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The House Intel Committee has invited former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and several other high level figures to testify at hearings about the Trump team's involvement with Russia. The White House's earlier attempts to block Yates from testifying are proving futile.
The House Select Committee on Intelligence has sent letters inviting multiple pivotal figures — including former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates — to testify before the committee about links between Donald Trump and Russian active measures.
In March, the White House attempted to block Yates from testifying by exerting executive privilege. However, Yates did not back down, and in the face of public outcry in response to the cover-up efforts, it appears the White House has backed off its attempts to prevent her testimony.
The Committee’s press release notes that FBI Director James Comey and National Security Advisor Admiral Mike Rogers were invited to testify behind closed doors on May 2nd, while former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Yates were invited to appear at a public hearing to be scheduled at a later date:
These will be the first hearings held by the House Intel Committee on Russian active measures since Republican Representative Devin Nunes was forced to step aside from his position as chair of the investigation in the wake of the scandal regarding his interactions with the Trump White House. Nunes’ replacement, GOP Representative Trey Gowdy, has previously threatened to hide all such investigations from the public, so the scheduling of a public hearing is particularly notable and lauditory.
Nonetheless, the troubling consistency with which the majority of Republican lawmakers put party ahead of country reinforces the need for an independent, non-partisan investigatory body to investigate the web of ties between the Trump team and Russia.
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Updated: Online Threat Against University of Chicago Was A Response To Laquan McDonald Shooting
By Kate Shepherd in News on Nov 30, 2015 6:05PM
via Jazmin Medrano
An arrest has been made in the investigation into a threat of violence that shut down the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus on Monday.
A University of Illinois at Chicago student living off-campus has been arrested, according to a statement posted on UIC's site.
Despite the fact no threats were made against UIC students, faculty or staff, the university has increased patrols on campus.
"We are monitoring this situation closely and are concerned about the impact this has had on our campus and the University of Chicago," UIC Chancellor Michael Amiridis said in the statement.
A University of Chicago spokesman and a Chicago Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the investigation Monday morning, and the FBI could not immediately be reached for comment.
Updated 12:30 p.m.: The Tribune is reporting that the threat was to kill 16 white male students or staff at the University of Chicago "in retaliation" for the shooting of Laquan McDonald. The comment was posted in response to a video clip from the 1995 movie "Panther" on www.worldstarhiphop.com, according to the Tribune:
"This is my only warning. At 10AM Monday morning, I'm going to the campus quad of the University of Chicago. I will be armed with an M-4 carbine and two desert eagles, all fully loaded. I will execute approximately 16 white male students and or staff, which is the same number of time McDonald was killed," wrote the commenter, who posted with the initials "JRD" and a Chicago Bulls logo, according to the police report. "I will then die killing any number of white policeman in the process. This is not a joke. I am to do my part and rid the world of white devils. I expect you do the same."
A New York resident reportedly called the FBI on Sunday morning to report the comment.
The FBI confirmed in an email statement to Chicagoist that: "An individual is in custody in connection with the threat of violence at the University of Chicago. Charges are pending, and no further information is available at this time."
Updated 1:30 p.m.: Investigators who searched the student's off-campus residence did not find a gun, sources told the Sun-Times.
Updated 3:30 p.m.: Chicago resident Jabari R. Dean, 21, was charged with transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced in a statement. Dean was arrested without incident this morning before the 10:00 a.m. deadline announced in the threat.
The maximum sentence for the charge is five years in prison. Dean was scheduled make his first court appearance at 3:00 p.m. Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan E. Cox.
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CLOSE Maybe because Dorothy's trip to Oz was courtesy of a Kansas tornado, we've always thought that twisters were more common in the Great Plains. But tornadoes actually kill more people and do more damage in the Southeast than they do in the central U.S. USA TODAY
A tornado moves through Tuscaloosa, Ala. Wednesday, April 27, 2011. Tornadoes will be the subject of a large scientific campaign this spring in the Southeast. (Photo: Dusty Compton, AP)
Two decades after helping inspire the movie Twister, a vast operation to chase, observe and study tornadoes in the USA is getting a reboot.
Starting Tuesday, 40 scientists from up to 20 different government, research and academic organizations will fan out across the Southeast, focusing for the first time on the so-called Dixie Alley, a region frequently hit by deadly, destructive tornadoes.
Known as VORTEX-SE — a clever acronym for "Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment, Southeast" — the project follows in the footsteps of large research campaigns that began 22 years ago in the “Tornado Alley” of the Great Plains and sparked the 1996 Hollywood blockbuster.
The impetus for the venture — allocated a $5 million budget from Congress — stems from a violent tornado outbreak in April 2011 that left hundreds dead, mainly in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee.
A University of Massachusetts radar truck observes a Wyoming tornado on June 5, 2009, during the VORTEX-2 campaign. (Photo: Robin Tanamachi)
The new research — to help scientists better understand tornadoes and the complex storms that fuel them as well as improve early warning systems that save lives — is well overdue in the region.
"Tornado density is greater in the Southeast than anywhere else," said Grady Dixon, a geosciences professor at Fort Hays State University in Kansas.
On average, about 40 people die in the nine states that make up the southeastern U.S. each year. Alabama tallies the highest death toll annually with an average of 14, according to data from the Storm Prediction Center.
By comparison, an average of 10 people die from twisters each year combined in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, the three states that make up Tornado Alley. Overall, about 73 Americans are killed each year by tornadoes, based on data from 1985-2014.
"I know it is sometimes portrayed as surprising that more deaths occur in the Southeast, but it makes total sense," Dixon said.
Dixon's 2011 study found twisters were far more likely in the region because the storm-fueled forces of nature last longer on the ground there than in the Plains. His research discovered the most tornado-prone area in the country is Smith County, in southeastern Mississippi.
Tornado deaths by year in each state. (Photo: Storm Prediction Center)
The deadly tornadoes that ripped through the southern and eastern U.S. last week, killing seven, highlight why the twisters researchers will begin studying in depth this week.
Southern tornadoes can sometimes occur in the winter, when people may not be as prepared for their destructive powers that are most often associated with spring. Many also happen at night, making it harder to seek shelter or watch the latest forecasts. Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky log the most nighttime twisters, Weather.com reports.
Half the nation's mobile homes, far more susceptible to tornadoes' winds, are located in the Southeast, where they add up to as much as one-fifth of the residences in many counties. Most tornado deaths occur in mobile homes, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
The frequency of killer tornado events is highest in the South. (Photo: Northern Illinois University)
The twisters are different beasts in the wooded, humid and hilly Southeast than they are in the dry, flat and windswept Plains, said Kevin Knupp, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the home base for the project.
That makes chasing the twisters harder in the region, where low clouds add to the list of conditions that can obscure tornadoes until it's too late for residents and researchers alike.
Driving is limited by the terrain and roads there whereas the Plains' orderly grid pattern of highways makes getting around easier and its limited trees allow everyone to see the twisters sooner and more clearly, said Erik Rasmussen, longtime severe weather researcher at the National Severe Storms Laboratory and VORTEX-SE coordinator.
The "rough" forested and urban landscapes of the Southeast make tornadoes spin up in different ways than the "smooth" landscapes of the flat, agricultural Plains, said Knupp. "We don't fully understand their behavior," Knapp said.
Part of the VORTEX-SE project will be to figure that out, he added.
Twister promoted the idea of storm chasers dashing madly to catch the next storm system that might produce a tornado. While mobile teams will be part of the southeastern project, there will be plenty of researchers in fixed locations throughout the region.
"The storms will be coming to us, rather than us going to them," Rasmussen said.
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Nobody among the supporters at the Trump victory party was more surprised than the few New Yorkers among them.
“It’s not Hitler,” one announced. “It’s Springtime for Hitler! It’s The Producers!”
He was referring to the Mel Brooks comedy where a couple of hustlers produce a Broadway musical that they never expect to be a hit. This New Yorker had known Trump for years and had worked with him on at least one major project. He suspects that Trump himself entered the presidential race with no real expectation he would win.
Trump may have begun to imagine otherwise when he discovered the incendiary potential of Twitter, using tweets as lit matches to commit a level of social arson our politics has never seen, stoking fear and prejudice and hatred against reason.
He spoke lies to power.
His hometown is a city of immigrants that thrums with diversity and had long known him as a con man.
But he won over millions of supporters beyond the Hudson River, where reality-television such as The Apprentice is so often confused with reality. He convinced them that he was going to shake things up and Make America Great Again, just like it said on the red hats that folks were wearing in the VIP section at what was billed an Election Night Victory Party at the New York Hilton before almost anybody believed he would win.
These were all new hats, for the VIPs were not the disaffected Rust Belt workers or riled-up coal miners that had been sporting them for months. These were prosperous-looking people in suits and ties.
“I think he was just playing to a certain audience,” a health-care industry executive from Greenwich, Connecticut, said when asked how he countenanced some of Trump’s more extreme statements.
Some of the VIPs did prove to have a bit of the Trump rally in them as one state after another was declared for their man.
“USA! USA! USA!”
“Drain the swamp!”
But in between, they fell to happy chattering with each other, seeming amazed that they had actually won. A guy who had been recorded bragging about grabbing women’s genitals had been elected the next president of the United States. The shouts erupted again when word came that Hillary Clinton was not yet prepared to concede.
“Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!”
By then, Election Night had ticked into the next day, November 9, making it exactly 15 years since this same Hilton hotel ballroom had filled with the family and comrades of FDNY Captain Patrick J. Brown, following his memorial at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral just down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower.
As had been noted during the eulogies, Brown had been one of the most decorated firefighters in the city’s history, routinely risking all to save strangers of whatever race or creed or gender from what he sometimes called the red devil. He had died on 9/11 while ascending the North Tower.
“Climbing up flight after flight to meet the very devil himself,” one of the eulogists had said.
The eulogist had gone on to say that Brown had not just been defying death. He had been affirming life.
“He always knew that the devil is not just fire,” the eulogist said. “The devil is also indifference and callousness and materialism and disrespect and anything else that hardens the heart.”
Brown was not one to countenance bigotry or bullying. He had seen heavy combat as a Marine in Vietnam and would not have tolerated denigrating a former POW or a Gold Star mother and father. And, as someone who sometimes sported bruises from teaching karate for the blind, he would have dismissed anybody who mocked the disabled.
So, it was particularly disheartening to see another of the eulogists from Brown’s memorial in prominent attendance at the Trump gathering in this same cavernous room on Election Night.
When he took the cathedral podium at the memorial back in 2001, Giuliani’s eyes had welled with tears as he spoke of a “fallen warrior and a great patriot… a legend in the life of the Fire Department.” Giuliani had observed one other attribute that Brown shared with all true greats.
“He kept his feet on the ground,” Giuliani had told the mourners. “He was humble despite all he accomplished."
Fifteen years later, the once tear-filled eyes had gone shiny with a zany zealotry as Giuliani embraced a man who was the very opposite. Giuliani had championed Trump against all reason even defending The Donald’s lies about giving to the victims of 9/11.
“Every time New York City suffered a tragedy, Donald Trump was there to help,” Giuliani said. “He’s not going to like my telling you this, but he did it anonymously.”
But an audit of Giuliani’s own Twin Towers Fund showed no such anonymous donations. Giuliani seemed to have joined Trump in a realm where the truth was whatever The Donald pronounced it to be.
As the campaigning neared an end, video clearly showed Obama defending the right of an elderly veteran to voice support for Trump. That had not stopped Trump from telling a rally that Obama had been “yelling horribly at the veteran Trump supporter!”
“If I acted like Obama did, I’d be called unhinged!” Trump declared.
Such things had caused Trump to be more unpopular in his hometown than any presidential candidate in memory, perhaps ever. His supporters would not likely fare well sporting those red hats in the subway.
But for a few hours on Election Night leading into November 9, a hotel ballroom in Manhattan was as much Trump country as deepest Georgia.
Around 2:30 a.m., word spread that Trump had made the short journey from Trump Tower to the hotel by motorcade. The future vice-president, Mike Pence, descended with his family from a balcony and took the stage.
“The American people have spoken and the American people have elected their new champion,” Pence said.
Then, a man who is both the most unpopular guy in New York and the candidate just elected president of the United States, appeared on the balcony wearing his usual red tie. He silently mouthed the words “Thank you.”
“USA! USA! USA!” the crowd chanted again.
Trump was joined not just by his family but by the likes of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who serves as his transition chief and may yet get indicted in the Bridgegate scandal.
Trump informed the crowd that he had just received a concession call from Hillary Clinton.
“And I complimented her and her family on a very hard fought campaign,” Trump said. “We owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service for our country. Now is the time to bind the wounds.”
The man who had divided the country as never before announced that we must now come together. He who had targeted Mexicans and Muslims and women with his invective pledged to represent all citizens.
“Working together, we will begin the important task of rebuilding our country,” his said. “It’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
He seemed to be saying that every ugly thing he had done and said, all the lies he had told, all the poison he had spread could just be forgotten because he had now had secured the prize that had inspired all those lies.
“This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough,” he said, as if it had all been just the nature of things and just a way to win.
Trump then said that he wanted to acknowledged somebody in particular.
“I wanted to give very special thanks to our former Mayor Giuliani.”
Giuliani came up on the stage.
“Rudy! Rudy!” a voice shouted.
The eyes that had filled with tears 15 years before now gleamed anew. He appeared to believe this was an honorable victory—something a true devil-fighter like Patrick Brown might have applauded.
The memorial back in 2001 had been held on November 9th because it had been Brown’s 49th birthday. He would have turned 64 on the day that Trump—the arsonist—became our next president.
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Roughly a year after swallowing up Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications could merge with yet another massive broadband and TV provider: Verizon.
The telecommunications giant is reportedly exploring a combination with Charter, the nation's second-largest cable company, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A deal between the two could create a massive company controlling access to home broadband, cable TV, and mobile voice and data services, accelerating what some analysts describe as a “mad scramble” of consolidation in the communications industry.
“These companies are chomping at the bit to gobble each other up and control Internet transmission across the country,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former antitrust official at the Justice Department and president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
Verizon serves 114 million cellphone subscribers, 4.6 million TV customers and 7 million Internet subscribers; Charter has 17 million TV customers and 21 million Internet subscribers. Together, the two companies' high-speed Internet businesses would add up to more than Comcast's 25 million broadband customers; at 21.6 million, their combined base of TV customers would be roughly on par with Comcast's. Both Verizon and Charter declined to comment.
What a combined Charter and Verizon would look like, stacked against Comcast and AT&T (Sources: Corporate financial filings)
Under pressure from rivals in the wireless industry such as AT&T and T-Mobile, Verizon has sought to expand into adjacent industries by buying up companies traditionally associated with Internet content, such as AOL and Yahoo. Cable companies are also trying to shore up their businesses as consumers, fed up with rising bills and attracted to online alternatives, increasingly cancel their service.
“Verizon faces challenges in its wireless future and a disappointing early experience in [providing online video] which might have it searching for a large deal that can provide a larger pivot in its strategy,” said Walt Piecyk, an analyst at BTIG. “It's unlikely that Charter will be the only company that Verizon talks with in 2017.”
President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism of large media mergers, taking aim on the campaign trail at AT&T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner and Comcast's 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal. But some say he is unlikely to block any deals.
“No one on Wall Street actually believes he's going to act on [his words]," said one industry analyst, referring to other campaign stances Trump has since softened, such as his vow to prosecute Hillary Clinton. The analyst spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely.
What's more, some of Trump's political appointees who might oversee a potential Verizon-Charter deal are seen as amenable to large mergers. Ajit Pai, whom the president named this week as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is expected to take a sunnier view of consolidation, said Paul Gallant, an analyst at Cowen & Co., in a research note Monday.
It's less clear what Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Trump's nominee for attorney general, thinks about big mergers — although in his confirmation hearing, he did say both that he would have “no hesitation to enforce antitrust law” and that he opposed forcing sweeping conditions on companies to regulate their post-merger activity.
Companies thus face the prospect of a friendlier regulatory environment than during the Obama administration, analysts say, which could help drive a wave of merger announcements in the coming months.
“The industry thinks there's going to be a short window in which lots of deals are going to be allowed,” said Blair Levin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who helped draft the FCC's National Broadband Plan in 2009. Turning to an arms race analogy, Levin added, “If an army is competing against an army and one of them gets a navy, suddenly you need a navy. And then you wind up in a situation where every army has a navy and a marine corps and an air force.”
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Utrecht 6 – 4 Ajax: Goal fest illustrates both teams short-comings
In a true goal fest, that ultimately saw Utrecht run out 6-4 winners, both teams illustrated their short-comings, rather than their qualities. The prejudice of the Eredivisie being a high scoring league due to a generally low level of defending was fed once more, as virtually all of today’s nine goals involved defensive weaknesses rather than offensive brilliance.
Utrecht’s formation
Disappointing would be the best one-word summary of Utrecht’s season up to this game. Having competed in the Europa League group stage of the past season , Utrecht are a very different side at this moment in time. Of last year’s squad that beat Ajax 3-0 at home for De Boer’s first defeat as Ajax manager, only three players remain today. Influential players like Dries Mertens and Kevin Strootman were sold to PSV, while striker Ricky van Wolfswinkel left for Sporting Lissabon. To make things worse, goal keeper Michel Vorm left during pre-season to join new Premier League side Swansea and captain and Danish international Michael Silberbauer left Utrecht for Swiss side Young Boys.
With such severe depletion, only moderate expectations should be kept this present season, and unfortunately this has been what’s in store for Utrecht so far. On top of the exodus of first team players, manager Erwin Koeman, who had only just started his work at the club this summer, left a few weeks ago, with former Ajax manager Jan Wouters taking care for the moment.
In tactical terms, Utrecht lines up in a 4-3-3 formation with central midfielder Asare looking to roam behind strong striker Mulenga, and the pair of Sneijder and Mårtensson responsible for holding the midfield.
Ajax’ flirt with the 3-3-1-3
During this year’s Dutch Cup campaign, Frank de Boer first showed his three-at-the-back system in competitive matches. He did so again amateur side Noordwijk, and later on away at Roda. Against Roda’s 4-4-2 diamond, the 3-3-1-3 did an excellent job, providing an excellent example of why defense should ideally contain one man more than the offenses their defending. De Boer stuck with the system for the follow-up Eredivisie match, again away at Roda, and Ajax earned another victory.
In the preface of the Zagreb match, last week, De Boer proclaimed that Zagreb playing a single striker formation was the main reason not to go with the 3-3-1-3 again, in turn choosing for the more familiar 4-3-3 formation, with offensive full-backs, complemented with offensive intentions for centre-back Vertonghen.
Against Utrecht’s 4-3-3, De Boer went with the expected 4-3-3 again. With Sigthorsson out for quite some time, Siem de Jong made another start in the striker position, although he got injured as early as in the second minute, when Dmitri Bulykin replaced him.
Spectacle or painful?
With five first half goals scored it does not make sense to go through all of them in chronological order to describe the tactical developments during the match. As a general theme, both teams threw any notion of control over the space in front of their back fours to the wind and paid the price for it. A match like this will generally go down as a spectacle and a ‘really good game to watch’, but at times the defensive performances of both teams were that far below par that it was painful to watch.
Utrecht’s problem
Let’s first describe Utrecht in this regard, and then turn our attention to the visitors. Jan Wouters, known more for his motivational than his tactical qualities in a general sense, lost the balance in his team in midfield. When deploying a 4-3-3 with wide strikers, rather than wide midfielders who tend to put in defensive shifts too, the balance in defensive terms needs to come from the central midfielders. Utrecht fielded three central midfielders today, but Asare mainly played close to striker Mulenga, and apart from topping the fouls charts of the Eredivisie, he is not known for his defensive input. Of the remaining two midfielders, Sneijder (brother Rodney, on loan from Ajax, that is) is a renowned playmaker more than a holding midfielder.
With a defensive line of four afraid to push up all too high when faced with the pace of Boerrigter and Sulejmani, the pair of Sneijder and Mårtersson could never cover the wide space in front of the defense. The resulting freedom was a gift, most notably for Eriksen, but also for both Ajax’ wingers when Utrecht’s full-backs needed to support the centre-backs by playing narrow.
Ajax’ problems
Contrary to Utrecht, Ajax did field a genuine holding midfielder in terms of Eyong Enoh. And he did a decent job playing against Asare, apart from that one moment where Enoh failed to step out of Ajax’ back line, which allowed Asare all the time he needed to fire in a shot, finding the net after Enoh’s unlucky deflection. Although the deflection proved vital for that particular shot to find the back of the net, Asare’s wide movement saw him escape the zone of Enoh to the right wing time and again, allowing him to join Duplan in overloading Ajax’ left-back Anita.
An important development in terms of Ajax’ back line might have been the early substitution of Toby Alderweireld. André Ooijer, who replaced him, lacks the pace and agility to deal with quick balls over the top, balls that are inevitably going to come given Ajax’ possession centered style of play. Ooijer’s short-comings in this regard were well illustrated in Utrecht’s second goal.
Ooijer was again at fault for inadequately marking Bovenberg for Utrecht’s third goal of the day. The right-back, who scored regularly from indirect set pieces for Excelsior last season, wasn’t tracked by Ooijer in a man-marking set piece situation that should be well-known terrain for a veteran defender.
Ajax’ miscommunications in the back line were frequent, and most of them could be dealt with through late tackles, but for Utrecht’s fourth goal the defensive line was all over the place. Ajax generally has its defense playing for offside in order to control the space behind the defensive line, but today the centre-backs and full-backs had all sorts of trouble keeping that offside line intact. For the fourth goal none of the four defenders even stayed on the same height of the pitch, and Mulenga was easily onside and in behind the defense.
Finally, Ajax’ fifth conceded goal will hopefully be seen as a demonstration that pragmatism should triumph over principle. Sometimes referred to as ‘the Dutch Disease’, consequently re-circulating the ball to your own goal keeper led to a series of precarious back passes, one of which ultimately saw Vermeer give possession away, only for Asare for fin the back of an empty net.
In the end
Matches like these can be described as either a ‘true goal fest’, or a painful series of defensive errors, and in terms of tactically reviewing a match the latter prevails. In honesty, both teams should have won this match based on their opponents short-comings and the fact that in offensive terms, they generally took advantage of the space presented.
For Utrecht, there may still be hope that Wouters will sort out this obvious problem of conceding acres of space in midfield, although his track record as manager before doesn’t serve to provide much confidence here.
And for Ajax, this may well be the most disappointing defensive performance of the season. The back line was all over the place, missing the communication that is essential in a team that aims to put pressure on their opponent, and therefore plays with a high defensive line. The substitution of Ooijer for Alderweireld introduced a painful series of problems in terms of (A) communication, (B) positioning, and (C) pace to make up for short-comings in either (A) or (B).
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SpaceX ditches landing legs on next Falcon 9 flight
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: September 14, 2014
Updated Sept. 15 with SpaceX correction
SpaceX's next resupply mission to the International Space Station is set for takeoff as soon as Saturday after a rapid rebound from the company's last flight from Cape Canaveral, but the company does not plan to use the launch as another chance to practice rocket recovery procedures.
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft inside SpaceX's hangar at Cape Canaveral. Credit: SpaceX
Liftoff of a 208-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for Saturday at 2:16 a.m. EDT (0616 GMT), a day later than previously planned to accommodate flight preparations after SpaceX's Sept. 7 launch of the AsiaSat 6 commercial communications satellite. If ground crews pull it off, it will bust SpaceX's record turnaround time between Falcon 9 missions as the launch company ramps up its mission cadence to accomplish a jam-packed manifest. Before now, the fastest turnaround between SpaceX launches was 22 days between a pair of commercial Falcon 9 flights from Cape Canaveral on July 14 and Aug. 5. The Falcon 9 booster stage set to launch Saturday will not carry landing legs, according to Hannah Post, a SpaceX spokesperson. Correcting an earlier statement, SpaceX said Monday it will still try to guide the first stage to a controlled soft splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean -- "with a low probability of success" -- but the company has no plans to retrieve it. The rocket's first stage is programmed fly back to Earth after completing its work to boost the Dragon spacecraft off the launch pad, but engineers swapped out the Falcon 9 booster with a first stage originally assigned to another flight, officials said. The reason for the changeout was not disclosed, but it means Saturday's flight will be without landing legs. SpaceX fitted two Falcon 9 rockets earlier this year with landing legs. During liftoff, the carbon fiber-aluminum honeycomb legs are left folded against the rocket's first stage. Once the booster finishes its main job in the launch sequence, the stage falls away and uses leftover propellant to re-ignite its engines for a controlled descent back to Earth. Moments before reaching the ground, the legs extend down and outward. The launches with landing legs earlier this year were exercises, culminating with splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean a few hundred miles from Cape Canaveral. SpaceX plans to eventually land its rocket stages on a barge or on shore, allowing engineers to refurbish the hardware for reuse. The next two launches after Saturday's mission will attempt landing the first stage on a solid surface, according to SpaceX. The last two Falcon 9 missions carried large communications satellites to high-altitude orbits, leaving insufficient fuel for a full descent and landing of the rocket's first stage.
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket with landing legs. The launch set for Sept. 20 will not carry landing legs. Credit: SpaceX
After the Sept. 7 launch of AsiaSat 6, SpaceX moved the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket for the next mission into the horizontal integration hangar at Cape Canaveral's Complex 40 launch pad. The schedule calls for the cargo-carrying Dragon capsule to be attached to the launcher this week, followed by a customary on-pad engine firing to verify the rocket's readiness for flight. Following the static engine firing, launch crews will rotate the rocket back horizontal to install time-sensitive cargo into the Dragon spacecraft's pressurized cabin. The rest of the ship's cargo load is already packed inside. The supplies to be loaded into the unmanned capsule on the eve of launch include 20 mice serving as experimental specimens for scientists studying muscle atrophy. More than 5,000 pounds of supplies, experiments, provisions and other gear is manifested to fly to the space station on the Sept. 20 launch. The payloads include an Earth observation package for mounting on a platform outside the space station to measure ocean winds. Scientists say the data will improve weather prediction, including hurricane forecasts. If liftoff occurs Saturday, the Dragon spacecraft is due to arrive at the space station Monday. The laser-guided rendezvous will conclude with grapple of the capsule by the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm. SpaceX has to launch the mission Sept. 20 or Sept. 21 or wait until at least Sept. 25 for another opportunity. The space station's next three-person crew -- made up of two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut -- is preparing for launch Sept. 25 aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft, and cargo missions like the SpaceX flight must stand down during crew rotations. The capsule will remain attached to the complex for about a month, then it will be released to descend from orbit for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, bringing home about 1.9 tons of experiment samples and other equipment tagged for return to Earth. The mission will be SpaceX's fourth operational cargo delivery to the space station. The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for 12 logistics missions through 2016. NASA turned to the private sector for cargo resupply missions after the retirement of the space shuttle. Orbital Sciences Corp. holds a similar contract with NASA worth $1.9 billion for eight flights with its Antares rocket and Cygnus spaceship, ensuring a steady stream of supplies to the space station with two independent providers. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
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Just over a week ago, as the Lost finale loomed, the faithful made preparations. We baked smoke monster cakes; we watched cats on YouTube explain the plot. But mainly, we read interviews with the creative team of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (affectionately known to the online horde as Cuselof or Darlton), the show-runners who had, under creator J. J. Abrams, overseen one of the most interactive TV hits in history, a show designed to be mob-solved, scavenged for symbolism, and adored.
They were preparing us. In each interview, with a mix of humility and defensiveness, they repeated that they had done the best they could. They had focused on the characters. And we, the viewers, shouldn’t expect answers to everythingsome we’d learn on DVD, others would never be resolved. So please stop asking about the four-toed statue. Let it go.
This kind of expectation management is, by now, a baseline responsibility of anyone steering a major TV sensation, and it’s no easy task. Some (Aaron Sorkin) are driven crazy and write entire television series in response to audience critiques; others (David Chase) push back, brilliantly. But like a lot of genre writers, the Lost creators had always been more-forthcoming figures, warm and reassuring, regularly urging the audience that we, as fans, should trust them, and that we should be patient, that while there was no time to explain right now, if we hung on, all would finally be revealed.
Yet as the seasons passed, Darlton were also clearly unnerved by their most passionate devotees, who were busily compiling databases, freezing images for hints and clues, and generally acting like a particularly deranged, faintly Aspergian breed of forensic detectives. In 2007, Lindelof argued that the really good critics were fans at heart. I find there is a very rare instance where your fan brain is having one reaction and your critical brain is having another. The level at which questions are asked of us is polarizing. You can tell it’s personal. If they don’t like it, it’s like they’re offended in a way.
Real fan-hood, in other words, is, at its purest level, love. As in Corinthians, fan-hood is patient, kind, not rude, etc. (It is also not easily angered and it keeps no record of wrongs.) The Fan of Faith is superior to the Fan of Science, and while it’s natural to have questions, the ideal viewer should behave less like a nagging critic and more like a soul mate, supportive and committed even when doubts creep in.
At one point, during a New York Times panel on the Thursday night before the finale, Lindelof made this romantic-relationship metaphor explicit. In response to a question about fan disappointment, he described a first date that begins with the wrongheaded question Are you going to disappoint me? Just see how it works out! said Lindelof, in the voice of the show-slash-date. If you’re going to fall in love with somebody, you have to put aside that fear of disappointment.
Then again, if you build a show to be loved, heartbreak is always a risk. I’m a serious Lost fanI watched every episode, I recapped the show online for years, I’m one of the fools who combed Egyptology sites to determine whether that damned statue was Tawaret or Subekand yet I’m also someone who now thinks of the show as a failure. That fact doesn’t erase the pleasure I got from Locke’s orange-peel grin, but it does change the context. Because like so many, I hung on long after I had doubts: through cage sex, through the successful (but in retrospect nonsensical) time-travel gambit, through those great sequences among the Dharma hippies and into the drippy realm of the last season’s alternative-reality time line (a.k.a. the Sideways Universe), in which the characters learned and grew. This wasn’t a first date, after all; it was a six-year marriage. You don’t just give up.
In the run-up to the finale, Lindelof posted to Twitter, expressing his love for the fans. But he also sent out a message directed at some online video artists I had never heard of: But Fine Brothers? You shat on the show and that is not cool. I hereby revoke your status as fans.’ Lindelof’s followers offered support, but there was also this: I’m as big of a fan as you can be, and I think Fine Brothers couldn’t have put it better. A disappointed fan is still a fan.
I spent the afternoon watching the Fine Brothers videos, of course. They were, as it turns out, hilarious: sharp, prickly satires acted out by action figures. In each one, characters from Heroes, Twilight, Battlestar Galactica, and other genre hits invaded the Lost universe to make rattled critiques. (In one, Spock simply started screaming, I refuse to live in a place without logic!) With their South Parkstyle brass, a few of the satires were more fun to watch than the Season 6 Lost episodes, many of which boil down in my memory to bathetic baseball monologues and such camp lines as I don’t like the way English tastes on my tongue.
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Stamkos and St. Louis found their chemistry quickly and were magical on the same line, an elite righty-lefty combination that combined 667 points (287 goals, 380 assists) from 2009-13.
"I think [playing with] Kuch is probably the closest for me personally to having that chemistry [that I had] with Marty [St. Louis]," Stamkos, the Tampa Bay Lightning captain, said. "It's a tough thing to find in this League, that chemistry."
TAMPA -- Steven Stamkos feels like he goes back in time whenever he steps on the ice with Nikita Kucherov.
Stamkos and Kucherov, also a righty-lefty combination on the same line, could be just as effective with Kucherov being the new St. Louis.
"It's just easy when you're out there with him," Stamkos said. "He's one of the best players in the League."
Kucherov, 24, has goals in each of the Lightning's first five games, becoming the first player in franchise history to accomplish that feat. He has eight points (five goals, three assists) and Stamkos has seven points (one goal, six assists, including assists on three of Kucherov's goals.
The production is a continuation of what they started last season, when Kucherov and Stamkos combined for 41 points (17 goals, 24 assists) in 17 games before Stamkos was lost for the season with a knee injury.
Video: PIT@TBL: Stamkos scores PPG, ties club record
The Lightning (4-1-0) have won three straight games. They begin a three-game road trip against the Detroit Red Wings at Little Caesars Arena on Monday (7:30 p.m. ET; SN1, TVA Sports, SUN, FS-D, NHL.TV).
"I saw [Stamkos] play with St. Louis, so I know what to expect from him," Kucherov said. "I know what he's going to do in certain situations in the zone. It's all in my head. I remember always St. Louis talked about little things and I listened to him. I have seen a lot of highlights with [St. Louis] and Stammer so I know what to expect from Stammer."
Kucherov regrets never getting a chance to play with the Lightning when they had St. Louis and a healthy Stamkos.
"It was my dream to play with them once," he said.
He instead made his NHL debut with Tampa Bay on Nov. 25, 2013, two weeks after Stamkos broke his leg against the Boston Bruins. The day Stamkos announced he was coming back, March 5, 2014, was also the day the Lightning traded St. Louis to the New York Rangers.
However, Kucherov said the highlights he would watch of Stamkos and St. Louis playing together stuck out to him.
"Sometimes, plays they did, I feel what they did it was going through my mind too, that I would do the same thing," Kucherov said. "So when they put us [he and Stamkos] together, we had that chemistry."
Video: TBL@FLA: Kucherov cashes in on loose puck in front
St. Louis, who retired after the 2014-15 season with 1,033 points in 1,134 games, said he enjoys watching Kucherov play, especially with Stamkos, because he feels like he's watching a younger version of himself.
"We have a lot of similarities," St. Louis said. "He's really good coming down the right side and being deceptive, understanding that he's playing with Stamkos. He's always aware of where Stammer is."
St. Louis said it's key to have that sense when you're playing with Stamkos because he typically wants to have the puck once he gets into the zone so he can make plays. Stamkos used to be more of a shooter and Kucherov the playmaker, but St. Louis said the roles have reversed.
"Kucherov knows when he gets in the zone he'll probably have nothing so he has to do something to help Stammer when he comes in," St. Louis said. "He's got to play for the next three or four seconds a certain way so he can put the puck on Stammer's stick. He's got such a great feel for the game and where everyone is on the ice. I feel that was my strength. He's the right player to play with Stammer."
Kucherov, much like St. Louis did, has also grown into an elite player early in his NHL career. He scored 40 goals last season, up from 30 in 2015-16. He scored 32 goals in 56 games after Stamkos sustained his knee injury.
Kucherov had more of a shot-first mentality last season and finished with a career-high 246 shots on goal, up 37 from the season prior in three fewer games.
Part of his spike in production, and in shots on goal, had to do with the fact that the Lightning needed more from him with Stamkos out. But it also had to do with comfort and confidence, two things St. Louis remembers feeling when the puck started to go in for him early in his career.
Video: Caley Chelios on the Tampa Bay Lightning defense
The puck is still going in for Kucherov this season, and he's even averaging more shots on goal per game (3.6) than he did last season (3.3).
"Now that he's got his own identity and he's got a little swagger he's starting to shoot more," St. Louis said. "He can be like, 'Hey, I can do this on my own too. I've earned that right of being a little more selfish.'"
Kucherov, who admittedly has had to shake off his natural pass-first mentality, said he worked on his shot all summer. He continues to do so before and after practice.
Not surprisingly, St. Louis used to do the same thing.
"It was really noticeable this summer when [Kucherov] showed up here in Tampa two months before the season was starting," Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. "Normally, that doesn't happen. Tampa is a little hot so it's understandable why guys don't come back too early, but he did. He was at the rink every single day working on his game. That's how the great players become elite players. That's what he's done. He is an elite player."
St. Louis was too. Stamkos was a big part of it. History is repeating itself in Tampa Bay.
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Residents gather at a shelter in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, after being evacuated from their homes following shelling by North Korea, Thursday. / Yonhap
By Jun Ji-hye
After exchanging fire on the western border on Thursday, North Korea warned the South that "military action" will occur if Seoul does not stop its propaganda campaign within 48 hours.
South Korea is likely to make its decision regarding the broadcasts as early as today depending on how the North reacts.
A high-ranking official from the Ministry of Defense said no decision has been made concerning the physiological warfare operation that has delivered outside news to North Korean soldiers and border-area residents.
Pyongyang claimed that Seoul's resumption of the broadcasts amounted to a "proclamation of war."
The belligerent state has reacted sensitively to the campaign, apparently fearing that the broadcasts could induce soldiers and residents to flee to the South.
Some North Korean defectors have testified that they decided to escape the North after listening to broadcasts from the South.
Moon Sung-mook, a retired Army brigade general who is now a senior researcher at the Korea Research Institute for Strategy, said: "North Korean soldiers who fled to the South have said that soldiers in the North's frontline units secretly have new recruits sing songs of the South. If this testimony is true, the broadcasts can be a main factor to shake the basis of the North."
He said the main purpose of the broadcasts is to give information, not slander the North, because North Korean residents and soldiers can hardly learn about outside news.
Female defectors from North Korea are also participating in loudspeaker broadcasting to the North's frontline units.
"They are telling about their experience of defection and life in the South to North Korean soldiers and border-area residents," an official of the Ministry of National Defense said.
Seoul is conducting the broadcasts from 11 places near the Inter-Korean border for the first time in 11 years.
The measure began on Aug. 10 in retaliation for Pyongyang's landmine explosion inside the Demilitarized Zone that maimed two South Korean officers on Aug. 4.
The official said broadcasts by the female defectors are being aired from all 11 locations.
Other propaganda being broadcast includes the purge of the North's high-ranking military officials, the superiority of democracy, international news, weather information and music.
Broadcasting times and lengths are irregular to heighten the effect of the psychological warfare.
On Aug. 15, the North Korean People's Army warned against the South's resumption of the broadcasting, saying, "We will fire indiscriminately."
South Korean officials have detected signs that North Korean frontline soldiers are training in an apparent bid to destroy the loudspeakers.
Pyongyang's frontline units have resumed anti-South broadcasting in an apparent effort to drown out the sound from the South.
The two Koreas agreed to suspend the broadcasts in 2004 during general-level military talks.
But Seoul announced a plan to resume the broadcasting in 2010 after Pyongyang's deadly torpedoing of the South Korean Navy frigate Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. At the time, the North threatened to shoot at the speakers and the broadcasting did not resume.
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IBM Adds Support For Publishing JSON In DB2
Alex Woodie
At long last, IBM i shops will be able to publish JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) documents from their Db2 for i database. That much-desired capability will finally arrive as part of the latest Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i versions 7.2 and 7.3, which were announced yesterday and ship this month. New SQL commands and security log enhancements round out the release.
The capability to publish JSON documents has been a long time coming for IBM i shops, who until now have had to content themselves with the capability to consume and store JSON within their database, but who lacked the formal IBM-sanctioned capability to generate or publish the popular data type directly from their workhorse database.
IBM got the JSON ball rolling in June 2015, when it launched the JSON store for DB2 for i, which IBM recently, for some reason, decided to rename Db2 for i (note the lowercase “b”.) It fleshed out the framework a year ago when it added support for JSON tables, which enabled JSON documents to be deconstructed.
The JSON story improved substantially earlier this year, when IBM added support for JSON predicates. That essentially created a layer that enabled applications to treat JSON like relational data.
But the keystone in the JSON support in Db2 for i – what many shops have been waiting for — is support for publishing JSON directly from the database. IBM finally filled that hole with the forthcoming releases of IBM i 7.2 TR7 and IBM i 7.3. TR3, and the database updates that accompany them.
Specifically, IBM added four database commands related to JSON publishing, including JSON_ARRAYAGG, JSON_OBJECTAGG, JSON_ARRAY, and JSON_OBJECT. IBM also added two scalar functions to its JSON kit, including JSON_VALUE and JSON_QUERY. You’ll be able to read the gory details about these commands on the IBM i Technology Updates pages on the developerWorks site when they finally go live.
Scott Forstie, the Db2 for i business architect and SQL development leader at the IBM lab in Rochester, Minnesota, says the new features completes Db2 for i’s SQL support for JSON.
“We are adding the last elements of JSON support into the SQL language,” he tells IT Jungle. “You will see JSON scalar functions, but the most interesting additions are the JSON publishing functions. With these enhancements, we have completed nearly all of the support being added to the SQL Standard.”
While many Db2 for i clients are already heavily using JSON, they’ll be able to take their use of the language further with the latest TRs, he says. “With these enhancements, they can use standards-based technologies where it’s possible to get to end-of-job in a single query,” Forstie says. “The new enhancements will use portable skills to produce web services data more efficiently.”
Other new arrivals in the database include new SQL commands for accessing IBM i operating system details. For example, the new ASP_INFO view returns information about auxiliary storage pools (ASPs). The ASP_VARY_INFO view, meanwhile, gives administrators the capability to use the use DB2 for i’s SQL Query Engine (SQE) to compare and contrast performance over time. Lastly, the JOB_QUEUE_INFO view returns one row for each job message queue.
The SQE also gets new features to make it easier to enable stateless pagination, which is an important capability for developers who are aiming to deliver stateless sessions in their IBM i-based Web and mobile applications. The capabilities are delivered via OFFSET and LIMIT commands.
The new OFFSET feature “lets the database manager know that the application does not want to start retrieving rows until offset-row-count rows have been skipped,” according to the IBM developerWorks story on the feature. Similarly, the new LIMIT feature “lets the database manager know that the application does not want to retrieve more than fetch-first-row-count rows, regardless of how many rows there are in the intermediate result table,” it says in developerWorks. You can access more detailed information in the developerWorks page for Db2 for i enhancements.
Lastly, the security story gets better in the database thanks to new logs aimed at giving auditors a steady stream of security access data delivered in a standards-based manner. That includes the new HISTORY_LOG_INFO table function that generates IBM i history log details in Syslog format. It also includes a new feature in the DISPLAY_JOURNAL table function that gives the auditor the option of returning a subset of IBM i audit journal entry types in Syslog.
The database features will be included in Db2 PTF Group SF99703, which IBM says is scheduled to be released on October 27.
You can view a PDF copy of the IBM announcement letter for IBM i 7.2 TR7 here and the announcement letter for IBM i 7.3 TR3 here.
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When you try to put the 30 NBA teams in order of quality every week, you find that there are some lines of delineation that are clear and others that are blurry.
Through four weeks of the season, there's a lot of blurriness. We have a clear big three with the LA Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors all having lost just two games. The Clippers' losses have been by a total of six points, one of the Cavs' losses came without LeBron James, and the Warriors are riding a seven-game winning streak. At 10-3, having righted the ship after a 1-3 stretch, the San Antonio Spurs would clearly be the fourth team if we voted to see who makes the NBA semifinals (thank goodness we don't).
After that, it's anybody's guess as to which teams are really good, which are solid, and which are heading for an ugly season. After Cleveland, the East has a group of five teams - Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, and Toronto - that could be beating each other up for the next five months. After the Clippers, Warriors and Spurs, the West has some good offensive teams and some good defensive teams, but nobody that has shown signs of putting it all together.
So we have a lot of teams that can look good one night and terrible the next, can beat a good team and lose to a bad one. If you know what to make of teams like the Pacers, Bucks, Wolves or Jazz, you're smarter than me. The good news is that when you don't put all 30 teams in quite the right order, you get to try again next week.
Last week: Clippers climb to No. 1
Clippers climb to No. 1 This time last year: Problems arise for Bucks, Clippers -- The Clippers were 6-7 and Josh Smith was having a meltdown in the locker room. The Sixers were 0-14 and the Warriors were 15-0 after coming back from 23 down to beat the aforementioned Clips. Russell Westbrook scored 40-plus in two straight games (with Kevin Durant out), Jonas Valanciunas broke his hand, and the Rockets fired Kevin McHale.
Hero team of the week: Memphis (4-0) -- The Grizzlies still have a negative point differential (because that's how they do it), but picked up two impressive road wins over the Jazz and Clippers last week, and then held the Mavs and Wolves to 135 total points on 34 percent shooting.
Memphis (4-0) -- The Grizzlies still have a negative point differential (because that's how they do it), but picked up two impressive road wins over the Jazz and Clippers last week, and then held the Mavs and Wolves to 135 total points on 34 percent shooting. Zero team of the week: Brooklyn (0-4) -- The Nets played two bottom-five defenses last week and their defense was worse. They lost their four games (three of which were seemingly winnable going in) by an average of 19.5 points.
East vs. West: The West is 34-31 (.523) against the East in interconference games after going 15-12 (4-0 against the Nets) last week.
Toughest schedules through Nov. 20: 1. Sacramento, 2. Dallas, 3. Washington
1. Sacramento, 2. Dallas, 3. Washington Easiest schedules through Nov. 20: 1. Atlanta, 2. Memphis, 3. Milwaukee
1. Atlanta, 2. Memphis, 3. Milwaukee Schedule strength is based on cumulative opponent record, and adjusted for home vs. away and days of rest before a game.
High jumps of the week: New York (+8), Memphis (+7), Indiana (+5)
New York (+8), Memphis (+7), Indiana (+5) Free falls of the week: Brooklyn (-8), Milwaukee (-8), Utah (-8)
Team to watch this week: L.A. Lakers -- Having lost three of their last four games with some pretty atrocious defense, the Lakers are teetering in the eighth spot in the West. If a game this early can be described as critical, Tuesday's visit from the Thunder would fit the bill. And then a home-and-home with the Warriors will really test that defense.
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Pace: Possessions per 48 minutes (League Rank)
OffRtg: Points scored per 100 possessions (League Rank)
DefRtg: Points allowed per 100 possessions (League Rank)
NetRtg: Point differential per 100 possessions (League Rank)
The league is averaging 99.1 possessions (per team) per 48 minutes and 103.8 points scored per 100 possessions this season.
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NBA.com's Power Rankings, released every Monday during the season, are just one man's opinion. If you have an issue with the rankings, or have a question or comment for John Schuhmann, send him an e-mail or contact him via Twitter.
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Carolina Hurricanes president Don Waddell met with members of the local media during Friday night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens to address the seemingly endless speculation about the team’s future in the Raleigh market.
Waddell said that today’s firestorm of speculation about relocation has its roots in the host of a Montreal radio program, Martin McGuire, who started this line of discussion earlier this week before the Canadiens arrived in Raleigh. It took on a life of its own at the morning skate this morning, when the Canes locker room was besieged by questions from Canadiens reporters about the possibility of relocation.
“There’s nothing that has changed. There’s nothing to report,” Waddell said.
Waddell accused McGuire of being responsible for the last time this subject came up, not coincidentally the last time that the Habs were in town.
Regarding the team’s revenue streams, Waddell indicated that despite the large numbers of recent empty seats, the Canes’ revenue is up over recent years. It is helped by a robust revenue sharing program that has drastically reduced the reliance on gate receipts, down from a high of nearly 70% before the 2005 CBA went into effect to about 30% today.
“Revenue sharing at one time was $6-7 million per team,” Waddell said. “Now it is much greater than that. The league has done a tremendous job of assisting teams who are not going to be a market like some of our competitors when it comes to attendance. The salary cap and revenue sharing works very well for all 30 teams.”
Additionally, Waddell said that while the investment bank advising Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos is still technically under contract because there is no end date on the contract, they are no longer actively utilizing the bank’s services in attempting to find a buyer.
“We’ve shut down our investment banker. If someone comes along saying they would want to buy it, we would talk about it,” Waddell said, adding that everything has a price. “But we are not actively looking for investors. I haven’t met with prospective buyers in the past four or five months.”
Asked specifically if Karmanos had received an offer to buy the team that he turned down, as had been reported in Quebec media late last season, Waddell said directly that the answer was no. “We’ve had some people look at it some pretty hard, but we have not had to turn down an offer,” he said.
The Canes’ president seems to be resigned to the fact that this line of discussion is going to flare up from time to time, but was clear in his position that the fundamentals of the team both on the ice and in the front office are in solid shape and the team is not under any threat of a sale or a relocation.
“You can talk about an owner not spending time here, but he has put resources into this team and he is very passionate owner,” Waddell said. “That’s why he wants to keep this franchise. He is a big hockey fan, and he is very passionate about this team and about the city of Raleigh.
“There is no doubt that the team is headed in the right direction, and that will be a big part of the team’s success moving forward.”
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There was outrage last year among Labour members and supporters when Labour HQ trawled – by its own admission – through members’ social media feeds looking for reasons to suspend and in some cases even expel members.
Much of the outrage was driven by the fact that only pro-Corbyn members seemed to incur any action – and fuelled by the fact that members considered this behaviour a breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA), since they had not given Labour’s bureaucracy permission to use their data in any such way.
And a court upheld that opinion:
Now Labour General Secretary Ian McNicol has issued new guidance to Labour staff on their obligations under the DPA, severely limiting their future behaviour.
That guidance is below as a series of images, but it relates to data that is perceived under law as private – social media posts.
While these may be of a public nature, the data they contain actually belongs to the poster and as such, under ICO definitions. it cannot be legitimately accessed for the purposes of Labour’s Compliance Unit the posts for excuses to suspend or expel members and supporters.
So many complained to the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) that the ICO has told Labour HQ staff that it has its eye on them, so they have to be careful to follow the law.
According to the exact wording McNicol used to ban people via Appendix 2.1.b.x of the party rulebook, which is imposed retrospectively by them, most of these bans do not stand up to any kind of scrutiny or challenge, leaving the Party wide open to legal action by any of those affected that has the funds and appetite for it.
This is hugely significant for the Labour Party going forward, as it means that Labour HQ can no longer legally trawl social media for evidence to disenfranchise members and supporters.
This will come as a relief to any who have been curtailing their social media discussions out of fear of subsequent suspension in a future purge. These new rules from McNicol mean CLPs & the Compliance Unit/Legal cannot use social media posts unless the poster has specifically authorised the Labour Party to do so.
However, if you think this may apply to you, check whether you might inadvertently have given the Party your social media details by default, as this may mean the Party can trawl your accounts and use material posted against you. If you’re not sure, it will be worthwhile writing to McNicol withdrawing your permission for Labour to use your social media information – and even doing so as a precautionary measure to make sure that nothing slips through.
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The last minute or so of basketball games, college or pro, is going to take a while if the game's tight. But what about all the other minutes—how long do those take, relative to each other? Inpredictable played a riff on our NCAA tournament stopwatch viewing and ran the timestamps for every play in every NBA game this season. Above is how long each minute in takes in a game, on average.
A few things. One, yes, last minutes take a long time, but that's something we're used to. Same goes for the mandatory TV timeout minutes. But the very fast (you might even say fluid) pace of the first minutes of every quarter, and the gradual ramping up of the various things clogging up the game as time goes on, is just frustrating—doubly so for the second and fourth quarters, which are thrown out of whack in their fourth minute, instead of the seventh. The pacing makes sense from just having watched a fair share of basketball games, but you have to wonder: How much of that is on officials, and how much on the teams? Officials may be very slightly sheepish to blow the whistle right as play is starting, but it also probably doesn't help that the second units are in for many of the big jumps in play time.
Game length doesn't vary much among ESPN, TNT, and ABC, apparently, but there's a dive in length when you drop down to NBA TV, and again to local affiliates, which makes sense. So there, now you know why the best quarters to skip in an NBA game are the second, and the beginning of the fourth.
[Inpredictable]
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The Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted on Sunday to provide government backing for the new version of the “muezzin bill,” a proposal to ban religious institutions from using outdoor loudspeakers at night.
MK Moti Yogev (Bayit Yehudi), who submitted the bill along with coalition chairman MK David Bitan (Likud), praised the committee’s decision.
“We want to prevent disrupting the sleep of the entire population,” he said. “This is a social bill and we will continue to push it in full cooperation [with all parties] in order to avoid infringing upon the freedom of religion.” Sources close to Yogev said the bill might go to the Knesset for a preliminary reading as soon as Wednesday.The original text of the legislation would have prohibited such use of outdoor speakers at any time. The changes in the bill were made at the request of senior politicians from the haredi sector, however, who pressured the cabinet to promote legislation that would not affect the Shabbat sirens that sound at sundown on Fridays.According to the revised text, it will be forbidden to use outdoor speakers to sound the call for prayer in residential areas from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. It also includes a larger fine of NIS 10,000 for violating the law.Any “house of prayer” – including synagogues, churches and mosques – would be covered under the law.Palestinian officials expressed their discontent with the move and called it a dangerous violation of freedom of worship.Yousef Mahmoud, the official Palestinian Authority government spokesman, said the religious and cultural heritage of Palestinian Arabs extends into the depths of history.“It is not rational for the ink of the occupation’s pen to strike it out,” he said, adding that Israel is “imposing a vain and unjust law that prevents the followers of the Semitic religions from carrying out their rituals and performing their religious obligations.”Opposition lawmakers and left-wing NGOs slammed the cabinet for the decision and labeled it as a racist move with the intention of harming the Arab sector.“It is another brick in the wall of injustices of this government. Their sole goal is to single out the Arab public as an enemy from within,” said Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh. “This bill is not about loud noise and not about quality of life – it is about incitement and racism against a national minority. The sound of the muezzin was heard here [in the region] much before those racists in Netanyahu’s government and will stay here long after them.”MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin said the objection to the bill is justified, as is the criticism of far-right French leader Marine Le Pen.“This ‘muezzin bill’ is a race [based] bill by all accounts. It is a bill with no legal justification, just pure incitement against the Arab-Israeli citizens,” she said.“When Marine Le Pen suggests these days to ban Jews from wearing kippot, there is a loud uproar, and it’s legitimate.”Nahmias-Verbin added that it is known to all that the current bill against loud noise is sufficient to protect the citizens, “but our government insists on promoting ‘price tag’ legislation against the Arab-Israeli citizens.”Amnon Be’eri Sulitzeanu and Dr. Thabet Abu Ras, co-CEOs of the Abraham Fund Initiatives NGO that deals with Jewish- Muslim relations in Israel, said that the bill will only add to the tension between the two religions. “It seems that the true goal of the bill is to harm the Arab sector,” they said. “Passing the bill will be foolish; it will load the interfaith relations with more religious animosity, which was relatively minor up until now.”Adam Rasgon contributed to this report.
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Steve Irvine is the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Integrate.AI
I recently made the decision to leave my executive role at Facebook Inc. in Silicon Valley to start a company, Integrate.AI, focused on applied artificial intelligence. Normally, this news would not raise an eyebrow in the valley. In fact, people in positions like mine often leave the comfortable confines of large tech companies to build their own startups in hot new areas, such as AI. However, there was a notable difference in my case – I chose to start my company in Toronto.
A lot of people immediately assumed I had made the move strictly for personal reasons, as my wife and I are both Canadian. But I'm not here to take a step back in my career. While I'm certainly happy to be closer to family and living again in a great country, I'm moving back because I believe that AI is the biggest technology advancement that we will see in our lifetimes and that Canada is the best place in the world to build a global leading AI company.
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In my last job, I led the partnership programs for Facebook and Instagram, working with a global developer network that ranged from innovative startups to large software partners, such as Salesforce, IBM and Oracle. I had a unique opportunity to work with innovative technology hubs, including Silicon Valley, Silicon Wadi (Israel) and Zhongguancun (China). When I looked around the world for the best place to build my new company, I felt as if Canada – with the emergence of the Toronto-Waterloo corridor and growing ecosystems in Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Edmonton and Halifax – had all of the raw materials to be a world leader in AI.
I don't accept the argument that Canada can't win on a global stage.
Silicon Valley was built by government, academia and entrepreneurial communities moving together in lockstep toward a common goal with a clear focus. Decades before the emergence of the software and Internet services industries, Silicon Valley got its name based on the large cluster of semiconductor (silicon chip) companies in the area in the 1970s. That clear industry focus combined with a world-class research institute and growing venture capital community attracted entrepreneurs and trained the next generation of technology talent.
We have that opportunity here if we can focus on building the AI community. We already have some of the building blocks in academia, including two of the godfathers of deep learning (an advanced area of AI) in Geoffrey Hinton (University of Toronto) and Yoshua Bengio (MILA), as well as Richard Sutton (Amii), a founding father of reinforcement learning. We've had leaders in business, academia and government join forces to help define actionable road maps, such as Tech North and its advocacy for a Waterloo-Toronto technology supercluster report. And we have a diverse, tech-savvy country filled with entrepreneurial talent and strong business leaders.
That said, there are still risks ahead. Canada will not be a world leader in all fields of technology, so it is incumbent on us to be clear to the rest of the world as to where we are placing our bets. We can't play "not to lose," we need to play to win if we are to compete for global industry leadership in a hyper-competitive field. We also need a simple, aspirational mission around which to unify as a country, similar to JFK's famous 1962 speech in which he said the United States is going to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard and "because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills."
I'm not back in Canada to build AI's equivalent of a great space shuttle, I'm here to help our country put a person on the moon. I think Canada can be a global leader in AI, which the Tech North report suggests can add $17.5-billion to our annual GDP and 170,000 new jobs by 2025.
AI has been likened to the discovery of electricity, in its wide-scale ability to affect all people and businesses. As with other major technology advances, we need to work through important ethical, legal and privacy issues, but we have already seen AI applied to help with early detection of cancer, seamless language translation and computer vision for the blind.
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At Facebook, there are posters that read "This journey is 1 per cent finished," recognizing that as much as we have accomplished, there was much more to do in order to achieve our ambitious mission of connecting the world. I feel the same way about the work we have to do in Canada to establish ourselves as a global leader in AI, a top destination for talent and the incubator for the next Google, Facebook or Apple.
There has been great work done by a lot of people here to get us to this position. I've moved back to Canada to play my part. Our journey is 1 per cent finished, but the future is bright.
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The California Legislature is moving for the first time in history to tax every residence and business about a dollar month for drinking water to generate $2 billion over the next 15 years to supposedly clean up contaminated ground water.
Although Senate Bill 623 is titled: “Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund,” a coalition of agricultural and environmental lobbyists convinced its author Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) to amend the ground water cleanup bill that has been moving through the Legislature since February, to quietly add a water tax of 95 cents per month on every residence and business. The bill would also tack on $30 million in farm and dairy fees.
The European Union first promoted an environmental tax on water under the cover of the imminent global warming crisis. But the 28 nations of the EU have expanded their water taxation regime to include a tap water tax; a value added tax on all water purchases; a provincial groundwater tax; and a tax for installations on public land or water.
A similar environmental tax was proposed as SB-20 in 2015 at the end of California’s 5-year drought by California Senator Fran Pavley (D- Conejo Valley), author of AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 that created the cap and trade tax tsunami.
But her water tax effort ran into blistering opposition from California’s 317 water districts and agencies that complained it was an effort to use the drought crisis as justification “to fund another layer of administration in Sacramento.” The effort failed when it did not get any Republican crossover support for the 2/3 constitutional requirement to pass a tax.
California has never taxed drinking water, which has always been exempt as an essential “food product” by the California State Board of Equalization under Regulation 1602. Other tax-exempt liquid food products included non-carbonated fruit and vegetable juices. The tax-exemption was expanded in 1981 to include bottled water.
The main reason that the Legislature had avoided taxing water is the long and bloody California history of water wars that date back to the 1849 gold rush. Mark Twain famously commented that in California: “Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.”
But in an unprecedented turn, the powerful Western Growers that represent large farmers in California, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico released a statement supporting SB-623 to provide clean drinking water to disadvantaged communities that cannot afford clean drinking water. The growers acknowledged the challenges of agriculture relying on nitrogen-rich and its runoff impact on water quality.
The Western Growers in a landmark statement added, “working with the environmental justice community, as well as other stakeholders, for over a year in an effort to address the critical needs in disadvantaged communities relating to safe drinking water. Since these challenges are numerous, both from naturally occurring contaminants and human sources, we believe the solution should be shouldered by a broad array of stakeholders.”
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RALEIGH, N.C. ()The undecided election for North Carolina governor reached a conclusion on Monday as a recount of thousands of votes wrapped up.
Gov. Pat McCrory released a video Monday in which he says "the citizens have spoken," and "we should now do everything we can to support the 75th governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper."
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McCrory, who could not capitalize on the wave of support that delivered statewide victories for Republicans Donald Trump and Sen. Richard Burr, was could have demanded a statewide recount, but only if the margin was 10,000 or fewer votes.
According to a recent count, Democrat Roy Cooper, N.C.'s new governor, lead the Republican incumbent by about 10,250 votes.
A review of more than 94,000 votes cast in heavily Democratic Durham County during the early-voting period and on election day was expected to finish Monday. McCrory has said he won't ask for a statewide recount if that recount shows the same results.
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Most other protests filed by McCrory's Republican allies have already been tossed out.
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Thousands of dead fish have begun mysteriously washing up in the polluted Rio bay that will host sailing events at the 2016 Olympics -- and experts are at a loss to explain why (AFP)
Thousands of dead fish have begun mysteriously washing up in the polluted Rio bay that will host sailing events at the 2016 Olympics — and experts are at a loss to explain why.
Guanabara Bay has already been the subject of concern amongst sailors who are to compete in Rio because of the human sewage that gets pumped into its waters.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has expressed confidence that Guanabara will be fit for purpose by the time of the games.
But the recent appearance of thousands of dead fish, and the foul stench of their rotting carcasses, has attracted further scrutiny with the Olympics less than two years away.
Scientists are baffled by the phenomenon but say there is no evidence so far to suggest pollution is the cause.
The foul odor first took over the usually peaceful Paqueta Island, where cars are banned and the population of 4,500 people travels on horseback or bicycle among the only baobab trees in Brazil.
With the help of a bulldozer, a municipal company has removed 20 tonnes of dead sabalo fish — from the Clupeidae family of herrings and sardines — as well as four dead sea turtles.
“Tests showed that this is not a matter of chemical or toxic water pollution,” Rio do Janeiro State University oceanographer David Zee told AFP.
Leandro Daemon of the National Institute for the Environment, or INEA, agreed that water testing had not identified any toxic chemicals or any unusual change in the water’s pH (potential of hydrogen), salinity or oxygen.
“We have no answer yet about what happened, but we can certainly exclude the hypothesis of a chemical pollution killing the fish,” he said.
– ‘Don’t go in’ –
But not everyone is so sure.
Worried fishermen and islanders are pointing the finger at the petrochemical activities of state giant Petrobras.
“We want to know why so many fish have died. The rotten smell is horrible and there are many flies on the island. The authorities tell us nothing,” said Vilma Leocadio of the Paqueta citizens’ association.
“We are afraid, we do not bathe in the sea any more and do not buy fish here.”
Rosimere Figueiredo, 52, said Paqueta was in distress.
“I do not encourage you to step in the water with all those dead bodies of fish. We see them dying,” she said.
Five of the fish were sent Tuesday to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s biology department for analysis, and the results will be announced in a week.
Experts want to know if there are any signs of pollution or disease in the entrails or gills.
– High temperatures to blame? –
One hypothesis is that the culprit is predatory fishing.
At this time of year, fishing is prohibited, but it is common for fishermen to still work, catching fish like sabalo that have a lower market value, Zee said.
But the expert said the likeliest scenario was that the deaths are caused by “thermal pollution” of the water.
“Sabalo are very sensitive to any lack of oxygen. Warm water temperatures such as those recorded several days ago — ranging from 27 to 30 degrees Celsius (81 to 86 Fahrenheit) — in shallow water decrease the solubility of oxygen,” Zee said.
He noted that Paqueta is located at the bottom of the Rio bay, where water circulation and exchange is more difficult, a phenomenon exacerbated by the low tide.
“What is striking is the duration of this mortality and also the high temperature of the water,” said biologist Mario Moscatelli, who has studied the bay’s waters for 20 years.
“I flew over the area in early October, and fish were floating. At first, we thought they were thrown into the sea by fishermen. But before too long, I saw them dying in a way that seemed they were missing oxygen.”
He said the sabalo, being more sensitive, are the first fish to die in the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, which contains sea water carried through a canal in Rio’s southern zone.
“But in case of chemical contamination, other species will die,” he said. “We have more questions than answers. We must wait for the results of the analysis.”
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اتاق های کلاسیک:
اتاق لوکس:
اتاق های سیگنچر:
قیمت اتاق های معمولی این هتل
هزینه های هیات صد نفره احمدی نژاد چقدر می شود؟
توضیح "انتخاب": محاسبه فوق، حداقل هزینه های احتمالی و با محاسبه و در نظر گرفتن اتاق های معمولی برای هیات همراه رییس جمهور ایران است و همچنین حداکثر این هزینه ها (مانند استفاده از مجلل ترین اتاق ها و ....) به هزینه ای بالغ بر 500 هزار دلار افزایش خواهد یافت.
توضیحی برای مخطبان "انتخاب" : آن دسته از مخاطبانی که گزارش فوق را ناشی از "عناد با دولت" می دانند!، مستحضر باشند که "انتخاب" هرگز با اختصاص امکانات خوب و عالی برای جناب رییس جمهور مخالف نیست و حتی معتقد است با توجه به حضور خبرنگاران و رسانه ها و مقامات مختلف، نیاز مبرم است که امکانات در حد شان ایشان و ایران عزیز باشد، اما آنچه محل بحث است و از فحوای گزارش فوق نیز قابل استنباط است این است که
اولاً: دولتی که شعار ساده زیستی می دهد، چگونه حاضر شده چنین مبالغی را بپردازد؟
ثانیاً: دلیل حضور هیات صد نفره ی همراه با جناب رییس جمهور و افزایش مخارج هنگفت این سفر ( که هفت سال است تکرار و تکرار می شود) چیست؟ آیا نتایج سفر به نیویورک و سخنرانی در سازمان ملل، در حد و اندازه ای است که چنین مخارج بی موردی از کیسه ی بیت المال، هزینه شود؟
لینک کوتاه کپی لینک
هتل وارویک نیویورک ، نام هتلی است که دکتر احمدی نژاد در سفر اخیرش به نیویورک در آنجا اقامت دارد.به گزارش سرویس بین الملل پایگاه خبری تحلیلی "انتخاب" Entekhab.IR، این هتل که در سال 1926 ساخته شد، در قسمتی از شهر واقع شده است که نزدیک به تمامی جاذبه های توریستی شهر مانند سنترال پارک، برادوی تئاتر، راکلفلر سنتر، خیابان پنجم و تایمز اسکور است.هتل وارویک نیویورک یکی از هتل هایی است متعلق به طبقه ی اعیان جامعه است. این هتل 259 اتاق دارد و محیط آن، عاری از هر نوع دود آزار دهنده از جمله دود سیگار و.. است. این هتل 67 سوئیت مخصوص با حمام هایی با سنگ مرمر و اینترنت و دیگر امکانات دارد.الویس پریسلی، گروه بیتلز و بسیاری از افراد مشهور دیگر در این هتل اقامت کرده و از زیبایی و خدمات این هتل تقدیر کرده اند.هتل وارویک چندین نوع اتاق دارد. اتاق ها و سوئیت های کلاسیک و اتاق ها و سوئیت های لوکس و اتاق ها و سوئیت های پریمیر و اتاق ها و سوئیت های سیگنچر.حدود 250 تا 330 متر مربع مساحت دارد. این اتاق ها دکوری اروپایی و اسیایی دارد. همه ای اتاق ها میز بزرگ کاری دارد حمامی با سنگ های مرمر. تلویزیون فلت، اینرنت وایرلس با سرعت بسیار بالار، مینی بار و ...از طراحی کلاسیک و معاصر برخوردار است. همچنین اتاق نشمینی به مساحت 250 تا 300 متر دارد.همه ای اتاق ها میز بزرگ کاری دارد حمامی با سنگ های مرمر. تلویزیون فلت، اینرنت وایرلس با سرعت بسیار بالار، مینی بار و ...این نوع اتاق شامل اتاق های به نام اتاق هالیوود و ستاره ها می باشد. واوریک هتل 9 اتاق سیگنچر دارد که ویژه ی افراد مشهور می باشد. این اتاق 625 متر مربع مساخت دارد و گنجایش 15 نفر را دارد. همه ای اتاق ها میز بزرگ کاری دارد . تلویزیون فلت، اینرنت وایرلس با سرعت بسیار بالار، مینی بار و ...هتل وارویک قسمتی برای بزگزاری نشست و جلسات را دارد که 7 هزار متر است و گنجایش 450 نفر را دارد.لازم به ذکر است که این هتل دارای سالن بدنسازی و انواع وسائل ورزشی است که با توجه به گزارشی که از احمدی نژاد پخش شد، رئیس جمهور هر روز صبح از ان استفاده می کند.این هتل اجازه ی ورود هیچگونه حیوان خانگی را نمی دهد.سوئیت های معمولی و البته کلاسیک شبی 435 دلار و سوئیت های پریمیر شبی 341 دلار است و ضمنا دو وعده غذا نزدیک به 200 دلار هزینه در بر دارد.به گزارش سرویس بین الملل پایگاه خبری تحلیلی "انتخاب"؛ با توجه به تعداد هیئت پرتعداد همراه رئیس جمهور و اقامت حتمی این گروه در اتاق های ویژه، هزینه ی اقامت این افراد سر به فلک خواهد زد که البته چندان تناسبی با برخی شعارها و وعده های جناب رییس جمهور ندارد.در همین حال خبرنگار "انتخاب" با بررسی تعداد همراهان رییس جمهور در سفر به نیویورک و اقامت 5 روزه در این هتل، هزینه های احتمالی سفر تیم همراه احمدی نژاد به نیویورک را به شرح ذیل، محاسبه کرد.در صورتی که هیات همراه رییس جمهور، به جز 7 نفر از نزدیکان رییس جمهور (که احتمالاً اتاقی اختصاصی خواهند داشت) از اتاق های دو نفره بهره ببرند، هتل وارویک ، 46 اتاق دو نفره و 7 اتاق اختصاصی به تیم همراه رییس جمهور داده که هزینه های آن برای هر شب اقامت، 23 هزار دلار و برای 5 شب اقامت 115 هزار دلار، برآورد می شود.از سویی، اگر فرض را بر این بگیریم که تیم همراه رییس جمهور، تمایل چندانی برای میل صبحانه نداشته باشند، روزانه 2000 دلار و برای 5 روز، 10 هزار دلار، هزینه ی "صرف نهار و شام"، می شود.به گزارش انتخاب؛ با این اوصاف، و با یک حساب سرانگشتی، تیم همراه رییس جمهور ایران در صورتی که به جز موارد مذکور، هزینه ی دیگری نداشته باشند، طی سفر 5 روزه ی خود به نیویورک، تنها 125 هزار دلار صرف هزینه ی هتل و خورد و خوراک (البته فقط نهار و شام) تقدیم هتل وارویک نیویورک خواهند کرد.
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The pair exchanged the opening four frames before Fu won three in a row, notching four half-centuries in the first seven frames.
However after the break Trump came roaring back, hitting back-to-back centuries to make it 5-4.
He won four more to make it six in a row, including another century, as the score became 8-5 in Trump's favour.
Fu fought back but another century helped Trump to 9-8, before he closed out the match.
"I'm delighted, there's a lot of relief - I've played in a lot of finals this season and lost the last three I think ," Trump said afterwards.
"Neither of us were at our best this evening; it was a bit scrappy which probably made it more exciting for the crowd to see us twitching.
"I do normally go behind in finals - maybe a bit of a slow starter - so I knew I could rattle off a few frames. I'm delighted and excited to have won."
The win continues Trump's fine form as the build-up to the World Championships continues.
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Paper Reviewed
Zhang, S., Fu, W., Zhang, Z., Fan, Y. and Liu, T. 2017. Effects of elevated CO 2 concentration and temperature on some physiological characteristics of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) leaves. Environmental and Experimental Botany 133: 108-117.
Writing as background for their work, the five member research team of Zhang et al. (2017) note that cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is "the most important oilseed and fiber crop worldwide, and plays a critical role in the global economy," where production presently amounts to around 25 million tones. Yet, despite interest in how this important species might respond to climate change, the researchers write that "the interactive effects of long term elevated [CO 2 ] and temperature have rarely been examined," a deficiency they intended to remedy.
Working at Northwest A&F University in Yangling, Shaanxi, China, Zhang et al. grew cotton in climate-controlled growth chambers under two different temperature (27/20°C or 34/27°C day/night) and CO 2 (400 or 800 ppm) regimes. The plants were then sampled and various parameters measured to observe the impact of elevated CO 2 and elevated temperature on those parameters. And what did those measurements reveal?
As reported by the Chinese scientists, at the end of the experiment (105 days after sowing), elevated temperature enhanced dry matter by 43% under ambient CO 2 conditions and by 60% under elevated CO 2 conditions (see Figure 1, left panel). Dry matter was also enhanced by elevated CO 2 (17% under ambient temperature conditions and 31% under elevated temperatures). The highest increase in dry matter content was noted in the elevated temperature and elevated CO 2 treatment, suggesting to the authors that "[CO 2 ] enrichment could enhance the effect of rising temperature on dry matter content."
Reporting on other parameters, Zhang et al. say that although early measurements made at 45 days after sowing revealed calculable differences, by 75 days after sowing and on through the end of their experiment they found no significant effect of elevated CO 2 on leaf nitrogen or C:N ratio at either ambient or elevated temperature. Leaf soluble sugars, total starch and total foliar nonstructural carbohydrates, in contrast, all experienced marked increases from elevated CO 2 under ambient and elevated temperatures. Additionally, they report that elevated CO 2 tended to enhance total leaf phenolic concentrations whereas elevated temperature tended to reduce them (Figure 1, right panel). This latter finding is significant in that phenolic compounds, in the words of the authors, "play physiological and ecological roles including structural support, constitutive and induced protection and defense against herbivores, weeds and pathogens (Jones and Hartley, 1999)."
Figure 1. Impact of CO 2 and temperature on the dry matter (left panel) and total phenolic concentration (right panel) of cotton plants, as determined by measurements made at 45, 75 and 105 days after sowing. Source: Zhang et al. (2017). Figure 1. Impact of COand temperature on the dry matter (left panel) and total phenolic concentration (right panel) of cotton plants, as determined by measurements made at 45, 75 and 105 days after sowing. Source: Zhang et al. (2017).
Reference
Jones, C.G. and Hartley, S.E. 1999. A protein competition model of phenolic allocation. Oikos 86: 27-44.
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When did your formal education in philosophy start?
I didn’t think I was going to study philosophy. I also loved science, and took out lots of books about science as a kid, and, oh gosh, I ruined my mother’s kitchen by trying to do do-it-yourself chemistry experiments. There were all kinds of things that interested me. One of the things about philosophy is that you don’t have to give up on any other field. Whatever field there is, there’s a corresponding field of philosophy. Philosophy of language, philosophy of politics, philosophy of math. All the things I wanted to know about I could still study within a philosophical framework.
What did your religious family think about your pursuit of philosophy?
It made my mother intensely uncomfortable. She wanted me to be a good student but not to take it too seriously. She worried that nobody would want to marry such a bookish girl. But I ended up getting married at 19. And I wasn’t an outwardly rebellious child; I followed all the rules. The problem was, I was allowed to think about whatever I wanted to. Even though I decided very early on that I didn’t believe in any of it, it was okay as long as I had freedom of mind. It was fine with my family.
How early do you think children can, or should, start learning about philosophy?
I started really early with my daughters. They said the most interesting things that if you’re trained in philosophy you realize are big philosophical statements. The wonderful thing about kids is that the normal way of thinking, the conceptual schemes we get locked up in, haven’t gelled yet with them. When my daughter was a toddler, I’d say “Danielle!” she would very assuredly, almost indignantly, say, “I’m not Danielle! I’m this!” I’d think, What is she trying to express? This is going to sound ridiculous, but she was trying to express what Immanuel Kant calls the transcendental ego. You’re not a thing in the world the way there are other things in the world, you’re the thing experiencing other things—putting it all together. This is what this toddler was trying to tell me. Or when my other daughter, six at the time, was talking with her hands and knocked over a glass of juice. She said, “Look at what my body did!” I said, “Oh, you didn’t do that?” And she said, “No! My body did that!” I thought, Oh! Cartesian dualism! She meant that she didn’t intend to do that, and she identified herself with her intentional self. It was fascinating to me.
And kids love to argue.
They could argue with me about anything. If it were a good argument I would take it seriously. See if you can change my mind. It teaches them to be self-critical, to look at their own opinions and see what the weak spots are. This is also important in getting them to defend their own positions, to take other people’s positions seriously, to be able to self-correct, to be tolerant, to be good citizens and not to be taken in by demagoguery. The other thing is to get them to think about moral views. Kids have a natural egotistical morality. Every kid by age three is saying, “That’s not fair!” Well, use that to get them to think about fairness. Yes, they feel a certain sense of entitlement, but what is special about them? What gives them such a strong sense of fairness? They’re natural philosophers. And they’re still so flexible.
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Tom Brady joined dozens of other NFL players Monday by speaking out against President Donald Trump’s “divisive” criticism of players who choose to kneel during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and systemic racism.
The New England Patriots quarterback, who Trump has described as a “good friend,” said he “certainly” disagrees with the president’s recent comments, in which Trump called for NFL team owners to fire protesting players during a Friday rally in Alabama.
“I thought it was just divisive,” Brady said during an interview with Boston radio WEEI’s “Kirk & Callahan” on Monday. “Like I said, I just want to support my teammates... I believe in bringing people together and respect and love and trust. Those are the values that my parents instilled in me and it’s how I try to live every day.”
Trump reiterated his criticism in a flurry of tweets throughout the weekend and into Monday morning after calling people like former San Fransciso 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick a “son of a bitch” for protesting during “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Many people booed the players who kneeled yesterday (which was a small percentage of total). These are fans who demand respect for our Flag! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017
But during Monday’s interview, Brady defended those who participate in “peaceful, respectful” protest.
“I think everyone has the right to do whatever they want to do,” he said. “If you don’t agree, that is fine. You can voice your disagreement, I think that is great. It’s part of our democracy. As long as it is done in a peaceful, respectful way, that is what our country has been all about.”
It’s unclear whether Brady supports Trump politically, though he was spotted with a “Make American Great Again” hat in his locker two years ago. Still, he’s one of several NFL figures who have called out the president’s Friday comments despite having previously been on good terms with Trump.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural celebrations, released a statement Sunday condemning the president’s remarks. “I am deeply disappointed by the tone of the comments made by the president on Friday,” said Kraft, who arranged for Trump to get his own custom Super Bowl LI ring after the Patriots won the NFL championship in February. “I am proud to be associated with so many players who make such tremendous contributions in positively impacting our communities.”
Kraft added that he supported the right of players “to peacefully affect social change and raise awareness in a manner that they feel is most impactful.”
On the field, Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan linked arms in solidarity with members of the team. Like Kraft, Khan donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Khan later said in a statement that it was a “privilege” to stand by his players.
“Our team and the National Football League reflects our nation, with diversity coming in many forms — race, faith, our views and our goals,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do, and we can do it, but the comments by the President make it harder. That’s why it was important for us, and personally for me, to show the world that even if we may differ at times, we can and should be united in the effort to become better as people and a nation.”
Former Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan went a step further and said Sunday that he regretted ever supporting Trump. Ryan, now a commentator for ESPN, lamented having agreed to introduce Trump at a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York, in April 2016.
“I’m pissed off,” Ryan said on ESPN Sunday. “When he asked me to introduce him at a rally in Buffalo, I did that. But I’m reading these comments and it’s appalling to me and I’m sure it’s appalling to almost any citizen in our country. It should be.”
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Description Edit
Wild type Muscovy drake Cairina moschata momelanotus[ clarification needed ] head details head details All Muscovy ducks have long claws on their feet and a wide flat tail. In the domestic drake (male), length is about 86 cm (34 in) and weight is 4.6–6.8 kg (10–15 lb), while the domestic hen (female) is much smaller, at 64 cm (25 in) in length and 2.7–3.6 kg (6.0–7.9 lb) in weight. Large domesticated males often weigh up to 8 kg (18 lb), and large domesticated females up to 5 kg (11 lb). The true wild Muscovy duck, from which all domesticated Muscovies originated, is blackish, with large white wing patches. Length can range from 66 to 84 cm (26 to 33 in), wingspan from 137 to 152 cm (54 to 60 in) and weight from 1.1–4.1 kg (2.4–9.0 lb) in wild Muscovies. On the head, the wild male has short crest on the nape. The bill is black with a speckling of pale pink. A blackish or dark red knob can be seen at the bill base, and the bare skin of the face is similar to that in color. The eyes are yellowish-brown. The legs and webbed feet are blackish. The wild female is similar in plumage, but is also much smaller, and she has feathered face and lacks the prominent knob. The juvenile is duller overall, with little or no white on the upperwing.[5] Domesticated birds may look similar; most are dark brown or black mixed with white, particularly on the head. Other colors such as lavender or all-white are also seen. Both sexes have a nude black-and-red or all-red face; the drake also has pronounced caruncles at the base of the bill and a low erectile crest of feathers.[4] C. moschata ducklings are mostly yellow with buff-brown markings on the tail and wings. For a while after hatching, juveniles lack the distinctive wattles associated with adult individuals, and resemble the offspring of various other ducks such as mallards. Some domesticated ducklings have a dark head and blue eyes, others a light brown crown and dark markings on their nape. They are agile and speedy precocial birds. The drake has a low breathy call, and the hen a quiet trilling coo. The karyotype of the Muscovy duck is 2n=80, consisting of three pairs of macrochromosomes, 36 pairs of microchromosomes, and a pair of sex chromosomes. The two largest macrochromosome pairs are submetacentric, while all other chromosomes are acrocentric or (for the smallest microchromosomes) probably telocentric. The submetacentric chromosomes and the Z (female) chromosome show rather little constitutive heterochromatin (C bands), while the W chromosomes are at least two-thirds heterochromatin. Male Muscovy ducks have helical penises which can become erect to 20 cm (7.9 in) in one third of a second. Females have cloacas that coil in the opposite direction that appear to have evolved to limit forced copulation by males.[8][9]
Etymology Edit
Taxonomy and systematics Edit
Ecology Edit
This non-migratory species normally inhabits forested swamps, lakes, streams and nearby grassland and farm crops, and often roosts in trees at night. The Muscovy duck's diet consists of plant material obtained by grazing or dabbling in shallow water, and small fish, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans, insects, and millipedes.[21] This is an aggressive duck; males often fight over food, territory or mates. The females fight with each other less often. Some adults will peck at the ducklings if they are eating at the same food source. The Muscovy duck has benefited from nest boxes in Mexico, but is somewhat uncommon in much of the east of its range due to excessive hunting. It is not considered a globally threatened species by the IUCN however, as it is widely distributed.[1] Reproduction Edit Egg, Collection Museum Wiesbaden This species, like the mallard, does not form stable pairs. They will mate on land or in water (note the submerged female in the image below). Domesticated Muscovy ducks can breed up to three times each year. The hen lays a clutch of 8–16 white eggs, usually in a tree hole or hollow, which are incubated for 35 days. The sitting hen will leave the nest once a day from 20 minutes to one and a half hours, and will then defecate, drink water, eat and sometimes bathe. Once the eggs begin to hatch it may take 24 hours for all the chicks to break through their shells. When feral chicks are born they usually stay with their mother for about 10–12 weeks. Their bodies cannot produce all the heat they need, especially in temperate regions, so they will stay close to the mother especially at night. Often, the drake will stay in close contact with the brood for several weeks. The male will walk with the young during their normal travels in search for food, providing protection. Anecdotal evidence from East Anglia, UK suggests that, in response to different environmental conditions, other adults assist in protecting chicks and providing warmth at night. It has been suggested that this is in response to local efforts to cull the eggs, which has led to an atypical distribution of males and females as well as young and mature birds. For the first few weeks of their lives, Muscovy ducklings feed on grains, corn, grass, insects, and almost anything that moves. Their mother instructs them at an early age how to feed. Feral bird Edit Feral chocolate/white Muscovy duck hen at Lake Union Seattle (USA) Feral Muscovy ducks can breed near urban and suburban lakes and on farms, nesting in tree cavities or on the ground, under shrubs in yards, on apartment balconies, or under roof overhangs. Some feral populations, such as that in Florida, have a reputation of becoming nuisance pests on occasion. At night they often sleep at water, if there is a water source available, to flee quickly from predators if awoken. Small populations of Muscovy ducks can also be found in Ely, Cambridgeshire, Calstock, Cornwall and in Lincoln, Lincolnshire UK. Muscovy ducks have also been spotted in Walsall Arboretum. There has been a small population in the Pavilion Gardens public park in Buxton, Derbyshire for many years.[23] In the US, Muscovy ducks are considered an invasive species. An owner may raise them for food production only (not for hunting). Similarly, if the ducks have no owner, 50CFR Part 21 allows the removal or destruction of the Muscovy ducks, their eggs and nests anywhere in the United States outside of Hidalgo, Starr, and Zapata counties in Texas where they are considered indigenous. The population in southern Florida is considered, with a population in the several thousands, to be established enough to be considered "countable" for bird watchers.[24] Legal methods to restrict breeding include not feeding these ducks, deterring them with noise or by chasing, and finding nests and vigorously shaking the eggs to render them non-viable. Returning the eggs to the nest will avoid re-laying as the female would if the clutch were removed. Although legislation passed in the USA prohibiting trade of Muscovy ducks, Fish and Wildlife Services intend to revise the regulations. They are not currently implementing them, though release of muscovy ducks to the wild outside their natural range is prohibited.[25]
Domestication Edit
Piebald Muscovy drake Muscovy ducks had been domesticated by various Native American cultures in the Americas when Columbus arrived in the Bahamas. The first few were brought onto the Columbus ship Santa Maria they then sailed back to Europe by the 16th century. The Muscovy duck has been domesticated for centuries, and is widely traded as "Barbary duck". Muscovy breeds are popular because they have stronger-tasting meat—sometimes compared to roasted beef—than the usual domestic ducks which are descendants of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). The meat is lean when compared to the fatty meat of mallard-derived ducks, its leanness and tenderness being often compared to veal. Muscovy ducks are also less noisy, and sometimes marketed as a "quackless" duck; even though they are not completely silent, they don't actually quack (except in cases of extreme stress). The carcass of a Muscovy duck is also much heavier than most other domestic ducks, which makes it ideal for the dinner table. Lavender hen Lavender Drake Domesticated Muscovy ducks, like those pictured, often have plumage features differing from other wild birds. White breeds are preferred for meat production, as darker ones can have much melanin in the skin, which some people find unappealing. The Muscovy duck can be crossed with mallards in captivity to produce hybrids, known as mulard duck ("mule duck") because they are sterile. Muscovy drakes are commercially crossed with mallard-derived hens either naturally or by artificial insemination. The 40–60% of eggs that are fertile result in birds raised only for their meat or for production of foie gras: they grow fast like mallard-derived breeds but to a large size like Muscovy ducks. Conversely, though crossing Mallard drakes with Muscovy hens is possible, the offspring are desirable neither for meat nor for egg production.[26][27] In addition, Muscovy ducks are reportedly cross-bred in Israel with Mallards to produce kosher duck products. The kashrut status of the Muscovy duck has been a matter of rabbinic discussion for over 150 years.[27] Oscillococcinum is a homeopathic preparation made from Muscovy duck liver and heart manufactured by the French company Boiron; similar products are also available from other manufacturers. Typically diluted with lactose and sucrose to 1:10400 (far less than one in one googol), they are advertised to relieve influenza-like symptoms, but no evidence has been found of its efficacy.[28][29] A study examining birds in northwestern Colombia for blood parasites found the Muscovy duck to be more frequently infected with Haemoproteus and malaria (Plasmodium) parasites than chickens, domestic pigeons, domestic turkeys and in fact almost all wild bird species studied also. It was noted that in other parts of the world, chickens were more susceptible to such infections than in the study area, but it may well be that Muscovy ducks are generally more often infected with such parasites (which might not cause pronounced disease though, and are harmless to humans).
Gallery Edit
Hatchling
Young duckling
Older duckling
Fledgling
One-year-old (still immature)
Mating pair
White Muscovy duck
Mating in water; the large drake entirely submerges the female
Black Muscovy Duck in Baton Rouge
See also Edit
References Edit
Bibliography Edit
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As promised, Sprint today began offering the Google Nexus 5 for pre-order, saying it will do its best to get it to you in a week (on November 8). You can grab the smartphone in black or white for $49.99 (if you switch to Sprint, otherwise it’s $149.99) with a two-year contract here.
In the US, the Nexus 5 is coming to Sprint and T-Mobile, but the Google Play version will also work on AT&T’s mobile network. Verizon customers unfortunately are out of luck. T-Mobile won’t let you pre-order yet, but it has put up a pre-registration page that lets you sign up to get an email when it’s available.
See also – Google’s Nexus 5 ships today: 4.95-inch display, Android 4.4 KitKat, 16GB for $349 and 32GB for $399 and Nexus 5 vs. Nexus 4: What’s new?
Photo credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Read next: ModCloth adds Fit for Me feature to help iOS users more easily find the clothes they want
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I. The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
- Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
'You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frère!'
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American civil servants in the department of energy and the White House are “looking for a story to tell” president Donald Trump that will persuade him to stay part of the Paris climate agreement, according to an EU official.
“How can they respect the pre-election pledges of the president and at the same time stay in the Paris agreement,” the source said on condition of anonymity. The source was part of a delegation that visited the United States recently.
“They want to have a narrative, they want to have a story.”
Trump has called climate change a “hoax”, but also has stated he would keep an “open mind” on the issue.
“I don't think it already reached his table,” the official said about Trump. “Nobody can guarantee what will be the final decision of the president.”
The narrative to convince Trump to stick to US pledges on curbing greenhouse gases, made by his predecessor Barack Obama, would involve the “business case” - investing in clean energy would create jobs, growth and spur innovation.
That is also the line the European Commission has taken since Trump took office, to convince the US that climate-friendly policies also make sense from an economic point of view.
Jos Delbeke, director-general of the European Commission's climate action department, said in January there is “one reality that may also be a reality where even Mr Trump cannot go against”.
“That is that the business dynamics is as active in the United States as it is in Europe or elsewhere," Delbeke said.
EU commissioner for Energy Union, Maros Sefcovic, said last week in a speech in Washington that energy consumption can decrease while maintaining economic growth.
“The clean energy transition does not run counter to economic interest, as often claimed,” said Sefcovic.
Speaking to reporters on Monday (13 March), Sefcovic added that the discussion within the US government on what to do about climate change is “ongoing”.
“It would be premature for me to tell you they are definitely going to stay, or that they are definitely going to leave [the Paris agreement]”, argued Sefcovic.
“My feeling from the meetings which I had there, was that they are evaluating all the aspects, and they fully understand the advantage of being at the diplomatic table where such important things are being discussed,” he added.
During Sefcovic' US trip, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, called into question the nearly universally accepted scientific premise that CO2 is causing global warming.
Although Sefcovic did not meet Pruitt, he said the comment “reflects the plethora of views and positions which are currently on the table”.
“It really demonstrates how the discussion is really ongoing and why I think it will take a while before these issues will be more permanently settled,” remarked Sefcovic.
Charmer
The Slovak commissioner did meet with the new secretary for Energy, Rick Perry, who was “very much open to international cooperation”.
“Mr Perry is a charmer and he made an excellent impression,” said Sefcovic, adding that the atmosphere was “excellent” and that Perry had a “very good understanding of all the energy files”.
The EU has invited the Americans to continue the dialogue in annual summits, known as the EU-US Energy Council.
Sefcovic said Perry showed a “genuine interest to cooperate” and was “positively inclined”.
“I believe we will have this meeting this year,” Sefcovic noted.
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The Gateless Gate
The Gateless Gate or The Gateless Barrier (Chin. Wu-wen kuan; Jap. Mumonkan)
The author is Chinese Ch'an master Wu-men Hui-hai (無門慧開 Mumon Ekai, 1183-1260).
English Translation
By late Zen master Katsuki Sekida (Two Zen Classics 26-137)
Original Chinese Text
The original Chinese text is taken from the following Japanese web site:
http://homepage1.nifty.com/poem-club/mumonnkan/mumonkanwoyomu.htm
The Chinese and Japanese texts in this web site are taken from the book titled Mumonkan, published in Japan by Iwanami Bunkõ.
Chinese Characters
Unfortunately a few Chinese characters were not given in this site. Luckily these characters are less than 1% of the text. Where there was a definition about these ideograms, they are entered them using Chinese system (Big 5). There are also ideograms that appear as mere black boxes, without any explanations. These are replaced with dummy characters (empty square boxes).
The Gateless Gate 無門關
Wu-wen kuan (Mumonkan)
Mumon's Preface
佛語心爲宗、無門爲法門。
Buddhism makes mind its foundation and no-gate its gate.
既是無門、且作麼生透。
Now, how do you pass through this no-gate?
豈不見道、從門入者不是家珍、從縁得者始終成壞。
It is said that things coming in through the gate can never be your own treasures. What is gained from external circumstances will perish in the end.
恁麼説話、大似無風起浪好肉抉瘡。
However, such a saying is already raising waves when there is no wind. It is cutting unblemished skin.
何況滯言句覓解會。 掉棒打月、隔靴爬痒、有甚交渉。
As for those who try to understand through other people's words, they are striking at the moon with a stick; scratching a shoe, whereas it is the foot that itches. What concern have they with the truth?
慧開、紹定戊子夏、首衆于東嘉龍翔。因納子請益、遂將古人公案作敲門瓦子、隨機引導學者。
In the summer of the first year of Jõtei, Ekai was in Ryûshõ Temple and as head monk worked with the monks, using the cases of the ancient masters as brickbats to batter the gate and lead them on according to their respective capacities.
竟爾抄録、不覺成集。初不以前後敍列、共成四十八則。
The text was written down not according to any scheme, but just to make a collection of forty-eight cases.
通曰無門關。
It is called Mumonkan, "The Gateless Gate."
若是箇漢、不顧危亡單刀直入。
A man of determination will unflinchingly push his way straight forward, regardless of all dangers.
八臂那咤、擱他不在。
Then even the eight-armed Nata cannot hinder him.
縦使西天四七、東土二三、只得望風乞命。
Even the four sevens of the West and the two threes of the East would beg for their lives.
設或躊躇、也似隔窓看馬騎、貶得眼來、早已蹉過。
If one has no determination, then it will be like catching a glimpse of a horse galloping past the window: in the twinkling of an eye it will be gone.
Verse 頌曰
大道無門 The Great Way is gateless,
千差有路 Approached in a thousand ways.
透得此關 Once past this checkpoint
乾坤獨歩 You stride through the universe.
Case 1 Jõshû's "Mu" 一 趙州狗子
趙州和尚、因僧問、狗子還有佛性也無。州云、無。
A monk asked Jõshû, "Has a dog the Buddha Nature?" Jõshû answered, "Mu."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、參禪須透祖師關、妙悟要窮心路絶。
In order to master Zen, you must pass the barrier of the patriarchs. To attain this subtle realization, you must completely cut off the way of thinking.
祖關不透心路不絶、盡是依草附木精靈。
If you do not pass the barrier, and do not cut off the way of thinking, then you will be like a ghost clinging to the bushes and weeds.
且道、如何是祖師關。
Now, I want to ask you, what is the barrier of the patriarchs?
只者一箇無字、乃宗門一關也。
Why, it is this single word "Mu." That is the front gate to Zen.
遂目之曰禪宗無門關。
Therefore it is called the "Mumonkan of Zen."
透得過者、非但親見趙州、便可與歴代祖師把手共行、眉毛厮結同一眼見、同一耳聞。
If you pass through it, you will not only see Jõshû face to face, but you will also go hand in hand with the successive patriarchs, entangling your eyebrows with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears.
豈不慶快。
Isn't that a delightful prospect?
莫有要透關底麼。
Wouldn't you like to pass this barrier?
將三百六十骨節、八萬四千毫竅、通身起箇疑團參箇無字。
Arouse your entire body with its three hundred and sixty bones and joints and its eighty-four thousand pores of the skin; summon up a spirit of great doubt and concentrate on this word "Mu."
晝夜提撕、莫作虚無會、莫作有無會。
Carry it continuously day and night. Do not form a nihilistic conception of vacancy, or a relative conception of "has" or "has not."
如呑了箇熱鐵丸相似、吐又吐不出。
It will be just as if you swallow a red-hot iron ball, which you cannot spit out even if you try.
蕩盡從 前惡知惡覚、久久純熟自然内外打成—片、如唖子得夢、只許自知。
All the illusory ideas and delusive thoughts accumulated up to the present will be exterminated, and when the time comes, internal and external will be spontaneously united. You will know this, but for yourself only, like a dumb man who has had a dream.
驀然打發、驚天 動地。
Then all of a sudden an explosive conversion will occur, and you will astonish the heavens and shake the earth.
如奪得關將軍大刀入手、逢佛殺佛、逢祖殺祖、於生死岸頭得大自在、向六道四生中遊戲三昧。
It will be as if you snatch away the great sword of the valiant general Kan'u and hold it in your hand. When you meet the Buddha, you kill him; when you meet the patriarchs, you kill them. On the brink of life and death, you command perfect freedom; among the sixfold worlds and four modes of existence, you enjoy a merry and playful samadhi.
且作麼生提撕。
Now, I want to ask you again, "How will you carry it out?"
盡平生氣力擧箇無字。
Employ every ounce of your energy to work on this "Mu."
若不間斷、好似法燭一點便著。
If you hold on without interruption, behold: a single spark, and the holy candle is lit!
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
狗子佛性 The dog, the Buddha Nature,
全提正令 The pronouncement, perfect and final.
纔渉有無 Before you say it has or has not,
喪身失命 You are a dead man on the spot.
Case 2 Hyakujõ's Fox 二 百丈野狐
百丈和尚、凡參次、有一老人常隨衆聽法。
When Hyakujõ Oshõ delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him.
衆人退、老人亦退。
When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave.
忽一日不退。師遂問、面前立者復是何人。
One day, however, he remained behind, and Hyakujõ asked him, "Who are you, standing here before me?"
老人云、諾。
The old man replied.
某甲非人也。
"I am not a human being.
於過去迦葉佛時曾住此山。
In the old days of Kashyapa Buddha, I was a head monk, living here on this mountain.
因學人問、大修行底人還落因果也無。
One day a student asked me, 'Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?'
某甲對云、不落因果。
I answered, 'No, he does not.'
五百生墮野狐身。
Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred rebirths as a fox.
今請、和尚代一轉語貴脱野狐。
I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox.
遂問、大修行底人、還落因果也無。
Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?"
師云、不昧因果。
Hyakujõ answered, "He does not ignore causation."
老人於言下大悟。
No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened.
作禮云、某甲、已脱野狐身住在山後。
Making his bows, he said, "I am emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain.
敢告和尚。 乞、依亡僧事例。
I have a favor to ask of you: would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk."
師、令維那白槌告衆、食後送亡僧。
Hyakujõ had the director of the monks strike with the gavel and inform everyone that after the midday meal there would be a funeral service for a dead monk.
大衆言議、一衆皆安、涅槃堂又無人病。何故如是。
The monks wondered at this, saying, "Everyone is in good health; nobody is in the sick ward. What does this mean?"
食後只見師領衆至山後嵒下、以杖挑出一死野狐、乃依火葬。
After the meal Hyakujõ led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain and with his staff poked out the dead body of a fox and performed the ceremony of cremation.
師、至晩上堂、擧前因縁。
That evening he ascended the rostrum and told the monks the whole story.
黄蘗便問、古人錯祗對一轉語、墮五百生野狐身、轉轉不錯合作箇甚麼。
Õbaku thereupon asked him, "The old man gave the wrong answer and was doomed to be a fox for five hundred rebirths. Now, suppose he had given the right answer, what would have happened then?"
師云、近前來與伊道。
Hyakujõ said, "You come here to me, and I will tell you."
黄蘗遂近前、與師一掌。
Õbaku went up to Hyakujõ and boxed his ears.
師拍手笑云、將謂、胡鬚赤。 更有赤鬚胡。
Hyakujõ clapped his hands with a laugh and exclaimed, "I was thinking that the barbarian had a red beard, but now I see before me the red-bearded barbarian himself."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、不落因果、爲甚墮野狐。
Not falling under causation: how could this make the monk a fox?
不昧因果、爲甚脱野狐。
Not ignoring causation: how could this make the old man emancipated?
若向者裏著得一隻眼、便知得前百丈贏得風流五百生。
If you come to understand this, you will realize how old Hyakujõ would have enjoyed five hundred rebirths as a fox.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
不落不昧 Not falling, not ignoring:
兩采一賽 Two faces of one die.
不昧不落 Not ignoring, not falling:
千錯萬錯 A thousand errors, a million mistakes.
Case 3 Gutei Raises a Finger 三 倶胝堅指
倶胝和尚、凡有詰問、唯擧一指。
Whenever Gutei Oshõ was asked about Zen, he simply raised his finger.
後有童子。因外人問、和尚説何法要。
Once a visitor asked Gutei's boy attendant, "What does your master teach?"
童子亦堅指頭。
The boy too raised his finger.
胝聞遂以刃斷其指。
Hearing of this, Gutei cut off the boy's finger with a knife.
童子、負痛號哭而去。
The boy, screaming with pain, began to run away.
胝復召之。 童子廻首。 胝却 堅起指。
Gutei called to him, and when he turned around, Gutei raised his finger.
童子忽然領悟。
The boy suddenly became enlightened.
胝將順世、謂衆曰、吾得天龍一指頭禪、一生受用不盡。
When Gutei was about to pass away, he said to his assembled monks, "I obtained one-finger Zen from Tenryû and used it all my life but still did not exhaust it."
言訖示滅。
When he had finished saying this, he entered into eternal Nirvana.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、倶胝並童子悟處、不在指頭上。
The enlightenment of Gutei and of the boy does not depend on the finger.
若向者裏見得、天龍同倶胝並童子興自己一串穿却。
If you understand this, Tenryû, Gutei, the boy, and you yourself are all run through with one skewer.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
倶胝鈍置老天龍 Gutei made a fool of old Tenryû,
利刃單提勘小童 Emancipating the boy with a single slice,
巨靈擡手無多子 Just as Kyorei cleaved Mount Kasan
分破華山千万重 To let the Yellow River run through.
Case 4 The Western Barbarian with No Beard 四 胡子無髭
或庵曰、西天胡子、因甚無髭。
Wakuan said, "Why has the Western Barbarian no beard?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、參須實參、悟須實悟。
Study should be real study, enlightenment should be real enlightenment.
者箇胡子、直須親見一回始得。
You should once meet this barbarian directly to be really intimate with him.
説親見、早成兩箇。
But saying you are really intimate with him already divides you into two.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
癡人面前 Don't discuss your dream
不可説夢 Before a fool.
胡子髭無 Barbarian with no beard
惺惺添□ Obscures the clarity.
Case 5 Kyõgen's "Man up in a Tree" 五 香嚴上樹
香嚴和尚云、如人上樹、口啣樹枝、手不攀枝、脚不踏樹。
Kyõgen Oshõ said, "It is like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb.
樹下有人問西來意、不對即違他所問、若對又喪身失命。
Someone appears under the tree and asks him, 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question. If he does answer, he will lose his life.
正恁麼時、作麼生對。
What would you do in such a situation?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、縱有懸河之辨、惣用不著。
Even if your eloquence flows like a river, it is of no avail.
説得一大藏教、亦用不著。
Though you can expound the whole of Buddhist literature, it is of no use.
若向者裏對得著、活却從前死路頭、死却從前活路頭。
If you solve this problem, you will give life to the way that has been dead until this moment and destroy the way that has been alive up to now.
其或未然、直待當來問彌勒。
Otherwise you must wait for Maitreya Buddha and ask him.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
香嚴眞杜撰 Kyõgen is truly thoughtless;
惡毒無盡限 His vice and poison are endless.
唖却納僧口 He stops up the mouths of the monks,
通身迸鬼眼 And devil's eyes sprout from their bodies.
Case 6 The Buddha Holds Out a Flower 六 世尊拈花
世尊、昔、在靈山會上拈花示衆。
When Shakyamuni Buddha was at Mount Grdhrakuta, he held out a flower to his listeners.
是時、衆皆默然。
Everyone was silent.
惟迦葉者破顔微笑。
Only Mahakashyapa broke into a broad smile.
世尊云、吾有正方眼藏、涅槃妙心、實相無相、微妙法門、不立文字、教外別傳、付囑摩訶迦葉。
The Buddha said, "I have the True Dharma Eye, the Marvelous Mind of Nirvana, the True Form of the Formless, and the Subtle Dharma Gate, independent of words and transmitted beyond doctrine. This I have entrusted to Mahakashyapa."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、黄面瞿曇、傍若無人。
Golden-faced Gautama really disregarded his listeners.
壓良爲賤、縣羊頭賣狗肉。
He made the good look bad and sold dog's meat labeled as mutton.
將謂、多少奇特。
He himself thought it was wonderful.
只如當時大衆都笑、正方眼藏、作麼生傳。
If, however, everyone in the audience had laughed, how could he have transmitted his True Eye?
設使迦葉不笑、正方眼藏又作麼生傳。
And again, if Mahakashyapa had not smiled, how could the Buddha have transmitted it?
若道正方眼藏有傳授、黄面老子、誑□閭閻。
If you say the True Dharma Eye can be transmitted, then the golden-faced old man would be a city slicker who cheats the country bumpkin.
若道無傳授、爲甚麼獨許迦葉。
If you say it cannot be transmitted, then why did the Buddha approve of Mahakashyapa?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
拈起花來 Holding out a flower,
尾巴已露 The Buddha betrayed his curly tail.
迦葉破顔 Heaven and earth were bewildered,
人天罔措 At Mahakashyapa's smile.
Case 7 Jõshû's "Wash Your Bowl" 七 趙州洗鉢
趙州、因僧問、其甲乍入叢林。
A monk said to Jõshû, "I have just entered this monastery.
乞師指示。
Please teach me."
州云、喫粥了也未。
"Have you eaten your rice porridge?" asked Jõshû.
僧云、喫粥了也。
"Yes, I have," replied the monk.
州云、洗鉢盂去。
"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Jõshû.
其僧有省。
With this the monk gained insight.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、趙州開口見膽、露出心肝。
When he opens his mouth, Jõshû shows his gallbladder. He displays his heart and liver.
者僧聽事不眞、喚鐘作甕。
I wonder if this monk really did hear the truth. I hope he did not mistake the bell for a jar.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
只爲分明極 Endeavoring to interpret clearly,
翻令所得遲 You retard your attainment.
早知燈是火 Don't you know that flame is fire?
飯熟已多時 Your rice has long been cooked.
Case 8 Keichû the Wheelmaker 八 奚仲造車
月庵和尚問僧、奚仲造車一百輻。
Gettan Oshõ said, "Keichû, the first wheelmaker, made a cart whose wheels had a hundred spokes.
拈却兩頭、去却輻、明甚麼邊事。
Now, suppose you took a cart and removed both the wheels and the axle. What would you have?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若也直下明得、眼、似流星、機、如掣電。
If anyone can directly master this topic, his eye will be like a shooting star, his spirit like a flash of lightning.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
機輪轉處 When the spiritual wheels turn,
達者猶迷 Even the master fails to follow them.
四維上下 They travel in all directions, above and below,
南北東西 North, south, east, and west.
Case 9 Daitsû Chishõ Buddha 九 大通智勝
興陽讓和尚、因僧問、大通智勝佛、十劫坐道場、佛法不現前、不得成佛道時如何。
A monk asked Kõyõ Seijõ, "Daitsû Chishõ Buddha sat in zazen for ten kalpas and could not attain Buddhahood. He did not become a Buddha. How could this be?"
讓曰、其問甚諦當。
Seijõ said, "Your question is quite self-explanatory."
僧云、既是坐道場、爲甚麼不得成佛道。
The monk asked, "He meditated so long; why could he not attain Buddhahood?"
讓曰、爲伊不成佛。
Seijõ said, "Because he did not become a Buddha."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、只許老胡知、不許老胡會。
I allow the barbarian's realization, but I do not allow his understanding.
凡夫若知、既是聖人。
When an ignorant man realizes it, he is a sage.
聖人若會、既是凡夫。
When a sage understands it, he is ignorant.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
了身何似了心休 Better emancipate your mind than your body;
了得心□身不愁 When the mind is emancipated, the body is free,
若也身心倶了了 When both body and mind are emancipated,
神仙何必更封候 Even gods and spirits ignore worldly power.
Case 10 Seizei Is Utterly Destitude 十 清税弧貧
曹山和尚、因僧問云、清税弧貧。
Seizei said to Sõzan, "Seizei is utterly destitude.
乞、師賑濟。
Will you give him support?"
山云、税闍梨。
Sõzan called out, "Seizei!"
税、應諾。
Seizei responded, "Yes, sir!"
山曰、青原白家酒、三盞喫了、猶道未沾唇。
Sõzan said, "You have finished three cups of the finest wine in China, and still you say you have not yet moistened your lips!"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、清税輸機、是何心行。
Seizei pretended to retreat. What was his scheme?
曹山具眼、深辨來機。
Sõzan had the eye of Buddha and saw through his opponent's motive.
然雖如是、且道、那裏是税闍梨、喫酒處。
However, I want to ask you, at what point did Seizei drink wine?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
貧似范丹 Poverty like Hantan's,
氣如項羽 Mind like Kõu's;
活計雖無 With no means of livelihood,
敢與鬪富 He dares to rival the richest.
Case 11 Jõshû Sees the Hermits 十一 州勘庵主
趙州、到一庵主處問、有麼有麼。
Jõshû went to a hermit's cottage and asked, "Is the master in? Is the master in?"
主、堅起拳頭。
The hermit raised his fist.
州云、水淺不是泊舡處。 便行。
Jõshû said, "The water is too shallow to anchor here," and he went away.
又到一庵主處云、有麼有麼。
Coming to another hermit's cottage, he asked again, "Is the master in? Is the master in?"
主亦堅起拳頭。
This hermit, too, raised his fist.
州云、能縱能奪、能殺能活。便作禮。
Jõshû said, "Free to give, free to take, free to kill, free to save," and he made a deep bow.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、一般堅起拳頭、爲甚麼肯一箇、不肯一箇。
Both raised their fists; why was the one accepted and the other rejected?
且道、□訛在甚處。
Tell me, what is the difficulty here?
若向者裏下得一轉語、便見趙州舌頭無骨、扶起放倒、得大自在。
If you can give a turning word to clarify this problem, you will realize that Jõshû's tongue has no bone in it, now helping others up, now knocking them down, with perfect freedom.
雖然如是爭奈、趙州却被二庵主勘破。
However, I must remind you: the two hermits could also see through Jõshû.
若道二庵主有優劣、未具參學眼。
If you say there is anything to choose between the two hermits, you have no eye of realization.
若道無優劣、亦未具參 學眼。
If you say there is no choice between the two, you have no eye of realization.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
眼流星 The eye like a shooting star,
機掣電 The spirit like a lighting;
殺人刀 A death-dealing blade,
活人劍 A life-giving sword.
Case 12 Zuigan Calls His Master 十二 巖喚主人
瑞巖彦和尚、毎日自喚主人公、復自應諾。
Zuigan Gen Oshõ called to himself every day, "Master!" and answered, "Yes, sir!"
乃云、惺惺着。□。
Then he would say, "Be wide awake!" and answer, "Yes, sir!"
他時異日、莫受人瞞。□□。
"Henceforward, never be deceived by others!" "No, I won't!"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、瑞巖老子、自買自賣、弄出許多神頭鬼面。
Old Zuigan buys and sells himself. He takes out a lot of god-masks and devil-masks and puts them on and plays with them.
何故。
What for, eh?
□。一箇喚底、一箇應底。 一箇惺惺底、一箇不受人瞞底。
One calling and the other answering; one wide awake, the other saying he will never be deceived.
認着依前還不是。
If you stick to any of them, you will be a failure.
若也傚他、惣是野狐見解。
If you imitate Zuigan, you will play the fox.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
學道之人不識眞 Clinging to the deluded way of consciousness,
只爲從前認識神 Students of the Way do not realize truth.
無量劫來生死本 The seed of birth and death through endless eons:
癡人喚作本來人 The fool calls it the true original self.
Case 13 Tokusan Holds His Bowls 十三 徳山托鉢
徳山、一日托鉢下堂。
One day Tokusan went down toward the dining room, holding his bowls.
見雪峰問者老漢鐘未鳴鼓未響、托鉢向甚處去、山便回方丈。
Seppõ met him and asked, "Where are you off to with your bowls? The bell has not rung, and the drum has not sounded." Tokusan turned and went back to his room.
峰擧似巖頭。 頭云、大小徳山未會末後句。
Seppõ mentioned this to Gantõ, who remarked, "Tokusan is renowned, but he does not know the last word."
山聞令侍者喚巖頭來、問曰、汝不肯老僧那。
Tokusan heard about this remark and sent his attendant to fetch Gantõ. "You do not approve of me?" he asked.
巖頭密啓其意。
Gantõ whispered his meaning.
山乃休去。明日陞座、果與尋常不同。
Tokusan said nothing at the time, but the next day he ascended the rostrum, and behold! he was very different from usual!
巖頭至僧堂前、拊掌大笑云、且喜得老漢會末後句。
Gantõ, going toward the front of the hall, clapped his hands and laughed loudly, saying, "Congratulations! Our old man has got hold of the last word!
他後天下人、不奈伊何。
From now on, nobody in this whole country can outdo him!"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若是未後句、巖頭徳山倶未夢見在。
As for the last word, neither Gantõ nor Tokusan has ever dreamed of it!
撿點將來、好似一棚傀儡。
When you look into the matter, you find they are like puppets on the shelf!
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
識得最初句 If you realize the first,
便會末後句 You master the last.
末後與最初 The first and the last
不是者一句 Are not one word.
Case 14 Nansen Cuts the Cat in Two 十四 南泉斬猫
南泉和尚因東西堂爭猫兒。
Nansen Oshõ saw monks of the Eastern and Western halls quarreling over a cat.
泉乃提起云、大衆道得即救、道不得即斬却也。
He held up the cat and said, "If you can give an answer, you will save the cat. If not, I will kill it."
衆無對。泉遂斬之。
No one could answer, and Nansen cut the cat in two.
晩趙州外歸。 泉擧似州。
That evening Jõshû returned, and Nansen told him of the incident.
州乃脱履安頭上而出。
Jõshû took off his sandal, placed it on his head, and walked out.
泉云、子若在即救得猫兒。
"If you had been there, you would have saved the cat," Nansen remarked.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、且道、趙州頂草鞋意作麼生。
Tell me, what did Jõshû mean when he put the sandal on his head?
若向者裏下得一轉語、便見南泉令不虚行。
If you can give a turning word on this, you will see that Nansen's decree was carried out with good reason.
其或未然險。
If not, "Danger!"
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
趙州若在 Had Jõshû been there,
倒行此令 He would have done the opposite;
奪却刀子 When the sword is snatched away,
南泉乞命 Even Nansen begs for his life.
Case 15 Tõzan's Sixty Blows 十五 洞山三頓
雲門、因洞山參次、門問曰、近離甚處。
Tõzan came to study with Unmon. Unmon asked, "Where are you from?"
山云、査渡。
"From Sato," Tõzan replied.
門曰、夏在甚處。
"Where were you during the summer?"
山云、湖南報慈。
"Well, I was at the monastery of Hõzu, south of the lake."
門曰、幾時離彼。
"When did you leave there," Unmon asked.
山云、八月二十五。
"On August 25" was Tõzan's reply.
門曰、放汝三頓棒。
"I spare you sixty blows," Unmon said.
山至明日却上問訊。
昨日蒙和尚放三頓棒。
The next day Tõzan came to Unmon and said, "Yesterday you said you spared me sixty blows.
不知過在甚麼處。
I beg to ask you, where was I at fault?"
門曰、飯袋子、江西湖南便恁麼去。
"Oh, you rice bag!" shouted Unmon. "What makes you wander about, now west of the river, now south of the lake?"
山於此大悟。
Tõzan thereupon came to a mighty enlightenment experience.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、雲門、當時便與本分草料、使洞山別有生機一路、家門不致寂寥。
If Unmon had given Tõzan the true food of Zen and encouraged him to develop an active Zen spirit, his school would not have declined as it did.
一夜在是非海裏著到、直待天明再來、又與他注破。
Tõzan had an agonizing struggle through the whole night, lost in the sea of right and wrong. He reached a complete impasse. After waiting for the dawn, he again went to Unmon, and Unmon again made him a picture book of Zen.
洞山直下悟去、未是性燥。
Even though he was directly enlightened, Tõzan could not be called brilliant.
且問諸人、洞山三頓棒、合喫不合喫。
Now, I want to ask you, should Tõzan have been given sixty blows or not?
若道合喫、草木叢林皆合喫棒。
If you say yes, you admit that all the universe should be beaten.
若道不合喫、雲門又成誑語。
If you say no, then you accuse Unmon of telling a lie.
向者裏明得、方與洞山出一口氣。
If you really understand the secret, you will be able to breathe out Zen spirit with the very mouth of Tõzan.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
獅子教兒迷子訣 The lion had a secret to puzzle his cub;
擬前跳躑早翻身 The cub crouched, leaped, and dashed forward.
無端再敍當頭著 The second time, a casual move led to checkmate.
前箭猶輕後箭深 The first arrow was light, but the second went deep.
Case 16 When the Bell Sounds 十六 鐘聲七條
雲門曰、世界恁麼廣闊。
Unmon said, "The world is vast and wide.
因甚向鐘聲裏披七條。
Why do you put on your seven-piece robe at the sound of the bell?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、大凡參禪學道、切忌、隨聲遂色。
In studying Zen, you should not be swayed by sounds and forms.
縱使聞聲悟道、見色明心也是尋常。
Even though you attain insight when hearing a voice or seeing a form, this is simply the ordinary way of things.
殊不知、納僧家、騎聲蓋色、頭頭上明、著著上妙。
Don't you know that the real Zen student commands sounds, controls forms, is clear-sighted at every event and free on every occasion?
然雖如是。 且道、聲來耳畔、耳往聲邊。
Granted you are free, just tell me: Does the sound come to the ear or does the ear go to the sound?
直饒響寂雙忘、到此如何話會。
If both sound and silence die away, at such a juncture how could you talk of Zen?
若將耳聽應難會、眼處聞聲方始親。
While listening with you ear, you cannot tell. When hearing with your eye, you are truly intimate.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
會則事同一家 With realization, things make one family;
不會萬別千差 Without realization, things are separated in a thousand ways.
不會事同一家 Without realization, things make one family;
會則萬別千差 With realization, things are separated in a thousand ways.
Case 17 Chû the National Teacher Gives Three Calls 十七 國師三喚
國師三喚侍者。侍者三應。
The National Teacher called his attendant three times, and three times the attendant responded.
國師云、將謂吾辜負汝、元來却是汝辜負吾。
The National Teacher said, "I long feared that I was betraying you, but really it was you who were betraying me."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、國師三喚、舌頭墮地。
The National Teacher called three times, and his tongue fell to the ground.
侍者三應、和光吐出。
The attendant responded three times, and he gave his answer with brilliance.
國師年老心孤、按牛頭喫草。
The National Teacher was old and lonely; he held the cow's head and forced it to eat grass.
侍者未肯承當。
The attendant would have none of it;
美食不中飽人□、且道、那裏是他辜負處。
delicious food has little attraction for a man who is satiated. Tell me, at what point was the betrayal?
國淨才子貴、家富小兒嬌。
When the country is flourishing, talent is prized. When the home is wealthy, the children are proud.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
鉄枷無孔要人擔 He carried and iron yoke with no hole
累及兒孫不等閑 And left a curse to trouble his descendants.
欲得□門并□戸 If you want to hold up the gate and the doors,
更須赤脚上刀山 You must climb a mountain of swords with bare feet.
Case 18 Tõzan's "Masagin" 十八 洞山三斤
洞山和尚、因僧問、如何是佛。
A monk asked Tõzan, "What is Buddha?"
山云、麻三斤。
Tõzan replied, "Masagin!" [three pounds of flax].
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、洞山老人、參得些蚌蛤禪、纔開兩片露出肝腸。
Old Tõzan attained the poor Zen of a clam. He opened the two halves of the shell a little and exposed all the liver and intestines inside.
然雖如是、且道、向甚處見洞山。
But tell me, how do you see Tõzan?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
突出麻三斤 "Three pounds of flax" came sweeping along;
言親意更親 Close were the words, but closer was the meaning.
來説是非者 Those who argue about right and wrong
便是是非人 Are those enslaved by right and wrong.
Case 19 Nansen's "Ordinary Mind Is the Way" 十九 平常是道
南泉、因趙州問、如何是道。
Jõshû asked Nansen, "What is the Way?"
泉云、平常心是道。
"Ordinary mind is the Way," Nansen replied.
州云、還可趣向否。
"Shall I try to seek after it?" Jõshû asked.
泉云、擬向即乖。
"If you try for it, you will become separated from it," responded Nansen.
州云、不擬爭知是道。
"How can I know the Way unless I try for it?" persisted Jõshû.
泉云、道不屬知、不屬不知。
Nansen said, "The Way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing.
知是妄覺、不知是無記。
Knowing is delusion; not knowing is confusion.
若眞達不擬之道、猶如太虚廓然洞豁。
When you have really reached the true Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space.
豈可強是非也。
How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?"
州於言下頓悟。
With these words, Jõshû came to a sudden realization.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、南泉被趙州發問、直得瓦解氷消、分疎不下。
Nansen dissolved and melted away before Jõshû's question, and could not offer a plausible explanation.
趙州縱饒悟去、更參三十年始得。
Even though Jõshû comes to a realization, he must delve into it for another thirty years before he can fully understand it.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
春有百花秋有月 The spring flowers, the autumn moon;
夏有涼風冬有雪 Summer breezes, winter snow.
若無閑事挂心頭 If useless things do not clutter your mind,
更是人間好時節 You have the best days of your life.
Case 20 The Man of Great Strength 二十 大力量人
松源和尚云、大力量人、因甚擡脚不起。
Shõgen Oshõ asked, "Why is it that a man of great strength does not lift his legs?"
又云、開口不在舌頭上。
And he also said, "It is not the tongue he speaks with."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、松源可謂、傾腸倒腹。
It must be said that Shõgen shows us all his stomach and intestines.
只是欠人承當。
But alas, no one can appreciate him!
縱饒直下承當、正好來無門處喫痛棒。
And even if someone could appreciate him, let him come to me, and I'll beat him severely.
何故。
Why?
□。要識眞金、火裏看。
If you want to find pure gold, you must see it through fire.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
擡脚踏翻香水海 Lifting his leg, he kicks up the Scented Ocean;
低頭俯視四禪天 Lowering his head, he looks down on the fourth Dhyana heaven.
一箇渾身無處著請 There is no space vast enough for his body—
續一句 Now, somebody write the last line here.
Case 21 Unmon's "Kanshiketsu" 二十一 雲門屎橛
雲門、因僧問、如何是佛。
A monk asked Unmon, "What is Buddha?"
門云、乾屎橛。
Unmon replied, "Kanshiketsu!" [A dry shit-stick.]
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、雲門可謂、家貧難辨素食、事忙不及草書。
Unmon was too poor to prepare plain food, too busy to speak from notes.
動便將屎橛來、□門挂戸。
He hurriedly took up shiketsu to support the Way.
佛法興衰可見。
The decline of Buddhism was thus foreshadowed.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
閃電光 Lightning flashing,
撃石化 Sparks shooting;
貶得眼 A moment's blinking,
巳蹉過 Missed forever.
Case 22 Kashyapa's "Knock Down the Flagpole" 二十二 迦葉刹竿
迦葉、因阿難問云、世尊傳金襴袈裟外、別傳何物。
Ananda asked Kashyapa, "The World-honored One gave you the golden robe; did he give you anything else?"
葉喚云、阿難。
"Ananda!" cried Kashyapa.
難、應諾。
"Yes, sir!" answered Ananda.
葉云、倒却門前刹竿著。
"Knock down the flagpole at the gate," said Kashyapa.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向者裏下得一轉語親切、便見靈山一會儼然未散。
If you can give a turning word at this point, you will see that the meeting at Mount Grdhrakuta is still solemnly continuing.
其或未然、毘婆尸佛、早留心、直至而今不得妙。
If not, then this is what Vipasyin Buddha worried about from remote ages; up to now he has still not acquired the essence.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
問處何如答處親 Tell me—question or answer—which was more intimate?
幾人於此眼生筋 Many have knit their brows over this;
兄呼弟鷹揚家醜 Elder brother calls, younger brother answers, and they betray the family secret.
不屬陰陽別是春 They had a special spring, not one of yin and yang.
Case 23 Think Neither Good Nor Evil 二十三 不思善惡
六祖、因明上座、趁至大庾嶺。
The Sixth Patriarch was pursued by the monk Myõ as far as Taiyu Mountain.
祖見明至、即擲衣鉢於石上云、此衣表信。 可力爭耶、任君將去。
The patriarch, seeing Myõ coming, laid the robe and bowl on a rock and said, "This robe represents the faith; it should not be fought over. If you want to take it away, take it now."
明遂擧之如山不動、踟□悚慄。 明白、我來 求法、非爲衣也。
Myõ tried to move it, but it was as heavy as a mountain and would not budge. Faltering and trembling, he cried out, "I came for the Dharma, not for the robe.
願行者開示。
I beg you, please give me your instruction."
祖云、不思善、不思惡、正與麼時、那箇是明上座本來面目。
The patriarch said, "Think neither good nor evil. At this very moment, what is the original self of the monk Myõ?"
明當下大悟、遍體汗流。
At these words, Myõ was directly illuminated. His whole body was covered with sweat.
泣涙作禮、問曰、上來密語密意外、還更 有意旨否。
He wept and bowed, saying, "Besides the secret words and the secret meaning you have just now revealed to me, is there anything else, deeper still?"
祖曰、我今爲汝説者、即非密也。
The patriarch said, "What I have told you is no secret at all.
汝若返照自己面目、密却在汝邊。
When you look into your own true self, whatever is deeper is found right there."
明云、其申雖在黄梅隨衆、實未省自己面目。
Myõ said, "I was with the monks under Õbai for many years but I could not realize my true self.
今蒙指授入處、如人飲水冷暖自知。
But now, receiving your instruction, I know it is like a man drinking water and knowing whether it is cold or warm.
今行者即是某甲師也。
My lay brother, you are now my teacher."
祖云、汝若如是則吾與汝同師黄梅。
The patriarch said, "If you say so, but let us both call Õbai our teacher.
善自護持。
Be mindful to treasure and hold fast to what you have attained."
Mumon's Comment
無問曰、六祖可謂、是事出急家老婆心切。
The Sixth Patriarch was, so to speak, hurried into helping a man in an emergency, and he displayed a grandmotherly kindness.
譬如新茘支剥了殻去了核、送在你口裏、只要你嚥一嚥。
It is as though he peeled a fresh lichi, removed the seed, put it in your mouth, and asked you to swallow it down.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
描不成兮畫不就 You cannot describe it; you cannot picture it;
贊不及兮休生受 You cannot admire it; don't try to eat it raw.
本來面目没處藏 Your true self has nowhere to hide;
世界壞時渠不朽 When the world is destroyed, it is not destroyed.
Case 24 Fuketsu's Speech and Silence 二十四 離却語言
風穴和尚、因僧問、語默渉離微、如何通不犯。
A monk asked Fuketsu, "Both speech and silence are faulty in being ri [離 inward action of mind] or bi [微 outward action of mind]. How can we escape these faults?"
穴云、長憶江南三月裏、鷓鴣啼處百花香。
Fuketsu said,
"I always remember the spring in Kõnan,
Where the partridges sing;
How fragrant the countless flowers!"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、風穴機如掣電得路便行。
Fuketsu's Zen spirit was like lightning and opened a clear passage.
爭奈坐前人舌頭不斷。
However, he was entangled in the monk's words and could not cut them off.
若向者裏見得親切、自有出身之路。
If you can really grasp the problem, you can readily find the way out.
且離却語言三昧、道將一句來。
Now, putting language samadhi aside, say it in your own words.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
不露風骨句 He does not use a refined phrase;
未語先分付 Before speaking, he has already handed it over.
進歩口喃喃 If you chatter on and on,
知君大罔措 You will find you have lost your way.
Case 25 Kyõzan's Dream 二十五 三座説法
仰山和尚、夢見往彌勒所、安第三座。
In a dream Kyõzan Oshõ went to Maitreya's place and was led in to sit in the third seat.
有一尊者、白槌云、今日當第三座説法。
A senior monk struck with a gavel and said, "Today the one in the third seat will speak."
山乃起白槌云、摩訶衍法離四句、絶百非。
Kyõzan rose and, striking with the gavel, said, "The truth of Mahayana is beyond the four propositions and transcends the hundred negations.
諦聽、諦聽。
Taichõ! Taichõ!" [Hear the truth!]
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、且道、是説法不説法、開口即失、閉口又喪。
Now tell me, did Kyõzan preach or did he not not? If he opens his mouth, he is lost; if he seals his mouth, he is lost.
不開不閉、十万八千。
Even if he neither opens nor shuts his mouth, he is a hundred and eight thousand [miles away from the truth].
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
白日晴天 In broad daylight, under the blue sky,
夢中説夢 He forges a dream in a dream;
捏怪捏怪 He makes up a monstrous story
誑□一衆 And tries to deceive the whole crowd.
Case 26 Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds 二十六 二僧卷簾
清涼大法眼、因僧齋前上參。 眼以手指簾。
When the monks assembled before the midday meal to listen to his lecture, the great Hõgen of Seiryõ pointed at the bamboo blinds.
時有二僧、同去卷簾。
Two monks simultaneously went and rolled them up.
眼曰、一得一失。
Hõgen said, "One gain, one loss."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、且道、是誰得誰失。
Tell me, who gained and who lost?
若向者裏著得一隻眼、便知清涼國師敗闕處。
If you have an eye to penetrate the secret, you will see where Seiryõ Kokushi failed.
然雖如是、切忌向得失裏商量。
However, I warn you strongly against discussing gain and loss.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
卷起明明徹太空 Rolling up the blinds, the great sky is open,
太空猶末合吾宗 But the great sky does not come up to Zen.
爭似從空都放下 Why don't you throw them all down from the sky,
綿綿密密不通風 And keep your practice so close that no air can escape?
Case 27 Nansen's "Not Mind, Not Buddha, Not Things" 二十七 不是心佛
南泉和尚、因僧問云、還有不與人説底法麼。
A monk asked Nansen, "Is there any Dharma that has not been preached to the people?"
泉云、有。
Nansen answered, "There is."
僧云、如何是不與人説底法。
"What is the truth that has not been taught?" asked the monk.
泉云、不是心、不是佛、不是物。
Nansen said, "It is not mind; it is not Buddha; it is not things."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、南泉被者一問、直得揣盡家私、郎當不少。
At this question, Nansen used up all his treasure and was not a little confused.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
叮嚀損君徳 Talking too much spoils your virtue;
無言眞有功 Silence is truly unequaled.
任從滄海變 Let the mountains become the sea;
終不爲君通 I'll give you no comment.
Case 28 Ryûtan Blows Out the Candle 二十八 久嚮龍潭
龍潭、因徳山請益抵夜。
Tokusan asked Ryûtan about Zen far into the night.
潭云、夜深。
At last Ryûtan said, "The night is late.
子何不下去。
Why don't you retire?"
山遂珍重掲簾而出。 見外面黒却回云、外面黒。
Tokusan made his bows and lifted the blinds to withdraw, but he was met by darkness. Turning back to Ryûtan, he said, "It is dark outside."
潭乃點紙燭度與。
Ryûtan lit a paper candle and handed it to him.
山擬接。潭便吹滅。
Tokusan was about to take it when Ryûtan blew it out.
山於此忽然有省。 便作禮。
At this, all of a sudden, Tokusan went through a deep experience and made bows.
潭云、子見箇甚麼道理。
Ryûtan said, "What sort of realization do you have?"
山云、某甲從今日去不疑天下老和尚舌頭也。
"From now on," said Tokusan, "I will not doubt the words of an old oshõ who is renowned everywhere under the sun."
至明日、龍潭陞堂云、可中有箇漢、牙如劍樹、口似血盆。
The next day Ryûtan ascended the rostrum and said, "I see a fellow among you. His fangs are like the sword tree. His mouth is like a blood bowl.
一棒打不回頭。
Strike him with a stick, and he won't turn his head to look at you.
他時異日、向孤峰頂上立君道在。
Someday or other, he will climb the highest of the peaks and establish our Way there."
山遂取疏抄於法堂前、將一炬火提起云、窮諸玄辨、若一毫致於太虚、竭世樞機似一滴投於巨壑。
Tokusan brought his notes on the Diamond Sutra to the front of the hall, pointed to them with a torch, and said, "Even though you have exhausted the abtruse doctrines, it is like placing a hair in a vast space. Even though you have learned all the secrets of the world, it is like a drop of water dripped on the great ocean."
將疏抄便燒。
And he burned all his notes.
於是禮辭。
Then, making bows, he took his leave of his teacher.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、徳山未出關時、心憤憤、口□□、得得來南方要滅却教外別傳之旨。
Before Tokusan crossed the barrier from his native place, his mind burned and his mouth uttered bitterness. He went soutward, intending to stamp out the doctrines of special transmission outside the sutras.
及到澧州路上問婆子買點心。
When he reached the road to Reishû, he asked an old woman to let him have lunch to "refresh the mind."
婆云、大徳車子内是甚麼文字。
"Your worship, what sort of literature do you carry in your pack?" the old woman asked.
山云、金剛經疏抄。
"Commentaries on the Diamond Sutra," replied Tokusan.
婆云、只如經中道、過去心不可得、見在心不可得、未來心不可得。
The old woman said, "I hear it is said in that sutra, 'The past mind cannot be held, the present mind cannot be held, the future mind cannot be held.'
大徳、要點那箇心。
Now, I would like to ask you, what mind are you going to have refreshed?"
徳山被者一問、直得口似□檐。
At this question Tokusan was dumbfounded.
然雖如是、未肯向婆子句下死却。遂問婆子、近處有甚麼宗師。
However, he did not remain inert under her words but asked, "Do you know of any good teacher around here?"
婆云、五里外有龍潭和尚。
The old woman said, "Five miles from here you will find Ryûtan Oshõ."
及到龍潭納盡敗闕。
Coming to Ryûtan, Tokusan got the worst of it.
可謂是前言不應後語。
His former words were inconsistent with his later ones.
龍潭大似憐兒不覺醜。
As for Ryûtan, he seemed to have lost all sense of shame in his compassion toward his son.
見他有些子火種、郎忙將惡水驀頭一澆澆殺。
Finding a bit of live coal in the other, enough to start a fire, he hurriedly poured on muddy water to annihilate everything at once.
冷地看來、一場好笑。
A little cool reflection tells us it was all a farce.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
聞名不如見面 Hearing the name cannot surpass seeing the face;
見面不如聞名 Seeing the face cannot surpass hearing the name.
雖然救得鼻孔 He may have saved his nose,
爭奈瞎却眼晴 But alas! he lost his eyes.
Case 29 The Sixth Patriarch's "Your Mind Moves" 二十九 非風非幡
六祖、因風颺刹幡。有二僧、對論。
The wind was flapping a temple flag, and two monks started an argument.
一云、幡動。一云、風動。
One said the flag moved, the other said the wind moved;
往復曾未契理。
they argued back and forth but could not reach a conclusion.
祖云、不是風動、不是幡動、仁者心動。
The Sixth Patriarch said, "It is not the wind that moves, it is not the flag that moves; it is your mind that moves."
二僧悚然。
The two monks were awe-struck.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、不是風動、不是幡動、不是心動、甚處見祖師。
It is not the wind that moves; it is not the flag that moves; it is not the mind that moves. How do you see the patriarch?
若向者裏見得親切、方知二僧買鐵得金。
If you come to understand this matter deeply, you will see that the two monks got gold when buying iron.
祖師忍俊不禁、一場漏逗。
The patriarch could not withhold his compassion and courted disgrace.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
風幡心動 Wind, flag, mind, moving,
一状領過 All equally to blame.
只知開口 Only knowing how to open his mouth,
不覺話墮 Unaware of his fault in talking.
Case 30 Baso's "This Very Mind Is the Buddha" 三十 即心即佛
馬祖、因大梅問、如何是佛。
Daibai asked Baso, "What is the Buddha?"
祖云、即心是佛。
Baso answered, "This very mind is the Buddha."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若能直下領略得去、著佛衣、喫佛飯、説佛話、行佛行、即是佛也。
If you directly grasp Baso's meaning, you wear the Buddha's clothes, eat the Buddha's food, speak the Buddha's words, do the Buddha's deeds—that is, you are a Buddha himself.
然雖如是、大梅引多少人、錯認定盤星。
However, alas! Daibai misled not a few people into taking the mark on the balance for the weight itself.
爭知道説箇佛字、三日漱口。
How could he realize that even mentioning the word "Buddha" should make us rinse out our mouths for three days?
若是箇漢、見説即心是佛、掩耳便走。
If a man of understanding hears anyone say, "This very mind is the Buddha," he will cover his ears and rush away.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
青天白日 The blue sky and bright day,
切忌尋覓 No more searching around!
更問如何 "What is the Buddha?" you ask:
抱贓叫屈 With loot in your pocket, you declare yourself innocent.
Case 31 Jõshû Investigates an Old Woman 三十一 趙州勘婆
趙州、因僧問婆子、臺山路向甚處去。
A monk asked an old woman, "What is the way to Taisan?"
婆云、驀直去。
The old woman said, "Go straight on."
僧纔行三五歩。 婆云、好箇師僧、又恁麼去。
When the monk had proceeded a few steps, she said, "A good, respectable monk, but he too goes that way."
後有僧擧似州。
Afterward someone told Jõshû about this.
州云、待我去與你勘過這婆子。
Jõshû said, "Wait a bit, I will go and investigate the old woman for you."
明日便去亦如是問。 婆亦如是答。
The next day he went and asked the same question, and the old woman gave the same answer.
州歸謂衆曰、臺山婆子、我與□勘破了也。
On returning, Jõshû said to his disciples, "I have investigated the old woman of Taisan for you."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、婆子只解坐籌帷幄、要且著賊不知。
The old woman only knew how to sit still in her tent and plan the campaign; she did not know when she was shadowed by a spy.
趙州老人、善用偸營劫塞乃機、又且無大人相。
Though old Jõshû showed himself clever enough to take a camp and overwhelm a fortress, he displayed no trace of being a great commander.
撿點將來、二倶有過。
If we look at them, they both have their faults.
且道、那裏是趙州、勘破婆子處。
But tell me, what did Jõshû see in the old woman?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
問既一般 The question was like the others,
答亦相似 The answer was the same.
飯裏有砂 Sand in the rice,
泥中有刺 Thorns in the mud.
Case 32 A Non-Buddhist Philosopher Questions the Buddha 三十二 外道問佛
世尊、因外道問、不問有言、不問無言。
A non-Buddhist philosopher said to the Buddha, "I do not ask for words; I don not ask for non-words."
世尊據座。
The Buddha just sat there.
外道贊歎云、世尊大慈大悲、開我迷雲令我得入。
The philosopher said admiringly, "The World-honored One, with his great mercy, has blown away the clouds of my illusion and enabled me to enter the Way."
乃具禮而去。
And after making bows, he took his leave.
阿難尋問佛、外道有何所證贊歎而去。
Then Ananda asked the Buddha, "What did he realize, to admire you so much?"
世尊云、如世良馬見鞭影而行。
The World-honored One replied, "A fine horse runs even at the shadow of the whip."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、阿難乃佛弟子、宛不如外道見解、且道、外道與佛弟子相去多少。
Ananda was the Buddha's disciple, but his understanding was not equal to that of the non-Buddhist. I want to ask you, what difference is there between the Buddha's disciple and the non-Buddhist?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
劍刃上行 On the edge of a sword,
氷綾上走 Over the ridge of an iceberg,
不渉階梯 With no steps, no ladders,
懸崖撒手 Climbing the cliffs without hands.
Case 33 Baso's "No Mind, No Buddha" 三十三 非心非佛
馬祖、因僧問、如何是佛。
A monk asked Baso, "What is the Buddha?"
祖曰、非心非佛。
Baso answered, "No mind, no Buddha."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向者裏見得、參學事畢。
If you understand this, you have finished studying Zen.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
路逢劍客須呈 Present a sword if you meet a swordsman;
不遇詩人莫獻 Don't offer a poem unless you meet a poet.
逢人且説三分 When talking, tell one-third of it;
未可全施一片 Don't divulge the whole at once.
Case 34 Nansen's "Reason Is Not the Way" 三十四 智不是道
南泉云、心不是佛、智不是道。
Nansen said, "Mind is not the Buddha, reason is not the Way."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、南泉可謂、老不識羞。
Nansen, growing old, had no shame.
纔開臭口、家醜外揚。
Just opening his stinking mouth, he let slip the family secrets.
然雖如是、知恩者少。
Yet there are very few who are grateful for his kindness.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
天晴日頭出 The sky clears, the sun shines bright,
雨下地上濕 The rain comes, the earth gets wet.
盡情都説了 He opens his heart and expounds the whole secret,
只恐信不及 But I fear he is little appreciated.
Case 35 Seijõ's Soul Separated 三十五 倩女離魂
五祖問僧云、倩女離魂、那箇是眞底。
Goso said to his monks, "Seijõ's soul separated from her being. Which was the real Seijõ?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向者裏悟得眞底、便知出殻入殻如宿旅舎。
When you realize what the real is, you will see that we pass from one husk to another like travelers stopping for a night's lodging.
其或未然、切莫亂走。
But if you do not realize it yet, I earnestly advise you not to rush about wildly.
驀然地水火風一散、如落湯螃蟹七手八脚。
When earth, water, fire, and air suddenly separate, you will be like a crab struggling in boiling water with its seven or eight arms and legs.
那時莫言、不道。
When that happens, don't say I didn't warn you!
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
雲月是同 The moon above the clouds is ever the same;
渓山各異 Valleys and mountains are separate from each other.
萬福萬福 All are blessed, all are blessed;
是一是二 Are they one or are they two?
Case 36 When You Meet a Man of the Way 三十六 路逢達道
五祖曰、路逢達道人、不將語默對、且道、將甚麼對。
Goso said, "When you meet a man of the Way on the path, do not meet him with words or in silence. Tell me, how will you meet him?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向者裏對得親切、不妨慶快。
In such a case, if you can manage an intimate meeting with him it will certainly be gratifying.
其或未然、也須一切處著眼。
But if you cannot, you must be watchful in every way.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
路逢達道人 Meeting a man of the Way on the road,
不將語默對 Meet him with neither words nor silence.
攔腮劈面拳 A punch on the jaw:
直下會便會 Understand, if you can directly understand.
Case 37 Jõshû's Oak Tree 三十七 庭前栢樹
趙州、因僧問、如何是祖師西來意。
A monk asked Jõshû, "What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming to China?"
州云、庭前栢樹子。
Jõshû said, "The oak tree in the garden."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向趙州答處見得親切、前無釋迦後無彌勒。
If you understand Jõshû's answer intimately, there is no Shakya before you, no Maitreya to come.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
言無展事 Words cannot express things;
語不投機 Speech does not convey the spirit.
承言者喪 Swayed by words, one is lost;
滯句者迷 Blocked by phrases, one is belwildered.
Case 38 A Buffalo Passes the Window 三十八 牛過窓櫺
五祖曰、譬如水牯牛過窓櫺、頭角四蹄都過了、因甚麼尾巴過不得。
Goso said, "A buffalo passes by the window. His head, horns, and four legs all go past. But why can't the tail pass too?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若 向者裏顛倒、著得一隻眼、下得一轉語、可以上報四恩下資三有。
If you make a complete about-face, open your eye, and give a turning word on this point, you will be able to repay the four kinds of love that have favored you and help the sentient beings in the three realms who follow you.
其或未然、更須照顧尾巴始得。
If you are still unable to do this, return to this tail and reflect upon it, and then for the first time you will realize something.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
過去墮抗塹 Passing by, it falls into a ditch;
回來却被壞 Coming back, all the worse, it is lost.
者些尾巴子 This tiny little tail,
直是甚奇怪 What a strange thing it is!
Case 39 A Mistake in Speaking 三十九 雲門話墮
雲門、因僧問、光明寂照遍河沙。
A monk said to Unmon, "The brilliance of the Buddha silently illuminates the whole universe. . ."
一句未絶、門遽曰、豈不是張拙秀才語。
But before the could finish the verse, Unmon said, "Aren't those the words of Chõetsu the Genius?"
僧云、是。
"Yes, they are," answered the monk.
門云、話墮也。
"You have slipped up in your speaking," Unmon said.
後來、死心拈云、且道、那裏是者僧話墮處。
Afterward, Shishin Zenji brought up the matter and said, "Tell me, at what point did the monk err in his speaking?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若向者裏見得雲門用處孤危、者僧因甚話墮、堪與人天爲師。
If you clearly understand this and realize how exacting Unmon was in his method, and what made the monk err in his speaking, you are qualified to be a teacher of heaven and earth.
若也未明、自救不了。
If you are not yet clear about it, you are far from saving yourself.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
急流垂釣 A line cast in the rapids,
貪餌者著 The greedy will be caught.
口縫纔開 Before you start to open your mouth,
性命喪却 Your life is already lost!
Case 40 Tipping Over a Water Bottle 四十 □倒淨瓶
溈山和尚、始在百丈會中充典座。
When Isan Oshõ was with Hyakujõ, he was tenzo [典座 head cook] of the monastery.
百丈、將選大溈主人。 乃請同 首座對衆下語、出格者可往。
Hyakujõ wanted to choose a master for Mount Tai-i, so he called together all the monks and told them that anyone who could answer his question in an outstanding manner would be chosen.
百丈遂拈淨瓶、置地上設問云、不得喚作淨瓶、汝喚作甚麼。
Then he took a water bottle and stood it on the floor, and said, "You may not call this a water bottle. What do you call it?"
首座乃云、不可喚作木□也。
The head monk said, "It cannot be called a stump."
百丈却問於山。
Hyakujõ asked Isan his opinion.
山乃□倒淨瓶而去。
Isan tipped over the water bottle with his feet and went out.
百丈笑云、第一座 輸却山子也。
Hyakujõ laughed and said, "The head monk loses."
因命之爲山。
And Isan was named as the founder of the new monastery.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、溈山一期之勇、爭奈跳百丈圈圚不出、撿點將來、便重不便輕。
Isan displayed great spirit in his action, but he could not cut himself free from Hyakujõ's apron strings. He preferred the heavier task to lighter one.
何故。□。
Why was he like that, eh?
脱得盤頭、擔起鐵枷。
He took off his headband to bear the iron yoke.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
颺下笊籬并木杓 Tossing bamboo baskets and ladles away,
當陽一突絶周遮 He made a glorious dash and swept all before him.
百丈重關欄不住 Hyakujõ's barrier cannot stop his advance;
脚尖□出佛如麻 Thousands of Buddhas come forth from the tips of his feet.
Case 41 Bodhidharma's Mind-Pacifying 四十一 達磨安心
達磨面壁。
Bodhidharma sat facing the wall.
二祖立雪。
The Second Patriarch stood in the snow.
斷臂云、弟子心未安、乞師安心。
He cut off his arm and presented it to Bodhidharma, crying, "My mind has no peace as yet! I beg you, master, please pacify my mind!"
磨云、將心來爲汝安。
"Bring your mind here and I will pacify it for you," replied Bodhidharma.
祖云、覓心了不可得。
"I have searched for my mind, and I cannot take hold of it," said the Second Patriarch.
磨云、爲汝安心竟。
"Now your mind is pacified," said Bodhidharma.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、□齒老胡、十万里航海特特而來。
The broken-toothed old Hindu came so importantly, thousands of miles over the sea.
可謂是無風起浪。
This was raising waves where there was no wind.
末後接得一箇門人、又却六根不具。
In his last years he induced enlightenment in his disciple, who, to make matters worse, was defective in the six roots.
□。謝三郎不識四字。
Why, Shasanro did not know for ideographs.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
西來直指 Coming east, directly pointing,
事因囑起 You entrusted the Dharma, and trouble arose;
撓聒叢林 The clamor of the monasteries
元來是□ Is all because of you.
Case 42 The Girl Comes out of Samadhi 四十二 女子出定
世尊、昔、因文殊、至諸佛集處値諸佛各還本處。
Once, in the old days, in the time of the World-honored One, Manjusri went to the assembly of the Buddhas and found that everyone had departed to his original dwelling place.
惟有一女人近彼佛坐入於三昧。
Only a girl remained, sitting in samadhi close to the Buddha's throne.
文殊乃白佛、云何女人得近佛坐而我不得。
Manjusri asked Shakyamuni Buddha, "Why can the girl get near the Buddha's throne, while I cannot?"
佛告文殊、汝但覺此女、令從三昧起、汝自問之。
Shakyamuni Buddha said, "Bring her out of her samadhi and ask her yourself."
文殊遶女人三□、鳴指一下、乃托至梵天盡其神力而不能出。
Manjusri walked around the girl three times, snapped his fingers once, took her to the Brahma heaven, and exerted all his miraculous powers to bring her out of her meditation, but in vain.
世尊云、假使百千文殊亦出此女人定不得。
The World-honored One said, "Even a hundred thousand Manjusris cannot make her wake up.
下方過一十二億河沙國土有罔明菩薩。
But down below, past twelve hundred million lands as innumerable as the sands of Ganges, there is a Bodhisattva Mõmyõ.
能出此女人定。
He will be able to rouse her from her samadhi."
須臾罔明大士、從地湧出禮拜世尊。世尊敕罔明。
Instantly the Bodhisattva Mõmyõ emerged from the earth and made a bow to the World-honored One, who gave him his imperial order.
却至女人前鳴指一下。
The Bodhisattva went over to the girl and snapped his fingers once.
女人於是從定而出。
At this she came out of her samadhi.
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、釋迦老子、做者一場雜劇、不通小小。
Old Shakyamuni put a petty drama on the stage and failed to enlighten the masses.
且道、文殊是七佛之師、因甚出 女人定不得。
I want to ask you: Manjusri is the teacher of the Seven Buddhas; why couldn't he arouse the girl from her samadhi?
罔明初地菩薩、爲甚却出得。
How was it that Mõmyõ, a Bodhisattva at the beginner's stage, could do it?
若向者裏見得親切、業識忙忙那伽大定。
If you understand this intimately, you will enjoy Nagya's grand samadhi in the busiest activity of consciousness.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
出得出不得 One was successful, the other was not;
渠儂得自由 Both secured freedom of mind.
神頭并鬼面 One in a god-mask, the other in a devil-mask;
敗闕當風流 Even in defeat, a beautiful performance.
Case 43 Shuzan's Shippei 四十三 首山竹篦
首山和尚、拈竹篦示衆云、汝等諸人、若喚作竹篦則觸。
Shuzan Oshõ held up his shippei [staff of office] before his disciples and said, "You monks! If you call this a shippei, you oppose its reality.
不喚作竹篦則背。
If you do not call it a shippei, you ignore the fact.
汝諸人、且道、喚作甚麼。
Tell me, you monks, what will you call it?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、喚作竹篦則觸。
If you call it a shippei, you oppose its reality.
不喚作竹篦則背。
If you do not call it a shippei, you ignore the fact.
不得有語、不得無語。
Words are not available; silence is not available.
速道、速道。
Now, tell me quickly, what is it?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
拈起竹篦 Holding up the shippei,
行殺活令 He takes life, he gives life.
背觸交馳 Opposing and ignoring interweave.
佛祖乞命 Even Buddhas and patriarchs beg for their lives.
Case 44 Bashõ's Staff 四十四 芭蕉拄杖
芭蕉和尚示衆云、你有拄杖子、我興你 拄杖子。
Bashõ Osho said to his disciples, "If you have a staff, I will give you a staff.
你 無拄杖子、我奪你 拄杖子。
If you have no staff, I will take it from you."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、扶過斷橋水、伴歸無月村。
It helps me wade across a river when the bridge is down. It accompanies me to the village on a moonless night.
若喚作拄杖、入地獄如箭。
If you call it a staff, you will enter hell like an arrow.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
諸方深與淺 The depths and shallows of the world
都在掌握中 Are all in its grasp.
□天□拄地 It supports the heaven and sustains the earth.
隨處振宗風 Everywhere, it enhances the doctrine.
Case 45 Hõen's "Who Is He?" 四十五 他是阿誰
東山演師祖曰、釋迦彌勒猶是他奴。
Hõen of Tõzan said, "Even Shakya and Maitreya are servants of another.
且道、他是阿誰。
I want to ask you, who is he?"
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若也見得他分曉、譬如十字街頭撞見親爺相似、更不須問別人道是與不是。
If you can really see this "another" with perfect clarity, it is like encountering your own father at a crossroads. Why should you ask whether you recognize him or not?
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
他弓莫挽 Don't draw another's bow,
他馬莫騎 Don't ride another's horse,
他非莫辨 Don't discuss another's faults,
他事莫知 Don't explore another's affairs.
Case 46 Proceed On from the Top of the Pole 四十六 竿頭進歩
石霜和尚云、百尺竿頭、如何進歩。
Sekisõ Oshõ asked, "How can you proceed on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole?"
又古徳云、百尺竿頭坐底人、雖然得入未爲眞。
Another eminent teacher of old said, "You, who sit on the top of a hundred-foot pole, although you have entered the Way you are not yet genuine.
百尺竿頭、須進歩十方世界現全身。
Proceed on from the top of the pole, and you will show your whole body in the ten directions."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、進得歩、翻得身、更嫌何處不稱尊。
If you go on further and turn your body about, no place is left where you are not the master.
然雖如是、且道、百尺竿頭、如何進歩。嗄。
But even so, tell me, how will you go on further from the top of a hundred-foot pole? Eh?"
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
瞎却頂門眼 He darkens the third eye of insight
錯認定盤星 And clings to the first mark on the scale.
拌身能捨命 Even though he may sacrifice his life,
一盲引衆盲 He is only a blind man leading the blind.
Case 47 Tosotsu's Three Barriers 四十七 兜率三關
兜率悦和尚、設三關問學者、
Tosotsu Etsu Oshõ set up three barriers for his disciples:
撥草參玄只圖見性。
1. You leave no stone unturned to explore profundity, simply to see into your true nature.
即今上人性在甚處。
Now, I want to ask you, just at this moment, where is your true nature?
識得自性方脱生死。
2. If you realize your true nature, you are free from life and death.
眼光落時、作麼生脱。
Tell me, when your eyesight deserts you at the last moment, how can you be free from life and death?
脱得生死便知去處、四大分離向甚處去。
3. When you set yourself free from life and death, you should know your ultimate destination. So when the four elements separate, where will you go?
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、若能下得此三轉語、便可以隨處作主遇縁即宗。
If you can put turning words to these three questions, you are the master wherever you may stand and command Zen whatever circumstances you may be in.
其或未然、麁□易飽、細嚼難飢。
If otherwise, listen: gulping down your meal will fill you easily, but chewing it well can sustain you.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
一念普觀無量劫 This moment's thoughts sees through eternal time;
無量劫事即如今 Eternal time is just this moment.
如今□破箇一念 If you see through this moment's thought,
□破如今□底人 You see through the man who sees through this moment.
Case 48 Kempõ's One Road 四十八 乾峰一路
乾峰和尚、因僧問、十方薄伽梵、一路涅槃門。
A monk asked Kempõ Oshõ, "It is written, 'Bhagavats in the ten directions. One straight road to Nirvana.'
未審路頭在甚麼處。
I still wonder where the road can be."
峰拈起拄杖、劃一劃云、在者裏。
Kempõ lifted his staff, drew a line, and said, "Here it is."
後僧請益雲門。
Later the monks asked the same question to Unmon,
門拈起扇子云、扇子□跳上三 十三天、築著帝釋鼻孔。
who held up his fan and said, "This fan jumps up to the thirty-third heaven and hits the nose of the deity Sakra Devanam Indra.
東海鯉魚、打一棒雨似盆傾。
When you strike the carp of the eastern sea, the rain comes down in torrents."
Mumon's Comment
無門曰、一人向深深海底行、□土揚塵、一人於高高山頂、白浪滔天。
One, going to the bottom of the sea, lifts up clouds of dust; the other, on the top of the highest mountain, rises towering waves to wash the sky.
把定放行、各出一隻手扶竪宗乗。
One holding fast, the other letting go, each stretches out his hand to support the profound teaching.
大似兩箇馳子相撞著。
They are just like two riders starting from opposite ends of the course and meeting in the middle.
世上應無直底人。
But none on earth can be absolutely direct.
正眼觀來二大老惣未識路頭在。
When examined with a true eye, neither of these two great masters knows the road.
Mumon's Verse 頌曰
未擧歩時先已到 Before a step is taken, the goal is reached;
未動舌時先説了 Before the tongue is moved, the speech is finished.
直饒著著在機先 Though each move is ahead of the next,
更須知有向上竅 There is still a transcendent secret.
Mumon's Postscript 後序
從上佛祖垂示機縁、據款結案、初無剰語。
The sayings and doings of the Buddha and the patriarchs have been set down in their original form.
掲翻腦蓋、露出眼睛。
Nothing superfluous has been added by the author, who has taken the lid off his head and exposed his eyeballs.
肯要諸人直下承當、不從佗覓。
Your direct realization is demanded; it should not be sought through others.
若是通方上士。 纔聞擧著、便知落處。
If you are a man of realization, you will immediately grasp the point at the slightest mention of it.
了無門戸可入、亦無階級可升。
There is no gate for you to go through; there are no stairs for you to ascend.
掉臂度關不問關吏。
You pass the checkpoint, squaring your shoulders, without asking permission of the keeper.
豈不見玄沙道、無門解脱之門、無意道人之意。
Remember Gensha's saying, "No-gate is the gate of emancipation; no-meaning is the meaning of the man of the Way."
又白雲道、明明知道只是者箇、爲甚麼透不過。
And Hakuun says, "Clearly you know how to talk of it, but why can't you pass this simple, specific thing?"
恁麼説話、也是赤土搽牛嬭。
However, all this kind of talk is like making a mud pie with milk and butter.
若透得無門關、早是鈍置無門。
If you have passed the Mumonkan, you can make a fool of Mumon.
若透不得無門關、亦之辜負自己。
If not, you are betraying yourself.
所謂、涅槃心易曉、差別智難明。
It is easy to know the Nirvana mind but difficult to attain the wisdom of differentiation.
明得差別智、家國自安寧。
When you have realized this wisdom, peace and order will reign over your land.
時紹定改元 解制前五日
The change of era to Jõtei [1228], five days before the end of summer session
楊岐八世孫 無門比丘慧開 謹識。
Respectfully inscribed by Mumon Ekai Bhikkhu, eighth in succession from Yõgi
無門關 巻終
Wu-wen kuan (Mumonkan) End of the book
Source
English translation by late Zen master Katsuki Sekida (Two Zen Classics 26-137)
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The nuclear deal seems to bind SA financially & holds the country liable for accidents at power plants.
JOHANNESBURG - Shocking details have emerged about the South African/Russian nuclear deal, which seems to bind South Africa financially and holds the country liable for accidents at power plants.
The Mail & Guardian is this morning reporting that although the nuclear deal has not been sent to Parliament, a sub clause allows the agreement to be implemented without going through the regular channels of law making.
On Thursday night, President Jacob Zuma reaffirmed the nation's commitment to nuclear power during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) but he said an open process would be followed.
It's being reported that a nuclear deal with Russia will release the suppliers from any liability arising from accidents.
This means South Africa will be responsible for any and all damage.
Russia will also apparently have special treatment when it comes to tax while South Africa will not.
The agreement is due to run for a minimum of 20 years but will in effect give Russia the right to block its partner from appointing anyone else to work on the same project.
Another concern is that South Africa will have to ask for permission to export any nuclear technology it harnesses once its power plants are up and running.
Government is yet to respond.
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Is interstellar travel by bio-humanity even possible? Not according to my dear bro and esteemed colleague Kim Stanley Robinson. Whose new novel AURORA follows one of the first… and possibly last… efforts to send a generation starship to a neighboring star. Naturally, any KSR book is worth rushing out to purchase… though like many of his other works, there is a very strong sense that the author has a point to make.
Starting with the fact that he’s been asked for thirty years: “Hey, Robinson, how come you never leave the solar system!” AURORA is – foremost – his answer.
Why? Because it cannot (in any reasonable way) be done. Aurora proclaims: “There. I left. For a bit. Okay? But there’s nothing interesting out there. And getting there is too hard. Let’s focus on fixing our home.”
In fact, I got no bones to pick with KSR’s Odes to Our Planet – (hey, one of my tomes is EARTH) – and its solar siblings. Moreover, I find his politics to be interesting, grownup and major contributions to our grand discussion of how advanced human societies may govern themselves. I tend to emphasize the role of regulated competition in the synergies that he seeks, that might offer our Enlightenment experiment extended success and wisdom. Still, I agree so often with KSR’s general zeitgeist that it’s actually refreshing to get a chance to pick at some disagreements, for a change!
Moreover, when it comes to Aurora’s stay-home message, he had to expect folks would accuse him of stacking the deck.
Of course Robinson’s fundamental premise is one that I violate like crazy in my Uplift Universe… that Einstein’s law is the law. Let’s start by assuming any interstellar travel endeavors that take place in the future must obey, and indeed use technologies that are within “squint” range of our own. We can see them in the distance as plausible extensions of things-currently-known. We are - for example - on the verge of achieving some kind of fusion and can collect traces of anti-matter… so it is not untoward to imagine an interstellar ship propelled by either fusion power or antimatter. Or else, since KSR veers away from those energy sources, let’s instead picture a combination of electromagnetic launch plus laser boost from home, followed by a series of planetary swing-bys in the target system–
— exactly the combination that I used earlier, in Existence. But no unobtanium. No warp drives. No uploaded people who get downloaded into new bodies at the other end. And… most tellingly – no suspended animation or deep sleep or cryo-storage. Those are cheating.
I’m not so sure about that last one. If KSR cannot squint and see it as plausible, I sure can. Indeed, the technologies that he chooses to include are only ones that are hard and likely to remain just barely on the edge of possible—especially the closed ecosystem methods needed for a generation ship. Techs are excluded if their existence would make interstellar travel much, much easier.
But let’s hop over for some other opinions. Starting with a pair of sagacious reviews at the Centauri Dreams site. The first, by my fellow “Killer Bee” Gregory Benford, addresses a number of the social aspects of KSR’s novel, including plot elements that seem designed to make the expedition more likely to fail.
In another fascinating followup, honorary Killer Bee Stephen Baxter dissects some of the physics and engineering behind KSR’s starship.
== My own riff re AURORA ==
Okay, my turn.
1- First, where I absolutely agree with Kim Stanley Robinson is over the biggest of all Big Lies in hard-SF tales about humans conquering the galaxy… the notion that it will be easy for ortho-humanity to colonize other earthlike worlds. A mere cloning of the European experience settling the Americas, stepping off the boat, inhaling the fresh air, chopping some trees and pushing back natives, building prosperous farms, then cities… this re-figuring of the American West in space is a standard motif, from Poul Anderson to Lois Bujold and a thousand other authors, and although it is so alluring a dream, it ain’t necessarily so.
A point that Stan hammers repeatedly, in AURORA, is that living ecosystems defend themselves. They have predation pyramids and immune systems and it seems improbable that human settlers will just fit right in, finding it easy to eat but not too-easy to be eaten… or simply poisoned by a zillion incompatible chemicals unfamiliar and lethal to Earth biology. Some authors have pointed out this problem before—Ursula LeGuin, David Gerrold in his Cthorr series and I’ve poked at it. Indeed, the SF author with the biggest galactic empire of all—Isaac Asimov—gave himself an out by assuming that all 25 million human-settled worlds had been free of metazoan life when robotic machines came along to terraform them for humanity. (See this resolved and made clear in Foundation’s Triumph.)
So, at one level, KSR is offering a badly-needed splash in the face with some cold-water reality, countering a hoary and overly-lazy old SF trope. And yet…
And yet, there is such a thing as way-overcompensation. In fact, it now seems likely that alien life forms will use plentiful adenine as their energy molecule and as one of their nucleotides. And the 20+ amino acids that we use in proteins just happen to be the ones that are most thermodynamically stable and easiest to produce and collect. I am not saying there won’t be bizarrely different biochemistries out there! But if you take twenty life worlds out there, I bet some will supply most of what we need to eat, enabling us to supplement with transplanted foods. The poisoning or immune system problems are bigger unknowns. But are you saying it will be forever beyond human science to analyze such things and reconfigure versions of humanity that would be capable of coping?
Indeed, this notion of us adapting to new homes is one that both KSR and I have dealt with, before. Trouble is… it distracts from AURORA’s core polemical message. And that message is a heavy one.
2- Alas, we keep running into the same problem, even among fellow members of our Promethean guild. To envision that your current set of problems might seem quaint to people just a generation hence.
In this case, when an author uses tech-science difficulties to stymie his colonists, the question then arises… might not the next mission learn from these mistakes? One has only to squint and picture that successor ship finding Tau Ceti’s obstacles quite surmountable.
Especially since… and this is kinda crippling… (spoiler alert!) .... Earth eventually saves some of the returning colonists by sending them exactly such a trick of technology. One that will change utterly the design of the next wave of starships, making them four or five orders of magnitude simpler, safer, easier, cheaper and quicker!
In other words: okay okay, so generation ships are barely plausible. But then, in that case, how about skipping them to something better?
3- Another deck-stacking… Robinson presumes Solar System civilization is just barely rich enough to have afforded to send a few generation ship expeditions… but not (generations later) wealthy enough to make expeditions increasingly a matter of proliferating whim. In the end, the stay-at-home lesson boils down to an assumption of permanent (if relative) poverty.
Indeed, the simplest way to perfect your systems for a generation ship is simply to keep such a ship as a freestanding colony in the Solar System. There might be ten thousand such habitats in a rich civilization. Pick a few that volunteer to have no physical contact with others, for a century. Many of the closed ecology problems KSR discusses could be old-hat and solved.
4- Ah, but a strong moral point against generation ships is the commitment of your grand-children to a stressful and dangerously limited life in which they had no choosing. Stan does a good job conversationally weighing the ethical tradeoffs… if leaning on the scales a bit. But again, our conclusion is simply to find something better than generation ships.
For other scenarios about starships and generation ships, see Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon, an anthology of stories and articles about our longterm future in space, edited by Gregory and Jim Benford.
5- KSR’s no-Captain premise may allow lots of colorful chaos, murder and plot-propelling societal collapse. But it also is silly. Even if the population aboard ship lives according to Robinsonian prescribed post-Marxian according-to-needs principles combined with Rothbardian no-coercionism and LeGuinian anarchic individualism (that predictably shatters under stress) they’d still have backup plans and those would include occasional emergency drills that familiarized them with age-old techniques. Those drills would include meritocratic selection of a ceremonial captaincy – AI -chosen, perhaps – that could assume command in a crisis. Should that arrangement then fail in order to drive the plot? Sure! But stacking the deck should be subtle. Even just a bit. It should not be based on everyone aboard having never cracked a single book about ancient eras of exploration.
6- What I find stunning is that in this book KSR indicts his own prescriptive utopia as brittle and incapable of resilience! I am sure the intended message was “if my super-mature society can’t handle an interstellar expedition, then no one can, hence forgetaboutit.” But that is not what the reader derives. Rather, the book’s take-away is just “my super-mature society can’t handle an interstellar expedition.”
Indeed, from the behavior of the denizens of Aurora, one is left to conclude something fundamental about this ship and expedition – that it was created by the folks back home, and carefully staffed, with one fundamental goal in mind – to be a “Golgafrincham B Ark.” A dig that should be self-explanatory, if you are sf’nally literate.
The most disappointing thing is that Stan Robinson is generally a master of problem-solving fiction, making him an archetype of what I believe to be the fundamental premise of Sci Fi, making it the opposite of traditional fantasy. The premise that children might – sometimes — learn from the mistakes of their parents. But not this time. By that metric, Aurora is, for all its tech-heavy recitations — alas – far more polemic than science fiction.
Do give Aurora a read. And now, let’s move on to another terrific - if flawed - best-seller.
== Nitpicks on THE MARTIAN ==
Hey, I agree that it’s a great book! Andy Weir’s The Martian deserves its plaudits and I look forward to the film. Still, a novel that’s called “competence porn” – presenting itself as a rigorously plausible Robinson-Crusoe-in-Space on every page – does merit scrutiny. My pal Joe Carroll – the best space engineer I know – loved the book but offers up these cavils. (Let the techie crit commence!):
1. It seems unlikely that there would be enough light inside to grow useful crops except right near windows or LED lights. Mars gets only ~43% as much sun as earth; the hab windows will be small; and LED area lighting is likely to be only a few percent as bright as outside.
2. His quantitative chemistry was sloppy. He’s confusing the pleasantly simple ratios of volumes of gas at the same pressure and temperature, with liquids. You don’t get 2 liters of liquid H2O from 1 liter of LO2 (liquid oxygen): 1 liter of LO2 weighs 1.14 kg and gives 1.14 * 18/16 = 1.28 kg = 1.28 liter of water.
3. Baselining a full 1 atmosphere for the hab, rover, and EVA suits doesn’t make sense to me (ISS uses 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch) but only 4 psi for EVA; Skylab used 5 psi). I think it should probably be more like 6-7 psi. That allows enough N2 dilution of O2 to make fires less of an issue in 3/8 gee. I think NASA would use 3-4 psi pure oxygen in the EVA suits. When the suit pressure is comparable to the N2 partial pressure in the hab or rover, you don’t have to pre-breathe O2 before EVA to avoid bends.
4. I don’t think his composite pressurized structures are very realistic. Flat floored “tents” are very hard to do. I think it would be far lighter, stronger, and safer to have a cylindrical pressure shell, with a lightweight raised flat floor inside, and space under the floor panels for storage. . I also think that 60 seconds from resin mix to strong cure may be reasonable for a patch material, but it makes a lot of what he did nearly impossible. But if he let it get cooler than intended, he could stretch the cure time.
5. I can’t see any reason for such high acceleration leaving Mars. I think the best initial T/W (Thrust to Weight ratio) would probably be less than 2 Mars gravities or less than 0.7 Earth gee. 2Even with a single stage and no throttling, that would probably be less than 3 gees max to low Mars orbit, and approximately 5 gees to rendezvous with the rest of the crew in a hyperbolic flyby.
Ouch! Burn! That is… if you are a real nitpicker!) But… isn’t that Weir’s readership? Indeed, the pickiness of these nits only shows how terrific the general execution truly is.
Seriously, as a “space cadet” since way back in my days as a post-doc at the California Space Institute .. and currently on the advisory board of NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group and the B612 Foundation, I am thrilled to see “competence porn” rising in popularity.
Now, on to Matt Damon. Go for it Good Will Hunting. Give us something for (forever young-minded) grownups.
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The last handful of years haven’t treated some of gaming’s greatest horror franchises very well. Resident Evil lost its way a few times, Left 4 Dead 3 has been MIA, Dead Space and Alan Wake were put on hiatus — soon to be joined by F.E.A.R. — and until recently, Silent Hill was largely assumed dead. Looking at all that, you would think horror was fading into obscurity again.
Thankfully, that’s not the case.
Indie horror is healthier than ever, bolstered by several high profile releases like The Forest, Slender: The Arrival and Outlast as well as a number of upcoming games that are all worth getting excited about. We’ve begin to see this renewed interest affect AAA horror, starting with the imminent arrivals of Alien: Isolation and The Evil Within next month. That’s just the beginning. We have a veritable horde coming next year.
If my guide to the remaining horror games of 2014 left you wanting, this (working) list of releases the genre has in store for us in 2015 should remedy that.
Bloodborne
If you don’t mind being broken down over and over again by a game with a thoroughly unforgiving nature that goes a long way in making the occasional victory all the sweeter. Bloodborne promises to be as challenging as the Dark Souls series that inspired it, only now that winning formula has been injected with a dose of horror.
Release Date: February 6, 2015
Call of Cthulhu
This past January, Magrunner: Dark Pulse developer Frogwares revealed their plan to make a new Call of Cthulhu. Since then, the game has kept unusually quiet. After the cancellation of the two sequels that were planned to follow Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and the state of limbo that Guillermo Del Toro’s InSane has found itself in, I’m wondering if there isn’t some sort of curse that’s been put on any developer that tries to create a game based on or inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
Release Date: TBA 2015
DayZ
PC gamers have been able to experience the wonders of getting robbed by strangers at gunpoint over cans of beans for what feels like ages. Soon, PS4 owners will have the opportunity to experience that same joy.
Release Date: TBA 2015
H1Z1
Trying to take a bite out of that juicy DayZ pie is H1Z1. It’s more or less the same game, so if you like trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wilderness where your fellow man is infinitely scarier than the walking dead, there’s a solid chance this game won’t disappoint.
Release Date: January 15, 2015 (Steam Early Access)
Dead Island 2
With Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager taking the reigns, I have faith they’ll be able to elevate this troubled series. Between its renewed focus on humor, over-the-top action and vibrant environments, Dead Island 2 is already doing a lot right.
Release Date: Spring 2015
Doom
After several delays, Doom is coming. We might not have seen it yet, but there’s plenty of folks who have. If id Software’s refusal to place it under the scrutinizing eye of the Internet is any indication of its quality, this may end up being a 2016 release.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Draugen
The day before Halloween, indie developer Red Thread Games decided to give us something scary to look forward to with Draugen, a survival horror game that feels like Gone Home meets Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It’s set on the Norwegian west coast, so you can be sure it’s going to look ridiculously good.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Dying Light
With Dead Island 2 in the hands of a new developer, Techland was left with some free time and a love for the undead. Rather than try something entirely new, the team is working on improving the foundation they created with the first Dead Island. The result is an incredibly ambitious game with a multiplayer that’s been seamlessly woven into the experience.
And parkour. Lots of parkour.
Release Date: January 27, 2015
The Evil Within: The Assignment
The Assignment, the first of three planned expansions for The Evil Within, will follow Sebastian’s partner, Juli “The Kid” Kidman. We don’t know much else about it yet, but I imagine there will be lots of blood, barbed wire and nightmarish creatures — including The Keeper, which has been confirmed for this DLC and the expansion that’s slated to follow it — for us to flee from.
Release Date: Early 2015
Fatal Frame V: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden
This game bums me out. Part of me takes solace in knowing this beloved survival horror franchise isn’t being entirely neglected, but most of me is too busy being frustrated to notice. If ever there was a time to release a quality horror game like this to the world — not just Japan — it’s now. The only reason this game is on this list is because I hope Nintendo just hasn’t gotten around to mentioning an international release yet.
Release Date: September 27, 2014 (Japan) / Possible 2015 release elsewhere
Hellraid
Originally announced as a last-gen console release, Techland gave us a substantial reason to be pumped for Hellraid when they confirmed it had been delayed to give them time to rebuild the game in a new engine for current-gen consoles. The new-and-improved Hellraid brings together the combat of Skyrim with the brutality of Dead Island, complete with a dark fantasy setting and tons of hellish monsters to battle.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Killing Floor 2
Tripwire Interactive hasn’t mentioned an ETA for the sequel to their hit cooperative horror game Killing Floor. When I saw it in action last month, it looked like the game was pretty far along. The mechanics are in and the gore is top notch, but multiplayer games require a lot of tweaking to get the balance right, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Killing Floor 2 arrives early next year.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Kodoku
Kodoku looks like a series of nightmares that were induced by a particularly bad acid trip. I have no idea what’s going on, but I like it.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Let it Die
Despite being a fan of Suda 51’s wacky work and the worlds he’s created, I haven’t seen enough to get me enthusiastic about Let it Die. It could be a twisted ride that showers us with the blood spilled from our mostly naked enemies, or it could be shallow and use its copious amount of violence as a gimmick. We’ll have to wait and see!
Release Date: TBA 2015
Resident Evil
I have two theories to explain why Capcom is re-releasing the Resident Evil remake. I’ve already gone into great detail on the first theory, but I haven’t even mentioned the other. My second theory revolves around the idea that Capcom is fully aware of our desire for a Resident Evil 2 remake, which they’ll get around to doing, but not before they every other Resident Evil first.
Release Date: January 20, 2015
Resident Evil Revelations 2
Not long after Capcom announced they’d be remastering the GameCube remake, they also revealed a sequel to Revelations. Their decision to build on a spin-off that’s widely considered to be one of the best Resident Evil games of the last decade. We know it will be delivered episodically, feature offline co-op, is set on a prison island and stars Claire Redfield and Moira Burton — Barry Burton’s daughter.
Release Date: Starting February 17 (full schedule here)
SOMA
Last October, Amnesia developer Frictional Games started teasing their next project, the freaky looking horror game SOMA. Here we are a year later and the game is significantly less mysterious than it was back then. Even still, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve only scratched the surface. SOMA looks like a mystery wrapped in an enigma that’s been slathered in gore, modified corpses and face-eating robots.
Release Date: Early 2015
State of Decay: Year One Survival Edition
State of Decay is one of the better zombie-themed video games we’ve been gifted with lately, and it’s undead hordes are slated to shamble onto the Xbox One in the near future. Other than the still glaring lack of co-op, what’s not to love about that?
Release Date: Early 2015
The Order: 1886
The Order: 1886 is set in Victorian era London and follows an ancient order of soldiers with steampunk weapons and gadgets, and their ongoing war with human “half-breeds”, or werewolves. If that doesn’t have you sufficiently excited, I don’t know what will.
Release Date: February 20, 2015
Human Element
Earlier this month we were treated to our very first look at the post-apocalyptic zombie survival game, Human Element. Much like The Walking Dead, the zombies aren’t the real threat — it’s your fellow man you should be worried about.
Release Date: November 2015
Until Dawn
After going silent for a while, Sony re-revealed developer Supermassive Games’ teen slasher Until Dawn. It’s been improved in every way possible, including a complete reworking of the original script to make it exponentially more terrifying. This game has a lot of promise, and if it’s successful, it could pave the way for more games like it.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Outlast 2
Back in October, developer Red Barrels confirmed a sequel to Outlast, their popular first person horror game set in the Mount Massive asylum. If it’s anywhere near as scary as its predecessors, we’ll all need to stock up on Depends.
Release Date: TBA 2015
Remember, this is a working list. 2015 is still a ways off and the unpredictable and always-changing nature of video games means a lot of the above will change, probably more than once, in the coming months. If I missed something, feel free to let me know in the comments.
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Most of the headlines about local governments fighting over the legality of short-term apartment rental services like Airbnb and VRBO have focused on New York City, where many of the rentals listed arguably violate subletting regulations . But there are folks in San Francisco who have a problem with these services and are pushing the city to rein them in.
Like NYC, San Francisco is a city with a good deal of tourist traffic and a limited supply of hotel rooms. It also has a decent population of residents and landlords willing to let out rooms and apartments to visitors. This makes it an ideal spot for a service like Airbnb, where users have the flexibility of spending thousands of dollars to rent out luxury homes for their visit, or crashing in someone’s spare bedroom for $50 a night.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, some of the city’s well-connected private citizens are pressuring local lawmakers to regulate this growing short-term housing business, limiting short-term rentals to only those parts of the city with commercial zoning and even going so far as to suggest that residents be rewarded for ratting out people who have turned their apartments into mini-hotels.
Under the proposal, whistleblowers would be rewarded with 30% of any fines or back taxes collected as a result of their alerting the authorities to illegal rentals.
“The short-term rental market is exploding and cries out for some sort of regulation,” one of the idea’s supporters, an area housing advocate, tells the Chronicle. “People are stunned to find out that a house on their block is now a hotel.”
This initiative is still in the process of raising funds to get on the ballot for next fall, and its supporters say the pay-for-tattling idea might not make it through to the final version.
A city supervisor has already proposed a new city law that would legalize short-term rentals throughout the city, but would require all operators of these rentals to register with the city. However, the registry would not readily be available to the public.
This is less strict than the privately backed ballot initiative, which would also require registration and would make that registry a matter of public record, so anyone could look up the buildings in their area to see which are operating short-term rentals.
Airbnb isn’t too thrilled with the idea of being further hemmed in by regulation.
“We want to work with everyone in San Francisco who cares about home-sharing, but this proposal would make it even harder for San Franciscans to make ends meet,” a rep for the company tells the Chronicle. “More than half of Airbnb hosts in San Francisco use the money they earn to pay their mortgage or rent, and the overwhelming majority share only the home in which they live. We hope to work with everyone on policies that help San Franciscans pay the bills and stay in the city they love.”
Rather than being compelled to do so, Airbnb recently announced that it would begin collecting the proper hotel taxes in San Francisco and other cities.
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption WATCH: Wi-fi security flaw explained
The wi-fi connections of businesses and homes around the world are at risk, according to researchers who have revealed a major flaw dubbed Krack.
It concerns an authentication system which is widely used to secure wireless connections.
Experts said it could leave "the majority" of connections at risk until they are patched.
The researchers added the attack method was "exceptionally devastating" for Android 6.0 or above and Linux.
A Google spokesperson said: "We're aware of the issue, and we will be patching any affected devices in the coming weeks."
The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (Cert) has issued a warning on the flaw.
"US-Cert has become aware of several key management vulnerabilities in the four-way handshake of wi-fi protected access II (WPA2) security protocol," it said.
"Most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Most wi-fi devices could be at risk
Computer security expert from the University of Surrey Prof Alan Woodward said: "This is a flaw in the standard, so potentially there is a high risk to every single wi-fi connection out there, corporate and domestic.
"The risk will depend on a number of factors including the time it takes to launch an attack and whether you need to be connected to the network to launch one, but the paper suggests that an attack is relatively easy to launch.
"It will leave the majority of wi-fi connections at risk until vendors of routers can issue patches."
Industry body the Wi-Fi Alliance said that it was working with providers to issue software updates to patch the flaw.
"This issue can be resolved through straightforward software updates and the wi-fi industry, including major platform providers, has already started deploying patches to wi-fi users.
"Users can expect all their wi-fi devices, whether patched or unpatched, to continue working well together."
It added that there was "no evidence" that the vulnerability had been exploited maliciously.
Tech giant Microsoft said that it had already released a security update.
Security handshake
The vulnerability was discovered by researchers led by Mathy Vanhoef, from Belgian university, KU Leuven.
According to his paper, the issue centres around a system of random number generation known as nonce (a number that can only be used once), which can in fact be reused to allow an attacker to enter a network and snoop on the data being sent in it.
"All protected wi-fi networks use the four-way handshake to generate a fresh session key and so far this 14-year-old handshake has remained free from attacks, he writes in the paper describing Krack (key reinstallation attacks).
"Every wi-fi device is vulnerable to some variants of our attacks. Our attack is exceptionally devastating against Android 6.0: it forces the client into using a predictable all-zero encryption key."
Dr Steven Murdoch from University College, London said there were two mitigating factors to what he agreed was a "huge vulnerability".
"The attacker has to be physically nearby and if there is encryption on the web browser, it is harder to exploit."
More details can be found at this website.
Krack explained
Prof Alan Woodward explained the issue to the BBC.
When any device uses wi-fi to connect to, say, a router it does what is known as a "handshake": it goes through a four-step dialogue, whereby the two devices agree a key to use to secure the data being passed (a "session key").
This attack begins by tricking a victim into reinstalling the live key by replaying a modified version of the original handshake. In doing this a number of important set-up values can be reset which can, for example, render certain elements of the encryption much weaker.
This attacks appears to work on all wi-fis tested - prior to the patches currently being issued.
In some it is possible to decrypt and inject data, enabling an attacker to hijack a connection. In others it is even worse as it is possible to forge a connection, which, as the researchers note, is "catastrophic".
Not all routers will be affected but the people this could be most problematic for are the internet service providers who have millions of routers in customers' homes. How will they make sure all of them are secure?
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Centenarians get to be centenarians by surviving or not suffering the diseases that kill everyone else. So what kills centenarians? This isn't an academic question, as we'd like to engineer a future in which none of us suffer the major diseases of aging, and all of us make it past a century in good health. Understanding the processes that slay those who survive everything else the failing body can throw at us is just as essential to the future of longevity medicine as curing cancer and repairing mitochondria.
If forced to make an educated guess today, I'd have to say that the best evidence is for amyloidosis to be the killer of the oldest old - a buildup of metabolic byproducts that eventually clogs the body's systems to the point of failure. The Supercentenarian Research Foundation outlines some of the case for that conclusion:
Coles argues [that supercentenarians] aren't perishing from the typical scourges of old age, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's Disease. What kills most of them, he says, is a condition, extremely rare among younger people, called senile cardiac TTR Amyloidosis. TTR is a protein that cradles the thyroid hormone thyroxine and whisks it around the body. In TTR Amyloidosis, the protein amasses in and clogs blood vessels, forcing the heart to work harder and eventually fail. "The same thing that happens in the pipes of an old house happens in your blood vessels," says Coles.
Folk from the Biogerontology Research Foundation (formed "to support the application of our knowledge of the mechanisms of ageing to the relief of disability, suffering and disease in old age") were kind enough to direct my attention today to a recent update from the amyloidosis research community:
Prof Pepys’s persistence pays off
Amyloidosis is caused by the build up of abnormal "amyloid" proteins in body tissues. Prof Pepys has long believed that the key to understanding the disease is a related blood protein called SAP, which sticks to amyloid fibres and stops enzymes removing them. The FT has covered his work several times. My predecessor David Fishlock described in 1990 Prof Pepys’s discovery of a way to image SAP and amyloid fibres. I wrote in 1995 and 2002 about progress in developing a drug called CPHPC, which aimed to clear the destructive amyloid deposits from patients by removing the protective SAP from their blood. Prof Pepys was working then in collaboration with Roche. But the Swiss pharmaceutical giant eventually pulled out. "While we had promising early results [with CPHPC] they were not enough to benefit patients with advanced disease," he says. "Something more dramatic is needed." That something turns out to a combination of CPHPC with an antibody - a molecular guidance system designed to seek out amyloid deposits in vital organs. Now Prof Pepys has reached an agreement with another big pharmaceutical group, UK-based GlaxoSmithKline, to collaborate on producing a treatment for amyloidosis based on the CPHPC-antibody combination.
Those of us interested in progress towards the tools needed to remove or repair changes in our tissues that accumulate with age should follow amyloidosis research with interest. Some fraction of the degenerations of aging is caused by just this sort of buildup of unwanted chemical aggregates. Strategies under development for dealing with specific aggregates may turn out be more broadly applicable to future engineered longevity therapies.
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The 2012 International Motorcycle Show is currently going on in Cologne, Germany and every global two-wheeler manufacturer is flaunting its 2013 line-up. But for Suzuki, the show is a little extra special as it announced as many as five new models including the highlight, Suzuki V-Storm 1000 Concept.
Inspired by Suzuki’s DR Dakar race bike, the V-Storm is the most advanced motorcycle designed by Suzuki for the adventure class. The bike equips a 1000 CC liquid cooled V-Twin engine fitted on a lightweight aluminum chassis for unmatched performance and handling which is further complemented by a top notch traction control system.
What is disappointing is the fact that it is unlikely to be launched shortly, as it is a concept model, but gladly Suzuki has confirmed that they are interested in building a production model of the same which will hit the dealerships along with the 2014 model year line-up.
What is really interesting here is that the concept model largely differs from the 2012 V-Storm and expresses a relatively modern design. From the front to the side to the rear, all seems to have changed drastically and undoubtedly it is one of the most advanced bikes ever built by Suzuki. We are sure the new touring/adventure motorcycle will go a long way and hope it hits the production line sooner.
Some of the key Features of the 2013 Suzuki V-Storm 1000 Concept Include:
1000 CC V Twin Engine which is high on acceleration
Slim and light aluminum frame/chassis for better handling
Adjustable windscreen
Thick padded seats
Retro inspired styling
Advance Traction Control System
Luggage space integrated at the rear
2013 Suzuki V-Storm 1000 Concept Pictures:
2013 Suzuki V-Storm 1000 Concept Price and Specifications
Official price and specifications will be announced sometime later when the production model of the 2013 Suzuki V-Storm 1000 is launched. We will bring you latest updates when the launch happens, stay tuned to Ride Talks by signing up for our FREE email newsletter.
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Gameplay:
Weapons:
Maps:
Modes:
Similarities:
Limitations:
Conclusion:
Have you ever wanted to feel once more the same thrill and nostalgia as back in the days during your old school Counter-Strike adventures, but on a next generation engine and modern appearance?Well, have no fear, as this time has come and we have exactly the thing you have been looking for all of these years... or at the least the base of it.Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive is a modification currently in early beta development byZooL that strives to bring back classic aspects and elements that exist in the previous editions of the Counter-Strike franchise to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, while in the same time preserving some of the current version's successful and tested features and respective.This includes features like significantly enhanced movement, upgraded wall penetration, the community favorite and familiar to most of us sounds from the previous versions, simplified maps and improved overall visibility, a new wave mode called "Guardian" and last, but not least, the all time favorite SMG, the MP5!I had the opportunity to test the game during the closed beta and after a bit more than an hour of playing it, I was pleasantly surprised to see how less of an adjustments are needed to make such a big difference. Scroll down below to see what the key features of the Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive project are to this date.The first thing you are undoubtedly going to notice is how much the movement has been improved compared to CS:GO's default. It resembles the one from the original Counter-Strike to a degree, as you can now consistently and smoothly maneuver while in air, allowing you to do things like evading a fight situation by strafe jumping around corners much more efficiently, or enter an opponent-held territory a bit safer and much faster than you could before. This improvement also allows you to peak corners on a whole different level, which in result can give you the upper hand in many different situations unlike in Global Offensive. Although that bunny hopping is not as consistent as it should be due to engine limitations, it is still overall better than the one present in CS:GO. Unfortunately due to the same reason duck jumping, also known as "Russian Walk" to some, is not present in this version.The second huge difference that exists in Classic Offensive is one that I always wanted to have in CS:GO. That is consistent wallbanging. Yes! You can now shoot through corners, concrete walls, crates and other sort of obstacles that may occur in your way in a nearly perfect fashion. You must however note that is it by far not as extreme as in Counter-Strike 1.6, which means you cannot simply do damage to a player from miles away or anything alike, but regardless it gives you the chance to play certain situations in a straight fight, as I believe it should be, rather than hide and seek. This is Counter-Strike after all.There are other lesser changes that have been applied to the game's mechanics and gameplay, some of which are not mentioned in this article, but you are welcome to go ahead and explore them.Currently only the original weapons from the previous games, excluding the tactical shield and nightvision goggles, are available in the modification and none of the extra weapons that were added in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.We are welcoming back the M4A1 as the one and only primary assault rifle for the Counter-Terrorists. You can no longer choose between two different version, as this one is a replica of the one from the original version. You can now also quickly take on and off the silencer. As mentioned above, we are also welcoming back the most used sub-machine gun back in Counter-Strike 1.6, the MP5. The difference between these weapons and the one from the original version is however that all of them are using tweaked CS:GO patterns rather than CS 1.6's ones, which makes them just as useful as they were in CS:GO and thus maintaining another important factor, balance.This also means that the accuracy and recoil of all weapons is nearly the same as in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a few slight adjustments here and there, but is more controllable to a sense.There are currently only four maps of the series that have been redesigned and added as official in Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive. These are in no particular order Dust II, Inferno, Mirage and Italy. There are also two community created maps added as well as special winter edition of Dust II right in time for Christmas!All maps have been simplified, redesigned to have nearly the same outline as the ones from Counter-Strike 1.6 and most importantly cleaned from needless resources and props, which not only improves the overall gameplay and visibility, but also helps with in-game performance. The levels are slightly brighter and should be nicer for your eyes.You should also be able to play the majority of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive maps on this modification as well.There are four modes that currently exist in Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive:- Deathmatch- Guardian- Demolition- Classic (Casual/Competitive)Three of these modes are in no need for an introduction as they are already well known and present in CS:GO by default and feature no significant changes. The fourth however is exclusive for the Classic Offensive modification.Guardian is a wave mode that simulates a bombsite defense scenario in which you can practice site holds against AI players alone or with teammates.Please note that matchmaking is currently unavailable in Beta 1.1b. More information will be revealed soon.The aim of the Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive project is not to replicate Counter-Strike 1.6 or any of the other previous version, but rather to add major features and aspects based on them to the Global Offensive respective, unlikeAlex Garfield's ProMod for instance.For example you can still pick up weapons by pressing the use key or throw grenades with the right click and enjoy all the other features that were added in CS:GO, but also do so with some of the classic aspects that made the Counter-Strike franchise what it is today.On the other hand, the game brings back elements such as the same radio commands as in CS 1.6, classic player and weapon models, adjusted Glock and Famas' burst fire and more.Unfortunately the engine that renders CS:GO is not as open and customizable as the one of Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source, which massively impedes the development progress and goals of Counter-Strike: Classic Offensive. The majority of the aspects are still heavily dependent on updates delivered by Valve Corporation and elements such as boosting, also known as player stacking, is nearly impossible to replicate.The GUI (Graphical User Interface) and HUD (Head-Up Display) are also limited to customization and for this reason the appearance has not changed much.I am fascinated of what the project has achieved so far for this short period and I am definitely looking forward to see the progress of it. As an experienced former professional Counter-Strike 1.6 player I do believe that the modification is being pulled in the right direction and has a bright future as an entertainment project and I encourage all players, especially those with a competitive background in the previous versions, that are still looking for that CS 1.6 nostalgia to try out this classic based skin-free game and share thoughts with us!The modification has now been released to open beta and is available for download, so do not hesitate to head over moddb.com and take a look for yourself. Feel free to provide feedback and tell us your opinion via the comment section below or throughout our social medias.Furthermore SK Gaming will soon release an in-depth interview with ZooL to provide more information about the project and more. Stay tuned.
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Netbooks, Microsoft, a Turning Point
Netbooks, Microsoft, a Turning Point
“If we win one more such victory … we shall be utterly ruined.”
Pyrrhus of Epirus, quoted by Plutarch in Life of Pyrrhus.
About 18 months ago a silver (actually white) bullet known as the eeePC running Linux appeared. They were literally sold out immediately (example story) – despite the fact that they were pre-loaded with Linux, and well before the onset of austerity from the financial crisis. Within 2 or 3 months a version of the eeePC running Windows XP was announced, first shipping in early (perhaps Jan??) 2008. At about the six-eight month mark (give or take) people were happy to report the form factor being sold at 70-30% in favour of Linux (google it or see Brendan Leblanc’s claim of “under 10%” in the first half of 2008).
Since that time something has happened. The specifications for this class of portable device have been steadily increasing, closing the gap between them and standard laptops (so much so, that there may not be a “netbook” market anymore). With that the price of these machines has also increased. Linux versions of the eeePC are either not available at all, or are only available on the lowest specification models. Microsoft now claims to have dominated the netbook market with Windows installations (see the Leblanc post referenced above). [One comment notes that Linux based netbooks are available in China. I would guess that they are available more generally in SE Asia (more price sensitivity) than in the West.]
Windows/Netbooks = Game Over?
Microsoft’s reaction to the success of the eeePC seems, on reflection, to have been well and professionally executed. Indeed, now that the specifications have been upscaled, Microsoft has announced an intention to increase the licensing fees for this form factor. That leaves open to question however, how the eeePC was able to be released sans Windows in the first place. It is difficult to believe that Microsoft had no knowledge of it. If they did have knowledge, they certainly could have struck a deal over it (as the fact that they subsequently struck such a deal demonstrates). They presumably chose not to strike such a deal. Only ASUS and Microsoft really know what happened, but it does not seem wildly outside the evidence available to speculate that ASUS was initially rebuffed by Microsoft and then has had Microsoft approach them cap in hand.
If so, the eeePC has imposed a heavy price on Microsoft. It was not a monetary price, although Microsoft has been reporting substantially reduced revenues (indeed, apparently its first ever quarterly revenue decline) and attributing those reductions to the netbook form factor (random example stories- one, two and three). Rather, that price was its credibility. The eeePC experience has indicated:
(a) that Linux based products can be a commercial success in their own right; and, as a corollary,
(b) that Linux allows manufacturers to dictate terms to Microsoft;
– and that is the crux of it. In 2007-08 ASUS appears to have achieved what no other computer manufacturer has managed to do in perhaps over 20 years – it dictated the terms of supply of Microsoft’s products, both in terms of price and availability (XP’s sales availability was either ended or imminently to end). Given the position of Microsoft this, of itself, is a remarkable achievement. However ASUS’ achievement was even more far reaching. Not only do they appear to have dictated terms, but the terms were, in effect, that XP be sold both as a commodity and as a complement to the eeePC. Commoditising your complements is the holy grail of business. It allows you to extract the most value/price premium from the sale of your products.
Far from showing strength, the wide availability of Windows on netbooks is a sign of weakness.
Looking forward
The eeePC was the proof of concept for a Linux based future. There is something incredibly powerful about achieving an apparently unachievable goal. Until something has been shown to be achievable, only the very brave or committed will even attempt it. However, once something has been shown to be possible, many people suddenly become willing to attempt it, and with more people attempting it, each new comer learns faster from the experiences of others. Consider the history of scaling Everest, with some 30 years from the first attempt in 1922 to Hillary and Tenzing’s first successful ascent in 1953, the time since has been peppered with many additional ascents, including ascents under different conditions such as an ascent without supplementary oxygen, which was once thought too difficult.
It should therefore not be much of a surprise that many companies are now making strategic investments in Linux (reload the link if you don’t get there on the first attempt). Some companies (such as Dell, Acer and HP) are expressly supporting Linux as a desktop operating system.
Rumours of My Death…
Nothing here should be taken as indicating backruptcy any time soon (- or ever!), or that there is imminent danger of Microsoft ceasing its participation in the IT sector. It’s involvement is broad and deep and will not fade for a long time. General Electric, for example, continues to live on after having diversified into many different areas over the past 100 years (Wikipedia claims that half of its revenue now comes from financial services). Rather, it seems that the days of Microsoft-as-we-knew-it, the corporation which could dictate, at least to some non-trivial extent, many aspects of the IT industry through its leverage over OEMs are over. Microsoft cannot afford for an OEM to stare them down on the next eeePC – another Linux based success on the scale of the eeePC would remove any doubt from the minds of the industry.
If this assessment is correct, we would expect to see other industry participants investing in open source, and in Linux in particular, as both a hedge and as negotiating leverage. Indeed, assuming that ASUS has extracted concessions from Microsoft, other OEMs will be disadvantaged if they do not follow a similar strategy (see this story on Acer’s proposed support of Linux for example). Loading Linux now appears to be a path to strength. Google is pursuing it.
In addition, we would expect to see Microsoft to continue to back track on its licensing requirements. We have seen the start of this in its removal of the three concurrent applications limitation on the starter edition of Windows 7, and also in its repeatedly pushing back the end of availability to manufacturing of XP (it is now 30 June 2010 for the netbook form factor – however despite Microsoft’s end of sales date ASUS has apparently secured an agreement to load XP on its eeeTop). 2008 seemed to be a particularly fruitful year for backpedalling (including limits on CPU speed, RAM, hard drive size, use of hybrid storage and screen size – apparently screen size for a netbook is now 14.1″, – hardly a substantive limitation on the netbook form factor). [One comment indicates that the screen size for windows 7 is 10.2″ – it will be interesting to see how this plays out, although 12″ netbooks don’t seem to have done that well]
The Final Analysis
The eeePC experience was the case study for the viability of a Linux based future. If ASUS has used the Linux eeePC to extract negotiating concessions from Microsoft, then it has, in the process, also undermined Microsoft’s credibility, opening the way for other vendors to play into this gap. Further, if ASUS has secured concessions then other vendors who do not pursue an aggressive Linux strategy will put themselves at a disadvantage. There is therefore an internal logic to the market which will drive support for Linux installations going forward.
Notes:
I’ve not been able to pinpoint the initial launch date for the eeePC, although it seems to be 16 October 2007.
I recall, but cannot find a reference to, thieves taking the Linux notebooks, but leaving the Windows based ones behind when they robbed a store. I think it was in the UK and I think it was around March 08. [-> See comment from Al, re Elonex netbooks]
Many secondary documents had to be referred to because primary documents were updated, losing the time relevant information.
The Windows versions of the eeePC were curiously configured in such a way that there was no direct comparison between Linux and Windows versions. This was also true of some Acer models. Dell now seems to offer direct comparison (eg lattitude 2100).
Post script
The eeeTop appears to not be available with Linux – however it is shipping with OpenOffice installed. I guess other vendors don’t offer an OpenOffice option on their installs – a quick look at the Dell 2100 indicates that Microsoft Office is available as a customisation on the Windows version, but no office suite is available on the Linux version. Office suites may be next…
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Steel Reserve is an American lager brand owned and produced by Steel Brewing Company, which is owned by Miller.[1] The drink comes in "Black" and "Silver" varieties, also known as "Triple Export Malt Liquor" and "High Gravity Lager", respectively. It has a high alcohol content (typically 8.1% ABV). It was introduced in 1994[2].
General [ edit ]
Steel Reserve is sold in 42 US fl oz (1.2 l) bottles. It also is distributed in 24 US fl oz (710 ml) cans, 22 US fl oz (650 ml) bottles, 16 US fl oz (470 ml) cans in packs of four or six, and 12 US fl oz (350 ml) cans in packs of six or twelve. In 2016 the company replaced its 40 oz. narrow-neck glass bottles with wide-neck, shatterproof plastic bottles.[3]
Availability [ edit ]
The 40-ounce, 8.1% ABV variety is widely available throughout the US; however, some states require the beverage to be sold as a diluted 6.0% ABV and in Utah 3.2% ABW within accordance of state law.
In 2016 a new lineup of fruit flavored 8.0% ABV 16 fl. oz. cans was introduced in the United States. Flavors include: BLK Berry, Hard Pineapple, Spiked Punch, Spiked Razz, and Spiked Watermelon.
Awards and ratings [ edit ]
In 2012, Steel Reserve 8.1% ABV received the Gold medal in the category of 'American-Style Premium Lager or Specialty Lager' at the World Beer Cup. Additionally, the american malt liquor style ale has been rated within the 83 percentile[4] earning the good rating by Beeradvocate. While users of the site have accumulated a rating of 60 - poor (2017). Alternatively, Ratebeer has given an accumulative rating of 0 overall and 10 for overall style.[5]
Competitor response [ edit ]
Anheuser-Busch also adopted the "High Gravity" nomenclature, referring to the term specific gravity, a measurement used to quantify the sugars available to produce alcohol in a fermented beverage, which may give an indication of alcohol content, and released Hurricane High Gravity Lager with the same alcohol content, container sizes, and similar price.
Advertising [ edit ]
Reverend Horton Heat and the Ramones[6] were commissioned to release several radio jingles for the beverage in the 1990s.
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Black Flag Deals presents "Boxing Week Giveaway” Contest Rules
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CHAPTER SIX
Night had fallen, and the campers were gathered by the treeline to play a game of flashlight tag. Things were much better. After their brief nap, Anna and Elsa had walked hand in hand to the mess hall just in time for dinner. Many of the adults in the building gave them either curious or suspicious looks; they let go of each other's hands right away, embarrassed.
Of course, Anna knew her embarrassment was only because they were late but it made her flustered apologies to Aurora seem less genuine as a result. Thankfully, the blonde let it slide with a curt, "Don't let it happen again," and allowed Anna to make her way over to Rapunzel with minimum fuss.
Now Anna was pretty much buzzing with excitement at the brunette's side. When Rapunzel first mentioned the annual game, she had been looking forward to it and purposely made sure she wasn't one of the three counselors assigned to unfreezing the players so she could play herself.
"Okay guys," Aurora called for attention and most of the kids went silent as they turned towards her. "In about five minutes, the game starts. For those of you who don't know how to play, the rules are simple. You should all have been given one of two coloured glow-in-the-dark ribbons; either red or yellow. Well… the red ones glow pink. Anyway, the team who starts the game as 'it' will all have flashlights. When a flashlight is on you and the tagger says your name and 'freeze!', you are not allowed to move until one of the 'medics' — Elsa, Belle, or myself — comes by and you complete the task they assign to you to get unfrozen."
There was a brief pause as Aurora let that information sink in before she continued, "Since last year, it was the Yellow Team that started as it, Red Team begins this time. In thirty minutes, when you hear the bell, it's time to switch. We end the game after an hour has passed and then we all go back to our cabins for the night."
"Better not get tagged and let me find you," Elsa muttered to Anna out of the corner of her mouth. "I might make you stand on your head."
Anna raised an eyebrow and tried to keep her tone nonchalant. "Really, Sis? Stand on my head? You can't be a little more creative?" She hoped that Elsa didn't choose that particular task because she remembered how Anna couldn't do it no matter how hard she tried.
"You say that like I don't remember how hard it is for you to do." Hopes dashed. "But… maybe I'll think of something funnier that's actually possible, instead."
"Okay!" Rapunzel squealed from nearby, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. "Are we all ready to do this?!"
Anna was about to retaliate, her mouth open to say something when Aurora's voice rang out once more. "Yellow has one minute to run before Red is allowed to go! Remember to stay in camp boundaries! Go!" Then she was yanked away from her sister by Rapunzel and off into the trees.
Five minutes later, Anna found herself crouched behind a bush alone, holding her breath as several pairs of footsteps and a couple beams of light passed by. Her heart thundered in excitement. "That was too close!" she whispered.
"Yeah!" Rapunzel whispered back, trying not to giggle. "This is the best!" When Anna whipped around, Rapunzel shrugged. "What? You found a good spot!"
"How the heck did you get unfrozen so fast?" Anna hissed in surprise, "and how did you find me for that matter?"
"Aurora took pity on me," Rapunzel snorted. "Probably because I'm a counsellor. All she had me do was recite John 3:16. I mean, what a softball!" Then she looked around eagerly. "Do you want to split up?"
"Yeah… softball…" Anna inwardly groaned and kicked herself, making a mental note to try and avoid not only getting Elsa for a medic, but Aurora, as well. The last time she read the Bible all the way through was a very long time ago. She knew the more common passages and remembered several others that stood out to her when she was little, but she knew Aurora would crack down hard if she found out Anna couldn't remember the whole thing. She really didn't need another reason for Aurora to be annoyed with her.
"Maybe we should stick together for now?" Anna gave Rapunzel a nervous smile. "You know all the best hiding spots since you've been here before, right? I just got lucky here." What she didn't mention was that she fully intended to use Rapunzel as a shield if they got caught.
"Yeah, I know a couple! Though I should probably tell you… I'm not great at this game." With a nervous little laugh, she shrugged at Anna. "That's okay, right? I mean, you're not mad, are you? You won't leave, will you?"
Anna frowned at Rapunzel, "Hey Punzie, you okay?" she asked, placing a hand on the brunette's shoulder and feeling a tad guilty. "I'm not mad, it's just a game."
"You're right," she sighed, a relieved smile spreading across her cheeks. "You're the greatest, you know th-"
"Freeze!"
"AH!" Rapunzel yelped, starting to leap out of the way.
"Rapunzel! Anna! I said freeze!" A familiar slow voice reached Anna's ears and she let out a frustrated breath. Mark… the only kid of her group who refused to make nice with her. He adored Elsa though and Anna knew that he was probably just gleeful to know he had caught her despite the bored look he sported.
"Hey guys!" Olaf chirped happily. "Good job, Marshmallow!"
"Nertz, I tried to tell you," Rapunzel hissed at her, though she had obediently stopped moving when Mark reminded her that she shouldn't. "I'm such a dope!"
Anna let out a heavy sigh before smiling at the boys. "Great job catching us, guys," she praised them, pointedly ignoring Mark's grumpy glare in her direction.
"Thanks, Anna!" Olaf cheered. "Don't you worry about a thing! I ran into Elsa close by where we caught you so she should be here any minute — and I have the bestest task for her to give you! Come on, Marshmallow! Let's go find her!"
"Olaf!" Anna snapped after him, wanting badly to run after him as he ran away giggling with his "brother" in tow, "Don't you dare!"
"What did he mean by that?" Rapunzel whispered fearfully. "I hope it's nothing with like, taking off clothes! You know how boys are!"
"I highly doubt Elsa would make us get naked because a boy told her to, Punzie," Anna replied. "Besides, Olaf isn't like that. He's a good boy." Most of the time, she added to herself."Chances are he's going to ask Elsa to make us do something silly… like make farting noises or something." Or he could ask her to make me propose, but then… Elsa wouldn't do that. She would reprimand him and tell him how unnatural that is first.
"Ewww," Rapunzel giggled under her breath. "That's nasty. Oh, is that them?"
It was. Holding a larger lantern-style light aloft, Elsa's ghostly-white face came into view, with Olaf on her heels. He was whispering something to her, and she was shushing him. Around the time they could be overheard, she turned to him and said, "Alright, alright, this isn't any of your business. Go look for more campers to tag and leave these two alone or I'll be upset with you."
Olaf pouted at her. "I still think her kissing you would be the best task." He stated it so bluntly that it made Anna choke on a laugh. A quick look at Rapunzel revealed that the brunette was too busy fussing to herself to have heard him and she let out a quiet sigh of relief. "It's not that hard and it might help you on your way to proposing!"
"SHH!" Elsa hissed more harshly at him. Finally, he jogged away into the trees. She shook her head as she turned back to the others with a wolfish smile. "Well, well. Fresh meat."
"O-okay," Rapunzel whispered with a gulp. Obviously, she still believed Elsa to be cruel. "What… are you gonna make us do? Not get naked! I don't wanna get naked!"
That made the blonde blink in surprise, lip curling. "Why would I tell you to do that? Just… well, let's have you give me twenty jumping jacks."
"Oh." With a relieved smile, still nervous, she took a few steps away from the other two and began doing the exercises, huffing with each tiny hop.
Anna giggled at her friend. "Oh come on, Punzie, those aren't even real!" She teased, "You have to at least get your feet off the ground!" Then she got herself into position, thinking that she had to share the task with her friend. "Here, let me show you how it's done!"
"Hold on, now," Elsa warned her with a finger held up. "I was only talking to Rapunzel. Don't go assuming things." Her tone was obviously light and teasing, but the finger still made her seem serious. Not knowing her, one might think she was.
"Better… not… mess with her!" Rapunzel was panting as she tried to pick up her feet a little more with each jumping jack. Her eyes were wide and warning as she looked over at Anna.
Anna halted. "What am I supposed to do, then, Elsa?" She couldn't help but feel nervous butterflies in her stomach, equal parts from the intimidating position her sister stood in, despite the teasing tone, and from embarrassment as she remembered Olaf's suggestion. 'No way she would ever do that….'
"I'm thinking," Elsa teased further. Finally, Rapunzel finished her jumping jacks, so she turned to her and waved dismissively. "You're free to go."
"Okay!" Shrugging in apology to Anna, she took off into the trees.
"Traitor!" she called after the brunette, not really meaning it but feeling the butterflies increase in frenzy when Rapunzel disappeared out of sight and left her alone with her sister. Then, she turned to Elsa with a blush. "I hope you're not thinking of Olaf's silly suggestion."
"What, that I ask you to marry me?" Elsa laughed easily. "Maybe I should. Unless you meant the other suggestion of his."
Her heart stuttered and her eyes widened a fraction at the unexpected jest. 'She's teasing, you idiot! Say something before you make this awkward!' Anna forced out a small giggle, one that thankfully didn't sound too bad in these circumstances.
"Oh, I highly doubt you would make me kiss you like that," Anna teased right back, patting herself on the back for the accomplishment despite her nerves. "I know you're probably hoarding that for a special someone. Besides, I can barely kiss your cheek without you getting flustered. A real kiss might make you faint."
But the teasing worked a little too well. Folding both arms over her chest, pursing those luscious lips of hers, Elsa said, "Really? You think I couldn't handle one stupid kiss from my sister? Fine." She stepped closer. "That's your challenge. Do it, or you stay frozen. And if I faint… I'll make your bed for the rest of camp."
"You do know what you're asking me, right?" Anna breathed. Her complicated feelings for Elsa made her feel both uncomfortable and elated in equal measures and the thought of actually kissing the blonde… Well, Anna had a feeling Elsa wouldn't be the one fainting when it happened.
Besides that, there was the worry that if Elsa kissed her and Anna lost control… As much as Anna despised hiding her preferences, she felt sick at the thought of Elsa hating her because of it.
"I mean, what if someone sees?"
Snorting, Elsa put her hands on her hips. "Why so serious, Anna?" To her surprise, that was delivered with a vague Heath Ledger impression; not one she put any effort into, but just enough to make the reference clear. Then she said in an undertone, "It's just a dare. Sounds to me like you're trying to get out of your challenge, Moondrop. But if you can't handle it…"
Anna's heart skipped another beat and for a moment she wondered if it would affect her health for how often it happened. However the husk that entered Elsa's voice from her attempt at the impression and the challenge that entered those glacier eyes did more to Anna than she cared to admit.
When Elsa challenged her outright, a mixture of pride and her own desire won out. With a low growl, she gripped Elsa's jacket and pulled her mouth down to meet hers, unable to hold back a faint, pleased noise at the taste of Elsa's lipbalm.
And Elsa didn't resist. Though she had expected the contact to be met with a disgusted outburst and shoving her away, or maybe laughter, she just seemed to have no response. The hands that had been on her hips went out to either side, unsure of where else to go. Then…
One of them found its way to Anna's waist. Just barely touching, only technically present. Her eyes slid closed after a few seconds, and even though she didn't quite find her way to pushing her lips back against Anna's, she didn't seem to have any intentions of fighting her off anytime soon.
Anna's head swam. Elsa's lips were full and soft against her own and even though they didn't move, they felt like a perfect fit. The crisp smell of fresh snow and mint, so subtle most of the time, was now flooding Anna's senses in the best of ways. The tang of Elsa's lipbalm just added to the experience and was like a cocktail to the brain; one that left Anna dizzy and lightheaded.
She had never been so completely addicted by a kiss before, especially one where her partner didn't even kiss back, and it took all of Anna's willpower to detach her lips from Elsa's and gently place their foreheads together.
Nearly a minute of gentle breathing passed, Elsa's eyes closed and the arms wrapped around Anna's back loose, before she could respond. Her pink tongue wet her lips, making them glisten as they had before Anna's saliva evaporated from the skin. Even then, all she whispered was, "W-wow…"
"H-how was that?" Anna asked, and even though she had said it as a joke, she fidgeted and watched intently for any signs of Elsa collapsing. "Showed you, huh?" She tried to ignore that her heart was beating a hundred miles a minute or that she could still taste those warm lips when she licked hers to wet them in response to Elsa's action.
"Right." Stepping back, Elsa pressed a hand to her lips for a moment, eyes closed. After a few breaths, she was able to open them, smiling back at her. "G-guess you did. I… that was my first kiss."
She stiffened at the confession. What Anna said about Elsa saving her first kiss had been another joke; knowing that she had just stolen Elsa's first made her stomach twist. Once again, though, Anna was frustrated to realize that she wasn't sure if it was in a good or a bad way. However, Elsa didn't look angry or disgusted and was instead smiling at her.
"H-how have you never been kissed before? You're gorgeous!" The words burst out before she could stop them.
There was a clear blush in Elsa's cheeks now. Whether it had been there before Anna made that comment was less clear. "J-just… never dated. Well, I'd go out with a boy, and it would be fine, but it just felt like hanging out with a friend. And there were no sparks, or…" Gulping, she slid fingers over her bottom lip, then cleared her throat. "Well. You definitely, um, performed the task, so if you want to go hide again…"
The comment was met with a clueless face for several seconds before Anna remembered the game that was still going on. "O-oh yes! I should go… you have others to kiss- I mean, unfreeze! Yep, go unfreeze all the kids and I'll just see you later!" With an awkward grin, Anna took off — leaving her dumbfounded sister behind.
This is getting ridiculous! the redhead cursed to herself. Whatever these feelings were, they were affecting her time with her sister and Anna didn't like it one bit. Every interaction felt like there should be more.
And then there was that kiss. Anna placed a hand against her still tingling lips. Elsa was her sister. Even if Anna was gay, she knew for a fact that people didn't kiss their relations without feeling some hint of disgust or wrongness. Yet that kiss had been one of the best she ever had, and it had felt so unbearably right that just thinking about it sent a delicious chill down her spine.
Resting her back against a large spruce, Anna closed her eyes, the game once again forgotten in the wake of her miniature crisis. She had to do something, or she was going to burst.
To Be Continued...
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Here are some Talk To Action stories addressing Gary North and Christian Reconstructionism:
Below is the bulk of my 2008 article,
More From The Biblical Stoning & Legalized Slavery Movement
On the website of the National Reform Association one can actually find an artifact, by Daniel Lance Herrick, titled Table of Death Penalty Laws in the Pentateuch which, explains the article introduction, "is a sidebar for Why Execute Murderers? which was published in the May - June, 2000 issue of The Christian Statesman."
Herrick's article contains a series of grid boxes that delineate various offenses, per the Old Testament, that are described in the Old Testament as punishable by stoning to death. the "crimes" demanding communal stoning to death according to Herrick are:
Idol Worship
Witchcraft
Blasphemy
Cursing the Lord
Violating the Sabbath
Enticing to Idolatry
Women who marry but are not virgins
Adultery
Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical "warfare" is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, "sodomy or homosexuality," incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, "unchastity before marriage." According to Gary North, women who have abortions should be publicly executed, "along with those who advised them to abort their children." Rushdoony concludes: "God's government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them." Reconstructionists insist that "the death penalty is the maximum, not necessarily the mandatory penalty." However, such judgments may depend less on Biblical Principles than on which faction gains power in the theocratic republic. The potential for bloodthirsty episodes on the order of the Salem witchcraft trials or the Spanish Inquisition is inadvertently revealed by Reconstructionist theologian Rev. Ray Sutton, who claims that the Reconstructed Biblical theocracies would be "happy" places, to which people would flock because "capital punishment is one of the best evangelistic tools of a society." The Biblically approved methods of execution include burning (at the stake for example), stoning, hanging, and "the sword." Gary North, the self-described economist of Reconstructionism, prefers stoning because, among other things, stones are cheap, plentiful, and convenient. Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence.
Such bloodthirsty aspects of Christian Reconstructionism rarely get publicly discussed, but one of the exceptions was during a controversy that broke out, in 1998, over an article written by William O. Einwechter entitled Stoning Disobedient Children? which provoked a deliciously sardonic response in Reason Online, a magazine that has specialized (among other things), ironically, in Global Warming denialism. Nonetheless, Walter Olson's 1998 Invitation to a Stoning: Getting cozy with theocrats managed to capture something especially characteristic of Christian Reconstructionists - they can be (and usually are) sticklers for detail:
For connoisseurs of surrealism on the American right, it's hard to beat an exchange that appeared about a decade ago in the Heritage Foundation magazine Policy Review. It started when two associates of the Rev. Jerry Falwell wrote an article which criticized Christian Reconstructionism, the influential movement led by theologian Rousas John (R.J.) Rushdoony, for advocating positions that even they as committed fundamentalists found "scary." Among Reconstructionism's highlights, the article cited support for laws "mandating the death penalty for homosexuals and drunkards." The Rev. Rushdoony fired off a letter to the editor complaining that the article had got his followers' views all wrong: They didn't intend to put drunkards to death. Ah, yes, accuracy does count.
In reaction to Olson's article, an obviously bristling Reconstructionist leader Adam Sandlin wrote in to Reason Online with the following rebuttal:
Protruding conspicuously through the facade of smirking paranoia in Walter Olson's screed against Christian Reconstruction is the outline of the ever-widening chasm between secular rationalists known as libertarians on one side and, on the other, Christians dedicated to re-establishing Christian civilization, by which alone true political freedom is possible. In what he obviously considers gleeful revelations of our dedication to taking seriously the whole Bible, Olson conveniently neglects to mention Rushdoony's conviction in Law and Society that the biblical civil codes are designed for a nation in covenant with God, not modern Western secular democracies which are at war with God.
William O. Einwechter, who professed to be taken aback by the controversy his "Stoning Disobedient Children?" had provoked, wrote a follow up to the article entitled "Stoning Disobedient Children?" Revisited:
When I wrote the article for the Chalcedon Report on Deuteronomy 21:18-21, "Stoning Disobedient Children?", little did I anticipate the notoriety this short essay would achieve. Apparently, it caught the attention of Rev. Barry Lynn and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU), and this organization sent out a press release on February 18, 1999 with the heading, "Bible Requires Death by Stoning for 'Rebellious' Teenagers, says PA. Preacher.... AU's philosophy seems to be: Why enter into serious discussion or interact on a theological or philosophical basis with those that you disagree with if you can simply marginalize your opponent by distortion and inflammatory words? But Lynn and AU were not finished yet with their use of the article on Deuteronomy 21:18-21. In the October 2001 issue of Church & State, the AU ran an article on the National Reform Association.3 The article, written by Rob Boston, began with this sentence: "The Rev. William Einwechter has a novel solution to the problem of incorrigible juvenile delinquents--stone them." Boston then gave his summary of the article and indicated that I serve as the vice president of the NRA....
Einwechter went on to describe how AU leveraged his "Stoning Disobedient Children?" to generate national publicity that persuaded Pennsylvania US Congressman Joe Pitts to cancel his appearance at a 2002 National Reform Association conference
...In the press release, AU made a predictable reference to the Chalcedon Report article saying, "One sponsor of this weekend's event, the Rev. William Einwechter, argued in a 1999 article that juvenile delinquents should be stoned to death." The pressure by AU and others caused the PA Congressman, Joe Pitts, to cancel his appearance (who wants to appear on the podium with a man who wants to stone disobedient children?)
Einwechter was obviously taken aback and felt unfairly attacked - in his article he had taken pains to make clear he didn't hold that children should be stoned but, rather, teenagers who were more like adults and had become truly, obnoxiously, corrupt and abusive. Had Einwechter reflected a bit, he might have seen how his position could have been misinterpreted because teenagers are quite often considerable trouble due to the hormonal vicissitudes of puberty. It's worth noting, additionally, that Einwechtwer is a leading reconstructionist thinker but not its sole spokesperson by any means.
Another major spokesperson for Reconstructionism is Andrew Sandlin who wrote, concerning slavery, in an article published on the National Reform Association website entitled Jesus and Politics:
If we are elected to political office, we must glorify God. We do this by obeying the Bible. And Jesus Christ himself confirms the authority of Old Testament civil law as properly enforced in the state.... Every area of life should be Christianized, including the state. ....Finally, this answers the question of whether Christianity is either a radical or a reactionary force. If we had listened to many of the "Jesus People" in 60s and 70s, we would have heard that Jesus was a revolutionary political radical... At the opposite end of the spectrum are those today who charge that Jesus Christ and his followers were politically and socially reactionary: women are held to be subordinate to men, slavery is permissible, private property is inviolable, and so forth. In other words, some leftists use the Bible to prove that the Bible supports leftism, while other leftists attack the Bible because it is anti-leftism. The former consider the message of Christ and the Bible radical, while the later consider it reactionary.
Sandlin offers the view that the Bible is neither revolutionary or reactionary in political terms. But he makes it clear that, in his view, Jesus condoned slavery.
William O. Einwechter also appears to hold a pro-slavery position and argues, in the following audio sermon A Christian Perspective on Slavery, that the issue of whether one is a slave or a master is actually irrelevant because, though slaves have the duty to honor and obey their masters, all are equal - spiritually at least - before God.
In short, Theonomy is simple - the templates for Christian governance, Christian (Biblical) Law and all manner of human behavior and societal structure can and must be derived from a close, literal reading of the Bible.
Whose Bible ? Probably the King James version.
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BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s Foreign Minister said on Monday that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s comments that NATO was obsolete had aroused concern across the 28-member alliance.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz (not pictured) address media at the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council organized by Germany's OSCE Chairmanship in Hamburg, Germany December 9, 2016. REUTERS/Fabian Bimmer
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking after a meeting with alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, said Trump’s remarks contradicted views expressed by designated Defense Secretary James Mattis. He spoke also of “amazement”.
“I’ve spoken today not only with EU foreign ministers but NATO foreign ministers as well and can report that the signals are that there’s been no easing of tensions,” Steinmeier told reporters when asked about Trump’s interview with Bild newspaper and the Times of London.
“Obviously the comments from President-elect Trump, that he views NATO as obsolete, were viewed with anxiety,” he said.
Trump, who is due to be sworn in as president on Friday, said NATO was obsolete because it had not defended against terrorist attacks.
He said also he had always had “great respect” for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but criticized her 2015 decision to allow in a wave of a million migrants as a “catastrophic mistake” that opened the door to terrorist attacks.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said it was “inappropriate” for Trump to weigh directly into the politics of another country by his remarks.
“He will have to speak to that, as of Friday he is responsible for that relationship.”
RUSSIA AGREES
NATO has been seen since the 1950s as the keystone of western European defenses, extending its zone of activity in the post-Cold War period to the borders of Russia - much to Russia’s chagrin. The alliance’s founding treaty commits members to consider an attack on any one state as an attack on all.
A Kremlin spokesman said he agreed with Trump that NATO, characterized by Russian officials as a hostile remnant of the Cold War, was obsolete.
Germany’s transatlantic coordinator, Juergen Hardt, told Reuters he did not expect Congress to allow Washington to give up its leadership role in NATO.
He said key U.S. lawmakers, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, had told him several weeks ago they expected Washington to remain a reliable partner in the 28-nation bloc, and he did not expect Trump to reverse the deployment of 4,000 U.S. troops to Poland.
Norbert Roettgen, head of Germany’s foreign affairs committee, said Germany should fight to restore Western unity.
Slideshow (2 Images)
“Europe is not able to replace the security role of the United States so there is a lot at stake - the very foundations of liberal order internationally and European security. And for that we should fight because it is our very existential interest,” Roettgen told Reuters.
Trump repeated criticism of NATO members that fail to meet spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.
Germany is working to gradually boost its military spending, Defence Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff told a news conference. Merkel in November said she could not promise the NATO target would be met “in the near future.”
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(Editor's note: The Rams don't prioritize winning. This news is yet another example of what they do prioritize.)
According to Variety, the Los Angeles Rams - in addition to HBO’s Hard Knocks, can be seen on a showed called "Hollywood & Football" this fall on E! Network.
It will feature six hour-long episodes later this year, coinciding with the NFL season.
Jeff Olde, EVP of E!’s programming and development had this to say about the show, which focuses on the Rams’ players and their families as they transition from St. Louis to Los Angeles:
We are excited to take viewers inside the exclusive lifestyles of these top athletes and their families as they navigate a new city, new friendships, new schools and the inevitable Hollywood gossip. E! has a track record of success with pop culture programming centered in the world of sports, and this series will capture the off the field perspective of one of football’s most anticipated and high profile events as the Rams return to L.A.
Rams’ players and wives/significant others to be featured on the show are: Kenny and Sabrina Britt, Rodger and Asia Saffold, Lance and Danielle Kendricks, Chase and Kila Reynolds, Cory and Bianca Harkey, and Bradley Marquez and his pregnant fiancee Melissa.
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Egypt has imposed restrictions on women travelling to Turkey, months after introducing similar measures for men to stop them joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
Women aged 18 to 40 are now required to obtain a security clearance before going to Turkey, a senior police officer told the AFP news agency on Sunday.
"A security clearance can be acquired within 72 hours, and it is now mandatory for women travelling to this country [Turkey]," the officer said.
The restriction took effect on Thursday, a Cairo airport official said.
In March, Egypt's state-sponsored Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, warned women against marrying ISIL fighters who wooed them over the internet to travel to ISIL-controlled territory in Syria.
The compulsory security clearance for men, introduced in December, applies to Libya as well as Turkey.
Allegiance to ISIL
In November the Sinai Province group, formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to ISIL, a move which heightened security concerns.
Fighters in the group say their attacks have been in retaliation for a government crackdown on supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi, that has left hundreds dead and thousands jailed.
Ties between Egypt and Turkey have deteriorated since the Egyptian army ousted President Morsi in 2013.
Morsi himself was sentenced to death on Saturday along with more than 100 defendants for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has condemned the verdict against Morsi, after repeatedly branding his overthrow a "coup".
Egypt has also previously accused Ankara of "backing terrorism", although Turkey, a vocal critic of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, has denied accusations that it tolerates the flow of foreign fighters into Syria.
Cairo has also regularly raised concerns over the war in Libya, which has plunged into chaos since the ouster and killing of long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
In February, Cairo carried out air strikes inside Libya targeting ISIL fighters, after the group posted a video showing the beheadings of 21 Coptic Christians, all but one were Egyptians, on a beach in Libya.
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A loud explosion has been heard in Manchester prompting fears amongst residents.
Unconfirmed reports suggested the blast occurred at a café in Salford.
Witnesses took to Twitter in the early hours of Tuesday morning to report the explosion, which was heard around 12.20am.
Residents said the explosion is thought to have happened at The Lounge Café on Whit Lane.
The cause of the blast is not yet known.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed they are aware of the explosion.
A patrol car was seen outside the cafe.
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Security forces have attempted to storm a mosque in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, reportedly killing at least six people.
The government, however, blamed the violence on an "armed gang", according to the state-run SANA news agency.
Residents said heavy gunfire was heard near the Omari mosque in the early hours of Wednesday in the city, which has been the scene of anti-government protests since Friday.
"It seems that security forces may be trying to storm the complex. It is not clear because electricity has been cut off. Tear gas is also being used," one resident told the Reuters news agency.
Protesters calling for political freedoms and an end to corruption had said earlier that they were going to remain in the mosque until their demands were met.
Mohammed Al Abdallah, an exiled Syrian rights activist living in the US, said he had been communicating with people in Daraa who told him that a doctor was among those killed.
"Security forces opened fire, they used bombs and live ammunition," he told Al Jazeera. "There are many injuries, including women and children."
He said electricity had been cut off before the attack and that security forces were preventing ambulances from entering the centre of Daraa, where the mosque is located.
Al Jazeera could not immediately confirm the reports and mobile phone network appeared to be disrupted in Daraa.
Rula Amin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Damascus, said the incident was a "very serious development" that could trigger protests, and the prospect of further violence.
She also said the use of violence against protesters indicated the government had abandoned its earlier offer of dialogue.
"With the killing of these six people overnight, it seems that the government is opting for the choice of using force to crack down on the protesters not dialogue as it had indicated," she said.
She reported that there was a heavy security presence in Daraa, with the army, anti-terror police and riot police all deployed in the city. Journalists are not being allowed to visit the city, and several of those who attempted to do so last night had their equipment confiscated by authorities.
Checkpoints have been set up by security forces at all entries to the city.
Government version
Syria's state-run television station reported that an "armed gang" attacked an ambulance at the Omari mosque, killing four people.
The victims were a doctor, a paramedic, a policeman and the ambulance driver, according to SANA.
"The security forces who were near the area intervened, hitting some and arresting others," the report said, without elaborating.
Later in the day, state television showed what it said were pictures of a weapons stockpile inside the Omari mosque, including pistols, shotguns, grenades and ammunition.
The violence came a day after the United Nations' human rights chief called for a probe into a weekend crackdown, when several protesters were killed in Daraa.
Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called on Syrian authorities to carry out a transparent probe into the crackdown and to halt the excessive use of force.
"The government should carry out an independent, transparent and effective investigation into the killings of the six protesters during the events of 18 and 20 March," Rupert Colville, a spokesman for Pillay, said on Tuesday.
"We are greatly concerned by the recent killings of protesters in Syria and reiterate the need to put an immediate halt to the excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, especially the use of live ammunition."
Colville said that the use of excessive force was a "clear violation of international law" and that perpetrators could be prosecuted.
"People have the legitimate right to express their grievances and demands to their government, and we urge the Syrian government to enter into a broad, meaningful dialogue with the protesters in an attempt to address those grievances," he said.
Emergency law
Demonstrations have been held in a number of Syrian cities in recent days despite the country's emergency law, which bans protests and has been in place since 1963.
Wednesday's incident brings to 12 the number of people reportedly killed by security forces since the start of the demonstrations on March 18, including an 11-year-old boy who died after inhaling tear gas on Monday.
A Syrian official told the AFP news agency that the governor of Daraa had been sacked following the killings.
The official, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said Faisal Kalthoum was fired from his position on Tuesday.
Al Jazeera's Amin said that Kalthoum had not officially been sacked but had not been seen in public for the past three days.
She said the latest round of protests were "unprecedented", but had not yet spread to other cities.
"It's a very serious challenge to the regime here. These are unprecedented demonstrations, they have been going on since Friday, and this has not happened in Syria for a long, long time. And it seems people are not detered by heavy security deployment there.
"So far, most of the protests have been confined to Daraa and the villages around it. It has not spread to Damascus yet, or elsewhere in Syria, despite calls by opposition and activists for people to take to the streets."
Malik al-Abdeh, a Syrian journalist and member of the Movement for Justice and Development, told Al Jazeera that President Assad "should be extremely worried".
"When he inherited the presidency from his father, he promised reform. And for the last 11 years he's used the language of reform, but on the ground there hasn't been any real, meaningful political reform," he said.
"So the Syrian people are very angry. They gave him the benefit of the doubt, they stood by him when the US tried to isolate him following the assassination of [then Lebanese prime minister] Rafik Hariri, and their loyalty was paid back by blood, by bullets, by the massacre that we saw in Daraa this morning."
He said that while protesters initially wanted reform within the system, they would now very likely push for outright change in the country's leadership.
"Well, to begin with, when the protests began ... it was very clear that the people wanted reform. They wanted to apply pressure on the government to press ahead with meaningful political reforms. However, a week on, and now following the deaths of 12 people in Daraa and following the arrest of over 1,000 in Syria, I think the demands for regime change will become ever higher.
"Certainly the people in Daraa are very angry and they're calling for revenge, and I'm sure that a large section of them legitimately will now be calling for regime change, because Bashar al-Assad seems to be following in the footsteps of his friend [Libyan leader] Muammar Gaddafi by ordering his soldiers to fire on innocent, unarmed protesters."
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A SHOCKING video has emerged of an Uber driver and his passenger brawling on a busy city street.
The passenger can be seen punching the driver with the driver then swinging back at him with a weapon, with the pair continuing to trade blows.
Twitter: Mickalars 6 The Uber driver can be seen swinging a weapon at the man with the passenger having just kicked him
Twitter: Mickalars 6 The fight took place on the side of a busy south London road, with the Uber driver, wearing light blue trousers, seen to kick out at the passenger
At one point, the Uber driver can be seen trying to kick the other man, slashing in the air with his weapon.
The fight took place on Wandsworth Road near the junction of Lavender Hill, Queenstown and Cedars Roads in Clapham just before midnight on Friday.
Taxi driver Mick filmed the shocking fight, saying he could not believe the attack.
Twitter: Mickalars 6 A woman was seen trying to stop the men from coming to blows
Twitter: Mickalars 6 The passenger, on the right, was held back by a woman at the scene
He told The Sun Online: "I was just driving along and saw the fight, it looked like the driver had a weapon in his hand.
"It looked like a wrench or a spanner, something quite long and tall."
The Uber driver, wearing light blue trousers, could be seen waving his arms around with the passenger also throwing punches.
Did you see the fight? Contact [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368
He said he pulled over but did not want to get involved in the attack.
He said: "It was just shocking behaviour.
"I don't want to jump to conclusions about who was at fault, and it could have been the passenger's fault, but if you are a professional driver, you shouldn't be fighting with passengers."
During the fight, a woman can be seen trying to get in between the men, stopping them from coming to blows.
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Having studied for more than three years to become a professional taxi driver himself, Mick said he was worried incidents like this tarnished the industry's name.
He said: "Looking back, it looked quite serious.
"It worries me greatly when we all get lumped in together."
Twitter: Mickalars 6 The Uber driver, in his 40s, can be seen holding a weapon above his head
Twitter: Mickalars 6 The men try to kick each other in the fight
A Met Police spokesman said: "Police were called at approximately 23:45hrs on Friday, 13 January to reports of a fight in Wandsworth Road, SW8.
"A man - an Uber driver aged in his 40s - reported he had been assaulted by male who was a passenger in his car.
"A female was also present."
No injuries were reported.
No one has been arrested with enquiries continuing.
An Uber spokesman said: "While incidents like this are exceptionally rare we take them very seriously. Both riders and partner-drivers can be barred from using the app following a serious incident.
"We're currently investing this and will take the appropriate action when we have spoken to the authorities and those involved."
Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 101 or via Twitter @MetCC.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at [email protected] or call 0207 782 4368
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Hillary Clinton doesn’t miss an opportunity to ridicule Donald Trump’s illegal immigration solution of a wall on the southern border — but that’s exactly what she’s deployed to keep undesirables away from her.
“First of all, as I understand him, he’s talking about a very tall wall, a beautiful tall wall, the most beautiful tall wall, better than the Great Wall of China, that would run the entire border,” Clinton riffed in March.
“He would somehow magically get the Mexican government to pay for it. It’s just fantasy.”
A series of photos reveal a massive barrier running the entire border of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s estate in Chappaqua, New York — undoubtedly intended to keep the unwashed masses away from the political elites.
This aerial photo shows the high white fence surrounding the Clintons’ property:
But that doesn’t quite do it justice — this isn’t some rinky dink picket fence. Only ground level views reveal how imposing the wall is:
The security guard in this photo gives it some perspective — it must be at least 10 feet high.
This is the kind of border wall Hillary Clinton can live with ==> pic.twitter.com/UiIy9nzpHI — Kyle Olson (@kyleolson4) August 12, 2016
HILLARY: A wall for me, not the country https://t.co/o9YxflNx8p — Kyle Olson (@kyleolson4) August 12, 2016
If Donald Trump is serious about building a protective wall on the southern border, perhaps he should consult the expert on erecting barriers: Hillary Clinton.
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+164%) some time
It was high time to make an update of the contrarian stocks of interest which can be found here . We have plenty of additions to the list and those are:I have now also decided that it was time to kick out some companies from the contrarian list because they have simply become too expensive for being of interest to buy. And here are the companies that were kicked out from the list with the adjustment according to their current share price. I decided that everything over 110% of the towards price was kicked out:Especially Grammer has made significant increases since I analysed it (+62%) and even more since I placed it on my follow list (before making the analysis.I seem to be a bit upset about missed opportunities and I must definitely learn or better put find a way to handle that. Maybe the best approach is to remove them from the follow list when they get to expensive... a kind of out of vision out of mind approach but at the same time I really want to see how far a company like that can go and what happens then? Would I have jumped out too early? at the good moment or maybe too late? Hard to know how one would have responded when actually owning the stock...
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President Obama Thursday quietly notified Congress that the government needs another $1.2 trillion to continue operating.
That’s both irresponsible and unpatriotic of him.
How do I know? A presidential candidate named Obama told me.
The new borrowing requested by the CURRENT president would raise the debt ceiling to $16.4 trillion. The debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Obama took office. That’s an increase of $5.8 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than the “unpatriotic” figure cited by Obama in the video.
Sure, a portion of the new debt is carryover from the Bush administration. But Obama can still be labeled utterly “irresponsible.” I’m not serious about the “unpatriotic” charge. I don’t call my president unpatriotic, though as you’ve noticed, some people will do that.
Obama has done nothing during his three years as president to address the central cause of the debt run up – the unsustainable increases in entitlement spending.
And he has actually worsened the deficit with a feckless $800 billion stimulus bill and a new $1 trillion health care entitlement.
So this is not the Bush deficit. It is the Obama deficit, and it’s threatening to ruin the country.
H/T to one of our readers, Mike Lester, for showing me this. Mike is one of the country’s great cartoonists. You can find his work at mikelester.com.
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Warning: Video contains coarse language
Diego Costa is a closed book. It's impossible to understand what's going on in the head of football's chief provocateur.
In the aftermath of Chelsea's victory at West Bromwich Albion, which secured the Blues' fifth Premier League title, Costa stirred up trouble everywhere from the pitch to the dressing room to Antonio Conte's press conference. But it was just another day for the childish villain, whose psychotic tendencies are as inexplicable as they are entertaining.
Exhibit A: Costa appears to grab John Terry's crown jewels
Uhh, what exactly is Diego Costa doing to John Terry here? pic.twitter.com/ppuVv6Xeqj — SI Extra Mustard (@SI_ExtraMustard) May 12, 2017
Exhibit B: Costa pops invisible champagne bottle
Exhibit C: Costa delivers unexpected thrust
Exhibit D: Costa tells reporter to 'fuck off,' appears to pour Lucozade into eyes
GREATEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME COSTA IS A FUCKING LEGEND pic.twitter.com/wkmo2dmCim — MA | 3 | (@TheLeftWingBack) May 12, 2017
Exhibit E: Costa, David Luiz kidnap Conte from press conference
Exhibit F: Costa gets hands on fire extinguisher
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Six nations listed on Trump’s controversial executive order, which prohibits citizens of seven countries from visiting the US, also impose travel bans of their own.
According to information supplied by IATA, the International Air Transport Association, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Libya all forbid Israeli passport holders from entering their countries, along with 10 other nations: Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Furthermore, eight of those counties – Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya – do not accept passports that contain Israeli visas.
Libya also enforces a separate ban on Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian visitors.
Somalia is the only nation on President Trump’s list that does not prohibit Israeli visitors, though Israelis are banned by their own government from travelling to the East African nation; along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Israel also imposes travel restrictions on Palestinians in the Jewish state.
Dozens of Israeli protesters amassed outside the US Embassy in Tel Aviv on Sunday to rally against Trump’s order and the policies of their own government.
Israel also imposes travel restrictions on Palestinians
The protest was organised by the campaign group Right Now: Advocates for African Asylum Seekers in Israel.
“We felt we needed to be doing something here to protest both the policies that have been going on in the United States and the policies going on in Israel for years,” the group’s co-founder, Elliot Glassenberg, told The Jerusalem Post.
“We believe that only by taking a global approach can we truly address the global refugee crisis.”
Donald Trump said there was a precedent for his executive order, claiming Obama temporarily stopped processing Iraqi refugees in 2011. According to the Washington Post the then-president enforced a more stringent screening process, but never imposed a ban. Enhanced screening came into force after the FBI arrested two Iraqi asylum seekers on terrorism charges in Kentucky.
In reality, there is no precedent for Trump’s travel ban, which has caused confusion as well as controversy; chiefly around the subject of why, if this has been done in the interests of national security, countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Colombia and Venezuela have been left off the list, given the US regards them as safe havens for terrorists.
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) today added its opposition to travel bans, claiming they are inappropriate and ineffective.
"WTTC believes that banning people from crossing borders for business and leisure purposes based on their nationality or religion is fundamentally wrong and can divert resources away from more effective means of tackling terrorism and other threats," said WTTC president, David Scowsill.
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Residents cover their face from dust as they ride their bicycles along a street on a hazy day in Zhengzhou, Henan province December 10, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer/Files
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has issued a “behavioural standards” guide to combat pollution and reduce environmental damage, urging people to do everything from walking and riding bicycles to buying goods with less packaging.
The Chinese government has identified public participation as a key element in its efforts to reverse some of the environmental damage done by more than three decades of breakneck economic growth.
The list of eight standards, published on the environment ministry’s website (www.mep.gov.cn) on Wednesday, urged citizens to refrain from burning garbage, and limit the use of fireworks and barbecues.
It also urged the public to take responsibility for pollution by reporting illegal behaviour to the authorities.
Amendments to the country’s Environmental Protection Law, passed on April, made it an obligation for all Chinese citizens to protect the environment.
A local government study showed in April that 31 percent of the smog in China’s capital Beijing is derived from vehicles, 22.4 percent from coal burning and 18.1 percent from industry.
Beijing’s environmental bureau said 14.1 percent was made up of other smaller sources like food preparation, livestock rearing and vehicle repairs.
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SPOKANE, Wa. — A couple married for 75 years is getting a lot of attention thanks to a huge coincidence.
Their names?
Harvey and Irma Schluter.
Harvey is 104. Irma is 92. They've been married 75 years. They've only ever seen a hurricane on TV. https://t.co/kQOL3jZDTi — The New York Times (@nytimes) September 8, 2017
The New York Times reports that Harvey, 104, and Irma, 92, have seen a lot of weather events in their days. But this is the first time two major hurricanes have shared their names.
“I don’t know how they’ve done that, to have a Harvey and Irma,” Irma told the New York Times. “I don’t know how that worked out.”
According to the New York Times, there are six master lists of storm names, and they are used in rotation. Harvey has been used as a storm name at least seven times in the past. Irene was next in line, but that name was retired after Hurricane Irene in 2011. So now, Irma.
The Schluters met in the 1940s after bumping into each other at an apartment duplex. They got married in 1942. Harvey was a barber, and Irma a homemaker. Over the years, they’ve taken in at least 120 foster children.
They’ve never been through a hurricane personally.
As for the onslaught of news reports on the hurricanes with their names, the two say it’s “really sad.”
“You just do whatever you think would be best to do,” Irma said. “If you can help someone, then help them.”
Read more here.
Twitter users have been loving the sweet couple’s story:
The kind of "Harvey and Irma" the world needs more of. ❤️ https://t.co/bNwIrk66F3 — Ashley Dopita Comeau (@AshleyDopita) September 7, 2017
This is an amazing couple you can get to know thanks to the random nature of hurricane naming. https://t.co/j7O5pazCe9 — Patrick LaForge (@palafo) September 7, 2017
A special bottle of wine for the reporter/editor who said "let's find a couple named Harvey and Irma" — Mina Radman (@minaradman) September 7, 2017
Harvey and Irma sound more like the names of that sweet elderly couple down the street than like what you'd name major hurricanes. — Taylor Kothe (@taylorkothe_nfl) September 5, 2017
The New York Times won the internet today with this gem of a story. https://t.co/S53KSMNbPL — Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) September 7, 2017
OMG…This!!
"Harvey and Irma, Married 75 Years, Marvel at the Storms Bearing Their Names" https://t.co/HNOhwxWltd — Lisa Guerrero 💃🏽 (@4lisaguerrero) September 8, 2017
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CTVNews.ca Staff
The Liberal government is launching the first phase of a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, the justice minister said Tuesday.
Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould made the announcement Tuesday afternoon during a news conference in Ottawa. She said the first phase will include consultations with affected families in the national capital region to hear their input on the design and goals of the inquiry.
Over the next two months, the government will also hear from other families across the country, aboriginal community organizations and frontline workers to seek their input, she said.
Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett said the initial phase is a "design phase," and will lead to the second phase, which will be the actual inquiry itself. She added that she hopes the inquiry will begin next spring.
As the inquiry advances, Canadians will be also be able to follow its progress, and engage in the discussion on a website and via social media, she said.
Bennett said the government is committed to creating the best possible design for the inquiry, and eventually finding "concrete action" that will stop "this national tragedy."
"We will get this right for the spirits and the memory of those we have lost," she said, as she wrapped up her remarks.
During question period in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Bennett said the government intends to let victims’ families help shape the inquiry.
“Even in this pre-inquiry phase, the design phase, we want to hear from the families and make sure that the design of the inquiry will meet their needs and that families will be involved throughout the inquiry,” Bennett said.
In an appearance on CTV's Power Play later on Tuesday, Wilson-Raybould said that the governments wants to "chart a path for true reconciliation," which requires engaging with the families of victims, as well as speaking to national indigenous organizations.
"Families are looking to tell their stories, looking to seek justice around the murder and missing indigenous women and girl," she said.
"And also to look more broadly in terms of the root causes of why this situation exists in the first place, looking at what we can do collectively do to address issues of poverty, the legacy of the colonial experience and marginalization."
The Liberals have pledged to spend $40 million on the inquiry, which they initially projected to last two years. During the news conference, Bennett said the projected budget is a "placeholder” until more details of the inquiry are determined.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the inquiry is a "top priority" of the Liberal government.
"We have made this inquiry a priority for our government because those touched by this national tragedy have waited long enough," he said during a meeting of aboriginal chiefs and leaders. "The victims deserve justice; their families an opportunity to heal and to be heard."
Calls for a national inquiry have been growing since a 2014 RCMP review found that 1,181 indigenous women had been murdered or gone missing since 1980 -- 164 missing and 1,017 homicide victims.
One of those who have been touched by the issue is Bernadette Smith, whose sister, Claudette, went missing in Winnipeg in 2008.
Smith told CTV's Power Play that her sister, a mother of four, "loved her family" and had a "contagious smile."
"She loved life. She had dreams and goals, her kids loved her and now they're growing up the last seven years without their mother," she said.
Smith said that the government's announcement Tuesday was a positive step forward.
"It really gave hope to me, and other families I've spoken to as well … that something is actually going to be done, that their voices are going to be heard and their loved ones aren’t going to be forgotten," she said.
Smith said that she had "zero faith" in the former prime minister Stephen Harper's government to address the issue.
On Monday, Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose said that her party supports the study, and believes the "most important thing is to hear the voices of the women and families."
Her comments are in stark contrast to Harper's, who consistently rejected calls for an inquiry. Instead, in September 2014, the Conservatives unveiled several measures to address violence against aboriginal women and girls, including funding for shelters, increased support for police investigations and the creation of a missing persons index.
In his remarks on Tuesday morning, Trudeau also outlined several other priorities the Liberals plan to address to build a “new” relationship with First Nations communities. These include investment in education funding and lifting the two per cent funding cap for First Nations programs, he said.
With files from The Canadian Press
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How Much Science Could $135.4 Billion Buy?
President Bush’s latest request for war funding totals $178 billion dollars, approximately $135.4 billion of which will go to fund operations in Iraq. The remainder is for operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the global war on terrorist networks. Because the supplemental bill providing this money is “must pass legislation,” members of Congress are weighing the possibility of boosting domestic spending with amendments to the bill, and there has been talk of money for scientific agencies to make up for funds unallocated in the FY2008 budget.
The Center for American Progress has proposed doubling the research and development funding for key federal agencies to bolster work that improves our country’s health, grows our economy, fuels the development of renewable energy technologies, and supports basic research. This doubling would take place over a 10 year period, with 10 percent annual increases. The FY2008 budget passed by Congress and signed by the President fell short of those 10 percent increases. So how does the money for the Iraq war compare with spending on R&D at these key offices, and how much of that war funding would we need to reallocate to set those offices on a doubling path?
$28,700,000,000: National Institutes of Health R&D budget for 2008, a 0.9 percent increase over 2007.
$2,586,000,000: Supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 NIH R&D budget to 10 percent increase.
4.7: The numbers of years the NIH R&D could be funded at its current 2008 levels with latest Iraq war request.
$4,500,000,000: National Science Foundation R&D budget for 2008, a 1.1 percent increase over 2007.
$399,000,000: Supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 NSF R&D budget to 10 percent increase.
30: The number of years the NSF R&D could be funded at 2008 levels with latest Iraq war request.
$4,000,000,000: Department of Energy Office of Science budget for 2008, 4.6 percent increase over 2007.
$166,000,000: Supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 DOE Office of Science R&D budget to 10 percent increase.
33.9: The number of years the DOE Office of Science could be funded at 2008 levels with latest Iraq war request.
$514,000,000: National Institute of Standards and Technology R&D 2008 budget, 4.7 percent increase over 2007.
$23,400,000: Supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 NIST R&D budget to 10 percent increase.
263.5: The numbers of years the NIST R&D could be funded at 2008 levels with latest Iraq war request.
$6,476,400,000: Department of Defense R&D 2008 budget, 0.9 percent increase over 2007.
$72,380,000: Supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 DOD R&D budget to 10 percent increase.
21.9: The number of years the DOD R&D could be funded at 2008 levels with latest Iraq war request.
$3,246,780,000: Total supplemental amount needed to boost FY2008 funding for these five key agencies to 10 percent increases.
2.4: Percentage of the $135,421,191,000 supplemental request this boost would require.
Funding Medical Research
Funding for the NIH has been flat for four years; accounting for inflation, the Institutes have lost 6 percent of their purchasing power during that time.
37,275: Total number of NIH research grants in 2007.
$403,528: Average size of each NIH research grant in 2007.
335,593: Number of additional average-sized NIH grants that Iraq war funding in the supplemental could finance.
Energy
The Center for American Progress has more information how the $600 billion spent since the start of the Iraq war could fund critical energy research.
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Defend the Prophet 14 March 2011 14 March 2011 Uncategorized Uncategorized 4 Comments 4 Comments Email This Post
By Justin Elliot at Salon.com
A Fox News website has picked up a hoax story about an Islamic council in Pakistan protesting the use of padded and colorful bras and presented it as fact.
The story, which is still featured on Fox News’ Fox Nation website, was illustrated with a picture of a woman’s mid-section and carried the headline “Pakistan: Islamic Clerics Protest Women Wearing Padded Bras as ‘Devil’s Cushions.'” (UPDATE 9:30: Fox has now pulled the story. See the original here.) The lead of the Fox Nation story, which sources the piece to the Indian news website sify.com, reads:
The Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan has protested the use of padded and colourful bras by Muslim women, and recommended that Pakistani Muslim researchers should try to invent an innerwear that makes female assets unnoticeable.
The problem is, if one takes the time to track the story back to its source, the whole thing is an obvious Onion-style satire — a fact first pointed out by Arif Rafiq of the Pakistan Policy Blog.
The sify.com story linked by Fox cites a “report” from yet another site called Roznama Jawani.
Roznama Jawani, in turn, appears to be a Pakistani version of the Onion, featuring such stories as “Karachi Preparing a Huge Ass Bat to Beat the Shit Out of Kamran Akmal,” “Altaf Hussain Challenges Imran Khan to a Rap Battle to Settle Differences,” and “Man From Peshawar Sues Red Bull. Says he has no wings!”
The bra story on Roznama Jawani features a crudely photoshopped image of an Islamic council meeting with a large sign that says, “Future of Padded Bras.” The story quotes an anti-padded bra protester saying that “Padded bras are evil as they make the breasts look bigger and perky … Only devil women show off private parts.”
Click around a little on the site, and one finds a legal notice:
The stories published in Roznama Jawani might only be applicable and true in another universe. That universe might be parallel to this universe. Might even be serial. Who knows?! Maybe some one does.
Fox Nation is an openly conservative news and opinion aggregation site that is part of the Fox News network. It’s not clear what sort of editorial standards are applied to the site, which carries a mixture of hard news and catnip for conservative readers (sample headlines: “Democrats politicize tsunami” and “The President’s afternoon: A round of golf”).
Fox Nation commenters, for their part, reacted to the bra story with outrage. “If I was a woman–anywhere in the world, I’d be taking a close look at Islam and what it meant for me,” wrote commenter rebubinca. A “louisiana_mom” replied:
“How can anyone in their right mind defend this religion/cult is beyond me. The silence of NOW and other women’s rights organizations speak volumes as to where their true loyalties are (and it is not for the rights for women).I cannot believe anyone in the 21st century would even entertain the thought of allowing Sharia Law into any Western county.”
This is hardly the first time a hoax story has made its way around the Internet. A similar situation last year prompted a boycott of pop sensation Justin Bieber by opponents of the “ground zero mosque” who falsely believed that Bieber had come out in favor of the project.
UPDATE: TPM’s Josh Marshall points out that this is not the first time Fox Nation has presented satire as fact.
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Hi, I'm Zaywolfe and I made this game. It's my first game and it took me 6 years to make! And now I'm giving it to you for free :)
It's an experiment of sorts. There is one game mode. A challenge with a reward at the end. Don't expect it to be easy, because it's not. It'll take some dedication to beat. And for all the years this game has been available no one has ever beaten it as far as I'm aware. Will you be the first to unlock its secrets?
26 gates block your path.
How far will you get?
Do you have what it takes?
How to Play
(For the best experience I'd play with a gamepad)
You play Box, and as Box you eat Bytes. The bytes come in 3 colors. Red, Green, and Blue. In order to eat them you must change Box between the 3 colors to eat the matching Byte. If you run into a Byte that's a different color you'll lose a life.
That's it. Simple. But it's much harder to master than it sounds.
Links
If you like my game, send me a message on twitter.
https://twitter.com/zaywolfe
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job growth slowed sharply in March amid continued layoffs in the embattled retail sector, but a drop in the unemployment rate to a near 10-year low of 4.5 percent suggested labor market strength remained intact.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 98,000 jobs last month, the fewest since last May, the Labor Department said on Friday.
Job gains, which had exceeded 200,000 in January and February, were also held back by a slowdown in hiring at construction sites, factories and leisure and hospitality businesses, which had been boosted by unseasonably warm temperatures earlier in the year.
In March, temperatures dropped and a storm lashed the Northeast and Midwest. Economists said bad weather accounted for the stepdown in hiring. The two-tenths of a percentage point drop in the unemployment rate from 4.7 percent in February took it to its lowest level since May 2007.
“The disappointing gain in nonfarm payrolls in March is a bit of a head fake that doesn’t reflect the underlying strength and momentum in the labor market,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.
While the bigger establishment survey showed fewer jobs created last month, the smaller and more volatile survey of households showed employment increased 472,000.
The economy needs to create 75,000 to 100,000 jobs per month to keep up with growth in the working-age population and some Federal Reserve officials view the labor market as being at full employment. Economists had forecast payrolls increasing 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate unchanged at 4.7 percent.
The dollar rose a three-week high against a basket of currencies while prices for U.S. Treasuries fell. Stocks on Wall Street rose.
LABOR MARKET SLACK SHRINKING
Job growth averaged 178,000 per month in the first quarter, underscoring the labor market’s strength, despite last month’s stumble.
The solid employment gains suggest that an apparent slowdown in gross domestic product growth to around a 1.0 percent annualized pace in the first quarter is probably temporary. The economy grew at a 2.1 percent rate in the fourth quarter.
Average hourly earnings increased 5 cents or 0.2 percent in March after rising 0.3 percent in February. That lowered the year-on-year gain in wages to 2.7 percent.
But with inflation rising and the unemployment rate below the most recent Fed median forecast for full employment, economists expect another interest rate increase in June.
The U.S. central bank lifted its overnight interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point in March and has forecast two more increases this year. Minutes from the Fed’s mid-March meeting showed most policymakers expected to start reducing the Fed’s $4.5 trillion bond portfolio later this year.
New York Fed President William Dudley said on Friday that would prompt only a “little pause” in the central bank’s rate hike plans.
“If today’s decline in the unemployment rate doesn’t reverse itself they may be compelled not only to hike but also to signal a faster pace of future tightening,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.
Other measures also showed labor market slack shrinking. The labor force participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, held at an 11-month high of 63 percent in March.
A broad measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, fell three-tenths of a percentage point to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since December 2007.
The employment-to-population ratio increased one-tenth of a percentage point to a fresh eight-year high of 60.1 percent.
Last month, construction jobs rose 6,000, the weakest gain since August, after robust increases in January and February. Manufacturing employment advanced by 11,000 jobs, slowing from the 26,000 positions created in February.
A fast food restaurant advertises for workers on its front window in Encinitas, California. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Retail payrolls fell 29,700, declining for a second straight month. Employment at clothing retailers decreased by 5,800 jobs last month and general merchandise stores shed 34,700 positions. Retailers including J.C. Penney Co Inc and Macy’s Inc have announced thousands of layoffs as they shift toward online sales and scale back on brick-and-mortar operations.
Leisure and hospitality payrolls increased 9,000, a third of February’s job gains, as employment at amusement parks fell 6,900. Government payrolls increased 9,000 as state and local government hiring offset a 1,000 drop in federal jobs.
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The 2001 discovery of the seven million-year-old Sahelanthropus, the first known upright ape-like creatures, was yet more proof of humanity’s place among the great apes. And yet Mike Pence, then a representative and now US vice president, argues for the opposite conclusion.
For him, our ideas about our ancestors have changed, proving once more that evolution was a theory, and therefore we should be free to teach other theories alongside evolution in our classrooms.
How to respond? The usual answer is that we should teach students the meaning of the word “theory” as used in science – that is, a hypothesis (or idea) that has been proved through repeated testing. Pence’s argument will then be exposed to be what philosophers call an equivocation– an argument that only seems to make sense because the same word is being used in two different senses.
Just words
Evolution, Pence argues, is a theory, theories are uncertain, therefore evolution is uncertain. But evolution is a theory only in the scientific sense of the word. And in the words of the National Academy of Sciences, “The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence.” Attaching this label to evolution is an indicator of strength, not weakness.
If you take this approach, you have failed to understand the purpose of Pence’s rhetoric, or why it is so appealing to creationists. Pence is an accomplished politician, and knows exactly how to appeal to his intended audience. He is also an accomplished trial lawyer, which makes him a conjuror with words, and like any skilful conjuror he has pulled off his trick by distraction. Pence has drawn us into a discussion about words, when our focus should be on the evidence.
I would suggest the opposite approach. The problem is not really with the word “theory” at all. Students will have learned its meaning in the same way they learn meanings in general: by seeing how the word is used.
They will have heard of atomic theory, which no one has seriously doubted for over a century. And what about the theory of gravity? Finally, they may have seen how Darwin himself uses the expression “my theory”, although at the time it was neither comprehensive nor well supported (there were huge gaps in the fossil record), to refer in a very general way to his linked ideas about mutability of species, common descent, and the power of natural selection.
So if anyone says, “Evolution is a theory”, don’t give them a lecture on the meaning of the word “theory”. If you do, you’ve fallen into the trap of making it seem that how we define words should affect how we see reality. You will be fighting on ground of your opponent’s choosing, since arguing about how to apply words is the stock in trade of theologians, preachers and lawyers like Mike Pence.
The correct response is to say that evolution is a theory – like gravity is a theory – and then redirect attention to the evidence. And that evidence is overwhelming.
Evolutionary ammo
Start with family relationships. Carl Linnaeus showed how living things can be classified into species, genera, families and so on, and Darwin pointed out that this is exactly the structure we would expect from a family tree. All dogs are canines, so dogs share an ancestor with foxes; all canines are carnivora, so dogs share a more remote ancestor with bears; all carnivora are mammals, so dogs and sheep are, albeit more remotely, related, and so on.
Then look at the discovery over the past few decades of family relationships at the molecular level, and the fact that the molecular family tree matches that based on anatomical resemblances.
Observe the fossil record. Once lamentably full of gaps (Darwin was among the lamenters), it is now densely populated. A century ago, it still made sense to point to the “missing link” between humans and pre-human apes. Now we know of several different hominin species living alongside each other, and the problem becomes one of distinguishing our grandparents from our great uncles. And yes, there are missing links in the chain, but without evolution we would not have a chain at all.
And then there’s biogeography: for example, why marsupials are only found in South America and Australasia, and except for a few species that made their way across the Isthmus of Panama, are never found elsewhere.
Plus we can actually observe evolution, and study it in the field or in the lab. The emergence of pesticide resistance is evolution in action, as shown in the justly famous Harvard/Technion demonstration “evolution on a plate”. So is the delightful Russian experiment of breeding tame foxes. Artificial selection, just as much as natural selection, is evolution in action.
And finally, and most convincingly, we must look at the way that these different lines of evidence mesh together. We can apply biogeography to the fossil record, and link it to what we know about the movements of the continents. Using the methods of molecular biology, we can identify and time the mutations that led different species to diverge from their common ancestor, and match the timing against the fossil record.
Thus the fossil record, deep anatomical resemblances, and DNA evidence agree in showing that whales, for instance, are closely related to hoofed mammals, diverging from them in the Eocene period. There are many other examples of such consistency.
Then, and only then, pause to explain how a scientific theory is an interlocking connection of ideas that explain things about the world, and that evolution is one of the most successful examples. And challenge the Mike Pences of this world to spell out exactly what they would like to see taught alongside the Theory of Evolution – and why.
Paul Braterman is Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, University of North Texas, and Honorary Research Fellow (formerly Reader) at the University of Glasgow. His research has involved topics related to the early Earth and the origins of life, and received support from NSF, NASA, Sandia National Labs, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
A version of this article was originally published on the Conversation’s website as “How to slam dunk creationists when it comes to the theory of evolution” and has been republished here with permission.
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New Horizons for Conventional Lithium Ion Battery Technology
In this video, Evan M. Erickson, Chandan Ghanty, and Doron Aurbach of the Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 5290002, Israel, discuss their Perspective published (web) in volume 5 of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
Secondary lithium ion battery technology has made deliberate, incremental improvements over the past four decades, providing sufficient energy densities to sustain a significant mobile electronic device industry. Because current battery systems provide ∼100–150 km of driving distance per charge, ∼5-fold improvements are required to fully compete with internal combustion engines that provide >500 km range per tank. Despite expected improvements, the authors believe that lithium ion batteries are unlikely to replace combustion engines in fully electric vehicles. However, high fidelity and safe Li ion batteries can be used in full EVs plus range extenders (e.g., metal air batteries, generators with ICE or gas turbines). This perspective article describes advanced materials and directions that can take this technology further in terms of energy density, and aims at delineating realistic horizons for the next generations of Li ion batteries. This article concentrates on Li intercalation and Li alloying electrodes, relevant to the term Li ion batteries.
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The small dead bodies were laid next to one another on the tiled floor of the morgue corridor, the blood drained from their cheeks. One had a bandage still wrapped around his head, another lay with his mouth half-open in his oversized, bloodstained clothes.
For a week the Samouni family had taken shelter in their small, single-storey home in Zeitoun, south-east of Gaza City, and there they survived wave after wave of Israeli bombing and artillery strikes. Then came Israel's ground offensive, the next phase in what Israel argues is a necessary and justified battle against the Palestinian militants firing rockets out of Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, promised an "iron fist" for Hamas and said he would treat the civilian citizens of Gaza with "silk gloves," though the Palestinians of Gaza know perhaps better than most that there are few silk gloves in war.
The Samouni family woke on Sunday morning to find themselves surrounded by camouflaged Israeli troops and dozens of tanks, who had set up a position in the rubble of what was once the large Jewish settlement of Netzarim. As dawn broke, the soldiers seized control of the highest buildings in the district and ordered several of the neighbours into the Samouni family home and there a dozen of them waited, without food and without water.
"All day Sunday there was shooting and bombing. We didn't have anything to eat, we didn't have water to drink - our water tanks had been damaged in the fighting," said Wael Samouni, 32, who on a normal day would be manning his stall at the vegetable market. "We couldn't sleep."
He stepped out of the house briefly and saw a man shooting an M16 assault rifle. He mistook him for a Palestinian militant. Samouni shouted at him: "Please don't come here. They'll kill us. Go away." But as the gunman turned round, it became clear he was an Israeli soldier. The soldier shouted back in Arabic: "Bring me your ID." Samouni disappeared back into his house and decided not to venture out again.
They passed another night under the bombing and artillery strikes, grateful to have made it through to morning. Samouni remembered sitting in the crowded living room yesterday, surrounded by his neighbours, wondering how much longer they had to endure. It was 6.30am.
"We were sitting and suddenly there was bombing on our house and everyone started to run. There were three rockets. I have no idea where they came from," said Samouni. The rockets, believed now to be tank shells, hit the building and brought it crashing down. "I looked to my side, took hold of my boy Mohammad and I started to run. As I ran I looked back and saw on the floor my mother, two cousins and three of my children. All dead," he said. Samouni and the others ran from the house, some raised white cloths as flags and they made it to a patch of safe ground where they were taken to hospital by car.
Yesterday, as three of his children were laid out dead on the hospital floor, Samouni was in a bed upstairs in the Shifa hospital, recovering from wounds to his legs and shoulder and comforting his son Mohammad, five, who had suffered a broken arm in the shelling and had just woken after his operation. He was still unsure exactly how many of his 10 children had died.
"It's a massacre," Samouni said. "I'm 32 years old and I've never seen such things as this. I couldn't help myself or any of those around me. We just want to live in peace."
At his bedside was his brother Nael, 36, who lives in a house close by. His wife and daughter had been in Wael's house yesterday morning at the time of the shelling: both were killed.
"I wanted to go and join them the night before, but it was too dangerous to go out. If anyone moved he would be shot," Nael said. "Then when I heard the bombing this morning I saw people running. I saw an injured man fall to the ground. I ran to help, but there was an Israeli sniper in the house next door who shouted: 'Leave him alone.' We couldn't rescue anyone."
As he ran, Israeli troops fired over their heads and then ordered them to lift up their shirts to show they carried no weapons under their clothes. "We just made it out and here to the hospital," Nael said. Then, in a moment of anger, he pointed the blame. "Hamas is responsible for this. They are starving us, now they are killing us," he said. "They asked the Israelis to enter but where is the resistance? They are hiding. All the leaders of Hamas are underground. It's just the civilians confronting the Israeli army. I don't like Hamas and I don't want them ruling Gaza."
Hospital officials believe nine people were killed in the Samouni house, including at least four children. But they were not the only civilians to die at the hand of the Israeli offensive yesterday. Just north of Gaza City in the Shamali district, a missile struck a three-storey apartment block in the middle of the night - home to three brothers, their families and their father. It hit the roof and dropped down to the basement, destroying half the building and killing Amer Abu Asha, 47, along with his two wives, three sons and one daughter.
Yesterday his brother Samer Abu Asha, 50, sat outside on a plastic chair under a green awning. Neighbours came to shake his hand and offer their sympathy before slipping away quickly to avoid the next missile strike.
The family were not asleep at 1.30am yesterday when the Israeli missile struck - the noise of the bombing had been too much. In the moments after the attack there was such confusion no one knew who or how many had died.
"We started searching but it was hard with the dust, the darkness and the smoke," said Abu Asha. Neighbours told them bodies had been taken to the hospital, so they rushed to the Shifa in Gaza City, only to be told no one from their family had been admitted. "We went back home and searched everywhere," he said. Finally they found his brother Amer lying on a patch of ground outside the house, mortally wounded, his stomach ripped open. "We started to search for others under the rubble. We found arms, legs, half a head," he said. "We didn't find a complete body."
Abu Asha admitted that another brother in the family - but one who did not live in the building - was in the Hamas military wing but said he could not account for the bombing. They had received no warning. "It's unjust. They are targeting civilians, children, old women," he said. "Some European and Arab countries are supporting Israel in this terrorism. They want to crack down on Hamas, but Hamas is not in the houses. It's on the front line. Go there and kill them. Not us."
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Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic surfaces during condensation, they can gain electric charge in the process. Now, the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity that might be used to power electronic devices.
The new findings, by postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, associate professor of mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang, and two others, are published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.
This approach could lead to devices to charge cellphones or other electronics using just the humidity in the air. As a side benefit, the system could also produce clean water.
The device itself could be simple, Miljkovic says, consisting of a series of interleaved flat metal plates. Although his initial tests involved copper plates, he says any conductive metal would do, including cheaper aluminum.
In initial testing, the amount of power produced was vanishingly small -- just 15 picowatts, or trillionths of a watt, per square centimeter of metal plate. But Miljkovic says the process could easily be tuned to achieve at least 1 microwatt, or millionth of a watt, per square centimeter. Such output would be comparable to that of other systems that have been proposed for harvesting waste heat, vibrations, or other sources of ambient energy, and represents an amount that could be sufficient to provide useful power for electronic devices in some remote locations.
For example, Miljkovic has calculated that at 1 microwatt per square centimeter, a cube measuring about 50 centimeters on a side -- about the size of a typical camping cooler -- could be sufficient to fully charge a cellphone in about 12 hours. While that may seem slow, he says, people in remote areas may have few alternatives.
There are some constraints: Because the process relies on condensation, it requires a humid environment, as well as a source of temperatures colder than the surrounding air, such as a cave or river.
The system is based on Miljkovic and Wang's 2013 finding -- in attempting to develop an improved heat-transfer surface to be used as a condenser in applications such as power plants -- that droplets on a superhydrophobic surface convert surface energy to kinetic energy as they merge to form larger droplets. This sometimes causes the droplets to spontaneously jump away, enhancing heat transfer by 30 percent relative to other techniques. They later found that in that process, the jumping droplets gain a small electric charge -- meaning that the jumping, and the accompanying transfer of heat, could be enhanced by a nearby metal plate whose opposite charge is attractive to the droplets.
Now the researchers have shown that the same process can be used to generate power, simply by giving the second plate a hydrophilic surface. As the droplets jump, they carry charge from one plate to the other; if the two plates are connected through an external circuit, that charge difference can be harnessed to provide power.
In a practical device, two arrays of metal plates, like fins on a radiator, would be interleaved, so that they are very close but not touching. The system would operate passively, with no moving parts.
For powering remote, automated environmental sensors, even a tiny amount of energy might be sufficient; any location where dew forms would be capable of producing power for a few hours in the morning, Miljkovic says. "Water will condense out from the atmosphere, it happens naturally," he says.
"The atmosphere is a huge source of power, and all you need is a temperature difference between the air and the device," he adds -- allowing the device to produce condensation, just as water condenses from warm, humid air on the outside of a cold glass.
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New Delhi: Noted historian Ramchandra Guha, Wednesday, said Hindutva (mis)appropriators need to be reminded that the four brigades of Netaji's Indian National Army (INA) were named after Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Chandrashekar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose himself.
In a series of tweets, Guha, said, “By naming his brigades after Gandhi, Nehru, and Azad, Bose made it clear that these were the three patriots he most respected.”
“Whatever their other differences, Bose knew that Gandhi, Azad and Nehru all completely shared his commitment to Hindu-Muslim harmony.”
“Note whom Bose DID NOT name these brigades after—no Pant, no Prasad, no Patel, and certainly no Savarkar,” his another tweet said.
Note whom Bose DID NOT name these brigades after—no Pant, no Prasad, no Patel, and certainly no Savarkar. (4/4). — Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) January 27, 2016
Few days back, the noted historian criticised the recent killings of eminent scholars and writers and the 'inability' of the administration to prevent such hooliganism and said the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the "most anti-intellectual" the country ever had.
PM Modi on January 23 unveiled digital versions of at least 100 secret files relating to India's great freedom fighter Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose death continues to be a mystery even after seven decades.
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"An update to improve the Samsung Captivate's GPS performance is now available. Captivate customers will receive a notification on their device that an update is available and will simply need to download the file to update their phone. The updates will be pushed to customers' devices over the next few weeks.
The update for the Captivate will also improve additional device functions, such as media scanning time, add the full version of Quickoffice and address Microsoft Exchange 2003 policy support."
Sammy just hit us up with a brief statement that should make Captivate owners jump clean out of their seats and do a spit take if they're enjoying a cup of joe:Awesome, right? Of course, the proof is in the pudding -- we'll need to wait and see how "fixed" the GPS really is after this gets installed, but it's a start. Notably, this doesn't seem to include Froyo, so we don't know whether these guys are going to be going the British or Spanish routes in getting that deployed.We've independently confirmed with AT&T that this update does include GPS improvements.
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Elsevier welcomes Mendeley
Elsevier’s acquisition of an innovative research management and social collaboration tool will enable the platform to further expand, giving researchers access to more content
By Olivier Dumon Posted on 8 April 2013
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Welcoming Mendeley's founders: Olivier Dumon, Managing Director of Academic and Government Markets for Elsevier (holding Lego sign), welcomes Mendeley founders (left to right) Paul Föckler, PhD, Victor Henning, PhD, and Jan Reichelt, PhD.
Mendeley is a company that has made a big name for itself with an innovative platform that helps researchers organize their work, discover the latest research and collaborate. As Managing Director of Academic and Government Markets for Elsevier, Olivier Dumon writes about how Elsevier started collaborating with this London-based company, and why joining forces will help both companies serve the research community better.
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[note color="#f1f9fc" position="right" width=400 margin=10 align="alignright"]
The Author
Olivier Dumon is Managing Director of Academic and Government Markets for Elsevier. Before joining Elsevier in February 2012, he served as VP of Product Management for AT&T Interactive and Senior Director of Search for eBay. Previously, he worked for eBay in France and co-founded an online collaboration start-up that he sold to a B2B publisher. He was born in Paris and first came to the United States to attend Harvard Business School, where he completed an MBA in 1998.[/note]
When I joined Elsevier one year ago, the challenge handed to me was, how do we continually make our flagship products — ScienceDirect and Scopus — more useful and relevant to our users? In other words, how do we make their lives easier using Elsevier’s rich content and tools?
ScienceDirect has always been a great platform for researchers to search and retrieve content, but there are also great opportunities in creating new environments for sharing that content — and in learning what happens to articles after they’re downloaded.
A few people on my senior team quickly introduced me to a start-up they had first met in New York in late 2008, then again at the 2009 NextWeb conference in Amsterdam. Two of our colleagues had approached the co-founders, Victor Henning and Jan Reichelt, after a presentation they made. What came from that conversation was an immediate sense that we shared common goals; they, too, were working to improve the lives of researchers, only on a new platform based on what happens to the article after it is downloaded.
Information about what articles are read by what kinds of researchers, and how people then collaborate with each other to produce original research, is potentially very powerful. Think in terms of improved readership statistics for individual research papers, papers shared between researchers with similar interests, and generated recommendations based on collaborative filtering.
Exciting conversations ensued. When we opened our ScienceDirect application programming interface (API) to outside developers, Mendeley was the first company we reached out to. Soon after, they built the Mendeley Readership App (which provided information on how many users added an article to their library). We also supported Mendeley’s events; for example, we sponsored their Science Online London conferences on Open Science.
Sometimes business collaborations show so much potential they should just go all-in, and that’s what Mendeley and Elsevier have decided to do.
The benefits of joining forces
Think about it: researchers use Mendeley for its document and reference management, collaboration, analytics and networking tools. Elsevier not only publishes almost a fifth of the world’s scientific, technical and medical (STM) content, we also have a successful track record with indexing content from multiple publishers on researchers’ behalves through tools such as Scopus, Scirus and Reaxys.
For Elsevier, we can build upon strong foundations in search and discovery by adding capabilities in document and citation management and sharing. By offering integration between Mendeley, Scopus and ScienceDirect, we can make this combined platform the central workflow and collaboration site for authors. In addition, we will be able to provide greater access to a growing repository of user-generated content while building tools that will enable researchers to search this growing body of research more precisely.
By joining forces, we will be in an even better position to support the needs of researchers. Our resources will enable Mendeley to continue building on its platform, keeping it free for individuals while introducing new content and interoperability that will make it even more useful.
This partnership can have a huge positive impact on areas such as altmetrics, getting real-time information on hot articles across publishers based on Mendeley readership metrics, helping librarians assess their collections and rendering all publishers’ content more discoverable.
‘Letting Mendeley be Mendeley’
We are committing to implementing Mendeley’s existing product development roadmap, and giving the company the space to “let Mendeley be Mendeley.” You see, Mendeley is a lot more than just a product; it’s a great company with a thriving, innovative culture and a lot of talented people. It’s open, social and collaborative, and it is important to us that it retains all of those traits. Victor, Jan, Paul and other senior managers will remain with the company to ensure a smooth integration and the continuation of Mendeley's vision.
[note color="#f1f9fc" position="right" width=400 margin=10 align="alignright"]
New packages provide more storage
Mendeley will continue to be a “Freemium” product, only now with expanded storage capacity:
“Free” users who get 1GB of storage will get 2GB.
“Plus” package users who pay £3.99 a month ($4.99 or €4.99) for 2GB will get 5GB.
“Pro” package users who pay £7.99 a month ($9.99 or €9.99) for 5GB will get 10GB.
“Max” package users will still pay £11.99 a month ($14.99 or €14.99) for unlimited space.
Generally speaking, a user can store about 1,500 articles for every 1GB.[/note]
Mendeley will remain a separate platform with a distinctive brand — the favorite daily destination site of researchers to check updates on their network, collaborate with other researchers, access their stored content, get alerts to relevant research domains, and make progress on their workflow efficiency and research in general.
And Mendeley’s “Freemium” offer will remain for individuals, and with more storage space. As Victor said, “It will still be Mendeley, only better.”
For institutions, the Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) will continue to be available. MIE is a tool that helps universities analyze research activity in real-time, providing a complement to the traditional Impact Factor system of academic citations. It also enables librarians to extract more value out of resources by optimizing their subscriptions and providing a better service to their researchers by aggregating anonymized statistics about faculty and student paper reading habits.
We’ve also spent a good deal of time talking with the Mendeley team about a variety of current topics, including access policy initiatives across the globe, the Cost of Knowledge and the social media #mendelete campaign that ensued following leaked rumors of our talks.
Victor and I both know there a lot more layers to Elsevier than many realize. This is a complex, dynamic, evolving company that cares about supporting the research community. And we know that means supporting a divergent set of perspectives and serving a variety of communities. But we’re totally aligned when it comes to the product, the vision and the benefits this union will deliver to the research community.
At its heart, this union is about making our users’ lives easier, whatever route that may take. As Victor told me, “We started Mendeley to help researchers, and Elsevier lets us do that for a much larger community.”
Today is a great day for Elsevier, Mendeley and, more importantly, all our customers, users and communities. I want to welcome Mendeley’s employees, advisors, users and all their followers to Elsevier. We look forward to doing great things together for the research community.
[divider]
Learn more
Check out the Q&A on the Mendeley blog.
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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University Duke University
DUKE (US) — Even low doses of silver nanoparticles can negatively affect plants and microbes, a study shows.
These preliminary findings are important, researchers say, because little is known about the environmental effects of silver nanoparticles, which are found in textiles, clothing, children’s toys, and pacifiers, disinfectants, and toothpaste.
“No one really knows what the effects of these particles are in the environment,” says Benjamin Colman, a postdoctoral fellow in Duke University’s biology department.
“We’re trying to come up with the data that can be used to help regulators determine the risks to the environment from silver nanoparticle exposures,” Colman adds.
[sources]
Previous studies have involved high concentrations of the nanoparticles in a laboratory setting, which the researchers point out, doesn’t represent “real-world” conditions.
“Results from laboratory studies are difficult to extrapolate to ecosystems, where exposures likely will be at low concentrations and there is a diversity of organisms,” Colman says.
Silver nanoparticles are used in consumer products because they can kill bacteria, inhibiting unwanted odors. They work through a variety of mechanisms, including generating free radicals of oxygen, which can cause DNA damage to microbial membranes without harming human cells.
The main route by which these particles enter the environment is as a by-product of sewage treatment plants. The nanoparticles are too small to be filtered out, so they and other materials end up in the resulting wastewater treatment “sludge,” which is then spread on the land surface as a fertilizer.
For their studies, the researchers created mesocosms, which are small, man-made structures containing different plants and microorganisms meant to represent the environment.
They applied sludge with low doses of silver nanoparticles in some of the mesocosms, and then compared plants and microorganisms from treated and untreated mesocosms after 50 days.
The researchers found that one of the plants studied, a common annual grass known as Microstegium vimeneum, had 32 percent less biomass in the mesocosms treated with the nanoparticles.
Microbes were also affected by the nanoparticles, Colman says.
One enzyme associated with helping microbes deal with external stresses was 52 percent less active, while another enzyme that helps regulate processes within the cell was 27 percent less active. The overall biomass of the microbes was also 35 percent lower, he says.
The study appears in the journal PLOS ONE.
“Our field studies show adverse responses of plants and microorganisms following a single low dose of silver nanoparticles applied by a sewage biosolid,” Colman says. “An estimated 60 percent of the average 5.6 million tons of biosolids produced each year is applied to the land for various reasons, and this practice represents an important and understudied route of exposure of natural ecosystems to engineered nanoparticles.”
“Our results show that silver nanoparticles in the biosolids, added at concentrations that would be expected, caused ecosystem-level impacts,” Colman says. “Specifically, the nanoparticles led to an increase in nitrous oxide fluxes, changes in microbial community composition, biomass, and extracellular enzyme activity, as well as species-specific effects on the above-ground vegetation.”
The researchers plan to continue to study longer-term effects of silver nanoparticles and to examine another ubiquitous nanoparticle—titanium dioxide.
Study collaborators include researchers from Coe College, Virginia Tech University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Kentucky, and Wuhan Botanical Garden, China.
Funding from the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency helped support the work.
Source: Duke University
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"For such a little person," said Perez Hilton, "Danny DeVito knows how to pack a six-pack away!" On the set of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning, the 64-year-old actor drank his way through a live interview with a local Philadelphia reporter, and the results were "completely and ridiculously inappropriate—which is just how we like it!" (watch the Danny DeVito interview)
For being "drunk at 8 a.m.," said Bunny With Fangs, DeVito managed to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. "He talks about childbirth, hits on the reporter, and embarrasses his posse of people all in, like, three minutes"—this interview was "epic."
This isn't the first time Danny DeVito's appeared tipsy on morning TV, said Tim Surette in TV.com. "DeVito also famously appeared under the influence on an episode of The View." (watch) At least during his latest display, his Sunny cast mates were there to attempt some "damage control, but once the beast is out of the cage, all they can really do is watch him do his thing."
DeVito's rep insists that the whole thing was an act, said Radar Online. But considering DeVito's record with public drunkenness, and the fact the he has his very own brand of limoncello, you have to wonder. But either way, his interview in Philadelphia on Tuesday was highly entertaining.
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Kids love you. Kids look up to you. You can influence them positively--or wreck them emotionally.
The games industry has a problem with supply imbalances. For example, it's still quite difficult to buy a Nintendo Switch , and may the good Lord help you if you're in the market for an NES Classic Edition.
Controversy, though? Controversy is plentiful 'round these parts.
"We recently became aware of comments made by voice artist JonTron after development on Yooka-Laylee had been completed," Playtonic told GamesIndustry.biz. "JonTron is a talented video presenter who we were initially, two years ago, happy to include as a voice contributor in our game. However, in light of his recent personal viewpoints we have made the decision to remove JonTron's inclusion in the game via a forthcoming content update."
The statement from Playtonic goes on to emphasize JonTron's views don't reflect their own, and that the studio "deeply regret[s] any implied association that could make players feel anything but 100% comfortable in our game worlds, or distract from the incredible goodwill and love shown by our fans and Kickstarter backers."
This latest hoopla, in addition to the controversy that erupted when millionaire YouTuber Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg used Fiverr.com to commission two people to hold up a sign stating "Death to All Jews," is personally sobering. JonTron's rants and PewDiePie's exploitation are gross in any context, but a couple of weeks ago I learned my eight-year-old niece is getting big into Minecraft, ROBLOX, Five Nights at Freddy's, and, by extension, she's watching a lot of YouTubers stream those games.
If this image was part of an art show, that art show would be called "Siiiiiigh."
My niece is patchwork quilt given human form (and bound together with fluffy scraps of adorability, but I'm biased). She's a Canadian-Trinidadian Irish-Hungarian Jew (whew). She's been made aware of her Jewish heritage, and it's celebrated.
So how long does she have until she hears her first oven "joke" during a stream, or receives her first dose of hilarious comedy via some remark about dead / gassed Jews? How's an eight-year-old supposed to understand that a 25+-year-old YouTuber—an adult, a person she's supposed to look up to and respect—is "just kidding" when they use the death and suffering of her direct ancestors as a casual remark meant to get a smattering of laughter during the slow parts of a Minecraft stream?
My concern isn't unique, obviously. Prominent YouTubers and game streamers fall back on off-color remarks and racial stereotypes all the time. It's a very easy way to keep the attention of a preteen viewer base that's very big on bucking authority, whether they do so by giggling at jokes about farts and poop, or grinning open-mouthed at the scandalous suggestion that "Hitler did nothing wrong." Sadly, these poisonous jokes and opinions are already affect young viewers caught in the blast radius
People defend the antics of PewDiePie and his ilk by bringing up other shock comedians, like George Carlin and Howard Stern. Thing is, shock comedians usually have adult audiences. To re-iterate a point made by games writer Jim Sterling earlier this week, they don't hold sway over millions of ten-year-olds who may have into the fray in the first place because they just wanted to watch someone play through Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.
Accurate life cycle of a popular YouTuber.
I have strong feelings about the cultural tug-of-war between Boomers and Millennials , so I don't like to say things like "In MY day—" (besides, the effect only works if you own a pipe to puff with supreme irritation, and I don't). But I can't help but think about how I started to fall in love with video games when I was around my niece's age—around the same time the NES started becoming a fixture in North American living rooms. Back then, if you didn't own a game or system, you had to peer over the shoulder of a friend who did. Our "YouTube" was shop windows, whereon we pressed our noses and looked longingly at Super Mario Bros' attract mode.
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Now, though? Any kid who wants to know anything about any game simply needs to hit up YouTube. There, they might find a benign trailer, or a developer interview. They might find a playthrough orchestrated by a cheerful person who's aware of their audience. Or they might find the gameplay footage interlaced with sour comedy involving remarks about black people and watermelon. Like that proverbial box of chocolates, you never really know what you're gonna get.
This isn't a call to police YouTube (though I haven't lost any sleep over JonTron and PewDiePie's scraped knees). This isn't a piece meant to spark a discussion about free speech versus consequences: Mike already tackled that subject in his elegant, even-handed way last month . Rather, it's a request—all right, maybe a plea—for YouTubers and streamers to remember they command the adoration of impressionable young people.
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To classical purists, it may not be music to their ears. But the controller of BBC Radio 3 has spoken of the importance of television theme tunes and film scores as part of the
station’s output, as it tries to capture the attention of younger listeners.
Roger Wright defended the addition of music such as the soundtracks from Doctor Who, Star Wars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to the Radio 3 repertoire, saying it was “key” to enticing a new generation to appreciate classical music.
He argued that it was no longer appropriate to cater only for a long-standing, knowledgeable audience.
While warning that classical music should not be the preserve of an educated elite, Mr Wright also defended his station against accusations of dumbing down. He told The Sunday Telegraph there was no point giving the Radio 3 audience “solely what it already knows”.
His intervention comes a fortnight after the Friends of Radio 3, a listeners’ group, wrote to Lord Hall, the BBC director-general, highlighting concerns about the way the corporation treats classical music, and the “extent to which it underestimates the intelligence of the public”.
Referring to budget cuts to classical output, the letter said 720 signatories wished to “express dismay at the decline of a station which was once intelligent, educational and enjoyable”, saying it was “increasingly frequently, none of these things”.
In recent years, others have claimed that the station has appeared to be attempting to appeal to an audience similar to Classic FM, traditionally assumed to be younger with less in-depth knowledge of the genre.
Music from films, musicals and television scores have quickly become part of Radio 3’s output, with the Doctor Who Prom now a regular best-seller. In September, the station participated in the BBC’s “Sound of the Cinema” season, with listeners voting the Star Wars theme tune the most popular film score, followed by The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and West Side Story.
Mr Wright, who is also controller of the Proms, defended the decision to attract new audiences by using familiar music, which he believes will lead to a love of other classical works.
He said he “makes absolutely no apologies” for attempting to appeal to a wider audience, with the broadcast of more accessible music a “key” part of BBC strategy.
Speaking of accusations classical music is associated with snobbery, he argued the genre is “no more elitist than Test Match Special”.
He also spoke of the challenges of providing classical music for a modern audience, with short attention spans and an “instant gratification” culture making it more difficult for people to listen to lengthy pieces.
“When you ask a general audience when it first heard classical music or when it first heard an orchestra, pretty regularly they will refer back to film music or musical theatre,” said Mr Wright.
He added that performances such as the John Wilson Orchestra’s Hollywood Rhapsody Prom were now “really key” in Radio 3’s audience development strategy, with young people finding their way into things that would “otherwise feel forbidding”.
“There’s no point giving the Radio 3 audience solely what it already knows, because that way in the end you diminish the audience; you don’t help to grow it,” he said.
“Of course we should be catering for our audience that already has a certain amount of knowledge, but at the same time, we’re also about building new audiences. The whole point of the Proms was to build the largest possible audience, and that holds good for the Proms now and what we’re doing with Radio 3.”
When asked about accusations of dumbing down, he said those who believed classical music should be kept for an elite were in the minority.
“There will always be people in the audience who want to have this music for themselves and not let anyone else in, but it’s a tiny, tiny percentage,” he said.
“Why should it be that it’s only for a few people who already know about it?”
Claiming that accusations of elitism in classical music were unfair, he said the occasionally esoteric language was no worse than that of science, literature or on Test Match Special.
Mr Wright will today announce that Radio 3 is to spend two weeks of March in residency at the Southbank Centre in London, to allow audiences a further insight into how it works.
Speaking to this newspaper to mark the launch, he also talked about the challenge of presenting classical music to audiences in the modern day.
“One of the things we need to do is encourage people to listen and get used to listening,” he said.
“One of the challenges of the busyness of our lives is actually the length of time a lot of classical music takes and that notion that we live in this world in which we expect instantaneous gratification. We have the remote control, which means that, if we don’t like something in two minutes, we’ll flick over to something else.
“That’s an issue for a piece of music that is 40 minutes long, let alone a Wagner opera which might last four hours.
“That’s something about getting people used to the business of live music. We need to train people to have a longer attention span.” He added that he had also noticed a tendency for people to dismiss the genre without properly giving it a chance.
“I think it’s perfectly OK for people to say they don’t like particular bits of music for whatever reason, because we all have particular tastes,” Mr Wright said.
“But I think what’s disappointing is people say they don’t like something based on no experience of it at all. It’s amazing how many people will have a preconception about a particular composer or group, whatever sort of music it may be, without ever really having sampled it.
“They’ve just picked up the vibe that it’s not particularly fashionable or not for them.
“But when you challenge them, you realise they’ve got no knowledge of it at all, and that’s just lazy thinking.”
Radio 3 will be in residency at the Southbank Centre, London, from March 15 to 31.
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In the heart of Tuscany, a magnificent ruined abandoned house has been restored, as it lays lost in the middle of nowhere; introducing the Italian Umbrian Castello di Reschio- Belvedere. This Castello is a very private estate sitting on 2,700 acres on the borders of Umbria and Tuscany. Surrounded by far away villages, the castle is still completely isolated despite the massive parcel of land it sits on. All around this estate, you can see sumptuous green landscapes consisting of plains, never ending hills and valleys.
The reconstruction of the building using the ruins and what’s left from that old abandoned house dating back to the XIXᵉ century, was almost exclusively made with recycled materials (wood beams, old stones, inlayed marbles and Encaustic tiles, etc.) found in Tuscany. To stay loyal and true to the original building and to stick with the perfect harmony with the landscape and other houses nearby, Ancient surfaces team had to had to seamlessly blend in the old with the new without losing sight of the original architectural character of this farmhouse house.
Here is one of the enjoyable views that could be contemplated from the main terrace. As visitors wind down on our old stone benches, they can’t help but to feel in unison with nature and one with Tuscany.
From the backyard, you can fully admire the open space architecture of this house. In order to accommodate and entertain a large number of family and friends, our client wanted to have a connected guest/pool house that feel naturally part of the estate.
Decorated in typical Italian style, the guest house includes antique biblical limestone pavers, stone wall cladding and an old fireplace that sits on an original 17th century focal foundation wall that everyone can enjoy.
A large diameter pool fountain is an ideal architectural element that comfortably fills in the expansive outdoor living space. Traditional Italian pool fountains such as this hexagonal piece has been for centuries utilized to cozy up all types of alfresco verandas and pool patios. The sound of water create a whimsical orchestra that is music to the ears.
In the entrance, this grand limestone staircase leads to the first floor of the main house. Antique Kronos limestone wall pavers line up the entire stairway wall.
An old cattle barn was re-purposed into a cozy and meditative home office. Its ceiling is characterized by its beautiful running bond barreled limestone briquettes. As for the limestone flooring, they were restored piece by piece and assembled by hand from ruined Mediterranean villas that has for hundreds of years fell into abandonment.
Going up one floor using the stairs of the entrance, you land on an open space which separates the parent’s master bedroom from the two kids and guests room. Parents’ bedroom
First Guest room
Second Guest Bedroom
All exterior lighting has been placed and installed by a specialized lighting designer. The couple wanted a simple and relaxing landscape design that employed subtle and scattered spot lights which illuminated the exterior stone facades of the farmhouse. The side garden is lined up with a narrow limestone catwalk. Projectors have been positioned at the foot of trees and antique terracotta jars creating an impressive lighting orchestra.
Rarely can one feel more alive than when relaxing and laying down at the patio of an infinity Tuscan pool overseeing the never ending Italian horizon.
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Quote:
Uncle Fishbits Originally Posted by
Yeaaaaahhhh.... But,
Got my first ticket today.
Del Norte county, CA. CHP coming at me on other side of freeway clocked me at 105. He wrote 75 in 65, because he said he loves cars and going fast, and that is why he got the job. He loved the car, lectured me that it isn't about my car or my skills, but the skills of other drivers. I mean.... He must have torn off the freeway and approached 140 to catch up to me. Lol. I was opened up on an empty road with one semi half mile back.
I almost thought to duck off an exit, when I knew he was coming. Glad I didn't play that game. This is non point traffic school for me. In the noted he did write 100mph, but that isn't what the speed box says. 75mph!!! 🤣🤣🤣😃😄😅
Lucky. I will call it another life off the cat.
I knew he was coming and slowed down for him. He was so amped and adrenalin fuelled, he was happy. If I had been some jerk, he would have arrested me for wreckless driving. But he wasnt mad, seemed out of breath but happy. Amazing.
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By Stephen Lendman
The global BDS initiative is the single most effective campaign against longstanding Israeli ruthlessness. Hillary Clinton opposes it - supporting Israel’s worst crimes, against fundamental rights for Palestinians everyone deserves.
In July, she wrote a letter to major Democrat party contributor/ billionaire entertainment mogul Haim Saban expressing alarm about BDS, stressing the need to counter its activities, saying:
“(L)eaders and communities across America can work together” against it. “From Congress and state legislatures to boardrooms and classrooms, we need to engage all people of good faith (to explain) why the BDS campaign (seeks to) punish” Israel.
Fact: It seeks to hold Israel accountable for high crimes too grave to ignore.
“It’s not the path to peace,” Clinton continued.
Fact: It’s a vital peace initiative - unlike the longstanding sham process dead on arrival every time introduced because Israel wants endless conflict and instability - to advance its greater Middle East agenda at the expense of other regional countries.
Clinton expressed concern about “compar(ing) Israel to South African apartheid” - ludicrously adding the Jewish state “is a vibrant democracy…fac(ing) existential threats to its survival.”
Fact: Israel is a fascist police state. It threatens regional peace and stability. Its only enemies are ones it invents. It’s had no real ones in over 40 years.
As senator and Secretary of State, Clinton opposed “dozens of anti-Israeli resolutions at the UN, the Human Rights Council, and other organizations,” she said.
“Time and again, I have made it clear that America will always stand up for Israel - and that’s what I’ll always do as president.”
“The Jewish state is a modern day miracle - a vibrant bloom in the middle of the desert. We must nurture and protect it.”
Her emails show she’s been anti-BDS for years. The Scotsman discussed how she pressured “the Scottish and UK Governments to oppose a highly controversial boycott of the Edinburgh International Film Festival,” according to her newly released emails.
In 2009, noted film director Ken Loach called for boycotting the event if it showed Israeli Tali Shalom-Ezer’s film. Its embassy donated 300 UK pounds (over $450) for travel expenses so she could attend.
Festival organizers said they were returning the money - saying it was “a mistake” to accept it.
It came after Israel’s Cast Lead war of aggression on Gaza. The funds were returned. The Israeli Lobby pressured Clinton to intervene.
The Scotsman said “the row went right to the upper echelons of the American political system with Mrs Clinton suggesting pressure could be exerted on the Scottish Government and the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown to get the festival to reverse its decision.”
“The controversy was brought to the attention of Mrs Clinton by newspaper publisher Brian Greenspun, a college roommate of Bill Clinton, who forwarded a newspaper article on the boycott to the then US Secretary of State.”
“According to emails from her personal account released by the US Department of State, the article had originally been emailed to Mr Greenspun by Bruce Ramer, an entertainment lawyer and former president of the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group.”
“The emails were released amid controversy about Mrs Clinton’s use of private email accounts while she was Secretary of State.”
She responded saying “(t)hanks for the headsup on this. We are working to decide the most effective way forward, and I’ll keep you informed.”
“We have some good ideas as to what our govt can do, but we also want to see pressure from local people brought on the British and Scottish govts.”
“Can you and Bruce reach out to the community in London and Edinburgh to urge them to raise this w PM Brown and other govt officials? We’d like to see top down and bottom up pressure. Let me know what you think.”
Ken Loach denounced Israel’s involvement, saying “I’m sure many filmmakers will be as horrified as I am to learn that the Edinburgh International Film Festival is accepting money from Israel.”
“The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable. With regret, I must urge all who might consider visiting the festival to show their support for the Palestinian nation, and stay away.”
Clinton’s support for Israel is unwavering - entirely one-sided, ignoring Palestinian rights. She wants the global BDS movement undermined.
She claims she’ll be a better friend to Israel than Obama. She calls Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible capital,” wants Washington’s embassy located there - despite the longstanding UN international city designation. Palestinians have as much legal right to it as Israelis.
She supports lawless settlement expansions in less than so many words. She opposes Palestinian statehood and full UN membership. She wants these and other important issues negotiated with Israel fundamentally against all Palestinian rights.
She’s against all initiatives created to hold Israel accountable for decades of high crimes. Her rhetorical support for peace is belied by her backing endless conflicts. She defends Israel’s right to wage wars of aggression she calls defensive.
A Clinton presidency will be disastrous for Palestinian rights. Sadly, US one-sided support for Israel won’t change no matter who succeeds Obama in 2017.
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Rodgers is now the first Liverpool manager not to win a trophy inside his first three seasons since the 1950s and will face renewed scrutiny after this defeat. How he must wish he could turn the clock back to pre-season so he could spend the £75million received from Luis Suarez’s sale properly. For such a crucial game in the club’s season the pressure was on the likes of Lazar Markovic, Dejan Lovren and Mario Balotelli to perform but they struggled once again and the finger has to be pointed at Rodgers and his recruitment team. After last season’s achievements Rodgers deserves more time but he will face a renewed examination over his signings this summer.
Roy Keane once famously claimed Aston Villa were not merely sleeping, “but in a coma”. This was a first cup semi-final success since 2000 yet it was proof that Tim Sherwood has kicked the former European Cup winners into life and there should be huge optimism for the future. After the ultra-cautious days of earlier this season, Villa are now exciting and ambitious and possess a squad that has been under-performing for too long. Sherwood may polarise opinion but deserved this triumph and maybe his mission to fly the flag for English managers wasn’t just a nice soundbite after all. Villa now need to ensure they avoid relegation, find a new buyer in the summer and then look forward to a new era.
Jack Grealish is ready to become a Premier League star
Jack Grealish is starting to come of age
For the last three years Grealish has been the name on the lips of everyone at Villa, tipped as a teenager likely to make it big and attracting interest from Chelsea before he made his senior debut. This was only the 19-year-old’s fifth start for the club but he could not have produced a more mature, composed yet streetwise performance. He has the aura of arrogance that all naturally talented footballers possess and there was one piece of skill late in the first half – when he took a high ball down on his instep – that was pure class. Roy Hodgson was in attendance and will surely be campaigning for Grealish to choose England over Ireland.
Is Daniel Sturridge the new Harry Kewell?
Daniel Sturridge's absence was felt by Liverpool
Sturridge’s failure to recover from a hip strain was widely expected but will do little to ease the growing irritation within Anfield circles over his fitness. There is definite frustration at Liverpool that not even an FA Cup semi-final can get Sturridge to play through what amounts to a small injury. Harry Kewell also had a reputation for being one of the most talented at Liverpool in recent years but there were constant doubts over his fitness. However, even Kewell made the starting line-up for the 2005 Champions League Final, though he limped off early on. Sturridge’s absence was keenly felt by Liverpool and proved costly.
Christian Benteke is set to spark a summer transfer scramble
Christian Benteke will be in demand this summer
Benteke now has nine goals in his last seven games and is finally looking like the striker who was coveted across Europe two years ago. Liverpool have always struggled to contain the Belgium international and it became clear very early on that Martin Skrtel and Dejan Lovren were intimidated by the Villa forward. Sherwood has already spoken of potentially offering Benteke a new contract and days like this will undoubtedly strengthen the club’s hopes of keeping him. A clause of over £30million was inserted into Benteke’s contract when he agreed a new deal nearly two years ago but that looks like a bargain on current form.
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Several more court battles are expected in South Korea, after judges rejected equal marriage.
A lawsuit filed by a prominent gay film director and his partner seeking legal status for their same-sex marriage was rejected by a South Korean district court this month in the first case of its kind.
Same-sex couples have no legal recognition in South korea.
Movie director Kim Jho Gwang-Soo and his long-time partner Kim Seung-Hwan, held a wedding ceremony in Seoul in 2013 and submitted their marriage registration form to their local authority, only for it to be rejected.
The couple challenged the decision in a lawsuit – but in a ruling this week a district court rejected their legal bid.
However, the pair have filed an appeal against the ruling, while a number of other cases have been filed by at least two other same-sex couples.
Kim Seung-Hwan said: “I would like to ask all same-sex couples to come out of the closet and join us.
“The legalisation will happen faster if the concerned party gets bigger.”
Their lawyer Ryu Min-Hee said that in addition to the appeal, two more same-sex couples would file separate suits seekin.
They said: “We will continue to add litigants. The voice will get louder from all regions.
“The plaintiffs have waited a long time.”
“When in doubt, all laws should be interpreted in a constitutional way.
“We’re disappointed but we’re not done yet.”
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The FBI — which did not say in the affidavit that Herrera is a suspect — said only that the investigation is ongoing.
No other documents have been publicly filed in the case since the affidavit was unsealed, so it isn't known what investigators found at Herrera's home. But in asking for the warrant, the FBI revealed that potentially hundreds — theoretically almost 2,500 — iCloud accounts were targeted.It's important to note that the identification of Herrera — who has no apparent criminal record — doesn't mean he is necessarily a suspect. IP and email addresses can be masked or spoofed through a variety of technologies, and Internet data can be routed through third-party computers without their owners' knowledge using any of a number of software packages.
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According to the affidavit, the computer address was successfully used to accessed 572 unique iCloud accounts — each of them an average of about six times. In addition, it said, the computer address was used in almost 5,000 attempts to reset 1,987 other iCloud passwords.
The affidavit doesn't specify whether that number includes multiple attempts to hack the same accounts or whether almost 2,000 individual accounts were targeted. Nor does it say how many of those other attempts were successful.
"A number of them were accounts of celebrities who had photos leaked online," and most of the rest — that is, accounts of people whose photos weren't published — belonged "celebrities, models or their friends and families," according to the affidavit.
Read MoreRussian hackers breached White House computers
Only a handful of alleged victims are identified, and even then only by their initials. They are described as "a female celebrity who has appeared in several movies."
The affidavit tends to support Apple's insistence at the time that the underlying iCloud technology itself wasn't breached — instead, it indicates that users' account names, passwords and security questions were the means of entry, as Apple contended.
But Apple did add additional steps to keep hackers out of user accounts, and it launched a campaign to encourage users to take stricter security measures.
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Jesus Campos is the key witness in the deadly massacre, and one of Stephen Paddock’s victims
The security guard at the center of the Las Vegas shooting massacre will be called to testify on the timeline of events the night that Stephen Paddock shot at a crowd of concertgoers from his hotel room window, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more — including the guard — before taking his own life.
According to Las Vegas news station KSNV, an attorney for shooting victim Rachel Sheppard says that Jesus Campos, the key witness to the deadly massacre, will be served with a subpoena to testify about the shooting timeline and other key facts that have yet to be satisfactorily clarified by law enforcement a month after the massacre.
Campos was on the 32nd floor at the same time that Paddock began shooting from his hotel suite window. According to the most recent police timeline, Paddock shot into the hallway where Campos was, hitting him in the leg, just before he opened fire on the concertgoers.
Fox News reports that attorneys connected to multiple civil suits regarding the mass shooting will be allowed in to the Route 91 Harvest Festival grounds to inspect the area for possible relevant evidence on Tuesday, reportedly the first time that anyone not connected to law enforcement will be allowed into the area
Sheppard, 26, was critically injured in the massacre after suffering multiple gunshot wounds while in the audience of the country music show. The New Yorker published a detailed report on her injury and recovery, revealing that doctors at one point suspected she would not survive her injuries. She continues to suffer severe complications and will not be able to work for at least a year.
As the New Yorker reports, Sheppard’s attorneys have already won an injunction to preserve evidence from the massacre. The lawsuit specifically names MGM Resorts International, which owns and operates Mandalay Bay; the company that manufactures the bump stocks that Paddock used to semi-automate his weapons; and the estate of Stephen Paddock.
At attorney for Sheppard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[Feature image: Associated Press]
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This simple thing extends the length (and comfort) of your thumbsticks allowing for faster accuracy and much more precise aim in mainly fps games.
I had seen these kind of "thumbstick extenders." being praised on the internet but i was a bit cynical. Almost all the reviews where sponsored by the company making the product and i could not find any really negative ones. So i decided to try them out by designing my own.
The way these work is they make the leverage of the stick itself almost 50% longer making it very light to move the sticks. They also allow for a larger range of motion enabling to use much higher sensitivity (I used to have a sensitivity of 40% in bf4, now i'm using 95% and i'm still much more accurate)
There are two models, the PS4Cap which has the cross (in the pictures) for additional grip and a flat one. I highly recommend some kind of decal or pattern on the surface since PLA and ABS are both very slippery and don't give much grip naturally.
If you have an Xbox One, PS3 or Xbox 360 and these don't fit please send me the measurements and i will make new models for them!
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The U.S. Supreme Court seemed worried Monday about the idea of companies patenting genes that can be found inside the human body, as it heard arguments in a case that could profoundly reshape U.S. medical research and the fight against diseases like breast and ovarian cancer.
U.S. genetic researcher Chris Mason says the patents already awarded mean as soon as DNA is extracted it belongs to a company. (CBC)
The court's decision involves an American case but it could have major implications throughout the world for the future of medicine and medical research.
The answer could reshape U.S. medical research, the fight against diseases like breast and ovarian cancer and the multi-billion dollar medical and biotechnology business.
Researcher Christopher Mason with the Weill Cornell Medical College told CBC the patents already given for thousands of genes means you don't own your own genetic material.
"It means as soon as you extract DNA from your body or your doctor does, it's no longer your property, nor your doctor's. It's the property of a company," he said.
"The intellectual framework that comes out of the decision could have a significant impact on other patents — for antibiotics, vaccines, hormones, stem cells and diagnostics on infectious microbes that are found in nature," Robert Cook-Deegan, director for genome ethics, law & policy at Duke University, said in a statement.
"This could affect agricultural biotechnology, environmental biotechnology, green-tech, the use of organisms to produce alternative fuels and other applications," he said.
Patents granted for almost 30 years
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say patent protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body.
"Finding a new use for a product of nature, if you don't change the product of nature, is not patentable. If I find a new way of taking gold and making earrings out of it, that doesn't entitle me to a patent on gold. If I find a new way of using lead, it doesn't entitle me to a patent on lead," lawyer Christopher Hansen said.
Allowing companies like Myriad to patent human genes or parts of human genes will slow down or cripple lifesaving medical research like in the battle against breast cancer, he said.
But companies have billions of dollars of investment and years of research on the line, with Myriad arguing that without the ability to recoup their investment through the profits that patents bring, breakthrough scientific discoveries needed to combat all kind of medical maladies wouldn't happen.
That concerned several justices. "Why shouldn't we worry that Myriad or companies like it will just say, 'Well, you know, we're not going to do this work anymore?"' Justice Elena Kagan said.
Hansen said that a company could get recognition for its work and that money for research would always be available, a statement that Justice Anthony Kennedy said wasn't sufficient. "I don't think we can decide the case on, 'Don't worry about investment. It'll come,"' Kennedy said.
The Supreme Court has already said that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature cannot be given a patent, which gives an inventor the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application.
Myriad has used its patents to develop its BRACAnalysis test looks for mutations on the breast cancer predisposition gene, or BRCA. Those mutations are associated with much greater risks of breast and ovarian cancer.
Women with a faulty gene have a three to seven times greater risk of developing breast cancer and a higher risk of ovarian cancer. Men can also carry a BRCA mutation, raising their risk of prostate, pancreatic and other types of cancer. The mutations are most common in people of eastern European Jewish descent.
Myriad sells the only BRCA gene test.
Lower courts say genes can be patented
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups challenged Myriad's patents, arguing that genes couldn't be patented, and in March 2010 a New York district court agreed. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has now twice ruled that genes can be patented. In Myriad's case, it's because the isolated DNA has a "markedly different chemical structure" from DNA within the body.
But the ACLU is arguing that isolating the DNA molecules doesn't stop them from being DNA molecules, which they say aren't patentable.
Justices attempted to break the argument down to an everyday level by discussing things like chocolate chip cookies, baseball bats and Amazonian jungle plants in attempts to understand the complicated issues. For example, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said if a new way was found to extract the ingredients of a cookie, a company still wouldn't be able to patent flour, eggs or salt.
"I can't imagine getting a patent simply on the basic items of salt, flour and eggs, simply because I've created a new use or a new product from those ingredients," she said.
Myriad lawyer Gregory A. Castanias argued that justices could think about their invention like a baseball bat. "A baseball bat doesn't exist until it's isolated from a tree. But that's still the product of human invention to decide where to begin the bat and where to end the bat," he said.
But that didn't work for Chief Justice John Roberts.
"The baseball bat is quite different. You don't look at a tree and say, well, I've cut the branch here and cut it here and all of a sudden I've got a baseball bat. You have to invent it, if you will," Roberts said. "You don't have to invent the particular segment of the strand. You just have to cut it off."
The court will rule before the end of the summer.
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DALLAS – Longtime noted numismatist Robert Korver has announced the launch of his new website, NumiStorica.com, a site devoted to the amazing tales, interesting connections and fascinating characters that make numismatics such compelling hobby. Using his keen sense of synchronicity, parallels and correlation, Korver brings to life his diverse subjects with a lively spirit.
“NumiStorica.com was created to provide free entertainment and education for coin clubs and advanced numismatists,” said Bob Korver. “After 50 years in the hobby and business – and after working at places like the Smithsonian and Colonial Williamsburg – I had a few stories worth sharing. My friends would also be quick to add that, perhaps, an opinion or two, as well.”
The site was awarded the Numismatic Literary Guild’s Best Non-Commercial Website award at the Summer ANA Convention in Chicago in August of this year.
“The slide shows were created in Apple Keynote as 'slide' presentation,” said Korver. “On the NumiStorica.com site they’re posted as PDF files due to size issues. Coin clubs who wish to use them as entertainment can use the PDFs, or they can email me and be linked to the Keynote version on iCloud.com. I’m also happy to call in to their meetings for questions and discussions.”
The slide presentations are presented for a broader audience, while the articles will appeal to more serious numismatists who enjoy the back story as much as the object.”
The site currently has three slide shows and a half dozen articles posted. Many more will be posted during the coming months:
“ALL WE LIKE SHEEP” is a 35-minute multimedia article (slide show with some music) examining a key numismatic topic: how much does art really reflect the times? The subtitle (“Is the Numismatic Iconography of Sheep on American Obsolete Currency Serving God or Mammon?” makes it sound less fun than it is, but the he music spans Gregorian chant to Johnny Cash. “I guarantee you will be surprised at my conclusions,” Korver said.”
“GAZAWAY BUGG LAMAR, “A True Southern”" is a 25-minute presentation resulting from the intersection of family history and a numismatic investigation centering on the Civil War. Korver provides the spoiler: what fun to discover connections — granted distant — to Gazaway Bugg Lamar, James Taylor Soutter and General John Adams Dix. Numismatic research can unfold in a surprising fashion. “Research that I now wish I had done 30 years ago,” added Korver.
"A NIAGARA BRIDGE? Researching a Common Bridge Separating Two Peoples" is a 25-minute Keynote (Apple) slide show of how Korver does his research. The topic started simply enough: Was a bridge vignette on an Obsolete banknote generic, or unique? Confusion over more than 12 bridges yielded an astonishing conclusion (soon to be tested). If you have ever made numismatic assumptions and had them go bad, you should enjoy watching.
The written articles run the gamut from light-hearted looks at numismatic themes used on television and in the movies, to more serious economic and legal topics. “Briscoe v. The Commonwealth Bank of Kentucky“ examines the banking chaos of early 19th Century America, and how Jackson’s Supreme Court Justices declined to destroy what was left of America’s banking system after Jackson’s bank war, while “’Tis Death To Counterfeit” is an old article investigating the legal ramifications of counterfeiting in Colonial Virginia, soon to be superseded by a major work on Colonial Virginia currency. Another upcoming articles will investigate Shakespearean Metaphors.
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States does not expect Syrian rebels it plans to train to fight Islamic State militants to also take on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but sees them as a crucial part of a political solution to end the war, the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted a senior U.S. official as saying.
Rebel fighters carry their weapons as they move towards their positions at the frontline against forces of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in the Handarat area, north of Aleppo October 20, 2014. REUTERS/Hosam Katan
The United States, which is leading an international coalition bombing Islamic State in Syria, has said it wants to train and equip “moderate” rebels to fight the militant group which has seized tracts of land in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Asked whether those rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) units would ultimately go on to fight Syrian government forces, John Allen, the U.S. representative to the coalition, told the Asharq al-Awsat daily:
“No. What we would like to see is for the FSA and the forces that we will ultimately generate, train and equip to become the credible force that the Assad government ultimately has to acknowledge and recognize.”
“There is not going to be a military solution here,” he added, in comments published at the weekend on the newspaper’s English language website.
The Free Syrian Army is a term used to describe dozens of armed groups fighting to overthrow Assad but with little or no central command. They have been widely outgunned by Islamist insurgents such as Islamic State.
Rebel fighters have voiced frustration with the U.S.-led approach to fighting Islamic State. They say Washington and its Arab allies are too focused on quashing the militant group at the expense of confronting Syrian government forces, which many rebels still see as the ultimate enemy.
The Syrian air force has ramped up its own bombing campaign on insurgent-held areas since the U.S-led air strikes began last month, increasing rebel fears that the government is profiting from the distraction of the coalition campaign.
POLITICAL OUTCOME
Allen said there was a need to build up the credibility of the moderate Syrian opposition at a political level, adding that it was normal for rebel forces to clash with the Syrian military as they seek to defend their territory and families.
“But the intent is not to create a field force to liberate Damascus — that is not the intent,” Allen, a retired U.S. general, told the newspaper.
“The intent is that in the political outcome, they must be a prominent - perhaps the preeminent voice - at the table to ultimately contribute to the political outcome that we seek,” he said at the start of a Middle East tour.
U.S. President Barack Obama said last month he wanted to train and equip Free Syrian Army rebels to “strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to the extremists” and to prevent U.S. troops from being dragged into another ground war.
“The outcome that we seek in Syria is akin to the (anti-Islamic State) strategy that fits into a much larger regional strategy and that outcome is a political outcome that does not include Assad,” Allen said.
The United Nations says more than 191,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising against Assad’s rule in 2011. Rights groups say the actual figure is higher.
(This story was refiled to clarify source in lead)
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Arizona’s capital city Phoenix is known for being 'hot as hell' with temperatures reaching 122 degrees F (50 C), but some residents are hot under the collar because a Satanic Temple will deliver an invocation at a city council meeting next month.
The decision came under fire after the city said it cannot “dictate religious viewpoints".
Michelle Shortt and Stu de Haan, from the Tucson branch of the Satanic Temple, will give the invocation.
Speaking to Fox News, Shortt said people misunderstood the Temple and that they don’t believe in Satan, instead seeing him as a metaphor for rational inquiry.
Shortt said their application to deliver the invocation is not about their beliefs, but about “religious liberty and democratic plurality.”
Four council members reacted angrily to the decision, saying it was not about diversity but “stupidity.”
They have submitted an emergency clause requesting the council discuss changes to the invocation process, including having a rotating schedule of council members pick a group to deliver it.
Politically correct PHX politicians pushing SATANIC PRAYER about to get pushed back. I move to block Satanic prayer https://t.co/P7XjfOzjxI — Sal DiCiccio (@Sal_DiCiccio) January 30, 2016
Speaking to the Arizona Republic newspaper, councillor Jim Waring said he is against the decision and believes “some of the intent is to make a mockery of the invocation", a claim Shortt denies, saying the invocation will be respectful and that people should not expect costumes.
De Haan, who works as an attorney in Tucson, criticized council members objecting to them, saying: “None of them ever asked us what we were going to say. They just made some blanket assumptions. The city council of Phoenix doesn’t get to pick and choose religions and what they think is appropriate, that’s unconstitutional.”
.@Sal_DiCiccio@CityofPhoenixAZ This is what Religious Liberty looks like when you open the forum, Councilman. Little Civics Lesson. — The Satanic Temple (@satanicpsalms) January 29, 2016
In December, Detroit's Satanic Temple chapter held a ceremony at the Michigan Capitol in what they described as the "nation's first state-sanctioned Satanic Ceremony in history."
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We’ll take a trip out to Animal Kingdom to see how construction on its many projects is progressing, in addition to checking to see if there are any menu updates of note.
The rope drop procedure that started back in July continues here at Animal Kingdom. That means guests will ordinarily be let through the Mickey readers at 8:30am with ropes set up in front of the Tree of Life to hold them until closer to 8:50am. At that time, guests are walked toward Africa, Asia, and DinoLand. Combined with a shakeup of the theme parks’ top brass, similar rope drop procedures have taken hold at Epcot and Hollywood Studios. At Epcot, guests are let into the Park from the main entrance and International Gateway at 8:30am. Here, you’re held at the Fountain of Nations until 8:50am and then walked toward Test Track or Soarin’. At Studios, the Mickey readers again open at 8:30am. Here, there are three different sets of ropes – one at the turn onto Sunset Boulevard for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster or Tower of Terror; one at Min & Bill’s next to Echo Lake for Toy Story Mania or Great Movie Ride; and one near 50’s Prime Time Cafe for Jedi Training Academy and Star Tours.
This might help visualize the locations, where the thicker red lines are the ropes:
Be on the lookout for that. The change shouldn’t affect morning touring much, though it can be uncomfortable waiting in such a large mass of people that are trying to jostle their way in front of you.
Avatar construction continues on the old Camp Minnie-Mickey plot. It’s gotten so tall that the tops of the floating mountains are visible from around the Park:
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Disney confirmed the name of the new land, Pandora – The World of AVATAR, in addition to describing the attractions that will arrive alongside at D23 here and here. I’m not sure how useful it is to continue the debate about whether or not Avatar “belongs” at Animal Kingdom, but here we are anyway. I think the answer is that it probably doesn’t, but when you’ve got James Cameron putting up hundreds of millions of dollars to build a major expansion to your theme park, you sort of do what the man wants. I fully expect to be blown away by the new land and its attractions, even if I don’t necessarily connect with the Na’vi. And with Cameron expected to helm multiple Avatar sequels, it’s likely that he and Disney know something that we don’t.
The thing about Avatar that never made much sense to me is the merchandising aspect. As of 2011, Cars had done over ten billion dollars in retail merchandise sales. Hence, Cars Land at California Adventure. Since then they’ve probably added a couple more billion, in addition to the Planes merch. Avatar merchandise sales are in the low hundreds of millions. But you never know, Avatar 2 may well bring some cutesie characters, princess dresses, and a singalong. We can hope not at least.
Anyway, we’ll be able to argue back and forth about that for the next 2+ years.
Work continues on expanding Disney Outfitters.
You may remember they lost the Creature Comforts store to Starbucks and Beastly Bazaar to the Adventurers Outpost Mickey and Minnie Meet and Greet.
Wider: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/discoveryislandstupidwide.jpg
There’s a smaller addition to the Outfitters on the DinoLand/Flame Tree Barbecue side.
Island Mercantile is partially out from behind walls. It joins the darker, more subdued color palette that is New Discovery Island.
Walls remain around the corner.
Another example of the new color scheme. Here’s the old, brighter version of the Discovery Island Kiosk, which was closed for a few days for repainting.
It looks like this now.
Flame Tree used to look like this with bright blues, oranges, and reds.
After. It’s a pretty major aesthetic change. I think I prefer the more vibrant color scheme.
Beastly Kiosk across from Adventurers Outpost is currently closed for the same treatment. It should reopen on the 23rd.
Pizzafari is closed through October 19th for repainting and the possibility that a portion of it will be repurposed into a separate restaurant.
That basically means there’s a wall from Island Mercantile past Pizzafari, in turn narrowing the pathway to Africa from Discovery Island.
Speaking of the Discovery Island Kiosk, which used to be called Gardens Kiosk and colloquially, “The Allergy Kiosk,” serves the same menu as before it closed for its face lift:
This is located across from the Creature Comforts Starbucks and just before you arrive in Africa. In addition to providing a variety of snacks, the kiosk is also equipped to offer advice for diners with allergies. They should have ingredient books and be able to make recommendations. It’s worth a visit if you’re concerned about being accommodated.
They also added Magners Pear Cider, in addition to Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, Redbridge, and Omission Pale Lager.
Orlando enjoyed a few days of very humid, very grey weather as the remnants of Erika passed through. Things have brightened a bit in the last few days, but September remains very hot and very humid. It’s my least favorite of the summer months, but that could be the fact that this is month five of it. There’s no worse place to be hungover than Magic Kingdom in July. Trust me. I’ve been hungover all over the world.
Dawa Bar remains a disappointment. There was once a time when drinks were made fresh and the beer menu included a half dozen African choices. Now they’ve gone Full La Cava, pre-mixing drinks in large batches. You can see the dispensers in the back there. At least it’s not jugs.
While it’s not at all obvious, you can save $6 by ordering the drinks without the plastic souvenir cup.
The SweetWater IPA and Victory Golden Monkey Tripel Ale are very good, but paying the 6-pack price for a bottle is pretty rough.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, Disney updates every quick service menu on property towards the end of August each year, which is why we’re going through this stuff. Table Service menus should be updated over the first week of October. Buffet prices go up that same week as well. Pricing is already available and most meals look to be up about $3/adult and $1/child, or 7-10%. Lunches are going up in price the most, probably because Disney realizes they can fill their restaurants in the afternoon without having to offer a lower priced affair. With tax, Tusker House lunch is currently $37.27/adult and $21.29/child. It’ll go up to $40.46/adult and $24.49/child as of October 4th. I think Akershus over at Epcot is seeing the biggest increase. Dinner is currently $51.11/adult and $29.81/child. It will be $57.50/adult and $34.07/child come October. Dinner for a family of two adults, an 11-year old, and a 7-year old would run you over $240 with 18% tip.
The addition of the Lion King theater in New Harambe and Harambe Market have arguably transformed the Africa section into Walt Disney World’s most cohesive, immersive land. A few details:
The area past the bathrooms is currently walled off, but will likely connect Africa with Pandora when it opens.
A crane stands tall above the trees.
Lion King has otherwise added an external queue that winds around outside.
Tamu Tamu Refreshments across from Tusker House is still serving its dessert menu. Kusafiri Coffee’s menu is the same:
The Elephant Ear Pastry and Cookie are up about 40 cents each. The Crispy Treat is a dime more expensive.
I feel the same way taking the pictures.
Most of these pictures are from Labor Day, Monday September 7th. Kilimanjaro Safaris sits at a reasonable 30 minutes.
You may remember that FP+ lines here had gotten so long that Disney reconfigured the FP+ queue to go underneath the hut that used to house the old FASTPASS machines.
Zuris’s Sweets is outside Harambe Market and attached to Mombasa Marketplace. They sell Flame Tree’s spice rubs and barbecue sauces, among other things. It’s also home to a Main-Street-Confectionery-style case:
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It’s worth checking out for a unique treat.
Harambe Market opened back in May. I have an initial look around the area along with a review of the Grilled Beef Kabob Sandwich here and then reviews of the Sausage and Ribs at the end of this post here.
The drink window added a new Leopard’s Eye drink and cut the wine list from six to four:
$17.25 is pretty rough on those drinks, even when they come with a souvenir tumbler. People complain about Trader Sam’s prices over at the Polynesian, but at least those are actual glasses that you might use or display at home. Originally, three of the wines on the menu came in at $6.75 or more. Those have been eliminated in favor of less expensive offerings. I’ve seen exactly one person order wine in my four visits (Lisa), but the pour looked pretty decent.
The aptly titled “Grill” added a Grilled Vegetable Stack. You may remember that the menu debuted without a vegetarian entree. Interestingly, the “All-Beef Gyro Flatbread” was originally called the “Ground Beef Kabob Flatbread.” On my original review, I commented:
“The Beef Kabob Flatbread comes in two pieces, each with two slices of mildly spiced beef with tomato, cucumber, and diced tomatoes with a yogurt-y sauce inside of the soft pita-like flatbread that isn’t altogether unlike a gyro.”
Told you.
Pricing and offerings are the same at Mwanga’s Ribs.
As I’ve mentioned in each of my previous reviews, Harambe Market has a few major weaknesses. The first is that it’s all outside – the lines to order food are mostly uncovered save for a few umbrellas and short awnings. The seating area is also outdoors and modestly sized. They’re also horrendously slow at preparing and serving food, even given relatively short lines. I got in line at 1:48pm and didn’t have my food until after 2:10pm. 20+ minutes standing outside in the heat is a little frustrating, particularly when we’re talking about an off-peak meal in what’s left of the off-season. My advice is to get here as close to the 11am opening as possible or as late in the afternoon as possible. Harambe Market operates through official Park close.
This time around I went with the $8.49 Grilled Vegetable Stack with Herb Pesto and Chickpea Salad.
Topped with greens.
Most of the pesto seemed to be spread on top of the tofu that tops the stack. I was impressed by how much of a “real grilled flavor” it had, not unlike what you’d taste from a nicely seasoned steak. The pesto added some garlic and basil to the flavor profile. The tofu gives way to a few slices of chewy yellow and green zucchini with a big slice of mushroom underneath.
The mushroom was too gummy for my sensibilities and I didn’t care for the texture, but I am also not a vegetarian and this may well be the ideal way to prepare it.
I thought the chickpea salad was going to be different than what’s served next door with the ribs at Chef Mwanga’s, but it ended up being a larger portion of the exact same thing. The flavors are fresh and cool and complement the hot grilled vegetables nicely.
Overall, I think the Grilled Vegetable Stack is a nice addition, though I would have preferred them to be served inside of the same flatbread as the Gyro Sandwich.
For about five seconds, the Bradley Falls kiosk along the pathway that connects Africa and Asia was serving a Teriyaki Beef Slider with Pickled Cucumber for $4.99 or a snack credit on the Disney Dining Plan. That’s in line with what Disney has done with other kiosks around Discovery Island, each serving a Food-and-Wine-Festival-style snack for four or five dollars. But this place is almost always closed.
Mr Kamal’s is the kiosk located across the way. Above is the new menu. Below is the previous menu:
The Falafel is now served in a snack size portion for about half the cost of the sandwich. And in a surprise twist, the hummus now costs $1 less (but omits the ‘fresh’ designation).
Drinkwallah is located across from Yak & Yeti. I’m guessing nobody reading this has ever been inside.
They’ve added a Frozen Coca Cola with a shot of Captain Morgan’s rum to the menu. The Fruit and Cheese is also a new addition for a snack credit and the Asian Noodle Salad moves over here for a snack credit.
This is an old shot of the Asian Noodle Salad. Feel free to forward a picture if you order the current version.
Yak & Yeti Local Foods Cafe rearranged the order of its entrees, which is about as exciting as this round of menu updates has been. Honey Chicken has been listed as entree #1 for years as that’s their “signature” dish, but now it lists items by cost. The Pineapple Coconut Cake for dessert is new and sounds intriguing, replacing the kind-of-disgusting Banana Pudding.
Kali River Rapids continues to see the longest peak and average waits as high temperatures are still into the 90s. That should continue until around mid-November, when highs drop to the low 80s.
As I mentioned in the Magic Kingdom post, waits over the first few days in September have been the lowest of the year. Here on September 1st, Kilimanjaro Safaris’ waits never rise above the default ten minutes. Everest averages just 12, including a zero minute posted wait in the last hour. I don’t remember seeing that this year. Part of the reason why waits were so low is probably due to the Hurricane Erika hype. And while Orlando wasn’t on the receiving end of Twister, the system did bring some of the worst humidity I’ve ever experienced here as well as grey skies and some rain.
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My visit on Labor Day saw considerably higher wait times, though this is still considerably better than the summer.
Anandapur Tea Company is the Joffrey’s kiosk located across from Yak & Yeti. I’m guessing 96.2% of people don’t realize it’s there. These are the current signature beverages.
These kiosks don’t really participate in the Disney Dining Plan with just one drink included. Their updated tea list:
Remember you can order any drink in any size at Starbucks for a snack credit.
Walls still line the walkway from Asia all around past DinoLand.
Construction continues on what’s expected to be a food and beverage location near Expedition Everest and what will eventually be the main seating area for Rivers of Light.
A fairly modest wait at Everest. Disney ended up extending the operating hours this past Saturday and Sunday and I have a feeling that crowds were heavier than they anticipated, though I won’t be able to tell you that for a fact until next week.
One more look at construction.
Until that project is complete, you’ve got this snack stand:
The Yeti Stout is a terrific beer, particularly at 9.5% ABV. That’s over twice a Bud Light and a very good choice if your significant other keeps tabs on how many beers you’ve drank. “But hunnyjlsadhsjk I’ve oly had fthree stoutpts.”
Last call for FastPass+ users at Finding Nemo at 2:50pm for the 3pm show. Most people will want to use FP+ elsewhere.
The wall that used to block access to the path down to the right is gone.
Dino Diner is still home of the Nachos Supreme:
It looks like this.
Primeval Whirl is closed with an expected reopening date of November 13th.
Scaffolding is up all around the ride.
Walls line the “attraction” all the way around.
A couple of Restaurantosaurus’s entrees are up 30 cents, but that’s as exciting as it gets.
The Cheesecake Topped with Strawberries is new for dessert and the “Cretaceous Cooler” replaces the Wildberry Mango Rum Lemonade.
Nothing new at Dino-Bite Snacks, but a reminder that they do offer two recent additions on draft. The Sunfish is better.
Trilo-Bite Snacks continues to serve the very good Buffalo Chicken Waffle Slider for a snack credit.
This is what it looks like.
Flame Tree Barbecue finally reopened after a refurbishment that went a couple months longer than expected back at the end of June.
The Turkey Leg is up 50 cents, but that’s it.
You may remember that I didn’t care much for the Jamaican Jerk Chicken Salad. I’m not sure if anybody has had a better experience.
Gardens Kiosk is located to the left of Flame Tree Barbecue’s seating area and to the right of Adventurers Outpost.
It added edamame for a snack credit. I have reviews of both salads and a variety of the other new snack items in this post in case you missed it (and you better not have).
In short, I liked the Farmers Salad but didn’t care much for the Trek Power Salad.
The Adventurers Outpost Mickey and Minnie Meet and Greet was posted at 15 minutes at 3:10pm with “literally” nobody in the standby line.
Larger: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/riversoflight.jpg
Here’s nearly a full resolution shot of Rivers of Light construction across the water.
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Seating doesn’t look to be particularly plentiful or particularly comfortable.
We’ll see what it ends up looking like.
Wider: https://www.easywdw.com/reports13/riverswidepano.jpg
I got a kick out of this shirt, which is Disney-branded.
And matching hat.
I don’t remember seeing these shirts before, but they’ve probably been around forever.
That’s what’s going on around Animal Kingdom. Things aren’t exciting quite yet, but they’re going to be.
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Tips and ideas Copyright 2012-18 © Troels Gravesen
Answers to some of the most common questions I have
For crossover boards, silicone glue may work great, but this is even better and settles faster. Superfix from Casco or Bostic. Except for Scandinavia, I have no idea about the availability of this compound in other countries. It's expensive, around 20-25 US $ for 300 mls, but worth it. It's a non-toxic, doesn't smell, tough to get off your fingers, doesn't take any solvents, flexible and easy to cut when hardened (remove crossover components for tweaking).
If you cannot find Superfix, use any kind of silicone glue, no problem at all.
Foil coils can be heavy! Use a dowel and a gluing ring of Superfix or silicone glue.
You can also use brass screws to the wooden center plug.
From Erik, Netherlands:
Casco and Bostik are hard to get here (Netherlands), but now I know what to use. Similar construction glues are here available from Bison or Pattex and they are available in every building market. Best regards, Erik
From MB, Spain:
I've asked about "MS technology" to a friend that works in a chemical company and these kinds of glue are very often used in Car Repairing due its properties. He told me that another brand that have this technology is "Teroson", and some of the glues are: teroson ms 9120 sf wh cr310ml, teroson ms939 wh fc570ml and teroson ms 9220 bk cr 310ml epig.
Click image to view large (and upright)
http://www.ceys.cz/mstech/mstech2.htm
Finally, I’ve done more research about the “Ceys” glue and is a Spanish product. It’s made in Bigues i Riells (Barcelona). Ceys is a company that is part of “AC Marca Group”. It’s website is: http://www.grupoacmarca.com/en I’ve talked with them (so kind!) and have explained me that they have subsidiaries in America (Mexico and Chile) and Europe (Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary), so maybe it’s easy to find this glue in those countries.
The Tereson glue is Henkel product:
From Cole/US, I had these recommendations:
Glue for crossover boards and felt sheets:
We would use A Hot Glue Gun in the U.S. Or the German Henkel Teroson product MS 930 available from the US Mercedes-Benz dealership in a tube for ~$18.00 USD. Part number: 005-989-61-71
Wood Glue for Cabinets
Titebond PVA Glue - Titebond II, http://www.titebond.com/Libraries/LiteraturePDFs/FF683_GlueGuideTB.sflb.ashx
Available on Amazon and Zoro.com for a good price. The Titebond III has a higher strength and longer setup time which is an advantage and the price is almost the same as Titebond II. Also, it is waterproof.
Glue for Bitumen Pads
This is the best choice from the company DAP Weldwood, https://www.amazon.com/00141-Multi-Purpose-Floor-Adhesive-1-Quart/dp/B0006MXRXO
Available on Amazon and Zoro.com for a good price.
Glue for cabinets
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I use nothing but standard PVA glue for cabinets. No nails or screws. I guess this is more or less the same all over the world. "Wood Glue" is usually PVA based adhesive.
You can use screws, but take care with particularly MDF. Pre-drilling is necessary not to split the MDF.
Setting up speakers
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It goes without saying that setting up speakers correctly is pivotal for getting the best from your kit. There are loads of sites on the web to help you out, and here's one: http://www.cardas.com/room_setup_main.php
Remember the room is half the system! It doesn't help buying the most expensive gear if your room is less than reasonably well acoustically. A pair of speakers can sound wonderful in one place and dreadful in another.
This one fits my room the best. The numbers mean of if you have the speakers 1 meter from the front wall (the wall behind the speakers) you have an optimal distance of 1.62 meters to the end walls of the room. If you have the speakers 0.8 meter from the front wall, then 0.8 x 1.62 = 1.3 meters to the end wall.
If you have the speakers on the end wall, the distances are the same, only visa versa, 1 meter to side walls and 1.6 meters to front wall. I'm sure not everyone can fulfill these guidelines.
Now, the above only goes for two dimensions, but the height of the speaker is another key player.
Download excel file here to find your placement from cells B25-26-27.
MDF AND BALTIC BIRCH
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Abo ve my three preferred materials for cabinet construction, MDF standard, MDF black and Baltic birch. I rarely use anything but 15-16 and 19-20.5 mm thickness.
The Baltic birch I use is usually 20.5 mm but it can vary a little. Sometimes I use 15 mm for bracing. Baltic birch may consist of 15 layers for a 20 mm sheet and the density is some 700 kg/m^3. It comes i various qualities, e.g. B/BB, which is what I use:
MDF is excellent due to homogeneity and in particular the black MDF, which I often use for front panels. Black MDF is really HDF, high-density fiberboard, weighing some 0.84 g/cm^3 compared to 0.64 g/cm^3 for the common brown MDF, although it depends on MDF thickness. Thick MDF sheets often have a rather soft center as producers may cut production cost by reducing glue content. This black MDF has an almost ceramic feel to it and comes at approx. twice the cost of standard MDF.
For most cabinets I use Baltic birch as it gives me the final finish at once without going through the trouble of veneering. See lacquer treatment below.
MAKING A DRIVER HOLE BIGGER
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Driver basket comes with tolerances and I always advise not to route for drivers before you have them at hand and can measure the diameter exactly. My new baby, the JA8008-HMQ, came in a basket 0.3 mm wider than the old one. This is within tolerances, but my QUATTRO cabs had a very tight match to the driver and I could not squeeze the new driver into the rebate and had to increase radius by 0.2 mm.
I have a whole box of inserts like seen above and I use them whenever a new driver just doesn't fit in. In most cases I have to countersink the screws not having the router bit destroyed by the screw heads.
TERMINAL BLOCKS/CONNECTORS
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To make good connection between cabinets(e.g Jenzen speakers) we need connectors that can be tightened hard and represent little metal mass at the same time. I'll claim these connectors are better and cheaper than anything else you can find and much better than any banana plug in some dubious socket.
They can be used for connecting speaker cabinets and if we want e.g. tweeter attenuation easily assessable. I have only found one supplier of these terminal blocks and he's in Taiwan, but easily assessable via eBay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5pc-PCB-Terminal-Block-GGB-40-08-A04P-4P-20A-300V-pitch-10mm-Wire-Soldering-/141207380595?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20e09da273
The placement on eBay may change from time to time, if so, start here:
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/wondercobuy79?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 - and use search function for "terminal block" and scroll down.
You need 7 mm forks to go with these. DO NOT crimp wires! Remove insulation and solder.
BTW: These connectors are used by Vandersteen due to low metal mass - and cost obviously.
Turns out Parts Express have them too: http://www.parts-express.com/nte-25-b100-04-4-pole-solder-lug-type-barrier-terminal-strip--090-856 item 090-856.
Available with two connectors too.
Use Teflon insulated wire and heat thoroughly!
SOLDERING
I have the question on soldering from time to time and here's what I use. The Weller WSD81/WSP80 is expensive and much less than this can be used for making perfect soldering. The soldering iron, WSP80, is 24V/80 watt and I mostly use a B tip for crossovers.
The solder I use is 0.7 mm 60/40 (Sn/Pb). This is not RoHS compliant, but works much better than 99.7/0.3 (Sn/Cu), which is a terrible. I never use silver solder.
Take care when soldering tweeter terminals. They are usually fragile. Add solder to the wire and next to the terminal, but only for a second or so. Hold the wire to the terminal and heat as little and short as possible to make the two merge.
Gluing bitumen pads and felt
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click images to view large
Although bitumen pads may be self-adhesive, they need to be glued to the panels. Years ago I relied on the sticky sheets, only to find they would start peeling off a year or two later.
Thus, I recommend using the kind of glue we use for e.g. floor vinyl tiles/sheets. This is some sticky, gooey stuff and use disposable gloves when using it. Add a thick layer to the bitumen pad placed on internal panels. Make sure it's got contact on the entire surface. This "floor tac" to some degree stays elastic, which adds to the damping properties of the bitumen pad.
I have also started using this glue for adding felt to internal panels. See below.
- also used for damping Lenco decks.
- and for gluing felt damping.
Bitumen pads usually come with a very thin foil. Peel it off of you have to attach felt sheets afterwards.
Screws for mounting drivers
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Click images to view large.
All screws from PartsExpress, US. Left: 081-425, #8x1. Middle: 081-422, #8x3/4. Right: 081-435, 6x3/4
All screws also available from Jantzen Audio.
First of all: Threaded inserts and T-nuts: I hate them! They do nothing good a standard wood screw cannot do.
Threaded inserts are a pain to mount correctly and most often there is not enough space to mount them properly due to chamfering of driver hole.
T-Nuts: Even worse! I had numerous diy-speakers in for crossover work and the first thing that happens when you have to un-mount a T-nut mounted driver is that one of the T-nuts gets loose and starts rotating with too little of the screw exposed for cutting. And mostly you cannot get to the inside of the cabinet to get hold of the loose T-nut.
Next: 6-8 good wood screws will fasten any driver more than needed. If I know I have to remove the driver several times I start drilling a 2.5 mm hole (in MDF) and fill the hole with synthetic lacquer. Leave it overnight and you'll have a plasticised hole even stronger. For solid wood this is not needed. In all cases with the above shown screws, drill a 2.5 mm hole before mounting the driver.
I've searched Europe for similar screws but can't find any. These are black "hardened" screws, acid treated or something. Don't buy painted screws as the paint will start peeling off.
I use the #8 x 1 for bass drivers (even up to 15 inch), #8 x 3/4 for middrivers and #6 x 3/4 for tweeters. #8 x 1 means 8 mm diameter head and 1 inch long. You US guys have some trouble with metrics it seems! Millimeter for diameter and inches for length. Like the Britts using Celcius when it's really cold and Fahrenheit when it's really hot.
Do not think a speaker driver is a something meant to go into orbit. Fasten screws properly but don't overdo. I sold a 12" JBL driver to a guy complaining the voice coil was scraping. It turned out he'd fastened the driver so tight with T-nuts that he had bent the driver gasket!
At some diy forum I read a posting from a guy claiming significantly improved sound from replacing his iron screws with brass screws. I suggest some proper therapy too!
REMOVING STUCK DRIVERS
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Sometimes it can be a real pain removing a driver from its cabinet, maybe due to lacquer or tight routing and the simple solution is making treads in one the mounting holes in the basket. For 8" drivers usually 6 mm threads work. For 4-5" drivers maybe 5 mm. Measure hole diameter and use the the nearest size. Insert a screw and lift the driver with a plier resting on a piece of wood. Simple as that.
My Router guide
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Click images to view large
Router: Dewalt DW621
The guide can be bought from Jantzen Audio and also on on eBay (Germany): http://stores.ebay.de/weyher-holztechnik
As can be seen from the pics, the guide was modified as the pin (4 mm screw) is too large and un-handy for precision routing. I shortened the alu bar and inserted a 2 mm hard steel pin (concrete nail). The large handle on top was also omitted as this prevents routing very small holes.
For chamfering driver holes I use this. Read page on the importance of chamfering driver holes.
The router bits I use the most, 6, 10 and 20 mm.
Routing for driver rebate
I've had this question also: How to measure the cutting radius on the router guide.
I hope the images are self-explanatory.
I always start making the rebate a little too small, then increase diameter by 0.1-0.2 mm at a time.
AND - I ALWAYS DO A TEST ROUTING BEFORE DOING THE FINAL BAFFLE.
TABS AND SLOTS FOR BRACES
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Had the question on how to make tabs and slots for the braces.
Hope images are self explanatory.
Faceting panels and fillets
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I hope the images above and below are self-explanatory in how panels and fillets can be faceted. Obviously the same thing can be done with a planer and sandpaper but I admit you'll be less exhausted using a table saw. Faceting a whole front panel takes the rig seen on photos. I made this from some MDF leftovers. Faceting a fillet (final image) is easier as you don't need more than the standard table saw rip fence. Make sure you count ten fingers when you're done as you can't use the blade cover guard. Always make test cuts before doing your final panels to make sure all adjustments are done.
For small panels I sometimes use a rig attached to the sliding table.
Here's a tricky faceting done on the table saw.
Above the easy parts, the tricky parts I do by hand, view SP44 front panel. Here are the photos:
Faceting the front panels. Use 1) chisel, 2) planer and 3) sandpaper. Takes a few minutes from MDF.
MAKING REBATES
Cutting 45 deg for cabinets
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Had the question on how to make these sharp 45 deg cuts: Cut from the left side of the blade. Usually tilts towards your right.
Made a guide for the sliding table held in place by a clamp.
How to make your DIY table saw:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR94aheUe60
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhfMQszFgS0 - this one more sophisticated.
Lots of videos on youtube!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diy%20table%20saw&sm=3
The DTQWT front inner panel - may be useful in other places.
I've had the question many times on how to chamfer the inner front panel of the DTQWT cabinet.
Simply place a sliding board on the front, adjust the router bit to the height of the side panels and move the router slowly from side to side.
CHAMFERING DRIVER HOLES
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The amount of energy coming from the rear of the driver is exactly the same as coming from the front!
Make sure your drivers can breathe and deliver their energy to the absorption material inside the cabinet and not experience acoustic resistance and diffraction from deep straight holes.
Read here
This is how I usually make driver holes.
If you have double front panels due to stepped panels, do like this.
Normally I don not chamfer drivers holes once we're into 8" drivers, at least not for 20 mm panels. For 40 mm panels I would.
For 10-15 inch drivers no chamfering is needed.
Lacquer, paint and oil
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For finishing the Baltic birch panels I use synthetic lacquer applied with a roller. Gloss 25-50 is used, semi-matt or sometimes semi-gloss. Usually two coatings will do with in between sanding (grade 180). I sometimes add the 1st coat before the final cutting. This reduce edge ripping as the outer veneer of Baltic birch is rather thin, unfortunately. For cutting small object from Baltic birch without ripping edges I use a 4-6 mm MDF panel below the Baltic birch. Sometimes painters tape is enough to avoid edge ripping.
More recently I've use this semi-gloss furniture lacquer and rollers made from polyester foam.
This works just great!
PAINT
The quick and cheap finish: Water based paint applied with a roller. Gloss 20 used here.
OIL
I mostly use mineral oil for the black MDF front panels. This product is for hardwood kitchen tables.
It takes two coatings. For every application excessive oil must be wiped off before drying.
Flanging straight vents made from ABS plastic:
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The pics below are hopefully self-explanatory.
A number of vents are made from ABS plastic and usually requires to be cut to target length. The outlet of the tube is already flared and after cutting to required length, the inner opening may be given the same treatment simply by heating the end of the tube with heating gun. I run my B&D heating gun at highest temperature and hold it 5-7 cm from the end of the tube while slowly rotating the tube. When the tube opening starts softening I push it towards the bottle shoulders and continue to rotate while pushing. When done I hold the flared end towards a piece of MDF while cooling and you may add cold water to cool faster.
Soldering tag strips:
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This is a question I've had many times: Where do you get the soldering tag strips used for the crossovers?
The above come from RS-Components and you have to order from a shop dealing with electronics. rswww.com homepage
Item 433-775, approx. 2-3 US$/ea. Minimum is 10 pcs.
I introduced the RS-Components solder tag strips to Jantzen Audio and they were able to source the gold plated version seen above.
These are now standard with all crossover/speaker kits from Jantzen Audio.
DAMPING MATERIALS AND CABINET DAMPING, LOOK HERE
GASKETS FOR MOUNTING DRIVERS
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I never use gaskets for mounting drivers, but if for some reason your driver rebates aren't nice and smooth, you may need to add a gasket between the frame and cabinet. Cut suitable circles from thin polyurethane foam, the kind of thing we get every time we buy a new electronic gadget, glassware, or whatever we buy these days, even fruit from China, I've seen.
FEET FOR CABINETS
I hate spikes and I honestly don't think they do much good, if any.
I use cheap furniture feet bought at the local Bauhaus.
They have a 10 mm thread and I buy some M10 bolts and fasten them with Araldite.
Preparing for the adjustable feet. The bolt is fastened with epoxy glue. Fill a syringe with epoxy and inject around nut.
I use WEST/SYSTEM 104 epoxy, mix 5+1, rather thin when mixed. Use large, short and blunt needle to inject.
SEALING WIRE HOLES
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I've had this question several times lately: How do you keep e.g. small midrange cabinets tight when you have to drill a hole for the wires? Easy, drill an e.g. 8 mm holes, pull the wires and fill the hole with e.g. silicone glue.
PORT DIMENSIONS
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To cut a long story short, port effective port dimensions of a slightly tapered port is X and Z as seen above.
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It’s a sentiment Mayor Schaaf, echoed in a talk with BAB about the minimum wage and other food issues she’s tackling: “An overwhelming number of Oakland voters voted for Measure FF,” she said. “We will be calling on them to support our restaurants that have stepped up to change the way that we pay our workers. I think fair wage food tastes better.”
How has the restaurant community been adjusting to the new wage?
We had several restaurant leaders that supported this initiative, even from its earliest stages. Charlie Hallowell, the owner of Penrose, Boot and Shoe Service, and Pizzaiolo, was a very early supporter, recognizing that it’s good for everybody when people make a decent wage and they’re taken care of with things like sick leave.
I have expressed a lot of support and empathy for our restaurant community, recognizing that this is a big change and it’s going to be a little painful. But I’m confident that in the final analysis, this will be a really great thing for Oakland and our restaurant community, because at the end of the day people will have more money in their pockets to eat out.
How is your office helping restaurant owners with the transition?
One thing we’ve been doing is trying to make sure everyone understands the new laws and they feel like all their questions can be answered, that they have support in knowing what the new expectations are. Secondly, we’re starting a public awareness campaign for Oakland consumers, to encourage them to understand why prices may be going up and ask them to put their money where their vote was. They have the opportunity to put that vote into action by supporting Oakland small businesses. Oakland restaurants are worth it. I mean, where else is there so much creativity and inventiveness in food than in Oakland?
You’ve been vocal about bringing wealthy businesses into Oakland. How can the city balance new high-end restaurants catering to these new residents with traditional community standbys?
Oakland has seen explosive growth in our restaurant scene. Last year alone, we saw more than 300 new restaurants and bars open up in Oakland. I have tried to focus on supporting neighborhood businesses. The East Bay Express just ran a story about their favorite Oakland restaurants, and they were very affordable, small, family-run restaurants that are off the beaten path--not in downtown, Jack London Square, Rockridge, Uptown, but in places like deep East Oakland, in the Bella Vista neighborhood.
I mean Champa Garden, man, that place has a line out the door all the time and it’s not in a neighborhood known for restaurants--or even businesses. Oaklanders are adventurous and they love going off the beaten path, and part of what gives Oakland its charm is its authenticity. We’re not fancy or stuffy, we are creative and real. The cultural diversity in this city is also quite tasty.
You've waited tables, how did that affect your opinion of the minimum wage increase?
I have worked several hospitality industry jobs and know how difficult it is to rely on tips. Some nights you have good nights and some weeks you have bad weeks. And that insecurity is extremely difficult. I’m really pleased that Oakland’s seen a lot more service and hospitality jobs but now the people that work in them have a little more security, a little bit more assurance that they can support themselves and take a day off if they’re sick and they need to.
Do you think $12.25 is enough? Would you like to see a higher minimum wage?
I appreciate this as a great starting place for Oakland. It is getting close to what we calculated the living wage is for Oakland. I would love to see the Bay Area become a little more affordable and the wages be better. I’d like to see movement on both ends of the spectrum because the cost of housing is a real issue throughout the Bay Area, including in Oakland.
This was a big push for businesses to adjust to, but in a perfect world we will get our workers to a living wage, so that when you put in a full week’s work, you have the security that you can live and support a family. Having an economy where someone has to work two full-time jobs just to live in the city where they work is not good for people’s health, it’s not good for their families, it’s not good for our community. I think if we’re looking at a sustainable economy, we’ve got to have fair wages and we’ve got to have affordable housing.
How are you planning to work on issues of food insecurity?
I’m very pleased we’re going to be opening a new grocery store in West Oakland, which has long needed one. I’m excited about the zoning changes we recently made to make backyard farming easier. We’re seeing some creative expression, where locally grown food is for sale in small baskets at local corner stores. In the meantime, while we wait to get full service grocery stores put into every neighborhood that needs them, [there are] these basket options, food carts, farmers’ markets. Some schools even [have] small farmers' markets from food that they’re growing at community gardens.
This whole different approach to awareness of where our food comes from and what healthy eating looks like is incredibly important, not just for sustainable communities, but for healthy families.
What’s the role of urban agriculture in Oakland’s food system?
Oakland’s a leader in promoting and encouraging backyard agriculture. We have focused on the growing of fruits and vegetables. I think a lot of people have raised very legitimate concerns around raising animals for meat. Our regulations have been recognized as very progressive and it’s been exciting to see a lot of nonprofits and community groups really embrace awareness of food security and health as something that all communities have an absolute right too.
Would you ever consider a tax break for urban farms like the one San Francisco has?
I’m always open to creative ideas that are going to create a sustainable economy and make life healthier. It’s certainly something I’d be interested in learning more about.
What are some other food issues you’re excited to work on?
Oakland has a growing [number of] food manufacturing businesses and that’s a very promising part of our economy. We have one of the cleanest public water supplies in the country, which makes us very ideal for food manufacturing. Numi Tea is the largest fair trade tea company in the world and it’s headquartered here in Oakland.
Ocho Candy, organic candies that are sold in Whole Foods, are a great success story. I’ll be honest: they initially had a lot of trepidation about the new minimum wage law. And now Dennis Ring is one of the biggest Oakland business boosters. He moved into a larger space, he’s expanded his business, he’s even employing formerly incarcerated workers and is loving it. It’s a really great example of a phenomenal Oakland food business. It’s sweet on so many levels.
In your campaign, you specifically mentioned food trucks when you talked about making it easier to start a small business.
That’s another place where Oakland’s food culture and arts culture kind of mesh together in a wonderful explosion of vitality. We are foodies but we also love culture, we love community, we love diversity and so by having this growing culture of local food vending and pods of food trucks, that becomes a social event, and it’s often tied with arts and culture.
It’s a lot of what people talk about when they talk about Oakland as one of the hottest new tourist destinations in the country, but it’s also a fantastic way for entrepreneurs to start in the business. I worked for years in the Fruitvale neighborhood. Most of those brick and mortar restaurant owners started out with a truck.
Another thing I’m very passionate about is the Kiva Zip lending model. These are interest free loans and we were the first city in the country to be a trustee on Kiva Zip. A lot of the businesses that we’ve endorsed for loans. Pop Art Bakery is just my favorite. I mean, oh my God, have you ever had one of their almond tassies? It’s a bite of heaven--with a lot of butter in it. They are just fantastic, a fantastic company that really benefited from a Kiva Zip loan.
To end on a less serious note: where do you like to eat?
I love Penrose. My husband and I have celebrated Valentine’s Day there for the last two years, partially because we’re not organized enough to make reservations. It just has phenomenal food, such a warm atmosphere and again, their food tastes better because I know that they’ve always paid a living wage to their workers.
When my kids were babies, the first restaurant I ever took them out to was called Messob on Piedmont Ave. It’s Ethiopian food and it’s a great place to bring a baby because everyone eats with their fingers. I had this proud Oakland mother moment when my son’s class was studying bread--each child was supposed to bring in their favorite bread, and my son’s favorite bread was injera.
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"So, are you planning to take that Nintendo Switch to any rooftop parties?"
Pretty much every time I talk about Nintendo's new game system, I hear some version of this question. It's annoying, and it's Nintendo's fault. The weird home-portable hybrid system has an equally weird advertising campaign attached, full of hip, 20-something men and women refusing to put their game systems down when obligations arise. Pick-up basketball game, birthday party, dog needs to pee—better bring the Switch every time.
The system is now officially in stores, and the launch has been met with another wave of "social Switch" ads . But, man, nobody has invited me to a rooftop yet, let alone one whose party is served by a hipster, bowtie-wearing bartender. Even so, I persevere. I decided to grab my pre-ordered hardware, a bunch of controllers, and a few friends to test the new console in the kind of loud group settings that it just might be appropriate for (conveniently, this allows us to also expand on some concepts touched upon in Kyle Orland's lengthy system review ).
Launch game 1-2 Switch figured largely into my sessions, so my party experiment doubles as a kinda-sorta review of Nintendo's latest mini-game compilation. I also tested most of the other multiplayer games currently available—which largely consist of more "traditional" fare—to get as many well-rounded, real-world group play impressions as I could.
The results: Nintendo's Switch offers a much better party than you might expect, but reality does intrude before reaching ad campaign nirvana.
Docking points for the dock
I started by emptying my messenger bag and filling it with all of my Switch errata. I can fit the system's core configuration into Nintendo's "official" Switch case: the primary hardware (which is a tablet-like slab of plastic and glass, fronted by a 6.2-inch touchscreen), one pair of Joy-Con paddles, and a few cartridges.
Tossing another pair of Joy-Cons into my bag is easy enough, as they're tiny and seem quite durable, though like the Nintendo Wii's remotes, these constantly turn on and seek a Bluetooth connection whenever their buttons are lightly brushed in a bag. (It's a good thing the rechargeable batteries are rated for over 20 hours.) The Switch Pro Controller is a little clunkier, at pretty much the size of an Xbox One pad, though I'm fine with it being "oversized," since it's not advertised as an on-the-go party option.
The worst element for on-the-go use is the Switch Dock, mostly because it doesn't have to be this bulbous and annoying in a travel situation. Hardware teardowns have already revealed how much smaller it could be. The dock's small circuit board breaks the tablet's single USB Type-C connection out into five more ports: another Type-C port for power, an HDMI-out, and three more USB 2.0 ports. The dock's bulk is meant for comfortable home use, with a spring mechanism designed to neatly accept the tablet hardware. Sadly in the early going, every time I've connected the dock to a new TV, it has been a pain to find a good place to put it.
You have to be able to pull the Switch tablet out from the top, so any entertainment center that blocks reaching above to place and remove a full, flat tablet is a no-go. Worse, you can't always expect to dock the system and then tuck it into an out-of-reach spot during party play. For example, some of 1-2 Switch's mini-games ask you to pull the tablet out and hold it in your hands. The dock also forces cords through only one of its sides. If your cords need to run to the left, you can't just spin the dock backward because it's trickier to insert the Switch hardware backward into the dock (you end up wasting inches of cord redirecting them). Depending on the TV and power setup where you are, those inches can be precious to lose.
In my dream world, I'd have a travel option of neatly tied-up power and HDMI cords attached to a new, smaller breakout box. Instead, I have to fill a Switch travel bag with what looks like a cheap prop from an '80s sci-fi movie.
Wait, how do I milk the cow?
Depending on the social situation, that TV connection is going to matter. Let's start with the tablet's screen.
As we've written before, Nintendo's 6.2-inch, 720p IPS touchscreen panel is a stunner in handheld mode, with a respectable 240-nit brightness maximum and some dynamite color reproduction shining right in your face. IPS technology suffers in one key category, however: viewing angle.
For some multiplayer games, this won't matter. Two players can sit at a table, put the Switch down with its kickstand extended, and enjoy perfectly solid viewing angles side-by-side while each holding a single Joy-Con. Snipperclips, the system's launch co-op puzzle game, is perhaps the ultimate showcase game for this mode. Its bold colors, simple designs, and slow action all read very neatly on a small screen. I set a Switch up at a bar table, handed two friends some Joy-Cons, and watched them lose themselves in the game while they sat on barstools. (Worth noting: throughout a few party-play sessions, no new players complained to me about cramps or discomfort while using small Joy-Cons in sideways mode.)
When it came time to test Snipperclips' four-player modes, however, we had to position ourselves like we were posing for a four-person group photo: two in front, two behind separated by height, and everyone standing close enough to each other to stay relatively close to the screen. When we tried playing while sitting side-by-side at a table, at least one person was stuck at a diagonal viewing angle. This made the already-small screen look smaller, and it added distortion effects. I noticed during a test of Super Bomberman R's four-player mode that when I was stuck at the edge, my brain couldn't wrap around the fact that my joystick presses didn't match which direction I saw on the screen. Ultimately, we had to be sure that our bar or table allowed a foursome to sit/stand kinda clumped together. It's a tight setup, but it's not necessarily hugging- or touching-close.
Games that divide the tiny tablet screen in two are another matter. The best split-screen game at launch, futuristic racer Fast RMX, only supports two players in tablet mode (if you want a full four-player split-screen race, you have to plug the Switch into a TV). There's a good reason for this limitation: the game's high speeds become much harder to read when they're squeezed onto just one half of the 6.2-inch screen. That split was tolerable in short bursts, but I wouldn't want to play a full evening's tournament that way (and I'd hate to imagine the tablet screen split into four even tinier screens). Mario Kart 8's slower pace will probably prove better for tablet split-screen play on the small screen, but that game will also require a TV dock to bump to four-player split-screen modes.
The other issue with tablet mode is sound, or specifically, the lack of it. 1-2 Switch relies heavily on audio cues. Every mini-game is introduced with a spoken explanation of how it works, while many of these directions ask players to "look each other in the eye" and quickly react to sound effects. I had already guessed this would be an issue, so I added a portable, battery-powered speaker to my messenger bag. This helped enable my loudest testing scenario: a crowded bar with ever-present background noise. The speaker I brought wasn't directional enough for this indoor scenario, though. Even toggling the Switch's "play audio from the system and anything plugged into headphone jack" option still wasn't loud enough, whether due to loud jukebox music or just the low-murmur noise of nearby patrons. Losing sound renders about a third of 1-2 Switch's 28 mini-games unplayable.
Kyle already criticized the Switch's flimsy tablet stand, but I want to emphasize just how little this thing appears to have been tested in social situations. The worst part is its default angle, which requires players to be pretty much at eye level. Parties, bars, and hotel rooms I've tested in rarely have surfaces that lend themselves well to the Switch's default angle. Any system revision will hopefully include a multi-angle stand. For now, anybody with on-the-go Mario Kart dreams may consider that issue alone as a reason to pause their console purchase.
Listing image by Nintendo of America
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Cynette Cavaliere's interest in solar power started with four wheels.
A couple of years ago, Cavaliere got a Chevrolet Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid that runs primarily off of a battery. She charges it at her Penfield home.
But Cavaliere says she knew that if she simply plugged her vehicle into its charging station, some of the power would come from plants that run on fossil fuels. So she and her husband pursued a solar power system to offset the electricity they use for the Volt; they had 18 panels installed on their roof.
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
Cynette Cavaliere
"I had wanted an electric vehicle for a long time and it really didn't seem to make sense to do that just to use more fossil fuels from a different location," says Cavaliere, a General Motors engineer.
A growing number of homeowners, businesses, and institutions in New York and across the country are adopting solar. Driving that interest is a combination of affordability, awareness, environmental concerns, and increasingly aggressive state and federal incentives.
And solar's supporters say that the spike in electric prices this past winter will probably generate even more interest in solar technology. Utility companies blamed the price increases, which happened during periods of particularly harsh weather, on tight natural gas supplies.
"I think people really look at those sort of things and say 'OK, what can I do to stop that from happening to me in the future?'" says Kevin Schulte, CEO of Sustainable Energy Developments, a company based in Wayne County. "And solar is a very good way to remove that volatility from your life."
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
The solar panels on Cynette Cavaliere's Penfield home provide enough electricity to offset the power she uses to charge her Chevy Volt.
But solar still faces obstacles in terms of adoption and perception. Some critics characterize it as an expensive, noncompetitive energy source that is overly dependent on government subsidies; supporters vehemently disagree.
And in places such as Rochester, where complaining about the weather is something of a local pastime, people tend to question whether the technology will work. In response, solar's supporters almost universally point to Germany; the country leads the world in solar installation and production, but gets less sunlight than Rochester, they say.
"It is the biggest misconception out there right now," says Matthew Rankin, renewable energy project associate at Larsen Engineering. "The more that people install solar, the more people will realize that it must work."
Cavaliere worked with fellow Penfield resident Bob Kanauer and his firm, LTHS Solar, to design a system that would provide enough power to fully charge her Volt six days a week. A full charge is enough to get her to and from work.
Not only has the system covered the electricity consumed by the car, Cavaliere says, it's actually generated more power than expected.
"There's more than enough sunlight here to be able to do it," she says.
Solar power had been making gains in New York for a few years prior to 2012. But that year, Governor Andrew Cuomo rolled out his NY-Sun program, which provides financial assistance for solar projects through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. And the industry took off.
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
A Chevy Volt.
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
A Chevy Volt.
The State Legislature has renewed the program for another decade, and over that time New York will provide approximately $1 billion for solar incentives. The incentives are awarded either competitively or first come, first served — depending on who's seeking the assistance.
In the two years since the program began, more solar has been installed statewide than during the entire prior decade, says Alan Wechsler, a NYSERDA spokesperson. Statewide, solar capacity totaling 316 megawatts has been installed and connected to the electric grid or is under contract, Wechsler says. (Not all of the projects are receiving NYSERDA funding.)
The Solar Energy Industries Association says that in New York, one megawatt of solar is enough to power 155 homes. The figure takes into account the average electricity consumption of New York homes and the average production of photovoltaic systems in the state.
The growth has been sharp locally, too. In 2003, Rochester Gas and Electric connected two solar systems to its electricity distribution system, according to information provided by the company. Last year, it connected 92 systems. Since 2003, the company has connected a total of 309 photovoltaic systems to its grid, and combined they have a generating capacity of 3.5 megawatts.
Prior to 2012, most of the statewide solar growth was at the residential level. But after that, commercial and industrial installations began growing at an aggressive rate.
In 2011, a large solar project came online in Long Island. The 32 megawatt solar farm was built through a partnership between BP Solar, the US Department of Energy, and the Long Island Power Authority.
Closer to home, Rochester Institute of Technology has installed two solar systems on its Henrietta campus. The system on the Golisano Institute for Sustainability building has a generation capacity of 400 kilowatts, or just under half a megawatt.
RIT plans to add another two megawatts of solar on campus, says Ryne Raffaelle, RIT's vice president for research and a former director of the National Center for Photovoltaics at the National Renewable Energy Lab.
For that project, he says, the university wants to partner with a solar developer using a power purchase agreement.
Under those agreements, the customer usually provides the land or rooftop space, the developer builds and initially owns the array, and the customer commits to buying the electricity at a certain price. RIT wouldn't own the array — though it would have a chance to buy it a few years down the line — but the power will still be cheaper than grid-supplied electricity, Raffaelle says.
"It pays for itself," he says.
Local government officials have started looking to solar power as a way to reduce energy costs, and they see the purchase power agreements as a good option. The Wayne County town of Williamson is using the arrangement to buy power from a solar system being built on a closed town landfill. Officials expect that the purchase agreement will save the town $1.5 million over 20 years.
Webster and Penfield are gathering public input on potential solar projects, and both towns are interested in using purchase power agreements.
Webster officials want to install a solar system on five acres of land near the town's waste water treatment plant to offset the plant's electricity consumption, says Supervisor Ron Nesbitt.
Penfield officials have proposed installation of a solar system near the town Department of Public Works building. Kanauer, the Penfield solar consultant and a member of the town's Energy and Environment Advisory Committee, says the site would accommodate a system that would offset between 50 percent and 75 percent of electricity usage at town government buildings.
"We're always going to need gas and electric, so what can we do to help take that edge off?" says Penfield Supervisor Tony LaFountain.
One of solar's big selling points is payback. After a certain number of years, the systems generate enough no-cost or low-cost electricity to equal out the purchase and installation costs.
But solar's supporters say there are other benefits, too. The technology creates jobs since someone has to sell and install the equipment. Statewide, there are approximately 400 solar companies employing more than 5,000 people, says NYSERDA's Wechsler.
And on-site solar generation can be more efficient than distributing electricity over miles of power wires. Solar power is also an important tool for cutting greenhouse gases — a step that the US and other countries need to take to avert the worst effects of climate change.
Solar panels crank out the most electricity during the middle of the day, which is the same time that consumers use the most power. So production aligns with demand, which isn't always the case with other renewables, including wind. And any electricity that isn't immediately used at the site gets put into the electric grid, and the state's electric utilities provide credit to the customers generating it.
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
RIT's Golisano Institute for Sustainability has a 400 kilowatt solar array on its roof.
"Distributed solar PV, when strategically placed, has the potential to reduce the strains put on the distribution system during times of peak energy demand," RG&E spokesperson Dan Hucko said in an e-mail. Though Hucko also said that the benefit depends on a number of factors, including the capacity of a given distribution circuit, the time that circuit reaches peak demand, and the size of the solar installation.
But broader solar deployment won't be without complications. Statewide, the systems are pumping electricity into a grid that at times is already nearing full capacity. The output also varies day to day, and the panels stop producing at night.
"I don't think it's a deal breaker by any means," says RIT's Raffaelle.
Some of the grid technology will have to be updated, he says; the state Public Service Commission is looking into how to do it.
Raffaelle says that the power's variable nature can also be offset by utility-scale energy storage; think very large batteries and fuel cells. The storage systems could help smooth out peaks and valleys in demand and production, he says, and some big electric industry companies are already "going great guns on storage," he says.
In the big picture, centralized, always-ready power supplies will still be necessary to meet consumer demand. Technologies such as solar and wind power, combined with energy efficiency measures, will help reduce the amount of power those plants need to supply.
click to enlarge PHOTO BY MARK CHAMBERLIN
RIT's Golisano Institute for Sustainability has a 400 kilowatt solar array on its roof.
Penfield Supervisor LaFountain says he knows that people are skeptical of solar technology, and wary of the expense.
But the cost of solar power equipment — not just panels, but the equipment necessary to make the generated electricity usable — has dropped. So have installation costs.
Schulte, of Sustainable Energy Developments, explains the decrease in terms of cost per watt. A decade ago, solar systems cost around $8 to $10 a watt after installation. Now the cost is heading toward $3 per watt. And the incentives take a large bite out of those costs, he says.
Schulte says that the size of an average household system is 7 kilowatts to 10 kilowatts. On average, a system of that size with installation would cost approximately $24,000 to $25,000 before incentives, he says. But a 30 percent federal tax credit would mean a rebate of approximately $7,200; a state tax credit would provide an additional $5,000 rebate; and NYSERDA incentives would take another $7,000 off the cost. The NYSERDA incentives are finite, and they're first come, first served. But they're also renewed every year.
Kanauer says that state and federal tax credits and incentives can, in many cases, knock the costs of a system and its installation down to one-quarter of the sticker price.
And the incentives shorten the time it takes buyers to recoup their investments.
Solar supporters say that it's the increasing demand and growing market that's driven down photovoltaic system and installation costs.
After tax credits and incentives, Cavaliere ultimately paid $4,500 for her system, including installation costs. And she says she expects it to have paid for itself in nine years.
"It was probably more affordable than we would have expected," she says.
And electricity consumers interested in solar increasingly have other arrangements they can use. Power purchase agreements are one, leasing a solar system is another.
One other question often comes up with residential solar, and that's how having a system affects a house's value. But there's no real consensus on whether it adds or detracts. Some buyers will undoubtedly see it as an asset, while others may not.
If solar's costs are going down, are the incentives necessary?
That question will almost certainly be debated at the national level in the near future. The federal tax credit for solar expires in 2016, and Congress will have to decide whether to renew it.
New York is also developing a plan to phase out its incentives, but wants to first make solar a competitive energy option for consumers, businesses, governments, and institutions. Under the state's approach, the incentives would be gradually reduced as the state's solar industry hits certain cost targets.
That approach makes sense, and is an appropriate way to incentivize the industry, Schulte says. It lets people in the industry know what to expect while they try to build their businesses and sell their products and services, he says.
Solar might not be catching on if not for the subsidies, though, and some form of basic incentives or assistance might be necessary in the long term. Schulte says it boils down to the need for a level playing field.
"Every kilowatt hour of energy in this country, every gallon of gas we pump in this country, every gallon of diesel we pump in this country, every decatherm of natural gas, that's all subsidized by state and federal governments via tax credits, via insurance, via all sorts of different things," Schulte says.
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My first clue that something had changed forever was the police.
In bright yellow vests, they descended on the area, guiding rush hour traffic out of parking garages and into the streets, down Harrison and onto Fairview.
At lunch, the line for the taco truck was clear around the block.
“Why do we all keep building tech startups?” I asked a friend. “Think about the profit margin on that taco truck.”
In retrospect, it was pitifully naïve – this idea I had that there would forever be one food truck on the corner of Republican and Boren. The face of South Lake Union was changing, and I was focused on burrito access.
Before the basement offices of Founder’s Co-op became home to Zipline Games, they housed a number of startups, including Startup Weekend and Seattle 2.0 (which would later be acquired by GeekWire). I wrote a weekly column for Seattle 2.0, and on occasion I worked from those offices, windowless and clockless and exceptionally bent to singular focus. (“It’s like Vegas,” commented then-CEO Jennifer Cabala.)
As soon as it opened, Founder’s Co-op’s South Lake Union location felt revelatory, a much-needed breath of fresh air from the Belltown, Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square startup scenes. It was a clean geographic slate for young companies hoping to write a new story.
Then Amazon started putting up signs. Slowly, pedestrian traffic increased. Parking got tougher. Taco waits got longer. And, eventually, there were police.
The cops were there because of the people, and not because those people were breaking the law. They were a response to the sheer size of the carefully selected and systematically seasoned employee base of Amazon.com. And those employees brought more than just law enforcement; they brought restaurants, parking garages, and an exciting variety of themed food trucks, many of which carry burritos anyway.
Clearly, word got around that South Lake Union was amassing technical talent and optimizing for burritos, because startups moved in en masse. Some were TechStars graduates and some were food trucks, but most were companies established elsewhere in the Seattle area, noticing that the action was moving to South Lake Union.
One such company is Glympse, the location-sharing startup that showed off their new SLU digs last night, hosting the Seattle digerati at their sold-out open house.
“I got in!” I overheard a ticketless young woman say to a friend, as though this were a post-Oscars fete at Kim Kardashian’s Calabasas mansion. “I just acted like I belonged and no one stopped me!”
Or maybe the Kardashian comparison is less apt than, say, a comparison to an invite-only party at a hot Valley startup.
Glympse is certainly hot right now. Last summer, they announced they’d acquired a million users — and promptly closed a $7.5M Series B led by Menlo Ventures and Ignition Partners. They were still operating out of the nondescript back offices of an industrial Redmond complex and about to go on a hiring spree. Their goal? To revolutionize the way smartphone users answer the question “Where are you?”
At some point, they asked themselves the same.
“South Lake Union is the sweet spot of Seattle,” says Glympse CEO Bryan Trussel. “It wasn’t an easy choice to move from Redmond. It certainly wasn’t convenient or cheap. But it took about 2 hours after we actually moved in to know we made the right choice.”
One of the motivating factors behind that “right choice” was Ignition VC Michelle Goldberg, who sits on Glympse’s board and encouraged Trussel to move the company westward, toward Amazon’s new stomping grounds.
“We love being next to Amazon,” says Trussel. “They are to South Lake Union and Seattle what Microsoft was to Redmond and the Eastside in the 90s. They attract a lot of talent. Talent begets talent.”
Glympse wasn’t shy about showing off its own talent for startup interior design at their event. Their roomy new digs boast a Kinect (perhaps a final nod to their Redmond roots), a kitchen with a cereal bar, and an impressive ping-pong table (“It looks Olympic-style,” said my boyfriend.)
The party was catered by – what else? – food trucks, the culinary staple of the area, and now a competitive enough space that ChopStix Mobile jostled to cater the party before its “South Lake Union debut” later this summer.
It’s a far cry from Glympse’s old home, and Trussel says his startup family has adjusted well. “It’s one of my top learnings in this startup journey,” he says. “Even focused, productive, driven people will do significantly better if you pay attention to the surroundings.”
Glympse, like so many Seattle tech startups making the pilgrimage to South Lake Union, is on the hunt for even more of those people.
“There’s a huge concentration of smart, motivated tech folks at the food trucks in our parking lot every day,” says Trussel.
“We set up a guest WiFi for those in need. The public network is named ‘Glympse Is Hiring.’”
Sasha Pasulka is the VP of Marketing at Salad Labs and a digital strategist at Red Magnet Media. You can follow her on Twitter @sashrocks. More from Sasha Pasulka on GeekWire: Hey, startups, users aren’t free…. Why Facebook may surrender users to niche social networks.
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The fourth arch of Bridgend’s medieval old stone bridge has been uncovered for the first time in hundreds of years.
The structure, parts of which could be almost 600 years old, was found behind a wall in an office building’s basement after rainwater leaked in.
A number of bones were also discovered, sparking a call to police.
But they have now been identified as animal, probably a cat, and possibly dating from the 18th century.
John Squire, director of Graham Paul chartered accountants in Dunraven Place, said they knew the arch was in their basement, but they had never seen it in full until builders pulled down a water-damaged wall.
“It’s very exciting. There’s a lot of interest in it,” he said.
He said after builders began work on repairs, some of the infill in the archway collapsed, exposing bones.
But South Wales Police subsequently identified the bones as animal, not human.
Originally built around 1425 to help pilgrims on their way to St David’s in West Wales cross the River Ogmore, the old stone bridge was severely damaged by flooding in the 18th century and was rebuilt in 1775, after which only two arches were visible in the span crossing the river.
But according to Welsh historic monuments body Cadw, which is responsible for the bridge as a scheduled ancient monument, the hidden structure had been described by John Leland (c. 1538-1540), who referred to the structure as “Bridges on Ogar Pennebont of four arches of stone”.
The Ordnance Survey also described two arches in the ground floor of a building in 1957.
The third arch is currently visible in the rear yard of the office building, which was constructed around 1830.
Both Cadw and the Glamorgan-Gwent Archeological Trust have inspected the newly-revealed arch, with experts from the Trust identifying the animal bones as coming from a cat, which may have got trapped under the arch during repair work in the 18th century.
A spokesman for the organisation, which has produced a report on the archway for Cadw, said: “To see some of the parts of the bridge that are hidden away in the basement is a rare opportunity.”
Its report, which details the damage suffered by the structure and what repairs are needed, has now been passed onto Cadw.
A Cadw spokesman said: “The Bridgend Old Bridge is a medieval bridge designated as a scheduled ancient monument and a Grade II listed building.
“The bridge is recorded in a deed of 1452. Cadw inspectors have visited the site and are providing advice to ensure that appropriate materials and techniques are employed to preserve the medieval fabric of the bridge and to assist the owner in complying with any applications required for listed building or scheduled monument consent.”
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Bitcoin’s value just broke $1,000. Again. And then went below. Again. Then up and down again. (Anyone else feeling seasick?)
Following relatively flat growth through the end of January (by cryptocurrency standards, anyway), bitcoin’s value spiked, breaking $1,000 to reach a high of $1,003.92 in Thursday afternoon trading. At the time of this writing, bitcoin sat tenuously at $1,000.73, up 1.36 percent for the day.
Don’t look away — things could always change in the blink of an eye. The last time this happened, the bubble burst about $100 higher, though the People’s Bank of China’s (PBoC) meetings with bitcoin exchanges were likely to blame for investor panic — thus the value drop.
The PBoC spot checks didn’t lead to indictments, arrests or major regulation changes, but Chinese exchanges have since restricted margin trading and introduced trading fees. BTCC, Huobi and OkCoin now charge traders a flat fee of 0.2 percent per transaction.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a shift in the overall ecosystem toward markets that don’t charge trading fees, writes CoinDesk. This shift could be responsible, at least in part, for the recent price rise. Investors are likely waiting with bated breath to see if this holds — or, in this case, waiting with their index fingers postured to take action at any moment. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Stateside, investors continue work toward bitcoin’s financial legitimacy, attempting to shed its seedy reputation and tone down its volatility. On Jan. 20, Grayscale Investments, LLC, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting to have its Bitcoin Investment Trust listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
If the SEC were to approve the fund (analysts say it’s unlikely in 2017), it could increase awareness and grow interest in bitcoin among traders. Given SEC approval, the bitcoin trust would operate as a traditional exchange-traded fund (ETF), with an asset class appeal similar to that of gold. A bitcoin-based ETF could work to downplay some of bitcoin’s more unpredictable tendencies, though it would remain on the riskier side as far as investments go.
While investors wait for the SEC decision, they can pass the time by setting up their own bitcoin kiosks. Peer-to-peer bitcoin technology company Paxful recently launched a new web widget, the Virtual Bitcoin Kiosk, that allows anyone to buy bitcoin worldwide instantly, with over 300 ways to pay up.
Users can reportedly embed the Paxful widget onto blogs, websites or even their Facebook page, allowing them to run a customizable bitcoin kiosk. Users can earn 2 percent commission from every sale made through their personal widget.
Paxful cofounder Ray Youssef was quoted by FinExtra as saying, “Bitcoin is still an early-stage technology. Think about how the web was before Google AdSense. This program is incredible for anyone seeking ground-floor opportunities.”
Meanwhile, in Switzerland (bitcoin’s favorite country), the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) approved U.S. bitcoin wallet and vault Xapo to operate in the country. Xapo has been designated a financial intermediary and does not require a banking license, said Reuters.
While other cryptocurrency firms operate in Switzerland, Xapo stores private-access keys, reportedly leading to questions about whether or not the wallet technically took deposits. Xapo first looked to expand to non-U.S. markets three years ago, deciding on Switzerland in 2015.
Xapo CEO Wences Casares wrote on the company blog that FINMA’s approval was conditional and required the company to take part in a self-regulatory organization, among other things.
“Many regulatory bodies in similar situations would have rejected Xapo (and bitcoin) entirely,” wrote Casares. “By choosing to persevere, however, we believe FINMA has positioned Switzerland as a hub for FinTech innovation and ensured Switzerland’s primacy in global financial services for decades to come.”
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Ninjas in Pyjamas are through to the semi-finals at ESL One Katowice following a 2-1 victory over Team SoloMid (16-8 on de_dust2, 4-16 on de_inferno and 16-12 on de_nuke.)
On de_dust2, NiP, who began on the Terrorist side, got the start they needed as they won the opening four rounds of the half thanks to a triple kill from Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg in the pistol round and some quality sniper work from Aleksi "allu" Jalli with the Scout and the AWP afterwards.
The fifth round then went to Team SoloMid as NiP ran out of time to plant the bomb, but the Swedish team immediately regained control of the match and restored a four-round lead.
In the seventh round, Team SoloMid denied a mid-B split from NiP, which allowed Finn "karrigan" Andersen’s men to cut the gap to 3-6. Two more rounds then went NiP’s way, but the Swedes’ streak was cut short after they failed to sell a mid fake. Still, that did not stop the ESL One Cologne champions from winning the remaining rounds, the last of which thanks to an amazing 1-on-3 clutch from Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund in the A site.
In the second half, NiP got off to a great start as they denied Team SoloMid's A push from long, despite Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen getting three kills to his name, but then the Swedish team were taken by surprise in the first anti-eco round.
NiP replied immediately after and took the score to 14-5, but then TSM found a lifeline after executing a mid-B split. Two more rounds then went to the Danish team, who were, however, unable to prevent their opponents from closing the map out at 16-8.
f0rest topped the scoreboard on de_dust2
Next up was de_inferno, where TSM, who began on the Terrorist side, came out the brighter following a textbook B push in the pistol round. NiP came close to winning the second eco round, but a 1v3 clutch from dupreeh kept TSM in the driving seat.
The first gun round also went TSM’s way following a B push, but then NiP broke the Danes’ momentum with just a little piece of equipment. Still, the Swedish team were immediately pegged back following yet another B entry from their opponents.
A 1v3 clutch from Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth in B in the next round enlarged TSM's lead to 6-1 and forced NiP to go on eco. In the following gun round, Adam "friberg" Friberg put his team back in the game with four kills, but the former dignitas team kept piling the pressure on their opponents and took the score to 9-3.
NiP scored their fourth round of the half thanks to a mid-banana push, but they were unable to capitalize on that as TSM won the final two rounds of the half with ease.
Things went from bad to worse for NiP right after as they were completely obliterated in the pistol round following a mid push towards archside, and in the first gun round they were aback by a stunning Famas ace from Xyp9x in B, which powered TSM to secure an impressive 16-4 lead and tie the series 1-1.
Xyp9x was on fire on de_inferno
It all came down to de_nuke, where NiP were able to capitalise on the fact that they started on the highly-favoured CT side as they picked up the first three rounds of the map. The first gun round then went to TSM, who executed a great entry into the upper site, but NiP regained control of the proceedings and took the score to 5-1.
A secret push with smokes and flashes towards the Lower site then put TSM back in the game and powered them to equalise the score on five rounds. The rest of the half was a really close affair, with NiP eventually taking a 9-6 lead into the second half.
Now playing on the Terrorist side, NiP tried to rush the lower site in the pistol round but it went horribly wrong for them, which allowed TSM to reduce the gap to just two rounds. Nevertheless, the Swedish team refused to give up and won three consecutive rounds, taking the score to 12-7 in their favour.
TSM then embarked on a five-round winning streak to level the score, which served as a wake-up call for NiP, who picked up four rounds in a row to seal passage into the semi-final stage of the tournament.
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Not long after the first personal computers started entering people’s homes, Intel fell victim to a nasty kind of memory error. The company, which had commercialized the very first dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chip in 1971 with a 1,024-bit device, was continuing to increase data densities. A few years later, Intel’s then cutting-edge 16-kilobit DRAM chips were sometimes storing bits differently from the way they were written. Indeed, they were making these mistakes at an alarmingly high rate. The cause was ultimately traced to the ceramic packaging for these DRAM devices. Trace amounts of radioactive material that had gotten into the chip packaging were emitting alpha particles and corrupting the data.
Once uncovered, this problem was easy enough to fix. But DRAM errors haven’t disappeared. As a computer user, you’re probably familiar with what can result: the infamous blue screen of death. In the middle of an important project, your machine crashes or applications grind to a halt. While there can be many reasons for such annoying glitches—including program bugs, clashing software packages, and malware—DRAM errors can also be the culprit.
For personal-computer users, such episodes are mostly just an annoyance. But for large-scale commercial operators, reliability issues are becoming the limiting factor in the creation and design of their systems.
Big Internet companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Google keep up with the growing demand for their services through massive parallelism, with their data centers routinely housing tens of thousands of individual computers, many of which might be working to serve just one end user. Supercomputer facilities are about as big and, if anything, run their equipment even more intensively.
In computing systems built on such huge scales, even low-probability failures take place relatively frequently. If an individual computer can be expected to crash, say, three times a year, in a data center with 10,000 computers, there will be nearly 100 crashes a day.
Our group at the University of Toronto has been investigating ways to prevent that. We started with the simple premise that before we could hope to make these computers work more reliably, we needed to fully understand how real systems fail. While it didn’t surprise us that DRAM errors are a big part of the problem, exactly how those memory chips were malfunctioning proved a great surprise.
Source: Hwang, Stefanovici, and Schroeder, Proceedings of ASPLOS XVII, 2012 Flavors of Goofs: Most often DRAM errors repeatedly affect the same address—or perhaps just the same row or column—rather than being isolated occurrences.
To probe how these devices sometimes fail, we collected field data from a variety of systems, including a dozen high-performance computing clusters at Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. We also obtained information from operators of large data centers, including companies such as Google, about their experiences.
We made two key observations: First, although most personal-computer users blame system failures on software problems (quirks of the operating system, browser, and so forth) or maybe on malware infections, hardware was the main culprit. At Los Alamos, for instance, more than 60 percent of machine outages came from hardware issues. Digging further, we found that the most common hardware problem was faulty DRAM. This meshes with the experience of people operating big data centers, DRAM modules being among the most frequently replaced components.
An individual memory cell in a modern DRAM chip is made up of one capacitor and one transistor. Charging or discharging that capacitor stores one bit of information. Unlike static RAM, which keeps its data intact as long as power is applied to it, DRAM loses information, because the electric charge used to record the bits in its memory cells slowly leaks away. So circuitry must refresh the charge state of each of these memory cells many times each second—hence the appellation “dynamic.” Although having to include refresh circuitry complicates the construction of memory modules, the advantage of DRAM is that the capacitors for the memory cells can be made exceedingly small, which allows for billions of bits on a single chip.
A DRAM error arises when one or more bits that are written in one way end up being read in another way. Most consumer-grade computers offer no protection against such problems, but servers typically use what is called an error-correcting code (ECC) in their DRAM. The basic strategy is that by storing more bits than are needed to hold the data, the chip can detect and possibly even correct memory errors, as long as not too many bits are flipped simultaneously. But errors that are too severe can still cause machines to crash.
Although the general problem is well known, what stunned us when analyzing data from Lawrence Livermore, Argonne, and Google (and a few other sites later on) was how common these errors are. Between 12 percent and 45 percent of machines at Google experience at least one DRAM error per year. This is orders of magnitude more frequent than earlier estimates had suggested. And even though the machines at Google all employ various forms of ECC, between 0.2 percent and 4 percent of them succumb to uncorrectable DRAM errors each year, causing them to shut down unexpectedly.
How can a problem whose existence has been known for more than three decades still be so poorly understood? Several reasons. First off, although these failures occur more often than anybody would like, they’re still rare enough to require very large data sets to obtain statistically significant frequency estimates: You have to study many thousands of machines for years. As a result, most reliability estimates for DRAM are produced in the lab—for example, by shooting particle beams at a device to simulate the effects of cosmic rays, which were long thought to be the main cause of these errors. The idea was that a high-energy cosmic ray would hit a gas molecule in the atmosphere, giving rise to a zoo of other particles, some of which could in turn cause bit errors when they hit a DRAM chip.
Another reason it’s so hard to get data on memory failures “in the wild” is that manufacturers and companies running large systems are very reluctant to share information with the public about hardware failures. It’s just too sensitive.
DRAM errors can usually be divided into two broad categories: soft errors and hard errors. Soft errors occur when the physical device is perfectly functional but some transient form of interference—say, a particle spawned by a cosmic ray—corrupts the stored data. Hard errors reflect problems with the physical device itself, where, for example, a specific bit in DRAM is permanently stuck at 0 or 1.
The prevailing wisdom is that soft errors are much more common than hard errors. So nearly all previous research on this topic focused on soft errors. Curiously, before we began our investigations, there were no field studies available even to check this assumption.
Source: Hwang, Stefanovici, and Schroeder, Proceedings of ASPLOS XVII, 2012 In the Crosshairs: Once a DRAM error occurs, the likelihood of other errors in the same row or column of memory cells increases. The likelihood of errors even grows for nearby rows or columns, as seen in this “heat map” of error correlations.
To test this widely held belief—indeed, to answer many open questions about memory errors—we examined large-scale computing systems with a wide variety of workloads, DRAM technologies, and protection mechanisms. Specifically, we obtained access to a subset of Google’s data centers, two generations of IBM’s Blue Gene supercomputer (one at Lawrence Livermore and one at Argonne), as well as the largest high-performance cluster in Canada, housed at the SciNet supercomputer center at the University of Toronto. Most of these facilities were already logging the relevant data, although we needed to work with SciNet’s operators on that. In total, we analyzed more than 300 terabyte-years of DRAM usage.
There was some unquestionably good news. For one, high temperatures don’t degrade memory as much as people had thought. This is valuable to know: By letting machines run somewhat hotter than usual, big data centers can save on cooling costs and also cut down on associated carbon emissions.
One of the most important things we discovered was that a small minority of the machines caused a large majority of the errors. That is, the errors tended to hit the same memory modules time and again. Indeed, we calculated that the probability of having a DRAM error nearly doubles after a machine has had just two such errors. This was startling, given the prevailing assumption that soft errors are the dominant failure mode. After all, if most errors come from random events such as cosmic rays, each DRAM memory chip should have an equal chance of being struck, leading to a roughly uniform distribution of errors throughout the monitored systems. But that wasn’t happening.
To understand more about our results, you need to know that a DRAM device is organized into several memory banks, each of which can be thought of as a 2-D array of memory cells laid out in neat rows and columns. A particular cell inside an array can be identified by two numbers: a row index and a column index.
We found that more than half the memory banks suffering errors were failing repeatedly at the same row and column address—that is, at the location of one iffy cell. Another significant fraction of the errors cropped up in the same row or same column each time, although the exact address varied.
It’s unlikely, of course, that the same location on a device would be hit twice by an errant nuclear particle. Extremely unlikely. This is clear evidence that, contrary to prevailing notions, hard DRAM errors are more common than soft ones.
What are we to make of the unexpected prevalence of hard errors? The bad news is that hard errors are permanent. The good news is that they are easy to work around. If errors take place repeatedly in the same memory address, you can just blacklist that address. And you can do that well before the computer crashes. Remember, the only errors that really matter are the ones that flip too many bits for ECC to correct. So errors that corrupt fewer bits could be used as an early warning that drastic measures should be taken before a crash occurs.
Our investigation showed that this strategy could indeed work well: More than half of the catastrophic multibit errors followed earlier errors that were less severe and thus correctable. So with the proper mechanisms in place, most crash-inducing DRAM glitches could be prevented. Indeed, rather than just relying on ECC or other expensive kinds of correction hardware, computer operating systems themselves could help to protect against memory errors.
Image: ZeptoBars Rows and Columns: This image shows the internal makeup of a typical DRAM chip, in this case Micron Technology’s MT4C1024, which stores 2 20 bits of information (1 mebibit).
Operating systems typically divide the computer’s main memory into areas known as pages (usually 4 kilobytes in size). And from the operating system’s point of view, the majority of errors come from a very small fraction of the available pages. Indeed, more than 85 percent of the errors come from just 0.0001 percent of all the pages. By removing those problematic pages from use, the operating system could prevent most of the risk of errors without giving up much memory capacity.
Although others have previously proposed this very tactic, known as page retirement, it’s seldom used. None of the organizations we worked with for our DRAM study employed it. One reason might be that people just didn’t realize how often DRAM errors tend to crop up in the same page of memory. After our research brought that fact to light, Facebook adopted page retirement in its data centers. But it’s still not widely used, perhaps because there’s still some confusion about what sort of page-retirement schemes would work best.
To help clarify that issue, we investigated five simple policies. Some were as conservative as “Retire a page when you see the first error on it.” Others involve trying to prevent row or column errors by retiring the entire row or column as soon as one memory cell starts to show problems. We used the data we collected to see how well such policies might protect real computer systems, and we found that almost 90 percent of the memory-access errors could have been prevented by sacrificing less than 1 megabyte of memory per computer—a tiny fraction of what is typically installed.
Sure, a technician could replace the entire memory module when it starts to have errors. But it would probably have only a few bad cells. Page retirement could isolate the regions of memory prone to errors without sacrificing the other parts of an otherwise functional module. Indeed, applying sensible page-retirement policies in large data centers and supercomputing facilities would not only prevent the majority of machine crashes, it would also save the owners money.
The same applies to consumer gadgets. With the growing ubiquity of smartphones, tablets, wearable electronics, and other high-tech gear, the number of devices that use DRAM memory is skyrocketing. And as DRAM technology advances, these devices will contain ever-larger quantities of memory, much of which is soldered straight onto the system board. A hard error in such DRAM would normally require replacing the entire gizmo. So having the software retire problematic parts of memory in such an environment would be especially valuable.
Had we accepted the received wisdom that cosmic rays cause most DRAM errors, we would never have started looking at how these chips perform under real-world conditions. We would have continued to believe that distant events far off in the galaxy were the ultimate cause of many blue screens and server crashes, never realizing that the memory errors behind them usually stem from underlying problems in the way these chips are constructed.
In that sense, DRAM chips are a little like people: Their faults are not so much in their stars as in themselves. And like so many people, they can function perfectly well once they compensate for a few small flaws.
This article originally appeared in print as “Battling Borked Bits”
About the Author
Ioan Stefanovici and coauthor Andy Hwang are computer science grad students at the University of Toronto, studying under third coauthor Bianca Schroeder. The three have worked together to understand errors in dynamic random-access memory. “It’s a fairly rare phenomenon,” says Stefanovici. “You buy DRAM and assume it works.” But as the authors show, sometimes that’s a faulty assumption, particularly for a giant data center or supercomputer.
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Partition: ‘Keep a bit of India’
This is an edited extract from Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam
by Mark Curtis
In 1947 the partition of colonial British India into two new states, India and the Muslim state of Pakistan, involved massive population transfer and a bloodbath: up to a million people lost their lives in the communal violence that accompanied partition. Indian nationalists, and a good many others, have constantly charged Britain with having deliberately promoted partition and the creation of Pakistan to secure its strategic interests. A huge amount has been written on this subject, and there remains much debate and controversy. Much of the historical evidence is contradictory, and the issues involved are clearly complex, but there is considerable evidence to support the view that Britain indeed used the ‘Muslim card’ for its own purposes.
In 1886 a group of northern Indian Muslims, led by the educationalist and social reformer, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, set up the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference in order to build bridges between Islam and science, and between Muslims and the colonial state. Known as the Aligarh movement, after the city in modern Uttar Pradesh where it was founded, the conference made a point of not supporting the Indian National Congress, the organisation of Indian nationalism – thus endearing itself to colonial officials, who provided it with moral and material support.
In 1906, the movement’s representatives, largely landowners from the Muslim nobility, asked the viceroy, Lord Minto, for special political representation for Muslims in new provincial legislative councils announced by the British; separate electorates were duly established for Muslims who voted for representatives from their own community, and with extra seats, over and above their proportion of the population, in certain provinces. Minto thus secured the continuing loyalty of the Muslim elite; his wife recorded in her diary that her husband had prevented ‘sixty-two million people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition’.
On 20 December the same year the Aligarh movement gave birth to the Muslim League, whose first article was ‘to promote among the Mussalmans of India, feelings of loyalty to the British government’. The League was looked on favourably by British officials; then Labour MP and future prime minister, Ramsay Macdonald, wrote in his 1910 book, The Awakening of India, that the leaders of the League ‘were inspired by certain Anglo–Indian officials, and that these officials pulled wires at Simla [the colonial ‘summer capital’ in northern India] and in London and of malice aforethought sowed discord between the Hindu and the Mohammedan.’
By the 1930s the idea of a separate ‘Pakistan’ – meaning ‘land of the pure’, an acronym of Punjab, Afghan (i.e., the people of the Northwest Frontier province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan – gained ground within the Muslim League. In 1939, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, worked with Muslim League leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to try to counter the Congress Party’s demand for full Indian independence from British rule and to urge the League to come up with an alternative. Linlithgow told Jinnah in September 1939 that if the Muslim League regarded it as unsuitable for India to become a dominion within the Commonwealth, a major British demand, ‘then the escape from the impasse is partition’.
When the two met again in March 1940, Linlithgow continued to press Jinnah to produce an alternative to Congress’ plan. Linlithgow considered that the demand for a separate Pakistan might give the British some useful leverage over the Hindu nationalists, who feared any break-up of India, and was, as Patrick French notes, ‘playing a complex game of political brinkmanship which was to have lasting consequences for the future of Asia’. On 23 March, ten days after this meeting, and backed by the British secretary of state for India, Lord Zetland, the Muslim League adopted the Lahore resolution, declaring as its official policy the establishment of a separate Muslim state in northern India.
Whitehall had long opposed demands for Indian independence of any description, but the popular power of the nationalist movement led by Gandhi, coupled with Britain’s weakened postwar position, made the end of the Raj inevitable by the mid-1940s. By then, crucially, the British realised that, post-independence, Indian nationalists would withdraw India from the Commonwealth and deny Britain military and political influence in the region. It was at this point that, much evidence indicates, London sought to detach the northwest part of the country to establish a separate Muslim state. The proposed state of Pakistan was strategically located, bordering Iran, Afghanistan and China, and close to the southernmost areas of the Soviet Union – the site, indeed, of the nineteenth century Great Game. Britain now deliberately set out to partition India to achieve important strategic objectives in the area.
Field Marshall Wavell, the British viceroy in India from 1943, was the principal proponent of partition, realising soon after his arrival that the Congress Party was not interested in post-independence military cooperation with Britain. By 1944, Wavell was determined to build up Jinnah’s Muslim League and withdraw British military forces into the strategic northwest, where they would seek to retain their bases. Pakistan, he envisaged, would become a dominion within the Commonwealth; the rest of India would be left to its own devices. Prime Minister Churchill had long rejected any form of Indian independence, but by March 1945, Wavell remarked that Churchill’s position was shifting: he ‘seems to favour partition of India into Pakistan, Hindustan and Princestan’ – Hindustan referring to the Hindu regions of India, and Princestan to the numerous princely states which Britain had long cultivated to ensure colonial control.
That August, Churchill, now in opposition following Clement Attlee’s landslide Labour election victory in July, had a further meeting with Wavell, who was in London to discuss India with the new ministers. According to Wavell, Churchill left the meeting with the parting words: ‘Keep a bit of India’. Thus, although Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, has often been blamed for partition by decisions made in 1947, the division of India appears to have already been shaped two years earlier.
Attlee and other ministers also initially opposed partition, holding out for retaining a united India that would cooperate with Britain after independence. When it became obvious that this was never going to happen, Attlee agreed to support partition as long as the Congress Party also acquiesced with this solution – thereby absolving Britain of any responsibility for it. When it became plain that Congress would not support partition, Attlee went ahead anyway, in April 1946 authorising the government to work towards the creation of Pakistan, ‘if it seems to be the only chance of an agreed settlement’.
By 1947, British military chiefs of staff had become enthusiastic proponents of Pakistan, seeing its creation as providing several valuable functions, including obtaining air bases in the new territory and ‘to ensure the continued independence and integrity [of] Afghanistan’. ‘The area of Pakistan’, the chiefs noted, ‘is strategically the most important in the continent of India and the majority of our strategic requirements could be met.’ Britain would also be able to ‘increase our prestige and improve our position throughout the Muslim world, and demonstrate, by the assistance Pakistan would receive, the advantages of links with the British Commonwealth.’
Field Marshall Montgomery, now the chief of the imperial general staff, noted that it would be ‘a tremendous asset’ if Pakistan remained within the Commonwealth, since ‘the bases, airfields and ports in northwest India would be invaluable to Commonwealth defence’. A document in his papers provides a precise analysis of Pakistan’s strategic importance, post-independence:
‘The Indus Valley, western Punjab and Baluchistan [the northwest] are vital to any strategic plans for the defence of [the] all-important Muslim belt …[and] the oil supplies of the Middle East … If the British Commonwealth and the United States of America are to be in a position to defend their vital interests in the Middle East, then the best and most stable area from which to conduct this defence is from Pakistan territory. Pakistan [is] the keystone of the strategic arch of the wide and vulnerable waters of the Indian Ocean’.
Patrick French argues that no leading British civil servants favoured the dismemberment of the Indian empire at independence or believed that the creation of Pakistan would be beneficial. He writes that ‘the claim that the British had secret plans all along to partition India … cannot be supported from the internal memoranda and documentation of Whitehall officialdom.’ However, French’s account did not apparently benefit from consulting the documents from the chiefs of staff, which are recounted in the analysis by Narendra Sarila, a former aide-de-camp to Mountbatten. It is true that the British did not ‘prefer’ to dismember India up to, say, late 1945 or early 1946, and therefore did not have ‘secret plans’ to partition India all along. Yet by the time it became obvious that Britain would not obtain an agreement on its terms – i.e., a united India which would preserve strong ties with Britain – planners quickly opted to promote a separate Pakistan. The British had long tried to use the Muslim card to exert leverage over the Hindu nationalists, since they had few other means to maintain British power in the face of a popular movement against it – there were no other major political forces to turn to, and overt military intervention was out of the question.
Another key aspect of Britain’s policy towards partition concerned the north Indian region of Kashmir, which London wanted annexed to Pakistan. Pakistan invaded and occupied Kashmir in October 1947, and throughout the ensuing border war with India, Britain maintained a strongly pro-Pakistan stance. The Commonwealth secretary noted, five days after Kashmir acceded to India in October, that ‘it would have been natural for Kashmir to eventually accede to Pakistan on agreed terms’. At the UN, Britain lobbied in favour of Kashmir’s becoming a Pakistani province, based on the argument that 77 per cent of the population was Muslim. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin told US Secretary of State George Marshall that ‘the main issue was who would control the main artery leading into Central Asia.’ Indeed, Pakistan was, as the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton put it, central to Bevin’s ambition to organise ‘the middle of the planet’.
The Times heralded Partition Day, 15 August 1947:
‘In the hour of its creation Pakistan emerges as the leading state of the Muslim world. Since the collapse of the Turkish empire that world, which extends across the globe from Morocco to Indonesia, has not included a state whose numbers, natural resources and place in history gave it undisputed pre-eminence. The gap is now filled. From today Karachi takes rank as a new centre of Muslim cohesion and rallying point of Muslim thought and aspirations’.
Two years after partition, its key proponent, Field Marshall Wavell, made an address to the Royal Central Asia Society, outlining the strategic importance of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. Wavell stated that ‘the next great struggle for world power, if it takes place, may well be for the control of these oil reserves.’ These regions might be the battleground not only for the material struggle for oil but also ‘of the spiritual struggle of at least three great creeds – Christianity, Islam, Communism’. Therefore, ‘the Western powers must surely be in the Middle East.’
The partition of India had immediate terrible human consequences. With an estimated 20 million people crossing the new border in both directions, in search of new homes, there was an almost total breakdown in law and order, and massive violence in the border areas. The process created a country that, like Saudi Arabia, would become a perceived strategic asset for Anglo–American planners. Pakistan would go on to become a ‘balance’ to neutral, non-aligned India, joining the US-backed Baghdad Pact military alliance in the 1950s and offering the US air base facilities to spy on the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, it was to act as a forward base for intervention in Afghanistan – precisely its utility as seen by British military chiefs over thirty years earlier.
Partition also created a state that had little to bind it together other than an adherence to Islam, and which, under military rulers lacking any other domestic legitimacy, would later propagate extremist versions of Islam and nurture jihadist groups. Kashmir’s division between India and Pakistan not only became a constant source of conflict between the two states; Pakistan’s Islamist cause to ‘liberate’ Kashmir from part-Indian control would help advance the jihadi movement far beyond the sub-continent. Thus would Pakistan go on to become an epicentre of Islamic radicalism and, in the present, pose the largest terrorist threat to Britain. While these are complex processes, working over a long time-scale, they can be traced back to the very creation of Pakistan, in which British policy-makers, seeking to promote their own interests, played an important role. Perhaps ironically, clerics of the revivalist Deobandi movement, which would be patronised by Pakistan’s later military rulers and would back jihadi forces in Pakistan, largely opposed the creation of Pakistan at the time, arguing that a Muslim national state was not needed to create their Islamic world.
Narendra Sarila notes that ‘the successful use of religion by the British to fulfil political and strategic objectives in India was replicated by the Americans in building up the Islamic jihadis in Afghanistan’. Overall, ‘many of the roots of Islamic terrorism sweeping the world today lie buried in the partition of India.’
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Source: whatinvestment.co.uk
Investors hoping to spot the early signs of another crash in the commercial property market should keep their eyes on UK ten-year gilt yields, according to Jonathan Webster-Smith, fund of funds manager at Brooks MacDonald.
Webster-Smith explained that a central attraction for property investors in the UK is the rental yield. But as the property market hots up and prices rise, those yields fall, dampening the income available to investors.
He believes the danger sign is when the yield on property falls below the yield on a ten-year UK government bond, an investment which is regarded as virtually risk-free.
He remarked that in 2007, ‘investors were looking at the income yield they were getting on property funds, and they were advised that, well you could get a higher yield by buying gilts [UK government bonds], and sometimes on a cash account. So investors went and moved out of property funds and into the higher-yielding product, which caused severe underperformance for property funds.’
Assuming Webster-Smith is right, the danger point is some way off. At the present time, UK gilt yields have fallen below 2 per cent, while most property funds offer a yield much higher than that.
But he noted that when UK interest rates eventually rise, gilt yields would be expected to go up too. This would narrow the gap between the yield on gilts and that on to property. If cash continues to pour into property funds at anything like the current levels, then Webster-Smith feels that a 2007-style crash could recur, where the yields on lower risk assets such as gilts exceed that on property, causing property investors who are focused on income to rush for the exit.
Webster-Smith has some exposure to property funds in his portfolio, with approximately 6 per cent of the capital employed in the funds he created for ‘low to medium risk’ investors in property, down to 2 per cent in the portfolio of funds he runs for higher risk investors.
Turning his thoughts to individual property funds, Webster-Smith remarked that he is a fan of the giant F&C Commercial Property investment trust, particularly as an income investment. But he remarked that he rates the fund a ‘hold’, rather than a ‘buy’ at the present time due to the 19 per cent premium at which it currently trades to its net assets.
Said Webster-Smith, ‘The performance of the fund on a total return basis is exceptional, I mean if you look at it on a performance line chart relative to the average fund in the sector, you would be forgiven for thinking that it invested in a completely different asset class to all the other property funds, it is so far ahead. We were able to buy it four or five years ago on a discount, and find it less attractive on the premium it is on now, but I am a big fan of the fund.’
Instead he is investing in two open-ended property funds, the £1.38 billion Legal and General UK Property fund, which currently yields 4.2 per cent, and the £500 million Scottish Widows UK Property fund.
Open-ended funds are valued at their net assets and cannot move to discounts or premiums.
In equity markets, he has, in the past three months, increased his exposure to the UK stock market, and is more cautious on the US.
Webster-Smith remarked, ‘The US economy looks to be in good shape, but the market there has performed very well for the past two years, and you would have to ask yourself if it can repeat that performance this year.
‘I think that there has been a big change, with the markets now expecting that US interest rates will rise faster than rates in the UK. For a couple of years the expectation was the other way around, and that could impact on the stock markets.
‘I think that part of the reason that the UK market did so badly last year was that the strength of sterling relative to the dollar hit company earnings, but now the dollar is stronger, so the earnings of the UK companies who sell their products in dollars should do better. Yet, the UK market went up on a total return basis by less than 1 per cent in 2014 and the market has started poorly in 2015, so the valuations aren’t more expensive even as the circumstances change.’
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November, 1989. Belgium is amidst a ‘UFO wave’ that begins in late November and seems to end in 1990, with a photograph that one man claimed to have taken of a hovering UFO. The photograph was to become one of the most controversial UFO photographs of all time. A triangle shaped UFO with bright orange lights was photographed in April of 1990 by a young eighteen year old man who goes by “Patrick”. It was to be printed in books and shown in lecture circuits around the world.
Two decades later, Patrick, is now more mature and seems to have changed his mind about the story. The story that puzzled many experts from across the globe. It turns out, that Patrick hoaxed the photograph that night by using polystyrene to build the UFO model. Then, with the help of friends, he strung it up and under the cover of the night, snapped the now infamous photograph. This is according to AFP News and “Patrick”.
The “Belgium UFO Wave” was an unexplained event in which several Belgian citizens reported to the authorities a triangle shaped UFO hovering through the sky. The reports were so many, that the police captain had to place a call to the military about the mass number of sightings which threatened the citizens. It’s known that the military sent two F-16s out to investigate the reports and one of the pilots reported that his radar locked in on the object. It resembled a diamond shape on the radar screen. Before he could get closer to the object, it picked up incredible speed and flew out of the radar’s range.
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There is still plenty to learn about the Overwatch League, but what is certain is that there are major players interested in securing a team for the future esports competition.
In an interview with theScore esports, NRG Esports chairman and co-founder Andy Miller said that, beyond just traditional sports teams, the organization has received overtures from mayors interested in bringing the esports organization to their cities.
"It's an eye-opener to me," Miller told theScore esports. "We've had interest from traditional sports teams who are located in cities saying 'hey, do you want to partner with us?' We've had interest from actual cities: like mayors and sports entertainment authorities, saying 'hey, is there a possibility that you want to bring your org to our city and partner with us?'"
NRG isn't playing coy about their interest in the Overwatch League, either. The competitive structure for the company's class-based FPS will see esports organizations bid for franchises that represent specific cities. Miller said NRG are "super interested, we want in," and that he believes the team's blend of popularity and skill can make them a hallmark entry in the future league.
"We've just signed [André "iddqd" Dahlström] this weekend — which blew us away with the response, and if you check out our social, it was amazing. People freaked that [Brandon "Seagull" Larned] and [iddqd] are on the same team," he said. "We want to bring that team into the league, we want to be the face of the league. We like what we hear so far."
Miller said that NRG are still considering their options for the league. Despite a perceived connection through Miller and fellow NRG co-owner Mark Mastrov to Sacramento — both are members of the Sacramento Kings' ownership group — the organization hasn't truly settled on a single city.
"Because we don't have a home, per se," Miller said, "and we're going to have to find one and partner up with someone so we have a great, attractive bid for the franchise."
Josh "Gauntlet" Bury is a news editor for theScore esports. You can find him on Twitter.
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Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) has spent most of 2016 in South Africa, where he was was charged with using a false passport and travel document while attempting to leave the country. Although he is out on bail, he is unable to go abroad to perform “due to circumstances beyond [his] control,” he explained in a new Facebook Live video. As a result, his show at London’s O2 Forum (set to take place October 14) has been postponed until October 22; the venue cited “an urgent issue” for the last-minute change. Bey, who is also scheduled to perform at the Forum on October 24, offered a solution for live shows, which would be exclusive video streams for those who purchased tickets.
Also in the video, Bey provided an update on his January claim that he was retiring from music and film industry “effective immediately.” He has now said, “I’m retiring this year for real.” The person filming later asked Bey, “When are you going to play another movie?” He answered emphatically, “I’m retiring, guys!” But he did continue, “I do have one or two films that I made commitments to earlier, before I announced my retirement. Apart from that, I’m moving onto other things, still being creative. You know, definitely fashion, textiles, and just art. Whatever I can create that’s beautiful and useful, that’s what I wanna do.” He also offered “exclusive new material” to Jay Z for Tidal. Watch the full video update below.
Despite his retirement assertion, Yasiin Bey has been very active musically this year. He has released a number of songs with Ferrari Sheppard as Dec. 99th. Among those is a track called “Hymn,” which is out on Tidal. In addition, he appeared on a Tribe Called Red’s “R.E.D.” (from We Are the Halluci Nation), and performed live with BADBADNOTGOOD when the band was in Cape Town.
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One of the most important hiking tips to remember is to let someone know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. But with beautiful Instagram posts and elusive Foursquare check-ins just a couple-hour hike away, it’s easy to forget to let someone you’re heading out.
Cairn, a new iOS app from Trover and Expedia veterans Ali Alami and Tove Martin, lets you easily enter the details of your hike, whether it’s a three day climb up Mt. Rainier or a half-day trip up to Hurricane Ridge, and keeps your friends and family up to date.
Just punch in where you’re going, the latest you plan to be back, and the contact info for your “Safety Circle,” and Cairn takes care of keeping everyone up to date on your adventures.
While out on your hike, climb or camping trip, you can check in with some pre-written messages (think “I made it to the top” or “I’m on my way back”) to let your circle know you’re safe. When your trip is over, just hit the End Trip button and everyone knows you made it back OK. And if you’re gone later than you said you’d be, Cairn sends a follow-up email to your circle, letting them know it’s time to call in some help.
“When comes down to safety in the wilderness and getting rescued, it’s really two things. One is did you let someone know where you’re going? That actually saves search and rescue hours if they have a general location that they can start from,” Alami said. “The other thing that’s important is being able to call 911. Most [wilderness] rescues in the last ten years have been initiated by a cell phone.”
But getting service in the wilderness can be tough, which is where Cairn’s secondary tool comes in handy: a cell phone signal map. Cairn lets you see what cell phone coverage will be like on your hike.
That’s the idea at least—the map is a little sparse right now. Cairn relies on user-generated data to find out where service is available on the trail, and some parks don’t have much data available at all yet.
As you travel on your hike, Cairn not only tracks where you’re going, but also tracks your signal strength, reporting that data back to servers and updating the map for future travelers. Cairn even breaks it down by cell carrier.
With more than 350,000 data points from around some of the largest western U.S. parks, the more popular destinations have good data, but as the app gains momentum it’ll get more data points in state parks and smaller recreational areas.
And you don’t have to worry about it draining your battery. While Cairn checks in every three minutes by default, you can set it to check in less often if you’re on a longer trip or running low on power.
“Really what takes up battery is your phone searching for a signal,” said Martin. You phone will look for signal anyway, so running Cairn won’t add significantly to your battery drain.
Martin and Alami thought up the app when they were out on a hike. After struggling to meet up on the trail, unsure of which way to head for better service, the duo realized they never told anyone where they were hiking to or when to expect them back.
But hiking and spending time outdoors wasn’t just a hobby for the co-founders; Almani was a wilderness survival instructor for the Air Force before he joined Expedia, teaching pilots how to survive if they crash, and Martin directed user experience for Trover, letting travelers share their adventure photos.
The team also includes developer Joel Dubowy, who helps build modeling software for the Forest Service in his day job, helping them to predict the movement of wildfires. And their head developer, Nick Neiman, hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, gathering data and testing the app. Then there’s the professional climber, Graham Zimmerman, who’s helping the team with community outreach and thinking up ways Cairn can benefit pro outdoorsmen.
Alami and Martin bootstrapped Cairn, which launched in December. Alami is working on it part-time while maintaining a product management role at Expedia, while Martin is focusing on the project full time.
The app is free on iOS, but Alami said they plan to build premium offerings in the future for frequent hikers. But now, the team is working on filling out the map and building a robust project to keep hikers safe.
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