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What’s up my dudes & dudettes? Often when the darkest timeline is upon us, the aggro players go back to their most powerful tool: Burn Spells. So this week I take Stonescar Burn for a spin! Stonescar Burn 4 Oni Ronin (Set1 #13) 4 Pyroknight (Set1 #16) 4 Torch (Set1 #8) 2 Annihilate (Set1 #269) 4 Argenport Instigator (Set1 #268) 3 Kaleb’s Favor (Set0 #3) 4 Rakano Outlaw (Set1 #20) 4 Rapid Shot (Set1 #259) 4 Champion of Chaos (Set1 #402) 3 Cinder Yeti (Set1002 #1) 3 Bandit Queen (Set1 #389) 4 Impending Doom (Set1 #286) 4 Obliterate (Set1 #48) 3 Soulfire Drake (Set1 #47) 6 Fire Sigil (Set1 #1) 1 Granite Monument (Set1 #423) 6 Shadow Sigil (Set1 #249) 4 Seat of Chaos (Set0 #60) 4 Stonescar Banner (Set1 #419) 4 Diplomatic Seal (Set1 #425) Stonescar Burn isn’t a new deck, and has survived many a nerf while still remaining a top dog in the metagame. Nerfs such as Champion of Chaos not getting +1/+1 for the thresholds, Rapid Shot costing 1S, Soulfire Drake costing 5FF, and so on. Despite all that, Stonescar is still a good choice. By applying early pressure with efficient aggro units and having extra burn reach with spells like Torch and Obliterate it maintains a good presence regardless of what the meta throws its way. Yes we were unlucky some points but these games show the strength of the deck. We had some opponents stumble, and we were able to close the door on them. We had other opponents give us some good games while allowing us to make some meaningful decisions. If you’re looking for a deck that will jam out games quickly and has a reasonable win percentage, I can’t recommend Stonescar Burn enough. As always you can give me comments/questions on Reddit, the Discord, or Twitter @jwiley129. Thanks so much for following along and I’ll see y’all next time! Comments

Canadian Blood Services is calling on the public to roll up their sleeves to help reduce a nationwide blood shortage that's reached what it calls a critical level. The organization currently has between 12,000 and 14,000 units of blood on hand; the country typically requires a minimum of 20,000 units at any given time. "It is critical right now," said Hailu Mulatu, a regional manager with Canadian Blood Services. "We're trying everything we can to ensure that we can meet patients' demands over the summer." While Saturday marks the last day of National Blood Donor Week, Mulatu says Canadian Blood Services is extending its appeal for donations. The goal is to bag 50,000 units of blood by the end of June, a target that will take a major surge to reach. Increasing the blood supply is, without exaggeration, a matter of life and death for thousands of patients around the country, Mulatu says. Victims of a bad car crash can need up to 50 units, while leukemia patients can require up to 80 units every week, the organization estimates. Life-saving blood Eleven-year-old Aaryan Dinh-Ali also relies on massive amounts of blood on an ongoing basis. 18 months ago, he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare bone marrow disease which caused brain bleeding and reduced his blood count to dangerous levels. In his treatment and recovery, Dinh-Ali has received around 100 blood transfusions. "Aaryan has countless strangers' blood running through his system so he can function on a normal basis and be where he is today," his mother Jenny Dinh said. "If it wasn't for those transfusions, Aaryan may not have survived and come home with us." Hailu Mulatu of Canadian Blood Services warns that hospitals may start to cancel elective surgeries if the shortage continues. (SickKids) Why the shortage? Mulatu believes this year's shortage has been caused in part by bad spring weather, which forced the closure of some Canadian Blood Services clinics over the last few months. With those clinics now back open, he's hoping Canadians recognize how valuable their donations are for patients battling disease and recovering from accidents. Mulatu also notes that hospitals may take other steps to preserve the dwindling blood supply. "With a low blood inventory, what may happen is that hospitals may be asked to reduce the amount of blood that they use, which may delay elective surgeries," he said. Geoffrey Brown has donated blood more than a hundred times.. "For a first-timer, it might be a little intimidating but the people there are all very kind and appreciative of what you're doing," he said. "It's always a degree of satisfaction knowing what you're doing can assist a number of different people with whatever health problems they are undergoing." Jenny Dinh-Ali says her son's ordeal also opened her eyes to the staggering importance of blood donations. Seeing the public inventory so low is even more painful after her experience over the past year-and-a-half. "It hurts because not only is it our child who's in need of blood, but being in Sick Kids Hospital for a month straight and seeing the children in there … everybody needs to donate," she said.

A special parliamentary committee will propose Parliament adopt a new physician-assisted dying law that includes advance consent for people in early stages of dementia, sources say. In a report to be tabled in Parliament Thursday, sources say the joint Commons-Senate committee will also address how doctors should deal with people with debilitating mental disorders and young people enduring painful and terminal illnesses. The report recommends the government should first see how medically assisted dying works with adults before allowing it for children or people with mental illnesses. Story continues below advertisement Some MPs had argued for prior judicial approval for an assisted death, but the committee decided it should be left to the medical profession to decide in a sensitive team-based way, sources say. "We trust our medical professionals with our lives every day," Liberal MP and committee co-chair Robert Oliphant told The Globe and Mail. "And this is a committee that also understands that we can trust them with our deaths." The report is also expected to outline areas in which the federal government should consult with provinces and territories, as well as issues not directly in the committee's mandate, such as palliative-care strategy to discourage people from opting for medically assisted death. Mr. Oliphant said most Canadians will be comfortable with the report, which includes safeguards for vulnerable people. "We have given a framework for the [Justice] Minister to consider, and it will be her job to take that framework and decide what has to be in legislation and what has to be in policy," Mr. Oliphant said. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the century-old law banning physician-assisted death was unconstitutional and that Canadians with unbearable and irremediable suffering could be eligible to end their life with a doctor's aid. The Conservative caucus is split on the contentious report with senators signing on to the majority opinion. Conservative MP and vice-chair Michael Cooper said only MPs are part of the dissenting report. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement "The report got some things right but some things wrong. And we felt there were some glaring errors with recommendations in the report," Mr. Cooper said. "We just felt that as Conservative MPs we owed it to our constituents and to Canadians to raise some issues that we felt were not adequately addressed in the main report." Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told The Globe and Mail that Tory MPs have decided to make a "political statement" on doctor-assisted dying. "I suspect it will talk about protecting the vulnerable but, you know, everyone who is suffering is vulnerable," Senator Nancy Ruth said. "The report itself does protect the vulnerable in my opinion, very strongly, even more strongly than I would have probably, perhaps even personally, have wanted. So it's a compromise and I think it's a fair report. I think the minority report is unnecessary." Mr. Oliphant said the Conservatives MPs who dissented to the report haven't accepted that "dying is a part of life." "I honestly believe that the Conservative MPs – not the senators – Conservative MPs disagree fundamentally with the Supreme Court decision, and have at every opportunity found ways or tried to find ways that would tie up access to assisted dying in such a way as to make the Supreme Court of Canada decision null and void," Mr. Oliphant said. Story continues below advertisement Liberal Senator James Cowan said the majority of MPs and senators of all parties believe the committee has struck a balance that places trust and responsibility in the medical profession to make the right decisions about end-to-life care. "It's not going to be what everybody wants but I think it's a good piece of advice for the government," Mr. Cowan said in an interview. The recommendations are the result of months of public consultations; they will be turned over the Justice Department to draft a new law by the June 6 deadline set by the high court. The main object of the federal legislation is to set a common national framework and avoid a patchwork system of end-of-life care. "The committee made an honest effort to try to listen to witnesses and to come forward with a consensus that seems to be addressing the fundamental issues raised by the decision of the Supreme Court," Liberal Senator Serge Joyal said in an interview. The Supreme Court judgment ending the ban on assisted dying was set to take effect on Feb. 6, but the federal government obtained a four-month extension during which those seeking this outcome must get approval from court. The Liberals initially said they were going to whip the vote to support doctor-assisted dying legislation, but later backtracked, saying they would wait for the committee's report and the bill to be introduced before making that decision. Story continues below advertisement Quebec already has its own law, which came into effect Dec. 10. Since then, one patient in Quebec City's university health-care network received a doctor-assisted death.

Oxidative stress-related phenotypic changes and a decline in the number of viable cells are crucial contributors to intervertebral disc degeneration. The polyphenol epigallocatechin 3-gallate (EGCG) can interfere with painful disc degeneration by reducing inflammation, catabolism, and pain. In this study, we hypothesized that EGCG furthermore protects against senescence and/or cell death, induced by oxidative stress. Sublethal and lethal oxidative stress were induced in primary human intervertebral disc cells with H2O2 (total n = 36). Under sublethal conditions, the effects of EGCG on p53-p21 activation, proliferative capacity, and accumulation of senescence-associated β-galactosidase were tested. Further, the effects of EGCG on mitochondria depolarization and cell viability were analyzed in lethal oxidative stress. The inhibitor LY249002 was applied to investigate the PI3K/Akt pathway. EGCG inhibited accumulation of senescence-associated β-galactosidase but did not affect the loss of proliferative capacity, suggesting that EGCG did not fully neutralize exogenous radicals. Furthermore, EGCG increased the survival of IVD cells in lethal oxidative stress via activation of prosurvival PI3K/Akt and protection of mitochondria. We demonstrated that EGCG not only inhibits inflammation but also can enhance the survival of disc cells in oxidative stress, which makes it a suitable candidate for the development of novel therapies targeting disc degeneration.

President Trump uttered one of his trademark quasi-dictatorial assertions during a Thursday-night interview with Laura Ingraham on her new show The Ingraham Angle (is that the permanent name, Fox News? You’re sticking with that?). Ingraham asked Trump about the massive number of vital diplomatic jobs that have remained vacant at the State Department as Rex Tillerson continues to systematically gut the agency — though she approached the crisis as worse news for Trump than for the United States. Trump says he's not worried about unfilled State Department roles b/c "the one that matters is me. I am the only one that matters." pic.twitter.com/JxcWiy7ozY — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 3, 2017 “Your State Department still has some unfilled positions. Are you worried that the State Department doesn’t have enough Donald Trump nominees in there to push your vision through?” Ingraham asked, adding that “there’s a concern that the State Department is currently undermining your agenda.” Trump responded with his customary eloquence and clarity of mind. “So we don’t need all the people they want,” Trump said. “I’m a businessman, and I tell my people, ‘When you don’t need to fill slots, don’t fill them.’ But we have some people that I’m not happy with there. Lemme tell you, the one that matters is me. I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.” Trump then blamed Chuck Schumer and Democrats for obstructing nominees (which is definitely not what’s happening) and defended “cost saving” as a diplomatic strategy. The autocratic egoism on display echoed several previous Trump moments, from his campaign ad released earlier in the week (“President Trump will fix it”) to his frightening speech at the Republican National Convention speech in 2016. And it wasn’t the only authoritarian-infused section of the Ingraham interview. Trump also defended comments from Wednesday, in which he referred to the U.S. criminal justice system as a “joke” and “laughingstock” for not prosecuting terrorists faster. He also called Donna Brazile’s account of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic National Committee “takeover” a “major story,” comments that served as a nice entree into his tweets Friday morning, in which he urged his Justice Department to go after Clinton. Norms, schnorms.

I’m waiting on line at Urth Caffé when I get a text from Dan Hageman: “You here? We’re out front at a curb table.” The lunchtime bustle at Urth—the most ubiquitously “Los Angeles” coffee spot in downtown—was so crowded that I must have missed Dan and his brother Kevin when I first walked in. The Hageman brothers (Kevin is 40, Dan, 37) are easy to spot, even amongst the sea of hipster locals. They both wear rectangular glasses, collared shirts, and cozy sweaters, and they share enough of the same facial features to clearly mark them as as brothers—although sometimes that similarity is mistaken for something else. “Yeah, a lot of the time people will think we’re a couple,” says Dan. Kevin nods, “We go to a lot of business meetings and the first thing the executives will say is ‘So, how did you two meet…?’” I’ve asked Dan and Kevin to meet me today because I’m enlisting them as the guinea pigs for a new writing project I’m embarking on. It’s been nearly four years since I moved to Los Angeles for college, and in just a few months, I’ll be continuing to live here without the backbone of university to keep me steady. In my time in L.A. I’ve bounced between many career dreams: first I wanted to be an actor, then a screenwriter, then a stand-up comedian, then a journalist, and now my passions lie in the murky gray area between the want for all of these things. I’ve found pieces of success in each of these arenas, but as the deadline to start making a real career for myself draws nearer, I find myself almost choking on fear. Here in the epicenter of The Industry (capital letters) it’s easy to grow desperate at the massive amounts of wealth success that surround you. So I’ve decided to go out into Hollywoodland and interview as many people as I can who aren’t necessarily the flashiest, most successful artists in the business, but who rather are a working part of the mechanics of the industry; the people whose careers are built on sweat and toil and the persistent, intangible goal of one day “making it big.” I call them “the E-List”: the people who grind the gears of Hollywood and rarely receive the credit—for now. The Hagemans are ideal first candidates. For starters, they weren’t offended when I used the term “E-List.” But they are also serious working screenwriters in Hollywood whose scripts—which include 2012’s Hotel Transylvania, the massively successful Cartoon Network series Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu, and the soon-to-be-released LEGO Movie—are beginning to find their way into the mainstream Hollywood vernacular. I’m here to pick their brains about how they’ve gotten to where they are, where they hope to go, and what kind of wisdom they have for someone like me, who harbors dreams of screenwriting but no real sense of how to get there. Haley: So give me a little background about yourselves. You’re not native Los Angelenos—what spurred you to come here and start writing for film? Dan: We’re from Oregon originally, so we actually feel very much like outsiders. Kevin: I came here for film school, at Loyola Marymount. Dan and I grew up together making movies—I would direct a lot of, you know, video camera crap. And I would force my brother to be in my movies. Dan: I was always doing whatever Kevin did. Like if Kevin wanted to take piano lessons, I would start playing the piano. I was always emulating my brother. And then Kevin was really big into acting, and so I went into acting. I always thought whatever he could do, I could do better. Kevin: And it’s still there, that competition. Dan: Well the place where he got me was in acting, because even when he was in high school he would get every lead. And then I would go and I would get— Kevin: That’s not true! I started off with small parts! Dan: Yeah, but even when you were a freshman you were like, Woody Allen in Play it Again Sam. Kevin: True, but you always had that huge beard, even when you were 15, so I guess that makes us even. Haley: So then Kevin went to film school, and you didn’t, Dan? Dan: Kevin went to film school because he wanted to be a director, and at that time I wanted to go into music for film; film scoring and composition. I thought my brother will get jobs, I’ll write the music to his movies… Kevin: And we’ll both become famous! Dan: Of course, when Kevin graduated film school, he had a crisis of faith with the realization of, who the hell’s gonna give him money to make a movie? All of his film buddies’ parents would give them like, twenty grand to make student films, and our parents basically said screw that, you’ve got to do it on your own. Then I’m thinking, “How am I gonna become a famous composer if my brother can’t even get a movie off the ground?” And so we decided to write something. Kevin: At this time I had recently graduated. I was an unpaid intern and then became an assistant at Dark Horse Entertainment, around the year 2000. And I had a great mentor there named Mike Richardson, and I actually spent 8 years working on the development side, working with writers. And I just kept meeting with these writers and thinking, “Why can’t I do this?” Neither of us ever thought never thought we could write, so we started to print out our favorite screenplays—Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws—and we just read the scripts— Dan: Goonies. That was the first one that we loved so much we printed it out and read it. And we were just like, “Oh my God, this is such a bad script.” I don’t know if you’ve read the original script, but there was originally a scene where the Goonies are attacked by a giant squid, and they escape because Data takes out his Walkman, puts his headphones over the squid’s ears, and the squid just rocks out to Cyndi Lauper. Amazingly bad. Kevin: So we thought, we could do that. Dan: That gave us the fire to say, we could probably do something like this. Kevin didn’t go to film school to be a writer, I had some writing skills but nothing professional— Kevin: I took one screenwriting course and I was like, whatever. I barely got a passing grade. Dan: But we wrote off our own passion of what we thought would be a really great movie. Our first script was a passion project, but it totally sucked. We loved it; we thought it was the greatest thing in the world. I remember Kevin had shown it to some guy on a plane—like, the assistant stunt double on the movie Predator— Kevin: And this guy read it and was like, “This is the second best script I’ve ever read, outside of Predator.” He was nobody, but we ate it up. Haley: There’s definitely a fun effect in Los Angeles, where everyone’s always trying to sell their product or scripts to whoever they think might be buying. You schmooze the guy you think is higher up than you, but he’s schmoozing you because he thinks you might be higher up than him—when really nobody’s anybody and everybody’s just trying to get their screenplay read. Dan: Oh yeah, because that’s when I said, “I’m moving down to LA! We’ve got talent!” We thought it was our big break. Jokes. I’m telling you the whole story now, of how we went from shit to…wherever we are now. Kevin: And we literally came from shit. We used to work at a sewer treatment plant. Our father used to build them. So we had this chance to take over a lucrative family company to build, you know, shit factories— Dan: And we were like, screw this shit. Kevin: Literally. Haley: And what did Dad say when you left the family business to work in film? Dan: Oh, he loves it. Kevin: He was scared at first, he hated the idea…I just remember there was a Christmas once where we opened up the presents, and Dad was SO excited to give these gifts to us— Dan: And it was a hard hat and hammers. Kevin: It was supposed to be the start of us training to work with him. And we were like, “No, we’re artists, we want to move to LA!” Dan: But there was a nice moment recently where he teared up and said, “You boys don’t need me anymore. You didn’t take the family company, but you made it on your own.” It was a really touching moment. Haley: But of course, it’s been a long battle, to finally be making a steady living off of screenwriting? Dan: It never gets easier. It’s an uphill battle every time, and you’re always starting from scratch. Kevin: And always in today’s climate in risk-averse studios, it’s hard for any creative writers or directors…you need a brand, you need the rights to something big. Dan: There was a 10-month period where it felt like you had to have Steve Carell attached to your project, or you weren’t getting hired. Kevin: It took us ten years of writing before anything actually got made. We were tossed around a lot, we had a major screenplay making the rounds—they told us it was gonna sell for 2 million dollars. We had this major meeting at CAA, they’re telling us Steven Spielberg is going to direct—Dan, you cried, didn’t you? Dan: I was in my Dodge Neon crying on my way to that meeting. I felt like, oh God, we made it. Kevin: Of course, we didn’t. There was some legal blockage, as there always is, and suddenly we’re being told that not only is our 2 million dollar script worth nothing, but that we can’t ever sell it to anyone, ever. Haley: So, tell me about how you came to the decision to write as partners. Kevin: Well I started writing by myself, in film school. Dan: And that went horribly wrong. Kevin: It was okay, but when Dan came in, the scripts got better. Dan: We used to always say it was a heart and mind thing. Kevin was the passion and energy behind a project, where he’ll look at something and say, “This movie has to have this scene, or this moment,” and I’m more of the copywriter who says, “Well if you want to have that moment you need to be able to track that in the structure.” Haley: And do you ever come into conflict? Kevin: Whaaaaaat?! No! Yes. Dan: I mean, it’s difficult to write with your brother, but we’ve met people who are married and write together. It’s so subjective. One of you will be writing some beautiful moment…”and here’s where he’ll take the flower, and reflect on his life…” and the other one is like “HE HAS TO LEAVE THE FLOWER! IF HE TAKES THE FLOWER IT RUINS EVERYTHING!” Haley: And what happens then? Dan: I steamroller him. Or Kevin shuts the Skype down. Kevin: We do a lot over video chat and it’s helpful to just go, BOOP! Goodbye. I’m more of the patient brother, he’s more of the hotheaded, impulsive brother. So he’ll get so tunnel-visioned in that flower moment– Dan: The flower moment has to resolve now or you are no longer my brother! Kevin: You’re an idiot for thinking that! Only someone who doesn’t know how to write would resolve the flower moment like that! Dan: That’s what’s hard with your brother, is you can cut deep. You push buttons. Kevin: But it also pushes you to find the gem. If you’re writing by yourself you can get stuck in a corner, and it’s so hard to come out of that. Dan: Think of it like another editor, too. If you’re writing by yourself, it’s a first draft. But when you’re writing with a partner, your first draft is really a second draft because everything’s gone through two different minds. If we turn in a script we both like, we don’t feel indecisive about where it is. And the highs and lows, to share that with somebody, there’s a lot of love. The highs when they come are amazing, and the lows are…manyful. Kevin: I don’t think “manyful” is a word. Dan: Excuse me, I’m a professional writer. Haley: So let’s talk about what’s been working for you. The LEGO Movie is a huge deal, and that’s coming out soon, but I think the real surprise success has been Ninjago. Dan: We never ever thought we’d see ourselves end up in children’s animation television, but at the time it was presented it to us, we had been working for seven years and nothing was ever produced. Kevin: This was right after we had set The LEGO Movie, which was great, but there was a lot of politics that come into play, and some really big directors came in and the studio basically said, “Why don’t we let these big directors write this? Why are we letting the Hagemans do this, who don’t have a single thing produced yet?” Which is understandable, of course. Dan: It really was a good decision by the studio. But we felt a bit like we were in a bum situation. So then Lego comes to us and says, “Well, we have this 44-minute special we want to do about LEGO ninjas.” And we weren’t really sure at first. But then they said, “We are DEFINITELY going to make this.” Kevin: And we said “Promise?” And they said yes. Dan: So we said, fine. We will give you 44 minutes of wall-to-wall, action packed awesomeness, and it’s going to kick ass, because all of our pent up frustration is going to go into it. And it was only supposed to be those 44 minutes, to launch a toy line, but it ended up going really well, and it turned into 13 episodes, which turned into 13 more episodes, and now we’re going into our fourth and fifth season. I think it’s actually the number one intellectual property for boys. [in fact, since its launch in 2011, the LEGO brand has credited Ninjago with growth of more than 25%, while capturing 7% of the global toy market. Source: http://cargocollective.com/rvhm/Lego-Ninjago] Haley: I see Ninjago apparel everywhere. Little kids in Ninjago shirts with Ninjago lunchboxes. Dan: A couple weeks ago we saw a grown man was wearing a Ninjago shirt, and we were like, LOOK AT THAT! Kevin: Yeah, like a 44-year-old enormous black homeless man. Dan: I don’t think he actually chose to wear it. But still! Haley: So how much of Ninjago is just the two of you? Are there other writers? Dan: Ninjago is so different from other shows—there is no writer’s room, there’s no showrunner. It’s literally just us writing these scripts. When we were hired to write the first 13 episodes, the first thing we did was call up someone who wrote for TV and basically ask, “How the hell do you write a TV series?” We really learned by the seat of our pants. Fake it ‘til you make it. We know what we want to see, we know what we don’t want to see. And you just kind of write towards that. LEGO came to us with a very simple approach: four ninjas, Sensei Wu, and a bad guy. What LEGO did well is that they understood that this was a toy commercial, but if we’re just writing a toy commercial, there’s no fun in that. At the same time, Dan and I didn’t mind writing a project that has to have, say, a tank with a grappling hook in it, because tanks with grappling hooks are cool. And also ninjas are cool. Kevin: So we came in and we wanted to bring a Star Wars quality of mysticism and magic and really make it a world, a universe. So we said, this isn’t about ninjas collecting weapons, it’s about a brother saving his sister. And we brought the emotion into the story. Dan: There was a little bit of pushback in bringing a girl character into the story. Kevin: But now there’s a real large growing girl audience for the show—something like 30% of our viewers are female. Dan: Teenage girls, too. There’s kind of a Twilight Team Edward thing going on, when girls are into Team Cole or Jay. Kevin: It’s become a great synergy with LEGO now, where they’ll create toys that inspire us, and we’ll put them in the show, or we’ll have ideas and they’ll design a toy off the scripts. Dan: Everyone kind of signed off, from to the musicians to the composers to the animators, on really raising their bar. We all understand it’s a toy thing, but we all want to make it more than just a toy thing. Kevin: I mean, we treat this very seriously. When we first started to write the actual series, we had to do 13 or 26 episodes, and the producers suggested we just follow a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles format: close-ended, half-hour, disposable episodes. But we didn’t want to watch that. We were inspired by these wonderful serialized adventures we loved—Indiana Jones, Star Wars—and we thought, why can’t we make something like that for kids? Dan: It made you believe in the world. We were talking to the Cartoon Network about why kids have embraced it so much. And they were saying that all the content that’s out there is all just rehashing of their parent’s stuff: Transformers, GI Joe, Avengers. But Ninjago is the first world they feel is their own. They know the names; they know how to pronounce Lord Garmadon. Haley: You obviously have to be very conscious of your audience. Dan: You gotta keep it light for the six-year-olds. Those are usually the notes: you can’t say “war;” you have to say “battle.” Kevin: Don’t say “fight” or “stupid.” No hitting in the face. Dan: What’s fun about Ninjago is that they fight inside these tornadoes, so you can’t really see anyone, I don’t know, tearing out a jugular. But that’s what I imagine happens in there. Haley: You seem to really love the work you’re doing. Dan: Here’s the big secret: We’re actually writing it just for us. There’d be a lot more swearing in it, if we could get away with it. But it’s been so much fun for us, and we keep going back to it because our relationship with LEGO has been the best working relationship that we’ve ever had. There’s a trust: they trust us and we trust them. Kevin: I was really surprised by the difference between TV and film, and how in film right now, as a writer you’re really in the shadow. Dan: Making a movie is really like a marathon, and as a writer you’re holding the first baton…just waiting for them to hire another writer or someone to take that baton from you. With Ninjago right now we’re in the driver’s seat, and it’s a great feeling. Haley: But of course, now you have The LEGO Movie coming out. Kevin: We’ve seen the rough cuts, and we’re so proud of it. Dan: We were so impressed to see the vision exceeded our own. Years ago, before we were getting produced, we thought that people were only making movies that are already entities. So we brainstormed ideas that we that people would pay to see, and one of those ideas was a LEGO movie. We wrote a 3-page treatment, then threw it in a drawer, cause we never thought we were actually gonna get the rights. So it was kind of kismet, when the producer Dan Lin called years later and asked if we were interested in LEGO. Totally chance. Kevin: It was interesting because in the beginning, we talked to so many people, and no one understood what a LEGO movie could be. And to us, it was always so simple. We just came up with the most basic of stories: A LEGO, who lives in LEGO city, suddenly finds himself in a whole new world that he’s at the center of. Basic fish out of water. Haley: Now, you have the story-by credits, not the screenplay credits. What does that mean? Dan: We wrote the initial treatments, setting up the central structure, including the different worlds and many characters Emmet meets along the way. Warner Brothers then brought in writing/directing pair Phil Lord and Chris Miller, to run all those ideas through their processors. They are HILARIOUS. And they really brought the comedy element to the movie. That’s their forte; they really elevated the movie to the next level. Kevin: Because we tend to stick in the emotional tones. We’re always looking for the emotional drive and the serious beats, what makes characters tick and all that. But you can’t just have emotion and no comedy, or you’d have the most depressing animated LEGO movie of all time. Dan: It was the same with Hotel Transylvania. Our original scripts were a little too brooding, to serious, and then Sony Animation brought in more writers to punch up the comedy. Kevin: And the visuals of The LEGO Movie are going to be really incredible. It’s literally made entirely of LEGOs. Everything. If you see fire, or smoke in the distance, that’s all LEGOs. And it looks incredible; the artists really raised the bar. Dan: We wanted to write a water scene, but thought we couldn’t because—well, how do you shoot a water scene in all LEGOs? But Phil and Chris didn’t let that hold them back and did it, and it looks amazing. Kevin: We were also confined to the limits of what LEGO figures can do—which isn’t much. So that became part of the humor—you can see in the trailer when Emmett does jumping jacks, and he’s just barely moving his arms and legs, because, well, he’s a LEGO. And it has this almost cheesy, stop-motion-esque quality to it—which we don’t have in Ninjago—and it really brings the whole concept together. It looks great. That’s what I think I’m most excited for, is how it all looks. Dan: This has been an incredibly exciting time for us. There are promotions everywhere, and giant Legos everywhere, and you can start to see kids getting really excited. Haley: I have to say, I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks pretty awesome. Kevin: We think so. We hope so. Dan: So did you get what you wanted from us? Whatever life advice you’re trying to suck out of this interview? Haley: I don’t know. You guys are cool. You make it sound scary—it clearly hasn’t been a quick route to success—but you’re also in this amazing place where you’re doing work that you love, and it’s working for you. Dan: You already know the basic advice. Don’t quit. It never gets easy. Don’t give up. Haley: It’s not very original, but I guess it works. Kevin: You’re not going to find original advice. It’s the same grind for everyone. You just need to have the drive, and the skill, and the will, to push it through to the other side. And then you end up writing screenplays for toys. It’s really not a bad trade. The LEGO Movie opens February 7th, 2014.

Amid the snipers, the rubble and the misery on many Syrian streets is another ugly phenomenon: garbage. In Adel’s* hometown of Janoub al Malaab, a district of Hama city, piles of waste give off an odour that is nearly unbearable. “You can see the dirt rot in the sun, and you can smell it. There are areas you cannot even approach because the stench is so bad,” said the local activist. “People are suffering from it.” Solid waste disposal and collection has been severely disrupted in embattled areas of Syria, more than two years into a conflict that has spurred a public health crisis. In areas held by the rebels, the state has all but stopped providing waste collection services. Combined with worsening hygiene and soaring summer heat, the uncontrolled garbage is putting about five million people at risk of disease, according to Ahmedou Bahah, manager of water and sanitation programmes for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Syria. “In July, temperatures will increase to up to 40 degrees, which poses a significant public health hazard in connection with the lack of clean water supply and waste management,” he told IRIN. In the embattled districts of Homs, state dustcarts have not been seen for the past 16 months, since government troops started a devastating military campaign. Instead, civil activist networks have sprung up, organizing committees tasked with cleaning the streets. “We collect all the trash in one place until there is a heap as big as a mountain,” said Mohammed*, a local activist. Usually, the activists create makeshift dumpsters (piles of rubbish) in areas that are now empty because residents have fled. “Once or twice a week, we’d get a truck and move it outside. It’s dangerous, though, because you have to pass checkpoints, and the soldiers often accuse us of smuggling weapons inside,” he said. “Sometimes people have been arrested, and sometimes they have forced us to unload everything.” Local efforts are also hampered by the ongoing clashes and limited capacities. “We’ve tried to solve this problem, but it’s still bad,” said Ahmed, an activist in Albara, a town of 20,000 in the Jebel Azzawieh region of rebel-held Idlib Governorate. “You can find volunteers to collect the trash for one day or two, but not every day, and we don’t have funds to pay salaries.” In addition, Ahmed said, to take away the refuse, they need trucks and fuel, which is expensive and not always available. “It’s a big town, so you need at least three vehicles if you want to clear the streets, but sometimes we can find only one.” “Whenever there is fighting, there is a problem,” said Adel, the activist in Hama. Though the city is militarily under regime control, public services have severely eroded, he said, while intermittent clashes make it difficult for the residents to clear their own streets. For instance, snipers sometimes make it almost impossible to cross the streets, let alone walk around and collect the rubbish, he added. When the army seals off certain districts, activists sometimes cannot take out the waste for weeks. “Then we bury it in the ground because there is nothing else we can do,” Mohammed said. Coinciding with a general collapse of infrastructure as well as a severe disruption of the health system - the World Health Organization (WHO) says at least 35 percent of the country’s hospitals are out of service - the pile-up of rubbish is likely to lead to a proliferation of diseases, according to Basel al Yousfi, director of WHO’s Centre for Environmental Health Activities in the Jordanian capital Amman. Leishmaniasis “Waste accumulations in streets are breeding sites for pests such as mosquitoes, flies and mice that could transmit many diseases such as Leishmaniasis, causing epidemics and outbreaks, particularly in emergency and conflict situations,” he told IRIN. In addition, al Yousfi warned, odours due to biodegradation might lead to serious respiratory problems. Already, reported outbreaks of Leishmaniasis, a disease transmitted by a sand fly that leads to skin ulcers resembling leprosy, have increased dramatically. According to WHO, humans can be infected if bitten by female sandflies after they have bred in waste. Internal displacement and limited access to health care are also contributing to the spread of the disease. Leishmaniasis has been on the rise in the city of Homs, residents and activists say, but Aleppo city, as well as the rural parts of Aleppo and Homs governorates, are worst affected, with local NGOs reporting as many as 4,000 cases in each area. “We cannot confirm these figures, but if hygiene standards continue to deteriorate, the spread of Leishmaniasis could reach catastrophic levels,” UNICEF’s Bahah said. Insects, especially flies, have been multiplying since the start of the summer, said Ahmed, the activist in Idlib. “You have Leishmaniasis in many places now. It’s gotten worse since the start of the summer. This is why we are now trying harder to take away the trash. People are starting to fear for their health.” Though the rise of communicable diseases in Syria like typhoid, hepatitis, cholera and dysentery is mainly attributed to shortages of clean water - according to UNICEF, the availability of safe water in Syria is one third what it was before the crisis - the amount of waste putrefying in residential neighbourhoods is aggravating an already critical health situation. According to WHO, acute watery diarrhoea increased by 172 percent between January and May 2013, from 243 to 660 reported cases. Hepatitis A increased by 219 percent from 48 to 153 cases in the same period. Logistical challenges As the peak of summer heat approaches, UNICEF has started implementing a contingency plan to reduce the risk of diseases related to hygiene and sanitation. It is supporting communities collecting and transporting solid waste and working with local partners to raise awareness and provide hygiene items and pesticides. Civil society activists in Aleppo are also receiving support in garbage clean-up from the Jesuit Refugee Service. But aid agencies and civil society activists face many logistical challenges. “Security is one of the main problems,” Bahah said. “Sometimes trucks full of waste are unloaded three to four times at checkpoints before reaching the dumpsters. This is why we are negotiating with the authorities now.” Rebel forces have also hampered attempts to bring the waste situation under control. On the highway between Hama and Homs, Bahah said, they have blocked aid convoys carrying petrol needed for the dust carts because they suspect the fuel will end up being used by the army. In rebel-held districts of the capital Damascus, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is trying to fill the gap left by the state. “But it’s obviously difficult because when there’s shelling, nobody cares about cleaning the streets. So, in some districts, the situation is disastrous. You even see dead animals lying in the streets.” When the FSA penetrated into the city centre in July last year and clashes broke out, public services were suspended for about a week, highlighting the risks for a city of two million people. “It was horrible - there was waste everywhere,” said Modar, a local student who gave only his first name. “Now we can really picture what will happen if the FSA should one day enter the city centre.” Click here for more IRIN reporting on how a lack of access to water, sanitation and proper hygiene is threatening Syrians and others across the region. *not a real name gk/ha/cb

“Some guys are lucky but not so competent. Some guys are unlucky but very competent,” Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa said on Tuesday, defending his decision to bring back a canned officer as head of the PNP’s new narcotics force. Senior Supt. Albert Ignatius Ferro was the chief of the PNP Anti-Illegal Drugs Group (ADG) that President Rodrigo Duterte ordered dissolved in October last year after officers of the unit were involved in the kidnapping and murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo. ADVERTISEMENT The entire ADG was fired, and criminal charges were brought against the officers involved in the crime. Ferro was sacked, too, under the principle of command responsibility. New job But after Mr. Duterte ordered the PNP back to his war on drugs, Dela Rosa formed a new narcotics force—the PNP Drug Enforcement Group (DEG)—and put Ferro in charge of it. Explaining his decision to reporters on Tuesday, the PNP chief said Ferro was not directly involved in the murder of Jee and was “even instrumental in the resolution of the case.” “Maybe one year after he was relieved, he has learned his lesson well. He will no longer get personnel who are not trustworthy. My instructions to him is to coordinate with the director for intelligence for the vetting process of the personnel he will get for the PNP-DEG,” Dela Rosa said. He described Ferro as a “very competent” officer who “got unlucky” because of “rogues” in the ADG. Ferro, he said, “deserves another chance.” Dela Rosa said Ferro had established links with foreign narcotics forces, including in the United States, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and countries in Southeast Asia, which would be vital to the Philippine campaign against illegal drugs. ADVERTISEMENT ‘He can really deliver’ “I am after how the PNP-DEG will perform now that we are back in the war on drugs. I need someone who can steer this group to a higher level. I need someone who will perform and deliver and I know him (Ferro), he can really deliver given his track record,” Dela Rosa said. Addressing critics of his choice of Ferro, the PNP chief said: “Criticize me, not Ferro, because that is my decision.” Dela Rosa has also renamed “Oplan Tokhang” and “Oplan Double Barrel,” the two PNP operations that have become synonymous with extrajudicial killing because of the thousands of suspects killed by police in drug raids. The operations are now called “Oplan Tokhang Petitioned” and “Oplan Double Barrel Cautioned.” Dela Rosa explained, joking: “Petitioned” because Tokhang has been challenged in the Supreme Court. “Cautioned” because drug operations will now be carried out more cautiously. ‘What’s in a name?’ He said Director General Aaron Aquino of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)—the lead agency in the war on drugs—had suggested that the PNP drop “Tokhang” from the campaign’s name, but the PNP decided to stick to its guns. “His suggestion is well taken. But what’s in a name? What is important is the result, what happens in your campaign regardless of the name,” Dela Rosa said. “If you change your campaign’s name, you are trying to deodorize it to make it acceptable to critics. But the critics will always find something for which to criticize you. They will still make up stories. Changing the name is the least of my concerns,” he said. Dela Rosa gave assurance that the “third edition” of the police campaign against drugs would be “more refined,” after revisions of perceived flaws in the earlier operations. “Expect more caution” on the part of narcotics agents, he said, adding that the PNP was gathering inputs from its personnel to improve the campaign. Dela Rosa said his initial instruction for the return of the PNP to the war on drugs was to “make sure that our operations are not infiltrated by syndicates.” Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READ

Get the biggest daily 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 BRUTAL Con-Dem welfare cuts will have cost Scots a staggering £4.5billion by 2015. And Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says £1billion of the eye-watering amount is being taken from measures aimed at helping children. She used a Scottish Government analysis of the cuts, published yesterday, to claim that backing ­independence would rid the country of Conservative benefit slashers. Chancellor George Osborne estimated the total impact of the cuts on ­Scotland between 2010 and 2015 would be £2.5billion. But speaking at the SNP conference in Inverness, Sturgeon said she took anything the Tories said “with a healthy pinch of salt”. She added: “I asked ­officials to check the figures and guess what? It seems the cumulative cut will not be £2.5billion. “It will be £4.5billion, taken from the purses and wallets of hard-working people right across Scotland who can least afford it. “Make no mistake, it will be hard-working people who will feel the pain. And ­disabled people too.” The analysis showed cuts of £29million in 2010-11 grew to £302million in 2011-12 and £827million this financial year. On current spending plans, cuts of £1.447billion will bite next year, reaching £2.062billion in 2014-15. Sturgeon also revealed £1billion of the cuts in Scotland will be to benefits that directly help children. These include abolishing the health in pregnancy grant, the abolition of child trust fund payments and the changes to income support and child benefit. Sturgeon said: “That is equivalent to a cut of more than £1000 for every child. “So there you have it – the awful price of letting ­Westminster control our resources and take our ­decisions for us.” But a UK Government spokesman dismissed her figures as “unofficial, crude and misleading”.

The Standards in Public Office Commission has defended the cost of investigating a Fianna Fáil Senator’s expenses insisting the majority of the money was spent on challenging court cases taken. Freedom of Information documents released to the Journal.ie this morning showed it has cost €300,000 to carry out an investigation into the alleged duplication of expenses by Brian Ó Domhnaill. Mr Ó Domhnaill is accused of claiming expenses for different events held at the same time. Sipo has insisted the majority of the €300,000 was spent on challenging court cases taken by the Donegal Senator. Mr Ó Domhnaill took cases in the High Court and the Court of Appeal seeking to prevent Sipo investigating the duplication of expenses. He lost both cases. A Sipo spokesman said the body had won its claim for costs so the majority of the monies would be returned to the exchequer. A total of €25,000 was spent on translation services, which was a request by Mr Ó Domhnaill. He sought to conduct the public hearing in Irish. A Sipo spokesman said this was his constitutional right but it did add significant costs. The spokesman said a standard investigation would cost a fraction of Mr O’Dómhnaill’s. “We have a duty to investigate all complaints forwarded to us. The majority of the costs involved here related to Mr Ó Domhnaill’s decision to take a High Court challenge and to subsequently refer it to the Court of Appeal. “That is his right and entitlement. However it should be stressed that a large sum of our legal costs will be refunded to the exchequer.” Sipo has made a preliminary decision in the case and a final report is being drafted at present. Mr Ó Domhnaill declined to comment until the office has concluded its work.

Marco Verratti has been photographed with a copy of Mundo Deportivo which has a headline linking him with Barcelona, although the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder would not make any comment on his future to the Catalonia-based newspaper. Verratti, 24, who has been joined on holiday in Ibiza by agent Donato Di Campli, told the paper that he "cannot talk about my future right now." Several reports have linked the Italy international with a move to the Camp Nou, and former Barca defender Eric Abidal said he believed he would be an ideal signing. "He has everything needed to play here [at Barcelona]," Abidal told Mundo Deportivo. "Barca have played against PSG a lot in recent seasons, and when Verratti is not playing you can see the difference. He is a star Barca have to sign." Abidal has also said he believes Borussia Dortmund attacker Ousmane Dembele would be another good addition, telling SPORT: "Dembele is a good representative of the French academy system, which always brings through good players. "I thought that last year when he left Rennes he would come to Barca because he has a lot of talent. "Could he come now? I do not know. Anything is possible and it would be a great signing. "He is a dangerous player with a lot of quality. A player so young needs to play, but to come to Barcelona would also be a plus for him, to keep growing."

MPAA Vice President Greg Frazier has made some interesting comments on copyright and widespread Internet piracy during a lobbying visit to Brazil. Among other things, Frazier told a local newspaper that democratizing culture is not in the interests of the MPAA. As it turns out, the MPAA's definition of creativity and culture is a rather narrow one that is quite different from that of the general public. The MPAA sent its Vice President Greg Frazier to Brazil this week to carry out some damage control. Last year the former president of Brazil posed with Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde and vowed not to cave in to the interests of the copyright lobby. But with the change of leadership the MPAA sees new chances, and so Frazier went to Brazil to convince local politicians that tougher anti-piracy laws are needed. In common with most Latin American countries, piracy is widespread in Brazil. According to a recent study more than half of all people living in urban areas regularly pirate movies, something the MPAA believes has to be stopped. In an interview with local newspaper Folha, Frazier commented on the threat piracy poses to the major studios, responding with the classic textbook answers we’ve heard hundreds of times before. “If you do not believe in the value of creativity, the importance of protecting it and the need to reward those who produce, then maybe you can justify piracy. But in that case you’ll be doing great harm to culture,” Frazier said. Please note the words ‘creativity’ and ‘culture’ in his answer, as we’ll come back to that later. The reporter then went on to ask how important copyright really is when 44% of households in Brazil are not connected to the sewer system. Not really a fair question, but Frazier made it very clear that even when people are starving it would be immoral to ‘steal’ entertainment from U.S. corporations. “Obviously, governments and societies have to work to make sure that the population has access to the basics in order to survive, but that does not mean you should ignore other things. Companies must live together because they respect each other and respect that people do not steal from one another. Even if you battle to put food on your plate, it is immoral to steal,” he said. Things got more interesting when Frazier responded in a surprisingly open manner when asked about Creative Commons licenses, which allow for a more flexible approach to copyright. Creative Commons licenses are very popular in Brazil and the reporter wanted to know what the MPAA’s view on this approach is. “They [Creative Commons supporters] don’t always agree with what we advocate,” Frazier responded. “And you are talking about democratizing culture, this is not in our interests. It really isn’t my interest.” Although this answer may not really come as a surprise, combined with his previous answers it shows how subjective the MPAA’s view on creativity and culture is. According to the MPAA piracy is ruining culture, but at the same time they are not allowing others to use even tiny snippets of their works. The MPAA is apparently only interested in creativity and culture when it applies to the works their studios produce. Needless to say, this isn’t necessarily what’s most beneficial to society. The MPAA is merely protecting their corporate interests. For the general public, culture and creativity are probably better off with less restrictive copyright laws. This doesn’t mean that it should be okay to pirate every Hollywood blockbuster, but the laws that are put in place to please the movie studios are the same ones that cripple the creativity of tens of thousands of other artists and the public at large. To the MPAA and many others in the entertainment industry, copyright has little to do with the word right, nor with creativity and culture. Instead, it’s a restrictive tool that allows works to be traded, leased and licensed in return for money. Indeed, democratizing culture is not in the MPAA’s interest, but maximizing profits and control is.

Ruger Delivers On and Extends the "2 Million Gun Challenge" July 26, 2016 Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (NYSE: RGR) is excited to announce the extension of the 2 Million Gun Challenge to Benefit the NRA - which is now the 2.5 Million Gun Challenge! Between the 2015 and 2016 NRA Annual Meetings, Ruger met the challenge goal of selling two million new firearms, for a total donation of $4,000,000 to the NRA-ILA. Ruger CEO Mike Fifer and President/COO Chris Killoy presented Chris Cox, NRA-ILA's Executive Director, with a check for $4,000,000 at the 2016 NRA Annual Meetings in Louisville, Kentucky. "Ruger's continued commitment to supporting the NRA-ILA is outstanding," said NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox. "The funds raised from this program will help us in both our fight to protect America's Second Amendment and our effort to educate voters and get them to the polls this crucial election year." During the challenge period, one of the largest independent distributors of Ruger® firearms, Davidson's / Gallery of Guns, also pledged to donate $1 for each new Ruger firearm they sold. Their effort added more than $350,000 to the NRA-ILA cause. "We believe that everyone in our industry should stand united and fight to protect our Second Amendment rights," said Davidson's CEO and President Bryan Tucker. Mr. Tucker echoed the message of Chris Cox, noting that "Our participation in the Two Million Gun Challenge is one of the ways that we continue to support the NRA-ILA and show our leadership in defense of the American Constitution." Both Ruger and Davidson's / Gallery of Guns have pledged to extend the challenge period through the end of October, to ensure continued support up until the election. Ruger's goal is to sell another 500,000 new firearms - totaling $5,000,000 in donations to the NRA ILA for the 2015-2016 period. Ruger CEO Mike Fifer commented, "With the support of our loyal consumers, we are not only able to make history again, but we also are showing our support of the NRA-ILA during this critical election year. I want to sincerely thank Bryan Tucker and the Davidson's organization for joining us in this challenge. I hope others follow in their footsteps to create a level of support for our Second Amendment Rights and the NRA-ILA that is contagious," Fifer concluded. For more information on the Ruger 2.5 Million Gun Challenge, visit Ruger.com/2Million. To learn more about the extensive line of award-winning Ruger firearms, visit Ruger.com or Facebook.com/Ruger. To learn more about Davidson's Gallery of Guns, visit galleryofguns.com.

10 Ways to free up hard drive space on Windows lists ten methods to analyze and clear used hard drive space on Windows computer systems. While you might say that such a guide is no longer necessary, as we are in the age of the Terabyte hard drive, I respectfully have to disagree. First, older computers running Windows may not use a Terabyte drive as the main hard drive of the system. Second, Solid State Drives, while slowly picking up pace in regards to storage, are mostly used as 512 Gigabyte or less drives. In some cases, computers may have a 120 Gigabyte SSD or even less than that as the main system drive. If you check out Microsoft's newest Surface device, the Surface Pro 4, you will notice that two models come with 128 Gigabyte of storage only. Last but not least, even if your computer has plenty of space, you may want to free up drive space anyway as most of it is dead weight. 10 Ways to free up hard drive space on Windows The following ten methods may be used in conjunction with each other, or individually. Analyze disk space The very first thing you may want to do is analyze the disk space. This gives you a pretty good picture of the biggest offenders space-wise. I like to use WizTree for that but there are plenty of alternatives such as TreeSize Free, the Disk Analyzer of CCleaner, or Xinorbis. WizTree offers two view modes that are both useful. Tree View displays a tree hierarchy of folders and files sorted from largest to smallest. File View on the other hand puts the focus on files only. Both are useful in determining which folders and files use a lot of space. You may want to jump to the methods below that are most lucrative when it comes to freeing up disk space. If you spot a 16 Gigabyte Page File for instance, you may want to start there by reducing it. Previous Windows installations / Updates Cleanup When you upgrade Windows to a new version, a copy of the old version is kept for a period of time. This is done to give you the option to restore the old version should you run into issues or are dissatisfied with the new version of Windows. This copy may take up more than ten Gigabyte of storage space. It is a bit different for updates. When you install updates, old updates or files may become useless as they are replaced by new files. Windows keeps these around as well and does not remove them. Updates cleanup refers to removing outdated update files that are no longer required. Note: if you remove old Windows installation files or old updates, you have no option to go back anymore. It is suggested to use the operating system for a time before running these clean up operations. Tap on the Windows-key, type Disk Cleanup and hit enter. Confirm the UAC prompt that is displayed. Select the main drive (c usually), and click ok. This comes up only if more than one drive letter is used by storage devices. Click on "clean up system files" when the Disk Cleanup window pops up. Select the main drive again, and click ok. Each entry is listed with the disk space it occupies currently. While you may check them all, it is suggested to only check the items that you know you don't need anymore. Select "previous Windows installation(s)" to clear up old Windows installation files, and "Windows Update Cleanup" to remove old files that are no longer required. You may also want to consider removing log files, system dumps, and temporary files. Patch Cleaner is a third-party program that you may use to remove old updates no longer needed. Pagefile The Pagefile, located at x:\pagefile.sys where x is the drive letter, may appear like a relic of the past to you, especially if you have plenty of memory installed. It is used for caching, and using a fixed or dynamic amount of disk space for that. It may be quite large, 8 or more Gigabytes by default which usually is not required. Use the keyboard shortcut Windows-Pause to open the System Control Panel applet. Select Advanced System Settings when it opens. Click on the settings button under Performance when the System Properties window opens. Switch to the advanced tab and click on the change button under Virtual Memory. This displays all hard drives connected to the PC and the paging file size for each drive. You may change the paging file size by selecting a drive, switching to custom size, and adding initial size and maximum size values. You may also consider disabling the page file for secondary hard drives as well. As an example: on a computer with 16 Gigabytes of RAM, I set the pagefile size on drive c to 2 Gigabyte, and disabled it on all other drives. This worked well and I did not notice any issues using the computer this way. The initial pagefile size was 8 Gigabyte on the computer, which means that I regained 6 Gigabytes of disk space. Hibernate Hibernate is a power state in which everything that is open at the time is saved to disk. The idea is to load the content again from disk when the PC is fired up the next time so that you can resume exactly where you left. The data is saved to the file hiberfil.sys. Obviously, it makes little sense for you to disable Hibernation if you make use of the feature. If you don't however, you will free up Gigabytes of disk space by disabling the feature. Tap on the Windows-key, type cmd.exe, hold down the Ctrl-key and Shift-key, and hit enter. Confirm the UAC prompt that appears. This opens an elevated command prompt. To disable Hibernate, run the command powercfg.exe -h off. To turn it on again, run the command powercfg.exe -h on. The hiberfil.sys file is removed from the system as soon as you disable Hibernation. System Restore System Restore is a backup feature of the Windows operating system that uses disk space to store system snapshots. These snapshots may be created automatically by Windows, for instance before updates are installed, or manually by the user. Basically, what System Restore allows you to do is roll back the system to a recent state. System Restore may reserve quite a big of hard drive space for its functionality, and one option that you have to free up disk space is to reduce the reserved space. This means fewer snapshots that System Restore maintains at any point in time though. Use the keyboard shortcut Windows-Pause to open the System Control Panel applet. Click on "System Protection". The window that opens lists all drives and their protection state. On indicates that System Restore is enabled for the drive, off that it is turned off. Locate the main drive letter (usually c) and click on the configure button. This opens a new window with two main options: 1) turn system protection on or off and 2) change the maximum disk space usage of System Restore. You may reduce System Restore's max usage a couple of percent. How much depends entirely on you and other backup strategies you may make use of. I have set it to 2% on the main drive, and turned it off on all other drives. Clear Temporary Files Programs and Windows may use temporary files. Web browsers use them to store website files locally to speed up future visits. Temporary files are never essential, but they may help speed things up and perform certain operations faster. While it is certainly possible to clean temporary files manually, or through the settings in individual programs, it is often better to use specialized software for that. You may use Windows' own Disk Cleanup -- referenced above -- for that to a degree, but third-party programs like CCleaner or PrivaZer do a better more thorough job when it comes to that. CCleaner separates between Windows and Applications. Windows covers native programs and features such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge or Windows Explorer. All you have to do is select the areas that you want analyzed for disk space usage and temporary files. Once done, hit the analyze button to check these locations and display the data they contain currently. You may then add or remove options or click on run cleaner to clear the temporary files. Note: If you select cookies under browsers, you will be logged out of services you are signed in at the time. You may also lose access to your browsing history if you select to clear the history. Tip: CCEhancer adds support for additional temporary file locations and programs to CCleaner. Move Temporary Files / Downloads Clearing temporary files is just a temporary solution to space issues you may experience. Programs and Windows continue to add temp files to the system as you use them. While you may run temporary file cleaners regularly to keep the data use in check, you may also want to consider moving folders to another drive if available. How that is done depends on the program you are using. Most web browsers for instance let you pick a download folder where all files get downloaded to. Some allow you to select temporary file locations as well, and the same is true for Windows. To move temporary file locations in Windows, do the following: Use the Windows-Pause shortcut to open the System Control Panel applet. Select Advanced System Settings when the window opens. Select Environment Variables when the next window opens. Locate the user and system variables TEMP and TMP. Note that they point to a directory on the hard drive, by default C: \Windows\TEMP for system variables and AppData\Local\Temp for user variables. Double-click on a TEMP or TMP entry, and change the drive letter and path to the temporary files folder to another drive. Check out these guides on how to change the IE and Edge download folder, or move the Firefox cache to another drive as examples on how to do that. Uninstall Programs Programs, and especially games, may take up a whole lot of disk space. Modern games are Gigabyte-sized, and it is uncommon that games use thirty or more Gigabyte on the hard drive when installed. One option to free up disk space is to remove programs and games that you don't require anymore. While you may use Windows' native tools to remove programs, it may not be the best of ideas for two reasons. First, Windows runs only the uninstaller but no cleanup operations afterwards. Second, third-party tools may provide you with size information on top of that which may help you during the selection process. Programs like Revo Uninstaller, or Geek Uninstaller offer that functionality. If you use Revo Uninstaller, switch to the details view mode after the program listing has been populated initially. Click on size then so sort the listing by file size. Move files / programs You cannot uninstall programs if you still require them. Moving may be an option in this case then, provided that you have another hard drive available. Please note that you may need to take hard drive performance into account as well. If you move a game from a fast Solid State Drive to a low spinning 5400 rpm platter-based drive, you will notice longer loading times. I have covered the process before, check out how to move large apps or games to another drive, for all the instructions you need. The basic idea is the following one: you move the app or game to another drive, and use symbolic links to make them point from the new location to the old one. All files are then accessible from the old and new location so that you don't lose any functionality. Duplicate files Duplicate files are another thing that you may want to look into. The gain depends largely on how the computer is used. If you like to download large bulk archives from the Internet for instance, or use different programs for the same purpose, thing file synchronization, then you may end up with duplicate files on the system that may take up a bit of disk space. The best way to handle this is to use third-party programs to find duplicate files on the system. There are numerous programs that provide you with that functionality: CloneSpy, DoubleKiller or Duplicate Commander are just three. The main difference between the programs may be the methods used to determine duplicates. Basic duplicate file finders compare file names and extensions only. More advanced programs may use hashes instead, or even use fuzzy logic to find nearly identical files (think a photo that is available in two different resolutions). Resources You may find the following resources useful. They may review programs that you may find useful, or provide additional information on certain clean up methods. Now You: Have another tip? Let us know in the comments. Summary Article Name 10 Ways to free up hard drive space on Windows Description The guide lists ten methods to free up disk space on Windows computers using various native and third-party programs. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technologyg News Logo Advertisement

The following is a short, but sweet sexy story that I wrote to get everyone in the holiday spirit. With Christmas only a few days away, I thought I’d write a little something to celebrate the season, as only an aspiring erotica/romance writer can. It’s not as long or elaborate as my last holiday-themed novel, “Holiday Heat.” It’s just a simple little story that mixes love, sex, and the holidays into one sweet little narrative. Enjoy! It was set to be the loneliest Christmas she’d had since her grandmother died. Jessie should’ve been used to it, having lost her father at a young age and endured many quiet Christmas mornings with few presents and limited festivities. However, she’d come to love bigger, more elaborate moments as she grew older. After meeting her boyfriend, Robby, she thought those quiet mornings were over. For the past three years, he’d gone out of his way to make Christmas extra special for her. He came from a big family and going over to his house was like entering a holiday paradise, full of elaborate meals, abundant presents, and a buffet of succulent deserts. Thanks to him, she’d grown to love Christmas and being part of Robby’s family. Then, about a month ago, Jessie got a double dose of bad news that promises to derail her Christmas entirely. Robby’s father got sick with severe bronchitis and had to spend several months in Florida with his brother recovering. Most of the family was going to follow suit and join him for Christmas. Jessie thought she’d be going with him. That was when the second bit of bad news dropped. Her mother got into a car accident, breaking a leg and injuring her back. She ended up needing surgery, the kind that required a recovery period that extended beyond the holidays. As a result, a plane trip to Florida just wasn’t feasible. She had to stay home and Jessie couldn’t leave her. She needed her help around the house as she recovered. That meant no elaborate feasts and festivities with Robby’s family. It also meant her mother’s ability to celebrate was severely limited. The most they could do was exchange some gifts, having a light meal, and watch Christmas specials all day. If that weren’t bad enough, a snow storm had rolled in and few relatives would be able to drop by to help. It made Christmas Eve feel even colder than it already was. After spending most of the day putting up decorations and keeping her mother comfortable, she felt too tired to be festive. It seemed like this year’s Christmas would be the same quiet, uneventful affair that left her so jaded as a kid. When she curled up in her old bedroom that night, having agreed to sleep over at her mother’s house to make things easier on Christmas morning, Jessie expected this year to be one of the most forgettable holidays of her adult life. “Guess this year counts as one big setback,” she sighed to herself after turning off the light, “and just when I was starting to really like the holidays again. Maybe I’m just not meant to enjoy Christmas like most people. Maybe I just can’t be part of Robby’s festive world.” It sounded so sad when she said it out loud. It made her want to cry right then and there. Jessie ended up burying her face in her pillow, muffling her voice and absorbing any tears she’d shed. The best she could do, now, was rest up and brace for another solemn holiday. She tried not to think about all the elaborate ways Robby’s family were enjoying themselves down in Florida. She swore she could smell the chocolate pie his mother made or his sister’s succulent cookies from 800 miles away. Most of all, Jessie tried not to think of how great it felt when Robby held her in his arms, even when he wore that ugly old Christmas sweater that he’d bought in college and refused to throw away. It was nothing short of torturous, contemplating what she’d miss. Not being with Robby and his family was like the antithesis of a Christmas miracle, a gut-punch to her holiday spirit. She wanted to make the most of the time she had with her mother, but between her injuries and her tendency to recount sad memories of her father during the holidays, it wasn’t looking good. Jessie closed her eye, groaned into her pillow, and just wished she could skip the holidays entirely. “It’s not fair!” she lamented. “Why does Christmas have to suck so much? Just this once, can I get a break?” Jessie kept her face buried in her pillow, muttering a string of curses in hopes she’d just pass out from frustration. She was so tired that she was ready to just let the rest of the holidays pass her boy completely. Then, just as she was about to nod off, she heard a loud thump against her window. Considering her room was on the second floor of her mother’s house, that was pretty rare. At first, she thought it was just a large chunk of snow blowing off one of the trees and hitting the side of the house. However, another thump followed, along with a familiar voice. “Jessie!” it said through the cold December night. “Open the window. It’s me!” Almost immediately, Jessie’s ears perked up and she shot up from the bed. She’d recognize that voice through a window, a snow storm, and a goddamn hurricane. It was Robby, but that should’ve been impossible. Either she was having one of those vivid Christmas dreams or her boyfriend was actually outside her window somehow. Both seemed unbelievable. “Hurry up, Jessie!” he said. “It’s colder than penguin’s ass out here. Only your ass can warm me up at this point.” “Holy shit, it is him!” Jessie gasped. There was no denying it. Only Robby could’ve said something so crude, yet so cute to her on a cold winter night. That meant he was really there. It wasn’t a dream. With the energy of a kid on Christmas morning, Jessie shot up from the bed and over towards the window. Sure enough, she saw Robby outside, standing atop a ladder with his hand pressed against the glass. Where he got the ladder and why he was here instead of Florida were just some of the many burning questions she had. Seeing the heavy snow falling outside, she set them aside and opened the window so he could get in. As soon as the window opened, he crawled into her small, yet cozy room. He was shivering, despite wearing multiple layers, but he still had that goofy, lovable smile on his face. Not questioning whether or not it was a dream, Jessie just took him in her arms and hugged him. “Robby! Oh my God, it is you!” Jessie exclaimed. “Yep,” he said, shivering as he hugged her back. “I’m here. Tropical weather, warm beaches, and sunny mornings were nice and all for the holidays…except, it didn’t have you.” “And you ditched your family to be with me, your hapless girlfriend?” she said curtly. “I didn’t ditch them. They urged me to come here. Even my dad said this is where I should be on Christmas…with the woman I love, in her time of need, celebrating the holidays with her.” “That…might just be the most romantic thing any man has ever said to me.” “You mean fully clothed, right?” “No, Robby. I don’t,” Jessie said strongly. Her heart was racing. In an instant, the notion that she would endure a lonely, uneventful Christmas faded completely. Even if she couldn’t spend it in Florida with Robby’s family, just being in his arms and feeling his loving embrace was enough to reinvigorate her holiday spirit…among other things. In an outburst of passion and holiday spirit, Jessie kissed her thoughtful boyfriend with all the love and heart of a million Christmas specials. He eagerly kissed back, even as he shed the heavy coat he’d been wearing to brave the cold. However, she quickly made it clear that she didn’t want him to stop there. “Robby…you came all this way to be with me,” she told him. “So be with me.” “Well, I was going to ask for some hot cocoa to warm up first,” he said playfully, “but if this is how you want to warm me up…” Jessie didn’t let him finish. She was too excited and impassioned to waste another second of this Christmas miracle. Robby was here now, in her room and in her arms on Christmas Eve. That was proof enough that he loved her just that much. Her only Christmas wish from that point forward was to return that love and that wasn’t something she could do fully clothed. Not caring how wet and cold his clothes were, Jessie helped him strip out of them bit by bit. By the time he was down to his boxers, his skin still felt so cold, but his lips felt so hot. That was all the reason she needed to jump him where he stood, throwing her arms and legs around him and her body heat mesh with his. The cold and the long trip must have made him extra impassioned as well. As soon as he caught her in his arms, he carried her over to her bed. Together, they crawled under the covers where they made out like a couple of horny prom dates. Already, she felt his flesh warming up, but hers was already too hot to bear. It led her to remove her sleeping attire, with Robby’s help. “Off…get it all off,” Jessie urged him. She quickly slid her tight-fitting cotton shirt off over her head while Robby removed her sweatpants, panties and all. His boxers soon followed, revealing a semi-hard dick that even the December cold couldn’t temper. It showed just how much he wanted her sex and her love. “Ooh Jessie,” Robby gasped as he took in her naked body. “Robby…make love to me,” she told him. For a moment, he just gazed at her with his loving eyes. It felt like the gaze of a Christmas angel, one who’d answered her payers for a holiday miracle. There wasn’t just a deep love in his eyes. There was a desire to mend the pain of so many cold and lonely holidays. Those feelings, and the powerful desires behind them, led him to embrace her naked body as only he could. Jessie eagerly embraced him back with desire of her own, wrapping her arms and legs around him as he got on top of her. Then, in what might have been the greatest Christmas gift anyone had ever given her, Robby made love to her. It was so raw, yet focused…so intense, yet affectionate. Under the thick covers, the rippling muscles of his manly body glided against the sensual curves of her feminine figure. His flesh melded with hers, sinews entwined like a million pieces coming together to form a single whole. Her body welcomed his, taking him into her depths and feeling his flesh, as well as his love, fill her with every movement. The sensations that followed were intense and hot, not an easy feat on such a cold, snowy night. It didn’t matter, though. They could’ve been at the North Pole and it wouldn’t have mattered. She and Robby were going to make hot sex and passionate love tonight. There was no way around it. Jessie had no idea how long they went at it or how many times she’d climaxed in the process. With Robby, it was so easy to lose track. It could’ve been as many as ten, but no fewer than three. All she knew that when all was said and done, they were warmer and more content than any couple could’ve been on Christmas Eve. “I love you, Jessie,” Robby said to her, breathless from so much spent passion. “I love you too, Robby,” she told him, “and thank you…for making this the best Christmas ever.” “You’re welcome, babe.” They shared one last passionate kiss before settling into a blissful state of post-coital afterglow. Now lying atop his naked body, the thick comforter draped over them, Jessie gazed up at her wonderful lover. He looked so happy, despite not being with his family in a tropical climate. The way he held her in his arms made clear that there was nowhere else he’d rather be. She made sure he knew the feeling was mutual, holding him closely and listening to his heart beating in his chest. She made sure he fell asleep knowing how much she loved him. She could do no less for the lover that had captured her heart and saved her Christmas spirit. The next morning, Christmas morning, Jessie awoke to find that her lover was still in her bed and they were still as naked as they’d been when they fell asleep. Robby was still fast asleep. Being a deep sleeper, especially after sex, she didn’t expect him to wake up for a good long while. That was just fine with her, though. Jessie would’ve been perfectly content spending the whole day like this, lying in bed with her lover and creating all sorts of sexy Christmas memories. However, that plan fell apart the moment her bedroom door opened and her mother entered, leaning hard on her crutches and looking as restless as any adult on Christmas morning. “Jessie, are you up yet?” her mother greeted, as though she didn’t even noticed Robby. “Mom?!” Jessie gasped, immediately holding the comforter up to her naked body a little closer. It was embarrassing, but not as mortifying as it could’ve been. Her mother knew she was a grown woman. She also knew that she and Robby had been intimate before. That still didn’t mean she liked her mother barging in her room when she was naked with her lover. However, she didn’t seem all that taken aback and Robby barely stirred from his slumber. “I put the coffee on. If you want to open presents, get up and get dressed already,” her mother told her. “Mmm…sounds good,” said Robby groggily. Still holding the blanket up to her body, Jessie was confused, if not mildly amused. She looked over at Robby, who had that goofy smile on his face again. Then, she looked back at her mother, who had a similar smile. She had a lot of questions, but she had a feeling the answers weren’t going to make this Christmas any less memorable. “Um…mind filling me in on some context here?” Jessie asked awkwardly. “Jessie, sweetie,” her mother said with a wide grin, “who do you think lent him the ladder?”

In the United States, a credit zombie is a person who has been erroneously declared dead by the Social Security Administration by being listed in its Death Master File (commercially known as the Social Security Death Index). It is unclear why living people are added to this list.[1] As a result of the listing, credit bureaus return reports of "deceased" to entities seeking checks on the individuals' credit reports, which can prevent people from attaining credit, receiving government benefits, renting apartments, or securing jobs, and interfere with anything involving credit checks or Social Security. Credit zombies may even find their bank accounts frozen and have no access to their money. The term "credit zombie" is an analogy to the concept of the zombie being a person who was once alive walking around as if he still is. A credit zombie is someone who is officially dead, while it is obvious that person is actually alive. The Social Security Administration accidentally declares about 1,000 people dead each month in its Death Master File. It is estimated that there could be 500,000 credit zombies in the U.S.[1] See also [ edit ]

SINCE leading his Liberal Party back to power in Canada last October, Justin Trudeau has been profiled in such glossy magazines as Vanity Fair and Vogue; Hello’s photo spread featured his wife and children. On March 10th he will sit down with Barack Obama at a state dinner in the White House, the first for a Canadian leader in 19 years. “I can’t think of a Canadian politician who has attracted as much attention in the United States,” says Laura Dawson of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington. Mr Trudeau owes his celebrity to more than glamour. He succeeds Stephen Harper, a prickly Conservative, who in ten years as prime minister conducted an ideologically charged foreign policy at odds with Canada’s multilateralist traditions. His relationship with the United States, by far Canada’s most important, was tense. Mr Trudeau replaces a scowl with a smile. He personally greeted some of the 25,000 Syrian refugees Canada agreed to admit. Such gestures have helped bring back to life the Trudeaumania inspired by the prime minister’s father, Pierre Trudeau, a dashing Canadian leader of the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “But how,” Ms Dawson wonders, “do we translate celebrity into influence?” Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Mr Trudeau’s answer: by returning to Canada’s diplomatic traditions. It is the world’s tenth-largest economy; as a military power, it counts for less. It has historically sought to increase its modest clout by working through international bodies such as the UN and the Commonwealth. Mr Harper spurned them as talking shops for despotic regimes. He refused to support a global accord on climate change (or introduce a credible policy in Canada). Co-operation is back in, says Stéphane Dion, the new foreign minister. His “mandate letter” from Mr Trudeau directs him to resume working through the UN. Mr Trudeau signed the global climate agreement reached in Paris in December. He was due to meet Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial leaders on March 3rd to talk about a national climate strategy and may announce a climate initiative with Mr Obama. The prime minister intends to re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran and to revive Canada’s relationship with Mexico, its partner, along with the United States, in the North American Free-Trade Agreement. He promised to lift visa restrictions on Mexicans, imposed in 2009 to stem an influx of asylum-seekers and an irritant ever since. He is not rolling back all Mr Harper’s policies. Canada is likely to ratify the free-trade agreement with the European Union, which Mr Harper negotiated. It may also join the Trans-Pacific Partnership among a dozen Asian and American countries. “We should not change everything,” said Mr Dion in a recent speech. If Mr Trudeau just gets along with Mr Obama, that will be a significant change. The two sporty leaders have engaged in pre-prandial raillery about which country’s ice-hockey teams are better. Mr Obama has taken with equanimity Mr Trudeau’s decision to withdraw Canada’s six fighter planes from the United States-led fight against Islamic State; Canada is increasing humanitarian aid and the number of troops advising Iraqi Kurds instead. The Keystone XL pipeline to carry crude from Alberta to the southern United States, greatly desired by Mr Harper but vetoed by Mr Obama, is unlikely to figure much in the dinner-table conversation. That leaves trade and tax. The United States is the market for three-quarters of Canada’s goods exports and the source of two-thirds of its imports, but commerce could flow more freely than it does. The “beyond the border” agenda is supposed to accomplish that but has hit a snag: a disagreement over what law will apply to United States officials stationed in Canada to pre-clear goods for import. A row over Canadian softwood lumber, which the United States says is subsidised, could get worse. Canada objects to a United States law that obliges its banks to hand over information about accounts held by expatriates (see article). But the main threat to Canadian-American relations will not come from anything the two leaders feasting in the White House might do. It comes from the loud-mouthed property mogul who aspires to be the building’s next occupant.

Andy Johnson, CTVNews.ca An email from the Prime Minister's Office used combat-like language in a discussion about helping new cabinet ministers transition into their jobs, suggesting a list of "friend and enemy stakeholders" was needed as part of the orientation process. The email, obtained by CTV, was sent to ministerial staffers by Erica Furtado in the issues management department of the PMO with the subject line 'Transition Binder Check List." It outlined the information staffers needed to compile for incoming cabinet ministers. The list includes topics such as what to say at Question Period, hot-button issues to look out for, even what to avoid ("pet bureaucratic projects") and who to avoid: "bureaucrats that can't take no (or yes) for an answer." Item nine on the 10-item list is: 'Who to engage or avoid: friend and enemy stakeholders." The goal is to highlight “problematic” bureaucrats, environmental groups, industry or civic associations, a source told CTV News. Brent Rathgeber, an Alberta MP who resigned from the Conservative caucus last month, said the “enemy” list requests expose the inner workings of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government. “The PMO staffers see the world in two colours: black and white,” he said. “You’re either good or bad, or in this case, you’re either friendly or evil.” Here is the full transition binder checklist: What to say in question period; What to expect soon: hot issues, legal actions and complaints; What to expect later: long-term issues; What to do: status of mandate items, off-mandate items; What to avoid: pet bureaucratic projects; Who to avoid: bureaucrats that can't take no (or yes) for an answer (this item was dropped from the list) What to attend: upcoming events, meetings and FPTs (federal/provincial/territorial meetings); Who to appoint: Outstanding GICs (Governor in Council appointments) and hot prospects; Who to engage or avoid: friend and enemy stakeholders; Private Members Bills -- lines and caucus packages. But newly minted Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the checklist wasn’t in his briefing books. “I’ve never heard of them, I’ve never seen them. They’re not part of the orientation process for a new minister, in my case,” he said. Julie Vaux, a spokesperson for the PMO, issued a statement Tuesday responding to the report about the leaked email. However, she declined to speak specifically about the transition checklist. “While we don't comment on internal communications, we are collaborating with our ministers, especially new ministers, to ensure they are fully briefed so they can continue their work on behalf of Canadian taxpayers,” Vaux said in an email to CTV News. Deputy NDP leader Megan Leslie called the revelations part of an “alarming pattern” of partisanship within the Conservative party. “It’s very troubling that the first thing new ministers are being told about their new responsibilities is who to ignore in their own departments and which Canadians to put on the Conservatives’ blacklist -- they seem to think that anyone who disagrees with Stephen Harper is their “enemy,” Leslie said in a statement. On Monday, Harper announced the appointment of eight new cabinet ministers -- four women and four men -- as part of the largest cabinet shuffle since he first took office. With a report from CTV’s Richard Madan

Production is due to start early next year on the long-awaited follow-up to Anchorman, with Will Ferrell and Steve Carell leading the returning cast. Entitled Anchorman: The Legend Continues, Adam McKay is directing again too, with the plan being to release the film before 2013 is out. The further plan also seems to add a new love interest to the movie, and The Wrap is reporting that Kristen Wiig is in talks to take on the role. She would "play opposite Steve Carell", which suggests that it's Brick who will be finding romance. Crikey. Wiig, whose biggest hit to date has been Bridesmaids (which she co-wrote), would join the likes of Christina Applegate and Paul Rudd in the cast. More on Anchorman 2 when we get it. The Wrap. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.

Rockets center Clint Capela ready to keep pace with Charlotte Hornets' Dwight Howard Having had perhaps the best game of his career in a matchup with the star center of his draft class, Rockets center Clint Capela will move to the star center on his team after he was drafted. Capela had a career high 20 rebounds along with 16 points and four blocked shots against Joel Embiid and the 76ers on Wednesday. He will go from that performance to a meeting Friday with Dwight Howard and the Hornets, offering Capela how far he has come as he starts his fourth season. “Every single game against Dwight is special for me,” Capela said. “It reminds me of my first days in Houston when I was looking up to him, looking at him as the superstar. I also watched him growing up. It always means a lot to me to play against him.” Howard averaged 22 points and 19 rebounds against Capela and the Rockets last season, making 18 of 21 shots in a pair of Hawks wins. Capela, however, played well against Howard, averaging 16 points and 9.5 rebounds, with 22 points in the second meeting. Houston Rockets' Clint Capela (15) dunks the ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Philadelphia 76ers, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez) Houston Rockets' Clint Capela (15) dunks the ball in the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Philadelphia 76ers, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2017, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez) Photo: Michael Perez/Associated Press Photo: Michael Perez/Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Rockets center Clint Capela ready to keep pace with Charlotte Hornets' Dwight Howard 1 / 3 Back to Gallery If Nene is out as expected, Capela could play roughly 30 minutes, as he did against the 76ers when he was able to run the floor and wear down Sixers star Joel Embiid. “Twenty rebounds, we’ll frame the box score,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “He can do that every night. We’re trying to push him. Clint was good, real good. “I thought (Embiid) got tired. We told (Capela) we need to run him every time. The only weapon we have is to run him, lean on him, make him work. I thought Tarik Black came in and put his body on him. It’s like a boxing match. Your legs get tired.” The Rockets would likely have a similar strategy against Howard who is much better prepared to keep pace with Capela. Capela, however, was not at all surprised by his success against Embiid. “I told you it was to prove to everybody and myself I can do it,” Capela said. “I’m a guy that watches a lot of video. I watch a lot of Embiid. I watch a lot of bigs. I want to be an expert on that. These kind of opportunities to show I can play with those guys is good.”

Vermont is beautiful in all four seasons, and exploring the mountains and valleys on foot is one of our favorite pastimes. We’ve been trekking and meandering the hiking trails in Southern Vermont with our kids for the past 12 years, and we figured it was high time we share our favorites with you. The following hikes, rambles, and walks are perfect for novice hikers or families with children. Most are under five miles, and all have a kid-friendly feature to help entice them along. The best way to encourage my own kids down a trail is with the promise of water for swimming. We’ve got a few more tricks up our sleeves if you’re interested, but a good many of our favorite trails surround lakes, meander along rivers, or end up at the bottom of waterfalls. More serious hiking opportunities will be covered in another post. Today, we’re going to focus on easy day-hiking in Southern Vermont, including trails in Bennington, Manchester, Stratton, Wilmington, Brattleboro, and Putney. Easy Hiking Trails in Southwestern Vermont Lake Shaftsbury State Park, Shaftsbury, Vermont This 84-acre park is small but well-loved. It is most popular as a picnic and swimming spot for local families, but the trail around the lake is underappreciated and quite lovely. The hike is more of a ramble — a mile in length, meandering through the woods, then wetlands, than back into the woods, with a constant view of the lake. Waterfowl are plentiful most of the year, and we’ve also spotted bald eagles and osprey on numerous occasions. After your hike, your kiddos will want to spend some time on the water, and the beach is the perfect spot for relaxing with a good book. I highly recommend driving south on route 7A for another mile and visiting the Chocolate Barn for the best ice cream you’re ever likely to taste in Southern Vermont. Difficulty level: easy Length of trail: 1-mile loop Kid appeal: swimming, boardwalk through wetlands, decent fishing, boat rentals Dogs: nope, unless you visit in the off-season Fee: $4 for adults, $2 for children For more on this hike, check out: An Autumn Walk Around Lake Shaftsbury Woodford State Park, Woodford, Vermont The hiking trail in Woodford State Park brings you around Adams Reservoir, a gorgeous, tree-lined lake nestled in the Green Mountains. Woodford State Park is much more secluded than Lake Shaftsbury, and much cooler (temperature wise). We’ve seen moose up here and spent days on the water without running into another person. The trail around the lake isn’t difficult, but at 2.7 miles, it might be hard for younger kids to make it around. We love how dark and mossy the trail is. There are several easy stream crossings, and you may even see the carnivorous sundew plants if you look very carefully along the shore. Difficulty level: easy to moderate Length of trail: 2.7 mile loop Kid appeal: swimming, playground, boat rentals Dogs: on leash Fees: $4 for adults, $2 for kids Want to learn more about Woodford State Park? Check out: Woodford State Park: A Park for All Seasons Mile Around Woods, North Bennington, Vermont The Mile Around Woods trail is one of the best hikes in Southern Vermont. It sits behind the beautiful Park McCullough house in North Bennington, VT. This loop starts by taking hikers through beautiful farm fields of grazing horses, then meanders through a hardwood forest on a lovely, wide path. The forest loop is exactly a mile long, but you can make the adventure last by traipsing across several fields, or by visiting the historic Park McCullough House and Hiland Hall gardens. I recommend making an afternoon of it – the Park McCullough House is open for tours on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from May to October. The Hiland Hall gardens have been meticulously restored and are located behind the main house. Difficulty: easy for all ages Length: 1 mile loop Kid appeal: farm animals, wildflowers, rocks for climbing Dogs: on leash Fees: none, unless you want a tour of the historic house For a trail map, please visit the Fund for North Bennington. Emerald Lake State Park, East Dorset, Vermont Emerald Lake State Park is nestled in a deep valley between the Taconic Mountains to the West and the Green Mountains to the east. The two mountain ranges are only a few hundred yards apart here, and they rise up steeply on either side of the lake. Covering just 20 acres, Emerald Lake isn’t big, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in beauty. There are several hiking trails in Emerald Lake State Park, and if you and your kids are into vistas, I recommend checking out the Vista Trail, which is a steady climb with awesome views of the lake. I have to say that our kids much prefer the lake trail, which hugs the shoreline, with side trails into the three campground loops. We like taking the trail to the “C” loop because it travels through the wetlands at the south end of the lake, perfect for some kid-friendly birding adventures. Difficulty: easy, although the campground trail is kind of steep Length of trail: The lake trail is .5 miles and the campground trail is .4 miles, one way. You can walk back to the beach and parking lot on the campground roads, or turn around and retrace your steps. Kid appeal: awesome swimming, rope swing for big kids (on the island), bird watching, boat rentals Dogs: They’re allowed in the campground and on the trails (on leash), but not at the beach or picnic areas. Fees: $4 for adults, $2 for children For more about Emerald Lake trails, check out: A Summer in Vermont: Exploring Emerald Lake State Park Merck Forest and Farmland Center, Rupert, Vermont Merck Forest and Farmland Center is a nonprofit educational center and outdoor stewardship organization that maintains 3,162 acres of woods and farmland in Rupert, Vermont. There are more than 30 miles of hiking trails to explore, plus cabins for camping. We like to stroll around the farm, visit the animals, check out the maple tap house, and then head up to Birch Pond for a dip and a picnic. This is a fairly easy, 3-mile loop, but we often make a day of it because the animals are so hard to resist. Difficulty: easy to moderate Length of trail: 3-mile loop Kid appeal: swimming, farm animals Dogs: They are allowed on the trails, but if you want to visit the animals, you should leave your dog at home. Fees: Free Read more about Merck Forest here: Cabin Camping at Merck Forest Hikes for Kids in South Central Vermont Stratton Mountain Fire Tower, Stratton, Vermont At 3,940 feet, Stratton Mountain is Southern Vermont’s tallest peak. The hike to the Stratton Fire Tower from the base of the mountain gains 1,700 feet in elevation, and is 6 miles, round trip. This is a great hike to aspire to, but it’s probably not suitable for young children, unless they are avid hikers already. Luckily, there’s a shortcut. During summer weekends, and every day during the fall foliage season, you can hop aboard the gondola at Stratton Mountain Resort. From there, it’s an easy, .7 miles to the fire tower, which provides unparalleled views in all directions. Difficulty: easy Length of trail: 1.4 miles round-trip Kid appeal: gondola ride, fire tower Dogs: No Fees: It’s $35 for a family of up to eight people to ride up the mountain in a gondola cabin. The Stratton Mountain Blog has a good overview if this adventure. Check out: Venture Vermont: Stratton Fire Tower Hike Mt. Olga, Molly Stark State Park, Wilmington, Vermont Mt. Olga is a great day hike for folks visiting Wilmington, which by the way, is one of my favorite Vermont towns. It’s a 1.8 mile loop to the top of the mountain. Older kids will appreciate that they are actually climbing a mountain, but it’s not so hard that it’s frustrating. Still, it is all up hill, so prepare yourself and your kids with an incentive for reaching the summit. We usually opt for cookies and ice tea. When my kids were little, we would read a chapter of their favorite book at the top. If you explore the summit a bit, you’ll find ruins of the defunct Hogback Ski Resort up here, which are fun to poke around. Difficulty: moderate Length of trail: 1.8 mile loop Kid appeal: ruins, Fire Tower Dogs: on leash Fees: $4 for adults, $2 for kids For more about exploring Wilmington, check out: The Complete Guide to Exploring Wilmington, Vermont Little Rock Pond, Mt. Tabor, Vermont Looking for a nice hike to a pristine mountain lake? Little Rock Pond sits just off the Appalachian / Long trail. The hike is 4 miles round-trip, but it gains just 350 feet in elevation. The lake is just far enough from civilization that it is never crowded, but close enough that it can be a nice day trip for a hike, picnic, and swim. Other hikers have seen leeches in Little Rock Pond, but I never have, and we’ve been there dozens of times. Just something to be aware of. There’s a lean-to shelter and several tent platforms set up near the lake for hikers, which also makes this hike the perfect first backpacking adventure for your family. Difficulty: easy Length of trail: 4 miles, round trip Kid appeal: swimming, rock jumping, beaver activity Dogs: yes Fees: none, although there is a nominal fee for camping For a trail description and directions, check out this article in the Castleton Spartan. Hamilton Falls, Jamaica State Park, Jamaica, Vermont Jamaica State Park is one of our favorite Vermont State Parks. It includes an awesome rail trail that hugs the West River, which is a gem for swimming. As you hike or bike this trail, you’ll find lots of secluded swimming holes. If you have little kids, I recommend sticking to the West River Rail Trail, which goes all the way to the Ball Mountain Dam. The hike to Hamilton Falls is probably the most challenging on this list. It’s 6 miles round-trip — 2 miles on the rail trail, and then a 1.1-mile climb to the base of the falls. We often shorten our trip by biking the rail trail and then locking our bikes up to a tree while we hike to the falls. Difficulty: easy on the rail trail, but a steep climb to the falls Length of trail: 6 miles round-trip Kid appeal: River swimming, playground, waterfall Dogs: on leash Fees: $4 for adults, $2 for kids For directions and a trail map, check out the Vermont State Parks website. Hikes for Kids in Southeastern Vermont Mt Ascutney State Park, Windsor, Vermont There are several hikes up Mt. Ascutney, a beautiful monadnock overlooking the Connecticut River Valley, but if you’re hiking with small children, or you want a more relaxing day trip, you can drive right up the mountain to a summit parking area. Once at the top, the summit trails are easy and fun to explore, with incredible views, a fire tower, and a hang glider launch pad. In fact, Mt. Ascutney is one of the premier hang gliding destinations in the northeast. There are several trails criss-crossing the summit, but if you want to climb the fire tower and watch the hang gliders, I recommend taking the summit trail to the Weathersfield trail to the hang glider’s trail. The whole loop is about 2 miles. Difficulty: moderate Length of trail: 2-mile loop Kid appeal: hang gliders, awesome views, fire tower Dogs: on leash Fees: $4 for adults, $2 for kids Want to read more about Mt. Ascutney State Park, check out: Vermont’s Mighty Monadnock Black Mountain, Dummerston, Vermont At 1,280 feet, Black Mountain isn’t huge, but it is an unusual ecosystem for Southern Vermont, boasting lots of mountain laurels and blueberry bushes (ready in late July or early August), and lots of exposed granite. The views are good, but a bit obstructed by trees. When you get to the top, it pays to explore a bit for more exposed outcroppings of rocks and better views. There are two trails up the mountain, from either Rice Road or Black Mountain Road. The Rice Road trail is 1.5 miles and steep. The Black Mountain Road trail is 2.5 miles, but a more moderate climb. Choose the one most suitable for your family. Difficulty: moderate to difficult Length of trail: depends – see above Kid appeal: blueberries, wildlife, good birdwatching Dogs: no Fees: none Putney Mountain, Putney, Vermont There is a whole network of trails here, maintained by Windham Hill Pinnacle Association and the Putney Mountain Association. The Putney Mountain trail is easy enough for families, provides awesome views of the Green Mountains to the west, and is one of the premier spots to watch migrating hawks in the spring and fall. Once you reach the summit, you can continue on the West Cliff Trail for a longer hike, or loop around back to your car for a total of 1.2 miles. Difficulty: moderate Length: 1.2 mile loop Kid appeal: vista, hawk watch Dogs: on leash Fees: none For a directions and a detailed trail map, visit Windam Hill Pinnacle Association There are many, many trails in and around Brattleboro that I haven’t explored yet. If you have, please leave a comment. I’d love some more recommendations. Also, the Brattleboro Area Trail System has a fabulous trail map and guide for anyone who wants to explore the area. As I visit more trails in Southeastern Vermont, I will update this page. If you’re interested in reading about our favorite hiking trails for kids in Northern Vermont, check out this post: Super Awesome Hikes for Kids in Northern Vermont Did you enjoy this post? Please pin for later or share with your friends!

Most people enter the self-help realm while planning a personal improvement project, a kind of steam-cleaning of the soul. I fell into it by mistake. Maybe the allusion to a familiar poem was what made me pull M Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled (1978) off my parents’ shelf as a young teen. In any case, I was hooked. Beset by typical middle‑school problems – bullies, fickle friends, chronic wallflower-dom – I was intrigued by the claim of this psychiatrist from Connecticut that suffering could have a noble and necessary purpose, as long as you showed the fortitude to tackle your issues head-on. ‘When we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems,’ Peck wrote, ‘we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us.’ A budding skeptic confronted with an array of belief systems, I felt that Peck’s emphasis on dedication to truth helped to ground me. And when I was tempted to nurse crushes as an alcoholic might a sloe gin fizz, Peck was there to remind me that true love involved a conscious choice to nurture the other partner’s wellbeing. Seekers in past generations might have found refuge in Rainer Maria Rilke or the Bible; I turned to the fatherly Peck, a remote but magnanimous presence who advocated self-discipline as the path to growth and happiness. In the following years, I adopted other adolescent bibles, including Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994) by the psychologist Mary Pipher. The book decried a toxic, sexualised culture that, as Pipher wrote, ‘limits girls’ development [and] truncates their wholeness’, arguing for new cultural ideals valuing all young women’s gifts. I obsessively re‑read Ophelia in the spirit of self-help, to gain insight into my new, foreign-feeling body and mind, and was cheered by its message that my looks didn’t have to determine my destiny. Standard-bearers such as Peck and Pipher made me feel that I could read my way to a better life. And as it turns out, my teenage conviction might not have been too far off the mark. Studies show that self-help books can resolve readers’ depressed moods, change ingrained thought patterns, and instill a renewed zest for life – as long as the advice within is scientifically sound. For many patients, so-called ‘bibliotherapy’ seems to work as well as talk therapy or drugs such as Prozac. In an ideal world, says the psychologist John Norcross at the University of Scranton, self-help books would be tried early in the course of therapy; medications and other intensive treatments would be a last resort, reserved for more serious cases. With ‘psychosis, suicide, emergencies, you get immediately to the professionals. But for most people, why not start with a book?’ Its New Age veneer aside, the self-help genre has been evolving and thriving for millennia. Canonical books of all cultures are full of advice on how to live a more moral and satisfying life. The Upanishads, written by Hindu sages from an ethnically diverse Indian society, emphasised the necessity of treating others with tolerance and respect. ‘For those who live magnanimously,’ one book states, ‘the entire world constitutes but a family’ – advice that continues to help readers navigate today’s pluralistic India. The Jewish thinkers who wrote the Bible’s Old Testament in the 7th century BCE advised the narrow yet fulfilling path of strict adherence to God’s commandments, which seemed a fitting, unifying maxim for a people often beset by empires waging attack. One of the earliest self-help guides in wide circulation was Marcus Cicero’s De Officis (On Duties), which the Roman politician wrote as a letter to his son. Cicero advised the younger Marcus to focus on meeting obligations to others, even if it required great sacrifice, and warned him away from shallow sources of gratification. ‘Brave he surely cannot possibly be that counts pain the supreme evil,’ Cicero wrote, ‘nor temperate he that holds pleasure to be the supreme good.’ This advice was rooted in Roman mos maiorum (ancestral custom), which emphasised loyalty to the empire above one’s own wellbeing – an ironclad moral code that fuelled the empire’s expansion for many years. Centuries later, farmers, tradespeople and politicians laboured mightily to establish the still-young United States as an economic and social power. The new country’s citizens – who often lived off the land and took pride in stalwart self-sufficiency – found kindred spirits in self-help spokesmen such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom emphasised the sacrifice and struggle required to lead a meaningful life. ‘A great man is always willing to be little,’ Emerson opined in an 1841 essay. ‘When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something.’ But by the mid-20th century, such self-abnegation was no longer in vogue. The prosperous Western economy was fuelling a generation of opportunists obsessed with maximising and flaunting their talents. A flurry of self-help books arrived to mark this transition, including Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936). Peck’s pull-no-punches opening sentence: ‘Life is difficult’ delivered an old message of discipline and restraint that was striking a new chord Overnight, it seemed, personal agency and self-insight had become hot commodities – Freudian psychoanalysis was all the rage – and the new self-help titles initially seemed to offer a painless shot at a certain kind of lasting change, one based on consciously shifting your thought patterns. In the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) ruled bestseller lists with its promise that changing your inner monologue could boost the quality of your life. ‘Think positively,’ he wrote, ‘and you set in motion positive forces which bring positive results to pass.’ Thomas Harris’s classic I’m OK, You’re OK (1969) taught readers that when they put their minds to a realistic assessment of their personal worth, their lives and relationships would improve. Harris went as far as to say that many of the world’s problems could be better tackled if more people would speak to each other as reasonable adults, rather than unthinkingly allowing past childhood wounds to colour everyday interactions. But as the era’s optimism and hippie excess faded, the tenor of self-help books shifted accordingly. The Road Less Travelled attracted a new, larger following in the no-nonsense 1980s, when the book hit the New York Times bestseller list for the first time. Peck’s pull-no-punches opening sentence: ‘Life is difficult’ delivered an old message of discipline and restraint that was striking a new chord. These days, the self-help landscape seems to be split in two. On the one hand, the culture’s growing insistence on empiricism has left a clear stamp on the genre. Gone is the relatively freewheeling prose of How to Win Friends and Influence People and even The Road Less Travelled, which mainly espouse the authors’ personal views rather than particular scientific theories or schools of thought. They’ve been succeeded by books such as David Burns’s Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (1980), Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (1990), and Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), all of which cite one scientific study after another to bolster their recommendations for behavioural change. Many of today’s popular science books also advertise some sort of self-help takeaway. Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath (2013), marshalls research describing how people can turn perceived weaknesses (dyslexia, childhood trauma) into strengths – a message tailor-made for self-improvement boosters. Yet alongside the science-backed titles are those that peddle unsupported, even unhinged, claims. The bestselling The Secret (2006) by the TV writer Rhonda Byrne asserts that our thoughts send vibrations into the universe, which affects what happens in our lives. Good thoughts, the theory goes, create good outcomes, while bad thoughts create bad ones. ‘If any events or moments did not go the way you wanted, replay them in your mind in a way that thrills you,’ Byrne writes. ‘As you recreate those events in your mind exactly as you want, you are cleaning up your frequency from the day and you are emitting a new signal and frequency for tomorrow.’ Discerning researchers have started calling out the woo-peddlers in recent years, proving that a self-help principle’s popularity is no guarantee of its quality. In a 1999 study at the University of California, Los Angeles, students who visualised themselves scoring high on an upcoming test actually scored lower and devoted less time to preparation than students who did not visualise this outcome. And in a 2009 study, the psychologist Joanne Wood at the University of Waterloo found that people who had low self-esteem to begin with actually felt worse after parroting positive statements about themselves. So the power of positive thinking touted in books such as The Secret can be little more than a mirage. ‘Concluding that it works based on personal experience does not constitute rigorous research,’ Wood says. Other advice commonly dispensed in self-help books – such as that venting your anger will diminish it or, if you’re feeling down, you should fill your mind with happy thoughts – have likewise failed to stand up to scientific scrutiny, as the psychologist Jeremy Dean points out. But as wayward as some self-help guidance can be, the genre also offers advice that is strikingly on the mark, even transformational. A handful of recent studies have underscored bibliotherapy’s potential to help create positive life change, as long as the book’s underlying tenets are sound. Depressed people in a 2010 trial at the University of Nevada thrived when they read Feeling Good, which navigates readers through the process – endorsed by cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) – of identifying their negative thoughts, assessing whether those thoughts were distorted, and if so replacing the thoughts with more logical, reality-based ones. Study participants in the bibliotherapy group showed as much mood improvement as members of another group who received ‘usual care’, including antidepressant prescriptions. Self-help readers can maximise mental-health benefits by demanding at least some proof that the books they choose deliver on their promise And in a 2013 study at the University of Glasgow, depressed subjects who used Chris William’s workbooks on overcoming depression were compared with subjects who received standard depression treatment, which included monitoring, antidepressants and referral to a psychologist. Four months after the start of the study, members of the bibliotherapy group scored several points lower on the Beck Depression Inventory than did members of the standard-care group. Norcross endorses the idea that the right self-help books could serve some patients better than antidepressants or other psychoactive drugs, and without such common side effects as mood blunting, sleeplessness and sexual dysfunction. ‘Antidepressants are horribly over-prescribed. It’s particularly true for mild disorders that we know respond to self-help,’ he says. ‘We endorse a self-care approach. You start with the least expensive, most accessible materials.’ Norcross is well aware that the self-help canon is a lot like the patent medicine industry of the late 1800s, replete with products promising personal transformation, few of them offering proven effectiveness. So should self-help books be held to a scientific standard of proof? Norcross thinks so. ‘There should probably be some regulation. I’m one of those people that believes there needs to be an FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] equivalent for this.’ But Norcross knows it’s wishful thinking to expect clinical trials for self-help books, so he developed a less labour-intensive way to assess the books’ mettle. He surveyed a group of more than 2,500 psychologists, asking them to rate the effectiveness of self-help titles their clients had tried. Feeling Good emerged on top of the heap, with an average score of 1.51 on a scale from -2 (worst) to 2 (best). A handful of autobiographies scored almost as well, including William Styron’s Darkness Visible (1990) and Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind (1995), perhaps because they outline concrete coping strategies while also helping mood-disorder sufferers feel they’re not alone. Since Norcross conducted his survey, the UK’s National Health Service has given bibliotherapy a real-world road test. Through a programme called Reading Well Books on Prescription, patients with mild to moderate depression borrow library books such as Burns’s The Feeling Good Handbook (1990) or Frank Tallis’s How to Stop Worrying (1990) on doctors’ orders. Health authorities have endorsed all the books in the programme as offering evidence-based benefits, and it has good reviews from the reading public. In one survey of the Warwickshire region, three in four respondents ‘strongly agreed’ that Books on Prescription had improved their wellbeing. Norcross’s research and the Books on Prescription results suggest that discriminating self-help readers can maximise mental-health benefits by demanding at least some proof that the books they choose deliver on their promise. This might mean that experts confirm a book contains valid principles, that the author cites peer-reviewed studies to support key points, or that the book has demonstrably helped a significant number of people. (Norcross’s studies have found no correlation between a book’s popularity and its effectiveness, so he warns against surface criteria such as sales numbers and celebrity endorsements.) Bibliotherapy is probably best undertaken with the guidance of a trained therapist – someone who can help readers assess how well the approach is working, offer advice on how to put self-help principles into practice, or recommend stronger treatment if appropriate. When we pore endlessly over self-help titles, we’re groping for something more profound – to infuse our plodding lives with new texture and meaning Once a particular book meets basic effectiveness benchmarks, the final verdict is more dependent on each seeker’s unique sensibilities. Self-help’s empirical shift has been a boon: readers can now proceed with more confidence that the end results will be worth the effort invested. But this shift has also given rise to many books that aim to help readers solve specific, bounded problems (depression, pessimism, relational conflict, social anxiety) rather than offering broader insights about how to live. Decades ago, when educated people regarded psychotherapy as a basic tool for carving out a fulfilled existence, it was only natural that self-help books such as Harris’s and Peck’s tracked the zeitgeist, guiding people to achieve the deep-rooted life satisfaction Aristotle called eudaimonia. Nowadays, therapy tends to focus more on healing well-defined mental pathology, and much recent self-help literature does the same. Still, through all these changes in intellectual fashion, our desire for eudaimonia remains as strong as ever. In his writings, Norcross has pegged the self-help movement as part of the ‘human quest to understand and conquer behavioural disorders’, but many readers would find that description incomplete. When we pore endlessly over self-help titles, most of us aren’t just looking to resolve our problems one by one, with a to-do list mentality. We’re groping for something more profound – to infuse our plodding lives with new texture and meaning. That’s why the psychologist Susan Krauss Whitbourne at the University of Massachusetts thinks it’s important to approach each self-help title with subjective attention to whether the content resonates on a deep level. ‘You want to look at: Is this something that’s going to work? What do I see in there that relates to me personally?’ It’s that sense of connection with a book, Whitbourne believes, that lets readers forge a therapeutic alliance with the author, boosting the odds that a literary meeting of the minds will spur genuine change. Having dipped into self-help books with a strong empirical bent, I can attest that the benefits are real. I’m convinced that Feeling Good, with its well-vetted techniques to combat negative thinking, helped lift me out of a stubborn bout of depression. As someone prone to descend into spirals of dark thought, I also benefited from the advice of Burns’ colleague, psychiatrist Aaron Beck, who recommends keeping a ‘Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts’. Writing down my exaggerated thoughts, identifying the errors they contained, and rebutting them with more logical thoughts helped keep my problems in perspective. The thought-challenging exercises reinforced a critical truth – I didn’t have to buy into everything my sometimes-overheated brain was telling me. My book-inspired course of self-therapy, I now believe, helped me as much as my sessions with a psychologist. Even so, when I encounter a future crisis of the soul, the eminently practical Feeling Good won’t be the only book I reach for. I might also pick up The Road Less Travelled, with its time-tested wisdom about finding meaning in struggle. Or I might open Darkness Visible, the unforgettable testimony of a writer who found the way back from his own personal hell. When it comes to achieving eudaimonia, we are all lone cosmonauts fumbling our way. The literature we choose to guide us should supply proven advice we can trust. But it should also, as Franz Kafka wrote, be ‘the axe for the frozen sea within us’, bludgeoning us in ways that awaken us to the extraordinary.

IBM Corp. IBM, +0.20% on Wednesday confirmed the purchase of The Weather Company, which includes the Weather Channel and its related technology platforms and sensors, to enhance its cloud ecosystem. Terms of the deal, including the price, were not disclosed, but IBM said the purchase adds to the $3 billion investment IBM committed earlier this year to build out products and services in the Internet of Things. The Weather Company's cloud-based services handle 26 billion inquiries each day through its mobile app and website, according to IBM. In addition to the increased cloud-servicing capacity, the company plans to use the data provided by The Weather Company's sensors to boost its analytics offerings for business clients. Shares of IBM rose 1.3% to $139.70 in recent trade. They are down nearly 13% over the last three months, underperforming the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is flat. Have breaking news sent to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Bulletin emails. Sign up here.

Mexico City legislators passed a proposal this week to ban Donald Trump from entering their country, following the presidential candidate’s repeated xenophobic rhetoric surrounding immigrants, particularly those from Mexico. The proposal, which passed unanimously, is largely a symbolic recommendation since the local legislature cannot enforce federal legislation, as the Huffington Post pointed out. But Deputy José Manuel Delgadillo of the conservative National Action Party noted that the proposal was a way to urge Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to more forcefully confront Trump. From the Mexico City legislature, which asked the federal government to ban Donald Trump from the country today pic.twitter.com/VNdykeEQ9f — Roque Planas (@RoqPlanas) March 3, 2016 “What we’re saying is that if he wants to build a wall so that Mexicans can’t enter his country, then he is not welcome in our country,” Delgadillo said, according to the publication. “What we need now is for President Peña Nieto to make a strong statement condemning Mr. Trump’s anti-Mexican comments.” Advertisement Trump has been running his presidential campaign on inflammatory rhetoric that denigrates Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals, as well as the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. He recently stated that Mexico was “killing” the United States by providing cheap labor. Meanwhile, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Trump reminded him of Adolph Hitler. Local Mexico City legislators aren’t the only ones pushing back on Trump’s rhetoric. After Trump called for Mexico to build a wall along its shared border with the United States, former Mexican President Vicente Fox responded by using profanity. “I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall,” Fox said. Up until now, the current Mexican government hasn’t directly addressed Trump’s charges. But Peña Nieto’s chief of staff hopes that the government may be able to counter some of his harsh views by eventually meeting with the Republican and Democratic nominees to talk about its relationship as an economic opportunity. A potential Trump presidency may actually be spurring an increase of migrants at the southern U.S. border, according to Reuters . Between October 2015 and February 2016, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency reported a 24 percent increase in the number of migrants detained as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. One worker at a migrant shelter in Mexico attributed Trump’s rhetoric to the surge in migrant crossings, stating to the publication, “They think they need to take advantage while they can.”

When I went vegan, I figured that cream cheese was just gonna be one of those things I lived without. I tried a couple of store brands, including Tofutti (umm, tastes like tofu to me), and Daiya (so chalky I can’t even get it down!), and Trader Joe’s Brand (I can’t remember why I hated that one, so I guess I blocked it from my memory). In short, commercial vegan cream cheese substitutes just do not do it for me. Nor did blending cashews with lemon juice. I mean, that tasted good, but it didn’t have that hip tang. I gave up for a while. Years, actually. I put hummus on my bagels and soyrizo in my jalapeno poppers. Then one day, I discovered that you can make easy cultured cashew cream cheese with nothing but nondairy yogurt and cashews. WTF? Was it seriously that easy this entire time? Yes. Yes it was. It sure freaking was. I have wasted no time playing catch-up on all of the cream cheese I missed out on eating during those dark days. This stuff is so superior to anything else I’ve tried. It’s sublime. Not only is it delicious vegan cream cheese… it just IS cream cheese. It takes exactly the same as the cow-derived variety, with none of the cruelty or digestive sadness. One of my good friends eats dairy foods. I fed him this stuff and he was even more excited than I am. He asked me for the recipe and now slathers it on his bagels too. I may not have turned him vegan yet, but I’m pretty sure there’s one more happy cow out there thanks to this amazing vegan cultured cashew cream cheese. I’m a little intimidated by fermented foods. I took a few stabs at making rejuvelac for the Artisan Vegan Cheese recipes, and it didn’t work so well for me. Beyond that, the process made me incredibly nervous. So take it from someone who is far from a whiz with culturing and fermenting things: this cashew cream cheese is extremely easy to make. And unlike rejuvelac, you will already know what the end product is supposed to smell and taste like! You know what yogurt is like, and you probably know what dairy cream cheese is like. You’ll be fine! If you’re nervous, start with a half batch (assuming your blender is small enough that it can blend that volume of ingredients smoothly). Here is the super simple recipe! (Pictured on homemade bagels). Finally a vegan cream cheese that doesn’t taste weird or have a bunch of funky ingredients. Just cashew cream and a little patience :). 4.8 from 34 votes Print Simple Cultured Cashew Cream Cheese Amazingly easy vegan cultured cashew cream cheese, made from just two ingredients: cashews and nondairy yogurt. This vegan cream cheese will make a believer out of any skeptic. Naturally paleo, gluten-free, grain-free and no sugar added! Prep Time 10 minutes Total Time 10 minutes Total Yield 2 cups Calories Per Serving 81 kcal Author Yup, it's Vegan Ingredients 2 cups raw cashews soaked overnight in filtered water (raw macadamia nuts also work - but will take a lot longer to blend) 2 tbsp plain, unsweetened non-dairy yogurt (see notes) 1/2 tsp sea salt (plus more to taste) filtered water as needed to blend Instructions Prepare a clean and dry glass or other nonreactive container. I use a Pyrex container. It may not be strictly required, but it's best to sterilize all of your equipment with boiling water before getting started. Drain the liquid off of the soaked cashews. Add them to a blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth. If you aren't used a high-powered blender, it will take several minutes for the cashews to break down and release oils in order to become a smooth mixture. Stop to scrape down the sides as needed; you can also add filtered water a tablespoon at a time if you're having trouble blending. Note: if your blender has warmed the mixture very much, it's best to take a break now and wait for it to cool down (we don't want to kill the yogurt cultures with heat). Then, add the yogurt and salt and pulse to combine. Transfer to the clean container and cover. Let sit out at room temperature for 24 hours. Use a clean utensil to taste the mixture, and add more sea salt to taste; let it culture for another 12-24 hours if you want a stronger tang. Store in the refrigerator for up to 1 weeks. (Note: length of storage time may depend on the culturing conditions and brand of yogurt used). (Optional step) This recipe makes cultured cashew cream cheese with a texture more like "whipped" dairy cream cheese. For a firmer texture like block cream cheese, press out the liquid using cheesecloth. Recipe Notes I use So Delicious Plain Unsweetened Cultured Coconut Milk as my nondairy yogurt of choice. I have tried this with soy yogurt and it also works. I find Forager cashew yogurt a little more prone to mold than other brands. Whatever you do, please use UNflavored, UNsweetened, yogurt. I have experienced that the raw cashews sold at Trader Joe's are a lower quality than other vendors. They do work for this recipe, but I recommend against them if you have other options available. Nutrition Facts Simple Cultured Cashew Cream Cheese Amount Per Serving (2 tablespoons) Calories 81 Calories from Fat 54 % Daily Value* Total Fat 6g 9% Saturated Fat 1g 5% Polyunsaturated Fat 1g Monounsaturated Fat 4g Sodium 76mg 3% Total Carbohydrates 4g 1% Dietary Fiber 1g 4% Sugars 1g Protein 3g 6% Calcium 1% Iron 5% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. Recipe source: Miyoko Schinner via Your Vegan Mom Other troubleshooting: The cultured cashew cream cheese won’t actually culture at all: The ambient temperature in your kitchen may be too cool. Try moving the mixture to a warmer location, or adding a bit more yogurt. The cashews won’t get smooth: You really do need to soak them overnight first, and use RAW cashews. And have patience: it can seem like all they’re doing for 5 minutes is getting grainy, but keep blending and they will eventually start to release their oils and get smooth. It’s basically the same chemistry as making nut butter. The mixture doesn’t taste like anything, not even yogurt. More salt! This definitely needs plenty of salt to bring out the flavor.

The regular season is about the team. The preseason is about the individual. This is the month for rookies and running backs. It's about position battles and injuries. The next four weeks are a pale imitation of the real thing, but you can still learn plenty if you know what to look for. Below, you'll find my watchability rankings for the preseason, powered by science and analytics. During the regular season, this column will detail the teams and players that are most intriguing in a given week. The qualifications are much different in the preseason. Information matters more than results. We'll look for clues on player usage and traits while understanding that August is a mirage usually conjured up by thirsty football takesmen. Teams don't truly game-plan in the preseason, which makes it a different sport. Stable teams take a backseat for now; the preseason won't tell us much about the Panthers and Packers. This month is all about the players and teams we don't know. Quarterbacks battling 1) Denver Broncos 2) Los Angeles Rams 3) San Francisco 49ers 4) Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback curiosity trumps all in the preseason. Three of the teams I want to watch most over the next month have open starting jobs, with No. 2 overall pick Carson Wentz's Eagles thrown in. This entire Broncos quarterback situation is unprecedented. The 2001 Ravens are the only other defending champions to replace their top two quarterbacks, but they didn't hold an open competition in camp. Baltimore simply handed the job to Elvis Grbac, a decision that proved even the best general managers make big mistakes. John Elway hoped to avoid that in Denver by trading for veteran Mark Sanchez (who is signed to a modest deal) while drafting Paxton Lynch in the first round. Lynch isn't believed to be a candidate to start due to an erratic camp, although a red-hot preseason could always change the picture. Sanchez will start Denver's preseason opener, with Trevor Siemian very much in the mix. It's a terrible sign for Sanchez that he has failed to gain any separation in practice against Siemian, a second-year pro drafted in the seventh round in 2015. The tie should go to the younger player. It is all reminiscent of 2013 in New York, when Sanchez struggled to beat out then-rookie Geno Smith. The difference here: Siemian's careful playing personality makes him less likely than Sanchez to commit a game-crushing mistake. Perhaps that's all Denver coach Gary Kubiak wants. The Broncos have the biggest range of potential outcomes of any team in football this year. They could repeat as champs or finish under .500 -- nothing would surprise. That makes them a must-watch team, even in August. (Rookie safety Justin Simmons and rookie running back Devontae Booker are also players to keep an eye on.) August is Chip Kelly season. Sam Bradford threw roughly 10 well-placed passes last year around this time under Kelly in Philly, and suddenly the Eagles became a trendy playoff pick. Now, of course, Kelly is in San Francisco, and the coach indicated the preseason will largely decide the battle between Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert, which has looked tight in practice. It has also inspired actual headlines like: "Kap vs Gabbert: 49ers fans will likely hate the winner and loser." Put aside the cynicism for a minute, and you'll see two quarterbacks with raw skill and a coach unafraid to be aggressive. The 49ers are such a strange team, but Kelly makes them fascinating. The defensive front seven is better than you think, especially if rookie DeForest Buckner makes good on his camp buzz. Two of the three starting receiver jobs are open, as is the tight end job. The football dork in me loves it all. Bradford, meanwhile, remains in Philadelphia. He's the Eagles' starter after a solid camp, so the team's placement in this tier is all about Wentz. Since the rookie won't get many practice snaps during the regular season, this month will likely comprise Wentz's resume for 2016. The job he's applying for: November starting quarterback when the natives get restless in Philly. Unlike Wentz, Jared Goff was not always expected to sit as a rookie in Los Angeles. His "plug-and-play" potential was one reason the Rams took him No. 1 overall. All reports, not to mention the first episode of "Hard Knocks," indicate Goff's progress is coming along slowly. This is hardly cause for alarm. It has happened to rookie quarterbacks from Aaron Rodgers to Eli Manning to Alex Smith. It is a surprise, however -- no matter what kind of spin comes out of L.A. about veteran Case Keenum's "proven ability" to beat the Seahawks. Other recent Rams starters to beat the Seahawks: Austin Davis and Nick Foles. The Rams should take their time with Goff if he's not ready, but this has never been about Keenum. It's Goff vs. Goff, and we get four games to watch his progress. Bonus points for this tier: The Rams and 49ers both play Denver this month. Plenty of intrigue 5) Cleveland Browns 6) New England Patriots 7) Tennessee Titans 8) Dallas Cowboys Robert Griffin III was signed by Cleveland on March 24, more than two weeks after he was released by the Redskins. It was hard to imagine him starting for any team as he languished on the free agent market, much less having a job locked down before the preseason starts. That takes some juice out of the Browns' preseason, but not much. We still want to see how RGIII looks against a live pass rush. We want to see if first-round pick Corey Coleman can live up to those Steve Smith comparisons, and whether Terrelle Pryor can finish his improbable journey from college quarterback to starting NFL wide receiver. We want to see running back Duke Johnson begin to make the leap. Browns homers can also enjoy open starting jobs up for grabs across the defense, but this preseason will be all about new coach Hue Jackson's offense. Are the Browns sneaky exciting? Jimmy Garoppolo's test drive as a starting quarterback would put the Patriots higher on this list if we hadn't seen it before. He should prove to be solid, but September is his month now. The team's open questions at running back (could LeGarrette Blount be cut, and when will Dion Lewis be back?) and the development of rookie receiver Malcolm Mitchell are just as interesting. It will also be fun to see Tom Brady treat these games like the regular season, taking down third-string cornerbacks while Boston radio stations lose their minds after Brady plays three quarters in the fourth preseason game. Marcus Mariota amps up the preseason curiosity factor for the Titans despite that gnawing suspicion coach Mike Mularkey could ruin everything by turning back the clock to 1991. Rookie running back Derrick Henry is one to watch after a strong showing in camp, and it would be great to see juice back in veteran DeMarco Murray's legs. Fifth-round pick receiver Tajae Sharpe is looking to cement his starting receiver job, while second-year pro Dorial Green-Beckham and veteran Andre Johnson battle just to earn snaps in a deep fight at the position. Before he pulled his hamstring, fourth overall pick Ezekiel Elliott's burst and propensity for making linebackers look foolish at Cowboys camp was something to behold. He makes Dallas appointment viewing once he recovers, while Tony Romo's mobility is something to watch. There should be some level of concern that Romo's back stiffness seems to require him to take so many days off at camp. The Cowboys also still need to figure out both starting defensive ends this month. Catch them weekly 9) New Orleans Saints 10) Jacksonville Jaguars 11) Seattle Seahawks 12) Baltimore Ravens 13) Houston Texans The Saints feel strangely fresh for a team that has had the same coach and quarterback for a decade. They finally rebuilt their offense with fun young talent around Drew Brees. Michael Thomas has made more noise than any rookie receiver this year. I've fallen for the hype in Saints camp that competent coaching and improvements through the defensive line and secondary could make this defense respectable. At running back, C.J. Spiller could earn the backup spot over Tim Hightower or get released, based on how he looks in the preseason. ... The Jaguars made news for their free agency splashes, but we'll be watching their rookies more closely this month. At least four defenders -- Jalen Ramsey, Myles Jack, Sheldon Day and Yannick Ngakoue -- have a chance to have big roles right away. Stable teams rank low on this list -- and the Ravens are as unstable as they've been in awhile. Five key starters are coming back from injury. Starting jobs at running back, wideout, tight end, defensive end, inside linebacker and safety are open this month. Everyone is just assuming 37-year-old veteran receiver Steve Smith is still Steve Smith coming off an Achilles injury. There's a lot that could go wrong. ... Houston is similarly in flux. The Texans have up to nine new offensive starters, including quarterback Brock Osweiler and first-round receiver Will Fuller. Seattle is the exception to the rule when it comes to established teams ranking low. Just watch one of the Seahawks' games. They often play so hard in the preseason that it feels like a real game. Their backfield should be among the most fun to watch this month, with Christine Michael teasing fantasy writers again. They also drafted three running backs trying to make an impact while Thomas Rawls returns from a broken ankle. Middle of the pack 14) New York Giants 15) Pittsburgh Steelers 16) Tampa Bay Buccaneers 17) Chicago Bears 18) Miami Dolphins 19) New York Jets 20) Indianapolis Colts 21) Atlanta Falcons 22) San Diego Chargers 23) Buffalo Bills The Giants' preseason isn't about rookie receiver Sterling Shepard vs. veteran Victor Cruz -- that battle is over; Shepard has won. The battle is Cruz vs. his old explosiveness, with the waiver wire a possible destination for Cruz. (And that battle will distract everyone from what's happening at linebacker for New York.) ... Atlanta has been threatening to start up to four defensive rookies, including first-round pick Keanu Neal, and the preseason will show how serious coach Dan Quinn is about turning over his group. ... The Steelers were ranked low in this exercise until I realized how much I wanted to see Sammie Coates and slot receiver Eli Rogers build on their camp hype. Pittsburgh coaches are also hoping outside linebackers Bud Dupree and Jarvis Jones finally establish themselves as clear starters, while they work in two rookies (first-round pick Artie Burns and second-round pick Sean Davis) in the secondary. These aren't former defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau's "wait and develop" Steelers. There isn't a ton at stake with the Colts this month, but an angry Andrew Luck coming off a disastrous season can't be ranked low. The same reasoning applies for the Buccaneers' Jameis Winston, who is going to my one of my favorite weekly watches when the real games start. Look to see if he feeds unheralded tight end Cameron Brate to help Brate win the starting job. ... This is a big month for Bears receiver Kevin White. Early reports in camp indicate that last year's No. 7 overall pick is coming along slowly after losing all of 2015 to injury. Fantasy drafters assuming that second-year pro Jeremy Langford will just dominate carries in the Chicago backfield also need to watch out for how rookie Jordan Howard and veterans Jacquizz Rodgers and Ka'Deem Carey are used. ... The Chargers are one of the teams we're most anxious to see in the regular season, but they don't offer a ton of intrigue this month. Keep an eye on whether second-year pro Melvin Gordon looks all the way back at running back after reportedly undergoing microfracture surgery on his knee in January. His hesitant preseason a year ago started his rookie campaign going the wrong way. The Jets have a roster of established stars for whom the preseason doesn't matter much. We don't expect to see a ton of Matt Forte, even when he gets healthy. They only rank this high on the off chance Geno Smith plays like Joe Namath and makes my heart sing. Second-round pick Christian Hackenberg hasn't seen many snaps in camp and might not even be ready for preseason action. The Jets definitely have the most compelling battle for a No. 3 quarterback job, with 2015 fourth-rounder Bryce Petty hoping to show progress. He says he plans to "Brett Favre it" in the team's first preseason game. We just want to see what that means. ... The Bills would have been a lot more interesting this month before losing their top two rookies (Shaq Lawson and Reggie Ragland) to injury. Former Olympic hopeful Marquise Goodwin is making believers (again) in Buffalo camp, and he has a solid chance to start if he shows out in August. ... ... Arian Foster will sit out the preseason opener for the Dolphins. It's worth watching how he and Jay Ajayi look this month, and if both can escape August healthy. Lower stakes 24) Green Bay Packers 25) Arizona Cardinals 26) Carolina Panthers 27) Oakland Raiders These four teams range from good to potentially great, yet we're unlikely to learn a lot new about them in the preseason. Raiders fans have to be thrilled that they have such a stable, young offense that returns nearly all its starters. Rookie DeAndre Washington is a player to watch -- can he establish himself as a true threat to Latavius Murray? Carolina is set to give three rookie cornerbacks major snaps, barring an August meltdown. No. 1 receiver Kelvin Benjamin's return from his ACL injury is just as important. Second-year receiver Devin Funchess and running back Cameron Artis-Payne also want to solidify their strong training camps. Aaron Rodgers is a treat any time of year, and he'll want to re-establish connections with Jordy Nelson and his No. 3 receiver to be named later, which currently figures to be Davante Adams. Like the Packers, the Cardinals are a team we know well. They'd be better off just fast-forwarding a month, because only injuries could mess with this squad. Save for Game Pass 28) Minnesota Vikings 29) Detroit Lions 30) Washington Redskins 31) Cincinnati Bengals 32) Kansas City Chiefs Fans of the five teams above should mostly see landing in this tier as a compliment, so save the emails. They just aren't generating many high-stakes storylines this preseason to capture the casual fan. Minnesota's best player (Adrian Peterson) will barely play, if at all. However, their two most recent first-round picks -- receiver Laquon Treadwell (2016) and cornerback Trae Waynes (2015) -- could use big months to earn regular playing time. The Lions will take a massive breath before the preseason starts, then exhale in a month if running back Ameer Abdullah's shoulder goes unscathed. The Bengals similarly can't handle more skill-position injuries; with their stacked roster, they don't truly need many of their young players to step up. Even Redskins beat writers admit camp this year is boring, which is a nice change of pace for them. Washington's first-round receiver Josh Doctson may not make it back on the field in time to play in the preseason, although we'll keep an eye on buzzy rookie runner Keith Marshall and second-year pro Matt Jones, who already wowed us in the preseason once. The Chiefs have a mostly veteran roster with intrigue at backup running back (Spencer Ware vs. Charcandrick West) and watching Chris Conley as the team's new starting wideout. There will be a moment during this preseason when we all just want to move forward to the fun stuff. This is not that moment. Addicts that make it this far down a "Preseason Watchability" column have a football problem. We complain about the preseason, but we watch it. We are grateful to have any live tackling and actual scores back in our lives. Now there are just 26 weeks left until it goes away once again.

Image caption Patriarch Kirill (R) met President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday evening The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has said the Kremlin should heed the recent mass protests over ballot-rigging and adjust its policies. In a televised message on Orthodox Christmas Day, Patriarch Kirill said it would be a "very bad sign" if the authorities ignored the protesters. He added that he could not take sides in the election dispute. However the Church, which counts about 70% of Russians as members, has close links to the Kremlin. It is unclear whether this is the patriarch's first comment on the election protests which gripped Moscow last month, but Russian commentators said it was unexpected. The last big rally, on 24 December, drew as many as 100,000 people to central Moscow in the biggest anti-government demonstration since Soviet times. It was called to protest at the conduct of parliamentary elections on 4 December, which were seen as a test of the electoral system ahead of a presidential election in March that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is contesting. Mr Putin served two terms as Russian president before becoming prime minister. "The main thing is to translate correctly expressed protests into a policy adjustment," the patriarch said in Saturday's broadcast. "If the authorities remain insensitive to the expression of protests, it is a very bad sign, a sign of the authorities' inability to adjust themselves." The Church could not take sides over the elections, he said, because it had members "among both those on the square and those who were being opposed on the square". Patriarch Kirill congratulated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they met at a Christmas Eve service in Moscow's Christ The Saviour Cathedral on Friday night.

A VIGILANTE commuter who boldly confronted train vandals and filmed them says they had to be taught a lesson. The man, known only as Mark, said he was sick of seeing taxpayers' money wasted on cleaning up graffiti on trains before he boldly confronted the train vandals and filmed them, saying they had to be taught a lesson. Do you know more? Email our reporter So when he spotted three vandals tagging in a carriage as he was on his way home, he could not turn a blind eye. "I thought, if these kids aren't taught now they'll probably think they will get away with it and continue doing it -- and probably end up in the big house when they are older. And you don't want that," he told Channel 9 News. His footage shows him cornering two taggers as the third runs off. "Guess what, matey? You're gone," he says. "Guess where this is going, boys? Straight to Crime Stoppers." The footage has gone viral, with more than 444,000 views on YouTube and 22,000 likes on Facebook in one day. The video ends with Mark grabbing the two taggers, chasing them off the train at the next station, and trying to make a citizen's arrest. Mark said he released one youth he was holding only after one of the boy's mates produced a rock. Today, police spokeswoman Anita Brens said police were keen for Mark to officially come forward, report the incident and hand over any footage. “We urge that person to hand the footage into police,” Ms Brens said. “It would form part of any evidence we may need to present." Victoria Police and Metro yesterday urged people not to take the law into their own hands. Senior Sergeant David Cochrane, of the transit police, urged people not to approach offenders but to ring police or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. "Be aware of the risks involved and think carefully before you do it," he said. "In this case, the person has let the offenders know he was filming and he was about to arrest them ... and it appears he has been assaulted as a result of it, which is concerning to us," Sen-Sgt Cochrane said. "If you see this stuff and you film it, we advise that you ring police. "Please let the police know in the first instance, because you put the prosecution at risk by putting it straight on to YouTube." Metro spokesman Daniel Hoare urged anyone who witnessed vandalism on a train or at a station to call police immediately. "If someone sees graffiti being carried out on a train, we urge them to press the red emergency button on the carriage, which will activate a call to police," he said. Metro must clean up graffiti within 24 hours of it being reported, which can force trains out of service. Graffiti offences attract a $276 on-the-spot fine and possessing graffiti equipment on a train carries a $704 fine. Criminal damage carries a penalty of up to 10 years' jail. Public Transport Users Association president Tony Morton said his group also did not encourage people to take matters into their own hands. He said the video showed how a situation could get out of hand and distress other passengers. Do you know more? Email our reporter

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Washington, where congressional Democrats are openly criticizing the secrecy surrounding the negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, known as the TPP. This comes as President Obama begins a major push to pass the controversial deal. The United States is in talks with 11 [other Pacific Rim] countries for the sweeping trade pact that would cover 40 percent of the global economy, but its provisions have mostly been kept secret. After the White House deemed a briefing on the trade pact classified, Congressmember Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut called the measures “needlessly secretive,” saying, quote, “If the TPP would be as good for American jobs as they claim, there should be nothing to hide.” Well, this comes as President Obama recently called on Congress to pass fast-track legislation to streamline the passage of trade deals through Congress. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As we speak, China is trying to write the rules for trade in the 21st century. That would put our workers and our businesses at a massive disadvantage. We can’t let that happen. We should write those rules. That’s why Congress should act on something called “Trade Promotion Authority.” AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO says it will withhold contributions to congressional Democrats to pressure them to vote no on fast-track authority. And some tea party-backed Republicans are saying Obama cannot be trusted with the same negotiating authority that past presidents have had. This spring, the White House has invited Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to address a joint session of Congress, in which he may promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership. For more, we’re joined by Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. As the push for the TPP heats up, she was recently featured in a National Journal profile headlined “The Trade Debate’s Guerilla Warrior Gets Her Day.” Welcome back to Democracy Now! Tell us about what you’re most concerned about, Lori. LORI WALLACH: Well, fast-tracking the TPP would make it easier to offshore our jobs and would put downward pressure, enormous downward pressure, on Americans’ wages, because it would throw American workers into competition with workers in Vietnam who are paid less than 60 cents an hour and have no labor rights to organize, to better their situation. Plus, the TPP would empower another 25,000 foreign corporations to use the investor state tribunals, the corporate tribunals, to attack our laws. And then there would be another 25,000 U.S. corporations in the other TPP countries who could use investor state to attack their environmental and health and labor and safety laws. And if all that weren’t enough, Big Pharma would get new monopoly patent rights that would jack up medicine prices, cutting off affordable access. And there’s rollback of financial regulations put in place after the global financial crisis. And there’s a ban on “Buy Local,” “buy domestic” policies. And it would undermine the policy space that we have to deal with the climate crisis—energy policies are covered. Basically, almost any progressive policy or goal would be undermined, rolled back. Plus, we would see more offshoring of jobs and more downward pressure on wages. So the big battle is over fast track, the process. And right now, thanks to a lot of pushback by activists across the country, actually, they don’t have a majority to pass it. But there’s an enormous push to change that, and that’s basically where we all come in. AMY GOODMAN: I mean, people are not used to hearing that President Obama and the Republicans have found common ground and that President Obama’s opposition are the largest bloc in Congress, and that’s the progressive Democrats. Can you explain why President Obama is pushing TPP forward and TPA, the fast-track authority, which means, again, that you can’t amend this agreement, you can only vote up or down? LORI WALLACH: Well, I want to—actually, I want to take one step back before guessing why, because it’s hard to imagine. If you go to our website, TradeWatch.org, we’ve literally done a side-by-side of Obama’s policy goals as a president and everything fast-tracking the TPP would do to basically undermine everything that he has fought for, from lower medicine prices to re-regulating Wall Street, to more energy-efficient climate crisis-combating policies, to allegedly this middle-class economics agenda. The TPP and fast track are the antithesis. But one other thing about fast track folks need to know, which is—and this gets to the weird politics—you’ve got the president basically doing the bidding of all the big corporations and commercial interests that spent millions of dollars to make sure he wasn’t elected the first time and to try and not elect him the second time. Against him are the entire labor movement united. There was a letter signed by every union president—basically, the most unity in the labor movement since certain unions left the AFL-CIO 20 years ago. And it’s the government employee unions, it’s the service sector unions—all the unions that are affected by what happens when all of our good jobs are taken away and the tax base crashes. And you’ve got groups that have never been involved in a trade fight before, all the Internet freedom groups who realize the agreement would undermine the basic rights to an accessible, free Internet. There are issues about net neutrality that could be rolled back. It’s just overarchingly a delivery mechanism for a huge, broad corporate agenda. So then, why would the president be with the Chamber of Commerce, the NAM, all the big lobby groups that also tried to unelect him? And against him are almost every House Democrat, and then, interestingly, a bunch of conservative Republicans. But it’s not—the issue is not that they, we—anyone—doesn’t want this president to have fast track. The issue is fast track is inappropriate for any president. Fast track lets a president unilaterally pick negotiating partners, set wide rules, not about trade, that would rewrite domestic policy, sign and enter an agreement that would require us to change all of our domestic laws to meet those rules, sign and enter into that agreement before Congress votes to approve the contents, then write implementing legislation to change all the U.S. laws, that isn’t subject to congressional review through committee. It goes directly to the floor. And the president is guaranteed in 90 days a yes-or-no vote, with no filibuster, limited debate, and no amendments. So it’s literally a form of diplomatic legislating. And actually, since 1988, only two presidents have managed to have Congress give away all that authority: Ronald Reagan in '88 and George Bush II in 2002. Every other president who's tried—Clinton in '95, ’97, ’98—Congress said no. So it's not an anti-Obama thing. It’s a no giveaway of the ability of Congress to make our laws. And that’s what fast track is. And that’s why it would enable something as outrageous as the TPP. AMY GOODMAN: I want to just ask one little example: “Buy American,” the whole push to try to buy things in the United—that are made here, because it would mean more U.S. jobs, etc.—how would that fit in to TPP? LORI WALLACH: So the way that that works is TPP, amongst its 29 chapters, only five of which have anything to do with trade, one of the nontrade chapters is a chapter about procurement, government procurement rules. And in that chapter, the requirement is that the U.S. government treat bids from any company in any TPP country identically to how they would treat a U.S. company’s bid. But Buy America and Buy American, two laws, the first one from 1934, requires you give a preference to a domestic company, so that when we’re spending our tax dollars, instead of offshoring our tax dollars, we’re reinvesting them in our communities to create jobs and also, by the way, to create innovation. So, like the CAFE standards, that are now normal, the fuel efficiency standards for cars, that was first a procurement condition; so the Renewable Portfolio Standards, the renewable energy standards that are now part of government procurement—that’s how you create a market using the government funds for a behavior you want the private sector to shift to. Great policy tool, great job creator, super—except, under TPP, we’d have to give a waiver to that preference. Any company in any TPP country, so even ones that aren’t from those countries—Chinese state-owned enterprise firms in Vietnam—would have to be treated the same as a U.S. company and get all of those government contracts. And that’s also the same rule that undermines all the Buy Local preferences. So to the extent—you know, for instance, a lot of school districts have done rules that say, “Let’s buy local food from local farmers. Let’s not have a big multinational company ship our vegetables a thousand miles away when we have the ability from right here to produce and procure.” Those would also be violations. You have to treat the foreign company the same, give them the same access, as you would any domestic company. And if we don’t change our laws to meet those rules, we would face trade sanctions until we do. AMY GOODMAN: Who negotiated this? LORI WALLACH: There’s an office that’s part of the Office of the President called the United States Trade Representative, are the actual negotiators. But I think underlying your question is: Who the heck negotiated this? And the reason we have such a lunatic agreement is those negotiators are advised by an official set of trade—U.S. private sector trade advisers. There are almost 600 of these advisers, and all but a handful of them represent big corporate interests. So, there are about 20 labor unions in the mix, of the 600. There are three or four environmental groups. There’s one consumer group, a couple family farm groups. Otherwise, it’s all corporate. So, literally, when it comes to like the pharmaceutical rules, the pricing of medicines, you’ve got all the industry there. AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the strategy that you’re—that people are using in opposing this? Democrats in Congress have spoken out, some of them, around the issue of secrecy. The reason we know this agreement, what’s in it, right, is because WikiLeaks released a draft of it about a year ago. But, you know, going back to 1999, the World Trade Organization in Seattle, for example, the massive protest outside led to the World Trade Organization—I mean, basically, the whole ministerial being called off. What kind of organizing is taking place right now? LORI WALLACH: Well, actually, what shut down the WTO expansion was a combination of inside and outside. So, folks saw the protests in the street in Seattle in ’99, but there was an entire year of campaigning, country by country, around the world to get the governments who were going to that meeting to agree to not do certain things and to demand certain things. And where we are in the campaign now is, basically, folks have to ramp up the inside and the outside, which is to say—you may think it sounds corny. I swear it makes a difference. I’ve worked in Capitol Hill. Folks, if you have not called your representative and both of your senators and gotten them to commit to you in writing that they oppose fast track, if and when it comes for a vote, which could be as soon as the third week of April, if you have not done that, you must do that. Please do that. Write them snail mail, email, call. The switchboard at the Capitol can connect you. If you’re not sure who your representative is, all you need is your ZIP code. The Capitol switchboard—you should write this down and stick it on a yellow sticky on your fridge for all purposes—202-225-3121, 202-225-3121. AMY GOODMAN: Lori, we’re— LORI WALLACH: But the other— AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to— LORI WALLACH: —thing to do is— AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. LORI WALLACH: We have a webinar today, TradeWatch.org, you’ll learn all you need to know. TradeWatch.org, webinar today. AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, speaking to us from Washington. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

For a Congress that struggled to pass even the most basic of bills, the 113th didn't lack for imaginative proposals. Squelched in committee, locked in legislative logjam, and buried in obscurity were bills that would do everything from eliminating federal agencies to micromanaging D.C. traffic enforcement. As the year draws to a close, let's take a look back at some of the best congressional pipe dreams, organized by their likelihood of passage, as determined by GovTrack. 0% — Tragically, Rep. Louie Gohmert's proposal to exempt D.C. residents from income taxes did not find its way into the congressional agenda. The No Taxation Without Representation Act addresses the District's long-standing voting-rights concerns, but rather than asserting Washingtonians' rights, it simply eliminates their obligations to Uncle Sam. Some District advocates are concerned it could turn the capital into a tax haven, as well as pushing residents' concerns even lower on the congressional totem pole. The bill has seen no movement since its introduction last July, much to the chagrin of many District-residing Hill staffers and political reporters. 1% — With a just-better-than-zero chance of passing, Rep. Alan Grayson's campaign finance proposal is more a product of idealism than of realism. His bill, the Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act, imposes a 500 percent tax on political contributions by corporations. What better way to get money out of politics than to bring in revenue in the process? While reform advocates might see the logic in Grayson's proposal, his donor-reliant colleagues seem unlikely to take it up, even in committee. Sometimes even the most quixotic ideas need to be stamped out before they take root. At least, that's the premise of Rep. Greg Walden's plan to ban trillion-dollar platinum coins. Some on the left had floated the idea of minting such coins as a work-around to another debt-ceiling fight with the GOP. Walden's bill would limit the value of platinum coins to $200, which, presumably, would not go very far toward circumventing a debt-ceiling battle. Rep. Charlie Rangel didn't get much traction behind his plan to make women register for the draft, coupled with his perennial proposal to reinstate compulsory military service. Rangel's goal is to give all Americans a stake in the wars the country fights, but it doesn't appear that his colleagues—or the Pentagon brass—share his views. 2% — Some bills exist simply to nakedly troll a member's political enemies. Rep. Ted Yoho's GLITCH Act is one such bill. Released during the botched rollout of HealthCare.gov, the proposal would cut the salary of the Health and Human Services secretary by 5 percent for every month that the website is not fully functional. The site has since rebounded, and Yoho's bill is collecting mothballs. Meanwhile, some lawmakers are just sick of speeding tickets. Rep. Steve Stockman's bill bans D.C. from using traffic cameras to catch speeders, including, presumably, members of Congress. It also nixes federal highway funds for states that use such cameras. Even love itself has not been safe from congressional interference. Rep. Matt Salmon's bill would give the axe to the Popular Romance Project, a program that studies the influence of romance on cultures throughout history. And in case any other agency was getting ideas, Salmon's bill would ban "any similar project relating to love or romance." 3% — Snarky bill names were not confined to the House of Representatives. Sen. Tom Coburn proposed the Let Me Google That For You Act, which would eliminate an obscure document-keeping agency. Its purpose, Coburn argued, has been largely made redundant by the availability of records on the Internet. 4% — Finally, Stockman makes this list twice with his self-named bill to disprove global warming. Intent on etching his name into law, the representative's Stockman Effect Act is his last attempt at disproving global warming. The bill directs scientists to study the Earth's magnetic field, which, if given more scrutiny, will apparently displace global warming as the culprit for most weather changes. Sadly for connoisseurs of such legislation, Stockman won't be back in the 114th Congress. But perhaps his ideas will live on.

There have been some bad debates so far in this presidential elections. I mean, really bad. We've seen candidates act like children and moderators like doofuses. CNBC was rightfully skewered last week for asking Republicans questions both petty and spiteful. Moderator John Harwood's first question to Donald Trump — asking the billionaire whether his candidacy was really just "a comic-book version of a presidential campaign" — was a perfect example. As if Harwood thought Trump might respond: Why, yes, John, it is. What an insightful inquiry. Harwood's salvo would've been better suited as a blog rant than a debate opener. However, one of the big problems when moderators throw out harebrained bombs early on is they allow candidates to dismiss legitimate questions later. Florida's own Marco Rubio took spectacular advantage of that. Moderator Becky Quick asked Rubio to explain a litany of well-documented financial problems from his past. Said Quick: "You accidentally intermingled campaign money with your personal money. You faced foreclosure on a second home that you bought. And just last year, you liquidated a $68,000 retirement fund … that cost you thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties" — all to ask whether Rubio had the ability to handle the nation's finances. Rubio refused to answer, describing the question as "a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents." That's simply not true. Rubio has a string of financial messes, personal and political. And anyone who watched his record in Florida knows it. He was mired in debt, even while living a life of limo rides and travel and telling others to live within their means. Don't take it from me. Take it from court documents. And investigative reports. Heck, take it from conservative commentator Joe Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida who has offered hearty defenses of Rubio in the past. After the debate, Scarborough was incredulous. "Marco just flat-out lied to the American people there," Scarborough said, going on to ridicule the audience cheering his denials. "Everybody's going, 'Oh, Marco was great.' No, Marco lied about his financials." The facts are all there. See, I can't claim to have watched Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump up close during the past decade. But I have watched Rubio. And he has been dogged by financial and ethical questions from the moment he became Florida House speaker and immediately spent $559,000 in taxpayer money to renovate offices and build a new members-only dining room. He entered the Florida Legislature nearly broke and with $30,000 in credit-card debt — but managed to live high on the hog thanks to a GOP credit card funded largely by special interests that wanted legislative favors. He used this Amex to charge everything from plane trips to limo rides. Even stone pavers at his home, an incident he described in his book as a mistake. Once, he was caught double-billing taxpayers and the GOP for the same airfare. Rubio's home did indeed face foreclosure. Not his family's house, mind you. A second house he owned with a legislative buddy. Court records said they stopped paying the mortgage for five months. And while railing against government spending, Rubio snagged an unadvertised teaching position at a taxpayer-funded university and crafted a budget that included $800,000 for artificial turf at his former flag-football team's home field. Gov. Charlie Crist — of all people — vetoed it. Rubio has admitted most of this, repaying improper expenditures and expressing regret for what he called mistakes. But last week facts became "discredited attacks." Listen, people can forgive financial pitfalls. But they don't like dishonesty … especially when it's about money and largess connected to public service. I still think Rubio's debate performance — especially his emasculation of one-time mentor Jeb Bush — will help him rise in the polls. His assets are his life story, his stage presence and his doe-eyed delivery. Rubio's baggage is his actual track record — much of which runs counter to the virtues he claims to embrace. smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Tips & Tales of Effective Crowdfunding In recent years, crowdfunding – the contribution of money from multiple people, usually through the internet, towards a single project or effort – has become more and more popular in the entrepreneurial world. Through sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, RocketHub, Crowdrise, Appbackr, Mosaic, and many others, anyone with an idea, no matter the industry, has the opportunity to ask others to finance it. Because of crowdfunding’s increasing popularity, success with crowdfunding has become more difficult to achieve. To get some perspectives on what works, we interviewed three Workbar members about their effective campaigns on the most well-known crowdfunding site – Kickstarter. Thinking Outside the Poster: Litographs The project: Litographs – a business founded in 2012 that screen prints the full text of books onto posters – started a Kickstarter in order to print on t-shirts. Strategically timed for the holidays, the Kickstarter exceeded its goal of $15,000 and raised $100,928 in one month. What worked? According to Danny Fein, Litographs’ founder, the campaign was successful for four main reasons – its mailing list and Danny’s social networks; its timing; its creative use of rewards; and its strong press coverage. “It’s really important to get your campaign off to a good start, and it’ll take on a life of its own,” Danny says. Danny’s main goal for the campaign was to get it featured by Kickstarter on the homepage, but that doesn’t happen without a bit of leg work. In order to build momentum and prove to Kickstarter that his project was worth highlighting, Danny sent an email to his existing mailing list of about 4,000 people who already had an interest in Litographs. He also promoted the page heavily on his personal social media sites – particularly Facebook. Instead of featuring a promotion on his website, he took the opportunity to offer a special price on posters – $15 instead of around $30 – available only on the Kickstarter page. This drove hundreds of customers, who were already Litographs fans, to “donate” to the campaign and get a poster for half the price. Kickstarter noticed the page’s immediate success and featured it soon after. According to Danny, about 50% of the money raised came from people who found his page through Kickstarter. Danny also wanted to get some press coverage, but knew very little about public relations best practices. “I gave myself every possibility to have good things happen because it was so unknown,” Danny says. One way he did this was to make a wish list of around 30 blogs that he wanted to feature Litographs’ story. Instead of sending a press release, he scraped text from each blog, created hand-printed litographs of their logos, and sent them out via snail mail along with a suggestion that they cover his story. Four out of five of them did, and the first was TechCrunch – leading to the largest spike in the campaign’s donors. Lastly, starting the campaign in time for rewards to arrive by December 24th was no coincidence. As a retail-centric project, the campaign’s positioning in time for holiday shopping was a major reason for its huge success. “It’s hard to overestimate how huge the holidays are – especially for a business like Litographs,” Danny says. Litographs’ Kickstarter campaign had residual effects on the company’s overall success. The campaign raised traffic to the Litographs website 10-20% during the month while it was running, and the site’s traffic settled after the campaign at 4-5% more on average than before – even after holiday shopping season. Last Words of Advice Though Litographs exceeded its goal by a huge amount, Danny says that kind of success has pros and cons. While the increased order numbers decreased the costs of t-shirts and other materials bought in bulk, the unanticipated number of rewards Danny had to turn out for the holidays added a lot of stress and pressure. “Don’t overestimate the complexity of having 300,000 customers breathing down your necks – especially during the holidays,” Danny says. If your page is wildly successful, be prepared for the follow-through it will require. Because Kickstarter does not design itself as a retail store, Danny had to come up with his own system for following up with orders in order to follow through with every contributor’s request. “Double however long you think it will take,” Danny says, and only add stretch goals if you previously planned on it. If the campaign is already proving successful, don’t over complicate it – it only creates more work and complexity. Putting a Local Landmark in a National Spotlight: The Brattle Theatre The project: The Brattle Theatre, a 60-year old arthouse cinema in Harvard Square, needed major upgrades –including a new HVAC and digital projection systems – and looked to Kickstarter to raise the $140,000 to do them. In five weeks, the Kickstarter campaign raised $149,580. What worked? To appeal to as many donors as possible, the Brattle put a great deal of thought into its rewards. “My impression of Kickstarter is that it’s tougher for local projects… our strategy was to make it attractive to people who don’t live nearby,” says Larry Yu, a board member who was involved in the execution and promotion of the campaign. To increase the chances of getting national donors as well as local, more personally-invested contributors, the Brattle offered a mix of lower to higher-end rewards, some regionally dependent and some not. These rewards included Brattle “Schwag,” movie tickets, a night with celebrity Amanda Palmer, and even choosing the name for the new HVAC system. Even with creative and diverse prizes, the Brattle’s campaign needed quite a bit of marketing power. In the first two weeks of the campaign, the Brattle reached its 20% mark, and finished strong with around 40% of funds rolling in the last week. According to Larry, a large reason for the campaign’s success near the end was the snowball effect of the Brattle’s promotional efforts. The theater started by promoting the campaign to its close networks – friends, family, and fans of the theater. In those initial solicitations, the promotional team also made an effort to focus on more influential connectors in its network that could help spread the word – connectors like influencers at Harvard University, the City of Cambridge, and local press and niche film publications. Using the theater’s press releases, the Boston Globe wrote several pieces highlighting the Brattle’s campaign. Last words of advice: The theater’s campaign succeeded and exceeded its goal, but Larry says, “It’s hard work – it doesn’t just sort of happen.” Plan for many hours of marketing power in order to get your project off the ground, and don’t expect donors to just find you. The Brattle already had many fans, and it still had to invest a lot of time, effort, and incentives into spreading the word about its campaign. Finding a Sweet Spot in a Niche: D Programming Language Conference The project: Andrei Alexandrescu, a D Programmer, was part of a group that wanted to organize an annual D Programming Language conference in the Bay Area in 2013. To do it, they needed funding for the rooms, speakers, food, and other conference amenities, and they decided to reach out to the D Programming community using Kickstarter in order to fund it. In one month, they raised $30,855 of their $29,999 goal. What worked? According to Andrei, the conference’s campaign succeeded because of its niche appeal, the length of the campaign, and the group’s ability to find initial investors. “I think one month is a sweet spot,” Andrei says. The group built momentum from the start by lining up some initial investors through their personal networks and by posting about the conference in targeted areas, such as D Programming forums, Hacker News, and Reddit. “Try to find some reliable contributors to seed it,” Andrei says, because when people are convinced the project will make it, they are more likely to help it get there. Once the campaign reached 50 contributors, they extended the reach of their network by emailing donors and asking them to spread the word. This strategy and the short timeline for funding kept up the campaign’s momentum, without major lulls. Once they reached their goal, the successful campaign gave the conference so much credibility that Andrei’s employer agreed to provide and pay for the conference’s venue. Last words of advice: Though a successful crowdfunding campaign gives a project credibility, Andrei cautions, “It’s a leap of faith, and you can lose face very easily… If it fails, it can be very disappointing and can hurt your project’s reputation.” He also advises to be aware that contributors can retract their donations last minute, which happened to them early on in the campaign. Had it happened later, as they approached their deadline, those retractions could have cost them the entire pool, so it’s always best to plan for a cushion. For further reading on crowdfunding best-practices, start with these resources: Raising Money Through Crowdfunding? Consider These Best Practices for Success | Entrepreneur Magazine How to Run a Successful Campaign on Kickstarter | Shopify The Untold Story Behind Kickstarter Stats [INFOGRAPHIC] | AppsBlogger Successful Kickstarter Campaigns | Garrett Gibbons Kickstartup | Craigmod.com About the Author: Alexa Lightner is one of the Space & Community Managers at Workbar. Contact her via email alexa@workbar.com or Twitter @alexalightner.

First - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Gallery - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/g… Prev - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Next - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Ah~! Vincent said the name of the chapter! XDLove, trust, and respect are going to be pretty common themes throughout this chapter. I mean, they're significant to the story as a whole, but I want you to really be on the lookout here. We're going to be seeing a lot of examples and challenges to each of these before we're done. And have I mentioned that this chapter is insanely long? XDAlthough this week's pages were mostly just stage setting, there's a lot of interesting stuff here too. Like, how Fara and Vincent neither confirmed nor denied that they were together. Or how Aiken asked about the compatibility of cis and trans people at all.©2004-2016Rain, all characters and all other aspects of the story are copyright material belonging to me.

The statistics showed that doctors, nurses, porters and administrative workers suffered physical and verbal abuse from patients. Accident and Emergency staff have been the victim of 774 attacks over the last two years, according to new figures. The statistics showed that doctors, nurses, porters and administrative workers suffered physical and verbal abuse from patients. In one case a person being treated at Perth Royal Infirmary attempted to bite a staff member. Reports from other hospitals revealed "worrying" incidents of homophobic and racial abuse, the Liberal Democrats said. Lib Dem health spokesman Jim Hume said: "Our figures show that a total of 774 attacks on A&E staff took place across Scotland over 2012 and 2013. That's equivalent to an attack a day on NHS staff. "NHS staff at A&E units have a tough enough time trying to save the lives of patients in often traumatic conditions. It is shameful that A&E staff are having to fend off violent and verbal attacks whilst trying to do their job. "Time is precious in A&E units and every minute which is spent dealing with abuse and calling in the police could be better spent at the bedside of patients. "Most people in Scotland hold a deep respect for our A&E staff and the inspirational work they do. The minority of people who attack our A&E staff should recognise that this will not be tolerated." A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Attacks against NHS staff are despicable and the perpetrators should be dealt with in the strongest possible terms. There is no question that staff should feel safe in their jobs and no-one should be the victim of abuse or violence while at work. "We are working hard to continue to bring down the rate of attacks against staff and more people than ever before are being convicted under the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act 2005 with the penalty of up to 12 months imprisonment, a £10,000 fine or both."

Does he cede power to the anti-establishment wing of his party? Or does he seek other pathways to successful governing by throwing away the partisan playbook and courting a coalition with the Democrats, whom he has improbably blamed for his party’s shortcomings? “It’s really a problem in our own party, and that’s something he’ll need to deal with moving forward,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, an ally of the center-right Tuesday Group, which stuck with Mr. Trump in the health care fight and earned the president’s praise in the hours after the bill’s defeat. “I think he did a lot — he met with dozens and dozens of members and made a lot of accommodations — but in the end, there’s a group of people in this party who just won’t say yes,” Mr. Cole said. “At some point, I think that means looking beyond our conference. The president is a deal maker, and Ronald Reagan cut some of his most important deals with Democrats.” Mr. Trump is not there yet. Before becoming a presidential candidate, he seemed to have little fixed ideology. But as president, he has operated from the standard-issue Republican playbook, embracing many of the positions of Speaker Paul D. Ryan and the party establishment. While he is angry and thirsty for revenge, he seems determined to swallow the loss in hopes of marshaling enough Republican support to pass spending bills, an as-yet unformed tax overhaul and a $1 trillion infrastructure package — legislation that could attract considerable Democratic support but has the potential to split the party. On Friday evening, a somewhat shellshocked president retreated to the White House residence to grieve and assign blame. In a search for scapegoats, he asked his advisers repeatedly: Whose fault was this?

The Antarctic Sun is an online newspaper with "News about the USAP, the Ice, and the People." It is funded by the National Science Foundation (contract no. NSFDACS1219442) by its prime civilian contractor, Lockheed Martin Antarctic Support Contract.[1] The online publication has been covering cutting edge science for the National Science Foundation since 1997–1998 austral summer, though it can trace its history back to the 1950s when the U.S. Navy ran logistics for the USAP.[2] From the austral summer of 1997-98 to 2006-07, The Antarctic Sun was produced at McMurdo Station between the months of October and February. Since October 2007, it has been a year-round news website managed out of the Denver, Colorado area.[2] The website covers both science and features. The former includes biology, glaciology, geology, astrophysics and oceanography, among others. Features include USAP operations, Antarctic history, and profiles on people. Antarctic Sun Journalists [ edit ] In order of tenure, from most recent: Mike Lucibella Peter Rejcek Steven Profaizer Steve Martaindale Emily Stone Brien Barnett Kris Kuenning Melanie Conner Mark Sabbatini Kristan Hutchison Beth Minneci Jeff Inglis Josh Landis Aaron Spitzer Ginny Figlar Alexander Colhoun

Are Planets Like Proxima b Water Worlds? Those of us fascinated by dim red stars find these to be exhilarating days indeed. The buzz over Proxima b continues, as well it should, given the fact that this provocative planet orbits the nearest star. We also have detections like the three small planets around TRAPPIST-1, another red dwarf that is just under 40 light years out in the constellation Aquarius. These are small stars indeed, just 8 percent the mass of the Sun in the case of the latter, while Proxima Centauri is about 10 times less massive (and 500 times less luminous) than the Sun. But just what might we find on planets like these? A new paper from Yann Alibert and Willy Benz (University of Bern) drills down into their composition. The researchers’ goal is to study planet formation, with a focus on planets orbiting within 0.1 AU, a range that includes the habitable zone for such stars. While a forthcoming paper will look at the formation process of these planets in greater detail, the present work studies planetary mass, radius, period and water content. To do this, Alibert and Benz have developed computer simulations that model red dwarf planetary systems, assuming a central star with a tenth the mass of the Sun and a protoplanetary disk around each modeled star. Putting the model into motion, the scientists studied a series ranging from a few hundred to thousands of such stars, with 10 planetary embryos in each disk — each embryo was modeled as having an initial mass equal to that of the Moon, and the initial location of each planetary embryo was drawn at random. The results, according to Alibert: “Our models succeed in reproducing planets that are similar in terms of mass and period to the ones observed recently. Interestingly, we find that planets in close-in orbits around these type of stars are of small sizes. Typically, they range between 0.5 and 1.5 Earth radii with a peak at about 1.0 Earth radius. Future discoveries will tell if we are correct!” Image: Artist’s impression of Earth-sized planets orbiting a red dwarf star. Credit: @ NASA, ESA, and G.Bacon (STScI). The most striking aspect of this work is likely to be Alibert and Benz’ findings on the water content of small planets in the habitable zone. The amount of water is found to depend upon the location at which the planet has accreted planetesimals, their composition being dictated by the thermal structure of the disk and the location of the snowline, which varies depending on disk mass. Note this: A significant fraction of the planets modeled show more than 10 percent water. Contrast this with the Earth, whose fraction of water is roughly 0.02%. The study shows a correlation between the mass of a planet and the water fraction, with planets that do not contain a high degree of water being lower in mass (generally below one Earth mass), while planets totally devoid of water are all less massive than one Earth mass. Alibert and Benz see this as the result of migration, with more massive planets migrating from further out in the system, thus collecting water-rich material from beyond the snowline. Water may be a key to habitability, and the ‘habitable zone’ is defined as the zone in which liquid water can exist on the surface. But water to the extent of deep global oceans is problematic. A large enough water layer can produce high pressure ice at the bottom, preventing the carbonate-silicate cycle that regulates surface temperature over long timescales from operating. Without this mechanism, atmospheric CO 2 cannot cycle through the weathering of rocks on the Earth’s surface and the eventual subduction of calcium carbonate. High temperatures and pressures eventually return CO 2 to the atmosphere by processes like volcanism, regulating global temperatures. We don’t know how much of a factor the loss of this process might be on planets around red dwarf stars, as the paper takes pains to note: In the case of low mass stars, which evolve on much longer timescales, this may not be a major problem, as the stellar flux varies on timescales much longer than in the case of the Sun. In this situation, a process that stabilizes the surface temperature may not be necessary. The second reason [why large amounts of water may be detrimental for habitability] is connected to the fact that for planets with too much water an unstable CO 2 cycle destabilizes the climate making habitability more challenging… Again, this was demonstrated for solar-type stars and a similar process may or may not exist for low mass stars. So we have a computer model that produces planets similar in mass and radius to the interesting worlds we’re finding around some nearby red dwarfs, with a peak in the distribution of radius at about one Earth radius. The authors argue that the properties of the disk potentially correlate with the mass of the star, thus determining the water content of emerging planets. Deep oceans on planets in the habitable zone of red dwarfs may be the norm, in which case we need to know a great deal more about climate on such exotic worlds. …our models show that the properties of the disk and their potential correlation with the mass of the star are the most important parameters determining the characteristics, in particular the water content, of the emerging planet population. In this context, observational constraints on mass and lifetime of discs in orbit of low-mass stars become of paramount importance. The paper is Alibert and Benz, “Formation and composition of planets around very low mass stars,” accepted at Astronomy & Astrophysics (preprint).

Custom Search September 2017 Comic Book Sales to Comics Shops Estimated Comics Shipped to North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors Search for titles on Comichron! Search tips While September closed out the worst quarter year-over-year (off nearly 16% in dollar terms) in nearly a decade and a half, it was the best of the three months in comparison with the same month the previous year. Overall orders were down 6%, while orders for Marvel comics and graphic novels were up 14% in dollar terms over the previous September, an increase of about $2 million at retail. That represented the publisher's best year-over-year performance since June 2016. A major part was the chart-topping Marvel Legacy #1, which played on DC's earlier success with lenticular covers. With lenticular and non-lenticular versions at the same cover price, combined orders were reported as one entry in the charts, totaling more than 298,000 copies and becoming the top-seller of the year thus far. While Marvel did some deep-discounting on graphic novels, the effect was partially offset by several Omnibus editions priced at over $100. Marvel's 88 new comic books in September was also the smallest number of periodical releases for the publisher in any month during the year. Marvel's improvement relative to its past performance continued to reverse the trend seen earlier in 2017, in which the publisher was entirely responsible for the industry's decline in dollar terms; as of September it was DC, up against the previous year's Rebirth numbers, which accounted for most of the loss. But there, too, DC's rate of decline in September was nearly half what it was in August, thanks to the continuation of its Dark Multiverse event and the fact that Rebirth was starting to come down off its heights from the previous year. DC had two Action Comics issues with lenticular and regular editions; combined, they would have made the top 10. Retailers ordered 24% more copies DC's Mister Miracle #2 than they had ordered of the first issue the month before, an infrequent occurence usually associated with high reorder activity. The 50th place comic book was up above 40,000 copies for the first time since January; the level was significant because few years in the 21st Century to that point had seen the 50th place title regularly go above it. Read more in our preliminary and final analysis posts for the month. You can also click to skip to the Top Graphic Novels for the month. —John Jackson Miller This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 charts, plus any post-#300 items from its Top 50 Indy and Small Publisher charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it. Items marked with asterisks [*] had their reported orders reduced by 10% due to returnability. Distributor charts are regional commodity reports, not measures of a work's total reach. Read our FAQ. The links lead to current listings for each item on eBay. You can also find the books at your comics shop. September 2017 Graphic Novel Sales to Comics Shops Estimated Graphic Novels and Trade Paperbacks Shipped to North American Comics Shops Based on Reports from Diamond Comic Distributors This list includes all items on Diamond's Top 300 charts, plus any post-#300 items from its Top 50 Indy, Manga, and Small Publisher charts. If you don't see a book, Diamond released no data for it. The links lead to details about each title on Amazon. You can also find the books at your comics shop. #1 #2 #3 #4 A new Walking Dead volume led the chart in a month in which graphic novel sales continued to lag behind periodical sales.

By Printus LeBlanc In early February, five employees of the House of Representatives were banned from the House IT network. The five former House employees are the subject of a criminal investigation by the Capitol Hill Police. They are accused of stealing equipment and accessing House IT systems without lawmakers’ knowledge. The former employees were “shared” IT employees. “Shared” means they worked for several offices, performing IT functions. The five employees worked for over 20 members, to include members from the Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees and former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz (D-Fla.). You may remember Wasserman-Shultz has had IT issues in the past when she was chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016. The salaries of the employees should have been the first clue something was not right. Anyone that has worked on Capitol Hill will tell you, the salaries are not great. Most staffers can expect to start in the $30-40,000 range, not a lot for one of the most expensive cities in America. However, at least three of the staffers in question were making over $160,000 per year, three times the average IT staffer salary. To put that number into perspective, Chiefs of Staff, with dozens of years on the Hill, rarely make that much. The story gets worse from there. All five employees are related, three of them were brothers, Jamal, Imran, and Abid Awan, with Hina Alvi being married to Imran, and Natalia Sova being married to one of the other brothers. Hina has apparently fled the country with her children, to Pakistan, where her family reportedly has significant assets and VIP protection. The strangeness of the case does not end there. The brothers also had a car dealership, Cars International A (CIA) they used for supplemental income. The dealership was not doing so well, and fell behind in payments to their vendors. One vendor, Rao Abbas, threatened to sue them, and suddenly he received a paycheck from U.S. Rep. Theodore Deutch (D-Fla.). That payment has yet to be explained. The brothers then took out a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar. The brothers were unable to repay that loan, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem, because Dr. Attar is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Attar was indicted on tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI discovered he used multiple bank accounts to hide income, in March 2012. The doctor is also believed to have ties to Hezbollah, the terrorist group. Al-Attar has since fled to Iraq. As the investigation continued, it kept getting worse. Several offices hired new IT staff, and found some of the computers were sending data to an offsite server. It is unknown what type of data or where the server is located yet, but several IT professionals on the Hill now believe members could be subject to blackmail because of the data theft. The violations were so bad, one staffer said, “There’s no question about it: If I was accused of a tenth of what these guys are accused of, they’d take me out in handcuffs that same day, and I’d never work again.” The case took another turn in a committee hearing on the Capitol Hill Police budget last week. Wasserman-Shultz took the opportunity to confront the Capitol Hill Police Chief about evidence in possession of the police. The Congresswoman wants a laptop computer back that is currently considered evidence by the Capitol Hill Police. The laptop allegedly was assigned to Imran Awan, the ringleader of the group. The laptop was found hidden in a different building from the one Wasserman-Shultz works in. The Congresswoman has an office in the Longworth building, but the laptop was found “hidden in an unused crevice of the Rayburn House Office Building.” The Capitol Police seized it and are treating it as evidence in their ongoing criminal investigation. While at the committee hearing, Wasserman-Shultz berated the Chief of Capitol Hill Police about procedures for getting the laptop back. The Chief explained what the procedures are, but the procedure changes if the laptop is evidence in a criminal investigation. The Congresswoman did not like that answer, and continued to ask the same question over and over. To his credit, the Chief answered the same way over and over. Finally, the Congresswoman threatened “consequences” for not returning her equipment. The video can be seen here, the exchange begins at 1:24:25. This brings us to a question being asked a lot in Washington D.C. lately. What is obstruction of justice? The phrase seems to be the latest buzzword of the D.C. establishment since James Comey was fired earlier this month. Did Wasserman-Shultz attempt to “obstruct justice” by demanding the investigating authority hand over evidence in a criminal matter, or suffer “consequences”? Remember, the Congresswoman is on the committee that controls the budget of the very person she threatened “consequences”. The Congresswoman was singing a different tune earlier this month about “obstruction”. Wasserman-Shultz commented about the Comey firing, saying “If President Trump pressured then-FBI Director Comey to close down an investigation into former National Security Advisor Flynn, it would represent an egregious corrosion of the rule of law.” Does this mean the Congresswoman is representing an “egregious corrosion of the rule of law”, her words not mine? This latest incident with Wasserman-Shultz has created more questions than answers. Why would the Congresswoman risk “obstruction of justice” to get this computer back? What is Wasserman-Shultz trying to hide? If there was a potential breach of IT security on Capitol Hill, wouldn’t the Congresswoman want that cleared up? We have a legitimate security breach and a potential blackmail situation occurring on Capitol Hill, but the press is focused on a Russia story still with no evidence. We have an offsite server sucking up Congressional data, with criminal suspects fleeing to Pakistan for protection, but the press wants to focus on a special counsel with no apparent crime to investigate. We have a member of Congress pressuring the Capitol Hill Police on camera, but the press wants to talk about a memo no one has seen. Where is the call for a special counsel on this scandal? Could it be Congress was breached by a foreign intelligence service, and no one wants to admit it, or did Congress get ripped off by a family of scammers? We need to find out the truth, no matter how unpleasant. Printus LeBlanc is a contributing reporter at Americans for Limited Government.

April 17: To more fully answer the question of whether or not theaters can present nudity or "semi-nudity" without running afoul of code enforcement, here's a blog about the successful staging of Naked Boys Singing at Theatre on the Square and Phoenix Theatre. "I'm so glad I didn't get arrested tonight," Katie Angel half-joked over the noise of the DJ at Kat's Pub, the Camby bar where she'd just finished performing the night of April 11 with her burlesque troupe, Angel Burlesque. It was like any other Angel Burlesque show — if on a smaller-scale than some of its big fundraising extravaganzas — except for a couple attendees. The Indianapolis Department of Code Enforcement was on the scene to determine if Angel Burlesque's act can be defined as adult entertainment. It's not an idle question: If it's determined to be adult entertainment, then it can only be performed on a "regular" basis in adult entertainment businesses, such as strip clubs or adult bookstores, which are carefully regulated and required by law to be located more than 500 feet from any residences. And such a definition could have a chilling effect on the fledging local burlesque scene by knocking troupes off of just about all the stages and venues where they have performed over the past decade — almost none of which are defined as adult entertainment businesses. Or it might not. Such is the vagueness and flexibility of the code and the laxness and inconsistency of its enforcement. In any case, the can of worms has been opened. The answer, relayed Monday by the city to NUVO: Yes, Angel Burlesque can be defined as an adult act because it meets the requirement for "semi-nudity," which the code defines as "a state of dress in which clothing covers no more than the genitals, pubic region and areola of the female breast, as well as portions of the body covered by supporting straps or devices." At issue is a letter the bar's landlord received in late March from the city (as a neighborhood in Decatur Township, Camby is under the administrative authority of Indianapolis). It cites Kat's Pub for two violations. One pertains to a window sign posted without the required permit. The other is the reason we're writing this story. It cites the landlord for violating Section 732-216 of the city code: "The establishment of an adult entertainment business shall be prohibited if the business is located within 500 feet of a dwelling district." The letter to the landlord spells out the penalties: If Kat's Pub were to present adult entertainment within 500 feet of anyone's home on a "regular" basis — note that the term "regular" isn't specifically defined — it would be subject to both administrative fees of $215 per scheduled visit by the city, and then lawsuits with fines up to $2,500 per violation, plus court costs. But there are at least six burlesque troupes in town, you might say, and they've been performing across the city for roughly a decade, since the first neo-burlesque troupe, Bottoms Up Burlesque, hit the scene. Angel Burlesque says it has performed in nine venues since its founding in 2011. How have they gotten away with it? It's time for more fun with code enforcement. Here's how not to get away with a burlesque show: 1) Do a show in a part of the community that might be hostile — or rather, might be home to a single hostile person who will notify the city. As Adam Baker, the Director of Communications for the Indianapolis Department of Code Enforcement puts it, "code enforcement is strictly a reactive agency," and will only address a violation if "people tell us. That's the way code enforcement is designed." And so, as Baker reports, the department was alerted to the performance only when someone in a Camby neighborhood sent a letter to the department complaining about an ad for the performance she received in a Money Mailer. Baker emphasizes that the department "is not a Gestapo," roaming the city looking for infringements. But it must respond to all complaints — and then assess the legitimacy of those complaints based on the letter of the code. Angel says her troupe has drawn attention because of its ambition to reach new audiences. "We're really trying to push into the mainstream," she says. "We're trying to reach a wider market beyond supportive family and friends." 2) Show a pretty lady in a state of semi-nudity in your advertisements. Code enforcement issued its citation to the landlord of Kat's Pub weeks before Angel Burlesque's performance took place, based upon the titillating nature of the bar's advertisement for the show. While the department says that "by definition, burlesque does not mean adult entertainment," the confluence of burlesque and a less than fully clothed woman on a poster was enough evidence for the city to make its decision. However, that was a preliminary decision, according to the department, which, according to Baker, says it "tries to get everyone on the same page" in any situation, seeing if "there's room to be worked" or if "there's a variance that can be applied for." When NUVO spoke to Baker last week, he noted that the bar "wasn't in violation right now"; the business had been assessed for two violations pertaining to the show but had until April 11 to abate said violations. [page] 3) Try to do your show more than once in the same venue. As Baker puts it, with respect to Angel Burlesque's show at Kat's Pub: "This could be a one-time performance; that's another way that would not be considered an adult entertainment business." So the solution for a burlesque troupe: One and done. Or maybe two. Maybe even monthly? The trouble is that a business needs to present adult entertainment "regularly" to be defined as an adult entertainment business — and "regularly" is not defined by the code. Not that the code doesn't get more specific; it does define, for instance, exactly what "nudity" and "semi-nudity" entail (nudity includes "human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state even if completely and opaquely covered"). But "regularly"? That's up for debate. And that ambiguity likely led to the cancellation of monthly, First Friday performances by Angel Burlesque at Deluxe at Old National Centre, which was contacted by the code enforcement in 2012, responding to a complaint similar to the one made about Kat's Pub. "When we found out about it, we were under the impression it was only a one-time thing," Baker says of the complaint. He notes that the venue was never issued a citation for the performance. Live Nation, which manages Old National Centre, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 4) Put on a show without a thorough understanding of the city code. Katie Angel and the rest of the members of Angel Burlesque were under no threat of arrest Friday night. But they thought a police officer would be attending their show — they were, in fact, plain-clothed code enforcement inspectors — and were more than a little nervous going into the performance. The owner of Kat's Pub, Chad Alvey, complained last week to NUVO that the city "didn't even know what a burlesque show was," that they "didn't know what the public indecency law was." The public indecency law has nothing to do with the adult entertainment code, according to code enforcement's Baker, but Alvey wasn't clear on the distinction. In other words, Angel and Alvey had an unclear understanding of the city code and the way that it's enforced going into the performance. But the city expects performers and venues alike to familiarize themselves with the law: "At the end of the day there has to be some kind of responsibility on the individual or performer to follow through," says Baker, adding that "we do what we can, up front, to try to educate." One key question: Should Angel and Alvey have been expected to know the adult entertainment code? Angel Burlesque performed a show at Kat's Pub in February, which didn't result in a citation of the venue. Alvey booked the show after seeing troupes like Rocket Doll Revue performing in venues around the city that aren't certified as adult entertainment businesses. Here's an excerpt from NUVO's 2012 cover story on burlesque that gives a sense of the scope of the local burlesque scene (with the caveat that much of the information is outdated): "Bottoms Up makes their home in Radio Radio and the Historic Melody Inn, while Creme de les Femmes can be found anywhere from Birdy's to the Casba's underground bar. Rocket Doll Revue are regulars at White Rabbit Cabaret and now The Sinking Ship; Pur Company can be found just about anywhere there's a party when they're not doing their regular gig at Room 929; Angel Burlesque is equally at home on Crackers' comedy stage or the eminently respectable Deluxe room at Old National Centre. And Hasenpfeffer is White Rabbit Cabaret's troupe-in-residence." In short, burlesque troupes have historically performed at venues across the city — venues open to the public, shows that were widely advertised and featured in local press — without running afoul of the code enforcement. And because burlesque isn't specifically cited as an adult entertainment act in the code — and semi-nudity and nudity have been historically been featured on local stages that aren't housed in adult entertainment businesses — then wouldn't those troupes have a reasonable expectation that their performances were lawful and appropriate? Which brings us to... 5) Perform as a burlesque troupe outside of a theatrical setting. Katie Angel doesn't want to have to resort to calling Angel Burlesque's performances "theater" because she rather likes the term "burlesque," with its rich tradition rooted in vaudeville, variety shows and other populist entertainment of the first half of the 20th century. "There's something special about saying burlesque," she says. "There's something so beautiful about burlesque that it's so female-positive; it connects us to our foremothers." But it's only when Angel Burlesque has ventured beyond a theatrical setting that it's drawn the attention of the city: First at Deluxe, which has a rock club feel, then Kat's Pub, an unprepossessing bar in a strip mall. There's evidently safety in presenting burlesque as a legitimate theatrical performance, with all the trappings of high art — in the same way as obscenity charges have historically been defeated by making the case for the legitimate cultural value of a particular artwork. Not that Katie couldn't make the case for Angel Burlesque's importance to the city in other ways. When she spoke to NUVO by phone last week, she was getting ready to cut a $2,000 check to Indiana Equality Action, from funds raised during its Bourbon Boylesque event at the Athenaeum last month. Angel Burlesque also hosts an annual fundraiser for the Indiana AIDS Fund, and has given money to the Julian Center and Planned Parenthood. She also emphasizes the "emotional benefits" afforded to troupe and audience members by a performance. "They're what motivate me to run Angel Burlesque," she says. "They go on stage and they feel so confident and they feel so beautiful, so powerful. Where do you get a chance to put yourself out there and receive that kind of positive reinforcement from the audience?" To be sure, Angel Burlesque defines "burlesque" as the "art of the tease," and it's this reporter's impression that some of the troupe's performers do achieve a state of "semi-nudity," as defined by the code, by the close of their performance. But such strict restrictions on performance involving nudity and semi-nudity have been successfully challenged. For instance, a 2001 performance of Naked Boys Singing, which involves the full-frontal nudity of adult male performers and has played locally, was shut down by the city of Provincetown, which cited similar zoning laws that prohibit adult entertainment businesses within 500 feet of protected areas. But to quote from a document from The First Amendment Center, "According to Provincetown Banner, Judge Gordon Piper found that the town could not prohibit the owners of the Crown & Anchor Inn, a privately owned hotel and 'entertainment center,' from staging live nude performances. The judge noted a footnote in the bylaw that attaches adult entertainment to the category of retail use and ruled that the inn did not fall under the town's definition of a retail establishment." The city plans to inform Kat's Pub of its decision later this week, and, as Baker says, "start a dialogue" with the club to see if there's common ground to be found. Kat's Pub owner Alvey says that while he plans to fight citations assessed by the city, he's unlikely to continue booking Angel Burlesque if he loses a court case or sustains substantial fines.

More than 200 people have died in their attempt to scale Mount Everest. The mountain offers seemingly endless options for kicking the bucket, from falling into the abyss to suffocating from lack of oxygen to being smashed by raining boulders. Yet climbers continue to try their skills – and luck – in tackling Everest, despite the obvious dangers. Indeed, the living pass the frozen, preserved dead along Everest’s routes so often that many bodies have earned nicknames and serve as trail markers. Here are a few of the more colorful tales, adapted from Altered Dimensions: The body of “Green Boots,” an Indian climber who died in 1996 and is believed to be Tsewang Paljor, lies near a cave that all climbers must pass on their way to the peak. Green Boots now serves as a waypoint marker that climbers use to gauge how near they are to the summit. Green Boots met his end after becoming separated from his party. He sought refuge in a mountain overhang, but to no avail. He sat there shivering in the cold until he died. In 2006, English climber David Sharp joined Green Boots. He stopped in the now-infamous cave to rest. His body eventually froze in place, rendering him unable to move but still alive. Over 40 climbers passed by him as he sat freezing to death. His plight might have been overlooked as passers-by assumed Sharp was the already-dead Green Boots. Eventually, some heard faint moans, realized he was still alive, and, too late, attempted to give him oxygen or help him stand. Francys Arsentiev was the first American woman to reach Everest’s summit without the aid of bottled oxygen, in 1998. But climbers do not recognize this as a successful ascent since she never made it down the mountain. Following a rough night time trek to camp, her husband, a fellow climber, noticed she was missing. Despite the dangers, he chose to turn back to find his wife anyway. On his way back, he encountered a team of Uzbek climbers, who said they had tried to help Francys but had to abandon her when their own oxygen became depleted. The next day, two other climbers found Francys, who was still alive but in too poor of a condition to be moved. Her husband’s ice axe and rope were nearby, but he was nowhere to be found. Francys died where the two climbers left her, and climbers solved her husband’s disappearance the following year when they found his body lower down on the mountain face where he fell to his death.

Another Perfect Media Center Companion There is more... This is the first affordable Raspberry Pi case made out of aluminum. We wanted to ensure we didn’t sacrifice form over function, so we used the aluminum housing of the case to provide a built in heat sink. Supplied with the case is a thermal pad and 4 screws for the simplest Raspberry Pi case assembly on the market. It only takes seconds to drop your Raspberry Pi into it’s amazing new home and show it off on your counter top. We included rubber feet to raise the enclosure so it just hovers underneath your television. In addition to the built in heat sink, small ventilation slots on the bottom help keep the Raspberry Pi cool. GPIO pins are accessible through the slot on the bottom of the case and there is no need for disassembly to get to the SD card. We know you will love the attention to detail we put in throughout the case.

KYODO NEWS - Dec 1, 2017 - 16:06 | All, Lifestyle, Japan With just about a month left in 2017, Japan is gearing up for the winter season as snow begins to cover its northern regions and seasonal illumination lights up scenic spots across the country. Mt. Fuji got its first full snowcap of the season in late October. Meanwhile, in western Japan's Himeji, an illumination show was held in early November at Himeji Castle, a national treasure and World Heritage site, during which LED balloons were released from a square outside it. By mid November, the city of Sapporo in northern Japan's Hokkaido was already glistening under a blanket of snow. The snow-clearing tram known as Sasara Densha makes its rounds in Sapporo, home of the famous Sapporo Snow Festival. The 2018 festival is scheduled to take place from Feb. 1 to Feb. 12. In Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Mt. Izumigatake recorded its first snowfall on Nov. 20, creating a splendid contrast with fallen red autumn leaves along the mountain path. Amid the arrival of the first snow, workers at a ski resort on Mt. Izumigatake busied themselves with preparations ahead of the season's opening. Besides the beautiful snow scenery, elaborate illumination is brewing a festive mood in many parts of Japan. In Sapporo, the annual Sapporo White Illumination event, using some 780,000 light bulbs, will run through Dec. 25, 2017. Meanwhile in downtown Tokyo, colorful Christmas trees by French architect and designer Emmanuel Muho adorn the fancy Omotesando Hills shopping mall. In neighboring Chiba Prefecture, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea also get into the Christmas spirit with festive illumination and special events. In central Japan, Nagoya's Legoland Japan unveiled a gigantic 10-meter Christmas tree, built with more than 610,000 Lego pieces. In Osaka, Universal Studios Japan readied for the festivities with a new Guinness World Record Christmas tree featuring 570,000 lights. For railway enthusiasts, the annual "Inaka Illumination" event in the rural town of Onan in Shimane Prefecture offered a spectacular display of lights in the vicinity of Uzui Station, which stands 20 meters above ground. The JR Sankosen Line, the only train service in Onan, will be discontinued in March 2018. According to the Japanese weather agency's three-month forecast, almost all regions across the country are expected to experience a colder winter in December 2017, and average or slightly warmer temperatures in January and February 2018. Snowfall in regions facing the Sea of Japan is likely to be around average in most areas, although western Japan may see slightly more snow than in normal years. More photo galleries: GALLERY: Autumn foliage in Japan's Kyoto GALLERY: Mt. Fuji gets season's first snow crown GALLERY: Chinese tourists flock to North Korean border

Hawaiian ‘Ukulele and Guitar will open a new location in Hilo in July 2017, kicking off with a reception on Tuesday, July 4. Hawaiian artist Ali‘i Keana‘aina‘a will provide free entertainment; pūpū will be served. Doors will open at 4:30 p.m. The new store is located on the Hilo Bayfront in the S. Hata Building on 76 Kamehameha Ave. next to Cafe Pesto. Owner and musician Robert Yates is proud to open his third location to better serve Big Island. Yates, more fondly referred to as “Uncle ‘Uke,” offers essentials for both professional and aspiring musicians. Hawaiian Ukulele and Guitar is a distributor of KANILE‘A ‘ukulele on the Big Island. KANILE‘A are masterpiece instruments made in Hawai‘i. Hawaiian ‘Ukulele and Guitar is also located at Kailua Bay in Kona and at Queens’ MarketPlace in Waikoloa. The stores offer sheet music, picks, stands, instruments and more.

The news that Al Gore is suing Al Jazeera America for millions of dollars owed him from the purchase of his Current TV network rocked the media world last week. After all, who knew Al Jazeera America still existed? But AJA is still there (probably), snug in the old Current TV channel slot on your cable guide. It’s just that you’re not watching. Neither is anyone else. Al Jazeera America went live exactly one year ago, on Aug. 20, 2013, powered by an initial $500 million in oil money from the emir of Qatar, plus millions spent hiring topflight broadcast journalism talent (including NBC veterans Randall Pinkston and John Seigenthaler, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien and Al Velshi, ABC’s Antonio Mora and CBS veteran Joie Chen and more) and establishing 12 news bureaus across the U.S. The network hoped to succeed in the U.S. market where Al Jazeera English had failed. It seemed like a good idea at The New York Times, where Brian Stelter rhapsodized that “Al Jazeera is coming to America to supply old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground news coverage to a country that doesn’t have enough of it.” Elites like Stelter couldn’t be bothered with AJA’s provenance – a parent bankrolled by the same people as Hamas, that acted as Al Qaeda’s PR arm during the Iraq War, completely ignored the public sexual assault on CBS’s Lara Logan and actually held a birthday/prisoner exchange party for a murdering Lebanese terrorist. Whether the American public knows or cares about any of that isn’t certain, but it certainly hasn’t shared Stelter’s enthusiasm for yet another left-of-center news organization in the U.S. market. On Aug. 11, AP cited Neilson ratings, noting, “So far this year, Al-Jazeera America has averaged 17,000 viewers in prime time, ticking up to 23,000 during the first week of fighting in Gaza.” And you thought MSNBC had definitively answered that old hypothetical question, “What if we built a network and nobody watched?” In April, AJA laid off dozens of journalists, and another round of lay-offs is in the works. The network is putting up a brave face. According to the Aug. 8 New York Daily News, AJA chief Ehab Al Shihabi told employees in an anniversary memo, “I know there has been a lot of talk about ratings. Let’s put things in perspective. Other cable news networks have been on television for decades — we’re a year old. We’re still growing our brand awareness as well as our distribution, which is a little more than half of all U.S. cable homes.” But that equates to about 60 million homes. You do the math. Of course, AJA is backed by nearly unlimited petro-dollars, and you can be sure the emir et al are taking the long view about influencing American opinion. But that raises another problem. While AJA has won awards for its reporting, it’s hard to think of any story or issue on which the network has made a real impact in the last year. Except maybe for getting sued by Al Gore.

Modern airplanes are basically a giant computer, and the latest reminder of that fact came Friday. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a warning about the Boeing 787 Dreamliner's computer system, which has a software counter that could periodically shut down all electrical power and "result in loss of control of the airplane." To prevent that, airlines must completely power down the electrical systems on the plane at least once every 248 days. The directive applies to all 787 model airplanes. Globally, 258 of the aircraft are currently in use by airlines, with more than 800 more ordered for future delivery. Boeing reported the issue — which it said was found during laboratory testing — to the FAA, which issued an airworthiness directive (AD) on Friday: This AD requires a repetitive maintenance task for electrical power deactivation on Model 787 airplanes. This AD was prompted by the determination that a Model 787 airplane that has been powered continuously for 248 days can lose all alternating current (AC) electrical power due to the generator control units (GCUs) simultaneously going into failsafe mode. This condition is caused by a software counter internal to the GCUs that will overflow after 248 days of continuous power. We are issuing this AD to prevent loss of all AC electrical power, which could result in loss of control of the airplane. In addition to the turn-it-off, turn-it-on solution, Boeing is also working on a software fix that will address the issue in a more permanent way. The directive is a temporary measure until that fix is in place. Since its introduction in 2007, the Dreamliner has had more than its fair share of problems. In 2013, all 787s were grounded because of the potential for battery fires. Sparking that directive was an incident at Logan Airport in Boston, where an unoccupied Japan Airlines 787 caught fire after a nonstop flight from Tokyo. Boeing is still betting heavily on the 787 as a profit engine, along with its other popular twin-jet aircraft such as the 777 line and 737 series. In recent months, airlines have been rolling out a stretched version of the 787, known as the 787-900.

The Federal Trade Commission denies accusations that it took no legal action against the tech company because of intense lobbying efforts Google did not lobby us into submission, US trade watchdog says America’s top trade watchdog has rejected accusations it took no legal action to curb Google’s dominance in search because of intensive lobbying by the software giant. Google staff donations made the firm the second-largest corporate backer in Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. The Wall Street Journal this week revealed that Google employees had lobbied the White House 230 times since Obama first took office, in 2009, and that the search company employs 20 separate lobbying agencies. The chairwoman of America’s Federal Trade Commission, Edith Ramirez, issued a statement on Wednesday night rejecting accusations in the Journal that the regulator had ignored the advice of its own staff in deciding to close its Google investigation. “Contrary to recent press reports, the Commission’s decision on the search allegations was in accord with the recommendations of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, Bureau of Economics, and Office of General Counsel,” Ramirez wrote. The statement was signed by two other serving commissioners. The remaining two members of the five-strong commission were not serving in early 2013, when the FTC settled with Google after extracting voluntary concessions from the company. Ramirez said: “Some of the FTC’s staff attorneys on the search investigation raised concerns about several other Google practices. In response, the Commission obtained commitments from Google regarding certain of those practices. Over the last two years, Google has abided by those commitments.” The Journal has obtained and published a partial copy of a 2012 report by FTC staff in which serious concerns were raised about Google’s practices. In the strongly worded document, FTC staff identify risks in bringing legal action against Google, but state: “Staff concludes that Google’s conduct has resulted – and will result – in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets. Google has strengthened its monopolies over search and search advertising through anticompetitive means, and has forestalled competitors’ and would-be competitors’ ability to challenge those monopolies, and this will have lasting negative effects on consumer welfare.” The debate is being closely watched in Europe, where competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager must soon decide whether to step up a long-drawn-out inquiry into Google search practices. The European commission probe began in 2010 and remains open after the rejection of three successive packages of voluntary concessions. Ramirez blasted suggestions that commissioners had been politically influenced. She said: “Today’s Wall Street Journal article … makes a number of misleading inferences and suggestions about the integrity of the FTC’s investigation. The article suggests that a series of disparate and unrelated meetings involving FTC officials and executive branch officials or Google representatives somehow affected the Commission’s decision to close the search investigation in early 2013. Not a single fact is offered to substantiate this misleading narrative.” In an emailed statement, the Journal defended its reporting as “careful, accurate and fair”.

The team is proud to announce the release of LMDE 201403 RC. Screenshots LMDE 201403 Cinnamon Edition LMDE 201403 MATE Edition Highlights Update Pack 8 Cinnamon 2.0 MATE 1.6 Latest Mint tools and improvements Support for EFI and GPT If you’re new to LMDE, welcome to Linux Mint Debian! Important links LMDE in brief Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) is a semi-rolling distribution based on Debian Testing. It’s available in both 32 and 64-bit as a live DVD with Cinnamon or MATE. The purpose of LMDE is to look identical to the main edition and to provide the same functionality while using Debian as a base. FAQ 1. Is LMDE compatible with Ubuntu-based Linux Mint editions? No, it is not. LMDE is compatible with Debian, which isn’t compatible with Ubuntu. 2. Is LMDE fully compatible with Debian? Yes, 100%. LMDE is compatible with repositories designed for Debian Testing. 3. What is a semi-rolling distribution? Updates are constantly fed to Debian Testing, where users experience frequent regressions but also frequent bug fixes and improvements. LMDE receives “Update Packs” which are tested snapshots of Debian Testing. Users can experience a more stable system thanks to update packs, or switch their sources to follow Testing, or even Unstable, directly to get more frequent updates. 4. How does LMDE compare to the Ubuntu-based editions? Pros: You don’t need to ever re-install the system. New versions of software and updates are continuously brought to you. It’s faster and more responsive than Ubuntu-based editions. Cons: LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT. Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu. Expect some rough edges. Additional notes: About bugs: Please use this blog to report bugs. Please use this blog to report bugs. Dedicated chat room: #linuxmint-debian is open to LMDE users on irc.spotchat.org. Download links: Torrents: MD5 sums: Cinnamon 32-bit: b5d2e82911c68865eff94e5a1b7fd7f2 Cinnamon 64-bit: 642110dbc8f111940f68cab739c07792 MATE 32-bit: 1641734a5ecc9a1ed81a53fe80ab4743 MATE 64-bit: 50a536ef81be0c2027d2ae64c4d2583c Cinnamon 32-bit: Cinnamon 64-bit: MATE 32-bit: MATE 64-bit: Enjoy! We look forward to receiving your feedback. Thank you for using Linux Mint and have a lot of fun testing the release candidate!

Federal judge says religious facility failed to prove civil rights violations, discrimination. Buy Photo The Chofetz Chaim yeshiva and apartment complex in Wesley Hills. (Photo: Peter Carr/The Journal News)Buy Photo A federal judge has again ruled that a yeshiva failed to prove that several villages in the town of Ramapo opposed a housing development based on anti-Hasidic sentiments. Friday's decision involved a nearly decade-long legal action by Mosdos Chofetz Chaim against the villages of Pomona, Chestnut Ridge, Wesley Hills and Montebello. The yeshiva accused the communities of incorporating as villages to curtail the expansion of Hasidic neighborhoods through restrictive zoning. It also claimed the villages hid behind environmental laws to oppose the town of Ramapo's adult student housing zone and singled out the yeshiva's housing and study center on Grandview Avenue, just outside the village of New Hempstead. Chofetz Chaim sought $100 million in damages, attorneys for the villages said. The yeshiva and Ramapo have also battled those villages in state court since 2004, with accusations of zoning and fire violations at the development. Rabbi Aryeh Zaks, his family and other Chofetz Chaim officials claimed the villages conspired to deprive the yeshiva of its civil, religious and equal protection clause rights under the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Fair Housing Act. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, in a 76-page decision, wrote that, while he was sympathetic to accusations of discrimination, there was a lack of evidence in the yeshiva's case. He wrote that yeshiva officials "have offered nothing more than conclusory, unsubstantiated assertions in support" of civil rights violations and "threadbare allegations alone will not suffice to defeat" a request by the village's lawyers to dismiss the legal action. Karas also cited a decades-long contentious relationship between the Hasidic community and other town residents. "The allegations, while often supported only by inference, are grounded in the context of fifty plus years of distrust, hostility and even bigotry within the communities at issue here," Karas wrote. "Having lived and worked with residents and officials from the villages during these many years, plaintiffs firmly believe that they have been targeted because of their religious beliefs, even if they cannot point to discriminatory statements by defendants." Pomona's attorney, Greg Saracino, said Karas' decision is rooted in the law and an appeal would prove futile. "The $100 million case was designed to bankrupt the villages," Saracino said. "I'm glad it's history." NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-426-6388. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters The yeshiva's lawyer could not be reached for comment. Karas had dismissed the yeshiva's initial legal action in 2010 but allowed the congregation to refile. Chofetz Chaim bought 4.7 acres on Grandview Avenue in 1997, after the federal government declared the Nike military property surplus. A federal lawsuit settlement against New Hempstead for blocking development put the land back under Ramapo's jurisdiction. Along with a study center, the yeshiva development contains 32 two-bedroom units and 28 four-bedroom units for students and their families. Twitter: @lohudlegal Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/1CmkiGH

.@BPShomrim alerted me that stones @ Washington Cemetery are down. I’ve spoken w/ the NYPD who are investigating. I'll be there in the am. pic.twitter.com/j3wHa1dzEp — Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) March 5, 2017 The New York Police Department says no evidence of vandalism has been found at a predominantly Jewish cemetery where more than 40 tombstones were toppled over.The NYPD says after consultation with the management of the Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, it was determined the 42 tombstones came down as a result of a number of factors. Those include long-term neglect or lack of maintenance, as well as environmental factors such as soil erosion.Assemblyman Dov Hikind tweeted photos Saturday night showing some headstones on the ground.There has been a rash of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries and 122 bomb threats against Jewish organizations in three dozen states since early January.A $69,000 reward has been offered for an arrest and conviction in the vandalism of Mt. Carmel Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in the Wissinoming section of Philadelphia.Authorities said Friday that Juan Thompson, a former journalist fired for fabricating details in stories, made at least eight threats against Jewish institutions nationwide as part of a campaign against his ex-girlfriend.----The Associated Press contributed to this report.------

Today, Elon Musk revealed his ambitious multi-decade roadmap for human colonization of Mars, including the Interplanetary Transport System he believes will get us there. But while the event was full of technical detail on the new rocket and ship, it appears the crafts have yet to be named. "We're thinking about names," Musk told the crowd. "The first ship that goes to Mars, my current favorite for it is Heart of Gold from The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy." The Heart of Gold is one of the ships at the center of Douglas Adams' 1978 radio play and subsequent book, stolen by Zaphod Beeblebrox at the ship's official launch and later used to rescue the story's protagonists. It's also the first ship to use the Inifinite Improbability Drive, a detail that was particularly appealing to Musk. "I like the fact that it's driven by infinite improbability," Musk said, referring to the because I think our ship is also extremely improbable." "The acronym is not the best," Musk conceded. SpaceX trip to Mars simulation

H. Res. 337 In the House of Representatives, U. S., July 8, 2015. Whereas Tibet is the center of Tibetan Buddhism, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism worldwide; Whereas the Chinese response to the Tibetan Uprising in 1959 led to the exile of Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leader; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, who on July 6, 2015, celebrates his 80th birthday, has for over 50 years in exile significantly advanced greater understanding, tolerance, harmony and respect among the religious faiths of the world; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has led the effort to preserve the rich cultural, religious, historical and linguistic heritage of the Tibetan people while at the same time promoting the safeguarding of other endangered cultures throughout the world; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has personally promoted democratic self-government for Tibetans in exile and in 2011 turned over political authority to the democratically elected leadership of the Central Tibetan Administration; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has been greatly concerned by the state of the Tibetan environment and the exploitation of its natural resources, including fresh water—as rivers originating in the Tibetan plateau support one-third of the world’s population—and has promoted environmental awareness in the region; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 in recognition of his efforts to seek a peaceful resolution to the situation in Tibet, and to promote non-violent methods for resolving conflict; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007 in recognition of his promotion of democracy, freedom, and peace for the Tibetan people; his efforts to preserve the cultural, religious, and linguistic heritage of the Tibetan people; his promotion of non-violence; and his contributions to global religious understanding, human rights, and ecology; Whereas His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, publicly presented in 2011 the religious process which Tibetan Buddhists should follow regarding his reincarnation; Whereas the Chinese central government has attempted to interfere with the reincarnation process and the practice of Tibetan Buddhist religious traditions; and Chinese officials assert that the failure to secure Beijing’s approval on the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation would make the process “illegal”; Whereas in the words of Party official Zhu Weiqun, “Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and over the end or survival of his lineage, resides with the central government of China.”; Whereas the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2013 noted that in Tibetan areas of China “[r]epression was severe and increased around politically sensitive events and religious anniversaries,” and “[o]fficial interference in the practice of Tibetan Buddhist religious traditions continued to generate profound grievances”; Whereas the Department of State has designated China as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) for religious freedom since 1999, and in its 2013 human rights report details that “under the banner of maintaining social stability and combating separatism, the [Chinese] government has engaged in the severe repression of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural, and linguistic heritage by, among other means, strictly curtailing the civil rights of China’s ethnic Tibetan population, including the freedoms of speech, religion, association, assembly, and movement”; Whereas access to Tibetan areas of China for United States officials, journalists, and other United States citizens, is restricted by the Government of the People’s Republic of China, obscuring the full impact of the Chinese Government’s policies, including the disappearance of Tibetans who sought to share information about human rights abuses on the Tibetan Plateau; Whereas the Department of State’s 2014 Report on Tibet Negotiations noted that “The Dalai Lama’s representatives and Chinese officials have not met directly since the ninth round of dialogue in January 2010.”; Whereas, on March 10, 2015, the elected Tibetan leader Sikyong Dr. Lobsang Sangay publicly stated “The Envoys of His Holiness the Dalai Lama are ready to engage in dialogue with their Chinese counterpart any time and any place.”; Whereas it is the objective of the United States Government, consistent across administrations of different political parties and as articulated in the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (subtitle B of title VI of Public Law 107–228; 22 U.S.C. 6901 note) to promote dialogue between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Dalai Lama or his representatives to reach a negotiated agreement on Tibet; Whereas China may be considering convening a Sixth Tibet Work Forum to set policy on Tibet for the next five years or so, with the last such work forum having been held in 2010; and Whereas the American people have a long-held concern for and interest in the plight of the Tibetan people: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives— (1) calls on the United States Government to fully implement sections 613(a) and 621(c) of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 by strongly encouraging representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China and His Holiness the Dalai Lama to hold substantive dialogue, in keeping with the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 and without preconditions, in order to address Tibetan grievances and secure a negotiated agreement for the Tibetan people; (2) calls on the United States Government to fully implement section 618 of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 in regard to the establishment of an office in Lhasa, Tibet, to monitor political, economic and cultural developments in Tibet, and to provide consular protection and citizen services; (3) urges the United States Government— (A) to consistently raise Tibetan human rights and political and religious freedom concerns at the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue and other high-level bilateral meetings; (B) and the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues to offer their assistance to China in its preparations for a potential future Sixth Tibet Work Form; and (C) to call for the immediate and unconditional release of Tibetan political prisoners, including Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama, who was taken into custody by the Chinese authorities and has been missing since 1995, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, and Khenpo Kartse (Khenpo Karma Tsewang); (4) calls on the United States Government to underscore that government interference in the Tibetan reincarnation process is a violation of the internationally recognized right to religious freedom and to highlight the fact that other countries besides China have long Tibetan Buddhist traditions, and that matters related to reincarnations in Tibetan Buddhism are of keen interest to Tibetan Buddhist populations worldwide; (5) calls on the United States Government to recognize and increase global public awareness and monitoring of the upcoming electoral process through which the Tibetan people in exile will choose the next democratically elected leader of the Central Tibetan Administration, the Sikyong; (6) calls on the United States Government to fully implement section 616 of the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 by using its voice and vote to encourage development organizations and agencies to design and implement development projects that fully comply with the Tibet Project Principles; (7) calls on United States and international governments, organizations, and civil society to renew and reinforce initiatives to promote the preservation of the distinct religious, cultural, linguistic, and national identity of the Tibetan people; (8) calls on the Government of the People’s Republic of China to allow unrestricted access to the Tibetan areas of China to United States officials, journalists, and other United States citizens; (9) affirms the Dalai Lama’s desire for a negotiated agreement for the Tibetan people, and urges the Chinese government to enter into negotiations with the Dalai Lama and his representatives; and (10) reaffirms the unwavering friendship between the people of the United States and the people of Tibet. Attest: Clerk.

As ’60s activist art enters museums, a new generation is creating an iconography of protest for today “There have been the singing nun and the flying nun, but the hippest of all is Los Angeles’s painting nun,” noted Newsweek in its 1967 cover story on Sister Corita Kent, the artist, activist, and teacher, whose first career survey, as The Saratogian reports, opened at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore college this week. COURTESY OF THE TANG MUSEUM AT SKIDMORE COLLEGE AND CORITA ART CENTER, LOS ANGELES. Despite her edgy Pop sensibility, influential friends like Ben Shahn and Buckminster Fuller, and posthumous shows in various museums, along with a 2009 exhibition at Zach Feuer Gallery, Sister Corita never became a presence in the mainstream art world. No doubt this is partly because of her vocation (she was a Sister of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which she joined in 1936 and left in 1968), and the fact that she was a printmaker, rather than a painter. COURTESY OF THE TANG MUSEUM AT SKIDMORE COLLEGE AND CORITA ART CENTER, LOS ANGELES. Deploying the earnestness of a believer, an avant-garde sense of typography, and a collagist’s wit, Sister Corita (1918-86) mashed together words and slogans from advertising, the Bible, philosophy, poetry, and lyrics, producing hundreds of confrontational, inspirational prints on themes of individual empowerment and social justice. (Later her 10 rules for Immaculate Heart College’s art department, which cite and are sometimes misattributed to John Cage, became an online classic.) COURTESY OF ZACH FEUER GALLERY, NEW YORK AND THE CORITA ART CENTER “Almost in some ways she was outsider even though was she trained and was insider in other ways,” says Tang director Ian Berry, who co-curated the exhibition with Michael Duncan. “I’m hoping this show can get her into the trajectory of art conversation.” Power Authority More activist art was in the news when the Brooklyn Museum announced its acquisition of 44 rare works from the Black Arts Movement of the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, landing Elaine “Jae” Jarrell’s stunning patchwork Urban Wall Suit (1969) on the cover of the Times’s Weekend Arts section. GIFT OF R.M. ATWATER, ANNA WOLFROM DOVE, ALICE FIEBIGER, JOSEPH FIEBIGER, BELLE CAMPBELL HARRISS, AND EMMA L. HYDE, BY EXCHANGE; DESIGNATED PURCHASE FUND, MARY SMITH DORWARD FUND, DICK S. RAMSAY FUND, AND CARLL H. DE SILVER FUND, 2012.80.21. The Black Arts Movement, conceived as the cultural arm of the Black Power Movement, was started by Amiri Baraka. But its manifesto of sorts was written by Larry Neal, who in a 1968 essay in Drama Review, called for “a radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic” with new “symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology.” To convey its message of self-determination and nationhood, the medium of choice for the Black Arts Movement was usually screenprint with a liberal dose of collage, appropriation, and futurism, as evident in works like Revolutionary, Wadsworth Jarrell’s -Day-Glo 1972 portrait of Angela Davis, and Jeff Donaldson’s 1969 rendering of rifle-toting Wives of Shango. BROOKLYN MUSEUM, GIFT OF R.M. ATWATER, ANNA WOLFROM DOVE, ALICE FIEBIGER, JOSEPH FIEBIGER, BELLE CAMPBELL HARRISS, AND EMMA L. HYDE, BY EXCHANGE; DESIGNATED PURCHASE FUND, MARY SMITH DORWARD FUND, DICK S. RAMSAY FUND, AND CARLL H. DE SILVER FUND, 2012.80.41. That these radically conceived works are entering art-museum galleries–some in the Brooklyn Museum’s American Identities galleries this spring, and others in its upcoming exhibition about the Civil Rights movement next year –shows that the canon of postwar American art has come a long way, kind of. Fight of the Butterfly As the activist art of a half-century ago, like the agitprop art before it, enters museum collections, a new generation is developing its own esthetic. Writing in Creative Time Reports, Robert Lovato describes some of the cultural interventions that artist/activists are staging to campaign for migrants’ rights—particularly those adapting the monarch butterfly, that great migrator, as the movement’s symbol. COURTESY OF NO PAPERS NO FEAR That butterfly floats through Migration is Beautiful, a video recently posted on rapper Pharrell Williams’ i am OTHER YouTube channel that’s been making the rounds of blogs. The three-part series follows artists, designers, and performers who have been using the arts to campaign for migrant justice in Arizona, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, and in actions across the country. A prominent generator of new iconography has been No Papers No Fear, an advocacy group that put out a call for images to express the migrants’ struggle. Many of the artists who responded drew clearly on the precedent of ’60s activist art. COURTESY NO PAPERS NO FEAR Doing the Rights Thing One artist who has managed to bring the art of activism into the academy is Cuba-born Tania Bruguera, recently announced as the winner a Meadows Prize residency awarded by the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. Since she launched Immigrant Movement International as a project cosponsored by Creative Time and the Queens Museum in 2011, Bruguera has offered free classes, workshops, pro-bono legal advice, and other services, operating out of a storefront in Corona, Queens. This year, Bruguera plans to spend more time teaching immigrants art history—“not as an end, but as a means to something else,” she explains, using the imagery as a bridge to approach difficult subjects. Bruguera and her team have also been working to develop a visual arsenal for immigrants’ rights, including a ribbon whose blue and brown tones reflects their passage by land and sea. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND IMMIGRANT MOVEMENT INTERNATIONAL. More recently Immigrant Movement produced a rubber stamp to stamp currency with the notice that immigrants pay taxes, too. The image, and the idea behind it, are partly behind a performative event that the group will stage at “How Much Do I Owe You?”, an exhibition organized by No Longer Empty at the Clock Tower in Long Island City on Saturday, February 16, at 2 p.m.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China aims to provide clean air in its largest cities for 80 percent of each year, or more than 9-1/2 months, by 2020, up from a figure of 76.7 percent last year, the country’s cabinet said on Monday. Workers stand on a bridge in front of the financial district of Pudong amid heavy smog in Shanghai, China December 5, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song Amid concern that pollution was stirring social unrest, China launched a campaign in 2014 to revitalize its tainted air, water and soil, which have been ravaged by more than three decades of breakneck industrial growth. The clean air goal for 338 cities was laid out in a five-year development plan on ecological and environmental protection that said China would push structural reforms to cut excess capacity in polluting industries. “With the downward pressure on the economy increasing, the contradiction between development and protection has become more prominent,” the cabinet said.Under the plan, authorities in Beijing, the capital, its neighboring city of Tianjin and the northern province of Hebei, and those along the Yangtze River economic belt will draw up eco-protection “red lines” by the end of 2017. Other provinces and cities will have to draw up such “red lines” by the end of 2018, the cabinet said. Total coal consumption in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and the eastern Shandong and central Henan provinces will be cut about a tenth during the five-year plan period. Consumption in the commercial capital of Shanghai, and the eastern provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui will be cut by around 5 percent in the same timeframe. Coal consumption in China’s Pearl River Delta region will also be cut by a tenth during the period, the plan stated. China aims to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, both gases associated with acid rain, by 15 percent in 2020, from 2015 levels, it said. Chemical oxygen demand, a measure of water quality, will be cut by 10 percent, while ammonia nitrogen emissions will also be reduced by 10 percent. Last week, the province of Hebei, which borders Beijing, issued its first “red alert” of the year over severe pollution. The highest level alert for smog requires suspension of work in factories, with cars being pulled off the road.

Authorities in the northern Spanish city of Bilbao are distributing cards for people to crush cocaine with prior to snorting, in a bid to reduce the potential harms of nasal drug use – including the spread of hepatitis C. The plastic card is the same size and shape as an ordinary credit card, and is being distributed under a scheme devised by the Bilbao City Council’s health department. It includes a written warning for people who snort drugs: “if it is not well chopped, you can damage your nostrils”. Health department officials have asserted that the move is necessary to “minimise the risks [of drug use]”, digital Spanish newspaper El Confidencial reports. They claim that the card is being provided to individuals in a “selective and personalised” manner, so that it would not appear that authorities were condoning drug use among the wider public. Indeed, according to El Correo - a prominent Bilbao newspaper - the card is not being widely distributed to the public; rather, it is only available for adults who have passed through three “filters”. To receive the card, one must demonstrate interest by visiting a mobile harm reduction facility staffed by health professionals, request harm reduction information, and complete a “personal interview” about their drug use. People who receive the card are also provided with harm reduction leaflets, including detail about how safer consumption methods are important to reduce the risk of getting hepatitis C from drug use. Scientific evidence indicates that hepatitis C can be transmitted by sharing a drug-snorting straw with someone who already has the disease. The UK's Hepatitis C Trust has issued a warning on the subject: “If you share a rolled up note or straw for snorting drugs you risk exposing yourself and others to hepatitis C. This is especially true if your nose is bleeding. Cocaine in particular is very alkaline and corrosive to the thin membranes in the nose. If even tiny drops of your blood - often too small to see - get onto the straw or note, it is quite possible that blood to blood contact may take place through the nasal membrane”. Therefore, if people who snort cocaine remember to crush their drug as finely as possible before using it, it reduces the likelihood of nasal bleeding, and potential hepatitis C transmission. Luisa Marquez of ENLACE, a Spain-based federation of organisations that advocates for the proliferation of harm reduction, told TalkingDrugs that this development was “respectful of human rights” because “we can’t stop people from using drugs, but we can prevent some harms.” “We consider it very necessary to give this kind of information, especially to young people, in order to avoid bigger problems such as deaths and serious diseases,” Marquez added. The Bilbao City Council has said that providing the card is part of a pilot scheme, and that it could be extended after the results of its implementation have been analysed.

Q&A: Italian Traditions Customs "In these Italian Traditions Customs articles we discuss the Italy food culture, hygiene, Italian mommy's boys, wedding customs, strange customs and we end with a joke..." Rodger asked: How can I get the best cultural experience of Rome Italy? I will be touring Rome in March 2008 and I was wondering about... "Italian traditions customs and culture i.e. What are typical Italian food customs, wedding customs, Italian Christmas customs and other Italian culture customs and traditions? And any ideas of getting the best Italian cultural experience outside of Rome?" Arnika replied to Italian traditions customs: My fiance just recently bought a new car and a friend of his that has Italian roots threw some spare change into the back of the car, he said it was an Italian custom for good luck. So I researched it... It's true. It started about 2000 years ago as an offering to the God of roads or travel as a payment for safety, but now it's a superstition, done more for fun than anything else. Jill replied to Italian traditions customs: I had a great experience of Italian family life and culture, I traveled on a train down the entire east coast. I saw such amazing details of Italian life, the funniest is when they call each other on their mobile phones when they are sitting only three seats away from each other. They all take their family, pets and lunches on the train and it is pure entertainment watching them play out their lives on the way to their summer destination. I say travel by train and just hop off whenever you feel like it - be prepared to be amazed. Oh yes, it's amazing how many older women I saw wearing black! After their husband dies some of them wear black for the rest of there lives. Patrick replied to Italian traditions customs: Find the best location (meaning most Roman) to live. The more you are among Romans the better. Most tourists choose to stay in a hotel near the main train station, this is the most “non-roman” place to book your Rome accommodation!. It's cheep but most of the residents there are “new Italians” meaning foreigners mostly from developing countries. The place is great but there is little roman about it. And then quite simply, take a walk around Rome, get a guide book or take notes from this site. Eat at trattorias and Pizzerias (not restaurants), they have a more homely feel and the staff and owners often like to converse. Also eat in places away from the main tourist squares. Cockney Jock replied to Italian traditions customs: Italians enjoy their meals and take their time to eat, they don't shove their food down their throats in 35 - 45 minutes. I still enjoy going to a restaurant in Italy and being able to sit 3 or 4 hours and enjoy the courses and allow my food to settle before I begin the next course. They cook with olive oil, eat a lot of unprocessed meats and fresh vegetables from the market, and cook simple and not over spiced (depending on the area I guess) and don't overload their plates. Italians enjoy their meals and take their time to eat, they don't shove their food down their throats in 35 - 45 minutes. I still enjoy going to a restaurant in Italy and being able to sit 3 or 4 hours and enjoy the courses and allow my food to settle before I begin the next course. They cook with olive oil, eat a lot of unprocessed meats and fresh vegetables from the market, and cook simple and not over spiced (depending on the area I guess) and don't overload their plates. Return to the top MaryAbbeymore replied to Italian traditions customs: I am an American who has been living in Italy for the last 9 years. Italians are very big on hygiene, you might find some who are very dirty, but they are in the minority. I think Italians are the Europeans who spend the most time and money on hygiene and personal appearance. In all Italian bathrooms you will find a shower or bathtub, toilet and a bidet. If you do not know what a bidet is it looks like a sink but it's low on the ground and Italians use it to wash their feet and intimate parts. Many Italians wash their intimate parts every time they visit the bathroom, and others 1 or 2 times a day. For Italians the thought of cleaning with only toilet paper is quite disgusting. They say it's not clean enough. Italian women spend millions of Euros yearly on perfumes, the hairdresser, shampoos, cosmetics, etc.and so do the Italian men. I know plenty of Italian guys that who spend a lots of money at hair dresser on cologne, shampoo, face cream, waxing, gym, designer clothes, etc. In the hotel I work at a Croatian client told me that Italian men are nothing like Croatian men because they take such good care of themselves (almost better than women in most other countries). I think the majority of Italians shower every day, the ones who go to gym take 2 or more showers. Italian women, and a lot of Italian men shave almost everything. I've yet to see an Italian woman with hairy armpits. I'm telling you all this because I've noticed a lot of stereotypes about Italian women with hairy armpits, it's false! Marcus from Roman Life Rome Italy replied to MaryAbbeymore re: Italian traditions customs: Wow Mary, thanks for all that information! But what I would like to know is how you know so much about Italians shaving and bathroom habits?! Jeff replied to Italian traditions customs: A peculiar Italian problem is the stay-at-home son or what they are called in Italian "mammone" - mommy's boy. More than 80% of men between the ages of 18 and 30 still live at home with their parents, enjoying the coddling doting mamas to wash iron clean the room etc so the son is free to spend his time and his income on pleasing himself. Who would want to give that up if they didn't have to? Return to the top George replied to Italian traditions customs: As a half Italian half Aussie I can give you the honest low down on the Italians.... Good: Social, extremely family oriented, and usually a faithful people. Hospitable and excellent cooks. If you are a friend they've "got your back" so to speak. And they sure know how to chuck a party. They are also mostly hard workers. Bad: Can gossip a lot and force feed you even when you are not hungry. Can be waaay to noisy, and some of the guys can be pretty sleazy. Just like in any culture, good and bad points, but i love my Italian family, they always make me feel welcome and are smiling and laughing. Sandy replied to Italian traditions customs: Did you know it's an old Italian custom to never give a knife as a gift but to always ask for some small payment? My friend's Italian grandfather asked for a quarter before "giving" him a set of beautiful cooking knives. Apparently the tradition is because if you were to give a person a knife and that person killed someone with the knife then you would feel that it is your fault. Another one is if you give a wallet as a present you should put a penny in it, this is so that the person will always have money, if you give them an empty wallet its said that they will always be poor! Return to the top Pasha replied to Italian traditions customs: Some Italian wedding customs are: Sugar coated Jordan Almonds as gifts from the bride (in uneven numbers for luck), these are also sometimes thrown at the bride and groom as they enter the reception area, also for luck. Putting sugar cubes in the bride and grooms glasses, it increases the effervescence and sweetness of the wine as a metaphor that your life may be the same. A full cocktail bar beforehand, with cheeses, breads and tasty Italian snacks A Sunday wedding is the luckiest In some areas of Italy it is tradition to give money instead of presents to the bride and groom. The money is not given to them personally but displayed in a rainbow design on their bed as a wish of prosperity. Sometimes the groom carries a piece of iron in his pocket, supposedly to keep evil spirits away Releasing white doves is another Italian tradition. The month of May is sometimes avoided as it should be reserved for the veneration of the Virgin Mary. Rain on the wedding day is supposed to be lucky - “Sposa bagnata, sposa fortunata.” The wedding cake table is usually also packed with a medley of delicious desserts. JackB replied to Italian traditions customs: Sofia just got married, and being a traditional Italian she was still a virgin. On her wedding night at her mother's house she was nervous, but her mother reassured her, "Don't worry, Sofia Luca is a good man, go upstairs and he'll take care of you." So she went. When she got upstairs, Luca took off his shirt and exposed his hairy chest. Sofia ran downstairs to her mother and said, "Mama, Mama, Luca's got a big hairy chest!" "Don't worry, Sofia", says the mother, "All good men have hairy chests, go upstairs and he'll take good care of you." So up she went again. When she was in the bedroom Luca took off his pants exposing his hairy legs, again Sofia ran downstairs to her mother, "Mama, Mama, Luca took off his pants, and he's got hairy legs!" "Don't worry Sofia, all good men have hairy legs, Luca's a good man, go upstairs and he'll take good care of you." So, up she went again. When she got up there, Luca was taking his socks off and on his left foot he was missing three toes. When Sofia saw this, she ran downstairs. "Mama, Mama, Luca's got a foot and a half!" "Stay here and stir the pasta", says the mother "this is a job for Mama!" Marcus from Roman Life Rome Italy says: For more on Italian tradition customs tips visit my page on Italian culture customs and traditions. Return to the top

Earlier this year I posted about a controversy at Friends Central School in Philadelphia, where a Palestinian Quaker, Sa’ed Atshan, was invited to visit and speak, then abruptly disinvited & the two teachers who invited him, Ariel Eure and Layla Helwa, were suspended. The previous posts are (here, here , here & here). The news site philly.com reported on May 10 that the two teachers have now been terminated effective June 30. Along with that decision came an invitation from the school to Sa’ed Atshan to speak at Friends Central sometime in the future, on “his personal experiences and path to peace education.” The report added that [The suspended teachers] were offered severance pay of $5,500, but that is contingent on their dropping a federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit, said Mark Schwartz, their lawyer. “This is a ridiculous offer,” he said. “I’d be surprised if they took it. Unlike the school, these two have some principles.” School representatives on Tuesday declined to give a reason for the terminations. The school set up a task force to consider how to handle issues around invitations to speakers. This task force has recommended that a nearby university Dialogue Institute be “invited to work with students and teachers to promote ‘intrareligious, interreligious, and intercultural dialogue.’” A couple thoughts: The great Yogi Berra once said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” But I’ll go out on a limb here, and predict that while I have not met Sa’ed Atshan and am unfamiliar with his scholarly or activist work, that he’ll be slow to accept such an invitation, especially in the wake of the teacher firings. Another thought: I wonder what Friends Central students are thinking about this whole matter? And a third: I posted an open letter to FCS students, much of which still seems pertinent as a comment. So I’ve updated it a bit, and reposted it here. (They tell me repetition is good for learning.) A Message to students at Friends Central School: From Chuck Fager In late January, I visited Friends Central School (FCS) and shared a story with you, about getting arrested in Selma, Alabama in 1965 and spending the night in jail with Dr. King. I told you that for almost 50 years, that true story had a happy ending: from the black struggle in Selma came the Voting Rights Act, which had advanced freedom, elected presidents, and made America better. But then starting a few years back, that happy ending was snatched away. In its place came massive vote suppression, and following that, continuing attacks on the other freedoms that democracy protects. So my story about a fight for freedom was not over after all. At my age, I said, passing on these stories is my main contribution. It’s a passing of the torch. As for the real activism, as for the new leadership demanded by our times, — and these were my final words: “It’s your turn.” Now it looks as if your turn has come already. I don’t know Sa’ed Atshan; but people I respect (like former FCS teacher Max Carter) say he’s well-informed & reasonable. Yet I gather some of his views are controversial. I’m no expert on his views, or those issues. So maybe Atshad’s views are right, or maybe they’re mistaken; that’s not for me to say. Instead, that’s for you to say, by hearing his views, and those of others, studying & debating them & making up your own minds. That’s what we call education. In FCS fundraising materials, like for the “Vision2020,” it’s called “Educating for Excellence.” We also call it freedom. But somebody doesn’t seem to want you to exercise that freedom, or get that education. So now the line is drawn: not only in Alabama, but right there in Wynnewood, on your campus. Not just for students, but for the two teachers who were suspended, and have now lost their jobs because of it. So the question now becomes: are you ready to claim and defend your freedom, as part of your education? Or will you let an unnamed few chop off this piece of it– this important piece? The message being sent is clear: you may not hear these views here. That topic is verboten on this campus. Teachers who stood up for that have now paid the price: not just wth their jobs, but possibly wth their careers. Just so you know, all this makes a mockery of the claims about educational “excellence.” And if you accept this, there are more pieces of freedom waiting to be chopped off, like limbs from a tree, and others ready to give similar orders. But here’s something I learned in Selma, and not only from Dr. King: You don’t have to comply. An order not to hear, not to consider, not to think and debate or push back about matters of this importance –such an order may be technically legal, but it defies the higher law that we were all given minds to be used, freely and fully, for knowledge, and for seeking justice. One of my Quaker heroes, Philadelphia’s own Lucretia Mott, put it as well as anyone: “Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth.” For her this was a Quaker Testimony, a central one. Dr. King put it another way: But you don’t have to be silenced. In 2017, it’s easy to imagine alternatives: check your social media, you’ll see that similar attacks, — and resistance to them — is rising all around you. Spring has now come and almost gone. I read that Sa’ed Atshan has been invited to speak at FCS, sometime in the future, on a carefully limited topic. I wonder if that will really happen, under the present circumstances. i also wonder if FCS students are satisfied with this outcome. And if not, how you will respond? But, some may say, what if we protest, and get in trouble? Look what happened to the teachers: will it cut our chances of getting into an elite college? Affect our career chances? Who knows? Freedom, as they say in the army, isn’t free. The same often goes for achieving “excellence” in education: it’s not just book work; it can mean struggle. It takes organization, and it takes courage. In Selma it led Dr. King and me to jail; a few years later it led him to a bullet in Memphis. But chill: chances are no one will be in mortal danger insisting on real educational excellence and freedom at FCS. If you haven’t noticed, it’s a pretty cushioned, advantaged place. So I ask that you think about how to put these advantages to work, for your benefit now, and as training in “education for excellence” in the not-so advantaged world that awaits beyond the campus. That’s a world in which just in the past few months since I visited FCS, the struggles for freedom have heated up on every side. Looks like they won’t leave you alone even now. Which means, my parting words to you last month weren’t a prophecy, and not even a prediction, but simply an announcement, even more accurate now. Brothers & sisters: “It’s your turn.” Please share this post.

All parties have been united in paying tribute to the late South African leader, but in the past things were more complicated Nelson's Mandela death has brought together politicians from across the political spectrum in shared tribute, obscuring a far less harmonious history in which attitudes towards the South African leader during the apartheid years divided along bitter ideological lines. The shift is most apparent in the Conservative party. The union flag hung at half mast over Downing Street morning and David Cameron issued a lavish tribute, describing Mandela as "a towering figure in our time; a legend in life and now in death – a true global hero". The praise was in stark contrast to the view taken by Cameron's predecessor and another of his heroes, Margaret Thatcher, who described the African National Congress as "a typical terrorist organisation" and fiercely opposed sanctions against the apartheid regime. Her South Africa policy was in part personal: her husband, Denis, had extensive business interests in the country. But her outrage at sanctions also sprang from her anti-communist convictions, which put the promotion of the free market above most, if not all, other political concerns. As the apartheid apparatus began to crumble, Thatcher's instinctive support went to the Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who led the Inkatha Freedom party, the ANC's only serious rival, rather than to Mandela. At the 1987 Commonwealth summit, her spokesman, Bernard Ingham, derisively rejected the suggestion that the ANC could achieve power. "It is cloud cuckoo land for anyone to believe that could be done," Ingham said, seven years before the watershed election that made Mandela president. While Thatcher herself always claimed to oppose apartheid on principle and was eventually persuaded to take the ANC seriously as an opposition movement, some of her keenest supporters were far less restrained. An arch-Thatcherite MP, Teddy Taylor, declared that Mandela "should be shot". One of her biggest fans in the press, the News of the World's "Voice of Reason", Woodrow Wyatt, accused Mandela and the ANC of trying to establish "a communist-style black dictatorship". Sir Larry Lamb, a personal friend of Thatcher and then Daily Express editor, declared in 1985 that Mandela's unconditional release would be "a crass error". During Thatcher's time in office, members of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) went as far as wearing stickers declaring: "Hang Nelson Mandela" until the group was banned in 1986 by an embarrassed Tory leadership. The head of the FCS at the time, John Bercow, is now the Speaker of the Commons, but he has insisted he did not take part in the Mandela-baiting. Nor is there any evidence that the young David Cameron was involved. However, he did visit apartheid South Africa in 1989, when he was 23, on an all-expenses-paid "fact-finding mission" funded by Strategy Network International, a lobbying group seeking to lift sanctions. The demonisation of the then political prisoner had its roots in racial attitudes but also in the black-and-white cold-war world of ideological struggle, in which Mandela's ties with the South African Communist party mattered far more than their common opposition to a deeply unjust system. Cameron broke with previous Conservative policy on South Africa while he was opposition leader. Returning in 2006 from South Africa, where he met Mandela for the first time, he wrote in the Observer: "The mistakes my party made in the past with respect to relations with the ANC and sanctions on South Africa make it all the more important to listen now." The attempt to bury Tory ghosts drew accusations of betrayal from Thatcher aides such as Ingham, who remarked: "I wonder whether David Cameron is a Conservative." The party chairman during the Thatcher era, Lord Tebbit, was also unrepentant. Challenged over the Tories' demonisation of Mandela as a terrorist in the 1980s, Tebbit told BBC Radio 4's The World at One: "He was the leader of a political movement which had begun to resort to terrorism. You have to act within the constraints of the time and I get very irritated by people who judge the past by the present." However, such sentiments have been rare across the political landscape in the reaction to Mandela's death. Perhaps uniquely among the world's political leaders, he has long been an icon of freedom, justice and tolerance with whom all politicians strive to identify.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved decisively into the Aequitas Capital Management scandal Thursday, suing the Lake Oswego company and three top executives for allegedly running a $350 million Ponzi scheme. The SEC claims Aequitas defrauded more than 1,500 investors into believing they were making health care, education and transportation-related investments, when their money was really being used in a last-ditch effort to save the firm. The commission has asked the court to appoint a receiver to take control of Aequitas. It also removed Aequitas chief executive Bob Jesenik and his longtime partner, Brian Oliver, from positions at the company and sought to ban them from the securities industry. Jesenik, Oliver and Scott Gillis, former Aequitas chief financial officer, were named defendants in the complaint. Filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Portland, the suit alleges that since 2014, Aequitas has used much of the new money it raised from investors to fund operating expenses and, increasingly, to pay off existing investors. "By at least July 2014, Jesenik and Oliver knew that redemptions and interest payments to prior investors were being paid primarily from new investor money in a Ponzi-like fashion, and that very little investor money was being used to purchase trade receivables," the SEC alleges. Jesenik said the SEC rushed to judgment. In a written statement issued by his lawyer, Jesenik said Aequitas brought on a consulting company called FTI last month. Thursday, in an effort to protect investors' interests, he said the SEC agreed to ask a federal judge to retain FTI as a receiver in the case. "However, I'm disappointed that the SEC has also chosen to rush to judgment about the company's management and make sweeping allegations without the benefit of a thorough investigation," Jesenik said. "I look forward to addressing these claims in court." Oliver too disputed the SEC's claims. ""Brian has not done anything wrong and we are deeply disappointed that the SEC would make such serious allegations without even speaking to him," said Oliver's lawyer Jahan Raissi. After reading the complaint, veteran Portland securities lawyer Bob Banks said it's a wonder Aequitas executives and its allies "that peddled these junk notes into 2016 can sleep at night." "I've listened to panicked Aequitas investors for the last two weeks, some of them in tears," said Banks, who is representing some of those investors. "Some have lost their children's college funds, some don't know how they will pay for medical treatments that they need. There are people in their 80s and 90s who turned over a lifetime of savings to Aequitas." As first reported by The Oregonian and OregonLive, Aequitas was hurt badly when its deal to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of student loans from controversial for-profit college Corinthian Colleges fell apart in January 2014. Though the loans were deemed predatory and illegal by a federal judge, it was Aequitas largest source of revenue. The company continued to try and collect the debt from former Corinthian students long after Corinthian went bankrupt. The SEC claimed in its lawsuit that Corinthian accounted for 75 percent of Aequitas debt-buying business. Aequitas insisted to the bitter end that losing Corinthian had an "immaterial" impact on the company. As Aequitas' position grew weaker, it became more desperate to raise investor cash. By late 2014, it offered to pay investors 15 percent interest if they would commit their money for a full year, an extraordinary rate of return in today's low-interest environment. The Aequitas scandal could spread well beyond Oregon. The company convinced independent investment advisers from Puget Sound to Long Island to peddle its private note investments. Aequitas paid many of them 2 percent commissions for every dollar they steered into its private notes. Investors across the country, some of whom are convinced they were misled, have lawyered up and are considering whether to sue Aequitas, their individual investment advisers or both. The company laid off most of its employees in February. In all investors have about $600 million in Aequitas private notes and in various Aequitas investment funds. It remains unclear how much they will recover. -- Jeff Manning 503-294-7606, jmanning@oregonian.com

US And EU Still Clueless About What The SOPA And ACTA Defeats Really Mean from the how-can-they-not-get-it? dept In the wake of the recent defeat of ACTA in the European Parliament, the key questions are not just what the European Commission will now do, but what lessons the EU and US will learn from it, especially in the wake of the equally dramatic derailing of SOPA earlier this year. At the annual meeting of the Transatlantic Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Working Group in Brussels last week, both the EU and US agencies and rights holders let slip a few hints about what they are really thinking. Here, for example, is how the EU views the post-ACTA situation, as reported by Intellectual Property Watch: Where IP rights once was a field for experts, now it drives the masses to the streets, the European Commission said referring to recent protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Without a much stronger commitment from rights holders, the rejection of ACTA would just be the beginning, Commission representatives said according to observers. This is extraordinary: rather than taking on board the concerns expressed by tens of thousands of European citizens about how ACTA was negotiated, and the way it sought to preserve outdated business models by weakening online privacy and freedom, the European Commission instead wants rights holders to fight back against this wave of protests. No sense, then, that maybe the Commission and copyright industries should possibly change their position to reflect the clearly-expressed wishes of European citizens, only a worry that without some kind of concerted action, things might swing slightly in the public's favor for once -- perish the thought. The European Commission wasn't even prepared to consider splitting ACTA into two separate treaties -- one dealing with counterfeits, the other with online copyright issues: Jean-Luc Demarty, the director general of the Trade Directorate of the European Commission, said at the meeting with regard to question of a potential split of counterfeiting and copyright piracy, IPR could not just be for bags and t-shirts. This betrays a woeful -- or perhaps willful -- lack of understanding about why physical counterfeits and digital copies are fundamentally different, and need to be addressed with different means. The US side was not much better: George York, deputy assistant to the US Trade Representative for IP and Innovation, and Susan Wilson, director of the Office of Intellectual Property Rights in the US Department of Commerce, confirmed during the meeting that despite ACTA’s failure in the EU, the ratification process would go on in the US, despite concerns by some experts about potential inconsistencies with US laws. Again, no hint that maybe ACTA was the wrong solution, or that it lacked legitimacy without the support of citizens in signatory nations. Just the insistence that the US would plough ahead, regardless of any inconsistencies with those tiresome laws. As if that weren't enough, the meeting's participants went on to express that they are "highly skeptical" about open access to scientific knowledge -- despite the huge and growing support for it among scientists themselves. The old FUD that open access somehow undermines peer review was rolled out -- even though no one who understands open access even minimally could possibly make that absurd accusation. The US and EU administrations also both said that India's compulsory licensing of Bayer's anti-cancer drug rang "alarm bells"; tellingly, the EU side added that the EU-India Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiatied "still needs work" -- presumably so as to limit India's freedom to issue more such compulsory licenses. The nearest thing to a tacit admission that the defeat of SOPA and ACTA indicated something was seriously wrong with the whole system came from William E. Kennard, the US Ambassador to the EU, who boldly suggested that legislators still have not got the balance in this area "quite right". Such a laughable characterization of the chasm that separates what the law tries to impose and what the public now believes is reasonable shows just how little US and EU officials and rights holders have really grasped what this year's extraordinary events mean for copyright -- and for them. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+ Filed Under: acta, eu, politicians, sopa, us

You might think Zach Braff is a destitute hobo, the way he was begging for money on the internet last week. But no! Zach Braff is in fact a very famous and wealthy actor, screenwriter, producer and director, and Zach Braff is also the donor who just pitched in enough money to save the Rio Theater in Monte Rio. That's right: the star of Scrubs and Garden State put the Rio's fundraising efforts over their $60,000 goal just today—meaning that the cutest little Quonset hut theater in Sonoma County will be able to buy a digital projector, thereby appeasing the big-movie-studio ogres and staying open to bring life and love and entertainment to the deep reaches of West County. On Facebook, Braff testified about the Rio Theater that he "Can't wait to see a movie there!" Congratulations to the Rio Theater, which opened in 1950 and has become a favorite of ours here at the Bohemian. The quaint one-screen is a true small-town gem, refreshingly removed from the moviegoing experience at huge megaplexes. With its hand-picked music, personalized slides, and fabric from Christo's fence hanging from the ceiling, it's a beloved staple of the West County community. (For the full story of the Rio Theater, see Stephen Gross' history of the place, here.) May the Rio last another 63 years or more—and you can bet that sometime soon, they'll be showing Braff's upcoming film, Wish I Was Here.

If you run OpenStack, you’re probably also looking for ways to do so as easily as possible. Developed by Mirantis, Fuel is an upstream OpenStack community project that helps you eliminate the time-consuming, complex, error-prone process of manual deployments. Fuel is an intuitive, GUI-driven tool that simplifies deploying, testing, and maintaining configurations of OpenStack at scale. Being an OpenStack tool itself, Fuel is not hard-bundled and prevents vendor lock-in. In a significant enhancement to Fuel’s ongoing evolution, it now runs on Docker to accelerate Fuel application updates, helping you leverage your OpenStack cloud investment with its increased capabilities. Read on for details on how Fuel on Docker can work for you. Why Fuel on Docker? Mirantis chose to run Fuel on Docker beginning with Mirantis OpenStack 5.0 because it accelerates Fuel updates through rapid application assembly. With the modifications we made to Puppet, Ruby, and Python code to put Fuel on Docker, you can now redeploy Fuel in less than 30 seconds without rollbacks or cleanup scripts. You can make changes, test them quickly, and rollback if necessary. You can also update the Fuel master node and rollback if you have problems. Docker enables such straightforward, rapid redeployment because its applications are in portable software “containers,” and run in diverse environments, including laptops running Mac OS X or Windows (using boot2docker), QA servers running Ubuntu in the cloud, and production data center VMs running Red Hat Enterprise Linux. To update a Fuel application in Docker, for example, you just drop the older container and start a new one, saving the 1-2 hours it would have taken to rebuild a Fuel ISO and test your changes. What’s new With the improvements of putting Fuel on Docker in Mirantis OpenStack 5.0 came some growing pains that we addressed in 5.1 and 6.0. In the 5.0 release, some users encountered protracted Fuel deployment times and unstable behavior. In addition, Fuel required too much disk space for logs, with the potential for crashing the operating system. In Mirantis OpenStack 5.1, we reduced the time required to install Fuel on master node into the Docker containers. On a virtualized deployment on an SSD in 5.0, the Fuel master node took about 18 minutes to load images and 9 minutes to start the containers. In 5.1, we reduced image load time to 9 minutes, with 8 minutes to start the containers. When deploying on physical hardware, image load time decreased by 20% in 5.1. Many users recommended using tmpfs on Fuel Master to decrease installation times, but we found that it was unreliable in low memory environments, which slowed the process even further. We were working with 3GB of uncompressed container data, which is just too large to use with tmpfs. Improvements are planned for future releases. We also made enhancements to Fuel stability in 5.1 with the dockerctl utility tracking configuration activity for Fuel on Docker updates, which pass hundreds of parameters to 13 containers to configure port mappings, disk path mappings, and privileged modes. Dockerctl is particularly important because the mappings are massive for applications that require 5-6 parameters from astute.yaml for each container to deploy the application. Instead of etcd or other tools that require systemd, we used astute.yaml parameters, preserved the YAML-based local file, and ran Puppet within containers to deploy the Fuel master applications. We won’t necessarily continue to do this, but it was a simpler and less disruptive method than using other available tools. However, the YAML-based local file and Puppet did have several disadvantages, such as contributing to the high volume of mappings in Docker that raised the disk overhead for each container because Puppet and its dependencies were installed. Even so, we’re still running one of the leanest full-blown OS Docker images in production. Docker’s Ubuntu base image is enormous, while our CentOS base image with Puppet installed compresses down to 39MB. What’s up in Mirantis OpenStack 6.0 Improvements continue in Mirantis 6.0, where we have fixed bugs to correct Fuel configurations that now enable log rotation, freeing up disk space. In addition, when setting system requirements for 6.0, we accounted for logrotate, which stores the last five archives by default. Archive size becomes an important issue when a managed node generates a prolific amount of log data that claims a disproportionate amount of disk space not freed until the archive cycles through the fifth rotation. Based on this consideration, Mirantis multiplied the number of logs by the number of machines and added more space to support a virtual machine that suddenly generates a large amount of logs. Docker itself needs disk space for logs, which can fill all free space, potentially destroying the file system. No automatic fix is available for this problem, so even with Mirantis’ log store improvements, you still need to track capacity because we can’t predict the volume of logs you will generate. While logrotate updates logs every hour, it doesn’t track free disk space, and no setting is available to maximize the size of the Docker log folder. In fact, the logrotate settings restrict the size of a single log file, which is archived when reached. So even with amplified parameters, you should allocate 30GB exclusively for logs in a 20-node deployment. Note: If you enable Debug mode, large files rotate every 10 minutes instead of hourly. More enhancements In other developments for Fuel on Docker in Mirantis OpenStack 6.0, we used CentOS 6.5 as the operating system for Master Node. Because CentOS 6.5 has no systemd to keep services running, Mirantis uses the Python supervisor utility to start and track Docker containers as well as to run web apps, providing great two-for-one functionality. Mirantis also developed a simple try-or-fail schema to address container shut downs in Docker, which has no inherent dependency tracking tools. In our solution, if Docker containers try to start but then shut down because PostgreSQL or RabbitMQ are not yet running, the supervisor utility waits for a few seconds and tries to start the failed container again until all containers start up. This method is much easier to maintain than an elaborate priority or dependency-based container deployment sequence. And though dockerctl does have a proper sequence in place when starting all containers, that sequence only applies during the initial deployment. In addition, Mirantis has also reduced the number of layers per Docker container from ~20 to ~5, reducing the delays imposed by Docker’s devicemapper storage backend. Using CentOS, which relies on Docker’s devicemapper implementation rewritten in the Go language as opposed to AUFS, is also considerably faster. This solution doesn’t scale well, however, so we’re considering other solutions to improve performance, including using other distributions. Fuel on Docker: To infinity…. and beyond! Moving forward with Fuel on Docker, Mirantis continues to enhance functionality. As an OpenStack tool, Fuel on Docker remains the best way to deploy, test, and maintain your OpenStack platform. The easiest way to get it, is as a part of Mirantis OpenStack, so download it today to fully leverage your cloud investment.

Image copyright Reuters Welfare reforms driving the "jobs miracle" must continue, says Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. In a speech in London, he said that changes so far had played a key role in getting people back into work and ending a welfare dependency culture. But they needed to go further as the UK faced challenges from other countries. Although the idea of limiting child-related benefits to the first few children in a family had been looked at, it was not going ahead "right now". Culture change Mr Duncan Smith said the policies of the last Labour government led to whole sections of society being left on the sidelines and communities marked by widespread unemployment. Everything we have done, every programme we have introduced, has been about supporting everyone who is able to into work Iain Duncan Smith, Work and Pensions Secretary "The number of households where nobody had ever worked doubled - and the welfare bill rose by twice as much as average earnings," he said. "More than half of the rise in employment that we saw was accounted for by foreign nationals. And not just in London - three-quarters of Eastern European migrants in employment live outside London. "Immigration into the UK has been a supply-and-demand issue. Businesses needed the labour and because of the way our benefit system was constructed, too few of the economically inactive took the jobs on offer." Mr Duncan Smith said that when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats took office in a coalition government in 2010, almost five million people were on out-of-work benefits. "It was clear to me that in large part this situation was the product of a dysfunctional welfare system that often trapped those it was supposed to help in cycles of worklessness and dependency. "My one aim as work and pensions secretary has been to change this culture - and everything we have done, every programme we have introduced, has been about supporting everyone who is able to into work." Reform 'chaos' Mr Duncan Smith said the scale of change instigated by the government had been "enormous" and the policies being delivered were changing the country "for the better". He said that the Bank of England deputy governor had said "the UK jobs miracle - with more people going into work and unemployment falling dramatically - is hugely down to the welfare reforms". But Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "David Cameron's government has failed to control social security spending and is set to overspend on welfare by a staggering £13bn. "Under Iain Duncan Smith, housing benefit spending is rising, not falling. "The number of working people claiming housing benefit is set to double between 201018 costing every British household £488. "The government's flagship welfare reforms are in chaos. "Millions of taxpayers money has been wasted on the £12.8bn universal credit, which less than 7,000 people are claiming." Cuts proposed Meanwhile, the centre-right Policy Exchange think tank has written a report suggesting a reduction of the current benefit cap of £26,000 a year by 10% for people living outside London and the South East, to reflect different income and housing costs across the UK. It also estimates that £1bn could be saved by paying child benefit for only four children and progressively reducing payments after the first child. Chancellor George Osborne has suggested that annual welfare savings of £12bn need to be found to avoid further cuts to departmental budgets. Asked in a BBC interview about the Policy Exchange ideas, Mr Duncan Smith said he would not reject the ideas, saying they were things that had been looked at in the past but were not being put forward as government policy "today".

(CNN) -- The toilet is broken -- and not because it won't flush. This unsightly piece of technology, which everyone uses but no one seems to think much about, is in desperate need of an overhaul, according to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which launched a challenge to "reinvent the toilet." The foundation announced $41.5 million worth of grants on Tuesday aimed at getting someone to reengineer the flushing porcelain pot, which has been in use since the 1700s. "No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet," Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation's global development program, said in a statement. "But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet." So what exactly is wrong with the current commode? It's too expensive for people in the developing world; it requires water and a sewer-system hook-up, which aren't always available; and it does nothing to actually treat human waste, said Frank Rijsberman, the foundation's director of water sanitation and hygiene. "We like the toilet. It was invented in 1775, saved millions of lives," he said. "At the same time, it didn't reach two-thirds of the world's population." So it's high time for an update, he said. About 2.5 billion people don't have access to toilets as we've currently imagined them, and this lack of toilet access encourages the spread of diarrheal diseases, which are blamed for the deaths of 1.5 million children each year, according to the World Health Organization. "We want to look at waste as a resource and recycle it," Rijsberman said. "We think we can recycle the energy, the minerals and also the water. We want to reinvent the toilet that is cheap, that doesn't cost more than a few pennies, that poor people want to use and that will recycle minerals, energy and water." The Gates Foundation has given out eight grants (here's the list as a PDF) to universities that are trying to dream up a toilet 2.0. Here are a few of the most striking ideas from those grantees: • M. Sohail, from Loughborough University in the UK, is making a toilet that will "recover water and salt from feces and urine." • Georgios Stefanidis, from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is working on a toilet that will generate electricity from waste, which will be "gasified into plasma" using microwaves. That gas can be used to generate electricity, according to the proposal. • Yu-Ling Cheng, from the University of Toronto, is trying to make a toilet that will "sanitize feces within 24 hours" so human waste doesn't transmit disease through a community. Chen plans to use a process of dehydration, filtration and smoldering to render the waste harmless. • Michael Hoffmann, from the California Institute of Technology, plans to develop a solar-powered toilet. Solar cells generate enough power to process waste and turn it into fuel for electricity. The Gates Foundation warns that none of these efforts constitutes a "silver bullet" that would solve the world's sanitation problems and says new toilet designs must be pursued in tandem with better wastewater treatment and sanitation systems. Some efforts to remake the toilet have gone down the tubes. "There have been a lot of toilet projects out there and a lot of failures," Marla Smith-Nilson, executive director of Water 1st International, told The Seattle Times. But the Gates Foundation remains hopeful that "radical innovation" can help. The universities that received funding are expected to have working prototypes within a year, and the foundation expects some of the projects to be ready for rollout in three or four years, Rijsberman said. Although these redesigned toilets are targeted at third-world countries, some of these ideas would be helpful in United States and Europe, too, Rijsberman said, especially in addressing water shortages. "How much sense does it make to clean up water to drinking water standards and then flush it down with sewage in an expensive pipe system?" he said. "We think modern science and technology can produce something that is more like the cell phone of sanitation."

The WBA is featuring three cruiserweight title fights this weekend. In its desire to have one champion in each division, the WBA cruiserweight tournament has officially begun. Friday night in Paris, France, Yunier Dorticos (21-0, 20 KOs) TKO’d Kayembre Kalenga (23-2, 15 KOs) to win the WBA World interim cruiserweight title. Tomorrow in Russia, WBA Super World cruiserweight champion Denis Lebedev faces IBF champion Victor Emilio Ramirez in a unification bout. The co-main in Moscow features a third cruiserweight championship bout between Beibut Shumenov and Junior Wright for the WBA World cruiserweight title. The winner of Lebedev-Ramirez must face the Shumenov-Wright winner within 120 days. The winner of that bout gets to tangle with Dorticos for undisputed recognition as WBA cruiserweight champion. Background On February 5 Denis Lebedev asked the World Boxing Association for special permission to participate in a unification bout with his IBF counterpart Victor Ramirez. The WBA gave a green light to the fight, on condition that the winner of Lebedev-Ramirez faces the winner of Dorticos-Kalenga. The winner of that bout will in turn face the winner of Shumenov-Wright. However, in March Team Shumenov appealed to the WBA to have his interim status elevated to that of regular champion. The World Boxing Association granted the request, with the understanding that his mandatory is the winner of Saturday’s fight between Lebedev and Ramirez. The WBA reaffirms its decision to have one champion in each division. This article was penned by the author who is not related to the WBA and the statements, expressions or opinions referenced herein are that of the author alone and not the WBA.

CLOSE The once quiet city of Flint, Michigan is facing a drinking water crisis that is drawing concern from around the nation. Here's what you need to know about how the public health crisis has evolved. VPC More than a year ago, e-mails among officials show deep concern behind the scenes about the quality of the city’s water. Flint residents Gladyes Williamson (C) holds a bottle full of contaminated water, and a clump of her hair, alongside Jessica Owens (R), holding a baby bottle full of contaminated water, during a news conference after attending a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Flint water crisis on Capitol Hill on Feb. 3, in Washington, DC. (Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images) More than eight months before Gov. Rick Snyder disclosed a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak in the Flint area, federal health officials worried a lack of cooperation in Michigan could be hampering the public health response. Thousands of pages of e-mails obtained by the Detroit Free Press through the Freedom of Information Act on Monday show increasing concern about the quality of the Flint's drinking water as tensions grew over a lack of coordination to combat the waterborne disease. County health officials were warned for reaching out to federal experts for help while they struggled to persuade Flint city officials to provide needed information, the e-mails show. Others in e-mails wondered about ethical breaches and the possibility of a cover-up. In sum, a review of the e-mails provided by Genesee County from several public-information requests appear to illustrate the inability, if not unwillingness, of city and state agencies to share information with the county as it investigated multiple Legionnaires' cases. The clash among bureaucrats went on privately for months despite growing fears inside Flint among residents that something was deeply wrong with the city's drinking water. “We are very concerned about this Legionnaires’ disease outbreak,” Laurel Garrison of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote to Genesee County health officials in an April 27, 2015, e-mail. “It’s very large, one of the largest we know of in the past decade, and community-wide, and in our opinion and experience it needs a comprehensive investigation.” Garrison added in her e-mail that ”I know you’ve run into issues getting information you’ve requested from the city water authority and the MI Dept of Environmental Quality. Again, not knowing the full extent of your investigation it’s difficult to make recommendations, and it may be difficult for us to provide the kind of detailed input needed for such an extensive outbreak from afar.” There were at least 87 cases across Genesee County during a 17-month period, including nine deaths, but the public was never told about the increase when it was happening — even after an initial wave of more than 40 cases were under investigation by early 2015. It is unclear whether swifter action by government officials could have prevented a return of the outbreak last summer. But a public health investigation is ongoing. Legionnaires’ disease is a pneumonia caused by bacteria in the lungs. People get sick if they inhale mist or vapor from contaminated water systems, hot tubs or cooling systems or, in some cases, showers. Genesee County Health Department officials could not be reached for comment Monday night. Neither the CDC nor the federal Department of Health and Human Services had an immediate response. Typically, Genesee County saw between six and 13 Legionnaires' cases a year, according to officials. In 2014, the number jumped to 42. In 2015, there were 45 confirmed cases. Officials investigating the outbreak in 2014 worried about disclosing a suspected cause. Liane Shekter Smith, the head of the Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance for the state Department of Environmental Quality contacted state health officials “a couple of times” to discuss the Legionnaires’ outbreak in 2014, according to e-mails. “She was concerned that an announcement was going to be made soon about the water as the source of the infection; I told her the Flint water was at this point just a hypothesis,” Susan Bohm of the Department of Health and Human Services wrote to officials in Genesee County in an e-mail dated Oct. 21, 2014. Last week, Snyder announced Sheketer Smith's termination, saying “putting the well-being of Michiganders first needs to be the top priority for all state employees.” The e-mails released Monday also showed how local officials struggled to contain the outbreak. On Feb. 10, 2015, Genesee County Health Department epidemiologist Shurooq Hasan wrote to an outside expert about 47 Legionnaires’ disease cases in 2014, which was almost four times the number of cases in 2013. “We have investigated a hospital as a potential source for the disease, but have expanded our investigation to include the city water supply,” Hasan said in the e-mail. “Of our 47 cases, 25 cases have occurred within the city water supply distribution system. No common links have been found between the cases. The majority of our cases are home bound immune-comprised individuals who have not traveled and are not readily mobile,” he wrote. Hasan said those stricken were in such bad condition that they are unable to answer questions that would assist with the investigation. On June 8, 2015, Jim Collins of DHHS e-mailed several officials at the county health department saying he had spoken with officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that morning about the Legionnaires’ issue. He then chastised county officials for talking to the CDC without state approval. “Relative to communications around the investigation, I believe that CDC is in agreement that their involvement really should be at the request of the state, rather than the local health department,” Collins said. “To be clear, we do value the skills and resources of our CDC colleagues, but we also recognize that their involvement needs to have some structure,” and “I want to reinforce the necessity that investigation communications from the Genesee County Health Department need to be directed to staff at the MDHHS.” By Dec. 5, Tamara Brickey, the Genesee County Health Department’s public health division director, said in an e-mail to other county health officials that “the state is making clear they are not practicing ethical public health practice.” “Now evidence is clearly pointing to a deliberate cover-up,” Brickey wrote. “In my opinion, if we don’t act soon, we are going to become guilty by association.” Snyder publicly revealed the Legionnaires' outbreak on Jan. 13 of this year, saying he had learned of it just days earlier. A spokesman for the governor Monday night reiterated that the governor acted quickly after he learned of the outbreak. But last week, other e-mails released by the liberal group Progress Michigan showed an aide in Snyder's office was notified in March 2015 — more than nine months before Snyder said he learned of the problem — that there was an increase in Legionnaires' disease cases in Genesee County. The aide, Harvey Hollins, said in an interview last week he did not brief the governor on the issue at the time because he told state environmental department officials to gather more information and make their own recommendation if warranted. Public notifications about such outbreaks are typically handled by the local health departments, Geralyn Lasher, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said Monday. Lasher said the state provided help to the Genesee County Health Department on wording for a public press release, but she was unsure if the department ever released it. Flint's switch to using the Flint River as its water supply in April 2014 was followed almost immediately by complaints from residents about discolored, pungent water that had caused a number of ailments. Local and state officials insisted for months the water was safe to drink but reversed course after independent testing discovered unsafe lead levels throughout the system believed to be caused by leaching from lead piping. Flint is now under a state of emergency because of the lead issue Today, state officials say they have been unable to link the Legionnaires' outbreak definitively to the Flint River water supply. County health officials feared as far back as the fall of 2014 the outbreak was connected to the switch to using the Flint River for drinking water. The new e-mails show other state health officials investigated the outbreak at least a year before the governor's public announcement. On Jan. 27, 2015, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services epidemiologist Shannon Johnson e-mailed the county health department about the Legionnaires’ disease issue, saying “at this point, the priorities in the public health investigation are to determine the scope of the outbreak and to define as clearly as possible the characteristics of the cases of Legionnaire’s Disease ...” “A current map of the municipal water system needs to be obtained and cases’ residences mapped in relation to the water system,” Johnson said. Overall, county officials express concerns about a growing number of people in the Flint area contracting Legionnaires' disease. The state Department of Health and Human Services had begun assisting the county in the fall of 2014, and the Legionnaires’ investigation had become “very intensive” in early 2015, according to Dr. Eden Wells, Michigan’s chief medical executive. The first wave of 42 cases was commonly known within the state health department, Wells said, but the agency did not take the information to the governor until confirming a second wave of 45 cases and analyzing them together. But back on Jan. 27, 2015, a county health official expressed frustration in an internal e-mail that he couldn't obtain information from local and state officials to investigate suspicions the water supply was behind the Legionnaires' outbreak. “Initially the water plant was cooperative, but since the beginning of November they have not responded to multiple written and verbal requests. Howard Croft has not responded the email that I sent yesterday morning, either," James Henry, a county environmental health supervisor, wrote in the e-mail. “I have explained our responsibilities to investigate and that our intent to work together with the City to identify potential risks so they can be reduced or eliminated. I was hoping to avoid FOIA, but we are getting nowhere.” In another e-mail, written a day earlier, on Jan. 26, Henry wrote: “MDEQ, Mike Prysby and Steve Busch declined to meet with our office. They did not have any comparable information regarding other public water systems relative to Legionella or Heterotrophic bacteria. They encouraged us to conduct our investigation and mentioned that they could assist with obtaining information from the water plant. I explained that they are the regulatory agency and participation is expected.” On Feb. 5, Howard Croft, the city of Flint’s public works director, alerted Henry about “another person who is reporting a rash on their child.” A note from a doctor, Croft wrote, asserted that the woman’s son “breaks out when he is in the bath with the city water.” He asked Henry to work with the woman and supply any needed data that could “help determine the cause.” Henry responded less than two hours later. He didn’t provide the data but instead spelled out how he said the city had not responded to the county’s earlier request for information. Henry said the county health department attempted as far back as November 2014 to obtain information about the city’s water system. “Your office has not provided a return phone call or response to emails,” he told Croft in the e-mail. In January, Henry said that he also filed a Freedom of Information request with the city to try to obtain information about city water, but his request did not provide what he sought. “I am still hopeful that we can work collaboratively to protect the health of the community and resolve any issue with the Flint water supply.” Henry wrote. By November 2015, Henry had grown frustrated by the lack of cooperation he said he received from state environmental officials. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality “reminds me of a stubborn 2yr old child,” Henry wrote on Nov. 6 to Genesee County Health Officer Mark Valacak. “Instead of doing what is right, they’ll willfully take another spanking just to be defiant.” On Dec. 4, Henry recapped events over several months in an e-mail to other county health officials and singled out a specific state health department official he said had sabotaged their Legionnaires’ disease investigation. “I think deaths could have been avoided, had he not!” Henry said. He said he thought state officials were motivated to impede the investigation because they “were concerned that Genesee County’s largest U.S. legionella outbreak, would implicate the Flint water system, for which they were responsible.” Henry wrote that “some of the people at the state agencies are simply criminals,” and “I do find it rather impressive how good they are at covering their tracks." Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan. Free Press photographer Ryan Garza contributed to this report. Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1T9N9s8

Searchers often prefer the view-all vs. paginated content with arbitrary page breaks and worse latency. If your site includes view-all pages We aim to detect the view-all version of your content and, if available, its associated component pages. There’s nothing more you need to do! However, if you’d like to make it more explicit to us, you can include rel=”canonical” from your component pages to your view-all to increase the likelihood that we detect your series of pages appropriately. rel=”canonical” can specify the superset of content (i.e. the view-all page, in this case page-all.html) from the same information in a series of URLs. Why does this work? If you’d like to surface individual, component pages (or there’s no view-all available) It may be the case that one or both of the situations below apply to your site: The view-all page is undesirable as a search result (e.g., load time too high or too difficult for users to navigate). Your users prefer the multi-page experience and to be directed to a component page in search results, rather than the view-all page. If so, you can use standard HTML rel=”next” and rel=”prev” elements to specify a relationship between the component pages in your series of content. If done correctly, Google will generally strive to: Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, between the component pages/URLs. Send users to the most relevant page/URL from the component pages. Typically, the most relevant page is the first page of your content, but our algorithms may point users to one of the component pages in the series. To better optimize your view-all page, you can use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the single-page version; otherwise, If a view-all page doesn’t provide a good user experience for your site, you can use the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” attributes as a strong hint for Google to identify the series of pages and still surface a component page in results. Webmaster level: Intermediate to AdvancedUser testing has taught us that searchers much prefer the view-all, single-page version of content over a component page containing only a portion of the same information with arbitrary page breaks (which cause the user to click “next” and load another URL).Therefore, to improve the user experience, when we detect that a content series (e.g. page-1.html, page-2.html, etc.) also contains a single-page version (e.g. page-all.html), we’re now making a larger effort to return the single-page version in search results. If your site has a view-all option, there’s nothing you need to do; we’ll work to do it on your behalf. Also, indexing properties, like links, will be consolidated from the component pages in the series to the view-all page.Interestingly, the cases when users didn’t prefer the view-all page were correlated with high latency (e.g., when the view-all page took a while to load, say, because it contained many images). This makes sense because we know users are less satisfied with slow results . So while a view-all page is commonly desired, as a webmaster it’s important to balance this preference with the page’s load time and overall user experience.In the diagram, page-2.html of a series may specify the canonical target as page-all.html because page-all.html is a superset of page-2.html's content. When a user searches for a query term and page-all.html is selected in search results, even if the query most related to page-2.html, we know the user will still see page-2.html’s relevant information within page-all.html.On the other hand, page-2.html shouldn’t designate page-1.html as the canonical because page-2.html’s content isn’t included on page-1.html. It’s possible that a user’s search query is relevant to content on page-2.html, but if page-2.html’s canonical is set to page-1.html, the user could then select page-1.html in search results and find herself in a position where she has to further navigate to a different page to arrive at the desired information. That’s a poor experience for the user, a suboptimal result from us, and it could also bring poorly targeted traffic to your site.However, if you strongly desire your view-all page not to appear in search results: 1) make sure the component pages in the series don’t include rel=”canonical” to the view-all page, and 2) mark the view-all page as “noindex” using any of the standard methods.It’s not uncommon for webmasters to incorrectly use rel=”canonical” from component pages to the first page of their series (e.g. page-2.html with rel=”canonical” to page-1.html). We recommend against this implementation because the component pages don’t actually contain duplicate content. Using rel=”next” and rel=”prev” is far more appropriate.Because users generally prefer the view-all option in search results, we’re making more of an effort to properly detect and serve this version to searchers. If you have a series of content, there’s nothing more you need to do. If you’d like to hint more to Google how best to serve users your information:As always, feel free to ask in our Webmaster Help Forum

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, CO, have demonstrated multiple computing operations on quantum bits–a crucial step toward building a practical quantum computer. Shine on, ions: Beryllium ions are trapped inside the dark slit on the left side of this chip. When researchers focus lasers on the ions, the ions can be used to perform quantum calculations. Quantum computers have the potential to perform calculations far faster than the classical computers used today. This superior computing power comes from the fact that these computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent both a 1 and a 0 at the same time, in contrast to classical bits that can represent only a 1 or a 0. Scientists take a number of different approaches to creating qubits. At NIST, the researchers use beryllium ions stored within so-called ion traps. Lasers are used to control the ions’ electronic states, depending on the frequency to which the laser light is tuned. The electronic states of the ions and their interactions determine the quantum operations that the machine performs. Over the past few decades, researchers have made steady progress toward a quantum computer, for instance, by storing quantum data or performing logic operations on qubits. But the NIST work, which is published online today by the journal Science, pieces together several crucial steps for the first time. The work involved putting an ion into a desired state, storing qubit data in it, performing logical operations on one or two of the qubits, transferring that information among different locations, and finally reading out the qubit result individually. Importantly, the researchers show that they can perform one operation after another in a single experiment. “This is the next step in trying to put a quantum computer together,” says Dave Wineland, lead researcher on the project. “It’s nice to have reached this stage.” The NIST team performed five quantum logic operations and 10 transport operations (meaning they moved the qubit from one part of the system to another) in series, while reliably maintaining the states of their ions–a tricky task because the ions can easily be knocked out of their prepared state. In other words, the researchers had to be careful that they didn’t lose quantum combinations of 1s and 0s while they manipulated their ions. One of the major problems in performing multiple operations is that the ions heat up after a single operation, in which laser beams, tuned to specific frequencies, adjust the energy level of electrons. Once this happens, explains Jonathan Home, a postdoctoral researcher at NIST, the researchers can’t do any further operations because the qubits can no longer hold both a 1 and a 0. To solve this problem, the researchers added magnesium ions to the mix. These ions are cooled with another set of lasers and, though the cold magnesium ions are not used for computation, they effectively chill the beryllium ions, keeping them in a stable state. A second challenge when repeating operations inside this type of quantum computer is making sure that the ions are protected from stray magnetic fields that can also cause them to lose their quantum state. To solve this problem, the researchers chose specific energy-levels within which the ions are temporarily impervious to changes in surrounding magnetic fields. This maintains the qubit’s state for up to 15 seconds, plenty of time, says Home, to perform a series of millisecond-long operations. “Our particular choice of levels doesn’t change with the magnetic field,” he says. “We don’t have to worry about the lifetime of the qubits anymore.” The experiment is a “milestone accomplishment,” says Isaac Chuang, a professor in the electrical engineering, computer science, and physics departments at MIT. “Very much like the early evolution of transistors into calculators, this work demonstrates a complete assembly of basic steps needed for a scalable quantum computer.” Chuang adds that the research “sets the bar” for other quantum computing systems. In demonstrations, the researchers manipulated two qubits at a time. For ion trap systems, the maximum number of qubits used in varying experiments so far is less than 10. In order to outperform a classical computer, the researchers would need to perform operations on 30 or more qubits, suspects Home, something he thinks could happen in the next five to 10 years. While quantum computers hold promise for breaking ultrasecure encryption codes, he says that early quantum computers will mostly likely be used to simulate physical systems, for example, the electronic properties of materials. But to get there, the researchers will need to improve their system. Currently, it performs with 94 percent accuracy. For a quantum computer to be reliable enough to use, it must be 99.99 percent accurate. A major factor affecting the accuracy of the system is the intensity fluctuations of the lasers that perform the operations on the ions. However, new, more-reliable, and more-powerful ultraviolet lasers could solve this problem, says Home.

“God’s Plan for Families,” Ensign, July 2015, 28–31 Gaining a knowledge of our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness can help us understand the central role of marriage and family in that plan. Illustrations by stefanamer, nuiiun, and Muymuy/iStock/Thinkstock The scriptures and modern prophets teach us that one of the fundamental purposes for the Creation of this earth was to foster marriage and family life. “Marriage is ordained of God,” the Lord explained, so “that the earth might answer the end of its creation” (D&C 49:15–16). “Simply summarized,” added Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “the earth was created that families might be.”1 Despite the plainness of these teachings, I have encountered many seminary and institute students who did not seem to fully understand how central a role marriage and family play in our Heavenly Father’s plan. As a result, these students sometimes adopt some of the thinking of the world on these important topics, which affects the way they plan for, seek, and support eternal marriage and family relationships. I believe that understanding the doctrines of God’s plan of salvation has the power to change our attitudes and behaviors to align more faithfully with the teachings of the Lord and his prophets.2 The following is a brief review of the plan of salvation as it relates to marriage and family. These principles can help us understand why “marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God” and why “the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”3 The Family in Premortal Life In our premortal life, each of us was born as “a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents.”4 As such, we were all brothers and sisters and lived as members of God’s family. Although all of us were part of this eternal family of God, the only ones who enjoyed the blessings of eternal marriage were our heavenly parents. Only they could have children and be called father and mother. As Apostles of the Lord have explained, “The title father is sacred and eternal. It is significant that of all the titles of respect and honor and admiration that are given to Deity, He has asked us to address Him as Father.”5 Our Heavenly Father prepared a plan whereby we could progress and become like Him. A central feature of this plan includes the opportunity to be married eternally and enjoy eternal posterity of our own. The Family through the Creation, Fall, and Atonement Three foundational events in God’s plan combine to make marriage and family relationships possible for time and eternity. These events are the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement. The scriptural account of the Creation culminates not just with the creation of man but with the establishment of marriage. A brief summary of Adam and Eve’s eternal marriage in Eden is found in Genesis 1:28, including the charge to “multiply, and replenish the earth.” President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972) explained: “Marriage as established in the beginning was an eternal covenant. The first man and the first woman were not married until death should part them, for at that time death had not come into the world. The ceremony on that occasion was performed by the Eternal Father himself whose work endures forever.”6 Thus, the crowning event of the Creation was not just when Adam and Eve were created in the image of their heavenly parents7 but when they were sealed in eternal marriage like their heavenly parents. From the beginning, marriage between a man and a woman was ordained of God and established as the ultimate purpose of our creation. Although Adam and Eve enjoyed eternal marriage like our heavenly parents, they could not yet enjoy the full blessings of family life. As the prophet Lehi explained, they were originally created in a state where “they would have had no children” (2 Nephi 2:23). One reason they chose to partake of the forbidden fruit and fall to mortality was so that they would have children. “Adam fell that men might be,” Lehi explained (2 Nephi 2:25). Marriage and family relationships, made possible by the Creation and the Fall, are made eternal through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. As Sister Julie B. Beck, former Relief Society general president, taught: “The Atonement allows for the family to be sealed together eternally. It allows for families to have eternal growth and perfection. The plan of happiness, also called the plan of salvation, was a plan created for families.”8 The Family in Time and Eternity For these marriage and family relationships to endure forever, they must be sealed through holy ordinances and covenants available only in the temple, with all the promised blessings being dependent on the participants’ faithfulness. The importance of these ordinances to our salvation was explained by the Lord: “In the celestial glory there are three heavens or degrees; “And in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood [meaning the new and everlasting covenant of marriage]; “And if he does not, he cannot obtain it” (D&C 131:1–3). In other words, just as the ordinance and covenant of baptism are the gate to enter the celestial kingdom, so temple marriage is the gate to enter the highest degree of that kingdom. Those who marry in the temple and remain faithful to their covenants are promised that they shall become like God because they will enjoy the continuation of the family unit forever, just like our heavenly parents (see D&C 132:19–20). The Family and Alternative Lifestyles It is true that not everyone has the opportunity to marry in this life, nor is every couple blessed with children in mortality. Latter-day prophets have assured us that those who are faithful will eventually be given these blessings, either in this life or the next.9 Nevertheless, just because not everyone achieves the ideal does not mean we should stop holding it up as the standard to seek. Eternal marriage and family relationships should be a desire and priority for every Latter-day Saint, regardless of circumstances. As has always been the case, Satan proposes alternatives to our Heavenly Father’s plan, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the family. In contrast to our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness through righteousness in marriage and family life, Satan proposes alternative lifestyles that are rooted in sinfulness and selfishness. He is cursed to never marry or have a family, and he entices us to live like him instead of like our Heavenly Father. He lies to us, telling us that marriage and family are an inconvenience and a bondage. He promises us that we will find greater joy and fulfillment in some other way or through some other arrangement. He tempts us not to marry and, if we do marry, to not have children. The deviations the adversary proposes include premarital sexual relations, pornography, abuse of spouse and children, elective abortion for personal or social convenience, marital infidelity, unjustified divorce, cohabitation, homosexual relations, and unwarranted sterilization.10 If he cannot convince us to do these things, he tempts us to support and encourage others to do them. But these alternative lifestyles will not bring the true happiness we seek in this life, nor will they bring the full blessings of salvation in the next. Out of loyalty to our Heavenly Father’s plan and out of love for mankind, we must discourage and oppose measures that are not designed to maintain and strengthen marriage between a man and a woman and “the family as the fundamental unit of society.”11

Digital Sunrise Polizei und Staat wollen Sie im Internet umfassend überwachen. Jeder zweite Schweizer sagt «Nein, danke!» Telefon- und Netzüberwachung Polizei und Staat wollen Sie im Internet umfassend überwachen. Jeder zweite Schweizer sagt «Nein, danke!» Telekomfirmen sollen für die Strafermittler die Internet-Überwachung ausbauen. Auch Handy- und Internetabos können vielleicht bald nur noch im Laden und mit einem Ausweis abgeschlossen werden. Das kommt beim Volk schlecht an, wie eine aktuelle Umfrage zeigt. Seit 2002 wird jede Bewegung von Schweizer Handybesitzern ein halbes Jahr lang aufgezeichnet. Swisscom, Sunrise und Orange müssen im Auftrag des Bundes von jedem Kunden folgende Daten auf Vorrat speichern: Mit wem er wann und von wo aus kommuniziert hat Wer sich wann und für welche Dauer ins Internet eingeloggt hat Wer wann wem eine E-Mail oder SMS geschickt hat Wo sich der Handynutzer gerade befindet Diese Internet- und Mobilfunkdaten werden ohne Verdacht auf eine strafbare Handlung von allen Bürgern gespeichert. Der Bundesrat will die Vorratsdatenspeicherung mit der Revision des Überwachungsgesetzes BÜPF ausbauen: «Das Gesetz ist nötig, um Drogenhandel, Kinderpornographie, Terrorismus und organisierte Kriminalität zu bekämpfen», sagte SP-Bundesrätin Simonetta Sommaruga. Jüngeren und Frauen ist Überwachen eher «egal» Fast die Hälfte der Schweizer lehnt die Speicherung von Daten auf Vorrat grundsätzlich ab. Dies ergab eine repräsentative Umfrage des Internet-Vergleichsdienstes Comparis. Nur knapp jeder Dritte begrüsst es demnach, dass der Staat Telefon- und Internetdaten von Bürgern ohne Tatverdacht über mehrere Monate speichern lässt. Knapp jeder Dritte befürwortet das prophylaktische Datensammeln als «gut». Keine eindeutige Position hat jeder fünfte Befragte. Über 50-Jährige stehen der Vorratsdatenspeicherung häufiger misstrauisch gegenüber als jüngere Personen. Frauen drücken eine stärkere Egal-Haltung aus als Männer, die wiederum verstärkt «nicht damit einverstanden» sind. Die Umfrage zeigt ferner: Je geringer der Bildungsabschluss, desto höher ist der Anteil der Gleichgültigen. Alle weiteren Informationen zum Überwachungsgesetz BÜPF finden Sie hier: Wer wird überwacht? Die Vorratsdatenspeicherung betrifft alle Bürger und Firmen, die Kommunikation über das Internet oder die Post nutzen, also die gesamte Bevölkerung. Die Überwachung soll mit der Revision des Überwachungsgesetzes BÜPF ausgeweitet werden. Wie oft müssen die Mobilfunk-Provider den Behörden Auskunft geben? Im Jahr 2013 wurden von den Strafverfolgungsbehörden insgesamt 16'000 Auskunftsbegehren an die Provider gestellt, Tendenz steigend. (Siehe nachfolgende Grafik) Um die 7000 Anfragen betreffen die auf Vorrat gespeicherten Nutzerdaten, das macht fast 20 pro Tag. Weitere 9000 Auskünfte teilen sich auf Direktüberwachungen der Handy- und Internetnutzung (~4000) sowie auf Auskünfte zur Seriennummer des Mobiltelefons, bzw. der SIM-Karte (~5000) auf. (Quelle: Dienst ÜPF / Digitale Gesellschaft) grafik: watson.ch So soll die Überwachung ausgebaut werden Die Revision des Überwachungsgesetzes (BÜPF) fordert im Kern drei Ausweitungen der bestehenden Möglichkeiten. Erstens: Die Vorratsdatenspeicherung (wer mit wem wann und von wo aus kommuniziert hat) soll von sechs auf zwölf Monate verlängert werden. grafik: watson Zweitens: Nebst Swisscom und Co. sollen auch Schweizer E-Mail-Provider, Cloud-Anbieter, Kurznachrichten-Apps wie Threema und Anbieter von öffentlichen WLANs wie Restaurants die Nutzerdaten speichern. grafik: watson Drittens: In der gezielten Direktüberwachung von einzelnen Personen, gegen die ein Verdacht vorliegen muss, soll neu der Einsatz von Spionageprogrammen (Trojaner) auf PCs und Smartphones erlaubt werden. So kann auch die verschlüsselte Kommunikation per E-Mail, Skype, Threema etc. via PC, Tablet und Smartphone überwacht werden. Für den Einsatz des Staatstrojaners wird ein richterlicher Beschluss vorausgesetzt. So funktioniert der Staatstrojaner video: srf/10vor10 Mit der BÜPF-Revision soll auch der polizeiliche Einsatz von Handystörsendern (IMSI-Catcher) erlaubt werden. Diese Geräte geben sich als Mobilfunkantenne aus und schieben sich im Handynetz zwischen die Mobiltelefone und das eigentliche Mobilfunknetz. Smartphone-Nutzer, die sich in der Nähe eines IMSI-Catchers der Polizei befinden, könnten so identifiziert und überwacht werden. Bild: watson Die KAPO Zürich sagte im April auf Anfrage: «Die Kantonspolizei Zürich besitzt zwei IMSI-Catcher, mit denen ausschliesslich Mobiltelefone geortet werden können. Weitere Beschaffungen sind nicht geplant. Wo und bei wem die Geräte beschafft wurden, geben wir nicht bekannt. Eingesetzt werden die Geräte ausschliesslich mit richterlicher Genehmigung im Rahmen der Gesetze. Primär wird diese Technik zur schnellen Ortung von Mobiltelefonen vermisster Personen, also Such- und Rettungsaufgaben, verwendet. Weitere Anwendungsmöglichkeiten finden sich bei kriminalpolizeilichen Aufgabenstellungen. Aus taktischen Überlegungen können wir keine näheren Angaben über den Einsatz der IMSI-Catcher machen. Für Personenkontrollen und bei Demonstrationen werden die Geräte nicht eingesetzt. Personenbezogene Daten werden mit dieser Technik nicht erhoben.» Was Orange, Sunrise und Swisscom an der Überwachung stört Die Gegner der BÜPF-Revision setzen sich aus einer losen Allianz von Grünen und Piraten, Liberalen und Konservativen sowie Unternehmern und Konsumentenschützern zusammen. Die Überwachungsgegner erhalten seit Kurzem Sukkurs von den grossen Telekomanbietern. Diese stören sich an der momentan fehlenden Rechtssicherheit sowie am Mehraufwand und den Zusatzkosten, die für sie durch den Ausbau der Überwachung entstehen. Das sagt Orange zur Ausweitung der Internet-Überwachung «Der BÜPF-Entwurf weist schwerwiegende Mängel auf. Insbesondere ist das Prinzip der Verhältnismässigkeit nicht gewahrt, da die Fernmeldedienst-Anbieter für beliebige, neue Überwachungsformen hohe und kaum planbare Investitionen in Systeme tätigen müssen.» «Würde die Aufbewahrungsfrist der Nutzerdaten gesetzlich von 6 auf 12 Monate verlängert, so müsste mit erheblichen Kostenfolgen und einer wesentlich grösseren Anzahl von Anfragen gerechnet werden.» «Neu sollen wir auch speichern müssen, wer wann welche Website besucht hat, was im Vergleich zur Aufbewahrung von Telefonieverbindungsdaten viel aufwändiger ist. Für die Rechnungsstellung an die Kunden ist dies überhaupt nicht nötig und wird daher schon aus Daten-/Persönlichkeitsschutzgründen momentan nicht gemacht.» «Die Begehrlichkeiten der Behörden sind gross und wir könnten mit dem in vielen Punkten bewusst offen formulierten Gesetzesentwurf zur Speicherung weiterer Daten verpflichtet werden.» Swisscom zur Ausweitung der Internet-Überwachung Bei Swisscom nervt man sich über das Prinzip, dass eine Telekomfirma die Strafverfolgung mitfinanzieren soll. «Es kann nicht sein, dass letztlich die Kunden die Strafverfahren subventionieren müssen», sagte Andreas Locher gegenüber SRF. Er leitet bei der Swisscom das Überwachungs-Team, das «nichts anderes tut als Abhöraktionen am Telefon ermöglichen, melden, wer wann wem eine SMS schickt oder Namen von Handynutzern ausliefern, und das Tag und Nacht», wie das SRF schreibt. Hinzu komme möglicherweise eine Ausweispflicht, sagen Orange und Swisscom unisono: Handy- oder Internetabos könnten allenfalls nicht mehr online gekauft werden, sondern nur mit einem Ausweis im Laden. Die Telekom-Verkaufsläden müssten Kopien der Ausweise aufbewahren, befürchtet Locher. Für ihn wäre dies «eine Art ausgelagerte Polizeidatenbank», schreibt SRF. Sunrise zur Ausweitung der Internet-Überwachung «Eine Revision des BÜPF für eine klarere Definition der Überwachungsformen findet Sunrise grundsätzlich sinnvoll. Mit Sorge stellen wir jedoch fest, dass die Ausweitung der Überwachung weitgehende und negative Auswirkungen auf den Betrieb der Unternehmen haben wird.» «Die Anliegen und Bedürfnisse der Strafverfolgung sollen die Revision des BÜPF nicht einseitig dominieren. Insbesondere die Aufbewahrungspflicht für auf Vorrat gespeicherte Daten soll nicht auf zwölf Monate ausgedehnt werden, sondern bei sechs bleiben. Dies aus Gründen der Verhältnismässigkeit und dem damit verbundenen deutlichen Mehraufwand für die betroffenen Unternehmen». Das Zwischenfazit Orange, Swisscom und Sunrise schlagen sich, so sieht es zumindest aus, auf die Seite der Überwachungskritiker. Ob aus Kosten- und Imagegründen oder aus der Überzeugung, dass die geplanten Massnahmen zu weit gehen, kann den BÜPF-Kritikern letztlich egal sein. Den Mobilfunkprovidern kommt eine entscheidende Rolle im Hinblick auf ein wahrscheinliches Referendum zu. Sie verfügen über die Mittel, die den Überwachungsgegnern für eine sichtbare Anti-BÜPF-Kampagne bislang fehlten. Abonniere unseren Newsletter

Will this be the future of luxury bachelor and bachelorette parties? Maybe it's something you could get your grandkids. By 2050, bordellos will offer for-hire sex robots for disease- and guilt-free pleasure, according to a new scientific paper. The research, published in the May issue of the journal Futures, sits incongruously among more staid titles about new spatial planning methods and urban sprawl. The paper is meant to be a "futuristic scenario" that "pushes plausibility to the limit," write its authors, Michelle Mars and tourism professor Ian Yeoman, both of the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Nevertheless, they said, "It is feasible. Society has had relationships with machines and we continue to have increasingly intimate relationships with more and more sophisticated technologies." And for the sex tourism industry, it's something to look forward to, they said. Commercial sex robots would be free of disease and would reduce the trafficking of real people for sex work, they write. To explore their ideas, Yeoman and Mars envisioned Amsterdam's sex tourism industry in 2050. They imagined "Yub-Yum," a sex club for business travelers, which would sell "all-inclusive service" — including massages, lap dances and intercourse — for 10,000 Euros, or about $13,000. Rises in human trafficking and in drug-resistant strains of HIV, which Yeoman and Mars predict will occur in the 2040s, motivated Amsterdam officials to license robotic bordellos. In spite of serious problems with human brothels, city tourism council members didn't want to shut down brothels altogether because they worried such a crackdown might drive away tourists. Robots were the answer. The bots would be made with bacteria-resistant fiber and cleaned after each use so they wouldn't transmit diseases between customers. Customers "feel guilt-free" because they don't have sex with people, so they don't have to lie to spouses about what they're doing, according to the researchers. Other drivers the researchers said that will make the sexy bot future possible are the growth of the sex industry and people's desire for humanly unattainable perfection — the researchers pointed to the popularity of plastic surgery as evidence. Here in 2012, companies in Japan and South Korea are already hiring out sex dolls, the researchers said. "The early successes of the sex doll businesses are a clear indicator of things to come," they write. The authors acknowledged social questions they didn't answer, such as whether couples would consider visiting a sex robot infidelity and whether people really would want to have sex with a robot. The only drawback they covered in any detail is that robotic prostitutes might put human ones out of business. Robots can perform superhuman feats and don't need rest. Mars and Yeoman's Yub-Yum scenario included protests by Amsterdam's human sex workers. There was an additional question we thought of at InnovationNewsDaily, however. While the authors optimistically write about "sexual gods and goddesses of different ethnicities, body shapes, ages, languages and sexual features," we imagined people might be able to bring to life stereotyped, socially harmful fetishes. They might want to order bots that look like children or personify racial stereotypes, such as savage indigenous people or submissive Asian women. While it might be relatively easy to create laws against creating robots that look underage, it would be more difficult to rule against stereotypes. So while their extreme trend-spotting exercise is fun, the researchers' conclusion might be a little glib. "If such a proposition came true," they write, "Amsterdam would probably be the safest and best sex tourism destination in world and all the social problems associated with sex tourism would disappear overnight." Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook. Related on InnovationNewsDaily: This story is copyright 2012 InnovationNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. By 2050, sex-for-hire robots may be the norm Will this be the future of luxury bachelor and bachelorette parties? Maybe it's something you could get your grandkids. By 2050, bordellos will offer for-hire s

Kan Colle Kai first details, new trailer The PS Vita Kantai Collection is actually happening. Kantai Collection Kai is the final name for the the PS Vita adaption of popular browser game Kantai Collection, Kadokawa Games announced during the Kadokawa Games x From Software Fall 2014 Media Briefing. Kadokawa Games’ Kensuke Tanaka will act as the game’s producer and director. It will use the browser game as its base, with a new user interface built for PS Vita including new systems like a “Waters Map.” Most of the Kanmusu (ship daughters) from the browser version will be included with the PS Vita version from the get-go, and gameplay will take a shift towards more overt strategy. As previously announced, the game will launch in spring 2015. Watch a new trailer below. Thanks, Inside Games and Famitsu.

Undercutting calls for Republican unity, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stubbornly withheld his endorsement from Donald Trump as he addressed the GOP convention Wednesday night, instead encouraging Americans to "vote your conscience" in November. Delegates on the floor implored Cruz to back the nominee, chanting Trump's name, then erupting in a chorus of boos when he ignored their pleas. "Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution," Cruz said. While he backed some of Trump's policy proposals, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, he mentioned the GOP nominee by name only once. Story continues below advertisement Cruz's decision to accept a speaking role at the convention but not explicitly endorse Trump was remarkable, and underscored the deep divisions still coursing through the GOP. While Trump has energized many Republican voters, others remain deeply skeptical of his unorthodox candidacy and divisive policy proposals. The Republican convention: What you missed on Wednesday Boos filled the convention hall in Cleveland as Cruz finished his prime-time speech. Cruz finished second to Trump in the delegate count and the two were bitter rivals during the primary campaign. Cruz's wife was escorted off the floor as delegates booed. Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia and a supporter of Cruz, told Reuters he escorted Heidi Cruz off the convention floor for her own safety. The gulf between Trump running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's hearty embrace of Trump and Cruz's refusal to do so is emblematic of the turmoil still roiling the GOP. The low-key Pence, who describes himself as a Christian, a conservative and a Republican "in that order" later today the crowd he never thought he'd be standing on the stage at his party's national convention. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement He joked that Trump is so charismatic that he must have been looking for balance in choosing him. Then he turned serious by framing the November presidential race as crucial to defining the makeup of the Supreme Court for the next 40 years. The GOP vice-presidential nominee said voters must ensure that it's Trump picking the next high court justices to protect the Second Amendment, which covers the right to bear arms, "the sanctity of life" and other liberties. Trump did get a boost from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, one of the 16 Republicans whose White House dreams were vanquished during the primary. Still, Walker suggested he was driven as much by a desire to keep Democrat Hillary Clinton out of the White House as admiration for his party's nominee. "Let me be clear: a vote for anyone other than Donald Trump in November is a vote for Hillary Clinton," Walker said. Later, Republican stalwart Newt Gingrich said people should be terrified at the prospect of Clinton as president. Story continues below advertisement The former House speaker says Clinton won't tell the American people the truth about the danger posed by Islamic extremists and that the price Americans would pay for electing Clinton would be what he calls the "loss of America as we know it." Gingrich, a Donald Trump ally, argued that Islamic extremists are stronger than the Obama administration admits. Trump's campaign hoped that by the convention's end, voters would look past the gathering's rough start, including the plagiarism charge involving Melania Trump's opening address. After 36 hours of denials, the campaign moved to put the matter to rest Wednesday, releasing a statement from a speechwriter who took blame for including lines from a Michelle Obama speech in the remarks. Trump, who will address the convention Thursday night, cheered on the night's proceedings via Twitter. After Walker's remarks, Trump wrote, "Great speech!" A day after Trump formally became the presidential nominee, some delegates at state gatherings around Cleveland where the four-day GOP convention is being held were still struggling to come to terms with their unorthodox new standard-bearer. Iowa delegate Cecil Stinemetz called Trump "the worst nominee that we have put forward for the Republican Party in the history of the Republican Party" and said he didn't plan to return to the convention floor the rest of the week. Story continues below advertisement Republican worries about Trump's preparedness for a general election battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton have only been reinforced during the convention. The campaign struggled to respond to plagiarism charges involving Melania Trump's Monday night address, finally releasing a statement Wednesday from a speechwriter who took blame for including lines from a Michelle Obama speech in the remarks. Campaign officials see Pence's address Wednesday as an important opportunity to reassure the doubters. In a show of unity, he'll be introduced by House Speaker Paul Ryan, a lukewarm Trump supporter, and lay out his reasons for partnering with the celebrity businessman who is in many ways his opposite. While Pence is expected to make the case that Democrat Hillary Clinton is unfit for the White House, officials said his speech will not be a full-throated takedown in the style of earlier speakers. Cruz was harshly critical of Trump in the waning weeks of their primary battle, calling the businessman a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral." He arrived in Cleveland with an eye on his own political future, holding a rally with hundreds of supporters who greeted him with chants of "2020" — suggesting Cruz's backers have no interest in seeing Trump become a two-term president. Cruz was expected to continue sidestepping a formal endorsement of Trump during his convention remarks. Top Trump aide Paul Manafort said the senator would at least "suggest" he is backing the nominee, while other Republicans said Cruz would argue the importance of keeping Clinton out of the White House. That message is sure to be well-received in the convention hall, where Clinton has been under constant attack. Speakers have painted an apocalyptic vision of America if she wins and have aggressively challenged her character. While Clinton has been a target of GOP ire for decades, the harshness of the attacks was still striking. Story continues below advertisement Former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson connected Clinton with Lucifer. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie implored delegates to shout "Guilty!" in response to various accusations of wrongdoing. And for a third straight night, the crowd filling the convention hall Wednesday chanted, "Lock her up." For at least some delegates, the negativity crossed a line. "Certainly races can be won based on focusing on the opponent," said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. "But I think we're at a place in our country's evolution where it's particularly important now, with all that's happened and the concerns that people have, for a positive vision to be laid out." Trump has shown little concern for maintaining any modicum of political decorum. Yet Pence, the Indiana governor and Trump's new political partner, has spoken out against negative campaigning and was put on the Republican ticket in part to provide a temperamental contrast. The Trump-Pence ticket was off to an awkward start, with some Republicans whispering that the businessman was gripped by last-minute doubts about his pick. The campaign hoped for better imagery Wednesday. Pence and his family, along with Trump's adult children, greeted the billionaire as his helicopter landed by Cleveland's picturesque lakefront. Story continues below advertisement "What begins in Cleveland will end in the White House, I'm convinced," Pence declared as they greeted a small group of supporters.

By Federico Fuentes, Caracas September 24, 2009 -- Faced with the growing impact of the global economic crisis, Washington’s intentions to establish seven military bases in Colombia and growing challenges in solving structural problems, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed the need to build a new state. “We have inherited a capitalist state that serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and is still penetrated by interests contrary to the revolution. We need to carry out an internal shake up of the government structures”, Chavez said on September 19 during the second expanded council of ministers meeting, which also involved governors and mayors aligned with the Bolivarian revolution. The meeting was called to discuss a series of new measures the revolutionary government plans to announce in coming weeks to confront some of the challenges it faces on the economic, political and social fronts. In all, 54 new measures have already been approved by his cabinet. Global economic crisis New figures released by the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) showed the national economy contracted by 1% in the first half of the year, including a 2.4% drop in the second quarter. The pro-poor and pro-development economic measures taken during the past 10 years of the Chavez government have ensured that some of the impact of the global economic crisis has been lessened, particularly in comparison with other countries. However, it is becoming clear that Venezuela is being negatively affected by the global downturn. This has also been felt in the decline in manufacturing industry (down 8.5%), among others, and the slight rise in unemployment, from 7.3% in March to 8% in August. While pro-capitalist economists are claiming the economic crisis is coming to an end, Chavez said: “No one can say that we have already passed through the worst of the crisis of capitalism.” He said worst could still lie ahead. Chavez said the insistence of the US government on imposing the same economic model “that generated the crisis” was making the situation worse. Chavez pointed to the military coup in Honduras and the seven new US military bases planned in neighbouring Colombia. He said these represent “the great threat of the empire and its pretension to continue imposing on us a model which they insist on despite the misery it has caused”. In Venezuela, the Washington-backed right-wing opposition continues to ramp up its propaganda campaign, using its control of the private media, against the government and Venezuelan people. In most cases, the propaganda is based on lies and distortions. However, in some cases it takes advantage of weaknesses in the revolution resulting — a result oif bureaucracy, corruption, internal power struggles and attempts to stifle popular participation that pervade the old state structures. Chavez said an “emergency situation” existed in the health sector. He said 2000 local medical clinics that were part of Mission Barrio Adentro, the popular government-run program that provides free health care to the poor, were no longer functioning due to “neglect on the part of everyone”. He warned that “the [US] empire knows that elections will be held next year. They are seeking a majority in the National Assembly. “They will try to weaken us. They will exploit to the maximum our inefficiencies. They are going into the barrios (poor neighbourhoods). They are trying to create movements to cohere support … we know they are capable of anything: buying votes, blackmail, trickery.” Popular support for Chavez remains extremely high. However, there is growing evidence that, after 10 years of the revolution, tiredness and discontent with the lack of advances in critical areas could mean that support for Chavez does not translate into similar support for pro-Chavez candidates in parliamentary elections. The opposition, which boycotted the 2005 National Assembly elections, will go into the poll with control of a number of key governorships and a vote that has risen in recent years, particularly in the larger cities. There are concerns they could win enough seats to sabotage the work of the assembly. New state In a July 25, 2009, National Assembly speech, Chavez raised the alarm about the failure of his government to act on decisive issues, such as health and crime, and the impact it was having on support for the revolution. Some of the social missions created by the government — with the active participation of the people — to tackle problems in the areas of health, education and housing have begun to falter due to neglect and flagging participation. The social missions emerged on the back of two important events. First, the April 2002 defeat of a US-backed military coup through a popular uprising that included important sections of the military. Second, the powerful mobilisation of the workers, communities and the armed forces that defeated a two-month bosses’ lockout (including shutting down the state-owned oil industry by its corrupt management) from December 2002 to January 2003. Defeating the lockout meant the government won control over the state oil company, allowing it to use oil revenue to set up the social missions. By organising the masses to help run the missions, the government was able to bypass the decrepit and corrupt old state structures that had proven incapable of meeting the needs of the people. However, several years down the track, these new emerging structures have begun to be “infected” by the “old state structures”, Chavez warned on August 25. “We cannot allow the new to be infected … its failure will mean the end of the revolution.” That is why “we have to finish off demolishing the old structures of the bourgeois state and create the new structures of the proletarian state”. At the September 19 meeting, Chavez called on the government to revitalise the social missions — this time within a single system with a single fund to ensure the resources reach the missions. Chavez said right now, “there are many entities responsible [for different missions], something which is holding back the process”. “The missions have to be instruments for the acceleration of the creation of the new state”, and therefore must not fall into the hands of “the old bureaucracy”. In order to reinforce Mission Barrio Adentro, more than 1000 Cuban doctors and 213 Venezuelan doctors trained in Cuba, as well as 257 specialists in intensive therapy, endoscopy and other areas, will arrive in Venezuela in October. They will join the almost 30,000-strong team of Cuban doctors, specialists and health technicians already working in Venezuela. Chavez emphasised on September 17 that these plans had to go hand-in-hand with the strengthening of popular power organisations. “The communal councils have to reactivate and commit themselves to this revitalisation ... because the role of the communes and communal councils are vital for consoliding its success.” Communal councils and communes At the cabinet meeting two days later, Chavez said that the communal councils, which group 200-400 families in urban areas and 20-50 in rural areas to solve the problems of local communities, “have to be a cell of a bigger body that is called the commune”. Chavez has constantly referred to the communes as the fundamental building blocs of a new, revolutionary state. Chavez announced the transfer of almost US$57 million for more than 330 projects decided on by local communal councils and communes. As part of the government shake up, Chavez announced the creation of six new vice-presidencies. These positions would each work to improve the coordination of government policy and ministerial action in the areas of social and political issues, the financial and productive economy, territorial development, and defence. A new Council of Revolutionary Ministries has also been formed, involving the six vice-presidents and a permanent secretary. It will involve an executive roundtable — the finance and planning ministers, the first vice president and Chavez — whose aim will be to speed government action by cutting through bureaucratic obstacles. Chavez also requested a law be drafted and presented to the National Assembly to create a Federal Council of Government involving all ministers and governors. “The opposition governors will be able to come”, he said. “As of now we invite the opposition. Instead of recruiting paramilitaries and enacting plans to destabilise the government, come to the Bolivarian Federal Council, where the people govern.” Economic measures Chavez indicated which direction the economic measures will be likely to head when he presented a number of them at the September 19 meeting. These include the creation of a new ministry and the Venezuelan Public Banking Corporation (BCV) to restructure and regulate the banking sector. With the completion of the government buy-out of the Bank of Venezuela, the state now directly controls around 16% of loans and 24% of deposits. Eight public banks, which until now have functioned with autonomous boards of directors and no coordination between them, will come under new banking corporation. Chavez demanded stricter regulation of the private banking sector, and noted this sector “continues, almost in its entirely, to not comply fully with its role of financial intermediary”. He called on governors to present productive projects for the creation of “mixed companies between the national state, the workers and the regional states in order to continue creating a new public sector based on social property”. In line with this proposal, Chavez said the cabinet had decided to create, together with the BCV, a fund to finance and support all initiatives of the new companies of social property. A special plan for employment has also been entrusted to the minister of infrastructure, housing and public works, and the minister of science, technology and medium industry. The National Assembly has announced plans to approve a reform of the labour law by the end of October. Pro-worker changes to be discussed include the reducing the workday, job protection, workers’ councils and banning labour-hire practices.

Abstract In 2005, as the result of a World Trade Organization mandate, India implemented a patent reform for pharmaceuticals that was intended to comply with the 1995 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Exploiting variation in the timing of patent decisions, we estimate that a molecule receiving a patent experienced an average price increase of just 3-6 percent, with larger increases for more recently developed molecules and for those produced by just one firm when the patent system began. Our results also show little impact on quantities sold or on the number of pharmaceutical firms operating in the market. (JEL K33, L11, L13, L65, O14, O34, O38) Citation Duggan, Mark, Craig Garthwaite, and Aparajita Goyal. 2016. "The Market Impacts of Pharmaceutical Product Patents in Developing Countries: Evidence from India." American Economic Review , 106 (1): 99-135 . DOI: 10.1257/aer.20141301 Choose Format: BibTeX EndNote Refer/BibIX RIS Tab-Delimited

Bernstein writes: "A lot of people argue that there's a tradeoff between growth and inequality - that you can have faster growth but you might have to take more inequality along with it." Economist Joseph Stiglitz. (photo: Roosevelt Institute) Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality By Jared Bernstein, Rolling Stone oe Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate economist, is uniquely qualified to explain how the economy really works, or more precisely, how and why it's working far better for the top 1 percent than the bottom 99 percent. That's the topic of his new book The Price of Inequality. The book is a model of clarity, but that's just one of its virtues. Another is how Stiglitz frames the problem; he doesn't start from a place of "vast inequality is a fact of life in our free-market system, and that's as it should be." He starts from a much more interesting, and frankly, humane place: "This is happening. Why? Is it a good thing? Is it the market functioning smoothly or is someone taking advantage of their power? Above all: Is society better or worse off? I recently asked Joe a few questions about his new book. In this book you develop an elaborate set of arguments about how the high levels of economic inequality we're seeing hurt our economy, our institutions, and our politics. Let's start with the economy. A lot of people argue that there's a tradeoff between growth and inequality - that you can have faster growth but you might have to take more inequality along with it. It's well documented that countries that are more unequal don't do as well, don't grow as well and they are less stable. It's not an accident that in the period right before the Great Depression, our inequality reached another peak just like it did in the years before the Great Recession. Inequality destroys growth. Not to mention opportunity. That's right. America has become the country with the least equality of opportunity of any of the advanced industrial countries. That means children that are born of poor parents or poorly educated parents are not living up to their opportunities. We're wasting our most valuable asset – our human resources. And that goes beyond economics to our sense of who we are as a country. That's right. In the book I try to show how economic inequality puts our democracy in peril by undermining our basic principles of one person, one vote; and how our notion of America as a land of opportunity has been undermined and our principle of justice for all has been perverted into justice for those who can afford it. If you go through almost every social and important political economic debate, it's being shaped by the massive inequality we're facing today. Talk more about the political impact. How do you see inequality undermining our democracy? High levels of economic inequality lead to imbalances in political power as those at the top use their economic weight to shape our politics in ways that give them more economic power. If you look at so many of the outcomes in our political process, no one can say that they reflect the interests of most Americans. Most Americans don't think speculators should be taxed at a fraction of people that work for a living; or that banks should be allowed to engage in predatory lending or abusive credit card practices; or that drug companies be allowed to get special benefits out of the government in the form of overpayments; or that mining companies should be able to get natural resources at below competitive prices. At the top [of the income scale], a lot of the inequality arises out of efforts that people take to get a larger share of the pie rather than to increase the size of the pie. As you know, economists call it "rent seeking." What they're doing is moving money from the bottom to the top. But they're not creating wealth; they're just shifting wealth around. And the people who have been exploited are not better off; in fact, they're worse off. All of which breeds disillusionment. Right. I was really struck that in the 2010 election only about 20 percent of young people bothered to vote. And that was an indication that in their mind politics doesn't matter. No matter who won, the outcome was going to be determined by the people at the top, and so why bother to vote? Even worse, disillusionment only reinforces the power of money. Why don't more people recognize these inequities? One of the reasons, I suggest in the book, is that our views on these issues have really been shaped. Corporations learned how to sell almost anything. An example that makes that clear is how the cigarette companies sold so many Americans on the idea that there was no credible evidence that cigarette smoking was bad for your health. I'm surprised they didn't try to convince us that cancer wasn't bad for your health! If you can sell a toxic product like cigarettes, you can sell pretty much any idea, good or bad. Today, those at the top have the tools, the resources, and the incentives to try to shape the public debate in ways that serve their interests. There are so many instances of this kind where they tried to deny the diagnosis of the problem and divert us from the right solutions. Can you give an example? Some people say we have this inequality because some people have been contributing much more to our society, and so it's fair that they get more. But then you look at the people who are at the top and you realize they're not the people who have transformed our economy, our society. They're not the inventers of the lasers the transistors, the computer, the discoverers of DNA. They're the bankers that exploited the poor, the CEOs who took advantage of the deficiencies of our corporate governing structure to a larger and larger share of the corporate revenues without increasing the productivity and performance of the companies or our economy as a whole. I was struck by the fact that all of the Republican candidates for President had as one of their primary platform positions to repeal Dodd-Frank. It's going back to 2007 to the kind of environment that created the crisis to me is amazing. I understand the criticism of Dodd-Frank that it didn't go far enough. That's not where they're coming from. They want to recreate the circumstances that allow for bubbles, exploited predatory lending, abusive credit card practices. How anybody can say after those experiences that that's what make an economy good, strong, and that's an economy that will benefit most citizens, I find incredible! How do you explain it? Ideology. This is economics being used to pursue a political agenda. I feel very intensely about that, because my own work over 30 years ago showed that whenever there's "asymmetric information," which just means some people know something others don't, whenever there were incomplete risk markets which there always are, markets are not in general efficient, and there is an important role for government regulation, government providing goods like basic research or support of the internet, and that kind of thing. But the ideology totally ignores this. Let's talk for a second about current events. So much economic policy today both here and especially in Europe, seems like medieval medicine: bleed the patient, and when she gets worse, add more leeches. In other words, "austerity." Let me put it very forcefully: No large economy has ever recovered from an economic downturn through austerity. It's not going to happen in the United States and it's not going to happen in Europe. The book ends on a hopeful note. You say the way out of this unsustainable inequality is "self-interest, properly understood." What do you mean by that? It's basically the realization that unless the country does well together, even the 1% won't do well. We've put a lot of money at the top, and the people in the middle, let alone the bottom, have done very badly. So let's focus on what makes our society as a whole work well. What would you include in that category? Education, investments in technology, infrastructure; and you have to start looking at our legal framework: anti-trust, corporate governance, financial regulations, tax laws that are riddled with loopholes that distort our economy - all these have to be changed to try to make our society and our economy work for all Americans, not just the top. But what are the chances of getting any of it done? When you have a highly divided society, it's hard to come together to make investments in the common good. One of two things - or both - can happen: One, the 1 percent will realize that the direction we're going is not even in their own self interest, and, two, the 99 percent realize that they've been sold a bill of goods. And I hope my book will make it clear that we have reached a level of inequality that is really intolerable and that we are all paying that price. And there really are simple remedies that we could implement if we only had the political will. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, has pioneered pathbreaking theories in the fields of economic information, taxation, development, trade, and technical change. He is currently a professor at Columbia University, and is the author of "The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future."

This debate is about more than papayas. It’s about how we assess the world. Photo by Efired/Shutterstock It’s gut-check time for the anti-GMO movement. In the past couple of years, some of the country’s best science journalists—Amy Harmon, Nathanael Johnson, Keith Kloor, Michael Specter, and others—have shredded many of the movement’s claims and arguments. Three weeks ago Slate poked more holes in the case for banning or labeling genetically engineered food. Some GMO critics, to their credit, seem open to reforming the movement. Gary Hirshberg, the chairman of Just Label It, has been pounded by GMO advocates for unscientific statements. But in his latest essay, Hirshberg shows tentative signs of turning away from allegations that GMOs per se are dangerous. He’s trying to refocus the debate on transparency, herbicidal applications, and long-term monitoring. Others are clinging to the same old discredited attacks on GMO safety. Chief among them is Claire Robinson, an editor at GMWatch and researcher for Earth Open Source. Two years ago, when Johnson investigated issues on both sides of the GMO debate for a series in Grist, Robinson accused him of parroting industry spin. Now Robinson has written a three-part series leveling a similar charge at Slate. Her arguments fail, but they do so in an instructive way. By exploring these common anti-GMO errors, you can learn a lot about how to think critically, and not just about GMOs. Here are some of the lessons. No. 1: Don’t rely on authority. Robinson says you shouldn’t settle for vague assurances from scientific organizations. I agree. That’s why I drilled down into four case studies to look at specific evidence. The evidence, not the assurances, is what debunks the arguments against these GMOs. So when Robinson tries to drown out that evidence with her own appeals to authority, citing bogus “science-related organizations” such as the American Academy of Environmental Medicine—a quack group dressed up as an association of scholarly referees—don’t fall for the act. No. 2: Beware of generalizations. Robinson quotes a statement from the World Health Organization: “Different GM organisms include different genes inserted in different ways. This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.” She portrays this as an argument for regulating GMOs more strictly than non-GMOs. She’s wrong. The statement means exactly what it says: Instead of segregating food into clumsy, overbroad categories, each product should be assessed on its own merits. That’s the problem with GMO labeling: It’s unwarranted segregation. No. 3: Read the fine print. To scare you about glyphosate, an herbicide that is used in tandem with some genetically engineered crops, Robinson displays a headline from Nature: “Widely used herbicide linked to cancer.” She puts the headline in a graphic, so you can’t click through to read the article. If you look up the article, you’ll find caveats: The risk is unquantified, and according to an expert quoted in the story, “the evidence cited here appears a bit thin.” The article also debunks a claim from Monsanto, which has implied, misleadingly, that glyphosate has been put in the same possible-carcinogen category as coffee and cellphones. Don’t trust the corporate spin. Don’t trust the anti-corporate spin, either. No. 4: Respect evidence. Robinson says you can’t trust me because I’ve “claimed that drones cut down on civilian casualties.” Guilty as charged. Here’s my evidence that the drones claim is true. You may interpret it differently. But the important thing is that I’ve put facts on the table so we can debate them and test our assumptions against data. If you follow Robinson’s approach—ridiculing propositions as absurd a priori—you’ll learn nothing. No. 5: Keep an open mind. Robinson points out that I initially favored the Iraq war, later regretted it, and eventually wrote about lessons I learned from my mistake. She says this shows I have “a history of bad judgment calls,” and therefore you shouldn’t trust me. She has it backward. The people you shouldn’t trust are those who reject new information. When events or experiments don’t turn out as you expected, you have to rethink your assumptions. Otherwise you end up clinging to dead dogmas. No. 6: Scrutinize everything. In the Slate article, I accused GMO critics of selective scrutiny: playing up the risks of GMOs while playing down the risks of non-GMO alternatives. One example was a papaya engineered with a gene from a virus. The papaya has been portrayed as dangerous, even though people have safely eaten non-GMO papayas loaded with the same virus for decades. Robinson says the comparison is faulty because “the genetically engineered form of the virus is not the same as the natural virus.” She claims that “the GM gene insertion and subsequent tissue culture processes used in genetic engineering create mutations. These can result in biochemical changes in the plant, which in turn could make the plant unexpectedly toxic or allergenic.” But mutations are hardly unique to GMOs. They’re ubiquitous, especially in plant breeding. You’re no more likely to get a toxic mutation from a GMO than from a non-GMO. No. 7: Compare the options. When you’re told something is bad, apply the same standard in judging the alternatives. Glyphosate is a good example. GMO critics say it’s hazardous, but they’re strangely quiet about the herbicides it has replaced. Robinson says the USDA report I cited—which said the adoption of herbicide-tolerant crops “has enabled farmers to substitute glyphosate for more toxic and persistent herbicides”—doesn’t mean glyphosate is “relatively benign.” But that’s exactly what it means. If you look up which pesticides have declined in use as glyphosate has increased, you find many that are far more hazardous. And if you study the World Health Organization’s pesticide safety ratings, you’ll see that glyphosate is in the second-least-hazardous category. Most of the herbicides it has replaced are worse. No. 8: Watch for moving goalposts. The Slate article reported that anti-GMO activists who present themselves as experts (at least one of whom Robinson had previously defended) gave false testimony in Hawaii. They testified that genetically engineered papayas had never been tested for safety in animals. I pointed to a study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, in which the papayas had been fed to rats. Rather than acknowledge that the testimony was false, Robinson simply throws up another claim. She says evidence in the rat study contradicts the “belief that the GM papaya is safe.” This, too, is false: The paper (which is paywalled, sorry) reports “no genotoxicity,” “no biologically significant differences,” and “no biologically adverse effects.” Robinson also says the study was too short. But just in case scientists follow up with a longer study, she’s ready to move the goalposts again: Even a two-year study in cows (“equivalent to around eight years in human terms,” according to Robinson) isn’t enough. The allegations and demands are endless. When you keep reaching for higher standards and new rationalizations, you’re just protecting your beliefs from falsification. No. 9: Beware of political agendas. Robinson dismisses Golden Rice, which is engineered to relieve vitamin A deficiency, as “a poster-child for GM” and “a weapon to attack the biotech industry’s critics.” But when you see everything in political terms, you lose sight of the underlying reality. Rice is food. Vitamin A is a nutrient. If you campaign against a nutritional project because you see it as a weapon for the other side, you are the one playing politics. This kind of us vs. them thinking can corrupt anyone. In the case of GMOs, it has corrupted too many environmentalists and public health advocates. No. 10: Beware of business agendas. Robinson discounts GMO research by anyone who has ever been linked to Monsanto. But she sees no problem with her own connections to the Organic Consumers Association, which represents “several thousand businesses in the natural foods and organic marketplace,” which would benefit from mandatory GMO labeling. Robinson also calls genetically engineered papayas a failure because of “market rejection.” But that’s a circular argument, since anti-GMO groups have been driving much of the market rejection. Monsanto isn’t the only one manipulating the market in this debate. Keep your eyes open, and look both ways. No. 11: Beware of conspiracy theories. Robinson says the Slate article was “political” because it “was published just before the Republican-led House of Representatives considered a complete ban on mandatory GMO labelling.” That’s news to me, since I didn’t even know the House vote was coming. As for Robinson’s suggestion that I’m a rabid Republican and my colleagues are in cahoots with the GOP, I bet that’s pretty funny to those of you who actually read Slate. Don’t be a sucker for conspiracy theories. They make you feel vigilant, when in fact you’re being credulous. No. 12: Check your behavior against your values. When you find yourself rooting for the failure of nutritionally enhanced crops, arguing that it’s OK to try to block these crops as long as you don’t succeed, or dismissing vitamin A deficiency in 15 percent of Filipino toddlers and preschoolers as no big deal, it’s time to ask yourself how you got to this point. No. 13: Think about the big picture. Robinson brushes aside two case studies in the Slate article, noting that genetically engineered papayas are “little grown” and Golden Rice is “unavailable.” But if you ignore the best applications of a technology, and you restrict or ban it because you don’t like other applications, you foreclose its possibilities. Why would you demand a label that puts the rice, the papayas, and safer potatoes in a category with products engineered for herbicide tolerance? Genetic engineering is a technique, not a type of food, and banning it would shut down all the good things it can do. I can’t promise you every GMO is safe, any more than Robinson can promise every non-GMO is safe. I’m not here to sell you an ideology or win a fight. I’m here to encourage you to think critically. If you follow these 13 rules, you’ll avoid the worst mistakes of the anti-GMO movement. And you’ll free yourself from dogmatists, even those who claim to speak for doubt.

Before I left for China a few weeks ago, I said my next post would be on our Rth parallel R package. It’s not quite ready yet, so today I’ll post one of the topics I spoke on last night at the Berkeley R Language Beginners Study Group. Thanks to the group for inviting me, and thanks to Allan Miller for suggesting I address this topic. A couple of years ago, the Julia language was announced, and by releasing some rather unfair timing comparisons, the Julia group offended some in the R community. Later, some in the Python world decided that the right tool for data science ought to be Python (supplemented by NumPy etc.). Claims started appearing on the Web that R’s king-of-the-hill status in data science would soon evaporate, with R being replaced by one of these other languages, if not something else. I chose the lighthearted title of this post as a hint that I am not doctrinaire on this topic. R is great, but if something else comes along that’s better, I’ll welcome it. But the fact is that I don’t see that happening, as I will explain in this post. Actually, I’m a big fan of Python. I’ve been using it (and teaching with it) for years. It’s exceptionally clean and elegant, so much nicer than Perl. And for those who feel that object-orientation is a necessity (I’m not such a person), Python’s OOP structures are again clean and elegant. I’ve got a series of tutorials on the language, if you are seeking a quick, painless introduction. I know less about Julia, but what I’ve seen looks impressive, and the fact that prominent statistician and R expert Doug Bates has embraced it should carry significant weight with anyone. Nevertheless, I don’t believe that Python or Julia will become “the new R” anytime soon, or ever. Here’s why: First, R is written by statisticians, for statisticians. It matters. An Argentinian chef, say, who wants to make Japanese sushi may get all the ingredients right, but likely it just won’t work out quite the same. Similarly, a Pythonista could certainly cook up some code for some statistical procedure by reading a statistics book, but it wouldn’t be quite same. It would likely be missing some things of interest to the practicing statistician. And R is Statistically Correct. For the same reason, I don’t see Python or Julia building up a huge code repository comparable to CRAN. Not only does R have a gigantic head start, but also there is the point that statistics simply is not Python’s or Julia’s central mission; the incentives to get that big in data science just aren’t there, I believe. (This is not to say that CRAN doesn’t need improvement. It needs much better indexing, and maybe even a Yelp-style consumer review facility.) Now, what about the speed issue? As mentioned, the speed comparisons with R (and with other languages) offered by the Julia people were widely regarded as unfair, as they did not take advantage of R’s speedy vectorization features. Let’s take a look at another example that has been presented in the R-vs.-Julia debate. Last year I attended a talk in our Bay Area R Users Group, given by a highly insightful husband/wife team. Their main example was simulation of random walk. In their trial run, Julia was much faster than R. But I objected, because random walk is a sum. Thus one can generate the entire process in R as vector calls, one to generate the steps and then a call to cumsum(), e.g. > rw <- function(nsteps) { + steps <- sample(c(-1,1),nsteps, + replace=TRUE) + cumsum(steps) + } > rw(100) [1] 1 2 3 2 3 2 1 0 1 0 -1 -2 -1 0 1 0 -1 0 -1 -2 -3 -2 -1 0 1 [26] 0 1 2 1 2 3 2 1 2 3 2 1 2 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 4 [51] 3 2 1 0 -1 -2 -1 0 -1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -3 [76] -4 -3 -4 -3 -2 -3 -2 -3 -2 -3 -4 -3 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 -1 0 -1 -2 -1 -2 -1 -2 So for example, in the simulation, at the 76th step we were at position -4. This vectorized R code turned out to be much faster than the Julia code–more than 1000 times faster, in fact, in the case of simulation 1000000 steps. For 100000000 steps, Julia actually is much faster than R, but the point is that the claims made about Julia’s speed advantage are really overblown. For most people, I believe the biggest speed issue is for large data manipulation rather than computation. But recent R packages such as data.table and dplyr take care of that quite efficiently. And for serial computation, Rcpp and its related packages ease C/C++ integration. Note my qualifier “serial” in that last sentence. For real speed, parallel computation is essential. And I would argue that here R dominates Python and Julia, at least at present. Python supports threading, the basis of multicore computation. But its type of threading is not actually parallel; only one thread/core can be active at a time. This has been the subject of huge controversy over the years, so Guido Van Rossum, inventor of the language, added a multiprocessing module. But it’s rather clunky to use, and my experience with it has not been good. My impression of Julia’s parallel computation facilities so far, admittedly limited, is similar. R, by contrast, features a rich variety of packages available for parallel computing. (Again, I’ll discuss Rth in my next post.) True, there is also some of that for Python, e.g. interfaces of Python to MPI. But I believe it is fair to say that for parallel computing, R beats Python and Julia. Finally, in our Bay Area R meeting last week, one speaker made the audacious statement, “R is not a full programming language.” Says who?! As I mentioned earlier, I’m a longtime Python fan, but these days I even do all my non-stat coding in R, for apps that I would have used Python for in the past. For example, over the years I had developed a number of Python scripts to automate the administration of the classes I teach. But last year, when I wanted to make some modifications to them, I decided to rewrite them in R from scratch, so as to make future modifications easier for me. Every language has its stellar points. I’m told, for example, that for those who do a lot of text processing, Python’s regular expression facilities are more extensive than R’s. The use of one of the R-Python bridge packages may be useful here, and indeed interlanguage connections may be come more common as time goes on. But in my view, it’s very unlikely that Python or Julia will become more popular than R among data scientists. So, take THAT, Python and Julia! 🙂 Advertisements

Identity Alaska, a nonprofit LGBT advocacy group, turns 40 years old in 2017. Identity organizes Anchorage's Pride Festival, which is capped off each year with the equality parade, an event that has grown from a handful of people in the late 1970s to over 10,000 participants in 2016. "Forty years ago LGBT Alaskans marched down the street with bags over their heads," said Anchorage Assembly member Christopher Constant. "Today we marched with two openly gay elected officials as the grand marshals." Constant and fellow assembly member Felix Rivera were elected in early 2016, becoming Anchorage's first openly gay elected officials. "This is bigger than the parade," said Constant. "This whole week has been an adventure. All week I've been talking to people, and they are scared. They're scared about what's going to happen to their health care, scared about the state budget. So it's been nice to be a ray of light, and to report that we are making progress. And to be the evidence of progress."

The Government has rejected a proposed financial offer by David Bain's legal team to settle his compensation claim for wrongful imprisonment. Mr Bain was found not guilty at a retrial last year of the 1994 murder of his parents and three siblings in Dunedin after spending 13 years in prison. Mr Bain is seeking legal aid to fight his compensation claim and his lawyer Michael Reed QC said that if they offer had been accepted it could have save the taxpayer up to $10 million, The New Zealand Herald reported today. "We have offered a short cut, but that has been rejected," Mr Reed said. "The short cut is that we talk to the Government about a negotiated settlement, because we are concerned that the cost of proving David's innocence - which we are quite confident we can do - is going to be much greater than the amount of any compensation we would be claiming." Mr Reed said that Justice Minister Simon Power had informed the Bain camp that it had to prove "on the balance of probabilities" Mr Bain was innocent. "This is going to involve a huge case, which in our estimation may end up costing everyone about $10 million, with an overseas judge to be appointed," Mr Reed said. He would not discuss how much compensation would be sought, but it is expected to be more than $1 million. The compensation bid would involve "presumably, recalling about a couple of hundred witnesses and experts from all around the world", Mr Reed said. "Which seems not an economic thing to do, bearing in mind the state of the economy generally. "In the public interest, I would have thought it would be better to negotiate with David, to give him some money and to allow him to get on with his life. As it is, he's in limbo." Mr Bain's lawyers also plan to pursue an inheritance from Mr Bain's parents which went to other family members when Mr Bain was convicted of the five murders in 1995.

Here is some news: I occasionally get asked if there is a way to get my comic in print, and after I discontinued the Lulu volume there wasn't. However, if you missed out before, there is no need to worry, as Gunnerkrigg Court is being published as a 300 page hardback book by Archaia Studio press. Here is a little announcement about it on Newsarama. Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation will contain the first 14 chapters up until the end of the meeting with Coyote, will be in full colour, and is scheduled to come out in May. What's more, despite this version being more than twice the length of the old book, and printed professionally, it should be about the same price ($25). That's a lot of comic for your buck right there. I'll post more news as I have it.

Sometimes we run into situations that remind us that the rest of the world just hasn’t quite caught up with electronic document management yet. We know from Freedom of Information Act requests that governments have sometimes been guilty of overcharging for access to public records. We were treated to a dilly of a case recently courtesy of the New York Times, which posted a dramatic reading of a deposition for an Ohio Supreme Court case regarding access to government records. The video is well worth watching if you have six minutes to spare, but here’s a summary of the case: In 2010, the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s Office made a change to its pricing policy for copies of county records, such as real estate title documents. Instead of the public being able to purchase digital copies of the records for $50 per CD, the Recorder’s Office announced that requestors would have to pay $2 per page for printed-out, hard copies of the documents. Digital copies would no longer be made available. All of these documents, it should be noted, were being stored digitally by the Recorder’s Office. To justify this price, the Recorder’s Office claimed that the digitally stored versions of the documents were not legally considered public records—if they were, by law, they would need to be provided to the public “at cost.” Several companies that used these records in their business sued the Recorder’s Office to continue to have access to the files on CD, at the actual cost of copying the digital documents to a CD. While the New York Times’ dramatic reading isn’t the first time this case has gotten media attention, it did boast someone identifying himself as David Marburger, the plaintiff’s attorney in the case, providing his perspective on the pricing proposal. Writing in the New York Times comments section, “Marburger” notes that at $2 for every paper page represented digitally on a CD, a person wanting copies of 20 CDs’ worth of records would have to pay the Recorder’s Office $208,000 (as compared to $1,000 at the previous rate of $50 per CD). Just taking depositions for the case took two years and required more than 600 pages of depositions. However, it never went to trial. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Recorder’s Office needed to make the files available on CD—for $1 per CD. This meant that for 20 CDs’ worth of records, the County Recorder’s office went from charging $1,000 to wanting to charge $208,000 to being ordered by the court to charge…$20. In a 7-0 decision on February 29, 2012, wrote the Court’s public information office, the court denied the claim that the real estate title documents were not public records. Having stipulated that, the court went on to reject the argument that the office was authorized to charge a fee of $2 per page for copies of the documents—since they were, in fact, public records, they needed to be provided at cost, the court ruled. The plaintiffs claimed that making the copies on a CD would cost only about a dollar, and the county office didn’t provide any evidence contrary to that, so the court agreed with the plaintiffs and ruled that the office could charge $1 per CD. (Ironically, by the time the case was settled, the office had already changed its public records policy, and no longer included the $2 per page charge.) Especially in these days of rising expenses and looking to find a way to keep the IT department from being a cost center, it’s tempting to look for ways to recoup costs. Unfortunately, take it too far, and the backlash can be quite dramatic.

Woman, 32, Arrested For Distributing Naked Photos Of Her Ex-Husband Share Tweet Meet Eva Gaitan. The 32-year-old Floridian is jailed on a stalking charge after she allegedly distributed naked photos of her ex-husband to the man’s employer and parents. Gaitan (pictured at right) was arrested yesterday on the misdemeanor charge at the Palm Harbor home she once shared with her ex-spouse. The couple's marriage was dissolved in February, according to court records. Police allege that Gaitan “mailed a CD of the nude images to her ex-husband’s parents” and hand delivered “packages of CDs” to her former husband’s workplace. The CDs were labeled “Requires Immediate Attention.” Gaitan, investigators charge, obtained the explicit photos “from her ex-husband’s flash drive.” In a post-arrest interview, Gaitan reportedly confessed to “burning the images to discs” and then distributing the CDs. Gaitan, who has pleaded not guilty, is being held in the Pinellas County jail in lieu of $1000 bond. A judge has ordered her to have no contact with her ex-husband.

animals mate so that they can procreate and that's it. Anyone who has actually spent time around animals other than cats or dogs knows this is not true. Monkeys, horses, and dolphins all masturbate, and there are many species of animals that do have sex for reasons other than procreating. It's possible to raise and kill an animal humanely True, but the vast majority of food animals are not kept humanely. Surely people are outraged over this, but I rarely see a level of outrage comparable to certain posters in this thread over having sex with them. And it's not just killing and eating them which animals do not consent to. Animals do not consent to a great number of things, such as being kept in kennels, having their ears and tails docked, or being trained for risky jobs and dying in the line of duty (bomb dogs, police dogs etc) when the animal has absolutely no comprehension of the danger they are being put into for the benefit of humans. It's not possible to have sex with an animal humanely Can you explain further? Male dogs and horses will willingly mount females outside of their species, and I'm not just talking about humans either. How does it harm the animal? Furthermore I'd be interested to know if you or anyone else thinks jacking off a horse into an artificial vagina is rape? Did the horse consent to that?

Square Enix launches ‘Murdered’ teaser site Square Enix teasing new PS3, Xbox 60, and PC game. Update: This is Murdered: Soul Suspect. Find more details here. Original Story: Square Enix is teasing something. The publisher sent out e-mails today titled “What is the hardest case to solve?”, which contains the following image: The e-mail comes from Square Enix Members, with a reply-to e-mail is listed as [email protected] Visit Murdered.com, and you’ll see the image atop this story, a Twitter link, and a “Legals” section. Hover your mouse over the latter, and you’ll see that whatever this is, it’s for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. Script found within the site’s source code suggest its a new title from Eidos Interactive. That said, it’s possible this is Eidos Montreal’s new title, which our friends at Siliconera detailed back in May. A single update on the Twitter account also shares the following image: Stay tuned.

The Republican Leadership Conference has announced their speakers for this weekend's conference in New Orleans, LA and the list includes reality television star Phil Robertson and Donald Trump. Phil Robertson, patriarch of the Robertson family and star of the series “Duck Dynasty,” will address the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference, Thursday May 29th at 6pm. Also speaking on Thursday evening are RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sen. Ron Johnson and Ben Sasse. Other Speakers at the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference include Governor Rick Perry, Governor Phil Bryant, US Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, & David Vitter; Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann and Allen West! The Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans has become one of the premier political events in the country. Robertson was a target of gay rights activists in December 2013 after comments regarding homosexual behavior were published in an interview with GQ magazine. At the time, A & E, the network his show Duck Dynasty appears on, suspended him. After an intense and vocal response from the show's loyal fans, and an overwhelming petition drive here at Truth Revolt, he was reinstated.

More scary stuff from the US Treasury which has resumed living auction to auction, even as it has plundered over $80 billion in G and CSRD retirement fund money to provide cap under the debt ceiling, a number which will eventually rise to $270 billion by August 2nd at which time all bets are off unless the politicos in DC finally relent with their soap opera and allow the inevitable $2 trillion debt ceiling hike (which probably won't happen. Instead Congress will start voting on incremental $200 billion debt ceiling hikes month to month in order to keep the public glued to their TV in a demonstration of just how fiscally prudent Congress is). In the meantime, here's the math: in the first 8 days of the month of June, the Treasury has seen its cash balance decline from $112.6 billion to $23.5 billion: a solid burn rate of $90 billion in just over a week. But lest readers think that this is due to paying down debt, it isn't: total US debt was flat (at the ceiling), while intragovernmental holdings declined by $20 billion to accomodate another $20 billion in marketable debt (see the plunder of retirement accounts discussed above). So how does one reconcile this data? Simple - in June the Treasury has collected $44 billion in withheld individual income taxes (and a whopping $400 million in corporate tax), while spending double that, or $89 billion. Fiscal prudence? Rhetorical. June Cash: June Debt:

Automating the Empire with the Death Star: getting Domain Admin with a push of a button Ever since Empire and BloodHound, pentesting Active Directory has become pretty straight forward for 95% of the environments I get dropped in. I find myself doing the same things over and over again, and when that happens it's time to automate! After all a 'fire and forget' script that automatically gets Domain Admin has always been the dream right? Luckily for me a lot of other awesome people (see the Shout Outs section below) did all the hard stuff already. Additionally, Empire introduced a RESTful API a while ago making the creation of third-party scripts that interact with it a breeze. Before I continue, I'll take this opportunity for a rant: getting Domain Admin should NOT be the sole scope of your pentest and if it is you are doing it wrong. You should be focusing on post-exploitation, trying to find sensitive PII, documents etc.. anything that can clearly demonstrate to 'management' how much it could have impacted the organization if it were a real world compromise. However, having Domain Admin access does make life easier, provides additional value to the client and tends to make an impression on the Blue Team. Project goals and implementation Originally, I wanted something that could just take BloodHounds output, parse it, feed it to Empire and make it follow the 'chain'. However, BloodHound does not take into account (at least to my knowledge) paths that could be achieved using domain privilege escalations such as GPP Passwords in SYSVOL (I personally find that one an almost every engagement). So I wanted a more 'active' version of BloodHound with 'worm like' behavior. Additionally, Empire has most of the core functionality of BloodHound covered between all of it's modules and anything that BloodHound does functionality wise that Empire currently does not have a module for could be fairly easily implemented with one (e.g. the ACL attack path update, which is insanely awesome by the way) I decided to just stick with Empire and automate everything using it's RESTful API. This would also give me the freedom to parse a module's output as I see fit and have more control over the overall logic and user feedback. What's it doing under the hood? The following flow graph details pretty well (I think) what DeathStar does better than I could ever explain in a blog post. If you've pentested Active Directory recently, you should be familiar with pretty much everything in that graph. If not, feel free to hit me up and I'll be glad to answer any questions. Setting Up Currently, for Death Star to work you're going to have to install my fork of Empire until this pull request gets merged and the changes get pushed to master. The fork contains some API and back-end database fixes for scripts that interact with the RESTful API. Edit 08/28/2017 - Empire 2.1 was released, changes were merged so you can now use the main Empire repo with DeathStar :) Clone Empire, install it, then run the following: python empire --rest --username username --password password That will start Empire's console and RESTful API server. To get DeathStar up and running: git clone https://github.com/byt3bl33d3r/DeathStar # Death Star is written in Python 3 pip3 install -r requirements.txt # Supply the username and password you started Empire's RESTful API with ./DeathStar.py -u username -p password If all goes well Death Star will create a http listener and you should see a 'Polling for Agents' status: this means you're authenticated to Empire's RESTful API and DeathStar is waiting for that first Agent. All you need now is an Agent on a domain joined machine, how you do that is beyond the scope of this blog post. I'd recommend using CrackMapExec but I'm biased. What does it look like in action? Once you get that first Agent, DeathStar will take over and the magic will start. Here are a couple of videos of DeathStar obtaining Domain Admin in two different scenarios. In the first video, it elevates Domain privileges using the GPP Passwords in SYSVOL vulnerability, spreads laterally to the machines the GPO is applied to using the decrypted credentials and eventually lands on a machine with a Domain Admin logged in. It then enumerates running processes and PSInject's into a process (explorer.exe by default) running under the Domain Admin account giving us an Agent running under that security context: In the second video, it actually obtains the Domain Admin's credentials using Mimikatz and abusing local admin relationships: One thing that I'd like to point out: although these two videos take advantage of credentials in one way or another it is possible for DeathStar to obtain Domain Admin rights simply by using a combination of local admin relationships and PSInject without ever using a set of credentials. Stuff that I'd like to see added There is so much more that could be done with DeathStar: more domain privilege escalation techniques could be added, more lateral movement methods, the logic could be fine tuned a bit more, we could do some post-exploitation and SPN shenanigans etc.. The current release is definitely a rough first draft. The game changer would be SMB Named Pipe pivoting. Once that's in Empire this will truly 'walk and talk' like a worm. Conclusion DeathStar demonstrates that automating obtaining Domain Admin rights in an Active Directory environment is a clear possibility using existing open-source toolsets. I expect to see many more tools that do something like this in the near future (I personally know two people who are working on their own versions/implementations which is awesome, and I encourage more people to do so) One final point I'd like everyone to reflect on: I put this together in 3-4 days. Imagine what a bunch of much more smarter people than me could do/have already done with more time and resources (cough cough nation states cough cough). That's something that I think is particularly interesting. Shout outs None of this could be possible without the amazing research and hard work of these people (you seriously should be following them everywhere), and I'd like to personally thank them for their constant support and encouragement :)

Over the past two years, London producer Jack Dixon has quietly amassed a rather impressive discography, dropping releases—both solo and collaborative—on labels such as Brownswood, Silverback, ManMakeMusic, and, most recently, R&S offshoot Apollo, which just put out his You Won't Let Me EP. But even with a string of quality releases to his name, it's sometimes easy to forget Dixon amongst the ever-swelling ranks of producers turning out bass music, or whatever genre tag is being applied at the moment. Perhaps it's due to the understated nature of his productions, which offer a polished, techno-infused take on UK rhythms. Well-suited for melancholy mornings and late-night comedowns, Dixon's tunes aren't anthems, nor are they meant to be. As admirers of his songcraft, we figured that it might be best to give Dixon a chance to showcase his talents outside of the club, which is why he's been invited to deliver the latest chapter of the XLR8R podcast series. As one might expect, it's a low-key affair, albeit never a sleepy one, as Dixon tastefully weaves together an hour's worth of nuanced house and techno selections. The blends are long and the mix never comes close to losing its composure, yet Dixon's podcast still carries enough weight to edge its way into our subconscious. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website 01 Eric D. Clark and Joel Alter "Rules Of Love (DJ Qu Remix)" (Bass Culture) 02 DPlay "Klick Klack" (Mild Pitch) 03 Kaitaro "Little Helper 324" (Little Helpers) 04 Smallpeople "Black Ice" (Smallville) 05 Fog "Dulcet Cynosure" (Apparel) 06 Jack Dixon "Black Paint" (Apollo) 07 Jack Dixon "Lose Myself (Dauwd Remix)" (Skint) 08 Sirenize "Everybody" (Bedrock) 09 Jack Dixon "The Walls" 10 Nail "(I Don't Wanna) Hurt U" (Classic) 11 Pawas "Who Is In" (Night Drive) 12 Einzelkind "Limelight" (Oslo) 13 Cherry "Lost Days (Orient Remix)" (Troplott) 14 Kassian Troyer "The Afternoon Grid" (Dial) Download MP3 Download M4A (iTunes enhanced) Subscribe to Podcast (RSS) XLR8R_Podcast_Jack_Dixon_2012_05_15

One might say that Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulThe Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times The 10 GOP senators who may break with Trump on emergency MORE (R-Ky.) was for the hate politics of the far right before he was against it. One day, with a smile, Paul gives a speech calling on Republicans to be positive, inclusive and offer a happy face to voters. On another day, with a snarl, Paul launches gutter-level attacks against Bill Clinton William (Bill) Jefferson ClintonInviting Kim Jong Un to Washington Howard Schultz must run as a Democrat for chance in 2020 Trump says he never told McCabe his wife was 'a loser' MORE, the enormously popular former Democratic president. ADVERTISEMENT These are the two faces of Paul. Voters aren't buying it. In my latest column about Bill Clinton's rescue ride for Democrats in the 2014 midterms, I noted the great appeal of the widely liked and admired former president. And I warned Paul that his low-blow attacks on Clinton are a suicidal formula that will lead to another Republican defeat. Perhaps Paul read my column. He is now saying that Republicans need to be more positive. But he has not retracted his discredited smears against Clinton. The Republican disease is that certain spinmeisters convince politicians like Paul that they have to hate liberal Democrats to be nominated, while other spinmeisters convince politicians like Paul that they have to be positive to avoid being slaughtered by Democrats like the Clintons in general elections. Hence, the two faces of Rand Paul. There is one thing we can all agree on. In polls galore, Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE would defeat every potential Republican opponent in 2016 by landslide margins. Based on every poll I know of, Clinton looks like Babe Ruth and Paul looks like the little league for the 2016 race. Against Clinton, voters don't like either of the two faces of Paul. The net impact of the Benghazi attacks against Clinton: zero. The net impact of ObamaCare attacks against Clinton: zero. The net impact of Paul's cheap shots against Bill Clinton: great for the Clintons and disastrous for Paul. My advice to Paul: He should lose one of his two faces. As Ted Nugent should apologize to Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaWith low birth rate, America needs future migrants 4 ways Hillary looms over the 2020 race Obama goes viral after sporting black bomber jacket with '44' on sleeve at basketball game MORE, Rand Paul should apologize to Bill Clinton. Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net.

About There are many things in life that... just plain suck. Someone cuts you off in traffic, the garbage bag breaks, you spill coffee on your junk in the car or someone at work eats your lunch that you clearly labeled before placing in the fridge (that jerk). I have found writing angry haikus to be a great way to deal with these things. Sometimes I even doodle the events. I have collected quite a few of these angry haikus over the past year. I have decided I want to share them with you so I am publishing a book. The book is a 5x7 96 page full color semi-gloss paperback. Every haiku is handwritten and scanned to be digitally placed in the book. EVERYONE GETS FREE SHIPPING! Here is one spread from the book so you know what you are getting.

It’s politics when a candidate disparages “the media.” But it’s potentially dangerous when the commander in chief tells U.S. troops not to trust the reporters who cover them. If you’re a soldier — say, an elite U.S. special operator at U.S. Central Command headquarters, maybe with some battle buddies from U.S. Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command — answer me this: When your commanding general tells you that the reporters covering your work are important and he makes a public effort to engage, educate, bring them along to war zones and build trust with the press corps, but your commander-in-chief says those same reporters are “dishonest,” and accuses them of purposefully ignoring terrorism (and by extension ignoring your hard, life-sacrificing work to fight terrorism) for some wink-and-nod agenda of their own, whom should you believe? The media — that’s me, hi — is accustomed to being a punching bag for politicians. Most of us wear their complaints like combat badges. One of my earliest mentors, Mark Feldstein, an award-winning former CNN and ABC News reporter who runs the broadcast journalism program at the University of Maryland, has this in the second line of his biography: “On assignment, he was beaten up, subpoenaed, and sued in the US; detained and censored by government authorities in Egypt; and escorted out of the country under armed guard in Haiti.” When Donald Trump talked about the “dishonest media” on the campaign trail, I didn’t speak up much because a) we’re taught that we journalists are not the story, and b) it was just politics. Even by inauguration day, the new president’s quip was just an annoyance. But when the newly minted commander-in-chief said it at CIA headquarters, it began to get worrying. And something changed for good on Monday when Trump traveled to Tampa. For the first time, he stood in front of CENTCOM commander Gen. Joseph Votel and SOCOM commander Gen. Tony Thomas — perhaps the two most important generals in the U.S. military today — and their teams. On camera, Trump praised the forces for fighting secret missions every day, and pledged to give them all the equipment and support they need to turn back the spreading threat of terrorism. Then he said this: “It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported and, in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that.” Wink. Nod. With respect, sir, that’s not true. And I hope the men, women, officers, civilians, and whomever else was in that room don’t believe it. I certainly don’t think Gen. Votel does. The defense/military/national security press corps is in many ways a different breed of journalists, with a different — and I’ll argue, heavier — burden of responsibilities. We cover war. We must inform the public, but we also must be careful not to get anyone killed. And military commanders and grunts alike remind us of that. Last year, special operations leaders bristled that some reporting used names, units, and mission details that revealed identities and other sensitivities putting elite U.S. troops at risk. Gen. Thomas, at a March 2016 press briefing in Tampa the day he took command of SOCOM, said, “I’d offer while our operations are necessarily secret, we are absolutely committed to the accountability we have to the American people and the president of the United States. So there’s a balance there, and certainly the American public have a need to know what we’re doing and that we’re doing it in the right way, and consistent with American values. So we accept that that’s a challenge in terms of information, but as Gen. Votel mentioned, I think where we do have concerns is where it starts to imperil the tactics and techniques that we employ, and more importantly, the people involved. We’ve had a rash of true-name disclosures here recently, which I don’t see serving any purpose other than to put those people in jeopardy.” Neither do I. During that period, sources told me they were angry at the offending reporter and all reporters, and I don’t blame them. At the same press briefing where Thomas and Votel acknowledged the importance of the public’s right to know, I hurt my own case for trust. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford was upset that I asked him a question about then-candidate Trump’s comment that NATO was “obsolete.” Dunford didn’t want to be pitted against his potential future commander in chief, rightfully. I didn’t realize Dunford was unaware I was asking him about Trump. It was a costly miscommunication. The chairman and his staff lodged his complaint, I responded, we talked, and moved on to do our jobs. The U.S. military works with hundreds of reporters from global TV networks to niche magazines and bloggers doing their jobs every day. In our jobs, we interview American and foreign allied troops on their way to die and we talk to their mothers when they return home in caskets. We travel with and talk to the experienced Joint Chiefs and the newest Marines out of boot camp. We fly onto aircraft carriers and into forward operating bases, and then to bespoke-suited NATO meetings of top European defense ministers — often in the same week. Generals, admirals, and service secretaries trust us enough to take us into dangerous places where there are secrecy rules to keep us all safe. They give us briefings and speak to us, often privately, to make sure we are getting the story right or that they are at least getting their version of the story heard. Some of us have been shot at, blown up, and killed, alongside the servicemen and -women we are covering, and some are still going back into the war zones to keep reporting. They have earned the respect and admiration of troops of all ranks. Not everyone is a war reporter, but most of those who report on the military understand the magnitude of our profession and the importance of the people we’re covering. The truth matters, whether we’re trying to understand what went wrong with an operation like the recent Yemen raid, or whether taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely on hundred-billion-dollar F-35 fighters. It matters, whether the topic is why appointed officials decide to deploy American troops into Iraq and Syria, what generals and admirals think of their adversaries in Iran or China, whether they are, in fact, taking care of the troops and their families from the day they enlist to the day they die as veterans, through adequate pay and benefits. This is a serious calling with serious repercussions. Journalists arriving on this beat find it takes a few years of source-building and practice just to get to know the enormous military, much less earn the kind of trust that leads senior leaders to talk to the public through your pen or camera when the news really hits. The door swings both ways. As junior commanders become senior commanders, they learn to interact with reporters, building relationships and even friendships with them. It’s true for base commanders in small towns or division commanders in desert war zones. That’s why there are thousands of U.S. troops who serve in the military as public affairs officers. Veteran reporters have seen all types come up through the ranks. There are the media-friendly ones who “get it” and work with us (or use us) to their benefit and the public’s, and then there are those who come in (understandably) wary of the press and skeptical that any interaction could possibly be to their benefit. Some are just not comfortable with cameras or talking out of line with their civilian leadership, as they’re trained. They (and Trump) inherited Obama’s war, which remains a largely secretive fight using elite special operators, intelligence officers, and private military contractors working an insane operational tempo. What was meant to be a way to keep the U.S. out of a large ground war became a perpetual secret mission. Few Americans know the extent of U.S. military and special operations intervention in that region stretching from Nigeria to Yemen and Syria. Except in this war, YouTube gets a vote. American forces are showing up on social media and foreign press more than they want. The entire war on terrorism is challenging the idea that every SOF warrior is a silent warrior when the mission is right there on TV for all to see, or veteran SEALs write tell-all books or open their mouths. It’s just not reality. Votel and Thomas said they want a better result with minimal risk. So do we. Nobody wants a Geraldo Rivera moment, drawing troops movements in the sand on live TV. Everyone wants to tell a better story. Trump, with one backhanded comment, endangered both the journalists and military leaders trying to build trust with one another. The next time a reporter hops on the back of a V-22 Osprey to a downrange base, what will the Marines on that flight be thinking? The next time a Special Forces soldier ends up in a firefight with a reporter in tow, what will that reporter be thinking? The next time an Abu Ghraib or My Lai incident occurs, will either side find the courage to trust each other to tell the uncomfortable truths that must be told? Trump uses the “dishonest media” line to his advantage well, as a candidate and political party leader. But as commander-in-chief to soldiers from age 18 on up, his words become marching orders. I hope they’ll be taken in context with what some other military leaders have said about the importance of the press to their missions and to democracy. The day after Trump spoke in Tampa, Gen. David Goldfein, chief of staff and top general of the Air Force, met with defense reporters at a regular breakfast roundtable in Washington. The first words out of his mouth were, “Well, first of all, let me just say thanks a lot for not only spending some time with me this morning talking about our Air Force, but also thanks honestly for what each of you do as well every day.” When the New York Times’ Michael Gordon asked the general for his comments on Trump’s “dishonest” line and support from military voters, Goldfein said, “Yes, you know, this is a great opportunity, I think, just to step back and remind ourselves and the American people the oath we take as members of the military, the oath we take and we retake every time we are promoted, to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We actually don’t, by design, pledge support to any particular party or any particular leader.” “So, I won’t comment particularly on the president’s comments, but just that is the way I see my responsibility.” Here’s what two other defense leaders have said about the media: Gen. Martin Dempsey, former Joint Chiefs Chairman, at the National Press Club in 2012, said: “Yours is a profession I respect, just as I know you respect my profession, the profession of arms. I’m sure you would agree that our professions are both built on trust — trust that has to be earned over time through the forging of relationships.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in 2013, at his final briefing as defense secretary, said: “What I wanted to do was to come down and use this opportunity to, first of all, thank you all, all of you that are part of the press corps here and the press in general. Throughout my 50 years in public service, I have always believed — believed very deeply in the role of the press, because I believe deeply in the role of the American people in our democracy. Information is a key to an informed electorate. And while we may or may not agree with every story, in the grand scheme of things, because of the work of the press, I believe the truth always comes out.” But I’ll leave the final word to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who in his final briefing in June 2011, said: “But since this will be my final press conference as secretary of defense, I would actually like to take this opportunity to say a few words to the Pentagon press corps. And don’t worry — it’s all good. These past few weeks have truly been the long goodbye, particularly for the traveling press, so I’ll keep it short. Even though I had held senior jobs in the U.S. government and was president of a major university, before becoming secretary of defense, I had never had sustained a regular on-the-record interaction with the news media. When I first took office, I worried that relations between the Pentagon, the military and the press, while always difficult, were mostly characterized by mutual suspicion and resentment. So I made it a point when speaking to military officers, from cadets to generals, to remind them that a vigorous, inquisitive and even skeptical press was a critically important guarantor of the — of freedom under the Constitution and not to be treated as the enemy. I gained even more of an appreciation for the important accountability role of the press early in my tenure when newspaper reports exposed two glaring bureaucratic shortcomings, in the outpatient treatment of wounded warriors at Walter Reed and resistance to purchasing life-saving MRAPs for troops downrange. Responding to both of these critical issues, which only came to my attention through the media, became my top priority and two of my earliest and most significant management decisions. Over the past four and a half years, I have not always liked what I read, and like anyone else in government, I hate leaks, maybe more than most. But I have great respect for your role as a watchdog on behalf of the American people and as a means for me to learn of problems that the building was not telling me about. I know we don’t always make it easy to do your jobs here. Gaining timely and usable information out of the bureaucracy and their gatekeepers is always a challenge, a challenge that I’ve shared with you on occasion. So thanks again for your professionalism, tough questions and hard work.”

BERLIN — When Sarah Kermer proposed to her girlfriend in March, she knew she was in love, but she did not know when, if ever, Germany would allow them to marry. The answer came early Friday morning, when the lower house of the German Parliament voted to legalize same-sex marriage after a brisk but emotional debate, prompting Ms. Kermer and scores of other gay and lesbian Germans to celebrate in the streets. “I was at work, and I just started crying,” Ms. Kermer, 25, said as she and her fiancée left a spontaneous gathering at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. “I was watching the decision on live-stream, and I cried — a lot. This has all happened just so fast.” The historic decision came with a swiftness rare in Germany’s usually staid politics, just five days after Chancellor Angela Merkel unexpectedly relaxed her party’s opposition to same-sex marriage and allowed lawmakers to vote on the issue according to their consciences.

By latching onto bacteria and detonating at just the right moment, a new drug could help take out the leading cause of bacterial infections in humans worldwide. The drug, a deadly combo of an antibody glued to an antibiotic, specifically seeks and destroys Staphylococcus aureus—even the difficult-to-kill, drug-resistant variety, methicillin-resistant staph (MRSA). In mice infected with MRSA, the dynamic duo fought off the infection better than the standard antibiotic treatment of vancomycin, researchers report in Nature. If the findings hold true in humans, the new superdrug could vastly improve the success rates of MRSA infection treatments, some of which can fail up to 50 percent of the time. That fail rate is likely linked to staph’s stealthy infection strategy, the authors note. Inside a victim, the bacteria battle immune cells that try to gobble them up. Once sucked into the cells, the bacteria normally get digested into un-infectious bits. But some of the bacteria can dodge death and hide out. Instead of a death chamber, the cells become bacterial getaway cars, leaving killer antibiotics in the dust and giving the germs a ride around the circulatory system to uninfected organs and tissues. Standard antibiotic treatments can fight off staph at infection sites. But those cellular stowaways are left unscathed, leaving patients with lingering or recurring infections. The new superdrug, on the other hand, specifically targets those stowaways. The antibody part of the drug tightly binds to acids on staph’s surface. When the bacteria get sucked into an immune cell, the antibody-antibiotic combo drug sticks with it. Once inside, cellular enzymes blast the drug apart, freeing and activating the antibiotic. In this case, the researchers found that a derivative of the common antibiotic rifampicin, called rifalogue, worked best. Bacteria that survive the cells’ digestion attempt ultimately succumb to the newly free rifalogue. In lab tests, more than ten thousand copies of the superdrug could clamp onto a bacterium, towing more than enough rifalogue to deliver a deadly dose inside the cell. In mice, the superdrug was orders of magnitude more powerful at wiping out MRSA than vancomycin or antibody treatments alone. But, for now, there are no guarantees that the superdrug will be that effective in human patients. Researchers point out that the human immune system may produce competing antibodies that bind to staph, possibly elbowing out the superdrug. Still, whether this particular antibody-antibiotic pair is successful in humans may not matter in the long run. Researchers can continue to try new combinations, even reviving antibiotics that failed to make it through the development pipeline. Antibiotics that may be toxic or bad at circulating through the human body on their own could be highly effective when glued to a bacteria-targeting partner. And researchers could make pairings with antibodies that target other infectious microbes, creating a host of other potential new therapies. Nature, 2015. DOI:10.1038/nature16057 (About DOIs). correction: the original version of this piece suggested MRSA treatments fail about half the time. The correct figure is that some treatments can fail up to half the time.

Participants dressed in pink perform cheerleading stunts before taking part in the forming of a giant pink dot at the Speakers' Corner in Hong Lim Park in Singapore June 28, 2014. The annual Pink Dot Sg event promotes an acceptance of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in Singapore, according to organizers. REUTERS/Edgar Su (SINGAPORE - Tags: SOCIETY) Kirsten Han is a Singaporean blogger, journalist and filmmaker. She is also involved in the We Believe in Second Chances campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty. A social media junkie, she tweets at @kixes. The views expressed are her own. Ireland – a largely Catholic country which only decriminalised homosexuality in 1993 and divorce in 1995 – voted resoundingly to amend their constitution and approve same-sex marriage last weekend. They have become the first country in the world to approve gay marriage by popular vote, and at a count of 62 per cent to 38 per cent, no less. This piece of news stood in stark contrast to another development circulating on social media in Singapore: that the Media Development Authority (MDA) had apparently banned from radio and TV a song and music video by Jolin Tsai, presumably because its pro-gay message would encourage a push for same-sex marriage here. It feels a bit as if the MDA has jumped the gun; there *is* no push for same-sex marriage in Singapore, mostly because everyone is still wondering how to shift the supposedly-not-enforced-but-somehow-still-important-to-keep Section 377A, which criminalises sex between men. On top of that, many in the LGBT community find themselves struggling against the fact that some Singaporeans don’t even recognise that discrimination exists. That conservatives exist in every country is beyond doubt; I’m sure there were some fundies praying for the Lord to chuck rain down on gay people in Ireland too. But while we’re riding high on the inspiration generated by Ireland’s stellar example, it’s time to think of how our own country could be so much better for everyone living in it. To not just dwell on hate and fear, but on love. The repeal of 377A would have little to impact on the lives of heterosexual – or even religious – people. It would, however, mean a lot for LGBT people in Singapore, all of whom have parents, siblings, relatives and friends who would in turn be affected. It would be a strong signal that Singapore’s government will no longer be in the vanguard of discrimination against LGBT people, that it will no longer support the symbolic legislation that validates countless forms of bullying, dehumanising language and prejudice. It would be a step towards telling young LGBT persons that they *are* accepted in Singaporean society; that they don’t have to be ashamed of who they are and that they can have a future without stigma and fear in Singapore. It would tell the parents of these LGBT persons that they are not alone, that they don’t have to worry about their children being branded as deviants and criminals. Conservatives aren’t the only ones who care about family; gay people have families too. Love, even familial love, is not exclusive to heterosexuals. The court has rejected the constitutional challenge to 377A, essentially pushing the responsibility back to the legislators. Yet legislators have often pointed to Singapore’s conservatism as a reason for maintaining the status quo. As we see from the MDA’s move, the state is not only unwilling to change, but actively restricting the conversation. Ireland has done something wonderful and historic in this past weekend. Let us Singaporeans not be caught on the wrong side of history; let us not wait for court cases or politicians to bring us the equality that we should have. Make it to Hong Lim Park for Pink Dot. Write to your MP about LGBT rights and the need for anti-discrimination legislation. Talk to your friends about acceptance and diversity. Reach out to LGBT people around you who might need support. Do what you can to create a safe space for them to be who they are and say what they need to say. 377A continues to loom over us all – a symbol of prejudice and discrimination. Yet we cannot simply wait for it to disappear; we as Singaporeans can do our part to start making Singapore a more inclusive place. Today.

"I believe there is a powerful argument that your proposal is simply not retroactive. Taxpayers can avoid the tax completely by repurchasing shares they sold to the United States; the excise tax would be imposed, not on prior bonuses, but on the taxpayer's affirmative post-enactment decision not to repurchase those shares at the same price that the shares were sold to the United States." "Even if the excise tax were... viewed as having retroactive effect, the Supreme Court has generally given a high level of judicial deference to economic legislation and has repeatedly upheld retroactive taxation as constitutional, so long as the legislation is 'supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by rational means...'" [snip] "Your legislative proposal presents a particularly strong case for constitutionality since it has only a modest look-back-period, as was the case in Darusmont, and is arguably a curative measure (with regard to the executive compensation provisions of TARP), as was the case in Carlton. Edward D. Kleinbard Chief of Staff Joint Committee on Taxation

What's the truth about the origin of the term "American Indian"? Schoolchildren have long been taught that Columbus thought he had reached the Indies, and therefore called the inhabitants "Indians." But lately I've been hearing the story that: (a) The Indies weren't even called the Indies at the time, but Hindustan; (b) Columbus didn't call the locals "Indians" but referred to them as "una geste in Dios", meaning "a people in God"; (c) somehow this caused people in Spain to start using the term "Indians"; and (d) Europeans then started using the geographical term "Indies" through back-formation. This explanation sounds like wishful thinking to me, with (c) and (d) particularly hard to swallow. Yet I've seen this stated as fact on some Indian Web sites, and it's doubtless being taught as fact in some schoolrooms. Is it possible to find the truth in this matter? George replies: The best way to determine the truth in cases like this, Steve, is to go to the source–in this case, Columbus’s original letter, through which word of the new lands and their inhabitants was disseminated throughout Europe (see links below). In this letter Columbus repeatedly refers to India and Indians, and says nothing whatever about "a people in God." First, let’s get the supposed phrase right. The Spanish word for people is gente, not geste. Note that the supposed derivation requires Columbus to have made an error in spelling, since "in" in Spanish is en; the word in doesn’t exist in the language. I’ll have more to say on this point later. Second, let’s dispose of the notion that India was called something else at the time. The name, derived from the Indus River (from Sanskrit sindhu, "a river"), goes back to antiquity. Alexander the Great referred to the Indus (Indos), and to the region’s inhabitants as Indikoi, as early as the third century B.C. The name passed from Greek into Latin and thence into other European languages, the earliest citation in English being in 893 A.D. by King Alfred the Great. At the time of Columbus’s voyage, "India" or "the Indias/Indies" was often used to refer to all of south and east Asia. Columbus carried with him a passport from Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, written in Latin and dispatching him "toward the regions of India" (ab partes Indie) on their behalf. Martin Beheim’s globe of 1492, which predated the voyage, clearly labels the region as "Indie." "Hindustan," also derived from the Indus River, is a much later term, not appearing in English until 1665. In any case, in Spanish that name is not Hindustan but Indostan. Third, let’s look at what Columbus actually said. The admiral wrote a letter, in Spanish, detailing his discoveries while off the Azores during his homeward voyage. He forwarded this to the royal court, then at Barcelona, shortly after his storm-driven arrival in Lisbon on March 4, 1493. The original manuscript has not survived, but a printed copy made shortly after its receipt has. In the first paragraph Columbus says "In 33 days I passed from the Canary Islands to the Indies" (en 33 días pasé de las islas de Canaria a las Indias). His first reference to the inhabitants comes in the second paragraph: "To the first [island] which I found I gave the name San Salvador . . . the Indians call it Guanahaní" (A la primera que yo hallé puse nombre San Salvador . . . los Indios la llaman Guanahaní). In all he makes six references to India or the Indies, and four to Indios. Nowhere in the letter does he use a phrase resembling una gente in Dios. He says little of the spiritual beliefs of the people–at one point he states, "These people practice no kind of idolatry; on the contrary they firmly believe that all strength and power, and in fact all good things are in heaven, and that I had come down from thence with these ships and sailors;" at another he says "they are very ready and favorably inclined" to be converted to Christianity–but that’s about it. Shortly after Columbus’s arrival, a copy of the letter reached Rome, where it was translated into Latin, and printed in early May. This version rapidly became a "best seller" throughout western Europe, with no fewer than eleven editions being produced in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands in 1493 alone. Of course, the fact that the news was circulated in Latin and not Spanish by itself pretty much puts paid to the supposed derivation. (The phrases corresponding to the ones quoted above are Tricesimotercio die postquam Gadibus discessi: in mare Indicû perueni and primeque earum: diui Saluatoris nomê imposui . . . Eam vero Indi Guanahanyn vocant.) The only hint of plausibility in the story is that "in" is in fact in in Italian, and so might be the kind of slip one could expect the Genoa-born Columbus to make. However, oddly enough, Columbus almost never wrote in Italian (and then, not more than a phrase or two), writing even to his family and Genoese friends in Spanish. Born poor, he appears to have been virtually illiterate when he left Genoa as a young man, not learning to read and write until he settled in Portugal. According to Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea, "he wrote Castilian with Portuguese spellings, especially in the vowels, which prove he spoke Portuguese before he learned Castilian." And in Portuguese, "in" is em. Actually, the land that Columbus most eagerly sought was not India itself, but "the noble island of Cipangu [Japan] . . . most fertile in gold, pearls, and precious stones." Who knows? If Columbus had managed to convince himself he had actually reached Japan, today Ohioans might well be rooting for the Cleveland Cipangans. For an English translation of Columbus’s letter: www.usm.maine.edu/~maps /columbus/translation.html For the Spanish text: ensayo.rom.uga.edu/antologia/XV/colon/ For the Latin text: www.usm.maine.edu/~ma ps/columbus/transcription.html Send questions to Cecil via cecil@straightdope.com. Related STAFF REPORTS ARE WRITTEN BY THE STRAIGHT DOPE SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD, CECIL'S ONLINE AUXILIARY. THOUGH THE SDSAB DOES ITS BEST, THESE COLUMNS ARE EDITED BY ED ZOTTI, NOT CECIL, SO ACCURACYWISE YOU'D BETTER KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED.

Co-founded by Lochlainn Wilson and Yuka Kojima, the project has a very prominent supporter: Philip Rosedale, who tells me he plans to make his new VR-compatible world High Fidelity compatible with the FOVE. In fact, he believes the eye-tracking technology is so important for the future of VR, it'll become standard in the next generation of VR HMDs: FOVE: The World's First Eye Tracking Virtual Reality Headset , is a new Kickstarter VR project which incorporates eye-tracking technology into a VR head-mounted display (or HMD) to very cool effect -- watch: "Being able to see exactly where someone else is looking is probably the most important missing component of 1:1 communication in a virtual environment, if we have head and upper body motion, facial gestures, and hand movement," as Philip puts it to me. "Eye contact is extremely important and eye movement is a rich form of communication. Having used it, I can attest to the fact that FOVE has demonstrated successful, accurate eye tracking in an HMD. So we can expect that second generation HMD's will have eye tracking built in, and that this will be a big and important advance in 1:1 presence." That sounds right to me. With Philip's first VR world, Second Life, the avatar eye-lock function is an incredibly compelling way to create simulated connectivity between two people. Go here to consider getting in on this Kickstarter. Thanks to Adrian Cutler for the tip! Please share this post: Tweet

Trans-Siberian Orchestra Paul O'Neill OD'd On Prescription Drugs Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Paul O'Neill Died from Prescription Drug Overdose EXCLUSIVE Paul O'Neill -- the founder of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra -- died from a combination of prescription drugs ... TMZ has learned. TMZ obtained a copy of O'Neill's autopsy report, and it says he died of intoxication from a mix of methadone, codeine, diazepam (generic Valium) and doxylamine (an antihistamine). According to the doc, the cause of death is intoxication ... but it also mentions other ailments O'Neill was battling ... such as mild heart disease, hypertension and moderate hardening of the arteries. The medical examiner determined the death to be accidental. When O'Neill died last month, the band released a statement saying he'd died from a "chronic illness." Paul was 61.

ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account Tesco will scrap the sale of 5p bags in three weeks’ time, replacing single use carriers with 10p 'Bags for Life'. The supermarket giant has sold over 700 million carrier bags a year since a 5p charge was introduced in 2015. The fee lowered bag sales by 1.5 billion over two years but Tesco will stop selling them all together from August 28 in favour of reusable versions. The decision comes following a 10-week trial at stores in Aberdeen, Dundee and Norwich. Bag sales dropped by 25 per cent in these stores since the introduction of the scheme, Tesco bosses said. Single use carriers will still be available to online shoppers alongside a bagless delivery option. Profits raised from the 10p Bag for Life will fund community schemes across the UK. Matt Davies, UK and ROI CEO at Tesco, said: “The number of bags being bought by our customers has already reduced dramatically. "Today’s move will help our customers use even fewer bags but ensure that those sold in our stores continue to fund thousands of community projects across the country chosen by customers. "It’s the right thing to do for the environment and for local communities.” Click here for Tesco Direct discount codes