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Infrasound arrays at infrasound monitoring station in Qaanaaq , Greenland Infrasound, sometimes referred to as low-frequency sound, is sound that is lower in frequency than 20 Hz or cycles per second, the "normal" limit of human hearing. Hearing becomes gradually less sensitive as frequency decreases, so for humans to perceive infrasound, the sound pressure must be sufficiently high. The ear is the primary organ for sensing infrasound, but at higher intensities it is possible to feel infrasound vibrations in various parts of the body. The study of such sound waves is sometimes referred to as infrasonics, covering sounds beneath 20 Hz down to 0.1 Hz and rarely to 0.001 Hz. People use this frequency range for monitoring earthquakes, charting rock and petroleum formations below the earth, and also in ballistocardiography and seismocardiography to study the mechanics of the heart. Infrasound is characterized by an ability to get around obstacles with little dissipation. In music, acoustic waveguide methods, such as a large pipe organ or, for reproduction, exotic loudspeaker designs such as transmission line, rotary woofer, or traditional subwoofer designs can produce low-frequency sounds, including near-infrasound. Subwoofers designed to produce infrasound are capable of sound reproduction an octave or more below that of most commercially available subwoofers, and are often about 10 times the size.[citation needed] Definition [ edit ] Infrasound is defined by the American National Standards Institute as "sound at frequencies less than 20 Hz." History and study [ edit ] The Allies of World War I first used infrasound to locate artillery.[1] One of the pioneers in infrasonic research was French scientist Vladimir Gavreau.[2] His interest in infrasonic waves first came about in his laboratory during the 1960s, when he and his laboratory assistants experienced shaking laboratory equipment and pain in the eardrums, but his microphones did not detect audible sound. He concluded it was infrasound caused by a large fan and duct system, and soon got to work preparing tests in the laboratories. One of his experiments was an infrasonic whistle, an oversized organ pipe.[3][4][5] Sources [ edit ] Patent for a double bass reflex loudspeaker enclosure design intended to produce infrasonic frequencies ranging from 5 to 25 hertz, of which traditional subwoofer designs are not readily capable. Infrasound can result from both natural and man-made sources: Human singers: some vocalists, including Tim Storms, can produce notes in the infrasound range.[25] Animal reactions [ edit ] Some animals have been thought to perceive the infrasonic waves going through the earth, caused by natural disasters, and to use these as an early warning. An example of this is the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Animals were reported to have fled the area hours before the actual tsunami hit the shores of Asia.[29][30] It is not known for sure that this is the cause; some have suggested that it may have been the influence of electromagnetic waves, and not of infrasonic waves, that prompted these animals to flee.[31] Research in 2013 by Jon Hagstrum of the US Geological Survey suggests that homing pigeons use low-frequency infrasound to navigate.[32] Human reactions [ edit ] 20 Hz is considered the normal low-frequency limit of human hearing. When pure sine waves are reproduced under ideal conditions and at very high volume, a human listener will be able to identify tones as low as 12 Hz.[33] Below 10 Hz it is possible to perceive the single cycles of the sound, along with a sensation of pressure at the eardrums. From about 1000 Hz, the dynamic range of the auditory system decreases with decreasing frequency. This compression is observable in the equal-loudness-level contours, and it implies that even a slight increase in level can change the perceived loudness from barely audible to loud. Combined with the natural spread in thresholds within a population, its effect may be that a very low-frequency sound which is inaudible to some people may be loud to others. One study has suggested that infrasound may cause feelings of awe or fear in humans. It has also been suggested that since it is not consciously perceived, it may make people feel vaguely that odd or supernatural events are taking place.[34] Engineer Vic Tandy provided such an explanation in his investigations in the 1980s. Tandy, while working in his laboratory, started to feel uneasy and as if a supernatural presence was with him. Later, he could attribute these feelings to a broken metal fan that was causing noises of a frequency that triggered them. The noise could not be perceived by the human ear, but Tandy's body reacted to the 19 Hz sounds.[35] A scientist working at Sydney University's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory reports growing evidence that infrasound may affect some people's nervous system by stimulating the vestibular system, and this has shown in animal models an effect similar to sea sickness.[36] In research conducted in 2006 focusing on the impact of sound emissions from wind turbines on the nearby population, perceived infrasound has been associated to effects such as annoyance or fatigue, depending on its intensity, with little evidence supporting physiological effects of infrasound below the human perception threshold.[37] Later studies, however, have linked inaudible infrasound to effects such as fullness, pressure or tinnitus, and acknowledged the possibility that it could disturb sleep.[38] Other studies have also suggested associations between noise levels in turbines and self-reported sleep disturbances in the nearby population, while adding that the contribution of infrasound to this effect is still not fully understood.[39][40] In a study at Ibaraki University in Japan, researchers said EEG tests showed that the infrasound produced by wind turbines was “considered to be an annoyance to the technicians who work close to a modern large-scale wind turbine.”[41][42][43] Infrasonic 17 Hz tone experiment [ edit ] On 31 May 2003 a group of UK researchers held a mass experiment, where they exposed some 700 people to music laced with soft 17 Hz sine waves played at a level described as "near the edge of hearing", produced by an extra-long-stroke subwoofer mounted two-thirds of the way from the end of a seven-meter-long plastic sewer pipe. The experimental concert (entitled Infrasonic) took place in the Purcell Room over the course of two performances, each consisting of four musical pieces. Two of the pieces in each concert had 17 Hz tones played underneath.[44][45] In the second concert, the pieces that were to carry a 17 Hz undertone were swapped so that test results would not focus on any specific musical piece. The participants were not told which pieces included the low-level 17 Hz near-infrasonic tone. The presence of the tone resulted in a significant number (22%) of respondents reporting feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear.[44][45] In presenting the evidence to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Richard Wiseman said "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound. Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost—our findings support these ideas."[34] Suggested relationship to ghost sightings [ edit ] Psychologist Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire suggests that the odd sensations that people attribute to ghosts may be caused by infrasonic vibrations. Vic Tandy, experimental officer and part-time lecturer in the school of international studies and law at Coventry University, along with Dr. Tony Lawrence of the University's psychology department, wrote in 1998 a paper called "Ghosts in the Machine" for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Their research suggested that an infrasonic signal of 19 Hz might be responsible for some ghost sightings. Tandy was working late one night alone in a supposedly haunted laboratory at Warwick, when he felt very anxious and could detect a grey blob out of the corner of his eye. When Tandy turned to face the grey blob, there was nothing. The following day, Tandy was working on his fencing foil, with the handle held in a vice. Although there was nothing touching it, the blade started to vibrate wildly. Further investigation led Tandy to discover that the extractor fan in the lab was emitting a frequency of 18.98 Hz, very close to the resonant frequency of the eye given as 18 Hz by NASA.[46] This, Tandy conjectured, was why he had seen a ghostly figure—it was, he believed, an optical illusion caused by his eyeballs resonating. The room was exactly half a wavelength in length, and the desk was in the centre, thus causing a standing wave which caused the vibration of the foil.[47] Tandy investigated this phenomenon further and wrote a paper entitled The Ghost in the Machine.[48] He carried out a number of investigations at various sites believed to be haunted, including the basement of the Tourist Information Bureau next to Coventry Cathedral[49][50] and Edinburgh Castle.[51][52] Infrasound for nuclear detonation detection [ edit ] Infrasound is one of several techniques used to identify if a nuclear detonation has occurred. A network of 60 infrasound stations, in addition to seismic and hydroacoustic stations, comprise the International Monitoring System (IMS) that is tasked with monitoring compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).[53] IMS Infrasound stations consist of eight microbarometer sensors and space filters arranged in an array covering an area of approximately 1 to 9 km2.[53][54] The space filters used are radiating pipes with inlet ports along their length, designed to average out pressure variations like wind turbulence for more precise measurements.[54] The microbarometers used are designed to monitor frequencies below approximately 20 hertz.[53] Sound waves below 20 hertz have longer wavelengths and are not easily absorbed, allowing for detection across large distances.[53] Infrasound wavelengths can be generated artificially through detonations and other human activity, or naturally from earthquakes, severe weather, lightning, and other sources.[53] Like forensic seismology, algorithms and other filter techniques are required to analyze gathered data and characterize events to determine if a nuclear detonation has actually occurred. Data is transmitted from each station via secure communication links for further analysis. A digital signature is also embedded in the data sent from each station to verify if the data is authentic.[55] Detection and measurement [ edit ] NASA Langley has designed and developed an infrasonic detection system that can be used to make useful infrasound measurements at a location where it was not possible previously. The system comprises an electret condenser microphone PCB Model 377M06, having a 3-inch membrane diameter, and a small, compact windscreen.[56] Electret-based technology offers the lowest possible background noise, because Johnson noise generated in the supporting electronics (preamplifier) is minimized.[56] The microphone features a high membrane compliance with a large backchamber volume, a prepolarized backplane and a high impedance preamplifier located inside the backchamber. The windscreen, based on the high transmission coefficient of infrasound through matter, is made of a material having a low acoustic impedance and has a sufficiently thick wall to ensure structural stability.[57] Close-cell polyurethane foam has been found to serve the purpose well. In the proposed test, test parameters will be sensitivity, background noise, signal fidelity (harmonic distortion), and temporal stability. The microphone design differs from that of a conventional audio system in that the peculiar features of infrasound are taken into account. First, infrasound propagates over vast distances through the Earth's atmosphere as a result of very low atmospheric absorption and of refractive ducting that enables propagation by way of multiple bounces between the Earth's surface and the stratosphere. A second property that has received little attention is the great penetration capability of infrasound through solid matter – a property utilized in the design and fabrication of the system windscreens.[57] Thus the system fulfills several instrumentation requirements advantageous to the application of acoustics: (1) a low-frequency microphone with especially low background noise, which enables detection of low-level signals within a low-frequency passband; (2) a small, compact windscreen that permits (3) rapid deployment of a microphone array in the field. The system also features a data acquisition system that permits real time detection, bearing, and signature of a low-frequency source.[57] The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission uses infrasound as one of its monitoring technologies, along with seismic, hydroacoustic, and atmospheric radionuclide monitoring. The loudest infrasound recorded to date by the monitoring system was generated by the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor.[58] See also [ edit ]
Microsoft announced last week a major investment in their Redmond campus, expanding their footprint to accommodate up to 8,000 more workers, but also renovating and reinventing their campus. 12 older buildings will give way to 18 taller ones with a net addition of 2.5 million square feet. Urbanists, and other observers, were quick to notice an apparent contrast with Amazon which has built its headquarters in Seattle and avoided suburban offices. Many Bay area tech companies, after having started in the suburbs, are putting down roots in cities too. Several regional companies like Weyerhaeuser and Expedia have decamped to Seattle. Microsoft doesn’t appear to have ever considered such a move, and is confident that it can create an urban vibe within its historic footprint. Microsoft’s 2005 master plan foresees a gradually densifying campus. The latest announcement will come close to exhausting the capacity in that master plan, but the likely next step will be another master plan for further development within the 500-acre footprint. Microsoft’s leasing of office space in Bellevue and Issaquah was viewed as responsive to urgent needs for space rather than a strategy to develop outside the core campus. Microsoft in 2015 negotiated zoning changes that allow up to 10 story offices on the eastern part of the Redmond campus though this expansion won’t be that tall. The campus vision already goes well beyond the stereotypical auto-oriented suburban office park. It’s aligned to the nearby rail station opening in 2023, with straightened pedestrian connections to offices and retail. Buildings are closer together. Cars are removed from the interior of campus and all parking is underground. The office expansion fits with transportation improvements from the master plan including a pedestrian bridge across SR 520. The bridge connects the east and west sides of campus across SR 520 to each other and to the future light rail station. The excellent transit connections with Link after 2023 also distinguish Microsoft from the far less accessible Bay Area tech company offices. It’s simply not very far from the region’s urban core. The large suburban campus does permit amenities that would be difficult to provide in a more physically constrained urban setting. A large outdoor plaza will have room for up to 12,000 people. There are running and walking trails and several soccer and cricket fields. Bellevue and Redmond are, after Seattle, the most urban and fastest growing cities in the region. Downtown Bellevue is more second city than suburb, and the immediate neighborhood south of Microsoft is urbanizing and densifying. Just one development nearby, Esterra Park, is expected to eventually count over 3,000 homes. The longer-term evolution to a contiguous urban area from downtown Bellevue to Overlake and (with some suburban interruption) to Redmond is visibly beginning to take form. Microsoft won’t entirely escape the limitations of surrounding suburbia. North-south transit, and auto traffic, are mired in congestion on 148th and 156th. Active transportation is limited by distance and auto-oriented infrastructure. Single family neighborhoods that are not amenable to redevelopment closely surround urban areas of Bellevue and Redmond. One test of how the wider neighborhood urbanizes will be how many workers are locked into car commutes from distant suburbs as nearby residential neighborhoods experience comparatively little change. Nevertheless, this appears a future urban campus and urban neighborhood, as much as the restrictions of historic suburban development patterns allow.
East of the river was the land of Wu, Shu's was among the Streams, And Cao Cao, brave and heroic, held fast the Central Plain. It is not that these three divided up the sub-celestial realm- They returned to take vengeance for their murders. Liu Xiu, whose style name was Wenshu, once lived in Baishui village of Deng city in Nanyang, he was afterwards the Emperor Guangwu in the Han Dynasty. “Guang” of the title “Guangwu”, means the light of the sun and the moon which illuminates the world, while “Wu” means dominating the world. He established his capital in Luoyang and reigned for five years. One day, the emperor made his promenade to the imperial garden where he was fascinated by the combination of exotic flowers and plants, he was so enchanted that he had no thought to leave. The emperor asked one of his ministers: “Was this garden created by Wang Mang the usurper?” The minister replied: “It was absolutely not Wang Mang's feat. Actually, he had the flowers and plants transplanted into this garden by forcing the common people to purchase and take care of them, which was a disaster for these people in the east capital of Luoyang.” The emperor said: “I now transmit my decree, ordering every common people to enjoy the flowers with me at the same place on the coming March 3rd the Qingming Festival by posting imperial edict.” The next day, when everyone was in the imperial garden admiring the flowers in their pavilion assigned, a scholar wearing his white gown, gauze cap and black boots, holding a liquor pot in this left hand and an earthen bowl in his right hand, carrying his case of sword and books on his back, appeared unannounced in the imperial garden. Since all the pavilions were full of audience, the late comer had no place to sit on. The scholar walked a bit forward and saw an array of pine trees. So he put down his liquor pot and earthen bowl, unload his case of sword and books on the luxuriant and bluish green, where he sat on and poured the liquor in the earthen bowl, then took his drink at a gulp for three bowls successively. Before long, he was comfortably drunk. After a bowl of Bamboo Leaf pierces through his heart, his face is flushed as red as peach blossoms. Someone may wonder what's the name of this scholar? His compound surname was Sima, while his style name was Zhongxiang. After playing his Chinese zither in order to divert himself from boredom, he opened his bookcase and took out a roll of his book where he read that during the Qin Dynasty, which had fallen, Five Ridges were constructed in the south, the Great Wall was built in the north, the sea was reclaimed in the east, the Epang Palace was built in the west, yet many books were burned and Confucian scholars were buried alive. Flying into a fury, Zhongxiang reviled that "Emperor Qin Shi Huang was such a tyrant! If I were the emperor, everyone in my realm would have been in happiness!" Again, he said "Eight or nine out of ten were killed, their bodies were unburied and rotten because of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. The god had shown no mercy but made this man an emperor! Afterwards, Xiangyu of Langya became his threat in the south, while Liu Bang from Fengpei of Xuzhou raised insurrections in the north. The whole world was in turmoil again, where the armies were armed, the people were harmed!" At this moment, more than fifty men in silk clothes and embroidered hat unexpectedly appeared and turned towards the racks of brambles. Eight of them in purple robe matched with gold belt, holding official tablet and wearing black official boots, walked forward taking the lead in two rows with their silk package of purple goldfish at the waist, however, their ranks were unknown. They said "Your majesty, please take the six sacred gifts bestowed by the Jade Emperor." One of them carried a Gold Phoenix Tray with six articles on it, including Crown of Pingtian, Robe of Gunlong, Boots of Wuyou, White Jade Tablet, Jade Belt, Oath Sword. Zhongxiang took all these articles and dressed them up, then sat where he had been holding the White Jade Tablet. The eight men reported, "Your majesty, this shall not be your throne." They then carried the Sedan Chair of Dragon and Phoenix from the other fifty men in embroidered hat standing behind, and set in front of him. "Your majesty, please ascend the sedan chair." Zhongxiang snatched his imperial robe, entered the sedan chair and sat solemnly. The eight men led the way at both sides surrounded by the fifty embroidered hats, until they arrived at the Liuli Hall. " Your majesty, please descend from the sedan chair." After entering the hall, Zhongxiang sat on the Nine Dragons Gold Chair in a stately manner, greeted with shouts of "Long Live the Emperor" by all the officials. The eight reported, "You majesty, you have known the sin that Wang Mang committed. He poisoned Emperor Ping to death, murdered Ziying and the empress, slaughtered all the servants in the palace. Countless maids were killed. Thus, he established Xin Dynasty as the emperor with the style name Jujun.
The European: Mr. Sedláček, many contemporary thinkers – including you – use Marxist theory and apply it to the contemporary world. Are we witnessing the renaissance of Marxism? Sedláček: Being from the Czech Republic, I find that Marxism as an ideology has utterly failed. History has proven that it is a dead end and eventually turns into a nightmare. On the other hand, modern capitalism itself owes its existence to Marx – and today it is much more sensitive and social than it used to be a hundred years ago. Children do not need to work, workers are protected, and the rich care about the poor, weak, sick and old through the obligatory taxation and relatively generous social system. So Marx proved to be a much better inspiration to capitalism than to communism itself. Communism has failed while capitalism has developed to incorporate the most burning points. I think that Marx would much rather live in a capitalist country in 2014 than in a communist one, past or present. Marx himself was not a Marxist – that is well known. The European: What’s the legacy of his ideas? Sedláček: His call to revolution against the system has failed, but he actually served the evolution of the very system he criticized quite well. He was the loudest critic, but failed to accomplish his goals. He probably thought that he was criticizing capitalism as such, but he actually criticized a much more general feeling: that the world in itself is wrong, not just, not ethical, exploitative, confusing, and that the system is not thoroughly thought through and generates paradoxes. The European: How do you mean that? Sedláček: Take alienation for example, one of his main points. The feeling of being detached from the work of your hands and ultimately from yourself influenced Marx a lot. But that is something way older than capitalism and not specific to it. It has to do more with industrialization, urbanization, specialization – but all these are not specific to capitalism and exist in other systems as well, past and present communist countries included. Marx is thus not criticizing capitalism itself, but the human condition. The European: Why did he blame capitalism for these ills? Sedláček: He had the same feeling that you can find in Christianity: that the system works but is at the same time fucked up. Marx attributed that to capitalism, whereas the writers of the New Testament attributed it to what they called “the system of the world”. Capitalism is to blame for many things, but not for alienation. The European: Do we still suffer from that alienation today? Sedláček: I think we oppress our feelings and ourselves, we alienate ourselves from ourselves and from our surroundings – that, in fact, is the role of civilization or culture as such. To alienate us from cold, hunger, wild nature, from the violence of others, from the desires of others… and perhaps even from our own. And one more thought: we have a mental image that the system oppresses us from above. But what if the oppression really comes “from below”? What if the system alienates us not so much from our “higher us”, but alienates us from our “lower us”? So, you see how mental mythology, mental placing of ideas plays a crucial role. The system might be like a lid on the Freudian id. Only God knows what would happen if this lid were removed and we did not oppress ourselves or be oppressed by the system. “We have fetishized economics” The European: Is the ideology of growth and improvement something that you would count as oppression? Sedláček: Yes. It pressures you to do something you are not comfortable with. But it is unfair to blame capitalism for that. Communism wanted to grow like mad; the five-year plans were much more economic and growth-oriented than many things in capitalism. I think what is in crisis is “growth capitalism”, not capitalism per se. The European: We are no longer in the era of industrialization and our standards of living have improved considerably. Can we still learn from Marx, or are his ideas only applicable in the context of industrialization? Sedláček: His idea that we should take care of the weak is not very original. In fact, it is religious. As all prominent voices of the Left will point out: It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. Point taken, but that is the fault of thinkers of the Left! If anybody should be able to imagine a better society, it should be them. Even Slavoj Žižek, who I consider the most brilliant, original, and inspiring thinker of the Left, will readily admit that we don’t have anything to replace the system. The critique we hear from the Left is often a critique with a condom: the critique is very erotic, but they don’t really want their ideas or dreams to be materialized. I am also very critical about the system, but not in order to destroy it… in order to improve it. The European: Marx’s ideas for a just society were inspired by moral philosophy – which was one of the main sources of inspiration for Adam Smith. Maybe we can’t come up with another system because our thinking takes place only in economic terms? Sedláček: I think you are right. Today, economists talk about art, love and corruption. They have studies showing that corruption slows down the economy, that art has economic benefits, etc. If studies showed that corruption was helping GDP growth, would that mean that stealing should be supported? Stealing is stealing and we don’t need economic proof that it is wrong. Here you see how economic our thinking has become. The European: Even our thinking about basic human concepts like love is characterized by the economic value of a partnership. Sedláček: Many Christian democratic parties see marriage as a central element of their policy. But there is actually very little about family in the New Testament. In fact, it is even quite critical of marriage. But these parties resort to economic reasoning and argue that pensions and society break down if the traditional notion of family disappears. They don’t value family as a value in itself, but as a supportive value to economic value. I have heard about a movement that wants to show that art is economically useful. That is crazy – art is just art! Like philosophy, art is not to be useful and make us more efficient at what we do, its role is exactly to be not only useless, meaning free from the imperative of usefulness, but even to go against usefulness. Art should show us that we are working too much, are being too corporate, and are too drunk with the economy or even too drunk with reason. We have fetishized economics and view everything – stealing, art, family – through the eyes of an economist. Health is also above economics: We have a good economy to be healthy, not the other way around. It is crazy to think that we should be healthy in order to foster economic growth. The European: In the United States, some people even assign a monetary value to a wedding proposal: An engagement ring needs to be worth three times the groom’s monthly income. Sedláček: Economics were supposed to empower us. But today it has become restrictive. A budget is supposed to give you freedom, but we instead think of the limitations. This is quite common. The same applies to Coke: thirty years ago, we used to love this drink – now we think it is despicable. What used to empower us, now limits us. We no longer perceive growth as the gate to freedom but as an imperative that dictates. Enjoy yourself! If you don’t, you are hurting others because you are not consuming. The European: In his Christmas speech after 9/11, President Bush asked citizens to go shopping… Sedláček: He could have said so many other things, but he said: Let’s consume! No wonder the current crisis is called “credit crunch”. “Credit” means faith in Latin – it is a faith crunch. The problem was too much consumption on credit, but what will get us out of is even more consumption on credit – only a little bit differently. It is the same idea as the one behind “quantitative easing”: If it doesn’t work, there must be too little of it. “Even the most perfect system breaks down” The European: In a sense, we find ourselves in a situation similar to that before the outbreak of the French revolution. We haven’t stormed the Bastille yet, but we have lost faith in the institutions. Who can fill this vacuum of belief? Sedláček: There is nothing to replace the belief. I don’t think one has a free choice in choosing one’s own beliefs. Imagine you are walking through a graveyard in the middle of the night. Of course you don’t believe in vampires, ghosts and zombies. But right then, for a little moment, you do. You don’t want to believe in them, but you do. It is not a free choice. Modern capitalism is like that. Nobody wants to believe the economics textbooks anymore, but since we don’t have anything else, there is nothing else to believe in. But there can’t be an ideological vacuum, which means we always have to swap one belief for another. And we reluctantly believe capitalism, not so much because it functions or has been proven to work, but because there is nothing else out there. The European: Coping rather than accepting it. Sedláček: Joseph Schumpeter or even John Maynard Keynes wrote about the same questions. They recognized that the way to a just society follows capitalism. Through evolution, not through revolution. Capitalism today is completely different than the David Copperfield capitalism from 200 years ago. In the Czech Republic, capitalism now is even different from what it was like 20 years ago. Capitalism changes all the time. Today, we try to have capitalism with a human face – capitalist perestroika. That is why I am a capitalist reformist. The European: What is the lesson of the current crisis? Sedláček: We have come to the realization that markets are not divine, that they fail like everything else and – as Marx pointed out – that we are responsible for the institutions we have created. Consider your car: You don’t expect it to be perfect. Your car unexpectedly breaks down sometimes. Does that mean we should go back to horses – would Marx suggest that? No. It simply means we should drive cars slower, make them safer and improve the traffic rules and habits. Everything, even the markets are “human, all too human”, to quote Nietzsche. The European: But there might still be accidents… Sedláček: What is the most perfect system we humans know? A computer program! It is rational, has no emotions, no goals of its own, no Oedipus complexes running about. It is 100% mathematical and therefore predictable. And yet, even these perfect man-made systems, they freeze, crash and collapse. From time to time, you have to reboot the system. Why are we so surprised that a society, which is a much more complicated system, sometimes gets to a crunch or a freeze? Even if we were to invent a perfect system – be it with no banks, no money, no specialization and lot of hippie love – it would break down from time to time. It would never be as perfect as a computer system. So the perfect society is an illusion. The European: You allude to a lot of rational thinking – the basis of the modern economy. Sedláček: I am not a big fan of pure rationality. When you hear an analyst mentioning a “bubble”, or that something “is overvalued”, they are really saying that markets are not rational. It implies that the market is wrong in assessing the value of that given asset and that analysts know better. If you ask them: “How come you know and the market does not?” They will say: “Well, I have a model for it”. But all of their models are based on the assumption that markets are rational. The European: When I meet somebody who claims to be rational, I always think of St. Augustine, who said “Love and do what you will”. Sedláček: In love, you do not have the “rational” choice to do what you will. You don’t even think. In Christianity, the Lord’s Prayer goes: “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” In other words: Your desire is our desire. Our will is bypassed, overshadowed by the will to love God. The European: You make it sound negative. Sedláček: Yes, but it also has upsides. Where there is love, you don’t need laws. Laws only enter when something doesn’t function. When children behave the way you want them to, you don’t need any laws. They love you and you love them. No laws required. Friendship needs no laws. There is not a single society that regulates friendship in a legal way – as opposed to marriage and business. We tend to believe that laws are the opposite of freedom. But for freedom to work, there have got to be rules. I am only free to drive fast on a highway if everybody sticks to the rules. Language is nothing but a set of rules. If I start breaking them I am not freer, nor can I express myself freer; nobody will understand me. Not even myself. ”You never own anything” The European: If rules don’t cause oppression, what does? Sedláček: That your image of yourself is different than you want it to be. And this is where economy enters. We can go back to Marx: There’s alienation, a gap you want to bridge. The European: Ironically, advertisement can help bridge that gap: It makes you identify with every object you look at. Sedláček: Patek Philippe advertises their watches with the slogan that you never own them but merely keep them safe for the next generation. Here is the trick: You never own anything. There is just a psychological agreement that I won’t take your jacket or the food on your plate. You don’t own it because you merely bought it. You own it because society respects that principle. The European: Isn’t that what the sharing economy is about? That our social conventions about ownership are overcome? Sedláček: The whole marketing structure has reversed: Certain industries become more dominant when they are not owned but shared. The more people use Google, the more valuable it becomes. Compare that with a car, which loses value with each use. The same holds true for money as well. The European: Because people trust its value. Sedláček: If half of the society didn’t believe in money, then the value of those pieces of paper would become half of what it is. But sharing is much bigger than that. We are also sharing the system: The more countries use market democracy, the richer we in the West become. International trade is beneficial to the poor countries, but it is much more beneficial to the rich countries. The European: Empires used to annex other countries, capture valuables and bring them back home. Are we doing something similar when enlarging our economic zones? Sedláček: If I offered Poland half of the Czech Republic, they wouldn’t care – or vice versa. Two generations ago, we would have killed for it. What is the economic point of enlarging your country geographically? It is just trouble. The fetish of geographical growth of a nation, which almost destroyed us, has been replaced with the fetish of economic growth of a nation. Which has also almost destroyed us. Every good thing, markets included, when fetishized, becomes a threat. The European: When the nation-state was introduced, it solved a lot of questions. But in our globalized world, it may no longer be required. Sedláček: Marx foresaw the withering of the nation-state. He was right – but it is withering in two directions. Towards Brussels and towards the regions. “I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot the deputy” is wrong. You shoot the middleman – and that is the nation-state. Did you like the conversation? Read one with Jacques Attali: “Clever capitalism is by definition altruistic” Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus
(Editorial cartoon courtesy of SOFREP’s own Robert L. Lang, Master Cartoonist, created specially for this essay) The Japanese (and other particulars) are mad, folks, boy are they mad. They are oh, ever-so mad, and in fact took to playing the race card over the white devil-race of America, who chose Asia as their sounding rod, their Rosetta stone for their newly discovered nuclear arsenal. Yes, the western heathens dropped not one but two nukes on the peaceful idyllic cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m comfortably sure that playing the race card meant jack squat to any governing faction during the second World War, so the Japanese waited for decades to try to play it. Why? Beats the dog crap out of me. Was it sympathy, restoration, reparations? Perhaps they should go ask the Chinese in Nanking how that is supposed to work. The notion has come up time and again among the international peace-nic USA-bashing community of zealot nations, that America made a racist decision to test its nuclear weapons on the yellow man in the pacific theater, vice dropping the nuke on Caucasian Berlin in the Atlantic theater. That, a fact-less expostulation built on a wet sand foundation. I could eat a box of Alphabets and crap a better hypothesis. The Japanese have a very strong case there, and if by ‘strong’ I mean ‘weak or practically non-existent’ then, ok sure, a strong case; feel the POWAH! Enter the case of the bombing of the German city Dresden. That is a deliberate case of Caucasians pounding the B-Jesus out of Caucasians for no military or strategic reason whatsoever. Dresden was home to countless priceless artifacts and monuments to architecture, but nothing an armada of RAF Avro Lancasters and Curtiss LeMay’s 8th USAAF Flying Forts couldn’t handle, nossirree! The rage I feel over the destruction of Dresden is as real as the rage I feel over the loss of U.S. sons on Peleliu Pelao in the South Pacific, Hamburger Hill in Vietnam, Heartbreak Ridge in Korea, and every trench charge by the Anzacs on Gallipoli, Turkey… just really didn’t need to happen; they were just a means to no end. Dresden was arguably one of the greatest horrific tragedies of the entire war, and there were a great many to choose from. Yes friends, the atrocities competition during that Word War was fierce. The military tactical gains from the destruction of cities like Dresden and Hiroshima were paltry at best. The strategic value proved to be remarkable at least. The decision to hit Japanese cities with nuclear weapons was part of a deliberate strategic plan to hasten the end of the war with that country, specifically eliminating the necessity to invade Japan. That, in exchange of an estimated 1,000,000 casualties in a protracted land invasion campaign. You see, sometimes you have to kill a few people, in order to save a lot of people. In order to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. Con: Dresden was a peaceful town Pro: Dresden presented several factories that produced military hardware in support of the Nazi war effort Con: Dresden was an artisan city boasting fine arts and glass/porcelain unmatched in the world Pro: Dresden boasted a major rail hub and was considered a principal avenue of communication for the Nazi war effort in eastern Germany Should have, would have, could have. Ol’ Humpty Dumpty himself Winston Churchill can be squarely placed on the whipping boy pedestal for the Dresden bombing. Although the attack was dominated as a joint British/American undertaking, it was indeed Winston that brokered the deal to pummel Dresden and other German cities of pallid military value. In some of Churchill’s earliest memos and dispatches on the subject, ‘instilling a sense of “terror” in the German people’ were to the effect words that he would regret after the fact for years, as he tried to shrink from responsibility for the massacre and destruction. What of the death toll? On the conservative and more scientific end of the estimate is 25,000 deaths, while on the wildest fringe of imagination of the spectrum is the high water mark of 500,000 victims, the latter, dwarfing the figure of the two Japanese cities combined. The tremendous disparity in estimates lay in the fact that the city was swelled with refugee’s and those fleeing from the advance of the red war machine in the east: prisoners of war, defectors, deserters, and soldiers convalescing from wounds received at the front. Such a glut of people under the myriad of circumstances is simply a ponderous task to maintain with any degree of accuracy of inventory. Corpses were difficult or impossible to identify. Many many other people simply were not missed. Imagine if you were to perish in a firestorm that was so vast, that everybody who would have missed you perished as well. If you died in a fire and nobody missed you, were you ever even alive to begin with? Whole families and entire neighborhoods vanished without a trace. In an extreme case an entire Luftschutzhause (bomb shelter) of 1000-person capacity a perdu completely. The structure was broken open and nothing remained but bones floating in a rancid brown/green liquid of essentially melted fat. People vanished. Bombers carried a calculated and tested ratio of high explosive (HE) bombs to incendiary bombs. HE would blow roofs, doors, and windows from houses, creating open air channels that would feed oxygen to a massive fire storm vortex that formed in the center of the city and rose thousands of feet into the sky. People disappeared. Winds generated by the gargantuan vortices are estimated to have reached ~150 miles per hour, pulling children out of parents’ arms, and dragging scores of people through streets into the heart of the twister of flame. People simply disappeared. Graves registration was anything but impeccable. The amount of corpses was so overwhelming that the urgency to ‘neutralize’ them by interment or cremation held priority over proper identification. The haste to rid the city of rotting corpses lead to massive open-air cremation pallets where the dead were stacked by hundreds awaiting extermination. American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, an American prisoner of war held in Dresden at the time of the bombing, renders a horrific first-hand account of the experience in his famous novel: Slaughter House Five. Vonnegut, as a prisoner of war, was tasked with recovery of bodies from all measure of scenario, including the breach of an underground shelter where thousands had succumbed to the heat and oxygen-deprived atmosphere of the ground zero vortex. Bodies would continue to be discovered in the ruins for over a decade of clean up and reconstruction of the fairytale city of Dresden. Japanese war guilt? I think not. Of all the glass houses in all the countries that ‘participated’ in World War II, I think a Japanese glass house is the thinnest and most brittle of all-—careful hurling your guilt rocks, Japan! And by the way: “Shutup!” And another thing: Korea called; they want all their trees back. What does George E. Hand IV think of it all? Well, the civilian geo is simply appalled and clutches his pearls as he flips through the Dresden photo album. The veteran Ice-G is shedding tear after crocodile tear. Like it or not, the Allied Forces in the day knew what it took to win a world war in just about four years. The US has lost that resolve, that audacity, those balls. Somewhere and somehow along the way, America has traded all of that fortitude and resigned to a quagmire of being stuck in two Vietnams at the same time, losing son after son, daughter after daughter. Finally, I am put in mind of a true story I had the pleasure of being a part of: My Green Beret A-Team and I went to Japan one winter to teach cold weather training to elements of the 25th Infantry Division from Schofield Barracks Hawaii. Our junior engineer was a strapping American farm boy from Idaho, God’s other country, and Abraham was his name-o. He didn’t say much. He had a really goofy voice, and a goofy accent to match. He simply resigned to the notion that he looked and sounded stupid. We loved him nonetheless. As we had just landed in Tokyo, and were awaiting transportation, we elected to partake in a $20 ‘Supah Hipstah’ American-style sandwich and coffee. As we quietly sat, ate, sipped, and chatted, I noticed a close-by table had taken apparent notice of the American military man-band that we were, and I felt a brief encounter was afoot. I just hoped it would be a cordial one. No such luck. So then the turkey carver at the other table, after much banter with his slack-jawed samurai posse, got up and sauntered over to our table, where he stood snobbishly with his hands on his girlishly slender hips. “How do you do?” one of my bros greeted smiling. “Hello you, American soldiers,” the college-age man began “My grandfather was fightah pilot in World War II. He shot down many American planes, and killed many American soldiers,” he sneered. The brothers and I looked at each other stunned and enraged, looking for one another to come up with a retort for this pompous pin-headed punk. Except for Abe, stupid Abe, nobody looked at him because he was just… stupid, and never had anything clever to say. It was then that Abraham took a sip of coffee, grinned his goofy grin, and in his goofy voice answered: “Hey that’s cool; my grandfather was the bombardier on the Enola Gay—-sayonara shithead!” And the homeboys roared with laughter, amazement, and genuine great affection for their Engineer, Abraham. Advantage: Murica!! By God, geo sends
(CNN) First lady Michelle Obama delivered Thursday an impassioned denunciation of Donald Trump, calling the recently unearthed comments by the Republican presidential nominee "shocking" and "demeaning," and below "basic standards of human decency." Speaking at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Manchester, New Hampshire, Obama lit into Trump over a video that surfaced last week in which he can be heard talking about being sexually aggressive with women. "I can't believe I'm saying a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women," Obama said. The speech was an uncharacteristically direct attack from the first lady, who said she eschewed her "normal campaign speech" because it would have been "dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream." The first lady never addressed Trump by name, referring to him only as a "candidate." She began the speech by reflecting on what she called a "rough week in an already rough election." Obama lamented the "hurtful, hateful language about women" throughout the campaign, saying it was "painful" to those who expected leaders should meet "basic standards of human decency." Her voice quivered as she recalled a meeting with young women at the White House on Tuesday. "I told them they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect," Obama said. "I wanted them to understand that the measure of any society is how it treats women and girls." Obama said the comments made by Trump in the video, which was recorded in 2005, had left her "shaken." "I can't stop thinking about this," she said. "It has shaken me to my core in a way I could not have predicted." She added: "I know this is a campaign but this isn't about politics. It's about basic human decency." In the 2005 video, Trump can be heard describing in graphic terms how he uses his star power to force himself upon women. Since the footage was published last week by The Washington Post, several women have come forward to say that Trump had touched them inappropriately. Trump has denied those allegations, and has dismissed the remarks made in the video as "locker room talk." At the rally on Thursday, Obama rejected that explanation. "This was not just a lewd conversation," she said. "This wasn't just locker room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turned on the TV." Referring to the spate of allegations levied against Trump, Obama said "it now seems very clear that this wasn't an isolated incident." "This is not something that we can ignore," Obama added. "It's not something that we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season." Obama also cautioned against a "protest vote" and urged the supporters gathered to do "everything possible to elect Hillary Clinton." "If you vote for someone other than Hillary ... you are helping to elect her opponent," Obama said. "We need to recover from our shock and our depression," she added, referring to the sordid campaign developments, "and we need to do what women have always done in this country: we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work." Clinton praised the first lady's support during a campaign event in San Francisco. "If you haven't seen it, I hope you will see Michelle Obama's speech today in New Hampshire," Clinton said. "And once again, she gave a compelling and strong case about the stakes in the election, but about who we are as Americans. And we cannot let this pessimism, this dark and divisive and dangerous vision in America take hold in anybody's heart. We have to keep lifting up this campaign." President Barack Obama later told a crowd of Ohio Democrats that his wife's speech in New Hampshire reminded him again of why he married her. "She was pretty good," he joked. "That's why you get married. To improve your gene pool. Your kids end up being superior to you." He said he didn't need to sell the room of diehard Democrats on Clinton's record -- but said if they needed a reminder, to check out the first lady's speech. Also on the stump for Clinton was Vice President Joe Biden, who called Trump's remarks the "textbook definition of sexual assault" during an event in Nevada on Thursday, saying it is consistent with the other ways Trump has "abused power." He added: "I'm tired of new politicians who want to go to Washington to demean women." As he closed out his speech, he reminded those to who are supporter Trump to take heed of their candidate's words, saying, "I encourage everyone listening to Trump- vote on November 28th."
Trailer for The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Set against the backdrop of the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. centers on CIA agent Solo and KGB agent Kuryakin. Forced to put aside longstanding hostilities, the two team up on a joint mission to stop a mysterious international criminal organization, which is bent on destabilizing the fragile balance of power through the proliferation of nuclear weapons and technology. The duo’s only lead is the daughter of a vanished German scientist, who is the key to infiltrating the criminal organization, and they must race against time to find him and prevent a worldwide catastrophe. Basically all of Hollywood was considered for the lead role in The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Alexander Skarsgård, Ewan McGregor, Robert Pattinson, Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Michael Fassbender, Bradley Cooper, 'Leonardo Dicaprio', Joel Kinnaman, Russell Crowe, Chris Pine, Ryan Reynolds and Jon Hamm
Image copyright KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY Image caption Australia says it has received a letter from Kim Jong-un's regime The Australian government says it has received a document from North Korea urging Canberra to distance itself from the Trump administration. The note denounces the US president's warning that America would destroy North Korea if forced to defend itself. Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull said the letter had been sent to other nations. He said it demonstrated that diplomatic pressure on North Korea was working, despite the document being "basically a rant" consistent with earlier rhetoric. The one-page letter was sent via North Korea's embassy in Indonesia and attributed to the Foreign Affairs Committee of Pyongyang's Supreme People's Assembly. It urges other governments to turn away from the "heinous and reckless moves of the Trump administration", reiterating that the US could be responsible for a "horrible nuclear disaster". Mr Turnbull said North Korea was responsible for escalating tensions by "threatening to fire nuclear missiles at Japan and South Korea and the United States". "They have sent [the letter] to a lot of other countries, like a circular letter," Mr Turnbull told local radio station 3AW. Pressure 'working' Australia Foreign Minister Julie Bishop described the letter as an "unprecedented" step from North Korea. Mr Turnbull then appeared to downplay its significance, comparing it to other "ranting and complaining about Donald Trump" by the state. However, both agreed it could be a sign that global pressure on North Korea was yielding success, and expressed hope for further international engagement. On Saturday, Pyongyang warned Australia would "not be able to avoid a disaster" if it followed America's policies towards Kim Jong-un's regime. North Korea has defied the international community in recent months by conducting its sixth nuclear test and launching two missiles over Japan. The US has responded with threats of military force, but Secretary of State Rex Tillerson insists that Mr Trump is keen to resolve tensions through diplomacy.
Local Democratic Party Chair Seems Clueless About Republican Attempt to Disenfranchise His Voters... Brad Friedman Byon 9/18/2008, 12:55pm PT From the St. Petersburg Times... TALLAHASSEE — A new pitch for John McCain's presidential campaign aimed at older Democratic voters is causing complaints by Democrats and concern by elections officials. The piece, paid for by the Republican National Committee and authorized by McCain, tells voters it is seeking to double-check their "unconfirmed" party affiliations while asking for money. A letter signed by McCain tells the Democrats: "We have you registered as a Republican." "I was a little bit shocked and a little bit surprised," said recipient Bill Smith, 81, of Tampa, who calls himself a lifelong Democrat and has been registered at his current address since 2000. ... The RNC declined to discuss the mailer, which Democrats said has landed in five counties: Duval, Hillsborough, Collier, Miami-Dade and Escambia. The article goes on to note that FL's Republican SoS Kurt Browning believes the mailing is "confusing" and "unfortunate", but does not note whether or not he plans to do anything about it. We're not holding our breath. Neither are we holding it for Democrats down there to do much about it either. The mailings sent to registered Democrats appear to be classic "caging" letters, marked as "Do Not Forward", so that they will then be returned to the GOP if there is any problem with delivery. Those returned letters will likely then be used as a basis to challenge the legitimacy of those particular voters on Election Day.... The first-class GOP mailing has a "Do not forward" instruction on the envelope, meaning they will be returned to the GOP if a recipient has had mail forwarded, perhaps to a summer address, or has moved. Letters returned as undeliverable can be compiled into "challenge lists" of unverifiable addresses and can be used to challenge voters' eligibility during early voting or on Election Day. The vote suppression technique is known as "vote caging." Aside from the troubling points spelled out above, and amplified by former Republican vote-rigger Allen Raymond last night on MSNBC (Allen suggests this effort will be done everywhere by the GOP this year), there's this disconcerting comment from the supposedly Democratic Party chair in Hillsborough County: Hillsborough Democratic Party Chairman Michael Steinberg said it makes no sense for Republicans to question the party affiliations of Democratic voters. "I don't understand their logic," he said. You "don't understand their logic," Mr. Steinberg? What rock have you been living under? The same one Dems in the U.S. Congress have been living under, in regard to the practice of vote caging, perhaps? The same one that Bob Woodward and the Washington Post have been inexcusably living under? If so, Dahlia Lithwick's Slate article from last year, explaining the practice, --- "What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care?" --- filed after the issue finally reared its ugly head before a largely-clueless Democratic U.S. House Judiciary sub-committee, needs to be mandatory reading for every Democrat, and every member of the media. Right now. Suffice to say, Steinberg's comment does not inspire confidence that Dems have any clue what they're up against this year, as we noted in some detail on Monday.
About MORIARTY Returns! After publishing two successful volumes and a hardcover collection of stories at Image Comics, the MORIARTY creative team is returning to Kickstarter to fund a third volume story. If you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes, we think you'll enjoy our illustrated take on the greatest villain of all time, Professor James Moriarty. If you haven't read our MORIARTY series yet, no worries. We have plenty of copies of the previous books available as rewards, so that you can catch up in time for the third volume that we'll be producing. WHY WE'RE HERE We need your help to raise money to fund the creation of the four issues and graphic novel collection of our third MORIARTY adventure. The money you contribute will go toward paying the artists and production costs. The MORIARTY team started on Kickstarter back in 2009, asking for just a few thousand dollars to help us complete our first few issues. Since that time, we have been picked up by mega-publisher Image Comics (WALKING DEAD, SAGA, SPAWN). We've had a great run with Image, and we want to continue that run. Independent comics is a tough field, and creators can use every bit of help they can get to keep the dream alive. Check out this video below, which explains the Professor's plight at the beginning of the first story that we published... MORIARTY Vol. I: THE DARK CHAMBER Preview In our first volume story, the Professor has achieved ultimate victory over Sherlock Holmes, but at great cost. He spends 20 years in obscurity before being called back into the fray by a Great War and another villain that threatens to surpass his legend. The conclusion of the first volume adventure leads the Professor to another mystery, far way in Burma... MORIARTY Vol. II: THE LAZARUS TREE Preview Both of these stories were published as softcover graphic novels, then published together as the MORIARTY DELUXE EDITION Hardcover. Our third adventure will take the Professor to an entirely new place. We'll be giving updates and revealing the story as we go along. MORIARTY Vol. III: A little more about the project MORIARTY writer Daniel Corey explains a little more about his Kickstarter goals for MORIARTY Vol. III. ABOUT US To catch up on the MORIARTY madness, check out some of the press we've done so far... Writer Daniel Corey interviewed in USA TODAY Daniel Corey co-hosting G4's FRESK INK with Blair Butler MORIARTY at MTV.com MORIARTY profiled in the School Library Journal OUR GOALS We have set a goal of $24,000 to cover the art and production costs of MORIARTY Vol. III. We'll also be creating MORIARTY T-shirts and smartphone covers, which will be available in the various prize tiers to the right. But, in a broader sense, we are here to expand the MORIARTY brand and add depth to our product line. We're setting flex goals, and if we can exceed our initial goal, we'll be adding more rewards. UNLOCK FLEX GOAL #1 If we hit $30,000, we will be able to create and give you a new mystery comic. It will be a brand-new, original title created by members of the MORIARTY team. The additional money you give will go toward the art and production costs of this new book. UNLOCK FLEX GOAL #2 If we hit $42,000, we will be mass-producing MORIARTY Collectible Figures, and adding them to the rewards tiers. People who have already pledged will be able to upgrade their reward package to include a figure. MORIARTY Collectible Figurine Sculpted by Grant Miller The figures will be professionally manufactured and packaged, fitting major retailer's specifications. Special thanks to Ian Smith for composing the amazing music for our video. Check out his website and hire him to do yours! www.ianscreams.com
A natural gas pipeline operated by TransCanada exploded and caught fire in a rural part of western Canadan early on Saturday, putting fresh focus on the firm's safety record ahead of a crucial White House decision over a controversial cross-border project. The explosion happened near Otterburne, Manitoba, about 15 miles south of the provincial capital, Winnipeg. The area was evacuated as a precaution, said the National Energy Board (NEB), which oversees parts of Canada's energy industry. No injuries were reported but the fire burned for more than 12 hours. The explosion comes as some environmentalists are raising concern about the safety of TransCanada’s pipelines. The company is currently making a big lobbying push to convince the U.S. government to allow TransCanada to deliver oil from Canada’s oil sands through the United States in its controversial Keystone XL pipeline. After the explosion, pictures of balls of flames poured into Twitter and television stations. The line was shut down and depressurized to contain the fire, the NEB said, adding it would work with the federal Transportation Safety Board to determine the cause. A TransCanada spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment. About 4,000 residents and other customers may be without natural gas for at least a day, according to Manitoba Hydro, the provincial government-owned energy utility. Temperatures in the province are well below freezing. "We could see these massive 200- to 300-meter high flames just shooting out of the ground and it literally sounded like a jet plane," said resident Paul Rawluk to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "The police were by [Highway] 59 and you could just see little cars out there and you could see in comparison how big the flame was. It was just literally 200 to 300 metres in the air. And bright, I mean lit up the sky." The incident comes as the safety record of all pipeline operators face increased scrutiny as they build infrastructure across the continent for natural gas and oil. In addition to the Keystone XL, plans are under way for construction of several export terminals on the Pacific Coast, with the aim of making Canada, the world's third largest producer of natural gas, an exporter of liquefied natural gas to Asia. A recent Wall Street Journal review found that there were 1,400 pipeline spills and accidents in the U.S. since 2010. In September, a farmer in North Dakota found 20,000 gallons of oil from a pipeline spilled on his land. According to the Journal review, four in every five pipeline accidents are discovered by local residents, not the companies that own the pipelines. Canadian officials said the cause of the latest incident is under investigation. Al Jazeera and wire services
BeyondEDM has just learned of a great contest presented by Liquified and the CounterPoint Music Festival. Simply share the line-up poster on your Facebook Profile, tag CounterPoint and 3 of your friends and you could win a 4 pack of tickets that include entry to the festival and camping! Can’t beat that for a few seconds of work. Visit the CounterPoint Music Festival website for full details and conditions. Check out our Beyond Podcast on our site and also on Itunes. We have an upcoming exclusive drum and bass podcast from Konkrete Jungle and rave legend DJ ODI, who has been a veteran of many Beyond Events. You catch BeyondEDM on Twitter, stop by and Like our Facebook page to chat about techno, house music and make fun of Skrillex.
In this latest teaser for the upcoming Lego Dimensions — a toy-based video game intertwining many of the brick purveyor’s key movie and TV licenses — Alison Brie meets-cute with her adorable, though anger-prone, Lego Movie alter ego. The setup: Brie receives a mysterious package containing unassembled pieces. She puts the set together revealing Cloud Cuckoo Land’s reigning princess, Unikitty, (“How cute!” gushes Brie. “I sense we have a lot in common.”), along with a strange portal. Brie starts starts to melt down when she loses a Lego piece, announcing — in a callback to the movie — “I’m feeling something. The opposite of happiness.” Once assembled, Brie/Unikitty is transported inside the game and cue the gameplay montage. Maybe she can even live out her Lego Movie fantasy of marrying a marshmallow? Similar to Skylanders and Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions takes the interactive-toy premise one step further. Instead of simply swapping out inarticulate plastic figures, Dimensions features multiple “fun packs” of characters and vehicles that need to be built in various configurations and then become playable when linked to the game through the Toy Pad. The other big appeal of Dimensions is the wealth of brick-ified properties represeing the Lego Multiverse, including: Jurassic World, The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, The Wizard of Oz, DC superheroes, Doctor Who, Scooby-Doo, The Simpsons, the Portal video game series, and, natch, The Lego Movie. Brie is among several Lego Movie voice actors reprising their roles for the Dimensions video game, including Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle, Charlie Day as overzealous astronaut Benny (yes, you can build his spacehip spaceship SPACESHIP!), and Chris Pratt as accidental hero Emmett (Pratt does double duty in the game, also voicing the character of Owen Grady in the Jurassic World add-on set). The amazing voice cast also features Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd back as their classic Back to the Future selves, Marty McFly and Doc Brown; Bryce Dallas Howard (Claire) and Irrfan Khan (Masrani) from Jurassic World; Peter Capaldi (the 12th Doctor) and Jenna Coleman (Clara) from Doctor Who; Matthew Lillard as Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo movies; J.K. Simmons as Portal character Cave Johnson; Joel McHale as the game’s narrator X-PO; and Gary Oldman as the game’s big bad boss, Lord Vortech, out to wreak havoc in the Multiverse. The starter set, available Sunday on major game consoles for $100, comes with Batman, Gandalf, and Wyldstyle.
The owner of the New England Patriots admits he remains “intrigued” by the prospect of owning a Premier League but says he is concerned about being “without a salary cap” in the PL. [ VIDEO: Premier League highlights ] Robert Kraft — whose family also own the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer and were a key member in founding MLS back in 1996 — spoke to the BBC about potentially investing in the PL in the future. It is obviously something the Kraft family has been looking at for a while as Liverpool’s former chief executive Rick Parry met him in 2005 before they were sold to the first of their consecutive American owners, George Gillett and Tom Hicks in 2007. “I like to win at whatever I do. But without a salary cap I’m concerned that we might be at a disadvantage,” Kraft said. “We helped found MLS in America. Our league here is starting to really develop, and with our soccer team we’ve gone to the championship game five times in 21 years. “I’m just concerned in the Premier League that we might not, with all the different ways of operating, we’re not as familiar with all of them. Let’s say people from all over the world come in and buy teams and maybe they have different reasons for doing it and managing it. And you have to compete with that and I’m not sure. But I’m still intrigued.” With the Fenway Sports Group now owning Liverpool, could we see a sale across Beantown to the Kraft family anytime soon? I don’t think so. Kraft has been a long-time investor in soccer in the U.S. with the Revs’ and MLS but many question, and rightly so, their inability to build a soccer-specific stadium in Boston for the club. It seems like the Kraft family are only willing to invest the bare minimum in their MLS franchise. And Kraft’s worries about the lack of a salary cap in the PL suggest that his understanding of the way the global soccer world works, outside of MLS, is limited and he isn’t serious about investing in a Premier League team anytime soon. Follow @JPW_NBCSports
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Cam Newton called it a "great responsibility" when the Carolina Panthers made him the first pick of the 2011 NFL draft. The league's 2015 MVP has apparently come around to taking some responsibility for his abbreviated postgame news conference following his team's 24-10 loss to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50. Newton didn't apologize for walking out on the media after giving short answers to 13 questions. Two days after the game, he admitted he's "a sore loser" and he wasn't going to "bend for anybody's expectations." But in the latest edition of Ebony, Newton admitted he could have handled the situation better. "The truth is, I represent something way bigger than myself," Newton told the magazine. "I'm doing it for [my fans and family] and I felt like I let them down." Newton told the magazine that he simply hadn't had time to process the loss when he was asked to take the podium. He also had to deal with being able to hear Denver players discussing the victory on the other side of a curtain in the same room. "Who is anyone to tell me, 'Man, it's just an interview'?" Newton asked. "You haven't been in that situation. You didn't have millions of people watching you. Your heart wasn't pumping [with] the embarrassment or the anxiety of the stress of dealing with that type of game. "I just wasn't ready to talk. Was I mad? Hell, yeah! But there could have been a better way to control it, and that's why I think having more time would have helped." Carolina coach Ron Rivera defended his quarterback at the NFL owners meeting, suggesting players from the losing team shouldn't be put in the position Newton was in. Former NBA player Jalen Rose, an ESPN analyst, told Ebony that Newton mishandled the news conference. "As soon as he took the stage, we all knew he was already pouting because he had the hoodie on," Rose said of Newton, who appeared at the podium wearing the hood of his sweatshirt over his head. "If he got up there and handled it like a boss, no one would have said anything." The interview with Ebony was Newton's most extensive since two days after the Super Bowl. He's currently in Charlotte participating in offseason workouts and filming the final episodes of his new Nickelodeon television show.
FILE - A child attends Eid al-Fitr prayers marking the day when Muslims worldwide celebrate the end of the fasting month of Ramadan (Photo credit: EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images) NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Police are investigating an unusual bias crime on Staten Island. Muslims who gathered for prayer to celebrate the end of Ramadan in a city park found bacon scattered on the ground, CBS 2’s John Slattery reported Monday. With Ramadan ending this past weekend, Muslims celebrated the end of fasting with prayer. On Staten Island an outdoor service was held Sunday on a New Dorp football field, attracting some 1,500 Muslims. But before most of the faithful arrived for Morning Prayer, it was discovered that someone had scattered a quantity of raw bacon on the field. “This has been determined to be a bias event on the part of our Hate Crimes Task Force,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters, including WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb. “On a website associated with this celebration was some derogatory comments and at the site itself, three packages of raw bacon were found,” Kelly added. WCBS 880’s Rich Lamb reports https://cbsnewyork.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/lamb.mp3 Followers of Islam are forbidden to eat pork. Even before the bacon was located, someone left offensive messages on the organization’s website. “…That he or she was going to do something with a fat pig right at the time of morning prayer,” said Hesham El-Meligy of the Islamic Civic Association of Staten Island. “The statement came from someone who identified himself as ‘007Midland,'” Kelly said on Monday afternoon. “Obviously, we’re conducting an investigation to determine who put the message on the website.” Police computer experts are trying to locate the identity of that person, whom Muslim organizers of the prayer service said was clearly trying to taunt Muslims through intimidation, like other symbols disturbing to African-Americans or Jews. “Whether burning crosses or swastikas, a small minority are trying to threaten other people,” said Muneer Awad, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on Islamic Relations. “This isn’t what America’s about. This isn’t about intolerance, our diversity is our strength and we’re encouraging people to embrace that diversity,” Awad told 1010 WINS. Clearly what was done was offensive, someone hoping to incite people about to engage in prayer. Because the offensive meat was found early, organizers said the prayer service was shifted to another area of the park. So, most of those present didn’t know of the problem until the service was over. Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below …
No one may have a more intimate and wary reading of the unstable behavior of a potentially dangerous gun owner than his own family. This is the driving force behind a new California law that, for the first time in the nation, allows concerned family members to petition a court to seize the firearms of a family member they fear is on the verge of harming himself or others. The law was prompted by the murderous spree near Santa Barbara, Calif., in May, when a troubled 22-year-old, Elliot Rodger, killed six people and himself and wounded 13 others. A few weeks earlier, his mother had warned authorities that his behavior was increasingly erratic, even life-threatening. But he was able to convince police that he presented no threat, even though he had legally purchased three guns and devised plans for a rampage. The California law cleverly confronts gun rights advocates whose customary response after shooting sprees is to try to get people to focus on complex mental health issues so as to divert attention from the need for gun safety legislation. The California approach embraces both fronts. Why shouldn’t family members be able to have lethal weapons confiscated on the basis of threatening behavior they can attest to firsthand? Any defense from the gun owner will be weighed by the court. Besides helping to prevent mass shootings, the law could help families prevent suicides in their midst. The law, similar to one authorizing restraining orders in domestic violence cases, is not a total cure. Mr. Rodger used a knife to kill his first three victims, then guns for the rest. But the Legislature’s Democratic majorities wisely decided some progress against the gun scourge was possible by inviting relatives to weigh in with valuable and timely family expertise on those who seem near the breaking point and who also have guns legally at hand.
Bookless Public Library Opens In Texas Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Bexar County Courtesy of Bexar County An all-digital public library is opening today, as officials in Bexar County, Texas, celebrate the opening of the BiblioTech library. The facility offers about 10,000 free e-books for the 1.7 million residents of the county, which includes San Antonio. On its website, the Bexar County BiblioTech library explains how its patrons can access free eBooks and audio books. To read an eBook on their own device, users must have the 3M Cloud Library app, which they can link to their library card. The app includes a countdown of days a reader has to finish a book — starting with 14 days, according to My San Antonio. The library has a physical presence, as well, with 600 e-readers and 48 computer stations, in addition to laptops and tablets. People can also come for things like kids' story time and computer classes, according to the library's website. A county official compared the concept to an Apple store, in a report on the library's plans by NPR's Reema Khrais in January. And Reema reported that the idea of a bookless library has been tried before — perhaps a bit too early. That was in 2002, when Arizona's Santa Rosa Branch Library went digital-only. "Years later, however, residents — fatigued by the electronics — requested that actual books be added to the collection, and today, enjoy a full-access library with computers," Reema said. Sarah Houghton, a.k.a. the tech-savvy blogger Librarian in Black, who directs the San Rafael Public Library in California, told Reema that it will take more than 100 years before all libraries are paperless. But she added that 10 to 20 percent of libraries could go bookless in the next decade. Some libraries have struggled to adapt to an era of digital options and budget cuts. In the Washington, D.C., region, the Fairfax County (Va.) library system's decision to destroy a reported 250,000 books drew the ire of residents — and an editorial from The Washington Post.
IKEA Heights Genre Web Series Created by Dave Seger, Paul Bartunek Written by Dave Seger, Spencer Strauss, Paul Bartunek, Tom Kauffman Directed by Dave Seger Starring Randall Park, Whitney Avalon, Matt Braunger, Tom Kauffman, Jess Lane, Wade Randolph, Abed Gheith, Delbert Dean Shoopman, Dean Pelton Country of origin United States Original language(s) English No. of seasons 1 No. of episodes 7 Production Producer(s) Dave Seger, Paul Bartunek Production location(s) Burbank, California Camera setup Paul Bartunek Running time ~5 minutes Production company(s) Channel 101 Release Original release May 31, 2009 ( ) – January 31, 2010 ( 2010-01-31 ) External links Production website IKEA Heights is a 2009 comedic melodrama web series created by Dave Seger, Paul Bartunek, Delbert Shoopman, Spencer Strauss, and Tom Kauffman for Channel 101. The series is a spoof of soap operas and filmed covertly inside the IKEA store in Burbank, California.[1] IKEA Heights stars Randall Park, Whitney Avalon, and Matt Braunger. Entertainment Weekly's Whitney Pastorek said of the series, "[IKEA Heights] is so brilliant and awesome that its glories can really only be diminished by additional words."[2] Madeleine Löwenborg-Frick, a spokesperson for IKEA's Canadian branch, said of the series, "Absolutely, we think it’s funny. We see the humour in it and we approach our own marketing with a similar tongue-in-cheek humour. But unauthorized filming in our stores isn’t a good thing. There’s proper channels that people who want to film in our stores can go through."[3]
Story highlights "They owe the President an apology," Spicer said Twitter users quickly found photos of Trump in a bathrobe (CNN) Pushing back on a New York Times article detailing disorder in the West Wing, press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday the reporters got their facts wrong -- including the eye-catching detail that Trump watches TV in his bathrobe. "That story was so riddled with inaccuracies and lies that they owe the President an apology for the way that thing was written," he told reporters aboard Air Force One. "There were literally blatant factual errors, and it's unacceptable to see that kind of reporting." He identified one detail in the piece that rang false. "I don't think the President wears a bathrobe, and definitely doesn't own one," he said. The New York Times had reported : "When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home." Read More
Why write about next year's class of free agents? Because who is available next offseason could affect what happens this offseason. For example, if you're interested in trading for Giancarlo Stanton or signing J.D. Martinez, are you better off waiting to go after Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or one of the big bats? Do you pay Yu Darvish or wait and see if Clayton Kershaw becomes available? The 2018-19 class, once hailed as the greatest class of free agents ever, has lost a little luster. Harper and Machado remain two elite free agents -- especially given their ages -- but Matt Harvey's career has disintegrated, Andrew McCutchen is no longer an MVP-caliber player, and others, such as Garrett Richards, have battled injuries. Still, there's a ton of depth out there, especially if a few key guys such as Kershaw exercise their opt-out clauses. Here's the top 20: 1. Bryce Harper, RF 2019 age: 26 2017 stats: .319/.413/.595, 4.7 WAR Everyone expects Harper to sign with the Yankees because they're the Yankees sitting on a pile of gold, and they were Harper's favorite team growing up. Aaron Judge's emergence, however, lessens the Yankees' need for a power-hitting outfielder, and it's possible that if Gleyber Torres and Clint Frazier develop into regulars in 2018, the Yankees will pool their future resources into pitching instead of offense. That could open the door for some other big spenders: the Dodgers and ... well, no team needs power in the outfield more than the Giants. Or how about a dream scenario of Harper playing right field next to Mike Trout? 2. Manny Machado, 3B 2019 age: 26 2017 stats: .259/.310/.471, 3.5 WAR Machado had a disappointing 2017, fueled in part by an extremely low BABIP in the first half. He bounced back by hitting .290/.326/.500 in the second half and, like Harper, will hit free agency in the prime of his career. He has had three seasons of at least 6.7 WAR, so you have to expect a better season in 2018, which makes him No. 1A to Harper's No. 1. In the meantime, the Orioles seem intent on holding Machado for 2018, waiting to see if they can compete for a playoff spot before dealing him. An intriguing team in the Harper/Machado sweepstakes will be the Phillies. Their only player signed beyond 2018 is outfielder Odubel Herrera, and that isn't for big money. The Phillies need talent and will have a ton of cash to spend on a franchise player. 3. Clayton Kershaw, LHP (opt-out) 2019 age: 31 2017 stats: 18-4, 2.31 ERA, 4.6 WAR Kershaw is pretty much a lock to opt out of his contract. He's signed for 2019 and 2020 for $70 million, but considering that Max Scherzer and David Price both signed $200 million contracts for their age-30 seasons, Kershaw would probably triple that $70 million as a free agent. The one red flag, of course, is that he has missed time the past two seasons with back issues. It's also impossible to see him anywhere except with the Dodgers, but what if Kershaw finally wins a title in 2018? Maybe that makes it easier for him to consider a different home. How about day games at Wrigley and then nights with the family? 4. Josh Donaldson, 3B 2019 age: 33 2017 stats: .270/.385/.559, 4.8 WAR Donaldson was a late bloomer, so he'll hit free agency at 33, but after returning from a calf injury last season, he once again played at an MVP-caliber level. He's an excellent athlete, a guy you would expect to age well, similar to Adrian Beltre in a perfect scenario, and his bat is good enough to move to first base later, if needed. The Blue Jays are in the same position as the Orioles with Machado: unlikely contenders and in need of depth but hesitant about punting on 2018 in the offseason. Rumors have the Cardinals interested in Donaldson -- and they've been successful in trading for veterans and signing them to extensions -- but given his career arc, Donaldson probably will want to see what he's worth in free agency. MLB offseason From Keith Law's free-agent rankings to all the big moves, we have the MLB offseason covered. • Complete MLB hot stove coverage » 5. Charlie Blackmon, CF 2019 age: 32 2017 stats: .331/.399/.601, 6.0 WAR Like Donaldson, Blackmon was a late bloomer, so he'll be reaching free agency in his early 30s. He's coming off a monster season, and if he can do it again, he'll be attractive even factoring in Coors Field concerns (he hit .391 at Coors in 2017 and .276 on the road). The other concern is paying Blackmon and counting on him as a center fielder. In the past 10 seasons, there have been just eight seasons of center fielders age 33 or older getting 500 plate appearances. Realistically, if Blackmon is signed to a five-year deal, he probably plays center for a season or two before moving to a corner. 6. Drew Pomeranz, LHP 2019 age: 30 2017 stats: 17-6, 3.32 ERA, 4.0 WAR That's right. The most attractive Red Sox left-hander might be not Price but Pomeranz. Obviously, he'll have to prove that his 2017 season was legit, but he'll be younger than the other free-agent pitchers on the market and -- because he’d have only three full seasons as a starter -- he'll have much less wear and tear on his arm. 7. Elvis Andrus, SS (opt-out) 2019 age: 30 2017 stats: .297/.337/.471, 4.7 WAR A couple of years ago, Andrus' long-term extension looked, if not calamitous, at least a little dubious. But he joined the fly ball revolution in 2017 and cranked 20 home runs after hitting 21 the previous four seasons combined. In 2013, he played 156 games and had just 25 extra-base hits; in 2017, he ranked ninth in the AL with 68 extra-base hits. He has opt-out clauses after both 2018 and 2019; otherwise, the contract pays him $88 million through 2023. Given his age and durability -- he has played at least 145 games every season of his career -- it seems that he could beat that in free agency given another 4-WAR season. 8. Brian Dozier, 2B 2019 age: 32 2017 stats: .271/.359/.498, 4.4 WAR With 76 home runs the past two seasons, Dozier has established himself as the premier power-hitting second baseman in the game. The Gold Glove Award he won this season was a little weird -- he has never been known for his range in the field -- but there's a lot to like here with his power, durability and command of his pull-heavy approach. Don't rule out a return to the Twins. The only money they have committed beyond 2018 is $13.2 million to Phil Hughes and $8 million to Jason Castro in 2019. However, Dozier is from Mississippi, and the Braves are a team in need of some power. If they believe in Dansby Swanson at shortstop (with Ozzie Albies at second), they could sign Dozier to play third base. 9. David Price, LHP (opt-out) 2019 age: 33 2017 stats: 6-3, 3.38 ERA, 1.7 WAR Price has a lot to prove in 2018, both on the field and off, where his meltdowns with the media in 2017 showcased a player not that happy to be in Boston. Foremost, he has to prove the elbow is healthy and capable of his usual 200-inning workload. Even if that happens, would he opt out? He's due $127 million from 2019 to 2022, and I'm not sure he'd get that even if he wins 20 games. It appears Price might be stuck with Boston. Or vice versa. 10. Andrew Miller, LHP 2019 age: 34 2017 stats: 4-3, 1.44 ERA, 3.1 WAR He'll be older, but Miller can be viewed as kind of a relief version of Randy Johnson: a tall, lanky lefty who throws a fastball and slider and could dominate into his 40s. Miller would have to be paid like a closer, but his willingness to pitch in any role without complaint also makes him an attractive setup option for any contender. Imagine him setting up Kenley Jansen. Wait, don't imagine that unless you're a Dodgers fan. 11. Craig Kimbrel, RHP 2019 age: 31 2017 stats: 5-0, 1.43 ERA, 3.6 WAR Considering that he averaged 16.4 K's per nine innings and held batters to a .140 average in 2017, he doesn't seem to be slowing down. Given good health in 2018, he should receive a contract similar to the five-year, $80 million deal Jansen signed with the Dodgers last offseason. 12. A.J. Pollock, CF 2019 age: 31 2017 stats: .266/.330/.471, 2.9 WAR Pollock had a superstar season in 2015, when he was worth 7.4 WAR, but that remains the only season in which he has reached 500 plate appearances. He isn't as young as you might think, and the injury issues probably limit him to a shorter contract. It will be interesting to see how the Diamondbacks spend their money. As much as they’d love to re-sign Martinez, he is probably out of their price range. Then Paul Goldschmidt hits free agency after 2019. 13. Daniel Murphy, 2B 2019 age: 34 2017 stats: .322/.384/.543, 2.8 WAR Murphy's three-year, $37.5 million deal with the Nationals has proved to be a bargain, and he'll hit free agency again with leverage to get a similar contract, if not something with a little more juice. The drawback is that you might be purchasing his decline phase on offense to go with his substandard defense. His future might be at first base or DH. 14. Marwin Gonzalez, LF/INF 2019 age: 30 2017 stats: .303/.377/.530, 4.3 WAR He had a breakout season in 2017 while showing his versatility before settling in as the team's left fielder in the postseason. That super-utility slot is probably his best role, as he's stretched defensively at shortstop. Although his numbers did tail off in the second half, he nevertheless delivered a respectable .299/.363/.485. If he does that again, he'll be a very rich man. The Nationals could have several holes after 2018, depending on what happens with Harper and Murphy, and the Astros will have to spend their resources on their bigger stars. 15. Gio Gonzalez, LHP 2019 age: 33 2017 stats: 15-9, 2.96 ERA, 6.6 WAR Don't buy into that 2.99 ERA or 6.6 WAR. He isn't that good, as he had the fourth-best strand rate among starting pitchers. He always seems to live right on the edge with his control and has never gone more than five innings in six postseason starts, but he has made at least 27 starts eight seasons in a row and still keeps batters off-balance with that big, swooping curveball. You don't want to go overboard here, but he seems like a reasonable bet on a three-year deal as a mid-rotation starter. 16. DJ LeMahieu, 2B 2019 age: 30 2017 stats: .310/.374/.409, 2.9 WAR He has hit .300 the past three seasons and earned a batting title in 2016. Of course, a lot of players win batting titles while playing for the Rockies, but LeMahieu did hit .303 on the road in 2016 and .294 in 2017, so he might still project as a .300 hitter away from Coors. He's a big guy but a slap hitter who hits the ball to the opposite field more than any other hitter. His defensive metrics are solid, confirming the Gold Glove selection. With Brendan Rodgers probably ready in 2019, the Rockies will have infield options with him and Trevor Story, plus they need money to try to sign Nolan Arenado after 2019, so LeMahieu looks like a good bet to sign elsewhere. 17. Andrew McCutchen, OF 2019 age: 32 2017 stats: .279/.363/.486, 2.5 WAR McCutchen didn't bounce back to his peak level, and much of his 2017 value came in June and July, when he tore it up. The Pirates will probably end up keeping him in his walk year because Austin Meadows isn't ready, and they might even let McCutchen play center field again -- a move to right field last year backfired when Starling Marte was suspended for PEDs. When McCutchen hits free agency, however, he'll be viewed strictly as a corner outfielder, which could potentially help his value, as maybe he'll prove to be a plus defender in left or right instead of a big negative in center. 18. Nelson Cruz, DH 2019 age: 38 2017 stats: .288/.375/.549 He remains one of the elite sluggers in the game, coming off a 39-homer season while leading the AL in RBIs. Another similar season should net him a nice two-year deal to DH for somebody, despite his age. 19. Zach Britton, LHP 2019 age: 31 2017 stats: 2-1, 2.89 ERA, 1.0 WAR Britton will have to rebuild his value after missing time with an elbow injury in 2017. When he returned, his velocity was OK, but his command wasn't. The Orioles will no doubt hold on to him during the offseason and hope he re-establishes his 2016 level, when he was the best closer in the game. 20. Cody Allen, RHP 2019 age: 30 2017 stats: 3-7, 2.94 ERA, 1.7 WAR Yes, the closer market will be deep next offseason. Allen wasn't quite as dominant last season, as he served up nine home runs -- and 17 the past two seasons, which separates him from the top tier of closers. But teams will like that he has done the job in the postseason and his strikeout rate remains strong. Others of note: Adrian Beltre, Justin Smoak, Michael Brantley, Matt Harvey, Garrett Richards, Patrick Corbin, Kelvin Herrera, Joe Mauer, Adam Jones, Lonnie Chisenhall, Sean Doolittle, Brad Brach, Drew Smyly, AJ Ramos, Wilson Ramos
Image copyright joe dukes Image caption Muslim broadcaster Mo Ansar, who featured in a documentary with former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson, was one of the protestors A group of Southampton residents are protesting outside Channel 4's headquarters against the pending TV series Immigration Street. The series is based on people living in the city's Derby Road, which the TV station calls "ethnically diverse". The protesters fear the series will provoke "social unrest". It follows Channel 4's Benefits Street, which sparked complaints. Channel 4 said residents' stories would be "represented fairly and accurately". Image caption Some 30 protesters stood outside Channel 4's headquarters waving placards and chanting About 30 protestors arrived by coach with placards outside the offices in Horseferry Road, London. They have also handed in a petition of more than 1,000 signatures. Benefits Street received more than 1,700 complaints over a perceived negative portrayal of benefits claimants. Image copyright Google maps Image caption Derby Road in Southampton is an "ethnically diverse street", according to Channel 4 Muslim broadcaster and community activist Mo Ansar, who lives in Southampton and took part in the protest, said the series producers, Love Productions, had been "reckless in their approach". He said: "We've seen with the Benefits Street programme and the programmes on Gypsy traveller communities that this sensationalist broadcasting results in prejudice. "Both these communities have had backlashes. It fuels and feeds the far-right." A Channel 4 spokesman said: "The producers spent several months getting to know the community and continue to have an ongoing dialogue with the local council, MPs and religious leaders. "A number of residents wanted to share their stories and these will be represented fairly and accurately. "Immigration is one of the most fiercely debated issues in Britain today so it is vital that as a public service broadcaster Channel 4 makes programmes that examine such topics."
Charles Jenkins, a former U.S. Army soldier who deserted to North Korea at the height of the Cold War, died Monday. He was 77. Jenkins collapsed outside his home in Sado, in northern Japan, on Monday and was rushed to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, a group representing families of Japanese abductees to North Korea said Tuesday. He died of heart failure, according to local reports. Jenkins, originally from Rich Square, N.C., disappeared in January 1965 while on patrol along the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea. NORTH KOREAN DEFECTOR DESCRIBES FORCED ABORTION, SAID BODIES FED TO DOGS IN PRISON In later interviews, he said he decided to abandon his unit and defect to the North, fearing he would be killed during a patrol or be sent to fight in the Vietnam War, the BBC reported. He was among four Americans to defect to North Korea in the 1960s. His plan was to seek asylum with the Russian embassy and eventually return to the U.S. in a prisoner swap. But the scheme didn't work. The Russian embassy didn't grant Jenkins -- or other Americans -- asylum. Instead, Jenkins was held as a prisoner by the North Koreans. “Thinking back now, I was a fool,” Jenkins said in a 2005 interview with CBS. “If there’s a God in heaven, he carried me through it.” Jenkins was reportedly forced to study the teachings of then-North Korean leader Kim II-Sung and teach English. He even became a minor celebrity when he acted in a North Korean propaganda film. Jenkins said he was tortured by his captors, who often beat him and conducted medical procedures on him that were brutal -- including cutting off a U.S. Army tattoo without anesthesia. Later, Jenkins would lament that his desertion led to decades of deprivation and hardship in the communist country. One bright spot was Jenkins meeting his wife Hitomi Soga, who was kidnapped by Pyongyang in 1978. She had been abducted to teach North Korean spies Japanese. NORTH KOREA PUSHING FOR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS FACTORIES, ANALYSTS SAY Soga is one of 13 Japanese citizens that Tokyo says were kidnapped and brought to the North in the 1970s and 1980s. Jenkins told CBS the couple was forced by North Korean officials to marry, however, eventually, they fell in love. They had two daughters, Mika and Blinda. In 2002, Pyongyang acknowledged the abductions of the Japanese citizens and allowed Soga and four others to visit Japan. They ended up staying. Jenkins and his daughters were allowed to join Soga two years later. Once in Japan, Jenkins was subject to a U.S. court-martial in which he pleaded guilty to desertion and aiding the enemy. He was dishonorably discharged and sentenced to 25 days in a U.S. military jail in Japan. Jenkins and his family moved to Soga’s hometown of Sado, where he was a popular worker at a local souvenir shop and could often be seen posing for photos with visiting tourists. Jenkins, in his 2005 autobiographical book "To Tell the Truth," and during appearances at conferences on North Korean human rights, revealed he had seen other American deserters living with women abducted from elsewhere around the globe, including Thailand and Romania. After settling in Japan, Jenkins visited North Carolina to see his mother and sister. But he said he had no plans to move back to the U.S. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Leon Trotsky The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (December 1939) Extract from A Petty-Bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party. Dialectic is neither fiction nor mysticism, but a science of the forms of our thinking insofar as it is not limited to the daily problems of life but attempts to arrive at an understanding of more complicated and drawn-out processes. The dialectic and formal logic bear a relationship similar to that between higher and lower mathematics. I will here attempt to sketch the substance of the problem in a very concrete form. The Aristotelian logic of the simple syllogism starts from the proposition that ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’. This postulate is accepted as an axiom for a multitude of practical human actions and elementary generalisations. But in reality ‘A’ is not equal to ‘A’. This is easy to prove if we observe these two letters under a lens—they are quite different from each other. But, one can object, the question is not of the size or the form of the letters, since they are only symbols for equal quantities, for instance, a pound of sugar. The objection is beside the point; in reality a pound of sugar is never equal to a pound of sugar—a more delicate scale always discloses a difference. Again one can object: but a pound of sugar is equal to itself. Neither is this true—all bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour, etc. They are never equal to themselves. A sophist will respond that a pound of sugar is equal to itself “at any given moment”. Aside from the extremely dubious practical value of this “axiom”, it does not withstand theoretical criticism either. How should we really conceive the word “moment”? If it is an infinitesimal interval of time, then a pound of sugar is subjected during the course of that “moment” to inevitable changes. Or is the “moment” a purely mathematical abstraction, that is, a zero of time? But everything exists in time; and existence itself is an uninterrupted process of transformation; time is consequently a fundamental element of existence. Thus the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist. At first glance it could seem that these “subtleties” are useless. In reality they are of decisive significance. The axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ appears on one hand to be the point of departure for all our knowledge, on the other hand the point of departure for all the errors in our knowledge. To make use of the axiom of ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’ with impunity is possible only within certain limits. When quantitative changes in ‘A’ are negligible for the task at hand then we can presume that ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’. This is, for example, the manner in which a buyer and a seller consider a pound of sugar. We consider the temperature of the sun likewise. Until recently we consider the buying power of the dollar in the same way. But quantitative changes beyond certain limits become converted into qualitative. A pound of sugar subjected to the action of water or kerosene ceases to be a pound of sugar. A dollar in the embrace of a president ceases to be a dollar. To determine at the right moment the critical point where quantity changes into quality is one of the most important and difficult tasks in all the spheres of knowledge including sociology. Every worker knows that it is impossible to make two completely equal objects. In the elaboration of baring-brass into cone bearings, a certain deviation is allowed for the cones which should not, however, go beyond certain limits (this is called tolerance). By observing the norms of tolerance, the cones are considered as being equal. (‘A’ is equal to ‘A’). When the tolerance is exceeded the quantity goes over into quality; in other words, the cone bearings become inferior or completely worthless. Our scientific thinking is only a part of our general practice including techniques. For concepts there also exits “tolerance” which is established not by formal logic issuing from the axiom ‘A’ is equal to ‘A’, but by the dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing. “Common sense” is characterised by the fact that it systematically exceeds dialectical “tolerance”. Vulgar thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom, workers’ state, etc as fixed abstractions, presuming that capitalism is equal to capitalism. Morals are equal to morals, etc. Dialectical thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which ‘A’ ceases to be ‘A’, a workers’ state ceases to be a workers’ state. The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality which consists of eternal motion. Dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of closer approximations, corrections, concretisation, a richness of content and flexibility; I would even say “a succulence” which to a certain extent brings them closer to living phenomena. Not capitalism in general, but a given capitalism at a given stage of development. Not a workers’ state in general, but a given workers’ state in a backward country in an imperialist encirclement, etc. Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradictions, conflict of content and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc., which are just as important for theoretical thought as is the simple syllogism for more elementary tasks. Hegel wrote before Darwin and before Marx. Thanks to the powerful impulse given to thought by the French Revolution, Hegel anticipated the general movement of science. But because it was only an anticipation, although by a genius, it received from Hegel an idealistic character. Hegel operated with ideological shadows as the ultimate reality. Marx demonstrated that the movement of these ideological shadows reflected nothing but the movement of material bodies. We call our dialectic materialist, since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our “free will”, but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of the nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. Our thought, including dialectical thought, is only one of the forms of the expression of changing matter. There is place within this system for neither God nor Devil, nor immortal soul, nor eternal norms of laws and morals. The dialectic of thinking, having grown out of the dialectic of nature, possess consequently a thoroughly materialist character. Darwinism, which explained the evolution of species through quantitative transformations passing into qualitative, was the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter. Another great triumph was the discovery of the table of atomic weights of chemical elements and further the transformation of one element into another. With these transformations (species, elements, etc.) is closely linked the question of classification, equally important in the natural as in the social sciences. Linnaeus’ system (18th century), utilising as its starting point the immutability of species, was limited to the description and classification of plants according to their external characteristics. The infantile period of botany is analogous to the infantile period of logic, since the forms of our thought develop like everything that lives. Only decisive repudiation of the idea of fixed species, only the study of the history of the evolution of plants and their anatomy prepared the basis for a really scientific classification. Marx, who in distinction from Darwin was a conscious dialectician, discovered a basis for the scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership which constitute the anatomy of society. Marxism substituted for the vulgar descriptive classification of societies and states, which even up to now still flourishes in the universities, a materialistic dialectical classification. Only through using the method of Marx is it possible correctly to determine both the concept of a workers’ state and the moment of its downfall. All this, as we see, contains nothing “metaphysical” or “scholastic”, as conceited ignorance affirms. Dialectic logic expresses the laws of motion in contemporary scientific thought. The struggle against materialist dialectics on the contrary expresses a distant past, conservatism of the petit-bourgeoisie, the self-conceit of university routinists and ... a spark of hope for an after-life. The Nature of the USSR The definition of the USSR given by comrade Burnham, “not a workers’ and not a bourgeois state”, is purely negative, wrenched from the chain of historical development, left dangling in mid-air, void of a single particle of sociology and represents simply a theoretical capitulation of pragmatism before a contradictory historical phenomenon. If Burnham were a dialectical materialist, he would have probed the following three questions: (1) What was the historical origin of the USSR? (2) What changes has this state suffered during its existence? (3) Did these changes pass from the quantitative stage to the qualitative? That is, did they create a historically necessary domination by a new exploiting class? Answering these questions would have forced Burnham to draw the only possible conclusion the USSR is still a degenerated workers’ state. The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism. Bruno R. places both the Soviet and fascist regimes under the category of “bureaucratic collectivism”, because the USSR, Italy and Germany are all ruled by bureaucracies; here and there are the principles of planning; in one case private property is liquidated, in another limited, etc. Thus on the basis of the relative similarity of certain external characteristics of different origin, of different specific weight, of different class significance, a fundamental identity of social regimes is constructed, completely in the spirit of bourgeois professors who construct, categories of “controlled economy”, “centralised state”, without taking into consideration whatsoever the class nature of one or the other, Bruno R. and his followers, or semi-followers like Burnham, at best remain in the sphere of social classification on the level of Linnaeus in whose justification it should be remarked however that he lived before Hegel, Darwin and Marx. Even worse and more dangerous, perhaps, are those eclectics who express the idea that the class character of the Soviet state “does not matter”, and that the direction of our policy is determined by the “character of the war”. As if the war were an independent super-social substance; as if the character of the war were not determined by the character of the ruling class, that is, by the same social factor that also determines the character of the state. Astonishing how easily some comrades forget the ABCs of Marxism under the blows of events! It is not surprising that the theoreticians of the opposition who reject dialectic thought capitulate lamentably before the contradictory nature of the USSR. However the contradiction between the social basis laid down by the revolution, and the character of the caste which arose out of the degeneration of the revolution is not only an irrefutable historical fact but also a motor force. In our struggle for the overthrow of the bureaucracy we base ourselves on this contradiction. Meanwhile some ultra-lefts have already reached the ultimate absurdity by affirming that it is necessary to sacrifice the social structure of the USSR in order to overthrow the Bonapartist oligarchy! They have no suspicion that the USSR minus the social structure founded by the October Revolution would be a fascist regime. Evolution and Dialectics Comrade Burnham will probably protest that as an evolutionist he is interested in the development of society and state forms not less than we dialecticians. We will not dispute this. Every educated person since Darwin has labelled themself an “evolutionist”. But a real evolutionist must apply the idea of evolution to his own forms of thinking. Elementary logic founded in the period when the idea of evolution itself did not yet exist, is evidently insufficient for the analysis of evolutionary processes. Hegel’s logic is the logic of evolution. Only one must not forget that the concept of “evolution” itself has been completely corrupted and emasculated by university and liberal writers to mean peaceful “progress”. Whoever has come to understand that evolution process through the struggle of antagonistic forces; that a slow accumulation of changes at a certain moment explodes the old shell and brings about a catastrophe, revolution; whoever has learned finally to apply the general laws of evolution to thinking itself, he is a dialectician, as distinguished from vulgar evolutionists. Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognising evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities of “common sense”. Notes/Glossary Syllogism: The historically first form of deduction, which consists of three “terms”: Individual, Universal and Particular, arranged in three propositions forming two premises and a conclusion. Fido (Particular) is a dog (Individual). All dogs are quadrupeds (Universal). Therefore, Fido is a quadruped (Conclusion), and each of the statements is called a “Judgment”. Hegel spent a lot time in the Doctrine of the Notion, developing the relationships between Individual, Universal and Particular, as part of his critique of formal logic. See the section in the Science of Logic on the Syllogism. Hegel ridicules the idea of a “logic” which is indifferent to the truth of its premises, but only whether the conclusion follows from the premises: nothing could be deduced from a notion which has no content. Something being ‘ to itself’ means that despite quantitative change, it still remains what it is, i.e. there is no qualititative change. “Self-identical” in Hegelian terminology means something totally lacking in internal contradictions and vitality. See Self-Identical in Glossary. Quality and Quantity: Quality is an aspect of something by which it is what it is and not something else; quality reflects that which is stable amidst change. Quantity is an aspect of something which may change (become more or less) without the thing thereby becoming something else; quantity reflects that which is constantly changing in the world (“the more things change, the more they remain the same”). The quality of an object pertains to the whole, not one or another part of an object, since without that quality it would not be what it is, whereas an object can lose a “part” and still be what it is, minus the part. Quantity on the other hand is aspect of a thing by which it can (mentally or really) be broken up into its parts (or degrees) and be re-assembled again. Thus, if something changes in such a way that has become something of a different kind, this is a “qualitative change”, whereas a change in something by which it still the same thing, though more or less, bigger or smaller, is a “quantitative change”. In Hegel’s Logic, quantity and quality belong to Being ... For Engels’ explanation of the dialectics of Quantity and Quality, especially in Nature, see the section from Anti-Dühring. See Quality and Quantity in Glossary. [From A Petit-bourgeois Opposition in the Socialist Workers Party, by Leon Trotsky, December 15, 1939.] Last updated on: 6.4.2007
Have you ever balled up your fists so tight for so long that your knuckles got all white, your nails started digging into your palms, and you were afraid you might be drawing blood? When letting your hands slowly open up feels almost unnatural after having them so tightly wound for so long? It kind of feels like that. It’s a pain which is at once deeply frustrating and oddly self-sustaining. You feed into the anger because it comforts you, in a strange way. Because to stop being angry, to stop clenching your fists, to loosen up for a minute and let go, would mean you have to feel the actual undercurrent of your anger: your pain. Finding out, of course, is most accurately described as an unexpected punch to the stomach. There are some people who have been taken aside and told with composure and elegance that they have been betrayed in the most profound way they could be. “I made a mistake,” the culprit might say, or, “I found someone else.” Depending on the intensity of the illicit relationship, the confession could range from the deeply apologetic to the coldly indifferent. But for those who find out because they stumbled across the evidence, or found it after frantic hours of terrified searching, the punch is strong enough to force the air entirely out of the lungs. The searching is perhaps the worst part, the breathless moments before the floor falls out from underneath you. That precarious dangling in the purgatory where you at once want to find something — anything — to justify your gnawing suspicions, and you want to be relieved with a realization that it was all in your head. In many ways, though, once that frantic searching has begun, there is no way to be satisfied that you imagined it all. If you have been driven to the point of checking through messages or looking in pockets or asking potential witnesses, if you have allowed yourself to come to the ugly, unflattering point of invading the privacy of the person you love to prove yourself right, you have already lost. And you know it. You know you have become what you had always condescendingly looked down upon, the couple who is as untrusting and dysfunctional as they are unable to admit it. But somehow, finding that shred of evidence or hearing the confirmation which proves you right in the worst way possible is almost a triumphant moment of victory. You have won, and you have lost everything. But for at least those few precious milliseconds of “a-ha!” you have gotten exactly what you wanted. And then comes the fall, the bottomless descent into every ugly moment of self-doubt and self-loathing in an attempt to find a justification or explanation which could never exist. What did you do wrong? What does the other person do better? Do they smell better? Taste better? Have more interesting things to say at parties which don’t involve sarcastic, ill-timed jokes? Suddenly, everything you are is wrong, every aspect of yourself is something you want to peel off and throw on the floor behind you. And the ignorant person you were before, the one blissfully unaware of all that was happening behind a turned back, is suddenly both laughable and enviable. You cringe imagining all of the things that were happening when you weren’t looking, but wish that you could return to a moment where not knowing was a possibility. But that person — the ignorant-yet-blissful person who was only so happy to be unwittingly cheated on — was ultimately not good enough to keep your love. And that is the real pain, the idea that there was something that was yours to keep which you were unable to hold a tight enough grip on. You delude yourself into believing that there was anything you could have done to prevent it, and yet never stop to understand that it was entirely your partner’s choice. If anyone could have stopped anything, it was your partner. Somehow, placing the blame where it truly belongs when cheated on is about as futile as feeling positively towards the “other.” At the end of the day, there is always something to find fault in within yourself, something which can be identified as the true culprit in the infidelity, instead of the beloved cheater. “If only I were thinner” somehow makes more sense than “if only he wasn’t a cheater.” As you unclench that fist, let go of all of every minor pain you’ve kept close to your chest so as to not have to see it in its full splendor, you finally exhale. You distance yourself from the betrayal and start to believe — the way a baby bird might open its wings for the first time — that not everyone must be monitored with the distrusting cunning of a fox. You accept that you may not have been able to stop it, or that you certainly didn’t deserve it. And while there will always be a part of you which longs to look twice at the inbox of a cellphone, who can’t believe that someone can be honest for uninterrupted years at a time, it is up to all of us to push those thoughts away. “If they are going to do it,” we must say, “Ruining myself in worry and doubt will not stop them.”
Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Whitefriar Street Shrine of St Valentine, Whitefriar Street Church Throughout the centuries since Valentine received martyrdom there have been various basilicas, churches and monasteries built over the site of his grave. Many restorations and reconstructions took place at the site, therefore over the years. In the early 1800s such work was taking place and the remains of Valentine were discovered along with a small vessel tinged with his blood and some other artefacts. In 1835 an Irish Carmelite by the name of John Spratt was visiting Rome. He was well known in Ireland for his skills as a preacher and also for his work among the poor and destitute in Dublin’s Liberties area. He was also responsible for the building of the new church to Our Lady of Mount Carmel at Whitefriar Street. While he was in Rome he was asked to preach at the famous Jesuit Church in the city, the Gesu. Apparently his fame as a preacher had gone before him, no doubt brought by some Jesuits who had been in Dublin. The elite of Rome flocked to hear him and he received many tokens of esteem from the doyens of the Church. One such token came from Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) and were the remains of Saint Valentine. On November 10, 1836, the Reliquary containing the remains arrived in Dublin and were brought in solemn procession to Whitefriar Street Church where they were received by Archbishop Murray of Dublin. With the death of Fr Spratt interest in the relics died away and they went into storage. During a major renovation in the church in the 1950s/60s they were returned to prominence with an altar and shrine being constructed to house them and enable them to be venerated. The statue was carved by Irene Broe and depicts the saint in the red vestments of a martyr and holding a crocus in his hand. Today, the Shrine is visited throughout the year by couples who come to pray to Valentine and to ask him to watch over them in their lives together. The feastday of the saint on February 14 is a very popular one and many couples come to the Eucharistic celebrations that day which also includes a Blessing of Rings for those about to be married. On the feastday, the Reliquary is removed from beneath the side-altar and is placed before the high altar in the church and there venerated at the Masses. At the 11.00am and 3.15pm Masses there are special sermons and also a short ceremony for the Blessing of Rings for those about to be married. The Shrine The Shrine to St Valentine is found on the right hand side of the church as one enters the main body of the church. The casket sits beneath the marble altar in a niche which is protected by an ornate iron and glass gate. Above the altar stands the life-sized statue of the saint set into a marble mosaic alcove. The saint is also barefoot. The casket is wooden and on top bears the papal coat of arms of Gregory XVI along with two large gold plates which have the letter of Cardinal Odescalchi inscribed in English upon them. Between these two plates and beneath the papal crest is a smaller plate with the inscription: This shrine contains the sacred body of Saint Valentinus the Martyr, together with a small vessel tinged with his blood. The Reliquary contains some of the remains of St Valentine – it is not claimed that all of his remains are found in this casket. There is also included a small vessel tinged with the blood of the martyr. These are contained within a small wooden box, covered in painted paper and is tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with wax seals (which is the usual way in which relics are contained within reliquaries). This container is inside the casket which is seen beneath the altar. The outer casket has only been opened on a couple of occasions and then only to verify that the contents are intact. The inner box has not been opened or the seals broken. When the Reliquary arrived in Dublin it was accompanied by a letter, in Latin, which reads: St Valentine We, Charles, by the divine mercy, Bishop of Sabina of the Holy Roman Church, cardinal Odescalchi arch priest of the sacred Liberian Basilica, Vicar General of our most Holy Father the Pope and Judge in ordinary of the Roman Curia and of its districts, etc., etc. To all and everyone who shall inspect these our present letters, we certify and attest, that for the greater glory of the omnipotent God and veneration of his saints, we have freely given to the Very Reverend Father Spratt, Master of Sacred Theology of the Order of Calced Carmelites of the convent of that Order at Dublin, in Ireland, the blessed body of St Valentine, martyr, which we ourselves by the command of the most Holy Father Pope Gregory XVI on the 27th day of December 1835, have taken out of the cemetery of St Hippolytus in the Tiburtine Way, together with a small vessel tinged with his blood and have deposited them in a wooden case covered with painted paper, well closed, tied with a red silk ribbon and sealed with our seals and we have so delivered and consigned to him, and we have granted unto him power in the Lord, to the end that he may retain to himself, give to others, transmit beyond the city (Rome) and in any church, oratory or chapel, to expose and place the said blessed holy body for the public veneration of the faithful without, however, an Office and Mass, conformably to the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, promulgated on the 11th day of August 1691. In testimony whereof, these letters, testimonial subscribed with our hand, and sealed with our seal, we have directed to be expedited by the undersigned keeper of sacred relics. Rome, from our Palace, the 29th day of the month of January 1836. C.Cardinal vicar Regd. Tom 3. Page 291 Philip Ludovici Pro-Custos The Legend of Saint Valentine The Roman Martyrology commemorates two martyrs named Valentine (or Valentinus) on February 14 which seems to indicate that both were beheaded on the Flaminian Way, one at Rome the other at Terni which is some 60 miles from Rome. Valentine of Rome was a priest who is said to have died about 269 during the persecution of Claudius the Goth (or Claudius II Gothicus). The other Valentine was allegedly Bishop of Terni, and his death is attested to in the Martyrology of St Jerome. Whether there were actually one or two Valentines is disputed. One possibility is that is two cults – one based in Rome, the other in Terni – may have sprung up to the same martyr but that in the mists of time his true identity became confused. In ancient Rome, February 14th was a holiday to honour Juno - the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia. At the time the lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl’s name from the jar and they would then be partners for the duration of the festival. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry. Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II, Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome. Claudius had also ordered all Romans to worship the state religion’s idols, and he had made it a crime punishable by death to associate with Christians. But Valentinus was dedicated to the ideals of Christ, and not even the threat of death could keep him from practicing his beliefs. Valentine and Saint Marius aided the Christian martyrs and secretly married couples, and for this kind deed Valentine was apprehended and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. He suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, in either 269 or 270. This is one legend surrounding Valentine’s martyrdom. The second is that during the last weeks of his life a remarkable thing happened. One day a jailer for the Emperor of Rome knocked at Valentine’s door clutching his blind daughter in his arms. He had learned of Valentine’s medical and spiritual healing abilities, and appealed to Valentine to treat his daughter’s blindness. She had been blind since birth. Valentine knew that her condition would be difficult to treat but he gave the man his word he would do his best. The little girl was examined, given an ointment for her eyes and a series of re-visits were scheduled. Seeing that he was a man of learning, the jailer asked whether his daughter, Julia, might also be brought to Valentine for lessons. Julia was a pretty young girl with a quick mind. Valentine read stories of Rome’s history to her. He described the world of nature to her. He taught her arithmetic and told her about God. She saw the world through his eyes, trusted in his wisdom, and found comfort in his quiet strength. One day she asked if God really existed and Valentine assured her that He did. She went on to tell him how she prayed morning and night that she might be able to see and Valentine told her that whatever happened would be God’s will and would be for the best. They sat and prayed together for a while. Several weeks passed and the girl’s sight was not restored. Yet the man and his daughter never wavered in their faith and returned each week. Then one day, Valentine received a visit from the Roman soldiers who arrested him and who now destroyed his medicines and admonished him for his religious beliefs. When the little girl’s father learned of his arrest and imprisonment, he wanted to intervene but there was nothing he could do. On the eve of his death, Valentine wrote a last note to Julia - knowing his execution was imminent. Valentine asked the jailer for a paper, pen and ink. He quickly jotted a farewell note and handed it to the jailer to give to his blind daughter. He urged her to stay close to God, and he signed it “From Your Valentine.” His sentence was carried out the next day, February 14, 269 A.D., near a gate that was later named Porta Valentini (now Porta del Popolo) in his memory. When the jailer went home, he was greeted by his little girl. The little girl opened the note and discovered a yellow crocus inside. The message said, “From your Valentine.” As the little girl looked down upon the crocus that spilled into her palm she saw brilliant colours for the first time in her life! The girl’s eyesight had been restored. He was buried at what is now the Church of Praxedes in Rome, near the cemetery of St Hippolytus. It is said that Julia herself planted a pink-blossomed almond tree near his grave. Today, the almond tree remains a symbol of abiding love and friendship. In 496 Pope Gelasius I named February 14 as Saint Valentine’s Day. On each Valentine’s Day, messages of affection, love and devotion are still exchanged around the world. This could be because of Valentine’s work in marrying couples against the law, or because of the miracle worked for Julia and the message he left other. Others believe that people in medieval times sent love notes during February because it was seen as the mating season of birds and that Valentine’s feast falling in the middle of the month became the principle day for this. Compiled from various sources including The New Catholic Encyclopaedia (New York: McGraw Hill. 1967), Butler’s Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and other principal Saints , and from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (London. 1962). Relics claimed by other places It is quite possible that the Church of Praxedes, in Rome, does have some of the remains of the saint. A relic can be as small as a scraping of bone or a hair from the head of a saint up to the entire, intact body, as with Blessed Pope John XXIII. In early Christian times it was the custom to build churches over the tombs of the martyrs (as with St Peter’s Basilica and St Paul’s Basilica in Rome) but as time went on this became both impossible and impractical. Instead, the faithful placed parts of the body of a saint in the new altar in the church which meant that the whole body was not used. Therefore, the remains of a saint could be found in many places which does not detract from what is found in any one place or the veneration of the saint by the faithful. Prayer to St Valentine O glorious advocate and protector, St Valentine, look with pity upon our wants, hear our requests, attend to our prayers, relieve by your intercession the miseries under which we labour, and obtain for us the divine blessing, that we may be found worthy to join you in praising the Almighty for all eternity: through the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
A collection of sources, articles, PDF’s, on Marxism Leninism and on the Marxist Leninist line to follow on historical events and upholding revolutionary nations battling western imperialism, workers of the world, unite! Marxist Leninist readings: Neo colonialism the last stage of imperialism by kwame Nkrumah Another view of Stalin by Ludo Martens Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism by Lenin On the question of revisionism by W.Z. Foster Foundations of Leninism by Stalin The three sources and three components parts of Marxism by Lenin The state by Lenin Imperialism Reserves by Stalin Fundamentals of Marxism Leninism The Comintern and the East: The Struggle for the Leninist Strategy and Tactics in National Liberation Movements‬ The national question by Stalin Holodomor Myth: The “Holodomor” and the Film “Bitter Harvest” are Fascist Lies by Grover Furr Fraud, famine, and fascism by Douglas Tottle Holodomor Hoax: Joseph Stalin’s Crime That Never Took Place Stalin, Soviet Agriculture & Collectivization ‪Soviet Peasants & Collectivization 1930-39: Resistance/Adaptation‬ China: Chinese communist revolution: Stalin and the Chinese revolution The Chinese revolution and the Chinese communist party Quotations from Mao Tse Tung Present day china: belt and road initiative Belt and road initiative: benefits for china AND receiving countries XiJinping: China will launch 100 poverty alleviation projects and 100 health care, rehabilitation projects in countries along belt and road China & market socialism: a question of state and revolution Chinese cooperation and alliance with African countries: Interview: Chinese investments pivotal to Kenya’s progress China donates to Kenya 4 mobile clinics, which prove successful in China’s own campaign to promote rural medicare China pledges $60bn to develop Africa (ZERO INTEREST LOANS) Somali students reviving full ride scholarships from Chinese gov Chinese gov provides more scholarships to Liberian students 30 Gambians offered Chinese gov scholarships The sinophobia in believing the Chinese imperialist myth: Yellow peril The irrational racist fear of china The myth about Chinese imperialism in Africa Challenging the myth of Chinese land grabs in Africa DPRK: Imperialism and The Interview: The Racist Dehumanization of North Korea The Historical Experience in Building Socialism and the General Line of our Party by Kim Jong II Kim jong ll Let us advance under the banner of Marxism Leninism and the juche idea DPRK’s Alliance with Syria Women lead lives of dignity in People’s Korea, 71st anniversary of the enactment of DPRK Law on Sexual Equality Link of free e books on the DPRK (hundreds to choose from) DPRK economy “Rojava” and “Kurdistan” imperialist project: Free Kurdistan destabilize Iran US’ arms supplies to Syrian Kurds is a geopolitical project, part of a larger plan ‪The Israel connection: Majority of Israeli oil is imported from Iraqi ‘Kurdistan‬ The removal of Assyrian mayors in towns within Iraq by the KDP Syrian government declares northern Syria is nothing but Syria ‪Netanyahu backs partitioning Iraq for Kurdish state‬ Kurdish official says US role essential in post-ISIS Syria US plan to balkanize Syria under false pretext of helping kurds get autonomous US forces to stay in Syria for decades Israelis ‘using Kurds to build power base The Myth of the Kurdish YPG’s Moral Excellence Stalin on what makes a nation, hint: not ethnicities US to set up 5 bases in Iraq near Iraq border Kurdish terrorist groups in Iran receive weapons and military training form us and U.K. SDF: We are ready to cooperate with Saudi Arabia regarding Syria SDF SPOKESMAN CONFIRMS THE GROUP DOES NOTHING WITHOUT ‘SIGNALS’ FROM THE UNITED STATES (VDIEO) US, Turkey to Set Up More Military Bases in Northern Syria US: YPG provides the necessary components to carve out a safe zone US military illegally occupy Tabqa Airbase as part of agreement with YPG Seven+ illegal US bases in Syria Kurds ethnic cleansing Arabs in raqqa By supporting Kurds, the US tries to set up the ‘second Israel’ My personal thread on the Iraqi Kurdistan vote Syria: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: THE REAL REASONS Why The West Cannot Topple His Government The Revolutionary Distemper in Syria That Wasn’t The regime that isn’t ‪Syrian elections show broad support for Assad ‬ US & allies have been funding AlQaeda-linked rebels in Syria since day 1 The ongoing media propaganda was against syria Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria Syria: U.S. talk of chemical weapons a pretext for war CIA activities in Syria Why U.S. wants regime change in Syria Syria: Doctors in Aleppo refute Western media lies The Myth of Syria’s Moderate Rebels The medias white washing of Syrian rebel war crimes British Govt-Funded Outlet Offered US Journalist $17k/Month to Produce Propaganda for Syrian Rebels Africa: Congo, Guam, et al: The crime of Congo by Conan Doyle An open letter from Guam to America Keith Harmon Snow Profiteering from Genocide in Central Africa ‬ The Mysterious Death Of The Former President Of Mozambique Empire in Africa: explores the imperialist aggression + distortion of conflict in Sierra Leone Recolonization Of Africa: Us Military Missions Reach Record Levels After Pentagon Inks Deal To Remain In Africa For Decades ‘Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars And Secret Ops In Africa’ ‪Secret documents reveal constellation of US military bases across Africa ‬ How the world bank and the imf destroy Africa Palestine: The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History Narrating The Subaltern Reclaiming Memory Military lessons of the 1936 Arab rebellion in Palestine The ethnic cleansing of Palestine Palestinian armed struggle: means and ends by yezid sayig Iran: Foundations of Colonial-Imposed Global Order Shaken by Islamic Revolution Hillary Clinton admits the USA manipulated the Iranian green revolution Hilary Clinton confirmed that US operatives supported the green revolutionaries in Iran Why Iran’s Revolution is still a threat to U.S. imperialism (a great thing) US involvement in ’09 Green Revolution include training Iranians in Bahrain Venezuela: The Achievements of Hugo Chavez Bolivarian missions US-Led economic war, not socialism, is tearing venzeula apart Venezuela to Investigate Food Giant Kraft Heinz for ‘Sabotage’ President Maduro to deliver the one million homes Venezuelan Opposition Accused of Attacking Indigenous Radio Station Land Reform in Venezuela Hugo Chavez and the bolivarian revolution US has budgeted $49 million for Venezuelan right-wing since 2009 CIA chief hints agency is working to change Venezuelan government CIA Director revealed the U.S. advises Mexico and Colombia on how to manipulate the outcome in Venezuela Marxs ideas deeply rooted in Venezuela revolution: ambassador Yugoslavia: The Media and their Atrocities “Denying” the Srebrenica Genocide Because It’s Not True: an Interview with Diana Johnstone The Avoidable War The Dismantling of Yugoslavia (Part I) The weight of chains Hungary: “Anarchism” Makhno myth Anarchism or socialism? by Stalin Advertisements
The following article originally appeared on Newtopia Magazine. Watching the new TV series Cosmos I was delighted to see so much attention given to Giordano Bruno. But Hermetic and Platonic traditions that influenced his thought were as usual, ignored. The currently official history of science tells us that while astrology and astronomy, and alchemy and chemistry grew up together in the 17th century with the birth of what would become modern science, astronomy and chemistry soared into the heavens while astrology and alchemy were condemned to lurk in the shadows. That’s not how Professor Leon Marvell sees it. In his groundbreaking book Transfigured Light: Philosophy, Science and the Hermetic Imaginary Marvell argues that new research in the fields of Chaos and Complexity theory, Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, far from being the radical arrival of previously unknown ideas, in fact have a long history which Marvell calls “Hermetic: the intellectual tradition that developed from the rediscovery of the Corpus Hermeticum and associated texts in the 15th century.” By studying these Hermetic antecedents of modern scientific theory, Marvell argues, we can shed more light on our world and our sciences, and on imagination, which mediates how we experience them. The Rosicrucians wrote of an Invisible College, winged, with wheels, that could be anywhere and nowhere, a college dedicated to the universal reformation of humanity, making all knowledge available to any sincere and worthy seeker with the patience to learn. The imagination of such a school is as much a precursor of our world wide web as Thomas Harriot’s work on binary numbers. But Marvell’s book goes much further than similarities in human preoccupation. What Marvell finds in the most recent science is the panpsychism of Neoplatonic and Hermetic thought. The universe is more than the random play of matter. Consciousness is everywhere. Since Marvell published Transfigured Light in 2007, science has provided more support for his view. Dr. Gagliano, an Australian Research Council research fellow at The University of Western Australia’s Centre for Evolutionary Biology, published in the January 2014 Oecologia solid evidence of memory and learning in plants. In 2013 Professor Lanza, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, again made headlines with his theory of biocentrism, a quantum physics view of life after death. Lanza describes space and time as “tools of our mind,” i.e., the material world is a form of consciousness, not the other way around. Marvell shows how the beliefs of Descartes and Hobbes about the human body, that it is a machine, eventually invaded psychology from Freud’s machinic analysis of the unconscious to Dr. Skinner’s view of man as a set of programmable behaviors in a mechanical body. He also reveals the conceptual connections between Platonic philosophy and the work of modern theorists like A-life scientist Christopher Langton who wrote: “The leap you have to make is to think about machines as being the logic of organization. It’s not the material…if you can capture its logical organization in some other medium you can have the same ‘machine’ because it’s the organization that constitutes the machine, not the stuff its made of.” Transfigured Light is an intense read. Einstein, Cybernetic theory, Artificial Intelligence and Cyberspace coexist happily with Gurdjieff, Ficino, Plotinus, the Tibetan bardo and Robert Fludd, whom Marvell convincingly argues was not the dodo bird at the birth of modern science many historians have dismissed him as but whose alchemical “psycho-physical practices” were akin to yoga, Marvell finds parallels between Fludd’s writing about self purification and similar Pythagorean ideas and practices. The chapter “The Gnostic Alchemy of Robert Fludd” is a must read for anyone interested in Fludd. Fludd’s Tree of Life. Marvell reminds us that: “In his Harmonia Mundi Kepler devoted an entire section to “The Earth as a Living Being” a section doubly significant in that it contains notions that lead directly to his statements describing the ‘dynamic power’ of matter as ‘energy.’ Conventional accounts of scientific conceptualization credit Kepler with replacing the concept of matter as being besouled with that of the notion of physical energy. But as M.H. Nicholson points out, this new notion is intimately connected with Kepler’s belief that the world was a living being. According to Kepler the earth itself was possessed of a soul and this world-soul reflected the anima mundi, the cosmic soul. Imagine for a moment how different our world might be if the scientists who followed Kepler had also regarded our world as living rather than a merely material planet of exploitable things. Nuances of the philosophy of Leibniz are examined and revitalized. The book contains many illuminating quotes, such as this from Karl Joel’s book about Leibniz: “Soul and body are not two substances that act one upon another, but two functions which pass into one another. The soul is not so fleeting as the wandering consciousness; the body is not as stiff as a corpse. The soul is formed in this transition, in transition the body becomes alive.” Marvell shows revealing similarities between the Kabbala and the philosophy of Leibniz. Recently in “Take Two Emerald Tablets in the Morning: Surrealism and the Alchemical Transubstantiation of the World” in the anthology Alchemical Traditions: From Antiquity to the Avant Garde (Numen Books, 2013). Marvell wrote about the strong influence of the occult on Surrealism and on Andre Breton, as Marvell says, “the leading western intellectual in the era between the wars.” Miserabilism is the unexamined life, the life of a cog in the wheel, hooked on watching suffering for entertainment, resigned to suffering in real life. For Breton and the Surrealists the cure for suffering is the marvelous, and the marvelous is with us everywhere. Self-portrait by Meret Oppenheim. The Surrealists related to alchemists in their effort to turn everyday lead into gold, gold that was always hidden in the lead, as its potential, and true nature. This gold, to the Surrealists, is the marvelous. Or as the Orphics described it over a thousand years earlier the soul in body is entombed and only by waking our true eternal natures can we avoid living lives of blind suffering. For the ancient Greeks the Mysteries were the path to salvation, for the Surrealists that path was art. (Inner Traditions is about to publish what may become the definitive look at the subject: The Esoteric Secrets of Surrealism: Origins, Magic, and Secret Societies by Patrick Lepetit.) I’m delighted to introduce my readers to a writer with one of the freshest views of the arcane available today. Professor Marvell at the grave of Julio Cortazar. …………………………………………………… Why did you name the book Transfigured Light? One of the key themes of the book is that a relatively limited number of “ideal objects” (an idea I synthesized from certain conceptions of the great historian of religion Ioan Couliano, 19th century mathematical conceptions of the fourth dimension, and Chaos Theory’s “strange attractors”) have travelled with us throughout history, generating sets of interrelated ideas, all of which constitute a particular “imaginary”. One of the key imaginaries for both Western and Eastern cultures is that of “Light”. In the book I wanted to show that these “luciform objects” have their origins in the very ancient past, and in particular that the various scientific conceptions of light and the allied notions these conceptions generated—rays and fields of energy—are simply transfigured (transformed) continuations of spiritual ideas supposedly expunged by the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of the 17th century. My task in the book was to reveal the import of these fourth dimensional transfigurations. And of course, we speak of the “light of understanding” and “illumination”, metaphors which are also part of the imaginary of light which I had set about to uncover. So you could re-translate the title to mean “transformations of understanding” if you really wanted to. There are other resonances to the title that I wanted at least some readers to get: a sly nod towards the Biblical story of the transfiguration of Christ—his transformation into a body of light—which is, as you know, the subject of the second chapter of the book: the historical importance of the various conceptions of the astral body. I like to think that in this manner the title poetically gestures towards the richness of the field I am investigating. What sort of response did Transfigured Light receive and did different academic disciplines view it differently? Good question! It is always difficult to know how one’s work is read, by whom, and with what affect. I actually have no idea how many copies were sold around the world, but “sales volume” was not what I was hoping for anyway. I would prefer that the book reach—I mean intellectually reach—a small group of people who would be excited by its ideas than for it to be an academic best-seller (which is a contradiction in terms anyway.) And the book seems to have had such a destiny: I have been contacted by individuals from around the world who have come across my book, and have been excited by it, and in one case at least, changed by it (a young academic in the United States told me that the book had changed his life—something for which I am not sure I want to be held accountable!) I tried to write the book in such a manner that anyone with an interest in such things could read it without fear that it would be a dry, academic text; in other words I wrote it endeavoring to walk the line between scholarly precision and readability, and evidently this strategy has worked. The book has had the greatest response from scholars and individuals with an interest in the more esoteric aspects of culture and history. These people tend to have an interest in esotericism in general, and the impact of esoteric thought on the history of ideas in particular. As to individuals on the other side of the books equation—those interested in the physical sciences or the history and philosophy of science—the response has been muted. But I suppose that is to be expected. Both my methodological approach and my critique of the history and philosophy of science are unorthodox, and those presently guarding the gates of the sciences are nothing if not guardians of orthodoxy. There are of course notable exceptions to this rule (I discuss several such individuals and their ideas in my book, as you know), but generally speaking, proselytizers and PR men for the sciences like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (for example) respond to unorthodox approaches with a determined vehemence. Such individuals believe that Science (with a capital S) is the one-and-only arbiter of what constitutes knowledge. I find such a belief absurd. Why is it that Hermetic and Neo-Platonist influences were so thoroughly discredited in earlier versions of the history of science when signs of influence and kinship were so obvious? The history of science is one of wonders and metaphysical daring, but it is also one in which we can very clearly discern a history of violence against alternative ways of imagining the world. This violence is of course on the level of rhetoric, polemic and political maneuver, but it is a history of violence nonetheless. In their efforts to attain legitimacy, the sciences and the “technological imperative” that has accompanied them have systematically either suppressed or ridiculed alternative world-views. This has been a very effective strategy, particularly when it comes to advancing the technological agenda, the results of which are only too clear in an era when many scientists are predicting the extinction of the human race within the next few decades, owing to the inevitably catastrophic effects of global climate change. As to whether this extinction is just the most recent form of scientific apocalypticism we can—frighteningly—only wait and see. As I have earlier indicated, Science-with-a-capital-S considers itself the pre-eminent gatekeeper of knowledge, and it has a well-financed publicity machine to assure this status, finding particular support among our politicians and their capitalist financiers. One of my intellectual heroes is Paul Feyerabend, whose Against Method is one of the greatest works in the philosophy of science, in my humble opinion. One of the chapters in the book, which most infuriated orthodox philosophers of science and the aforementioned gatekeepers, is the chapter in which he compares the scientific method to witchcraft. For Feyerabend, witchcraft was just as valid an approach to knowledge production as the empirical, scientific method. You can imagine that such an idea caused many historians of science to blow a gasket, and still does. If we needed further proof of this militant orthodoxy, we just have to look at what happened to Rupert Sheldrake and Graham Hancock at the TED talks recently. Their presentations were ex post facto officially dismissed as “pseudo-science” by the TED scientific committee, when nothing either of them said was unscientific, and in fact Sheldrake’s presentation was the very spirit of scientific enquiry. What the committee could not stomach was Sheldrake’s unorthodox research proposals, proposals which, if scientifically pursued in the manner he advocated, might very well pose a threat to long-held belief systems. And as Kuhn has conclusively shown, historically the sciences are the very last to acknowledge that the reigning paradigms have been in error. There have been, of course, scholars whose work has recognized the influence of Hermetic and Neo-Platonist ideas during the development of the sciences, scholars such as Thorndike (Western science) and Needham (in terms of the influence of Chinese alchemical ideas on Chinese science) for example, but the idea that, for want of a better term, spiritual thought has had a determinate affect on the history of the sciences has become pretty much anathema nowadays. In the early part of the 20th century this was not the case (when Thorndike, Needham and Yates were writing), but the aforementioned technological imperative married to the scientist PR machine have all but crushed such investigation. Revenge on Culture by Lee Miller Do you think it’s possible science will reinvent itself by discovering what was once called “the soul of nature”? It is certainly possible, but not likely in the near future. I think that for this to happen we would need a “scientific breakthrough” that was so mind-bending, so “out there” that everyone in the scientific community would have to exclaim, “Whoah!” Perhaps something like the scientific confirmation of Sheldrake’s concept of morphogenetic fields, or his notion that human consciousness and vision are not localized to brain activity (as outlined in his recent The Science Delusion), would fit the bill. It is one of those peculiarities of history that it is only a great crisis, such as a crisis in faith in regards to a scientific paradigm, that provokes any real and lasting change in human consciousness. As Lewis Mumford noted decades ago, we are living under the “sign of Caliban”, a world-view dominated by misshapen political agendas and corporate funding of dreams of mass destruction. This is a historically determined form of deadly miserabilism. But even while enduring this, someone like Jean Gebser believed that he could see the rudiments of a new form of consciousness emerging in the 20thcentury. He came to this conclusion through a close reading of the sciences (particularly the “new physics”) and the impact of Modernism in the arts. I am not so sanguine about this possibility, but if Gebser is even only partly right, then I guess there is the remote possibility that some sort of revival of the “soul of nature” concept will arise in the sciences. After all, the idea of “inter-connectedness” that is central to modern ecology has its ultimate origins in Renaissance notions of the connection between microcosm and macrocosm, and, even earlier, with the Pythagorean notion of cosmic “harmony”. So ecological ideas have been with us since ancient times — it is just that since the late 17th century the intimate connection between human consciousness and the play of nature has been excised from the equation. Masculin / Féminin by Mimi Parent Perhaps — and I think there is a very real possibility here — discoveries in the field of consciousness studies will finally open a space for the return of the idea of the soul of nature and, consequently, our erotic relationship (for this was how it was conceived of by both Plato and Ficino) with the anima mundi. In Transfigured Light you point out that our idea of the virtual and the real, and the question among computer scientists about which is “really” more real, resembles the Platonic division between the transitory world of forms and the timeless world of archetypes. Can you share with our readers some insight into that similarity? The virtual and the real are slippery terms, and over time they have shifted position in relationship to each other. In the time of the Schoolmen (essentially Medieval Aristotelian) what we would call the “real” today was the virtual, and vice versa. This idea, as you mention, they had inherited from Plato (and only very little Plato had survived in the West before his rediscovery in the Renaissance, so they were lucky to have gleaned even this idea). Like the shifting of chess pieces on a chessboard, Aristotelian thought would subsequently be displaced by Platonic thought in the Renaissance, and this Platonism would be replaced by the revival of one of the keymodus operandi of Aristotle, empirical observation, in the 17th century. So when we talk about the “virtual and the real” we should remember that we are really talking about variations on Aristotle and Plato — not that contemporary computer scientists would even be aware of this. In computing science the distinction between the virtual and the real is operative in the distinction between software and hardware. The hardware is your PC. The software is, for example, the operating system and any programs you might add to this. As an incarnation of the “universal Turing machine” your PC can (theoretically) run any software uploaded into it. Your PC is an incarnation, if you like, of the archetype of the “universal computing machine” dreamed of by Alan Turing. Therefore all PCs are just instances (“realizations”) of a virtual, archetypal serial von Neumann architecture machine. And every program uploaded into your PC is the “realization” of a virtual archetype. For computing science the beauty of this distinction is that if a phenomenon can be modeled (in a virtual computer environment) to a high degree of exactitude, then it is possible to “realize” this phenomenon across any number of computing devices. The sine qua non of such modeling is to capture the very essence of a phenomenon in all its complexity. This, of course, is the dream of AI, to create a mind that is indistinguishable from a human mind (as per the Turing test). So far, this dream is only a dream. The contemporary quest for quantum computation — if it progresses — may well accelerate the realization of this dream, but for that to happen science will have to overcome the thermodynamic limitations of silicon machines and venture into carbon-based computational devices. And that of course is the big stumbling block, both physically and metaphysically. Here I am referring to the concept of ecophagy (consumption of the environment) by “grey goo” quantum nanobots, one of a number of possible apocalyptic scenarios, to which I have already alluded, produced by the contemporary scientific imagination. It is all really quite Faustian, as Oswald Spengler would have characterized it — another connection to the esoteric, or at least, the occult! Rikki Ducornet on the foot of Ramses, 1953. Transfigured Light provides numerous examples of modern theorists of computer science and physics whose “breakthroughs” have evidently transformed our view of the world, but in fact, as you show, their ideas would not be out of place in the Hermetica or a Neoplatonist tract. Please share with our readers a favorite example or two. Well, perhaps your readers should go to Transfigured Light where I have explored several examples in-depth in the book. That is old news! Here I would like to mention something that has engaged my thinking recently — a dovetailing of the recent ideas of a committed computationalist with those of a Platonic biologist. My thinking about this is a kind of mash-up of the controversial ideas of Ray Kurzweil and Rupert Sheldrake. Sheldrake has been on my mind since his disgraceful treatment by the TED scientific committee. I see him as a kind of Hermeticist in biologist’s clothing. In his How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, Kurzweil proposes that a mind, specifically a human mind, is essentially a pattern recognition machine composed of a hierarchical number of nested pattern recognition circuits that form a sort of recursive fractal. In this respect he is not that far away from similar territory explored by Douglas Hofstadter in his I Am a Strange Loop. I have to admit that I am quite partial to both Hofstadter’s ideas and Kurzweil’s as, even though both of them would probably think of themselves as materialists, there is no reason in principle that their computational ideas could not be applied “across platforms”, as it were. In other words, such “pattern recognition” circuits could be manifested in human systems, computer systems, and perhaps even as morphogenetic fields, which may exist in something like the greater reality where Plato imagined his Eternal Forms as abiding. This is where Sheldrake enters the picture: morphogenetic fields are a kind of transfiguration of the Platonic virtuality that lies behind phenomena. Of course, like Daniel Dennett’s similarly misleading title for his book Consciousness Explained (Dennett does no such thing), Kurzweil certainly does not deliver on the “secret” to human thought, as one might hope from its subtitle. There is no mention of human emotion, or the human creative drive, or human spirituality (which, as you know, I take to be an obvious empirical reality, not some “delusion” as Dawkins would have it). But if one attempts to align this recent book of Kurzweil’s with that of Sheldrake’s The Science Delusion, then I think a very interesting “space for perturbation” opens up. In Transfigured Light you discuss the common idea that artificial intelligence may soon become sentient, perhaps even providing a seat for a soul (Vinge’s singularity). What are your current feelings about that theory? I remain skeptical that such an event, the ‘Technological Singularity’, will ever happen. I am not saying that this is impossible in principle, just that the history of predicting such an event, or even the advent of a true AI, has been a woeful history of failed predictions. Unlike the world of fiction where SF writers have often been accurate prophets of future events and technologies, history verifies the fact that actual scientists are terrible predictors of the near future. I certainly hope that this trend continues, as many scientific pronouncements about the very near future are quite terrifying. My favorite vision of the emergence of an AI and the consequent beginnings of the Technological Singularity is a film called Colossus: The Forbin Project, made way back in 1970. The film has a very dark ending (when dark endings were still allowed in Hollywood), and whenever I read of the almost-here Singularity, in my imagination I see the global super-computer Colossus progressively, inexorably enslaving us all. Family Portrait by Dorothea Tanning. You describe the effort to map DNA as a binary code determining the fate of every cell of every body “a continuation of the dream of the mechanization of nature.” Can you say a few words about this, and about your view of DNA? One of the things that consistently seems to be left out of the narrative of “genetic determinism” is the idea of “gene expression”. Gene expression is essential to an understanding of how genes work, but you never find it mentioned by proponents of the idea that our genes are a sort of program or code that determines all aspects of our lives. The concept of gene expression recognizes that environmental factors strongly influence which genes are “expressed”, and consequently the development of individuals is not determined by an inviolable code hidden within the cells, but by a feedback system between the environment and the developing creature. Surely this is the most important aspect of the entire process, but as I say, one hardly reads any discussion of its importance. Luckily recent discoveries in so-called “neuro-plasticity” also give the lie to genetic determinism. Alchemists, especially those working with a soror mystica, a female partner in life and lab, were preoccupied with what might be called goddess metaphors. Breton and the Surrealists were also very interested in the sacred feminine. Yet so few women made significant contributions to Surrealism (or alchemy). What held them back, and do you think we may yet see a renaissance of arts and letters led by women? I’m not sure about your numbers in regards to Surrealism. By my reckoning there were at least as many women Surrealists as their male counterparts. Just off the top of my head, I would mention Dorothea Tanning, Mimi Parent, Rikki Ducornet, Penelope Rosemont, Joyce Mansour, Leonora Carrington, Alejandra Pizarnik, Hilary Booth, Méret Oppenheim, Valentine Penrose, Nelly Kaplan, Lee Miller… as you may guess, I could go on. Perhaps the women were not as full of bluster as their male co-conspirators, but they were certainly as active in making significant contributions to international Surrealism. Indeed, in the continuing life of Surrealism many women are still making provocative contributions to the revealing of surreality in everyday life. If one knows anything about Surrealism at all, I don’t see how it could be otherwise. Vampires by Remedios Varo. Remedios Varo, the Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter and anarchist certainly had an interest in alchemy, as did Leonora Carrington. I certainly would not call their contributions to the arts and our culture insignificant! And if Zosimos of Panopolis was correct, then Maria Prophetissima (Mary the Jewess) was the very first Western alchemist. So the sorors mystica have always been traveling with the entwined paths of Surrealism and alchemy… Why is it that the influence of the occult on Surrealism has been so understated until now? I think part of the reason is that many of the commentators on Surrealism (including those who would seek to bury it by treating it as a historically delimited phenomenon) have sought to diminish the extent to which the occult tradition had an influence on its key thinkers, in favor of readings that emphasize its political activities and its association with the European avant-garde. Both these readings are perfectly valid; it is just that they do not constitute the whole picture. Anybody familiar with the aims and methods of Surrealism would have to ask, how could Surrealism not be influenced by the occult tradition? I think also that with the comparatively recent rise and begrudging acceptance of studies in esotericism as being a legitimate area of academic research, scholars are now more willing to step into what was once forbidden territory and, in regards to Surrealism, see what was always there to see. Most scholars interested in Surrealism however come from art history or literature backgrounds, and so they are not necessarily equipped to recognize the formative influence of the occult tradition on Surrealism, and if they do, they are not able to interpret what they find. There are notable exceptions to this, naturally. André Breton of course always maintained his indebtedness to the European occult tradition. In the past, scholars were just too scared to go there with him! Temple of the Word by Leonora Carrington, 1954 You’re an associate professor of Film and Digital Media at Deakin University, Melbourne, what do you think about this time in the evolution of film? Do you think the future of film will be in the hands of visionaries with digital cameras, or will corporate media complete their stranglehold on distribution by televisionizing the Internet? Actually I think both scenarios are likely. Of course corporate media will try and limit and control the distribution possibilities of the visionaries, but one thing it cannot do is control the imaginations of young filmmakers, and it cannot stop filmmakers (young and old) from making films if that is what they really want to do. In the wonderful short documentary film, Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe by the great American filmmaker Les Blank, Herzog says something like that if you really, really want to make a film, then you will have no qualms about begging, borrowing or stealing the equipment you need to get it done. That was over thirty years ago. We all know how much easier it is to make a film with affordable digital equipment now; you don’t have to steal anything! It does not even have to have high production values to have the required affect — just look at YouTube and Vimeo or the number of people who only listen to their music in the form of mp3s. All three are crap forms of media (in terms of picture or sound quality), but they serve their function very well as media — that is, as a medium of communication. We are living in a time in which low-fi is absolutely acceptable, and this means that even if you just have a cell-phone to make a movie, you can do it. It is a kind of rock-and-roll sensibility, a garage-band aesthetic that says if you have something to say, just go ahead and say it. It doesn’t have to look pretty. Personally I am quite partial to such a sensibility, and I don’t think it jibes with my simultaneous love for the grand filmmakers of the past such as Tarkovsky. I think we should all look towards an ecology of creative expression, in which differing forms all contribute to the scintillating complexity. What are you working on these days? I have been quite busy writing for various publications recently. I co-wrote a chapter for the MIT Press book Re: Live: Histories of Media Arts, Science & Technology on the concept of the “Lifebox” with my friend Rudy Rucker that came out late last year. I will have two chapters in a collection devoted to occult cinema, edited by my friend and colleague Jack Sargeant, and published by Fulgur Press in the UK, coming out later this year. I have an essay in an upcoming volume of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Transdisciplinary Image. The essay is titled, Headless and Unborn, or the Baphomet Restored: Interfering with Bataille and Masson’s Image of the Acephale. It is an “esoteric” reading of Masson’s famous drawing that ropes in Levi’s image of the Baphomet, Roger Caillois’ essay on the preying mantis and the Knights Templar. Truly a transdisciplinary essay! I am also editing a book with a colleague provisionally entitled, Dangerous Science Fiction, devoted to the idea that SF can (and should) be dangerous. I will have a chapter in it that ties together Tarkovsky’s Solaris with Hitchcock’s Vertigo. That will come out next year. And finally, I am trying to finish writing a book called Daimonic Cinema, which is an attempt to bring cinema studies within the purview of studies in esotericism. I think it will be an interesting contribution in an area that has traditionally been the concern of religious studies departments only. What do you read to unwind? I would like to say that I read to unwind, but unfortunately as an academic in the modern university, if I read anything other than what might be considered research material I feel guilty, and guilt isn’t something that is conducive to relaxation. I have a large pile of novels on my bedside table, but every time I pick one up to read at night, a twinge of guilt inevitably arises. Such is the insidious poison of contemporary academia, and its unforeseen side-affect. Having said that, I have been re-reading some Science Fiction classics, and catching up on recent work that I have missed, like M. John Harrison’s conclusion to his brilliant Kefahuchi Tract trilogy, Empty Space. I have also been re-reading the novels of Peter Straub and exploring some of the newer generation of horror writers such as Gary Braunbeck and Sarah Langan. I like anything (such as the work of these writers) that has what might be called a “metaphysical frisson.” I think that a lot of contemporary horror writing is about the terrors of being “thrown” into the world, as Heidegger called it, of being an embodied soul trapped in a world we never made (to quote Howard the Duck, sort of). And I am presently reading Andrew Crumey’s latest work, The Secret Knowledge. His Mobius Dick is one of my favorite novels. As a consequence, my academic guilt quotient is quite high at the moment. Quite apart from reading, luckily I have another outlet from the pressures of academia. I have been a student of Chinese martial arts since the mid-1980s when I was living in China. I study and practice the so-called internal (neijia) martial arts of Xingyiquan, Baguazhang and Taijiquan, for all of which I have had (and continue to have) wonderful teachers. As one of the keys for the practice of such arts is what in Chinese is called song, or relaxation, I am guarantied a practice session without stress if I am doing things right. Thank you for your questions Ronnie. It has been a pleasure responding to your queries.
A steady surge in illegal pot shops has prompted many cities to turn to law enforcement to try and clamp down. In Toronto and Ottawa, police tried co-ordinated raids to crack down on illegal pot shops. In Montreal, police recently raided six marijuana storefronts — the day after they opened. But Vancouver's latest approach is different from many other cities, with local officials turning to zoning rules, licence fees and hefty fines to try and control the marijuana boom. Earlier this year, Vancouver became the first city in Canada to draft a set of bylaws that would regulate pot shops in the absence of federal laws, which are expected to be tabled next year. But the rules seeking to limit the city's growth of medical marijuana businesses, brought in on June 24, have so far had limited success. The city recently voted to quadruple fines, hoping the boost would give its regulations more teeth. Long-time marijuana advocate Dana Larsen, who runs two unlicensed marijuana businesses in Vancouver, says "we haven't paid any of our fines yet." "We will if we have to, but we're going to use every legal means possible to fight those fines, including going to court." He's not the only one — the vast majority of fines issued by the city haven't been paid. Zoning rules, hefty fines The number of medical marijuana retailers in Vancouver had mushroomed before the city brought in a bylaw to restrict their distance to 300 metres from each other, schools, youth facilities and community centres. According to officials, the number of marijuana-related businesses grew by 100 per cent per year from mid-2013 to mid-2015. In the first six months of 2015 alone, the city said, the number of pot-related businesses increased from 60 to 100. After Vancouver set out its business licence and zoning rules, the city said it received a total of 176 applications before the August 2015 deadline. By October, the city had refused 140 applications, saying they "did not meet zoning requirements for medical marijuana-related retail uses." Vancouver then gave those businesses a timeline: they had six months to shut down from the date their application was refused. The Medical Cannabis Dispensary on East Hastings is unlicensed. (Meera Bains) Larsen has applied for business licences for his stores. But in the meantime, he's not willing to shut down the stores during the application process, which he says is taking months. The city sends inspectors to ticket him — $250 dollars each visit — while the businesses remain open. "I'd be happy to spend more money fighting those fines than just paying them, just kind of on principle," he said. "Because this city is full of schools and community centres. It really limits how many dispensaries can be in the city." City council in Vancouver has been relying on a system of fines, while Toronto has relied more on law enforcement to deal with a surge of marijuana retailers. (Meera Bains) Most fines unpaid The City of Vancouver recently approved a new rule that would quadruple fines for businesses without a licence. For example, a fine for businesses operating without a licence has risen to $1,000 per violation, up from $250 — an effort to change the behaviour of businesses by hitting them in the pocketbook. As of Dec. 6, more than 1,000 tickets have been issued. Roughly a quarter of them, 255, have been paid. The city expects to head to court next year after filing more than two dozen injunctions aimed at shutting down the pot shops it says are violating the rules. Coun. Kerry Jang claims Vancouver's bylaw is more effective than police raids. (Rafferty Baker/CBC) We've actually stopped the growth of new dispensaries across the city. - Kerry Jang , Vancouver city c ouncillor "Because of our licence system, we've actually stopped the growth of new dispensaries across the city, whereas places like Toronto, that spent millions of dollars trying to enforce with police and whatnot, are seeing an increase in the numbers," Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang told CBC News. Precise numbers on marijuana shops are hard to come by, as stores spring up without license or warning. In Toronto, there was a "proliferation" of pot sellers in storefronts across the city in spring 2016, a spokesperson said. In late May, city licensing staff and police raided a number of marijuana retailers, laying a total of 101 charges for zoning and licensing infractions. "Since that time, enforcement has continued and there have been 156 dispensaries investigated to date," a licensing department spokesperson said in an email. Of those, 112 are closed and 44 are still operating, the city said. New worries with legalization A recent report by the federal marijuana task force highlighted the role of municipalities and provincial governments in future legislation — and there is the potential for new concern. Jang reviewed the report and said the task force upholds the right of municipalities to manage their land. But he says he's worried about a recommendation that would allow people to grow recreational pot at home, with a limit of four plants per residence. "It says it will be under the jurisdiction or under the control of local governments, but they don't tell us how a local government is supposed to enforce that," Jang said. "[They] didn't tell us how we're going to pay for that."
With the ever-increasing sales of smartphones and the burgeoning tablet market starting to skyrocket, coupled with far greater access to more robust mobile data networks, the internet is now being accessed by our users in a multitude of new ways. The huge range of mobile devices used to browse the web now means you really have to consider making your site mobile-compatible when designing your responsive website. But how do you go about it? Testing your site on mobile devices can be time-consuming and expensive due to the vast number of different mobile devices. Fear not, because there are some handy tools available at your disposal for making sure that your website renders appropriately on the Mobile Web. This article shares and discusses 10 such tools. An excellent free iPhone tester, iPhoney isn’t exactly an emulator, but allows developers to create 320x480px websites for use on the iPhone. It allows you to test images and code in a pixel-perfect Apple-Safari-powered environment, with all the normal features including Portrait and Landscape modes, fullscreen, zoom and plugins. This checker is a web-based automated validation tool that checks to see how mobile-device-friendly your website is. The tests are checked against the W3C mobileOK Basic Tests specification developed by W3C. This handy web-based tool allows you to see how your websites look when rendered on the iPad. It’s recommended that you use a WebKit-based browser such as Apple Safari or Google Chrome to have as accurate a simulation as possible — or at the very least, a CSS3-capable browser that supports transformation properties (like Opera) because it uses them to render the page in Portrait mode. 4. Modify Headers Add-on for Firefox There are add-ons for Firefox that can manipulate the data sent to servers to make it seem as if the user agent is browsing on a mobile device, even when they’re not. To do this, you need an add-on called Modify Headers (for Firefox). Once you have downloaded and installed this add-on, the new options, Tools > Default User Agent and Tools > Modify Headers should appear in your browser. To emulate browsing on a mobile device, you need to find the User Agent Profile (UAProf) value of your mobile device, which can be found with a quick search on Google for “user agent” followed by the model of your phone (e.g. see Google results for “user agent ipad“). Alternatively, check out this list of UAProf values. Once you have located the UA Profile value for the phone you want, enter it into the Modify Header dialog box, and bingo, you will see how it’s like to browse from that device. For Google Chrome, you can try out the User-Agent Switcher extension. For a browser-independent desktop application that works on virtually any internet-enabled app, try out Fiddler Web Debugger that lets you modify HTTP requests, among other things. As part of the latest Adobe Creative Suite, Device Central emulates the operation of mobile devices on your desktop allowing you to test HTML and Flash from the comfort of your desktop. To open a page or site, select Device Profiles > Browse Devices, then right-click and choose Add To Test Devices. Now that you’ve added a device, simply go to File > Open (for local testing) or File > Open URL (for remote testing). Though far from being free, if you’re a professional designer or developer, you’ll have a high chance of being able to access Adobe’s creative suite of applications. 6. Google Mobilizer Google Mobilizer is a simple web tool that lets you input a web page address and then makes the page mobile-web-friendly by trimming the content down to its bare essentials. This is an excellent tool for seeing where you can make performance optimizations on your site. Gomez mobile readiness test gives you a score between 1 and 5 based on an analysis of over 30 proven mobile web development techniques, ranging from stylesheet use (e.g. media queries) to caching techniques and standards-compliant code. The results are displayed in an easy-to-understand document that offers advice on how to make your site better. Unfortunately, to be able to test your site, you must enter in a bunch of information including your email address, country, zip code, and phone number. 8. MobiReady In the same vein as Gomez, MobiReady is another online testing site that allows you to enter a URL so that it can perform a set of evaluations, including Page Test, Markup Test and Site Test of the web page. This is a slightly more detailed version of Gomez above and provides a comprehensive test result page including dotMobi compliance, W3C mobileOk tests, device emulators, detailed error reports, HTTP tests and a code checker. However, the results aren’t as succinct as Gomez’s results, a disadvantage when it comes to presenting your information to your less technically astute clients/employers. The dotMobi emulator gives you a live preview of your site from a (fairly small, to be honest) range of different mobile phones. This mobile testing tool is great if you need to test your page on older mobile devices. What can be annoying to potential users of this tool is that it requires the Java browser plugin for it to work. With over 120 million smartphones sold that has Opera pre-installed[1] and an edition available for almost any OS, making sure that your site works on Opera Mini (the mobile version of the Opera web browser) is a good practice to include in your testing workflow. Thankfully, Opera has obliged us by offering a free web-based emulator for testing and evaluating your web design on a mobile device that uses Opera Mini. This tool requires the Java browser plugin to function. With many industries now having the majority of their traffic coming from mobile devices rather than desktop, you must have a mobile friendly site. Think about a college campus for example. The vast majority, if not all students have a cell phone and will be visiting the campus’s website on that phone probably a lot of the time. This is a key to keep in mind when designing a college’s website. If it’s not mobile friendly, it will leave for a bad user experience. Further Reading References Related Content
Yesterday, Nergal from Behemoth used the band's Facebook page to send an S.O.S. message saying they have been detained by Russian authorities for visa issues. In a new interview, Nergal explained the misunderstanding: "We received the visas at the Russian consulate in Warsaw. When we asked how to fill out the paperwork, we were told that it was necessary to obtain a business visa. We did everything we were told. Now it turned out that it was necessary to get some kind of a 'humanitarian' visa, not a business one." According to Blabbermouth, a humanitarian visa is one required to enter Russia for "wishing to enter Russia for cultural purposes, science, sports, religion, etc." The remainder of the band's "Russian Satanist" tour has been cancelled and after spending a night in jail, the band have been ordered to leave Russia within a reasonable amount of time. When asked what the conditions in the jail were like, Nergal said: "It was a very small room and the walls were smeared with feces. At night, we asked to be taken to the toilet but our request was denied for some reason. So we had to use plastic bottles instead." So basically it was like touring in a van. Additionally, the band was fined 2,000 rubles, which is about $60. The band hopes to one day return to Russia for a proper tour. Here is a local Russian news report of the band looking miserable while being detained: Subscribe to Metal Injection on Related Posts
Thirteen months ago in Cleveland, Ohio, a 12-year-old black boy named Tamir Rice was playing with a BB gun in a park when he was ambushed by two Cleveland police officers who drove up to the gazebo where the boy was relaxing. One officer, Timothy Loehmann, shot Rice in the chest before their police cruiser arrived at a full stop. Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback, declined to administer first aid, electing instead to his arrest the boy’s 14-year-old sister, who was rushing to his side. Rice died the next day. Three days ago, a grand jury declined to indict either officer after they claimed that they thought Rice was older (though he was not) and that they thought the gun was real (though it was not). It was a complete failure, but Rice is dead and the officers are free because Rice was a black boy in America and American black boys are seen as so inherently dangerous and disposable that claiming to sense danger, even where there is none, can justify one’s murder. That two agents of the state who executed an unarmed, innocent child on camera were allowed to walk free outraged millions. One man, Tariq Touré, tweeted this to his followers, tagging prominent Black Lives Matter activists like DeRay Mckesson, Erika Totten, and New York Daily News columnist Shaun King: Advertisement Touré thought a way to get justice for Rice’s execution would be for NBA superstar and native Ohioan LeBron James to refuse to play until Loehmann and Garmback are behind bars. Lots of people agreed with Touré’s plan, and it eventually picked up steam. It got to reporters who brought it to James, and yesterday he was asked about plans to sit out in support of Rice. James has supported Black Lives Matter before, donning a hoodie after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Sanford, Fla. by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, and an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo was captured on video choking 43-year-old Eric Garner to death in Staten Island, N.Y. Yesterday, though, he said he couldn’t speak on Rice’s death, because he didn’t know enough about it: “First of all, I think I’ve been very outspoken about what I believe in. What hits home for me, what I am [knowledgeable] about. There’s been so many more issues that’s gone on that I haven’t spoken about. “There’s been the San Bernardino massacre, there’s been guys going in movie theaters, shooting up movie theaters, there’s been other issues. Those are not something that ... I don’t have much knowledge of so I don’t speak about it. So for me ... if I feel like it’s something that I have a lot of knowledge about [I’ll add my voice to the issue], because I don’t like to speak when I don’t know about it. “But I think the most important thing that we all need to understand, the most important thing, this issue is bigger than LeBron. This issue is bigger than me; it’s about everyone. And gun violence and tragedies and kids losing lives at a young age, some way, somehow we need to understand that that matters more than just an individual.” Advertisement It seems unlikely that James doesn’t know much about a case in his own backyard that was accompanied by video and has garnered international attention, and the addition of shooting massacres in San Bernardino, Cal. and Aurora, Co. ring a bit disingenuous. But this was a Fine statement, because at bottom, it is James stating the rather obvious truth that one guy, even a really rich and famous Ohioan guy, can’t fix this. Still, it garnered outrage from some in Black Lives Matter. Yesterday, King wrote: I had been hoping for months and months that LeBron was eventually going to say something strong about this case. I imagined he was just looking for that right time. What we’ve learned now is something as far short as that as humanly possible. He wasn’t speaking out about it because he doesn’t even know the basics. It’s no wonder that police and prosecutors of Cleveland think they can do whatever they want to black folk in the city and get away with it. The most powerful man in town doesn’t even care enough to put even a smidgeon of fear in them. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to our heroes sometimes. Learning the truth is a mighty huge letdown. Advertisement King’s response can be engaged from a few angles, but it should be noted first that there is nothing LeBron James, Steph Curry, Brian Scalabrine, Kobe Bryant, Bobby Jackson, Christian Laettner, or any current or former NBA player can do to influence the Department of Justice’s review of the case. LeBron James could wrap himself in dynamite and walk into Quicken Loans Arena with his thumb on the detonator and it wouldn’t move Tamir Rice’s killers one inch toward jail, and Touré and King know this as well as LeBron does. We do not live in a society in which a black basketball player can get killer cops sent to jail by taking a break from playing. Any gesture James made, then, would be empty performance, flattering Black Lives Matter activists for their ability to manipulate one of the most famous people in the world rather than recovering lost justice for Rice. It’s a waste of time. By taking James’s refusal to engage in a performative boycott as a betrayal, King and others are challenging James’s loyalty to Black Lives Matter and to his race. This is nuts, because—aside from being wholly unrelated to one’s biological makeup—protest is risky. Protesters risk their reputations, freedom, livelihoods, and lives in the service of being heard, of advocating for themselves and others in the face of overwhelming, heartbreaking, immovable injustice. It’s tiresome; it’s dangerous; it requires fervent, clairvoyant optimism; and that’s why, in every corner of the world, as long as there have been protests, young, anonymous fighters who have little and even less to lose have filled out the front lines. Few celebrities risk fame and money to align themselves with protesters in any way nearly as direct as what LeBron is being asked to do, because to do so requires something beyond just selflessness and empathy. LeBron James is the best basketball player of his generation, a working actor, a successful shoe salesman, and one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, and he has been very clear about what his values are, what he believes, and who he stands with and for. To do more than that would require a combination of bravery, anger, and opportunity that’s unfair to expect or ask for. Some people don’t want to, or don’t have time. Some people don’t because they have to or would rather play basketball instead. If that could eliminate their blackness, we wouldn’t need protests. Advertisement Photo Credit: Getty Images
31 Pages Posted: 26 Jun 2017 Date Written: June 25, 2017 Abstract The impact of poor nutrition has been established as an important determinant of learning and achievement among school aged children. It has also been demonstrated that the single monthly treatment of food stamps leaves meaningful nutritional deficiencies in recipient households during the final weeks of the benefits cycle. This paper exploits detailed administrative data on standardized math tests scores and randomized food stamp receipt dates to allow us to measure the impact of these low nutritional periods on student performance. Our main results are that scores are notably lower when the exam falls near the end of the benefit cycle and when food stamps arrive on the four days immediately preceding the exam. While both boys and girls experienced a similar penalty with receipt near the end of the cycle, the effect from receipt just prior to the exam appears to be partially explained by a large negative effect associated with weekend receipt, which coincides with the four days prior to the exam, that is concentrated among African-American boys. Our results provide evidence that households do not sufficiently smooth consumption and that this has measurable effects on student performance. The fact that weekend receipt differs suggests a behavioral response from households beyond food insecurity that also has meaningful effects.
BEIJING — One of China’s largest hosts of Twitter-like microblogs decreed new punishments on Monday for users who post comments that its editors — and by extension, China’s government censors — deem inappropriate. The service, Sina Weibo, imposed “user contracts” that award each of its 300 million microbloggers a starting score of 80 points. Points can be deducted for online comments that are judged to be offensive. When a blogger reaches zero, the service stated, a user’s account will be canceled. Users who suffer lesser penalties can restore their 80 points by avoiding violations for two months. Deductions will cover a wide range of sins, including spreading rumors, calling for protests, promoting cults or superstitions and impugning China’s honor, the service stated. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Most notably, the contracts also will punish time-honored tactics that bloggers have used to avoid censorship, like disguising comments on censored topics by using homonyms (where two different Chinese characters have nearly identical sounds), puns and other dodges.
NEWS that the Queen is to visit York Minster has been welcomed by church and civic leaders. As revealed on this website this morning, the Queen will distribute the Royal Maundy at the Minster on April 5. The Dean of York, the Very Reverend Keith Jones, said staff at the cathedral were ‘thrilled’ the Queen had chosen to perform the annual ceremony there in her Diamond Jubilee Year. “The Queen has asked that representatives from all over the United Kingdom should be included in the Royal Maundy this year, alongside the recipients from the Diocese of York, and there will be a special air of thanksgiving for her long reign,” said the Dean, who retires just weeks after the service on Thursday, April 5. “There is so much excitement centered on London this year that it’s great that York will once again be the place for this Royal and beautiful ceremony.” The last time the Queen distributed the Royal Maundy in York was in 1972, and he said: “This year Her Majesty’s visit also coincides with the 800th anniversary of the granting of the City of York’s charter, which adds to our delight.” The Lord Mayor, Coun David Horton, said he was ‘honoured and delighted’ the Queen would be coming in such an important year, both for her personally and for the city. “York has a long association with the British monarchy and I’m sure residents will provide a fitting welcome for the Queen,” he said. The monarch is expected to enter the city in traditional fashion at Micklegate Bar, where she will be greeted by the Lord Mayor and York’s first female town clerk - council chief executive Kersten England - before going to the Minster for the service. York council leader James Alexander said he was ‘delighted and honoured’ the Queen had chosen to visit York in her Diamond Jubilee year and both York's MPs, Hugh Bayley and Julian Sturdy, also welcomed the news. April's visit will be the Queen's first to York since Royal Ascot in 2005.
Silhouette of handgun (Photo: Getty Images/Comstock Images) A Brandywine Hundred man faces charges after firing a weapon from his home, breaking glass in the window of a neighboring home, New Castle County police said Monday. On Sunday, police were called to the 200 block of Murphy Road in the Deerhurst community for a criminal mischief report. Upon arrival, homeowners told officers that they'd heard two to three loud "pops" coming from the rear of their home, Officer Tracey Duffy said. One of the homeowners was sitting in the living room when he heard the popping noise. He then heard glass break and was injured when fragments from the window struck his forearm. The homeowners also found a bullet on the floor, Duffy said. Additional officers responded to the scene and while searching the area, found items that appeared to be homemade targets the backyard of Peter Muench, 58. Muench was taken into custody without incident. A search warrant was executed and officers located additional evidence inside his home, police said. Muench was charged with two counts of first-degree reckless endangering, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, third-degree assault, criminal mischief and discharging a firearm near occupied dwellings. Muench was arraigned and issued $33,000 unsecured bail. Read or Share this story: http://delonline.us/1q4UGrw
Well, I was wrong. Here’s why and how I solved it. libclang is a C API that exposes the C++ abstract syntax tree (AST) which is built on top of clang. And clang is a good and conforming C++ compiler, so I expected an interface to read the AST that just works and give me the information I need. Last year I started standardese , a C++ documentation generator. In order to provide exact documentation, I need to parse C++ code. As I didn’t want to waste time implementing my own parser, which will take ages and don’t work most of the time, I opted to use libclang . tl;dr: cppast. libclang problems libclang isn’t terrible. It has a reasonable easy to use interface, so it is quick to get going. And as it is based on clang, it has no problem dealing with conforming C++ code. Furthermore, it supports GCC and MSVC compiler extension and is fast enough for a documentation generator. However, as its website advertises, it doesn’t expose the full AST. If you just need to do basic tasks, like “print all functions in the given file”, it works well. But for standardese, I needed access to the full AST, in order to provide good documentation. And libclang simply doesn’t provide that. The reason for that is simple: libclang features are implemented on-demand. Need to get more information about XXX for your project? Implement that yourself. So it works great for things other people already needed, but not for the rest. Now in hindsight I should have probably used LibTooling even though the API isn’t stable, and from what I’ve heard, it is difficult to use in a standalone project. But instead I opted for a different path: I started to workaround libclang’s limitation. libclang workarounds Read “hacks”. For example, libclang doesn’t expose whether or not a function is marked noexcept , and if so, what the noexcept expression is, if it is conditional. It does, however exposes all tokens of a function. See where I’m going with this? I thought to myself “hm, that’s easy, just loop over the function tokens and see if you can find noexcept ”. That’s what I did. The first problem I ran into was macros. For compatibility reasons sometimes the noexcept is hidden behind a macro. But the libclang tokens are not preprocessed, so I needed to do that. Instead of implementing my own preprocessor, I decided to use Boost.Wave which is advertised as a conforming C++ preprocessor implementation. I wrapped the tokenization behind an interface that automatically preprocessed those. Now this had two consequences: 1) Compilation times of standardese exploded: As most files required to parse the tokens, most files needed Boost.Wave which included Boost.Spirit, which takes ages to compile. 2) The approach didn’t work if you had a macro to generate a couple of boilerplate functions. So I had to resort to preprocessing the entire file with Boost.Wave. This improved compilation times as now only one file needed it, but wasn’t perfect either: Wave can’t preprocess standard library files due to many extensions, so I had to resort to a system that selects the header files that should be preprocessed. But more important: Boost.Wave is slow, so I wasn’t too happy. After I wasted too much time trying to write my own preprocessor (macro expansion is surprisingly tricky), I resorted to using clang directly for preprocessing. If you pass -E clang will output the file after it has been preprocessed. So I did exactly that: I used a process library to call clang and parse the output. In particular, -E also expands all includes, which I didn’t want, requiring me to undo that. This wasn’t hard, thanks to the line marker output. I also used the opportunity to parse macros and include directives. While the preprocessor is still the slowest part, I’m happy with it. So now I can safely scan the tokens of an entity to get the additional required information. But what started as a simple “loop and see if it contains a token” quickly grew into a ball of more or less smart heuristics as I needed to get more and more advanced information (contextual keywords like override and final , I’m looking at you). The end result works for any code I threw at it, and while I could come up with various edge cases, nobody uses them in real world code™. But my parsing code was a convoluted and unmaintainable mess. It didn’t help that I needed to workaround various inconsistencies in the libclang API: Just take a look at this file! And as the parsing code was strongly coupled with the standardese code, the entire project became messy. I originally designed standardese to be both a library you can use to generate documentation as you wish, and a tool. But with the current state, it’s not possible. So I needed a different solution. libclang outsourcing Why am I telling you this story? Because I now have found a way to get the C++ AST, but it is not usable and if you need the AST yourself, you have to go through all the same workarounds. So I did the only reasonable thing: I extracted the mess into a different project. I had two goals: 1) Provide a clean API to work with the AST and hide all the parsing code into the implementation. This only pollutes one place with my libclang workarounds. 2) Be independent from the underlying parsing implementation. This allows multiple backends or switching backends without affecting the usage code. The standardese parsing API was a more or less thin wrapper over libclang. Each cpp_entity stored the libclang CXCursor and using it was a mix between my API and libclang. In order to achieve my goals, I had to completely isolate the entity hierarchy from libclang. For that, I had to mirror some infrastructure like resolving cross referencing, or creating an entirely new hierarchy for the types: Previously I simply used libclang’s CXType , now I have cpp_type and derived classes. But the end result was totally worth it: I have a clean and modern representation of the C++ AST. It uses type_safe in the API, which makes it more expressive, and does not expose anything from libclang. The parsing interface is as simple as possible - just call one member function - and all the messy details are physically hidden away. It can currently parse basically everything you can put in a header file, except variable templates. This is a libclang limitations - they’re currently “unexposed”, meaning that you only get the tokens concatenated into a string, and not further information. Of course, there are some other limitations I can’t easily workaround, but those are rare edge cases and only lead to things being unexposed. It also has a complete cpp_type hierarchy, but the cpp_expression hierarchy currently only has two classes (literal and unexposed). It also does not parse function bodies, i.e. statements, or attributes. But those features will be added as needed (yell at me, if you want them). I’ve also implemented other parts of standardese there: It features support for documentation comments in various formats and the same smart comment matching system, as well as a way to iterate over unmatched comments. And it also supports customizable code generation of an AST entity I can use to generate the synopsis. Currently every AST entities are immutable, but I’ll change that, so you can both synthesize new entities and modify existing ones. This will also vastly simplify standardese’s code. I will probably also add a more high level visitation interface, like clang’s AST matchers.
If you’re not a nuclear physicist, nuclear physics is likely nothing more than a nebulous and abstract idea out of popular culture to you. It’s easy to forgive someone for not understanding the finer points of induced fission or which elements make better nuclear fuel than others. Frankly, the whole endeavour is better left to the experts…whenever possible. I recently offered a post on spontaneous fission – that is, a naturally occurring nuclear reaction – and the astounding discovery made in 1972, wherein French physicist Francis Perrin found sixteen naturally occurring nuclear reactors in Central Africa that are 1.7 billion years old. Some of you might be thinking that’s impossible. To those people I simply point to the Sun and shake my head, though granted, that’s a slightly different kind of nuclear reaction. The point is, it’s real. Spontaneous fission happened, and it went on for several hundred thousand years. There are those, however, who would have you believe that spontaneous, and even induced fission has happened many times on this little blue planet of ours over the millennia. Though that story take a little longer to explain. Mohenjo-Daro. No, that’s not a mystical incantation, it’s the name of an ancient archaeological site in Sindh, Pakistan. You may have heard of it, it’s a particularly interesting part of our history, and is connected to one of the most enigmatic lost cultures that has ever existed – The Indus Valley Civilization. There is a lot of folklore and legend surrounding Mohenjo-Daro. And while all of it is interesting, the most relevant bit to the current discussion is the fact that parts of the many ruins of this ancient village have undergone vitrification. In other words, they’ve turned to glass. Vitrification is the process by which sand, or more accurately, silica is super-heated and then cooled, which results in a glass-transition. It’s the way all glass is made, in basic terms, though there’s a difference between deliberately fired glass for manufacturing (technically known as frit) and vitrified sand. The latter type of glass consists of three categories: · Fulgurite, which is glass created via lightning strikes · Tekkite, which is formed from the heat generated by meteor strikes · And trinitite, which is the glass that results from nuclear detonations. Now, from the opening of this post, you can probably already tell which one is popularly thought to be found at Mohenjo-Daro. The only real difference between those three categories of vitrified sand is the different heat sources that make them. Other than a tendency for trinitite to be radioactive (Duh!), samples of each are pretty much the same compositionally. Silicon dioxide, which is the most common element in sand around the world, melts at roughly 1,700 degrees Celsius, so any one of those methods can get the job done. But if there were a competition, the clear winner would be a nuclear detonation. The heat generated through a nuclear blast can be greater than 10 million Kelvins or 9,999,726.85 degrees Celsius.[1] By comparison, the surface of the Sun is only 5,778 Kelvins. Yeah, that’s pretty hot. In fact, it’s hot enough to flash-melt pure silica into glass instantly. So the Mohenjo-Daro vitrified ruins were made by one of three potential events, it seems. A series of major lightning strikes, a meteor strike (or perhaps more than one), or a nuclear detonation. The Indus Valley isn’t the only place to boast vitrification mysteries though. Scotland has over 70 examples of what are known as Vitrified Forts, such as Dun Mac Sniachan. These are crude encampments from both the Iron Age and Early Medieval period with stone-pile walls, usually situated in easily defended formations. The outer walls of these forts have been heat treated, so to speak, resulting in whole sections of wall where stone and brick have melted into a glass facade. They are wondrous, and in most cases they are quite beautiful, and they make up a collection of vitrified forts that dot the landscape throughout Great Brittan. There are other places too, such as Çatalhöyük in the southern Anatoli region of Turkey, and Alalakh in Turkey’s Hatay Province, and even the Seven Cities of Cibola in Ecuador. You might be getting the wrong impression though. As mentioned, it’s commonly believed that one of the three potential methods of vitrification was responsible for all of these sites, with a conspiratorial bent toward some form of nuclear energy, whether that be detonations or a fission reactor of some kind. But this isn’t necessarily the case, nor is it likely. Remember above, when I told you that silicone dioxide melts at around 1,700 degree Celsius? A flame fed by natural gas can easily reach 1,600 degrees Celsius, and a bonfire with mixed fuels can approach 1,200 degrees, especially if extremely dry wood is used, perhaps pinion pine.[2] Both of those examples are of open flame fires, but what if that flame was enclosed? Perhaps, within a stone structure where the heat would be trapped, reflected, and amplified by the stone? Internal structure fires, like we see in today’s buildings, can easily exceed 3,000 degrees Celsius, so it’s not unreasonable to think that temperatures sufficient to reduce stone to glass could have been achieved in Mohenjo-Daro and other locations without the use of nuclear power. That isn’t to say that some catastrophic event didn’t take place in the Indus Valley of the time; a war, a religious or ethnic cleansing, or some really wild parties that got out of hand. But it isn’t likely that the vitrification was achieved through a nuclear reaction of some kind, whilst leaving no traces of radiation or fission products in the surrounding environment, and most conspicuously, without levelling the entire city. In the case of the Vitrified Forts of Scotland and elsewhere, it is believed by the experts, that it was indeed wild parties that caused the destruction, sort of. Most archaeologists assert that these locations were deliberately destroyed by fire, either by successful invaders or by the inhabitants as a part of a ritual closing of the facility, as it were. (Ralston 2006, 143-63) It seems, and this is purely speculative, that the parties who wish to further the argument that these examples of ancient vitrification are the result of a lost or perhaps natural nuclear process, are simply taking advantage of the popular familiarity, and simultaneous ignorance, that we all possess on the topic of nuclear physics. In reality there are simpler explanations to be considered, even though the alternatives may be more exciting.
Observed snowpack loss Observations of snow water equivalent (SWE) were acquired from the United States Natural Resource Conservation Service Snow Telemetry (SnoTel) network of automated snow pillow measurements across alpine sites. These measurements were taken from a quality-controlled data set discussed in ref. 12. We restrict our analysis to the post-1981 period since the number of observations before this time is too low to allow calculation of reliable regional averages. Monthly-mean (January-May) SnoTel observations are continuously available from 1982 to 2016 at 354 stations with elevations greater than 1,500 m. A threshold of 1,500 m provides good regional coverage; use of continuous observations avoids introducing temporal changes in spatial coverage. Figure 1 shows that 307 of the 354 stations (or about 87% of all stations) show a negative trend in annual maximum SWE (SWE max ). The maximum loss typically occurs in April. Here and subsequently, SWE max is computed over 1982–2010 to facilitate comparison with reanalysis-based estimates for the maximum period of overlap between the reanalyses and the SnoTel data (see below). Figure 1: Topography and measurement network. The circles are the snow telemetry (SnoTel) network of stations utilized in this study. The red circles denote stations with negative trends in annual maximum snow water equivalent (SWE max ). The blue circles indicate stations with positive trends. Linear trends are computed from 1982 to 2010 to facilitate comparison with reanalysis-based estimates (for the period of maximum overlap between SnoTel and the four reanalysis products). All the stations plotted here are at elevations greater than 1,500 m. Full size image We first compute the climatology and trend in SWE max . Results are area-averaged over the 354 selected SnoTel stations. Figure 2 shows that the climatology and trend are 4.6 cm and −0.33 cm per decade, respectively. The trend has a P value less than 0.15. This decrease in SWE max represents about a 9.5% loss; this is expressed as the per cent difference between the decadal averages of SWE max in 1982–1992 and 2000–2010 (the first and last decades of the period of maximum overlap). This multi-decade decline in regional snowpack is consistent with results from refs 13, 14, 15, despite the fact that these studies used different time periods, data sets and metrics. (The sensitivity to the metric used, for example, 1 April SWE or SWE max , has been discussed in ref. 16.) Finally, we note that the accumulated SWE over the winter months is primarily controlled by snowfall. Significant losses in SWE are observed throughout the snowfall season (Supplementary Fig. 1) and are not restricted to April, the month typically associated with SWE max . Figure 2: Climatology and trend in area-average annual maximum snow water equivalent. The green bars show snow telemetry (SnoTel) ranges (±1 s.d.) computed from random samples of stations from the SnoTel network (see main text). The pink bars show ranges (±1 s.d.) from four land surface reanalyses (REANAL4). The black ellipse encompasses 95% of the climatology and trend values across 50 simulations of a global climate model. The circles represent the average climatology and trend for SnoTel, REANAL4 and the CanESM2 ALL simulations. All values in this figure are area averages of annual maximum snow water equivalent (SWE max ) at elevations greater than 1,500 m and north of 30°N and south of 50°N. The period considered is the maximally overlapping period from 1982 to 2010. Full size image We also consider a group of four gridded SWE data sets obtained from reanalysis products (hereafter referred to as REANAL4). These four data sets have been assessed in ref. 17 over the common period of availability from 1982 to 2010. Whereas the SnoTel measurements provide a purely observational perspective, the REANAL4 group has been produced using snow schemes of varying complexity embedded in land surface models forced by meteorological reanalyses. The following data sets were used: (1) the Global Land Data Assimilation System Version 2 (ref. 18); (2) the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts Interim Land Reanalysis19; (3) the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications20; and (4) the Crocus snow scheme driven by ERA-Interim meteorology21. Differences between these data sets have been discussed at length in ref. 17. The SWE fields were re-gridded to a 1° longitude by 1° latitude grid; monthly mean SWE results were averaged across the four reanalyses. Area averaging SWE max at elevations greater than 1,500 m (north of 30°N and south of 50°N) yields a reanalysis-mean climatology and trend of 3.9 cm and −0.56 cm per decade, respectively. The trend has a P value less than 0.01. This decrease in SWE max represents an ∼21.8% loss between 1982–1992 and 2000–2010. The correlation between the SWE max time series from REANAL4 and SnoTel is 0.73. The range of climatology and trend estimates from the four reanalysis products encompasses the corresponding SnoTel estimates (Fig. 2). While this is encouraging, there are significant scale challenges in relating local SWE measurements to coarsely gridded snow reanalyses, and direct comparisons between the two must be approached cautiously22. The green bars in Fig. 2 show the uncertainties associated with the SnoTel values. Here, uncertainties are computed as ±1 s.d. across 10,000 random samples of the SnoTel stations. In each case, a station is randomly selected and the average climatology and trend is computed across a random selection of no more than 10 of its neighbouring stations within 1° longitude and 1° latitude (the spatial resolution of the reanalyses). In short, the SnoTel and REANAL4 results are consistent within the uncertainties in each data source; this holds for both climatologies and trends. Historical simulated snowpack loss Our ensemble of model simulations was generated with the Canadian Earth System Model version 2 (CanESM2; see Methods and ref. 23). Simulations include historical forcings from 1950 to 2005 and RCP8.5 forcing extensions after 2005. The RCP8.5 pathway is a high-emission scenario leading to an 8.5 W m−2 increase in radiative forcing by 2,100. Over the early part of the twenty-first century, forcing differences between RCP8.5 and other commonly analysed RCPs are relatively small24. Two 50-member ensembles were run with CanESM2, one with natural and anthropogenic forcings (ALL) and one with only natural forcings (NAT). Anthropogenic forcings include changes in well-mixed greenhouse gases, anthropogenic aerosols, tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, and land use. Natural forcings consist of changes in solar irradiance and volcanic aerosol loadings. For the ALL ensemble, area-averaging the simulated SWE max at elevations greater than 1,500 m (north of 30°N and south of 50°N) yields an ensemble-mean climatology and trend of 6.1 cm and −0.57 cm per decade. The trend has a P value less than 0.001. The simulated trend is in good agreement with the average of the four reanalyses; the simulated climatology is at the high end of the reanalysis estimates (Fig. 2). The latter suggests greater climatological snowfall in the model than in reality, although this is difficult to assess given the absence of a reliable long-term observational record of winter precipitation. The simulated pattern of climatological SWE max is in reasonable agreement with the comparable field in reanalyses (see Fig. 3), albeit with spatial detail given the coarser resolution of the global coupled model (which is nominally 2.8° longitude by 2.8° latitude). Figure 3: Climatology of annual maximum snow water equivalent. (a) Average of four land surface reanalyses. (b) Average of 50 global climate model simulations from the ALL ensemble. The period considered is that of maximal overlap between the reanalysis products (1982–2010). The orange contours are topographic height in kilometers. The outer contour is 1,500 m and the inner contours are in increments of 500 m. Full size image Figure 4a shows 5-year mean anomalies of area-averaged SWE max at elevations greater than 1,500 m. Results are from SnoTel (green), REANAL4 (pink) and the ALL simulations (black). We also show results obtained by dynamical downscaling of 35 members of the CanESM2 ALL ensemble and RCP8.5 continuation (dashed curve). Downscaling relied on the Canadian Regional Climate Model version 4 (CanRCM4), which has a nominal resolution of 50 km (see Methods and ref. 25). Downscaling was performed over the North American domain defined in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment26. The similarity between the CanESM2 and CanRCM4 ensemble-mean time series (r=0.99) is evidence that the temporal variability of area-average SWE max from CanESM2 is relatively insensitive to an increase in spatial resolution. Figure 4: Anomaly of annual maximum snow water equivalent and scaling factor β. (a) Anomaly in non-overlapping 5-year averages of annual maximum snow water equivalent (SWE max ). Solid black is ALL ensemble-mean and grey is 10–90% range (based on 50 ALL realizations). Solid blue line is NAT ensemble mean and dashed blue lines indicate the 10 and 90% values. The ALL and NAT curves are from CanESM2. The dashed black curve is from the 35-member set of CanRCM4 simulations with ALL forcing. Pink denotes the average of four reanalyses and green is the SnoTel observations. Anomalies are defined in Methods. (b) Scaling factor and 5–95% uncertainty range estimated from application of an optimal fingerprint method to SnoTel observations, reanalyses and CanESM2 simulation output (see Methods). Scaling factors greater than 0 and consistent with 1 indicate that a model-predicted SWE max signal has been detected in observations and attributed to the imposed forcing changes in the ALL or NAT simulations. Full size image Because there is only one realization of internal variability in the real world, we do not expect the CanESM2 ensemble-mean SWE max (which is averaged over many different model realizations of internal variability) to closely follow the time evolution of SWE max in the SnoTel data and REANAL4. The key point here is that the multi-decadal changes in SWE max are reasonably similar in SnoTel, REANAL4, and the CanESM2 and CanRCM4 ensembles under ALL forcing. Under NAT forcing, however, the CanESM2 ensemble mean does not replicate the observed decline in SWE max since the 1980s. Detection and attribution analysis We use a standard optimal fingerprinting method to address the causes of these SWE max changes. This involves regressing the observations onto the simulated ALL and NAT responses. The resulting values of the scaling factor β provide information on the extent to which the model SWE max responses must be scaled to best reproduce the observed SWE max changes. The method also yields the 90% confidence intervals on β estimates (see Methods). Figure 4b shows that with combined anthropogenic and natural forcings, CanESM2 reproduces the reanalysis and SnoTel SWE max changes, albeit with smaller magnitude—that is, the scaling factors are significantly larger than 0 and less than (but still consistent with) 1. With natural forcings alone, however, the model does not reproduce the reanalysis and SnoTel changes. A similar result was obtained in ref. 13 using snow course data, observationally based precipitation, two earlier-generation climate models, two statistical downscaling approaches, and a late-twentieth-century analysis period (1950–1999). Since we do not have a CanESM2 ensemble with anthropogenic forcing only, we compute the anthropogenic scaling factor by linear regression of the reanalyses or observations onto the difference between the ALL and NAT responses (denoted by ANT). We assume additivity of the ANT and NAT SWE max responses. Figure 4b shows that the estimated ANT SWE max changes: (1) are consistent with the reanalyses; (2) are detectable in the SnoTel observations but with significantly smaller magnitude; and (3) yield very similar β values to the ALL case. Regarding (2), when average SWE max is computed over the larger region encompassing elevations greater than 1 km (in order to reduce the noise contribution inherent in point measurements) anthropogenic forcing more successfully reproduces the magnitude of the SnoTel changes (Supplementary Fig. 2). While the results from this analysis provide clear evidence of an anthropogenic influence on snowpack water storage, it is difficult to more reliably quantify the magnitude of this influence given the relatively short observational SWE max record, the effects of underlying variability and the uncertainties inherent in our indirect estimate of the ANT SWE max response. Near-term projected snowpack loss Figure 5a shows 5-year mean SWE max from the ALL ensemble, averaged at elevations greater than 1,500 m. The first 5-year period is centred on 1988 and the last 5-year period is centred on 2038. The ALL ensemble uses the RCP8.5 forcing extension after 2005. The ensemble-mean response (black curve) shows a small increase in the rate of SWE max decline from the first half of the analysis period shown in Fig. 5a to the second half of the analysis period. More specifically, the externally forced trend in SWE max is about −0.50 cm per decade from 1988 to 2013 and about −0.62 cm per decade from 2013 to 2038. This increase in the rate of SWE max decline is significant at P<0.05, where significance is assessed using a standard difference of means test on the 50 simulated trends in the earlier period and the 50 simulated trends in the later period. As noted in ref. 15, distinguishing rates of change in externally forced response over small regions and short timescales, such as these, requires large ensembles of simulations (as shown here). Figure 5: Annual maximum snow water equivalent and per cent change. (a) The black curve is for the CanESM2 ALL ensemble mean and shading is the 5–95% range. The ALL ensemble uses RCP8.5 forcing extensions after 2005. The red curve is the simulation with the greatest loss in annual maximum snow water equivalent (SWE max ) between 2013 and 2038. The blue curve is the simulation with the largest gain over the same 2013 to 2038 period. All values are 5-year averages plotted on the central year. (b) Per cent change in SWE max between the periods centred on 2013 and 2038 under different radiative forcing scenarios. Results in orange are from the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble (Supplementary Table 1). CMIP5 results are based on the analysis of one ensemble member (r1i1p1) from each CMIP5 model for which there exists a historical simulation with ALL forcing and a corresponding RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and/or RCP8.5 extension. The box-and-whiskers plots show ensemble-mean SWE max values, the 95% uncertainty ranges on the ensemble-mean values, and the minimum-to-maximum ranges. All values in this figure are for area averages of SWE max at elevations greater than 1,500 m and north of 30°N and south of 50°N. Full size image Our focus is on quantifying the combined contribution of internal variability and external forcing to near-term projected SWE max . The largest near-term loss in accumulated snowpack over the western United States is ∼60%; this was calculated as the per cent change between averages over the 5-year periods centred on 2013 and 2038. The largest near-term gain is about 3%. The substantial difference between these two percentage changes—obtained with the same physical climate model, driven by the same external forcings—underscores the potentially large contribution of decadal variability to regional-scale changes in SWE max , particularly on shorter (ca. 30-year) timescales. The range in projected snowpack reductions reflects the interplay between temperature and precipitation trends on the end of season SWE15,27,28. Averaging over realizations reduces this variability, and provides a better estimate of the underlying response to external forcing, yielding about a 30% loss of regional snowpack in the ALL ensemble mean. We note that CanESM2 generally reproduces the large-scale wintertime patterns of decadal variability observed in Pacific sea surface temperature, precipitation, sea level pressure and North American surface temperature11. This enhances our confidence in the credibility of the simulated decadal variations in snowpack loss. In comparison with other climate models participating in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5; Supplementary Table 1), the magnitude of unforced decadal variability in SWE max in CanESM2 is in the bottom half of the multi-model ensemble (Supplementary Fig. 3). This suggests that the CanESM2 estimate of the influence of decadal variability on regional snowpack is conservative. Alternately, smaller decadal variability also has implications for the detection results in Fig. 4, and may yield more liberal estimates of anthropogenic signal detectability. We also compare the projections of regional SWE max changes in CMIP5 models and CanESM2 (Fig. 4b). Results are for changes in ensemble-mean simulated SWE max between the 5-year periods centred on 2013 and 2038; the minimum-to-maximum ranges are also indicated. The CMIP5 set consists of one ensemble member (r1i1p1) from each CMIP5 model with an ALL forcing historical simulation and corresponding RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 extension (Supplementary Table 1). The range associated with the CanESM2 initial condition ensemble (for ALL forcing and the RCP8.5 extension) solely reflects the influence of decadal variability. The ranges associated with the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble are indicative of both decadal variability and model uncertainty. Although the ‘spread’ in these ensembles arises from different reasons, the message from this comparison is that the potential for large snowpack loss in the CanESM2 initial-condition ensemble is also evident in the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, and is manifest across all three emissions scenarios. Large-scale patterns associated with extreme snowpack loss Figure 6 shows the sea level pressure and surface air temperature patterns associated with a large negative contribution to regional snowpack from decadal variability in the period from 2030 to 2040 as obtained from the CanESM2 ensemble. These patterns are indicative of a stronger than normal Aleutian Low. The Aleutian Low is a semi-permanent low pressure centre located near the Aleutian Islands during the winter. It is one of the main centres of action in the atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere. The circulation anomalies associated with the stronger than normal Aleutian Low are responsible for transporting anomalously warm and moist air over the western United States. The impact of warm air on regional snowpack is obvious (especially where temperatures are above or about the freezing point). The impact of increased precipitation on snowpack is generally more complex29, but our model shows that the anomalous precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, therefore yielding a reduction in snowpack.
Kolkata-based Savetur Digital, which owns and runs the aggregator app TYGR (pronounced Tiger), on Wednesday made an official foray into Mumbai to compete against the big two in the segment - Ola and Uber. With a fleet of 5,000 cabs, TYGR, which has had a soft launch in Mumbai, aims to expand to 10,000 cabs in the city over the next two to three months, a top official told Moneycontrol. “We run a subscription-based service wherein the cab partner pays us only Rs 500 a month as against the 25-30 percent fees charged on the turnover by other aggregators. We do not do pricing surge either,” said Aditya Poddar, Co-founder and Chief Executive, TYGR. Last year, the company announced it had secured seed funding of USD 3 million (about Rs 20 crore) from Franchise India. Franchise India is a franchise and retail solution provider established in 1999. Ola and Uber have faced mass exodus of cab partners over the past several months after the companies gradually reduced the incentives doled out by them initially to lure partners. Bengaluru, which alone drives 30 percent of app-based aggregator business in the country, has seen maximum dropouts. With TYGR, Poddar hopes that cab partners will find a better alternative to Ola and Uber. “We showcased our model in Bengaluru and the response has been very enthusiastic. They are eagerly waiting for us to launch the app there,” said Poddar. TYGR does not intermediate payments and customers can pay directly as per their preferred method such as meter, fixed rate, cards and even negotiate price. TYGR is presently available only on the Android platform. It will be extended to Apple’s iOS platform in the coming months. “We are looking to have an average of 5000 cabs in every city in the next three to four months. We would be targeting 10 cities initially”, added Poddar. According to Poddar, the cab aggregator business in India has around 500,000 vehicle partners, of which about 300,000-400,000 units belong to Uber and Ola. In the immediate future, TYGR aims to enter the commercial logistics marketplace through the aggregator way. This space recently got increased action with the entry of heavyweight Mahindra & Mahindra-backed Smart Shift. In reality, TYGR is an omni-platform logistics operator that offers a wide spectrum of logistics solutions including cabs, auto-rickshaws, shuttle vans, buses and luxury vehicles. Additional services for ambulances, delivery and intercity logistics will be rolled out in Mumbai at a later stage.
records from a 15-year-old investigation into the Clinton Foundation that was closed in 2005. A mostly dormant Twitter account operated by the FBI has in recent days started releasing files about Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, and The account, which is verified and tweets as "FBI Records Vault," drew attention after sharing files around noon Tuesday related to former President Bill Clinton's 2001 presidential pardon of hedge fund manager Marc Rich on his last day in office. The Clinton campaign and other observers questioned whether it was appropriate for the FBI to begin releasing documents related to Bill Clinton one week before the presidential election. Some called it a "November surprise" and suggested further evidence of FBI meddling, especially given the bureau's surprise announcement Friday that it would be examining more documents related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation that had been closed in July. "Absent a FOIA litigation deadline, this is odd," Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon tweeted Tuesday. "Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?" Two days earlier, the account had shared documents related to Fred Trump, Donald's father, calling him a "real estate developer and philanthropist." That release was also condemned by some political observers who felt it unfairly omitted information about allegations of racial bias that plagued Trump's real-estate company in the 1970s. So let me get this straight ... an @FBI account, DOA for two years, suddenly comes to life to praise Fred Trump and bash the Clintons? Mkay. https://t.co/2oFSkd4arX - Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 2, 2016 "That is just weird - it is not required" @AriMelber about the FBI's dormant twitter account tweeting about Clinton today - Chris Golden (@chrisgolden) November 2, 2016 In a statement, the FBI said the release of the documents reflected a routine release of material that had been requested three or more times under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). After the third time, the FBI said, that information is then automatically made available to the public online on a "first in, first out basis." "By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI's public reading room shortly after they are processed," the statement read. "Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI's public reading room." Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, who is well-versed in FOIA requests and FBI procedure for releasing classified information, said that the tweets are neither "news nor scandalous. The account is the FOIA reading room tweeting whenever there's a new posting." It's unclear, however, whether the documents are tweeted out automatically or manually by the bureau. The documents relating to Fred Trump, for example, were released by the bureau on October 7 but only tweeted out on October 30. As such, many wondered why the account had suddenly come out of relative dormancy a few weeks before the election. "Whatever the reasoning behind it, this latest release further brands the FBI as the Federal Bureau of Intervention," David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter. "It's a head-scratcher!"
A Swiss café offering robot sex services to accompany your hot drink wants to open in Geneva by the end of the year. Owner Bradley Charvet, who runs the Swiss escort service Facegirl, had originally planned to employ sex workers to entertain clients, but legal issues meant he now wanted to use high-tech robots. Charvet told Swiss newspaper Le Matin that he planned to charge men 60 Swiss francs ($62) for a drink that includes the sex act from a woman selected from an iPad. Prostitution is legal in Switzerland but the project has encountered resistance. A spokeswoman from Geneva's department of security and economy told Le Matin "paid-for sexual services are banned in public establishments under the law on catering and the sale of drinks." Charvet believes he can get around the problem using robots The entrepreneur says he's in talks with a U.S. sex robot manufacturing company to buy several "lifelike robot-women" for a cost ranging between $1,800-$3,000.
This page is under construction. Please check back later. This message was added 1:04, June 5, 2015 (UTC). “If I told you a man could shoot lightning from his fingers now, would you believe me? If I told you a man could hoist a one-ton stallion straight into the air, would you believe me?” ― Vigor Barker at the fair[src] Vigors are the wondrous tonics of Columbia, granting extraordinary abilities to its user after consumption. They are powered by Salts which can be found in phials in their raw form or by consuming special foods (usually stimulants, i.e. coffee, cigarettes, soda, etc.). Like Plasmids, Vigors do cause notable side effects, visible on the user's arm. They also affect the user's mental stability by provoking short hallucinations when consuming a new type of Vigor. However, Vigors (with the exception of one) have an alternate use activated by charging it, ranging from enhanced attacks to stationary traps dealing four times as much damage. There are eight Vigors in BioShock Infinite, which can be either found by exploring Columbia or bought from Veni! Vidi! Vigor! vending machines. Each tonic has two upgrades obtainable from the same machines, but for greater prices. Their effects can also be combined, giving the best of two Vigors. Contents show] History Edit Research and Concern Edit Although Vigors differ from Plasmids in their application (drunk rather than injected directly into the blood stream), they share the same origin. Using the Lutece Device to look at other worlds, Jeremiah Fink eventually witnessed in November of 1894 the work of the geneticist Dr. Yi Suchong in Rapture and his creation procedures for Plasmids.[1] From this point, he assembled a laboratory to research and release them as Fink Manufacturing products. Fink also organized several underwater expeditions all around the Atlantic ocean in order to acquire and study Sea Slugs, whose ADAM is the base for Plasmids and Vigors.[2] Research wasn't without risk and led to accidents, such as Devil's Kiss Vigors setting fire to a factory building in October 1900, which was then separated from the city to avoid its spread but condemned all workers trapped inside.[3] The incident was covered up by Fink Manufacturing who assured the population of the tonic's safety once released,[4] although it only resumed production eight years later by Police demand.[5] These incidents eventually raised public concern as far as in early July 1912, and Fink reassured Columbia's fair inhabitants that it was a necessary evil for their own safety.[6] He also took the opportunity of hosting the 1912 Raffle and Fair the same month to promote and sell his products, including Bucking Bronco trials and free Possession giveaways.[7] Yet, a few people were still cautious about the next Vigors and preferred to wait for Fink to improve their stability. Even with active marketing to sell Vigors, Fink was losing money due to the cost of the underwater expeditions.[2] In early June 1912, he went to think about changing the structure of his Vigors to their original form and less expensive on ADAM: injectable Plasmids. He also went to copy the design of syringes used in Rapture to cut the cost of making individual bottles for each tonic.[8] Marketing and Uses Edit “A Life with Vigor is a life that's Bigger!” ― Fink Manufacturing advertisement Vigors were advertised as either domestic aids (lighting a fire, lifting heavy loads or subduing automata), alternative energy source to power Automated Stallions and Gondolas but also self-defense tools (Murder of Crows, "proven deterrent against hooligans"). Like other products from Fink Manufacturing, a few of them were actually credited to one or another inventor. When the Vox Populi started taking action against the Founders, Vigors were requested by the Police to use them all as weapons. The conflict saw each side equipping themselves to take an edge, and Fink Manufacturing producing them in grand quantities. Vigors were then advertised in short films to be used offensively instead of being aids. What's more, some Vigors started to show their heavy toll on their users' body and mind, whether it be the Zealots of the Lady mastering the abilities of Murder of Crows and becoming delusional in their grief or Colonel Cornelius Slate overdosing on Shock Jockey to force Booker DeWitt into attacking him, and displaying blue crystals sprouting from various spots on his arms and forehead.[9] BioShock Infinite Vigors Edit Cast: Temporarily levitates enemies, rendering them defenseless. Charged Effect: Deploys the Vigor as a stationary trap, levitating nearby enemies for longer when sprung. Location: At the end of a corridor prior to entering the ticketing area leading to the Hall of Heroes. Cast: Causes Booker to ram into the target from a distance and damage them. Charged Effect: Increases the charge's damage the longer the Vigor is held. Location: In a previously locked booth upon returning to Finkton Proper while helping the Vox Populi. Cast: Throws a flaming projectile which detonates after a short while, burning nearby enemies and environmental hazards. Charged Effect: Deploys the Vigor as a stationary trap, burning surrounding enemies for higher damage when sprung. Location: Acquired by killing a Fireman after leaving Raffle Square. Cast: Sics a murder of crows onto the targeted enemies, damaging and temporarily distracting them. Charged Effect: Deploys the Vigor as a stationary trap, releasing crows onto all nearby enemies when sprung. Location: Acquired by killing a Zealot of the Lady at the Fraternal Order of the Raven's headquarters. Cast: Turns the targeted machine to the caster's side, causing vending machines to give out a cash bounty and fighter automatons to fight for the user. Upon gaining the Possession Aid upgrade you may take control of human enemies as well. Charged Effect: Deploys the Vigor as a stationary trap, possessing surrounding enemies when sprung. Note: This effect is not initially available, and must be unlocked by purchasing the Possession Aid upgrade. Location: Given to Booker at the Fairgrounds. Cast: Creates a temporary shield, blocking all incoming gunfire. Charged Effect: While charging, absorbs all incoming bullets and projectiles. Upon release, either deploys as a stationary trap or explodes upon direct contact with an enemy, inflicting damage proportionate to the damage absorbed. Location: In the Salty Oyster Bar, after discovering the location to the secret room within. Alternatively, at a crossroads leading to the Memorial Gardens. Cast: Shocks the target, temporarily stunning them and doubling the damage they take. Deals critical damage against enemies in contact with water. Can also activate electric generators. Charged Effect: Deploys the Vigor as a stationary electrified field, shocking any enemy who approaches it. Location: Acquired after dealing with Cornelius Slate at the Hall of Heroes. Cast: Throws all targets in front of the user back with a watery tendril, momentarily knocking them to the floor if they hit the ground. Charged Effect: Pulls the selected target to the user and holds them in the air via a tentacle made of water, temporarily stunning them and increasing the damage they take. Location: In Jeremiah Fink's office, in front of the door leading to the rooftop of the Factory. Several Vigors reappear as Plasmids in the Burial at Sea DLC. While Yi Suchong observed and documented the sudden appearance of Tears in Rapture, which revealed Columbia, he discovered that his own formulas for Plasmids had been stolen by Fink. Fink had modified the formulas with an ingestable oxidation agent to create Vigors. To return the favor, Suchong would steal Fink's modified Plasmid formula. Sold as drinkable Plasmids, these would be marketed as a substitute for citizens who did not like injections. Suchong would also use this modified Plasmid formula to create Old Man Winter, a new drinkable Plasmid which would have similar but different effects from its injectable counterpart, Winter Blast. While being similar to Vigors, the defensive effect of these Plasmids are not as potent or as lasting against Splicers, due to their ADAM-enhanced bodies. The mental and physical side-effects from overdosing on drinkable Plasmids were much more severe then those caused by injectable ones, such as those seen on Frosty Splicers. These side-effects appear to be brought on solely by over-consumption, rather than ADAM withdrawal. Cast: Temporarily levitates enemies, rendering them defenseless. Charged Effect: Deploys the Plasmid as a stationary trap, levitating nearby enemies for longer when sprung. Location: In the Housewares Department near the second vent, the electrified water will need to be frozen before it can be picked up. Cast: Throws a flaming projectile which detonates after a short while, burning nearby enemies and environmental hazards. Charged Effect: Deploys the Plasmid as a stationary trap, burning surrounding enemies for higher damage when sprung. Location: Booker starts with this. Cast: Throws a ball of dry ice, freezing Splicers or turning broken water pipes into ice bridges. Charged Effect: Places a shard of ice on the ground, which freezes enemies within a small radius when disturbed. Location: Found in a Tear at the skating rink of Jack Frost's Village. Cast: Turns the targeted machine to the caster's side, causing vending machines to give out a cash bounty and fighter automatons to fight for the user. Users can also possess Splicers, but this effect wears off quickly. Charged Effect: Deploys the Plasmid as a stationary trap, possessing surrounding enemies when sprung. Location: Booker starts with this. Cast: Shocks the target, temporarily stunning them and doubling the damage they take. Deals critical damage against enemies in contact with water. Can also activate electric generators. Charged Effect: Deploys the Plasmid as a stationary electrified field, shocking any enemy who approaches it. Location: Found in the Plasmids Department in Fontaine's Department Store. Removed Plasmids Edit Chameleon : This Plasmid allowed you to turn invisible. An upgrade would allow weapons to do double damage while the Plasmid was active. Another upgrade would cause the Shield to recharge when the Plasmid was activated. [10] [11] : This Plasmid allowed you to turn invisible. An upgrade would allow weapons to do double damage while the Plasmid was active. Another upgrade would cause the Shield to recharge when the Plasmid was activated. Charge : A Rapture Variant of the Columbian Vigor. Upgrade allows a Charge at second enemy if the first one is killed. [12] : A Rapture Variant of the Columbian Vigor. Upgrade allows a Charge at second enemy if the first one is killed. Undertow: Another Rapture copy of a Columbia Vigor. The upgrade for this increases the damage done when targets impact something.[13] Plasmids Edit Cast: Throws a ball of dry ice, freezing Splicers or turning broken water pipes into ice bridges. Charged Effect: Places a shard of ice on the ground, which freezes enemies within a small radius when disturbed. Location: Found in the Test-Drive Cast: Turns the targeted machine to the caster's side, causing vending machines to give out a cash bounty and fighter automatons to fight for the user. Users can also possess Splicers, but this effect wears off quickly. Charged Effect: Deploys the Plasmid as a stationary trap, possessing surrounding enemies when sprung. Location: Found in an open crate next to a guitar-playing man outside Bathyspheres DeLuxe. Cast: "X-ray" feature, that allows you to detect nearby enemies if you are standing still. Charged Effect: Allows you to turn completely invisible to stealth-kill your foes. Location: In Cupid's Arrow. Vigors Edit Cast: Creates a temporary shield, blocking all incoming gunfire and returning it as ammo to you. Charged Effect: N/A Location: On The First Lady airship. Early Vigors Edit Some information on early vigors can be found in the DefaultGame.ini section of the game files[14]. Further reference can also be found in The Art of BioShock Infinite. Bucking Bronco (Same as in the game) Devil's Kiss (Same as in the game) Electric Touch (Turned into the Gear "Electric Touch") Frostbite (Reused its icon and revamped it for "Old Man Winter") Fungal Healing Ghost Touch Kinetic Overflow Mesmerize (Renamed "Possession") Murder of Crows (Same as in the game) Return to Sender (Same as in the game) Rift Tethers (Possibly renamed "Undertow") Spider Trap Weapon Slave (Gameplay) (Turned into two different Gears "Ghost Posse" and "Spectral Sidekick") Rejected Vigors Edit Amnesia Edit Fink Manufacturing aggressively developed Vigors for many different uses, but a number of concepts were rejected for having no market for them, as well as unwanted results. A chalkboard describing these rejected Vigors can be found inside Fink's laboratory in Byline: Forget everything you know. Marketing Note: How do you plan to sell this dud?! Plant Peeper Edit Byline: Read the inner thoughts of your houseplant! Marketing Note: No demand for this type of product. Dead Ringer Edit Byline: Re-Animate dead loved ones & pets! Marketing Note: No one wants a moldy puppy! Gallery Edit Early concept art for methods to employ Vigors, still called Plasmids at the time. Vigor bottle concept art. Ironsides bottle concept art. The Vigors in BioShock Infinite. A Vigor Mod upgrade for Ironsides in Burial at Sea - Episode 2. Add an image to this gallery Behind The Scenes Edit The Vigor advertisement "A Life with Vigor is a life that's Bigger!" is based off an advertisement for Curaçao liqueur, Triple Sec Allary. These Vigors are ingested, unlike their Plasmid counterparts, which are injected. Vigors also had no stated negative side-effects. However, there is concept art in The Art of BioShock Infinite containing Vigor-abusing workers known as "Vigor Junkies", suggesting they were originally intended to degenerate their users as did those in Rapture. Some of the negative side effects Vigor use can still be see in Cornelius Slate who had a number Shock Jockey crystals growing out of his head. containing Vigor-abusing workers known as "Vigor Junkies", suggesting they were originally intended to degenerate their users as did those in Rapture. Some of the negative side effects Vigor use can still be see in Cornelius Slate who had a number Shock Jockey crystals growing out of his head. The Vigor vending machine's name, "Veni! Vidi! Vigor!" is a play on the famous phrase spoken by Caeser,"Veni, Vidi, Vici", which translates roughly to, "I came, I saw, I conquered." If the player does not pick up Vigor bottles when they first appear, they can purchase them later for 150 Silver Eagles, or pick them up in other areas. It wasn't until the 2012 Beast of America trailer that a BioShock Infinite trailer showed heavily physical side effects to the player's flesh, while using Vigors during gameplay. The previous trailers and gameplay demos only had a normal arm with minimal Vigor effects. trailer showed heavily physical side effects to the player's flesh, while using Vigors during gameplay. The previous trailers and gameplay demos only had a normal arm with minimal Vigor effects. An early concept in The Art of BioShock Infinite shows small modules attached to the player's hands which were used to inject the fluids of the various Vigors into the user when casting them. One appears to have a hummingbird dipping into a small vessel containing the Vigor. Another shows a mosquito-like construct injecting it into the user. shows small modules attached to the player's hands which were used to inject the fluids of the various Vigors into the user when casting them. One appears to have a hummingbird dipping into a small vessel containing the Vigor. Another shows a mosquito-like construct injecting it into the user. Using all eight Vigors against at least one enemy grants the player the " Well Rounded " Achievement/Trophy. The Vigor uses do not need to be on the same enemy. " Achievement/Trophy. The Vigor uses do not need to be on the same enemy. There are eight official Vigor Combinations. Performing each of them unlocks the " Combination Shock " Achievement/Trophy. " Achievement/Trophy. In an early version of the game, the system for Vigor usage was limited to the Vigor bottles themselves, as disposable and unreloadable powers, or mentioned comparatively as "Plasmids and EVE combined". That version intended each Vigor ability to have their own numbered of doses, and the doses would have been scattered throughout the game, such as on corpses and in stores. Players could only use their available Vigors and thus forced to use a variety of strategies. In late 2012, this system was revised with the usage of EVE-like Salts, which had Vigor abilities work from a single bar meter. Ironically, the system for finding similar Vigor bottles would work the same as the previous system, only as Salts. In the downloadable content Clash in the Clouds , the Vigors Undertow, Possession, Devil's Kiss and Bucking Bronco can be collected as free samples. The other Vigors must be purchased from the vending machines in the Columbian Archeological Society. , the Vigors Undertow, Possession, Devil's Kiss and Bucking Bronco can be collected as free samples. The other Vigors must be purchased from the vending machines in the Columbian Archeological Society. If you reverse the audio clip of the Possession acquiring sound, after the woman says, "With one whisper, they're all ears…" and when the cutscene ends, you can faintly hear a line from the play Romeo and Juliet. Vigors are often referred to as Plasmids in the in-game files of BioShock Infinite . Devil's Kiss is in some places named Incinerate!, and there are several references to the Enrage Plasmid instead of the Possession Vigor (also called Mesmerize). . Devil's Kiss is in some places named Incinerate!, and there are several references to the Enrage Plasmid instead of the Possession Vigor (also called Mesmerize). Unlike their injectable counterpart, Plasmids, which all have a blood-red color, the color of a Vigor varies depending on what type it is. Vigors, like Plasmids, are powered by ADAM. Fink produced ADAM from Sea Slugs captured during underwater expeditions to the Atlantic Ocean. The cost of the expeditions and each drinkable Vigor requiring 10 times the amount of ADAM, put a financial strain on Fink. He was planning to change them into injectables before the Vox Populi assaulted the factory. Frank Fontaine also canceled "drinkable" plasmids for similar reasons. In an early 2010 demo shown at E3, there was an unnamed Vigor similar to telekinesis in some ways. [15] This Vigor was likely Weapon Slave and it was soon scrapped and some of its abilities transferred to Gears. This Vigor was likely and it was soon scrapped and some of its abilities transferred to Gears. Game files indicate that there were upgrades to increase the radius the traps for Vigors Bucking Bronco, Devil's Kiss, Possession, Murder of Crows, Return to Sender and Shock Jockey. There is also a listing for a No Escape Vigor upgrade (or possibly a Gear) that increased the radius of the above Vigors collectively. [16] Vigor upgrade (or possibly a Gear) that increased the radius of the above Vigors collectively. For Burial at Sea - Episode 2, in-game files indicate that Shock Jockey was considered as being one of the Drinkable Plasmids Elizabeth could use. Ultimately, it was cut for unknown reasons.
From Google Trends: Other than the obvious peak we see stemming from the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting tragedy we can make some more inferences. I find it odd there are so many Texas cities (follow the link and scroll down for Austin and Houston) in the top ten for interest in gun control. I have no speculation for that result. Anyone? We are winning. Look at the level of interest in 2004 to early 2005 range. The lowest level then was greater than anything we have had in the last few months. And the interest from 2004 until December 2012 was steadily declining. We appear to be getting back on track to that decline. You can see why the anti-gun people dance in the blood of the victims. Their message becomes far more important when there is a mass shooting. Do you see the decline starting in April 2014 (point A)? That coincides with Bloomberg’s $50 million push for gun control. Bloomberg may be our enemy. But as enemies go he is one of the easiest to demonize. Share this: Share Email Facebook Twitter Print Reddit WhatsApp Skype Tumblr Pinterest Like this: Like Loading...
She has already endured widowhood, the post-coital death of her Turkish lover and a dizzying array of love triangles. But Downton Abbey 's Lady Mary is in for one last "shocking u-turn", Michelle Dockery has said. Dockery, who has starred in the ITV period drama since its beginning, said the sixth and final series would see her character get her "bite" back. Speaking to Harper's Bazaar magazine, she said: : “I’ve got such a great story - Lady Mary’s bite kind of comes back again. When I read the scripts, they really surprised me. "How Mary is and what happens is quite shocking. There are always twists and turns in the plot — there are every year — but this year particularly, there’s a bit of a U-turn that happens with Mary, and it’s amazing. “It is another kind of challenge and another really interesting series for me. Just when you think Julian [Lord Fellowes, Downton creator] has exhausted the possibilities of a character, he manages to throw in something else that pulls the rug from under you. Photo: David Slijper/ Harpers Bazaar “On a show like this, when you’re playing a character — the same character — all the time, you want to still feel like you’re being challenged.” She will return to television screens on Sunday, September 20 for the final season of Downton, which insiders have said will leave fans needing "two hankies" to cope with the emotion. The full interview can be read in the October issue of Harper's Bazaar, out now.
Boys do cry: For battered men, shame can be hard to overcome (imagepoint) By the end of this week, German-speaking Switzerland will have its first two homes for battered men, highlighting a social problem often mired in taboo. While women remain the largest victims of abuse between the sexes, both homes target men who have suffered physical or psychological violence from a spouse, often during a divorce or separation. The first shelter, “Zwüschehalt” – “stopover” in Swiss German – opened on Thursday in a village near the city of Aarau, in northwest Switzerland. The second opens on Saturday in Erlenbach, on the shore of Lake Zurich. The opening of Zwüschehalt, the exact location of which is being kept from the public, coincides with International Human Rights Day. “This is obviously not a coincidence,” said Olivier Hunziker, president of VeV, an association that promotes responsible parenting and is funding the shelter. It can accommodate up to ten people for varying periods up to two months in theory. Men can receive advice and practical assistance until they figure out what to do next. Cornered Both homes are independent of one another and are designed primarily for men who, from one day to the next, have lost homes and families after separation. “In fact, we do not distinguish between cases of difficult separations and cases of violence,” Hunziker said. “All victims have the right to come.” Hunziker himself is a divorced father who has joint custody over his children with his ex-wife. He says many men are stuck on whether to return home for the sake of the children. “We know how conflict situations can escalate,” he said. The director of the Erlenbach shelter, André Müller, was subjected to violence from his ex-companion. “Except for slapping, I had not been physically abused,” he said. “I had however suffered extreme psychological abuse.” Müller does not consider a slap to by physical violence. This perception is typical, say observers. “Men see violence differently,” Hunziker said. Ashamed to speak Elsbeth Aeschlimann, director of a counseling service in Zurich that works with male victims of violence, says men are more isolated, at least socially, than women. “In cases of domestic violence, a man who dares to speak about his problems is often misunderstood,” she said. “Others tell him he should be able to ‘deal with it’ and he feels even more discouraged and belittled.” According to Hunziker, “people often only understand if there is physical violence. Moreover, when police arrive at the scene of a dispute and they are not sure about a situation but it’s clear they need to separate a couple, they usually turn to the man.” Six per cent Cornelia Kranich, co-director of the Zurich cantonal office of intervention against domestic violence, says this is not the case. “The principle is the same in all cases: the one who hits must leave. We apply it with consistency, even if it is sometimes complex when children are involved.” She said she’s still rather puzzled by the figures provided by VeV on violence by women against men: 39 per cent of domestic violence cases in St Gallen, 25 per cent in Zurich, 20 per cent in Basel and 19 per cent in Fribourg. “Out of 1,625 police interventions for domestic violence in 2008, men filed a complaint against their companions 25 per cent of the time,” Kranich said. “But out of 1,065 protective measures taken by the police – restraining orders and/or forbidding someone from going home for 14 days – 67 have been taken against women, or six per cent of cases.” A lack of room Both Kranich and Aeschlimann welcome the creation of shelters for men. “To make a place available for them to talk and seek advice is an excellent thing,” Aeschlimann said. “That also helps to remove the pressure they face – pressure that can also, sometimes, push them to violence.” “It is definitely positive that such shelters are emerging but on a private basis,” Kranich said. “Do not forget that shelters for women are in dire need of more room and that the cases they’re taking on are more and more serious. “I saw a man seriously injured once,” she added. “Women, on the other hand, are often severely beaten.” For Aeschlimann, it’s important to leave behind the cliché of the “nice woman, evil man” without going to the opposite extreme. “Male victims are where women were 20 years ago. They must fight for recognition of their suffering.” Ariane Gigon, swissinfo.ch, in Zurich (Translated from French by Tim Neville) In Brief Zwüschehalt, the first shelter for battered men, opened on December 10 near Aarau. VeV, an association for responsible upbringing, is financing the centre with about SFr10,000 ($9,750) per month. The home can accept up to ten men and children. It is open to victims of domestic violence as well as men who are leaving their home during a separation. The shelter works with local police. Another shelter, only for divorced men, opens on December 12 in Erlenbach on the shore of Lake Zurich. The homes are independent of each other. There are 17 shelters for women in Switzerland and they are overcrowded. end of infobox Context Violence by women against men is a taboo phenomenon that remains relatively unknown. In the canton of Zurich, 6% of the 1,065 restraining orders issued in cases of domestic violence in 2008 were for women who attacked men. The figures should be interpreted with caution because the number of complaints is not equivalent to the number of restraining orders placed against men, Zurich authorities say. “We start from the idea that there is a large grey area,” says Elsbeth Aeschlimann, head of a Zurich counseling office. end of infobox Neuer Inhalt Horizontal Line SWI swissinfo.ch on Instagram SWI swissinfo.ch on Instagram
Still looking for the ideal Christmas present that isn’t a gift card? More than 30 local artists have signed up to participate in this year’s “Umpteenth Annual $20 Art Show,” one of the highlights of the holiday season. The show takes place inside Copper & Kings Distillery in Butchertown on Saturday, Dec. 10. With names like Ashley Brossart, Kathleen Lolley, Madpixel, Jeral and Sarah Tidwell, Robby Davis, Natasha Sud and J. Cobb, this event offers art from high-profile artists at the low price of $20. It’s a win for both artist and collector. Doors open at 6 p.m., and, because of the popularity of the show, you should probably expect to wait in line to get in. On Facebook, organizers said they have a few surprises planned for people trying to get through the doors. “We all know waiting isn’t awesome, so we have some great things lined up to help make your wait as awesome as it can be. Stay tuned!” they wrote. The “$20 Art Show” is free to get in and runs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Copper & Kings is at 1121 E. Washington St. Here is a list of participating artists:
The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email A group of 11 prostitutes and their clients were forced to walk naked through the city centre by police before being bundled into police cars. The crying girls' walk of shame, a real life version of the one carried out by Cersei in Game of Thrones, was filmed by passersby in Russia's second city of St Petersburg. It followed a police raid on an illegal brothel in the city's historic Vasilyevsky Island. All of the girls working there and most of their clients were arrested. Three men managed to escape through a back door. The group was marched naked for five city blocks before being put into police cars and taken to a police station. (Image: CEN) An eye-witness said: "Police burst into the building and a little while later left with naked and crying prostitutes." Read more : It is reported that the brothel was responsible for a flood in the apartment below. Netizen Natalia Lukyanova said: "Oh my! It would have been much more fun though if it had happened in the day time." Sergey Kulik commented: "They should make pimps going naked through the streets, not those girls." (Image: HBO) The police raid followed a tip-off by notorious Russian former kickboxer and MMA fighter Viacheslav Datsik. Read more: Most awkward walk of shame ever as man is filmed completely naked at the side of road Datsik, who calls himself Red Tarzan, has declared war on prostitution in the city and regularly urges police to raid brothels. He is famous for his dramatic knock-out of future Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski in 1999. (Image: CEN) In 2007, he was detained for his part in a spate of armed robberies of mobile phone shops in St Petersburg. He escaped prison and was instead confined to a mental institution after exalting Slavic paganism and claiming Jesus Christ was a Mossad agent. Netizen Irina Ivanova commented: "Who is this man and who allowed him to exercise justice? He is a former criminal himself."
Philadelphia Eagles Playoff Chances Beat Washington 24-0, playoff odds up 67.8 to 100% 9-7-0 .563 Add your own league How are these numbers calculated? Big Games How we did last week and who we should root for this week. Explain Week of 12/15 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl 100.0* Average seed LA Rams 23 Philadelphia 30 +19.7 +0.1 +1.6 Minnesota 41 Miami 17 -3.1 -0.1 Carolina 9 New Orleans 12 +2.4 +0.1 Buffalo 14 Detroit 13 +1.1 +0.1 Chicago 24 Green Bay 17 +0.9 +0.1 Baltimore 20 Tampa Bay 12 +0.3 +0.1 Jacksonville 13 Washington 16 -0.2 -0.1 Indianapolis 23 Dallas 0 +0.1 NY Giants 0 Tennessee 17 +0.1 Atlanta 40 Arizona 14 -0.0 Week of 12/22 100.0 Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl 100.0* Average seed Philadelphia 32 Houston 30 +25.1 +0.1 +0.8 Detroit 9 Minnesota 27 -15.0 -0.1 -0.2 Carolina 10 Atlanta 24 +1.6 +0.1 Tennessee 25 Washington 16 +1.6 +0.0 Dallas 27 Tampa Bay 20 -0.7 -0.0 Seattle 38 Kansas City 31 -0.2 NY Jets 38 Green Bay 44 -0.1 Week of 12/30 100.0* Chance in playoffs 100.0* Win Super Bowl 100.0* Average seed Washington 0 Philadelphia 24 +28.1 +0.1 +0.7 Minnesota 10 Chicago 24 +21.2 +0.1 +0.2 * A starred number could be exactly 0 or just really small. The simulation did not run long enough to know. Games Above .500 Chance Will Make Playoffs Lottery Why are you looking down here? We just made the playoffs! Big Games Week of 12/15 100.0* Lottery seed LA Rams 23 Philadelphia 30 -3.0 Carolina 9 New Orleans 12 -0.1 Indianapolis 23 Dallas 0 +0.1 Chicago 24 Green Bay 17 -0.1 Denver 16 Cleveland 17 +0.1 Buffalo 14 Detroit 13 -0.1 Cincinnati 30 Oakland 16 +0.1 Pittsburgh 17 New England 10 +0.0 NY Giants 0 Tennessee 17 +0.0 NY Jets 22 Houston 29 -0.0 Baltimore 20 Tampa Bay 12 +0.0 Minnesota 41 Miami 17 +0.0 Atlanta 40 Arizona 14 -0.0 Week of 12/22 100.0* Lottery seed Philadelphia 32 Houston 30 -2.2 Detroit 9 Minnesota 27 +0.5 Miami 7 Jacksonville 17 -0.2 Dallas 27 Tampa Bay 20 +0.1 Carolina 10 Atlanta 24 -0.1 Indianapolis 28 NY Giants 27 +0.1 NY Jets 38 Green Bay 44 +0.0 New Orleans 31 Pittsburgh 28 -0.0 Seattle 38 Kansas City 31 -0.0 Cleveland 26 Cincinnati 18 +0.0 Week of 12/30 100.0* Lottery seed Washington 0 Philadelphia 24 -1.2 Minnesota 10 Chicago 24 -0.3 Baltimore 26 Cleveland 24 -0.1 Pittsburgh 19 Cincinnati 16 +0.0
(A few more quantum posts are coming. But let’s have a quick break for games.) Tic Tac Toe is played since anciant times. For the common version, where the two players X and O take turns in marking the empty squares in a 3 by 3 board – each player has a strategy that can guarantee a draw. Now suppose that the X player has a budget of Y dollars, the O playare has a budget of 100 dollars and before each round the two players bid who makes the next move. The highest bidder makes the move and his budget is reduced by his bid. For example, if, to start with, the X player have 120 dollars, and if for the first move X bids 40 dollars and O bids 30 dollars, then X will make the first move and will be left with 80 dollars while O will be left with his 100 dollars. What would you expect the minimal value of Y is so the X player has a winning strategy? Of course if Y>300, X can make 3 uninterrupted moves and win, but perhaps much less is enough? (Thanks to Reshef Meir and Moshe Tennenholtz) Update: Another variant of this game is when the player winning the turn pays his bid to the other player. (This version is called “Richman game,” while the variant above is called “Poorman game”. In this case if Y> 800 the X player can play three moves and win. And again the question is what is the infimum value of Y for which the X player can force a win… Advertisements
10 Political News And Protests In recent American political news and protests we have seen multiple people burning the American flag. All these events have taken flight after Donald Trump was named president elect. Throughout history the burning of the American flag has been used as symbolic speech to show disagreement over political decisions or policies. As Americans we are almost used to seeing the American flag being burned after every controversial political event. But is this desecration of the American flag something we should be getting used to? As Americans we tend to forget history and the symbolism behind our flag. In other countries it is illegal to burn the national flag but not in the United States since 1969. It was ruled by the Supreme Court as protected by the first amendment under freedom of speech and penalty is unconstitutional. American Flag Symbolism The American flag has incredible meaning behind it including liberty, justice and freedom. The 50 stars represent the number of states. The 13 stripes represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from Great Britain becoming the first states. The flag colors have meaning as well. The Red symbolizes Hardiness and Valor, White symbolizes Purity and Innocence and Blue represents Vigilance, Perseverance and Justice. Due to the meaning above is that our flag is displayed on American military uniforms, astronaut suits, museums, monuments, during national holidays, American territory, civil servant funerals and historic buildings. So how can this patriotic symbol which holds so much meaning behind it be allowed to be burned? What type of message are we sending to others by doing so? Flag Etiquette Often Forgotten The United States Flag Code sets the advisory rules for display and care of our national flag. It is a U.S. federal law but failure to comply is not enforced due to the first amendment. Here are the advisory rules: The flag should never be dipped to any person or thing, unless it is the ensign responding to a salute from a ship of a foreign nation. The flag should never be displayed with the union (the starred blue union in the Canton) down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property. The flag should not be used as “wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery”, or for covering a speaker’s desk, draping a platform, or for any decoration in general (exception for coffins). The flag should never be drawn back or bunched up in any way. The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling. The flag should never be used for any advertising purpose. The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way. The flag should not be used as part of a costume or athletic uniform, except that a flag patch may be used on the uniform of military personnel, firefighters, police officers, and members of patriotic organizations. Flag lapel pins may also be worn (they are considered replicas) and are worn near the heart. The flag should never have any mark, insignia, letter, word, number, figure, or drawing of any kind placed on it or attached to it. The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything. The flag should never be stepped on. In a parade, the flag should not be draped over the hood, top, sides, or back of a vehicle, railroad train, or boat. When the flag is displayed on a motorcar, the staff shall be fixed firmly to the chassis or clamped to the right fender. When the flag is lowered, no part of it should touch the ground or any other object; it should be received by waiting hands and arms. To store the flag it should be folded neatly and ceremoniously. The flag should be cleaned and mended when necessary. If the flag is being used at a public or private estate, it should not be hung (unless at half staff or when an all-weather flag is displayed) during rain or violent weather. When a flag is so tattered that it no longer fits to serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning. The flag should never touch anything beneath it. The flag should always be permitted to fall freely. You Have The Right Under U.S law you currently have the right to burn an American flag. On the other hand the choice is yours. Is it okay to act the same as those enemies who often pledge “death to America” by burning our flag? Should burning an American flag be illegal? There are many other ways of exercising freedom of speech and protesting. Nowadays it seems that only during moments of chaos such as 9/11 people find pride and unity by displaying the American flag.
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Hindu ideas about the creation of the universe. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Hindu ideas about Creation. According to most Western religious traditions, a deity was the original creator of the Universe. Hinduism, on the other hand, has no single creation story. For thousands of years, Hindu thinkers have taken a variety of approaches to the question of where we come from, with some making the case for divine intervention and others asking whether it is even possible for humans to comprehend the nature of creation. The origin of our existence, and the nature of the Universe we live in, is one of the richest strands of Hindu thought. With: Jessica Frazier Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University Gavin Flood Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford. Producer: Thomas Morris.
But don’t expect the V-280 or SB-1 to hit battlefields until after 2030 — unless their builders find other customers first. Next year will bring the first flights of the prototype rotorcraft vying to replace the Army’s venerable Black Hawk and other helicopters. But don’t expect the futuristic aircraft to hit battlefields for another decade and a half — unless their manufacturers find other customers first. The prototypes are being built for the Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator project by Bell Helicopter and the competing Sikorsky-Boeing team, who touted their work in advance of the Army Aviation Association of America, or “Quad A,” annual summit in Atlanta this week. Bell is building the V-280 Valor, a tiltrotor aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter, or rotate its propellers to fly fast like a fixed-wing plane. Sikorsky and Boeing are building the SB-1 Defiant, a high-speed coaxial helicopter with one rotor mounted atop the other. Bell officials say V-280 ground testing is scheduled for next April and first flight for September 2017; Sikorsky-Boeing reps said their SB-1 would fly next year as well. The Army commissioned the demonstrator aircraft in 2013 — after talking about about replacing its helicopters for more than a decade — to prove various new technologies for a replacement for the UH-60. Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan’s hot, high, and sandy environments pointed up various performance limitations, so the new rotorcraft are being designed to fly higher, farther, and faster while also carrying more. The project will feed into the Future Vertical Lift program, a vast effort to replace all Army helicopters — which include the AH-64 Apache, CH-47 Chinook, and the OH-58 Kiowa — at a projected cost of around $100 billion. Thanks to a decade of heavy wartime use, the Black Hawks are wearing out faster than anticipated. But the Army isn’t planning to buy its first new rotorcraft until after 2030. That’s because its acquisition budget — aircraft, armored vehicles, and so forth — has taken a major hit. The service has even been called out by a Dutch Air Force general for the project’s slow pace. So Bell officials want you to know: they could start cranking out battle-ready aircraft in 2024 or 2025. “There’s no real technology that needs to be further developed for us to be able to design and develop an aircraft that meets those requirements,” said Vince Tobin, Bell’s vice president of advanced tiltrotor systems. “Our big push now is that, after we fly this and prove out that we can build this aircraft, that we are ready to go into engineering and manufacturing development.” The company is self-funding much of the project, mainly because the payoff could be so high if its V-280 is chosen by the Army, which operates most of the world’s 2,700 Black Hawks. But Bell is also pitching their tiltrotor as a replacement for other H-60 variants flown by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and militaries of 26 other countries. “Our view is that if any of the services that are flying any form of medium-utility, whether that be a SH-60, UH-60, MH-60, that this aircraft can fill that role going forward,” Tobin said. Bell is currently mating the wing to the fuselage of its V-280, after which “we’ll have what looks like a completed aircraft,” Tobin said. They will mount the tail in the fall and then put the engines at the tip of the wings. This final assembly work is happening in Amarillo, Texas, where the company builds most of its helicopters. Bell built the wing “almost from scratch” and Israeli firm IAI built “almost all of the parts” in the nacelles, Tobin said. Spirit Aerosystems built the fuselage in Wichita, Kansas, and GKN is building the tail in Alabama. “Right now, we’re sticking to the schedule that we published when we started this effort a couple of years ago,” Tobin said. The Sikorsky-Boeing team also is putting together their fuselage; final assembly will commence later this year ahead of first flight in 2017, said Doug Shidler, Sikorsky’s program director for its Joint Multi-Role tech demonstrator. Shidler also touted the company’s S-97, a smaller compound helicopter, on which the SB-1 is based. The S-97 has a max gross weight of 11,000 pounds; the SB-1, more than 30,000 pounds. “That gives us a very broad range to demonstrate this technology and capability that this platform will bring to the warfighter,” Shidler said. “Based on the requirements that come out, we can adapt to their requirements pretty quickly and respond with a configuration that would support them. In the Middle East, the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, which flies farther and faster than its traditional helicopter cousins, have been in demand. Last year, the United Arab Emirates asked the U.S. to base Ospreys closer to the fight against Islamic State militants, so downed pilots could be rescued quicker. Longer-range helicopters could also prove more effective in the vast Asia-Pacific region.
But why all this somber legal-speak mixed in with talk about a children’s fable that became an instant classic when it was first performed onstage in London in 1904 with the title ‘Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up’, then on Broadway the following year? First, some backstory about a calamitous event that helped inspire Barrie to create Peter Pan. When he was six years old, J.M. Barrie (one of 10 children born to David Barrie and Margaret Ogilvy) had to witness firsthand the pain his mother went through when her pride and joy, son David Jr., sustained a fractured skull and eventually passed away from his injuries. It was the night before his fourteenth birthday, and young David suffered a crack to the head following a fall while skating with an unnamed companion who unintentionally knocked him to the ice. Approximately a week later on January 28, 1867, David Barrie died at the Bothwell Academy private school, with the attending physician who signed off on the death certificate noting inflammation of the brain had been evident in the days leading up to his passing. Rumours have circulated since then that the anonymous friend responsible for David’s deadly fall on the ice a week earlier may have been his younger brother J.M., although that has never been officially verified. Regardless, Barrie’s mother was devastated by her favourite son’s passing, and J.M. spent the following years watching his mother attempting to ease the grief and emotional pain of David’s death by saying that her deceased son would remain a young boy forever. It was there the seeds of what would eventually become the Peter Pan story took root. Skip ahead a handful of decades now, to the year 1929. By this time Barrie was well-known on many social fronts, due in large part to his successes as a playwright-including his story of Peter Pan. Barrie, who had always been an ardent supporter of a children’s care facility in London called the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), was asked to be a committee member on a delegation in charge of purchasing land that would be used for a new wing of the hospital. He politely declined, instead gifting a very shocked Ormond Street Hospital board with the copyright to his most financially rewarding character, Peter Pan. “At the time Barrie gave his copyright to GOSH, the hospital was the most specialized children’s hospital in the country, and it was also entirely dependent on private donations and sponsorships,” says the Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Peter Pan Director, Christine De Poortere. “No one knows exactly why he decided to give Peter Pan to the hospital but he knew the hospital well, having lived nearby when he first came to London and he had made donations previously.” And while there’s no official explanation on file for Barrie’s generosity, De Poortere is aware of a speech Barrie gave in 1930 where he was noted as having said, Peter Pan had at one time been a patient at the hospital and it was he who put me up to the little thing I did for the hospital.” De Poortere voices a sentiment that is likely shared by many when she adds, “I don’t think there is any particular part of the hospital or speciality that Barrie had any affinity for. He wanted to support and help children, and sick children in particular.” The gift came with one stipulation from Barrie (who passed away in 1937), and that was the amount of money raised from the royalties of Peter Pan never be made public. But GOSH wants to make something very clear to people who might be under the impression that Peter Pan is a non-stop printing press for money. On their website it states: Public speculation has been wildly exaggerated and the Peter Pan income is not-and has never been-the main source of charitable income for the hospital (contrary to some internet reports)! But what GOSH may not reap on the financial side of things they more than make up for with the publicity gained by having the Peter Pan name so ingrained with the hospital’s image. De Poortere notes, “Barrie and Peter Pan are remembered and celebrated throughout the hospital with a Peter Pan statue at the entrance, a commemorative plaque at the chapel, a Peter Pan Ward, a mural and many other elements.” Tours of the hospital are available to view all the Pan and Barrie-related memorials, or to see firsthand the hospital’s collection of memorabilia. Since the late 1980s things have become a little more complicated for Peter Pan and his GOSH benefactors when it comes to what they are legally entitled to this day and age. Thanks to the creation of the Copyright Designs & Patents Act (1988) in the United Kingdom, GOSH has a right to royalties in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland for perpetuity, but only for the original play. Sequels, prequels, or spinoffs? Nope. But with the exception of the United States (where the play’s copyright won’t expire until 2023 thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act of 1998) and Spain (due in 2017), everywhere else in the world Peter Pan is now officially considered fair game. In other words, public domain. However, De Poortere makes a valid case that the Peter Pan gift stretches beyond the obvious financial impact it has had over the years. “I was very touched a few years ago to be contacted by a 90-year old lady who had been a patient at GOSH in 1929 and was part of the audience when a scene from the (Peter Pan) play was performed at the hospital,” she begins. “It was of course the year Barrie gifted Peter Pan, and he was also present in the audience so could actually witness the children’s delight. She had never forgotten her stay at the hospital which had looked after her very well, nor her being present at the performance. She had kept that memory – and the photograph of the performance with her in the audience, on her mantelpiece all her life.” Whether or not Sonny Bono has swapped out Cher for Tinker Bell as his singing partner in whatever Neverland they find themselves in now is something the rest of us are just going to have to wait to find out… Sources
Frederic Hauge of the Norwegian environmental group Bellona is calling it "one of the ugliest political crash landings" ever. The Norwegian government has given up its plans on keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by tucking it under the ocean floor. In 2007 Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg launched the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Technology Centre in Mongstad, Norway. In a very publicized event the Prime Minister opened the 5.9 billion kroner research centre, equating its importance with that of a "moon landing." Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) was supposed to take CO2 from the a nearby oil refinery and funnel it into the Norwegian continental shelf through a pipe. Now, after many delays and budget issues, Stoltenberg says the plan is bust. "At both the national and international level, the development of technologies to capture and store CO2 has taken longer, been more difficult and more costly than expected," Oil and Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe told reporters. The ministry told the BBC that it "remained committed to research into carbon capture." Stoltenberg's cabinet is leaving office in October after an election defeat. After initiating the TCM project, Norway also earmarked 140 million euro over five years for CSS intiatives in other EU member states. Upon allocating the funds, Stoltenberg told officials that CSS would be "essential" for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
For the first time ever a team of Dutch hacking experts, led by cyber security professor Herbert Bos at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, managed to alter the memory of virtual machines in the cloud without a software bug, using a new attack technique. With this technique an attacker can crack the keys of secured virtual machines or install malware without it being noticed. It's a new deduplication-based attack in which data can not only be viewed and leaked, but also modified using a hardware glitch. By doing so the attacker can order the server to install malicious and unwanted software or allow logins by unauthorized persons. Deduplication and Rowhammer bug With the new attack technique Flip Feng Shui (FSS), an attacker rents a virtual machine on the same host as the victim. This can be done by renting many virtual machines until one of them lands next to the victim. A virtual machine in the cloud is often used to run applications, test new software, or run a website. There are public (for everyone), community (for a select group) and private (for one organization accessible) clouds. The attacker writes a memory page that he knows exists in the victim on the vulnerable memory location and lets it deduplicate. As a result, the identical pages will be merged into one in order to save space (the information is, after all, the same). That page is stored in the same part of the memory of the physical computer. The attacker can now modify the information in the general memory of the computer. This can be done by triggering a hardware bug dubbed Rowhammer, which causes flip bits from 0 to 1 or vice versa, to seek out the vulnerable memory cells and change them. Cracking OpenSSH The researchers of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who worked together with a researcher from the Catholic University of Leuven, describe in their research two attacks on the operating systems Debian and Ubuntu. The first FFS attack gained access to the virtual machines through weakening OpenSSH public keys. The attacker did this by changing the victim's public key with one bit. In the second attack, the settings of the software management application apt were adjusted by making minor changes to the URL from where apt downloads software. The server could then install malware that presents itself as a software update. The integrity check could be circumvented by making a small change to the public key that verifies the integrity of the apt-get software packages. Advise NSCS Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSSH and other companies included in the research were notified before the publication and all have responded. The National Cyber Security Centre (NSCS) of the Dutch government has issued a fact sheet containing information and advice on FFS. 'Hack-Oscar' The researchers presented their findings this week during the UNESIX Security Symposium 2016 in the United States. Recently they won the Oscar of hacking: the Pwnie for another attack technique that allows attackers to take over state-of-the-art software (such as the new Edge browser on Microsoft Windows) with all defences up, even if the software has no bugs. Moreover, they can do this from JavaScript in the browser. ###
Burdock has set up shop in what used to be Portuguese chicken resto Churrasqueira Aveirense and transformed the space into an artist-driven bar/restaurant/music hall/future-microbrewery run by a group of musicians and music lovers. Inspired by Montreal's well-loved bar/bistro/music venue Casa del Popolo , the former churrasqueira has been split into two deep rectangular spaces: upon entering, there is the restaurant/bar/future-microbrewery, and a door on the left leads to the music hall. Charlotte Cornfield, the hall's booker, aims to program a wide variety of quality music. Since Cornfield and Underhill are musicians themselves, they understand the wants and needs of those who play here. The custom-designed, acoustically isolated hall is relatively intimate - it can hold at least 90 and has its own bar separate from the restaurant's. Back on the restaurant/bar's side, the space feels welcoming and homelike; in addition to smaller tables, there's a communal dining table by the bar, which resembles a wide kitchen counter. For decor, there are hanging plants, what looks like the side of a staircase leading to nowhere and lovely tiles left over from the churrasqueira. In the back, gleaming brew kettles indicate the imminent arrival of a new microbrewery. Burdock plans to offer its own craft beers using Ontario yeasts and hops come summertime, with guidance from Brewery Director Matt Park and Lead Brewer David Everitt. They're offering a rotating list of pale ales, saisons, pilsners, sours and beer-wine hybrids that are all brewed in house. Like the venue itself, the kitchen (open 'til 11pm daily) is helmed by a hyphenate. Jeremy Dennis ( Woodlot , Chantecler ) is a chef/musician/homebrewer, making him a perfect fit for Burdock - and vice versa - as this place incorporates everything he loves. Chef has created a multi-format menu of contemporary Canadian fare using local, seasonal ingredients when possible. A majority of it is vegetarian and can be converted to vegan if necessary. Bread and olive oil ($4) is a given, seeing as how Dennis used to work the graveyard shift at Woodlot as a breadmaker. The hand-mixed sourdough with stone-ground spelt, rye and cornmeal has a good story behind it: the starter is from Woodlot, and was brought over there by its head baker Jeff Connell from St. John's Bakery . Legend has it that it's originally from France and is over 100 years old. Dennis has come up with snacks that he would want to eat while drinking beer. His inspiration for Dufferin Doubles ($5) came from the countless times he's eaten doubles from Patty King (now known as Golden Patty) while downing beers at Ronnie's Local in Kensington. His take on the Trini treat involves curried Saskatchewan chickpeas and onions sandwiched between pan-fried sourdough bara that uses the same starter as the bread. The two flavourful doubles come with a not-too-spicy fermented jalapeno dipping sauce. For mains, there's a charred cauliflower ($15) served with a sweet potato croquette and swiss chard. This makes for hearty comfort food, with a nice mix of salty capers, a touch of sweetness from the croquette, plus a satisfying taste of butter, oil and char. Following this hearty, home-y theme is the ale roast pork shoulder ($15), one of only two meat dishes on the menu. It's amusingly described as "a gnarly hunk of mustard and ale-slathered slow-roasted pork shoulder," and it's served with sauteed sauerkraut (yum), black kale and smashed potatoes. The "gnarly hunk" is super tender and a pleasure to eat, as everything is perfectly seasoned. Locals are starting to discover the spot, and it should become even more popular when the side patio opens up. The crowd transitions from older couples and families dining with kids in the early evening to a 20-to-30-something demographic after 10pm looking to catch a hot band or live DJ set. It seems Burdock wants to be all things to all people, and surprisingly enough, it may just succeed.
The availability of iOS 7 jailbreak means we get a chance of restyling our iPhones or iPads with winterboard themes. While the latest version of iOS features a major redesign there’s a consensus among a large fraction of iOS users that its new icons are pretty bad. But that’s not a problem since we can now change those icons replacing them with the ones of our choice. There are several iOS 7 themes available in Cydia right now. In this post we are going to tell you about five gorgeous themes for iPhone and iPod touch that we really like. Please note that these themes require Winterboard, which as of right now is not compatible with iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini Retina Display. Users of devices other than these can download and apply them using Winterboard. Also read: 5 WinterBoard themes for iOS 7 you should try on your iPhone Space BlueBerry One of the many things we saw in the field of user-interface was the advent of flat design. Space BlueBerry replaces iOS 7’s stock icons with more colorful and friendly looking icons. This theme not only features icons for stock apps but also replaces icons of several third party applications including Cydia, Whatsapp, Twitter and more. It has around 50 original icons. Space BlueBerry theme is available for free in Cydia. Solstice Solstice theme not only makes iOS 7’s icons more colorful but it also adds a shadow to them,, which looks surprisingly good. Believe me the screenshots above are not doing justice to the awesomeness of these icons. This theme brings over 90 custom made icons for both stock and popular third party applications. Solstice can be downloaded from Cydia for free. BrightFlat v1.5 BrightFlat v1.5 theme for iOS 7 features icons that are too flat for their own good. Although users who like bright colors would appreciate this theme. It is free as well. Oil7 The Oil7 theme for iPhone and iPod touch takes a different approach than themes mentioned above. Instead of featuring a flat look this theme gives iOS’s icons a look that make it seem like they have been drawn using a paint brush. Oil7 is available for free in Cydia. Circulus If you don’t have a problem with iOS 7’s icons but would love to make them rounded then apply Circulus theme on your jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch. The theme brings new icons for some apps while simply makes the existing ones round for others. Circulus theme is available for free in Cydia.
Georgia Tech fired defensive coordinator Al Groh months ago, but that did not stop him from voicing his displeasure with the environment surrounding the program. In an interview with the Roanoke Times printed Wednesday, Groh said: "Just to say it briefly, this circumstance here was the most unprofessional, divisive and negative environment in which I've ever been. To say more would be unprofessional of myself. "It was just a bad cultural match." These are the first public comments Groh has made on his dismissal. I reached out to Georgia Tech for a response from coach Paul Johnson. He said in a statement: "I'm sorry to hear that Al feels that way. I'm surprised he would stay here for two and a half years if he felt like that it was that bad." Interestingly enough, Groh put out a statement through the school when he was fired Oct. 8, saying he respected the decision. "I appreciate all the help and input from (assistant defensive coaches) Charles Kelly, Joe Speed and Andy McCollum, and the effort of all the players. I aimed to give the best that I had every day. It’s been an honor to be a part of the legacy of Georgia Tech football. I feel positive that this is a good time in life to move on to a new situation," Groh said. There is no question that Georgia Tech struggled defensively this year. At the time Groh was fired, Georgia Tech had given up 40 or more points in three straight games -- a school record that nobody wants to set. Groh is a fired coach whose ego is bruised, no doubt. Things didn't work out for him, and nobody has called yet to offer him another job. So take his comments and interpret them however you see them. The Jackets did end up in the ACC title game and beat USC, and improved in every major statistical category since his departure.
He’s not dressing up for Halloween. A quick-changing, costumed bank robbery suspect is using disguises in attempt to thwart authorities. The bandit is wanted by the FBI in connection to at least eight South Florida bank robberies. Surveillance cameras have captured the robber dressed in light blue scrubs, in a hunter’s flannel shirt and camouflage cap, a construction worker’s orange vest, and occasionally he’s wearing street clothes and a baseball hat. The FBI has placed the costume-loving bandit on its wanted list. They’ve even given him a nickname: “The Shaky Bandit”. “He tends to shake while he is robbing the banks,” Special Agent Michael Leverock said Wednesday. “His reason for shaking is unknown.” Since late September, the slim man with wavy blonde or light brown hair has robbed eight banks in Palm Beach and Broward counties, authorities said. Leverock warned that the suspect may be armed. He added, “He has threatened violence to the bank employees.” According to the FBI, the suspect has implied that he has a weapon during holdups, but none have been shown in robbery photographs released by authorities. The FBI is treating the suspect as if he’s armed. Leverock said, “We’re gonna take his word for it.” So far, the suspect has passed notes to tellers and no one has been hurt. The FBI won’t say how much money was stolen. Here are the banks “The Shaky Bandit” has robbed, according to the FBI: Sept. 27, 11:22 a.m., Citibank, 3101 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale. Oct. 1, 2:45 p.m., TD Bank, 665 NW 62nd St., Fort Lauderdale. Oct. 3, 5:11 p.m., Chase, 555 N. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach. Oct. 4, 5:18 p.m., Wells Fargo, 400 N. State Road 7, Margate. Oct. 6, 4:45 p.m., PNC, 999 E. Commercial Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. At 5:56 p.m., the FBI says he held up another PNC branch, at 4560 Lyons Rd. in Coconut Creek. Oct. 9, 2:21 p.m., Wells Fargo, 2525 N. Dixie Highway, Wilton Manors. Oct. 10, 2:45 p.m., Chase, 2425 W. Indiantown Rd., Jupiter. Jupiter police say he left without getting any cash, and may have been driven away in a silver Mazda3 hatchback. Crime Stoppers of both Palm Beach and Broward Counties are asking for information.(Photo: Palm Beach County Crime Stoppers) To share information about the Jupiter and Boynton Beach robberies, call the FBI or Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County, at 800-458-8477 or Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477. County Crime Stoppers accepts anonymous tips and pays up to $3,000 for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about the suspect or these incidents can call 754-703-2000.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during an opening ceremony of the MAKS International Aviation and Space Salon in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia, August 25, 2015. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for unilateral air strikes against Islamic State in Syria if the United States rejects his proposal to join forces, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. Russia has increased its military presence inside Syria and its arms supplies to the Syrian army as it steps up support of longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad, drawing warnings of further destabilization from Western countries that oppose Assad. A Russian diplomatic source told Reuters on Wednesday that Moscow sees a growing chance to reach international agreement on fighting terrorism in Syria and end the crisis that has stretched into its fifth year. Bloomberg reported that Putin’s preferred course of action was for the U.S. government and its allies to agree to coordinate their campaign against Islamic State militants with Russia, Iran and the Syrian army. It cited a person close to the Kremlin and an adviser to the Defense Ministry in Moscow. Bloomberg cited a third person as saying Putin’s proposal called for a “parallel track” of joint military action accompanied by a political transition away from Assad, a key U.S. demand. Russia has communicated the proposal to the United States, according to the news service. But one source told Bloomberg that Putin was frustrated with U.S. reticence to respond and was ready to act alone in Syria if necessary.
Milan’s last professional match of the 2015/16 campaign came to a disappointing conclusion on Saturday. An extra-time defeat to Juventus in the final of the Coppa Italia sealed the fate of the Rossoneri, who are now not only trophy-less for a fifth consecutive season, but also without European competition for three years in a row. Pre-match spirits were once again unusually high as supporters either settled in front of their television screens or flocked into the gates of Roma’s Stadio Olimpico, the ground of the club which pulverised Milan’s hopes of sixth place in Serie A just a week prior. Though nothing went to plan against the Giallorossi, supporters felt that Juventus would underestimate Milan, and the clear underdogs would be able to snatch a victory. Fans thought that Carlos Bacca, who was comfortably shut down by Bianconeri defenders in both of the club’s’ Serie A meetings, would strike the killing blow. Some even speculated that the result would be a comfortable victory for Milan. The victory never came. The killing blow failed to arrive, the blowout fizzled out, and Milan once more have to pick themselves up from a major defeat. The last Good, Bad, and Ugly piece of the season ends on a mixed note, as though many positives can be taken from the match, certain negatives make hope for the future a tough pill to swallow. THE GOOD Despite the undesirable outcome, plenty of cause for optimism can be taken from the ashes of Milan’s defeat. A persistent source of hopefulness, Gianluigi Donnarumma once more failed to disappoint. His first major cup final, jitters from the 17-year-old shot stopper were expected. Though fans felt that the composure Donnarumma kept throughout the season was enough to see him through the ensuing clash with Juventus, small sects, particularly on Twitter, vocalised their well-intentioned but misguided doubts in the shot-stoppers mental toughness. “Gigio” proved his few remained doubters wrong, contributing the latest in his seemingly unending sequence of phenomenal performances. Making three key saves but powerless to stop Morata’s match-winning goal, Donnarumma commanded his area admirably, even under the ever-increasing pressure of the Bianconeri attacks. With the rising stock of the Italian and near-universal knowledge of his incredible feats, upper management thought it to be prudent to lock their prized asset down for the the foreseeable future. With a reported contract of €1 million per year until Donnarumma turns 18, with a further 5-year deal after that point, Milan are sending a strong message to potential suitors: if you want him now, be prepared to empty out your bank accounts. Somewhat unusually, fullback Mattia De Sciglio also performed above expectations. After an amazing breakout 2012/13 season, three consecutive campaigns of ever-increasing mediocrity had left all but the most loyal fans of the youngster cold towards him. Against Juventus, the leftback provided a flash of the brilliance which led many analysts to place him on the path to greatness. A tireless presence on Milan’s left flank, De Sciglio was dropped in the unenviable position of having to deal with the physical strength of Stefan Lichtsteiner, Paulo Dybala’s dynamic footwork, and in the later stages of the match, Juan Cuadrado’s lethal dynamic play style. Though ultimately unable to prevent Cuadrado from providing the assist for Morata’s solitary strike, the Italian international otherwise neutralised almost everything Juventus threw down his flank. Offensively, De Sciglio looked very competent, moving forward to swap passes with Bonaventura and even letting loose several shots, two of which had to be dealt with by goalkeeper Norberto Neto. Though the match was more of an outlier performance than business as usual for De Sciglio, it has inspired Milan fans to once again find hope for their out-of-favor fullback. It now rests squarely on the 23-year-old’s shoulders to either live up to the hype placed on him in his big breakout season, or go down as a rare failed Italian defensive product. Riccardo Montolivo, condemned throughout the season for ducking during freekicks, failing to coordinate attacks, and not living up to the captain’s armband placed upon him, also showed that he still knows how to have a great match. A wizard in structuring Milan’s play and the club’s main distribution center, nearly every Rossoneri attack went through the midfielder at one point or another. He completed 82 passes, more than any other player on the pitch over the course of the 120 minutes. Montolivo also create two chances for his teammates, both of which unsatisfyingly led to nothing. Montolivo, like De Sciglio, has shown that he can be a game-changer on his day. After all, he was not given the captaincy for nothing. However, much like his teammate, the midfielder has done little to show he deserves a starting spot, much less the armband, in recent months. A three-year contract extension will keep the Italian with Milan for the next few years, and he now has to prove to both management and supporters that his extended contract was not a mistake. THE BAD Though there were an unusually high amount of positives that were taken out of the match, the nature of defeat means that certain variables did not go quite right. One of these elements was the extremely odd choice to replace Andrea Poli with M’Baye Niang late into the second half. Poli himself did not have the best of outings, and a substitution, especially with the match seemingly inevitably heading to extra time, was a prudent decision. Swapping him with Niang, however, was far from the most optimal move. Niang brought with him fresh attacking output, at the cost of midfield integrity. It left a gap on the left side of the midfield, and ultimately resulted in Juan Cuadrado getting the space he needed to send Alvaro Morata through on goal late in extra time. Poli, for all his faults, was a defensive nuisance for Juventus, and he and Mattia De Sciglio were enough to keep the left flank in check, much like Juraj Kucka and Davide Calabria did on the right. Removing the midfielder provided an extra offensive piston, but critically weakened the already flimsy structural integrity of Milan’s defensive set up. Carlos Bacca, Milan’s prized superstar, found himself ineffective against Juventus once again. Only getting 23 touches on the ball and unable to direct a single shot on goal in the two hours he shambled around on the pitch, the justification for keeping him in the starting 11 continues to lose more and more weight. His misleading goal return may have fooled the majority of supporters, but matches like this serve to show that unless every minute detail is in the perfect place, Bacca won’t be able to function. Closed down by either Barzagli or Chiellini and kept from making inroads into Juventus’s box, the aforementioned De Sciglio, a fullback, was more productive in front of goal than Milan’s Colombian striker. Bacca may have had a solid season on paper, but reality tells a different story. With most teams having figured out the forward, he will have to make a drastic change to his game in order to not be left behind. THE UGLY As with all Milan matches, tactical mishaps ultimately presented themselves as the least positive aspects of the match. Milan may have played in an uncharacteristically attacking and dynamic fashion against Juventus, but this newfound aggressive system did not come without its fatal flaws. The match finished with 17 shots for the Rossoneri, a season high. Juventus, on the other hand, pulled off just eight, less than half of their opponent’s haul. The total itself was a great achievement for Milan, but the accuracy of their shots was what ultimately doomed the club. Out of the 17 attempts, a measly three found their way to the target, an embarrassing accuracy rate of 18%. Juventus, on the other hand, boasted a on-target percentage of 50%. Milan also held 56% possession, compared to 44% for the victors. With such a disparity in attacking output, at first glance it appears nonsensical that the Rossoneri were unable to net at the bare minimum one strike. While the numbers placed Milan as the attacking superiors, the match played out differently. The club undeniably had more offensive plays, but their quality left much to be desired. These sequences were not well-developed, and did not have enough buildup to be successful. Milan looked for any and every opportunity to smash the ball in Neto’s general direction, opting for 10 poor chances instead of one polished opportunity. In the first half the club made 10 attempts to open the scoring, but only one ultimately found its way to Neto. This trigger happiness was not shared by Juventus, who carefully bided their time instead of aimlessly charging forward. This changed slightly in the second half when the Bianconeri began venturing forward in search of a winning goal, but even with the aggressive plays in the second 45 minutes, the club still finished regulation time with two on target shots from five attempts, compared to three from 11 for Milan. A more defined example of the attacking disparity between the clubs came during extra time. Milan desperately threw everything at their rivals over the course of the thirty minutes, and made a further six attempts to score. None of them hit the target. They were once again poorly developed, with the addition of Niang to the offensive fold only serving to weaken the club instead of boosting its luck in front of goal. In the same time span, Juventus made just two attempts. Both hit the target, and one, Morata’s brought the Old Lady the Coppa Italia. The efforts Milan made to attack from the first minute were admirable, and a breath of fresh air after the disastrous sluggish start seen week after week throughout the course of the club’s ill-fated Serie A campaign. However the switch from one extreme to another, while invigorating, did little to improve the club’s fortunes. A balance must now be struck between sitting back and pushing forward. Milan showed they can do adequately do one at a time, now the Rossoneri must demonstrate that they can adapt to find the middle ground between their two match plans. If harmony arrives, good things will be close behind. If it does not, mediocrity will pursue for years to come, with supporters crying out about what once was, and perhaps never will be again.
What is the James Webb Space Telescope? The James Webb Space Telescope, also called Webb or JWST, is a large, space-based observatory, optimized for infrared wavelengths, which will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope. It launches in 2021. It will cover longer wavelengths of light than Hubble and will have greatly improved sensitivity. The longer wavelengths enable JWST to look further back in time to see the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, and to peer inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today. More Info What are the most exciting things we will learn? We have yet to observe the era of our universe’s history when galaxies began to form. We have a lot to learn about how galaxies got supermassive black holes in their centers, and we don't really know whether the black holes caused the galaxies to form or vice versa. We can't see inside dust clouds with high resolution, where stars and planets are being born nearby, but Webb will be able to do just that. We don't know how many planetary systems might be hospitable to life, but Webb could tell whether some Earth-like planets have enough water to have oceans. We don't know much about dark matter or dark energy, but we are expecting to learn more about where the dark matter is now, and we hope to learn the history of the acceleration of the universe that we attribute to dark energy. And then, there are the surprises we can't imagine! More Info Why is Webb an infrared telescope? By viewing the universe at infrared wavelengths Webb will show us things never before seen by any other telescope. It is only at infrared wavelengths that we can see the first stars and galaxies forming after the Big Bang. And it is with infrared light that we can see stars and planetary systems forming inside clouds of dust that are opaque to visible light. The primary goals of Webb are to study galaxy, star and planet formation in the universe. To see the very first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe, we have to look deep into space to look back in time (because it takes light time to travel from there to here, the farther out we look, the further we look back in time). The universe is expanding, and therefore the farther we look, the faster objects are moving away from us, redshifting the light. Redshift means that light that is emitted as ultraviolet or visible light is shifted more and more to redder wavelengths, into the near- and mid-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum for very high redshifts. Therefore, to study the earliest star and galaxy formation in the universe, we have to observe infrared light and use a telescope and instruments optimized for this light. Star and planet formation in the local universe takes place in the centers of dense, dusty clouds, obscured from our eyes at normal visible wavelengths. Near-infrared light, with its longer wavelength, is less hindered by the small dust particles, allowing near-infrared light to escape from the dust clouds. By observing the emitted near-infrared light we can penetrate the dust and see the processes leading to star and planet formation. Objects of about Earth's temperature emit most of their radiation at mid-infrared wavelengths. These temperatures are also found in dusty regions forming stars and planets, so with mid-infrared radiation we can see the glow of the star and planet formation taking place. An infrared-optimized telescope allows us to penetrate dust clouds to see the birthplaces of stars and planets. More Info Will Webb take amazing pictures like Hubble? Can Webb see visible light? YES! We are going to be looking at things we've never seen before and looking at things we have seen before in all new ways. The beauty and quality of an astronomical image depends on two things: the sharpness and the number of pixels in the camera. On both of these counts, Webb is very similar to, and in many ways better than, Hubble. Although Webb images will be infrared, this can be translated by computer into a visible picture (just like we have done with Spitzer, which has produced beautiful pictures as well). Additionally Webb can see orange and red visible light. Webb images will be different, but just as beautiful as Hubble's. Read More Also listen to this interview with John Mather about "Making Data Beautiful" on the NASA Blueshift podcast. What will Webb's first targets be? The first targets for Webb will be determined through a process similar to that used for the Hubble Space Telescope and will involve NASA, ESA, CSA and scientific community participants. The first engineering target will come before the first science target and will be used to align the mirror segments and focus the telescope. That will probably be a relatively bright star or possibly a star field. How does Webb compare with Kepler? The Kepler mission is designed to answer a simple question. What fraction of stars have terrestrial planets located in or near the habitable zone? The habitable zone is the region around a star where water can exist on a planet in liquid form. Kepler seeks to answer this question by staring at a small region of the sky containing more than 100,000 stars for 3.5 years or more to look for transiting terrestrial planets, and thus determine what fraction of stars have terrestrial planets. In answering this question, Kepler is generating a large database of confirmed transiting planets together with some of their basic properties. Once we have found these planets, we need the tools to study their physical properties and the composition of their atmospheres. It is Webb that provides the specialized tools to undertake these studies. Kepler is designed to be a "wide and shallow" survey telescope, while Webb is designed for "narrow and deep" focused studies with near and mid-IR imaging and spectroscopy. More Info How does Webb compare to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)? Webb is a very large observatory designed to address a variety of questions across many areas of astrophysics, while TESS concentrates on identifying a large sample of small planets where follow-up observations are feasible with current and planned telescopes. TESS will identify small planets and measure their sizes. Through follow-up observations, we can determine the masses of some of these planets. With both mass and size measurements, we can determine the planets' densities and start to understand what they are made of. This work will provide a foundation for future missions in the search for potentially habitable planets. TESS will expand on the NASA Kepler mission's census of exoplanets by targeting closer, brighter stars, where follow-up observations are easier to make. The stars TESS studies will on average be 30 to 100 times brighter than the stars earlier Kepler surveyed. How does Webb compare with Herschel? Webb and Herschel are complementary. Webb will be a 6.5m telescope sensitive from gold-colored visible light to the mid-infrared, at wavelengths ranging from 0.6 micrometers to 28.5 micrometers. Herschel was a 3.5m telescope sensitive in the far-infrared from 55 to 670 micrometers wavelength. By working at longer wavelengths, Herschel saw colder objects, such as the earliest stages of star formation in dark clouds and emission from molecules such as water. Webb will view more energetic phenomena including forming proto-stars and very distant galaxies. Getting data with both telescopes on the same objects will build a more complete picture of the astrophysical processes. More Info How does Webb compare with Hubble? Webb is designed to look deeper into space to see the earliest stars and galaxies that formed in the universe and to look deep into nearby dust clouds to study the formation of stars and planets. In order to do this, Webb will have a much larger primary mirror than Hubble (2.5 times larger in diameter, or about 6 times larger in area), giving it more light-gathering power. It also will have infrared instruments with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity than Hubble. Finally, Webb will operate much farther from Earth, maintaining its extremely cold operating temperature, stable pointing and higher observing efficiency than with the Earth-orbiting Hubble. More Info What will Webb tell us about exoplanets? Will it take photos of exoplanets? Webb will be able to tell us the composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets. It will observe planetary atmospheres through the transit technique. A transit is when a planet moves across the disc of its parent star. Webb will also carry coronographs to enable photography of exoplanets near bright stars (if they are big and bright and far from the star), but they will be only "dots," not grand panoramas. Consider how far away exoplanets are from us, and how small they are by comparison to this distance! We didn’t even know what Pluto really looked like until we were able to send an observatory to fly right near it, and Pluto is in our own solar system! More Info Will we image objects in our own solar system? Yes! Webb will be able to observe the planets at or beyond the orbit of Mars, satellites, comets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects. Many important molecules, ices, and minerals have strong characteristic signatures at the wavelengths Webb can observe. Webb will also monitor the weather of planets and their moons. Because the telescope and instruments have to be kept cold, Webb’s protective sunshield will be blocking the inner solar system from view. This means that the Sun, Earth, Moon, Mercury, and Venus, and of course sun-grazing comets and many known near-Earth objects cannot be observed. More Info How far back will Webb see? Webb will be able to see what the universe looked like around a quarter of a billion years (possibly back to 100 million years) after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies started to form. More Info When will Webb launch and how long is the mission duration? Webb will launch in 2021 from French Guiana on a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket. Webb's mission lifetime after launch is designed to be at least 5-1/2 years, and could last longer than 10 years. The lifetime is limited by the amount of fuel used for maintaining the orbit, and by the possibility that Webb’s components will degrade over time in the harsh environment of space. More Info What happens after launch, how long until there will be data? In the first hour: Starting at liftoff, the Ariane rocket will provide thrust for a little over 8 minutes. Webb will separate from the Ariane V launch vehicle a half hour after launch and we will deploy the solar array immediately afterward. We will also release several systems that were locked for launch. In the first day: Two hours after launch we will deploy the high gain antenna. About ten and a half hours after launch, Webb will pass the Moon's orbit, nearly a quarter of the way to L2. Twelve hours after launch there will be the first trajectory correction maneuver by small rocket engines aboard Webb itself. In the first week: The second trajectory correction maneuver will take place at 2.5 days after launch. We will start the sequence of major deployment just after that. The first deployments are the fore and aft sunshield pallets, followed by the release of remaining sub-system launch locks. The next deployment is the telescope in which the telescope and the spacecraft bus move apart from each other by about 2 meters when the deployable tower assembly extends. The full sunshield deployment with unfolding and tensioning of the membranes can then be initiated. At 6 days we deploy the secondary mirror, followed by the side wings of the primary mirror. In the first month: As the telescope cools down in the shade of the deployed sunshield, we will turn on the warm electronics and initialize the flight software. At the end of the first month, we will do the mid-course correction that ensures that Webb will achieve its final orbit around L2. Although the telescope cools to near its operating temperature, the ISIM is warmed with electric heaters to prevent condensation on the instruments as residual water trapped in the materials making up the observatory escapes to the vacuum of space. In the second month: At 33 days after launch we will turn on and operate the Fine Guidance Sensor, then NIRCam and NIRSpec. The first NIRCam image will be of a crowded star field to make sure that light gets through the telescope into the instruments. Since the primary mirror segments will not yet be aligned, the picture will still be out of focus. At 44 days after launch we will begin the process of adjusting the primary mirror segments, first identifying each mirror segment with its image of a star in the camera. We will also focus the secondary mirror. In the third month: From 60 to 90 days after launch we will align the primary mirror segments so that they can work together as a single optical surface. We will also turn on and operate the MIRI. By the end of the third month we will be able to take the first science-quality images. Also by this time, Webb will complete its journey to its L2 orbit position. In the fourth through the sixth month: At about 85 days after launch we will have completed the optimization of the telescope image in the NIRCam. Over the next month and a half we will optimize the image for the other instruments. We will test and calibrate all of the instrument capabilities by observing representative science targets. After six months: Webb will begin its science mission and start to conduct routine science operations. More Info Is Webb serviceable? Webb will be operated at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), located approximately 1 million miles (1.5 million km) away from the Earth, and will therefore be beyond the reach of any manned vehicle currently being planned for the next decade. Hubble is in low-Earth orbit, located approximately 375 miles (600 km) away from the Earth, and is therefore readily accessible for servicing. In the early days of the Webb project, studies were conducted to evaluate the benefits, practicality and cost of servicing Webb either by human space flight, by robotic missions, or by some combination such as retrieval to low-Earth orbit. Those studies concluded that the potential benefits of servicing do not offset the increases in mission complexity, mass and cost that would be required to make Webb serviceable, or to conduct the servicing mission itself. Hubble is an exception and not the rule. No other satellites but Hubble are serviceable currently. More Info Is there a danger from micrometeorites? All of Webb's systems are designed to survive micrometeoroid impacts. We tested beryllium discs for micrometeoroids using test facilities in the US and showed the micrometeoroids have negligible effects on the beryllium. Cryogenic beryllium mirrors have been flown in space exposed to micrometeoroids without problems. The Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003, has a beryllium primary mirror. Why is the mirror segmented? Webb needs to have an unfolding mirror because the mirror is so large that it otherwise cannot fit in the launch shroud of currently available rockets. The mirror has to be large in order to see the faint light from the first star-forming regions and to see very small details at infrared wavelengths. Designing, building and operating a mirror that unfolds is one of the major technological developments of Webb. Unfolding mirrors will be necessary for future missions requiring even larger mirrors, and will find application in other scientific, civil and military space missions. More Info Why are the mirrors hexagonal? The hexagonal shape allows a segmented mirror to be constructed without gaps that can be roughly circular in shape and needs only 3 variations in prescription. The hexagonal shape allows a segmented mirror with "high filling factor and six-fold symmetry". High filling factor means the segments fit together without gaps. If we had circular segments, there would be gaps between them. Symmetry is good because we only need 3 different optical prescriptions for all 18 segments, (6 of each prescription). Finally, we want a roughly circular overall mirror shape because that focuses the light into the most compact region on the detectors. An oval mirror, for example, would give images that are elongated in one direction. A square mirror would send a lot of the light out of the central region. More Info Why does the sunshield have 5 layers? Webb has a giant, tennis-court sized sunshield, made of five, very thin layers of an insulating film called Kapton. Why five? One big thick sunshield would conduct the heat from the bottom to the top more than would a shield with five layers separated by vacuum. With five layers to the sunshield, each successive one is cooler than the one below. The heat radiates out from between the layers, and the vacuum between the layers is a very good insulator. From studies done early in the mission development five layers were found to provide sufficient cooling. More layers would provide additional cooling, but would also mean more mass and complexity. We settled on five because it gives us enough cooling with some “margin” or a safety factor, and six or more wouldn’t return any additional benefits. Webb has a large sunshade to protect the telescope from heating by direct sunlight, allowing it to cool down to a temperature below 50 Kelvin (-223° C or -370° F) by passively radiating its heat into space. (Fun fact: You could nearly boil water on the hot side of the sunshield and it’s cold enough to actually freeze nitrogen on the cold side.) More Info What kind of telescope is Webb? Webb is a reflecting telescope that uses 3 curved mirrors. (It's a 3 mirror anastigmat). There is a technical description of this kind of telescope on Wikipedia. Why not assemble it in orbit? Various scenarios were studied and assembling on-orbit was determined to be unfeasible. In the very earliest stages of feasibility studies, we examined the possibility of on-orbit assembly for what was then called the next generation space telescope or NGST. At that time, and still today, the International Space Station does not have the capability to assemble precision optical structures. Additionally, the environment around the Space Station is not suitable for the exposed mirrors that Webb has and would have had the possibility to damage or contaminate the optics. The deployment of Webb happens far above Low Earth Orbit and the debris that resides there. Finally, if the Space Station were used as a stopping point for the observatory we would have needed a second rocket to launch it to its final destination at L2. The observatory would have to be designed with much more mass to withstand this “second launch” leaving less mass for the mirrors and science instruments.
December 1914 witnessed one of the most famous events of the First World War . The Christmas Truce, as it became known, involved large numbers of British, French and German soldiers on the Western Front. Along the 30 miles of line held by the British Expeditionary Force south of Ypres, impetus for the truce came from the need to repair trenches and bury the dead. As both sides struggled to improve living conditions, the intensity of fighting died down. As the weather worsened, both sides risked sending out working parties in daylight to repair trenches. On Christmas Eve, the weather changed with the arrival of a sharp frost, causing the ground to harden. That evening, British soldiers noticed strange activity along sectors of the German line. Major Henriques (1/16th Londons) recalled how, as darkness fell, firing slackened and the Germans began putting up lanterns along their trenches. Soon afterwards the singing of carols and patriotic German songs was heard, which the British applauded. Men began shouting remarks across no-man’s land and the night passed without a shot being fired. With friendly relations established, more adventurous souls on each side moved the truce to another level on Christmas Day. Private Jack Chappell (1/5th Londons) wrote home that in the morning his battalion and the Germans opposite agreed not to fire. Men on both sides began showing themselves above the trenches and waved to each other. When no shots were fired, German and British soldiers climbed out of their trenches and walked into no-man’s land. In a scene repeated at many places on the front line, men met and exchanged food, drink, cigarettes, sweets and souvenirs. In some places photographs were taken and at others soldiers from both sides came together and took part in impromptu kickabouts with footballs. There was no set formula to the truce. Much depended on what activity, if any, commanding officers allowed. On some sectors, open fraternisation continued beyond Boxing Day. Lt Dougan Chater (2nd Gordon Highlanders) wrote to his mother that the Germans opposite his battalion had requested a further meeting at New Year to see photographs taken on Christmas Day. Units that took part in the truce usually maintained a “live and let live” attitude for as long as possible. However, the fact should not be overlooked that the truce was not universal and 81 British soldiers were killed on Christmas Day, including Sgt Frank Collins (2nd Monmouthshires), shot by a sniper after leaving his trench to take part in the truce. The reaction of senior officers to the truce was mixed. A number issued instructions forbidding involvement, others sanctioned the event as an opportunity to carry out maintenance and bury the dead. But once such work was completed, commanders on both sides were anxious to get the war started again, fearing fraternisation would permanently affect the fighting spirit of their men. Orders were issued at the highest level that anyone persisting with such activity would be courtmartialled. Evidence suggests a number of British officers feared censure over their part in the truce and much effort was made to portray the event as an ideal intelligence-gathering opportunity. Official reports carry information on German regimental insignia, the apparent age and physical fitness of German soldiers and details of enemy trenches. Even general information gleaned from newspapers exchanged during the truce was cited as evidence of morale on the German home front. Men of a Royal Engineers signal company pluck turkeys for their seasonal meal But senior commanders need not have worried about the truce developing into a general ‘‘soldier’s peace’’ as most taking part simply regarded it as a festive interlude in a war that had to be won. The following year, commanders on both sides were determined to prevent a repetition. Instructions were issued that anyone fraternising with the enemy would face serious punishment. Such concerns had foundation as small-scale but prolonged fraternisation took place between British and German infantry at St Éloi in November 1915 and on other sectors relations between opposing troops were reported as friendly. Orders were given for artillery and machine-guns to be particularly active on Christmas Day and a number of senior officers made personal visits to the front line to check that soldiers were not engaging in any form of truce. But such measures did not entirely stop the practice. At Laventie, units of the Guards Division fraternised with the 13th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. This incident was quickly stamped out and inquiries held at brigade and divisional level. Matters escalated and on January 4, 1916, repercussions of the event hit the 1st Scots Guards with the arrest of their commanding officer, Capt Miles Barne, and company commander, Capt Sir Iain Colquhoun. Barne was acquitted and Colquhoun recommended for a reprimand at court martial. Colquhoun’s punishment was remitted by Sir Douglas Haig because of his previous distinguished service record. In later years, no major truces occurred on the Western Front. The war took on an increasingly dehumanising and industrial dimension with huge attritional battles, the use of poison gas, unrestricted submarine warfare and the bombing of civilians. All this ensured there were fewer men inclined to have a friendly disposition towards the enemy. Despite this, isolated incidents took place such as that recorded by Pte Arthur Burke (20th Manchesters), who wrote to his brother on December 29, 1916, stating his unit and the Germans opposite were on speaking terms, frequently swapped cigarettes and hardly fired a shot at each other. At this time the opposing infantry were manning shell holes rather than trenches, movement was difficult and conditions so poor that the men had simply come to an understanding to make life more bearable. Away from the Western Front, a soldier’s Christmas experience often depended on the opposition he faced. In the Balkans, where men of the British Salonika Force faced Bulgarian troops, the festive season was often extended as the Orthodox Bulgarians celebrated Christmas on January 7 and both sides generally respected each other’s celebrations. At the other extreme it was not unknown for Turkish forces to launch major attacks around Christmas in an attempt to catch the British troops off guard. This happened on Christmas Eve 1915 during the siege of Kut Al Amara in Mesopotamia, when the garrison desperately fought off repeated Turkish attacks against a key part of the town defences. Making do: Christmas dinner in a shellhole near Beaumont-Hamel, France, 1916 Christmas was also a busy time for Army postal services handling the dispatch of letters and parcels to service personnel. The presents brought soldiers closer to family and friends at home. Typical gifts included hand-knitted socks, scarves, gloves and balaclavas, tobacco and cigarettes, chocolate and homemade cakes. The condition in which a parcel reached its destination depended greatly on the skill of the packer and length of journey undertaken. The unfortunate Pte Frederick Goldthorpe, serving in Mesopotamia, received a Christmas cake in March 1916 only to find that the long-awaited treat was inedible, having spent three months packed in the same box as a bar of scented soap. Alongside homemade items, many parcels contained commercially produced items. In 1915, a number of department stores including Harrods, Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges set up war comforts departments that gathered together all items a soldier on active service could possibly need. For relatives unable to visit stores in person, catalogues were produced listing items suitable for sending to men at the front. Soon it was possible to buy prepacked “standard” boxes of food and comforts. Harrods offered different boxes for those serving on the Western Front and in the Middle East. Regimental associations, town councils and organisations in Allied countries also provided Christmas gifts to men at the front. In December 1917, the 1/4th Royal Berkshires, serving in Italy, received £50 and gifts from their county territorial association. Additional presents for serving soldiers included chocolate and soap courtesy of the Italian Touring Club. In many units, officers clubbed together to provide Christmas dinner for the men under their command. Securing sufficient food could prove a major procurement exercise involving an inventive combination of purchasing, requisitioning and pilfering. At these dinners it was traditional for officers to wait on the men and the commanding officer usually put in an appearance to wish everyone the compliments of the season. Such events built morale and a spirit of camaraderie between officers and men. Soldiers also procured their own food for Christmas with friends clubbing together to visit local markets or trade with civilians for turkeys, geese, hens, rabbits and even goats. Some enterprising men even reared their own livestock or poultry; though this option was really only open to support units serving behind the lines. Communal Christmas dinners were usually followed by entertainments. These could take the form of men within a unit performing musical and comedic ‘‘turns” or a visit to the local concert party. The latter produced musical revues and pantomimes, often to a very professional standard even in the wilds of Mesopotamia or the Balkans. In Macedonia, chief among the performers were men of the 85th Field Ambulance who put on the premier shows in Salonika: Aladdin in Macedonia, Bluebeard and Dick Whittington. The stories and characters were frequently changed to reflect the nature of Army life in the Balkans. In the production of Dick Whittington, for example, the villains, Count Maconochie and Sir Joseph Paxton, were named respectively after brands of tinned stew and jam that were staple rations for British troops during the First World War. Sports were also popular, with football and rugby being to the fore among the British troops. Matches that pitted teams of officers, NCOs and other ranks against each other were particularly competitive and where troops of Allied armies served alongside each other it was possible to play internationals. For most of the soldiers who fought in the First World War, whether volunteer or conscript, the war marked their first significant period of time away from home. Christmas was a time to focus on the family through the sending and receipt of letters, cards and gifts, helping take men’s minds away from the reality of life at the front. Besides their immediate families, soldiers received evidence that their service was valued by their local communities, who sent Christmas gifts through the many comfort committees or servicemen’s support organisations that sprang up during the war. No matter where troops found themselves – be it the muddy winter trenches of France and Flanders, the deserts of the Middle East, among the ravines of Gallipoli or Macedonia, the mountains of Italy or the African bush – a good meal, presents, decorations, cards, concerts, general entertainments and sports were all on the checklist for a wartime Christmas. These elements, which are common to peacetime celebrations, brought some measure of familiarity and normality to the lives of ordinary men living through extraordinary events. *Alan Wakefield, head of photographs, IWM, wrote Christmas in the Trenches (The History Press Ltd) Also in Inside the First World War, part four: First World War art: Stanley Spencer's Travoys Arriving with Wounded at a Dressing-Station >> War letters home: 'The Christmas truce saw German soldiers sharing a barrel of beer with us British' >> First World War Christmas cards in pictures >> Victoria Cross winner braved hail of fire to drop First World War's 'most important bomb' >> Battle of Jerusalem: the Holy City is captured >> Battle of Gallipoli: the retreat that became a rare triumph >> French entertainer tricks his way out of German PoW camp >> First World War poetry by Tom Kettle >>
Travis Zajac returned to practice on Wednesday and is possible for Thursday's game in Philadelphia. Zajac has missed two games since rolling his ankle in practice last Friday. He's one of several Devils battling the injury bug. "He skated [Tuesday], felt better," Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello updated. "We put him on the ice this morning to just see and he felt good enough to go and practice. We'll see how practice is today." Anton Volchenkov (lower body, 1 game missed) and Peter Harrold (lower body, 3 games) were also back on the ice. "We'll see how they survive the practice as far as what they're at," said Lamoriello. Jon Merrill, who suffered facial lacerations after he was tripped by Torrey Mitchell in Sunday's game at Minnesota, could be just days away from a return. It was Merrill's NHL debut. "Every test came back normal," Lamoriello said. "He''ll just be a few days because of the lacerations and the bang [into the boards] and so forth. It's a matter of four or five days." Patrik Elias (upper body, 2 games missed) will not travel with the team to Philadelphia. He left warmups before Saturday's home meeting with the Flyers and did not return. Elias is tied for third on the club with seven points (3 goals, 4 assists) in 10 games. "Hopefully we'll get him back skating in the next few days – hopefully," Lamoriello said. "But he's feeling much better." Bryce Salvador and Ryane Clowe remain sidelined. • The Devils recalled Cam Janssen on Wednesday. Janssen rotated through the fourth line at practice with Ryan Carter, Stephen Gionta and Jacob Josefson. Janssen will "just bring a little different dimension to our lineup," Lamoriello said. In 11 games this season with Albany (AHL), Janssen has one assist and 15 penalty minutes. "He's an excitable guy," Lamoriello said. "He brings energy, he brings enthusiasm. He's a great locker room guy. He's got a lot of things going for him." Wednesday's forward lines: Dainius Zubrus - Andrei Loktionov - Jaromir Jagr Mattias Tedenby - Adam Henrique - Michael Ryder Damien Brunner - Travis Zajac - Steve Bernier Ryan Carter - Stephen Gionta - Jacob Josefson / Cam Janssen
Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn . . . but you can and should redistribute consumption. Here’s Matt Yglesias discussing a recent post by John Quiggen: John Quiggin makes the case that redistribution of income away from the top 1 percent is essentially the only thing that matters in American politics. After all, as Willie Sutton said, “that’s where the money is.” I’m all for that, but I really do think it’s an unduly limited view of political life. Income really is the Achilles heel of the progressive movement. The income statistics simply don’t mean what progressives think they mean–something like “resources available for redistribution.” If you want something closer to resources available, you’d use consumption, or wage income. If you combine wage and capital income in the same aggregate, you are counting the same resources twice. This is deeply counter-intuitive, yet all public finance economists understand this. The policymakers in Nordic countries understand this. But progressives don’t seem to understand this. Even Paul Krugman, who must know better, keeps citing income distribution data, which is about as informative as examining the entrails of a chicken. A rich guy with lots of income has three choices, consumption, savings/investment, and charity. Let’s dispose of charity quickly. Yes, we could redistribute the money Gates in spending on malaria in Africa, and give it to other Americans. Would that be a gain? I think everyone would say no. On the other hand if a rich guy gives a lot of money to Princeton, to have his name on a building, perhaps that’s really a form of consumption. I’m fine with treating it that way, if the tax authorities decide that’s the way to go. But the real money here is obviously in the consumption/investment categories. You can redistribute consumption from the top 1% and give it to average Americans working in a car factory, or a Walmart. But it’s an illusion to think you can redistribute investment from the top 1%, so that average Americans can have a higher living standard. Where do people think the car factory comes from? Or the Walmart building? BTW, this has nothing to do with trickle-down economics, a theory I reject. This is simple accounting. Money put into investment projects isn’t available to boost living standards for the lower classes, unless you don’t do those investment projects. So what’s available to be redistributed? Basically consumption (including a modest amount of vanity charity.) And that’s it. Now come back to me with the consumption distribution data, and let’s see what that looks like. I predict that consumption inequality is far lower than income inequality. And that consumption inequality is rising at a far slower rate than income inequality. I’m not saying there’s no problem, but it’s way smaller than the progressives imagine, as the data they use is pure nonsense. Consumption inequality is economic inequality. Income inequality is . . . well it’s meaningless gobbletygoop. This Will Wilkinson posts cites study after study supporting my consumption inequality claim. I’m not trying to make an Ayn Randian argument here. I favor 4 types of income redistribution, on utilitarian grounds: 1. Education vouchers 2. Catastrophic health insurance 3. Government subsidy of HSAs for low income workers. 4. Wage subsidies for low income workers, combined with abolition of minimum wages and occupational licensing. Thus a single mom with two kids making $8 hour, might get a government subsidy of another $8 hour. And someone making $16/hour might get a $4 hour subsidy. But they have to be employed. Have government jobs paying 1 cent per hour as a residual, for those claiming they can’t find a job. Give them a $12/hour subsidy. They would also get the other three subsidies discussed above. As one’s income rose, one would get less and less of a HSA subsidy, but I’d probably make the education voucher and catastrophic insurance universal. Importantly, I’d try to spend less on education than we do now. You do all this redistribution with two consumption taxes; a VAT and a progressive payroll tax. Plus perhaps some other taxes on efficiency grounds (carbon, land, etc.) No personal or corporate income taxes, no forms to fill out. K.I.S.S. BTW, other than my quibble over “income,” I basically agree with the thrust of Yglesias’s post. PS. Oh, and get rid of the debt ceiling, for God’s sake. Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn Tags: income inequality, Income tax, Taxation This entry was posted on July 26th, 2011 and is filed under Fiscal policy, Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.
Australian Craig S. Wright has stepped forward to claim that he is indeed the illusive creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto. Furthermore, he claims to have “proof” of the claim that he has demonstrated under somewhat constrained circumstances to journalists, Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen and Founding Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, Jon Matonis. Although Andresen is convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt: Craig Wright is Satoshi.”, journalists from the Economist were careful to hedge the announcement with some scepticism. The doubt expressed by the Economist is largely shared with commenters on Reddit and the Bitcoin Forum who are largely unconvinced by the claims made by Wright. The proof that Wright showed to journalists from the Economist, BBC and GQ was that he held a private encryption key that was involved in the production of the earliest Bitcoin. The trouble is, that when asked to provide further proof by spending some of the actual Bitcoin made at the time, or to use the keys to sign other documents provided by the Economist, Wright refused saying that “I’m not going to keep jumping through hoops.” After Wright was originally “outed” as being Nakamoto last year, and the story was reported by journalists at Wired and Gizmodo, almost all aspects of Wright’s claims were brought into doubt. When The Economist raised these concerns with Wright, for example the exaggerated and unverifiable claims of academic degrees, Wright responded that he had created profiles on LinkedIn and other sites as a “joke”. A supercomputer that Wright was supposed to have bought from computer manufacturer SGI who later claimed not to have known anything about this sale, was again dismissed. Wright explained SGI’s denial as being a result of Wright having customised the machine with a competitor’s equipment. He couldn’t say anything else about the computer nor actually show it to journalists for “security reasons”. The Founding Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, Jon Matonis is also convinced that Wright is Nakamoto. He bases his evidence in part on the fact that Wright was knowledgeable about technical aspects of Bitcoin. There is evidence that this was certainly not the case in 2011 where he referred to Bitcoin as “Bit Coin” in an online comment. Matonis misses the somewhat obvious problem that a proof based on what Wright knows now ignores the fact that he has had several years to acquire that knowledge along with many other people. Further technical proof furnished by Wright that he holds a private key involved with early Bitcoin transactions has also already been brought into question. Wright used the key to digitally sign a text containing a 1964 speech of Jean-Paul Sartre’s where he explains why he refused to accept the Nobel prize for literature. The signature has been found included in a block on the Bitcoin blockchain dating back to 2009. So all this means is that Wright has produced a piece of evidence allegedly from 2009 not that he was able to produce that signature now. If Wright really did believe in research and really wanted to prove that he was Nakamoto, he would be open to complete scrutiny to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was who he claimed to be. Andy Greenberg from Wired magazine has outlined further proofs that Wright could demonstrate to get everyone to that point. Wright has chosen not to for the time being. Whilst there is no direct evidence to say that Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, because of the staged evidence that has been presented so far, we should treat the claim with a high degree of scepticism. Wright has a great deal to gain by making this claim. He salvages his currently damaged reputation which suffered from the revelations of the inconsistencies in his past public record. His reputation has also been brought into question as a result of the ongoing investigation by the Australian Tax Office for fraud related to Wright over claims of research and development credits and GST. These research and development credits are related to the alleged purchase and running of the SGI supercomputer that SGI has said they never sold to Wright. It is unlikely that the majority of the Bitcoin world will accept Wright as the inventor of Bitcoin and for that reason alone, it seems even more inexplicable as to why he is now trying to claim that title. What is absolutely certain is that we have not heard the last of it and there is sure to be more to come.
Black Hat Arsenal USA 2015 Speakers Lineup Digitalmunition is delighted to present the Tools selected for Black Hat Arsenal, the Best InfoSec Tool Event in the World. And yes, Arsenal is growing again. This year, selected 57 Tools ranging from Vulnerability and exploitation research to hardware and electronics gadgets. During this session, over 31% of tools will be officially announced and released publicly. This rate has incredibly increased since the last event. We are so proud and happy about it. Here few statistics about this session Black Hat Arsenal is going into its 9th session and we’re still excited to promote tools from great folks. So here is the outstanding lineup for the Arsenal USA 2015. Fasten your seat-belts, you’re in for an exciting journey !! presented by Joffrey Czarny When it comes to the security of the information system, Active Directory domain controllers are, or should be, at the center of concerns, which are (normally) to ensure compliance with best practices, and during a compromise proved to explore the possibility of cleaning the information system without having to rebuild Active Directory. However, few tools implement this process and several ways exist to backdoor Active Directory. We propose to present some possible backdoors which could be set by an intruder in Active Directory to keep administration rights. For example, how to modify the AdminSDHolder container in order to reapply rights after administrator actions. Moreover, backdoors can be implemented in Active Directory to help an intruder to gain back his privileges. Then, we will present BTA, an audit tool for Active Directory databases, and our methodology for verifying the application of good practices and the absence of malicious changes in these databases. The presentation will be organized as follows: – We begin by describing the stakes around the Active Directory, centerpiece of any information system based on Microsoft technologies. – We will continue by demonstrating some backdoors in order to keep admins rights or to help an intruder to quickly recover admins rights. – We will present BTA and the methodology developed to analysis Active Directory. We conclude with a feedback on real world usage of BTA. More information can be found on the Bitbucket repository https: //bitbucket.org/iwseclabs/bta presented by Joshua Pitts The Backdoor Factory (BDF), first released in 2013, is an open source framework for patching PE, ELF, and Mach-O binaries with payloads or shellcode. Combine that with BDFProxy, a tool based on mitmProxy and BDF to MitM patch binaries during download over HTTP, pentesters can bring unique attack capabilities to red teaming engagements and other testing engagements. BDF/BDFProxy is included in multiple operating systems and frameworks including Kali-Linux, Veil-Evasion, BlackArch Linux, and MITMf. ▼Advertisement The presenter will demo multiple use cases, from red teaming, testing OS security, cover framework internals, writing custom scripts, and new features. presented by Viacheslav Bakhmutov Bearded is an open source Security Automation platform. The platform allows Development, QA, and Security team members to perform automated web security scans with a set of tools (w3af, sslyze, nmap, arachni etc), and re-execute those scans as needed. All tools can be executed in the cloud in docker containers. Bearded has a default web interface which integrates all core options and makes it possible to manage large pentests easily. Similar to owtf or minion, but using docker containers and scalable for clouds. Breachego presented by Christian Heinrich A large number of Maltego Remote Transforms for @Abusix, @haveibeenpwned, and @BreachAlarm for OSINT of compromised credentials posted to Pastebin, etc. Burp-hash presented by Scott Johnson Burp-hash is a Burp Suite plugin. Many applications will hash parameters, such as ID numbers and email addresses for use in secure tokens, like session cookies. The plugin will passively scan requests looking for hashed values. Once a hashed value is found, it is compared to a table of parameters already observed in the application to find a match. The plugin keeps a lookout for parameters, such as usernames, email addresses, and ID numbers. It also keeps a lookout for hashes (SHA, MD5, etc). It hashes new data and compares to observed hashes. The user receives a notification if any hashes match. This automates the process of trying to guess common parameters used in the generation of hashes observed in an application. presented by Omri Herscovici CapTipper is a python tool to analyze, explore, and revive HTTP malicious traffic. CapTipper sets up a web server that acts exactly as the server in the PCAP file and contains internal tools, with a powerful interactive console, for analysis and inspection of the hosts, objects, and conversations found. The tool provides the security researcher with easy access to the files and the understanding of the network flow, and is useful when trying to research exploits, pre-conditions, versions, obfuscations, plugins, and shellcodes. Feeding CapTipper with a drive-by traffic capture (e.g. of an exploit kit) displays the user with the REQUEST_URI’s that were sent and metadata responses. The user can at this point browse to https://127.0.0.1/[URI] and receive the response back to the browser. In addition, an interactive shell is launched for deeper investigation using various commands such as hosts, hexdump, info, ungzip, body, client, dump, and more. presented by Vivek Ramachandran Chellam is a Wi-Fi IDS/Firewall for Windows. Chellam can detect Wi-Fi attacks, such as Honeypots, Evil Twins, Mis-association, and Hosted Network based backdoors etc., against a Windows based client without the need of custom hardware or drivers. The tool also allows you to create Firewall like rule sets for Wi-Fi networks and create alerts etc. when there is a rule mismatch. presented by Colin O’Flynn Side channel power analysis and glitching attacks have almost mythical powers – the ability to crack cryptographic implementations by exploiting fundamental flaws in the hardware running those otherwise secure algorithms. The ChipWhisperer project aims to teach everyone from computer science students to in-the-trenches embedded engineers how the attacks work, and how to perform them on real devices. This completely open-source project is a combination of hardware and software – the hardware can be built by a seasoned hardware hacker with surface mount experience, or a less seasoned hardware hacker can buy commercially for under $250. The project is complete with extensive documentation and tutorials to help teach the user about the general principles of side-channel analysis and glitching attacks. ChipWhisperer was previously a finalist in the 2014 Hackaday Prize, where it placed 2nd out of around 800 entries. presented by Yan Shoshitaishvili There are a lot of tools written for security research and CTFs, but fairly few gain enough traction to be packaged and distributed by the likes of Ubuntu, or even Kali. Worse, when they are packaged, the packaged versions are often hopelessly outdated. This is unfortunate, and causes most researchers to have to spend time tracking down, compiling, configuring, and installing these tools. Also, when a computer has to be reinstalled the process generally has to be done again. There is a need for a central repository of such tools to track them and allow security researchers to easily install them (without screwing up the whole host system!). This is the story of such a repository. ▼Advertisement I’ve gone through the list of tools I’ve used in CTFs and in my research I have found the ones that are not adequately packaged, and created a central place for install scripts. The build system works with simple shell scripts (for easier contribution of packages) and installs everything under ~/tools (or, really, any other directory), without any global system changes (except for apt-getting dependencies from official repositories). As far as I can tell, this is the first repository of obscure security research tools, and I think it’ll be a useful thing for the community at large. presented by Idan Revivo To combat the growing problem of Android malware, we present a new solution based on the popular open source framework Cuckoo Sandbox to automate the malware investigation process. Our extension enables the use of Cuckoo’s features to analyze Android malware and provides new functionality for dynamic and static analysis. Our framework is an all in one solution for malware analysis on Android. It is extensible and modular, allowing the use of new, as well as existing, tools for custom analysis. The main capabilities of our CuckooDroid include: – Dynamic Analysis – based on Dalvik API hooking – Static Analysis – Integration with Androguard – Emulator Detection Prevention – Virtualization Managers that support the popular virtualization solutions (VMware,Virtualbox, Esxi, Xen, and Kvm) and now also android emulator. – Traffic Analysis – Intelligence Gathering – Collecting information from Virustotal, Google Play etc. – Behavioral Signatures Examples of well-known malware will be used to demonstrate the framework capabilities and its usefulness in malware analysis. presented by David Oren CuckooSploit is an environment for comprehensive, automated analysis of web-based exploits, based on Cuckoo sandbox. The framework accepts URL or a PCAP file, and works at three levels: Exploitation Process – Detecting the core components of the exploitation process (ROP chains, shellcodes, heap sprays, etc) for when exploitation takes place but fails to launch payload for several reasons, along with immediate successful post-exploitation phenomena (e.g process creation). Full Flow Emulation – Implementing the approach of full web emulation, rather than emulation of a single file at a time, since many exploits served by Exploit Kits do not work out of the web-page context (require configurations and/or arguments). Web Flow Detection Redirection sequence chains, JavaScript obfuscations, evasion techniques. By using full web emulation on different combinations of OS/browser/plugin version, CuckooSploit increases the rate of malicious URL detection and presents a reliable verdict and, in some cases, CVE identification. presented by Michael Hudson DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is recognized worldwide for the exchange of medical tests, designed for handling, display, storage, printing, and transmission standard. It includes defining a file format and a network communication protocol. Target: D1c0m-X is a tool that is responsible for searching the TCP / IP port Robot surgery or x-rays, CT scans, MRI or other medical device that use this protocol, and once found, check if the firmware is vulnerable, if not vulnerable, try to exploit the same way using scripts, which are intended to block the connection between the server and the Robot, making a DDOS or accessing the System. Before launching the attack, D1c0m-X also explores the possibility of an intrusion through the Corporative Web of the Hospital or Clinic, if the intrusion is achieved, we proceed to interact with shell console, applying different vulnerabilities, such as SQLI, Default password, etc. Finally, the DUMP of critical information of Patients, Doctors and Staff is automated. Damn Vulnerable iOS App (DVIA) presented by Prateek Gianchandani Damn Vulnerable iOS App (DVIA) is an iOS application that is damn vulnerable. The main goal is to provide a platform to mobile security enthusiasts/professionals or students to test their iOS penetration testing skills in a legal environment. This application covers all the common vulnerabilities found in iOS applications (following OWASP top 10 mobile risks) and contains several challenges that the user can try. This application also contains a section where a user can read various articles on iOS application security. Vulnerabilities and Challenges Include: – Insecure Data Storage – Jailbreak Detection – Runtime Manipulation – Piracy Detection – Sensitive information in memory – Transport Layer Security (http, https, cert pinning) – Client Side Injection – Information Disclosure – Broken Cryptography – Security Decisions via Untrusted input – Side channel data leakage – Application Patching The new version of DVIA will include vulnerabilities, like Brute forcing login screens, touch id bypass, insecure apple watch sync, insecure data storage, and vulnerabilities in extensions, etc. presented by Efrain Ortiz Today’s digital ecosystem is harboring digital diseases that are increasingly resistant to antiviral measures. Many information security professionals continue to address the malware (digital disease pathogen) threat by focusing on antiviral methods and the re-imaging of infected hosts. The prevalence of infection is not conducive to the old reactive vaccination paradigm of one antidote signature for all. Can we learn from epidemiologists and how they investigate biological diseases? How do we enable more people to help in this digital medical crisis? We know there aren’t enough people working on the digital disease problem, so how do we increase the numbers? This Digital Disease Control Web-Based Tracking app is an alpha proof of concept visualization tool, inspired by epidemiology, to enable entry level technicians to enter the security field. presented by Daniel Martin Dradis is an extensible, cross-platform, open source collaboration framework for InfoSec teams. It can import from over 15 popular tools, including Nessus, Qualys, and Burp. Started in 2007, the Dradis Framework project has been growing ever since. Dradis is the best tool to consolidate the output of different scanners, add your manual findings and evidence and have all the engagement information in one place. Come to see Dradis 3.0 in action. Three years after our last official release, we’ve got a new version of the app that is ready for you to use and enjoy packed with new features (download-and-run packages, node properties, HTTP API, PDF reports), and new tool connectors (Acunetix, NTO spider…). Come and check it out before we run out of stickers! presented by Quentin Long ElastAlert is a simple framework for alerting on anomalies, spikes, or other patterns of interest from data in Elasticsearch. It works by combining Elasticsearch with two types of modular components, rule types and alerts. Elasticsearch is periodically queried and the data is passed to the rule type, which determines when a match is found. When a match occurs, it is given to one or more alerts, which take action based on the match. presented by Juan Sacco Objectively measure threats, vulnerabilities, impact and risks associated with specific cyber-security incidents by rapidly reacting on the integration of both, offensive and defensive security. Exploit Pack uses an advanced software-defined interface that supports rapid reconfiguration to adapt exploit codes to the constantly evolving threat environment. presented by Federico Kirschbaum Since collaborative pentesting is more common each day and teams become larger, sharing the information between pentesters can become a difficult task. Different tools, different formats, long outputs (in the case of having to audit a large network) can make it almost impossible. You may end up with wasted efforts, duplicated tasks, a lot of text files scrambled in your working directory. And then, you need to collect that same information from your teammates and write a report for your client, trying to be as clear as possible. The idea behind Faraday is to help you to share all the information that is generated during the pentest, without changing the way you work. You run a command, or import a report, and Faraday will normalize the results and share that with the rest of the team in real time. Faraday has more than 40 plugins available (and counting), including a lot of common tools. And if you use a tool for which Faraday doesn’t have a plugin, you can create your own. During this presentation we’re going to show you the latest version of the tool, and how it can be used to improve the effectiveness of your team during a penetration test. presented by Philippe Arteau FindSecurityBugs is a plugin for the Java static analysis tool FindBugs. This plugin consists of set rules that focus only on security weaknesses. It can be use by developers or security analysts to find vulnerabilities in their code. The plugin can identify weaknesses in Java web applications, Scala web applications and Android mobile applications. The assessment can be done in an IDE, such as Eclipse, or IntelliJ. It can also be configured in continuous integration environment, such as SonarQube. The demonstrations at BH Arsenal will focus on the integration in IntelliJ and SonarQube. Example of vulnerable applications will be scanned and basic code review methodology will be presented. ▼Advertisement FindSecurityBugs has already received some attention from the security community. It is integrated in the SWAMP code review service funded by the DHS. The OWASP Top 10 describe the tool as “the most promising” from the open source alternatives. It is used in the academia for security laboratories and the commercial sector. Finally, it was used with success in the code review of the Norwegian Voting System in 2013. The tool is released under LGPL and it is available for download at https://h3xstream.github.io/find-sec-bugs/. Heybe is Penetration Testing Automation Kit. It consists of modules that can be used to fully automate each step of pen-tests and make them most effective. With Heybe you can own all systems in a target company in matter of minutes. Heybe was first released during Black Hat USA 2014 Arsenal. This is new and updated version with some new modules. Heybe modules: Fener: Fast network discovery tool optimized for speed. Fener leverages several networking tools to discover all hosts within target network. Fener leverages automated active and passive discovery techniques to discover targets. Crowbar (Prevoiusly Levye): Brute force tool. Levye is used for automating brute forcing process against common and not so common protocols like openvpn and VNC. NetworK9 (Previously DepDep): Post exploitation tool. NK9 is a merciless sentinel which will seek sensitive files containing critical info leaking through your network. SeeS: High precision social engineering tool. Sees is used for performing tail-made social engineering campaigns with high success ratio. ADHunter: MS Active Directory takeover tool. It cane used to automate and speed up active directory attacks and give the keys to the kingdom in minutes. More information about Heybe modules can be found at following links: https://www.galkan.net/2014/03/how-to-determine-critical-data-in-netwok-sharing.html https://blackarch.org/tools.html presented by Nikhil Mittal Kautilya is a framework which enables using Human Interface Devices (HIDs) in Penetration Testing. Kautilya is capable of generating ready-to-use payloads for a HID. In the Black Hat edition, new payloads will be added and live demos will be shown. Come and learn techniques like dumping system secrets in plain, data, executing shellcode in memory, installing backdoors, dropping malicious files and much more using nothing but a HID capable of mimicking a keyboard. presented by Tyler Colgan Have you ever wanted to inject code into a Linux process, but found yourself lacking an easy way to do it? Ever wished Linux had a system call, like CreateRemoteThread on Windows? Linux-Inject is the tool you were wishing for! It can load a shared object inside another process, in much the same way Windows lets you load DLLs in other processes. It does this by attaching to the target process with ptrace and overwriting part of its address space with a custom loader. Once the target process has executed the loader, Linux-Inject restores the target’s overwritten memory and register state and sends it on its merry way. At that point, it’s up to you to wreak whatever havoc you’d like within the target process via the newly loaded shared object. Linux-Inject supports x86, x86_64, and ARM. presented by Michael Boelen Most of us have performed some level of system hardening, using checklists or custom scripts. The next level is to keep the security defenses of your systems compliant with your baselines. Lynis is an open source tool to help you with this goal. It is portable, flexible and specialized on Linux/Unix based systems. It performs an in-depth health check of your systems and tells you what additional steps you can take to lock them down. In this demo, we will see how easy it is to use, yet flexible enough to support much more than initially is visible. presented by Dominic White Mana Toolkit is a Wi-Fi rogue access point toolkit whose purpose is getting as many clients connected, and getting as many credentials from their connections. It was first presented at Defcon 22 last year (https://youtu.be/i2-jReLBSVk). It started as an attempt to get KARMA attacks working again, but ended up going much further. We will be extending it even further for Arsenal. It implements several patches to hostapd that: – Implement our improved KARMA attacks – Implement EAP credential interception (freeradius-wpe style, but built in) – Auto crack ‘n add, where EAP credentials are cracked automatically to get the client to connect to a fake network with EAP Additionally, it includes several configurations and scripts to gather credentials: – Firelamb – Our reimplementation of firesheep in python to grab cookies – Sslstrip-hsts – Leonardo NVE’s HSTS bypass implementation – Certificate side loading – To attempt to load malicious certificates to better intercept SSL connections – Captive portal social engineering – Attempts to gather creds with fake captive portal, or google pages – Fake-internet – To fool various devices into thinking they are online For Arsenal, we’ll be improving the EAP functionality quite significantly, and adding the ability to target specific devices, as well as several bug fixes. More information can be found in the slides: https://www.slideshare.net/sensepost/improvement-in-rogue-access-points-sensepost-defcon-22 presented by Marcello Salvati The current state of Man-In-The-Middle tools is abysmal, most of them just don’t work, are completely outdated or require a lot of time and effort to get working. MITMf brings to the table a one-stop-shop for offensive Man-In-The-Middle attacks, while improving and updating existing techniques. Written in Python, it’s designed to be modular, customizable and extendible: anyone can write a custom plugin for their own needs. Currently the following plugins are available: – Responder – LLMNR, NBT-NS and MDNS poisoner – SSLstrip+ – Partially bypass HSTS – Spoof – Redirect traffic using ARP Spoofing, ICMP Redirects or DHCP Spoofing and modify DNS queries – Sniffer – Sniffs for various protocol login and authorized attempts – BeEFAutorun – Autoruns BeEF modules based on clients OS or browser type – AppCachePoison – Perform app cache poison attacks – SessionHijacking – Performs session hijacking attacks, and stores cookies in a firefox profile – BrowserProfiler – Attempts to enumerate all browser plugins of connected clients – CacheKill – Kills page caching by modifying headers – FilePwn – Backdoor executables being sent over http using bdfactory – Inject – Inject arbitrary content into HTML content – JavaPwn – Performs drive-by attacks on clients with out-of-date java browser plugins – Jskeylogger – Injects a javascript keylogger into clients webpages – Replace – Replace arbitary content in HTML content – SMBAuth – Evoke SMB challenge-response auth attempts – Upsidedownternet – Flips images 180 degrees presented by Ryan Barnett ModSecurity is an open source, cross-platform web application firewall (WAF) module. Known as the “Swiss Army Knife” of WAFs, it enables web application defenders to gain visibility into HTTP(S) traffic and provides a power rules language and API to implement advanced protections. Come check out the new features and capabilities with live demos. presented by Nikhil Mittal Nishang is a framework which enables using PowerShell for Penetration Testing and Offensive Security. In the Black Hat edition, many interesting scripts and payloads will be released, as well as live demos of some work in progress will be done. Techniques like running shellcode in memory, using Gmail for code execution, SSID names for command execution, network relays, and more will be discussed. Come to see how PowerShell and Nishang could be used to enhance your Penetration Test. presented by Brian Baskin Noriben is an open-source system monitoring tool that allows for quick and simplified tracking of malware activity. By wrapping its operation around Microsoft SysInternals Process Monitor, Noriben uses a comprehensive set of filters to generate very succinct reports that provide the required indicators to create Indicators of Compromise (IoC) alerts. Requirements: – Windows-based system with SysInternals Procmon.exe – Python 2.7.9 or 3.x. – Optional Python Requests and a VirusTotal public API key for VT lookups – Optional Python lib-yara for automated Yara scanning Noriben takes large volumes of system activity and filters out the background noise of system activity and legitimate operations. By focusing solely on important API calls, for file creation, registry operations, and network connections, Noriben creates a simple and straightforward report that features only the indicators that a security analyst or malware analyst cares about. Along with collecting indicators, Noriben will process all created or modified files through a collection of provided Yara signatures and detail any results. It will also submit any file hash to VirusTotal to collect its virus score. As Noriben runs in the background during live operation, it is also suitable to acquire activity while malware is being actively debugged by an analyst. This allows for the collection of artifacts not found during normal operation in standard sandboxes. Within 60 seconds an analyst can get a good handle on a malware’s capability and determine if it’s a new variant of a known family or something completely new and requiring reverse engineering. Noriben is currently in sophomore stages of development and is deployed in a number of malware analysis labs, including those run by federal law enforcement agencies and defense contractors, relying on its output simplicity to help analysts create actionable intelligence. presented by Juan Jacobo Tibaquirá Nsearch is a tool that helps you find scripts that are used nmap (nse) it can be searched using the name, category author or combining the parameters. It is also possible to see the documentation of the scripts found, the principal programing is python. You can save your favorites scripts into a db table and set a rank. The tool has an auto installer script for debian (ubuntu, mint, kali linux), Red Hat (Fedora, CentOS), and MacOX. Nsearch is still under developing, the next features for adding are: – Launch nmap from the application using your own list of scripts favorites as a parameters – Release a version for windows – Release a GUI presented by Patrick Wardle Patrick drank the Apple juice; to say he loves his Mac is an understatement. However, he is bothered by the increasing prevalence of OS X malware and how both Apple & 3rd-party security tools can be easily bypassed. Instead of just complaining about this fact, he decided to do something about it. To help secure his personal computer he’s written various OS X security tools that he now shares online (always free!), via his personal website objective-see.com. So come watch as KnockKnock generically detects persistent OS X malware, DHS reveals hijacked applications, and BlockBlock provides runtime protection of persistence locations. Our Macs will remain secure! presented by Takahiro Haruyama Indicator of Compromise (IOC) is a piece of information that can be used to search for or identify potentially compromised systems. Forensic investigators can define and share IOC files according to some standards or rules such as OpenIOC and YARA. Currently, many IOCs are available on the Internet, but most of the IOCs cannot be used for memory forensics because they are composed of indicators dependent on disk or live response data. Two years ago, I introduced “volatile IOCs” based on RAM evidence only at SANS DFIR Summit 2013. We can detect malware in memory images using them faster than using disk-based traditional IOCs. Besides, we can define indicators based on not only metadata like file paths but also malware functions such as code injection sign, imported functions, unpacked codes, and so on. However, in order to scan threats using volatile IOCs, we needed to use a closed-source tool based on OpenIOC standard. I could not improve it even if there were some limitations in the tool. That’s why I implemented “openioc_scan” as a plugin for Volatility Framework which is an open-source memory forensic tool. In this demonstration, I explain how to use it and details of the implementation. Furthermore, I also show the results of considerations about IOCs to detect unknown malware in RAM by focusing on generic traits of malware. presented by Ivan Leichtling We use Macs a lot at Yelp, which means that we see our fair share of Mac-specific security alerts. Host based detectors will tell us about known malware infestations or weird new startup items. Network based detectors see potential C2 callouts or DNS requests to resolve suspicious domains. Sometimes our awesome employees just let us know, “I think I have like Stuxnet or conficker or something on my laptop.” When alerts fire, our incident response team’s first goal is to “stop the bleeding” to contain and then eradicate the threat. Next, we move to “root cause the alert” figuring out exactly what happened and how we’ll prevent it in the future. One of our primary tools for root causing OS X alerts is OSXCollector. OSXCollector is an open source forensic evidence collection and analysis toolkit for OS X. It was developed in-house at Yelp to automate the digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) our crack team of responders had been doing manually. presented by Chuck Willis The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Broken Web Applications project (www.owaspbwa.org) provides a free and open source virtual machine loaded with web applications containing security vulnerabilities. This session will showcase the project VM and exhibit how it can be used for training, testing, and experimentation by people in a variety of roles. Demonstrations will cover how the project can be used by penetration testers who discover and exploit web application vulnerabilities, by developers and others who prevent and defend against web application attacks, and by individuals who respond to web application incidents. New features and applications in the recently released version 1.2 of the VM will also be highlighted. presented by Jeremy Long Does your application have dependencies on third party libraries? Do you know if those same libraries have published CVEs? OWASP dependency-check can help by providing identification and monitoring of the libraries your application uses, notifying you that vulnerabilities (CVEs) have been published for third party code your application uses. Jeremy will be demonstrating the tool and the various ways enterprises can use the tool to perform continuous monitoring of their applications’ dependent libraries. presented by Jose Miguel Esparza peepdf is a Python tool to explore PDF files in order to find out if the file can be harmful or not. The aim of this tool is to provide all the necessary components that a security researcher could need in a PDF analysis without using 3 or 4 tools to make all the tasks. With Peepdf it’s possible to see all the objects in the document showing the suspicious elements, supports all the most used filters and encodings, it can parse different versions of a file, object streams and encrypted files. With the installation of PyV8 and Pylibemu it provides Javascript and shellcode analysis wrappers too. Apart of this it’s able to create new PDF files and to modify/obfuscate existent ones. presented by Marc Ochsenmeier Pestudio is a unique tool that allows you to perform an initial assessment of a malware without even infecting a lab system or studying its code. ▼Advertisement Malicious executable often attempts to hide its malicious behavior and to evade detection. In doing so, it generally presents anomalies and suspicious patterns. The goal of Pestudio is to detect these anomalies, provide Indicators and score the Trust for the executable being analyzed. Since the executable file being analyzed is never started, you can inspect any unknown or malicious executable with no risk. Pestudio has been in the top 10 list of “Best Security Tool” in 2013 and 2014 by the readers of ToolsWatch.org presented by Gursev Singh Kalra The demo will discuss a new visual CAPTCHA scheme that leverages the 64K Unicode code points from the Basic Multilingual Plane (plane 0) to construct the CAPTCHAs that can be solved with 2 to 4 mouse clicks. We will discuss the design principles, the security mechanisms and its various features. There will be demonstrations for the various CAPTCHA configurations and the use cases. The proposed PixelCAPTCHA scheme will be released as an open source Java library along with a demo website. presented by Yan Shoshitaishvili Preeny [1] helps you pwn noobs by making it easier to interact with binaries locally. It provides many different LD_PRELOAD binaries that implement a wide range of capabilities. Preeny can keep a binary from using ptrace, forking, or sending signals. It can override the random seed to disable randomness, suspend programs at startup (for debugging/analysis), patch binaries at load time, and can even convert network applications to be able to interact on the commandline. It’s been used enable AFL to fuzz nginx [2], and has been used in a lot of reverse engineering, malware analysis, and exploitation work. The demo will go through Preeny’s capabilities, discuss the addition of new functionality to Preeny, and detail scenarios where Preeny comes in handy. [1] https://github.com/zardus/preeny [2] https://lolware.net/2015/04/28/nginx-fuzzing.html presented by Tony Trummer Introducing QARK (Quick Android Review Kit), a new tool designed with both red and blue teams in mind. QARK will perform static code analysis on Android applications, by decompiling them, parsing their manifests, and finally the tokenizing the underlying Java code to allow full source-to-sink mapping. Unlike other tools QARK will also automatically create customized ADB commands to demonstrate vulnerabilities and probably coolest of all, it can create customized Proof-of-Concept apps to exploit the vulnerabilities it finds. presented by Philippe Arteau This Burp plugin has one focus built script to replay HTTP request with various scripting language. It supports Python, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Powershell and JavaScript. It is the swiss knife of the custom HTTP web exploits. This plugin starts where other automated tools reach their limit. It integrates itself well with “python-paddingoracle” tool to create custom padding oracle attack. It can be used to build quickly malicious JavaScript request for XSS payload. It can be used along sqlmap to exploit second order SQL injection.The BH Arsenal demo will focus on the most common usage: Padding Oracle, SQLi and XSS payload. The Burp plugin is available for download on GitHub and on the Burp App Store: – https://github.com/h3xstream/http-script-generator – https://pro.portswigger.net/bappstore/ShowBappDetails.aspx?uuid=6e0b53d8c801471c9dc614a016d8a20d presented by Ankur Tyagi Rudra provides a framework for automated inspection of network capture files. It extends upon another tool called flow inspect and adds subsequent file-format aware analytics to its feature set. It consumes network capture files as input and passes them through a file type-specific analysis chain. In this chain, the file is operated upon by individual modules like: – FileID – Populates metadata like file entropy, compression ratio, hashes, bitrate, average packet rate, duration, etc. – Libnids – Handles IP defragmentation and TCP reassembly – ProtoID – Custom-made, minimal, regex-based protocol identification module (currently supports HTTP/SMTP/FTP/IMAP/POP3 identification) – Heuristics Engine – Uses a stochastic model based flow scanning engine to detect network traffic abnormalities – Yara Scan – Uses Yara’s file scanning features to identify malicious network streams – Shellcode Scan – Uses Libemu to emulate and identify x86 shellcode – Regex Scan – Helps to identify and extract useful pieces of information (hashes, email addresses, private API keys, password DBs, etc.) from network traffic flows – Entropy visualization wih graphing support – DNS/Whois/GeoIP (with Google Maps API v3 integration) modules Each of these modules sends a report JSON that is then collated to provide a highly verbose summary of the capture file. The analyst has an option of requesting the report in any one of the supported formats (JSON, HTML, PDF). The framework provides command-line based interactive interface that exposes a file analysis object. This object can be used to scan files and generate reports. This architecture also allows quick embedding within third-party tools and applications. Most of the analysis modules accept configuration options and as such provide a faster alternative to directly tweaking codebase. With the above listed modules and features in place, the project is still under development. There are plan to extend its functionality beyond capture files to include binary and document formats with the first public release. presented by Jon Barber Have you ever been faced with a Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Service Provider and dreaded the development effort required to attack it? Have you ever crafted custom SAML payloads and wondered why no one had written this tool before? SAMLyze is a new tool that makes pentesting SAML Service Providers fast and easy. It streamlines the attack process by providing preconfigured payloads for testing against XXE, DTD and automatically performs a variety of SAML validations. The web interface makes configuration of custom assertions and modification of any SAML response values simple. Additionally, the SAMLyze workflow allows for integration with web proxies such as Burp Suite and Zed Attack Proxy. presented by Jason Haddix If you have been in the industry a little while you start to realize that tools are only as good as their fuzz lists. Fuzz lists are the secret sauce behind mapping, brute forcing, web exploitation, etc. SecLists is a collection of multiple types of lists used during security assessments. List types include usernames, passwords, URLs, sensitive data grep strings, fuzzing payloads, mapping/discovery, and many more. Our goals are to enable a security tester to pull this repo onto a new testing box and have access to every type of list that may be needed. This makes security testers less reliant on one tool and more empowered to write their own (or use the one of their choice). Come check out this project and we will walk you through several usages for the SecLists project using your favorite proxies (Burp + ZAP) and show how you can use it to enhance your current testing methodology! presented by Willis Vandevanter SERPICO is a simple and intuitive report generation and collaboration tool; the primary function is to cut down on the amount of time it takes to write a penetration testing report. When building a report the user adds “findings” from the template database to the report. When there are enough findings, the user clicks ‘Generate Report’ to create the document of the report. New Report templates can be added through the UI making the reports easy to customize. The Report Templates themselves use a custom Markup Language that includes common variables (example, finding name, customer name, customer address) along with more complex requirements. We’ve had a lot of growth since the last Arsenal and we are back to show off some of the exciting new features including the ability to import Nessus scans, automated presentation generation, new findings, and more. SERPICO was built by penetration testers with a pen-testers methodology in mind. It might make you hate report writing just a little bit less. presented by Shota Shinogi ShinoBOT is a RAT simulator to evaluate an organization’s ability to protect its networks from an advanced targeted attack. It has the basic RAT functionality. -Execute any command -Upload / Download any file -Take a screenshot -Key logging (new) It has also many components to make ShinoBOT powerful and hard to be detected, which is called ShinoBOT Suite. It contains exploit (shortcut attack, macro attack, extension spoofing), DGA, crypt, decoy file, downloader, dropper, icon spoofing, etc. And the C&C server is provided as a service, so you do not need to prepare a server. The new components allow you to evade the detection of the C&C communication, ShinoEncoder and ShinoProxy. presented by Josh Sokol As security professionals, almost every action we take comes down to making a risk-based decision. Web application vulnerabilities, malware infections, physical vulnerabilities, and much more all boils down to some combination of the likelihood of an event happening. Risk management is a relatively simple concept to grasp, but the place where many practitioners fall down is in the tool set. The lucky security professionals work for companies who can afford expensive GRC tools to aide in managing risk. The unlucky majority out there usually end up spending countless hours managing risk, via spreadsheets. It’s cumbersome, time consuming, and just plain sucks. After starting a Risk Management program from scratch at a $1B/year company, Josh Sokol ran into these same barriers and where budget wouldn’t let him go down the GRC route, he finally decided to do something about it. SimpleRisk is a simple and free tool to perform risk management activities. Based entirely on open source technologies and sporting a Mozilla Public License 2.0, a SimpleRisk instance can be stood up in minutes and instantly provides the security professional with the ability to submit risks, plan mitigations, facilitate management reviews, prioritize for project planning, and track regular reviews. It is highly configurable and includes dynamic reporting and the ability to tweak risk formulas on the fly. It is under active development with new features being added all the time. SimpleRisk is truly Enterprise Risk Management simplified. presented by Adam Compton SPF is an open source simple email phishing tool/framework which can assist penetration testers in quickly deploying phishing exercises in minimal time. The tool, when provided minimal input (such as just a domain name), can automatically search for potential targets, deploy multiple phishing websites, craft and send phishing emails to the targets, record the results, generate a basic report, among other more advanced tasks. Features include: -Written in Python -Can be run fully Automated -Automated Target Identification -Profiling of Target Company -Hosting of Templated and Dynamical y Generated Phishing Websites -Sending of Emails -Collection of Phishing results -Verification of Results The presenter will demo multiple use cases, cover framework internals, and new features. The tool is released and is available for download from https://github.com/tatanus/SPF presented by Takehiro Takahashi Sphinx is a highly scalable open source security monitoring tool that offers real-time auditing and analysis of host activities. It works by having clients forward various types of event logs including process execution with cryptographic signature (MD5 hash), network activity, dll/driver loading, as well as miscellaneous system events to a Sphinx server where each event is recorded and analyzed. With Sphinx, you can quickly find an answer to questions like: – Can we get a list of every event that happened on machine X between date Y and date Z? – Can we graphically trace what happened on my computer in the last 10 minutes because I feel there’s something weird going on? – Who has run a piece of malware whose existence cannot be detected by our existing Anti-Virus product on our network? ▼Advertisement Give me a list of program executions as well as dll loads whose reputation is questionable or bad: – Is there Office application making outbound connection to China? – Are there any dlls injected into explorer.exe whose digital signature does not belong to Microsoft? You can build both simple and complex queries to search for threats. These queries can be run recurrently, and send alerts whenever there’s a hit. presented by Yusen Chen This awesome new tool, sqlchop, is a new SQL injection detection engine, using a pipeline of smart recursive decoding, lexical analysis and semantic analysis. It can detect SQL injection query with extremely high accuracy and high recall with 0day SQLi detection ability, far better than nowadays’ SQL injection detection tools, most of which based on regex rules. We proposed a novel algorithm to achieve both blazing fast speed and accurate detection ability using SQL syntax analysis. I will provide a web interface to demonstrate our new engine. And some CTF-like SQL injection challenge. Hackers are welcomed to have a try. We will prepare gifts and bonus for those who bypass our engine successfully. presented by Michael Ligh The Volatility Framework is a completely open collection of tools, implemented in Python under the GNU General Public License, for the extraction of digital artifacts from volatile memory (RAM) samples of Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Android systems. After last year’s Arsenal, we’re excited to come back and demo an entirely different set of features, such as: – Extracting injected code and defeating anti-reversing tricks. In particular, we’ll repair a PE file whose header(s) have been erased from memory. – How to reverse engineer PlugX and determine what system memory it manipulates to hide its persistence mechanism. We’ll use what we learn to design a new Volatility plugin that detects the rootkit trick. – Using the new unified output rendering engine to consume and process large sets of memory artifacts in JSON, SQL, and other formats. In short, you’ll learn how to build analysis tools on top of the Volatility Framework. presented by Dan Cornell ThreadFix is a tool designed to give security practitioners the ability to understand the security of their applications and efficiently conduct remediation. ThreadFix can help with your reporting issues. The software vulnerability management tool provides security managers and professionals a central location to store and track software. vulnerabilities. Trending reports empower users to give up-to-date security statuses of their web applications. ThreadFix also creates web application firewall virtual patches, protecting applications during remediation, applications and vulnerabilities, prioritize application risk decisions based on data, and translate application vulnerabilities to developers in the tools they are already using. presented by David Cowen Triforce is both a free and commercial product that allows an analyst to reconstruct past activity on a system down to the granular file change thanks to file system journaling forensics. New this year we’ve discovered even more data sources and can now go back up to 5 years in real world tests of individual granular file system changes. Learn how to: – Reverse Wipes – See what was uploaded and downloaded to dropbox – Discover the attackers toolkit – Discover the actual infection vector – Profile malware – See what attachments have been opened and when and more! presented by Elvis Hovor UTIP is an open-source solution that automates phases of threat data extraction from unstructured sources, and maps extracted elements to the STIX standard. By utilizing UTIP, security analysts and practitioners can: – Focus on analysis, instead of spending time parsing text in a document – Apply customized contextualization and prioritization filters to the extraction process – Increase automated communication (M2M) by converting ingested data into structured format – Perform higher order analysis on data extracted from these documents, and determine trends otherwise unattainable The solution utilizes Scrumblr and Sketchy (open-source provided by Netflix) to scrape advisories, the OpenNLP stack for natural language processing, and a few machine learning techniques. The underlying web platform runs on Django, with D3 (JS framework) utilized to visualize insights drawn. presented by Scott Christie Continuing the work from the SANS published War Pi article, Scott will demonstrate new low cost DIY tools and techniques to assess your unique and challenging wireless network infrastructure. The original War Pi article is found at: https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/incident/war-pi-34435 presented by Andreas Schmidt WATOBO is a security tool for testing web applications. It is intended to enable security professionals to perform efficient (semi-automated) web application security audits. Most important features are: – Powerful session management capabilities! You can define login scripts as well as logout signatures. So you don’t have to login manually each time you get logged out. – Can act as a transparent proxy (requires nfqueue) – Vulnerability checks (SQLinjectin, XSS, LFI) out of the box – Handles Anti-CSRF-/One-Time-Tokens – Supports inline de-/encoding, so you don’t have to copy strings to a transcoder and back again. Just do it inside the request/response window with a simple mouse click. – Smart filter functions, so you can find and navigate to the most interesting parts of the application easily. – Is written in (FX) Ruby and enables you to easily define your own checks – Runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS every OS supporting (FX) Ruby – Is free software (licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2) Wireedit.com presented by Michael Sukhar Text editors give us means to manipulate text documents without knowing the character encoding schemes and formatting mechanisms. Vector graphics editors allow us to edit vector based pictures without understanding the underlying vector math. We love Wireshark. It does a fantastic job capturing, decoding and analyzing network packets. But what if you want to edit them? ▼Advertisement WireEdit is a WYSIWYG editor for network packets. It allows editing network packets at any stack layer without knowing anything about their syntax and encoding rules. presented by Michael Ossmann YARD Stick One is a sub-1 GHz wireless transceiver controlled directly from your computer. It uses the same radio circuit as the popular IM-Me. The radio functions that are possible by customizing IM-Me firmware are now at your fingertips when you attach YARD Stick One to a computer via USB. YARD Stick One (Yet Another Radio Dongle) comes with RfCat firmware installed, courtesy of atlas. RfCat allows you to control the wireless transceiver from an interactive Python shell or your own program running on your computer. The device also has CC Bootloader installed, so you can upgrade RFCat or install your own firmware without any additional programming hardware. Featuring an external antenna connector, transmit and receive amplification, and plenty of expansion options, YARD Stick One is the most powerful CC1111 board available. Unlike previous devices based on the CC1111 transceiver, it operates effectively over the entire frequency range of the transceiver IC, and it is open source hardware. So dont miss the chance to meet the best hackers. Be there !!
I am not a big fiction reader. I pick up maybe 2-3 fiction books a year while reading 20-30 non-fiction books. But wow, am I glad this was one of the few I chose to read. I've been a big fan of futuristic/space opera settings since I first started watching Stargate Atlantis many years ago. Since then I've kept up with random sci fi movies and the occasional short story so I didn't have much hope of finishing a book several hundred pages long - I picked it up just to kill a few hours at work. Next thing I knew, I was glued to the story for the next 3 days! The plot is addictive, without giving too much away the story follows a handful of key characters as they attempt to solve thier mission. As the book progresses, you start to realize how much bigger the "conspiracy" truly is and its a lot of fun. One thing I really appreciate is that it is clearly written and logical. The characters are consistent, realistic and definitely not flat. And the writing is solid! My only complaint is that there are not paperback versions of these books. I would pick up the whole series in a heartbeat, for now though I plan on starting book 2 tomorrow!
Share the News As the weather gets warmer, a young Baltimorean’s thoughts turn to frosty pints, or spiked lemonade, or minty mojitos, or crisp glasses of Vino Verde. There’s something extra-refreshing about having a drink outside on a balmy night; here are some of our favorite places to do just that. Add your own favorites in the comments! In Mt. Vernon: Grand Central – Baltimore’s friendliest, most inclusive gay bar is almost always playing excellent music. In Fell’s Point: Woody’s Rum Bar – Known by some as the “Best Bar to Get Day Drunk” on large, sweet, island-themed drinks, all while overlooking the beautiful sandy shores of…. the Inner Harbor. Your call whether that’s a plus or a minus. In Hampden: Rocket to Venus – Starting around this time of year, the restaurant’s outside seating area seems packed every time I drive by. Plus, there’s a 8 percent chance you’ll see John Waters. In Charles Village: Gertrude’s – Go on half-price wine night (Wednesday) to ease the sticker-shock a bit. But the courtyard is lovely! In Federal Hill: The Tiki Barge – Yes, it’s kind of trashy. But it’s also a boat! With a swimming pool! Just go with it. Can’t take the marine air? Retreat to Little Havana‘s popular outdoor seating area, if you can snag a table. Honorable Mention: Your own backyard/roof deck/fire escape/porch. It’s BYOB and there probably won’t be a crowd.
Over the weekend, the Nets landed DeMarre Carroll and the Raptors’ first- and second-round picks in 2018 for Justin Hamilton, an NBA rotation player who, if we’re being honest, is probably better known as an unlikely narrative device in Zach Lowe’s column on the NBA’s scoring explosion last season than he is as a Nets big man. It was a move that earned nearly universal approval, leveraging one of the few advantages Brooklyn had over its peers (abundant cap space) and turning it into several assets out of virtually nothing. The trade does not alter the Nets’ immediate fate; it could be argued that the Raptors, who are on the cusp of dipping below the luxury tax line, benefited more from ridding themselves of the $30 million remaining on Carroll’s contract. But it was one of those beautifully executed 3-yard gains, a sign of forward progress. After years of self-induced paralysis, that in itself is encouraging. The Nets for years were in a dark, dark place and have now stumbled into an area notably less so. To understand what GM Sean Marks has accomplished in his year and a half with the team, you have to hold your nose and take a dive back into that abyss. In other words, you have to put yourself in his shoes. Even in a league that has begun to reward nonlinear thinking, the tiers of team-building can appear to be awfully regimented. More and more to the NBA’s dutiful observers you’re either contending, burning time and money on the treadmill of mediocrity, or blowing it up. The term "mediocrity treadmill" was, ironically, coined in 2011 at an MIT Sloan Conference basketball analytics panel by Kevin Pritchard, the current Pacers president of basketball operations who recently traded superstar Paul George for talented role players in Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis. It was a snappy encapsulation of what fellow panelist Mark Cuban had explained earlier in the talk: "The worst position you can be in [in] the NBA is to be mired in mediocrity." That’s the truism that has been espoused for the past half-decade, and was the basis of the religion Sixers fans built around their idol, Sam Hinkie. But all it takes is a walk across the bridge to realize the falsehoods of it all; if you think your team being unexceptional is absolute bottom, you just aren’t imaginative enough. Life has a way of showing us that things can always get worse. In the NBA, life used Brooklyn as its unfortunate example. The cataclysmic trade between the Nets and Celtics in 2013 will forever live in infamy, perhaps as the worst of all time. It was the pièce de résistance of a half-decade of hall-of-shame-level mismanagement by then-GM Billy King and his coconspirators. We saw Brooklyn offer the fountain of youth in exchange for a decaying empire headlined by Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, who were both on the wrong half of the wrong side of 30 by that point. For Boston, the deal has yielded three exponentially valuable first-round draft picks (no. 17 in 2014, no. 3 in 2016, no. 1 in 2017) with another on the way in 2018. For Brooklyn, the deal has placed the team in a level of purgatory that almost defies the parameters of the sport. The Nets have had control of their first-round pick exactly once since 2010 (in 2013, when they drafted Mason Plumlee no. 22 overall). Let’s recap what has happened with the picks the team has traded since 2010 (sorry, Nets fans): 2011: Utah selects Enes Kanter no. 3 overall (Deron Williams trade) 2012: Portland selects Damian Lillard no. 6 overall (Gerald Wallace trade) 2014: Boston selects James Young no. 17 overall (Garnett/Pierce trade) 2015: Atlanta selects Kelly Oubre Jr. no. 15 overall due to a pick swap with Brooklyn, trades his rights to Washington (Joe Johnson trade) 2016: Boston selects Jaylen Brown no. 3 overall (Garnett/Pierce trade) 2017: Philadelphia selects Markelle Fultz no. 1 overall, via pick swap with Boston (Garnett/Pierce trade) Brooklyn will give up its 2018 first-rounder sight unseen. When the Nets make what will likely be a lottery selection in the 2019 NBA draft, it will be more than half a decade since they’ve used their original pick to draft a player in the first round. By the start of the 2015–16 season, after three postseason appearances in which the Nets reached the second round once, the team slid off of the mediocrity treadmill and fell into something much bleaker. Hinkie established a platform through which Sixers fans could remain engaged in a game beyond the dichotomy of good or bad, win or loss; fans could celebrate the wins, few and far between, in a traditional manner, while also celebrating what the losses were building toward in a way that felt countercultural. He helped spawn a movement of like-minded fans who saw that maybe the real wins were the friends they made along the way — those friends being top-three picks, of course. But there was always that incentive — to drastically increase the likelihood of a high draft pick — built into the Process. The Nets, who not only forfeited picks, but opted either to apply loose protections or no protection whatsoever, did not have that light at the end of their tunnel. They’d fallen out of the three tiers of team-building altogether: they were one of the worst teams in the league without the means to do anything about it. There they were on the absolute fringe, an outlier whose situation denatured the very objective of professional basketball: Winning didn’t matter because they couldn’t; losing didn’t matter because there would be no compensatory relief. It was a Kafka story played out on hardwood. That is what Sean Marks inherited in February 2016. Considering how the draft and free agency have become the NBA’s third season, transactions often betray as much of a team’s personality as what happens on the court. Tom Thibodeau retrofitting the Wolves with the familiar components of past haunts shows a team led by a man of habit; his blockbuster trade with his former employer shows a man who isn’t over his dismissal. As such, in a short time Marks has constructed an identity for the Nets from a transactional perspective: They might be the pettiest little team in the league. The way they’ve dealt with restricted free agents has become their weapon of the weak. Since Marks took office, the Nets have signed offer sheets with four different restricted free agents and haven’t landed a single one. They’ve offered $37 million to Donatas Motiejunas, $50 million to Tyler Johnson, $75 million to Allen Crabbe, and $106 million to Otto Porter Jr. over the past two summers. Embedded in those offers have been all sorts of booby traps: player options, poison-pill structuring with an overloaded first year, 15-percent trade kickers. So far, they’ve been unsuccessful, but at this point, it almost feels like the failure is by design — a "tanking" of free agency that engages in brinkmanship, forcing opposing teams into difficult choices, while endearing the team to agents who suddenly see it as a place that is willing to do the most for their clients. But as to not completely alienate themselves from the rest of the league with their pettiness, they’ve also become willing accomplices for teams eager to get rid of a body in exchange for assets. That, more than anything, has laid the foundation for how the Nets have crawled out of no-man’s-land. In addition to the two years and $30 million remaining on Carroll’s contract, the Nets are also swallowing the remaining $48 million over three years on Timofey Mozgov’s contract, and $20 million over three years on Andrew Nicholson’s deal (a low-key salary dump in the Bojan Bogdanovic trade). For their troubles, the Nets landed the no. 2 pick in the 2015 draft, D’Angelo Russell, the no. 22 pick in the 2017 draft, Jarrett Allen, and a first-rounder (lotto protected) and second-rounder in 2018. The Nets are harvesting youth, and aren’t afraid to pay to continue accumulating assets. But rather than create new bad contracts with their surplus in cap space, Brooklyn has taken to absorbing past contracts that fit within its timeline. The Nets still have one more year of purgatory left to go — no matter how well or how poorly they play next season, they will forfeit their first-round pick to Boston — so loading up on expensive, ineffective players doesn’t exactly affect what the Nets are hoping to achieve. However, by the time they make that pick in 2019, their roster could conceivably consist mainly of players on rookie deals and young players on their second contracts, with just one season of Mozgov’s gargantuan contract left to endure. Around half the teams in the league could find themselves paying the luxury tax, which is a startling amount considering how many legitimate championship contenders there are. Teams will be looking to shed salary, and even after the Carroll trade, the Nets will be in good position to facilitate. Part of Marks’s job is looking into the future, and he’s done a good job of mapping out where his team stands in comparison with leaguewide trends. "The teams with potential cap space shrink and shrink and shrink," Marks said last December. "So it’s not like last year when there were a couple dozen teams that could offer big salaries. It’s shrinking as it goes. There’s no secret out there now. Every team knows we’ve got plenty of cash to spend and maneuver around. We’ll just be strategic in how we do it." According to Albert Nahmad, the Nets will have roughly $16 million remaining in cap space once the Carroll deal is official (and Jarrett Allen officially signs his rookie contract), with a maximum of $21 million available if they rid themselves of their nonguaranteed contracts. Should they decide against a big run for a player like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, they’ll likely have enough cap space to take on another expensive player — which means they’ll have the leverage to ask for an even sweeter pot of assets down the road. "We are going to be aggressive and creative in how we acquire assets, obviously with the hand we’ve been dealt," Marks said last December. Make no mistake about it: The Nets are still going to be bad (their roster is extremely imbalanced; their projected starting small forward, Carroll, is getting paid $15 million a year, and was an unplayable husk over the past two postseasons). But they’ll be recognizable as a normal, struggling team with a bright future, and not an existentially doomed one. That, in itself, is revelatory progress. Three years ago, a painfully mediocre Brooklyn Nets team paid nearly $90.6 million in luxury tax, a record-obliterating figure that, despite a windfall in team spending power over the past two seasons, has yet to be matched, let alone topped. For reference, the Warriors’ tax bill is projected at $37 million once their roster is rounded out; the Cavs, who will once again finish with the highest payroll in the league, will likely pay somewhere in the ballpark of $57 million. The repeater tax levied on Golden State over the next two summers will soon blow Brooklyn’s ignominious place in NBA salary cap history out of the water. For now, though, it stands as a monument to how shortsighted planning can ruin a franchise for a decade. Sean Marks has flipped the script entirely, carving a future out of the abyss by taking a longer view. He’s shepherding, in my opinion, one of the most interesting teams in the league. True to their strategy, in proving that there is no such thing as an untradable contract, the Nets are also proving that there is no such thing as an unsavable team. An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that the Nets hadn’t controlled their original first-round draft pick since 2010; they controlled it in 2013.
Who is the true populist: Bernie Sanders, who promises single-payer health care and college without tuition, or Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to “drain the swamp”? Jeremy Corbyn of the UK’s Labour Party, who wants to nationalize public-sector firms, or Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front, who wants to take France out of the Eurozone? And what would be the consequences of their policies? To answer these questions requires first an understanding of populism. One definition of populism, such as the one found here, refers to it as policies for the “common people.” Populism, therefore, divides the world into two groups: the good “common people” and the evil “them.” “They” deprive the “people” of the rewards of their hard work and exclude them from the political process. But just who are these “common people”? And who are not? Dani Rodrik of Harvard’s Kennedy School in one recent paper and a second coauthored with Sharun Mukand of the University of Warwick proposes an analytical framework for understanding the different strands of nationalism. Rodrik and Mukand suggest that populist politicians obtain support by exploiting divisions within a society, and envisage two kinds of separation. The first is an ethno-national split, such as occurred in Europe in the 1930s and again in modern-day Europe, and is usually associated with right-wing movements. The second is a partition by economic class, as seen in the U.S. in the 1890s, Peron’s Argentina and contemporary Venezuela, and is often found in left-wing organizations. Under this classification, Trump and Le Pen are nationalist populists while Sanders and Corbyn have a class-based agenda. Once we understand this demarcation, we can see they will advocate different policies. The nationalist populists are suspicious of all foreign contact. They regard trade pacts as zero-sum transactions: one side to an agreement wins, and the other loses. Similarly, immigrants hurt native workers and impose fiscal costs on society. These populists are in favor of government expenditures for the “people,” but not anyone else. They favor domestic firms and will support measures to benefit them. Class-based populists, on the other hand, are concerned about the “workers,” who includeindustrial laborers and farmers. They are suspicious of property owners and the financial sector. They seek to use taxes and other measures to redistribute property. They may also advocate government control of the economy through public ownership or the use of licenses and other means to guide production. They can grant subsidies for the purchase of basic needs, such as food or fuel. They will oppose foreigners if they are seen as allied with domestic financiers. Initially, populist measures of either type may lead to prosperity, as more domestic and/or government spending leads to more jobs. But less efficient firms are subsidized, which increases costs. Over time these costs must be paid, as well as those made directly to households. If the bond markets are reluctant to finance government budget deficits (except at very high interest rates), the government may turn to the central bank to finance its expenditures. But the resulting inflation leads to more spending and monetary creation. A country with a fixed exchange rate, like several in Latin America, eventually runs out of foreign exchange. The resulting crises are blamed on “foreigners” or “capitalists,” and eventually may lead to a collapse. Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards (currently at UCLA’s Andersen School of Management) wrote an analysis of the populist policies of Latin American governments that appeared in the Journal of Development Economics in 1990 (see working paper here). In their view: “We mean by “populism” an approach to economics that emphasizes growth and income redistribution and deemphasizes the risks of inflation and deficit finance, external constraints and the reaction of economic agents to aggressive non-market policies.…populist policies do ultimately fail; and when they fail it is always at a frightening cost to the very groups who were supposed to be favored.” The most prominent manifestations of President Trump’s nationalist populism have come in the negotiations over NAFTA and the administration’s refusal to abide by the decisions of the World Trade Organization. In addition, there are its policies that affect illegal immigrants and its support of measures to cut legal migration. None of these will lead to an immediate crisis in the U.S. economy, but they will have long-run consequences for the growth of the economy. Moreover, the law of unintended consequences has a wide reach, The Trump administration may find that retaliation can sting.
In one of her most engaging Ted Talks, writer Chimamanda Adichie once warned again the danger of a single story – you show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become in popular perception. India and Pakistan have seen this happen for 69 years. To this day, the pedagogical history textbooks in the sibling nations give children splintered chronicles – uni-dimensional accounts of historical events that are fraught with biases against the so-called other. In 2005, Qasim Aslam and Ayyaz Ahmad, two young Pakistanis, saw this up close. They were invited to be part of a Seeds of Peace conflict resolution camp in Maine, USA – a platform that brought together children from India and Pakistan to hold dialogues. In one of the workshops, the children compared the historical timelines of their two countries. During the discussion, conflicting viewpoints emerged and ricocheted off each other – the children from both sides of the border nurtured a different narrative of a shared history. “What we realised while talking to our Indian friends was that it was very difficult to have a peaceful conversation because both sides didn’t know what the other side had been taught,” recounted Ahmad. There were evident discrepancies in the two versions of history. When Aslam and Ahmad returned home to Pakistan, that incongruity disconcerted them. In their mind, it lingered and remained. Six years later, in a casual conversation, the two decided to start working on a book that would juxtapose the Indian version of history with the Pakistani one, highlighting where the respective historical trajectories deviated and merged. That was the birth of The History Project. Courtesy: The History Project What lay in front of Ahmad and Aslam was a mammoth task. They began by calling out for academics and scholars who would volunteer to help cull text from both Indian and Pakistani school books and assemble them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “We were very cognisant of the fact that we could not have every textbook,” said Ahmad, an MBA from Cambridge. “So we are not claiming to present [the] narrative of textbooks in their entirety – that was never the purpose. The purpose is to show that there are overarching narratives and that these textbooks are just samples from those narratives that give the other side a good sense of what’s being taught in India or Pakistan.” Through The History Project, the children are encouraged to compare both renditions of history, critically analyse the texts and make their inferences. By placing the two texts side by side, the prejudice subtly taught by the educational apparatus becomes apparent. In Pakistan, for instance, a 10th grader’s history book delineates the partition of Bengal as, “Curzon [the Governor-General of India] felt that the Muslims in East Bengal would be better off in a separate province governed by Dhaka. However, Hindus saw it as a deliberate plot… they were not ready to accept any step that would benefit Muslims.” The same event described in an Indian textbook reads, “The Indian nationalists condemned the partitioning of the province and saw it as a deliberate attempt to divide Bengalis on religious lines. The nationalists were also upset… because it showed no regard for public opinion within Bengal.” The History Project’s firstborn, Partitioned Histories: The Other Side of Your Story, is a book that binds the dual accounts sprawling across a timeline of 1857 to 1947. Sanaya Patel, a third-year law student in Mumbai, co-authored the book with Sidra Zia, who is the Content Director leading the team from Lahore. Working on the Indian version, Patel compiled texts from five varying schoolbooks (belonging to the curriculum designed by several school boards). “While going through the books, we deliberately tried to pick out sections that had some kind of strong, hidden biases,” said Patel. “As children you wouldn’t notice these biases, but somewhere subconsciously they become a part of you. So when I sat down to look for these elements, it was overwhelming. Also, when I received the final copy of Partitioned Histories, I sat and marked the parts in the Pakistani version that I thought were different from what I had learned in school. It’s interesting to see that there really is a difference.” Courtesy: The History Project At select institutions in Pakistan and India, The History Project holds a five-session, activity-based workshop. Designed with the help of an ex-Harvard University faculty member, the workshop aims to teach children about multiple perspectives. One of the sessions involves taking two children aside and asking them to simulate an argument. The reason for the argument is unknown to the rest of the class. After the argument has ended, the class is expected to come up with reasons for what the cause of the argument may be. “Interestingly, no one knows the real reason, but everyone will give their opinion,” said Patel. “And that’s how we are learning history in schools – as students we don’t know really what happened in the past, but we are reading someone else’s perspective. What we are trying to do through THP is to make students realise that history is not a set of facts but a perspective, and it’s important to know whose perspective you are looking at.” Prejudices, nationalism and animosity towards the presumed other are deliberately instilled in children at a young age. Ahmad got to experience it first hand when during a workshop in Mumbai, a student stood up and condescendingly asked what he was doing there. “The girl must have been 11-12 years old. I didn’t get offended, but I felt sad because she didn’t even know me. All she knew was that I was a Pakistani.” At the culmination of another workshop in Pakistan, a student approached him and said that she understood that he was trying to teach that the other side wasn’t inherently devious, but she felt angry every time Indians were mentioned. “The kid really didn’t understand why or where that anger was coming from,” said Ahmad. “How do we fix these issues of hatred and intolerance?” Last year, Galaxy School in Rajkot, Gujarat, was the first in India to introduce The History Project’s book into its curriculum. “Growing up, we’ve heard biases such as Muslims have a major fault (sic) in all the events that took place,” said Advait Ketan Gosai, a 14-year-old student at Galaxy School. “But when we were given both the sides of the story, we were able to analyse both motives, which we often reject when it comes to the other side. In their eyes they were right. I may not entirely agree with them, but I can understand their perspective better now.” Across the border, in Pakistan, Noor Nabi Noor Mir, a student at Lahore Grammar School agrees. “In a larger sense, The History Project has helped develop humanity within me. I think the best takeaway is that we get to learn how to understand the ‘other’.” So far, The History Project has worked with over 700 children in both the countries. Eventually, they intend on introducing histories of more countries. “We’ve started working on other narratives – there aren’t inconsistent narratives of India-Pakistan alone. There is enough historical conflict in the world, like Israel-Palestine, for example. So we are now looking at things that could be interesting, but also relatable,” says Ahmad. “By the end of our workshops, I wouldn’t say that we hope to completely shift the children’s worldview – that would take a much longer process, but I hope they become more open to the idea of the existence of alternative narratives.”
Story Series Confusion Gameplay Playersare given a choice of how to form their party at theoutset of the game. If s/he so wishes, the party can be made upentirely ofrobots or monsters. This bucks conventional wisdom, of course, sincetheseparties would be too devoid of magic and too inflexible, respectively.The party of four can be accompanied by story-based "NPC's", thoughNPC (non-playercharacter) is a misnomer since you can command them in battle.These characters join and depart as dictated by the plot, and you cannotunequip anything from their person (so beware what you give them). Often, theNPC's will offer powerful commands that are either likely too expensive toprocure upon first meeting the character, or extremely uncommon at that pointin the game. References to Mythology and Lore As was commonplace in Square RPG's and now in many videogames, there areseveral references made to Roman, Egyptian and Norse mythology and other cultural lore. Characters Isis , a Goddess who is the living manifestation of all the pieces of magi , a Goddess who is the living manifestation of all the pieces of magi Apollo , a seemingly benevolent God who initially aids you in your quest , a seemingly benevolent God who initially aids you in your quest Venus , the vain Goddessof beauty who casts out the ugly and crippled from her city , the vain who casts out the ugly and crippled from her city Ashura , an early boss and wannabe god strengthened by the power of magi , an early boss and wannabe god strengthened by the power of magi Odin , a god who resurrects your party upon death and tests your ability tocomplete your task , a god who resurrects your party upon death and tests your ability tocomplete your task titan (male)/ titania (female), a monster class blessed with great strength (male)/ (female), a monster class blessed with great strength chimera , a monster class based on the multi-species monster of Greekmythology , a monster class based on the multi-species monster of medusa , a monster class based on the Greek myth of the Gorgon Medusa, able to turn passersby into stone with a single glance Sleipnir , a monster class based on the eight-legged horse of Norse mythology mephisto , a monster class (complete with pitchfork and pointed tail) based on the Faustian demon Mephistopheles cocatris , a monster class based on the mythological creature, cockatrice, which possessed a petrifying glare hydra , a monster class based on the multi-headed repitilian creature of Greek mythology scylla , a monster class based on the sea monster of Greek mythology (represented in the game, oddly enough, by the medusa sprite) leviathn , a monster class based on the Biblical serpent Leviathan O-bake, a monster class that is essentially a ghost, based on the shape-shifting spirits of Japanese folklore Locations Valhalla , Odin’s residence , Odin’s residence Edo, a world inspired by feudal Japan ("Edo" is the actual former name of the Japanese capital, "Tokyo") Items Gungnir , a deadly spear that can damage multipleenemies (so long as they are in the same group) at once, named after Odin's mythical spear , a deadly spear that can damage multipleenemies (so long as they are in the same group) at once, named after Odin's mythical spear Xcalibr , one of the strongest swords in the game named after King Arthur’slegendary Excalibur , one of the strongest swords in the game named after King Arthur’slegendary Excalibur Hermes boots, equippable boots that raises agility, named after the Greek messenger god boots, equippable boots that raises agility, named after the Greek messenger god Masmune , a piece of magi that is essentially a powerful katana named after the Japanese swordsmith Masamune , a piece of magi that is essentially a powerful katana named after the Japanese swordsmith Masamune Muramas , a powerful katana named after the Japanese swordsmith Muramasa , a powerful katana named after the Japanese swordsmith Muramasa Aegis , a piece of magi that covers the entire party in a protective shieldfor a single round, named after the Greek god Zeus' shield , a piece of magi that covers the entire party in a protective shieldfor a single round, named after the Greek god Zeus' shield Pegasus , apiece of magi that can transport the party to any previously-visited locale, named after the Greek god Poseidon's winged horse , apiece of magi that can transport the party to any previously-visited locale, named after the Greek god Poseidon's winged horse Arthur , body armor named after King Arthur , body armor named after King Arthur Hecate, footwear that increases magical potency, named after the Greek goddess of Witchcraft The story revolves around MAGI, the shards of a shattered statue of the goddess, Isis. The Hero is awakened by his father, who explains he has to leave for a while. He then makes his way through the Hero's open window. Years later, the Hero decides to set out to find his father, and eventually joins a fight involving new gods bent on taking over the world and the Guardians, an organization dedicated to the protection of MAGI and to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. The player visits twelve distinct worlds, in addition to the Celestial World and the shrine at its center. The goal of the game is to collect the varied pieces of MAGI scattered around each of these worlds. These MAGI pieces can also be equipped by your characters to increase stats or grant special abilities.Final Fantasy Legend II is the second game in the "SaGa" franchise to be brought over to the United States, and is one of many games re-named with the "Final Fantasy" moniker in order to capitalize on the attention garnered by the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The entire "Final Fantasy Legend" series is actually "SaGa" in Japan, while "Final Fantasy Adventure" was originally part of the "Seiken Densetsu" series -- known better in the United States as the "Mana" series (Secret of Mana; Dawn of Mana; Legend of Mana). The "SaGa" series finally made it over to the United States with SaGa Frontier for the Playstation, and continued producing new entries such as Unlimited SaGa for the Playstation 2.Final Fantasy Legend II, which has very similar--almost identical--gameplay to its predecessor, plays in a traditional turn-based queue style made popular by the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. In other words, you select a command for each of your four party members before making a final confirmation, which leads to the beginning of the "round" between player and enemy. One notable difference between Legend II's battle system and those of Dragon Quest / Final Fantasy is that each of your characters can equip multiple, distinct weapons, spells and shields -- most of which have limited uses before they break or otherwise expire. For instance, your fighter can carry a Rapier, Long Sword, Battle Axe and Psi Dagger, and is free to use whichever he pleases in a given round of combat. Shields similarly count as "consumable" items (i.e. use a shield for a round, and you're protected; but it'll break after multiple uses) as opposed to other armor (mail, boots, helmets), which act as one might expect (they simply buff your defense stats; they are not "used" in battle).Your human and mutant (the "mages" in this game) characters grow based on how you use them, similar to Final Fantasy II's (Famicom, Wonderswan, Playstation, Gameboy Advance) level-up system. (Note that the human level up capabilities is a change from this game's predecessor; in Final Fantasy Legend, humans needed to drink special potions in order to improve statistics.) If a character continues to attack with a Battle Axe or other strength-based weapon, eventually his strength statistics will increase. Attack with an agility-based weapon (whips, rapiers), and his agility will increase. Similarly, use of magic and magic-imbued items will increase a character's Mana. With enough work, one could conceivably craft all-around characters -- fighters and mutants who are adept at magic and fighting, respectively, past what's expected.Legend II does offer two unique playable classes: monsters and robots. Monsters don't level up; rather, they grow by eating the meat of stronger monsters left behind after battle. Eat the meat of a weaker monster, and your character will devolve accordingly. Robots level up based on the equipment you give them; in fact, weapons become infinitely rechargeable when equipped to robots (i.e. they don't break), though to balance this out, their maximum usages are cut in half. (E.g. A Long Sword starts out with 30 uses before it breaks; equip it to a robot, and it maxes out at 15, but can be "recharged" by healing at an inn.) A robot's statistics increase immediately in a similar fashion to how humans and mutants level up: Equip a strength-based weapon, and you'll see an immediate boost in the robot's strength statistic. Stronger equipment in general boosts a robot's maximum hit point count as well. The robot class offers a lot of interesting experimentation in the way of finding the best combination of weapons, items and armor that maximizes all statistics to 99, as well as hit points to 999. Caveat: Robots, no matter what you do, can never be adept magic users. Thus, equipping spellbooks and magic-imbued weaponry is a waste. Gameplay Oddities There are a few elements scattered about the game that would likely strike a casual observer as odd or unrefined.
A group of concerned thinkers, including Roger Scruton, have written a rousing manifesto calling for the defense of Europe against its accelerating cultural suicide. The document is called The Paris Statement, and it is good strong stuff. (I learned about it from this article at Reaction, where you can find additional commentary.) You can read the Statement here. With a document of this length I will naturally have a quibble or two, but something like this — a clear and ringing declaration of European identity and purpose, that names and denounces the mortiferous ideology that has brought this great civilization to the brink of death — is Europe’s only hope. If it becomes a rallying creed for a pan-European awakening, as our own Declaration did, it might have a miraculous effect. I will excerpt a few brief passages (and have bolded some for emphasis): From part 1: Europe belongs to us, and we belong to Europe. These lands are our home; we have no other. The reasons we hold Europe dear exceed our ability to explain or justify our loyalty. It is a matter of shared histories, hopes and loves. It is a matter of accustomed ways, of moments of pathos and pain. It is a matter of inspiring experiences of reconciliation and the promise of a shared future. Ordinary landscapes and events are charged with special meaning—for us, but not for others. From part 2: Europe, in all its richness and greatness, is threatened by a false understanding of itself… the false Europe praises itself as the forerunner of a universal community that is neither universal nor a community. From part 7: The true Europe is a community of nations. We have our own languages, traditions and borders… This unity-in-diversity seems natural to us. Yet this is remarkable and precious, for it is neither natural nor inevitable. From part 9: The true Europe has been marked by Christianity… It is no accident that the decline of Christian faith in Europe has been accompanied by renewed efforts to establish political unity—an empire of money and regulations, covered with sentiments of pseudo-religious universalism, that is being constructed by the European Union. From part 12: Our shared life is an ongoing project, not an ossified inheritance. But the future of Europe rests in renewed loyalty to our best traditions, not a spurious universalism demanding forgetfulness and self-repudiation. Europe did not begin with the Enlightenment. Our beloved home will not be fulfilled with the European Union. The real Europe is, and always will be, a community of nations at once insular, sometimes fiercely so, and yet united by a spiritual legacy that, together, we debate, develop, share—and love. Part 13: The true Europe is in jeopardy. The achievements of popular sovereignty, resistance to empire, cosmopolitanism capable of civic love, the Christian legacy of humane and dignified life, a living engagement with our Classical inheritance—all this is slipping away. As the patrons of the false Europe construct their faux Christendom of universal human rights, we are losing our home. From part 15: Libertine hedonism often leads to boredom and a profound sense of purposelessness. The bond of marriage has weakened. In the roiling sea of sexual liberty, the deep desires of our young people to marry and form families are often frustrated. A liberty that frustrates our heart’s deepest longings becomes a curse. Our societies seem to be falling into individualism, isolation and aimlessness. Instead of freedom, we are condemned to the empty conformity of consumer- and media-driven culture. It is our duty to speak the truth: The Generation of ’68 destroyed but did not build. They created a vacuum now filled by social media, cheap tourism and pornography. From part 17: Europe’s multicultural enterprise, which denies the Christian roots of Europe, trades on the Christian ideal of universal charity in an exaggerated and unsustainable form. It requires from the European peoples a saintly degree of self-abnegation. We are to affirm the very colonization of our homelands and the demise of our culture as Europe’s great twenty-first century glory—a collective act of self-sacrifice for the sake of some new global community of peace and prosperity that is being born. Part 20: The hubris of the false Europe is now becoming evident, despite the best efforts of its partisans to shore up comfortable illusions. Above all, the false Europe is revealed to be weaker than anyone imagined. Popular entertainment and material consumption do not sustain civic life. Shorn of higher ideals and discouraged from expressing patriotic pride by multiculturalist ideology, our societies now have difficulty summoning the will to defend themselves. Moreover, civic trust and social cohesion are not renewed by inclusive rhetoric or an impersonal economic system dominated by gigantic international corporations. Again, we must be frank: European societies are fraying badly. If we but open our eyes, we see an ever-greater use of government power, social management and educational indoctrination. It is not just Islamic terror that brings heavily armed soldiers into our streets. Riot police are now necessary to quell violent anti-establishment protests and even to manage drunken crowds of football fans. The fanaticism of our football loyalties is a desperate sign of the deeply human need for solidarity, a need that otherwise goes unfulfilled in the false Europe. There is much, much more: the second half of the document moves from diagnosis to prescription, and it is a prescription, for the most part, that any traditionalist should applaud. Go and read the whole thing.
Editors' Note: This article is part of the Public Square 2014 Summer Series: Conversations on Religious Trends. Read other perspectives from the Mormon community here. A common interpretation of recent LDS disciplinary actions against Kate Kelly—asserted by Kelly herself and echoed over much of social media—argues that these actions were intended to repress questions. In a letter to her local leaders before her disciplinary council, Kelly claimed that if they excommunicate her, they are "punishing anyone with a question in their heart who wants to ask that question vocally, openly and publicly." Again in an interview following her excommunication, Kelly summarized: "I think the church is trying to scare people away from asking questions out loud, particularly women." I disagree, and I believe that this assessment makes Mormons with questions feel needlessly at risk and gives those uncomfortable with questions a false cue. The potential result of reversing an increasingly transparent and expansive Mormon culture is one that gives most people a legitimate feeling of deep discouragement. Here are a few reasons that persuade me that such discouragement is misplaced and that LDS leaders, local or general, were not intending to repress or punish questions: 1) People have been asking hard questions for a long time. And very vocally and visibly, thanks to the internet. LDS sociologist Armand Mauss, observing the lively presence of feminist blogs over the years, believes the recent disciplinary councils "simply represent [an effort] to draw the line more emphatically between dissent (even public dissent), on the one hand, and organized movements seeking to bring pressure for change upon the church leaders, on the other hand. ... Official toleration for such dissent in 2014 seems to me much greater than it was two decades ago." A few weeks ago, the head of Church PR, Michael Otterson, reached out to several blogs in the "Bloggernacle" (the familiar term for the Mormon online aggregate), including Feminist Mormon Housewives, to post a letter, implicitly acknowledging the blogs as a valuable forum familiar to Church PR. 2) The Church says it's not. Church Public Affairs and leadership have repeatedly emphasized that asking questions is welcomed in the Church. The first official statement from the Newsroom opened by saying "[t]he Church is a family made up of millions of individuals with diverse backgrounds and opinions. There is room for questions and we welcome sincere conversations." Follow-up statements reiterated the centrality of questions to LDS history and theology and the "room to ask questions." On June 28th, the First Presidency and Twelve Apostles published a letter on lds.org reaffirming that "members are always free to ask such questions [about Church doctrine, history, or practice] and earnestly seek greater understanding. … Simply asking questions has never constituted apostasy." 3) Kelly's local leaders say it's not. The letters from Kelly's local leaders have explicitly denied that asking questions has anything to do with the disciplinary decisions. The probationary and excommunication letters specify that "the difficulty… is not that you say you have questions or even that you believe that women should receive the priesthood," but Kelly's "aggressive" opposition to Church doctrine and counsel, such as leading a protest on Temple Square and disseminating proselyting material for her organization.
Mere words can’t express the depth of my appreciation to the dozens of you who went above and beyond on my behalf these past few months. Many of you took the time to reach out to both the Mets and WOR, and I can’t imagine that hurt my chances of a return to the job I’m so excited about having in the first place. Two little words aren’t close to enough, but they are totally heartfelt: “THANK YOU.” During this process, some of you have taken some shots at the Mets or WOR, and I say this not as an apologist or a company stooge, but quite sincerely – I have had nothing but great experiences with both the Wilpon Family and the new radio station. They both have the best interests of the overall collective at heart, they really do. Also, I’m aware that those with dissenting opinions of the “Howie&Josh” dynamic have taken some shots as well… and I’ll invoke the old George Carlin line: “Like my grandpa always said, ‘hey, if everyone liked the same thing, they’d all be after your grandma.’” I solemnly and sincerely pledge that I will try as always to make every Met fan a happy listener to our presentation… I regard this job with a near-sacred responsibility since so many are so passionate. And although I may continue to disappoint some of you, please know I’m doing my best to please everyone, but given that no two listeners have the exact same taste, that’s simply an impossible task. The late Harry Kalas used to quote Shakespeare and tell us fledgling broadcasters “to thine own self be true;” and that’s the way I’ll continue to go at it: Mets fan, a little goofy (okay, a lot goofy), not in possession of a classic radio voice, but at the very least, wanting to inform and entertain for all nine innings without fail. That’s all I can control. I am overjoyed that I’m back for another year to live out my childhood fantasy as a Mets radio announcer. There is no better partner in the business than Howie Rose, and I am honored to return as the John Oates to his Darryl Hall. It should be a really fun and interesting year. (I can’t wait to watch Bartolo Colon run the bases, can you?) Lastly, I would love to host as many of you as possible after Opening Day to thank you in person, buy you a beverage, and just talk a little baseball. I’m guessing McFadden’s is the spot that makes sense. Let’s touch base via twitter in late March and coordinate a meet-up, which will serve as my chance to thank you very kind people, fan to fan. Wishing you peace, love and soul… (and thanking you all again) — -Josh Lewin Advertisements
Including the Kresge Building, Dan Gilbert has now purchased FIVE more buildings downtown! Remember all of 24 hours ago, when we said that Dan Gilbert's Holiday Shopping Spree was just warming up? We were spot on! Here are some pics to help you figure out what buildings these are, as there is a good chance anyone currently downtown is now standing in Gilbert Country. We'll be up late figuring out what the story is with each of these addresses, but here are some basics according to the Quicken Loans press release. Here's the damage: 1. The Kresge Building, 1201 Woodward: News of this purchase leaked yesterday. The Kresge has nine stories and is now slated for renovation. Downstairs will remain retail, upstairs either residential or office. 2. 1217 Woodward, which is the five-story building that we suspected would be included in the deal, as it was part of the bundle that the Kresge was initially offered in. This one will also be renovated, and the upstairs will be converted to residential or office use. 3. 1412 Woodward: That weird little concrete building we've been keeping an eye on for a while now. The facade makes no sense to us, but the structure itself was apparently built in 1916. The standard retail below/office above is the official word on its future. 4. Cary Lofts Building, 1301 Broadway: This one is interesting. Built in 1906, Rock Ventures is saying the building needs extensive renovation. Residential units are planned for the top four floors, retail on ground level. 20,000 sqft total. 5. The "Small Plates Building", 1521 Broadway: This unfortunately named structure has five stories, 9,300 sqft in total. Small Plates restaurant takes up the whole first floor, with residential lofts above. · Rock Ventures Wraps Up 2012 with Purchase of Five Downtown Properties [Quicken Loans]
IndieCade feature A Mother's Inferno follows a mother on her horrific journey to find her son. The game begins on a moving train, but this train is anything but ordinary. A ride for a mother and son takes a terrifying turn when a demonic entity absconds with the child. The mother, armed with only a shard of broken glass, must pass through the train cars, which are often filled with more otherworldly things than seats. She must decapitate corpses, kill fierce creatures, and do physical harm to her own person if she ever wants to see her son again. A Mother's Inferno is a free-to-play first-person horror game for PC, developed by students from The National Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment (DADIU) in Denmark. A team of seventeen created the title from scratch in a little under one month, and the finished product earned a spot in the showcase at this year's E3 IndieCade. A Mother's Inferno heavily borrows motifs from an inferno of another kind. Dante Alighieri's Inferno lurks in the shadows: the game's atmosphere, the mother's trip through the train – each car more bizarre and dangerous than the last – eerily reminiscent of Dante's descent through the circles of Hell. The mother is tortured by visions: flashing images of the monsters she must kill and the possible fate of her child. The boss battles, five in total, represent the stages of loss. The mother must brutally kill demons meant to represent her own denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance in relation to her son's abduction. Anger, for example, is a rampaging skeletal bull whose heart the mother must stab. The game can be completed in about fifteen minutes, but that doesn't make A Mother's Inferno any less harrowing. It plays like a horror movie and its graphics are just low-key enough to keep tensions high. It can be downloaded in full from DADIU Games' website. Just make sure to turn the volume down, and keep on a light or two. And please, don't play this game if you have epilepsy.
Brazil will seek China's expertise and financing to complete its third nuclear power plant when President Michel Temer makes a state visit to Beijing on Friday, Brazilian government officials said Tuesday. The Brazilian nuclear energy company Eletronuclear will sign a cooperation agreement with China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), signaling their intent to establish a partnership to finish the Angra 3 plant, the officials said. Construction of the 1,405-megawatt reactor on the coast south of Rio de Janeiro has dragged on for three decades and its completion is now scheduled for 2023, but Brazil does not have the estimated 16 billion reais ($5 billion) needed to finish the job. Russia is also interested in completing Angra 3 and Eletronuclear, a subsidiary of state-run electric utility Eletrobras, has held talks with the Russian nuclear monopoly Rosatom. The Chinese corporation is expected to have the advantage in terms of abundant financial resources. The head of Eletronuclear, Bruno Barretto, signed an initial memorandum with CNNC on the Angra 3 completion in Beijing in December when he visited Chinese banks that are potential financiers, Eletronuclear said in a statement. Temer's government has announced plans to privatize Eletrobras, Latin America's largest utility. But Eletronuclear will be split off and remain in state hands under Brazil's Constitution, which establishes that nuclear facilities must be government controlled. Temer said on Tuesday he expects China to be a major player in Brazil's plans to modernize its ports, airports and other infrastructure projects that will be offered to investors in private concessions. He also hopes China will finance energy projects. "China could be one of the big investors in our plans for concessions," he said in a video message released after he set off for Beijing, where he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the BRICS summit in Xiamen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused “the Armenian lobby” of conspiring with his political opponents to deny his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) a landslide victory in Turkey’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Erdogan’s hopes to extend the AKP’s 12-year rule and gain even more sweeping powers through constitutional changes could be dashed by the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Sunday’s elections. Observers say that the AKP party may well lose its parliamentary majority if the HDP clears a 10 percent vote threshold for being represented in Turkey’s parliament. Erdogan has increasingly attacked the HDP on the campaign trail in recent weeks. He has accused Western and Turkish media critical of his government, other domestic critics as well as unnamed Armenian groups of helping the progressive Kurdish movement make a strong showing in the polls. “Their biggest ally is [the Turkish group] Dogan Media. The Armenian lobby, homosexuals and those who believe in ‘Alevism without Ali’ -- all these representatives of sedition are [the HDP’s] benefactors,” “Hurriyet Daily News” news quoted him as saying during a campaign rally in eastern Turkey on Wednesday. During another rally held on May 27, Erdogan similarly listed “the Armenian Diaspora” among forces which he said oppose Turkey’s transformation into a presidential republic headed by him. Three days later, he hit out at “The New York Times,” saying, according to “Hurriyet Daily News,” that the U.S. daily is “close to the Armenian lobby.” No groups in Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora have publicly endorsed the HDP in the Turkish parliamentary race, even though it is the only major party in Turkey to have recognized the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. The HDP leader, Selahattin Demirtas, has publicly called on the Turkish government to acknowledge that the 1915 slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians constituted genocide. The Erdogan government, just like the previous authorities in Ankara, vehemently denies that. In late April, Erdogan reiterated his view that the rulers of the crumbling Ottoman Empire were right to order mass deportations of Armenians.
CALGARY — Windowless bedrooms in multi-family buildings don’t pose a safety threat to dwellers or detract from Calgary’s goal of being “socially inclusive,” according to a new city report. In June, city council directed administration to investigate safety, societal and urban design issues concerning multi-storey, residential buildings with windowless bedrooms — an entirely legal practice under current building codes. But the report fails to address the important role sunlight has on “good psychological health,” says one city council member. “The one area that the report doesn’t address is the availability of natural light,” said Ald. Gord Lowe, a member of the Calgary Planning Commission. “If you read anything particularly for those of us who live in a northern climate, in the winter natural light is an important thing.” Changes to the provincial safety code in 2006 allow for the construction of suites with windowless bedrooms in residential buildings four storeys or higher. However, there must be a sprinkler system installed throughout the building, including all bedrooms, as well as a proper ventilation system. Additionally, Calgary’s fire department said a bedroom window on a fourth floor is not an appropriate emergency exit. Lowe and Ald. Druh Farrell said the concern is less about safety and more about quality of life. “If we want to encourage people living in multi-family (units) we need to provide a high quality of life and that we’re not simply warehousing people,” said Farrell, who also sits on the planning commission. However, getting people into multi-family units requires an approach that must consider several factors, such as privacy and natural lighting. “We haven’t somehow incorporated those basics into how we design our multi-family communities,” she said. In a letter to the city, the director of government affairs for the Canadian Home Builders’ Association, Amie Blanchette, said “the market should then rule the desire to have windows in a highrise bedroom.” Farrell calls the market solution argument a red herring. “We hear that with community design as well,” she said. “For example with tree-lined streets, the market very clearly has said that it wants tree-lined streets and yet we haven’t been providing it.” The report notes there “may be a negative impact” from a design standpoint if the lack of windows on a building wall does not “enhance the visual and functional connection” between the building and the surroundings. Council does have several options if it wants to pursue changes to the codes: • Advocate for a ministerial order requiring windows in all bedrooms; • Order city administration to pursue changes to the National Building Code, which are set to be updated in 2015; and • The creation of a city charter could allow the city to establish its own building safety rules.
Prosecutors have used the Espionage Act to convict officials who leaked classified information. They have never successfully convicted any leak recipient who then passed the information along, however, and the Justice Department has never tried to prosecute a journalist —which Mr. Assange portrays himself as being — under either a Republican or a Democratic administration. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, said Tuesday on Fox News that he believed The Times should be investigated alongside WikiLeaks, although he cautioned, “This is very sensitive stuff because it gets into the America’s First Amendment.” “I certainly believe that WikiLleaks has violated the Espionage Act, but then what about the news organizations — including The Times — that accepted it and distributed it?” Mr. Lieberman said, adding: “To me, The New York Times has committed at least an act of bad citizenship, and whether they have committed a crime, I think that bears a very intensive inquiry by the Justice Department.” A government official familiar with the investigation said that treating WikiLeaks different from newspapers might be facilitated if investigators found any evidence that Mr. Assange aided the leaker, who is believed to be a low-level Army intelligence analyst — for example, by directing him to look for certain things and providing technological assistance. Photo If Mr. Assange did collaborate in the original disclosure, then prosecutors could charge him with conspiracy in the underlying leak, skirting the question of whether the subsequent publication of the documents constituted a separate criminal offense. But while investigators have looked for such evidence, there is no public sign suggesting that they have found any. Meanwhile, according to another government official familiar with the investigation, Justice Department officials have also examined whether Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks could be charged with trafficking in stolen government property. But scholars say there might be legal difficulties with that approach, too, because the leaked documents are reproductions of files the government still possesses, not physical objects missing from its file cabinets. That means they are covered by intellectual property law, not ordinary property law. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “This is less about stealing than it is about copying,” said John G. Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in Internet issues and intellectual property. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Intellectual property law criminalizes the unauthorized reproduction of certain kinds of commercial information, like trade secrets or copyrighted music, films and software files. But those categories do not appear to cover government documents, which by law cannot be copyrighted and for which there is no ordinary commercial market. Mr. Assange has received leaks of private-sector information as well. He has indicated, for example, that his next step might be to publish a copy of the contents of a hard drive belonging to an executive at a bank — apparently, Bank of America. If he does so, some of the problems associated with trying to find a way to prosecute him for distributing leaked government documents could disappear. The works of a person in the private sector are automatically copyrighted, and bank documents could be deemed trade secrets. “If you had large-scale dissemination of a private-sector company’s records, there might be some kind of argument there similar to commercial espionage,” said James Boyle, a Duke University law professor who specializes in intellectual property and public-domain issues. There would still be obstacles. For example, Mr. Assange could claim that his distribution of the files was allowable under the “fair use” exception to copyright law and that it was not for financial gain. Still, “fair use” does not allow wholesale reproduction, and prosecutors could argue that his organization was raising money from its activities. Even so, Mr. Boyle cautioned, intellectual property law is not well designed to prosecute what WikiLeaks is doing. “The reason people are upset about this is not about commercial theft or misusing the fabulous original expressions of U.S. diplomats,” Mr. Boyle said. “I think it is the wrong tool. You go after Al Capone for tax evasion rather than bootlegging — fine. But this is a bridge too far.”
King Falafel has always made me feel at home in my neighbourhood. It is one of those places that stays the same as everything outside of it changes. The faded posters of Morocco on the walls, falafel for $3.80, customers with greyer hair each time I see them, and the Rifi family smiling and never failing to ask me "Spicy?". In the 1970s, relatively new to Canada from Morocco, Abderazzak and Jamila Rifi noticed a lack of freshly made falafel and halal food in Toronto. In 1978, they opened the first shop in the new plaza on the south west corner of Bathurst and Eglinton. King Falafel was born and their daughter Noseiba was born soon after. For the next 37 years, the family commuted everyday from Mississauga to Forest Hill to serve freshly made falafel and shawarma. Noseiba started frying falafel when she was 13. The parents would work during the day and Noseiba and one of her sisters would run the restaurant at night. Customers who first starting coming in middle school now bring their children. It was not only the Rifi's second home, but the second home to a lot of customers. "We are known in this neighbourhood," Noseiba tells me, "I come to visit my mom every week. I see customers that have been coming here for 20 years, since I was little. And other people coming here know each other. So it's like a connection within a connection." Nine years ago the family lost Abderazzak (always known as Rifi). Their husband, father, and rock. But they kept going, keeping the business alive. About 18 months ago they received a letter from the owner of the plaza, The Milestone Group, saying that Metrolinx is taking over in March 2016. The plaza will be demolished, used as a parking lot for the subway construction vehicles for the next five years, and then a condo will be built. There is nothing they can do. December 31st will be the last day for King Falafel. I encourage you to visit, grab a falafel, and say goodbye to Jamila before she heads back home to Tangiers for a well deserved and much overdue visit. "Now I have some time. Nothing to think about," Jamila tells me as she prepares a customer's falafel, "The first time I can relax since my husband passed away. What can we do? Life is too short sometimes." In addition to all of the remaining falafel, everything in the store is also for sale. Everything from the shawarma rotisserie down to the timeless silver Moroccan tea sets. Some of the Moroccan posters have already been purchased by longtime customers. Noseiba is optimistic about reopening a new location in the future, "I would want to open up a new one. We have all of the recipes in our hearts, but my mom does it the best. Everything is in her head." We all have our own King Falafels in our neighbourhoods. Thank you for all the years, meals, and feels. Long live the King. 1978-2015. Writing by Ryan Collins-Swartz. Photos by Ryan Collins-Swartz and Abigail Ainsworth.
Nicky Hayden, Dani Pedrosa, Championship leader Casey Stoner, Ben Spies and Marco Simoncelli were the MotoGP quintet in attendance at the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix press conference on Thursday afternoon. The famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosts the 12th round of the 2011 MotoGP World Championship this weekend, the Red Bull Indianapolis Grand Prix, and on Thursday afternoon the pre-event press conference brought together a quintet of premier class stars to preview the action. Casey Stoner’s control at the top of the standings grew to 32 points after his victory at Brno in the previous round, his second consecutive win and a sixth of the season so far, and the Repsol Honda rider admitted that he arrives at Indianapolis with the aim of getting into his rhythm a lot quicker than the past two rounds. “We’ve had a couple of tough race weekends leading up to the race but then we’ve managed to pull things together for race day and get ourselves up front,” said Stoner of his last two wins, which came in impressive style. “We definitely arrive here with more confidence. If we can get set up a little bit faster here it’s going to be a lot more relaxing.” Stoner added: “It’s a very challenging track, it’s not a normal brake, enter and exit the corner circuit, there are some tricky little sections to it and there are some faster sections that take more guts than some corners. I’ll be looking forward to taking on this track with the Honda.” The Australian’s team-mate Dani Pedrosa, who crashed out of the Brno race whilst leading from pole position, won here last year and will be hoping to replicate the positive weekend he had in the Czech Republic up until his fall. “In the past I’ve been quite good here, I’ve had a pole and a win, and last year’s race was amazing for me. I hope this year we can have a good weekend again and a good race,” said Pedrosa, who continues to feel more comfortable with every race. “Every week I feel a little better, the stability of the shoulder is getting better and my feeling is good now – it’s not as it was before I broke the collarbone but I can feel well on the bike this weekend.” “Last race was a disappointing result but the weekend overall wasn’t too bad. I was very happy with the performance, and I hope to repeat it here and then in the race,” he concluded. For Yamaha Factory Racing’s Ben Spies the circuit holds special memories of last year, where he took his first and so far only MotoGP pole position, led the race and finished in second place. “It’s a huge race, being Indy, and it’s another home race for me. There will be a lot of support from the home crowd and family and friends,” said the Texan, who hopes to benefit from an updated engine tested after the Brno GP. “We have a couple of new pieces this weekend, hopefully to make the bike a bit better. The track surface is different so whilst we don’t have to re-learn the track we have some differences from last year.” Spies also hopes his physical condition permits him to push harder, having been affected by a pinched nerve in his neck in the last race which caused numbness in his left arm. “It’s one of those frustrating things, not knowing going into the weekend,” he said. “We’ve done everything we can in the last week that we’ve had off. Coming into a weekend knowing you’re not 100% is frustrating but it’s not going to stop us from trying like we did at Brno and giving 100%.” Fellow American Nicky Hayden is another rider with high hopes having previously stepped onto the podium twice at Indianapolis, and the Ducati Team rider tried out the newly resurfaced track section – from Turn 5 through to Turn 16 – earlier this month. “The new surface is definitely a lot smoother than it was previously, and it’s not as patchy,” he said. “Now from Turn 5 all the way to the finish will be the same asphalt so we’ll get out there tomorrow and see how quick it comes in once we put some rubber down. You never really know with a new surface what it will do to the tyres, whether it’ll wear them a lot or not, but the asphalt is really smooth – almost like glass – so I don’t expect any tyre wear issues.” Hayden will also ride the Desmosedici GP11.1 for the full weekend having had a chance to fully try it out at Brno. “I tested the bike at Brno for a full day and had a pretty solid day,” he commented. “I was a lot more consistent and quicker than I was on Sunday so I thank Ducati for getting the bike to me: it’s definitely something in the direction of the future. It has a few advantages to it so hopefully I can do it justice and get some good results, this weekend would be a good time to start!” San Carlo Honda Gresini rider Marco Simoncelli scored his first premier class podium last time out and hopes the result will prove the first of many rostrums. “I tried all season to get a podium and finally I did it. Now I hope to continue like this,” said the Italian. “Throughout the season I’ve shown very good pace in practice, now I hope to show it in the race. For me my potential is higher than eighth position in the Championship and for sure I’ll try to do my best until the end of the season and improve my position.”
Jennifer Lawrence has three words for the haters: "Screw those people." The Oscar-winning actress stopped by Yahoo for a Q&A about the upcoming Hunger Games film, and ended up getting candid about today's beauty standards. See also: Jennifer Lawrence Brilliantly Photobombs Sarah Jessica Parker It was a father's question — acting as a stand-in for his teenage daughter — about Hollywood's critical nature and pressure for girl's to look a certain way that got Lawrence all riled up. Her advice to girls? "You look like you look, and be comfortable. What are you going to do be hungry every single day to make other people happy? That's just dumb." Amen, J-Law. Lawrence has faced body image backlash herself, with critics and fans calling her too curvy to play Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games trilogy. She also expressed anger that the press condones calling others fat, and adds, "It's disappointing the media keeps it alive and fuels that fire, because I love to eat." Once again, Lawrence proves why she has such a stellar reputation as a positive, kick-ass female role model. Image: Tumblr, maysileed Image: Tumblr, i-ll-tell-you-no-lies Image: Tumblr, fuckyeahsterekfeels Image: Tumblr, fuckyeahsterekfeels Image: Tumblr, fuckyeahsterekfeels BONUS: 23 Ways to Be a Badass Like Jennifer Lawrence 23 Ways to Be a Badass Like Jennifer Lawrence Image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Image: Shutterstock In my previous post on the hype around blockchain, I acknowledged the technology’s potential but warned that many of the much-touted benefits were still a long way off becoming a reality. Instead I urged banks to focus on four key areas—trade finance, on-demand liquidity, capital requirements and payments risk—where they could use blockchain to make short-term gains while laying the groundwork for a long-term strategy. Yet even within this quadrant of opportunity, the very nature of Bitcoin’s blockchain technology imposes critical restrictions on its effectiveness in a banking environment. 1. Throughput Blockchain refers to a single-state database that disseminates the same information concurrently to all connected parties. Like any database, the processing power of a blockchain is based on how fast it can move data around. Right now, the Bitcoin blockchain technology is unable to process transactions at speeds required by banks. At most, Bitcoin can handle seven transactions per second, whereas Visa averages 2,000 and, if required, can process as many as 56,000 transactions per second. 2. Cost Not requiring a central counterparty (CCP) to administer the database suggests that the Bitcoin blockchain technology would cut costs. But each transaction still needs to be cleared over a common system. Rather than doing away with the need for a CCP like The Clearinghouse or Euroclear, this blockchain essentially acts as an uber-CCP with all the collateral, margin and regulatory capital requirements associated with the current transaction clearing system. 3. Interoperability The challenge that blockchain attempts to solve is how to move value from one party to another and reconcile the changes to their respective accounts. Providing this interoperability requires all parties to be on the same blockchain or accessing the same database. With so many competing blockchain systems, the problems associated with interoperability are far from resolved. In fact, they’re only getting worse. 4. Privacy As a source of truth or record of account, blockchains are useful for reconciling accounts across multiple counterparties. However, this benefit requires each party to have access to the same public database, which raises issues of transaction privacy. Private blockchains are much more secure but only increase the issue of interoperability. While all of this might dampen your enthusiasm for blockchain’s transformative potential, these limitations are not insurmountable. You just need to be aware of how the Bitcoin blockchain falls short and where to look for even more innovative solutions. For example, the Ripple Consensus Ledger, which handled payments of more than $1 Billion dollars in 2016, can now process 1000 transactions per second. We also cut global interbank settlement costs by up to 60 percent and use the Interledger Protocol to connect multiple ledgers and guarantee privacy. Despite all the hype, Bitcoin’s blockchain technology is not perfect. But the future of banking will still revolve around distributed ledgers that overcome current common limitations. And there is one area—payments—where banks can believe the hype right now, which I’ll discuss in the third and final part of this series.
IN A high-tech world, dirty black lumps of coal might seem like an anachronism. Yet coal is far from a thing of the past. However whizzy your iPad, your wall-mounted television or your electric car, the chances are that it is powered by the stuff. Coal-fired power stations provide two-fifths of the world’s electricity, and there are ever more of them. In the doubling of the world’s electricity production over the past decade, two-thirds of the increase came from coal. At these rates, coal will vie with oil as the world’s largest source of primary energy within five years. As recently as 2001, it was not much more than half as important as oil (see chart). Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. The main factor has been the unslakable thirst for energy in China, which in 2011 overtook America as the world’s biggest electricity producer. In 2001, according to the International Energy Agency, a club of rich nations, Chinese coal demand was about 600m tonnes of oil equivalent (25 exajoules). By 2011 China’s coal demand had tripled—a rise from two-thirds of the energy America gets from oil to twice that amount. China’s domestic coal industry produces more primary energy than Middle Eastern oil does. Other developing economies are just as keen on coal, if not yet on such a grand scale. In India, producing 650 terawatt hours of electricity in 2010 took 311m tonnes of oil equivalent, and the power sector’s coal demand is growing at around 6% a year. The IEA reckons India could surpass America as the world’s second-largest coal consumer by 2017. But if America no longer dominates the business as it once did, what is happening to the industry there is still able to trigger changes far away. And at the moment coal is falling from favour in America. King no more In developing economies coal’s advantages—being cheap and widely available—are deemed to outweigh the damage it inflicts both on people near the places where it is burned (burning it gives off particles that harm people’s health) and on the planet as a whole (burning coal produces carbon dioxide, the most important long-lived greenhouse gas). In rich countries you might expect the cost-benefit balance to tip the other way, and coal use to be dropping. But things are not quite that simple. In America coal is indeed being burned less and less—but not principally thanks to climate policy, of which America has relatively little. Meanwhile in Europe, which likes to see itself as a world leader on climate, they are using more and more of the stuff (see article). America’s coal business, like the rest of the country’s energy industry, has been upended by the advent of shale gas, now available in unforeseen quantities at unforeseen prices. In April 2012 the price fell below $2 per million British thermal units, or Btus ($7 per megawatt hour). This has made gas increasingly attractive to power companies, which have been switching away from coal in increasing numbers. At its peak, in 1988, coal provided 60% of America’s electricity. Even in 2010, when the shale-gas boom was well under way, it still accounted for 42%. By the middle of 2012, though, gas and coal were roughly neck-and-neck, each with around a third of power generation. There are two reasons for thinking the shift from coal may be long-lasting. One is that new gas is continuing to come on stream, and getting cheaper to produce. Though prices have started to rise from their earlier rock-bottom levels (they are now $3.43 per mBtu), it is unlikely to cost more than coal for a good while. And it will be fairly easy to use more gas without having to build new power stations. Around half of America’s gas-fired capacity is made up of so-called combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT) which generate power come what may (the rest is used in “peakers” which generate only when needed). Utilisation rates in CCGTs have risen, but are still only 50%; they can use more. The other reason why coal’s decline as a fuel may continue is that gas plants meet environmental regulations more easily. In the second Obama administration these are likely to stay in place or be extended. The coal industry’s lobbying power looks weaker following the election. Mitt Romney, who regularly attacked the president’s “war on coal”, had its full support, but that support did not deliver him the swing states of Virginia and Ohio. As things stand, power plants will have to comply with rules governing emissions of mercury and other toxic nasties by 2015. Court challenges to further rules to control emissions of sulphur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen may delay these new standards, but will not kill them. And environmental rules promulgated under the Clean Air Act do not require congressional approval. Should Mr Obama decide to make environmental policy by fiat, the coal industry will feel the pinch. The Environmental Protection Agency has already proposed restrictions on carbon emissions which would in practice ban new coal-fired plants after 2013 unless fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS)—a technology has not yet been made to work on a commercial basis, though facilities planned for California and Texas may change that. Even without CCS, modern coal-fired power plants, though more efficient than the old ones and capable of being made a lot cleaner, are more expensive than those using old technology. They are twice the price of gas-fired plants with the same capacity. A gas facility can also be built in two to four years, instead of four to eight, giving utilities more flexibility when adding capacity. This bodes ill for America’s coal plants. The combination of cheap gas and expensive regulation means that 50 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity—a sixth of the total—could be shut down by 2017, according to Navigant, a consultancy. Others put the figure higher. This means trouble for America’s coal miners. Coal production is likely to have fallen by roughly 100m tonnes in 2012, compared with 2011, or around 10% of the total. A surge in exports softened the blow: they rose by a quarter in the first half of 2012, to around 66m tonnes. The industry’s infrastructure is not geared to export—it is hard to get coal from Wyoming on to ships bound for China—but if that were rectified, analysts reckon, exports could reach 200m tonnes a year. In the meantime mining companies have been closing pits, shedding jobs and consolidating, especially in the least efficient mining areas of central Appalachia (West Virginia and Kentucky). The decline of coal, though, will be protracted. Coal-fired power stations are built to last—the oldest plant currently operating was built in the 1930s—so unless new rules force them to close, they will be retired gradually. By 2017 or so, reckons Brattle Group, a consultancy, coal use will stabilise again, as gas demand finally makes gas prices dearer than coal. Coal may be down in America. But it is not yet out.
To sum up the key character’s journey in an entire movie into a single picture, would not only be a pain in the arse to research, but would take forever to create. Well I’m glad Andrew DeGraff had the patience and skill to create his collection of Movie Maps. Andrew is an illustrator by trade and has loved maps from an early age, and as he told The Huffington Post, it sounds like merging his passion of stories and maps was a no brainer: “When I started as a professional illustrator, I got a few jobs creating maps for travel magazine illustrations, and had a lot of fun doing them. I realized I really loved doing architecture and landscape. At the time I was also showing in some pop-culture shows, and I noticed that a lot of the work was based on character portraits, characters in scenes, or the characters re-contextualized. There’s nothing wrong with that — and I love a lot of that work, but it’s often one character from one part of the movie. I wanted to do something that was more complete, maybe the whole film if I could.” “I thought I’d try to take all the characters out and just use the sets and locations, and I replaced the characters with coloured arrows that followed their action in the movie. I was really happy with the result, and people seemed to really like them. At a glance the movie maps were a snapshot of the complete film, and up close you could follow the actions and interactions of nearly everything that happens. It was really interesting to take that into mapping books for Plotted. There’s so much more information, and at the same time a lot more room for invention.” I’ve included some examples of his work below but for more of Andrew’s illustrations check out his website and tumblr page. I’ve added a couple of close-ups so you can really appreciate the detail and the amount of effort that must have gone into making these. Be on the lookout for his map of The Goonies adventure. Also check out his book ‘Plotted’ mentioned in the above article www.andrewdegraff.com www.andrewdegraff.tumblr.com So is it any good? Let us know what you thought of Andrew’s work in the comments section below.
The Indian space agency is strongly suspecting the failure of pyro elements for the non-separation of the heat shield of its rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle's (PSLV) XL variant on August 31, said a senior official. As a result of the heat shield not separating the 1,425 kg navigation satellite IRNSS-1H got stuck inside it resulting in the failure of the Rs 250-crore-mission. Normally, the heat shield will be separated soon after the rocket crosses the earth's atmosphere. According to K. Sivan, director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), all the systems during the rocket's flight worked well while the only suspect place is the pyro elements. The VSSC is part of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). "Tests are going on to find out the reasons for the failure of heat shield separation. Each test takes around 72 hours," Sivan told IANS. One fortunate aspect of the failure is that ISRO has all the flight data as the rocket was not lost during its one way journey. Sivan said the heat shield would separate after on-board computers give the command to ignite the explosives. The explosives would then ignite and explode to separate the two parts of the heat shield joined by bolts.
CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwired - Sept. 6, 2016) - Suncor and Fort McKay First Nation today announced the signing of a participation agreement for the purchase and sale of a 34.3% equity interest in Suncor's East Tank Farm Development to Fort McKay First Nation. Under the terms of the agreement, Fort McKay First Nation will pay 34.3% of the actual capital cost of the East Tank Farm Development once the assets become operational, which is currently anticipated to be in the second quarter of 2017. "The signing of this participation agreement is the result of many years of hard work and discussions to understand and identify areas of mutual interest. Through this process we developed greater understanding and trust, and we worked collaboratively to achieve this. I'm extremely proud that Suncor and Fort McKay First Nation have partnered on this historic and progressive deal," said Mark Little, executive vice president, Upstream, Suncor. "This agreement demonstrates a very positive evolution in our long-term relationships and a new way that we will work together." Fort McKay First Nation's 34.3% share of the actual capital cost of the East Tank Farm Development is currently anticipated to be approximately $350 million which will be payable to Suncor upon closing. The transaction is subject to a number of closing conditions including the negotiation of definitive documentation, First Nations obtaining suitable financing, due diligence and other conditions customary for transactions of this nature and is anticipated to close in the second quarter of 2017. Revenue from the long-term terminaling services agreements with the Fort Hills partners will underpin Fort McKay First Nation's independent financing of the transaction. Suncor will be the operator of the East Tank Farm Development once operational. "This deal clearly shows industry that our people are integral players in business and we have the ability and means to build strong relationships. We believe our investment in this project demonstrates our support of Suncor's continued willingness to forge a long-term business relationship," says Chief Jim Boucher, Fort McKay First Nation. "Fort McKay First Nation has been engaged in the oilsands business for over 30 years and we have the ability to build and maintain sustainable relationships with our neighbours. The investment we make today is an investment that will endure for the long-term benefit of our community." The East Tank Farm Development is a Suncor-operated midstream asset currently under construction in the Wood Buffalo Region of Alberta. The facility will consist of bitumen storage, blending and cooling facilities and connectivity to third party pipelines. Legal Advisory - Forward-Looking Information This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively referred to herein as "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on Suncor's current expectations, estimates, projections and assumptions that were made by the company in light of its information available at the time the statement was made and consider Suncor's experience and its perception of historical trends, including expectations and assumptions concerning: the accuracy of reserves and resources estimates; commodity prices and interest and foreign exchange rates; capital efficiencies and cost savings; applicable royalty rates and tax laws; future production rates; the sufficiency of budgeted capital expenditures in carrying out planned activities; the availability and cost of labour and services; and the receipt, in a timely manner, of regulatory and third-party approvals. In addition, all other statements and information about Suncor's strategy for growth, expected and future expenditures or investment decisions, commodity prices, costs, schedules, production volumes, operating and financial results and the expected impact of future commitments are forward-looking statements. Some of the forward-looking statements and information may be identified by words like "expects", "anticipates", "will", "estimates", "plans", "scheduled", "intends", "believes", "projects", "indicates", "could", "focus", "vision", "goal", "outlook", "proposed", "target", "objective", "continue", "should", "may" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements in this news release include references to statements about the transaction, including the anticipated timing for closing of the transaction and the interest that will be acquired by the First Nation in the East Tank Farm. There can be no assurance that the transaction will close as described or at all. Forward-looking statements and information are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, some that are similar to other oil and gas companies and some that are unique to Suncor. Suncor's actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by its forward-looking statements, so readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on them. Suncor's Management's Discussion and Analysis dated July 27, 2016 and its Annual Information Form, Form 40-F and Annual Report to Shareholders, each dated July 27, 2016, and other documents it files from time to time with securities regulatory authorities describe the risks, uncertainties, material assumptions and other factors that could influence actual results and such factors are incorporated herein by reference. Copies of these documents are available without charge from Suncor at 150 6th Avenue S.W., Calgary, Alberta T2P 3E3; by email request to [email protected]; by calling 1-800-558-9071; or by referring to suncor.com/FinancialReports or to the company's profile on SEDAR at sedar.com or EDGAR at sec.gov. Except as required by applicable securities laws, Suncor disclaims any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Suncor Energy is Canada's leading integrated energy company. Suncor's operations include oil sands development and upgrading, onshore and offshore oil and gas production, petroleum refining, and product marketing under the Petro-Canada brand. A member of Dow Jones Sustainability indexes, FTSE4Good and CDP, Suncor is working to responsibly develop petroleum resources while also growing a renewable energy portfolio. Suncor is listed on the UN Global Compact 100 stock index and the Corporate Knights' Global 100. Suncor's common shares (symbol: SU) are listed on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges. Suncor works with Aboriginal communities across Canada to increase their participation in energy development. One of the ways we do this is through business development opportunities. Suncor has worked with more than 150 Aboriginal communities, including in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, home to our oil sands operations, and other locations through our Petro-Canada branded retail, wholesale and lubricant products and services. In 2015, we spent $599 million in goods and services with Aboriginal-owned businesses, bringing our total to approximately $3 billion since 1999. There are 21 Petro-Canada branded gas stations owned by First Nations and one wind project where a First Nation is an equity partner. Fort McKay First Nation (FMFN) is composed of over 700 band members with approximately 400 members residing in the hamlet of Fort McKay-a community located approximately 65 km north of Fort McMurray. As a First Nation, FMFN is a leader in working collaboratively with industry, and holds a successful and long established record of strong relationship building with the various mining companies operating adjacent to its land. Fort McKay has aimed to maximize its participation in the economy to create sustainable, long-term growth and development. FMFN believes the practice and preservation of our traditional ways of life can occur simultaneously alongside continuous and responsible oil sands development. This philosophy has allowed the FMFN to enhance our community's social and economic conditions through effective partnerships with industry and government. We are known for our good working relationships with the surrounding oil sands companies. FMFN strives to balance resource development with protecting the health of our community and the environment. For more information about Suncor, visit our web site at suncor.com, follow us on Twitter @SuncorEnergy, or come and See what Yes can do. For more information about Fort McKay First Nation, visit our web site at fortmckay.com, follow us on Twitter @Fortmckay, or view our community presentation.
Are you hesitating to get out and vote? Choosing, expressing your views, wanting to change things, defending your interests and participating concretely in democratic life are all reasons to vote and encourage others to do the same! To make an informed decision , you have to inform yourself. It's your responsibility! Here are a few ways to get informed about the election. To vote, you have to meet five requirements, including being registered on the list of electors . On election day, it will no longer be possible to enter your name on the list or make a change of address. Don't wait! Voting Voting is easy and accessible to everyone. Find out how, where and when to vote! There are several dates and places where you can exercise your right to vote. If you are at school, unable to move about, in a residential facility or hospital centre, outside your electoral division or in a remote region, there may be another voting option available to you.
ON JUNE 18th the Ukrainian crisis, which has slid into a nasty and increasingly bloody civil war of late, took a small step backwards to possible de-escalation. After talking to Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, declared a unilateral ceasefire in the east to give time for anti-government insurgents either to leave Ukraine or to give up their weapons. However, the fighting around Donetsk and Luhansk now has its own self-perpetuating logic, driven by daily skirmishes between rebel militiamen with unclear allegiances and poorly trained, ill-equipped Ukrainian troops. Decisions taken in Kiev, or in Moscow for that matter, may have little effect on the ground. The insurgents in the east were quick to say they would not abide by the ceasefire. The real danger is that, ever since the fall of Viktor Yanukovych in late February, rational solutions to the crisis in Ukraine have “not been in demand” in Moscow, according to Sergey Utkin of the Department of Strategic Assessment at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Instead of a stable post-Yanukovych Ukraine, the Kremlin appears to prefer a weak country under an ever-present risk of falling apart—or, as Mr Utkin puts it: “A Ukraine that is so occupied with its own internal problems that it doesn’t have time for anything else.” Mr Putin seems to have ignored his own warnings in past conflicts about how anarchic violence knows no borders. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. In another twist, Mr Utkin notes, more revanchist and conservative voices in Russian foreign-policy circles have for years accused the Americans of stirring up “managed chaos” around the world as a way of nefariously advancing their objectives. Now those same hardliners are backing a Russian policy aimed at just such a goal in Ukraine. With support that can range from winking approval to proxy deliveries of arms and money, the Kremlin has tried to ratchet up (and down) instability in eastern Ukraine as a way of applying pressure to the government in Kiev, wielding the implicit threat of widespread civil war or even invasion. In practice that has meant allowing the passage of Russian volunteers into Ukraine to join the fight and giving political cover to separatist leaders like Denis Pushilin and Alexander Boroday, who have been in Moscow for meetings with key figures, including Vladislav Surkov, a longtime master of political sorcery close to Mr Putin. More murkily, some Russian weapons seem to be finding their way to eastern Ukraine, perhaps including an Igla rocket system that was used to shoot down a military aircraft on June 14th, killing almost 50 soldiers, and a handful of Soviet-era T-64 tanks. Rebel fighters are coming under artillery fire, yet they do not have much heavy weaponry, making the tactical logic of arms transfers clear, says Alexander Golts, a military analyst. Yet Mr Golts adds that there are no concrete facts about what is coming from Russia—a sign that the 1,600-kilometre (1,000-mile) border is hard to monitor even with Western surveillance technology. In recent weeks Russia has tried, with varying degrees of success, to “attach and shorten the leash” over the armed rebels in the east, says Mark Galeotti of New York University. The rise of the Vostok battalion, initially reliant on Chechen fighters and now largely Ukrainian, is an example. Mr Putin would like to consolidate his control over the disparate militia groups, not least so that he can credibly claim to be able to stop the violence as part of a potential “grand bargain” with Mr Poroshenko. The problem, says Mr Galeotti, is that Russian policy has become a “victim of its own success,” in that it has fostered the creation of armed groups and newly empowered warlords who wield more influence than the Kremlin had foreseen. They have their own interests and priorities which do not always align with Mr Putin’s. The past few days have also seen the re-emergence of another old weapon: natural gas. On June 16th Gazprom, Russia’s gas giant, halted deliveries to Ukraine, because of what it says is a $4.5 billion unpaid bill. The dispute is over price, a subjective measure since Russia charges wildly different amounts depending on its relations with the buyer. (Mr Putin tried to prop up Mr Yanukovych by offering him a cut-rate price of $268 per thousand cubic metres; Gazprom now wants $385.) Even with the taps off, the move was just a warning shot. Ukraine has months before it needs to worry about dwindling stocks for winter, and Russia has its own interests in seeing the gas flow again. Last year more than half of the Russian gas sold to Europe went through pipelines across Ukraine. On June 17th a mysterious explosion damaged one of them. This, and the shut-off, may enable Russia to put pressure on the European Union to permit construction of the South Stream pipeline, now stalled (see story alongside). All this has taken place against a backdrop of Russian troops rotating to and from the border. They are meant to serve as a reminder to Mr Poroshenko that, lest he think otherwise, his forces cannot achieve a decisive victory on the battlefield alone: he will have to deal with Mr Putin if he wants to pacify the east. The demonstrative presence of the Russian army—several brigades have again moved to the border after some weeks back at base—is also meant to curb temptations in Kiev to resort to heavier weapons, including air power. Unless he absolutely has to, Mr Putin would much rather not invade. He would prefer to attain his objectives—getting Mr Poroshenko to accept greatly decentralised power in the regions, for example, and to give up hopes of NATO and EU membership—without sending in troops. But if it comes to a choice between invasion, with all its sizeable dangers and costs, and anything resembling an open defeat, which would mean a damaging loss of face at home and abroad, Mr Putin would probably choose to go in.
How To: 4th Gen seats in your 3rd gen (pics) First you're going to need to acquirefrom a 2010+ Ram 1500/2500/3500. You cannot use the 3rd gen console, the brackets are totally different. I paid $500 for my cloth set from an '11 1500. It took me a few weeks to find them, but just keep calling every wrecker in town and you will find them eventually.Start by removing the seats. M15 in the front, M18 in the rear. I suggest using a breaker bar to get them started, and move onto an impact to get them the rest of the way out. I feel sorry for you if you've gotta use a rachet to get them out... They're tough.A couple suggestions when removing the seats:- You CAN take the whole front seat set out in one piece, but I do not suggest it.- After all the seats are unbolted, unplug all the wiring and lean them back onto the rear seats. From here, you can unbolt the center console and remove all the pieces individually.- Be VERY careful when installing and removing the seats from the cab. The brackets on the outside of the seats are easy to forget, and will scratch the heck out of your truck.There is some wiring involved. I'm not going to get too far into how to wire it up, because wiring is different from truck to truck. However, it's very simple. You simply need to supply +12v to the seats, ignition-switched +12v to the cigarette lighter in the center console and signal to the seatbelt indicator. On the newer style seats, the seatbelt indicator may use two wires. One will go to the trucks indicator wire, and the other can be grounded.Once you've wrestled the new seats into the truck, you're going to have to make one slight modification to get them to fit properly. This bracket here was hitting my cup holder center console, so I just rotated it out of the way.You'll need to trim a small tab off this bracket to rotate it.The center console bracket setup is a bit different than the 3rd gens. The center console bolts onto the passenger seat bracket, and then would bolt into the floor on a 2010+ truck. Since we don't have holes in our floors there, it'll just have to sit on the bracket and be bolted down with the passenger seat. I found that it made no difference what-so-ever, the center console does not move or sit uneven.Bolt the seats down, plug them in and enjoy. The difference between the old seats and these is unreal. You can actually drive the truck without your butt falling asleep after 30 minutes! Your back won't be out of place after an hour!I've got some Wet Okole seat covers on the way, that way they'll match the rest of my interior. I wish I had waited to order the seat covers, these 4th gen seats actually look pretty good in the truck, and would probably match the truck if I swapped the rear seats too.Feel free to reply or PM if you need any help with your swap.-KyleFinally got my Wet Okoles installed:
The Spock Framework is a testing and specification framework for Java and Groovy applications. Its website make a somewhat bold claim: What makes it stand out from the crowd is its beautiful and highly expressive specification language. Before we can verify if this claim is true, we have to create an example project that we can use for this purpose. The previous part of this tutorial described how we can do this by using Maven. Now we will learn how we can do this by using Gradle. This blog post describes how we can create a Gradle project that fulfils the following requirements: It must support “normal” unit tests that use JUnit and unit tests that use the Spock Framework. It must compile and run the “normal” unit tests that are found from the src/test/java directory. It must compile and run the Groovy unit tests that are found from the src/test/groovy directory. It must create an HTML test report that describes the test results of our unit tests that use the Spock Framework. Let’s start by getting the required dependencies. Additional reading: If you are not familiar with Gradle, you should read the following blog posts before you continue reading this blog post: Getting Started With Gradle: Introduction helps you to install Gradle, describes the basic concepts of a Gradle build, and describes how you can add functionality to your build by using Gradle plugins. Getting Started With Gradle: Our First Java Project describes how you can create a Java project by using Gradle and package your application to an executable jar file. Getting Started With Gradle: Dependency Management describes how you can manage the dependencies of your Gradle project. Getting the Required Dependencies We can get the required dependencies by adding the following dependencies into the testCompile configuration: JUnit (version 4.12) is a framework that allows us to write both unit and integration tests. Spock Core (version 1.0-groovy-2.4). Spock is a testing and specification framework for Java and Groovy applications. Groovy All (version 2.4.4). Groovy is a dynamic programming language for the JVM. After we have added these dependencies into our build.gradle file, its source code looks as follows: dependencies { testCompile( 'junit:junit:4.12', 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.4.4', 'org.spockframework:spock-core:1.0-groovy-2.4' ) } We don’t have to add the JUnit and Groovy dependencies into our build.gradle file. However, if we leave them out, we have to use the JUnit and Groovy versions specified by Spock Core. Additional Reading: Getting Started With Gradle: Dependency Management After we have added the required dependencies into our build.gradle file, we have to configure Gradle to compile and run our unit tests. Compiling and Running Our Unit Tests Because our unit tests use both Java and Groovy programming languages, we need to compile our test sources by using the Groovy plugin that extends the Java plugin and adds support for Groovy projects. We can configure our Gradle build by following these steps: Apply the Groovy plugin. Ensure that the Java compiler accepts code that uses Java 1.8. Ensure that the compiled classes are compatible with Java 1.8. After we have configured Gradle to compile and run our unit tests, the source of code of our build.gradle file looks as follows: apply plugin: 'groovy' sourceCompatibility = 1.8 targetCompatibility = 1.8 dependencies { testCompile( 'junit:junit:4.12', 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.4.4', 'org.spockframework:spock-core:1.0-groovy-2.4' ) } We can now compile and run our unit tests by running the following command at the command prompt: gradle clean test When we do this, we see that: The compileTestJava task is invoked. This task compiles the unit tests that are found from the src/test/java directory. The compileTestGroovy task is invoked. This task compiles the unit tests that are found from the src/test/groovy directory. The test task invokes all unit tests. The output of this command looks as follows: > gradle clean test :clean :compileJava :compileGroovy UP-TO-DATE :processResources UP-TO-DATE :classes :compileTestJava :compileTestGroovy :processTestResources UP-TO-DATE :testClasses :test BUILD SUCCESSFUL The last thing that we have to do is to configure Gradle to create an HTML test report that describes the test results of unit tests that use the Spock Framework. Creating an HTML Test Report When we run our unit tests, Gradle creates an HTML test report to the build/reports/tests directory. The HTML report that describes the test results of our test class, which uses the Spock Framework, looks as follows: If we are happy with this report, we don’t have to do anything. We can just enjoy the ride. However, if we want to create a test report that describes the preconditions and the expected results of our test cases, we have to use the Spock Reports Extension. By default, it creates an HTML report for each invoked specification and and a summary that lists all invoked specifications. We can use this Spock extension by following these steps: Ensure that Gradle resolves the dependencies of our build by using the Bintray’s JCenter Maven repository. Add the Spock Reports Extension jar file into the classpath. We can do this by adding the spock-reports dependency (version 1.2.7) into the testRuntime configuration. After we have enabled the Spock Reports Extension, the source code of our build.gradle file looks as follows: apply plugin: 'groovy' sourceCompatibility = 1.8 targetCompatibility = 1.8 repositories { jcenter() } dependencies { testCompile( 'junit:junit:4.12', 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all:2.4.4', 'org.spockframework:spock-core:1.0-groovy-2.4', ) testRuntime( 'com.athaydes:spock-reports:1.2.7' ) } Additional Reading: Spock Reports Extension We can now run our unit tests by using the command: gradle clean test When we run our unit tests, the Spock Reports Extension creates an HTML test report to the build/spock-reports directory. The HTML report that describes the test results of our test class, which uses the Spock Framework, looks as follows: If you need to provide custom configuration to the Spock Reports Extension, you need to create a properties file to the following location (relative to the classpath): META-INF/services/com.athaydes.spockframework.report.IReportCreator.properties Additional Reading: Spock Reports Extension – Customizing the Reports Let’s summarize what we learned from this blog post. Summary This blog post has taught us three things: We know how we can get the required dependencies with Gradle. We can compile and run our unit tests by using the Groovy plugin. If we want to create a test report that describes the preconditions and the expected results of our test cases, we have to use the Spock Reports Extension. The next part of this tutorial gives an introduction to Spock specifications. P.S. You can get the example of this blog post from Github.
Today I have the third installment of my Femme Fatale series, The Gemtone collection . The collection is comprised of eight eyeshadows, all with different color shifts over a sheer white base. One of the shades, Icemist Diamond, I've had since my first order with FF and it's my favorite blue shifted highlight color. When I was running low on my Icemist Diamond sample, I decided to pick up the whole set of shades. The eyeshadows are swatched over Nyx Black Bean Jumbo Eye Pencil on the top/left, Urban Decay Primer Potion in the middle, and Darling Girl Glitter Glue on the bottom/right. These may appear sheer over just regular primer but they can be built up nicely on the eye. For highlighting shades, I prefer semi-opaque formulas so these shades are great for that. Fire Opal (vegan, lip-safe) is a sheer white with strong copper orange shimmer and sparkles. This one is pretty similar to Shiro Cake! if you have that shade. This one was one of the strongest performers over Glitter Glue. Just as a sidenote, I don't recommend applying these over a sticky base in your application. I did so to ensure that the shifts were visible in the pictures because sometimes my camera will wash out some of the finer shimmer. In practical use, applying these over a sticky base can make the shades appear chalky so I would stick to regular primer or a black base. Icemist Diamond (vegan, lip-safe) is a soft translucent white highlighted by a stunning aqua shift and sparks. These colors absolutely glow over the black base! This is a must-have shade for me. My go-to blue eye look includes FF Moonglow on the lid, Dreamstate in the crease, with Icemist Diamond as an inner corner highlight. Twilight Amethyst (vegan, lip-safe) is a translucent white with a purple shift and sparkles. I've been looking for a purple inner corner highlight shade and this fits the bill perfectly. Over a black base, it turns into a blue-based purple. Emerald Glow (vegan, lip-safe) is a sheer white complimented by an emerald green shift and green sparkles. Over a black base, this is less emerald and more blue-green. Moonstone (vegan, lip-safe) is a sheer white shade with a soft blue duochrome shine and sparkles. As you can see, this one is pretty similar to Icemist Diamond without the black base. I'd say unless you wanted to get the whole set, you could pick just one and be fine. Sun Crystal (vegan, lip-safe) is a sheer soft-white base with striking golden shimmer and sparks. I absolutely love the way this one looks over a black base! Olive green goodness HNGGGG. This makes for a pretty interesting highlight shade as well. Star Ruby (vegan, lip-safe) is a translucent white with pink/red shift and sparkles. I've used this one already and it added a nice pinky highlight to my look, This one reminds me a lot of Fyrinnae Crimson Ghost. Golden Peridot (vegan, lip-safe) is a translucent white with a lime green shimmer and sparkles. This one is stunning over all three bases, I can't wait to try it out. All of the shades had the same formula - semi opaque but buildable. I think Sophie did a great job in providing lots of different shifts. There's teal, aqua, blue, purple, pink, yellow, orange, etc. What I really like about this collection is how versatile it is. The colors completely transform over a black base so it's like you're getting two shades for the price of one. My favorite colors were Icemist Diamond, Sun Crystal, and Golden Peridot. Thanks for reading, have a lovely weekend! xx Carissa
For the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London, Horrible Histories returns for a one-off special looking at the disaster and the events that surrounded it. On the night of 2 September, a spark from a baker’s oven in Pudding Lane ignited a fire which roared through the tightly packed streets of London, tearing up the timber-framed houses and destroying up to a third of the city. In true Horrible Histories fashion, this special episode explores London and Britain before the fire, full of plague and party in the raucous Restoration atmosphere personified by King Charles II. We see how London’s Mayor preferred to stay in bed during the fire because been partying the night before, and how Samuel Pepys rushed to bury his parmesan cheese for safety. We meet Christopher Wren, astronomer and self-styled architect (Robert Webb, pictured). We see how his new St Paul’s, that rose phoenix like from the ashes, was a physical manifestation of the ideas of the age. We take a look at Isaac Newton and the Royal Society with their wonderfully crazy and gruesome experiments! And, of course, our trusty sewer dweller Rattus to guide the way! Guest starring Robert Webb. Horrible Histories: The Grizzly Great Fire of London will be broadcast on Monday the 5th of September on BBC Two. More promotional pictures below: With thanks to BBC Media Advertisements
Perhaps Dez Bryant knew what he was talking about when he declared in April that Tyrann Mathieu was the best player in the 2013 NFL Draft. Entering training camp, general manager Steve Keim complimented Mathieu on an "outstanding" offseason. A week later, it's obvious that the NFL game already is slowing down for Mathieu. One scout told Ron Wolfley of Arizonasports.com that Mathieu has been "pound-for-pound, the best player on the field." An offensive assistant added that the third-round draft pick is "going to change the team." Translation: The "Honey Badger" is undersized but still highly impressive. Draft analysts praised Mathieu for his natural football instincts, so it should be no surprise that he's already comfortable at cornerback, safety and nickelback in coordinator Todd Bowles' defense. "Tyrann is getting his hands on a lot of balls," quarterback Carson Palmer said recently. "He's so quick and explosive in and out of breaks and reading concepts and knowing coverages and weaknesses in where we're trying to throw the ball." The early signs suggest the Cardinals might have the steal of the draft. Mathieu has the look of an NFL-ready playmaker, which should lead to a major role in a secondary that lost Adrian Wilson, Kerry Rhodes and Greg Toler from last season's roster. The Around The League Podcast is now available on iTunes! Click here to listen and subscribe.
WINNER HAS BEEN DRAWN. AWAITING REPLY BEFORE ANNOUNCING. Looking for a new phone? Today is your lucky day because TechnoBuffalo is giving away a brand new Samsung Galaxy S8! TechnoBuffalo is teaming up with Superscreen to give away a brand new Galaxy S8. Probably by now you’re thinking that the phone isn’t even out yet, but it will soon. If you want more info on the Galaxy S8, it’s all here. So what is Superscreen you may ask? Superscreen is a new way to think about tablets. Before, if you wanted to get a display experience larger than six inches, you’d have to buy a tablet. You would end up spending upwards of a couple hundred to well over $500. This is the fundamental difference between Superscreen and other tablets. Instead of offering an expensive device you’ll rarely use, Superscreen created a low-cost tablet that is powered by your phone. All you have to do is download the app on your phone and sync it with the Superscreen tablet. Once the app is launched, it will begin casting the contents of the phone to the beautiful 10.1-inch Full HD display. Superscreen even has front and rear facing cameras and supports Apple Watch and other wearables. So you get the full tablet experience without any compromise. It doesn’t even need Wi-Fi or an internet connection to accomplish this. The app, which is available on both iOS and Android, can cast anything from Netflix to mobile games on to Superscreen’s display. This eliminates the redundancy of a tablet that is expensive and hardly used. Right now, if you back Superscreen on Kickstarter, you can get it for just $99—a fraction of what you would pay for a regular tablet.
In this post, we are going to do an introduction to Angular Modularity (the NgModule functionality) and understand why it enables several important features like ahead of time compilation and lazy loading. We will cover the following topics: What is an Angular Module? Angular Modules vs ES6 modules What is a Root Module? Making modules more readable using the spread operator Angular Modules and Visibility Angular Modules and Dependency Injection - common pitfalls Dynamic bootstrapping and Just In Time compilation The Angular Ahead Of Time compiler in action Static bootstrapping Feature Modules Angular Modules And The Router Lazy Loading a Module using the Router Shared Modules and Lazy Loading Conclusions and Pitfall Summary What is an Angular Module? The name Module can sometimes be an overloaded term in programming, but the use of the name "Module" for this new functionality is actually consistent with previous AngularJs terminology. Angular Modules are a close Angular counterpart of AngularJs modules, so using the same term really helps us make the transition smoother. So what are Angular modules? Let's start by having a look at the newest official docs: Angular modules consolidate components, directives, and pipes into cohesive blocks of functionality... Modules can also add services So we can see here that an Angular module is used to group an inter-related set of Angular primitives. Examples of modules A good example of a module is the reactive form directives and services: these are directives that are aware of each other and are very interrelated. There are also injectable services like the FormBuilder , which is functionally linked to those directives. Another example of a module is the router directives and services, they are tightly linked and form a consistent unit. But there could also be application-level modules: imagine an app that is divided into two sets of completely separate screens; we should probably separate them into two different modules. What does an Angular Module look like? This is an example of an Angular module, it defines the application module that we are about to use in our examples: We can see here several things going on: the @NgModule annotation is what actually defines the module annotation is what actually defines the module we can list the components, directives, and pipes that are part of the module in the declarations array array we can import other modules by listing them in the imports array array we can list the services that are part of the module in the providers array but read further on why this should only be used in some cases This declarative grouping is useful if for nothing else for organizing our view of the application and documenting which functionality is closely related. But Angular Modules are more than just documentation, what does Angular exactly do with this information? Why are Angular modules needed? An Angular module allows Angular to define a context for compiling templates. For example, when Angular is parsing HTML templates, it's looking for a certain list of components, directives and pipes. Each HTML tag is compared to that list to see if a component should be applied on top of it, the same goes for each attribute. The problem is: how does Angular know which components, directives and pipes should it be looking for while parsing the HTML? That is when Angular modules come in, they provide that exact information in a single place. So in summary, we can say the following about Angular modules: they are essential for template parsing, both in the Just In Time or Ahead Of Time Compilation scenarios as we will see they are also very useful simply as documentation for grouping related functionality They can be used to clarify which components and directives are meant to be used publicly vs internal implementation details, as we will soon see Angular Modules vs ES6 modules An Angular Module is something very different than an ES6 module: An ES6 is a formalization of the typical Javascript module that the community has been using for many years: wrap private details in a closure and expose only the public API we want. An Angular Module is mainly a template compilation context but it also helps to define a public API for a subset of functionality as well as help with the dependency injection configuration of our application. Angular Modules are actually one of the main enablers for fast and mobile-friendly applications, more on this further. Let's now go over the different types of modules and when they should be used. What is a Root Module? Each application only has one root module, and each component, directive and pipe should only be associated with a single module. This is an example of an Application Root module: Several things identify this as being a root module: the root module has the conventional name of AppModule the root module in the case of web applications imports the BrowserModule , which for example provides Browser specific renderers, and installs core directives like ngIf , ngFor , etc. the bootstrap property is used, providing a list of components that should be used as bootstrap entry points for the application. There is usually only one element in this array: the root component of the application We can see that this module can quickly grow to contain large arrays as the application grows. Before going further let's see how we can avoid this potential readability issue. Making modules more readable using the spread operator The simplest way to make a large module more readable is to define the lists of components, directives and pipes in external files. For example, we could define a couple of constant arrays in an external file: We can then import these constants into the module definition, using the array spread ... operator: We can see how this would make the module definition much more readable in the long term. Angular Modules and Visibility To understand how module visibility works in Angular, let's now define a separate module with only one component called Home : Let's now try to use in our root module, by importing it: You might be surprised to find out that this does not work. Even if you use the <home></home> component in your template, nothing will get rendered. Why isn't the Home component visible? It turns out that adding Home to the declarations of HomeModule does not automatically make the component visible to any other modules that might be importing it. This is because the Home Component might be just an implementation detail of the module that we don't want to make publicly available. To make it publicly available, we need to export it: With this, the Home component would now be correctly rendered in any template that uses the home HTML tag. Notice that we could also have only exported it without adding it to declarations . This would happen in the case where the component is not used internally inside the module. Could we still import the component directly? If we try to use a component directly that is not part of a module, we will get the following error: Unhandled Promise rejection: Component Home is not part of any NgModule or the module has not been imported into your module. This ensures that we only use components on our templates that have been declared as part of the public API of a given module. Angular Modules and Dependency Injection What about services and the providers property, when should we use it? We might think that when importing a module, if that module has providers then only the component directives and pipes of that module would be able to see the service. Let's see if that is true. Let's start by creating a simple service so we can give a concrete example: Let's now add this service to the HomeModule : This service is now as we would expect available in the Home component: But the problem is that a new module will not create its own separate dependency injection context! The lessons service will actually be added to the global dependency injection context. This means that LessonsService is available for injection anywhere in the application, including: the root component any component of the HomeModule any component of any other module in general But the Angular Dependency Injection container is hierarchical, meaning that unlike in AngularJs we could have created a separate context. So why did that not happen? Why isn't a separate DI context created by default? This happens by design: Modules that are directly imported are usually meant to enrich the global application and the injectables received are in most of the cases meant as application-wide singletons. The goal is usually not to create almost a small separate sub-application inside the main application. So the behavior of not creating a nested DI context is meant to help with the most common use case: importing application-wide singletons. This helps prevent the following error situations: we import a module and are trying to use its injectables but we start getting errors saying that the injectable is not available we run into subtle bugs caused by the presence of multiple instances of an injectable But what about lazy-loading? One of the main issues in Angular 1 was that the dependency injection container was not hierarchical: everything was in a single big dependency injection bucket. This meant that when we navigated around and lazy loaded parts of the app, we could accidentally overwrite services with the same name with newer versions. This meant that the app would have different behavior depending on the sequence of navigation actions, which could cause errors that are hard to reproduce. This was the main reason why lazy loading in AngularJs was not supported directly at the level of the framework, although it was still doable with for example ocLazyLoad. We will see in a moment how modules can help out also with Angular lazy-loading, but first let's see how to use the root module to bootstrap our application. Dynamic bootstrapping and Just In Time compilation Angular modules specify a template compilation context, but how can we pass it to the compiler to bootstrap our app? We have several options. An option that is good for using in development is to ship the Angular compiler to the browser, and dynamically compile the application: This will compile all templates and bootstrap the application. This will come at the expense of a much larger application bundle, but that is OK when the server is actually running on your own development machine. Let's see what we could use as a viable production alternative. The Angular Ahead Of Time compiler in action A more interesting alternative is to use the module information to do ahead of time compilation. The angular-cli will in the future allow us to do this transparently. We can already have an idea of how this works if we install the angular template compiler manually by following the developer guide: npm install @angular/compiler-cli --save This will provide a command line executable that we can use to parse all the templates of our application. This executable is actually a drop-in replacement for the Typescript compiler itself. How can we use the ngc compiler to compile templates? This new executable named ngc will look for Angular component classes and it will output another Typescript file, the component factory. We can run the executable like this: ./node_modules/.bin/ngc -p ./src This assumes that src contains the tsconfig.json of your application. In the case of our main.ts component, this would create a file next to it named main.ngfactory.ts , that might contain something similar to this: The code is a bit surprising, but we can have an idea of what is going on: the constructor was extended to receive some core injectables, like for example renderers the renderer is then being used to manually output the HTML by creating DOM elements, text content etc. This is actually what an Angular renderer looks like under the hood, and except for the names of the variables it's actually quite close to what we would have written by hand But how can we use these factory classes to bootstrap our app? Static bootstrapping We can statically bootstrap an application by taking the plain ES5 Javascript output of the generated factory classes. Then we can use that output to bootstrap the application: This will cause the application bundle to be much smaller, because all the template compilation was already done in a build step, using either ngc or calling its internals directly. Again this will all be made transparent when using the CLI: ng serve will serve the app in Just In Time Mode will serve the app in Just In Time Mode ng build -prod && ng serve -prod will serve the app in Ahead Of Time mode So we can see how the root module can be used to bootstrap an application in different ways: another possible way would be to bootstrap the app on the server for server-side rendering. But what about lazy loading, how does that relate to modules? Let's first explore feature modules, as we need that concept to help understand lazy loading. Feature Modules The HomeModule that we have been building so far is actually the beginning of a feature module. A feature module is meant to extend the global application. This is the current version of the HomeModule , and there is actually something wrong in this definition: To see what the problem here is, let's try to use a core Angular directive in the Home component template, like for example ngStyle : If we try to run this we will run into the following error message: Unhandled Promise rejection: Template parse errors: Can't bind to 'ngStyle' since it isn't a known property of 'h3'. But ngStyle was already imported into the application via BrowserModule , which includes CommonModule where ngStyle is defined. So why does this work in the application component but not in the Home component? This is because HomeModule did not itself import CommonModule where the core ngStyle directive is defined. It's not because the application itself has imported a module that the module will be visible inside other modules imported or not by the application Each module needs to define separately what it can 'see' in its context, so the solution here is to import the CommonModule : What we end up having is a typical feature module: it imports CommonModule , and provides some related components and services. Feature Modules and Lazy Loading We might want to split our larger application into a set of feature modules, but at a given point the application might become so large that we might want to use lazy loading to split it into multiple separately loadable chunks, each one corresponding to a feature module. But there we might run into an issue with the module injectables, let's see why. Angular Modules And The Router To understand the issue that might arise with modules and lazy loading, let's first add the router to the application and define a simple route: What we have done here is we have defined a /home URL than when hit will cause the Home component to be displayed. The way that this works is that when we hit the /home URL the Home component is displayed in place of the <router-outlet> HTML tag. Have a look at this router introduction post if you would like to learn more about the router. We can also see the following: We have imported RouterModule , which contains the routing directives like routerLink , which contains the routing directives like But did that import router services, like for example RouteSnapshot ? Actually no, we can see in the RouterModule definition that no providers are defined ? Actually no, we can see in the RouterModule definition that no providers are defined It's the forRoot call that imports the services, and we are going to see what does this call mean exactly and learn how to use it in our own feature modules Lazy Loading the Home module We will now refactor this code in order to make the Home component and anything inside HomeModule to be lazy loaded. This means everything related to the HomeModule will only be loaded from the server if we hit the home link (see the App HTML template above) in the App component, but not on initial load. The first thing that we need to do is to remove every mention of the Home component or the HomeModule from the App component and the main routing configuration: We can see here that the App component no longer imports HomeModule , instead the routing config uses loadChildren to say that if /home or any other url starting with it gets hit, then the file home.module should be loaded via an Ajax call. Depending on your module loader configuration this will either load home.module.js or maybe home.module.ts if you are using in-browser transpilation. What does a lazy loadable module look like Let's have a look at an initial version of HomeModule , please beware that there is a new behavior introduced here different than a normal feature module: With this small refactoring, we now have a fully working lazy-loadable module! We can see here that several things are going on: the HomeModule defines its own routing configuration, which will be added to the main config and made relative to the /home path defines its own routing configuration, which will be added to the main config and made relative to the path The HomeModule is exported with the default keyword: this is essential otherwise the router will not be able to know which export to import from this file because there is no information about the name of the needed export; the router only knows the name of the module file is exported with the keyword: this is essential otherwise the router will not be able to know which export to import from this file because there is no information about the name of the needed export; the router only knows the name of the module file The routing configuration of HomeModule is added via a call to forChild , we will understand exactly what that is and why it's needed What is different towards the import of a non lazy-loaded feature module? Do you remember the problem mentioned earlier with AngularJs, that essentially lazy loading could trigger certain bugs that are hard to reproduce due to accidental overwrites of injectables? in order to avoid this what Angular will do when lazy loading a module is that it will create a child dependency injection context. This Home DI context will contain the LessonsService , but this service will not be visible to the rest of the application. The service will be visible to the Home component, so if we try to inject it there it will work: But if we now try to inject this into for example the main App component, we will get an error: The error we will get is the following: Error: Can't resolve all parameters for App Multiple versions of the same injectable are possible This is actually normal because LessonsService is lazy loaded. But what we could do is define a second LessonsService implementation, which has the same name for a different internal implementation: We now just have to add this alternative definition of LessonsService which is defined in the other-lessons.service.ts file and add it to our AppModule providers configuration: This would now work: The App component and the Home component would get injected different versions of LessonsService . This also solves the structural problem that AngularJs had with lazy-loading: the hierarchical injector and the fact that the router creates a child DI scope for the lazy-loaded module elegantly enables reliable lazy-loading behavior One final Pitfall with modules and lazy loading We are close to knowing most of what we will need to know about modules, but there is one final notion that we need to introduce: Shared Modules, we will see how those relate to lazy loading and understand what are those forRoot and forChild calls. Shared Modules As our application grows, we can see that the need would arise of having a shared module which contains for example a set of commonly used services. Take for example a AuthenticationService : you might want to use it at the level of the main module, but you might want to also reauthenticate inside feature modules, for example before doing an important operation like a financial transfer. Let's now create a shared module, which contains the AuthenticationService , please note that this module definition would not work with lazy-loaded modules and we will in a moment see why: We can now simply import this module anywhere we need it, for example at the level of the AppModule : But now we would also want to use App inside HomeModule , and we would expect this to work: This does not throw any error, the problem is that now we have two versions of AuthenticationService running in our application, because of the child DI context of the HomeModule : one instance is created at startup and injected into App the second instance is created when we click on the Home link which triggers the lazy loading of the HomeModule And this is not the intended behavior, we again fall into a situation where we accidentally triggered a bug that might be very time consuming to troubleshoot. We would like the service to be an application-level singleton. So how can we solve this? This is where the forRoot and forChild methods comes in. Shared Modules and Lazy Loading If we want to have a shared module that is correctly loaded by lazy-loaded modules, we can now conclude the following: in such scenario the shared module cannot define services using the providers property So we need another mechanism for a shared module to make its injectables available to both the root module and lazy loaded modules in a safe way. What we want is a way to do the following: create an AuthenticationService instance when adding it to the root module instance when adding it to the root module this instance will automatically by visible to any child DI contexts, like the HomeModule context context prevent the creation of a second instance of the service, by removing the providers declaration By following some Angular conventions, we can do so by defining a forRoot method in SharedModule : Notice that we removed AuthenticationService from the providers array. This means that when we import this module in HomeModule we will no longer create a duplicate service instance. We can now use this method to import the service in the main module: What this method does is that it returns the module plus providers that we need, but because the name of the method is forRoot , Angular will know how to use it: it will create the module context and the services declared in providers. But when we import SharedModule into HomeModule without using forRoot , it will only process the module itself. SharedModule will have no information about the providers and so it will not instantiate a duplicate AuthenticationService . Conclusions and Pitfall Summary In this post we have learned why Angular Modules are necessary: they allow to group the functionality of our app into logical parts, and are essential for enabling ahead of time compilation (which means much better bootstrap performance) and lazy-loading. We can now see how this feature was so important to have for the final release, without it some of the main benefits of the framework would not be available. Modules are very useful, but beware of the following pitfalls: do not redeclare a component, directive, etc. in more than one module modules do not create their own DI context, so injectables are available also outside the module unless the module is lazy loaded, in that case a separate DI context is created by the router to avoid accidental injectable overrides and prevent hard to troubleshoot bugs if you have a shared module that needs to be added to a lazy loaded module, make sure that it does not have providers , because that would create duplicate service instances (unless that is the intended behavior) The new modularity functionality is the enabler of some tremendous features: we can now have mobile friendly applications that load very quickly with only a couple tens of KB of Javascript but with tons of functionality. We will be able to focus a lot more on application features, and with minimal configuration and in a very transparent way the Angular modularity features will make building blazing fast progressive web apps a breeze in the very near future. Other posts on Angular If you enjoyed this post, please have also a look at other popular posts on my blog that you might find interesting: The Angular University On YouTube Do you like to learn on YouTube ? Have a look at this one hour sample of the Complete Angular With Typescript Course, or Subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one:

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