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A four-year old Texas boy found wandering across the border in Mexico this winter finally returned to the United States. Authorities believe his mother traveled from El Paso to Juarez to purposely abandon the child.
Over the weekend, the El Paso Police Department announced that the youngster found in the Mexican state of Chihuahua returned to the United States on Friday night. The four-year-old remained in the custody of social services in Juarez for more than four months.
The police department tweeted they placed the little boy into the care of Child Protective Services (CPS). Since then, though, it appears authorities reunited the child with his father in El Paso.
CAP – 4 year old boy found in Juarez was returned to the United States & CPS Friday evening. dp — EL PASO POLICE DEPT (@EPPOLICE) July 1, 2017
Breitbart Texas reported that Mexican police found the boy wandering alone on the streets of Juarez on February 22. They suspected the child, purportedly named “Luis,” was American because of his command of the English language. Months later the El Paso Police Department identified the four-year-old as a U.S. citizen.
In fact, detectives in the south Texas border city only first learned about the boy in late May when an El Paso police supervisor in the Crimes Against Persons unit attended an Amber Alert seminar in Mexico City and heard about the child’s situation. Subsequently, on June 3, El Paso police issued a media alert about the unidentified boy. His mother, Ruby Esmeralda Gonzalez, 25 viewed photographs of her son on El Paso TV news broadcasts and then contacted police to report her child as a kidnapping victim.
An ensuing police investigation revealed Gonzalez crossed over the U.S.-Mexico border and into the city of Juarez on February 22 where, allegedly, she left her child in a dilapidated and deserted building. Gonzalez then returned to El Paso on the same day.
According to KVIA, a Juarez cab driver actually found the boy who was alone, scared, and hungry. The cabbie contacted local police who then took the child into custody. When investigators examined “Luis,” they noticed bruises on his head, legs, and buttocks.
Current El Paso jail records show that police arrested Gonzales on June 5 on one count of child abandonment with imminent danger and booked her into the El Paso County Detention Facility on a $10,000 bond.
On June 13, law enforcement officials charged her with filing a false report to a peace officer, federal special investigator, or law enforcement employee. This carries a $10,000 bond. On top of that, they charged Gonzalez with injury to a child with the intent of bodily injury which has a $25,000 bond. She remains incarcerated in the county jail.
Reportedly, before releasing “Luis,” Chihuahua police said the unidentified adult male had to take a DNA test in Juarez to prove he was the biological father. Investigators with the Mexican Attorney General’s office, officials from the United States Consulate in Juarez, and CPS authorities worked to bring the boy to home to his father, according to local Juarez newspaper El Diario de Juarez.
Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter. |
Executive summary
This paper reviews the empirical literature on the employment effects of increases in the minimum wage. It organizes the most prominent studies in this literature by their use of two different empirical approaches: studies that match labor markets experiencing a minimum-wage increase with an appropriate comparison labor market, and studies that do not. A review of this literature suggests that:
The studies that compare labor markets experiencing a minimum-wage increase with a carefully chosen comparison labor market tend to find that minimum-wage increases have little or no effect on employment.
The studies that do not match labor markets experiencing a minimum-wage increase with a comparison labor market tend to find that minimum-wage increases reduce employment.
A better understanding of which approach is more rigorous is required to make reliable inferences about the effects of the minimum wage. This paper argues that:
Labor market policy analysts strongly prefer studies that match “treatment” with “comparison” cases in a defensible way over studies that simply include controls and fixed effects in a regression model.
The studies using the most rigorous research designs generally find that minimum-wage increases have little or no effect on employment.
Application of these findings to any particular minimum-wage proposal requires careful consideration of whether the proposal is similar to other minimum-wage policies that have been studied. If a proposal occurs under dramatically different circumstances, the empirical literature on the minimum wage should be invoked with caution.
Introduction
President Harry Truman famously joked that he wanted to hire a one-armed economist because all of his staff economists would resort to “on the one hand… but on the other hand…” formulations when giving policy advice. Truman just wanted a straight answer. Today, policymakers and the public also seem to want a one-armed economist in discussions of the minimum wage. Minimum-wage policy in the United States is made at the federal, state, and local level. The federal government imposes a minimum wage nationally (currently $7.25 an hour for most workers) that Congress can raise. Many states and even local governments set minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum. One group of well-regarded economists contends that increases in the minimum wage reduce employment by raising labor costs, while another group insists the evidence shows that minimum-wage increases do not reduce employment, likely due to factors such as reduced turnover, increased productivity, and small price increases. Responsible economists understandably mention both strands of the literature. Nevertheless, it would be helpful if there were some way to determine which side has the more persuasive case, something a little closer to Truman’s one-armed economist.
There are many criteria that could be used to make sense of the empirical literature on the employment effects of the minimum wage. This report focuses on the distinction between studies that use what I will refer to as “matched comparison groups” to estimate these effects, and those that do not. The term “matching” is used here in a relatively broad way, to describe a family of methods that identify a comparison group as an appropriate match for a treatment group, thus mimicking a randomized experiment. A matching design is strongly preferred by economists working on a variety of applications because it is often the closest study design to randomized experiments available. Whether or not a study uses matching is a broad criterion, but an important one for discriminating between studies and clarifying who provides more persuasive evidence in the minimum-wage debate.
The first section of this report reviews the two major approaches to studying the minimum wage—studies with and without matched comparison cases—and compares the major findings from these two approaches. The second section makes an argument for preferring studies that use matching over studies that do not. The report concludes with a discussion of the implications of this research for policy.
Two approaches to studying the minimum wage
The empirical literature on the impact of the minimum wage is large, but much of it (and all important recent studies) can be classified into one of two categories: one, studies that match and compare cases involving an increase in the minimum wage with a similar control group, and two, studies that do not match cases of a minimum-wage increase to a similar control group. This distinction is only one of many possible ways of thinking about the empirical literature, but it is critical for answering the question of who is right about the employment effects of the minimum wage.
Matching studies
Analyses of the minimum wage that use matching first received wide attention with David Card and Alan Krueger’s 1994 paper on an increase in New Jersey’s state minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.05. Card and Krueger were concerned with distinguishing changes in employment at fast food restaurants that would have happened anyway from changes occurring in response to the minimum-wage increase. Their solution was to use comparable restaurants in Pennsylvania immediately across the border from New Jersey as a control group of establishments operating in a similar environment, but not subject to the minimum-wage increase. These Pennsylvania establishments provided a baseline for determining what would have happened in New Jersey if the minimum wage had remained constant. Deviation from that baseline in the New Jersey restaurants could thus be safely attributed to the minimum wage. A true experimental design would have randomly assigned increases in the minimum wage in order to control for alternative influences, but in the absence of random assignment the authors identified the next best alternative: a close match.
The Card and Krueger study concluded that there was no evidence that the minimum-wage increase in New Jersey reduced employment in that state relative to the comparison group of Pennsylvania restaurants. Criticisms of the quality of the study’s phone survey data were raised at the time, which led the authors to analyze more reliable administrative payroll data from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Card and Krueger (2000) confirmed the original finding that the minimum-wage increase in New Jersey had no discernable employment effect.
The matching approach pioneered by Card and Krueger has been applied with increasing sophistication and stronger data sources than the initial phone survey data in the 20 years since the New Jersey analysis. The most notable advance in matching has been in the work of Arindrajit Dube with several coauthors, which uses counties that neighbor each other across state borders as control cases. Rather than a restricted analysis of one state’s minimum-wage increase, Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) compare every pair of neighboring counties along every state border in the country (similar study designs are used in other papers by Dube and his colleagues). By exploiting variation in the minimum wage across the country and over the course of 16 years, this research estimates minimum-wage effects from a larger sample than earlier matching studies, and produces estimates that are more representative of the typical response to a minimum-wage increase and not the special circumstances of a particular local labor market.
Dube and his colleagues consistently find no evidence for reduced employment as a result of regular increases in the minimum wage using the county pair match. In fact, even before using county pairs, as Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) add increasingly more precise geographic matching into their models, the negative impact of the minimum-wage increase identified in the nonmatching literature (discussed in more detail below) gradually evaporates. Table 1 reports Dube, Lester, and Reich’s (2010) estimates of the percentage change in employment resulting from a percentage change in earnings as a result of an increase in the minimum wage. The authors analyze two different samples of employment data: one that includes all counties (the first column), and one that includes pairs of neighboring counties (the second column), with county pair matching performed on the latter sample.
Table 1 Percentage change in employment for each percentage change in earnings due to a change in the minimum wage All county sample County pair sample No matching -0.784* -0.482** No matching, control for Census division differences -0.114 — No matching, control for state differences 0.183 — No matching, control for MSA differences 0.211 — County-level matching — 0.079 * Statistically significant at the 10 percent level.
** Statistically significant at the 5 percent level. Source: Estimates drawn from Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010), Table 2 (this is not a reproduction of their Table 2) Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
The first row in Table 1, which presents results when no matching is done, is representative of most study designs before Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010), and many since. When no matching is done, the minimum-wage increase is estimated to have a negative effect. However, as the comparison is increasingly narrowed to more similar counties, first in the same Census division, then the same state, then the same metropolitan statistical area (MSA), the statistically significant negative effect of the minimum-wage increase is eliminated. In the analysis that uses actual pair-matching of bordering counties to construct a comparison group (the last row), the higher minimum wage has an estimated positive effect on employment. However, because this result is statistically insignificant it cannot be statistically distinguished from a finding that the minimum wage has no effect on employment. In any case, the stronger designs that use matching strategies clearly contradict the theory that minimum-wage increases reduce employment. Other examples of this approach include Addison, Blackburn, and Cotti (2009; 2012), which have conclusions that are similar to Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) and other matching studies.
One possible critique is that by over-parameterizing (i.e., adding too many controls to) their models, Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) are mistakenly attributing true employment-discouraging effects of minimum-wage increases to other variables in their model, or that statistical significance is lost due to the difficulty of estimating such a complex model. However, the authors point out that these fears can be easily dismissed by comparing estimates of the impact of the minimum wage on employment with estimates of the impact on earnings. Only the estimate of the impact on employment becomes positive—and loses statistical significance—as more rigorous matching strategies are introduced. The effect of the minimum wage on earnings stays consistent across these models. Since the same statistical model with the same risks of over-parameterization is being used regardless of the dependent variable (earnings in one case, employment in the other), the case that specification problems are driving the result is harder to justify.
There are many different explanations for the lack of substantial disemployment effects in matching studies. One suggestion is that employers exercise “monopsony power,” or bargaining power associated with being one of a small population of buyers in a market (an analog to the monopoly power exercised by sellers). Just as a monopoly will not reduce its output in response to an imposed price reduction, a monopsonist can absorb a price increase (such as a minimum-wage increase) without reducing demand for workers. Although such theoretical explanations are possible, a more straightforward argument is that an increase in the minimum wage does not have a disemployment effect because the increased labor costs are easily distributed over small price or productivity increases, or because fringe benefits are cut instead of employment levels. Less work has been done on the impact of the minimum wage on these outcomes than on the employment impact. Alternatively, disemployment effects might be avoided due to reduced fixed hiring costs as a result of lower turnover.
The most comprehensive and best known matching studies find that a higher minimum wage does not have a negative impact on employment, but this finding is not unanimous. Some matching studies do find disemployment effects. For example, Sabia, Burkhauser, and Hansen (2012) find negative effects on employment when they compare New York state with several comparison states, and Hoffman and Trace (2009) find that a minimum-wage increase in Pennsylvania reduced the employment prospects of “at-risk” workers relative to comparable workers in New Jersey. Perhaps the best quality study using matching methods that identifies a disemployment effect is that of Singell and Terborg (2007), who find negative effects associated with much larger increases in the minimum wage in Oregon and Washington. Finally, Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) use a “synthetic control method” and find negative minimum-wage effects. This important contribution to the matching literature is discussed in more detail below.
Each of these studies is open to criticism. Hoffman (2014) shows that rectifying questionable data choices eliminates Sabia, Burkhauser, and Hansen’s (2012) negative result. Finally, all of these analyses use state-wide data, which arguably provide a weaker match than Card and Krueger (1994), Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010), and other studies that match neighboring counties rather than states. Even if these negative results are taken at face value, the strongest studies investigating the widest range of minimum-wage increases by Dube and his colleagues find that on average, minimum-wage increases have little or no effect on employment.
Studies without matching
The alternative to a matching approach is to run a model using state-level or individual-level panel data (i.e., data collected over time) on employment levels to estimate how employment changes after states enact a higher minimum wage. These models have a number of valuable features, most notably their ability to control for idiosyncratic differences between states or individuals that do not change over time. These stable differences are called “fixed effects,” and the models are therefore referred to as fixed-effects models. Regardless of whether fixed-effect models use state or individual-level data, they rely on variations in the minimum wage among states to determine the effect of the policy.
Notably absent from the fixed-effects models is any matching of comparison cases to treatment cases. While Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) used counties immediately across a state border as comparison cases, the fixed-effects models implicitly treat every state not experiencing a minimum-wage increase as a coequal comparison case to every state that does have a minimum-wage increase. This potentially introduces “selection bias” into the results. Minimum-wage laws are not imposed under experimental conditions. This means that states that “select into” higher minimum wages by enacting increases may be systematically different from states that do not. Fixed-effects models can handle this problem if the researcher has data on the factors that are associated with the differential adoption of minimum-wage laws or if these factors do not change over time (in that case, the inclusion of fixed effects controls for the nonrandomness that is introduced due to the lack of a true experiment). However, if factors correlated with the adoption of minimum-wage laws vary over time and across states, fixed-effects models will produce biased estimates of the effect of the minimum wage.
This sort of bias is very plausible in practice. Many states in the South and Central United States are experiencing rapid population and economic growth. In contrast, communities in the Midwest and Northeast are already densely populated and in many cases undergoing a structural transition associated with the decline of manufacturing. None of these changes are the result of the minimum-wage policy, but all are correlated with the minimum wage, which tends to be lower in the South and Central United States and higher in the Midwest and Northeast. Other trends specific to states or counties rather than regions are also conceivable. Some of these trends may be controlled for in certain studies, but fixed-effects models are not structured to capture the more comprehensive set of state-specific trends that matching studies can account for. State-specific time trends that are not accounted for will move a fixed-effects model further away from results that would have been estimated by a randomized experiment.
The economists most closely associated with the fixed-effects model approach to studying the minimum wage are David Neumark and William Wascher. In 2007, Neumark and Wascher conducted a thorough review of 102 minimum-wage studies, covering policies implemented both inside and outside the United States, and at the federal and state level. They identified a subset of studies that they deemed “credible,” most of which fall into the category of state and individual-level fixed-effects models. This subset of studies, selected for special mention by the most prolific authors who use the fixed-effects method, is therefore an excellent vantage point for understanding the consensus of this literature. Most of the studies mentioned below come from this list. Neumark and Wascher’s most recent minimum-wage study with J.M. Salas is not a standard fixed-effects model. This is discussed in more detail in the next section.
A typical state-level fixed-effects approach is offered by Neumark and Wascher (1992), published two years before the great disruption of the Card and Krueger (1994) study. This research estimated that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduced teenage employment by 1 to 2 percent and young adult employment by 1.5 to 2 percent. These findings were notable because they were comparable to earlier estimates from the time series literature, which relied on variation over time rather than across states to estimate employment effects.
Neumark and Wascher (1996), Neumark (2001), and others soon extended the fixed-effects modeling framework to individual-level data to understand the impact of the minimum wage on specific vulnerable groups. The authors find in both cases that increases in the minimum wage reduce employment for the population of interest (typically teenagers or low-skill workers). These studies use the same design as the state-level studies, relying on variation among states and over time to estimate how changes in the minimum wage affect employment. As such, they are vulnerable to the same criticisms outlined above. Individuals in a high-minimum-wage state may experience lower employment rates, but it is difficult to determine whether that is the result of fundamentally different local labor market conditions that are unrelated to the minimum wage.
The most comprehensive exploration of the sensitivity of the fixed-effects model results to their ability to control for differences among states is by Allegretto, Dube, and Reich (2011). This study uses Neumark and Wascher’s preferred fixed-effects modeling framework, but includes controls for Census division and state-specific labor market trends that Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) suggest might be driving the strong negative employment effects in most fixed-effects analyses. After controlling for these trends, the standard disemployment effects become statistically indistinguishable from zero effects. What is notable about Allegretto, Dube, and Reich’s (2011) contribution is that the result of little or no disemployment effects of the minimum wage is not generated from models related to the matching studies described in the previous section. Instead, the study uses the methods that are usually employed by Neumark and Wascher.
The method has also been extended beyond standard employment outcomes for the United States. Couch and Wittenburg (2001) use a fixed-effects model to assess the impact of the minimum wage on hours worked, while Neumark and Wascher (2004) use these techniques to understand how labor market institutions are relevant for international differences in the effect of the minimum wage. Both studies find the traditional negative impact. Meer and West (2013) use state fixed-effects models and numerical examples to argue that matching studies that include location-specific time trends (discussed in more detail in the next section) may provide inappropriate employment estimates if the principal impact of changes in the minimum wage is on employment growth rates.
Which approach makes more sense?
Matching cases of minimum-wage increases to a control group is essential because it is often the closest social scientists can get to the gold standard of an experiment using random assignment. Although the minimum-wage literature as a whole is divided on the question of the impact of minimum-wage increases, the strongest studies that use matching strategies find little or no evidence that such increases have a negative impact on employment.
It is difficult to overstate how uncontroversial it is in the field of labor market policy evaluation to assert the superiority of matching methods to the nonmatching approaches described above. The seminal evaluations of the effects of job training programs, work-sharing arrangements, employment tax credits, educational interventions, and housing vouchers all use at least some sort of matching method, if not an actual randomized experiment. In their widely cited survey article on non-experimental evaluation, Blundell and Costa Dias (2000) do not even mention state-level fixed-effects models when they list the five major categories of evaluation methods. In a similar article, Imbens and Wooldridge (2009) do mention fixed-effects models as a tool for policy evaluation, but clarify that these were used before more advanced methods were developed, noting that the modern use of fixed-effects models is typically in combination with other more sophisticated techniques. For example, Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) also use a fixed-effects model, but more importantly it is a fixed-effects model that utilizes rigorous matching strategy to identify the effect of the minimum wage. Sometimes fixed-effects models are the best available option if no natural experiment or other matching opportunity emerges to provide a more rigorous approach. Well specified fixed-effects models can still be informative. But faced with the choice between a well matched comparison group and a fixed-effects model, the former is unambiguously the stronger study design.
Given the unanimity of the evaluation literature on the importance of these methods, how is it possible that so many minimum-wage studies use only state-level fixed-effects models? One possible answer is that unlike many of the programs studied in the evaluation literature, everyone is subject to the minimum wage. The minimum wage is not like a training program or a tax credit where some people receive it (are treated) and others do not. It is instead just one of many “rules of the game” in the labor market. As such, economists may not think of the minimum wage in the context of the evaluation literature and the methods of that literature.
Potential signs of progress
In the immediate aftermath of the Card and Krueger (1994) study, many critics simply dismissed the finding as an abandonment of sound economic theory. Fortunately, today these reactions are less common (though still not unheard of), and the major voices in the discussion seem to be developing a mutual appreciation for the importance of hammering out credible study designs. An excellent example is the recent exchange between Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) and Allegretto et al. (2013). Instead of advancing new work in the tradition of a state-level fixed-effects model, Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) raise criticisms of the county matching approach of Dube and his colleagues, and then go on to offer an alternative matching approach that they feel to be more appropriate. They suggest that a better method is the “synthetic control” approach of Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), which generates weights for a number of comparison cases that together provide a good match to the treatment case. After running models using the synthetic control method, Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) find evidence for negative effects of a higher minimum wage on employment, consistent with their work with state-level fixed-effects models. Allegretto et al. (2013) responded by defending their county-pair approach and further developing the synthetic control method, including rectifying problems in Neumark, Salas, and Wascher’s (2013) work. In a separate paper, Dube and Zipperer (2013) argue that Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) fail to properly implement the synthetic control method, using an approach that is quite different from the earlier literature in that tradition and much less defensible. Allegretto et al. (2013) and Dube and Zipperer (2013) conclude that across both methods (their contiguous county approach and a properly executed synthetic control method), the minimum wage does not have substantial disemployment effects.
The most important development in this recent work is not that it has resulted in agreement on the impact of the minimum wage. Numerous econometric disagreements remain, and of course Neumark, Wascher, and others continue to defend fixed-effects studies on the grounds that the biases in these analyses are not substantial. The critical advance has been that Neumark, Salas, and Wascher (2013) appear to concede that some sort of modern matching approaches are essential for evaluating the effect of minimum-wage increases in the absence of a randomized experiment. The authors continue to disagree on the best way to implement such a study, but the more recent focus on credible non-experimental designs is a step forward.
What do we need to keep in mind in applying research to policy?
Study design offers a means of arbitrating between studies in the often conflicting minimum-wage literature. The strongest designs seem to consistently find little or no evidence of disemployment effects associated with increases in the minimum wage. However, when applying this research to policymaking, these findings do come with caveats.
First, we can only make inferences about the impact of a minimum-wage increase if it is relatively similar to the sorts of minimum-wage increases that have been studied. Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010, 962) caution that their “conclusion is limited by the scope of the actual variation in policy; our results cannot be extrapolated to predict the impact of a minimum-wage increase that is much larger than what we have experienced over the period under study.”
The recent bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 represents a 39.3 percent increase above the current federal minimum wage of $7.25, to be implemented over the course of three years. The typical increase in the legal minimum wage associated with the proposed change to $10.10 is of course lower than 39.3 percent because some states affected by the change at the federal level already have state minimum wages exceeding $7.25. States without a higher minimum than $7.25 would experience the full increase. Table 2 provides context for this increase by comparing it to prior federal minimum-wage increases.
Table 2 Proposed and past federal minimum-wage increases Nominal minimum-wage increase Harkin-Miller proposal 39.3% in three steps 2007–2009 40.8% in three steps 1996–1997 21.2% in two steps 1990–1991 26.9% in two steps 1978–1981 45.7% in four steps 1974–1976 43.8% in three steps 1967–1968 28.0% in two steps Source: EPI analysis of Fair Labor Standards Act and amendments and the proposed Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
The increase in Harkin and Miller’s proposed Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 is typical of the federal minimum-wage increases since the late 1960s. The largest increases during this period (i.e., 1974–1976 and 1978–1981) came at a time of considerable inflation, so their magnitude to a large extent reflects an effort to keep up with consumer prices. However, the 40.8 percent increase between 2007 and 2009 is also larger than the Harkin-Miller proposal, despite the fact that it occurred in an environment of dramatically subdued inflation.
Figure A presents the distribution of all percentage changes in effective minimum wages for all states from 1980 to 2011 using data from the University of Kentucky’s Center for Poverty Research. The “effective” minimum wage is defined here as the highest of either the federal or state minimum wage in a given state. Almost all increases were lower than 15 percent. The minimum-wage increase in New Jersey studied by Card and Krueger, at 18.8 percent in one year, was much larger than the average one-year increase during this period. Despite the magnitude of this increase, Card and Krueger found no notable disemployment effects. The proposed federal increase to $10.10 comes in three stages: a 13.1 percent nominal increase, followed by an 11.6 percent increase in the first year and a 10.4 percent increase in the second year after the initial increase. These increases are in the upper half of the distribution of changes in the effective minimum wage presented in Figure A, but well within the historical ranges studied by the empirical literature on the minimum wage.
Figure A “Effective” one-year minimum-wage increases for all states, by percent change, 1980–2011 One-year increases 0-5% 85 5-10% 153 10-15% 219 15-20% 14 20-25% 5 25-30% 4 30-35% 5 35%+ 0 Chart Data Download data The data below can be saved or copied directly into Excel. The data underlying the figure. Note: The “effective” minimum wage is defined here as the highest of either the federal or state minimum wage in a given state. Periods with zero percent changes are excluded from Figure A. Source: Author’s calculations from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research’s (2012) state-level data of economic, political, and transfer-program information for 1980–2011 Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
The relative size of any proposed increase does not necessarily imply that the results from the matching literature are irrelevant, but these findings should be invoked with caution in cases that depart from historical norms. Ultimately, what matters is not the absolute increase in the minimum wage, but whether or not the minimum wage is in excess of the value of workers’ production to employers.
Finally, policymakers need to remember that even the best national studies, such as Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010) or Allegretto et al. (2013), provide only average effects of the minimum wage across a wide sampling of counties. The effect of a federal minimum-wage increase in any given local labor market is likely to vary with local conditions. This point is made emphatically in Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010, 957); the authors show the variation in minimum-wage effects across different local labor markets in their sample. These estimates are all heavily concentrated around zero, consistent with their finding of negligible disemployment effects. However, the local labor estimates also show a nontrivial probability of having a considerably more positive or negative employment effect. This suggests that while on average the minimum wage does not have disemployment effects, some localities may exhibit these effects. Dube, Lester, and Reich’s (2010) estimates suggest that other localities may experience positive effects from the minimum wage, providing motivation for state or local minimum or living wages in excess of the federal minimum wage.
Ultimately, even skeptics of the matching literature reviewed here need to consider total effects of the minimum wage, and not simply whether or not a disemployment effect can be identified. The disemployment effects identified in the weaker empirical strategies are still small, and the earnings gains for minimum-wage workers keeping their jobs are substantial. The net effect of a minimum-wage increase is therefore likely to be quite positive, even if concerns remain about a small population hurt by the minimum wage and in need of other assistance. Studies with the strongest study designs of course suggest that this population is extremely small if it exists at all.
Conclusion
Thinking about the designs of the major studies in the minimum-wage literature helps to approach Truman’s ideal of a one-armed economist. The best evidence we have comes from studies that try to match treatment cases with appropriate control cases. This research suggests that historically typical minimum-wage increases have no impact on employment, on average. This is valuable information for thinking about policy. It suggests that raising the minimum wage would not have the negative effects attributed to it by critics, but would increase the earnings of low-income families.
Policymakers and the public should demand empirical rigor in research impacting the lives of low-income working families. Minimum-wage research should be conducted with the best feasible study designs, just as federal agencies demand the best designs when they seek out evaluations of other labor market policies.
About the author
Daniel Kuehn is a doctoral student in American University’s Department of Economics with field specializations in labor economics and gender economics. Before coming to American University he was a research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population. He has a master’s degree in public policy, specializing in labor market policy, from George Washington University.
Acknowledgements
The paper benefited from comments and review by Josh Bivens, David Cooper, J. Bradford DeLong, Arindrajit Dube, Doug Hall, Robert Murphy, Ryan Murphy, Michael Reich, Heidi Shierholz, and David Wynn.
Endnotes
Within this family of methods, there is an approach to policy evaluation called “propensity score matching” that literally establishes a match between one treatment case and one or several comparison cases using an estimate of the probability of receiving a treatment. This paper, which is targeted to a broader audience, does not use “matching” to refer specifically to propensity scores, and instead uses it to describe any study design that consciously constructs comparison groups for treatment cases (here, cases experiencing an increase in the minimum wage). These include difference in difference models, regression discontinuities, synthetic control models, and other “natural experiments.”
David Card published a study two years earlier, in 1992, examining the impact of a minimum-wage increase in California. This paper also used a matching strategy, even before the celebrated 1994 paper. However, the match in this paper was between California and a set of comparison states that roughly reproduced the demographic and labor market characteristics of California. This is not as clear of a match as the cross-border match in Card and Krueger (1994) nor does it set the same kind of precedent for future work by Arindrajit Dube and his colleagues, but Card (1992) should also be counted as an early example of the matching literature on the minimum wage. The author found no evidence of a decline in teenage employment or employment in retail.
See Card and Krueger (2000). In their reanalysis of administrative payroll data, Card and Krueger (2000) also provide evidence of selection bias problems associated with data on New Jersey and Pennsylvania restaurants provided to Neumark and Wascher (2000) by Richard Berman, a public affairs executive who advocates on behalf of the food and beverage industry. Neumark and Wascher’s (2000) analysis of the Berman dataset finds that the minimum-wage increase reduced employment in New Jersey, although this finding is not consistent with the administrative payroll data.
A detailed discussion of all of Dube’s work on the minimum wage is excluded in the interest of briefly outlining the differences between matching and nonmatching studies. Another critical contribution of Dube and his colleagues, Allegretto et al. (2013), is discussed below. Also of note are Dube (2013), which looks at minimum-wage effects by industry; and Dube, Naidu, and Reich (2007), which looks specifically at San Francisco. Recent work by Giuliano (2013) controls for unobserved heterogeneity by restricting the analysis to stores within a single firm. Giuliano also finds no evidence of disemployment effects from the minimum wage.
This elasticity is estimated as the ratio of the minimum-wage coefficients in the employment and earnings regressions in Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010).
In models that match counties that straddle a state border, additional “fixed effect” variables must be added indicating that a given county in the dataset is a member of a county pair. The inclusion of these fixed effects dramatically increases the size of the model that must be estimated.
Notably, the standard errors of the estimates of the minimum-wage effect increase more substantially from the baseline model for the earnings regressions than they do for the employment regressions. The source of the difference between the earnings and employment regressions is thus driven by the change in the point estimates themselves, and not the precision of the estimates.
For example, by using the entire state of Pennsylvania, Hoffman and Trace (2009) are comparing employment outcomes in Pittsburgh and rural western Pennsylvania with those in New Jersey. These communities are quite different and they are experiencing different types of economic change. In contrast, the original Card and Krueger (1994) study, which focused on border establishments, and Dube’s work with border counties compare far more similar local labor markets.
Recall once again that “matching methods” is used here to describe a range of quasi-experimental methods that try to construct a comparison group that is a good match to the treatment group.
See for example Leonard’s (2000) discussion of the reaction to Card and Krueger (1994). A particularly questionable and combative example is the case of the late Nobel laureate James Buchanan, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 1996, “Just as no physicist would claim that ‘water runs uphill,’ no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.”
The University of Kentucky dataset begins in 1980, in the middle of a three stage increase in the federal minimum wage. The first two stages, which are not in the data, were larger than the third.
Some localities have implemented “living wages” that are higher than minimum wages and therefore may be associated with greater percentage changes in the minimum wage at the time of their implementation. These are not considered here, nor are they studied in the minimum-wage literature discussed above. See Holzer (2008) for a review of the literature on living wage laws.
References
Abadie, A., and J. Gardeazabal. 2003. “The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country.” American Economic Review, 93(1), 113–132.
Addison, J., M. Blackburn, and C. Cotti. 2009. “Do Minimum Wages Raise Employment? Evidence from the U.S. Retail-Trade Sector.” Labour Economics, 16, 397–408.
Addison, J., M. Blackburn, and C. Cotti. 2012. “The Effect of Minimum Wages on Labour Market Outcomes: County-Level Estimates from the Restaurant-and-Bar Sector.” British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50(3), 412–435.
Allegretto, S., A. Dube, and M. Reich. 2011.“Do Minimum Wages Really Reduce Teen Employment? Accounting for Heterogeneity and Selectivity in State Panel Data.” Industrial Relations, 50(2), 205–240.
Allegretto, S., A. Dube, M. Reich, and B. Zipperer. 2013.“Credible Research Designs for Minimum Wage Studies.” Unpublished manuscript, available at: http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/148-13.pdf.
Blundell, R., and M. Costa Dias. 2000. “Evaluation Methods for Non‐Experimental Data.” Fiscal Studies, 21(4), 427–468.
Buchanan, J. 1996. “Commentary on the Minimum Wage.” Wall Street Journal, April 25, A20.
Card, D. 1992. “Using Regional Variation in Wages to Measure the Effects of the Federal Minimum Wage.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 46(1), 22–37.
Card, D., and A.B. Krueger. 1994. “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.” American Economic Review, 84(4), 772–793.
Card, D., and A.B. Krueger. 2000. “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Reply.” American Economic Review, 90(5), 1,397–1,420.
Couch, K. A., and D.C. Wittenburg. 2001. “The Response of Hours of Work to Increases in the Minimum Wage.” Southern Economic Journal, 171–177.
Dube, A. 2013. “Minimum Wages and Aggregate Job Growth: Causal Effect or Statistical Artifact?” IZA Discussion Paper No. 7674.
Dube, A., S. Naidu, and M. Reich. 2007. “The Economic Effects of a Citywide Minimum Wage.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 60(4).
Dube, A., T.W. Lester, and M. Reich. 2010. “Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4), 945–964.
Dube, A., and B. Zipperer. 2013. “Pooled Synthetic Control Estimates for Recurring Treatments: An Application to Minimum Wage Case Studies.” Unpublished manuscript, available at http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/spring14/zipperer/dubezipperer_pooledsyntheticcontrol.pdf
Giuliano, L. 2013. “Minimum Wage Effects on Employment, Substitution, and the Teenage Labor Supply: Evidence from Personnel Data.” Journal of Labor Economics, 31(1), 155–194.
Hoffman, S. D. 2014. “Are the Effects of Minimum Wage Increases Always Small? A Re-Analysis of Sabia, Burkhauser, and Hansen.” Submitted to Industrial and Labor Relations Review.
Hoffman, S. D., and D.M. Trace. 2009. “NJ and PA Once Again: What Happened to Employment When the PA–NJ Minimum Wage Differential Disappeared?” Eastern Economic Journal, 35(1), 115–128.
Holzer, Harry. 2008. “Living Wage Laws: How Much Do (Can) They Matter?” Paper prepared for the 2008 Brookings-George Washington University-Urban Institute Conference on Urban and Regional Policy and Its Effects.
Imbens, G., and J. Wooldridge. 2009. “Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation.” Journal of Economic Literature. 47(1), 5–86.
Leonard, T. C. 2000. “The Very Idea of Applying Economics: The Modern Minimum-Wage Controversy and Its Antecedents.” History of Political Economy, 32, 117–146.
Meer, J., and J. West. 2013. Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics. NBER Working Paper No. 19262.
Neumark, D. 2001. “Evidence on Employment Effects of Recent Minimum Wage Increases from a Pre-Specified Research Design.” Industrial Relations. p. 121–144.
Neumark, D., J.M. Salas, and W. Wascher. 2013. Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater? National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. w18681.
Neumark, D., and W. Wascher. 1992. “Employment Effects of Minimum and Subminimum Wages: Panel Data on State Minimum Wage Laws.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 46(1), 55–81.
Neumark, D., and W. Wascher. 1996. “The Effects of Minimum Wages on Teenage Employment and Enrollment: Estimates from Matched CPS Data.” Research in Labor Economics, 25–64.
Neumark, D., and W. Wascher. 2000. “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania: Comment.” American Economic Review, 1,362–1,396.
Neumark, D., and W. Wascher. 2004. “Minimum Wages, Labor Market Institutions, and Youth Employment: A Cross-National Analysis.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 57(2), 223–248.
Neumark, D., and W. Wascher. 2007. “Minimum Wages and Employment.” Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, 1–182.
Sabia, J. J., R.V. Burkhauser, and B. Hansen. 2012. “Are the Effects of Minimum Wage Increases Always Small? New Evidence from a Case Study of New York State.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review. 65(2).
Singell, L.D., and J.R. Terborg. 2007. “Employment Effects of Two Northwest Minimum Wage Initiatives.” Economic Inquiry. 45(1), 40–55.
University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research. 2012. State-Level Data of Economic, Political, and Transfer-Program Information for 1980–2011. http://www.ukcpr.org/AvailableData.aspx. |
Photo Ballots were stacked up as a statewide presidential election recount began Thursday, in Milwaukee. Credit Morry Gash/Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. — Supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have filed legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in a suddenly robust effort to stop the presidential election recount efforts there.
Bill Schuette, the attorney general of Michigan, said that the recount, initiated by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, put Michigan voters at risk of “paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process.”
“This court cannot allow a dilatory and frivolous request for a recount by an aggrieved party to silence all Michigan votes for president,” Mr. Schuette, a Republican, said in a court filing.
A lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission filed in Federal District Court by the Great America PAC, the Stop Hillary PAC and Ronald R. Johnson, a Wisconsin resident, argued that the recount could “unjustifiably cast doubt” on Mr. Trump’s victory in that state.
The plaintiffs argued that the recount, which began across the state’s 72 counties on Thursday morning, should be halted immediately, in part because there is a substantial chance that it cannot be accurately completed by the deadline of Dec. 12. In 2011, a statewide recount took close to a month.
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In Michigan on Friday, where the recount is still pending, the Board of State Canvassers met to consider an objection to the recount by Mr. Trump.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump told the canvassing board, which is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, that it should not allow a recount to proceed, describing it as needless, too expensive and not required by Michigan law. Besides, Ms. Stein came nowhere near winning the state.
“This recount petition is absolutely unprecedented in the history of Michigan election law,” said Gary Gordon, a lawyer for Mr. Trump and his campaign.
A lawyer for Ms. Stein, Mark Brewer, said Mr. Trump’s campaign was making a “desperate attempt” to avoid a recount. “I would remind everybody that the original source of the allegation that this election was rigged was Mr. Trump,” Mr. Brewer told the board.
The Michigan board split, 2-2, along party lines, meaning the recount objection failed.
Lawyers for Mr. Trump and his allies are also seeking to halt legal proceedings by Ms. Stein to contest the statewide election results in Pennsylvania.
Lawrence J. Tabas, general counsel of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, said in an interview on Friday that Ms. Stein’s lawyers had fallen short of demonstrating that there was fraud or illegal action in the Nov. 8 election. “They know they have no claim,” he said.
“This action by Jill Stein and her supporters — I couldn’t even call it a Hail Mary pass, because that would be insulting to the Hail Mary pass,” said Mr. Tabas, who along with other lawyers, submitted a lengthy brief filed in Pennsylvania court on Thursday.
The recounts bids are widely viewed as having little chance of making a difference. But Ms Stein, in a statement, said the challenges to them were an effort to put “party politics above country.”
“In an election already tainted by suspicion, previously expressed by Donald Trump himself,” she said, “verifying the vote is a common-sense procedure that would put all concerns around voter disenfranchisement to rest. Trump’s desperate attempts to silence voter demands for recounts raise a simple question: why is Donald Trump afraid of these recounts?”
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Ms. Stein has raised millions of dollars for an effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states that have recently voted Democratic and where Mr. Trump won by relatively thin margins. |
Idaho Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter made a recent proclamation that grabbed the attention of the L.A. Times, but flew under the radar of most people in Idaho. On the same day that the federal government shut down and Idaho's new health exchange launched, Gov. Otter declared Oct. 1 "Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day".
WHEREAS, “Aaron Paul” first became a household name for his role as “Jesse
Pinkman” on the popular AMC series “Breaking Bad;” and WHEREAS, Aaron won two Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a
Drama Series” for his role in “Breaking Bad” in 2010 and 2012; and WHEREAS, anyone who watched Aaron Paul’s performance in “Breaking Bad”
witnessed the devastating, tragic impacts of methamphetamine use on individuals, and the
scourge that meth has become to our communities and society; and WHEREAS, Aaron Paul continues to be an ambassador for the State of Idaho throughout
the nation and is an inspiration to all Idahoans; NOW, THEREFORE, I, C.L. “BUTCH” OTTER, Governor of the State of Idaho, hereby
proclaim October 1, 2013, as Aaron Paul Sturtevant Day.
Aaron Paul Sturtevant, who goes by Aaron Paul, played the meth-cooking Jessie Pinkman in AMC's "Breaking Bad." The hit show's finale was Sept. 30, but the show's much-anticipated end wasn't the final word in Idaho. The governor's proclamation came two weeks after the Emmett-born actor rented out the Egyptian Theatre in downtown Boise for a screening of one of the final episodes.
According to Otter's spokesman Jon Hanian, a proclamation of this kind isn't unusual.
"He's obviously had great success in his chosen profession, winning accolades and honors for his role in 'Breaking Bad.' He speaks fondly of Boise and of the state and of his experience of growing up here," Hanian says.
Hanian says he's not sure if the governor is a fan of the show, but he says Otter wanted to recognize this "Idaho son," despite his living in L.A. for the past several years.
And for those who missed the feverishly hyped visit from Paul at the Egyptian, Bushmill's whiskey produced this video documenting it. The whiskey company sponsored his trip to the City of Trees, as Paul refers to Boise. In the video Paul sips whiskey with some friends and talks about his Idaho roots -- and "staying grounded" in Hollywood. |
EU politics: renewing the wedding vows 19/01/2015
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Jean-Claude Juncker says he is prepared to examine the UK's demands on how the EU should change – or so we are told by caveat: he will not allow certain "red lines", including on immigration issues, to be crossed.
But what grabs the headline is the Commission President comparing EU-UK relations to a love affair. "It's easy to fall in love and more difficult to stay together", Juncker says, also observing that, "people shouldn't stay together if the conditions aren't the same as when things started".
That, of course, is horse manure: conditions always change, so the test is whether people can adapt to them. In the case of the EU though, which – at best – was a loveless, arranged marriage, there never was a situation when we should have stayed together.
Nevertheless, while Juncker still feels that, "it's in the interest of both the UK and the EU to stay together", he reaffirms that he won't weaken the EU's fundamental principles.
"When one mentions the end of the free circulation of workers, there can be no debate, dialogue or compromise", he says. "We can fight against abuses - and national lawmakers can do that - but the EU lawmakers won't change the treaties to satisfy the will of certain politicians".
So, it seems, Juncker is still playing the "bad cop" against Merkel's "good cop", although he's not saying anything very new.
Interestingly, though, Mr Cameron could be acquiring another ally, in
This is Viktor Orban, who says he believes the EU's laws on asylum should be tightened, just a week after he said in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris that immigration into Europe should stop – with not an EU flag in sight (pictured).
"This is a Christian country", he said on a Sunday radio talk show. "We can help those who are indeed chased out of their countries, but we have to make it clear we don’t want to be the destination for immigrants seeking to make a living here".
The number seeking asylum last year in Hungary was 43,000 last year, double the figure in 2013, Mr. Orban says, a large number in relation to Hungary's total population of a little below ten million.
"If Europe continues to bury its head in the sand, these trends won't change. It now seems like Brussels won't shield us from this issue; we have to protect ourselves", Orban adds, then saying that the Dublin Regulation should be upheld, so that those immigrants who manage to escape farther westward within the EU can be transported back to the country where they entered the EU.
Hungary is perhaps not the best of allies though. It gets asylum seekers routed through its territory from Greece and Bulgaria, most often via Serbia, where there were 19,951 illegal crossings in 2013, up 212 percent on the previous year. But in Hungary, though – as the German broadcaster
The few existing facilities are overflowing, so that many refugees are housed in former military barracks or community buildings converted into prisons for migrants. In April 2014, more than 40 percent of all male asylum seekers were being housed in a prison. The reasons for arrest were arbitrary and unclear. As a rule, migrants were held for a month without having committed a crime.
The UNHCR
Detainees remained behind bars typically for four to five months, while some for the entire length of their asylum procedure. They were locked in their cells much of the day, suffered verbal and physical abuse by the security guards, and were escorted in handcuffs and on leashes to the court hearings or even to doctors, treated like a criminal.
Hungarian authorities often automatically started the aliens police procedure and ordered detention of asylum-seekers. Courts tended to review detention orders in group hearings, dealing with the case of 5-10 people in 30 minutes that was not enough time properly to consider the facts of each individual case.
According to UNHCR, asylum-seekers were also routinely deported to Serbia, considered by Hungary as a safe third country. In Serbia, however, asylum-seekers faced chain deportations to Macedonia and Greece, countries with no adequate asylum systems in place, and where asylum-seekers faced the risk of refoulement to countries where they may have fled danger or persecution.
However, resistance to the flow of asylum seekers is also manifest in the Czech Republic where, on Friday, hundreds showed up for a rally in which protesters objected to allowing Muslims to settle in Central Europe (even after this Monday's
The centre-left Czech government has so far been reluctant to offer asylum to refugees from the Middle East because of concerns that potential terrorists might be among them. It eventually agreed to take in 70 Syrian refugees under EU pressure, against thousands presenting themselves to the rest of the EU.
But that also makes the Czech government a potential ally for Mr Cameron, who is not looking quite so isolated on this issue as some might aver. Softly, softly, "Europe" is going his way. He may well confound Juncker, and bring home his treaty, sufficient for him to call upon the British to renew their wedding vows. Jean-Claude Juncker says he is prepared to examine the UK's demands on how the EU should change – or so we are told by Bloomberg . but there is a: he will not allow certain "red lines", including on immigration issues, to be crossed.But what grabs the headline is the Commission President comparing EU-UK relations to a love affair. "It's easy to fall in love and more difficult to stay together", Juncker says, also observing that, "people shouldn't stay together if the conditions aren't the same as when things started".That, of course, is horse manure: conditions always change, so the test is whether people can adapt to them. In the case of the EU though, which – at best – was a loveless, arranged marriage, there never was a situation when we should have stayed together.Nevertheless, while Juncker still feels that, "it's in the interest of both the UK and the EU to stay together", he reaffirms that he won't weaken the EU's fundamental principles."When one mentions the end of the free circulation of workers, there can be no debate, dialogue or compromise", he says. "We can fight against abuses - and national lawmakers can do that - but the EU lawmakers won't change the treaties to satisfy the will of certain politicians".So, it seems, Juncker is still playing the "bad cop" against Merkel's "good cop", although he's not saying anything very new.Interestingly, though, Mr Cameron could be acquiring another ally, in Hungary's prime minister . Yesterday, he was urging the EU to limit immigration, saying that some people were abusing the asylum rules, when they were actually seeking employment.This is Viktor Orban, who says he believes the EU's laws on asylum should be tightened, just a week after he said in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris that immigration into Europe should stop – with not an EU flag in sight (pictured)."This is a Christian country", he said on a Sunday radio talk show. "We can help those who are indeed chased out of their countries, but we have to make it clear we don’t want to be the destination for immigrants seeking to make a living here".The number seeking asylum last year in Hungary was 43,000 last year, double the figure in 2013, Mr. Orban says, a large number in relation to Hungary's total population of a little below ten million."If Europe continues to bury its head in the sand, these trends won't change. It now seems like Brussels won't shield us from this issue; we have to protect ourselves", Orban adds, then saying that the Dublin Regulation should be upheld, so that those immigrants who manage to escape farther westward within the EU can be transported back to the country where they entered the EU.Hungary is perhaps not the best of allies though. It gets asylum seekers routed through its territory from Greece and Bulgaria, most often via Serbia, where there were 19,951 illegal crossings in 2013, up 212 percent on the previous year. But in Hungary, though – as the German broadcaster Spiegel reported in September 2014, there is no functioning asylum system. Illegal detention is routine and guards use drugs to sedate migrants.The few existing facilities are overflowing, so that many refugees are housed in former military barracks or community buildings converted into prisons for migrants. In April 2014, more than 40 percent of all male asylum seekers were being housed in a prison. The reasons for arrest were arbitrary and unclear. As a rule, migrants were held for a month without having committed a crime.The UNHCR has been critical of conditions in the asylum prisons, calling them "inhumane and demeaning".Detainees remained behind bars typically for four to five months, while some for the entire length of their asylum procedure. They were locked in their cells much of the day, suffered verbal and physical abuse by the security guards, and were escorted in handcuffs and on leashes to the court hearings or even to doctors, treated like a criminal.Hungarian authorities often automatically started the aliens police procedure and ordered detention of asylum-seekers. Courts tended to review detention orders in group hearings, dealing with the case of 5-10 people in 30 minutes that was not enough time properly to consider the facts of each individual case.According to UNHCR, asylum-seekers were also routinely deported to Serbia, considered by Hungary as a safe third country. In Serbia, however, asylum-seekers faced chain deportations to Macedonia and Greece, countries with no adequate asylum systems in place, and where asylum-seekers faced the risk ofto countries where they may have fled danger or persecution.However, resistance to the flow of asylum seekers is also manifest in the Czech Republic where, on Friday, hundreds showed up for a rally in which protesters objected to allowing Muslims to settle in Central Europe (even after this Monday's Pegida rally had been cancelled.The centre-left Czech government has so far been reluctant to offer asylum to refugees from the Middle East because of concerns that potential terrorists might be among them. It eventually agreed to take in 70 Syrian refugees under EU pressure, against thousands presenting themselves to the rest of the EU.But that also makes the Czech government a potential ally for Mr Cameron, who is not looking quite so isolated on this issue as some might aver. Softly, softly, "Europe" is going his way. He may well confound Juncker, and bring home his treaty, sufficient for him to call upon the British to renew their wedding vows. |
Day two of Government Shutdown 2013 offered America plenty of surreal moments, from the brief and ridiculous re-emergence of the Grand Bargain, to the sight of multiple members of a universally reviled governing body offering to give up their paychecks as if they thought it was a move worthy of a medal. But nowhere did Salvador Dali's clocks warp and melt under the heat of sustained stupidity as badly as they did down at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Yesterday, it became pretty obvious that if you wanted to catch the eye of any Beltway reporter to discuss what you were enduring during the shutdown, you had to go on down to this memorial to make your case. Unfortunately, that's where many members of Congress decided to while away their day as well. As Ryan Reilly reported, heroic members of Congress turned out to boldly grandstand at the memorial, pretending just as hard as they could that its temporary closure was the most dire effect of the shutdown ... for which ... they voted. Yes, that was by far the most surreal thing about it. Gawker's Tom Scocca turned the best phrase about the whole mess, describing those lawmakers as committing "an act of civil disobedience against themselves."
But Mark Segraves, reporting for NBC News' Washington affiliate, managed to capture the howler highlight of the Great World War II Memorial Bleat-n-Repeat -- Rep. Randy Neugebauer's (R-Tex.) Wednesday confrontation of a poor park ranger on the scene -- who was doing nothing more than her job -- blaming her for the closure he voted for and telling her that she should be ashamed of herself.
Seriously, this actually happened. Per Segraves:
"How do you look at them and ... deny them access?" said Neugebauer. He, with most House Republicans, had voted early Sunday morning to pass a funding measure that would delay the Affordable Care Act, a vote that set up a showdown with the Senate and President Barack Obama. With the parties unable to agree on how to fund the federal government, non-essential government functions shut down Tuesday. "It's difficult," responded the Park Service employee. "Well, it should be difficult," replied the congressman, who was carrying a small American flag in his breast pocket. "It is difficult," responded the Park Service employee. "I'm sorry, sir." "The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves," the congressman said. "I'm not ashamed," replied the ranger.
From there, Segraves reports, "a crowd of onlookers got involved," and began loudly demanding that Neugebauer lay off the park ranger, pointing out again and again that the reason everyone was in the position they were in was due to the fact that Congress very specifically put them there. Neugebauer countered that it was all really Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) fault, but that failed to impress anyone.
What's really ghastly about this is that the whole "Harry Reid shut down the government" line is a talking point. It's "messaging" -- the mostly disingenuous bilge that politicos spit in order to gain some phantom upper hand in a war of rhetoric that plays itself out in the press. It's not intended to be sincere, it's all posturing -- throwing sub-standard witticisms at a wall in the hopes that something will stick and convince people.
This is all stuff intended for an audience of reporters -- and in that setting, all is fair. But you're not actually supposed to extend "messaging" out into the world of ordinary human Americans in this fashion, and victimize park rangers with it.
What's also inane about this is that, as Segraves takes pains to point out, the park rangers deployed to the World War II Memorial, while enforcing the closure of the memorial to the general public, are also there to make sure that the Honor Flight veterans who come to the memorial get access to the site. So, by impeding her from doing her job, all Neugebauer was doing was impeding access for the Honor Flight veterans. And telling the ranger that she should be ashamed? Man, that's not a good look, and the gathered crowd made sure Neugebauer learned that the hard way.
Got to give credit to the ranger for standing her ground and doing her job with professionalism, in the face of an idiot who really needs to learn his place. |
A counterterrorism catch-and-release campaign by Canada's national police force may have prevented 10 aspiring jihadis from heading off to war, but the roundup at Montréal-Trudeau airport is raising worries about what comes next for radicalized youth.
On Wednesday, while federal and provincial political leaders applauded the police work, anti-radicalization experts said only an integrated effort involving civilians and police can deal with youth fixated on taking up arms in the Middle East or joining terrorist groups.
In Montreal, which has become a jihadi recruiting hotbed, the only tool appears to be handcuffs. In the past six months alone, at least seven youths have left the city to join the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq. At least 15 other teenagers and young adults have been arrested pre-emptively. Some have volunteered to be monitored, while others, such as those arrested at the Montreal airport on the weekend, were simply released after having their passports confiscated.
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Acting on a tip from one or more parents, the RCMP arrested the 10 youth at the airport but have released few other details. An 11th teenager was captured on video being led away from a Montreal home by investigators. None of the teenagers have been identified publicly and no charges were laid.
The government may opt not to pursue a criminal case for fear that any public trial could force it to reveal sensitive intelligence methods – a situation that is a chronic issue in Canadian counterterrorism cases.
The passport confiscations recalled last fall's terror attacks in which two lone-wolf assailants each killed Canadian soldiers after they were thwarted in attempts to travel abroad and possibly join jihadi groups. Officials provided no answer when asked how they might prevent similar backlash in the latest cases.
The arrests again turned scrutiny toward a pre-university in Montreal's east end. Four of the people arrested on the weekend attended Maisonneuve College. A total of 11 alleged extremist recruits have now come from the school, which again denied it has a radicalization problem. "It's increasingly clear youth recruitment is happening through social media," a statement issued by the school said.
Observers are increasingly asking whether the threat to Canada can be contained if the ranks of extremists and thwarted jihadis continue to grow.
The RCMP's terrorism prevention program is designed to intervene before suspects mobilize toward violence, but the details of the program remain murky. In Quebec, Premier Philippe Couillard has promised oft-delayed legislation to deal with radicalization. He said a new law will be presented within weeks, meaning it will be months before any new program is enacted.
The City of Montreal has announced a radicalization-prevention centre, but so far it amounts to a phone number at police headquarters. Mayor Denis Coderre said Wednesday that much work remains to be done.
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"How many parents will have to call the police or the RCMP on their children because it's all they have for tools to prevent radicalization?" said Agnès Maltais, an Opposition member of Quebec's Legislature.
Vern White, a police chief turned senator, pointed out that police cannot put released suspects under surveillance indefinitely because monitoring can require as many as 25 officers per target.
"I do have confidence if charges are warranted they will be laid… If this is an early intervention, [police] might have gotten to this before they crossed the line into criminality," Mr. White said in an interview.
But, he added, authorities have to learn how to de-program extremists – and quickly. "Now it becomes a de-radicalization discussion."
Civilians who are trying to set up anti-radicalization efforts say they're getting little support and are struggling to build trust – both among police and parents who suspect their children may be radicalized.
"You know things have already gone sour when the police are involved," said Abdul Rashid Anwar, a leader in the small Montreal Ahmadiyya community who is trying to get anti-radicalization efforts off the ground in the city but is having little success. "Parents, teachers, community leaders have to do the work of educating these kids before the police get involved. We seem to be missing the bridge from one side to the other."
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Christianne Boudreau, an Alberta woman whose son was killed in 2014 fighting with the Islamic State, is working with a public outreach program called Extreme Dialogue. She says a hardening stance in law enforcement combined with a recently enacted federal anti-terror law are making it even harder for police to reach for tools beyond arrest and detention. "Every police force is different, but some of them are hesitant. Some have their hands tied. Crown prosecutors often have their own agenda, too," she said.
Amarnath Amarasingam, a terrorism researcher who is studying Canadian foreign fighters, said it is significant that no charges have been laid in Montreal.
"I think it shows just how difficult this issue is. Tracking these individuals and understanding their networks and intentions is enormously complicated," he said. "I think, perhaps, the government is trying to move away from approaching this from strictly a law-enforcement angle."
The size of the alleged cluster caught in Quebec is large, possibly uniquely so in North America, where smaller-scale interdictions against "high-risk travellers" and "foreign fighters" have become commonplace. The Montreal case is also significant because police pounced without pursuing any immediate criminal charges or peace-bond conditions.
Charges may yet come, but investigations such as this may be the new normal. Ever since the self-proclaimed Islamic State started to seize swaths of Iraq and Syria, jihadi siren songs on social media have enticed a growing pool of would-be recruits from the West. The conflict has no end in sight and police are increasingly put into the position of trying to stop suspects who cannot be proven to have broken any laws. |
A team led by postdoctoral associate John Heron of Cornell University has developed a room-temperature magnetoelectric memory design that replaces power-hungry electric currents with an electric field. It could lead to low-power, instant-on computing devices.
“The advantage here is low energy consumption,” Heron said. “It requires a low voltage, without current, to switch it. Devices that use currents consume more energy and dissipate a significant amount of that energy in the form of heat. That is what’s heating up your computer and draining your batteries.”
The researchers made their device out of bismuth ferrite, which is both magnetic and ferroelectric, meaning it’s always electrically polarized; and that polarization can be switched by applying an electric field.
This rare combination makes it a “multiferroic” material, allowing for it to be used for nonvolatile memory devices with relatively simple geometries. Other scientists have demonstrated similar results with competing materials, but at impractical cold temperatures, like 4 Kelvin (-452 Fahrenheit).
Their results were published online Dec. 17 in Nature, along with an associated “News and Views” article.
Collaborators from the University of Connecticut; University of California, Berkeley; Tsinghua University; and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich where also involved in the research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science.
Abstract of Deterministic switching of ferromagnetism at room temperature using an electric field
The technological appeal of multiferroics is the ability to control magnetism with electric field1, 2, 3. For devices to be useful, such control must be achieved at room temperature. The only single-phase multiferroic material exhibiting unambiguous magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature is BiFeO3 (refs 4 and 5). Its weak ferromagnetism arises from the canting of the antiferromagnetically aligned spins by the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya (DM) interaction6, 7, 8, 9. Prior theory considered the symmetry of the thermodynamic ground state and concluded that direct 180-degree switching of the DM vector by the ferroelectric polarization was forbidden10, 11. Instead, we examined the kinetics of the switching process, something not considered previously in theoretical work10, 11, 12. Here we show a deterministic reversal of the DM vector and canted moment using an electric field at room temperature. First-principles calculations reveal that the switching kinetics favours a two-step switching process. In each step the DM vector and polarization are coupled and 180-degree deterministic switching of magnetization hence becomes possible, in agreement with experimental observation. We exploit this switching to demonstrate energy-efficient control of a spin-valve device at room temperature. The energy per unit area required is approximately an order of magnitude less than that needed for spin-transfer torque switching13, 14. Given that the DM interaction is fundamental to single-phase multiferroics and magnetoelectrics3, 9, our results suggest ways to engineer magnetoelectric switching and tailor technologically pertinent functionality for nanometre-scale, low-energy-consumption, non-volatile magnetoelectronics. |
Police across Kansas feel they are targets of “built-in” bias and say they are wrongly accused of racial profiling.
Those sentiments underlie findings of a new study by a Wichita State University professor for the Kansas Department of Transportation.
Specifically, 39 of 61 officers interviewed for the research said they had been accused of racial profiling at least once during a traffic stop. Yet none said they were the subject of a formal complaint following the traffic stop.
One Hispanic officer “said he has been accused of racial profiling at least fifty times,” says a 59-page analysis compiled by Michael Birzer, a professor of criminal justice and director of WSU’s School of Community Affairs. The officers were from 15 agencies, including the Wichita Police Department.
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Last year, Birzer completed a study for the city of Wichita finding that Wichita police ticketed black motorists at disproportionately higher rates than white motorists. While African-Americans made up only 11 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 22 percent of the people given traffic citations from November 2012 through April 2013. That report said the results don’t prove that racial profiling exists because a number of factors may influence who gets ticketed by police. For example, if police are deployed more heavily in minority neighborhoods, it might explain why more minorities are being stopped. It can “present the perception of racial profiling even though it may not be occurring,” the report said.
The latest Birzer study, commissioned by the state, was designed to get officers’ perspectives. Birzer interviewed or spoke with the officers multiple times and met with them in focus groups.
Besides the Wichita department, the officers were from the Andover, Arkansas City, Derby, Dodge City, Eastborough, Kansas City, Lenexa, Newton, Pittsburg, Topeka and Wichita State University police departments and the Reno, Shawnee and Sumner County sheriff’s departments.
Many of the interviews were taking place as the tense situation in Ferguson, Mo., where a black teen was fatally shot by a white officer, was unfolding, Birzer said.
“We have an opportunity to look at both sides of this issue,” Birzer said. One sound approach to police-community relations, he said, seems to be “good, old-fashioned interaction, communication, just the little things that don’t cost a lot of money.”
“If every officer treated their beat like Andy Taylor” – the sheriff in the small town of Mayberry on “The Andy Griffith Show” on TV in the 1960s – “that can go a long, long ways,” Birzer said.
On being accused
The officers said that when they were accused of stopping motorists because of their race, usually it was an African-American accusing them.
Asked how they responded to the accusation, officers said they tried to explain the specific reason – speeding or a defective brake light – but they thought motorists accepted the explanation only part of the time.
One white officer told a black driver that he couldn’t see his race until he walked up to his car.
One officer shared this: “Some officers don’t care and won’t take a few extra minutes to explain to the citizen why they are being stopped and that’s a problem.”
The officers, two-thirds of whom are white, are not identified by name or agency.
Another theme: Officers suspected that minority drivers accusing them of racial profiling were trying to intimidate the officers. They suspected it was a way to evade a ticket or to try to distract the officer because the motorist had a suspended license or something to hide.
“Only a very few officers indicated that racial minority citizens allege racial profiling because they genuinely believe they were stopped because of their race,” the report said.
Officers said minorities had a bias against them that has been taught. One black officer said: “African Americans learn not to trust the police from a young age. … Older generations of African Americans had bad experiences with the police and so that leaves a bad impression of the police which is passed down generationally in families.”
A white officer said that when he said “Hi” to children in a car during a traffic stop, the adults “will tell the kids don’t talk to the police.”
Media blamed
Officers blame the news media for part of the negative image, saying that media skew their reporting against police when it comes to the issue of racial profiling, and that media “over-report” on cases like the shooting in Ferguson, Mo.
“So I really think the media are like weather chasers,” one officer said. “They are going to report anything, and objectivity doesn’t really matter.”
What people don’t understand, officers said, is that they are targeting crime, not minorities. Police call it “proactive policing.” The problem is, the same neighborhoods where they go after gangs and drug trafficking often are home to many low-income minorities. The officers said they learn from experience to look for certain clothing, gestures and behavior for crime indicators – not race.
“So when you’re driving along and these indicators start popping up you’re like wow,” one officer said.
Police also defend their use of “pretext” stops, where they are stopping someone for a minor traffic violation because they suspect the person of something more serious. For example, an officer might stop a driver for not signaling soon enough after the car leaves a drug house. The report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld pretext stops.
“My biggest case came from using a pretext stop for a defective headlight,” an officer said.
A black officer from eastern Kansas said he once wondered about a fellow officer who always seemed to be pulling over black men.
“But getting to know him over the years,” the officer said, “I realized that he is not like that at all, he just has this photographic memory for criminals regardless if they are white, purple, black or red and when he passes you he’s on it.”
Training criticized
Police say their racial-profiling training is “boring,” “bland” and “mind numbing” and should be more interactive. Some officers proposed bringing in minorities during the training so the citizens would understand the officers’ view.
It goes both ways. Birzer noted in an interview about his latest study that when he talked with minorities for his Wichita racial profiling study, they said they wanted to see officer training “so police could have a better understanding of them and their culture.”
Part of the problem is that minorities don’t have enough positive contact with police, a white officer said in the latest study.
Another sentiment is that officers have to be smart and realistic about their public relations effort. “I mean, holding a feed or a barbeque in the middle of the hood with a bunch of cops is not going to do it,” one officer said.
The media also need to be invited to officer training so they can be better educated about police work, officers said.
A white female officer said about the media: “Maybe if they gave as much attention to the positive things that we do that would be a start. It takes one bad incident to wipe out all good things that go on.” |
Three people you may have heard of—writer John Gruber, developer Brent Simmons, and designer Dave Wiskus—have joined forces to create Q Branch, an app development company whose first product is a $5 iPhone app called Vesper. The app, released Thursday, aims to help “collect your thoughts.”
Yes, it’s Yet Another iPhone Notes App. But it’s one that’s meticulously and tastefully designed—not surprising, coming from the principals of Q Branch. I’ve spent the past few weeks beta-testing the app, and in advance of the release I also talked to Gruber, Simmons, and Wiskus (all of whom have written for Macworld in the past) about what went into building it.
A notebook in your iPhone
There’s no shortage of notebook and reminder apps on iOS. I’ve used many of them, including Apple’s own Notes, Evernote, and a vast collection of text editors. And yet none of them has stuck for any length of time. The Q Branch group has had the same experience.
Vesper's full list view.
“I’d been waiting for [a note-taking app] I liked and wanted to use,” Simmons said. “That one just hadn’t appeared. There are good ones, for sure—but none that fit how I think and none that feel the way Vesper feels.”
I certainly can’t guarantee that I’ll stick with Vesper for the long haul, but I’ve been using it quite a lot for the past few weeks. The app’s core is a simple list of notes. Each note has a title, displayed in bold, with the first couple of lines displayed below it. Tap and hold to “pick up” a note and re-order the list in any way you like.
Tapping on a note enters the note editor. You can enter in as much text as you’d like, as well as attach a single image, which you can take directly from within Vesper or insert from your Camera Roll. Notes can be mailed, sent via message, or copied to the clipboard—there’s no syncing with other devices or any cloud-based sync services. Notes are organized via tags. Tap on the gray Tag button at the bottom of the note to add a tag, and a pretty orange pop-up will appear as you type, suggesting tags you’ve already entered.
Autocompletion of tags.
From the list view, you can tap the “hamburger” icon in the top left of the screen or just swipe from the left edge in order to display a filter list, which lets you limit the notes being displayed to those that contain a particular tag. There’s also an Archive list, where you can send old notes with a swipe.
Vesper doesn’t do much, but that’s the point. “We built it for ourselves,” Gruber said. “I think anyone who is like us—anyone who appreciates attention to detail, doing a few things really well instead of many things mediocrely—will love Vesper.”
Vesper's tag-filter list sidebar.
It’s visually striking. I like the typography (the app’s one and only body font is a custom-tweaked version of Hoefler and Frere-Jones’ Ideal Sans) and the design of the tags and the filter list. It’s simple enough not to get in my way with a lot of fiddly organizational features, but provides me with more structure than something like the Notes app. Tagging notes made a lot of sense—I immediately made Work, Writing, and Recipes tags. I commingled work notes, ideas for my novel, a favorite recipe for buttermilk biscuits, and an idea for my podcast without any trouble. Once I started treating it as the iPhone equivalent of a small paper notebook tucked into a pocket, it all began to fit.
That’s not to say there isn’t more to be done with the app. Syncing notes to other iOS devices (and perhaps a service like Dropbox) would be a natural, though I fear that any feature addition will make the app more cluttered, when simplicity is one of its real strengths. Too many fiddly feature additions and I’ll run screaming from it, just as I often do from Evernote.
The story of Q
Q is, of course, the mastermind who provides James Bond with all of his clever gadgets, as the leader of the British spy service’s Q Branch. (Vesper is the name of a cocktail invented by Bond as well as a pivotal character in Casino Royale.)
"Bond’s gadgets have always been at the intersection of utility and elegance," Gruber said. "That’s as good a motto for a software company as any."
“What I hope people pick up on is that in this scenario, we aren’t Bond,” Wiskus said. “We’re the people who make all the great tools for the agents to use.”
Here’s a look at the formation of Q Branch and the creation of Vesper in the words of its three creators.
Macworld: How did this project come about? When did you decide to work together? Did the idea for Vesper appear first, or did you decide to collaborate and then figure out what you wanted to build?
Simmons: Last year at Çingleton I talked to John and Dave about the three of us building an app, because it occurred to me that we’d make a great team, and I was looking for something new and awesome to do. John already had the idea for Vesper, but I didn’t know about it in advance.
Wiskus: Last summer, Justin Williams suggested that we work on an idea John mentioned to him. Justin had to drop out to keep up with freelance work, but I had completed a few iterations of design. When Brent pulled me and John aside in Montreal, we knew we wanted to work together but didn’t have anything in mind. I said, “Well, I have this idea of John’s I was working on,’ and showed them the early designs on my phone.
Gruber: Right. It was an old idea of mine from around 2009, but I had long ago figured I wouldn’t be able to build it myself, so over the years I had offered it to developer friends when they asked me if I had any ideas for apps. The difference with what we’ve done here is that I didn’t just contribute the idea, I was part of the team. I don’t consider ideas for apps all that valuable. It’s the implementation of an idea that matters.
Simmons: We talked it over, and decided pretty quickly that we’d build Vesper. Not long after that I decided to leave my then-current job and switch full-time to working on Vesper.
What was the division of labor on this project? What did John do, what did Brent do, and what did Dave do?
Simmons: I write code while Dave and John design. While I have input on design, it takes all my time keeping up with these madmen. Which I thoroughly enjoy. In the past I’ve designed my own software, though I didn’t necessarily do all the graphics. This is a very pleasant change for me—it’s great working with designers I trust, so I can concentrate on making those designs real. (Being a design-savvy engineer helps a ton.) I’m so proud of their work. Maybe they can’t say it, but I can: I think the design is hot. I love the way it looks and especially how it feels.
Wiskus: Our org chart is a Venn diagram, but simply: John and I would talk, then I would go draw pictures and give them to Brent. Then we’d all look at them, talk things through, try things out in implementation, and start the process over again.
"The last few years...have been the longest stretch in my life where I’ve done nothing new," Gruber said. "I had the itch."
John, what made you want to build an app?
Gruber: I didn’t seek it out. It’s Brent’s idea that we three would make a good team. But once he offered, I jumped at the chance. I’ve never worked with Brent before, but I’ve been using his software for over a decade now, and I’ve long been a beta tester on his stuff. I know his taste in software, and I know it matches mine. It sounded like fun, an opportunity I could not resist.
Secondarily, I’ve always tried to do new things. The last few years, where I’ve done nothing but write Daring Fireball, have been the longest stretch in my life where I’ve done nothing new. I had the itch.
The surprising part is how much designing for iPhone harkens back to my days doing print design. My earliest design work was print, and that was my first love. Of course as the years went on, I did more and more Web design and less and less print. And like everyone who made the switch from print to Web design, I bemoaned the lack of control. No control over the size of the canvas, severely limited selection of fonts, crude rendering resolution, etc.
The control and fidelity afforded by the iPhone—world-class fonts, high resolution output, control over the size and placement of everything on screen—made me feel right at home.
Vesper and Q Branch are James Bond references. Why the homage?
Gruber: Bond’s gadgets have always been at the intersection of utility and elegance. Serve a necessary purpose, reliably, and look good doing it. That’s as good a motto for a software company as any.
What does Vesper bring to the table that other apps don’t?
Gruber: A few things. For one, the design supports any size note, naturally. I have two-word notes, and 200-word notes. Vesper supports photo attachments, which few others do, and the ones that do tend to be complex, fussy apps. But the three big things are organization, prioritization, and feel.
With tags, I feel organized. I’ve got everything in my mind in Vesper. But with tags I can focus on just one area at a time. (E.g., I have a tag for articles I want to link to on Daring Fireball.)
With drag-and-drop reordering, I can keep important stuff at the top of my list. This drove me nuts in other notes apps, which sort by date. I’d always be opening week-old notes and adding meaningless changes, like an extra line at the end, just to get them to sort back to the top of my list. Vesper notes are like cards in a stack—it’s easy to move one to the top of the stack.
The last, feel, is the most subjective. But I think we’ve achieved something special with Vesper, where it feels both efficient and pleasing to use. I think this is more than just superficial. Our goal was to make it such that, if a quick little thought entered your head that you might want to put in Vesper, the appeal of using the app would push you over the edge to do it, to put it in Vesper rather than just keep it in your head. A complete reduction of friction.
Wiskus: Most apps of this type enforce some kind of philosophy. Some have books you need to read just to understand them. We wanted something that worked the way our brains did naturally. |
The driver of a bus that struck and killed a cyclist just outside the Olympic Park in Stratford while ferrying journalists between venues has been bailed until August, police have said.
The 28-year-old man was knocked down by the doubledecker in Ruckholt Road, at the junction with the A12, at about 7.40pm on Wednesday. An air ambulance doctor pronounced him dead at the scene.
A Metropolitan police spokesman said a man in his mid-60s had been arrested just outside the Olympic Park at 9.28pm on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
The victim is expected to be formally identified later on Thursday. A date for a postmortem examination is yet to be fixed.
After the fatal incident, Bradley Wiggins, who by winning a gold medal on Wednesday became Britain's most decorated Olympian, warned of the perils of cycling in the capital. "It's dangerous and London is a busy city and [there is] a lot of traffic. I think we have to help ourselves sometimes," he said.
"I haven't lived in London for 10 to 15 years now and it's got a lot busier since I was riding a bike as a kid round here, and I got knocked off several times.
"But I think things are improving to a degree. There are organisations out there who are attempting to make the roads safer for both parties. But at the end of the day we've all got to co-exist on the roads.
"Cyclists are not ever going to go away as much as drivers moan, and as much as cyclists maybe moan about certain drivers they are never going to go away, so there's got to be a bit of give and take."
Wiggins said he would like to see the introduction of a law making it compulsory to wear cycling helmets.
He later clarified his comments on twitter. "Just to confirm I haven't called for helmets to be made the law as reports suggest."
"I suggested it may be the way to go to give cyclists more protection legally if involved in an accident.
"I wasn't on me soap box CALLING, was asked what I thought."
Responding to his comments, Chris Peck, the policy coordinator for the UK's national cycling organisation the CTC said that making helmets compulsory would be counter-productive. He told Radio 5 live. "Making cycle helmets compulsory would be likely to have an overall damaging effect on public health, since the health benefits of cycling massively outweigh the risks and we know that where enforced, helmet laws tend to lead to an immediate reduction in cycling."
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said he was "hugely saddened" by the death. A spokesman for the mayor said: "Any road death is a tragedy and the mayor's thoughts are with the cyclist's family. As this is now under police investigation it would be inappropriate to say anything else."
Johnson cycled into Whitehall for this morning's ministerial Olympics meeting at the Cabinet Office wearing a bike helmet. But he appeared to be opposed to mandatory wearing of protective headwear by cyclists, as advocated by Wiggins. "I think they should do if they want to," Johnson said.
A London 2012 spokesman said: "We can confirm that a cyclist tragically died as a result of a collision with a bus carrying media from the Olympic Park this evening.
"The police are investigating the accident and our thoughts are with the cyclist's family."
The Metropolitan police's road death investigation unit is looking into the collision. |
The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of IQ testing in the early 20th century. There remains some debate as to whether and to what extent differences in intelligence test scores reflect environmental factors as opposed to genetic ones, as well as to the definitions of what "race" and "intelligence" are, and whether they can be objectively defined. Currently, there is no non-circumstantial evidence that these differences in test scores have a genetic component, although some researchers believe that the existing circumstantial evidence makes it at least plausible that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually be found.
The first test showing differences in IQ test results between different population groups in the US was the tests of United States Army recruits in World War I. In the 1920s groups of eugenics lobbyists argued that this demonstrated that African-Americans and certain immigrant groups were of inferior intellect to Anglo-Saxon whites due to innate biological differences, using this as an argument for policies of racial segregation. Soon, other studies appeared, contesting these conclusions and arguing instead that the Army tests had not adequately controlled for the environmental factors such as socio-economic and educational inequality between blacks and whites.
The debate reemerged again in 1969, when Arthur Jensen championed the view that for genetic reasons Africans were less intelligent than whites and that compensatory education for African-American children was therefore doomed to be ineffective. In 1994, the book The Bell Curve argued that social inequality in the United States could largely be explained as a result of IQ differences between races and individuals, and rekindled the public and scholarly debate with renewed force. During the debates following the book's publication, the American Anthropological Association and the American Psychological Association (APA) published official statements regarding the issue, both highly skeptical of some of the book's claims, although the APA report called for more empirical research on the issue.
History of the debate
Claims of races having different intelligence were used to justify colonialism, slavery, racism, social Darwinism, and racial eugenics. Racial thinkers such as Arthur de Gobineau relied crucially on the assumption that black people were innately inferior to whites in developing their ideologies of white supremacy. Even enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, believed blacks to be innately inferior to whites in physique and intellect.
Early IQ testing
The first practical intelligence test was developed between 1905 and 1908 by Alfred Binet in France for school placement of children. Binet warned that results from his test should not be assumed to measure innate intelligence or used to label individuals permanently. Binet's test was translated into English and revised in 1916 by Lewis Terman (who introduced IQ scoring for the test results) and published under the name the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales. As Terman's test was published, there was great concern in the United States about the abilities and skills of recent immigrants. Different immigrant nationalities were sometimes thought to belong to different races, such as Slavs. A different set of tests developed by Robert Yerkes were used to evaluate draftees for World War I, and researchers found that people from southern and eastern Europe scored lower than native-born Americans, that Americans from northern states had higher scores than Americans from southern states, and that black Americans scored lower than white Americans. The results were widely publicized by a lobby of anti-immigration activists, including the New York patrician and conservationist Madison Grant, who considered the Nordic race to be superior, but under threat of immigration by inferior breeds. In his influential work A Study of American Intelligence psychologist Carl Brigham used the results of the Army tests to argue for a stricter immigration policy, limiting immigration to countries considered to belong to the "nordic race".
In the 1920s, states like Virginia enacted eugenic laws, such as its 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which established the one-drop rule as law. On the other hand, many scientists reacted to eugenicist claims linking abilities and moral character to racial or genetic ancestry. They pointed to the contribution of environment to test results (such as speaking English as a second language). By the mid-1930s, many United States psychologists adopted the view that environmental and cultural factors played a dominant role in IQ test results, among them Carl Brigham who repudiated his own previous arguments, on the grounds that he realized that the tests were not a measure of innate intelligence. Discussion of the issue in the United States also influenced German Nazi claims of the "nordics" being a "master race", influenced by Grant's writings. As the American public sentiment shifted against the Germans, claims of racial differences in intelligence increasingly came to be regarded as problematic.[7] Anthropologists such as Franz Boas, and Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, did much to demonstrate the unscientific status of many of the claims about racial hierarchies of intelligence. Nonetheless a powerful eugenics and segregation lobby funded largely by textile-magnate Wickliffe Draper, continued to publicize studies using intelligence studies as an argument for eugenics, segregation, and anti-immigration legislation.
The Jensenism debates
As the de-segregation of the American South was begun in the 1950s the debate about black intelligence resurfaced. Audrey Shuey, funded by Draper's Pioneer Fund, published a new analysis of Yerkes' tests, concluding that blacks really were of inferior intellect to whites. This study was used by segregationists as an argument that it was to the advantage of black children to be educated separately from the superior white children. In the 1960s, the debate was further revived when William Shockley publicly defended the argument that black children were innately unable to learn as well as white children. Arthur Jensen stimulated scholarly discussion of the issue with his Harvard Educational Review article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?"[14] Jensen's article questioned remedial education for African-American children; he suggested their poor educational performance reflected an underlying genetic cause rather than lack of stimulation at home. Jensen continued to publish on the issue until his death in 2012.
The Bell Curve debate
Another revival of public debate followed the appearance of The Bell Curve (1994), a book by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, who strongly emphasized the societal effects of low IQ (focusing in most chapters strictly on the non-Hispanic white population of the United States). In 1994, a group of 52 researchers (mostly psychologists) signed an editorial statement "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" in response to the book. The Bell Curve also led to a 1995 report from the American Psychological Association, "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns", acknowledging a difference between mean IQ scores of whites and blacks as well as the absence of any adequate explanation of it, either environmental or genetic. The Bell Curve prompted the publication of several multiple-author books responding from a variety of points of view.[17][18] They include The Bell Curve Debate (1995), Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996) and a second edition of The Mismeasure of Man (1996) by Stephen Jay Gould.[18] Jensen's last book-length publication, The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability was published a few years later in 1998.
The review article "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability" by Rushton and Jensen was published in 2005. The article was followed by a series of responses, some in support, some critical.[7][20] Richard Nisbett, another psychologist who had also commented at the time, later included an amplified version of his critique as part of the book Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009).[21] Rushton and Jensen in 2010 made a point-by-point reply to this thereafter.[22] A comprehensive review article on the issue was published in the journal American Psychologist in 2012.
Some of the authors proposing genetic explanations for group differences have received funding from the Pioneer Fund, which was headed by Rushton until his death in 2012.[18][26] The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Pioneer Fund as a hate group, citing the fund's history, its funding of race and intelligence research, and its connections with racist individuals. Other researchers have criticized the Pioneer Fund for promoting scientific racism, eugenics and white supremacy.[28][29][30]
Validity of race and IQ
Intelligence, IQ, g and IQ tests
The concept of intelligence and the degree to which intelligence is measurable is a matter of debate. While there is some consensus about how to define intelligence, it is not universally accepted that it is something that can be unequivocally measured by a single figure.[31] A recurring criticism is that different societies value and promote different kinds of skills and that the concept of intelligence is therefore culturally variable and cannot be measured by the same criteria in different societies.[31] Consequently, some critics argue that proposed relationships to other variables are necessarily tentative.[32]
In relation to the study of racial differences in IQ test scores it becomes a crucial question what exactly it is that IQ tests measure. Arthur Jensen was a proponent of the view that there is a correlation between scores on all the known types of IQ tests and that this correlation points to an underlying factor of general intelligence, or g. In most conceptions of g it is considered to be fairly fixed in a given individual and unresponsive to training or other environmental influences. In this view test score differences, especially in those tasks considered to be particularly "g-loaded" reflect the test takers innate capability. Other psychometricians argue that, while there may or may not be a general intelligence factor, performance on tests rely crucially on knowledge acquired through prior exposure to the types of tasks that such tests contain. This view would mean that tests cannot be expected to reflect only the innate abilities of a given individual, because the expression of potential will always be mediated by experience and cognitive habits. It also means that comparison of test scores from persons with widely different life experiences and cognitive habits is not an expression of their relative innate potentials.
Race
The majority of anthropologists today consider race to be a sociopolitical phenomenon rather than a biological one, a view supported by considerable genetics research.[36] The current mainstream view in the social sciences and biology is that race is a social construction based on folk ideologies that construct groups based on social disparities and superficial physical characteristics.[37] Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd (2005) state, "Race is a socially constructed concept, not a biological one. It derives from people's desire to classify."[32] The concept of human "races" as natural and separate divisions within the human species has also been rejected by the American Anthropological Association. The official position of the AAA, adopted in 1998, is that advances in scientific knowledge have made it "clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups" and that "any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations [is] both arbitrary and subjective."[38]
Race in studies of human intelligence is almost always determined using self-reports, rather than based on analyses of the genetic characteristics of the tested individuals. According to psychologist David Rowe, self-report is the preferred method for racial classification in studies of racial differences because classification based on genetic markers alone ignore the "cultural, behavioral, sociological, psychological, and epidemiological variables" that distinguish racial groups.[39] Hunt and Carlson write that "Nevertheless, self-identification is a surprisingly reliable guide to genetic composition. Tang et al. (2005) applied mathematical clustering techniques to sort genomic markers for over 3,600 people in the United States and Taiwan into four groups. There was almost perfect agreement between cluster assignment and individuals' self-reports of racial/ethnic identification as white, black, East Asian, or Latino."[40] Sternberg and Grigorenko disagree with Hunt and Carlson's interpretation of Tang, "Tang et al.'s point was that ancient geographic ancestry rather than current residence is associated with self-identification and not that such self-identification provides evidence for the existence of biological race."[41]
Anthropologist C. Loring Brace[42] and geneticist Joseph Graves disagree with the idea that cluster analysis and the correlation between self-reported race and genetic ancestry support biological race.[43] They argue that while it is possible to find biological and genetic variation corresponding roughly to the groupings normally defined as races, this is true for almost all geographically distinct populations. The cluster structure of the genetic data is dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the populations sampled. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental; if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clusters would be different. Kaplan 2011 therefore concludes that, while differences in particular allele frequencies can be used to identify populations that loosely correspond to the racial categories common in Western social discourse, the differences are of no more biological significance than the differences found between any human populations (e.g., the Spanish and Portuguese).
Earl B. Hunt agrees that racial categories are defined by social conventions, though he points out that they also correlate with clusters of both genetic traits and cultural traits. Hunt explains that, due to this, racial IQ differences are caused by these variables that correlate with race, and race itself is rarely a causal variable. Researchers who study racial disparities in test scores are studying the relationship between the scores and the many race-related factors which could potentially affect performance. These factors include health, wealth, biological differences, and education.[44]
Group differences
The study of human intelligence is one of the most controversial topics in psychology. It remains unclear whether group differences in intelligence test scores are caused by heritable factors or by "other correlated demographic variables such as socioeconomic status, education level, and motivation."[45] Hunt and Carlson outlined four contemporary positions on differences in IQ based on race or ethnicity. The first is that these reflect real differences in average group intelligence, which is caused by a combination of environmental factors and heritable differences in brain function. A second position is that differences in average cognitive ability between races are caused entirely by social and/or environmental factors. A third position holds that differences in average cognitive ability between races do not exist, and that the differences in average test scores are the result of inappropriate use of the tests themselves. Finally, a fourth position is that either or both of the concepts of race and general intelligence are poorly constructed and therefore any comparisons between races are meaningless.[40]
United States test scores
In the United States, individuals identifying themselves as East Asian tend to have higher average IQ scores than do Caucasians, who, in turn, have higher average IQs than African Americans. Nevertheless, greater variation in IQ scores exists within each ethnic group than between them.[46]
Rushton & Jensen (2005) wrote that, in the United States, self-identified blacks and whites have been the subjects of the greatest number of studies. They stated that the black-white IQ difference is about 15 to 18 points or 1 to 1.1 standard deviations (SDs), which implies that between 11 and 16 percent of the black population have an IQ above 100 (the general population median). According to Arthur Jensen and J. Philippe Rushton the black-white IQ difference is largest on those components of IQ tests that are claimed best to represent the general intelligence factor g.[47] The 1996 APA report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" and the 1994 editorial statement "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" gave more or less similar estimates.[48][49] Roth et al. (2001), in a review of the results of a total of 6,246,729 participants on other tests of cognitive ability or aptitude, found a difference in mean IQ scores between blacks and whites of 1.1 SD. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate sections (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).[50]
East Asians have tended to score relatively higher on visuospatial subtests with lower scores in verbal subtests while Ashkenazi Jews score higher in verbal subtests with lower scores in visuospatial subtests. The few Amerindian populations who have been systematically tested, including Arctic Natives, tend to score worse on average than white populations but better on average than black populations.[50]
The racial groups studied in the United States and Europe are not necessarily representative samples for populations in other parts of the world. Cultural differences may also factor in IQ test performance and outcomes. Therefore, results in the United States and Europe do not necessarily correlate to results in other populations.[51]
Global variation of IQ scores
A number of studies have compared average IQ scores between the world's nations, finding patterns of difference between continental populations similar to those associated with race. Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen have argued that populations in the third world, particularly populations in Africa, tend to have limited intelligence because of their genetic composition and that, consequently, education cannot be effective in creating social and economic development in third world countries. Lynn and Vanhanen's studies have been severely criticized for relying on low quality data and for choosing sources in ways that seem to be biased severely towards underestimating the average IQ potential of developing nations, particularly in Africa.[55] Nonetheless there is a general consensus that the average IQ in developing countries is lower than in developed countries, but subsequent research has favored environmental explanations for this fact, such as lack of basic infrastructure related to health and education.
In the 2002 book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, and IQ and Global Inequality in 2006, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen created estimates of average IQs for 113 nations. They estimated IQs of 79 other nations based on neighboring nations or via other means. They saw a consistent correlation between national development and national IQ averages. They found the highest national IQs among Western and East Asian developed nations and the lowest national IQs in the world's least developed nations among the indigenous peoples in the regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America.[56] In a meta-analysis of studies of IQ estimates in Sub-Saharan Africa, Wicherts, Dolan & van der Maas (2009, p. 10) concluded that Lynn and Vanhanen had relied on unsystematic methodology by failing to publish their criteria for including or excluding studies. They found that Lynn and Vanhanen's exclusion of studies had depressed their IQ estimate for sub-Saharan Africa, and that including studies excluded in "IQ and Global Inequality" resulted in average IQ of 82 for sub-Saharan Africa, lower than the average in Western countries, but higher than Lynn and Vanhanen's estimate of 67. Wicherts at al. conclude that this difference is likely due to sub-Saharan Africa having limited access to modern advances in education, nutrition and health care.
A 2010 systematic review by the same research team, along with Jerry S. Carlson, found that compared to American norms, the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans was about 80. The same review concluded that the Flynn effect had not yet taken hold in sub-Saharan Africa.
A 2007 meta-analysis by Rindermann found many of the same groupings and correlations found by Lynn and Vanhanen, with the lowest scores in sub-Saharan Africa, and a correlation of .60 between cognitive skill and GDP per capita. Hunt (2010, pp. 437–439) considers Rindermann's analysis to be much more reliable than Lynn and Vanhanen's. By measuring the relationship between educational data and social wellbeing over time, this study also performed a causal analysis, finding that when nations invest in education this leads to increased well-being later on. Kamin (2006) has also criticized Lynn and Vanhanen's work on the IQs of sub-Saharan Africans.
Wicherts, Borsboom & Dolan (2010) argue that studies reporting support for evolutionary theories of intelligence based on national IQ data suffer from multiple fatal methodological flaws. For example, they state that such studies "...assume that the Flynn Effect is either nonexistent or invariant with respect to different regions of the world, that there have been no migrations and climatic changes over the course of evolution, and that there have been no trends over the last century in indicators of reproductive strategies (e.g., declines in fertility and infant mortality)." They also showed that a strong degree of confounding exists between national IQs and current national development status.
Similarly, Pesta & Poznanski (2014) showed that the average temperature of a given U.S. state is strongly associated with that state's average IQ and other well-being variables, despite the fact that evolution has not had enough time to operate on non-Native American residents of the United States. They also noted that this association persisted even after controlling for race, and concluded that "Evolution is therefore not necessary for temperature and IQ/well-being to co-vary meaningfully across geographic space."
Flynn effect and the closing gap
For the past century raw scores on IQ tests have been rising; this score increase is known as the "Flynn effect", named after James R. Flynn. In the United States, the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to about 1998 when the gains stopped and some tests even showed decreasing test scores. For example, in the United States the average scores of blacks on some IQ tests in 1995 were the same as the scores of whites in 1945.[63] As one pair of academics phrased it, "the typical African American today probably has a slightly higher IQ than the grandparents of today's average white American."[64]
Flynn has argued that given that these changes take place between one generation and the next it is highly unlikely that genetic factors could account for the increasing scores, which must then be caused by environmental factors. The Flynn Effect has often been used as an argument that the racial gap in IQ test scores must be environmental too, but this is not generally agreed – others have asserted that the two may have entirely different causes. A meta-analysis by Te Nijenhuis and van der Flier (2013) concluded that the Flynn effect and group differences in intelligence were likely to have different causes. They stated that the Flynn effect is caused primarily by environmental factors and that it's unlikely these same environmental factors play an important role in explaining group differences in IQ.[65] The importance of the Flynn effect in the debate over the causes for the IQ gap lies in demonstrating that environmental factors may cause changes in test scores on the scale of 1 SD. This had previously been doubted.
A separate phenomenon from the Flynn effect has been the discovery that the IQ gap has been gradually closing over the last decades of the 20th century, as black test-takers increased their average scores relative to white test-takers. For instance, Vincent reported in 1991 that the black-white IQ gap was decreasing among children, but that it was remaining constant among adults. Similarly, a 2006 study by Dickens and Flynn estimated that the difference between mean scores of blacks and whites closed by about 5 or 6 IQ points between 1972 and 2002, a reduction of about one-third. In the same period, the educational achievement disparity also diminished.[68] However, this was challenged by Rushton & Jensen who claim the difference remains stable. In a 2006 study, Murray agreed with Dickens and Flynn that there has been a narrowing of the difference; "Dickens' and Flynn's estimate of 3–6 IQ points from a base of about 16–18 points is a useful, though provisional, starting point". But he argued that this has stalled and that there has been no further narrowing for people born after the late 1970s. A subsequent study by Murray, based on the Woodcock–Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, estimated that the black-white IQ difference decreased by about one-half of one standard deviation from those born in the 1920s to those born in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s. Recent reviews by Flynn and Dickens (2006), Mackintosh (2011), and Nisbett et al. 2012 accept the gradual closing of the gap as a fact. In his review of the historical trends, Hunt (2010, p. 411) states: "There is some variety in the results, but not a great deal. The African American means are about 1 standard deviation unit (15 points on the IQ scale) below the white means, and the Hispanic means fall in between."
Some studies reviewed by Hunt (2010, p. 418) found that rise in the average achievement of African Americans was caused by a reduction in the number of African American students in the lowest range of scores without a corresponding increase in the number of students in the highest ranges. A 2012 review of the literature found that the IQ gap had diminished by 0.33 standard deviations since first reported.
A 2013 analysis of the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that from 1971 to 2008, the size of the black–white IQ gap in the United States decreased from 16.33 to 9.94 IQ points. It has also concluded however that, while IQ means are continuing to rise in all ethnic groups, this growth is occurring more slowly among 17-year-old students than among younger students and the black-white IQ gap is no longer narrowing. As of 2008, a study published in 2013 by Heiner Rindermann, Stefan Pinchelmann, and James Thompson have estimated the IQ means of 17-year-old black, white, and Hispanic students to range respectively from 90.45–94.15, 102.29–104.57 and 92.30–95.90 points. They explain that the gap may persist due to the crack epidemic, the degradation of African-American family structure, the rise of fraud in the educational system (especially with respect to No Child Left Behind), the decrease in unskilled real wages and employment among African-Americans due to globalization and minimum wage increases, differences in parental practices (such as breastfeeding or reading to children), and "environmental conditions shaped by [African-Americans] themselves." To resolve this, they ultimately recommend the reestablishment of "meritoric principles" and "blindly graded objective central exams," as opposed to "ethnically based policies," in education.[74]
Environmental influences on group differences in IQ
The following environmental factors are some of those suggested as explaining a portion of the differences in average IQ between races. These factors are not mutually exclusive with one another, and some may, in fact, contribute directly to others. Furthermore, the relationship between genetics and environmental factors may be complicated. For example, the differences in socioeconomic environment for a child may be due to differences in genetic IQ for the parents, and the differences in average brain size between races could be the result of nutritional factors. All recent reviews agree that some environmental factors that are unequally distributed between racial groups have been shown to affect intelligence in ways that could contribute to the test score gap. However, currently, the question is whether these factors can account for the entire gap between white and black test scores, or only part of it. One group of scholars, including Richard E. Nisbett, James R. Flynn, Joshua Aronson, Diane Halpern, William Dickens, Eric Turkheimer (2012) have argued that the environmental factors so far demonstrated are sufficient to account for the entire gap. Nicholas Mackintosh (2011) considers this a reasonable argument, but argues that probably it is impossible to ever know for sure; another group including Earl B. Hunt (2010), Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn have argued that this is impossible. Jensen and Rushton consider that it may account for as little as 20% of the gap. Meanwhile, while Hunt considers this a vast overstatement, he nonetheless considers it likely that some portion of the gap will eventually be shown to be caused by genetic factors.
Health and nutrition
at least 10 µg/dL. Black and Hispanic children have much higher levels than white children. A 10 µg/dL increase in blood lead at 24 months is associated with a 5.8-point decline in IQ.[76] Although the Geometric Mean Blood Lead Levels (GM BLL) are declining, a CDC report (2002) states that: "However, the GM BLL for non-Hispanic black children remains higher than that for Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white children, indicating that differences in risk for exposure still persist."[77] Percentage of children aged 1–5 with blood lead levels10 µg/dL. Black and Hispanic children have much higher levels than white children. A 10 µg/dL increase in blood lead at 24 months is associated with a 5.8-point decline in IQ.Although the Geometric Mean Blood Lead Levels (GM BLL) are declining, a CDC report (2002) states that: "However, the GM BLL for non-Hispanic black children remains higher than that for Mexican-American and non-Hispanic white children, indicating that differences in risk for exposure still persist."
Environmental factors including childhood lead exposure,[76] low rates of breast feeding,[78] and poor nutrition[79][80] can significantly affect cognitive development and functioning. For example, childhood exposure to lead, associated with homes in poorer areas[81] causes an average IQ drop of 7 points,[82] and iodine deficiency causes a fall, on average, of 12 IQ points.[83][84] Such impairments may sometimes be permanent, sometimes be partially or wholly compensated for by later growth. The first two years of life is the critical time for malnutrition, the consequences of which are often irreversible and include poor cognitive development, educability, and future economic productivity.[85] The African American population of the United States is statistically more likely to be exposed to many detrimental environmental factors such as poorer neighborhoods, schools, nutrition, and prenatal and postnatal health care.[86][87] Mackintosh points out that for American blacks infant mortality is about twice as high as for whites, and low birthweight is twice as prevalent. At the same time white mothers are twice as likely to breastfeed their infants, and breastfeeding is highly correlated with IQ for low birthweight infants. In this way a wide number of health related factors that influence IQ are unequally distributed between the two groups.
The Copenhagen consensus in 2004 stated that lack of both iodine and iron has been implicated in impaired brain development, and this can affect enormous numbers of people: it is estimated that one-third of the total global population are affected by iodine deficiency. In developing countries, it is estimated that 40% of children aged four and under suffer from anaemia because of insufficient iron in their diets.[89]
Other scholars have found that simply the standard of nutrition has a significant effect on population intelligence, and that the Flynn effect may be caused by increasing nutrition standards across the world.[90] James Flynn has himself argued against this view.[91]
Some recent research has argued that the retardation caused in brain development by infectious diseases, many of which are more prevalent in non-white populations, may be an important factor in explaining the differences in IQ between different regions of the world.[92] The findings of this research, showing the correlation between IQ, race and infectious diseases was also shown to apply to the IQ gap in the US, suggesting that this may be an important environmental factor.[93]
A 2013 meta-analysis by the World Health Organization found that, after controlling for maternal IQ, breastfeeding was associated with IQ gains of 2.19 points. The authors suggest that this relationship is causal but state that the practical significance of this gain is debatable; however, they highlight one study suggesting an association between breastfeeding and academic performance in Brazil, where "breastfeeding duration does not present marked variability by socioeconomic position."[94] Colen and Ramey (2014) similarly find that controlling for sibling comparisons within families, rather than between families, reduces the correlation between breastfeeding status and WISC IQ scores by nearly a third, but further find the relationship between breastfeeding duration and WISC IQ scores to be insignificant. They suggest that "much of the beneficial long-term effects typically attributed to breastfeeding, per say, may primarily be due to selection pressures into infant feeding practices along key demographic characteristics such as race and socioeconomic status."[95] Reichman estimates that no more than 3 to 4% of the black-white IQ gap can be explained by black-white disparities in low birth weight.[96]
Education
Several studies have proposed that a large part of the gap can be attributed to differences in quality of education.[97] Racial discrimination in education has been proposed as one possible cause of differences in educational quality between races.[98] According to a paper by Hala Elhoweris, Kagendo Mutua, Negmeldin Alsheikh and Pauline Holloway, teachers' referral decisions for students to participate in gifted and talented educational programs were influenced in part by the students' ethnicity.[99]
The Abecedarian Early Intervention Project, an intensive early childhood education project, was also able to bring about an average IQ gain of 4.4 points at age 21 in the black children who participated in it compared to controls.[78] Arthur Jensen agreed that the Abecedarian project demonstrates that education can have a significant effect on IQ, but also said that no educational program thus far has been able to reduce the black-white IQ gap by more than a third, and that differences in education are thus unlikely to be its only cause.[100]
Rushton and Jensen argue that long-term follow-up of the Head Start Program found large immediate gains for blacks and whites but that these were quickly lost for the blacks although some remained for whites. They argue that also other more intensive and prolonged educational interventions have not produced lasting effects on IQ or scholastic performance.[47] Nisbett argues that they ignore studies such as Campbell & Ramey (1994) which found that at the age 12, 87% of black infants exposed to an intervention had IQs in the normal range (above 85) compared to 56% of controls, and none of the intervention-exposed children were mildly retarded compared to 7% of controls. Other early intervention programs have shown IQ effects in the range of 4–5 points, which are sustained until at least age 8–15. Effects on academic achievement can also be substantial. Nisbett also argues that not only early age intervention can be effective, citing other successful intervention studies from infancy to college.[101]
A series of studies by Joseph Fagan and Cynthia Holland measured the effect of prior exposure to the kind of cognitive tasks posed in IQ tests on test performance. Assuming that the IQ gap was the result of lower exposure to tasks using the cognitive functions usually found in IQ tests among African American test takes, they prepared a group of African Americans in this type of tasks before taking an IQ test. The researchers found that there was no subsequent difference in performance between the African-Americans and white test takers.[102][103] Daley and Onwuegbuzie conclude that Fagan and Holland demonstrate that "differences in knowledge between blacks and whites for intelligence test items can be erased when equal opportunity is provided for exposure to the information to be tested". A similar argument is made by David Marks who argues that IQ differences correlate well with differences in literacy suggesting that developing literacy skills through education causes an increase in IQ test performance.[105][106]
A 2003 study found that two variables — stereotype threat and the degree of educational attainment of children's fathers — partially explained the black-white gap in cognitive ability test scores, undermining the hereditarian view that they stemmed from immutable genetic factors.[107]
Socioeconomic environment
Different aspects of the socioeconomic environment in which children are raised have been shown to correlate with part of the IQ gap, but they do not account for the entire gap. According to a 2006 review, these factors account for slightly less than half of one standard deviation of the gap.[109] Generally the difference between mean test scores of blacks and whites is not eliminated when individuals and groups are matched on socioeconomic status (SES), suggesting that the relationship between IQ and SES is not simply one in which SES determines IQ. Rather it may be the case that differences in intelligence, particularly parental intelligence, may also cause differences in SES, making separating the two factors difficult.[48] Hunt (2010, p. 428) summarises data[clarification needed] showing that, jointly, SES and parental IQ account for the full gap (in populations of young children, after controlling parental IQ and parental SES, the gap is not statistically different from zero). He argues the SES-linked components reflect parental occupation status, mother's verbal comprehension score and parent-child interaction quality. Hunt also reviews data showing that the correlation between home environment and IQ becomes weaker with age.[citation needed] Hart and Risley argue that in welfare, working-class, and professional families, children hear a large disparity in the amount of language (between 13 million and 45 million words) in the age range of 0–3, and that by age 9 these differences led to large differences in child outcomes.[110]
Other research has focussed on different causes of variation within low SES and high SES groups.[111][112][113] In the US, among low-SES groups, genetic differences account for a smaller proportion variance in IQ than among higher SES populations.[114] Such effects are predicted by the bioecological hypothesis – that genotypes are transformed into phenotypes through nonadditive synergistic effects of the environment.[115] Nisbett et al. (2012) suggest that high SES individuals are more likely to be able to develop their full biological potential, whereas low SES individuals are likely to be hindered in their development by adverse environmental conditions. The same review also points out that adoption studies generally are biased towards including only high and high middle SES adoptive families, meaning that they will tend to overestimate average genetic effects. They also note that studies of adoption from lower-class homes to middle-class homes have shown that such children experience a 12–18 pt gain in IQ relative to children who remain in low SES homes. A 2015 study found that environmental factors (namely, family income, maternal education, maternal verbal ability/knowledge, learning materials in the home, parenting factors (maternal sensitivity, maternal warmth and acceptance, and safe physical environment), child birth order, and child birth weight) accounted for the black-white gap in cognitive ability test scores.
Test bias
A number of studies have reached the conclusion that IQ tests may be biased against certain groups.[117][118][119][120] The validity and reliability of IQ scores obtained from outside the United States and Europe have been questioned, in part because of the inherent difficulty of comparing IQ scores between cultures.[121][122] Several researchers have argued that cultural differences limit the appropriateness of standard IQ tests in non-industrialized communities.[123][124]
A 1996 report by the American Psychological Association states that intelligence can be difficult to compare across culture, and notes that differing familiarity with test materials can produce substantial difference in test results; it also says that tests are accurate predictors of future achievement for black and white Americans, and are in that sense unbiased.[48] The view that tests accurately predict future educational attainment is reinforced by Nicholas Mackintosh in his 1998 book IQ and Human Intelligence,[125] and by a 1999 literature review by Brown, Reynolds & Whitaker (1999).
James R. Flynn, surveying studies on the topic, notes that the weight and presence of many test questions depends on what sorts of information and modes of thinking are culturally-valued.[126]
Stereotype threat and minority status
Stereotype threat is the fear that one's behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which one identifies or by which one is defined; this fear may in turn lead to an impairment of performance.[127] Testing situations that highlight the fact that intelligence is being measured tend to lower the scores of individuals from racial-ethnic groups who already score lower on average or are expected to score lower. Stereotype threat conditions cause larger than expected IQ differences among groups.[128] Psychometrician Nicholas Mackintosh considers that there is little doubt that the effects of stereotype threat contribute to the IQ gap between blacks and whites.
A large number of studies have shown that systemically disadvantaged minorities, such as the African American minority of the United States generally perform worse in the educational system and in intelligence tests than the majority groups or less disadvantaged minorities such as immigrant or "voluntary" minorities.[48] The explanation of these findings may be that children of caste-like minorities, due to the systemic limitations of their prospects of social advancement, do not have "effort optimism", i.e. they do not have the confidence that acquiring the skills valued by majority society, such as those skills measured by IQ tests, is worthwhile. They may even deliberately reject certain behaviors that are seen as "acting white."
Research published in 1997 indicates that part of the black-white gap in cognitive ability test scores is due to racial differences in test motivation.[132]
Attempts to replicate studies evincing significant effects of stereotype threat however have not yielded the same results. In 2004 Sackett et al. found that eliminating stereotype threat does not eliminate the racial test performance gap, and in 2005 Tyson et al. found African Americans to have motivation similar to or even better than that of white Americans.[133][134] Self-affirmation exercises promoted by research scientists such as Geoffrey L. Cohen have not been shown to be effective by attempts to replicate his studies purporting them to be successful.[135] A 2015 meta-analysis conducted by Flore & Wicherts of studies on the relationship between gender and stereotype threat found the observed estimates to be inflated by publication bias, arguing the true effect to be most likely near zero.[136]
Research into the possible genetic influences on test score differences
Ongoing research aims to understand the contribution of genes to differences in intelligence. Currently there is no non-circumstantial evidence that the test score gap has a genetic component, although some researchers believe that the existing circumstantial evidence makes it plausible to believe that hard evidence for a genetic component will eventually appear. Growing evidence indicates that environmental factors, not genetic ones, are more important in explaining the racial IQ gap. Several lines of investigation have been followed in the attempt to ascertain whether there is a genetic component to the test score gap as well as its relative contribution to the magnitude of the gap.
Genetics of race and intelligence
Geneticist Alan R. Templeton argues that the question about the possible genetic effects on the test score gap is muddled by the general focus on "race" rather than on populations defined by gene frequency or by geographical proximity, and by the general insistence on phrasing the question in terms of heritability.[141] Templeton points out that racial groups neither represent sub-species nor distinct evolutionary lineages, and that therefore there is no basis for making claims about the general intelligence of races.[141] From this point of view the search for possible genetic influences on the black-white test score gap is a priori flawed, because there is no genetic material shared by all Africans or by all Europeans. Mackintosh (2011) points out that by using genetic cluster analysis to correlate gene frequencies with continental populations it could possibly be the case that African populations had a higher frequency of certain genetic variants that contribute to an average lower intelligence. Such a hypothetical situation could hold without all Africans carrying the same genes or belonging to a single Evolutionary lineage. According to Mackintosh, a biological basis for the gap thus cannot be ruled out on a priori grounds.
Intelligence is a polygenic trait. This means that intelligence is under the influence of several genes, possibly several thousand. The effect of most individual genetic variants on intelligence is thought to be very small, well below 1% of the variance in g. Current studies using quantitative trait loci have yielded little success in the search for genes influencing intelligence. Robert Plomin is confident that QTLs responsible for the variation in IQ scores exist, but due to their small effect sizes, more powerful tools of analysis will be required to detect them.[142] Others assert that no useful answers can be reasonably expected from such research before an understanding of the relation between DNA and human phenotypes emerges.[87] Several candidate genes have been proposed to have a relationship with intelligence.[143][144] However, a review of candidate genes for intelligence published in Deary, Johnson & Houlihan (2009) failed to find evidence of an association between these genes and general intelligence, stating "there is still almost no replicated evidence concerning the individual genes, which have variants that contribute to intelligence differences".[145] In 2001, a review in the Journal of Black Psychology refuted eight major premises on which the hereditarian view regarding race and intelligence is based.[146]
A 2005 literature review article by Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd stated that no gene has been shown to be linked to intelligence, "so attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time". Hunt (2010, p. 447) and Mackintosh (2011, p. 344) concurred, both scholars noting that while several environmental factors have been shown to influence the IQ gap, the evidence for a genetic influence has been circumstantial, and according to Mackintosh negligible. Mackintosh however suggests that it may never become possible to account satisfyingly for the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors. The 2012 review by Nisbett et al. (2012) concluded that "Almost no genetic polymorphisms have been discovered that are consistently associated with variation in IQ in the normal range". Hunt and several other researchers however maintain that genetic causes cannot be ruled out, and that new evidence may yet show a genetic contribution to the gap. Hunt concurs with Rushton and Jensen who considered the 100% environmental hypothesis to be impossible. Nonetheless, Nisbett and colleagues (2012) consider the entire IQ gap to be explained by the environmental factors that have thus far been demonstrated to influence it, and Mackintosh does not find this view to be unreasonable.
Heritability within and between groups
An environmental factor that varies between groups but not within groups can cause group differences in a trait that is otherwise 100 percent heritable
Twin studies of intelligence have reported high heritability values. However, these studies are based on questionable assumptions. When used in the context of human behavior genetics, the term "heritability" is highly misleading, as it does not convey any information about the relative importance of genetic or environmental factors on the development of a given trait, nor does it convey the extent to which that trait is genetically determined. Arguments in support of a genetic explanation of racial differences in IQ are sometimes fallacious. For instance, hereditarians have sometimes cited the failure of known environmental factors to account for such differences, or the high heritability of intelligence within races, as evidence that racial differences in IQ are genetic.[150]
Psychometricians have found that intelligence is substantially heritable within populations, with 30–50% of variance in IQ scores in early childhood being attributable to genetic factors in analyzed US populations, increasing to 75–80% by late adolescence.[48][145] In biology heritability is defined as the ratio of variation attributable to genetic differences in an observable trait to the trait's total observable variation. The heritability of a trait describes the proportion of variation in the trait that is attributable to genetic factors within a particular population. A heritability of 1 indicates that variation correlates fully with genetic variation and a heritability of 0 indicates that there is no correlation between the trait and genes at all. In psychological testing, heritability tends to be understood as the degree of correlation between the results of a test taker and those of their biological parents. However, since high heritability is simply a correlation between traits and genes, it does not describe the causes of heritability which in humans can be either genetic or environmental.
Therefore, a high heritability measure does not imply that a trait is genetic or unchangeable, however, as environmental factors that affect all group members equally will not be measured by heritability and the heritability of a trait may also change over time in response to changes in the distribution of genes and environmental factors.[48] High heritability also doesn't imply that all of the heritability is genetically determined, but can also be due to environmental differences that affect only a certain genetically defined group (indirect heritability).[151] The figure to the left demonstrates how heritability works. In both gardens the difference between tall and short cornstalks is 100% heritable as cornstalks that are genetically disposed for growing tall will become taller than those without this disposition, but the difference in height between the cornstalks to the left and those on the right is 100% environmental as it is due to different nutrients being supplied to the two gardens. Hence the causes of differences within a group and between groups may not be the same, even when looking at traits that are highly heritable.[151] In his criticism of the Bell Curve, Noam Chomsky further illustrated this with the example of women wearing earrings:
To borrow an example from Ned Block, "some years ago when only women wore earrings, the heritability of having an earring was high because differences in whether a person had an earring was due to a chromosomal difference, XX vs. XY." No one has yet suggested that wearing earrings, or ties, is "in our genes," an inescapable fate that environment cannot influence, "dooming the liberal notion."[152]
In regards to the IQ gap the question becomes whether racial groups can be shown to be influenced by different environmental factors that may account for the observed differences between them. Jensen originally argued that given the high heritability of IQ the only way that the IQ gap could be explained as caused by the environment would be if it could be shown that all blacks were subject to a single "x-factor" which affected no white populations while affecting all black populations equally.[153] Jensen considered the existence of such an x-factor to be extremely improbable, but Flynn's discovery of the Flynn effect showed that in spite of high heritability environmental factors could cause considerable disparities in IQ between generations of the same population, showing that the existence of such an x-factor was not only possible but real.
Jensen has also argued that heritability of traits rises with age as the genetic potential of individuals becomes expressed. He sees this as related to the fact that the IQ gap between white and black test takers has been shown to appear gradually, with the gap widening as cohorts reach adulthood. This he sees as a further argument in favor of Spearman's hypothesis (see section below).
In contrast, Dickens and Flynn argued that the conventional interpretation ignores the role of feedback between factors, such as those with a small initial IQ advantage, genetic or environmental, seeking out more stimulating environments which will gradually greatly increase their advantage, which, as one consequence in their alternative model, would mean that the "heritability" figure is only in part due to direct effects of genotype on IQ.
Today researchers such as Hunt (2010), Nisbett et al. (2012) and Mackintosh (2011) consider that rather than a single factor accounting for the entire gap, probably many different environmental factors differ systematically between the environments of white and black people converge to create part of the gap and perhaps all of it. They argue that it does not make sense to talk about a single universal heritability figure for IQ, rather, they state, heritability of IQ varies between and within groups. They point specifically to studies showing a higher heritability of test scores in white and medium-high SES families, but considerably lower heritability for black and low-SES families. This they interpret to mean that children who grow up with limited resources do not get to develop their full genetic potential.
Multiple studies have been conducted over the past several decades to survey scientific estimates on the heritability of the IQ gap. A review by Snydermann and Rothman in 1988 found that 45% of the scientists they questioned believed the gap to be "a product of genetic and environmental variation," 15% and 1% respectively "entirely to environmental" and "genetic variation," while the remaining 38% either declined to answer or stated that the evidence was inconclusive.[158] The heritability of intelligence was estimated on average to be 59.6% for white Americans and 57.0% for black Americans among those who answered that the evidence was sufficiently conclusive.[159] The Wall Street Journal published an editorial by Linda Gottfredson in 1994, signed by 52 professors specializing in intelligence and allied fields, that estimated the heritability of individual variation to range between 40–80%, but also stating that "there is no definitive answer" to explain the racial gap.[160] Social psychologist Donald T. Campbell criticized the report, arguing that it overstated the plausibility of genetic explanations and underestimated the extent of environmental differences between races.[161] A 1995 report by the APA stated that there is more plausible evidence for an environmental than for a genetic explanation, but that there was "no adequate explanation" for the black-white IQ gap.[162][163] In a 2013 followup on Snyderman & Rothman, Rindermann et al. found the average and median estimates of the black-white IQ gap to be heritable by 47% and 50% respectively among surveyed scientists who believed that the available evidence allowed for a reasonable estimate. This survey however yielded a response rate of 18% (228 participants) compared to Snyderman & Rothman's 65% (661 participants).[164]
Spearman's hypothesis
Spearman's hypothesis states that the magnitude of the black-white difference in tests of cognitive ability is entirely or mainly a function of the extent to which a test measures general mental ability, or g. The hypothesis was first formalized by Arthur Jensen who devised the statistical Method of Correlated Vectors to test it. Jensen holds that if Spearman's hypothesis holds true then some cognitive tasks have a higher g-load than others, and that these tasks are exactly the tasks in which the gap between black and white test takers are greatest. Jensen, and other psychometricians such as Rushton and Lynn, take this to show that the cause of g and the cause of the gap are the same—in their view genetic differences.
Mackintosh (2011, pp. 338–39) acknowledges that Jensen and Rushton have shown a modest correlation between g-loading, heritability, and the test score gap, but he does not accept that this demonstrates a genetic origin of the gap. He points out that it is exactly in those the tests that Rushton and Jensen consider to have the highest g-loading and heritability such as the Wechsler that has seen the highest increases due to the Flynn effect. This suggests that they are also the most sensitive to environmental changes. And in turn, if the highly g-loaded tests are both more liable to environmental influences and as Jensen argues, the ones where the black-white gap is most pronounced, it suggests in fact contrary to Jensen's argument that the gap is most likely caused by environmental factors. Mackintosh also argues that Spearman's hypothesis, which he considers to be likely to be correct, simply shows that the test score gap is based on whatever cognitive faculty is central to intelligence, but not what this factor is. Nisbett et al. (2012, p. 146) make the same point, noting also that the increase in the IQ scores of black test takers is necessarily also an increase in g.
James Flynn (2012, pp. 140–1) argues that there is an inherent flaw in Jensen's argument that the correlation between g-loadings, test scores and heritability support a genetic cause of the gap. He points out that as the difficulty of a task increases a low performing group will naturally fall further behind, and heritability will therefore also naturally increase. The same holds for increases in performance which will first affect the least difficult tasks, but only gradually affect the most difficult ones. Flynn thus sees the correlation between in g-loading and the test score gap to offer no clue to the cause of the gap.
Hunt (2010, p. 415) states that many of conclusions of Jensen, and his colleagues rest on the validity of Spearman's hypothesis, and the method of correlated vectors used to test it. Hunt points out that other researchers have found this method of calculation to produce false positive results, and that other statistical methods should be used instead. According to Hunt, Jensen and Rushton's frequent claim that Spearman's hypothesis should be regarded as empirical fact does not hold, and that new studies based on better statistical methods would be required to confirm or reject the hypothesis that the correlation between g-loading, heritability and the IQ gap is due to IQ gaps consisting mostly of g.
Adoption studies
A number of studies have been done on the effect of similar rearing conditions on children from different races. The hypothesis is that by investigating whether black children adopted into white families demonstrated gains in IQ test scores relative to black children reared in black families. Depending on whether their test scores are more similar to their biological or adoptive families, that could be interpreted as either supporting a genetic or an environmental hypothesis. The main point of critique in studies like these however is whether the environment of black children—even when raised in white families—is truly comparable to the environment of white children. Several reviews of the adoption study literature has pointed out that it is perhaps impossible to avoid confounding of biological and environmental factors in this type of studies. Given the differing heritability estimates in medium-high SES and low-SES families, Nisbett et al. (2012, pp. 134) argue that adoption studies on the whole tend to overstate the role of genetics because they represent a restricted set of environments, mostly in the medium-high SES range.
The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (1976) examined the IQ test scores of 122 adopted children and 143 nonadopted children reared by advantaged white families. The children were restudied ten years later.[167] The study found higher IQ for whites compared to blacks, both at age 7 and age 17.[167] Rushton & Jensen (2005) cite the Minnesota study as providing support to a genetic explanation. Nonetheless, acknowledging the existence of confounding factors, Scarr and Weinberg the authors of the original study, did not themselves consider that it provided support for either the hereditarian or environmentalist view.
Three other adoption studies found contrary evidence to the Minnesota study, lending support to a mostly environmental hypothesis:
Eyferth (1961) studied the out-of-wedlock children of black and white soldiers stationed in Germany after World War 2 and then raised by white German mothers and found no significant differences.
Tizard et al. (1972) studied black (West Indian), white, and mixed-race children raised in British long-stay residential nurseries. Two out of three tests found no significant differences. One test found higher scores for non-whites.
Moore (1986) compared black and mixed-race children adopted by either black or white middle-class families in the United States. Moore observed that 23 black and interracial children raised by white parents had a significantly higher mean score than 23 age-matched children raised by black parents (117 vs 104), and argued that differences in early socialization explained these differences.
Rushton and Jensen have argued that unlike the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, these studies did not retest the children post-adolescence when heritability of IQ would presumably be higher.[22][47] Nisbett (2009, p. 226) however point out that the difference in heritability between ages 7 and 17 are quite small, and that consequently this is no reason to disregard Moore's findings.
Frydman and Lynn (1989) showed a mean IQ of 119 for Korean infants adopted by Belgian families. After correcting for the Flynn effect, the IQ of the adopted Korean children was still 10 points higher than the indigenous Belgian children.[172]
Reviewing the evidence from adoption studies Mackintosh considers the studies by Tizard and Eyferth to be inconclusive, and the Minnesota study to be consistent only with a partial genetic hypothesis. On the whole he finds that environmental and genetic variables remain confounded and considers evidence from adoption studies inconclusive on the whole, and fully compatible with a 100% environmental explanation.
Racial admixture studies
Most people have an ancestry from different geographic regions, particularly African Americans typically have ancestors from both Africa and Europe, with, on average, 20% of their genome inherited from European ancestors.[173] If racial IQ gaps have a partially genetic basis, one might expect blacks with a higher degree of European ancestry to score higher on IQ tests than blacks with less European ancestry, because the genes inherited from European ancestors would likely include some genes with a positive effect on IQ. Geneticist Alan Templeton has argued that an experiment based on the Mendelian "common garden" design where specimens with different hybrid compositions are subjected to the same environmental influences, would be the only way to definitively show a causal relation between genes and IQ. Summarizing the findings of admixture studies, he concludes that it has shown no significant correlation between any cognitive and the degree of African or European ancestry.
Studies have employed different ways of measuring or approximating relative degrees of ancestry from Africa and Europe. One set of studies have used skin color as a measure, and other studies have used blood groups. Loehlin (2000) surveys the literature and argues that the blood groups studies may be seen as providing some support to the genetic hypothesis, even though the correlation between ancestry and IQ was quite low. He finds that studies by Eyferth (1961), Willerman, Naylor & Myrianthopoulos (1970) did not find a correlation between degree of African/European ancestry and IQ. The latter study did find a difference based on the race of the mother, with children of white mothers with black fathers scoring higher than children of black mothers and white fathers. Loehlin considers that such a finding is compatible with either a genetic or an environmental cause. All in all Loehlin finds admixture studies inconclusive and recommends more research.
Another study cited by Rushton & Jensen (2005), and by Nisbett et al. (2012), was Moore (1986) study which found that adopted mixed-race children's has test scores identical to children with two black parents—receiving no apparent "benefit" from their white ancestry. Rushton and Jensen find admixture studies to have provided overall support for a genetic explanation though this view is not shared by Loehlin (2000), Nisbett (2009), Hunt (2010), Mackintosh (2011), nor by Nisbett et al. (2012).
Reviewing the evidence from admixture studies Hunt (2010) considers it to be inconclusive because of too many uncontrolled variables. Mackintosh (2011, p. 338) quotes a statement by Nisbett (2009) to the effect that admixture studies have not provided a shred of evidence in favor of a genetic basis for the gap.
Mental chronometry
Mental chronometry measures the elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent behavioral response by the participant. This reaction time (RT) is considered a measure of the speed and efficiency with which the brain processes information.[176] Scores on most types of RT tasks tend to correlate with scores on standard IQ tests as well as with g, and no relationship has been found between RT and any other psychometric factors independent of g.[176] The strength of the correlation with IQ varies from one RT test to another, but Hans Eysenck gives 0.40 as a typical correlation under favorable conditions.[177] According to Jensen individual differences in RT have a substantial genetic component, and heritability is higher for performance on tests that correlate more strongly with IQ.[178] Nisbett argues that some studies have found correlations closer to 0.2, and that the correlation is not always found.[179]
Several studies have found differences between races in average reaction times. These studies have generally found that reaction times among black, Asian and white children follow the same pattern as IQ scores. Black-white differences in reaction time, however, tend to be small (average effect size .18). Rushton & Jensen (2005) have argued that reaction time is independent of culture and that the existence of race differences in average reaction time is evidence that the cause of racial IQ gaps is partially genetic instead of entirely cultural. Responding to this argument in Intelligence and How to Get It, Nisbett has pointed to the Jensen & Whang (1993) study in which a group of Chinese Americans had longer reaction times than a group of European Americans, despite having higher IQs. Nisbett also mentions findings in Flynn (1991) and Deary (2001) suggesting that movement time (the measure of how long it takes a person to move a finger after making the decision to do so) correlates with IQ just as strongly as reaction time, and that average movement time is faster for blacks than for whites. Mackintosh (2011, p. 339) considers reaction time evidence unconvincing and points out that other cognitive tests that also correlate well with IQ show no disparity at all, for example the habituation/dishabituation test. And he points out that studies show that rhesus monkeys have shorter reaction times than American college students, suggesting that different reaction times may not tell us anything useful about intelligence.
Brain size
A number of studies have reported a moderate statistical correlation between differences in IQ and brain size between individuals in the same group. And some scholars have reported differences in average brain sizes between Africans, Europeans, and Asians. J. P. Rushton has argued that Africans on average have smaller brain cases and brains than Europeans, that Europeans have smaller brains than East Asians, and that this is evidence that the gap is biological in nature. Critics of Rushton have argued that Rushton's arguments rest on outdated data collected by unsound methods and should be considered invalid. Recent reviews by Nisbett et al. (2012a) and Mackintosh (2011) consider that current data does show an average difference in brain size and head-circumference between American blacks and whites, but question whether this has any relevance for the IQ gap. Nisbett et al. argue that crude brain size is unlikely to be a good measure of IQ; for example, brain size also differs between men and women, but without well-documented differences in IQ. At the same time newborn black children have the same average brain size as whites, suggesting that the difference in average size could be accounted for by differences in postnatal environment. Several factors that reduce brain size have been demonstrated to disproportionately affect black children.
Earl Hunt states that brain size is found to have a correlation of about .35 with intelligence among whites and cites studies showing that genes may account for as much as 90% of individual variation in brain size. According to Hunt, race differences in average brain size could potentially be an important argument for a possible genetic contribution to racial IQ gaps. Nonetheless, Hunt notes that Rushton's head size data would account for a difference of .09 standard deviations between black and white average test scores, less than a tenth of the 1.0 standard deviation gap in average scores that is observed. Wicherts, Borsboom, & Dolan (2010) argue that black-white differences in brain size are insufficient to explain 91% to 95% of the black-white IQ gap.
Archaeological data
Archaeological evidence does not support claims by Rushton and others that blacks' cognitive ability was inferior to whites' during prehistoric times as a result of evolution.
Policy relevance and ethics
The 1996 report of the APA commented on the ethics of research on race and intelligence.[40] Gray & Thompson (2004) as well as Hunt & Carlson (2007) have also discussed different possible ethical guidelines.[40][193][non-primary source needed] Nature in 2009 featured two editorials on the ethics of research in race and intelligence by Steven Rose (against) and Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams (for).[194][195]
According to critics, research on group differences in IQ will reproduce the negative effects of social ideologies (such as Nazism or social Darwinism) that were justified in part on claimed hereditary racial differences.[38][196] Steven Rose maintains that the history of eugenics makes this field of research difficult to reconcile with current ethical standards for science.[195]
Linda Gottfredson argues that suggestion of higher ethical standards for research into group differences in intelligence is a double standard applied in order to undermine disliked results.[197] James R. Flynn has argued that had there been a ban on research on possibly poorly conceived ideas, much valuable research on intelligence testing (including his own discovery of the Flynn effect) would not have occurred.[198]
Jensen and Rushton argued that the existence of biological group differences does not rule out, but raises questions about the worthiness of policies such as affirmative action or placing a premium on diversity. They also argued for the importance of teaching people not to overgeneralize or stereotype individuals based on average group differences, because of the significant overlap of people with varying intelligence between different races.[47]
The environmentalist viewpoint argues for increased interventions in order to close the gaps.[199] Nisbett argues that schools can be greatly improved and that many interventions at every age level are possible.[200] Flynn, arguing for the importance of the black subculture, writes that "America will have to address all the aspects of black experience that are disadvantageous, beginning with the regeneration of inner city neighbourhoods and their schools. A resident police office and teacher in every apartment block would be a good start."[201] Researchers from both sides agree that interventions should be better researched.[179][22]
Especially in developing nations, society has been urged to take on the prevention of cognitive impairment in children as of the highest priority. Possible preventable causes include malnutrition, infectious diseases such as meningitis, parasites, cerebral malaria, in utero drug and alcohol exposure, newborn asphyxia, low birth weight, head injuries, lead poisoning and endocrine disorders.[202]
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography |
America may be one of the richest countries in the world, but its people are less healthy and more likely to die early from disease or accidents than those in any other affluent country, a damning official US report has found.
Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour – are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says the report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.
"We were struck by the gravity of these findings," said Steven H Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. "Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What really concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind." The report, US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health. It compares the US with 16 affluent democracies, including Australia, Canada and Japan and many in Europe including Britain. There have been similar findings from the Commonwealth Fund over some years, but they have compared the US with only a handful of nations.
The new report looked in detail at data from the late 1990s to 2008. "Over this time period, we uncovered a strikingly consistent and pervasive pattern of higher mortality and inferior health in the United States, beginning at birth," it said.
For many years, Americans have had a shorter life expectancy than people in almost all the comparator countries and for the past three decades the gap has been widening, particularly for women.
The US does badly in nine specific areas. It has the highest infant mortality rate of any wealthy country and also does poorly on other birth outcomes, such as low weight babies.
Deaths from injuries and homicides are far higher than elsewhere and a leading cause of death in children, adolescents and young adults. US adolescents have had the highest rate of pregnancies of affluent countries since the 1990s and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections. The US has the second highest HIV rate and the highest incidence of Aids among the 17 countries.
Even taking out drunk driving, Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and other drugs than people in other affluent countries. The US has the highest obesity rate and, from age 20, one of the highest levels of type 2 diabetes. The death rate from heart disease is the second highest in the 17 countries. There is more lung disease and more deaths from it than in Europe and older people report more arthritis and other limitations on their activity than in Europe or Japan.
The US is, however, good at looking after the health of the most elderly. People who reach 75 are more likely to live longer, have lower death rates from stroke and cancer, better-controlled blood pressure and cholesterol levels and lower rates of smoking than elsewhere.
But death and disease take a huge toll on the younger American population, even though the US spends more on healthcare per capita than almost any other country in the world. Poverty, inequality, racial and ethnic differences and lack of health insurance are part of the story but not all. Even non-Hispanic white people with money and insurance who are not smokers or obese do less well than those in other countries.
Unless action is taken, the report says, the health of Americans will probably continue to fall behind. "The tragedy is not that the United States is losing a contest with other countries but that Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are demonstrably unnecessary. Superior health outcomes in other nations show that Americans also can enjoy better health," says the report.
The US public is unaware of the issues, says the report. "I don't think most parents know, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the US die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries," said Woolf.
The report says the situation will not improve unless Americans wake up to the truth about their health and a public debate begins. |
Fingerprint riddle leads to new call for Dr David Kelly inquest
Found in woods: Dr David Kelly's possessions did not have any fingerprints on them
Fresh information casting doubt on how weapons inspector Dr David Kelly died has been sent to the Government by campaigners trying to secure an inquest into his death.
Attorney General Dominic Grieve was presented with legal papers on Monday arguing that because there were no fingerprints on five items found with Dr Kelly’s body – including the knife he supposedly used to kill himself – a coroner’s inquest must be held to determine how he died.
The information, covering dozens of legal and scientific points, was submitted by a group of doctors who believe Dr Kelly’s death has never been investigated properly.
Mr Grieve will now consider if there is sufficient fresh evidence for a full examination of what remains one of the most notorious episodes of Tony Blair’s premiership. His decision is expected shortly.
Dr Kelly, a world-renowned weapons inspector, is said to have killed himself after being named as the prime source of a BBC report accusing Blair’s government of lying to take Britain into the Iraq war.
His body was found in woods close to his home in Oxfordshire on July 18, 2003. Uniquely, for an unexpected death such as his, no coroner’s inquest has ever been held.
The public inquiry into his death chaired by Lord Hutton found that he killed himself after slashing his wrist with a blunt pruning knife and overdosing on painkillers.
But Mr Grieve has been told by the doctors that they have established a range of fresh evidence questioning the official finding and highlighting several irregularities.
They state that it has been established, using the Freedom of Information Act, that there were no fingerprints on five items found with Dr Kelly’s body: the knife, a watch, his mobile phone, an open water bottle and blister packs of pills he supposedly swallowed.
In their legal papers, the doctors state: ‘It is submitted that to properly investigate the circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death, any coroner would be obliged to make inquiries as to why there were no fingerprints found, including for example seeking evidence on whether any tests were carried out to establish if anything had been used to attempt to erase fingerprint evidence.
Fresh inquiry call: Body of the government scientist was found at Harrowdown Hill, Oxfordshire, on July 18, 2003
‘This is particularly relevant as it was noted no gloves were found on the body or in its vicinity.’
The doctors have also alleged that Dr Kelly’s GP, Dr Malcolm Warner, may have concealed crucial evidence about seeing the weapon inspector’s corpse when he appeared as a witness at the Hutton Inquiry in 2003.
The doctors claim they were ultimately made aware of this by Dr Kelly’s MP, Robert Jackson, who has since retired from Parliament.
They also say conflicting evidence about where Dr Kelly was found leads them to believe his body might have been moved after death.
According to the two volunteer searchers who found him, Dr Kelly’s body was sitting against a tree, but pathologist Nicholas Hunt described him as lying several feet in front of the tree.
The doctors have also raised questions about the fact that Thames Valley Police failed to collect vital evidence offered to them by Dr Kelly’s close friend Nigel Cox.
This evidence suggests that, immediately before his death, Dr Kelly had made social plans for July 23. Mr Cox is understood to still have an answerphone message proving his claim.
The doctors have stipulated that because none of the fingerprint evidence was even mentioned at the Hutton Inquiry, this point on its own ought to satisfy the minimum legal requirement for a coroner’s inquest to be held.
The legal document covers 36 points. It was co-authored by medical doctors Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox, David Halpin and Andrew Rouse.
Dr Michael Powers QC, who has been instructed to represent the doctors in their legal action, said: ‘The circumstances of this case are highly unusual.
‘They have troubled a wide section of public opinion. Given the inadequacy of Lord Hutton’s investigation, it’s essential there should now be a full coroner’s inquest.’ |
Refined mansion tax proposal being fed into debate on abolishing 50p tax rate for those earning more than £150,000
The Liberal Democrats are pushing for the eventual disbanding of the 50p rate of tax to see the implementation of a new land tax levied on properties above £1m.
In a refinement of their controversial mansion tax policy launched at their party conference two years ago, the Lib Dems now believe there is an argument for levying capital gains tax on any money made from the sale of a property after the first £1m.
The Lib Dem idea is being fed into the debate surrounding how to bring down the 50p rate for those earning more than £150,000. A review into the rate is expected to confirm suspicions it does not bring in much revenue but serves to deter international business from locating in the UK at a time when the chancellor is seeking to encourage inward investment and spur growth.
Over the weekend, George Osborne gave his clearest sign that the top rate would come down.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Osborne said there was "not much point" in having a tax that raised scant funds but that served to drive businesses out of Britain.
Osborne said: "I've said with the 50p rate I don't see that as a lasting tax rate for Britain because it's very uncompetitive internationally, and people frankly can move. What is it actually raising? It's only been in operation for a year, this tax, put in place by the last government."
Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Treasury chief secretary, has said supporters of abolishing the 50p rate are living in "cloud cuckoo land". Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary, has said if it goes it must be replaced by another imposition on the wealthy – possibly a mansion tax which would hit owners of the highest-value properties. |
Ghazala Khan, the mother of a fallen U.S. soldier of Muslim faith, is responding to Donald Trump’s speculation that she didn’t speak at last week’s Democratic convention due to her religion.
“I can say that my religion or my family or my culture never stopped me saying whatever I want to say,” Khan said in an interview with CNN’s “New Day.” “And my husband is very supportive of me in these things that I have all the rights as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter.”
After Khan and her husband, Khizr, took the stage at the Democratic National Convention last week to deliver an emotional speech denouncing Trump’s proposed Muslim immigration ban, the GOP presidential candidate suggested that Mrs. Khan wasn’t allowed to speak because of her Islamic religion.
Also Read: 'The Simpsons' Derides Donald Trump, Theorizes Dog Toupée (Video)
“If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me,” Trump said.
The Republican candidate received backlash for his comments, notably from Mrs. Khan.
“I have done very well saying my mind out, but that time was different. And anybody can see it was different that time when I was standing there in front of America,” Khan said.
Also Read: Ann Coulter Hammered by Conservatives for Smearing US War Hero's Dad as 'Angry Muslim'
The Khans’ son, Army Capt. Humayun, had served in Iraq and died during a suicide car bombing. They said Trump’s ban would have prevented their son from serving his country. |
The GDP-growth figure released today, at 3.5%, was slightly higher than expected, but camouflages the mounting economic cost of the 2014 coup. Thailand’s output gap is now among the biggest in Asia; the economy is being kept afloat by government spending and foreign tourists’ cash. But last week’s bombings may deter visitors, and autocratic rule is stifling economic progress. Household debt is at a historic high; low agricultural prices have depressed farm incomes. The country’s old-style route to prosperity is blocked: exports will fall for the fourth consecutive year in 2016. Thailand’s economy is bigger than those of fast-growing Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia combined. But its population is ageing and economic policy is deeply conservative. Future growth will have to come from capital accumulation or increases in productivity. Yet the new constitution puts the army in charge, making it responsible for the economy, education and innovation. What could possibly go wrong? |
By the end of 2017, every smartphone manufacturer has embraced the 18:9 aspect ratio screen model. The users too have shown these new displays a lot of love and this trend will probably evolve in 2018. However, a minor adjustment that comes with the new aspect ratio is the positioning of the navigation keys. Earlier, handsets used to have the physical keys just below the display. Whereas now, they’re on-screen buttons. But not everyone loves on-screen navigation buttons. So, some phone makers like Apple and Vivo have opted for gestures on the iPhone X & Vivo X20. Now it’s OnePlus 5T.
Fresh news is that the OnePlus 5T is also soon going to join their ranks and completely do away with navigation buttons. OnePlus CEO, Pete Lau (Liu Zuohu), in Chinese OnePlus forums, talked about the virtual navigation keys. And it seems that many users too want them to get replaced by gestures. Pete Lau said that the feature is in the works and a future update will see it arrive.
He hasn’t mentioned what kind of gestures will the OnePlus 5T have. Will they be exactly like the iPhone X or they will mimic the Vivo X20? This remains to be seen. It seems we might even see this new feature in the Oreo stable update. However, we’re not sure about it.
Meanwhile, Android Oreo development is ongoing for both the OnePlus 5/5T and we’re hoping to see stable builds start dropping in January. |
B. Sherwood Lollar et al. A scientist takes a sample of water from a mine deep underground in Ontario, Canada. The water turned out to be 2.6 billion years old, the oldest known water on Earth.
By Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
A pocket of water some 2.6 billion years old — the most ancient pocket of water known by far, older even than the dawn of multicellular life — has now been discovered in a mine 2 miles below the Earth's surface.
The finding, announced in the May 16 issue of the journal Nature, raises the tantalizing possibility that ancient life might be found deep underground not only within Earth, but in similar oases that may exist on Mars, the scientists who studied the water said.
Geoscientist Barbara Sherwood Lollar at the University of Toronto and her colleagues have investigated deep mines across the world since the 1980s. Water can flow into fractures in rocks and become isolated deep in the crust for many years, serving as a time capsule of what their environments were like at the time they were sealed off.
In gold mines in South Africa 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) deep, the scientists previously discovered microbes could survive in pockets of waterisolated for tens of millions of years. These reservoirs were many times saltier than seawater, "and had chemistry in many ways similar to hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean, full of dissolved hydrogen and other chemicals capable of supporting life," Sherwood Lollar said. [Strangest Places Where Life Is Found on Earth]
To see what other ancient pockets of water might exist, Sherwood Lollar and her colleagues investigated copper and zinc mines near the city of Timmins in Ontario, Canada. "As the prices of copper, zinc and gold have gone up, mines now go deeper, which has helped our search for long-isolated reservoirs of water hidden underground," Sherwood Lollar said.
'Mind-blowing' find
"Sometimes we went down in cages — they're not called elevators underground — that dropped us to the levels we wanted to go," Sherwood Lollar told OurAmazingPlanet. "Other times, we went down ramp mines, which have curling spiral roadways, so we could actually drive all the way down."
The scientists analyzed water they found 2 miles (2.4 km) deep. They focused on noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon. Past studies analyzing bubbles of air trapped within ancient rocks found that these rare gases could occur in distinct ratios linked with certain eras of Earth's history. As such, by analyzing the ratios of noble gases seen in this water, the researchers could deduce the age of the water.
The scientists discovered the fluids were trapped in the rocks between 1.5 billion and 2.64 billion years ago.
"It was absolutely mind-blowing," Sherwood Lollar said. "These weren't tens of millions of years old like we might have expected, or even hundreds of millions of years old. They were billions of years old."
The site was formed by geological activity similar to that seen in hydrothermal vents. "We walked along what used to be ocean floor 2.7 billion years ago," Sherwood Lollar said. "You could still see some of the same pillow lava structures now seen on the bottom of the ocean."
Signs of life?
This ancient water poured out of the boreholes the team drilled in the mine at the rate of nearly a half-gallon (2 liters) per minute. It remains uncertain precisely how large this reservoir of water is.
"This is an extremely important question and one that we want to pursue in our future work," Sherwood Lollar said. "We also want to see if there are habitable reservoirs of similar age around the world."
Sherwood Lollar emphasized they have not yet found any signs of life in the water from Timmins. "We're working on that right now," she said. "It'd be fascinating to us if we did, since it'd push back the frontiers of how long life could survive in isolation."
And the implications of such a finding would extend beyond the extremes of life on Earth.
"Finding life in this energy-rich water is especially exciting if one thinks of Mars, where there might be water of similar age and mineralogy under the surface," Sherwood Lollar said.
If any life once arose on Mars billions of years ago as it did on Earth, "then it is likely in the subsurface," Sherwood Lollar said. "If we find the water in Timmins can support life, maybe the same might hold true for Mars as well."
Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+.Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
Hulu has acquired exclusive subscription-streaming rights to Syfy’s time-travel thriller “12 Monkeys” under a deal with NBCUniversal.
In addition, under the expanded NBCU deal, Hulu has acquired the full library of programming for series “Battlestar Galactica” and “Saved by the Bell,” which are available to stream now. The deal also adds episodes of popular children’s series including “Bob the Builder,” “Thomas and Friends” and “Barney.”
The first season of “12 Monkeys” will premiere exclusively on Hulu on Feb. 24, available to subscribers. The series, from Universal Cable Prods., will return for its second season on Syfy on Monday, April 18. The deal is structured by NBCU to drive interest in the show by letting viewers catch up on Hulu ahead of the season 2 bow on TV. It’s a tactic NBC and others have used in the past with subscription VOD services.
“12 Monkeys” follows the journey of James Cole, who’s sent back in time to prevent a dark and hellish future from ever happening. The series stars Aaron Stanford as Cole, along with Amanda Schull, Kirk Acevedo, Emily Hampshire, Barbara Sukowa and Todd Stashwick.
Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett (“Nikita”) are executive producers and showrunners, with Charles Roven (“Batman v. Superman,” “Suicide Squad,” “American Hustle”) and Richard Suckle (“Suicide Squad,” “American Hustle,” “The International”) as executive producers. Atlas Entertainment and Roven produced the original “12 Monkeys” film — which starred Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Madeline Stowe — on which the series is based.
NBCU is one of Hulu’s parent companies, along with 21st Century Fox and Disney. |
This year's 41st issue of Shueisha's Young Jump magazine is announcing on Thursday that an anime adaptation of manga creator Lynn Okamoto (Elfen Lied, Nononono)'s Gokukoku no Brynhildr science fiction manga is in the works.
The original manga revolves around high school boy Ryōta Murakami, who cannot forget his female childhood friend whom he let die in an accident. Feeling that he must fulfill their promise of proving the existence of aliens, he has continuously looked up at the sky as a member of the astronomy club. One day, a girl named Neko Kuroha who looks exactly like his childhood friend appears as a transfer student. It turns out that she is a magic-user that has run away from a research lab.
Okamoto began the manga in Young Jump in 2011. Shueisha will release the sixth compiled volume of the manga on September 19.
Update: Updated title's reading. |
I’ve always managed to dodge the bullet and avoid the addictive pull of Pokémon. Leave it to a button-mashing brawler with plastic figurine accessories to finally get me hooked. At first glance, Pokémon Rumble U isn’t much to look at. With its simplistic controls and repetitive gameplay, you might feel inclined to dismiss it as yet another cash-in of the popular Nintendo franchise. But despite its faults, there’s actually much more to Rumble U than meets the eye, making this a satisfying and fun little title for fans of the series and newcomers alike.
The gameplay is nothing to rave about. It’s incredibly basic. Using either the Gamepad or Wii Remote, you move your character around tiny arenas and attack using one of two buttons as countless hordes of Pokémon charge you head on. If you and your team of four Pokémon (human co-op or CPU controlled) survive the onslaught, then you’re left to battle the stage’s giant-sized boss Pokémon. Upon victory, you’re ranked according to the points you’ve collected and are presented with all the Pokémon that you’ve managed to catch for the round. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Rinse and repeat. There’s very little room or need to strategize a plan of attack. It really boils down to how powerful your Pokémon are and whether or not you’re lucky enough to unlock more of them.[singlepic id=15820 w=320 h=240 float=right]
You may have already guessed it, but most of the appeal does not derive from the monotonous gameplay. While I do admittedly enjoy a mindless brawler from time to time, the real fun in this game comes from the satisfaction of completing challenges to unlock new levels, hoarding coins to upgrade your character (if you purchase the optional figurines) and of course collecting Pokémon.
I’m not gonna lie, it really is all about the Pokémon, all 649 of them. There’s something about these odd little creatures that just makes you need to collect them. I’m sorry, but it happens. I don’t know if it’s because they’re each so uniquely designed with creative names like Leafeon and Heatran or if its because each Pokémon has different skills and power levels, but every time you find a new one, there is a slight yet noticeable release of endorphins into the bloodstream, leaving you temporarily warm and gooey inside. I imagine this sense of satisfaction is even more magnified for diehard fans of the series as they constantly dream of catching their favorite elusive Pokémon to add to their collection.
[singlepic id=15819 w=320 h=240 float=left]And if that wasn’t bad enough, Pokémon Rumble U introdces a new, real world element to further prey on us hapless addicts. The Near Field Communication (NFC) figurines are probably the most unique and appealing aspect of this title. Pokémon Rumble U is the first game to ever use the Wii U’s NFC scanner that comes already built in every gamepad. I honestly didn’t know it was there before this game came along. I always thought it was just some funny symbol on the bottom left of the controller for aesthetic design. When you place one of the separately sold figurines ($3.99 a pop at Gamestop) onto the gamepad, the coinciding character pops up on the screen. It’s similar to the technology used in Skylanders and, more recently, Disney Infinity. The base of the figure acts as a sort of memory card for the character, storing stats and upgrades.
The developers say you don’t need to buy these NFC figures to play the game, and while that is essentially true, without at least one of these little guys you’ll be cheating yourself out of the most rewarding experience in the game. Unlike the two previous Pokémon Rumble titles, in Rumble U the only characters that you’re able to level up are these separately purchased NFC figures. And since all upgrades are purchased in the game using the coins you collect from matches, there really is no other point to collecting them except to occasionally pay for continues. Trust me, I tried playing the game without an NFC and it just wasn’t any fun. There was no incentive to play. It felt utterly boring and unmotivated
That’s when I decided to drag myself off the couch and face the lines at Gamestop. They had the Pokéball dispenser prominently displayed at the front desk next to the gift cards. There were two dozen red and white capsules spilling from the boxes, each containing a random and unknown Pokémon just waiting to be revealed. You have no idea what Pokémon you’re getting until you buy it and open it. Nintendo is getting a lot of flak for making the pokéballs randomized, but I know it’s all part of the plan and just another addictive element to the game. I was surprised to find myself actually getting excited about this thing. Would I get a rare character with special abilities? What would it look like? The checkout guy gave me a knowing look and told me these little balls were selling like hotcakes. Feeling uncomfortable from the whole situation, I left as quickly as I could and then, just like one of those guys playing scratch offs in the gas station parking lot, I opened my pokéball and tore through the inside bag.[singlepic id=15822 w=320 h=240 float=right]
My Pokémon is a black fox with red hair called Zoroark. He’s not the coolest dude with the best powers on the block, but he came to me and he’s mine. And from that point on I was officially hooked. I finally had something to spend all those coins on. I was going to make Zoroark the strongest Pokémon in the world. I’d start by leveling up his HP and attack traits. I figure he’s specialized in Dark moves so maybe I’ll…Oh dear God what have I become? They got me. I’m hooked on Pokémon and I didn’t even see it coming.
Strange how much a good motivator can improve a game’s overall appeal. Suddenly the arena battles weren’t so pointless; I was working towards something. Collecting Pokémon started to matter because the more powerful ones could help me beat challenges to get more points to upgrade Zoroark. My Zoroark. My precious…
Beyond the storyline mode that can be beat in roughly six hours of playtime, there are tons of little motivators built in to keep you coming back for more and, just like the worst of addictions, the more you use it, the more this game tightens its sinister grip around you. I must warn you, if you do have an addictive personality, turn back now and save yourself from countless hours of monotonous button mashing. You’ll find yourself hunting down elusive Pokémon to add to your insane collection or trying over and over to complete challenges with ridiculous requirements. Every level has a list of challenges with specifics that’ll keep you searching for the right Pokémon or executing the correct number of moves before you can unlock bonus capsules that sometimes contain Pokémon for your collection. Some challenges ask for you to use only Pokémon with a power level below 200 or to only use Pokémon with names beginning with “O.” There are even challenges that use the Wii U’s internal clock that require you to beat the game on a Monday or in the evening before it can be unlocked. Such requirements may seem excessive and tedious but if you really care about completing the collection, you’ll do just about anything, raising the replay value to fully beating the game somewhere in the week to month range (meaning 300 to 600 hours, and that’s a safe estimate) It’s a good time, but seriously, if you are an addictive personality, consider yourself warned.
[singlepic id=15821 w=320 h=240 float=left]Pokémon Rumble U is a game of firsts. It’s the first Pokémon title for the Wii U, which also makes it the first one with HD graphics. It’s the first to use Wii U’s NFC, and it’s the first game to allow in game screen captures that you can post directly into the Miiverse social network for instant likes and comments. It’s a pretty cool feature – with the touch of a button you can take a picture of your game and share it with the Pokémon online community. There’s a lot of new stuff being unveiled in this title and it feels more like an introduction of things to come rather than a stand-alone game, which probably explains it’s low pricing of $17.99.
The graphics are flashy and fun to look at, but sometimes there is so much going on in the screen that it’s easy to lose track of your character. I can’t tell you how many times I had no idea what I was doing so I just kept mashing the attack buttons.
The couch play co-op is an awesome addition, but I was very disappointed that they missed the opportunity to make a VS. battle mode. I mean, what could be more fun than two friends battling their custom built Pokémon in a one-on-one battle? I think they missed the boat on that one. It’s also saddening that they didn’t provide any online capabilities for the game.
So I guess what I’m getting at is that this isn’t a super quality game, but it’s loads of fun and it’s good at what it does. Pokémon Rumble U is designed to keep you locked in and coming back for more. It’s a harmless diversion with a built in sense of accomplishment that I may not fully endorse (I’m not about to hunt down all 18 of the NFC figurines), but I certainly can appreciate the fun here. I’ll definitely continue upgrading my Zoroark. My girlfriend even got a Pikachu that she’s leveling up alongside me in co-op. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll even get around to catching all 649 Pokémon. It could happen.
Stefan started gaming the day his dad brought home a shiny, brand new commodore 64. He's been hooked ever since. Whether he's leveling up his ninja in Final Fantasy Tactics, cruising the streets of San Andreas or working on his Terran build order, videogames are never far from his mind. He is currently on the lookout for an appropriate 12 step program to address his electronic addiction. |
It’s already hard enough to part with a quarter-of-a-million dollars to buy a Ferrari 458 Italia, but can you imagine the rationale behind the man who would fork over that much money to buy a book?
Yeah, neither can we.
Now if you’re wondering if such a book even exists, then prepare to be introduced to the “Official Ferrari Opus”.
The book’s publisher, Opus Media Group, is calling it the “most exclusive book in the world”, and with the most expensive version retailing at $275,000, we find it hard to believe that there’s another book that’s being sold for that much.
Ridiculous as the price tag of this book may be – believe us, there’s nothing justifiable about a book that costs more than an actual car – those interested in it do have options to choose from.
The 852-page book weighs in at 82 lbs and is printed using heavy-duty paper. It’s got over 2,000 photos of every Ferrari vehicle that Maranello has ever produced, be it a road car or a race car. On top of that, the book contains over 200,000 words detailing literally everything and anything you need to know about the Italian automaker.
Check out how much each version of the Official Ferrari Opus book costs after the jump. |
If sports columns were posted on bulletin boards in town squares instead of the internet, folks would be gathered around Ailene Voisin's Bee column with jaws slung low and "what the Frahms" ringing out regularly. It's a gem. Holy cow, it's a gem.
First, Voisin's sources -- which on first glance look like either the Maloofs or close confidants of the Maloofs -- say that the family will accept a matched bid from Sacramento. In fact,
On Thursday, sources close to the Maloofs said that if the Sacramento group submits a matching offer that satisfies the league's other owners, they will embrace an outcome that keeps the Kings in Sacramento.
And
"We're giving Sacramento every opportunity to keep the team," one source said Thursday, "but they keep blowing every deadline. We haven't seen anything in writing."
That's good news, I guess? But here's the really fun news.
The Maloofs have met with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and have for months looked into buying a hockey franchise, with Las Vegas among the possible destinations. Their interests also have expanded and included opportunities in Major League Baseball.
I can envision David Stern running over to Gary Bettman during the annual Sports Commissioners Summit (totally a real thing don't try to convince me otherwise) and saying, "Tag, you're it." (And lord, can you imagine if the Maloofs sold the Kings to the Sacramento group and then successfully bought the Coyotes and moved them to Vegas, blocking Seattle's bid for an NHL team!)
MALOOFED, indeed.
This whole saga has entered the Twilight Zone. Thanks for sending us there, Ailene. |
Poland will sign ACTA despite massive protests, Global Voices Online reports, citing Polish Minister of Administration and Digitisation Michal Boni.
Unfortunately, it appears that the Polish minister does not shy away from telling his citizens blatant lies, in order to get the controversial ACTA agreement signed.
According to Global Voices, Mr. Boni said in a radio interview in Polish that it was ”impossible not to sign the agreement, because it was too late: Poland joined the negotiation process in 2008 and all the other European countries have already signed it”.
If Mr. Boni did in fact say this (I don’t speak Polish, so I cannot verify independently), it is an outright lie. Not a single one of the 27 EU Member States has signed the agreement yet. Poland is the first country scheduled to do so, tomorrow on January 26.
The European Council of Ministers has taken a decision that it wants the EU to sign the agreement, but that is a completely different thing. ACTA is a so called ”mixed agreement”, that has to be signed by both the EU and each of the member states. On the national level, no member state has taken the formal decision to sign the agreement yet.
Global Voices further reports that Mr. Boni said that Poland ”should attach a clause to the treaty that would show how we interpret these articles”. If it is true that he said this, it is also a direct lie.
There is no way of attaching any further clauses to the ACTA agreement. The negotiations have been concluded, and the only thing left for the EU and the individual member states to do now is to say either ”yes” or ”no”. Being a minister in the Polish government, Mr. Boni would of course know this.
It is apparent that the game of telling EU citizens whatever lies may be necessary to get the ACTA agreement signed has begun. Poland is only the first of 27 EU member states. Do not get surprised if the story repeats itself in your own country in the coming months. |
In November, a University of Michigan student reported that a white male threatened to burn her alive unless she took off her hijab, a head covering worn by some practicing Muslim women.
The campus police grabbed hold of that report and brought it to the Ann Arbor Police Department’s attention. However, a month later it was found that there was no evidence to support that the student’s reported incident ever took place.
The incident, classified under the law as “ethnic intimidation,” is prosecuted as a felony. One of the law enforcement officials told Fox 2 that the prosecutor’s office would be reviewing the case. Because the hate crime that the woman falsely reported is a felony, if convicted, she will face a felony charge, as well.
But Tuesday, officials at the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office told The College Fix in an email that they will not be pursuing any charges against the woman.
“This office has declined to authorize charges in that matter,” said Steven Hiller Chief Assistant Prosecutor.
The prosecutor’s office refused to comment any further.
The woman reported the hate crime just days after Donald Trump’s election victory. A wave of Muslim students began reporting similar hate crimes across the United States around the same time. Several of those reports turned out to be hoaxes. |
WHAT?!??! I know. That’s what you’re saying right now.
“WHAT?! DISNEY HAS A DONUT SUNDAE AND I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT IT?!” How do I know you’re saying that? Because that’s exactly what I was saying when Tina (<– amazing DFB photographer who’s frigging awesome) spotted this at the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor in the Magic Kingdom this week!
But it’s OK. It’s brand new — not even on the menu yet — so we didn’t miss out on too much of the Donut Sundae lifespan. And we’re hoping that lifespan is a nice, long one!
The Main Street Plaza Ice Cream Parlor can be found at the intersection of Main Street USA and Tomorrowland, just before you get to Cinderella Castle. And the sundae joins a few other must-have treats on the Ice Cream Parlor’s menu, including the house-made ice cream sandwich (preferably ordered with a drizzled sauce!), the “kids’ cone” (it’s totally OK to order this as a grown-up, too) with Mickey ears, and the Plaza Ice Cream Sundae. So…I’m really not envying you the decisions you’ll have to make when you get there! ;-D
After spotting the sundae on a placard, we grabbed it! It comes with a warm glazed donut, warm apple compote, vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, a cherry, chocolate chips, and peanut butter chips.
We found out that the donut was not house-made (it’s basically a Krispy Kreme), but it’s warmed just before serving. And with the warm donut and warm compote contrasting with the cold vanilla ice cream, there’s a LOT of amazing going on in this sundae!
I’m doubting the apple compote is house-made, or even fresh (probably canned), but it still works well with the sundae. Though the combo of apple compote with peanut butter chips is a bit strange?
At the moment, vanilla ice cream is the default flavor. The Cast Member we spoke to said that once this is officially on the menu, guests should be able to request whatever flavor they’d like.
At press time, this costs $5.99 and is not a Disney Dining Plan snack credit option. But at $5.99, you’re still getting a bargain as far as we’re concerned!
Our thoughts? This was fantastic! Donut? Good! Ice Cream? Good! Apple Pie Filling? Good! Whipped Cream? Good! It’s a winner all around. We can’t WAIT until this gets cemented onto the menu!
Pin it for later!
What do you think? Will you be heading to the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor for your Donut Sundae the next time you’re on Main Street USA? Let us know in the comments below! |
ABC chairman Jim Spigelman has strongly criticised the federal government's proposed anti-discrimination law, saying it poses risks to freedom of speech.
Mr Spigelman, former New South Wales chief justice, said there was no justification for including the notion of ''offending'' in the definition of discrimination.
The legislation consolidates several anti-discrimination laws, including that on racial discrimination, which refers to treatment that offends. The proposed law extends ''offending'' into the definition of discrimination for all purposes.
Delivering an oration on Human Rights Day, Mr Spigelman pointed out that none of the other existing Commonwealth acts - covering sex, disability and age discrimination - included conduct that only offended.
The freedom to offend was an integral component of freedom of speech. ''There is no right not to be offended. I am not aware of any international human rights instrument, or national anti-discrimination statute in another liberal democracy, that extends to conduct which is merely offensive,'' he said. |
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President Donald Trump’s war with the intelligence community is about to go nuclear, says former NSA analyst and national security expert John Schindler.
The intelligence community’s efforts to do their jobs and expose the connections between the Trump camp and the Russian government have been met with insults and attacks from our hypersensitive President as he attempts to paint them as the enemy and sides with the Russians against the men and women who work tirelessly to keep our nation safe from foreign threats.
Just this morning, Trump decided to smear last night’s bombshell report on the Trump camp’s continued contacts with Russian officials during the election as “illegal:”
The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by "intelligence" like candy. Very un-American! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2017
This is only the latest in a long string of attacks – like that time Trump compared the intelligence community to “Nazis” – that Schindler says is aggravating the intelligence community – with potentially devastating consequences:
US intelligence is not the problem here. The President's collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple. — John Schindler (@20committee) February 15, 2017
Progress? The President was calling US "intelligence" Nazis only a few weeks ago — now they're merely un-American.https://t.co/5y1T8EHCJy — John Schindler (@20committee) February 15, 2017
Now we go nuclear. IC war going to new levels. Just got an EM fm senior IC friend, it began: "He will die in jail."https://t.co/e6FxCclVqT — John Schindler (@20committee) February 15, 2017
Putin never viewed Trump as anything more than a useful lunatic. Moscow wants political chaos in America — and oh boy are they getting it. — John Schindler (@20committee) February 15, 2017
In this tweet, IC is shorthand for “intelligence community” and EM for “email.”
If we take these tweets at face value, Trump’s continued insistence on berating the intelligence community for their work and siding with the Russians over our own national security apparatus is going to come back to haunt him.
The only thing “illegal” about this entire scandal are the secret communications that the Trump campaign was conducting with agents of the Russian Federation during and after the election – and every move the Trump administration makes only deepens the suspicion that the Russian government is blackmailing our so-called President – and that is an unacceptable state of affairs.
Download our NEW Occupy Democrats app for your iPhone by clicking here or for your Android by clicking here.
Add your name to millions demanding that Congress take action on the President’s crimes. IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP! |
A pictorial look at the career of City's latest recruit
An Italian Under-21 International, Federico joined the Manchester United youth set-up from Lazio in 2007, going on to top the Under-18 scoring charts in his first season at Old Trafford, netting 12 goals in 21 appearances.
A man whose experience defies his tender years, Macheda burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old as he came off the bench against Aston Villa in 2009. 2-1 down at the time, Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed an equaliser for United before the Italian curled home a debut goal in stoppage time to win the match for Sir Alex Ferguson’s title challenging side.
Macheda continued to feature in the United squad that season, scoring his second goal for the club against Sunderland just 46 seconds after taking the field to replace Dimitar Berbatov before being rewarded with his first Barclays Premier League start for United against Middlesbrough that season.
It was a remarkable breakthrough campaign that saw him named the Jimmy Murphy Academy Player of the Year, an award also won by Mats Møller Dæhli, in recognition of his rise to the senior set-up at Old Trafford.
A Champions League debut against CSKA Moscow followed the next season before injury started to hinder his progress in establishing himself as a United first-team regular. He returned to score in a top-of-the-table clash against Chelsea later in that season, with his fourth goal for United coming the following year against Aston Villa.
The following few years saw him look to impress away from Old Trafford as he undertook a series of loan spells away from the club. 2011 saw him return to his native Italy for a spell with Sampdoria before 2012-13 saw him have stints at Queens Park Rangers and VfB Stuttgart.
It was 2013-14 campaign that saw ‘Kiko’ enjoy his most fruitful spell away from his parent club, first scoring three goals in two stints at Championship Doncaster Rovers before aiding Birmingham City’s push for survival with ten goals in 18 appearances for Lee Clark’s side.
WATCH AN EXCLUSIVE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH FEDERICO MACHEDA ON CARDIFF CITY PLAYER NOW. FOR A TEASER, WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO BELOW. |
Officials doubted someone could have walked away from the crash The wreckage of a plane found near the town of Mammoth Lakes in California does belong to missing US adventurer Steve Fossett, officials say. A number plate confirmed the plane as the Bellanca Super Decathlon piloted by the 63-year-old millionaire. Body parts are reported to have been found inside. The search began after a hiker found items thought to belong to Mr Fossett. He vanished in September last year on a solo flight that took off 90 miles (145km) away in neighbouring Nevada. Click here to see a map of the area A wide-ranging search operation conducted since then had failed to find any trace of Mr Fossett or his plane and he was officially declared dead in February. Fuselage shattered Madera County Sheriff John Anderson said the wreckage had been spotted late on Wednesday during an aerial search of a stretch of the Sierra Nevada mountains near Mammoth Lakes. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement A ground team later confirmed the identity of the plane, which seemed to have struck the mountain head-on, Mr Anderson said. "The crash looked so severe I doubt if someone would have walked away from it," he said. Most of the fuselage had disintegrated, with engine parts scattered several hundred feet away. Mr Anderson initially said no human remains had been found at the crash site. "It's quite often if you don't find remains within a few days, because of animals, you'll find nothing at all," he said. SOME OF FOSSETT'S RECORDS 1998/2002: Long-distance for solo ballooning 2001/2002: Duration for solo ballooning 2002: First solo round-the-world balloon flight First balloon crossings of Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, South Atlantic, South Pacific, Indian Oceans Seven fastest speed sailing titles 13 World Sailing Speed Record Council titles 2001: Fastest transatlantic sailing 2004: Fastest round-the-world sailing Round-the-world titles for medium airplanes US transcontinental titles for non-military aircraft
In pictures: Steve Fossett Profile: Steve Fossett But reports later said that some remains had been found in the aircraft and would be sent for DNA analysis. Fifty people and five dog teams would carry out an extensive search of the site for Mr Fossett's remains, he added. On Thursday British entrepreneur Richard Branson paid tribute to his friend and fellow adventurer. "The most important thing is that the family know what's happened," he said. "He led an extraordinary, absolutely remarkable life, and now we can remember him for what he was and move on." The National Transportation Safety Board will be responsible for examining the wreckage. But a local official said snow was expected over the weekend, potentially hampering the investigation. The wreckage was located two days after identity documents bearing Mr Fossett's name - including a pilot's licence - as well as cash and a sweatshirt were found by hiker Preston Morrow. Mr Morrow had been returning from a mountain walk when he spotted the items in dirt and pine needles west of Mammoth Lakes. An employee at a sporting goods store, Mr Morrow said he handed them over to police after unsuccessful attempts to contact the Fossett family. The BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani, in Los Angeles, says the items were found outside the vast area searched after Mr Fossett went missing - and also in a different direction to that in which he was thought to have flown. Mr Fossett took off from the ranch of hotel magnate Barron Hilton, south of Yerington, Nevada, on 3 September 2007 on a flight that was expected to last three hours. In 2002, he became the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon and had about 100 other world records to his name.
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In this July 6, 2012 photo, excavation continues at the Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal mining facility in southern Mongolia. Fully 90 percent of Mongolia's exports - coal, copper, cashmere and livestock - go to China, which in turn sends machinery, appliances and other consumer goods that account for a third of Mongolian imports. The rising trade with China now amounts to three-fourths of Mongolia's economy, one of the highest ratios in the world, according to an Associated Press analysis of IMF trade data. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
* China, India to propel coal past oil by end of decade
* Muted impact from carbon policies aimed at curbing coal use
* China to drive two-thirds of coal growth this decade (Adds comments from Alstom on Asia power market, coal supply and prices; provides graphic link)
By Florence Tan
DAEGU, South Korea, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Coal will surpass oil as the key fuel for the global economy by 2020 despite government efforts to reduce carbon emissions, energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie said on Monday.
Rising demand in China and India will push coal past oil as the two Asian powerhouses will need to rely on the comparatively cheaper fuel to power their economies. Coal demand in the United States, Europe and the rest of Asia will hold steady.
Global coal consumption is expected to rise by 25 percent by the end of the decade to 4,500 million tonnes of oil equivalent, overtaking oil at 4,400 million tonnes, according to Woodmac in a presentation on Monday at the World Energy Congress.
"China's demand for coal will almost single-handedly propel the growth of coal as the dominant global fuel," said William Durbin, president of global markets at Woodmac. "Unlike alternatives, it is plentiful and affordable."
China - already the top consumer - will drive two-thirds of the growth in global coal use this decade. Half of China's power generation capacity to be built between 2012 and 2020 will be coal-fired, said Woodmac.
China has no alternative to coal, with its domestic gas output limited and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports more costly than coal, Durbin said.
"Renewables cannot provide base load power. This leaves coal as the primary energy source," he said.
ASIA TO FOCUS ON LOW-COST COAL
Power infrastructure provider Alstom estimated that across Asia close to half of the 600 gigawatt of new power generators to be built over the next five years will be coal-fired, Giles Dickson, a vice president at the company said.
"Coal prices are low," he said, adding that coal is about one-third of the price of LNG in Asia and about half of the gas price in Europe.
Abundant supply is also supporting demand for coal. The traded volumes of coal will increase by a further 20 percent by 2020, Dickson said, including supply of lower grade coal from Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.
"As the lower grade coal comes into the market, further downward pressure on prices will further drive demand," he said.
Excess supply and faltering demand growth have depressed global coal prices this year. European coal futures have tumbled more than 20 percent, while Australian coal prices have plummeted from the record $130 per tonne hit in 2011 to around $80 per tonne as China's demand grew slower than expected.
"If you take China and India out of the equation, what is more surprising is that under current regulations, coal demand in the rest of the world will remain at current levels," Durbin said.
High fuel import costs and nuclear issues will support coal use throughout Northeast Asia, while in North America coal is still competitive in many locations despite abundant low-cost shale gas.
"The struggling economy and low coal prices has rendered the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) ineffective," Durbin said. "The carbon price will need to reach 40 euros per tonne to encourage fuel switching, which is unlikely before 2020."
In Southeast Asia, coal will be the biggest winner in the region's energy mix. Coal will generate nearly half of Southeast Asia's electricity by 2035, up from less than a third now, the International Energy Agency said in early October. |
Squeeze on consumer spending is the worst in peacetime for a century, new research shows
Households are facing the most savage peacetime squeeze on consumer spending in almost 100 years.
Figures show that only during the Second World War did spending suffer a deeper fall. Even the Great Depression saw nothing on this scale.
Analysis by the independent Centre for Economics and Business Research shows an 8.4 per cent fall in real consumer spending per household between 2007 and the end of this year. The comparable figure for 1939-1945 was 14 per cent.
Consumer spending: Only during the Second World War did it suffer a deeper fall
Chief executive Douglas McWilliams said only in the slump of 1919-1920 was there possibly a peacetime drop on today’s scale.
The extraordinary figures are published today ahead Tuesday’s expected downgrading of economic growth in the third quarter.
The first estimate showed the economy roaring back to health, with growth of one per cent from July to September.
But it is now thought that this may have exaggerated the recovery from recession and that the second estimate is likely to see the rate of expansion cut to 0.9 per cent, or lower.
The psychological impact could be out of proportion to the size of the reduction, according to Howard Archer of independent consultancy IHS Global Insight.
‘The fact of no longer having a “one” in front of the decimal point and having a nought instead may weigh with some people,’ he said. ‘More worrying is the possibility of a flat or negative number in the fourth quarter. Much will hinge on spending over Christmas.’
He said higher than expected inflation may make people more concerned and this, in turn, could make worries about negative growth in the first quarter of next year into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A recession is defined as two successive quarters of negative growth, so shrinkage in this quarter and the next would plunge Britain into a slump for the third time in less than five years.
Trevor Williams, chief economist at Lloyds Bank wholesale markets, said: ‘The second estimate could be lower, perhaps 0.9 per cent instead of one per cent.
‘As for the fourth quarter, I would expect that to be flat, or even slightly negative. But the prospects of a triple-dip recession are more remote. There is no obvious reason why we would get a negative reading in the first quarter of next year.’
Peter Dixon, strategist at Commerzbank, said: ‘There is a possibility of a negative fourth quarter. I am certainly not looking for anything stellar.’ |
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I recently found out that one of my associates uses her Roth IRA as an emergency fund. Rather than put money into a low yield savings account, or some other cash account, she uses her retirement account as an emergency fund. Technically, the basics of a Roth IRA are conducive to this arrangement. However, you do want to be careful. Think things through before you use your Roth IRA as an emergency fund.
Why Your Roth IRA Could, In Theory, Be An Emergency Fund
In theory, your Roth IRA works as an emergency fund because of the withdrawal rules. You are actually allowed to withdraw your contributions to a Roth IRA at any time, and for any purpose – no matter your age. This means that you can take money out of your Roth IRA with no penalty or tax, as long as you are only withdrawing money that you have sent to the account through regular annual contributions. As long as your withdrawal amount doesn't exceed your overall contribution amount, you don't have to pay a penalty or taxes. Keep in mind that previous withdrawals count against your overall contribution amount.
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You do have to be careful, though. Withdrawing from your Roth IRA can cost you if you don't do it right. If you are under 59 1/2, and you exceed your contribution amounts (except in certain cases), you might be subject to a 10% penalty and to paying income taxes on the amount. Make sure you know what you are doing before you withdraw money from your Roth IRA to shore up your finances in the case of emergency.
Opportunity Cost
While you might not have the expenses associated with penalties and taxes when you withdraw your contributions to your Roth IRA, you are still subject to opportunity cost. Remember: The money in your Roth IRA is working for you. You are earning interest at a pretty good rate (depending on your asset allocation and market conditions), and if you withdraw principal, you miss out. You can't replace the time that your money might have spent in your Roth IRA, growing with the power of compound interest.
On the other hand, though, some insist that the opportunity cost comes when you put that money in a low yielding cash account as an emergency fund. Because your money (theoretically) grows faster in the Roth IRA, the power of compounding interest at a higher rate makes up for the fact that you withdraw some of your contributions for emergencies.
Bottom Line
What you decide to do depends on what you think is likely to work best for you, and provide for your needs. If you plan ahead sufficiently, it should be possible to get quite a bit built up in your Roth IRA. Of course, for it to work, you need to make sure you only withdraw contributions in cases of true emergencies. If you use your Roth IRA as an ATM, you could easily remove all of your contributions quickly — and then move into penalty areas where it starts costing you more. Make sure you carefully evaluate your situation before adopting this emergency fund strategy.
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We have some bad news for ATI fans, AMD has announced that it will be killing the ATI brand in favor of its Fusion project which aims to build hybrid CPU and GPU chips. The Radeon and FirePro branding will be remaining intact, but ATI Eyefinity will now be known as AMD Eyefinity and the first set of graphic cards to be shipped with the new branding strategy will be released later this year.
The company also claimed that this is the perfect time AMD could possibly consolidate the ATI brand, because Radeon products are performing well in terms of sales, and there’s high market penetration of AMD’s graphics products. Finally, AMD revealed the new brand logos that are nearly identical to the present ATI logos, of course, minus the “ATI”. |
And so, we stagger into an even more uncertain future
Emotions ran high as Hong Kong legislators opened debate on a controversial electoral reform package on Wednesday.
Supporters and opponents made last-ditch efforts after extensive campaigns to influence public opinion.
(In the end, the measure was roundly rejected, with 28 votes against eight in favor of the bill after most of its supporters walked out.)
As if these were not enough drama, police smashed a bomb plot on Monday that recalls conspiracies such as the Gunpowder Treason Plot, a failed assassination attempt on England’s King James in 1605, or the Reichstag Fire, an arson attack on the German parliament building in Berlin in 1933.
One can’t help feeling that worse things are about to happen.
Prosperous metropolis
The British colonial authorities didn’t bother with so-called “desinicization” of Hong Kong.
Rather, they gave way to local customs and did not force people to spurn Chinese history, culture, religion and the like.
Under the British, Hong Kong earned a place on the global map as a prosperous metropolis unequalled in any Chinese society.
China’s rapid rise as a global power and its growing ambitions have had a negative effect on local politicians and the business elite.
They have become Beijing’s lackeys to promote its political agenda in Hong Kong including a controversial roadmap to the 2017 chief executive election.
Young Hong Kong people see such moves by Beijing as a bad omen, especially after it issued a white paper last year in which it asserted full control and authority over Hong Kong in contravention of “one country, two systems”.
Their concerns, dismissed as unrealistic and doomed, remain unanswered by Beijing and their own government.
What’s worse, they are increasingly alienated by a government that is not above questionable tactics.
Their disaffection has been used as an excuse by so-called “localists” to push separatism.
That used to be a pipe dream. Now, the notion of Hong Kong independence has entered the real world.
Secessionists are a minority but in a time of globalization and social networking, their message may be catching on.
Although it might take a long time before they hit world headlines and begin to rattle China, it cannot be completely ignored.
Three-year spiral
It has only been three years into Leung Chun-ying’s administration and we’re already seeing a precipitous decline in social cohesion.
Leung’s style of governance has led to increased public grievances and exacerbated political and social tensions.
And continued bickering over constitutional reform has overshadowed the historic significance of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty.
The government’s response has been to exaggerate issues and stir up disputes, resulting in a crippling polarization of society.
When it became clear in public opinion polls that more people were opposed to the election reform proposal, the government discredited the surveys, saying they had been manipulated.
I wonder if Beijing also thinks that way, so that it simply ignores public sentiment as long as it has a loyalist at the helm.
We have already seen that in Leung.
Irrelevant
The result of the voting on the election bill is no longer relevant to the future of Hong Kong’s democracy.
If it is passed, we will all have our shameful share of the big swindle. If it’s voted down, it merely reaffirms what we’ve been saying all along — we prefer nothing to something fake.
Rejection of the bill won’t lead us back to the right track either, and the Hong Kong government will simply continue with its naked lies about freedom, democracy and universal suffrage.
Life will go on but the years to come may not be the kind of future we want.
The odds of seeing a truly democratic Hong Kong are tremendous. And we may be seeing the last of Hong Kong as we know it — stable and prosperous — as we stagger into an even more uncertain future.
This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on June 17. It was written before the Legco vote on the election bill.
Translation by Frank Chen
[Chinese version 中文版]
– Contact us at [email protected]
RA |
Tool Announces"Vicarious" As New Single, Release Date Set
Band Photo: Tool (?)
Jonathan Cohen of Billboard.com reports: Tool has revealed the track list for its next studio album, "10,000 Days." As previously reported, the set is due May 2 via Volcano. The first single/album opener "Vicarious," which stretches past the seven-minute mark, is due to arrive April 17 at U.S. rock radio outlets.
True to form, the 11-track "10,000 Days" sports a number of epic tunes, particularly "Rosetta Stoned" and "10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2)," both of which clock in at 11:14. Near the end of the disc are the substantially lengthy "Intension" (7:21) and "Right in Two" (8:56).
"10,000 Days" is the follow-up to 2001's "Lateralus," which debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 2.3 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
As previously reported, Tool will play its first U.S. show since late 2002 when it headlines the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on April 30 in Indio, Calif. No other U.S. dates have been confirmed. Afterward, the band will spend the first portion of the summer playing the European festival circuit, with dates on tap through July 9 at Finland's Turku Festival.
Here is the track list for "10,000 Days":
"Vicarious"
"Jambi"
"Wings for Marie (Pt. 1)"
"10,000 Days (Pt. 2)"
"The Pot"
"Lipan Conjuring"
"Lost Keys (Blame Hofman)"
"Rosetta Stoned"
"Intension"
"Right in Two"
"Viginti Tres"
Source: Billboard.com |
The view from Mount Sunflower, Kansas’s highest elevation. (Image: CC0)
Geographer Jerry Dobson had barely started his new job at the University of Kansas when a realization hit. Whenever he told friends and colleagues about his gig, people would smile, congratulate him, the works. But then, almost inevitably, they’d make some crack about his new home state: specifically, how flat it was. Over his years-long tenure, this did not change.
“Everytime you meet someone, they say it—and it’s not true,” he says. “I always looked around and saw hills.”
But Dobson is a geographer, able to translate this frustration into motivation. A few years ago, he and his colleague Joshua Campbell—a born and raised Kansan—undertook a project. They set out to measure the flatness of every state in the union, using an algorithm designed to calculate how flat each one looks from different points in its interior—what Campbell calls “that feeling of total flatness.” When they got the results back, Kansas was in a respectable seventh, behind Delaware, North Dakota, and the clear winner, Florida. Since then, Dobson and Campbell have toured their results around, using them to argue against the flat-Kansas mythology.
Bluff along the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River. #gyphills Photo by @flinthillsboy Use #kansasaintflat to be featured A photo posted by Kansas (@kansasaintflat) on May 31, 2016 at 7:25pm PDT
So how did Kansas get this reputation? Andy Stuhl, a musician who recently moved there by car, bets it comes from East Coast road-trippers, who spill out onto the plain after miles and miles of woods. Sam Huneke, a historian who grew up in Lawrence, points to a lack of particularly large hills, but insists that “the day-to-day experience is not one of flatness.” What is clear is that, like Dobson, they don’t much like it. “Of course it affects our reputation,” says Kelli Hilliard of the Kansas Tourism Board, pointing towards efforts to change that, like a set of scenic, rolling byways, and an Instagram account called “kansasaintflat.”
But Branden Rishel, a Washington-based cartographer, has a different, more radical idea: If everyone already thinks Kansas is flat, why not lean in? Why not just make it flat—totally, completely flat?
Rishel is very familiar with the Kansas flatness question. He was a student of Mark Fonstad, a Texas State geographer who, in 2003, set out with some colleagues and a laser microscope to determine which was flatter: Kansas or an IHOP pancake. The resulting study, titled “Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake,” likely added to the public misconceptions that rankle Dobson and Campbell. (They also point out that, if you use the particular mathematical approach of Fonstad et al, “there is no place on Earth that is not flatter than a pancake.”)
Despite his academic parentage, Rishel doesn’t disagree with Dobson and Campbell—“if Kansas is a sloped and hummocky lawn, Florida is a parking lot,” he says. He also agrees that perceived flatness is probably bad for the state’s reputation. He just thinks the best solution involves less fact-checking and more literal digging. “Kansans should reclaim and celebrate flatness,” Rishel says. “Kansas should become more flat than flat.”
Kansas, in Rishel’s ideal future. (Image: Branden Rishel)
About a year ago, Rishel posted a mocked-up map of Totally Flat Kansas on his blog, Cartographers Without Borders, along with a skeleton of his plan. The image, in which a smooth, sleek Kansas sits embedded in the bumpy continent like a tooth in a gum, is immediately appealing. It gives the sense of a state that has taken charge of its own destiny and has ended up several thousand years ahead of the rest of us, in a state of David Bowie-esque aesthetic precision. It makes Kansas look cool.
The plan, which he elaborated for me, goes as follows: Start in the middle of the state and dig west, towards Colorado. Send that excavated dirt due east, and lay it out as you go, filling in all possible nooks, crannies, valleys, etc. By the end, you will have moved 5,501 cubic miles of soil—over 9 billion Olympic swimming pools’ worth, Rishel points out. To even begin to do this, you’d need a whole lot of technology that hasn’t been invented yet (moveable pipelines, huge nuclear-powered mining machines, all that jazz). But the state would end up flat enough to test a level on, separated from its neighbors by enormous cliffs.
Rishel is a great evangelist for this plan. Besides the obvious recreational benefits—interstate cliff diving, endless ice skating in wet winters—total flatness would make Kansas a geographically fascinating spot, he says. There would be new plant life under the giant cliffs, which wouldn’t see the sun until noon. The Arkansas River would plunge down from Colorado, free-falling into the western edge of the state. “Tourists could take an elevator into Kansas and play bocce,” Rishel imagines, his enthusiasm palpable. “The region would turn into a giant puddle after storms… Visitors would discover that flat is never boring.”
A northeast view of Lawrence from the top of Mt. Oread. (Image: New York Public Library/Public Domain)
I’m sold. But I’m not from Kansas—and, like so many aspirational developers, neither is Rishel. Even if flattening is the sincerest form of flattery, Dobson, Campbell, and the other real Kansans I talked to would be sad to lose their hills, which help them take advantage of the good parts of being on the level. From the top of Lawrence’s Mount Oread, for example, “the view reaches far enough to fade away,” says Stuhl. “It’s awe-inspiring to stand on top of one of our hills and see a squall line moving in,” adds Sam Huneke, a history student who grew up in the state.
That is, until the mining machines roll by, bringing the future with them. Then, you’ll just want to get out of the way. |
The American coal industry is terminally ill — and that should serve as a warning to investors who might be tempted to put their money into other fossil fuels.
That’s the gist of a new report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which warns that oil and natural gas could also wind up becoming stranded assets — property that under other scenarios could be worth a lot of money, but not in the real situation we face as the climate warms and the market shifts in response.
Coal use has been decoupled from America’s economic growth for a number of reasons, the report finds. The biggest is the availability of other cheap sources of energy — since 2008, the abundance of shale gas from America’s fracking boom has played a big role in driving that trend, but so have renewable energies like solar and wind. Increasingly strict regulations on air pollution and the energy sector from the Obama administration’s EPA have also played a role.
“Cheap gas has knocked coal off its feet, and the need to improve air quality and ever-lower renewables costs has kept coal down for the count,” said Luke Sussams, co-author of the report and a Carbon Tracker senior researcher. He and his colleagues posit that investors in oil, and eventually even natural gas, could see a similar trend. The Carbon Tracker Initiative was one of the first groups to promote the idea of a “carbon bubble,” in which, as the world confronts global warming, fossil fuel investors would see the value of their assets collapse. Companies stand to lose billions, the think tank said.
This week’s Carbon Tracker report comes on the heels of a separate report from CoalSwarm and the Sierra Club that looks at international coal use. That picture, too, does not look good for fossil fuel investors. From “Boom and Bust: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline”:
In India, projects shelved or cancelled since 2012 outnumber project completions by six to one, and new construction initiations are at a near-standstill. In both Europe and the U.S., the coal fleet is shrinking, with retirements outnumbering new plants. China faces a looming glut in coal-fired generating capacity, with plant utilization rates at a 35-year low.
The report also finds that more than two dozen U.S. coal companies have gone bankrupt in the past three years, and those that haven’t lost more than 80 percent of their share value.
The coal industry, of course, disputes these gloomy assessments. Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the U.S., recently predicted that U.S. coal usage would increase 10 million to 30 million tons by 2017, and global demand could grow by 500 million metric tons during the same period.
The company and its coal-loving friends are also making every effort to challenge forthcoming EPA regulations that could hasten coal’s collapse. The company is paying well-respected constitutional scholar and former Obama mentor Laurence Tribe to argue that the administration’s Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional. And coal’s allies in Congress are trying to undermine the EPA plan with, among other things, an amendment to a big budget bill that would allow states to opt out. If the amendment passes, it will likely face a presidential veto, spurring yet another budget standoff.
But, as the Carbon Tracker report shows, the EPA’s efforts are just one factor among many that have weakened coal’s prospects. Ultimately, the industry is up against a global energy economy in which coal, with its huge environmental and health costs, increasingly just doesn’t make sense. And no amount of lobbying Congress or arguing in court will slow that trend. |
Mandalay Bay & MGM Ban OnSite Investigator – Armed Guards & FBI Agent Throw Him Out Of His Room
An independent onsite investigator by the name of Nick Falco decided to stay at the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino and investigate things pertaining to the Las Vegas shooting. He was subsequently banned from the hotel, as well as MGM for life and escorted out of his hotel room by armed guards and an FBI agent.
The actions of Falco and the hotel occurred within 24 hours of his arrival.
Falco tweeted out his investigation (his tweets require approval to be seen, but I have linked them below), along with the ban he received from Mandalay Bay & MGM.
“I questioned the #LasVegas shooting narrative. I went to Mandalay Bay to check for myself. After 24 hours I was banned for life from MGM,” tweeted Falco, providing the following picture to prove his ban: https://t.co/AEdgzRGfG8.
Falco spoke with Intellihub and sought to confirm certain things, including the validity of the receipt that was leaked online from Stephen Paddock’s room.
Intellihub reports:
Falco told Intellihub exclusively that he received a phone call from the front desk of Mandalay Bay shortly before 7:30 p.m. in which a female operator instructed him to answer his hotel room door where four men (two armed guards, a security guy, and an FBI agent) simultaneously met him. Falco was then told to pack up his belongings before the FBI agent conducted a subsequent inspection of his room. Soon after the independent investigator says that he was escorted over to the main entrance of the Mandalay Bay where a security guard stood him in front of a camera and verbally read him the trespass. During Falco’s visit, he was able to prove that the leaked online version of Stephen Paddock’s room service receipt was, in fact, “authentic” after comparing it to a receipt he himself received after ordering room service Saturday morning.
Here’s the series of tweets from Falco with links to each tweet.
2. I stayed at Mandalay Paddocks room service receipt was leaked online. It is authentic.https://t.co/us9zDGoU57 Here’s mine- ONE guest pic.twitter.com/JEAyuEzpKM — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017 3. There’s 1000s of surveillance cameras in gaming area, mostly visible There’s a surveillance camera in each main elevator. You cant hide pic.twitter.com/qXeOlORYUb — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017
He did shoot down theories that Paddock used his wife/girlfriend’s ID to access the service elevator saying, “Service elevators aren’t prohibited from guests. No signs. No locks.”
4. Some People have said Paddock used service elevator w his girlfriends ID- this is FALSE There are No locks, No signs, No keys required pic.twitter.com/rjE5sdr6yD — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017 5. Police said Paddock used service elevators.
Why? To bypass security? Service elevators arent prohibited from guests. No signs. No locks pic.twitter.com/kHVYc8WPLK — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017 6. There are visible surveillance cameras in all service elevators. There was no reason for Paddock to use these to get around security. pic.twitter.com/xNFWYtMF3i — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017
Falco also pointed out that the freight elevator is quite a distance from Paddock’s room.
7. Red dot is service elevator. Main elevators are in middle. I’m pointing to Paddocks room Why did Paddock use service elevator? It’s far pic.twitter.com/FSrVnTuY5a — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017 9. There is an exit staircase right next to Paddock’s room. No locks, no alarms, no signs & most importantly? No Cameras. pic.twitter.com/GF0JoXJaq3 — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017
Falco goes on to say that there was no need for a second window as the vantage point Paddock would have had over the venue didn’t require it.
8. I had clear view of Paddocks room, concert & fuel tanks Shooter didnt need 2nd window to shoot people & fuel tanks Why break 2 windows? pic.twitter.com/Tq5giT76In — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017
Additionally, Falco told Intellhub that he is no conspiracy theorist, just someone checking out the facts.
And take note of MGM’s privacy policy which Falco notes in tweet number 12 of 14.
I don’t think that is far-fetched considering the wealth of information Wikileaks has provided the American people on the illegal activities of the CIA in our own country.
Falco then concludes his series of tweets by asking, “I was evicted after less than 24 hours but a shooter w 23 rifles was at their hotel for 7 days & they didn’t know?”
13. I was evicted after less than 24 hours but a shooter w 23 rifles was at their hotel for 7 days & they didn’t know? This guy? Really? pic.twitter.com/ZUGpLqeqMe — Nick (@Nick_Falco) October 15, 2017
It seems to me that Nick Falco has provided a plethora of evidence, just in his being banned from the hotel that attorney Brian Claypool may have a proper theory concerning Mandalay Bay and MGM simply being negligent of a high roller like Stephen Paddock, which put lives in danger, grave danger. |
Month after month I've taken the "over" for the employment report ("over" the consensus), and that has been correct most months. However, for January, I'll take the "under" ... however I think there is a good chance that employment will be up 3 million year-over-year (it would take 192 thousand jobs added including revisions).
Friday at 8:30 AM ET, the BLS will release the employment report for January. The consensus, according to Bloomberg, is for an increase of 230,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January (with a range of estimates between 215,000 and 268,000), and for the unemployment rate to be unchanged at 5.6%.
The BLS reported 252,000 jobs added in December.
Here is a summary of recent data:
• The ADP employment report showed an increase of 213,000 private sector payroll jobs in January. This was below expectations of 220,000 private sector payroll jobs added. The ADP report hasn't been very useful in predicting the BLS report for any one month, but in general, this suggests employment growth slightly below expectations.
• The ISM manufacturing employment index decreased in January to 54.1%. A historical correlation between the ISM manufacturing employment index and the BLS employment report for manufacturing, suggests that private sector BLS manufacturing payroll jobs were unchanged in January. The ADP report indicated a 14,000 increase for manufacturing jobs in January.
The ISM non-manufacturing employment index decreased in January to 51.6%. A historical correlation between the ISM non-manufacturing employment index and the BLS employment report for non-manufacturing, suggests that private sector BLS non-manufacturing payroll jobs increased about 115,000 in January.
Combined, the ISM indexes suggests employment gains of 115,000. This suggests growth below expectations.
• Initial weekly unemployment claims averaged close to 298,000 in January, up from 291,000 in December. For the BLS reference week (includes the 12th of the month), initial claims were at 308,000; this was up from 289,000 during the reference week in December.
Generally this suggests a few more layoffs, seasonally adjusted, in January compared to the previous four months (employment gains averaged 284,000 per month for the previous four months).
• The final January University of Michigan consumer sentiment index increased to 98.1 from the December reading of 93.6. This was the highest level in over ten years. Sentiment is frequently coincident with changes in the labor market, but this increase is probably mostly due to sharply lower gasoline prices.
• On small business hiring: The small business index from Intuit showed a 20,000 increase in small business employment in January, down from 30,000 added in November and December.
• Trim Tabs reported that the U.S. economy added between 190,000 and 220,000 jobs in January. This was down from their 210,000 to 240,000 range last month (that was low but close). "TrimTabs’ employment estimates are based on analysis of daily income tax deposits to the U.S. Treasury from the paychecks of the 141 million U.S. workers subject to withholding" December and January are challenging for TrimTabs due to year end bonuses - so they provided a range again this month.
• Conclusion: There is always some randomness to the employment report, but most indicators suggest fewer jobs added in January compared to the previous several months. The consensus forecast reflects some slowdown in employment growth, but I'll take the under this month (below 230,000).
Special Note: In addition to the normal revisions, the annual benchmark revision will be released with the January report. The preliminary estimate was an additional 7,000 jobs as of March 2014 (not a large revision).
Also, the new population controls will be used in the Current Population Survey (CPS) estimation process. The BLS notes that the "household survey data for January 2015 will not be directly comparable with data for December 2014 or earlier periods". |
1893 New York hurricane Category 3 major hurricane (SSHWS/NWS) Map of the hurricane on August 24 over New York City Formed August 15, 1893 Dissipated August 25, 1893 Highest winds 1-minute sustained: 115 mph (185 km/h)
Lowest pressure 952 mbar (hPa); 28.11 inHg Fatalities At least 34 Areas affected Eastern United States Part of the 1893 Atlantic hurricane season
The 1893 New York hurricane, also known as the Midnight Storm,[1] was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that struck the New York City area in August 1893. First identified as a tropical storm on August 15, over the central Atlantic Ocean, the hurricane moved northwestward for most of its course, ultimately peaking with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure reading of 952 mbar (hPa; 28.11 inHg). It turned due northward as it approached the U.S. East Coast and struck western Long Island on August 24. It moved inland and quickly deteriorated, degenerating the next day.
The storm inflicted severe damage with storm tides as high as 30 ft (9 m). Trees were brought down, houses were demolished, and Hog Island was largely washed away by the cyclone. Several areas suffered extensive effects from the hurricane, and at least 34 sailors lost their lives. The storm is regarded as one of the most severe hurricanes to strike the city.
Meteorological history [ edit ]
The system was first classified as a tropical storm while situated in the central Atlantic Ocean on August 15, 1893. It steadily intensified as it tracked generally toward the west and attained hurricane force. Gradually curving northwestward, the storm continued to gain power and, on August 18, it achieved wind speeds corresponding to Category 2 intensity on the modern-day Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.[2] This scale was devised in 1971 to categorize tropical cyclones based on their maximum sustained winds.[3] The storm is estimated to have maintained winds of approximately 100 mph (155 km/h) for several days as it passed well to the north of the Lesser Antilles. As the hurricane turned more northerly still, approaching the United States, it strengthened to major hurricane intensity, Category 3, on August 22. At this point, it peaked in intensity with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). The lowest known barometric pressure in relation to the storm was 952 mbar (hPa; 28.11 inHg).[2]
Less than a day later, the storm deteriorated to Category 2 strength.[2] Cape Hatteras, North Carolina experienced the hurricane on the morning of August 23 while its center passed less than 100 mi (160 km) offshore. Heading nearly due northward, the cyclone skimmed the New Jersey coastline, passing just east of Atlantic City,[4] and weakened further to Category 1 status.[2] On August 23 the storm was one of four hurricanes occurring simultaneously within the Atlantic Ocean.[5] On August 24 the storm moved ashore on western Long Island, in the New York City area. At 1200 UTC that day, while centered just inland, its maximum winds were estimated to have been 85 mph (140 km/h). It progressed northward through New England, quickly weakening. It was briefly downgraded to a tropical storm before becoming extratropical.[2] It dissipated fully on August 25, near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River.[4]
Impact [ edit ]
Winds from the storm exceeded 50 mph (80 km/h) at Atlantic City and New York, initially blowing from the northeast before shifting southwesterly.[4] The hurricane wrought severe destruction,[6] described by The New York Times on August 25 as "a mighty war of winds and a great tumbling of chimneys" and 3.82 inches (97 mm) of rain falling from 8:00 PM Wednesday to 8:00 AM Thursday.[7] A 30 ft (10 m) storm surge impacted the shore, demolishing structures as large as an elevated railway.[6] The storm has been cited as an example of a noteworthy New York City tropical cyclone.[8] The cyclone is known for largely destroying Hog Island, a developed resort island along the southern Long Island coast, which had been as long as about 1 mi (1.6 km) in the 1870s.[9]
The worst of the damage was reportedly confined to a 50 mi (80 km) area surrounding New York City. In a 12-hour period, 3.82 in (97 mm) of precipitation fell, breaking the daily rainfall record. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses accompanied the severe impact. Low-lying areas of the city, particularly those near the coast, were flooded. Roofs and chimneys were ripped off buildings and windows were broken in many homes and businesses. In Central Park, "More than a hundred noble trees were torn up by the roots, and branches were twisted off everywhere."[7] The park was devastated and thousands of dead birds fell to the ground after being washed out of, or drowned in, their nests. Groups of children gathered the birds and picked them up, with the apparent intention of selling them to restaurants.[7] The storm took the lives of 34 sailors as vessels were blown ashore and men swept overboard. The tugboat Panther, towing two coal barges, was wrecked; 17 crew members perished and three lived.[7]
High winds brought down telegraph wires and left the city almost entirely cut off from communication with outside locations. At Coney Island, the storm completely destroyed many buildings, walkways, piers, and beach resorts. Brighton Beach was hit particularly hard. The raging seas swept inland, washing out tracks of the Marine Railway.[7] Bathing houses were moved a great distance by the cyclone. Near the Sheepshead Bay, Emmons Avenue was heavily damaged. Further to the east, at Greenport, numerous yachts were wrecked and scattered. Corn crops on land were ruined and fruit trees lost their fruits.[7]
At Brooklyn, still an independent city from New York, houses were dismantled and uprooted trees blocked streets. Damage was widespread throughout the area and flood waters reached waist-high levels. The storm was the most severe in years at Jersey City, New Jersey, despite the fact that its damage was moderate. Trees were blown down and cellars filled with water there and in nearby areas, such as Hoboken.[7]
See also [ edit ] |
Thor, the classic God of Thunder in the Marvel comics, exploded onto the screen in 2011's "Thor".
The film did well, both with critics and financially, giving Marvel even more momentum to push its planed cinematic universe forward. Surprisingly though, Thor's debut film was a make or break moment for Marvel.
In a recent interview with the director of the film, Kenneth Branagh, discussed just how nervous the company was about the film.
Branagh had the following to say in the interview, as reported by Comicbook.com:
"Remember, there were only two pictures in the Marvel Universe. Iron Man, genius, the first one. [The Incredible] Hulk hadn’t worked as they’d hoped," he continued, "And then [ Thor was] number three, it was sink or swim before Captain America and then suddenly, oh, it was fine after that. We make Iron Man 2 and Avengers and everything’s tickety-boo."
"But everybody who was there knows that that was an incredibly sweaty time," he continued.
When asked if Thor failing would have hurt Marvel and the plan for their film timeline, Branagh had the following to said, "That’s certainly how they felt."
What a twist! Sounds like Thor succeeding was the best thing that could have happened for everyone!
Thor recently starred in the third film for the character, "Thor: Ragnarok", which has become a smash hit. Looks like everyone has this thunder god to thank for making sure we would continue to enjoy high quality superhero films produced by Marvel!
"Thor: Ragnarok" is out now, be sure to check it out!
|
Written by Stephanie Siam
When I reverted to Islam in March 2005, I have to admit I was afraid. Okay, perhaps nervous is a better choice of word, as I wasn’t scared or frightened. And I know I’m not alone in admitting this feeling, especially with female converts. The process of transitioning into Islam from a previous faith/belief system (because face it, even if you don’t believe in God, you believe there is no God) is daunting:
What will my friends think? How will I be received by the public? Does this mean I have to start dressing like an Arab or East Asian-er? Do I have to start my life over from the beginning, rethinking every choice I’ve ever made?
While all of those are valid concerns, and ones that I did contemplate at some point in time post-reversion, they weren’t what I was afraid of. My fear came from telling my father.
Not my family. Not my Mother.
My Father.
Now, before you start thinking my dad is this overbearing and close-minded totalitarian who lives for controlling others’ lives, he’s NOT. In fact, he’s the polar opposite. He’s one of the most open-minded individuals I’ve ever known in my life. And if there is a perfect antonym for overbearing, that describes him, too. I mean, for Heaven’s sake, the man used to sit and logically discuss with me the reasons I should pick up my toys when I was 3 years old. If there’s anything my dad is not, it’s overbearing and close-minded.
So, why was I scared of telling my dad I had become Muslim?
My father has a strong head on his shoulders (don’t confuse strong with stubborn). His choice of worship was not made based on how he was brought up (Nazarene). He didn’t look to his parents to tell him how he should worship God or practice his religion (Christianity). Instead, he went to a Christian college, studied the history and lineage of the Bible and Christianity, and majored in Bible Studies. His goal: to become a preacher.
When he became a member of the Church of Christ denomination, he did so knowing full-well that it represented the beliefs he personally held based on his extensive studying. To him, it was correct.
Now there I was, his 23-year-old daughter, midway through my graduate school program, and I’d converted to Islam. And I had to tell my Father. The same father who responded to my 16-year-old self’s idea of becoming Baptist with, “I’ve failed as a father!”
So, one day while my parents were in town for a wedding, my father and I drove over to the beach at Gulf Shores. We had lunch, talked about religion a little bit, and mostly discussed general life topics. (My father is also a severe introvert, like me, and idle conversation is not a forte of his.)
After lunch, we walked out on the beach. I’d planned my delivery. I asked him what it was exactly that he believed about life and death. He started out with the history of religion (he always starts with the history behind the pertinent question), and then he transitioned into his personal beliefs. Once he finished, I offered my part. I told him nobody had ever really asked me what I believe. It was always just assumed because I was part of a certain family or church that I shared the same beliefs. But, obviously, I didn’t.
Then came the time to deliver my blow. I told him I was thinking about becoming Muslim. (I couldn’t own up to it full-force yet; I needed time to let the idea sink in for him.) Surprisingly, he didn’t stop walking. He didn’t yell (not surprisingly). He just said one thing, and his response has stayed with me every day since. It has had my back when people were against me. It has given me conviction along my chosen path. And those words were:
As your father, it is my job to let you know that I think you’re wrong. But you’re an adult. And if you chose to believe something just because I told you so, that would be just as wrong.
It was all I needed. I didn’t need an “I support you” or a “That’s wonderful”. And I know he still doesn’t like my choice. And I know there have been many tears shed on his side on my behalf. But I also think both he and my mom have come to conclusion that after nearly a decade, a husband and a child, I’m not going through a phase.
And as each day goes by, I never lose hope that one day my family will join me in truly understanding the history, relevance and authority of our beautiful Islam, insha’Allah. Until that day comes, I will continue to enjoy the avid discussion my father and I have about our beliefs, and I will rest easy knowing that despite our differences, we still respect each others’ beliefs … and rights to have them.
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What is the cure for American health care? That is a question that a lot of people are trying to answer, and it’s a highly debated topic, but the answer is plain and simple. Single payer health care is the best form of health care a nation can hope to have. It is efficient, provides quality and timely access to everyone, and it is cost effective. A single payer health care system is a system in which the government, rather than private insurers, pays for all health costs. The system is funded typically through income taxes and is free at the point of use. Some countries with a single payer system include Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, and Australia. France is often considered to have the best health care system in the world, but a large group of people (including myself) believe the best system is the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS). This is because of its central and efficient operation, as well as high quality standards, low wait times, and staff quality.
To start let’s dismiss some of the common arguments against single payer health care that come from the opposite side, like a single payer system having long wait lists, or that it is very inefficient and expensive. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, fact a recent Public Library of Science study stated, “Reported efficiency tended to be lower in the private sector than in the public sector…Studies evaluated in this systematic review do not support the claim that the private sector is more efficient, accountable, or medically effective than the public sector.” It also found that countries with a single payer system also spend less per capita, and that the United States would save over 150 billion annually. That doesn’t even include personal and business savings which would be thousands of dollars annually, would boost the economy, and make the United States more globally competitive.
This is just one example of the several studies on this issue all saying the same thing, that single payer works and it is inherently the best system a nation could hope to have. A study by the World Health Organization also supports this claim and in a world-wide health care ranking, the United States was ranked 37, Canada was 32, the UK ranked 7, and France number 1. All of the countries ahead of the United States had a form of universal coverage and all of the countries in the top 25 had a single payer system. The OECD (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) performed a study on wait times and found that the wait times in the United States increased by 30% in major U.S. cities, and that the U.S. had above average wait times. However, the U.K. and France were below the average wait times and were in the top five worldwide, both operating under a single payer system. Another organization, based in the United States, that has been pushing for single payer and has also conducted multiple studies is the PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program), an organization of thousands of doctors, nurses, and health specialists. PNHP has been supporting and proposing legislation at the state and federal level for years, gaining little ground. A large reason is health insurance company money in politics, and “corporate” arguments propped up, in large part, by the republican party.
To be clear this isn’t a conservative or liberal issue, in fact, in most countries it’s just a given there are no politics involved. The PNHP explained the conservative argument for single payer health care, saying that it would save money by eliminating bureaucracy, boost American business by eliminating health costs and would also save individuals thousands. Which leads into the next point, the method of payment and how it works. As previously explained, a single payer system is paid for through income taxes, so that means you’re going to see a large increase in income taxes right? Actually no, you aren’t. A recent study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that it would call for a 2.2% income tax increase on individuals earning less than $200,000 annually, and cost middle income earners roughly $1,100 that is $3,855 less than the average out of pocket premium. Sadly, even though polls for the last 70 years have consistently shown a majority of Americans support a single payer system, Congress is bought and paid for by health insurance companies.
So, it’s likely there won’t be any action to move to this system, which every major study finds is better, for a whole, on a national level. However, there has been a growing movement for a single payer system on a national level mainly rallied around the Independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, and even though it might not be possible in the next 4 years, it seems like the inevitable future. At the state level, however, it seems like an increasingly likely outcome within the next few years, and there have been efforts in Vermont, California, and even Minnesota. Current Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has been one of the few Democrats to take the lead on this issue, criticizing Obamacare, supporting a single payer system, and even proposing a public option for MNsure. It is an increasingly likely possibility that Minnesota could adopt a single payer system and we could experience the benefits first hand, however, the current problem is the state legislature doesn’t support any government action on health care and you can probably guess why.
But with midterm elections in two years it’s quite possible things could change and a single payer option could be back on the table. I would like to take a moment to encourage everyone, Conservative or Liberal, to put politics aside and come together on this issue. No one should be denied the right to health care for any reason, and it is important to support candidates who support this basic idea. A local candidate and former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Andrew Falk, has been one of the few outspoken local political advocates for a single payer system and has taken the lead on this issue. It’s important to rally around candidates like Falk who turn down corporate dollars and put the interests of the people first. If we all do that a single payer system could be a reality sooner than we think. |
The battle over marriage equality in Iowa is heating up as Republicans in the State House are moving forward with plans to ban gay marriage and civil unions, an attempt to reverse a unanimous 2009 State Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality. To amend the constitution, “an amendment would require approval by state lawmakers during two legislative sessions, and then approval by voters at the ballot box.” Encouraged by major Republican gains in the midterm elections and the removal of three pro-equality Justices through retention votes, Iowa Republicans have emphasized restrictions on gay-rights and reproductive-rights in their legislative agenda, and Religious Right leader Bob Vander Plaats is pressing for the removal of the entire Supreme Court.
Vander Plaats’s new organization, The Family Leader, recently blasted pro-equality faith leaders in an alert message that questions their faith, stating: “167 ‘religious’ leaders signed a letter delivered to the Iowa Legislature saying that people of faith support homosexual ‘marriage.’ Don’t stay silent while others speak for you and misrepresnt [sic] God.” The group calls on pastors to sign an alternative petition which describes “homosexual behavior” as “immoral and sinful” and “harmful both to the individuals who choose to participate in it and the society that chooses to accept it.”
The mobilization of pastors by The Family Leader comes at a time when, according to the Des Moines Register, Republican leaders are trying to prohibit not only gay marriage but also other forms of legal rights for gay couples such as civil unions and domestic partnerships. The Register reports: |
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Innovation is a mindset — not just something you do once or twice a week — and Hollywood’s media companies have done a pretty poor job of it, a panel of New Media experts said in the final panel at TheGrill, TheWrap’s fourth annual Media Leadership Conference on Tuesday.
Los Angeles-based legacy companies have been slow to adopt the Silicon Valley way, said Rich Raddon, co-founder of Venice-based Zefr, which helps content owners and brands manage their business on YouTube.
“Not a lot of that culture has really rubbed off on SoCal media companies,” said Raddon, a former producer (“A Slipping Down Life”) and director of the Los Angeles Film Festival from 2000 to 2009. “I just found a strong affinity to how people were building business up there.”
Also read: TheGrill: Online-Video-Giant Maker’s Chief – We’ll Be the Next Viacom (Video)
The panel, titled “Innovators panel: Meet the Folks We’ll All Be Working For in 10 Years,” also included Tumblr’sDavid Hayes and Lowercase Capital partner Matt Mazzeo. It was moderated by TheWrap’s Lucas Shaw.
Raddon relayed the story of a major film studio that hosted a weekly “innovation group” – which was managed by, of all things, the company’s human-resources department.
(At right: Hayes, Mazzeo and Raddon)
“It’s hilarious,” he said. “Innovation is a mindset, not just a word.”
But there’s good news: A whole lot of companies who do get it are sprouting up all over town.
“This city is seeing this massive growth and explosion in tech companies,” said Mazzeo, whose Lowercase Capital advises and invests in companies at the junction of tech and media. “A lot of this is happening in mobile. It couldn’t be a more exciting time to be playing in both worlds right now.”
Also read: TheGrill: Market-Research Leader Bruzzese – Our Industry Is Broken (Video)
And there’s no bigger nexus point than YouTube — another thing the panelists don’t think Hollywood is getting its head around.
“This town has a misperception about what’s happened with YouTube, which just keeps going up and up,” said Raddon, citing its staggering growth toward 1 billion unique users per month.
The reason many traditionalists turn their nose up at YouTube, he said, is that it’s still not easy to monetize there — especially the platform’s wicked-fast growing overseas users.
“But you gotta have some vision here,” he said. “In the early days of cable, the big networks were sitting around doing the same thing … My kids know two things: They know YouTube and Neflix. They know a little about what Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel are.”
Also read: TheGrill: On the Scene at TheWrap’s Media Leadership Conference (Photos)
At the suggestion that emerging storytelling forms — short videos, gifs, the like — would be so disruptive as to put an end to the two-hour movie or 10-season TV show, Mazzeo bristled: “Our consumption patterns might change,” he said, “but the storytelling forms will survive. The people I deal with in tech may think, ‘Well, this is better.’ But they don’t think the other thing has to die.”
Hayes, entertainment evangelist at Tumblr and head of the blogging platform’s think-tank CANVAS, said people are simply finding different ways to use different platforms, and young people are already acclimated to those differences.
“They’re being trained at a young age to be satisfied by a three-minute video, or a three-second gif,” he said. “A lot of these platforms are being used to market story forms. We’ll soon see them be used to deliver those story forms.” |
Lena Oxton (call sign: "Tracer") was the youngest person ever inducted into Overwatch's experimental flight program. Known for her fearless piloting skills, she was handpicked to test the prototype of a teleporting fighter, the Slipstream. But during its first flight, the aircraft's teleportation matrix malfunctioned, and it disappeared. Lena was presumed dead. She reappeared months later, but her ordeal had greatly changed her: her molecules had been desynchronized from the flow of time. Suffering from "chronal disassociation," she was a living ghost, disappearing for hours and days at a time. Even for the brief moments she was present, she was unable to maintain physical form.Overwatch's doctors and scientists were stumped, and Tracer's case seemed hopeless until a scientist named Winston designed the chronal accelerator, a device capable of keeping Tracer anchored in the present. In addition, it gave Tracer the ability to control her own time, allowing her to speed it up and slow it down at will. With her newfound skills, she became one of Overwatch's most effective agents.
: Overwatch: Tracer (Lena Oxton)So I keep going with my Overwatch portraits series. The story of Tracer is also full of drama, and I decided to illustrate her as a ghost when she had a "chronal disassociation":
- Overwatch Wiki
Programms used: SFM+ PS5
#21DaysofOverwatch |
According to this report from Replays.net, this is how transfers have been standardized under the ACE Alliance in Chinese Dota 2. The latter half of the article reveals the transfer fees and related details of some of this year’s biggest moves.
If Team B wishes to buy Team A’s player C, then B must first approach A and confirm whether the player is available for transfer. If A agrees, only then is B allowed to approach the player C. If player C is open and willing, then Team B can lay out their transfer conditions and offer. If player C does not agree to these terms, then he will remain at his current club; if player C agrees, then all three parties, A, B, and C need to communicate with ACE via email and receive their confirmation. In the ensuing days, the involved parties need to come to the ACE offices in order to sort out paperwork and related processes, and then they are allowed to make official announcements regarding the news. If the new team and their new player decides to use existing contracts, then they perform a trade of contracts while at ACE. If they decide to sign a new contract, then the new contract will be signed and backup files stored with ACE. In the case later on that a party fails to uphold their end of a contract, then ACE will be abe to lay penalties according to existing policies.
Below are images from the transfer of KingJ from TongFu to RisingStars:
In addition, Replays.net also received information regarding the details of this year’s transfers, as below:
TongFu <–> RisingStars
1. KingJ transfers from TongFu to RisingStars
2. XTT is part of the transfer terms, and joins TongFu from Rstars, his contract is exchanged for KingJ’s
3. RStars and TongFu respectively pay to XTT and KingJ their owed prize moneys and promotional fees
TongFu <–> iG #1
1. Banana transfers from TongFu to iG
2. TongFu pays to banana all owed prize moneys and promotional fees
3. iG pays TongFu a transfer fee totaling 100,000 RMB for the rights to banana
TongFu <–> iG #2
1. iG and TongFu agree to collaborate on themed promotional product(s)
2. iG pays TongFu a transfer fee totaling 110,000 RMB for the rights to Hao
3. Zhou is part of the transfer terms, and joins TongFu from iG, his contract is exchanged for Hao’s
4. iG and TongFu respectively pay to Zhou and Hao their owed prize moneys and promotional fees
VG <–> RisingStars
1. CTY transfers from VG to RStars
2. RStars pays VG a transfer fee totaling 45,000 RMB for the rights to CTY
3. VG pays CTY’s August salary and previous promotional fees
LGD <–> RisingStars
1. xiaotuji’s contract is exchanged for Sylar’s
2. xiaotuji is traded for Sylar, each player’s official transfer fee consists of the other player’s transfer rights (Dotaland note: they were essentially traded 1 for 1)
3. LGD is to pay Sylar his promotional fees for China Joy, as well as DSL prize money
It is easy to see from all this, that the ACE Alliance has a certain amount of influence watching over transfers and related activities, helping clubs and players maintain their rights in the process. The current scene seems to allow both player trades as well as straight cash purchases of transfer rights, akin to something of a mix between what is commonly seen in the sports of basketball and soccer (football). If a new club is willing to spend millions and buy out an entire team, what is to stop them? Additionally, it was not hard to see during this reshuffle from the weibo posts of various team managers that, despite this structure, things were still very chaotic. We hope that ACE can make further improvements to the details and processes.
Source: http://dota2.replays.net/news/page/20130917/1852014.html
Follow DOTALAND on Twitter for instant updates: https://twitter.com/Dotaland
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Carlos Tevez says he will snub Chelsea interest to stay at Boca
Carlos Tevez won Premier League titles with Manchester United and Manchester City
Carlos Tevez claims he will snub interest from Chelsea this summer to see out his career with Boca Juniors.
The Argentina forward says Chelsea and Italian side Napoli want to bring him back to Europe, where he spent nine years with West Ham, both Manchester clubs and Antonio Conte's Juventus.
Tevez returned to Buenos Aires and first club Boca in 2015, and the message to interested European clubs is clear: 'I'm not coming back'.
"I'm fine at Boca," said the 32, year-old, quoted in Italy's Corriere dello Sport. "Indeed my idea, my dream is to finish my career as a player in this wonderful club.
"Europe? Yes, it's true Napoli and Chelsea seek me, but I repeat what I said before. My desire is to stay at Boca until I retire."
West Ham co-chairman David Sullivan revealed earlier this month he had explored the possibility of re-signing Tevez, claiming the deal broke down over the player's wage demands.
Tevez became a cult hero in east London when he helped save the club from relegation in 2007, and Premier League successes with United and City followed.
He left for Juve in 2013 when new Chelsea boss Conte was in charge and went on to win back-to-back Serie A titles. |
A Los Angeles police officer was sentenced to 36 months in jail Thursday for assaulting a South L.A. woman in an incident that was caught on video by a police cruiser camera.
Mary O’Callaghan’s sentencing comes amid intense scrutiny and criticism nationwide of police use of force. The last 20 months of her sentence were suspended meaning she’ll likely spend a little more than a year in county jail.
A downtown L.A. jury last month convicted O’Callaghan, 50, of assault under color of authority after a prosecutor argued that the video recording showed the officer used unnecessary force during the 2012 arrest of Alesia Thomas.
In the video, O’Callaghan jabbed at Thomas’ throat with an open hand and threatened to kick her in the crotch. O’Callaghan then raised her boot and struck Thomas, whose body shook in response.
Click here to read the full story on LATimes.com.
Clarification: O’Callaghan was sentenced to the maximum term, 36 months, but 20 months of that sentence was suspended by the judge, meaning her sentence comes to 16 months in jail, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. |
Best Answer: Several things can happen to the clothes. In reality they aren't considered "clothing" such as you buy at the store. They are technically costumes, even if it looks like what you find at walmart or American Eagle. After production wraps costumes are stored in case they need re-takes or re-shooting. After the release many times costumes end up in storage. There are large warehouses filled with costumes and clothes used in movies. Important pieces are held for display and publicity, but most end up in storage. Sometimes costume departments for other movies will recycle old costumes, re-making them for a new character. When the warehouses get too full the costumes will be culled, some sent to thrift stores, some will be auctioned off, some will be sent to film museums depending on the importance of the costume and the actor who wore it. Some actors have riders in their contracts that allow them to keep a few special costumes, usually ownership belongs to the production company. Costumes are considered an asset and something that can be sold to raise money for other productions.
For television programs all costumes are kept until the show wraps up production, then they are dispersed. When productions shuts down the actors are given first dibs at their favourite props and costumes. Julia Louis Dreyfuss kept her entire Elaine wardrobe from Seinfeld; Jason Alexander kept George's glasses, sneakers, velvet clothes and the Yankees sheets and blankets. The girls from Friends kept many items and auctioned off many others as part of a fundraiser. Important pieces are held for publicity and museums (I imagine Horatio Caine's sunglasses will end up in the Smithsonian, like Seinfeld's puffy shirt) and the rest are auctioned off (important pieces again, think Sex and The City) and the rest sent to thrift stores.
Stage costumes are not like real clothes in the materials used and the construction. A 18th century court dress may look authentic on stage, but it can be constructed on modern fabrics with invisible zippers to allow the actor to change quickly between scenes. Stage costumes are they are kept in storage and/or recycled into new costumes. The Stratford Festival in Canada re-uses costumes, laces, trims, shoes, wigs etc. There are a few important costumes that are kept for publicity. Every few years the costume department hold a garage sale of costumes, laces, shoes, and grab bags of leftover supplies. I have been to several of these sales and know people who work in the costume shop. They make everything from dresses to wigs to shoes.
It really depends on the costumer and the production company. There are cases where costumes are merely trashed, but they have come to realize that people are willing to spend lots of money on old costumes.
Source(s):
Linda S · 10 years ago |
Chapter Text
The world turned upside down on a Tuesday.
Thomas had been sitting at his computer, looking at pictures of other peoples’ cats. There was a brief moment of unaccustomed weightlessness, followed by a lurching feeling as he started falling. He hit the ceiling half a second later, denting the plaster and hurting his head. He lay there for a moment, rubbing his scalp, which was bleeding profusely in the way that minor head wounds sometimes did. Thomas let out a groan and moved slowly. When he looked up, he saw his cat, Bartleby, staring at him. From the floor.
“Help?” asked Thomas. His cat meowed.
He placed a hand on the ceiling, where he’d cracked the plaster. Bits of it fell past him, to where his cat was sitting. Bartleby, having seen enough, sauntered out of the room. Thomas stayed where he was. He touched the wound on his head, causing his fingers to come away bloody. He stared at them for a moment. There was enough blood for it to drip down; it fell toward the ceiling for a few brief fractions of a second, then reversed direction and fell toward the floor. Thomas looked up at the plaster and blood next to his computer chair, which had fallen over. Everything in the room was sitting just where it had been.
Thomas did what any savvy young person would do in a time like this; he pulled out his smartphone to consult the internet. Unfortunately, when he pulled it from his pocket, he suddenly realized that it was trying to get away with him, fleeing toward the floor. If he’d been prepared, it would have been no work at all to keep it in his grasp, but while he had decades of practice keeping a phone from falling from his grasp, he had no experience whatsoever with keeping a phone from falling up. The whole concept of gravity had been sundered into two pieces: the objective (everything in the world) and subjective (just Thomas). This would have been a pleasant epiphany had it not immediately followed his phone crashing into the ground. He winced when he saw the shattered screen.
The internet wasn’t going to be any help. It was unlikely that the internet would have been any help anyway, since Thomas was certain that he would have heard about it if anyone had ever had their personal gravity reversed; there wouldn't be any readily available FAQs or decades-old forum threads where the issue was hammered out. Still, he would have been able to go online to ask some pointed questions, which might have led him somewhere.
He rose on slow, unsteady feet, until he was standing on the ceiling. When he reached (subjective, Thomas oriented) up, he could just barely touch the phone. The screen was cracked, but there was no way of telling whether it was still working. Even going up to the balls of his feet, he only really succeeded in pushing the phone around. He was finally able to grab it by jumping for it, which brought another dusting of plaster past him as he landed back on the ceiling.
Thomas looked down. He was on the ceiling of the second floor of his house. The actual floors were built for the strain of people walking on them, but he wasn’t so sure that the same could be said for the ceilings. He had no idea what was beneath the plaster. There were probably some joists and insulation, then shingles beyond that. If he fell through the ceiling, what would happen? Would he continue falling into the sky? The thought was sobering enough that he moved away from the windows.
The phone wasn’t working, even after pulling the battery out then putting it back in to reset it. With the idea that this might actually be a dangerous situation to be in, Thomas reached up to grab his keyboard; luckily, it was a wireless one. While he was standing, he wasn’t in too bad of a position to look at his computer screen, though he had to hold into the keyboard with one hand so it wouldn't go falling to the floor, which meant typing with a single hand. It took a few moments to get his computer to flip the output of his monitor (Ctrl+Alt+F1), but then he was in business, with an open conduit to the internet and the wealth of problem-solving it contained.
It was all anyone was talking about. That was a relief -- it was proof that Thomas wasn’t crazy and wasn’t alone -- but it also meant that Thomas was nothing special. There were brief, half-buried thoughts at the back of his mind, that perhaps something strange and unique had happened to him. Maybe he wouldn’t have been Upside-Down Man, but there had been plenty of thoughts percolating, thoughts of money and attention. These all evaporated in the face of the worldwide news.
The thing that really brought it home was a video. It looked like a traffic cam, but it was much better quality than that, so Thomas thought perhaps it was one of those static cameras that TV stations cut to during commercial breaks. It showed a crowded pedestrian crosswalk somewhere in Asia. It was evening in America, which meant that it was early morning in China; people were going to work. One moment the mass of people were crossing the street, the next they were accelerating toward the sky. It was almost exactly what the Rapture was supposed to look like, at least in the movies and television shows that Thomas had seen. There was nothing peaceful about it though; these people were falling, their mouths open in screams that the camera's microphone wasn’t close enough to pick up. It only took a small slice of time for the crosswalks to be devoid of people. That was when Thomas saw the cars; there were people inside them, pressed up against the roofs. A few of the cars started to idle forward, heading towards collisions that their drivers weren't in control enough to stop. That was where the video cut out.
Thomas stared at the computer screen in mute horror. Then he rewound the video and did the math. He advanced it frame-by-frame, making best-guess measurements for height. Because there were so many people, it was easy to get references. He charted the seeming ascent of the people to confirm their acceleration away from the Earth. In the first second, they’d gone ten meters. In the second second, they’d gone thirty meters. That meant acceleration approximated ten meters per second per second, which was almost exactly equal to the force of gravity, only working in reverse.
The second half of the math was much more grim. Terminal velocity for a human was about two hundred kilometers per hour, which they would reach in about twelve seconds. People started having substantial trouble with oxygen deprivation at eight kilometers above sea level, which the people falling into the sky would reach in about two minutes. From there, the air would get thinner, increasing their speed and hastening their death from asphyxia. All this would have happened within five minutes. While Thomas was rubbing his head and fumbling with his phone, people had been dying. Anyone who had been standing outside when the change happened was almost certainly dead by the time he finally watched the video.
It was more than that though. Anyone in a car would have been lifted from their seat, jolted and disoriented even if they were wearing a seat belt. Thomas had felt mildly dizzy after his fall, which must have been from the fluid in his inner ear sloshing around. There would be car crashes, lots of them. Car crashes aside, even if you were stuck in an unmoving car, what would you do? How would you escape to the safety of indoors if you were under threat of falling into the sky? How would people get food? How was anyone who survived this first day supposed to keep on living?
Thomas began downloading a local copy of Wikipedia. If the change had happened worldwide, then it was only a matter of time until basic services were interrupted. Men and women at the power plants would have been thrown to the ceiling, which wouldn’t immediately cause the electric grid to shut down, but would impact their ability to correct any problems. That would lead to eventual failure. The same went for water pressure and internet service. While the five minute download of Simple English Wikipedia was going, Thomas began charging his e-reader to full power and moving over likely looking books from Amazon, grabbing everything that looked like it might be relevant. He reached up to grab his laptop from its satchel and began charging that as well. When he had all the transfers going, he moved to the bathroom and turned the water on full blast. If water pressure went, a bathtub full of water would keep him from dying of dehydration.
Once all that was finished, Thomas sat on the ceiling of his bedroom and thought about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Physiological needs came first; that meant food, water, air, clothing, and shelter. The bathtub full of water would take care of dehydration for the time being. Assuming that he could get down to the first floor, he could eat something in the kitchen. He made a quick mental note to eat things that were frozen or refrigerated first, in case the loss of electricity was imminent. He would have to take inventory, but he doubted that he had enough food for more than two weeks, and that was with rationing factored in. He had shelter and clothing covered just fine, though his shirt and pants seemed to follow the regular laws of gravity, which meant that they would need some modifications in order to reduce annoyance; his shirt was resting on his armpits rather than his shoulders. He'd have to find some suspenders and garters to keep everything where it was supposed to be. Reducing annoyance was high up the hierarchy of needs though; comfort would have to come later.
Thomas began preparing to go looting without any real conscious decision; it simply came to him as a thing that needed doing.
Getting downstairs was a challenge, one that mostly involved standing on the second floor ceiling in order to try to find a grip on the first floor ceiling. He’d never really taken note of the fact that the stairs from the first floor to the second floor had a high ceiling, but now it was all too apparent. If he planned to stay in his house, Thomas was going to have to put some upside down stairs there, secured with nails, or at least make an incline of some sort. Once on the first floor, he made his way to the hall closet, where he found one of the things he’d need to make it in this new world; his climbing kit.
He and Lillian had gotten into rock climbing together. There was an indoor rock-climbing gym downtown that had cheap prices and an auto-belay system that didn’t really require any sort of knowledge except how to wear a harness and how to clip in a carabiner. That had been the gateway that they’d needed. From there, it wasn’t too big a jump to buying his own harness instead of renting one. The shoes had followed soon after, a pair that he and Lillian had bought together, so that their kit matched. He’d bought the rope and carabiners for outdoor climbing, though they’d only done that two or three times at a few of the local spots.
As with most hobbies, Thomas had eventually dropped climbing. He’d considered himself fortunate to have come away from it having only spent a few hundred dollars. There had been other hobbies that had taken him in much more completely, which had eaten thousands of dollars before he’d eventually grown bored. Lillian had kept up with climbing though; that was one of the things that had driven a wedge between them. Climbing had been something they’d done together, a few hours three or four times a week. After Thomas had stopped, it became something that kept them apart for a few hours three or four times a week. It wasn’t too much of a surprise when Lillian said that their relationship had run its course, though it still hurt.
The only reason that his climbing gear was in a closet in his home instead of a cubby at the climbing gym was that Lillian had called him up to ask him whether she could use it. Thomas had said yes, because he didn’t want to feel like an ass, but the only explanation for Lillian borrowing a men’s harness was if she was going climbing with an uninitiated man who didn’t have equipment of his own. Thomas had gone down to the gym the next day (careful to go at a time when he knew that Lillian wouldn’t be there) in order to take his climbing gear back. If she called him to ask again, he could simply say that he’d decided to sell it, or that he’d gone outdoor climbing, or some other excuse. They’d had a reasonably amicable breakup, but that was no reason to let Lillian’s new boyfriend have something of his.
That small, admittedly petty act was now going to put Thomas in the top percentile of people most likely to survive. He started by stepping into the harness, which needed only a few straps loosened to compensate for the pudge that came with months of a sedentary lifestyle. After that, he threaded the rope through and tied the necessary knots, then tested them, mostly to make sure that he still remembered how to tie them correctly. The next question was where to find the appropriate counterweight.
Thomas weighed 190 lbs. He would need to find something that weighed that much just to keep him stuck to the earth. Anything less would just be pulled with him as he fell into the sky, like a teddy bear being pulled from a child’s hand by a helium balloon. Just for the sake of safety, Thomas figured on needing an extra twenty pounds of weight. His other big parameter was movement; the nearest place to stock up on food was a gas station, but that was still three full blocks away. In addition to the problem of getting there, Thomas also needed to consider the problem of trying to get back.
There were weights in the basement, but only two adjustable dumbbells that totaled up to a hundred pounds. They were fancy, because you could dial in however much you wanted to exercise with to within five pounds. In this particular situation (one he had never considered when he was buying the dumbbells) Thomas would have been much better off with separate weights that could all be tied together. After looking around his house for a bit, Thomas settled on using the coffee table in the middle of the room as additional weight. It was a huge, ugly thing, but it was also a hundred pounds, which served his purpose. Lifting the coffee table was far easier than he’d expected it to be; all he had to do was reach up, grab it, and then pull down on it using his full weight. It didn’t feel like carrying anything at all; instead, it felt like hanging down from a pull-up bar so that he was only putting a small amount of weight on his feet.
He assembled everything in the basement, where the ceiling was much lower. That way he could reach up towards the floor without having to try for extra height. He used the coffee table and the weights together, wrapping his rope around them several times and tying the knots as tight as he could. When he was finished, he pulled himself up and dangled from this contraption, so that his feet were a few inches from the ceiling. He tugged on it in a few different ways, then began swinging himself from side to side in order to do a stress test. If it failed here, he would fall a foot or two to the basement ceiling. The worst that would happen would be that he would bruise his tailbone. If the counterweight system failed out there, he would fall into the sky, where he would die of hypoxia and presumably become a floating corpsicle. Everything held, which meant that it would be safe enough.
The only thing keeping him back was the thought that perhaps gravity would take another turn. Before today, his prior probability for the personal gravity of everyone in the world reversing direction was in the thousandths of a thousandth of a percent, but after it had happened once, his prior probability that it would happen again necessarily had to increase by a very large margin.
If he knew that gravity was going to go back to normal in the next few days, he would certainly stay in his house instead of venturing out; food and water weren’t going to be an issue in the immediate future.
If he knew that gravity was going to stay in its current configuration indefinitely, or at least as long as the next month, he would leave the house as quickly as possible in order to gather enough food to prevent starvation, and ideally gather whatever supplies would be needed to survive into the future, beyond the timescale of months.
He could try to split the difference and bide his time. Even though he had no way to gauge the odds of gravity returning back to normal, he knew that if t was the time since the change, then as t increased, the odds that gravity would change back at t+1 decreased. Every passing minute made him marginally more confident that this was simply the new order of the world. So as t increased, the confidence in the necessity of making this perilous journey would also increase. Unfortunately, looting had definitive advantages for the people who moved first. Worse, waiting too long would begin to exhaust Thomas’ supplies, not just in terms of material things like food, but willpower and mental acuity as well. If he stayed at home with not much to do, with the gears turning, would he still have the courage to embark tomorrow?
He wore an old biking helmet, which would hopefully protect him in the event of a sudden acceleration towards the ground. In his backpack, one he hadn’t used since college, he put two liters of water, a number of snacks like trail mix and protein bars, a first aid kit from the bathroom, his wallet, and his laptop, which was now full of charge and loaded down with every resource he’d thought to cram it with. Backpacks were unfortunately designed to be assisted by gravity; their straps rested the weight on the shoulders. He had to use carabiners in order to secure it to his climbing harness, but that put the weight right on his legs, which were already carrying the weight of his body in a way that the human musculoskeletal system wasn’t designed for. The last thing he grabbed before setting out were two flashlights, in case it had grown dark by the time he returned. His cat watched these preparations with idle curiosity.
Thomas’ inner ear had finally stopped fighting with his visual cortex. In the beginning, the inner ear had been saying that he was right side up when his feet were on the ceiling but his visual cortex had been saying that he was upside down, likely based on decades of training in making just that determination. It was mildly disorienting, but nothing that he hadn’t been able to handle. Now though, the inner ear -- which was much more insistent -- had won out. The houses and trees were stalactites on the roof of an enormous cave so tall that the bottom was invisible.
With a deep breath and not too much more time for second guessing, Thomas set out toward the garage. Movement was a matter of lifting up one of the dumbells and swinging it forward, then swinging the other one forward, then reaching up to grab the coffee table and awkwardly rocking it. It was slow, but seemed safe enough. After a few cycles of this, Thomas was out of the house and dangling into the open air. There was nothing to catch him if his counterweights or ropes failed. After debating it for a few moments, he left the door partly open so that Bartleby could escape. There was no sense dooming the cat to death by starvation if Thomas fell into the sky.
The trip to the garage took fifteen minutes of awkward movement, where before it had taken a handful of seconds. Extrapolating from that and accounting for increases in efficiency as he got better at it, Thomas still would have taken half a day to get to the gas station, which was the nearest point where there was food to be found in quantity. It was bad enough without the psychological terror of looking at the sky and seeing a quick death by oblivion there. Fortunately, he had a car.
Getting into the car was an ordeal. Opening the car door was easy enough from his dangling position, as was lifting the weights in, but the coffee table proved unwieldy. Without it, Thomas would have no way to get out of the car without risking death by falling. He eventually crammed it into the backseat with some difficulty by moving his weight around, but the ropes meant that he wouldn’t be able to fully close his doors. He got in the driver’s seat by flipping himself around, pushing his hands against the ceiling of the car, and then hastily buckling himself in. The average seat belt wasn’t really designed to keep someone from floating up, but it was better than nothing. He clipped himself to his seat belt as well, so that in the event of a crash he would have some redundant mechanisms keeping him stuck to the earth.
Driving was a slow, painful process. In fact, everything outside the house seemed to consist of awkward and tedious processes. The car functioned the same as it ever had, but the pedals that controlled the gas and brake were difficult to reach because he had to work against gravity. Blood was pooling in Thomas’ brain from almost the moment he had turned himself upside down, so after he was out of the driveway, he had to turn the car off, turn himself around so he was sitting on the ceiling of the car, and wait to regain some semblance of proper blood flow. This mostly confirmed his initial thought that everyone who had been in a car or truck when the change happened was not long for the world.
During that rest, Thomas began thinking in the long-term. Stocking up at the gas station would mean that he could survive for a matter of months. He would be able to set out rain barrels, which would take care of water easily enough by the time his bathtub cache had gone dry. It was early September, which meant that winter would need some thinking about. His house was insulated, but he had to assume that electricity would be a thing of the past when he would need to heat the house. That meant he would either need to move to a warmer climate, with all the problems that driving there would involve, or find a way to make a fire every day in a house that didn’t have a fireplace. Thomas was thinking like a scavenger, but eventually there would be nothing left to scavenge. He would have to learn how to farm, but with all the added effort of clipping weights to himself. He would also have to scavenge weapons from somewhere in order to be able to hunt.
But beyond those concerns, was there a life worth living in this new world? A conservative estimate said that maybe 20% of the people in his city were now dead. More would die from wounds they had sustained in those brief, unexpected falls that had marked the change. How many people had broken bones with no hope of emergency services or doctors coming to help? Starvation (and the desperation that came with it) would eventually claim more lives. Everyone that survived would be reduced to subsistence farming.
Yet even with these thoughts, Thomas continued on. If there was no life worth living with things the way they were, suicide was as easy as unclipping his harness, but there was no way to chart out the course of the future with the information he had available to him.
When he pulled up to the gas station, he was surprised to see people inside. He maneuvered the car as close to the front door as possible, then opened his car door. An older man, who was standing on the ceiling of the gas station next to a rack of postcards, opened the door.
“You an idiot?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” asked Thomas.
“Why in the hell are you out driving?” asked the man. He rubbed his head. “We seen too many fall into the sky. Indoors is the only place that’s safe.”
“I needed supplies,” said Thomas. He wasn’t sure why he had thought there wouldn’t be people in the gas station. In his head, he’d matched what was happening to the patterns that the movies always presented of apocalypses. Maybe that was because he’d seen the video of all those people falling to their deaths; it was easy to imagine what had happened as being the Rapture. He’d thought that if he was going to run into anyone, it would be another looter. Yet now that he thought about it for five seconds, of course it made sense. A gas station almost always had at least one person in it. When the flip happened, they would have ended up on the ceiling. In a zombie apocalypse, the gas stations ended up abandoned, because the workers didn’t really have a reason to be there. But here, they wouldn’t have had any ability to leave.
“Supplies?” asked the man. He rubbed his head again. “Well, come on in, I guess. How is it out there?”
“I didn’t come too far,” said Thomas. “Just three blocks.”
A woman was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling with a phone in her lap. She wore a t-shirt with the local college’s name emblazoned on the front. The older man was wearing a button-down shirt with his name on a patch. Thomas mentally labeled them customer and attendant. There were two cars out by the pumps though, which meant there was an extra person not accounted for.
“So you’re here to loot us?” asked the woman.
“I can pay,” said Thomas. He was about to unzip his backpack when he realized that it would be disgorge its contents onto the floor if he did that. “I can pay,” he repeated lamely. Most of his money was in the form of credit cards, not cash. Both were now of dubious worth.
“I don’t blame you for looting,” said the woman. “It’s what I would have done, if I thought I could make it to my car.” She pointed to a silver Toyota next to one of the pumps.
“No one is looting anything,” said the attendant. “I don’t know that I can let you just buy things though.” He frowned in thought.
“You can have whatever you want,” said the woman, “So long as you help us get out of here.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” said the man. He turned to the woman. “You don’t have any claim on what’s in this store.”
“What’s the plan then?” asked the woman. “We were stuck here until he showed up. Our options included trying to get into one of the cars or staying here until the power went out and we ran out of food. You were planning on splitting food with me, right?”
“I suppose,” the man said slowly.
“Well, if you take into account the fact that I would be eating half the food in this place, then if this guy leaves with me, it seems like he should be entitled to some amount of the food as a reward.”
“My name’s Thomas,” said Thomas.
“Juliette,” said the woman. She held out her hand, which Thomas shook.
“Randall,” said the attendant with a nod. “Now I suppose I would split some food, if it came to that, but maybe this whole thing works itself out. Maybe I can explain to my boss that I couldn’t let you starve, but that’s a whole heap different than letting you take off with half the food.”
“It won’t just be food,” said Juliette. “We’ll need batteries, rope, flashlights, I saw some patching kits over there, tools we can use, things like that.”
“No,” said Randall. He shook his head. “That’s too much. Things you need to survive, that’s one thing, but you’re talking about the long term. You can’t use these resources to hunker down on your own.”
“I’m not hunkering down,” said Juliette. “I’m going to launch a rescue mission.”
“You’re what?” asked Thomas.
“A rescue mission,” replied Juliette. She turned to look at him. “Most people are trapped inside their houses or places of business. Everyone who survived the initial fall into the sky is safe, so long as they stay in one place. But in the long term, we’re going to need to work together if we want to pull through this. Right now, I think our first priority is going to be mobility.” She pointed at the ropes and harness that Thomas was wearing. “I assume you know where we can find more of those?”
“There’s a climbing gym downtown,” said Thomas. He felt slightly dazed. Though neither of them had mentioned it, his head was still sticky with blood where he’d hit it on his ceiling.
“We’ll go there first,” said Juliette. “Wait, there’s a gym a block from here, maybe we’ll stop there first in order to get some weights. We’ve got to figure out a foolproof method of moving around and weights are going to be part of that.”
“I didn’t agree to anything,” said Thomas.
“You have some rudimentary understanding of rock climbing,” said Juliette. “I need you. And what are our other options here? Grab as much food for ourselves as we can, hide out until civilization crumbles, then starve to death or be reduced to hunter-gatherers? That’s crap.”
Thomas wavered. “I don’t think two people can keep civilization together.”
“Of course not,” said Juliette. “Civilization is a process, one that take more than a handful. But the first step is getting mobility, not just for us, but for a small core of people. We need to do it while the communication networks are still up and running. Furthermore, we need to build communication networks that can survive a temporary or even semi-permanent loss of power. Hand-cranked radios, if we can find them. Walkie-talkies, maybe. If I’d had my laptop, I’d be downloading as much information from the internet as possible, survival manuals and schematics for how to build things back up if it comes to that … but before any of that, I need to secure a way out of this gas station. How about it?”
Thomas paused. She’d just thrown his plans into disarray. She’d driven a sense of hope into him like a stick stuck into the wheel of a moving bicycle. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll give it a shot.” |
Corporations And Governments The Real Threats To Free Speech
Above Photo: This guy is not actually the biggest threat to free speech in the country, despite the New York Times using him to illustrate an op-ed (11/12/15) on “Who Is Entitled to Be Heard?” Daniel Brenner/NYT.
I find this statement in a New York Times oped (11/12/15), coming from Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America, to be absolutely stunning:
Some of the most potent threats to free speech these days come not from our government or corporations, but from our citizenry.
Anyone who can write a sentence like this simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Which is fine, but not fine when the person is the head of an organization dedicated to freedom of expression.
By “our citizenry,” Nossel is referring to the recent round of free speech wars on college campuses. Now, when these issues of free speech arise on campus, you usually see an explosion of conversation about it: on the campus itself, and in the media. Far from dampening down discussion, the controversy over free speech on campus actually ignites discussion. Everyone has an opinion, everyone voices it.
And while I wouldn’t diminish the challenges to free speech that these controversies pose, the notion that they are far more common and threatening than what governments or corporations do is risible. Though given that Nossel is a former State Department flak, perhaps understandable. She is, after all, someone who has said:
To advance from a nuanced dissent to a compelling vision, progressive policymakers should turn to the great mainstay of 20th-century US foreign policy: liberal internationalism…should offer assertive leadership — diplomatic, economic, and not least, military — to advance a broad array of goals.
When there are not just threats but actual abridgments of speech at the workplace—Nossel says “corporations,” referring I guess to firms’ financial lock on the political process, but as I’ve argued many times, it’s in their capacity as employers that firms really do damage to free speech—there is no such explosion as there is on college campuses. Partially because people like Nossel and the media are completely uninterested in the topic, even when the workplace in question is a university: If Nossel wrote an oped in the New York Times when Columbia prohibited its workers from speaking Spanish, I must have missed it.
But more important, there’s no explosion because abridgments of speech at work are so lethally effective. Workers are silenced, that is the end of the story. We never hear about it.
At one point in her op-ed, Nossel does give a nod to the status of speech in the workplace. Here’s what she says:
Who would trade their [universities’ and colleges’] free-range spirit for the dreary sameness of a corporate office, with its federally sanctioned posters on what constitutes unlawful discrimination?
That’s where Nossel sees the threat to freedom of speech at work: in the “dreary sameness” roused by government efforts to inform workers of their rights against discrimination. There’s a suspicion on the left that freedom of speech is little more than a rationalization for racism or indifference to racism. I try to fight that suspicion all the time. But when the head of PEN America writes sentences like these, it makes that job infinitely harder.
Whatever one thinks about the current controversy over free speech at Yale and the University of Missouri, if the head of PEN America is going to leverage her pen on behalf of freedom of speech on the pages of the New York Times, she would well do to consider where the real threats to such speech lie. |
November 15, 2012 12:58 IST
J ust one week after United States President Barack Obama's convincing re-election, his faithful Vice President Joseph Biden led the White House celebration of Diwali, reflecting on the significance of festival of lights, and also acknowledging the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu American elected to the US Congress, and also Ambassador Nirupama Rao, who like Gabbard, seemed to have that gravitational pull in terms of the guests wanting to pose for pictures with them.
Also present at the celebration that was closed to the press, were Dr Ami Bera, on the brink of becoming the first Indian American physician elected to the US Congress from the 7th District in California, and Kumar Barve, the majority leader in the Maryland House of Delegates, and the most senior Indian American legislator who was elected to the State Assembly nearly two decades ago.
The nearly two-hour celebration, held on November 13 at the Old Executive Office Building -- which lies adjacent to the White House and houses the administrative offices of the White House -- after which the guests moved to the Indian Treaty Room for the reception, was attended by a select cross-section of about 200 members of the Indian American community from across the country, senior Indian American staffers in the administration like Dr Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and also erstwhile officials, including Aneesh Chopra, the first chief technology officer in the White House and now making a run for lieutenant governor of Virginia, several US lawmakers and one of the priests from the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in Lanham, Maryland, Ramesh Babu, who recited a shloka and assisted Biden in the lighting of the diya and then wrapped the ceremonial shawl on the vice president.
After greeting the guests with a Happy Diwali and Saal Mubarak, Biden began with a quip that had the audience in peals of laughter as he said Diwali was all about light over darkness, "and that's what we are all about -- trying to shed some light."
But then getting serious, he said, "It's a very special time for all of us here today and a time which means a great deal to me personally, and it means a lot to see so many good friends as I look out on this audience."
Biden then greeted Rao and also the deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Washington, Ambassador Arun Kumar Singh, and said he had joked with Singh earlier that "if I had his hair, I could have been important."
And, then to sustained applause and raucous whoops, Biden recognised Gabbard, who stood up and greeted the guests with a namaste.
Biden said, "There is a distinction that you come to the Congress as the first Hindu to be elected to the legislature and I am looking forward to working with you," and then reverting to his humorous side, quipped, "As (Congressman) Rush Holt (who was among half-a-dozen lawmakers present) can tell you, that could be a blessing or a curse."
He then reiterated that even though "it's a strange thing to say to this audience that Diwali is the festival of lights and that on this day, we celebrate light over darkness, and equally is important, compassion over hatred and there's such an overwhelming need to have in our world today."
Biden said, "Every year, Diwali reminds us of the fundamental human bonds that unite us, which are much more powerful than those things that divide us. Right now, people of four major faiths are celebrating Diwali -- millions of Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists in India and here in America are lighting lamps in their homes -- and are reflecting on a year gone by and are trying as we all are here for a good year to come."
"But even as we celebrate here today, we also remember the work that is still ahead as we strive together to build a better world," he said, and exhorted everyone "to commit ourselves to bring light to any place that is still facing darkness. And, as we all know, there are tens of millions of people that are still facing darkness around the world."
Biden, then referring to the horrific massacre of Sikh worshippers in the Wisconsin gurdwara on August 5, said, "Earlier this year, we faced that stark reminder of evil that still exists when a gunman walked into a holy place in Oak Creek in Wisconsin and opened fire. It was another shock to the system."
"But as my mother would say -- she always said -- 'Joe we have something terrible, and now good will happen, if you fight these evil forces, the fact is that it did in a way bring various communities together that I don't know that one anticipated would happen and the way in which it would happen."
Biden asserted, "We saw the resilience of a community that refused to consider itself as victims and instead they drew strength from their faith and people across this country of all faiths offered compassion and their support."
"We saw that compassion in the kindness of neighbours and the heroic actions of the first responders on that tragic day," he said.
Earlier, in his Diwali message, President Obama had also referred to the Wisconsin gurdwara tragedy, recalling that "earlier, this year, we were reminded of the evil that exists in the world when a gunman walked into the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and opened fire. (But) In the wake of that horrible tragedy, we saw the resilience of a community that drew strength from their faith and a sense of solidarity with their neighbours, Sikh and non-Sikh alike."
"We also saw compassion and love, in the heroic actions of the first responders and the outpouring of support from people across the country. Out of a day of sadness, we were reminded that the beauty of America remains our diversity, and our right to religious freedom," he said.
Biden in his remarks observed, "Folks, one thing that Diwali reminds us of is that there is a light within all of us -- it's a light of knowledge and compassion, a light that empowers us to do good. To, as Abraham Lincoln said, respond to our better angels."
"And that light that we have to keep, in each of our hearts and we have to spread that faith. So, as I have the great privilege of lighting and illuminating this lamp, I wish you all peace and prosperity and the promise of a new and happy new year."
Biden declared, "May Diwali illuminate your dreams and fresh hopes for all of us and may the light guide us safely home. We have much, much work to do, but I can think of no community I'd rather embark on that journey with than all of you assembled here today."
Barve told rediff.com that "it was such a great honour and pleasure to be at the White House for this particular Diwali, especially since the first Hindu member of Congress was present."
Shalini 'Shelly' Kapoor Collins, founder and chief executive officer, Enscient Corporation, who served on the platform committee at the Democratic National Committee, and raised millions of dollars for Obama's re-election, said, "It was truly a lovely event with senior White House administration personnel explaining Diwali, and talking about the White House's Faith Engagement, a program which was not in place until our president took office."
She told rediff.com, "President Obama's vision of inclusion and respect for all was truly reflected in the Diwali program. It was the perfect coming together of both of my worlds -- Indian and American--and I felt incredibly proud to support this president, for were it not for his efforts, this event would not take place."
Collins said, "I personally was honoured to be included in this event where folks were asking for invitations but only a limited number were distributed. I was fortunate enough to take my mom and dad to the event and flew in from San Francisco. Others flew in from Los Angeles and Chicago to be part of this auspicious kickoff to the new year."
Also present was Arunachala 'Raj' Nagarajan, who came to the US from India by boat on a 22-day journey in September 1962, and earlier in the day to celebrate his 50th anniversary in the US and for his significant contributions to the social fabric of the US through Indian culture and his professional career at IBM, was honoured and felicitated by Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, who created a certificate acknowledging his contributions and the flag flown over the US Capitol on September 9, 2012, was presented to him.
Nagarajan attended his wife, Janaki, son Kamesh and daughter-in-law Dr Ami Shah, and was also greeted and congratulated by Biden.
Also present were Obama's old college roommate and the US Ambassador to Belize, Vinai Thummalapally, Indian American officials at the White House and Department of Labour Nicholas Rathod and Parag Mehta, former principal deputy solicitor general Neal Katyal, Kiran Ahuja, executive director of the White House Initiative for Asian American and Pacific Islanders, ex-Kansas legislator Rajiv Goyle, air force officer Ravi Chaudhary, Gautam Raghavan, associate director, White House Office of Public Engagement, and Democratic activist Reshma Saujani.
There were also speeches about Diwali and community service from Ahuja, Raghavan, Joshua DeBois, Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and the only Hindu on its advisory council, Anju Bhargave, and entertainment by a fusion and playing three pieces of Carnatic music.
In her remarks, Bhargave, the founder of Hindu American Seva Charities, said, "In this changing American landscape, we have seen a paradigm shift of inclusion occurring. The faith glass ceiling has cracked in America and is resounding around the globe. The doors for the people of eastern traditions, not only the Hindus but the entire the Dharmic Americans have opened. And we have demonstrated how we strengthen this country we love and call home."
She said, "During the last four years together with the White House we have laid a strategic road map to bring the values of transformative seva, of social justice and karmic empathy to the forefront and connected the community with the federal agencies. We have succeeded in creating a national Dharmic voice where there was none."
Bhargave said, "We are identifying ways to reduce poverty across the country and spur economic development. We appointed our first Hindu American chaplain and honored the Dharmic military. Together we are promoting the values and benefits of yoga, nutrition and Ayurveda."
In November 2009, President Obama created history by becoming the first US President to light a diya and host several Indian Americans at the Diwali celebration in the White House East Room.
The tradition of the White House hosting an annual Diwali celebration was started in the final year of the George W Bush administration and continued throughout the four years of his second term. But President Bush never attended any of the events nor did Vice President Richard Cheney, and it was always a senior aide who did the honors with the first Diwali the White House hosted being graced by Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove. None of the Diwali celebrations the Bush White House hosted were held in the White House proper, but were always in the Old Executive Office Building.
Image: US Vice President Biden lights a diya as priest Ramesh Babu recites shlokas during Diwali celebrations in White House |
This is why friends shouldn’t let friends drive drunk.
New Jersey cops scored a drunk-driving hat trick when they busted a motorist for DUI, then pinched her two sloshed friends who separately drove to the police station to pick her up.
It all started when a cop in Readington Township pulled over Carmen Reategui, 34, after he noticed her car swerving on Route 22 early one morning last week.
Charged with DUI, she was taken to the town’s police station, where she called a friend to come and get her.
But the friend wasn’t much help.
Nina Petracca, 23, who drove down to the station, was filling out necessary paperwork when a cop noticed that she, too, seemed a little tipsy.
She failed a sobriety test right in the station lobby and was charged with DUI.
So Petracca, too, was slapped with a DUI charge, as well as a drug charge for Vicodin tablets found in her purse, police said. Both women then reached out to another friend, Ryan Hogan, who, like Petracca before him, raced down to the police station to help his friends out of a jam.
But when he showed up, Police Sgt. Carlos Ferreiro thought he seemed off.
“When I was outside talking to him he displayed signs of intoxication,” he said.
Hogan also failed sobriety tests, police said.
“They finally got a sober adult to come pick up all three of them,” Ferreiro said.
“It’s the first time in nine years I’ve had something like this.”
All three friends are scheduled to appear in court next month.
Reategui vented about the ordeal on Facebook.
“Just getting home,” she posted to her page on Dec. 16. “ABSOLUTELY THE WORST NIGHT OF MY F–KING LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Petracca “liked” her lockup pal’s comment.
Later in the day she was wishing the whole thing had never happened, posting:
“Heavy, heavy heart. Wish there was an undo button in life.” |
I was in Cleveland the day LeBron announced he would be taking his talents to South Beach. I’ve performed music in Cleveland more times than I can count. One of the things I enjoy about touring is getting to meet sports fans of all different teams, and walks of life. In that one day I gained more respect for Cleveland as a fan base than I have for any other in my life.
The sense of absolute misery that overtook everyone – from gas station attendants to elite music promoters and executives – was overwhelming. Even dogs walked around aimlessly, looking like they had been recently kicked. Cleveland is a city that lives vicariously through their professional sports franchises. Win or lose (and there’s been a lot more “lose” both recently and historically) the fans there take it personally. I love that about them.
Now, the Cleveland Browns are at a crossroads. Coming off a disappointing 4-12 season in 2011, the organization is faced with a monumental decision: What to do at quarterback, the league’s most vital position. My friends, my loyal readers, my fellow students of NFL sickness; it is here you will learn that whatever road Cleveland takes from their present situation into the wild blue yonder will come through Central Texas.
Browns QB Colt McCoy needs little introduction around these parts. While at the University of Texas, he broke nearly every Longhorn single-season and career QB record and took home 13 of 15 major QB awards his senior season as a Heisman and national championship finalist. McCoy is tough, gritty, smart, elusive, and accurate which makes up for his “so-so” arm strength. After being drafted in the third round and getting to start in spot duty in 2010, Colt came into the 2011 season as the Browns’ starting QB in a West Coast system that many close to the team thought he was beginning to get a good grasp of. The Browns’ season went on to be hampered by brutal injuries along the offensive line, a constant merry-go-round freak show at the running back position, and a complete lack of playmaking ability at WR. McCoy was lost for the season to a concussion suffered in Pittsburgh during week 13 via an illegal James Harrison hit. When the dust settled on the Browns’ 2011 season, only three numbers really mattered, though: 4, 12, and 0. Four wins, 12 Losses, and zero career wins for Colt McCoy against AFC North division opponents.
There’s a kid from up the road you might have heard of named Robert Griffin III. The Heisman-winning Baylor QB represents most everything a team looking for revitalization on offense could ask for. He has a big arm, he’s smart, he’s a great leader, and he exhibits excellent downfield vision and elite running ability. The best part: He does not rely on his feet to bail him out. Unlike most elite running QBs, he will always look to make the play with his arm first, sometimes taking brutal hits to remain in the pocket until his receiver comes open.
The Browns have two first-round picks in this year’s NFL draft. Pick No. 4 and pick No. 22. I will be attending the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis next week, and was invited for inclusion in Mike Mayock’s NFL Combine media conference call, where I had a chance to address the Cleveland QB issue. His thoughts were much different from those of NFL writing legend and Senior Editor for the Browns Vic Carucci who we spoke with in Mobile, Ala., earlier this month at the Senior Bowl.
Lets start at the top: The Colts will take Andrew Luck (QB, Stanford) with pick one. Saint Louis picks second. They have too much money tied up in Sam Bradford to even consider a QB. Their reasonable options are as follows: Matt Kalil (OT, USC), Justin Blackmon (WR, Oklahoma State), Morris Claiborne (CB, LSU) or in the best case scenario, trade out of the pick to someone who wants Robert Griffin and accumulate more picks through the very valuable late first, second, and third rounds. The two teams thought to be interested in possibly trading up are the Redskins and the Browns. At pick three, the Vikings would love to have Kalil fall to them, as LT is their single biggest need. If he is not there and Griffin is still on the board, they will try to trade down to a team wanting Griffin as the Vikes reached to draft QB Christian Ponder in last year’s draft. If they cannot trade down and Kalil is gone, I expect them to take Morris Claiborne at this point. Now we come to the Browns at pick four (assuming they did not trade up.) If Griffin is there … should they take him?
I say no.
“We haven’t seen an athlete like RG3 in many drafts,” Mike Mayock, lead draft analyst for the NFL Network told me. “The chance that the Browns may be able to get him, that’s exciting. It will be a ride, that’s for sure. There are a few flaws to his game, mainly lack of anticipation and waiting on plays to develop leading to too many big hits, but the bottom line is the kid is a playmaker.”
To me, the issue is not about Griffin’s playmaking ability or even his ability to be an elite NFL QB. I see the issue as being the system. Browns GM Mike Holgren is a Bill Walsh disciple. He has been building championship variations of the West Coast offense for almost 30 years now. In coming to Cleveland, he put his managerial trust in Head Coach Pat Shurmur who runs what he likes to call a “pure” form of the West Coast offense. Vic Carrucci affirmed our suggestion that there is generally a three-year learning curve for QBs developing into this kind of system. He went on to say that many decision-makers within the organization were beginning to see vast, marked improvement in McCoy’s progression in the system that was cut off too early in 2011 (albeit by only three games).
He said that if he had to prognosticate at this early juncture, that he believes McCoy will come in as the team’s starting QB next season. Carucci told us that the Browns scouting department has done such a bang-up job on the defensive side of the ball (drafting four defensive starters in the last two drafts) that he believed 2012 would be the year that Shurmur would finally get to address some of the offensive issues that have been left largely unanswered.
So I asked Mike Mayock, "Why would an offensive-minded coach (knowing how hard it is to go through a long QB development process) want to risk the possibility of making his hot seat even hotter by throwing in a wild-card uber-athlete at QB with no surrounding weapons?"
“That’s an interesting question – but we saw it all last year. Offenses are showing more and more … Cam Newton, for example. Look at Cam. He comes to Carolina, they build around him. All these guys, Jake Locker [Titans], Christian Ponder [Vikings], if there is one thing we learned last year it is that rookie QBs can come in and contribute," Maycock replied.
"But you said he has no anticipation. I agree. Do you not think that anticipation is important in a timing-based precision West Coast offense in which you must 'throw receivers open' as opposed to 'throwing to open receivers'?" I questioned.
“Yea, and its another one of these deals,” Mayock said. “You have an exceptional player here and a chance you may be able to get him. Childress, Shurmur, you know; they would have to change how they do some things, sure.”
Mike Holmgren doesn’t just “change things”. His staff will not either. Thinking in such broad terms can be messy. Panthers Head Coach Ron Rivera had the luxury of “letting Cam be Cam” on offense because he was a first-year defensive head coach with his hands full trying to fix the heap of garbage Carolina runs on D week in and week out. I see the idea of RG3 to the Browns as one that could create a lot of excitement for a fan base in dire need of some sort of positive spark, but I just don’t like the fit. Holmgren has stated publicly he will be taking a QB in 2012. This is not an indictment on the position or its current standing, just an affirmation of his regime’s “bullpen” mantra in either drafting or signing a new QB each season for depth and seasoning.
I see so many more reasonable options later in the draft. An accurate, smart passer like Kirk Cousins (Michigan State) in the third round would be ideal to groom under McCoy in case his development does not positively continue given his new weapons and surrounding cast. At that point, you have an accurate passer and student of the game coming into the system without the handicaps that McCoy endured his first season as a starter due to lack of offensive personnel. The position needs to be upgraded, but that does not mean that McCoy could not bring about that upgrade with a better offensive line, an entire off-season/training camp, and at least one offensive playmaker. If Griffin falls to pick four, I believe the Browns could trade down to six and let the Redskins take Griffin. At pick six, hopefully the Browns could land a Justin Blackmon, a Trent Richardson (RB Alabama), or worst case, a Riley Reiff (OT Iowa). Then at pick 22, there will be an embarrassment of riches at offensive skill options, especially WR. Through the second and third rounds is where the greatest value for interior offensive line is found.
I do believe Robert Griffin III will be an outstanding NFL QB. I simply do not believe he will be an outstanding Cleveland Brown QB given the current state of the organization.
[Alex Dunlap is the host of RosterWatch on 104.9FM ESPN Radio Austin, founder of Rosterwatch.com, and a featured expert contributor to the FantasyPros.com network. He is also an NFL draft analyst for PlayTheDraft.com.] |
Amazon has launched a new cheaper version of its Echo Dot voice-controlled device today.
The launch comes six months after Amazon first introduced two new Echo devices — one of which was the $90 Echo Dot, which has a line-out port to connect to third-party speakers. It has been sold out in recent months, which may have been a deliberate move by Amazon to pave the way for the new Dot that is coming to market today.
Priced at $50 (£50 / €60 in the U.K. / Germany), the new version is similar to the existing incarnation in most respects, but it has been trimmed by a few millimeters and now packs a more powerful processor, meaning it should be capable of performing more labor-intensive tasks.
What’s perhaps most interesting, apart from the price, is that it can be bought just like beer — in six-packs and 12-packs.
Image Credit: Paul Sawers / VentureBeat
The six-pack effectively gets you half-a-dozen Dots for the price of five, while with the bigger box you get 12 for the price of 10.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has introduced beer-style bulk-buying to its products — it did the exact same thing for its quad-core Fire tablet launch last September. But it helps to illustrate what Amazon is striving for here — it wants consumers to embed the Echo and its Alexa-powered brain in every room of their house.
The new Echo Dot comes out on the same day that Amazon announced its flagship smart Echo speaker is finally launching outside of the U.S, kicking off with the U.K. and Germany today. |
Why the court will uphold Obamacare For its reputation, mainly
Predictions are always hazardous when it comes to the economy, the weather and the Supreme Court. I won’t get near the first two right now, but I’ll hazard a guess on what the court is likely to decide tomorrow: It will uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by a vote of 6 to 3.
Three reasons for my confidence:
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First, Chief Justice John Roberts is — or should be — concerned about the steadily declining standing of the court in the public’s mind, along with the growing perception that the justices decide according to partisan politics rather than according to legal principle. The 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United, for example, looked to all the world like a political rather than a legal outcome, with all five Republican appointees finding that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures violate the First Amendment, and all four Democratic appointees finding that such restrictions are reasonably necessary to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. Or consider the court’s notorious decision in Bush v. Gore.
The Supreme Court can’t afford to lose public trust. It has no ability to impose its will on the other two branches of government: As Alexander Hamilton once noted, the court has neither the purse (it can’t threaten to withhold funding from the other branches) or the sword (it can’t threaten police or military action). It has only the public’s trust in the court’s own integrity and the logic of its decisions — both of which the public is now doubting, according to polls. As chief justice, Roberts has a particular responsibility to regain the public’s trust. Another 5-4 decision overturning a piece of legislation as important as Obamacare would further erode that trust.
It doesn’t matter that a significant portion of the public may not like Obamacare. The issue here is the role and institutional integrity of the Supreme Court, not the popularity of a particular piece of legislation. Indeed, what better way to show the court’s impartiality than to affirm the constitutionality of legislation that may be unpopular but is within the authority of the other two branches to enact?
Second, Roberts can draw on a decision by a Republican-appointed and highly respected conservative jurist, Judge Laurence Silberman, who found Obamacare to be constitutional when the issue came to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The judge’s logic was lucid and impeccable — so much so that Roberts will try to lure Justice Anthony Kennedy with it, to join Roberts and the four liberal justices, so that rather than another 5-4 split (this time on the side of the Democrats), the vote will be 6-3.
Third and finally, Roberts (and Kennedy) can find adequate Supreme Court precedent for the view that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution gives Congress and the president the power to regulate healthcare — given that heathcare coverage (or lack of coverage) in one state so obviously affects other states; that the market for health insurance is already national in many respects; and that other national laws governing insurance (Social Security and Medicare, for example) require virtually everyone to pay (in these cases, through mandatory contributions to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds).
OK, so I’ve stuck my neck out. We’ll find out tomorrow how far. |
No. 1 seed Virginia (21-11) will host No. 8 seed Norfolk State (21-11) in the National Invitation Tournament on Tuesday, March 19. Tipoff at John Paul Jones Arena is set for 9 p.m.
The Virginia-Norfolk State game will be televised on ESPNU and broadcast on the Virginia Sports Radio Network.
The winner will advance to the second round against the winner of St. John's and Saint Joseph's. Second-round games are scheduled for March 21-25.
Virginia is making its 13th NIT appearance and first under fourth-year head coach Tony Bennett. The Cavaliers claimed NIT championships in 1980 and 1992 and are appearing in the tournament for the first time since 2006. Virginia is 15-10 all-time in the NIT.
The Cavaliers are 1-0 all-time against Norfolk State, defeating the Spartans, 50-49, on Dec. 20, 2010. Virginia is 19-0 all-time against Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference opponents, including a 75-57 win over Morgan State at JPJ on Dec. 19, 2012.
The Cavaliers are coming off a disappointing 75-56 loss against NC State in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals. Akil Mitchell (Charlotte, N.C.) led Virginia in scoring and rebounding for the fourth consecutive game with 19 points and eight rebounds. Joe Harris (Chelan, Wash.) added 13 points and Jontel Evans (Hampton, Va.) had a game-high seven assists.
All-ACC performers Harris (first team), Mitchell (third team) and Evans (All-Defensive) lead the Cavaliers into postseason action. Harris ranks fourth in the ACC in scoring at 16.9 ppg and Mitchell ranks third in rebounding at 8.9 rpg. Evans leads Virginia with 114 assists.
The Cavaliers, who earned an at-large bid into the NIT, rank in the top 12 nationally in five defensive categories, highlighted by their fourth-ranked scoring defense at 55.1 points per game. Offensively Virginia is averaging 64 points per game overall, shooting 45.6 percent from the field and 38.5 percent from 3-point land.
Freshman Justin Anderson (Montross, Va.) leads Virginia rookies in scoring, rebounding, assists and blocked shots. Sophomore Paul Jesperson (Merrill, Wis.) has made at least one 3-pointer in 12 consecutive games.
Freshman Mike Tobey, who made his second career start against NC State, is averaging 10.3 points and 5.3 rebounds in the last three games.
Bennett sports a 74-52 record, including a 1-0 mark against Norfolk State, in four seasons at Virginia. Bennett, who guided the Cavaliers to their first NCAA Tournament since 2006-07 last season, is the first Virginia coach to post back-to-back 20-win seasons since Jeff Jones in 1991-92 and 1992-93. Bennett has a 3-4 postseason record as a Division I head coach.
Norfolk State earned the MEAC's automatic bid to the NIT by winning the conference's regular season title with a 16-0 mark. The Spartans were upset by Bethune-Cookman, 70-68, in overtime in the MEAC Tournament quarterfinals. Norfolk State is making its second straight postseason appearance since moving to Division I in 1997. No. 15 seed Norfolk State upset No. 2 seed Missouri, 86-84, in the 2012 NCAA Tournament.
Guard Pendarvis Williams leads the Spartans in scoring at 14.1 points per game. Guard Malcolm Hawkins averages 11.8 ppg and forward Rob Johnson has chipped in 9.3 ppg and 4.8 rpg. Center Brandon Goode leads the team with 5.4 rebounds per game.
Head coach Anthony Evans has a 99-93 record in six seasons at Norfolk State. He guided the Spartans to the 2012 NCAA Tournament.
Tickets for Virginia's first-round NIT game are on sale. Reserved tickets are $10 each. Fans may also purchase tickets through the Virginia Athletics Ticket Office by telephone and in person. The ticket office is located in Bryant Hall at Scott Stadium and open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. Telephone purchases can be made by calling 800-542-UVA1 (8821) or locally at 434-924-UVA1 (8821).
Parking will be free of charge and available on a first-come, first-served basis in the John Paul Jones Arena, University Hall and McCue Center parking lots and the Emmet/Ivy Parking Garage. The John Paul Jones Arena Garage will be reserved for permit holders. The University Hall and John Paul Jones Arena parking lots are also available for baseball fans attending Tuesday's game against Yale that starts at 5 p.m.
Should Virginia advance in the NIT and host a second and/or third-round game, tickets will be sold for $10 each and available for purchase shortly after the second-round opponent is determined.
Tickets will not be available for sale through the Virginia Athletics Ticket Office for away games in the NIT. |
In a recent interview, Angela Merkel made a statement that may be considered the signal for the implementation of the brutal Greek experiment inside Germany itself:
I am concerned with trying to provide jobs for as many people as possible. We have improved in the last years and have managed to halve unemployment since 2006, but we have also made sure that minimum earning capacity has improved through the minimum wage. This means that people who work the full day should not be reliant on welfare.
Economist Heiner Flassbeck explained to Sharmini Peries and The Real News how much the German chancellor and her party is devoted to the 'ideology' of lowering wages in the name of job creation.
As he said:
What Angela Merkel says is an ideology. It's an ideology of her party, but also it's affecting the Social Democrats, that says if you go for a policy that reduces unemployment, this is the best kind of social policy that you can have. Even if people suffer or if wages fall, this is then absolutely necessary and is justified because falling wages do a good thing, produce a good thing, namely more jobs, which is not true.
Unemployment is falling very slowly, but it's falling quite steadily, but it is not, so to say, the immediate result of the reduction of the social contributions to the poorer people or the reduction of the wages. It's mainly the result of Germany's huge export surplus, which cannot be copied by other countries.
Germany has now a very low minimum wage. It's eight euros and a little bit, which is much too low given the productivity of Germany. If Madam Merkel would really be realistic and would not have her ideology of low wages producing jobs, she would increase the minimum wage. There would be no problem at all given the very high German productivity.
The Social Democrats and the Green Party were those in the beginning of the century who reduced the social contributions, who said we have to lower the contributions dramatically to make the people search for work and that will reduce unemployment. The Social Democrats have never distanced from their own mistakes and so there is no difference between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats on this.
The most probable outcome will be a continuation of the Grand Coalition, so we will go on for the next four years. And the poor people will not change the outcome of the election because they are four or five million people and many of them will not even go to the election, so that will not change anything.
Flassbeck's remarks show that current German leadership actually continues to lower wages, not because this is a policy that helps towards the creation of jobs, but, essentially, because of its ideological devotion to the destructive neoliberalism.
Furthermore, check out again Merkel's last sentence: "This means that people who work the full day should not be reliant on welfare." Actually, Merkel is showing the policy that her party, or coalition, is about to implement in case she will get elected for another term. Next step according to the Greek experiment: the destruction of the welfare state, which has a long tradition in Germany.
As already described , German oligarchs promote another "haircut" of multiple dimensions across Europe. They proceed into a violent cut of salaries and pensions, trying to equalize them in a first phase with those of countries of the former Eastern bloc, and disolving the welfare state. Federalism means however, that the same policies will be applied totally, definately and very soon, also against German citizens and workers.
As Flassbeck rightly pointed out, the Social Democrats in power, or as leaders in a coalition with Cristian Democrats will not make much difference. Both these two parties in Germany, and more or less in Europe, have been occupied completely by the neoliberal doctrine. Their single mission will be to federalize Europe with the Greek experiment as a pattern. |
Illustrations by Ben Passmore
You probably aren't getting into heaven if you enjoy watching New Japan Pro Wrestling. You are, at some level, sick. That's okay; we live in a sick civilization. I'm sick too. I love watching dudes hurt each other. Let's watch New Japan on AXS TV together. You don't mind if I get comfortable, right?
Is it weird that part of why I'm addicted to NJPW is that I barely ever know what's going on? Fat yellow letters fill the screen's bottom third: IWGP JR. TAG CHAMPIONSHIP TIME SPLITTERS BECOME 38th CHAMPION. "This match," the announcer says, "is the latest in the interminable battle between Chaos and the Sakuraba Gund." Duly noted. The bouts on a given episode come from different years; they're highlights cherry-picked from intricately bracketed Cups and Tournaments, the structures of which remain obscure.
And now, a commercial break. "I'm... Gregg Allman." Gregg Allman says, in a tone that suggests he might not have been yesterday, "and you're watching (pause) AXS TV."
Read More: In Search of My Childhood Wrestling Heroes
We're back! Cheesy computer-smoke blows in from both sides behind the NJPW logo and triumphant electric guitar fades into driving synth. A battered wrestler peers into the camera through a sunset of facial bruises; his upper and bottom lips are both split. "I will never let anyone speak lightly of Super Junior," he assures us via subtitle. Is that a division, then? Not a person, tag team or faction? Who fucking cares? After no more than thirty seconds of elliptical promo, we're in the ring, inside "Bodymaker Colosseum, formerly known as Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium," to watch a wrestler named Vampire Chicken get massacred.
Some in the audience are wearing surgical masks. There is a shirtless man pacing ringside, presumably invested in the match's outcome, though his presence is not remarked upon. He's wearing a gigantic headpiece reminiscent of Sauron's battle helmet. It looks like a haunted castle is growing out of his shoulders.
The outlook is grim for haggard old Vampire Chicken. He is facing a pretty boy hero wrestler with Masters of the Universe musculature, blonde-streaked boy-band hair, and a surgically idealized face. Above a lantern jaw, the hero's cheeks are round as a Cabbage Patch Kid's. His artificially plumped cherry-red cupid's bow lips smile, revealing luminous teeth. His face is uncannily ageless. Without changing expression, he kicks Vampire Chicken in the head so hard the television shudders on the dresser; his forearm chops leave diagonal, turnip-colored welts. The violence is appalling and yet so compelling, so visceral, so... real. This is "strong style," the notorious Japanese approach to pro-wrestling, now available with English commentary on AXS, a channel I had no idea existed.
The English commentary is key. Mauro Ranallo and Josh Barnett are the best pro-wrestling commentary team in decades. Effortlessly in command of the details and characters, they are superlative, enriching guides to each episode's otherwise disconnected and potentially baffling matches. Their approach is sports-like, and they take the action seriously as presented, integrating bits of backstory with flawless, technically informed play-by-play. They project a sort of Bruce Campbell-ish suavity, presiding over the broadcast like confident friends introducing you around a surreally wild party.
It's all real, you know. — Illustration by Ben Passmore
Ranallo, who's also announced boxing and MMA matches, has a polished, authoritative baritone and a remarkable vocabulary. Barnett, a former combat sports participant, provides an earnest, laid-back counterpoint and knows many of the NJPW wrestlers personally. Barnett's anecdotes span Tokyo, Las Vegas, and Rio de Janeiro, evoking a gritty, glamorous, big-city after-dark showbiz milieu of private suites and international flights. The commentary team's enthusiasm and engagement offer a path into a product that might otherwise be off-puttingly bizarre. When a wrestler cheats, the announcers react with strong disapproval, and their credibility makes it work. Instead of dispassionately evaluating the "heel work" of the villain, I'm nodding in agreement with my cool pals, Mauro and Josh, who are pissed at this asshole disrespecting the sport.
I have not seen any women in NJPW, except in the audience. This is a fantasy realm populated entirely by super-tough men, though the NJPW locker room ranges in body type, fashion, and age; it's a broad palette of violent masculinity. There are young boys and faded stars, the latter variously avuncular, mummified or deranged. This is a world of dandies, beefcake pinups, rough-trade bruisers, stone-faced killers, and quasi-human archetypal wildmen who grimace like gargoyles, bellow like gorillas, pull their own hair and bite whatever comes within range.
[daily_motion src='//www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x23t4j5' width='480' height='270']
The number one reason to watch NJPW—arguably to watch pro wrestling at all—is the wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura. Nakamura, to dip into Japanese cinema, is a Takashi Miike character as played by a younger, more sinewy Beat Takeshi: an otherworldly gangster god whose face alone can hold your complete attention. In more domestic terms, Nakamura is like Omar in "The Wire," the avatar of some mythological force; he transcends not just the show but the medium.
I can try and compare him to idols from other fields, but Nakamura is sui generis, a foppish, world-weary thug in a drum major's jacket who prances to the ring like Michael Jackson. His horrific strikes-- Nakamura is "The King of Strong Style"-- come like the dagger inside a phantasmagoric, florid bouquet of stylized balletic flourishes and gyrations, eccentric upper-body twists and Fred Astaire footwork. His face is that of man exhausted by the effort to control his own violence. Nakamura seems a prisoner of his gifts; deep inner struggle is etched into his expressive features.
When an opponent provokes him, Nakamura appears to experience genuine moral regret, something like disgust at what he's about to unleash. His face changes: he trembles: he surrenders to whatever terrifying entity dwells inside him and launches a spinning, writhing beat-down that would cripple a plowhorse, an unforgettable mix of guitar solo and Hulk Smash.
NJPW offers a few familiar gaijin faces. There's AJ Styles, who is like the AJ Styles of TNA except a hundred times better, and Doc Gallows, previously known as Festus and Luke Gallows in WWE, now wearing Mantaur head-paint. There's also a North American wrestler named Ricochet who moves like a cheat-coded video-game character—some lazy programmer forgot to assign him a weight value. Apparently untethered from earth physics, Ricochet vaults and rebounds and straight-up zooms around the air at will; his conventionally Newtonian opponents appear relics of an earlier evolutionary stage, cavemen trying to swat something flickering through the fourth dimension.
A very strong style. — Illustration by Ben Passmore
Much could be said about what New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS is not. It exists, of course, in contrast to the delicious McDonald's that is WWE—not only in contrast to, but as an anomaly growing in the substrate of WWE, which remains the global arbiter of what pro wrestling is. NJPW broadcasts on AXS are exciting, brutal and streamlined. Many elements WWE fans are accustomed to, including the soap opera storylines, are absent. The product is purer, heavier yet more sophisticated, somewhere between gonzo porn and art film.
It is difficult to expound on how thrillingly strange NJPW is without straying into exoticism. It is so strange, though. The audience sits in darkness, largely silent except for a scattering of bird-like yelps. The ring announcer is past parody, soaring up into a searing, power-metal falsetto gargle while introducing each competitor. Even the ring bell sounds weird, like it's made of wood.
The matches are far longer, their rhythms and dynamic composition more complex. There is often a "fighting spirit" segment wherein one competitor mercilessly beats on an adversary who refuses to give up or even acknowledge the very real pain he's being subjected to. Hulk Hogan used to do something similar, shaking off blows when he got angry for his comeback, but his opponents did not hit even a tenth this hard. The moves are wilder: the Dragon Screw Leg Whip, the Magic Killer, Mongolian Chops and Mountain Bombs, heinous neck-imperiling drivers and plexes no wrestling fed should still allow. The wrestlers fight on through legit injuries, including mid-match broken jaws.
The violence is reprehensible. I confessed my newfound fixation with NJPW to a friend whose judgment I trust, and found he shared my mix of misgiving and obsession. Watching NJPW, he told me, "I feel I witness more concussions per minute than even the grisliest of World Star compilations. I know I shouldn't like it, but I really, really do."
NJPW wrestlers practice disparate styles, a throwback to the days when UFC featured boxers with one glove vs. a karate guy, clashes of what would seem incompatible in-ring technique. A defrosted, vintage 1980s big-man monster, a pop-eyed grimacing 7-foot slob who throws flailing clotheslines, goes up against a solemn, cyborg-like submission machine who knots opponents into flesh pretzels and chokes them out with their own legs. Who the hell wins that one? Will the giant fat dude really get pretzelled? What will it sound like when his tendons tear?
I first came upon NJPW on AXS by accident, channel-surfing at 1 a.m. in a motel room, and I'd argue that was the ideal introduction. It's quintessential late-night TV that's very rare these days—late-night TV that isn't merely shown late at night but which emerges from a late-night realm, TV you shouldn't let the kids see. It's dangerous and different, gripping and gruesome, a tantalizing window into a fully formed and radically unfamiliar world. It is art, but wow, wow, wow do those motherfuckers hurt each other. |
Loans
Most credit unions come into their own for loans of smaller amounts, under £3,000. Many people who borrow these amounts would otherwise only be able to resort to doorstep lending or payday loans as an alternative. Compared to those, credit unions have halos. See the loans section below for more info.
You can also use the loan to buy white goods via Co-operative Electrical - this scheme's offered through more than 100 credit unions, so ask yours if it participates. Another way to buy electricals is via the Smarterbuys scheme. This is a collective buying project that allows you to pay for goods via a credit union loan as a way to avoid payday loans, weekly payment stores or loan sharks.
Savings
All unions offer some form of savings account. The difference between these and high street accounts is that credit union savings often pay you a dividend, which is dependent on how well the credit union's done that year, rather than a confirmed interest rate. See the savings section below for more information.
Current accounts
Around 60 credit unions now offer current accounts. If your union provides a bank account facility, it'll operate very much like a Basic Bank Account.
Mortgages
These are only offered by a few credit unions, Glasgow, Scotwest & Capital Credit Unions (all in Scotland) and No 1 Copperpot Credit Union (for police staff). However, never pick a mortgage without looking at the whole market. See Cheap Mortgage Finding for how to locate the best deal.
Prepaid cards
Around 40 unions around the UK offer a prepaid card service. See the Prepaid Cards guide for how the cards work. |
“It was an idea whose time had come, and the technology finally caught up with the vision.” -Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Ph.D.
If you’re at all familiar with VR, you’ve probably heard that VR is more than “just games” a time or two. Used to describe applications of VR that go beyond first-person shooters—think education, conservation, training, etc.—the phrase is something that many in the industry intuitively understand. Still, it continues to merit saying, especially when we talk about the research and clinical practice of virtual reality in cognitive and physical therapy treatment by leading psychologists and clinicians—which goes way beyond gaming; it has the potential to change the way we think about therapy altogether.
Despite the recent surge in VR development over the last few years, the idea of using virtual reality in a therapeutic setting isn’t a new idea. Research regarding VR simulations to treat specific phobias was around as early as the nineties, but the technology simply wasn’t advanced enough for such treatment to be feasible. Head mounted displays were clunky, computer processing speeds laughable, and 3D graphics downright primitive in comparison to what’s available VR today. Perhaps even more importantly: the technology required for advanced VR in the 90s was too costly to ever be seriously considered for mass distribution.
Clearly, things have changed.
“We’re seeing more companies emerge in the last two years than we’ve seen in the last twenty years,” said Skip Rizzo, Ph.D, director for medical virtual reality at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. “It was an idea whose time had come, and the technology finally caught up with the vision.”
An unlikely contributor led the way in funding and support for VR therapy research: the US military. Operation Iraqi Freedom led to an unforeseen number of troops returning home from the battlefront with physical and emotional trauma, prompting the military to seek out new, innovative treatment options for their soldiers and vets—especially those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Virtual Iraq VRET was developed from 2005-2007 as an answer to the military’s problem at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. During the early stages of development, Rizzo considered different treatment options, but eventually decided on exposure therapy for the project.
“Whenever I design a VR application in a clinical area, I look at, okay, what do we know works in the real world that we can use VR to amplify, or extend the effect?” said Rizzo. “Exposure therapy was a no brainer.”
Exposure therapy employs the patient’s imagination and memory to actively engage with their “triggers” or source of trauma, as opposed to avoiding it. With time, prolonged exposure to the trauma lessens its hold on the individual.
Though traditional exposure therapy is the most widely accepted therapy for PTSD, it has its limitations. Some patients are unwilling or unable to recount the traumatic narrative, resulting in ineffective treatment. VR enhances the treatment by allowing patients and clinicians to take the guesswork out of the experience by dropping them into a virtual scenario that is tailored to their individual experience. In VR, the patient is fully emotionally immersed in the traumatic situation while physically remaining in a safe, controlled setting. The use of VR in exposure treatment also enhances the experience for the therapist, who can view the experience on a screen and witness first-hand what exactly triggers the patient, along with listening to the patient’s recollection of the event.
Over time, Virtual Iraq VRET advanced and morphed into project BRAVEMIND, which yielded exceedingly positive results through clinical trials. BRAVEMIND is now being used in VAs, university clinics, and Army, Navy, and Airforce medical centers to treat PTSD patients.
“A little known secret is, since we’ve been doing the work, the two iterations of the exposure therapy system have been deployed to over a hundred sites,” said Rizzo.
Despite the wide distribution, he hesitates to call VR therapy mainstream just yet, saying instead that “it’s right at the tipping point.”
Since its creation, BRAVEMIND has expanded to include treatment scenarios for PTSD in combat medics and victims of military sexual assault. Psychologists are also researching ways that VR can be used in PTSD diagnosis as well as treatment. As Rizzo’s team looks to expand the therapy to non-combat related PTSD patients, the potential seems limitless.
“We’re finding out new things all the time,” he said.
Though PTSD treatment is a pretty strong focus of research for many VR therapists, in part due to support and funding from the US military, psychologists have also successfully incorporated virtual reality into treatment for patients with a number of other physical and cognitive disorders. For example, the very nature of VR makes it an extremely effective tool for treating patients with phobias—something that the Virtual Reality Medical Center has been doing for the past 21 years.
While many VR therapy treatment options are still in conceptual or testing phases, the VRMC has treated a staggering number of cases across its three US based clinics since it first opened its doors.
“I’ve conducted over 10,000 VR therapy and training sessions,” said VRMC President Dr. Brenda K. Wiederhold, Ph.D., MBA, BCB, BCN.
Using VR-enhanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in which patients are taught breathing with biofeedback techniques that are applied in the VR world, the team of psychologists have successfully treated patients with a fear of needles, claustrophobia, fear of public speaking, flying related anxiety, and more. Patients treated at VRMC often have phobias so severe that facing their fear—be it spiders, blood, flying, etc.—in the real world would be simply inconceivable. VR gives people with phobias the ability and power to confront their fears head on in a virtual setting.
“It’s empowering for the patient,” said Wiederhold.
VR therapy treatments for PTSD and phobias are similar in that they use the virtual environment to have the patient confront their fear or trauma in a safe, controlled setting. However, VR can be applied in completely different ways to treat other disorders like depression. An innovative study by UCL Barcelona professor Chris Brewin used a “body switch” method to help alleviate depression symptoms in a small, controlled trial.
Depressed patients entered a VR world in which there was a crying child who needed their help. After the patients consoled the child, they virtually switched bodies with the child and heard their own voice through an avatar consoling them. Though the study showed overwhelmingly positive results, the small trial lacking a control group needs extensive further testing and research before it can be used regularly as a treatment for people with depression.
Other methods of VR depression treatment are being explored by The VR Therapy Center in Grand Rapids, MI. Since it opened in January 2015, the center has treated over 300 patients suffering from depression using VR. Founded by psychotherapist Thomas J. Overly, LMSW, the clinic’s team has found that VR treatment is most effective in patients with comorbid depressive symptoms; 75% of the patients treated at the clinic have depression symptoms that are connected to other behavioral or interpersonal issues such as PTSD. The therapy has improved depressive symptoms in many patients, but Overly and his team are on a mission to improve upon the current platforms available for VR depression treatment.
Enter PromenaVR: a software system designed by Overly that allows clinicians to actually enter the VR environment with patients and have customized, two-way interactions with them inside of the virtual world. The experience is tailored so that the clinician appears as any race, gender, age, or body type depending on the specific needs of the patient, creating a “story that is their story.”
Settings range from a casual living room to open public spaces. Currently in beta, the software system was created “to treat depression and comorbidity issues that aren’t being addressed in typical VR therapy platforms that are available right now,” said PromenaVR COO, CMO Tanya Kellen. While not being used to treat patients just yet, the team at VR Therapy Center and PromenaVR believes that the interactive, two-way immersion system is the key to successfully treating depression using virtual reality in the future.
From PTSD, phobia, depression treatment and beyond, it’s clear that the future of VR therapy is extremely bright. Though it’s unclear how or when the technology will finally “go mainstream,” Rizzo predicts that it will do so in waves, with VR pain management therapy as the first to really be accepted as standard practice nationwide.
“I think in the next year you’re going to see more and more hospitals using VR for pain distraction or discomfort reduction,” said Rizzo.
VR is a tool that has the power to change the way we think about therapy, but at the end of the day, Rizzo believes that it is just that—a tool.
“In one sense, VR offers some magic in delivering this type of content, but, we’re always operating from a base of what we know works in the real world,” said Rizzo. “How can we do it better, more effectively, more consistently, and in a more engaging way.”
In other words, VR won’t replace the expertise and care of psychologists and psychiatrists or the tried and true techniques in therapy that have been used for decades. But it can—and will—improve and enhance the therapy experience in ways that haven’t even been imagined yet. After all: “It’s a revolution.”
Image Credit: USC Institute for Creative Technologies and UCL Barcelona |
Recently, education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post has been writing about reading in the public schools, two of those pieces appearing here and here. One reason for doing so stems from a report issued by Renaissance Learning, a reading program that helps teachers and parents determine how well children understand the reading they do for homework and on their own.
Because of the popularity of the program, Renaissance Learning has a vast database on the books kids in public schools from kindergarten to 12th Grade actually read voluntarily and for class. The most recent findings, for the 2008-09 school year, are now released in a paper entitled “What Kids Are Reading: The Book-Reading Habits of Students in American Schools” (here’s for the link).
The list of most popular titles for Grades 9 through 12 show just how powerful the social element of reading is at that age. The top four spots (!) are held by one author, Stephanie Meyer — Twilight, New Moon, Breaking Dawn, and Eclipse. (At Border’s Books yesterday, I asked for the jigsaw puzzles and the man directed me to a rear wall, adding, “We only have six or seven puzzles, and nearly all of them are New Moon stuff.”)
At No. 5 sits To Kill a Mockingbird, then comes Night (Wiesel), A Child Called “It” (Dave Pelzer), Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, Brisingr (Christopher Paolini), Romeo and Juliet, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Giver, and seven more works of literature.
That makes only two nonfiction works in the entire list, prompting Mathews to comment:
“Educators say nonfiction is more difficult than fiction for students to comprehend. It requires more factual knowledge, beyond fiction’s simple truths of love, hate, passion and remorse. So we have a pathetic cycle. Students don’t know enough about the real world because they don’t read nonfiction and they can’t read nonfiction because they don’t know enough about the real world.”
This dilemma is increasingly discussed in English Language Arts circles as more and more ELA standards are oriented toward abstract reading skills. Those standards will say things like “Students identify the main thesis in a text” and “Students detail the evidence used to support a contention in a text” — essential capacities, to be sure. To a decreasing degree, however, they ask for students to demonstrate specific “domain knowledge” such as “Students characterize, with examples, major periods of English and American literary history.”
As a result, the knowledge deficits proceed, and so does poor achievement in the higher grades. Mathews again:
“Educational theorist E.D. Hirsch Jr. insists this is what keeps many students from acquiring the communication skills they need for successful lives. “Language mastery is not some abstract skill,” he said in his latest book, The Making of Americans. “It depends on possessing broad general knowledge shared by other competent people within the language community.”
Hirsch’s new book may be found here.
Another voice on the issue is cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham, who contributes an introductory note to the reading report above. There, Willingham maintains:
“Many people think of intelligence as comprised of mental skills that are independent of knowledge. That is, smart people think logically and analytically about problems, and they do that for pretty much any problem that comes along. If you’re a ‘good thinker’ you can apply those thinking skills quite broadly. This view is inaccurate. Thinking well is intertwined with knowledge.”
Why so? Willingham:
“We tend to think of reading as a skill that can be applied to any text. Indeed, describing a child as a good reader implies that she will be a good reader no matter what the content. That is true only for decoding — the process of turning written letters into sounds. Comprehending what you read depends heavily on what you already know about the topic.
“Here’s why that’s true. We all omit information when we speak. For example, imagine I said to a friend “I ate pasta when I wore my new sweater. Now I’m going to have to throw it out.” I don’t elaborate that I spilled pasta sauce on my sweater, or that stains are hard to remove from some fabrics, or that these fabrics are often used to make sweaters, or that I am the sort of person who would throw out a sweater if it were stained. I assume that my friend knows all this, and can fill in the gaps. If I didn’t omit information that the listener already knows, speech would be very long and very boring.” |
Former England star Paul Scholes is set to play futsal in India
Former Manchester United and England midfielder Paul Scholes has signed a three-year deal to play in India's new futsal league which starts next month.
The inaugural edition of Premier Futsal, an indoor variant of football where players use a smaller and less bouncier ball than in the traditional game, will run from July 15-26.
"Futsal is a fascinating format that has played a pivotal role in developing the skills of some of the greatest football players," said Scholes.
"Premier Futsal will be a great way to introduce the sport to India and I'm looking forward to meeting the fans across India who I know are some of the most passionate in the world."
Deco (l) will also play in the inaugural league
Ex-Chelsea and Barcelona midfielder Deco and host of the world's top futsallers have already signed up to play in the league, with organisers promising that more marquee signings are on the way.
Premier Futsal co-founder, Nithyashree Subban added: "We are extremely proud to announce Paul Scholes as marquee player for Premier Futsal.
"Since our launch, we have maintained that we are committed to bringing the top talent from across the world to India and we are clearly delivering on our promise.
"Through a pioneering model for introducing futsal and a holistic approach to breeding home-grown talent, Premier Futsal aims to be the marquee all-star futsal tournament in the world."
Scholes retired from playing in 2013
Scholes, 41, won 11 Premier League titles, as well as two Champions League trophies, during more than 700 appearances for Manchester United before retiring in 2013.
Futsal is five-a-side and is played on a hard-court surface. Premier Futsal - whose president is ex-Real Madrid and Barcelona midfielder Figo - is the latest franchise-based sporting competition in India, following the Indian Premier League, Indian Super League and Premier Badminton League. |
Honestly, people, why wait to fall asleep with your shoes on when you can just draw dicks on your own face, am I right?
Asia Brautigam, 19, as she was poking fun at our obsession with beauty bloggers, experimented with some eyeliner, and well? It’s dick liner. Cat eyes are out. Dick eyes are in.
Wow MUA Twitter has been so creative with their eye looks, thought I'd have my take ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/Nsfm460HVV — asia (@asialbx) November 18, 2016
And a bunch of people began following her lead.
@asialbx sooo in LOVE with your look my new everyday eye makeup pic.twitter.com/bxlP3NEPJC — jas♡ (@jasmin_c_) November 19, 2016
Asia got ahead of the curve and told Buzzfeed she wasn’t trying to shade makeup artists just in case people started saying she was “makeup shaming.” She assured “I think they’re all creative and amazingly talented!” she said, and added, “My dick-liner will never compare!” There ya have it, folks.. |
Criticize cops involved in the G20 debacle? We can now expect to be arrested and face criminal prosecution.
Forget a civil defamation suit—two members of the Ontario Provincial Police, aided and abetted by the Crown Attorney’s office, have chosen the nuclear option, charging a Kitchener activist with criminal defamation.
(More here. Needless to say, this latest assault on the right to dissent has not received much coverage in the corporate media.)
From the Waterloo Record:
Dan Kellar, 29, was recently charged with two counts of defamatory libel by officers in the OPP anti-rackets squad as he left his Kitchener home on a bicycle. He was also charged with counsel to assault one of the officers. Police allege he published comments likely to injure the reputation of the officers by exposing them to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that were designed to insult the officers. …Kellar says the officers who arrested him are from the same unit that arrested other AW@L members and activists in connection with G20-related allegations. “The cop who arrested me is the one who’s making all the arrests for conspiracy cases,” he said. He said police agents began infiltrating activist groups before the summit. The two undercover officers joined AW@L [Anti-War at Laurier, a campus peace group], but were kicked out in the spring of 2010, before the summit, because activists didn’t feel comfortable around them, he said. …The defamatory libel charges were laid against Kellar after he put out a “community alert” on AW@L’s website, peaceculture.org. Kellar learned one of the officers had been spotted in Toronto, and, “sent out the warning…’suspected infiltrator police agent spotted in Toronto,’” he said. In the posting, he made comments police allege are defamatory.
Here’s the Criminal Code provision, rarely invoked in this country—until now, I guess:
298 (1) A defamatory libel is matter published, without lawful justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published. Mode of expression (2) A defamatory libel may be expressed directly or by insinuation or irony (a) in words legibly marked on any substance; or (b) by any object signifying a defamatory libel otherwise than by words.
Note that the bar for a successful criminal conviction (“beyond a reasonable doubt”) is considerably higher than for a successful civil action (“balance of probabilities”).
Kellar’s words might exceed current legal boundaries, although they don’t seem to me to be much more heated than many of the public comments that erupted in the aftermath of the G20 police riot. And, given a recent court ruling, young Kellar may have an ironclad defence in any event—at least for now.
I must at this point remain sceptical of the OPP’s motives: “outing” an undercover officer, with a photo, is more likely at the root of this remarkable arrest. But the latter sets a disturbing precedent for those of us critical—sometimes harshly so—of police actions during the G20, and elsewhere.
For good measure, Kellar has also been charged with counselling assault on a police officer:
He also invited people to “spit in the footsteps” of the officer if they saw him. For that, he is charged with counselling to assault.
Now, hold on a sec. Not “spit on the officer,” but “spit in [his] footsteps,” the rhetorical opposite of “worship the ground he walks on,” something that too many police officers appear to expect from a compliant, forelock-tugging citizenry. Last I heard, footsteps are not part of the body, and are not protected by the Criminal Code.
If this is the rock upon which the Crown is to build a case of counselling assault, one can only wonder at the strength of the criminal libel case, and whether this is simply punishment by process.
But in a free society, we shouldn’t have to wonder. |
There are new accusations that the Justice Department colluded with the Clinton campaign about the Democratic candidate's court cases, according to new revelations in emails released by WikiLeaks.
The May 2015 email from Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said, “DOJ folks inform me there is a status hearing in this case this morning, so we could have a window into the judge's thinking about this proposed production schedule as quickly as today.”
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, a supporter of Donald Trump, weighed in this morning, telling Tucker Carlson that the corruption of the Justice Department started with then-Attorney General Eric Holder being found in contempt of Congress.
Clarke said that has continued under Loretta Lynch, pointing out her secret meeting with Bill Clinton shortly before the FBI announced there would be no charges against Mrs. Clinton over her private email server.
"The corruption is all throughout the government. It's the courts, it's our institutions of government, the higher-ups at the FBI, the DOJ, the Congress, on and on and on," said Clarke, adding that the only way it will change is through the ballot box.
"I believe that the American people are finally going to have to rise up. It is 'pitchfork and torches' time, to use a metaphor, in America to get these people out of here and for the citizens of America to take this country back."
Carlson pointed out that if people begin to believe that some powerful people are held to a different legal standard, it's a "threat to our system itself."
Watch the full interview above.
Gingrich: 'Republicans Willing to Help Hillary' Belong in the Dem. Party
WikiLeaks Dump: Top Clinton Aides Mock Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity
McCain: 'The Clintons Don't Live by the Same Laws We Do'
Trump: 'Shackles Are Off Me,' Now I Can Fight for America My Way |
A survey of jihadis in Austria reveal 21 percent of people who have either traveled to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or planned on doing it are women.
The study from the Austrian Green Party and the Ministry of the Interior reveals 59 out of 280 prospective ISIS members are women. Close to half of responders who have been prevented from leaving Austria to join ISIS, 22 out of 50, were women.
“The number is unpleasant,” Berivan Aslan, a Green Party member of parliament, told The Local. “I did not expect the percentage of female IS-sympathizers to be as high as 21 percent.”
The figure in Austria is significantly higher than in Belgium, where just 17 percent of participants in a similar study were women.
Aslan said the idea of being the wife of a “hero” is appealing to young Muslim women in Europe.
“Disoriented young women in Western Europe feel attracted to IS-fighters and imagine that being on the side of a fighter building their own ‘state’ would afford oneself stability and meaning,” Aslan told The Local. “In the Islamic Statement, women are given the role not only of the wife of a ‘hero’, but are also used as fighters and suicide bombers.”
All-female ISIS cells have recently emerged in France, where a group of women were arrested after a car full of gas cylinders were found outside the Notre Dame church in September.
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Greetings fellow Agonians!
Today we wanted to present a development update on the progress of our Early Access Road Map, discuss the contents of our upcoming patch, and give some marketing updates as we prepare ourselves for launch. We will be releasing our next community competition tomorrow where you will be able to submit unique mob names and lore backstories that we will tie into our new unique rare mob spawn mechanics described below. We are at a very exciting time in the development of Darkfall: Rise of Agon as we get closer to our official launch, and all of us at Big Picture Games look forward to the coming months.
Without further ado, let's get into it!
Marketing Update:
Playthrough Convention
The marketing team has been gearing up for the upcoming Playthrough gaming convention that Brad and Michael will be attending this weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina. There have been many things we have been working on from banners and fliers to even some giveaways for those who stop by and say hello. This will be the first time that we publicly show off Darkfall: Rise of Agon and we cannot wait to talk about the project and what we have in store for the upcoming launch. Speaking of launch, our official launch date will be announced at the convention on Saturday. We hope to get to meet some of you in our community and invite everyone on Saturday to join us at the Crank Arm Brewing Company at 10:00 P.M. EST only a block away!
Lighting the Fuse
We want to ensure that when the game launches we can provide our players with as many friends and enemies to fight alongside with as possible. In the coming weeks we will be starting our external marketing campaigns that we have been planning internally and will not be letting up until we officially launch. We also have some things planned where you in our community can lend a helping hand to us in this endeavor. Stay tuned for more information as this train is about to leave the station.
Next Patch Update
The development team is currently working on our next Early Access patch which is currently scheduled to land at the end of February or beginning of March. This next patch will focus primarily on our new PvE spawn mechanics and the other changes listed below.
Champion Spawn PvE Mechanics
In the next patch we will be implementing our Champion Spawn PvE mechanics. This is a new system that changes the way certain mob spawns will function and provides a way for players to test their mettle against waves of enemies. This is the way that the system will work:
Upon entering a Champion Spawn the player will notice a new UI at the top of their screen where they can choose to begin the spawn mechanics
Players must kill a certain number of mobs within the allotted time to clear that wave of monsters and move onto the next stage
Players that fail to complete the wave in time will have the spawn reset to the beginning of the challenge
The first wave will consist of numerous monsters of lower difficult, and each wave afterwards will add in new threats and challenges
The final stage will consist of a named Champion Spawn with stronger attributes and a better reward, although they will be guarded by a set number of minions as well
For the initial iteration we will have these mechanics on a few mob spawns, but plan to add more throughout Early Access and after launch. The loot tables will be getting an overhaul as well once we begin to implement our unique recipes and rare items to the game.
Named Unique Rare Mobs
We also will be implementing the mechanics for our new Named Unique Rare Mobs. Although we may only get a few in with the next patch, our upcoming community competition will provide you with the opportunity to create some of the additions we will add throughout Early Access. Once the mechanics go into the game, it becomes much easier for us to add to this system and continuously implement new unique mobs.
These mobs will be named, have stronger attributes as well as better loot tables, and will have a rare chance to spawn at certain mob locations. Eventually we plan to implement backstories to these new monsters where players can unlock the lore of each one in the game. As with champion spawns, we plan to add new unique items to these mob's loot tables at a later date.
Respawn Scaling
Another mechanic coming with this patch is our first iteration of respawn scaling. This will eventually be applied to all new player spawns to help with spawn rates for players who can clear spawns quickly. The faster that you kill mobs, the faster that they will spawn, as well as potentially increase the amount of spawns that occur. This is not dependent on how many people are present at the spawn, rather how efficient you are at clearing the spawn itself.
Decreasing Tedium in Gearing
There are multiple changes coming with this patch to how you can gear and de-gear in the game. The following is a list of what to expect:
One button on the paperdoll to completely degear yourself
Faster equipping of armor
Ability to queue up armor pieces to equip by double clicking on multiple pieces
Cooking Update
We have completed our initial overhaul of the cooking profession and have added around 20 new cooking recipes, as well as many new ingredients. Mana regeneration is also now a benefit that can be found on some food, along with some other benefits.
Other Changes
There are some more changes coming with the patch such as new system messages for skins that do not produce items, changes to Digging, mount/ship/warhulk ownership changes, and a new staff seen below.
Road Map Update
Task System and NPX
We are finalizing the list of tasks and actions that new players will be guided through for initial guidance. There is a lot of work required in order to get the Task System implemented, as it needs new tracking of mechanics and a brand new UI, along with the flexibility to expand it past the new player guidance. This system is currently being designed, along with some changes we can make outside of it to help ease new player experience (such as spawning in Action mode instead of GUI mode).
Wilderness Portals
Our artist Demo has been creating some new assets for our upcoming Wilderness Portal network. We are currently planning to have over 100 portal locations throughout the lands that will be providing one-way travel throughout the world of Agon. We have been working through some issues with placement of these new assets but are on schedule to have the system implemented for launch.
Here are a few teasers of some of the new wilderness portals that have been created:
Deployable Player Vendors
The developers have begun working on the mechanics of the deployable vendors, but the brunt of the work on the coding side still needs to be accomplished. This system is still planned to be implemented for launch, but is not planned for the upcoming patch or the one thereafter.
In the meantime our artist Adam has put together the initial draft of the art asset which you can see below:
Crafting Updates
After this patch we will have gone through the initial crafting changes of most of the professions in the game. We will be focusing on some of the combat updates that we want to work on after the game launches, and part of that will tie into the professions of Armorsmithing, Tailoring and Shieldcrafting. For this reason we will be holding off on making our changes to these professions until we can tie them into the changes we plan to focus on after launch.
Economy Updates
We are currently going through a pretty massive overhaul of the in-game economy, focusing on resource sinks and faucets as well as loot tables and resource locale. This will be a task that we will be working on all throughout Early Access to ensure that we can have a good starting point for the in-game economy when we launch. These changes, along with our persistence changes and monitoring tools we have implemented, will provide us with more insight and control of the economy. It is imperative to have a strong balance of risk vs reward when this game goes live, as that is one of the pillars of this game.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for our upcoming community competition!
Join us for the discussion!
Sincerely,
- The Team at Big Picture Games |
One of the tough parts of running a business is deciding when to put more effort into something and when to not. We know we've been pretty silent here since the end of the season, and after a lot of internal debate, we've decided to stop posting editorial content on the BBR blog.
This obviously has nothing to do with the quality of the content produced by lead writer, Neil Paine. His posts were phenomenal, and I know many readers looked forward to them every week. A big thanks to Neil for making this such a vital place for basketball discussion and analysis. As a small company, focus is vital for our success, and we are choosing to focus our energy on pumping out as much statistical basketball data as possible and that means cutting back in other areas.
None of the existing content is going to go away. We'll keep it up here for as long as the site is open (which we intend to be a very long time). If you would like to contact Neil, he's available at [email protected].
Thank you most of all for your patronage. |
House Republican appropriators are scaling down an emergency funding bill to address the surge of child immigrants crossing the border.
Just three days before the House’s August recess is set to begin, Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) is in the process of drafting limited legislation that would provide less than $1 billion in funds and through only Sept. 30, aides said.
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That’s a far cry from the $3.7 billion requested by the White House, and less than half the amount in $2.7 billion bill Senate Democrats have written.
The differences suggest it will be tough to get a final bill to President Obama’s desk and that Republican leaders are more focused on winning approval from House conservatives to ensure a bill is approved by the lower chamber.
As recently as last week, Speaker John Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE (R-Ohio) said the legislation would likely provide about $1.5 billion and last through the end of 2014.
Republicans are making the changes to try to win over conservatives who are reluctant to give the Obama administration any new funding. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure.
The last-minute tweaks open what could be a frantic final week on the border bill before lawmakers leave town.
Under House Republicans’ own rules, legislation must be publicly available for at least three calendar days before a floor vote. That means a bill must be released by Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. at the latest for a vote by Thursday, the last day the House is scheduled to be in session.
House GOP leaders could break the rule, but that might spark disapproval from conservatives, who are wary of bringing up a bill to address the surge of unaccompanied child minors crossing the border in the first place. Leadership would likely get heat from members who want sufficient time to review a lengthy appropriations bill.
“I don’t like big bills,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert Louis (Louie) Buller GohmertRepublicans force House subcommittee to adjourn during hearing on climate change Trump met with group led by Ginni Thomas at White House: report House passes bill expressing support for NATO MORE (R-Texas). “The one thing I’ve learned in my time here in the House is that, when you hear the word ‘comprehensive,’ what it means in a loose translation is, ‘we got some really bad provisions that would never pass, so we need a big, comprehensive law so we can hide the bad laws in it.’ ”
GOP leaders held their cards close to the vest on Monday. A spokesman for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who takes over as majority leader at the end of the week, said conversations about legislation continued through the weekend. But congressional aides would not offer a timeframe of when the House GOP bill might be released.
While the House bill would be much smaller than what Obama requested, the shortened timeframe could still address the more immediate aspects of the child migrant issue.
The Department of Homeland Security has said it expects Immigration and Customs Enforcement to run out of money in mid-August. It has projected the same for Customs and Border Protection by mid-September.
The House bill would ensure those departments get immediate funding.
Rogers said he will be presenting a plan before the GOP conference at its weekly meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday.
The chairman said the bill could be released Tuesday for a vote by Thursday.
“I hope we file tomorrow,” Rogers said Monday night. “It’s practically ready to go.”
Rogers said Congress only needed to approve extra funding for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. Funding beyond that date could be part of the regular appropriations process for fiscal 2015.
“Well, we can handle whatever is needed next in the regular bills,” Rogers said. “We really don’t need to do the fiscal year [2015].”
And with Senate Democrats struggling to line up enough support for their competing border proposal, the House GOP has an opportunity to distinguish itself as potentially the lone group to get something done.
But that won’t be easy, given the reluctance some Republicans will have in voting for any border bill.
From the beginning, a conservative bloc of lawmakers has urged leadership to ignore Obama’s funding request and simply pass a resolution underscoring their opinion that the president encouraged children to come to the U.S. with lax immigration policies and that the administration has the power already to address the matter.
Rep. Trent Franks Harold (Trent) Trent FranksArizona New Members 2019 Cook shifts 8 House races toward Dems Freedom Caucus members see openings in leadership MORE (R-Ariz.) introduced a resolution to do just that Friday afternoon. If passed, the nonbinding resolution would express the sense of the House that the president’s immigration policies have effectively “enticed” children to migrate from Central America, under the belief they would be free to stay if they made it over the border.
The resolution only had one co-sponsor as of Monday. If that number grows, it could be an indication that Republicans will have trouble pulling enough support for new funding, even when paired with policy changes to strengthen the border.
Meanwhile, nearly all Democrats have remained resolute in opposing the GOP bill.
Opposition among Democrats to changing a 2008 human trafficking law many Republicans blame for the influx of immigrant children has hardened. While Republicans are confident some Democrats will come around to the bill if it reaches the floor, so far, only a sparse handful of Democrats have said they are even considering supporting it.— This story was posted at 2:14 p.m. and updated at 7:25 p.m. and 8:41 p.m. |
In the conservative commentariat and intellectual classes, the deal with the devil that is Trumpism seems increasingly complete. Stalwart conservatives who for years—in some cases decades—defended the principles of limited government, personal liberty, and strict adherence to the Constitution have hiked their skirts and dropped their panties, swooning as Big Donnie Trump talks dirty to the media.
In a depressing twist, many members of my party and ideological persuasion have become advocates for Donald Trump on a scale that ranges from grudging to toadying, for a simple reason that seems to overwhelm all other factors: He attacks the media. Many are willing to forgive almost any sin because of it.
All it took to break the spirit of far too many in the conservative class was for Trump to leaven his deranged, autocratic rantings with “fake news” and “duh librul media” bait to compromise the ideals and credibility of a large swath of the conservative firmament. People who think of themselves as being smarter than the average bag of hammers are missing that they’re the just the latest victims of the Trump Con.
We now routinely see a formulation something like this:, “Well, Trump isn't perfect, but at least he's attacking the media.” It's the haute-bourgeois pleasure of watching someone else to do your dueling.
For decades, the rallying cry on the right was: “If only we could overcome the liberal media monoculture, the truth and strength of our ideas would finally break through. If only we could really be heard on economic matters, on foreign affairs, and on race, the Republican Party and conservatism would finally get a fair hearing in the minds of the American people.” It wouldn’t have to be a zero-sum game of replacing one set of biases with another; the rightness of our ideas would carry the day.
But in a White House press room that includes staff “writers” for Infowars and Breitbart in press conferences, the Trump Administration isn’t looking for up-the-middle coverage; they’re looking for partners in the fake news explosion that helped Trump win the election. Conservative writers and thinkers who look away from the creepy authoritarianism, apocalyptic religious war fantasies, lavish corruption, overt economic statism, and general ineptitude simply because Trump snubs the established press aren’t doing the movement any favors.
Let’s be clear; the mainstream media deserves a kick in the ass so hard they reach orbital velocity for their professional missteps, insularity, ideological blinders, vast self-regard, and occasional outright malice against conservatives. However, as a justification for every one of Trump’s failings, reveling in their misery falls wildly short of the mark. It’s certainly not enough for the movement once graced by the ideas of Burke, Hayek, Kirk, and Buckley to sell so cheaply.
It’s not an argument for mainstream media malpractice, Obama, Clinton, social justice silliness, George Soros, or the Pentaverate to say that imitating the worst behavior of the liberal elements of the national media doesn’t honor the ideals we claim to serve. Instead, it makes a mockery of our ideas if we believe our a Trump-centric media monoculture is a positive outcome.
Yes, in 2008, the media lost their collective minds in a paroxysm of Obama-driven adulation. The superlatives flowed in an ridiculous, flowery stream of praise that bordered at times on the creepy. Yes, “the One” was a media absurdity. I remember emailing a reporter a snarky note after reading one of her pieces, “Are you practicing writing ‘Mrs. Katherine Obama’ in loopy script in your mash book?” (Name changed to protect the embarrassed.)
Obama was referred to in terms so glowing, so fulsome, so toadying that it was easy to pin down the journalist class of 2008 as a group of fangirls squeeing and fainting at his every utterance. That nearly mindless adulation was still a strong element in Obama's coverage until he walked out of the Oval Office. Conservatives rightly mocked it, while recognizing that the normative power of media and pop culture had combined in one fell swoop to overcome Barack Obama’s thin resume, his lack of experience, and questions about his ideological underpinnings.
Now, though, writers who just two years ago would have torn the bark off Barack Obama for picking winners and losers or for advocating some form of pie-in-the-sky “everyone gets covered” single-payer-ish health care plan today direct a large fraction of their ire to media outlets scrambling to find a way to process the election and governance of Trump. Rather than examine his daily assaults on conservative values, common sense, and that little thing we used to value called “the truth” they look politiely away as “conservatives” who have for decades sung the praises of free trade, low tariffs, and multilateral trade agreements now mutely nod at the brute stupidity of Trumpian economic populism... because at least he’s battering CNN, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed, right?
Of course, intellectual conservatism is a fairly small pool in the great scheme of things. What really mattered then and now is that a half-dozen gatekeepers in the conservative movement decided Trump would be lucrative fodder for their audience. They monetized the transition from promoting conservative ideals to selling the umber con man with the same vigor they pitch reverse mortgages, catheters, survival food, and gold.
This constellation of media players could have at any moment pumped the brakes on Trump and Trumpism during the 2016 election, and could do so now. At any moment, Rupert or the sons could have told Roger Ailes, “OK...that's enough.” The as-yet unchronicled conspiracy – and I use that word deliberately – between the c-suite at Fox News, Matt Drudge, Trumpbart, Rush Limbaugh is a story waiting to be told. They and others actively elected to elide Trump's endless catalog of ideological sins, moral shortcomings, mob ties, Russian moneymen, personal weirdnesses, trophy wives, serial bankruptcies, persistent tax shenanigans, low-grade intellect, thinly-veiled racial animus, and conspiracy email-forwarding kooky grandpa affect.
The “populist movement” explanation for 2016 isn't entirely wrong, but it took the full throttle efforts of the high-volume media enablers to promote Trump as the singular remedy for the moral, economic, and political collapse they decried each day for their credulous viewers and listeners to make that “movement” happen. Even after 25 years in this movement, I can't help but feel a sense of wonder at how brazen their marketing and monetization of Trump has been, and at its spectacular cost to conservatism. |
Foretelling the future can be a tricky business. It’s hard to trust your own psychic abilities. They are skills one comes into by accident and design. There are lots of things that you can try. These can help to hone your skill if you’re a beginner or even a seasoned expert. I’ve been reading the cards and getting psychic readings for over three decades. Over the years I’ve consulted with thousands of professionals and clients about what it is you need to know, what you want to know, and how the different systems work.
Keep a Record – It is good magickal practice to keep track of your readings, dreams, and the events that follow. You don’t need to get obsessively anal about it, but if you keep a journal you can begin to see patterns and signs that you may not have recognized otherwise.
– It is good magickal practice to keep track of your readings, dreams, and the events that follow. You don’t need to get obsessively anal about it, but if you keep a journal you can begin to see patterns and signs that you may not have recognized otherwise. Observe your own Thoughts – Consider your own personal observations and associations as they relate to the archetypal symbols present in the Tarot. One of the most important things to remember while reading is “wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”
– Consider your own personal observations and associations as they relate to the archetypal symbols present in the Tarot. One of the most important things to remember while reading is “wherever you go, you take yourself with you.” Test and Re-Test – Psychic tests can start with something simple. As your cards a question like will it rain on me today? Or Will I get a call from X in the next 24 hours? Choose simple and verifiable questions to start with. Measure your results against the actual outcomes.
– Psychic tests can start with something simple. As your cards a question like will it rain on me today? Or Will I get a call from X in the next 24 hours? Choose simple and verifiable questions to start with. Measure your results against the actual outcomes. Practice – How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Ok, I’m a New Yorker, I couldn’t pass that joke up. No matter what you are trying to achieve practice goes a long way. Many readers start by doing daily sessions with their cards, some still do.
– How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Ok, I’m a New Yorker, I couldn’t pass that joke up. No matter what you are trying to achieve practice goes a long way. Many readers start by doing daily sessions with their cards, some still do. Make Sure You Have the Right Cards – There are thousands of tarot and oracle decks in existence today, will more being created every day. There are decks based on Pulp Fiction, Fairies, Dragons, and Goddesses. You can find your way with cards inspired by Victorians, Steampunks, Masons, and a whole host of others.
– There are thousands of tarot and oracle decks in existence today, will more being created every day. There are decks based on Pulp Fiction, Fairies, Dragons, and Goddesses. You can find your way with cards inspired by Victorians, Steampunks, Masons, and a whole host of others. Make Sure You Have the Right Spread – Tarot spreads can be very open or very rigid. There are three card spreads to represent the past, present, and future. There are spreads that incorporate the entire deck and are designed to tell the story of an individuals whole life.
– Tarot spreads can be very open or very rigid. There are three card spreads to represent the past, present, and future. There are spreads that incorporate the entire deck and are designed to tell the story of an individuals whole life. Scry or Die – All forms of divination, tarot included, involve opening one’s mind up to new ways of seeing. Most people are used to practicing the art of scrying with a mirror or a crystal ball. These same techniques used with these methods can be utilized with tarot cards. Obviously there is the image one sees on the card, but tarot challenges your mind to think beyond the four edges of the card.
– All forms of divination, tarot included, involve opening one’s mind up to new ways of seeing. Most people are used to practicing the art of scrying with a mirror or a crystal ball. These same techniques used with these methods can be utilized with tarot cards. Obviously there is the image one sees on the card, but tarot challenges your mind to think beyond the four edges of the card. Sleep with your Deck – In many different spiritual tradition the psychic energy of places and things is very important. Sleeping with your tarot cards under your pillow allows you and the cards to access your subconscious power. That way there will be an energy exchange between you.
– In many different spiritual tradition the psychic energy of places and things is very important. Sleeping with your tarot cards under your pillow allows you and the cards to access your subconscious power. That way there will be an energy exchange between you. Only You Know– Ultimately, you are the only person who can attempt to be objective about what you are seeing in the cards. Sometimes you may notice a tendency towards wishful thinking or paranoia. That may be when you need to take a break.
This list of recommendations is only just a beginning, Tarot provides a whole world of possibilities. More information about learning the tarot can be found in our Divination Space Station series. If you are interested in getting a Tarot reading email me at [email protected]
What are your recommendations for learning and trusting your own readings? Please post them in the comments below! If you enjoyed what you have read here please help me out and share, tweet, and pin this post! |
It is ok to hate your personal bests. Actually, I’d encourage it. I hate most of mine. When you get a new one, it’s so exciting! You see your name printed next to a fancy new number that you’ve never seen before, and it validates everything you’ve been working towards. But then the next day you wake up, watch the race video and think, ‘I could have gone faster had I just done this, this and this.’ Maybe the next few weeks you’ll still beam with pride when congratulated on the number, but time passes and it grows old. Then you’re sick of it. And then it’s 3 years of self-loathing and conversations about the existence of short tracks. But when I crossed the finish line in South Carolina and saw the clock was way lower than ever before, I flipped out!
In 2012, while a senior at Columbia, I was able to use a few connections to gain a late entry into a small Monday night 1500 at Swarthmore College. Training had been going really well, and racing was on a sharp upswing. I stepped on the line calm and ready, knowing that the 3:39 Olympic Trials qualifying time was well within reach of my fitness. The plan was just to follow the leader, and slowly move up in the field. We strung out immediately, and with the help of Nick Willis pacing for 1300 meters, I ran splits of 59-58-57-41 for the American Collegiate Record* of 3:35.59.
A couple years later I had a conversation with Nick about why that race was so fast, and I think he summed it up perfectly: Most rabbits go out fast, slow down and step off after their slowest 100. Now the athletes behind have lost their momentum, and have to shift gears again to head into the kick. In that race, we were wound up and released.
If your goal is to break 5 minutes in the mile, you can most likely find a race that would set you up for a chance to do it. It’s nice in HS and most of college, to have so many prospective races setup to get the times you are chasing. Unfortunately, at the professional level, you have to earn [deservedly so] the right to be in those races unless you get lucky being in the right place at the right time (i.e-Swarthmore, Furman). Once you reach the Diamond League level, you have world-class rabbits and competition that produce sub 3:35 races with regularity. At a certain level you run into this problem again since 3:26-3:29 races are extremely rare, and getting rabbits that are capable of coming through in 2:45 is a tall order.
From Swarthmore until Furman, the fastest race I had been in was a 3:38.5 race last summer in the ‘C’ heat at Heusden-Zoleder [and I won]. Saturday night at Furman, I was lucky enough to be in a fast race that ran from the gun. We had a fresh and capable rabbit, as well as a couple brave runners who were fearless about attacking the pace and chasing the standard. But as noted, these opportunities are special, and it’s of utmost importance to capitalize on them when they do come. And hopefully then, you run fast enough to climb the ladder and get into the next tier of professional meets. It’s a tough, but fair process.
During our cool down the conversation was overwhelmingly positive about the success of the meet, and we couldn’t help but wonder why there aren’t more races like this in the United States throughout the summer. The atmosphere was intimate, the field was competitive, and the pace was honest. After last summer, having attended the Michigan Track Classic and the Falmouth Mile, I was inspired to create my own race, The Hoka One One Long Island Mile this September 9th. It’s an easy formula to replicate, and if enough individual race organizers through out the country decided to put one of their own on, we could have a competitive domestic circuit in our own backyard during the summer months that could rival Europe’s. The US distance scene is plenty deep, and it’d be a great boost to the local running community and for athletes who cannot afford to spend multiple weeks overseas.
Just food for thought.
A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders for the next two US Championships by achieving the World/Olympic ‘A’ Standard. I am stepping away with a lot of confidence having closed in 54-mid off an honest pace. Now the focus shifts to the US Championships and a top 3 finish. Back to work!
My next race on the schedule is an 800 this Thursday at the Adrian Martinez Classic in Concord, MA.
(By the way, I think it’s an awesome experience and fully support HS runners getting a chance to compete at professional races. I apologize for the inability of sarcasm to be translated via the Internet.)
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As former acting attorney general Sally Yates prepares to testify, Donald Trump lashed out this morning via his customary outlet, Twitter, to attack both the Obama administration and Sally Yates herself.
In his first tweet, Trump went after the Obama administration, attempting to shift blame for the hiring of Michael Flynn off himself and onto his predecessor:
General Flynn was given the highest security clearance by the Obama Administration – but the Fake News seldom likes talking about that. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017
Oh, dear, things seem to have gotten too deep for Trump almost immediately, as national security expert and former NSA analyst John Schindler quickly pointed out:
WH does not adjudicate clearances. IRL Obama fired #MoscowMike as DIA director because he's an incompetent asshat. https://t.co/R0ZYtK5hQZ — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017
Schindler further dismantled Trump’s absurd attempt at blame-shifting by a simple appeal to logic and fact:
Flynn was commissioned in Army MI in 1981. By Trump's "logic" Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 & Obama all cleared him. This is insane BS. — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017
Trump’s second tweet was directed at Sally Yates:
Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017
Again, Schindler quickly pointed to the fly in Trump’s buttermilk (a mistake Trump has since quietly corrected to “counsel”):
There's a WH Counsel. And there's a National Security Council. There is no "WH Council". POTUS is a complete moron. https://t.co/hUMBsq7NKS — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017
Schindler followed that up with a stinging condemnation of Trump’s continued dishonesty and where it’s going to get him (hint: not a good place):
There's so much dishonest desperation in this tweet you can taste it across the room. Gonna be a bad week for Trump & his #KremlinGate pals. — John Schindler (@20committee) May 8, 2017
Donald Trump has good reason to be frightened and good reason to want to shift blame for his hiring of Kremlin mole Michael Flynn onto Obama, who fired the guy and to discredit Sally Yates, who has the proverbial “goods” on Donald Trump.
John Schindler called it: Trump is a complete moron and he has only himself to blame for the fix in which he finds himself.
His desperate and increasingly pathetic attempts to blame everybody himself for everything he did wrong will stand out in historical accounts of his dizzying fall from the heights vaulting ambition.
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The Nuraphones determine your personal hearing profile by listening to "otoacoustic emissions" -- sounds emitted by the inner ear when stimulated -- with a tiny microphone. These emissions reveal a lot of info about our hearing, enough that Nura believes can be deciphered into a sort of hearing "fingerprint." Nura takes this fingerprint and uses it to adjust the audio signal from the headphones. The end result is a bit like a personal EQ setting, without all the guesswork, designed to make music sound like the artist intended (rather than amplify arbitrary frequencies).
It's a tantalizing prospect: Corrective headphones that know the quirks and failings of your beleaguered ears. When we wrote about them last year, I'll admit I was skeptical. Pretty much every headphone pitch I have ever had (and that is many) has espoused the virtues of its revolutionary audio, be it custom drivers, magical sound engines, dynamic doo-dahs or cutting-edge EQ algorithms and so on. But none of that helps if you're not able to hear all of those sounds and frequencies equally.
Setting up the Nuraphones is a bit more involved than most other headphones (in that there's even a setup process at all), but it's simple. Using the companion app (iOS/Android), you are first guided to make sure you have the headphones placed on your head correctly. Nuraphones have an unusual configuration that we'll get into later, but this makes it important to have them on just right during setup.
Once you have them on properly, the app plays some audio that sounds a bit like a futuristic fax machine. This doesn't last long, but it soon moves onto the next stage of configuration, which takes a little longer. All in all, it takes about a minute. Once complete, you can save your profile and forget about it if you wish.
Naturally, the first thing I wanted to know was how it sounded without the custom profile. Fortunately, this is easy to do in the app, as there's a switch to toggle between generic and custom audio. I'll be honest, the difference was incredible. In the generic setting, the audio sounded actually pretty bad. But once I put on the custom profile, the music sprang to life.
The first thing you notice is that the music is louder. This alone -- a simple bump in volume -- is often enough to "trick" the brain into thinking something sounds better. (There's an old DJ trick of casually lowering the volume on the previous DJ's last record so that your first one invokes the same feeling.) I could tell straight away though that there was more going on here. The music didn't just sound louder, it sounded more "complete." All the different frequencies in the music felt balanced and natural, and not "juiced."
After listening to a number of different tracks in different styles, I was actually somewhat excited. There's an intangible, magical feeling you get when listening to well-recorded audio on a high-end system. This isn't quite the feeling I had here, but it was similar. A sense that music feels alive -- clearer, almost.
The Nuraphones have a few other features that help the music along, too. While they look like over-ear headphones, each cup has a protruding "stalk" that goes inside your ear. Both the outer section and in-ear part provide passive noise canceling, so the effect is doubled. In a room with people talking right in front of me (and no music playing), I couldn't hear a thing.
The second trick that Nura added is tactile bass. Inside the on-ear part are transponders that respond to low frequencies (bass) with vibrations. It's not just an on/off vibrate, it's responsive to the frequency. Similar to how SubPac or Basslet work. The idea is that you "feel" the bass while the in-ear part focuses on the midrange and upward. It works very well (trust me), and I'd love to see this option in more headphones. If you're wondering, you can disable the "immersion" feature (as Nura calls it) or, conversely, go wild, and jack it right up to face-melting levels.
By now, you can't help but have noticed that these are no regular headphones. The design alone will tell you that. When I first saw the two in-ear drivers poking out of the cups, I didn't know what to make of them. Each stalk is spring-loaded, so it doesn't poke you in the side of the head (or push into your ear too hard). The spring is cleverly engineered so it retracts/extends slowly. The upshot is that sometimes you adjust the headphones and then feel the tip of the stalk slowly worm its way into your ear canal. You might also have noticed these stalks are... mildly "anatomical" looking. It's a little weird, but not unpleasant.
I did find myself having to readjust the Nuraphones a fair amount. Not constantly, but maybe two or three times an hour I'd find myself reaching for either side just to get it in a slightly sweeter spot. The earbud stalks aren't uncomfortable, but it's more about making sure you have them inserted properly, so it becomes a bit of an unconscious twitch to be sure you have them set right.
The Nuraphones' weird earcups aside, the product experience as a whole is thoughtfully designed. The rubber sections that rest on the side of your head can detect when you're wearing them. This is, in fact, how you turn the Nuraphones on -- simply put them on your head. There are two touch-sensitive buttons "hidden" in the circular caps outside the strap (where you adjust the fit). These can be configured in the app to do whatever you want.
There's likely a compromise here, as you'll have to choose between skipping tracks, audio profile toggling, answering calls ... whatever the two things you need the most. I often want to pause or adjust the volume on the go, but obviously want to be able to answer calls too, without reaching for my phone.There's no button to activate Bluetooth mode, either. Anytime the headphones aren't connected, they default back to pairing mode.
This minimalist approach feels smart when it works. But if you need to toggle Bluetooth (as I sometimes did) or want to reboot the headphones (as I sometimes did), it's a bit of a guessing game -- setting them down for a bit and putting them back on. Likewise, occasionally I'd lift one earcup off to talk with a friend, and the headphones would turn off. They'd reconnect again in a few seconds, but it's a minor break in the experience.
For those who prefer a wired connection, you have plenty of options here. The Nuraphones come with a USB A cable for charging, but there are USB C, micro-USB, Lightning and 3.5mm audio cables available too (for an additional cost).
Despite the minor quirks, the whole experience feels refined. Smart, even. And it'll likely only get better. A feature in beta is that the headphones can detect who's wearing them (if they have a profile set in the app). I tested this with my wife, and it works well -- telling me "Welcome back, James" every time I put them on. You also don't need the app once you've gone through the setup -- the settings are stored on the headset, so you can forget about it completely if you prefer.
If you're wondering, you can have up to three different profiles set in the app. It's also a good way to see how different your hearing is to someone else's. I tried my wife's profile, and it actually sounded pretty similar. Both mine and hers sounded pleasing, but mine did sound better (to me). I noticed higher frequencies were a little harsher in my partner's setting, and mids a little subdued.
On a more practical note, in wireless mode the Nuraphones last about 20 hours, which is decent. You can also use them with your PC without the 3.5mm cable. When you plug them in via USB, your computer should detect them as an audio output device, so you can easily charge them while listening at work. It's worth noting here that there's no LED, so without the app, it can be hard to know if they are fully charged.
For a debut product, the Nuraphones are impressive. The audio voodoo really does add a depth and a sense of clarity to music that almost makes you worry that you must otherwise be slogging through the world hearing the world only half as brightly as you could. The tactile bass adds another dimension (and means you need less volume), though your personal preference may vary with this one, and the slick design touches make this feel like a polished product.
But they also introduce a few minor compromises or design quirks that might take some getting used to. If you can live with relinquishing control over connectivity and power to the headphones, you've got little to worry about. At $399/£349, the Nuraphones aren't the cheapest on the market, but they deliver an experience (and musical excitement) that's unique. |
Our Chief Justice thinks that if the evidence of gerrymandering is too sophisticated for laymen to grasp, the court should ignore it.
Chief Justice John Roberts in Jackson, Miss., on Sept. 27, 2017. (Photo11: Rogelio V. Solis, AP)
For 12 years, Chief Justice John Roberts has worked overtime peddling the dubious conceit that he and his life-tenured colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court are above politics and determined to remain so.
Yet Roberts himself is a consummate politician — a strategist who worries about appearances and harbors a ward heeler's contempt for the intelligence of the average voter. And his cynicism was on full display last week when justices took up the politically fraught problem of gerrymandering.
Plaintiffs in a case known as Gill v Whitford want the Supreme Court to rule that Wisconsin legislators violated the U.S. Constitution when they drew district boundaries that systematically diluted the electoral clout of their state's Democratic voters.
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A lower court ordered Wisconsin to draw a fairer map after concluding that evidence and voting data submitted by the plaintiffs proved Republicans had configured districts designed to preserve their party’s legislative majority even when Democrats win a majority of the popular vote.
Roberts, who knows a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs will jeopardize Republican gerrymanders in more than a dozen other states, wants his colleagues to stay out of a partisan process even simpatico conservatives like Justice Samuel Alito concede is “distasteful.” The chief justice says the public will lose respect for the courts if he and his colleagues stick their noses into all that distastefulness.
But what if a majority party uses its mapmaking prowess to effectively disenfranchise the opposing party's voters? And what if those aggrieved voters can use the same technological advances their opponents exploited to prove an election was rigged, and even to quantify the advantage its rivals gained by manipulating a state's political boundaries?
That's exactly what has happened in the Wisconsin case, as one of the country's premier scientists explained in a remarkable friend-of-the-court brief filed on behalf of the plaintiffs.
Mapping chromosomes and rigged elections
It's rare for disinterested third parties to play a decisive role in landmark Supreme Court cases. But the arguments filed by Eric Lander, a geneticist and mathematician who oversees the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, may prove an exception.
Lander was one of the principal leaders of the decade-long effort to map the human genome, and he has advised the White House and the Pentagon on innovative uses of technology for national defense. In a brief that several justices cited during Tuesday's oral arguments, Lander says the sort of data-crunching the federal government uses to assess whether a nuclear weapon will detonate properly or whether Miami is safely outside the path of a hurricane can be used to prove when political boundaries have been manipulated to guarantee one party the largest possible electoral advantage.
Lander's argument is a crucial one, because lawsuits challenging the fairness of gerrymandered political districts have foundered on the high court's doubts that challengers could propose an objective standard for evaluating partisan bias.
Lander says technological advances that allow mapmakers to project likely electoral outcomes in thousands of different scenarios mean that a party that controls the redistricting process can pick the map that yields the most extreme partisan advantage. But he adds that the same analytical methods allow courts to discover when district lines have been manipulated to produce the maximum distortion of the electorate's will, whether by amplifying the impact of one party's voters or minimizing its opponents' ability to muster an electoral majority in most districts.
By comparing the district lines a state has adopted with all the other possible configurations that comply with state and federal law, courts can determine not only whether a given map handicaps one party's voters, but also how much. Using these reliable analytical tools, Lander says, deciding which of several possible maps yields electoral outcomes most consistent with the majority's druthers becomes "a mathematical question to which there is a right answer" — exactly the sort of objective test judges worried about the corrosive effects of gerrymandering have been seeking.
Gobbledygook?
Chief Justice Roberts, of course, doesn't see it that way. During oral arguments last week, he dismissed the evidence Lander and other mathematical analysts have submitted as proof Wisconsin's legislative elections are rigged as "sociological gobbledygook."
In another exchange with the plaintiffs' attorneys, the chief justice appeared to concede that the evidence he disparaged might be persuasive after all, once you took the time to digest it, but hinted that few voters had the patience or smarts to do so.
"The intelligent man on the street is going to say that's a bunch of baloney," Roberts insisted. If justices blow the whistle on Republican cheating, he believes, the public will inevitably conclude that they're simply shilling for Democrats — "And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and the integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country."
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Roberts' argument amounts to a rejection of rational inquiry itself: If the evidence that Wisconsin has violated its citizens' constitutional rights is too sophisticated for laymen to grasp at first glance, he says, the court would be better off to ignore it.
This is the same cynically anti-intellectual rationale cheerleaders for the fossil fuel industry have marshaled to discredit the evidence of climate change. Until "the intelligent man on the street" has a keener understanding of the role greenhouse gases play in global warming, why should elected officials kowtow to experts who do?
Of course, the same logic could be marshaled to discount the warnings of hurricane forecasters or military strategists trying to anticipate the likely consequences of a military confrontation in the Middle East or on the Korean peninsula. If we don't understand their calculations, why should we pay any attention to them?
The answer, of course, is that democratic government, like many other aspects of daily life, requires a reasonable deference to those with superior expertise: the surgeon who does hundreds of bypass operations a year, the repair technician who diagnoses malfunctioning furnaces for a living, or the pilot with 10,000 hours of in-flight service under her belt.
Roberts is right to be worried about the credibility of the judiciary, and its capacity to command the confidence of citizens across the political spectrum. But he should be at least as concerned about the credibility of representative democracy itself.
As Paul Smith, who represents the plaintiffs challenging Wisconsin's legislative map argues, the stakes in Gill v. Whitford are larger than the public's perception of Justice Roberts and his colleagues.
"If you let this go, if you say … we're not going to have a judicial remedy for this problem, in 2020 you're going to have a festival of copycat gerrymandering the likes of which this country has never seen," Smith warned Roberts near the end of Tuesday's oral arguments. "Voters everywhere are going to be like voters in Wisconsin, and (say): No, it really doesn't matter whether I vote."
Brian Dickerson is a columnist for The Detroit Free Press, where this piece first appeared.
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to [email protected].
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The upcoming Men’s EHF EURO 2016 in Poland will be the chance for all handball fans to see some new faces in European handball. Some of them are already known from their performance in the clubs and national teams, but still they are Under 23, ready to improve and conquere handball world in years to come.
Handball-Planet.com made a list of BEST 7 youngstars (generation 1994 and younger) for the upcoming event which we would like to see. The leader of the team is Handball-Planet Young World Player 2015 – Sanders Sagosen.
RIGHT BACK: Fabian Wiede (Germany)
PLAYMAKER: Sanders Sagosen (Norway)
LEFT BACK: Vuko Borozan (Montenegro)
LINE-PLAYER: Blaž Blagotinšek (Slovenia)
LEFT WING: Rune Dahmke (Germany)
RIGHT WING: Darko Đukić (Serbia)
GOALKEEPER: Torbjorn Bergerud (Norway)
Our list didn’t include some names who will miss the tournament (Lasse Andersson or Paul Drux). However, like in the list of BEST 7 “old guns”, we couldn’t find the left wing player (1994 and younger) who will be close to the final squad, so we decided to put Rune Dahmke (1993). On the other side, the lack of young goalies is more than visible, so our choice is young Norwegian Torbjorn Bergerud, who probably won’t get a chance to play in poland. |
Stacey Tillman, a 47-year-old woman from Sandusky, Ohio, says she has donated over $300 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure each year for the past nine years. The issue is close to her heart, she says, because her aunt had breast cancer.
This year, however, following the news that Komen has pulled breast exam funds from Planned Parenthood for political reasons, Tillman is sending her money straight to the family planning provider instead.
"I donated $250 this morning, and then I'll see what I can do in a couple months if I can get more," she told HuffPost in a phone interview. "I've had family members in financial difficulty that have used Planned Parenthood for pap smears and breast cancer screenings. They're getting my money now because they help the needy and the people who fell through the cracks."
After partnering with Planned Parenthood for the past five years to provide cancer screenings to low-income patients, Komen announced on Tuesday that it would sever ties with the family planning provider because it is under investigation in Congress. However, the groups that prompted that investigation are anti-abortion advocacy organizations that have long criticized Planned Parenthood over the fact that some of its clinics offer abortions.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) both criticized and revoked their support for Komen on Wednesday. "I was perplexed and troubled to see the decision by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to cut off funding for life-saving breast cancer screenings through Planned Parenthood because of a political witch hunt by House Republicans. I truly hope that they will reconsider this decision and put the needs of women first," Boxer said in a statement.
"I have been a big booster of the Susan G. Komen organization, but not anymore," Speier said on the House floor.
One of Komen's own affiliates withdrew its support as well. The Connecticut affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure said in a statement on Wednesday that it "shares" people's frustration over the decision and that it will continue funding Planned Parenthood of New England.
"The decision regarding the funding of Planned Parenthood was made by Susan G. Komen for the Cure National Headquarters," the group posted on its Facebook wall. "Susan G. Komen for the Cure Connecticut enjoys a great partnership with Planned Parenthood, and is currently funding Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. We understand, and share, in the frustration around this situation. We hope that any investigation prohibiting Planned Parenthood from receiving Komen grants is promptly resolved."
Komen has faced a massive social media backlash since announcing the decision, with angry people flocking to its message boards and Facebook wall to announce that they will no longer donate to the breast cancer charity.
Many commenters on Facebook have complained that Komen is scrubbing some of the more negative comments from its wall, but a spokesperson for Komen said the organization is only deleting the profane ones.
"We have not and do not scrub negative comments from Facebook unless they include profanity," said Leslie Aun, vice president of communications for Komen. "There have been some serious misrepresentations of our position, which is unfortunate. The level of interest reflects the fact that people care deeply about breast cancer and women's health issues."
The main sentiment among the thousands of people posting online seems to be that regardless of one's position on the issue of abortion, it is wrong to politicize women's health. According to a new Polipulse analysis of online conversations about the issue, only 26 percent of people believe Komen made the right decision. Nearly a quarter of the people who expressed criticism of Komen's decision online said they were going to pull their donations from Komen.
In contrast, Planned Parenthood has seen a huge influx of financial donations in the 24 hours since Komen broke ties. While the organization has not officially released the new donation numbers yet, a source close to the issue said they've raised "hundreds of thousands" of dollars in individual donations during that period. That, combined with a donation of $250,000 from Texas oil executive Lee Fikes and his wife Amy for a "Breast Health Emergency Fund," could put the family planning provider on track to match or surpass the roughly $680,000 it received from Komen in 2011.
Planned Parenthood said it also saw a spike in people making appointments for breast examinations Wednesday.
"The silver lining is that more people than ever are aware that Planned Parenthood provides breast exams, and we're seeing more people calling us today to make an appointment," Tait Sye, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood, told HuffPost. "Politics should not get in the way of women's health, and people respond powerfully when they see politics interfering with women's health."
UPDATE: 3:40 p.m. -- Planned Parenthood announced on Wednesday that it has received $400,000 from about 6,000 donors since Komen announced it was cutting funding to the organization on Tuesday afternoon. |
The investigation into suspected collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government has claimed its first three victims: one (Paul Manafort) for completely unconnected money laundering charges, and two (George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn) for lying to investigators about things which were not themselves criminal, and which are therefore crimes which would never have happened had there never been an investigation. To date, the evidence of direct collusion between Trump and the Russians is looking a little thin, to say the least. Now, into this maelstrom steps Guardian reporter Luke Harding with his book Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russian Helped Donald Trump Win.
Collusion spends over 300 pages insinuating that Trump is a long-standing agent of the Russian secret services, and hinting, without ever providing any firm evidence, that Trump and his team acted on orders from the Kremlin to subvert American democracy. I’ll be honest, and admit that I picked this book up expecting it to be a series of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, and to be utterly unbalanced in its analysis, and in that sense I’m not an unbiased reader. At the same time, I was interested to see if Harding had come up with anything that everybody else had not, and was willing to give him a chance. I needn’t have bothered. For alas, my worst suspicions proved to be true, and then some.
The first thing to note about Collusion is that most of it is padding. That is to say, that it consists mainly of a lot of digressions in which Harding describes people and events not directly related to the main story of collusion. Whenever a new character is introduced, you tend to get pages of background information, along with descriptions of various places they’ve been to, things they’ve done in the past, and so on. At the start of the book, for instance, Harding introduces Christopher Steele, who prepared an infamous dossier purportedly based on secret sources within the Kremlin, which made all sort of extreme accusations against Trump. We learn about Steele’s parents, his childhood, his education, his career, and so on. Harding recounts how he met Steele. We learn about how they tried one café, then another, who drank what, etc, etc. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book. There’s a lot of padding. This padding makes Collusion an easy read, and gives it colour, and the flavour of a spy novel. But none of it adds anything to our knowledge of Donald Trump and his relationship with Russia. It’s just filler, designed to cover up the fact that, when it comes to the matter of collusion, Harding doesn’t have a whole lot new to say and certainly doesn’t have enough to fill up an entire book.
The second thing to note is that Harding’s modes of argumentation and standards of evidence are not – how can I be polite about this? – what I’m used to as an academic. Let’s take the example of Trump’s former convention manager, Paul Manafort, to whom Harding devotes an entire chapter, obviously on the basis that the Trump-Manafort connection somehow proves a Trump-Kremlin connection. The problem Harding has is that, despite pages of fluff about Manafort, he hasn’t got any evidence that Manafort is a Kremlin agent. In fact, he quotes one source – a former Ukrainian official, Oleg Voloshin – as telling him that when Manafort worked as a political advisor to Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich:
Manafort was an advocate for US interests. So much so that the joke inside the Party of Regions [in Ukraine] was that he actually worked for the USA. … He supported Ukraine’s association with NATO and with the EU. He warned Yanukovich not to lock up [former Prime Minister Iuliia] Tymoshenko. “If it weren’t for Paul, Ukraine would have gone under Russia much earlier,” Voloshin told me.
This is pretty funny behaviour for a Kremlin agent, and Harding has to admit that, “It’s unclear to what extent, if any, Manafort was involved in supplying intelligence to Russia.” This doesn’t fit with the conclusion that Harding obviously wants readers to draw – that Manafort was a Kremlin agent, and so Trump must be too. So, he comes up with something else: some of Manafort’s associates in Ukraine “were rumoured to have links with Russian intelligence.” Note the use of the word “rumoured”. It’s not exactly convincing, but it’s good enough for Luke, who uses it to tell a story about one such associate, Konstantin Kilimnik. Harding recounts that he contacted Kilimnik by email to ask him about his relationship with Manafort. Kilimnik responds by telling him that the collusion accusations are “insane” and “gibberish”, and signs off his email with a bit of self-mockery: “Off to collect my paycheck at KGB. :))”
And here’s where it gets interesting. For Harding thinks there’s something suspicious about Kilimnik’s answer. He writes:
The thing which gave me pause was Kilimnik’s use of smiley faces. True, Russians are big emoticon fans. But I’d seen something similar before. In 2013 the Russian diplomat in charge of political influence operations in London was named Sergey Nalobin. Nalobin had close links with Russian intelligence. He was the son of a KGB general; his brother had worked for the FSB; Nalobin looked like a career foreign intelligence officer. Maybe even a deputy resident, the KGB term for station chief. On his Twitter feed Nalobin described himself thus: A brutal agent of the Putin dictatorship : )
And that’s it. That’s Harding’s evidence. Just to make sure readers get the point, he follows the last line up with a double paragraph space. Stop and think what this means, he seems to be saying. Someone who “looked like a career foreign intelligence officer” uses smiley faces. Kilimnik uses smiley faces!!! Say no more.
This is the level at which Harding’s logic works. Harding recounts a meeting of Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the White House, a meeting which was photographed by someone from the Russian news agency TASS. As Harding tells us:
The Times put the photo of Trump and Lavrov on its front page. At the bottom of the photo taken inside the White House was a credit. It said: “Russian Foreign Ministry.”
Yet another double paragraph break follows, just to make sure that readers take in the implication of what this means.
Take another example. We learn (which in fact we knew already if we’d been following this story) that Trump’s short-lived National Security Advisor, and former head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn, attended a conference on the subject of intelligence at Cambridge University, where he met a Russian woman, Svetlana Lokhova. Harding admits that, “There is no suggestion she is linked to Russian intelligence.” Nevertheless, he feels it necessary to tell us that Flynn later corresponded with her by email. He writes:
In his emails, Flynn signed off in an unusual way for a US spy. He called himself “General Misha.” Misha is the Russian equivalent of Michael.
Again, Harding then introduces a section break, leaving this ominous fact hanging in the air. Think of what it means, he is saying!
This is typical of how Harding argues. He puts in some suspicious sounding fact, or asks some question, and then just leaves it hanging. The implication is that the question doesn’t need answering, that the most damaging and extreme answer is obviously true. There’s an awful lot of this technique in Collusion. Harding spends pages on a digression about Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybovlev before telling us that Rybovlev’s private jet sometimes parks next to that of Donald Trump. Seems suspicious, huh? Except that Harding tells us that, ‘The White House … said that Trump and Rybovlev had never met. This appears to be true.” But Harding isn’t satisfied, and asks, “Had he [Rybovlev] perhaps met someone else from Trump’s entourage during his travels? Like, for example, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen?” Later, Harding tells us that Rybovlev’s yacht was once at Dubrovnik at the same time as Ivanka Trump’s yacht. “Was this perhaps planned” he asks.
Harding’s method is to ask these questions, as if asking was itself proof of guilt. Trump borrowed money from Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank was bailed out at one point by the Russian bank VTB. “Was there a connection?” Harding asks. But Harding doesn’t answer these questions. In fact, one of the interesting things about this book is that again and again the author has to confess that the facts don’t really fit what he’s trying to say. For instance, when discussing Trump and Deutsche Bank, and trying to make it sound as if Trump was in some way connected to the Kremlin because he was borrowing from the Germans, Harding writes, “The sources insist that the answer was negative. No trail to Moscow was ever discovered, they told us.”
This isn’t a lone example. Harding spends quite a few pages discussing Carter Page, a businessman who appeared on RT and gave a talk at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and who at one point had a marginal role in the Trump election campaign. It’s clear that he wants it all to sound really damaging. And yet, he writes that Page’s “attempts to meet Trump individually failed.” So, it turns out that there’s not much of a connection there after all. Likewise, when discussing Russian computer hackers, Harding writes: “By the second decade of the twenty-first century the cyber world looked like the high seas of long ago. The hackers who sailed on it might be likened to privateers. Sometimes they acted for the ‘state’, sometimes against it.” This rather undermines his claim that the Russian state was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
In another example, Harding discusses the sudden death of Oleg Erovinkin, who worked for the oil company Rosneft. He speculates that “Erovinkin was Steele’s source deep inside Rosneft,” and was murdered because word of Steele’s document had leaked out. The murder, he implies, is proof of the dossier’s validity. Except that Harding admits that, “there was nothing suspicious about Erovinkin’s sudden death” and “Steele was adamant that Erovinkin wasn’t his source.” Yet this doesn’t stop Harding from writing that, “in the wake of the dossier the Kremlin did appear to be wiping out some kind of American or Western espionage network. … It certainly looked that way.”
I could give other examples, but I can’t make this review too long. The point is that Harding ignores his own evidence. He argues by innuendo, and on occasion he just lets his imagine run away with itself. Steele’s dossier alleged that Trump had hired prostitutes while on a trip to Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s response was to crack a joke about Russian prostitutes being the best in the world. But to Harding it wasn’t a joke. As he writes:
Putin may have been sending a second message, darkly visible beneath the choppy, translucent waters of the first. It said: we’ve got the tape, Donald!
I wish I could say that this book was a joke. If you were going to write a parody of the collusion story, this is perhaps what it would look like. Unfortunately, Harding is deadly serious and I suspect that a lot of uncritical readers will soak it all up, not stopping to reflect on the awful methodology. So, I end on a word of warning. By all means read this book. But don’t do so in order to find out the truth about Donald Trump and Russia; do so in order to understand the methods currently being used to enflame Russian-Western relations. In that respect, Collusion is really quite revealing.
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Massive spoilers in this article for Metal Gear Solid: Phantom Pain
Back in 2013, Metal Gear Solid fans were presented with the barely-dressed character design for female sniper assassin Quiet. The reaction wasn’t entirely positive, but Hideo Kojima stepped forward to assure fans that there was a perfectly reasonable narrative justification for the character’s attire.
“I know there’s people concerning about ‘Quiet’ but don’t worry,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “I created her character as an antithesis to the women characters appeared in the past fighting game who are excessively exposed. ‘Quiet’ who doesn’t have a word will be teased in the story as well. But once you recognise the secret reason for her exposure, you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds.”
So, two years on Phantom Pain has been released. No one has forgotten Kojima’s words and we have the full story behind Quiet’s attire. Are we ashamed? Well, not for ourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HywkFVKGgbQ
It turns out that the reason Quiet wears that bikini outfit is because of a parasitic infection. This infection means that she has to breathe through her skin, using photosynthesis to absorb air, water, and nutrients. So, you see, Quiet doesn’t want to be exposed in the way she is. She has to be. And that’s empowering how exactly? She’s essentially a houseplant. Quiet is actually the second photosynthetic character in the series, the previous character being The End, but for some reason he gets to wear a lot more clothes than Quiet does. Probably his lack of displayable tits. |
I got lots of wonderful things, and they were all wrapped -so fun! I got:
a big sketch book (how did my match know I was on the last page of my old one? awesome timing)
a pack of Micron pens for drawing. My old ones had dried out, so also awesome!
A National Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography (digital). Perfect! I love doing nature photography and I'm a beginner. I've been trying to figure out how to get better and this is exactly what I needed.
A Falcon Guide to the Best Easy Day Hikes near my Oklahoma City. I love hiking and I just moved here, so this will be great for helping me explore the area and find good hiking spots!
Thank you so much Legotech! These were all very thoughtful gifts, you are awesome! |
This is a tale of New Jersey politics. So it is only fitting that it begins — as it will end — in a courtroom. It is the spring of 1978, and a boy wants to sue the government. Charles A. Poekel Jr., a suburban attorney, is staring across his desk at his client, a Livingston High School junior who’s trying to run for a minor office but has been disqualified because he can’t vote. The 16-year-old sits next to his parents, but he does most of the talking. He knows the names of all the county bosses and town committeemen. Poekel understands impatient ambition — he ran for Congress himself at the age of 28. But he’s never met anyone like this boy, David Wildstein.
“It is very unusual that someone of that age would be that all-consumed with politics,” Poekel recalls many years later. “It was like having a child prodigy as a musician, but he was a child prodigy as a politician. I would call him a political Mozart.”
Wildstein takes his case to court. He makes the local TV news, the Times, and the front page of the Livingston weekly paper, the West Essex Tribune, which has been covering his activities since middle school. (It straightforwardly reported his defection from the Democrats to the Republicans at the age of 12.) When the judge rejects his request, the boy remains defiant. “I am in no way over the hill,” he declares, “and can assure the voters of Livingston that they have only just begun to see the name of David Wildstein.”
Video: A Brief History of “Bridgegate”
Back at Livingston High, Wildstein is considered an oddball. He is chubby, with glasses, and a strident conservative. Wildstein doesn’t fit into any of the school’s cliques, but he hangs around the margins of the baseball team. He is a baseball nerd — loves the strategy, the way the game can be broken down into numbers — and acts as team statistician. Livingston is a championship contender, and the players are popular. Everyone loves the catcher, who is the president of the class a year behind Wildstein’s, a beefy jock with a shaggy haircut named Chris Christie.
That May, as Wildstein is trying to run for office, Christie makes the paper for socking a home run into a neighboring swimming pool. Christie’s middle-class family lives in a modest brick home on the other side of town from the Wildsteins, who own a successful manufacturing business and live across the street from the estate of Tom Kean, soon to be New Jersey’s governor. But Wildstein and Christie do cross paths, working together as volunteers on one of Kean’s campaigns and taking a road trip to a rally in Trenton. They are friendly, but then Christie is that way with everyone. He wears his ambition as amiably as a varsity jacket.
Wildstein’s ambition fits him awkwardly, like a grown-up suit a few sizes too large. When he’s a senior, he runs a write-in campaign for the school board on a platform of cracking down on drug use and vandalism. He submits endorsement letters to the local paper from fellow students and his social-studies teacher. The teacher promptly accuses Wildstein of “political manipulation,” claiming he was tricked into signing a letter he hadn’t written. Though they later issue a joint statement, saying the matter was “basically a misunderstanding,” Wildstein still finishes with just 37 votes.
Christopher Christie, class of 1980. Photo: Courtesy of the Livingston Public Library, NJ
So now it’s 1984. Ronald Reagan is running for reelection, “Born in the USA” is piping out of every radio, and Christie is graduating from the University of Delaware, where he ran the student government and met his future wife, Mary Pat Foster. Wildstein has returned home from Washington, D.C., where he attended college and worked as a congressional aide. He has been managing campaigns for Jersey politicians, including a state senator named Louis Bassano. In an era before ubiquitous computers, Wildstein pores over reams of precinct-level voting results, looking for angles. (“He would spend hours and hours and hours,” Bassano recalls. “I would walk into the office and there he is, looking over the figures, making notes, making notes.”) Wildstein has an obsession with New Jersey political lore, loves the old stories of clubhouse skulduggery.
When Wildstein says he plans to run for office himself, Bassano thinks it’s a bad idea — the kid has got tactical talent but a backroom personality. Wildstein proves him wrong, winning a seat on Livingston’s town council. Two years later, amid a racially tinged uproar over affordable housing, the Republicans win a majority on the council and elect Wildstein to the rotating position of mayor. He is just 25.
“He was quite a phenom,” says Chuck Hardwick, the Speaker of the New Jersey state assembly at the time, for whom Wildstein worked as an adviser. “The talk then was that he was going to be the first Jewish president of the United States.”
But Wildstein is preoccupied with being king of Livingston. “We used to call him the Wild Man,” says his former high-school classmate Leonard Sorge. “He had some wild ideas.” The post of mayor is a part-time position with little power, but he is always at town hall, meddling with the bureaucrats. He shows up early to monitor what time they come to work. Teachers at the high school think he visits an inordinate amount, chumming around with the kids in Key Club, for which he is an adviser.
“He was into everything, he wanted to know everything, and he had something to say about everything,” says Pat Sebold, a longtime Democratic officeholder from Livingston. “He was a major disaster.”
Visiting the high school, Wildstein allegedly tells a group of students that a certain township policeman is “a bad apple.” The cop sues him for defamation. The mayor verbally attacks a municipal judge, claiming that he “continues to take the side of criminals” because he released a pair of shoplifting suspects from Brooklyn. The judge’s admirers are outraged. “I look forward to the time when Livingston will again have a mayor who puts the township first and his own political ambitions second,” Todd Christie — Chris’s younger brother — writes to the Tribune.
Toward the end of his term, Wildstein organizes a coup against the Republican councilman who is supposed to rotate into the mayor’s office next. The councilman accuses him of “terror politics” and trickery. “David’s ploy must be criticized on two counts,” he tells the public. “Most importantly, it was wrong. Secondly, the scheme was doomed to backfire from the start.” That September, facing dim prospects, Wildstein announces that he is dropping his bid for reelection. Democrats retake the Livingston council, which remains in their control to this day.
“A lot of people say that it stays Democrat because of David,” Bassano says. “He would probably have done the party a lot more justice if he had stuck to electing other people.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in New Jersey, Chris Christie goes through a debacle of his own: a term on the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders full of mudslinging, infighting, and litigation, culminating in an ignominious last-place finish in his reelection bid. By the end of the 1990s, both Christie and Wildstein appear to be finished in electoral politics. Christie, an attorney, is back in private practice, working as a lobbyist. Wildstein is running his family’s company, Apache Mills, a leading manufacturer of doormats.
Christie and Wildstein share a laugh, during the third day of Fort Lee’s traffic gridlock.
On February 1, 2000, a crudely designed website appears on the internet, run by a person who goes by the name Wally Edge. The real Edge was a newspaper publisher, two-time Jersey governor, and tool of the Atlantic City machine of Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the inspiration of the Prohibition-era series Boardwalk Empire. The pseudonymous Edge is a purveyor of political gossip. It is actually Wildstein, hiding behind a characteristically obscure historical reference. The same personal attributes that were liabilities to him as a politician — his obsessiveness, his lack of tact, his fascination with personal conflict — prove to be well suited to the internet. The word blogging doesn’t yet exist, but that is what he aims to do, offering readers a mix of score-settling rumors, lobbyist chatter, trial balloons, and arcane trivia.
For the next decade, the true identity of Wally Edge is the subject of much speculation in political circles, but few guess it’s David Wildstein. He’s gotten married and moved to the town of Montville, where he lives in a brick McMansion on two wooded acres. He has been selling floor coverings and doing a little political consulting on the side. One of the politicians he has stayed in contact with is Bob Franks, who represented Livingston in the state assembly during Wildstein’s mayoral tenure. Franks is a brilliant strategist who mentored many operatives. By 2000, Franks is a congressman running a long-shot campaign for the U.S. Senate. In its early days, Wildstein’s site, PoliticsNJ, seems to exist, at least partly, to promote Franks’s candidacy. His regular column, “The Inside Edge,” defends Franks from his primary rivals’ attacks, suggesting they worked out a corrupt bargain to coordinate against him.
Wildstein’s agenda, though, proves to be larger than advancing any one candidate. In a posted mission statement, he says the site “means to inject our views into the political arena.” His biases, he admits, are personal: “We have favorites just like you, and there are some New Jersey pols we really dislike.” Wally Edge’s favorites include three operatives from the Franks campaign: Mike DuHaime, Bill Stepien, and Bill Baroni. All three will go on to become major players in New Jersey politics and key figures in the Chris Christie administration.
Wally Edge is not overtly partisan, though. As they say in baseball, he is a fan of the game. He disdains those he deems phonies and appreciates operators. (“Among those of us who pay inordinate attention to politics in New Jersey, Wally Edge had an unusual seat at the table,” says Robert Torricelli, the Democratic power broker known as “the Torch,” who was a U.S. senator at the time. “I always liked him because I was always one of his favorites.”) Wildstein would sometimes describe his audience as “people who get the joke.” The joke is that, beneath all the theatrics of ideology, politics is about people competing for status. In that sense — and in many others — our institutions of government are not so different from high school.
Chris Christie has found a new calling, too. He spends the 2000 campaign raising money and working as a lawyer for George W. Bush, drawing Wally Edge’s ire when he appears to be cooperating with one of Franks’s primary opponents. But then Bush appoints Christie to be a U.S. Attorney, and he begins to arrest public officeholders for corruption. In New Jersey, criminal investigations are considered to be politics by other means — that’s another part of the joke — and Wildstein is quick to appreciate how cannily Christie is positioning himself. In 2002, the website names him its “Politician of the Year.” It constantly touts his prospects for higher office, attaching “corruption-busting” before every mention of his name.
And there is so much corruption to bust! Christie obtains an indictment for Essex County executive James Treffinger, one of Franks’s old GOP-primary opponents, and has him handcuffed in front of his family home. PoliticsNJ is credited with the scoop and revels in Treffinger’s downfall. After he pleads guilty, the site publishes a Photoshopped picture of the politician in prison stripes. Christie later arrests developer Charles Kushner, a major Democratic contributor, who ultimately pleads guilty to making illegal campaign contributions and retaliating against a witness, his brother-in-law, by luring him into a videotaped encounter with a prostitute. (PoliticsNJ refers to him as a “budding filmmaker.”) Whenever Wally Edge finds out that Christie is investigating someone — as he frequently does, somehow — he writes that the target is “hearing the cellos,” a reference to the Jaws theme.
In 2004, Governor Jim McGreevey, a Democrat, starts hearing the cellos. An FBI informant has caught him on tape uttering “Machiavelli,” which is allegedly a code word signaling his complicity in an illegal fund-raising scheme. The governor hastily resigns, explaining that he is a “gay American” and has been carrying on an affair with a former aide. (PoliticsNJ has been dropping hints about the aide and his “unique skill set” for years.) Republican leaders then try to draft Christie to run for governor, and Edge has an authoritative description of Christie’s thinking as he considers, and then rejects, the opportunity. Christie will always deny leaking, but he definitely appreciates the site’s influence. Long after Wildstein has stopped blogging, Christie still calls him “Wally.”
Wally Edge has more power than David Wildstein ever did. Communicating almost exclusively by AOL Instant Messenger, Wildstein maintains a web of informants inside both parties. Over the years, PoliticsNJ evolves into a real news organization. The site hires a small staff of professional reporters, none of whom know their boss’s true identity. Wildstein turns out to be a good judge of talent. One of the website’s first hires is Steve Kornacki, who goes on to become a political analyst on MSNBC.
Wildstein has dreams of expanding his model into every state, but the site can never generate much revenue from its few ads. In 2007, he decides to sell the site to someone who can invest. An unlikely buyer materializes: Jared Kushner, Charles’s 26-year-old son. Wally Edge announces the sale with his own invocation of Machiavelli: “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
Wildstein’s email presented during hearings on the lane closures. Photo: Mel Evans/AP Photo
The Kushner family is also from Livingston. Charles’s reputation may be tarnished, but Jared has a plan to expand their influence by buying media properties, first in New York (he already owns the New York Observer) and now back home in New Jersey. Wildstein agrees to sell on two conditions: He wants to remain anonymous, and he wants to keep possession of Wally Edge’s AOL email account, which contains much information that might interest the Kushners. (“The repository of secrets that David collected is like nothing I’d ever seen,” says Jordan Lieberman, who managed the business side of PoliticsNJ for years.) Kushner agrees. He tells his employees at the Observer that they could learn something about digital media from Wally Edge, whom he admiringly calls “a wild man.” Wildstein swoons for Kushner, decides he is another prodigy. He ends up attending Kushner’s wedding to Ivanka Trump.
Kushner puts Wildstein in charge of building a national network, and they hire staff in 17 states. But it turns out statehouse gossip is hard to produce at scale. After the 2008 election and the real-estate crash, Kushner decides to abandon the project and lays off most of the staff. Wildstein goes back to running the New Jersey site. The 2009 governor’s race is coming up, and Kushner has a very personal interest in that, because Christie is on the ballot.
Kushner harbors a deep antipathy toward the prosecutor who locked up his father, and Wildstein knows how his new boss wants the race to be covered. “In 2009,” says a former Observer employee, “the site exists to destroy Chris Christie.” When Christie wins, though, the governor is forgiving: He has a job for Wally Edge. He needs an agent at the Port Authority. When Wildstein defects, sources say, the Kushners are furious. Someone leaks Edge’s true identity to the Newark Star-Ledger.
The near-universal reaction among the insiders he covered is: David who? But Wildstein is known to people who matter, especially Mike DuHaime, now Christie’s chief political strategist. Wildstein’s new post, at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, comes with a huge salary, by government standards, and the specially created title of director of interstate capital projects. It quickly becomes evident that Wildstein is not there to build bridges.
“Wildstein has been waiting his whole life to get into a massive government bureaucracy,” says a former colleague, “with all kinds of nooks and crannies and levers.”
Why would Christie want to turn David Wildstein into a power broker? The Port Authority may look like a boring bureaucracy, but it’s really a self-propelled patronage machine. Every time you cross the Hudson River, or land at one of the region’s airports, or swipe a MetroCard at the World Trade Center transit hub, a coin rings in the Port Authority’s coffers. It has a 1,700-member police force, an army of engineers and lawyers, and the capacity to spend billions of dollars on construction projects. The governors of New York and New Jersey jointly control the authority, and the two sides clash eternally. The New Jersey faction is convinced that it is being cheated out of its fair share of the budget.
Wildstein’s direct boss at the authority is Baroni, his close friend from the Franks campaign, but Wildstein is seen as Christie’s inside man. (“He came directly — like a missile — out of the governor’s office,” says a former Port Authority executive.) Wildstein meets frequently with Christie’s advisers, DuHaime and the other Franks-campaign veteran Stepien, and more occasionally with the governor himself.
“When David Wildstein walked into a room, it was clear that Chris Christie was represented,” says Torricelli, who dealt with the Port Authority as an attorney for an auto-importing facility that had a lease dispute with the agency. “I thought they had rather direct communication.”
Wildstein can imagine many creative ways to put the machinery of the Port Authority to use. (Stepien will later allegedly tell the governor that Wildstein came up with “50 crazy ideas a week.”) And because the Port Authority is an independent agency, Christie can maintain a deniable distance. When the Port Authority needs to raise tolls, Wildstein and Baroni come up with an elaborate ruse to make it look like Christie is heroically fighting the bureaucracy. When the city of Bayonne is about to go bankrupt, they orchestrate a land deal that bails it out, removing the burden from Christie.
Inside the authority, Wildstein makes it plain that he is watching out for the governor’s interests. The civil servants who work at the authority are accustomed to some political interference, but Wildstein’s conduct shocks them. (“It was extreme,” says a former port official. “Full intimidation: ‘I’m Christie’s guy. I rule.’ ”) Co-workers report that Wildstein is seen poking around the office before dawn. He shows up at meetings he isn’t invited to and begins tapping notes on his tablet. In an email to an aide, Scott Rechler, a powerful board member from New York, references the widespread concern that Wildstein may be eavesdropping on phone conversations.
Wildstein clashes with the authority’s professional department heads and conspires to purge low-level employees, replacing them with his own people, who are assumed to be spies. His powers reach into every area: port operations, the airports, the police. There is a rumor that he uses an emergency-access lane to cut the line every morning at the Lincoln Tunnel. One day, during a routine tour of the George Washington Bridge, he notices a set of orange cones are blocking off three toll lanes, offering direct access to drivers approaching the bridge from neighboring Fort Lee. He is annoyed and wants to know why the town appears to have its own entryway. The bridge’s manager tells him there is a long-standing deal with the mayor. Wildstein apparently files the observation away.
By 2013, everyone in Christie’s orbit is working toward one objective: the White House. He is going to run, for sure, and the only question is whether Republicans are ready for a blunt-spoken, sometimes rude northeastern populist with a flair for social media. Christie first has to get past his reelection campaign in New Jersey, but that’s just a formality. He’s so popular that the Democrats only put up a token opponent. In order to demonstrate his centrist appeal, though, Christie’s strategists want to run up the score by winning endorsements from as many Democratic officeholders as possible.
The endorsement push is coordinated by Stepien, Christie’s campaign manager, and Bridget Kelly, a state official who runs the governor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. (The two are also quietly dating.) The governor’s allies at the Port Authority are key players in their strategy. Drawing on a list of targeted mayors, Baroni raids a JFK hangar filled with debris from the Twin Towers and distributes pieces of steel to towns around New Jersey for use in memorials. He and Wildstein conduct so many VIP tours of ground zero that they demand — and receive — a new entry gate for their convenience.
The courtship is not subtle: Mark Sokolich, the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, later recounts that when Wildstein offered his family a tour, he repeatedly referred to Sokolich as “the one I was told to be nice to.” But after hemming and hawing, the mayor eventually makes it clear to Kelly’s office that he’s not going to back the governor. Soon after, in what prosecutors will describe as an act of political reprisal, Wildstein and Kelly start discussing a scheme. On August 12, 2013, Kelly checks with her staff one final time to make sure they won’t win Sokolich over. Early the next morning, she sends Wildstein a terse email.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
“Got it,” Wildstein replies.
A month later, on the first day of school in Fort Lee, Wildstein arrives at the bridge at dawn to supervise the implementation of his plan, which he calls a “traffic study.” All the Port Authority employees involved know something strange and colossally stupid is afoot, but no one says anything, because they are all terrified of Wildstein. The cones are reconfigured so that Fort Lee’s access is cut to a single lane. Inside the bridge’s command center, via a live video feed, Wildstein watches as the rush-hour traffic begins to build. Soon, Fort Lee is totally gridlocked: Buses can’t get children to school. “Is it wrong that I’m smiling?” Kelly, a divorced mother of four, later texts Wildstein. “I feel badly about the kids … I guess.” He responds that they are the children of Democrats.
A Port Authority policeman named Chip Michaels texts Wildstein a report from the streets: “Its fkd up here.” Michaels is another guy from Livingston. He and his brother, a Republican lobbyist, have known both Wildstein and Christie for years. Michaels picks up Wildstein and takes him on a drive to observe the traffic. Then they go to a diner, where they have breakfast and discuss Christie’s presidential hopes.
The first day of the traffic pileup.
All right, so now it’s September 11, the most solemn day of the whole political calendar, and Chris Christie — the candidate who never neglects to mention he was appointed U.S. Attorney the day before the terrorist attacks — is yukking it up with Wildstein at the World Trade Center site. They’re there for the annual memorial service, but it’s also the third day of the closures, and Wildstein has been monitoring the traffic, along with Mayor Sokolich’s increasingly desperate messages to Baroni. (“Radio silence,” Wildstein orders.) Photos of the event show Wildstein standing next to the governor, checking his phone, and sharing a hearty laugh with Christie, Baroni, and others. No one knows what’s so funny, but Wildstein will later allege that they discussed the bridge. It is the last time he and the governor will see each other in person, at least publicly.
By the next day, Sokolich and others in Fort Lee are screaming about public safety and political payback. The “Road Warrior” columnist for the Bergen Record contacts the Port Authority about the mysterious gridlock, and Wildstein forwards the message to Kelly, who is heading down the shore with the governor, responding to a major fire on the Seaside boardwalk. No one knows what she tells Christie, but the lane closures continue. The Record column draws the attention of the Port Authority’s executive director, Pat Foye, a New York appointee. This is the first he’s heard of a “traffic study,” and he freaks out. He orders the lanes reopened, saying the “hasty and ill-advised” closure is both dangerous and illegal. A couple of weeks later, the email from Foye makes its way to reporter Ted Mann at The Wall Street Journal. Wildstein presumes Foye is waging factional warfare, rather than worrying about ambulances and school buses stuck in traffic.
“Holy shit, who does he think he is, Capt. America?” Stepien texts Wildstein.
“Bad guy,” Wildstein says. “Welcome to our world.”
The Christie administration brushes aside accusations of its involvement in causing the gridlock as an absurd conspiracy theory, but the Journal continues to pursue the story, and other outlets follow. Legislative hearings are called, subpoenas are issued, and the governor and his aides hold crisis-management meetings. As late as December 2, Christie is still trying to laugh off suggestions of retaliation. “I worked the cones, actually,” he says sarcastically at a press conference. “Unbeknownst to everybody, I was actually the guy out there in overalls and a hat.”
One day, Wildstein disappears from his office at the Port Authority headquarters, never to return. He can hear the cellos.
In early December, the dormant Wikipedia account Montclair0055 — whose sparse prior contributions include creating a page for the state senator who gave Wildstein his first paying job at age 12 and laudatory additions to the entries for Baroni and DuHaime — stirs to life. As the clamor of the investigation intensifies, Montclair0055 writes late into the night on subjects that mirror Wildstein’s obsessions, adding a critical entry for an obscure Democratic Party hack who was one of Wally Edge’s favorite targets and another about “the Curse of the 38th,” a phrase (used exclusively on PoliticsNJ) to describe the voting history of a Bergen County legislative district. The editor revises the page of Steve Kornacki to note that he got his start at PoliticsNJ. Montclair0055 seems determined to ensure that the picaresque characters and episodes that so enthralled Wildstein are preserved for posterity. Many of the contributions are later deleted by other Wikipedia editors on the grounds of insignificance.
The night of December 4, Wildstein has dinner in New Brunswick with his friend Mike Drewniak, the governor’s spokesman, and tells him that Christie was aware of the lane closings as they were happening. The message is implicit: He won’t go down alone. The governor’s chief counsel calls Wildstein and tells him his resignation is required immediately.
Wildstein’s subpoena from the state legislative committee arrives on December 12, and he hires a criminal-defense attorney. They could fight to quash it, but instead he hands over 900 pages of emails, texts, and documents. One of those emails is the fateful one from Kelly: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Those eight words are all it takes to ruin several lives.
You can imagine Christie, the former prosecutor, wondering: Why didn’t she just use the goddamn phone? His reputation as an incorruptible truth-teller is rendered ridiculous. Even his hero Bruce Springsteen, in a hilarious knife-twisting gesture, duets with Jimmy Fallon on Late Night in a song about the traffic jam set to the tune of “Born to Run.”*
Christie holds a two-hour press conference, in which he says he was “blindsided” and “humiliated” by the actions of his staff. “Let me just clear something up, okay, about my childhood friend David Wildstein,” he says scornfully. “We didn’t travel in the same circles in high school. You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don’t know what David was doing during that period of time.” Christie’s office later circulates a memo to supporters that describes Wildstein as untrustworthy, citing, among other things, the high-school dispute with his social-studies teacher and his odd habit of registering web addresses for the names of his enemies. In January 2015, Wildstein reaches a deal to plead guilty and testify. Baroni and Kelly are indicted four months later.
Christie decides to run for president anyway. He announces his candidacy at Livingston High School. Inside a sweltering gym bedecked with championship banners, the governor is received by a boisterous contingent of his old friends from the class of 1980. “Lots of people have asked me over the course of last week, why here?” he says. “Why here? Because everything started here for me. The confidence. The education. The friends. The family. And the love that I’ve always felt for and from this community.” Outside the gym, protesters picket the speech, waving signs that read BULLY.
On the campaign trail, he keeps getting incredulous questions about the juvenile traffic-jam prank. He drops out after a poor finish in New Hampshire and endorses Donald Trump. This puts him in the awkward company of the nominee’s son-in-law and strategic adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner finally bests his father’s accuser, crushing Christie’s hopes of the vice-presidential nomination, but Christie still retains an important place in Trump’s small circle of loyalists. If Trump wins, you can assume there will be a place for him in the administration, perhaps as attorney general.
That prospect must make Wildstein extremely nervous. After the scandal, he moves to Florida, sells the house in Montville, and loses a precipitous amount of weight. When he arrives at court to enter his guilty plea, the reporters covering the case hardly recognize him. By the terms of his deal with prosecutors, he is expected to be the star witness against Kelly and Baroni, who, if convicted, would likely face two to three years in prison. It is rumored that their trial will bring significant further disclosures. Wildstein, the collector of secrets, is said to have walked out of the Port Authority with an enormous amount of documentary evidence, including the hard drive to his former friend Baroni’s computer.
Looming over the trial is the question of Christie’s level of involvement in his old classmate’s crazy bridge idea. Prosecutors have filed a sealed memorandum, listing people who were aware of the scheme; it is widely presumed that Christie’s name is on it. If he is called to testify, the governor will have to tell his story under oath. At a minimum, the spectacle will be embarrassing for Christie and threatening to any future chance of a cabinet post. At worst, the trial could destroy what is left of a career he’d once thought could plausibly culminate in the presidency.
Among veteran observers of New Jersey politics, there is an ongoing debate about who is most to blame for Chris Christie’s downfall. There are essentially two theories. One holds that Christie, a seemingly intelligent adult, would never be so idiotic as to authorize a retaliatory traffic jam. The other holds that Wildstein, a seemingly intelligent adult, would never be so idiotic as to go forward with his scheme without Christie’s approval. The trial is scheduled to begin on September 19. Soon we may hear the rest of the tale and, at long last, get the joke.
*This article appears in the September 19, 2016, issue of New York Magazine.
*This article has been corrected to reflect that Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon performed a song about the traffic closure on Late Night, not SNL or The Tonight Show. |
Image caption Waking up too early and having problems settling back to sleep may have a negative impact on the heart, a study shows
People who have trouble drifting off to sleep may be at increased risk of heart failure, researchers say.
The study, published in the European Heart Journal, followed more than 50,000 people for 11 years.
Scientists found those who suffered several nights of poor sleep were more likely to develop the condition, in which the heart fails to pump properly.
Experts say further research is needed to see if a lack of sleep causes heart failure or the link is more complex.
"Luckily many of the things that reduce the chance of heart failure also reduce insomnia; good diet, exercise, weight loss and not smoking Dr Tim Chico, Univeristy of Sheffield
Scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology looked at more than 50,000 people aged between 20 and 89. At the beginning of the study, none of them were known to have heart failure.
In this condition the muscles of the heart are often too out of shape to do their job properly - they may be too weak or too stiff to pump blood around the body at the right pressure.
More than 750,000 people in the UK have heart failure and for the majority there is no cure.
People with the disorder may feel increasingly breathless and exhausted.
And as heart failure worsens, it can be difficult to get a full night's rest - but the Norwegian study is one of few to investigate whether poor sleepers without the condition are at risk of getting it in later life.
'Stress hormones'
During the research, the participants were asked whether they had any difficulties getting to sleep or staying asleep and whether they felt fully restored after a night's slumber.
People who had trouble falling asleep and remaining asleep each night were three times more likely to develop heart failure than those who reported no trouble sleeping.
Those who experienced substandard sleep that failed to leave them fully refreshed were also at risk.
And this link between a bad night's sleep and heart failure remained true despite researchers taking smoking, obesity and other well known triggers of insomnia and heart problems into account.
The researchers say it is unclear exactly why poor sleep and heart failure are associated in this way.
Dr Laugsand, lead author of the study, said: "We don't know whether insomnia truly causes heart failure. But if it does, the good thing is it is a potentially treatable condition.
"So evaluating sleep problems might provide additional information in the prevention of heart failure."
He suggests the lack of sleep may provoke harmful responses in the body.
Heart Failure In this condition the heart fails to pump blood around the body effectively. Most commonly this is due to damage to the muscles of the heart because of: Heart attacks
High blood pressure
Excessive alcohol
Cardiomyopathies - a group of diseases that affect heart muscle
Some people are born with heart failure British Heart Foundation
"When you have insomnia your body releases stress hormones which in turn may effect the heart in a negative way," he said..
The same team of researchers have previously reported a link between people prone to insomnia and heart attacks.
'Unpleasant condition'
And diabetes, depression and poor brain function have all been linked to missing restful hours in bed.
Dr Tim Chico, senior clinical lecturer at the University of Sheffield said: "This is an association study - it links insomnia to heart failure, but does not prove that insomnia causes heart failure or vice versa. Studies like this raise interesting suggestions that need further work to examine.
"Insomnia is a very unpleasant condition, but there are effective lifestyle changes that can reduce it, such as weight loss and exercise.
"Luckily many of the things that reduce the chance of heart failure also reduce insomnia - good diet, exercise, weight loss and not smoking."
June Davison, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This research shows a link between insomnia and your heart, but this doesn't mean sleepless nights cause heart failure.
"It's well known that getting enough sleep is vital for your mental, physical and emotional wellbeing.
"Trouble drifting off can be helped by taking a warm bath to relax, or avoiding caffeine and heavy meals too close to the end of the day.
"If lack of sleep is becoming a problem and affecting your daily life, have a chat with your GP." |
Well, that reality stands true even today. Kejriwal is still the leader of a city (which lusts for free bijli, paani, and wi-fi), and the recent revolts within AAP, and all that dirty linen being washed out openly in public by AAP, shows his sheer inability to take everyone together. That is precisely why Shanti Bhushan said that he lacks organizational ability and should not be a Chief Minister. His prophecy is becoming true within the very forst month. Just ten days after Kejriwal boastfully sermonized to others that AAP workers should not have 'ahankaar' (while at the same time branding BJP and Congress as 'ahankaari' parties), it comes out that the most 'ahankaari' guy in AAP is he himself as he cannot tolerate any other founder member in AAP attaining some status within the party. When AAP's own pet 'Lokpal' pointed out the one-man-one-post rule being violated by Kejriwal, and objected to his holding dual posts, he was brushed aside by Kejriwal and his coterie. What does this show? It only shows that all that talk of Jan Lokpal by Kejriwal and his coterie was a plain bluff to milk Anna Hazare's ideals to gain power in Delhi. Can someone who brazenly insults own party Lokpal ever be trusted to work towards a national Jan Lokpal? |
Image caption People took the streets again on Friday in Cairo, the traditional day of protest
On chilly, rain-soaked streets, activists turned out for a peaceful march to al-Ittihadiya, the presidential palace in Cairo's well-off Heliopolis district.
"Step down, step down, Muslim Brotherhood!" and "Freedom is for us and for you!" were among the chants.
Some carried placards showing a red cross through the face of President Mohammed Morsi.
Meanwhile, in Tahrir Square, the scene of renewed clashes between protesters and police over the past week, numbers swelled to several thousand after Friday prayers.
Rallies against Mr Morsi also took place in cities along the Suez Canal where he imposed emergency measures to try to halt recent violence. Demonstrators carried pictures of young men killed in the fighting.
More than 60 people died in the latest wave of unrest that added to the sense of a deep crisis in Egypt.
The numbers at the latest demonstrations were lower than expected and greatly diminished from those seen two years ago, at the height of the Egyptian uprising.
However, they were another expression of the anger and disappointment that many Egyptians feel over the performance of their new Islamist leader who narrowly won last June's presidential election.
'New authoritarianism'
Mr Morsi's critics accuse him of betraying the values of the 2011 revolt and imposing a new brand of authoritarianism that concentrates power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, the religious organisation from which he stems.
Image caption Protesters say they want to purge the country's judiciary and interior ministry
The main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front (NSF), demands a national unity government and amendments to the new Islamist-tinged constitution. Revolutionary groups also call for reforms.
"We're not for or against Morsi. He just hasn't fulfilled his electoral promises," says Mohammed Adel, a leader of the 6 April Youth Movement which helped organise the latest protests.
"We want the constitution to be changed, we want the judiciary and interior ministry to be cleansed and we want violence by the state to stop."
The president's supporters argue that his detractors refuse to accept the results of a free and fair election and are trying to seize power through the street.
Mr Morsi has not ruled out a committee to re-examine the rushed new constitution but says a new government will be decided after parliamentary elections in a few months.
"After the elections we will have a parliament chosen by the people. It is the duty of parliament to make a new government," he told journalists on Wednesday.
Al-Azhar agreement
This week brought a stern warning from the head of the military that continuing political strife could cause the collapse of the state.
Egypt's army 490,000 active soldiers
Military governed between February 2011 until June 2012
Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (pictured above) is head of the armed forces and minister of defence
Military's budget not made public or scrutinised by parliament. It is overseen by National Defence Committee made up of military chiefs and cabinet members
US military aid to Egypt $1.3bn
According to some estimates army controls 40% of economy Profile: Abdul Fattah al-Sisi Suez: the city fighting a curfew Q&A: Egypt's riots and political crisis Black Bloc anarchists emerge
Afterwards, Egypt's Grand Imam summoned rival political factions, youth groups and church officials to the headquarters of al-Azhar, the 1,000-year-old institution that is the top seat of Sunni Islam.
They agreed to sign up to a charter condemning violence and committed to dialogue as a way to end the crisis.
It prompted the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Mohammed ElBaradei, a leader of the NSF, to speak of his "optimism" while the head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, Saad el-Katatni, declared it "a historic day".
The agreement appeared to help take away the impetus for further mass protests on what activists had called "The Friday of Salvation".
A lot of Egyptians are also weary of demonstrations or are worried about their personal safety.
Egypt on edge
The economy was already teetering before the latest turmoil. Tourism and foreign investment have fallen dramatically. The central bank has been forced to drain currency reserves to prop up the Egyptian pound.
"The country is going down. It's worse now than under the old president," said one man observing protesters at the entrance to Tahrir Square.
Another bystander chimed in: "[The former president, Hosni] Mubarak was lousy and he was a thief but at least we had security and we were living".
Parts of central Cairo have become no-go areas for many ordinary people with reports of a spike in sexual assaults and increased crime and lawlessness.
The Nile-side luxury hotel, the Semiramis InterContinental, has been closed after masked men looted it early on Tuesday, terrifying guests.
"This is a disaster," said small businessman, Gamal.
"I have loans that I can't repay. We need tourism to come back, we need the economy to come back and we need a strong leader who can make the right decisions." |
2 Journalists Killed During Live Broadcast In Virginia; Suspect Has Died
Enlarge this image toggle caption DAVID MANNING/Reuters /Landov DAVID MANNING/Reuters /Landov
(This post was last updated at 3:43 p.m. ET.)
Two journalists for Virginia TV news station WDBJ were killed by a gunman Wednesday morning while they were broadcasting live at a waterfront shopping center about an hour southeast of Roanoke, Va.
Reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward were doing a live report from Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta when a gunman opened fire, killing Parker and Ward and injuring Vicki Gardner, the head of a local Chamber of Commerce who was being interviewed. Gardner is now in stable condition, hospital officials say.
A suspect in the shooting was quickly identified — in part because of video taken at the scene — as Vester Lee Flanagan, 41, a former reporter for the station who was also known as Bryce Williams.
toggle caption Twitter
Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton says Flanagan has died. He had suffered a gunshot wound when he was taken into custody by Virginia State Police after a car chase that came hours after the shooting; authorities earlier said Flanagan was in critical condition.
At a 2:15 p.m. news conference, Overton said that less than an hour earlier, Flanagan had "died at Fairfax Inova Hospital in Northern Virginia, as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."
In an earlier statement, Virginia State Police described how the shooting suspect had fled and eventually reached Interstate 66, with police in pursuit.
The suspect refused to stop, ran off the road and crashed. When police approached the vehicle, they found he had suffered a "gunshot wound." The man, police said, was taken to a hospital with "life-threatening injuries."
In an interview with CNN, Jeffrey A. Marks, WDBJ-TV's general manager, said Flanagan was hired as a reporter, but about two years ago he was fired. During a separate broadcast on his network, Marks said Flanagan had filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after he was fired.
The station reports:
"This happened during a live broadcast around 6:45 a.m. ... "Adam was 27-years-old. Alison just turned 24. "Both were from the WDBJ7 viewing area."
Video shows the camera panning to Parker in the middle of an interview as the gunman opens fire. Parker can be heard screaming.
The final image in the video shows the camera falling down and the feet of the presumed gunman walking out of the frame.
Hours after the shooting, a video from the gunman's perspective was posted to Twitter and Facebook under the name Bryce Williams. It shows a gunman quietly walking up on the live broadcast, looking toward the photographer (whose back was turned) and then pointing his gun at Parker before opening fire.
A man claiming to be Flanagan also sent a 23-page fax to ABC News, in which he said he had "been a human powder keg for a while" and took action after the Charleston, S.C., church shootings in June.
In addition to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have sent personnel from Roanoke.
Update at 2:25 p.m. ET: Updates From News Conference
Former WDBJ employee Vester Lee Flanagan was taken into police custody after his car crashed into the median on I-66 in Virginia.
Franklin County Sheriff Bill Overton says Flanagan had switched cars, leaving his Ford Mustang at a Roanoke airport and driving away in a Chevrolet Sonic that he had rented before the attack. But the authorities tracked him as he drove up Interstate 81 and then onto I-66, and a police officer trailed him before activating her cruiser's emergency lights upon the arrival of backup.
Overton says Flanagan died at 1:30 p.m. ET, after being taken to the hospital with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Update at 1:34 p.m. ET. A 'Senseless Tragedy':
In a written statement, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said that he was "heartbroken over this morning's senseless tragedy."
He said that as the state reflects on the shootings, residents should also begin thinking about how to prevent these kinds of things from happening.
"Keeping guns out of the hands of people who would use them to harm our family, friends and loved ones is not a political issue; it is a matter of ensuring that more people can come home safely at the end of the day," McAuliffe said. "We cannot rest until we have done whatever it takes to rid our society of preventable gun violence that results in tragedies like the one we are enduring today."
During his regular press briefing at the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said this was yet another example of gun violence that has become prevalent.
There are things that Congress can do, he said, to have a "tangible impact."
Update at 12:12 p.m. ET. Suspect Injured?:
Earlier today, WDBJ-TV, citing law enforcement officials, said the suspect had killed himself on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County. The station later retracted that report, saying Flanagan was injured but still alive and in critical condition.
Update at 12:07 p.m. ET. Suspect Filed EEOC Complaint:
On the same Twitter account that posted video of the shooting, Flanagan also made it clear that he was angry at the reporter and the photographer.
He said he had filed a report with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Jeffrey A. Marks, WDBJ-TV's general manager, confirmed that Flanagan had filed that EEOC complaint.
Citing confidentiality provisions, the EEOC said it could not comment.
Update at 11:20 a.m. ET. Presumed Suspect Posts Video:
The presumed suspect in the shooting of the two WDBJ journalists posted a video of the attack filmed from his vantage point to Twitter and Facebook.
The video, which has since been taken down, shows the gunman walk up behind cameraman Adam Ward. Ward does not appear to be aware the gunman is there. As the cameraman pans to the left and the camera is pointed at reporter Alison Parker, the gunman raises a handgun and aims it at Parker,who also did not seem aware of the shooter's presence.
The gunman fires at least six rounds.
Parker runs out of the frame before the video goes black.
The Twitter account has also been suspended.
Update at 10:39 a.m. ET. Authorities Identify Suspect:
CNN is reporting law enforcement authorities know the identity of the presumed gunman. And the network is reporting that the woman being interviewed in the video survived.
"The woman being interviewed, Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, was shot in the back and is in surgery, said Barb Nocera, the chamber's special projects manager."
The Stauton, Va., area News Leader is reporting: |
TOKYO — He was celebrated as a prolific musical genius whose compositions appeared in popular video games and the competition routine of a top figure skater in the coming Sochi Olympics. His deafness won him praise as Japan’s modern-day Beethoven.
It turns out his magnum opus was his own masquerade.
On Thursday, Japan learned that one of its most popular musical figures, Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, had staged an elaborate hoax in which someone else had secretly written his most famous compositions, and that he had perhaps even faked his hearing disability.
Across a nation long captivated by Western classical music, people reacted with remorse, outrage and even the rare threat of a lawsuit after Mr. Samuragochi’s revelations that he had hired a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The anger turned to disbelief when the ghostwriter himself came forward to accuse Mr. Samuragochi of faking his deafness, apparently to win public sympathy and shape the Beethoven persona.
The scandal began on Wednesday, when Mr. Samuragochi publicly confessed that someone else had written his most famous works. These include Symphony No. 1 “Hiroshima,” about the 1945 atomic bombing of his home city, which became a classical music hit in Japan; the theme music for the video games Resident Evil and Onimusha; and Sonatina for Violin, which the Japanese Olympic figure skater Daisuke Takahashi is scheduled to use in his performance in Sochi. |
As federal authorities continue to investigate Anthony Weiner's sexually charged online chats with an underage girl, DailyMail.com has learned that a grand jury could hear the case against the ex-congressman as soon as the end of the month.
The FBI, the New York Police Department, and US attorneys in New York and North Carolina opened investigations into Weiner's conduct in late September, after DailyMail.com reported that the former politician carried on a months-long online relationship with a 15-year-old high school girl.
Weiner has already been hit with a federal subpoena for his cell phone, CNN reported last month.
The feds are apparently looking to move quickly - a federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com.
A federal grand jury is expected to hear allegations against disgraced Anthony Weiner in the next few weeks, sources tell DailyMail.com
The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl (pictured), who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January
In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard'
The timing of the potential hearing - shortly before the US presidential election - could cause a political headache for Hillary Clinton, whose top aide Huma Abedin is still officially married to Weiner, 52.
Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, after he was caught sending a suggestive photo of himself to another woman with his four-year-old son in the background.
Abedin and Weiner continue to share an apartment, and Clinton's political opponents have sought to tie the presidential candidate to the scandal-plagued former congressman.
After DailyMail.com reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, Donald Trump called on Clinton to return any campaign donations from Weiner.
Legal experts say there are several possible avenues prosecutors might pursue if they are looking to build a case against Weiner under either New York State or federal laws.
Celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina told DailyMail.com that Weiner could potentially face a misdemeanour of endangering the welfare of a child, which could carry up to a year in jail.
Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin (pictured on October 15 with her son), is still officially married to Weiner, 52
Abedin announced in August that she was separating from Weiner, though they continue to share an apartment
'All you really have to do is look at the messages there to substantiate 90 per cent of her story,' said Tacopina.
Other legal experts said he could have violated federal laws against sending obscene materials to minors.
Weiner's conversations with the girl also drew criticism from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said during a press conference: 'If the reports are true, it's possibly criminal and it's sick.'
The DailyMail.com first reported on Weiner's conversations with the 15-year-old girl, who he traded photos and sexy messages with for several months starting in January.
In the messages, which were obtained by the Dailymail.com, Weiner repeatedly complimented the girl's body, told her that she made him 'hard', and invited her to chat with him on the video-messaging application Skype.
One message said: 'I would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'
Weiner and the girl used several anonymous messaging apps, like the one pictured above, where every line of text - and the sender's name - disappear after the message is opened. In one message he told he would 'bust that tight p***y so hard'
The message continues, and Weiner says he would bust that tight p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week'. Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter
The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him
Weiner began talking to the girl in January, after she messaged him on Twitter.
In the messages, the girl told Weiner she was in high school and discussed her school activities and newly acquired learner's permit.
The girl told DailyMail.com in an interview that she and Weiner also spoke over Skype, where the ex-congressman asked her to get undressed and masturbate in front of him and engage in teacher-student 'roleplaying' scenarios.
In a statement to DailyMail.com, Weiner said that he was sorry for having poor judgment with his online conversations and said he might have been the victim of a 'hoax' in this scenario.
This is far from the first time Weiner has been entangled in a sexting scandal.
He resigned from congress in 2011 after he was caught sending photos of his crotch to a female college student, and admitted to sexting with several other women during his marriage.
In 2013, he ran for New York City mayor, but his campaign tanked after it came out that he had been exchanging sexual messages with yet another college student.
This past summer, Abedin announced that she was separating from Weiner after the New York Post reported that he had sent shirtless photos to another woman, including one that showed his four-year-old son in the background. |
Fans who can't make it to University of Phoenix Stadium for 2014 Arizona Cardinals Training Camp presented by Hyundai can follow the team's practice on Tuesday, July 29 on NFL Network's Inside Training Camp Live.
Former Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner and anchor Amber Theoharis will host NFL Network's coverage from the team's practice from 2:00 to 4:30 p.m.
Continuing through August 5, NFL Network's Inside Training Camp Live hits the field at 7:00 a.m., providing nine hours of live coverage each day. As teams report to camp and take the field, NFL Network will provide live look-ins at team practices, interviews with players and coaches, analysis from former players, head coaches and front office executives, and live reports from reporters stationed at various training camp sites.
Each day, NFL Total Access airs at 4:00 p.m., followed by a two-hour Training Camp Primetime at 5:00 p.m. recapping all of the day's action and providing up-to-date information and analysis. |
Legalisation of no-fault divorce leads to 350,000 couples splitting in a year since 2010 in world's most populous Catholic country
The number of Brazilians divorcing has reached a record high, according to the country's IBGE statistics agency.
It said on Monday that there were more than 350,000 divorces last year – 46% more than in 2010 after Brazil's congress made it quicker and easier to divorce in the most populous Catholic nation on earth.
Before 2010, Brazilians had to be separated with a judge's approval for a year before they could seek a divorce. But after an amendment to the country's constitution in 2010, such a separation no longer became necessary. The agency said this had prompted the record number of divorces, which have been monitored in Brazil since 1984.
Currently, as long as there is agreement between the divorcees and there are no underage children or incapable persons involved, a divorce may be performed by a notary. Divorce only became legal in Brazil in 1977. |
Silence on human rights encourages despots, discourages activists.
President Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on April 3, 2017. (Photo11: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)
To the extent that the Trump administration's foreign policy has started to take shape — and it seems to be a work in progress — advocacy of human rights and democracy doesn't seem to be very high on the agenda.
If anything, Trump's "America First" foreign policy is looking more like a sort of realpolitik, where ethical and moral considerations are shed in favor of achieving transactional "wins" on jobs and security.
The president seems drawn to autocrats and cynical about promoting cherished American ideals. Asked in February about Russian President Vladimir Putin's reputation for ordering political killings, Trump didn't miss a beat: "Do you think our country is so innocent?"
Last month, the administration lifted human rights conditions on the sale of F-16 fighters to Bahrain, where political dissidents are locked up without due process. And the annual State Department report on global human rights was issued without fanfare or the usual news conference.
This week, Trump gushed about Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when the two met at the White House. Sisi overthrew his democratically elected predecessor in 2013 and has brutally cracked down on political dissent, a sure route to fomenting more violent extremism. "He's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation," Trump said, vigorously shaking Sisi's hand, something he didn't do with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a staunch ally, two weeks earlier.
It's true, as the foreign policy realists like to point out, that America can't right every wrong in the world. Trump needn't go as far as President George W. Bush, whose grandiose vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East, by military invasion if necessary, led to the fiasco in Iraq. Or even as far as President Carter, who made human rights a cornerstone of his foreign policy.
But there’s nothing wrong with private nudges, public rhetoric and material incentives to make clear America stands for basic freedoms. There’s no reason to cede the moral high ground and every reason to try to hold it.
Silence on human rights discourages the pro-democracy activists who put their lives on the line for the rights Americans take for granted — and encourages the bad actors such as Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
As Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Wednesday, it's probably no coincidence that a horrific chemical weapons attack occurred in Syria soon after U.S. officials suggested that Assad could stay in power. (Later in the day, Trump condemned the attack but didn't say what he'd do about it.)
Which brings us to the meetings between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping planned for Thursday and Friday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The White House has said that human rights will be raised discreetly, if at all.
Xi's regime imprisons peaceful critics, detains people accused of violating Communist Party rules, holds hundreds of activists for years without trial, and engages in widespread Internet censorship. For all this, Xi avoids accountability to the Chinese people.
Shouldn't America at least advocate — for a moment during the discussion of trade imbalances, currency rates and North Korea — doctrines of freedom for the leader of the world's largest, repressive regime? Would it do any harm if Trump diplomatically pressed Xi to release Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, whose "crime," for which he's serving an 11-year prison sentence, was to circulate a petition for placing human rights, democracy and the rule of law at the core of the Chinese political system?
As much as Trump might disdain moralizing, part of his job is to send the message that America cares about its values.
USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.
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Ad blockers are often painted as the enemy of online publishers, but sometimes things are more complicated.
AdBlock Plus, for example, just announced that they’re working with startup Flattr on a new product that allows readers to pay the publishers who produce the content they read, listen to and watch.
As a result of the partnership, AdBlock Plus said it has also made a small investment of undisclosed size in Flattr .
Together, the two companies have created a new product called Flattr Plus. Like Flattr itself, it allows users to allocate a monthly budget that they want to pay publishers. Unlike Flattr, users don’t have to click a button to “Flattr” a website — instead, it will automatically track their browsing activity and distribute the money based on their engagement.
It sounds somewhat similar to the way a company like Spotify distributes subscription fees to musicians — except it’s not just for artists on a single website or app.
Plus, the question of exactly how to calculate engagement is a tricky one. You probably don’t want to reward a worthless article with a dumb-but-effective clickbait headline. You might also leave an article open for hours without actually reading it.
Ben Williams, who leads communication and operations at AdBlock Plus, told me that the product is still in beta testing (the plan is to do a full launch later this year) partly so the team can experiment with ways to measure engagement — it will involve some combination of factors like time spent and scroll activity.
Publishers will have to sign up with Flattr Plus if they want to get paid, b ut Williams said that if they’re don’t, the money they’re due will be held for them until they join the program . (Update: Williams said that actually, AdBlock Plus won’t hold the money — it’ll just tell them how much money they could have earned.)
The goal, he added, is to earn half a billion dollars in revenue for publishers next year. He doesn’t necessarily expect every AdBlock Plus user to volunteer to pay, but he predicted that many will — and when you’ve got 500 million downloads, just a small percentage of users paying a few dollars a month can add up.
In fact, he said the AdBlock Plus users who opt out of seeing any advertising whatever (even if it’s part of the company’s acceptable ads program), are the ones who “have been the most vocal in asking for solutions like this.” Basically, these users have told the company they don’t like any ads, period, but they still want to support publishers and creators. Now we’ll get a chance to see if they meant it.
Oh, and if you want to hear more about Flattr Plus and AdBlock Plus’ broader vision, I’ll be interviewing CEO Till Faida next week at Disrupt NY. |
BY: Follow @LizWFB
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the "psychological status" of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.
The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.
The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can "deliver an automated intervention" if necessary.
"The NIH inventors have developed a mobile health technology to monitor and predict a user's psychological status and to deliver an automated intervention when needed," according to the notice published Wednesday. "The technology uses smartphones to monitor the user's location and ask questions about psychological status throughout the day."
"Continuously collected ambulatory psychological data are fused with data on location and responses to questions," the NIH said. "The mobile data are combined with geospatial risk maps to quantify exposure to risk and predict a future psychological state. The future predictions are used to warn the user when he or she is at especially high risk of experiencing a negative event that might lead to an unwanted outcome (e.g., lapse to drug use in a recovering addict)."
The NIH said the technology has potential commercial applications for "real-time behavior monitoring" and "therapeutic delivery of an intervention via a mobile device."
Researchers developed the system from a project that tracked the mood and cravings of drug users in Baltimore. The $8.9 million federal study sought to develop algorithms that could "automatically detect behavioral events (such as episodes of drug use or stress) without requiring self-report."
The NIH said the app is currently being used for drug addiction interventions, but that the "inventors are also seeking to test the technology for other health applications."
Request for comment from the NIH was not returned by press time. |
The title of this article is conjectural. Though the topic is found within The Simpsons universe, a proper name is not available.
The Blue-Haired Lawyer, is Springfield's most prominent lawyer known for his pasty face, blue hair, New York accent, and nasal voice.
Contents show]
Work
He was first introduced as one of Mr. Burns' many lawyers. Subsequently, he most commonly appears as the lawyer arguing against the Simpsons whenever they wind up in court. He often makes good points against them and wins over the judge. However, he has attempted to aid the Simpson family at least once.[6] He also occasionally appears to serve as a prosecutor.
He worked for "Luvum & Burnham: Family Law" in one episode, where he had a secretary named Uwa (homophone for "YOU WHA?!?!").
His name is never stated, though it's presumably either Luvum or Burnham, given his law firm's name. In one episode, he reveals himself to be the author of a scifi novel called "The 60 Foot Baby" and on the cover he is simply credited as "Burns' Lawyer."
Despite being his lawyer, he is, sometimes, intimidated by Burns. An example of this is when Burn begins losing money, he (and Burns's other lawyers) loses his competence and acts as a yes-man out of fear of his wrath, going as far as to encourage Burns into making bad investments that bankrupt him.[7]
Politics
He is a member of the Springfield Republican Party
He graduated from Springfield University.
Non-Canon Appearances
The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened/existed.
In the The Simpsons Game , several of him work as The Creator's lawyers/bodyguards.
In The Simpsons Guy, he sues the Pawtucket Patriot brewery for copyright infringement.
Behind the Laughter
Writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss have both stated on the DVD commentaries that the voice is based on McCarthy-era lawyer Roy Cohn, and animator Jim Reardon has said that he is designed to look like character actor Charles Lane.
If you compare him to Milhouse, he has a striking resemblance to yet another adult version of him: plus, thin glasses and tuxedo and minus the humor, voice, and relationship with a Simpson.
His voice sounds similar to Arnie Pye's voice.
Appearances |
Alan McConnell is the new coach of the Giants' AFLW team
ALAN McConnell will replace Tim Schmidt as coach of Greater Western Sydney’s NAB AFL Women’s team.
McConnell, the Giants' director of coaching, will continue working with the AFL team.
The club said Schmidt, who coached the NSW/ACT team in the NAB AFLW Under-18 Championships, had stepped down to focus on his expanded role with AFL NSW/ACT’s talent programs. He also operates a kicking academy business.
"When the opportunity arose, it made sense to look internally to continue to build the relationship between our AFL and AFLW teams," Giants CEO David Matthews said.
"Alan had already assisted our AFLW players and coaches across the inaugural AFLW season and to secure him in this role is a real win.
"Importantly, he will continue to be across the men’s program during the women’s season, and return to the men’s program during the AFLW off-season."
Matthews thanked Schmidt for his contribution to the club’s inaugural AFLW season.
"Many of the values and processes he implemented will continue into 2018 and beyond," he said.
"Pleasingly Tim’s role at AFL NSW/ACT will ensure he continues to work with the Giants' AFLW program as the key person identifying and developing young female talent in New South Wales and the ACT."
McConnell played 37 games for Footscray and was the last coach of Fitzroy before it merged with the Brisbane Bears at the end of 1996. He was previously an assistant coach at Geelong and the AIS-AFL Academy’s high-performance coach. He has been with the Giants since 2009. |
New Zealand drug-trafficking accused Sharon Armstrong has admitted she knew of a secret package hidden inside her suitcase, but insists she believed it was nothing more than confidential papers.
Ms Armstrong, 54, a former Maori Language Commission deputy chief executive, was arrested on April 13 after Buenos Aires Airport police allegedly found 5kg cocaine hidden in her suitcase.
Ms Armstrong has said she did not know about the drugs and was tricked by a man she met online.
She is being held in a medium-security women's detention centre in Ezeiza, about 30km southwest of Buenos Aires.
She made a private court appearance on Thursday, where Judge Daniel Petrone ruled he would proceed with a full investigation court appearance, dashing any hopes of an early release.
Yesterday she told the Herald on Sunday an online boyfriend who lives in London, who she had been dating for six months, tricked her into being a drug mule.
"He said that it was documents and a contract. I don't know any more about it and I didn't ask. I just thought it was really important and that the contract was worth a lot of money."
Armstrong refused to say how she came into possession of the suitcase, but it was understood the switch was made with the case she brought from New Zealand just before she attempted to board a British Airways flight to London on April 13.
She said she did not notice the 5kg of cocaine.
If convicted, Ms Armstrong faced at least eight years behind bars.
Speaking to NZPA from jail last week, Ms Armstrong said she needed help but was reluctant to talk about her case because she feared for her safety.
"I'm just a little bit concerned that this might be a lot bigger. I've never been involved in anything like this ever before."
She refused to name the man who she said scammed her.
"I'm not wanting to protect him, but I'm not prepared to name any names for fear of any retribution."
Ms Armstrong said reports she was carrying four driver's licences when arrested were wrong.
She told NZPA she had three licences -- New Zealand, Australian, and Cook Islands -- with her at the time.
She said the Australian licence was for when she visited family, and the $10 Cook Islands licence had expired.
Staff from the New Zealand embassy in Buenos Aires had visited her in prison and had given her a Spanish dictionary, magazines and writing paper so she could write a journal. |
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