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And pretty much every spread shows underlying techniques and tricks you likely never thought of. For instance, a simple quinoa salad with cauliflower--it just requires a pressure cooker, and it's really fast--it takes just four minutes of cooking for the quinoa, something that never occurred to me to try, and includes the tip of freezing a baking sheet to cool the cooked grain for the salad. And cauliflower is rendered palatable (i.e., invisible) to doubters by being shaved over a mandoline or grated on a Microplane grater, mixed with green apple, celery, pine nuts, currants, and a hone-vinegar and lemon dressing. Easy, right? And good for winter. And not what you'd expect from this book. Some of the techniques that will likely change your own regular practices include "low-temp oven steak," which involves first freezing steaks or any other tender cut of meat, quickly searing them, then putting it into the oven at the lowest temperature until a digital thermometer reads 133 F (or your desired degree of doneness). This, Myhrvold explains, yields meat that's evenly done to exactly the degree you want, rather than meat with an overdone exterior and underdone dead-center. And there are unexpected forays, such as deconstructed carnitas that just require a pressure cooker and provide incidental lessons in braising meat, which the authors extend on the next pages to other braised recipes: steamed omelets that, like the frozen-then-low-temp steak, result in a completely uniform doneness and texture that the authors assure us is tender and delicate, as well as braised short ribs that, of course, require a sous-vide setup, the $300-or-so vacuum-bag and controlled water-bath machine that started being a foodie must last year--and a set-up, on a larger scale, that most restaurant cooks routinely use for short ribs, though they almost always fail to say so. I still think you should go into debt to get the six-volume set--but that's just for hardcore cooks who want an invaluable reference. This is the book for anyone who wants to understand her or his kitchen better, and have a taste of what all the controversy over sous-vide and xanthan gum has been about. Burma: Rivers of Flavor, by Naomi Duguid Naomi Duguid, a tireless wanderer, a photographer with marvelous eye, and a teacher of cooking classes in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has a deep knowledge of Asia from her decades of chronicling and writing about village food in books like Hot Sour Salty Sweet and Seductions of Rice. She traveled all over Burma when the kind of cultural opening we saw this year was still a dream, and by good fortune the release of Burma: Rivers of Flavor coincided with President Obama's November visit. She found a cuisine related to the Thai food she knows so well--chiles, ginger, lemon grass, turmeric, fish sauce, tomatoes as a condiment--but different in some of its building blocks, like shallot oil, fried garlic, chile oil, and, for protein, toasted chickpea flour and pan-roasted peanuts. Once you have a few of these on hand, you can make easy dishes like golden egg curry, the boiled eggs quickly deep-fried to give them a sizzling crust, and put in a fresh tomato-chile sauce with fresh sliced cayenne chiles, or an easy stir-fry of pork tenderloin with star anise and palm sugar water. And as usual, Duguid has new ways to make rice, like jasmine rice with shallots, cinnamon stick, turmeric, and coconut milk, which sounds celebratory. The real influence the book is likely to have on your cooking, though, are the salads and soups--what sound to be the real glory of Burmese food--easily assembled from various vegetables and leftover meats dressed with lime juice, shallot oil, and various fresh herbs that give them new life. From A Polish Country House Kitchen: 90 Recipes for the Ultimate Comfort Food, by Anne Applebaum & Danielle Crittenden

Albuquerque police have released lapel camera footage that shows an officer shooting at a fleeing suspect. In October 2013, officers were called about an erratic driver who was running drivers off the road and firing a weapon from his vehicle. Officers said the man, Joaquin Ortega, tried to carjack drivers after crashing his own car. The newly-released footage seems to contradict the story that police initially reported. Then-Interim Police Chief Allen Banks would not release more than a single frame of the lapel video after the incident, stating that he wasn’t going to allow the case to be tried in the media. He told reporters, "I'm going to do things my way.” Banks initially claimed that the single image he released showed that Ortega turned toward Officer Brian Pitzer with a gun. Later, Banks said that Ortega didn’t actually point a gun at Pitzer, but that the officer was justified in shooting at him anyway because the suspect was a “perceived threat.” Here is the video footage of what occurred after officers caught up with Ortega: The video footage shows Ortega outside an auto repair shop. Here is an explanation of the scene: Officer Pitzer yells "Let me see your hands," and refers to Ortega as "dude" and "bro." Ortega runs along the front of the building, walks between two cars and then turns to the right to head toward the sidewalk. Pitzer fires twice. Ortega appears to toss a gun over his shoulder while two more shots are fired. Ortega continues to bolt down the sidewalk, his back turned to Pitzer, as the officer fires the remaining shots. Ortega stumbles at the edge of the sidewalk, falls and is handcuffed. He was wounded at least once in the shoulder. The video shows authorities tending to a moaning Ortega as he says, “Please, please.” Is is not clear how many times Ortega was shot. In November, he was indicted on charges of child abuse, armed robbery, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault upon a peace officer with a deadly weapon. The court case has been on hold because the officers still haven’t finished their police report – something which Kari Morrissey, Ortega’s attorney, said is unacceptable: "Quite frankly, why it takes the department this long to complete a report for an incident like this is inexcusable.” Morrissey said the footage doesn’t show any evidence of Ortega acting aggressively towards the officer, so she does not believe the aggravated assault charge will stick. She also said the video will be “quite helpful” in a lawsuit against the officers for injuring Ortega. The Albuquerque Police Department has been under investigation by the Department of Justice since November 2012 over several high-profile abuse cases and three dozen shootings since 2010. In spite of that, the man who designs the department’s training programs has been teaching officers to use MORE deadly force. The city has already paid out millions in police misconduct lawsuits. Ortega’s shooting was Officer Pitzer’s third in his six and a half years with the department. Morrissey told The Los Angeles Times that the case is typical of the department: "Unfortunately, this is par for the course for the Albuquerque Police Department. You have an officer who's demonstrated an inability to handle the job, but I'm guessing they are worried about showing any weakness by firing him and admitting they mistakenly hired him." _ Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple. Her goal is to help people to “Wake the Flock Up!”

Cork City FC are pleased to announce that Colin Healy has signed a new contract with the club. The midfielder made twenty league appearances for the club last season, and speaking to CorkCityFC.ie, Healy said: “I am very pleased to have signed back with Cork City for the 2016 season. We are all looking forward to the new season and hopefully we can have a good year.” City boss John Caulfield praised Healy’s positive influence at the club, saying: “Since I came in, Colin has been fantastic, both on the pitch and off it. In 2014, he had a fantastic season and played the majority of our games, unfortunately last year he picked up an injury in the final third of the season but he had done really well up to that point.” “He is a real leader, a Cork City man and he is fantastic around the training ground. While some of our older players from 2015 have moved on, we were anxious to keep Colin because he is such a good person and a good influence around the club.” “You have to weigh up who you feel is going to have the most influence on the squad. There are a lot of young players coming through in the squad, including some of our Under 19s, but Colin has been top class since I came in and that is why I was anxious to keep him for another year.” Caulfield also confirmed that full back Ross Gaynor will not be at the club next year, stating: “Ross has decided to move on and I would like to thank him for his services. He has done really well for us in the last year and a half but we probably knew from a while back that this would happen and we wish him well.” Hear more from John Caulfield on CorkCityFC.ie later today.

The selection of Congressman Trey Gowdy as Chair of the Select Committee on Benghazi by House Speaker John Boehner was the best act of the Speaker in this Congress. Gowdy has impressed most fair observers with his preparation for prior Benghazi hearings, his careful questioning, his command of the facts and his approach to witnesses --allowing them to answer questions rather than eating up time with showboating. An experienced former state district attorney as well as a federal prosecutor for a half dozen years, Gowdy knows how to put together a case and how to assemble and mange a team. These skills will greatly benefit the country as it looks for answers as to what happened and why on 9/11/12. The naming of Gowdy's fellow committee members and the committee's staffing will be as crucial as naming the chair. I spoke with House Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, on Monday's radio show --transcripts and audio here-- and it is clear that the Committee will be formed at least as to its GOP members by the end of this week. National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy and the Washington Examiner's David Drucker also provided key background Monday on the considerations that will go into the filling out of the Committee's membership and its staffing, and the transcripts of those interviews will be posted here later today. Drucker's reporting yesterday suggested some of the names to watch for: Besides Gowdy, they include: Intelligence Committee members Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., who served as the informal panel's chairman; Oversight and Government Reform Committee member Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah; and Armed Services Committee members Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Joe Heck, R-Nev., who also serve on the Intelligence Committee. Additionally, Boehner asked Rep. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., to participate because of his prosecutorial background and to bring a fresh perspective. Gerlach does not serve on any of the five committees of jurisdiction that have been jointly investigating the Benghazi attack, which include the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary panels. Nunes discussed Boehner’s informal Benghazi committee on Friday during a radio interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt. All of those members bring excellent backgrounds --Chaffetz has actually been to Benghazi to see the site of the attack-- but I'd like to see some military veterans like Pompeo and/or Florida's Ron Desantis (both Pompeo and DeSantis are Harvard Law grads as well) and Illinois' Adam Kinzinger, also a veteran, added to the Committee. Too many of the questions surrounding the attack on Benghazi and the failure to get help to the embattled CIA annex there revolve around military logistics. Experienced vets on the Committee will help it through these questions and deliberations, and these Members would help the Committee ask the toughest questions of the uniformed witnesses, questions that simply don't occur to civilians who haven't had to deal with military bureaucracy and logistics. Pompeo, DeSantis and Kinzinger would also protect the men and women in the chain of command from getting blamed for the decisions of their civilian overseers by always asking for precision as to the orders received and from whom and when they were received. Democrats have threatened to stay away from the hearings. Let them, and let them then explain to the victims, the families of the dead, and the American public why they are above asking tough questions about an obvious cover-up, a cover-up that cannot be denied now that the Rhodes memo surfaced almost a year after it was formally requested. The cover-up of the Rhodes memo is proof that the Administration has not been cooperating with any of the committees digging into the events leading up to and occurring that night and afterwards, and the memo is the sort of flare that indicates there is much more hidden away in desks that hasn't been produced yet. If House Democrats shun the proceedings they will themselves be shunned at the polls for abetting this cover-up As McCarthy and I discussed, the choice of chief counsel, the director of communications and the director of social media for the select committee will be the three key staff choices. McCarthy suggested either George Terwilliger or Miguel Estrada as both have deep D.C. experience as well as prosecutorial chops. They would be the sort to bring the Committee the witnesses prepped and ready for examination. Hopefully the Chair will have the lawyers do a lot of the examination of witnesses in public so that there is a premium on getting the story out, not on grabbing television time by members though we can expect Democrats to grandstand and fulminate as we get closer and closer to the key questions and answers: What did the president know that afternoon, night and the following day and when? What did he do --and not do-- during that period? Ditto for then-Secretary of State Clinton and then-Secretary of Defense Panetta, and then CIA Director Petraeus. Five timelines running along the first timeline of events in Benghazi and Tripoli are needed, along with many others following key White House and State Department staffers through those hours and the cover-up that followed. Witnesses need to be asked with specificity as top where they were and when, who they were with and what they heard and saw done. The federal statute of limitations on perjury is five years. Eric Holder won't last long enough to protect those who lie under oath, nor those who suborn perjury. The phones of D.C. elite criminal defense bar are already ringing if they didn't ring a year and a half ago. The cover-up of exactly what was going on in D.C. during these crucial hours and days has held for a long time. (See my interview with HRC co-author Jon Allen on how little he and his colleague Amie Parnes were able to discover about the specifics of events in that time frame. There's a reason why everyone has clammed up. The Committee needs to figure out why.) Networks interested in serving their audience (and in their ratings) will gear up for gavel-to-gavel coverage, and begin signing up experts like McCarthy, Drucker and Townhall's Guy P. Benson to provide background and explanation as the hearings proceed. A former SEAL like Rorke Denver --a skilled communicator-- ought to be on the set back at the studio to explain the Benghazi security team's movements, and experts on the chaos that was Libya pre- and post-Benghazi should be identified and lined up both by the Committee and the networks covering the committee. The interest level is already high and will soar as the Committee organizes a coherent narrative from the scrambled stories and committee proceedings. (My interview of Jake Tapper concerning Jay Carney's Benghazi dissembling has garnered 17,000 views in five days --an interview about a press secretary! Imagine what the audience will be for the questioning of the real witnesses.) Chairman Gowdy should also select an experienced, aggressive, television-friendly communicator for Committee spokesperson and formally name a Committee director of social media so the Committee is prepped to be responsive to all the forms of media, not just the POTUS-protecting shield wall of D.C. bureau chiefs and the ancient Sunday show's anchors. As Pete Sessions told me yesterday, fashioning the rule that will govern the Committee is a crucial exercise because it will set the Committee's boundaries, which ought to be broad, and the scope of its power which ought to include of course the ability to subpoena without a vote of the full House. As Drucker suggested, an early July start to the hearings --especially those intended to set a foundation of history and fact on which to build-- is very doable, and planning for a summer in D.C. following the proceedings ought to be on most serious reporters' minds right now. For the first time since the attack began, the House of Representatives is going to methodically, coherently and very seriously investigate why four Americans were surprised and killed that night, what our Ambassador was trying to accomplish in Benghazi, why even the few troops that were sent were delayed and why more potent forces were never sent --always recall that the White House, State Department and Pentagon had no idea when the attacks would end-- and finally when did the Administration systematically set out to lie about what happened there, conflate it with what happened in Cairo and blame it all on a You Tube video. These hearings and the final report of the Committee --and the perjury prosecutions that should follow if anyone lies while under oath-- will finally bring the beginning of justice to Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Ty Woods. The hearings may also prompt the Administration to fulfill its promise to the families of these men: To bring their killers to justice.

Honduras soccer captain Arnold Peralta shot dead in hometown Updated Authorities in Honduras say the captain of the national soccer team has been shot dead in a shopping centre parking lot in a city on the country's Caribbean coast. Arnold Peralta was killed by an unidentified gunman on a motorcycle in his hometown of La Ceiba on Thursday. His father, Carlos Peralta, confirmed the death at a news conference. The 26-year-old midfielder joined Club Deportivo Olimpia in the Honduran national soccer league this year. Olimpia was eliminated from the league's semi-final last weekend. Peralta previously played for the Rangers Football Club in Scotland and Club Deportivo Vida in Honduras. Peralta was scheduled to play in the national team's friendly match against Cuba next week. Honduras is plagued by gang violence and has one of the world's highest homicide rates. AP Topics: soccer, sport, honduras First posted

Just after a midnight deadline that could have seen a complete shutdown of oil and gas production, Norwegian Labor Minister Hanne Bjurstroem said that the government had been forced to intervene. "I had to make this decision to protect Norway's vital interests. It wasn't an easy choice, but I had to do it," Bjurstroem told Reuters after a last-ditch meeting with trade unions and the Norwegian oil industry association (OLF). Norwegian law allows the government to force striking workers back to duty, if it believes there is a threat to safety or the national interest, and it has used these powers in the past. However, until the threat of a total shutdown loomed imminently, the Labor-led coalition had been reticent to do so. Leif Sande, leader of the largest labor union Industri Energi, said the workers would return to work immediately. "It's very sad. The strike is over," he told journalists. The dispute is now set to go into a process of arbitration. Prompt restart planned State-controlled Statoil, which dominates the sector, said it planned an immediate resumption of all production. It had previously warned that - if it were forced into a lockout - it would be unable to honor existing contracts. Oil accounts for roughly half of Norway's exports and offshore workers enjoy the highest salaries of any of their contemporaries across the world - a salary of some $180,000 (146,000 euros). While the employees work for only 16 weeks in the year, they say that tough working conditions mean they should be able to retire early at 62. That age is three years before the legal retirement age in the field and five years before the national retirement age. "It may take from 1 to 2 days to get production started and Statoil expects to have the fields back in full production within a week," the company said in a statement. The last lockout was in 1986. A center-right conservative government stepped in to avert a lockout in 2004. In all, some 6,500 workers work on 70 extraction fields out at sea. Norwaycurrently delivers 27 percent of all German gas imports, making the Scandinavian country the second most important supplier after Russia. rc/slk (AFP, Reuters)

Share Pinterest Email Bill Baker, the legendary PR man who played a key role in Land Rover’s successful return to the U.S. market in 1986, died Thursday after a battle with cancer at his home near Laguna Niguel, Calif. He was 72. Baker, a broadcast newsman from Ohio, caught Ford’s attention in the early 1970s with his road test segments that aired in Cleveland. Ford offered Baker a job on its broadcast media relations team. Two years later, Baker moved to Volvo, and then held management positions at Fiat-Lancia and Ferrari. Baker then worked for Sony Corp. of America. And in 1983, opened his own shop and worked for Chrysler before becoming one of the first American employees of Land Rover of North America in 1986. Land Rover’s U.S. operations in the mid-1980s were small, fewer than 100 people, recalls Charlie Hughes, Land Rover’s North American CEO in the 1980s and 1990s. Baker, Hughes said, was given a small budget to promote a vehicle few Americans had ever heard of -- the Range Rover. Not only was the Range Rover a new vehicle and brand in the U.S., it was creating a new segment -- the luxury SUV. “We were a very small company and we knew we had to do some exciting things to get noticed. You turn Bill loose and all sorts of wonderful things happened,” Hughes told Automotive News. Car News Jaguar and Land Rover want to make paying for gas easier with in-car app Paying for gas usually isn't a huge hassle (unless you have to stand in line behind someone who's buying dozens of lottery tickets) but Jaguar and Shell have teamed up to allow drivers to make ... Tough odds The Rover name was somewhat tarnished with American buyers. In 1973, British Leyland, then owner of Land Rover, suddenly pulled the brand out of the U.S. market, leaving many of its dealers with nothing to sell. Seven years later, the Rover name was back in the U.S. but on a car, the 1980 Rover 3500. A mere 1,254 units of the large V-8 powered five-door hatchback were sold before the model was pulled from the U.S. market after just one year. It didn’t help that the 1986 Range Rover’s 3.5-liter aluminum V-8 engine used the Rover 3500’s engine and was a GM castoff first used in a 1962 Buick. None of that bogged down Baker. As Land Rover was gearing up for the Range Rover’s U.S. launch, Rover executives in England stepped back. Still reeling from the embarrassing failure of the 1980 Rover 3500, the company could not afford another failure. They wanted Americans to run the North American launch, Hughes recalled. “When you are launching a vehicle and you have a very small advertising budget, we just made a decision to make sure we’d spend whatever we needed to spend in the public relations area because we knew that money was going to be more important and more impactful.” Creative spark The Land Rover brand ignited in Baker a spark of creativity and passion that cemented his reputation as one of the most brilliant and strategic public relations executives in the industry. Hughes says Range Rover got traction at launch in part because of the company’s catchy ads by Grace & Rothschild, which showed the off-road vehicle in places such as luxurious Long Island homes, but also covered with mud -- a first in automotive advertising -- and the creative way Baker promoted the brand and the vehicles to the media. Baker dreamed up and then hosted extreme driving expeditions in North America, South America, and Africa that put influential auto writers behind the wheel of Land Rover’s rugged vehicles in extremely hostile terrain. Baker knew one way to erase lingering quality concerns and other issues from the minds of skeptical reporters, was to let automotive journalists drive the rugged Rovers through streams, up rocky mountainsides and on dangerously slippery snow-covered roads. Jean Jennings, former editor of Automobile magazine, said: “Bill Baker single-handedly put Land Rover on the map at a time when there was virtually no product. His press trips spanned the globe, each a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Great Divide, Morocco, Scotland, Iceland, Belize, and on and on.” “Land Rover/Range Rover would certainly not be the unquestionably authentic brand it is in the U.S. market were it not for Bill and Charlie Hughes building the stories, painting the pictures and making it thoroughly first-person for so many writers and journalists. His legacy will endure,” Jim Resnick, one of Baker’s former colleagues wrote on Facebook. Stuart Schorr, vice president of communications and public affairs for Land Rover’s U.S. operations, said Baker defined the Land Rover brand in North America. “Everything we do today is informed by the vision and hard work of those Land Rover pioneers such as Bill Baker.” Baker went into semiretirement from Land Rover in 2003. But he stayed in touch with Hughes and with many of the journalists who attended his driving expeditions. He had been battling cancer and other health issues in recent years. “Bill was critical to our success,” Hughes told Automotive News. “Arguably, he was the most creative PR person of his time.” "Bill Baker, how put Land Rover on the map, dies at 72" was originally published at Automotive News on 2/17/17.

Yellowstone has the world's largest collection of geysers, and it has the underground plumbing to prove it. Scientists have announced that the volcanic activity beneath the National Park's surface may be far bigger and better connected than once thought. The National Park is home to hot springs, mudpots, fumaroles and geysers, so it's not surprising that it has quite a bit of volcanic activity under the ground. Known as a hotspot, a massive volume of molten magma is located beneath Yellowstone. This plume of superheated rock rises from Earth's mantle, punching through the continent's crust as North America has slowly drifted over it. The phenomenon has left a trail of calderas created by massive volcanic eruptions in its wake; the most recent occurred about 640,000 years ago. Yellowstone is infamous for its potential for a "super eruption." When the Huckleberry Ridge eruption in Yellowstone occurred about 2 million years ago, it darkened the skies with ash from southern California to the Mississippi River. It was one of the largest eruptions to have occurred on our planet. Understanding the volcanic activity of this location is therefore crucial for predicting future eruptions. So how did researchers find out about the new size of this hotspot? They analyzed earthquakes, examining the seismic waves as they travelled through the earth. Since these waves change speed depending on whether they travel through molten or solid rock, the scientists were able to determine exactly how big the mass of molten material beneath the surface is. "We are getting a much better understand of the volcanic system of Yellowstone," said Jamie Farrell, a seismology graduate student at the University of Utah, in an interview with LiveScience.com. "The magma reservoir is at least 50 percent larger than previously imagined." The reservoir isn't just bigger; it's also more connected. The researchers discovered that instead of individual pockets, the underground magma is centered in one giant mass. About 37 miles long and 18 miles wide, the magma helps power the volcanic activity seen at the park. The new findings could allow scientists to better predict future eruptions in the area. In addition, it has given them some more insight into what makes Yellowstone and its geysers tick. The findings were reported at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting.

There have been a lot of media reports today following the information presented to the Everton FC AGM last night. I was disappointed that people were left with the impression that the council and other partners were not fully in support or part of a true partnership. I don’t recognise that view. As Mayor of the city, I wish to set straight some of the issues which were not communicated to last night’s meeting. Many people would love to see a new stadium, new housing, a better park and new community facilities at Walton Hall Park. Some would prefer the park to remain the way it currently is. All of which are things to consider but the facts are that: – delivering what Everton FC refer to as “the Vision” requires in excess of £300m which Everton cannot yet show that they – or anyone else – have available. – there is no regeneration scheme in place. – there is no developer in place. – there is no planning application. Once these are in place, of course we will support, facilitate and work together to move the project forward, in the same way that we did with Liverpool FC for their recent the Anfield stadium expansion. Some people seem to be forgetting that it is not the job of the council to finance and deliver a major regeneration scheme of the type proposed, including a potential new stadium for Everton Football Club. Nobody should be in any doubt about the horrendous financial situation that the council is facing. Let me re-iterate, we would welcome a regeneration scheme to consider but the fact is, at the moment, there isn’t one. That is why there is no real progress to report. It is sad that Everton FC chose to question mine and the Council’s integrity and commitment publicly. As a city we have helped Everton with Finch Farm and took the controversial decision to support a regeneration project with a stadium on Walton Hall Park. The evidence of our commitment to supporting Everton is there for all to see. As Mayor I am totally committed to helping, within reason, this project if it meets the wider regeneration needs of the area or indeed any other solution the club may propose. I await sight of those plans. Joe Anderson – Mayor of Liverpool

Here & There is a project by BERG exploring speculative projections of dense cities. These maps of Manhattan look uptown from 3rd and 7th, and downtown from 3rd and 35th. They're intended to be seen at those same places, putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward. (The map deserves to be examined at full scale. Prints from a limited run are available for purchase.) Landmarks are in gold. Note the figure standing outside Cooper Union. You'll see him in the distance on the other map of the pair. Click to see Here & There looking downtown. What's going on? Imagine a person standing at a street corner. The projection begins with a three-dimensional representation of the immediate environment. Close buildings are represented normally, and the viewer himself is shown in the third person, exactly where she stands. As the model bends from sideways to top-down in a smooth join, more distant parts of the city are revealed in plan view. The projection connects the viewer's local environment to remote destinations normally out of sight. How? Jack Schulze explains... "First we take an electronic Manhattan. It's a patch-work of various commercial sources, where we've repaired walls that aren't drawn right and roofs that don't fit. About a tenth of the city is re-built by hand, then textured. "The projection seen here is a combination of city manipulations in modelling software, and choosing the best lens for the simulated camera. The nearby buildings obstruct the view if you get that wrong, or the distant ones stop working as a conventional map. There's fine tuning and instinct. Let's not demo the power of 3D applications, but make a map which is both useful and optically awesome to look at. "Annotations come after the render. You'll see that roads have to contour around buildings that would otherwise hide them. The design key is what's handiest for a person standing in this exact spot, looking at this exact poster." Why? Because the ability to be in a city and to see through it is a superpower, and it's how maps should work. Read more 21 Feb. Here & There in MoMA’s permanent collection — read 03 Feb. Maps and macroscopes — read 08 May. What if GPS worked like Here & There? — read 04 May. Here & There influences — read

For a while now those of us living with, or working with HIV, have known that if you’re HIV positive and undetectable that you’re very unlikely to be able to pass HIV on. But things just changed. Backing up a little, in 2008 the Swiss National AIDS Commission released a document for Swiss HIV consultants. This document was based on the best possible evidence at the time and stated that as long as the HIV positive person was on treatment, had a viral load below 40 and had no other STIs, that they were very unlikely to pass on HIV. This document became known as The Swiss Statement. Whilst The Swiss Statement didn’t directly change policy and procedure it was widely acknowledged that we’d discovered something potentially world changing, something that deserved much more research. In 2010 a new study called PARTNER started enrolling couples. They were looking for sero-different couples where one partner was HIV positive and undetectable, and the other partner was HIV negative. They enrolled 1166 couples in total, ranging in age, ethnicity and sexuality, but most importantly these couples needed to be having condomless sex. Yesterday the results came in, and wow. Over the six years (and counting) the PARTNER study was running the 1116 couples recorded 58,000 condomless sex acts (lucky them) and there have been zero partner-to-partner HIV infectious. Let’s just look at that again shall we? Years worth of data on thousands of HIV negative and HIV positive undetectable couples having tens of thousands of condomless sex sessions and ZERO partner-to-partner infections. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Their research also showed something we weren’t sure of before too. The presence of other STIs, and any associated viral load blips, didn’t raise infectiousness. The STIs they recorded had no impact on that zero partner-to-partner infection ratio. It’s important to note that there were 11 infections during the PARTNER study, but those were traced to sex that happened outside their monitored relationships and not from their HIV positive undetectable partners. This was done by phylogenetic analysis which uses the genetic structure of HIV to tell researchers which person it came from. “This study has proven what we thought we knew, what we hoped, that we are uninfectious. I can’t pass on HIV, not even via condomless sex, as long as I keep taking my medication.” This is huge news for people living with HIV all over the world. It’s huge news for me. This study has proven what we thought we knew, what we hoped, that we are uninfectious. I can’t pass on HIV, not even via condomless sex, as long as I keep taking my medication. You really ARE safer sleeping with someone who’s HIV positive and undetectable, than with someone who thinks they’re HIV negative based on their last test goodness knows how long ago. For people living with HIV everywhere this will have such a profound effect. It will impact the way governments and health services around the world roll out treatment programmes. It will give positive people more confidence dating negative people, and give the negative partners more security. It’ll allow sero-different couples to become more intimate, safe in the knowledge they won’t pass it on. It’ll open up more jobs to HIV positive people, jobs that were restricted based on their status. It will allow more couples to naturally conceive the children they’ve always wanted. It will cut stigma. This, this changes everything. The message is clear: Get Tested. Get Treated. Become Uninfectious. Get on with life. And if you see me on Tinder, Scruff or any of the other countless apps – please do swipe right, I’m single and I’m uninfectious… Check out our quick video summary here: (Link to PARTNER study document) You can follow Tom on twitter as @PositiveLad You can support beyondpositive’s work, helping giving those with HIV a voice, by donating via Paypal

Autonomous vehicles will be in wide use in as little as three years, slipping into traffic before transportation departments and disrupted industries have a chance to prepare, experts said in Chicago today. "The majority of people I talk to have no idea they're coming so soon," said Lauren Issac, manager of sustainable transportation for the engineering and planning firm Parsons Brinkerhoff. As Isaac discussed autonomous vehicles with other experts at the National Shared Mobility Summit in Chicago, a scenario unfolded of how driverless cars may emerge in the U.S.— with the potential to save up to a trillion dollars and a gigaton of carbon emissions. 1. Robo-Taxis And Driverless Freight Isaac believes autonomous trucks will appear first on the highways, hauling freight for companies that cannot resist avoiding the cost, inefficiency, maintenance, liability and loss that they incur now because of human drivers. The Rocky Mountain Institute, which has studied autonomous vehicles as a route to reduced carbon emissions, concurs. "Our research indicates that the first thing that's going to roll out, she's probably right, will be level-three freight, some kind of trucks going across our highways," said Jonathan Walker of the Rocky Mountain Institute. "In the cities it's going to be Robo-Taxis, and it's going to be sooner than we think. In three years we're going to see some kind of automated taxi service, probably in the Bay Area, maybe in Austin." If the traditional cab companies don't leap to autonomous cabs, the disrupters will. "Uber is chomping at the bit to bring autonomous vehicles on," Isaac said, "so they don't have to deal with all their employee issues." Will autonomous taxis be affordable? With lower overhead, it's likely. And some rides may be free. "What if the bar or the restaurant or Walmart or Target, they pay for your trip? because they're essentially using these vehicles to bring customers to them," Walker said, "so you might actually see free robo-taxis in three years." 2. Commute Services "Next. I won't break out any names, but you're going to see the tech leaders who specialize in consumer experience very interested in getting high-end people to and from their jobs in luxurious autonomous vehicles," Walker said. Apple? Tesla? "The business models make the most sense if these vehicles are shared, and the tech companies in the Silicon Valley who specialize in consumer adoption are going to figure out a way to get people with money to give up their personal vehicles and take a shared autonomous vehicle too." This will probably occur between 2020 and 2025, Walker predicts, when those services have matured. Then the masses get on board: 3. Full System The next stage, according to Walker, is a fully built automated system, mobility on demand, in which people can request an automated vehicle whenever they need one. "2030 comes and you've got these fully bloomed systems where I request an autonomous airstream to go the mountains with my buddies, I request the one-seat to go to the city, I request a 10-seat because I want it to be free or subsidized, and I don't use any cars anymore. "So that's probably the 2030-2035 scenario, and that's the way we see it unrolling." Economics will drive the success of autonomous vehicles, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute, because of a suite of financial advantages. Autonomous vehicles cost about 15 cents per mile to operate, compared to 60 cents for personal cars. They're cheaper because they can be shared, eliminating purchases, parking spaces, and idle time. most cars are idle 95 percent of the time, Walker said. Automated vehicles are less likely to suffer damage or get into the 82 percent of accidents that occur because of driver error. For commercial and public vehicles, the drivers represent the system's greatest cost, Walker said. The U.S. Department of Transportation illuminated some of those costs when it experimented with an automated bus. "What it did for us was some amazing things," said Jeffrey Spencer, a program manager with USDOT. "We found that the bus no longer has the tires rub against the curb. It doesn't knock the wheel alignment off. It doesn't collide with the platform, and on a 60-foot articulated bus, it put all passengers within one inch of the platform. So people could get on and off the bus very easily. We've not only reduced the maintenance cost, we've reduced the liability cost. "And because of its precision, and it comes to the same spot every time, we were able to keep that bus on time most of the time, and reduce the amount of capital expense. We didn't have to buy another bus to meet the demand because we were able to move that bus in a more precise and proficient manner." The insurance for automated vehicles should be about 10 percent what insurance costs motorists today, Walker said, and vehicles can be right-sized for their tasks: people can order a pickup truck for buying gardening supplies, a single-seater for the drive to work, a shuttle to go to the airport, a bus when they want to save money. Because of their efficient use of road space, Walker said, they will free up lanes equivalent to five times the highway infrastructure we have today. The carbon savings occur, Walker warned, only if the fleet is electric and shared. A different scenario, described by panelists as "the nightmare scenario" emerges if autonomous vehicles cling to the current transportation model—individually owned and gasoline powered. Then some of the problems they might solve—parking, congestion, pollution—get worse. Many questions remain. How will the insurance industry react? What will become of filling stations? The oil industry? Will autonomous vehicles compete with transit systems or take them over? How will pedestrians and bicyclists interact? And: "When the Apple car is deployed," asked Spencer, "will it have Windows?"

I dunno I'd say it was a pretty good year. Thought I'd do another one of these things this year because looking back on progress can be pretty neat. I totally broke out of my shell digitally, and I think I can use a pencil with a bit more finesse than I used to. I started learning composition and stuff and it's super interesting, I screwed up my values in basically every piece I did, I attempted to make colors work, and I even learned that the brush tool has a density setting other than 50%! Busy year indeed. I've got a big ole CMC piece in the works that's coming out pretty darn well so get stoked cause my first art of 2015 is gonna have Sweetie Belle in it! ... what, does that not get you hyped? It totally gets me hyped. Anyways, have some art progress!

Fox News analyst Ed Rollins talks about President Donald Trump's threat to Iran (Screen cap). President Donald Trump and his administration put Iran “on notice” this week after it launched a missile, and conservative Fox News analyst Ed Rollins said it showed the president’s commitment to Old Testament-style toughness. Appearing on Fox on Thursday, Rollins linked Trump’s warning to Iran with the Bible, and said Trump and his team are modern-day Crusaders. “Clearly, this is a different kind of administration, a much tougher administration, and no nonsense,” Rollins explained. “It’s almost like it’s a crusade, we’re doing it under God.” “A crusade,” said Fox News host Bill Hemmer, who was moderating the panel. “Huh.” Instead of following up with Rollins about what he meant by Trump going on a “crusade,” however, he instead moved right on and asked panelist Doug Schoen for his take on Trump’s Iran threat. Check out the full segment below.

He is now one of five active coaches in the ACC and one of 15 active coaches in DI to accomplish the feat. RALEIGH, N.C. – NC State baseball head coach Elliott Avent recorded his 1,000th career win against North Carolina Central Tuesday evening, as the Wolfpack hit a season-high four home runs en route to a 13-0 win at Doak Field at Dail Park. Now in his 28th season as a head coach and 21st at NC State, Avent reaches the milestone to become one of five active coaches in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and one of 15 active coaches among NCAA Division I to accomplish the feat. "Well, it feels good to win," said Avent. "It was a rough weekend in Boston and it was good to play good tonight. Coach Hart had a talk with the hitters today and I thought they responded tremendously. "It takes a lot of good players to get 1,000 wins. When I look back on it, I think about Billy Best coaching with me my first five years here and all the things he did and what a great person he is. I think about Chris Combs, Tom Sergio, and all the players that came through here. I also think about Chris Hart, he's been with me for thirteen years and he's been unbelievable and loyal, and he works harder than anybody I know. It just makes me feel good and proud when I think about all the people that I've worked with all these years." NC State Highlights NC State jumped out to an early lead in the contest, scoring at least one run in four of the first five innings. Joe Dunand hit a sacrifice fly to center field to plate the first run of the game in the bottom of the first and the Wolfpack extended the lead with four runs in the second. Evan Mendoza hit an RBI double to right center and later scored on a wild pitch. After a fielding error on NCCU and a hit-by-pitch, Brad Debo tripled to deep right field to drive in two runs and he scored on a passed ball to make it 5-0. The Wolfpack hit three home runs in the bottom of the fourth to pull away from the Eagles. Josh McLain smacked the first of the inning on an 0-2 pitch over the left field wall. After Debo was hit-by-pitch, Dunand launched a two-run blast to left field and Brett Kinneman followed with a solo shot to right field. BREAKING - With the win, #Pack9 HC Elliott Avent earns his 1,000th career win, one of 17 active head coaches to reach the mark #STATEMENT pic.twitter.com/mpHJivvQHw — NC State Baseball (@NCStateBaseball) April 26, 2017 It was the second time this season that NC State has hit back-to-back home runs, as Debo and Mendoza accomplished the feat at UNCW. Dunand left the yard for the second time in the game in the fifth with a two-run homer over the left field wall to finish the day 3-for-3 with a pair of homers and five RBI. The Pack added a run in the eighth off a sacrifice fly from Brock Deatherage to push the lead to 13-0. Tuesday's victory was the third shutout for NC State. Tommy DeJuneas earned the win with 4.2 innings in relief to improve to 3-0 on the year. He struck out five batters and allowed just two hits. NC State will return to action Wednesday evening when it travels to East Carolina for a 7 p.m. first pitch at Clark-LeClair Stadium.

At Alexandria Brewing Company, we share the same belief; you achieve true happiness by making others around you happy. Our mission is to create an honest company that gives back and treats all people involved like we would want to be treated. We want to build a business on the foundation of integrity. We plan to tap into the Alexandria and Greater Cincinnati communities by sharing good company, celebrating rock and roll while also enjoying great beer at a family-friendly establishment. With your pledge, you will help us create a taproom and German-styled biergarten for the community, while also taking advantage of some wicked cool rewards we have listed below. We look forward to sharing a pint with you soon, cheers! Read more of our story at www.alexandriabrewingcompany.com . Gimme the goods! How do I back ABC? Create a Kickstarter account Log in using your email + password Click the reward(s) Share our project! We don’t get a penny unless we meet our goal. Why Back ABC? You can: be a part of opening Alexandria’s first brewery since the 1880’s. contribute to the development of the city and the community through small business. help establish a thriving, craft beer local community. assist in the creation of a place that brings a sense of community and celebrates the history of Alexandria and surrounding areas. earn some sweet rewards, starting at the $10 level. What will ABC will use the money for? The money we raise from this campaign will be used to get this project off the ground. We will be able to secure the desired location in the heart of Alexandria. Taproom. We plan to renovate an existing building on the property into a community taproom, with a home-like feel, where people can find good company and great beer. Your support will be able to help outfit our taproom and create a space for all to enjoy. Rewards Thank you in advance for supporting ABC! Below you will find all the sweet swag + experiences we have lined up! Keep in mind if you back this project, Kickstarter only allows you to pledge to one reward, so be sure to check out all the combined reward packages. The following two events described are bonus rewards for individuals who pledge above a specified dollar amount: Backers Beer Bash ABC will host an annual anniversary beer bash in their biergarten to celebrate good company, great beer and the people who have supported ABC since inception. We want to add your name to the guest list, so don’t wait! Must pledge $100 minimum to qualify for this bonus reward. Soft Opening Soiree Prior to the grand opening of the taproom, ABC will host a soft opening event that you don’t want to miss! This is your chance to experience our brewery before anyone else. You will be able to come out, try some beer and help shape ABC to serve you better. Must pledge $200 minimum to quality for this bonus reward. READY, SET, PLEDGE! ABC Sticker Pledge $10 or more Slap this bad boy somewhere to help show people you are bringing this brewery to life! ABC Glassware Pledge $15 or more Enjoy a cold beverage in our exclusive branded glassware. Your choice of a pint or tulip glass. Kickstarter Pint Glass Kickstarter Belgian Tulip ABC Tee Pledge $25 or more Wear a branded ABC tee of your choice with pride and don’t forget to get one for a friend! Your choice of a men’s black tee or a ladies slim fit blend tee in red heather. Please indicate shirt size when you submit your shipping information after the campaign ends. Men’s sizes: medium-XXL Men's Kickstarter Shirt Ladies sizes: small-XL (sizes run small) Ladies Kickstarter Shirt (hop pick on back) ABC Growler + Glassware Set Pledge $50 or more A.K.A, Cincy Brewcast Special. With this pledge, you will get ABC’s exclusive swing-top growler and your choice of two pint or tulip glasses. Both items include ABC’s logos. Limited to 25 backers. Limited Edition A.B.C Growler Set ABC Hoodie Pledge $75 or more Rock this comfy zip-up hoodie in style. Includes ABC logos. Please indicate hoodie size when you submit your shipping information at the end of our Kickstarter. Unisex sizes: small-XXL A.B.C Zip-Up Hoodie ABC Bomber Club Pledge $100 or more Earn ABC Bomber Club status. You will receive the ABC Bomber Club card with the limited addition glassware set for a great experience guaranteed for every limited beer release. This membership guarantees you 6 bombers (maximum 3 releases). ABC will email you before each limited release and you can use your Bomber Club Card to reserve 2 bombers at no charge, or if the release doesn’t interest your tastes, you can wait for the next release opportunity. Bomber Club members will also have the benefit of reserving 4 additional bombers at regular price during any release. This exclusive club card will ship at a later date. Plus: ABC Sticker Your choice of ABC pint or tulip glass (x2) *Invitation to ABC’s Backers Beer Bash Sapper Club Stein Pledge $200 or more This pledge earns you this stunning hand-crafted, 24-ounce stein made by the Little Delaware Pottery Company. Each stein is individually numbered by the artist. When you back us at this level, ABC will give $2 off flagship beers when you visit. Plus, we can even fill it with select flagship beers. Plus: ABC Sticker Your choice ABC pint or tulip glass (x2) Choice of ABC T-Shirt ABC Bomber Club Membership Card *Invitation to ABC’s Backers Beer Bash *Invitation to ABC’s Soft Opening Soiree ABC Brick Pledge $500 or more With this pledge, you will become an ABC Introductory Engineer and get your name inscribed on a brick in our biergarten. You will receive early access to our annual Backers Beer Bash, in which we will celebrate our backers, such as you! Be sure to include how you would like your name inscribed on your brick when you submit your shipping information. Plus: ABC Sticker Your choice ABC pint or tulip glass (x2) Choice of ABC T-Shirt Limited Edition ABC Swing-Top Growler ABC Hoodie Sapper Club Stein *Invitation to ABC’s Backers Beer Bash *Invitation to ABC’s Soft Opening Soiree Brew with Brewer Pledge $1500 or more That’s right! Experience the day in the life of a brewer when you pledge at this level. This is the ultimate ‘beer geek’ experience for you or the beer lover in your life. You will get to spend the day with ABC’s president and head brewer, Andy, and learn how to brew on a professional system. You will get the chance to design your own beer and brew it on our pilot system. You also get to name it (pending TTB approval). Once your beer has completed fermentation, ABC will keg it and serve it in our taproom. You better believe you will get the first glass, on us. If successful, your beer will become a part of our seasonal rotation. If this happens and we bottle it, we will give you one case of it at release and you will be included at our release celebration. We are ultra-flexible picking your brewing day. Plus: ABC Sticker Your choice ABC pint or tulip glass (x2) Limited Edition ABC Swing-Top Growler ABC Hoodie ABC Bomber Club Membership Card Sapper Club Stein Inscribed Brick in our Biergarten *Invitation to ABC’s Backers Beer Bash *Invitation to ABC’s Soft Opening Soiree Private Pre-Party Pledge $2000 or more ABC will throw a pre-opening private party for you and 9 guests on a night of your choice. We will provide a catered meal via a local food truck, brewery tour, samples of completed beer, as well as some ‘still working in the fermenter’ beers. ABC’s president and head brewer, Andy, will be on hand to answer any questions you may have. Certainly a night to remember in the newest spot in town! Great idea for any type of event; bachelor / bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, business meeting, etc. Limited to 10 donations. If you are interested in this option, but feel like you need a larger group than 10, please contact ABC’s CFO, Brain Fish at brian.fish@alexandriabrewingcompany.com. We are willing to work with you to make this worth every penny. Plus:

William Mayer, a prolific composer who ranged from orchestral and chamber music to choral works, operas and more, all while displaying a whimsical streak to go along with his serious one, died at his home in Manhattan on Nov. 17, the day before his 92nd birthday. His daughter the journalist Jane Mayer said the cause was heart failure. Mr. Mayer received his first commission in 1952, for “Essay for Brass and Winds,” and was still creating new works in the 21st century. His better-known ones included the opera “A Death in the Family,” first produced in 1983 by the Minnesota Opera Company. His compositions were performed at major halls all over the world and recorded by ensembles of various sizes. Mr. Mayer, though, was not confined to the usual classical music boxes. He once wrote a three-act, six-minute opera, “Brief Candle.” “The Brooklyn Philharmonic can usually be relied upon to come up with something unusual,” Tim Page wrote in The New York Times in his review of a 1985 performance that included “Brief Candle,” “and Friday night’s program at Cooper Union did not disappoint.”

The left-wing media company BuzzFeed has been forced to lay off around 100 employees and eight percent of its U.S. workforce as part of a restructuring plan after the company missed revenue targets, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a memo to employees, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti confirmed that the company would have to “say goodbye to some talented colleagues” as part of a restructuring effort centered around the company’s business team and bureau in the United Kingdom. Peretti said: As our strategy evolves, we need to evolve our organization, too — particularly our Business team, which was built to support direct sold advertising but will need to bring in different, more diverse expertise to support these new lines of business. Unfortunately, this means we have to say goodbye to some talented colleagues whose work has helped us tremendously. In an email to staff, @peretti details BuzzFeed layoffs and restructuring on the business and UK side pic.twitter.com/oCNPoQ3eYu — Max Tani (@maxwelltani) November 29, 2017 Peretti added that the company’s model of “native ads” was not as profitable as anticipated, and they would instead sell traditional digital ads on its website, among other revenue strategies. The shakeup comes as the company is forced to re-examine its business model, particularly its advertising revenue, after falling 20 percent short of their $350 million revenue goal, which has damaged its chances of an IPO. In January, the company suffered a reputational hit after publishing an unverified and likely false dossier of lurid accusations against President-elect Donald Trump, with Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith adding that there was “serious reason to doubt the allegations.” Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com

"We have to give the consumer tools to help with this. And we've got filter out part of it before it ever gets there without losing the great openness of the internet. And so this is one of today's chief problems, it is not something that has a simple solution." In a statement released after the meeting, Apple said: "We are proud that Apple's innovation and growth now supports nearly 300,000 jobs across the UK." Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts. As Apple CEO Tim Cook continues to make his rounds in Europe, Good Morning Britain managed to catch him for a quick interview while he was visiting Woodberry Down Primary School yesterday. Regarding fake news, which has been an increasingly hot topic since the U.S. Presidential election got into full swing last year, Cook said that "this is one of today's chief problems."In the wake of growing fake news, companies like Facebook have taken action to bring the quality of an article to their users' attention before they share it with their friends. For Apple, Cook said that the solution to the problem is not a simple one.Cook covered another topic during his stay in London this week, discussing Brexit with United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May. According to The Independent , in the talk Cook said that he is "very optimistic" about the UK's future outside of the European Union, and that it will be "just fine," although there will undoubtedly be some "bumps in the road along the way."Apple will continue to back the UK in the future, as it currently plans on building a new headquarters at London's Battersea Power Station , expected to be complete by 2021. After its completion, 1,400 employees will be moved from eight locations around London to occupy the company's new UK offices.Early this morning, Cook also continued documenting his European adventures on Twitter, congratulating the Tate Britain art gallery after he visited its digital artwork exhibit. Yesterday, he stopped in the offices of ustwo games in London to get a sneak peak at the latest mobile game from the company behind Monument Valley.

Some people have really stressful lives. So much so, they need to keep a list of what needs to be done each day. This gets even more important if you like a toke of weed between dying your hair and eating your lunch. Police in Murdoch, Western Australia, have posted a pot smoker's "to do" list on Twitter, saying it was located as they searched a property in Cooby on April 30. The list gives some insight into the mind of a stoner. Are ur Saturdays hectic like this!!! To do list located at search warrant in Cooby. #MurdochLPT3 pic.twitter.com/KdpMbdEYMq — Murdoch Police (@MurdochPol) April 30, 2015 People were quick to respond, saying this list is proof that pot-smoking Australians are harmless creatures and the cops should let them just keep on puffing. @MurdochPol This is proof stoners are dangerous, he should definitely be arrested! — Brndn (@Brandon0612) April 30, 2015 @MurdochPol At least you don't have to worry about that criminal mastermind anymore. — Texture (@iamtexture) April 30, 2015 @MurdochPol This is proof we need to legalise marijuana. If this is the MO of the average pot smoker we're all VERRRRRY safe !!! Awesome !!! — Boy from Oz (@boyfmoz) May 1, 2015 Police in Australia also use Facebook better than most regular citizens, and the latest example is no exception. BONUS: Colorado's Farm-to-Table Marijuana

The Washington Post's Paul Kane speaks to Libby Casey about President-elect Donald Trump's unfounded claim that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton. (The Washington Post) Correction: Politico columnist Jack Shafer did not advise journalists to “ignore,” Donald Trump’s tweets. He wrote that journalists should think before tweeting in response and not take “the bait.” Commentators such as Jack Shafer argue the media should ignore President-elect Donald Trump’s outlandish tweets — because they are outlandish and because they distract us from things Trump wants us to ignore. Shafer has things exactly backward. The Post’s Aaron Blake responds, “The job comes with the so-called bully pulpit, and what he says matters and will be the subject of debate no matter what the mainstream media does. Everything he says reverberates. It doesn’t matter if he says it on Twitter or at a news conference; either way it’s going to be consumed by tens of millions of people, and the media has an important role to play when it comes to fact-checking and providing context.” We find that logic compelling and would add a few additional points. First, the media can walk and chew gum at the same time. Cable TV news has 24/7 coverage. Online editions of major newspapers and of the broadcast networks have virtually unlimited pixels at their disposal. Even in print newspapers, the most space-limiting format, room can be found not only for a headline “Trump invents voter fraud,” but also “Trump’s business connections threaten to deepen the swamp” and “Trump’s ignorance of the Constitution reignites concerns.” If one suspects Trump is trying to distract us, as opposed to getting himself distracted to an alarming degree, how much more important is it to explain, for example, that “Trump takes to Twitter to distract from secretary of state paralysis”? (But unless someone is privy to the inner thoughts of Trump, we really do not know the “motive” for his tweets.) In any event, covering tweets does not negate coverage of his other missteps; to the contrary it should underscore his continued difficulty in performing a job he really never planned to hold. [Get ready for the cable news presidency] Second, we would argue that there is no more important story than the continuous stream of evidence of the president-elect’s irrationality and instability. Hillary Clinton certainly thought that was relevant to the campaign (it was); the mental and intellectual status of the man we elected should be of even greater concern. We can hardly think of more important topics than these: How are we to trust the decision-making of a president so easily waylaid by nonsense? Does Trump’s lack of attention span and refusal to read make him susceptible to conspiracy theories? Can he continue his willful indifference to reality and still govern? Do his personal grievances interfere with his ability to function as president? Who, if anyone, can reason with a man this irrational? Third, our allies and enemies are constantly taking the measure of our president-elect. They will continue to assess Trump’s presidency throughout the next four years. (Is he easily fooled? Does he have the attention span to stick with issues? Can he be confused and distracted? Is his word reliable?) If every world leader takes into account Trump’s public pronouncements and makes strategic decisions based, in part, on those utterances, the voters surely should be privy to the same information. In sum, no one can assess at this stage whether Trump tweets strategically or compulsively, whether he means what he tweets or simply tweets to blow off steam, and whether he understands the importance of a president’s words. Perhaps clarity will come with time. For now, however, his utterances on Twitter and elsewhere give critical insight into the mind-set of the least prepared man ever to win the presidency. The media’s central task now and in the months ahead is to explain to the American people precisely who it is they elected — his shortcomings, his blind-spots, his emotional state and his decision-making process. Turning a blind eye to his unfiltered outbursts would be journalistic malpractice. Worse, it would shield the public from the unpleasant reality, the consequences of their electoral decision, which they must now endure for four (if not eight) years.

"I love driving for Uber, but they want to replace me with driverless cars. I don't know what will happen to me and everyone else, but there could be a revolution." A conversation with my Uber driver last week unearthed a new fear among many that few of the world's business leaders seemed to have grasped – the real impact that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation could have on jobs and society. Uber is just one company that has stated its intention to automate its business. The ride-hailing firm is testing autonomous cars, but chief executive Travis Kalanick said last year in an interview with Business Insider, that it would not wipe out jobs because "you're still going to need a human-driven parallel, or hybrid". The encounter with my Uber driver cast my mind back to this month, hundreds of miles away in the mountain resort of Davos, where the world's elite gathered for the World Economic Forum's (WEF) annual meeting. The so-called "fourth industrial revolution" was again a big topic, but the rhetoric had moved from scary doomsday scenarios from a year earlier, to how AI and automation won't be as bad as previously thought. In a CNBC panel, major CEOs discussed the topic. Jonas Prising, CEO of Manpower, was upbeat. "With automation ... Certainly there are going to be jobs that will be displaced, but most jobs will be impacted by technology in terms of specific tasks within the job that will change," Prising told CNBC. He pointed towards a survey of 18,000 employers in 43 different countries across the world conducted by Manpower earlier this month, which found 82 percent of employers expect to maintain or increase staff levels as a result of automation.

Story highlights Candidates' health has emerged as an issue One third party candidate has said he runs very fast Washington (CNN) Donald Trump said he is not one to exercise, and Hillary Clinton drew a lot of attention after faltering in public and taking a few days of rest over pneumonia. Voters truly concerned about fitness could take a look at Gary Johnson. "I don't want this to be an embellishment, but I will be the fittest president of the United States ever," Johnson said Wednesday in Detroit. Although President Barack Obama is no slouch, and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, was a regular exerciser, Johnson has a decent case to make. The Libertarian candidate for president and former governor of New Mexico is an avowed athlete and outdoor adventurer. He said he has climbed the tallest peak on every continent, including Mount Everest. JUST WATCHED Nominee asks, 'What is Aleppo?' Here's the answer Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Nominee asks, 'What is Aleppo?' Here's the answer 02:48 Read More

Repealing the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) individual mandate in the tax bill is being characterized by some Senators as a catalyst for Congress to replace the health law next year. It may be just the opposite, equivalent to crossing a bridge and burning it behind you. The individual mandate, or shared responsibility provision, gives people a choice: buy affordable coverage if you can afford it or pay a tax. It encourages people to maintain continuous coverage rather than purchase it when they get sick. ADVERTISEMENT It has contributed to an individual market that, prior to being undermined by the Trump administration, was growing in size and stability . It contributed to the lowest uninsured rate in American history. Knocking out this incentive for coverage would make it more (and for some too) expensive to buy individual market coverage. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that average premiums would increase by 10 percent, which translates into nearly $2,000 per year for a family of four. The amount would be greater for older Americans and those that live in rural areas. This premium increase, coupled with less emphasis placed on getting coverage, would result in an estimated 13 million more uninsured Americans. If the mandate repeal is signed into law with the tax bill, there is no turning back for three reasons. First, to date, no expert has identified a policy as effective as the individual mandate. For example, CBO estimated that the American Health Care Act’s proposal to maintain continuous coverage would end up causing more people to lose than to gain coverage. And proposals that incentivize private insurance won’t help the 5 million Americans who will no longer get Medicaid coverage under the tax bill. Second, even if such a policy existed, no funding would be easily found to pay for the coverage for lost under the GOP bill. Congress has yet to agree on funding for the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program. The $318 billion needed to cover those uninsured because of the tax bill is 40 times higher than the $8 billion Congress has failed to find for low-income children’s coverage. Third, no trust would be left to make the system work as it did before. Democrats would be unlikely to give up parts of the ACA to make the Republican-induced problems less bad. Republicans themselves can’t agree on how to lower private insurance premiums. Ideas like reinsurance are opposed by conservatives as insurance company “bailouts.” Ideas like allowing insurers to charge more or drop benefits for people with pre-existing conditions are opposed by moderates. The bipartisan Alexander-Murray bill would only get the system back to the pre-Trump baseline; it would do virtually nothing to limit the tax bill’s impact. Insurance companies, faced with this bleak outlook, are likely to abandon this market. And Americans may not only give up on Congress but on the prospects for the private insurance system altogether, increasing the demand for ideas like Medicare for more people. Senate Republican's tax bill would cause real harm to Americans’ health, resulting in more unpaid bills, skipped health care, and preventable deaths. And it would harm America’s health-care system, increasing its costs and gaps. There is no subsequent Congressional action that could retroactively restore people’s health and financial security after it is lost. And there may be no subsequent Congressional agreement that even attempts to do so. There is only one choice for Senators who care about lowering premiums and maintaining coverage: get the individual mandate repeal out of the tax bill. Jeanne Lambrew a a former deputy assistant to President Obama for Health Policy and currently is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation.

Constance Wu, the actress best known for playing the matriarch of the Huang family in ABC’s television series Fresh Off the Boat, spoke about what being Asian American means, her role in the sitcom and her opinions about Hollywood typecasting Tuesday night in Bovard Auditorium. The Asian Pacific American Student Association hosted the event, which was part of the signature speaker event for its 2016 Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival. Fresh Off the Boat, a show run by School of Cinematic Arts alumna Nahnatchka Khan, is one of the few television series on a broadcast network to feature a predominantly Asian cast. The series is based on the memoir of the same name by Eddie Huang. In 2014, Wu was cast as Jessica Huang, Eddie’s pragmatic mother who wants her children to be successful and also keep in touch with their Chinese heritage. The conversation began with Wu talking about how she got involved in acting from a young age and how her upbringing in Richmond, Virginia, influenced her to pursue a degree in acting at the State University of New York-Purchase. “My friends started doing plays … and when I became a teenager, I started to think more about it as a career,” Wu said. “Theater people are like open-minded family people, where people are encouraging creativity, art and all these other things. It was a safe thing to try out as a kid.” Wu also talked about how her childhood contrasted with the upbringing Eddie Huang portrays in his novel. “I had a different experience than he did,” Wu said. “Racism was not a thing in Richmond … our neighbors were really open and inviting — baking muffins and inviting us to parties.” When asked why there aren’t many Asian Americans on television or in movies, Wu explained that there was racism in casting studios. “We have our ideas of what romantic ladies look like,” Wu said. “Why can’t an acne-ridden girl or a fat girl be cast in the role for The Notebook?” Wu emphasized that this institutionalized racism unfairly stigmatized minorities, correlating this to the portrayal of foreign accents. “Hollywood has made the French accent a sexual thing and the Chinese accent a clowny thing,” Wu said. “There’s nothing shameful about your heritage, but Hollywood has made it shameful.” Despite all the racism placed upon Asian-American actors, Wu said that she has not always been typecast throughout her career. “Some of my roles before Fresh Off The Boat were not stereotypically written for Asians,” Wu said. “I was a futuristic space traveler in one, and I was a pothead stoner in another!” As for the future of Fresh Off The Boat, Wu told the audience that she has no control over what the screenwriters write. “I just hope that they keep writing great stuff!” Wu said. Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Fresh Off the Boat was the first television series on a broadcast network to feature a predominantly Asian cast. The show was preceded by ABC’s All-American Girl, among others. The Daily Trojan regrets the error.

A Palestinian UN worker accused by Israel of aiding the Hamas terrorist group was sentenced to seven months’ jail on Wednesday, his lawyer said, in a plea deal that will see him released soon. Waheed Borsh was convicted of “rendering services to an illegal organization without intention,” his lawyer Lea Tsemel told AFP. With time already served, he is expected to be released on January 12. The case centered on accusations that rubble in Gaza under the responsibility of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was misused by the terrorist group Hamas that controls the enclave. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up The engineer from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, who worked for the UNDP, was arrested on July 16. According to the Shin Bet security service, Borsh was recruited by a Hamas member to “redirect his work for UNDP to serve Hamas’s military interests.” During his interrogation, Borsh told investigators that in 2014, he was directed by Hamas to “focus on his work in the UNDP in a way that would allow Hamas to extract the greatest possible benefit from him,” the Shin Bet said at the time. The UNDP has operated in the West Bank and Gaza since the late 1970s. In recent years, its Gaza branch has focused on rebuilding the homes and businesses destroyed in the conflicts between Israel and Hamas. In August, Borsh was charged with diverting 300 tons of rubble from a UNDP project in the Gaza Strip, run by Hamas, to build a jetty for the Islamist movement’s naval force. After reviewing the charge sheet, the UNDP challenged Israel’s allegations and said Borsh diverted the rubble under instructions from the Palestinian Authority. Tsemel stressed that her client had been convicted only of unintentionally aiding Hamas by “moving some rubble.” “The prosecution claimed that he should have checked better as this could have helped Hamas.” The UNDP said it had “zero tolerance for wrongdoing”, but that the case did not prove deliberate intent. “This outcome confirms that there was no wrongdoing by UNDP,” the body said in a statement. UN officials argued that Borsh, as a UN employee, may qualify for immunity from prosecution and requested that they be allowed to visit him in jail. Israel however, rejected the UN request, saying “whoever assists a terror organization cannot hide behind a claim of immunity.” In addition to Borsh, Israel has accused two other Palestinians of infiltrating international aid organizations on behalf of Hamas. In August, an Israeli court charged Muhammad Halabi with channeling millions of dollars in foreign aid to Hamas and its armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Halabi, who worked for the Christian organization World Vision, was arrested in June and later indicted on a number of charges, including funding terror. The charge sheet said he was recruited by Hamas to infiltrate the aid organization more than a decade ago, rising to become the head of the organization’s Gaza operations. According to the Shin Bet, Halabi also recruited a Palestinian aid worker from the Britain-based Save the Children to join the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 2014. The governments of Britain, Germany and Australia suspended their donations to the charity over Halabi’s alleged links to Hamas. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, said at the time the cases were evidence of a “troubling trend of the systematic exploitation by Hamas.” AFP visited the site of the alleged UNDP misuse last summer and found a new-looking jetty extending around 50 metres (yards) into the sea. Perhaps 10 feet (three yards) wide, it had wooden slats erected on one side to obscure the view. Armed Hamas fighters were in nearby fields. UNDP officials privately accepted that rubble from one of its projects may have been used in the construction of the jetty. But they stressed the disposal occurred in conjunction with the Ministry of Public Works, which is run by Hamas’s rivals Fatah. Fatah leads the internationally recognized Palestinian government, and a UNDP probe concluded that there were no signs of Hamas activity in the area at the time the rubble was placed there.

The story of Koyomi Araragi and the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, cold-blooded vampire: Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade gets to that cold-blooded part in Kizumonogatari III: Reiketsu-hen, opening in Japanese theaters on January 6th. A round of ticket tales open November 6th, featuring its latest visual with Tsubasa Hanekawa. The second movie hits DVD/Blu-ray in Japan on December 21st. Kizumonogatari II Nekketsu-hen BD/DVD CM2 by pKjd Seven-11 keychain Keychain Advanced ticket Amazon limited fabric poster 7-Eleven mug Key visual Speaking of Monogatari, the anime's character designer Akio Watanabe has teamed up with Naoki Hisaya, the creator of Sola and Sora no Method/Celestial Method on new light novel Kanojo Tachi Ga Tojiru Senkai And Okitegami Kyouko no Ryokouki seees Nisio Isin's forgetful detective head to France in the Monogatari author's latest novel. ------ Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

Dr. Ashraf Marwan remains a riddle in his death, just as he was in his life. The man who for a large part of the Israeli intelligence community is considered the most senior spy in the history of the state, the one who warned on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1973 that war was about to break out, was also, according to others, a double agent who was trying to get the Israelis to fall into his trap – with some success. He was an Egyptian billionaire, and happened to be the son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. He also served in the Presidential Office under Nasser and was a close aide to Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat.On June 27, 2007, at the age of 63, he died mysteriously.“I do not have to prove to anyone that our sources were first-class,” says Zvi Zamir, head of the Mossad in 1973, and the one who met with Marwan on October 5 in London and heard about the date of the war.“In Military Intelligence, they treated him as a double agent without having any proof. We proved that he was not. I hope you will understand the importance of such intelligence at a time when war was expected. Ashraf Marwan was an unparalleled source in our history.”Eli Zeira, who was the head of Military Intelligence during the Yom Kippur War, led the double-agent theory, but it turns out that in the intelligence division, Zeira wasn’t alone in his theory: Maj.-Gen. (res.) Shlomo Gazit believes that Marwan’s contribution was mostly harmful, since the warning he delivered came only hours before the outbreak of the war.“Fifty-five percent [certain that] Marwan was a double agent,” Gazit volunteered. “I did not care about his death, but the phenomenon is important to me. I have a clear opinion – whether he was a real agent or a double agent – that the damage he caused was terrible. If we hadn’t used Marwan, the State of Israel, being led by the IDF, would have prepared for the war a week earlier when news began to arrive about what was happening in Egypt. But they said that if Marwan didn’t tell us about it, it wasn’t serious, it was just an exercise. That doesn’t mean he was a double agent. But the fact is that when you have a super-agent – a super-super-super agent – you are enslaved to him.”In Lugano, Switzerland, I caught up with Dr. Ahron Bregman, who lives in London and teaches at King’s College in the Department of War Studies. Bregman was the man who revealed Marwan’s name in 2002, and he was the Israeli who was closest to the Egyptian spy in his last years, particularly in his last days.Last year Bregman published a book called The Spy who Fell to Earth about his relationship with Marwan.“Double agent? My opinion isn’t any better than yours or Joe Schmo’s,” Bregman says. “But I think the opposite of what Zamir thinks.He has a clear interest in Marwan not being ruled to be a double agent, because what a failure it would be if he were a double agent. When people think about spies, they think it’s like it’s straight out of the Cold War.“In my opinion, Marwan wasn’t like that. What was important to Ashraf was Ashraf. He had a lot of fun in terms of his status when Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin wanted to hear his opinion, or when Zamir met with him.It inflated his ego, and that’s why he loved the game. In the moment of truth, moments before the war, I think he asked himself, ‘Am I an Israeli or an Egyptian?’ He came to the conclusion that he was Egyptian and he misled us. That’s the story of Ashraf Marwan.’”On June 26, 2007, the day before his death, Marwan left Bregman three messages on his answering machine, asking him to call him back. The relationship between the two came about in a strange way: Bregman, who had written several books, became obsessed with discovering the identity of the spy known as “Babylon” or “Angel.”By putting together a puzzle of clues, he was able to arrive at Marwan, who had unbelievable connections. The man was Nasser’s son-in-law, and was very close with the Egyptian leadership.“Eli Zeira did not want to cooperate with me, because after all he had written a book of his own,” says Bregman. “There was a need for verification, and Rami Tal, a very well-known journalist, edited Zeira’s book. Understand what kind of an obsession I had. I flew to Tel Aviv to meet him. I knew he wouldn’t say the name but they probably told him.What was I doing? I was observing from his body language whether Ashraf was the spy. I rehearsed at home in front of the mirror. Nine minutes into the conversation and I decided that I would burst out, randomly: ‘Ashraf Marwan is the spy,’ and then I looked in the direction of his face and ears.At Tel Aviv’s Beit Sokolow, nine minutes on the dot into a casual conversation, I said, ‘Ashraf Marwan is the spy.’ I got my proof.”In the book he did not explicitly write the name but dropped clear and obvious hints. The Egyptian journalists put the pieces together and asked Marwan if he was the man.Marwan denied it, but then a journalist from Al-Ahram met with Bregman in London, where the professor defended his reputation and named the spy.A few days after Bregman’s comments were published in Egypt, it was Marwan on the phone, asking to meet with him.“When I spoke, he immediately felt that I was sorry for what I had done,” Bregman says today. “Marwan was a sick person.You could hear his heavy breathing, and suddenly you feel bad about what you’ve done. I went from being a journalist trying to uncover him, getting a massive scoop, to having to use all my energy to defend myself. We journalists sometimes run after the goal blindly, and as soon as we get it, we come to our senses... I understood that it was stupid. He wasn’t the ‘Angel,’ he was someone who had undergone three heart operations.I said, ‘Whoa, someone’s going to kill him.’” The two agreed to meet at the Intercontinental Hotel, after Bregman rejected the offer of meeting at the Dorchester Hotel, because he remembered that they had tried to assassinate ambassador Shlomo Argov there in 1982, a shot that sparked the first Lebanon War.Bregman took side streets to the hotel, checking constantly that no one was following him.“He was very angry at the Mossad because at the last meeting with them, he discovered that they had recorded him, and as far as he was concerned, they had broken the rules,” he said.“At the meeting we were both crazy. I thought he was going to kill me, and he thought I was recording him. It was a very anxious conversation. He was nervous and I was nervous, but after that, for years, we would talk on the phone just as you and I are talking now. Some of the conversations were informational, and some were for him to pour his heart out and complain, because who could he talk to? His wife didn’t know, he was protecting his children, and, so, there was only Ahron Bregman. He was very well-connected in his life, but as a spy, he was very lonely.”Bregman felt obliged to update Marwan on the dispute that developed during the Yom Kippur War between Zvi Zamir, head of the Mossad, and head of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira.In 2004, Zamir accused Zeira of exposing the identity of Israel’s senior source in Egypt, thus damaging Israel’s ability to recruit agents. In April 2005 Zeira filed a libel suit against Zamir.Retired Judge Theodore Orr was appointed arbitrator, and he decided to accept Zamir’s version. In his decision, the name “Ashraf Marwan” appeared more than once. It was no longer just an Israeli academic who was asserting that Marwan spied for Israel, but now it was the courts that had established the claim as truth. The decision was issued on June 14, 2007, two weeks less a day before Marwan’s death.“The first time I told him that Zeira and Zamir were fighting, and that the case could go to court, he said, ‘It will never get to that point,’” Bregman recalls, “Ashraf didn’t really understand our system, and that’s why when his name was published it stunned him.”Mona, his widow, said that in his final days Marwan had lost 10 kg. as a result of the tension, he would always check whether the door was closed, something he hadn’t done in their 38 years of marriage, and he often complained that he was afraid they were trying to kill him. In an autopsy, they found traces of anti-depressants.On June 26, Marwan left three messages for Bregman on his answering machine. The next day, only a few hundred meters from Piccadilly Circus, at 1:30 p.m., he fell to his death in the rose garden under his fifth-floor apartment in Carlton House Terrace. Pushed or jumped, that’s the question.PROF. URI Bar-Joseph of the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa has a theory about the events. In 2010, Bar-Joseph published his book The Angel, which became a film, slated for release next year.“When [president Anwar] Sadat decided to choose [Hosni] Mubarak as his deputy, it really annoyed Marwan, who thought that Mubarak wasn’t very smart,” Bar-Joseph says.“When Sadat was assassinated in 1981 and Mubarak took his place, it was clear to Marwan that he had nothing more to look for in Egypt, and this was despite his and Mubarak’s children being friends.”Mubarak didn’t want to see Marwan near him, certainly not after it was published in Al-Ahram that Marwan was Agent Babylon, or the Angel, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the former editor in chief of Al-Ahram, wrote in his last book before he died. At one of the ceremonies marking the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, he wrote, Mubarak saw Marwan and gave an order to put him on a plane the next day. Mubarak understood that he was a source of embarrassment, especial- ly after the arbitration. This time the espionage was official, and the order to assassinate him was understood, Heikal said.He wrote that he had asked Mubarak several times: “‘Maybe we should investigate whether he worked for the Israelis?’ Mubarak always replied: ‘Forget it.’ He did not want to get involved in the issue; he just wanted to get rid of it.”Bar-Joseph notes that death from falling off a high balcony in London wasn’t a new idea for the Egyptians. Six years prior, on June 21, 2001, it was Egyptian film star Suad Hosny who fell from her balcony at her Stuart Tower residence, and it was also said about her that she was about to write a sensational memoir. In the same tower, in August 1973, Al-Liethy Nassaf, who founded and headed the Republican Guard in the days of Nasser, fell to his death.Coincidence? Marwan’s widow claimed that he had been murdered, blaming the Mossad. Not only that, she also said that his memoir had disappeared from the apartment on the day of his death. But in an email sent by a British detective knowledgeable about the case to an American colleague, it was said that there was no evidence of the book.Bregman remembers how the British detective asked him about the memoir.“I wanted to write a book myself, but Ashraf said, ‘I will write and you will advise.’ Why did he do that? Maybe he was trying to prevent me from writing my book,” Bregman estimates.“We spoke a lot, and I feared that he was trying to trick me. I would surprise him politely, asking ‘What’s the name of the book?’, ‘In which language?’ He said in English, because Arabs don’t read books.”So where’s the book? “The detective asked: ‘Do you have a copy?’ I said no. He asked if I had seen the book, and I replied that I had not. I was very embarrassed when I began to suspect that there was no book, because I told everyone that there was. I began to investigate.I called every library you could think of to ask if Ashraf Marwan had visited, and finally a librarian called Mary, a deputy chief librarian in Washington at the National Archives, said Marwan had visited them twice, and she even gave me dates. She said he came with a cane, limped and said he was writing his memoirs. The second time he arrived, he brought her Godiva chocolate as a gift. I sent a letter to the English detective and said, ‘Here’s the proof.’ If there ever was a book? I hope so, otherwise Ashraf pulled the wool over my eyes.”Bregman came to court at the family’s request. It was important for them to determine that death was murder, since suicide was considered an embarrassment in Islam, especially for such a distinguished family.“I went to court and reinforced the murder theory,” Bregman relates, “I told him that he had reasons to stay alive. He planned to meet me. He had a book he wanted to publish, and there was apparently something in the book that caused him to be murdered. If you ask me what I think? Forty=-nine percent he was thrown, 51% he committed suicide. He didn’t want them to think he jumped, he wanted them to think he was murdered and that’s why he used me. He had planned the story after his death. He called me the day before to leave a testimony, recording himself on the answering machine.He knew that I would save the messages. He knew me well.Of course I saved them. He knew I would tell the world that we had talked, that I would tell them that there was a book.Maybe it sounded a bit fanciful, but if you knew the man, you would understand that it makes perfect sense.”No one knows exactly what happened in central London on June 27, 2007, but if there are those who can back up any theory, they are the eyewitnesses to Marwan’s death. There were four – by coincidence or not – who happened to be working in one of his companies. The four sat for a business meeting and waited for Marwan to join them. They even called and heard that he was running a bit late. Suddenly one of them saw him fall to his death.Another coincidence?Ashraf Marwan was buried as a hero in Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak said he was an Egyptian patriot, not even mentioning the suspicion that the man had betrayed his country.“They gave him a hero’s funeral because they did not want to hurt the significance and importance of the Egyptian aristocracy,” Zamir says. “To say he was a spy would cast a heavy shadow on the group that is considered elite.“We didn’t protect him. The proof is that the intelligence sources and the IDF, even with our pleas, let Eli Zeira and his companions express themselves rudely and make Marwan persona non grata. There, I said more than I’m willing to say.”Gazit doesn’t give too much thought to Marwan’s death.“I have no idea what happened. I was not aware, involved or connected. A client who led an adventurous lifestyle like he did shouldn’t be surprised if someone wants to kill him.”It seems that the mystery of Ashraf Marwan’s life will remain unsolved, even after the 20th anniversary of his death, but that does not mean that his exciting story won’t be in the news anymore.“I do not know a case in history, at least in the 20th century, of a spy who gave such critical information in such a critical period that had a significant impact on the way things turned out,” Bar-Joseph is convinced.“The only one in the same league is Richard Sorge, not because he gave incredible information that the Germans were going to attack the Soviet Union in June 1941, but because he gave information about the Japanese not going to attack the Soviet Union at the end of the year, enabling Stalin to take his forces from the Siberian front and bring them to defend Moscow.If Marwan hadn’t given the warning of the war, I think that the Golan Heights would have fallen to the Syrians on the second day of fighting, because there was no one there to defend them.”So Bregman remains with questions.“No one has said, ‘Okay, he was a double agent,’ and no one said: ‘They threw him from the window and he didn’t commit suicide.’ It would have been the crowning moment of my career had it not been for the tragedy. You don’t want on your conscience the thought that you made someone jump, or that you got him killed. You just say,’ It’s not good what happened.’”Translated by Benjamin Glatt. Originally published in Ma’ariv. Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]What is Cuusoo?LEGO Cuusoo is a site where fans can submit their ideas for LEGO products, once a project reaches 10,000 supports it is reviewed by LEGO and has the possibility to become a set.You'll have to create an account to contribute. Don't worry though, creating an account is easy, you can even use Facebook to log in! Once you've created your account, you can press the "Support" button near the top of this page, and we'll be one step closer to getting this project into the next LEGO review!But remember, the road to 10,000 supports is a long one and we can only achieve this goal by working together as a community. Make sure to spread the word, tell every fan of the Legend of Korra you know to support this project so that we can get a Legend of Korra set![][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]The Legend of Korra is a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show follows the adventures of the young Avatar named Korra, who is Aang's successor. During the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, LEGO created two sets from the show; unfortunately the line wasn't continued beyond these two sets. However, with the introduction of the Legend of Korra we have another chance to get Avatar themed LEGO sets. The show is cleared for 2 seasons, each consisting of 2 "mini seasons" called books.The Air Temple Island set would feature iconic structures and characters frequently shown on Air Temple Island in the show. Minifigures could include Korra, Tenzin, Pema, Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, Rohan, Oogi (Tenzin's Sky Bison), a Ring-tailed Winged Lemur, and a White Lotus sentry or two. Structures could include the main tower, air bender training area, meditation pavilion, and some miscellaneous scenery.Make sure to check out my other Legend of Korra projects as well::: Pro-Bending Arena :: United Forces Battleship But these aren't the only Legend of Korra/Avatar project on CUUSOO, make sure to lend you support to the others!

"The unheralded scandal of the tobacco industry is the damage to land in developing nations" was the message of a presentation delivered at the Fifth World Conference on Smoking and Health in Canada on July 12, 1983.(1) This discussion paper will adddress, in more detail, the links with tobacco and deforestation, pesticide use, land use, environmental degradation, fires, litter and pollution. Deforestation is considered one of the most severe environmental problems worldwide. Modern cigarette manufacturing uses wood to cure the tobacco and to roll and package the cigarettes. In fact, a cigarette manufacturing machine uses four miles of paper per hour to roll and package cigarettes. It is estimated that one tree is consumed for every 300 cigarettes produced.(2) In Brazil, the third largest producer and number one exporter of tobacco in the world(3), the country's farmers are estimated to need the wood of 60 million trees a year.4) This large scale deforestation damages the land and contributes to increased flooding, decreased food output and can affect the local climate. On a global scale, many scientists believe deforestation is changing the world's climate and contributing to global warming. The industry claims to encourage reforestation programs. But these programs are problematic in that small farmers in the developing world prefer to use their small amount of land to grow food rather than replacement trees. Eucalyptus trees grown for reforestation are used for building while native forests continue to be burned for curing. Small farmers in the developing world cure tobacco on their own land with their own barn, each having to find their own wood. Solar and central curing would save huge amounts of wood, but are not encouraged by the tobacco industry because they would cost the farmer more. Diversifying to grow other cash products isn't always feasible as the economic incentives provided by the tobacco companies make tobacco an irresistibly profitable commodity, especially to poor farmers. There is also a direct impact on the people living in developing countries. According to Dr. Judith MacKay, director of the Asian Consultancy of Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, the use of peasant farmland for tobacco growth "denies 10-20 million people food...where food has to be imported because the rich farmland is being diverted to tobacco production.."(4) Women in some developing countries carry the heaviest burden since they must carry out farming-related tasks and collect wood for the barns as well as for domestic use. Often times they must travel longer and longer distances to find the wood. When the land no longer sustains them communities may be required to move altogether. Tobacco growing often exploits of child labor at all stages of cultivation and curing thereby affecting school attendance. Other crops make use of child labor, but tobacco's longer growing season and the curing process seem to place particular strains.(4) Tobacco cultivation involves a great deal of pesticides which must be used in the all stages of tobacco growth. Because tobacco depletes soil nutrients at a heavy rate, it requires regular inputs of chemical fertilizers. For example, during the three month period from making the seedbed to transplanting the seed in the field, up to 16 applications of pesticide may be recommended (applications depend on climate and local pest problems.(4) Not only do these fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides directly poison farmworkers and may cause chronic health problems, but they also seep into the soil and pollute waterways and ecological systems and poisoning livestock and food crops.(3) Farmworkers, while harvesting wet tobacco in the fields have been documented as falling ill from a form of nicotine poisoning called "green tobacco sickness" or "green leaf fever". Since 1973, Dr. Stephen Gehlbach of the University of Massachusetts School of Public Health has documented this problem and is quoted on a 1993 "Day One" segment as saying, "its hard to imagine that there is any other occupation where as many people get sick on the job in as short a period of time, where something isn't done about it".(5) Claims by the tobacco industry that there are no economically viable alternatives to growing tobacco are increasingly being disputed and investigated (especially when the price of tobacco in some developing countries falls dramatically, such as in Malawi in 1993). "There are alternatives to tobacco. Many crops can grow in land that is now under tobacco -- they include the majority of grain crops and vegetables. Sugar cane, bananas, coconut pineapples and cotton could all be suitable."(9) Finally, in the U.S., cigarette butts account for almost half of the items collected in the annual California statewide cleanup. Nationally, all the cigarette butts thrown away in 1993 weighed as much as 30,800 large elephants.(6) These are washed into rivers, lakes and into the ocean from city streets, through storm drains. Seabirds, animals and fish eat them by mistake. Their bodies have no way to digest the filters and they can die. Cigarette butts take an average of 25 years to decompose.(7) Cigarettes are the leading cause of fatal household fires, especially endangering children in the United States. In developing countries, fire is an even greater hazard because dwellings are often constructed of highly flammable materials. To date, the tobacco industry has refused to leave out additives to their cigarettes that would keep them burning while unattended, contributing to fatal fires and the most potent type of secondhand smoke.(2) This secondhand smoke is the main source of indoor air pollution and is responsible for the hospitalization of over 115,000 children each year in the U.S. for respiratory infections.(8) Footnotes 1. Madeley, John, presentation to the 5th World Conference on Smoking and Health, Canada, July 12, 1983. 2. Muller, M, Tobacco in the Third World: Tommorrow's Epidenic?, London: War on Want, 1976. 3. FAO Yearbook, Production, Volume 48, 1995 4. Taylor, Peter, "Smoke Ring: The Politics of Tobacco", Panos Briefing Paper, September 1994, London 5. "Tobacco Field Workers Experience Nicotine Poisoning", Corporate Crime Reporter, 2/14/94. 6. "No Butts About it", Colorado Department of Health and American Cancer Society. 7. Stienstra, Tom, San Francisco Examiner, 9/13/96. 8. Environmental Protection Agency, "Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoke", 12/92 1994 9. Panos Briefing: "Tobacco: The Smoke Blows South", Panos Briefing Paper, September 1994, London AMP Section Name: Tobacco

Target’s anti-union video for employees -- which previously drew ridicule for strained and earnest delivery, kitschy and melodramatic graphics, and sub-par production values -- appears to have gotten a makeover. The newer video, reviewed by Salon (but which is not being re-posted for legal reasons), echoes or repeats verbatim many of the lines from its predecessor, which Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan posted in 2011 and mocked as “shitty propaganda” with “the production values of an eighth-grade educational film.” Gone are the switch to black-and-white (to depict a unionized universe); the trippy image of $20 bills stacking up against a shifting red background (to represent union dues), and the sight and sound of a slamming door (to portray being cut off from communicating directly with management). An actual Target executive no longer makes a cameo to stiffly set forth Target’s stance on organizing; instead, the two stars of the new film ("Dawn" and "Ricardo," replacing "Doug" and "Maria") make all points on his behalf. Advertisement: But the message is much the same: Narrators tell employees -- whom union organizers charge were required to watch the video in mandatory meetings -- that right now, “We put people in jobs because they’re well-suited for them, not because of the day they happened to get hired.” If a union came in, “chances are they would change our fast, fun and friendly culture, with their way of doing business.” Workers are warned that “this is a very competitive business that we’re in,” and that “If Target faced rigid union contracts like some of our competitors, our ability to serve our guests could suffer dramatically – and with fewer guests, what happens to our team?” Even if they vote union, they’re told, “Management doesn’t have to agree to any union demand.” The video closes with a pledge that “there are always people you can talk to,” and a list of five places to take your questions: “Supervisors/leaders”; “Human Resources”; “Chat Sessions”; “Best Team Survey”; and “Employee Relations and Integrity Hotline” (not listed: rank and file co-workers). The Target video, “Think Hard: Protect Your Signature,” was shown to Valley Stream, N.Y., Target employees in the lead-up to a 2011 unionization vote, according to the United Food & Commercial Workers union. Target was compelled to turn over the video as part of the National Labor Relations Board’s investigation of alleged illegal union-busting prior to that election, in which employees voted against becoming Target's first unionized employees. In a 3-0 decision last year, the NLRB found sufficient wrongdoing by Target to throw out that election result, paving the way for a new unionization vote. However, citing intimations of lost jobs (including in that now-hipper video) and an alleged purge of union activists (whom the NLRB has not ordered Target to reinstate), the UFCW union last week told Salon that it now plans not to pursue another vote there. “The system failed the workers, as it’s going to continue to fail the workers,” said UFCW Local 1500 organizing director Aly Waddy. Before the election, she alleged, Target used a mix of legal and illegal tactics to scare and spy on workers; after the union was defeated in the vote, she charged, the company rewarded or punished employees based on their stance toward the union, and used a four-month store shutdown for renovations as a pretext to transfer or terminate 20-some pro-union activists. “None of the workers that started the campaign are there …” Waddy told Salon, “Workers have seen a company that’s gotten away with doing whatever it is that they wanted to do.” While the UFCW filed charges with the NLRB alleging union activists were illegally targeted for termination, the union was unable to secure any rulings to that effect from the Labor Board. Instead, the NLRB decision throwing out the 2011 election results cited a company solicitation policy, which it found illegally interfered with workers’ organizing rights, as well as “a coercive interrogation, a threat of unspecified reprisals, and the distribution to employees of a leaflet that unlawfully implied a threat to close the store if employees selected the Union …” Asked last week about the UFCW allegations and NLRB findings, a Target spokesperson emailed that Valley Stream employees had "strongly rejected unionization," and that "The judge dismissed the union's claim related to the temporary closure in its entirety." She said that the company had "reached out to the NLRB" to schedule a rerun election, "Out of respect for our team's desire to move past this issue ..." (Target did not confirm or deny the UFCW's report that Valley Stream workers were required to watch "Think Hard: Protect Your Signature" prior to the 2011 vote, but did say that the prior video reported by Gawker "is no longer used at Target," and noted that "we communicate with our team members through a variety of channels, including videos.") Advertisement: In sworn testimony, Tashawna Green, a union activist hired by the UFCW after being fired by Target, described conversations in which members of Target management “told us not to let them hear us mention anything about a union” or “you could be terminated”; questioned her about comments she’d made in the media; and warned her to “be careful of what you do ‘cause you never know what could happen.” One flier provided to the NLRB (and to Salon), headlined, “WILL THE STORE CLOSE IF THE UNION GETS IN,” told workers, “There are no guarantees” and “The union has a terrible record of store closings," and ended with an urging to “VOTE NO” and an invitation to meet with management to get statistics on declining unionization and closings of unionized stores. Green testified that she “had team members ask me if this is true, that if the Union gets in, will the store close?” and that “A lot of people were concerned and scared” that was the case. While the Target store is still standing and once again open for business, argued the UFCW's Waddy, “the company’s threats were made good,” when “the company got away with closing the store and cleaning house and getting rid of all the workers” pushing unionization. (According to the UFCW, almost none of Target's over 900 U.S. store remodels have involved shutting down the store.) While scrapping election plans, Waddy told Salon that the UFCW would “maintain communication” with workers at the Valley Stream, N.Y., store, and was in touch with Target employees elsewhere as well. (The UFCW's Target Change campaign maintains a website criticizing the company and inviting employees to get in touch.) Asked if the union would pursue another NLRB-supervised union election, she said, “We would really have to look at it case-by-case.” Pro-union activists and academics have long warned that U.S. labor law’s wide berths and weak enforcement leave ample opportunities for both legal and illegal intimidation of workers who try to organize. (Salon has covered such allegations at name-brand giants including Wal-Mart, Amazon and NBC Universal, and lesser-known employers including artisanal bakery Amy’s Bread, pharmaceutical distributor McKesson and document storage company Iron Mountain.) 2009 research by Cornell’s Kate Bronfenbrenner suggests that employers hold mandatory anti-union meetings (like the ones in which UFCW says Target aired its revamped movie) in 89 percent of NLRB election campaigns, and are alleged to fire pro-union activist workers in 34 percent of campaigns and to threaten plant closings in 57 percent. Advertisement: Like its predecessor, Target's post-makeover anti-union video closes with the words, "Refuse to sign, and keep Target union free." But whereas the old one touted the decline in private sector unionization to 8 percent of the U.S. workforce, the new one notes the rate has now dipped below 7 percent. Update (3/19): Gawker's Hamilton Nolan has now posted the "Think Hard: Protect Your Signature" video.

(Steven Nelson for USN&WR) Approximately 100 conservative activists gathered in front of the White House on Tuesday for a kickoff of what organizers call "the second American revolution." The event could easily have been mistaken for a tea party rally, with American and Gadsden flags, a smattering of biker jackets and a few lawn chairs. Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman, who emceed the event, told attendees if President Barack Obama does not resign by Nov. 29, conservative activists will meet in Philadelphia to elect a shadow government. "We've got God on our side," Klayman said. "He's going to make sure we win this revolution." The so-called revolution will be nonviolent, he said. Klayman is suing the Obama administration in a bid to end the National Security Agency's phone and Internet surveillance programs. He said at the rally that Obama "has broken into 300 million homes" with the programs. "In the end [Obama] will feel the force of the American people, just like King George did," he said to applause. The forthcoming convention in Philadelphia, Klayman said, will be organized within the next several weeks. A so-called "government in waiting" will be elected there, including a president, representatives and a cabinet, he said. Nearly all speakers invoked their Christian faith to condemn Obama. Bishop Dan Johnson of the Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, Ky., prayed with ralliers, asking God to "cause [elected officials] to get on their knees, not to Allah, but to God almighty." In his prayer, Johnson denounced homosexuality, permissive parenting, pornography and welfare. Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., told the crowd Obama should be impeached. Barr spearheaded the successful impeachment campaign against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. "We have a scoundrel living in that building," Barr said, pointing at the White House, "and need to do something about it." Barr was the Libertarian Party's 2008 presidential candidate and is currently running for a U.S. House seat. Other speakers included WND editor Joseph Farah, 2004 Constitution Party presidential candidate Michael Peroutka and retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Lyons. Belinda Bee, a principal organizer of the Sept. 11, 2013, motorcycle convoy into Washington, D.C., also attended. A George Washington impersonator read from the stage a revised Declaration of Independence composed by organizers. "Mister Obama and his collaborators," the man declared, should be personally responsible for the national debt. The new declaration says Obama must "immediately step down from his usurped office and seek refuge in a nation more of his liking." Grievances against Obama include gun-control proposals, immigration reform agitation, a departure from "Biblical morality," alleged help for al-Qaida associates in the Middle East, an allegedly fabricated birth certificate and executive actions that loop around Congress. Activists seek to dissolve the United States until Obama is forced from office. "He's kind of like a skunk," one attendee joked. "He's half white, half black, and everything he does stinks." More News:

BEGINNER TO EXPERT IN 29 WEEKS It can be overwhelming when jumping into game development for the first time, with so many articles, tutorials, books, resources and opinions circulating around the web. This article is going to simplify the process and give you a road map to becoming an expert with Unity 3d Game Development. We will focus on two separate sections, one to the complete beginner with no programming experience and one for the people who already have programming experience and just want to add unity development to their knowledge base. Choose the one that fits your situation. And if you really just want a visual roadmap, go see the bottom where we have a timeline overview with all the resources. Weeks 1-4 The Complete Beginner Before jumping into Unity, it will be extremely important to get a good foundation in a programming language. Unity gives the option to choose from two separate languages, C# (pronounced c-sharp) and Java. We will outline a path to learn each one. All of our tutorials are in C# but honestly they are very similar so either one you choose will differ slightly in syntax. The easiest way we can recommend (and the way I first began learning programming) would be to start with a Learn C#/Java in 21 Days book. These are fantastic resources and break it up into manageable daily learning sessions, which also helps retain the information as well, because they have you do simple tasks to cement the concepts at the end of each daily lesson. At the end of 30 days you will have a very good understanding of the inner workings of that language and programming in general, because a lot of languages still follow the same structure, just using different syntax. Yes, it is completely possible to learn programming, or anything for that matter, online with free resources. Personally I recommend books because it saves time in searching for things and they are getting paid to put out good quality material all in one place, and are easy to reference later on when you need to remember what you did in specific situations. Plus you can’t go wrong investing in knowledge. Here are the “Learn in 21 Days” books, if you are new to programming, get one of these! You won’t regret it.

Katedra (Cathedral in English) is a Lithuanian Heavy Metal band, founded in 1986. From the outset, it was significantly influenced by the style of Iron Maiden.[1] Members [ edit ] Current members [ edit ] Former members [ edit ] Povilas Meškėla – vocals (episodically also trombone), Romas Rainys – guitar, Marius Giedrys – drums, Naglis Patamsis – keyboard, Algimantas Radavičius – bass guitar, Domas Dėdinas - drums, Gediminas Jurgaitis - bass guitar. History [ edit ] Beginning [ edit ] In its first incarnation, Katedra was composed of the three musicians: Ričardas Laginauskas on guitar, Algimantas Radavičius on bass, and Marius Giedrys on drums. Later, former Foje guitarist Romas Rainys and even then-unknown vocalist Povilas Meškėla joined the band. December 1986 was the official start of Katedra. Mors Ultima Ratio and break up [ edit ] In 1989 band finished recording their first LP called "Mors Ultima Ratio" (Latin: "Death is the final accounting"). Although, it was released a year after recording, Katedra's first vinyl album gained extreme popularity in Lithuania. "Mors Ultima Ratio" was also noticed by Edgar Klusener from "Metal Hammer" magazine. He described Katedra as: "that is pure thrash metal act, strong both musically and technically. In fact the formation is superior in comparison with 90 percent of similar Western acts. So it is evident how far the music in Lithuania made headway. Katedra are the only matadors in Lithuania and maybe stand among the hottest European thrash metal bands".[2] Gained popularity, opened doors to concerts abroad. In 1991 Katedra played at "Baltic Sea Music Festival" in Sweden. Unfortunately, it was the last gig for Povilas Meškėla and Romas Rainys with the band. Soon after the festival they left Katedra. Downturn [ edit ] The band was now seeking another shift: Ričardas took over the vocalist position. The band's output at this time included the album "Natus in articulo mortis"; their music became more severe; and Ričardas's vocal entry of the Katedra sounds from the standard clichés.[citation needed] The trio played many concerts and their albums were played on Lithuanian radio stations. Later, and for some time, concert activity was stopped. Although the trio continued to build and perform together, the group's name was almost forgotten. It was a new generation, and new names appeared on the Metal stage. In February 2001, the band was invited to play an acoustic concert on Lithuanian national television. The group relied on its own feet—and played live. Revival [ edit ] From 2003 the band helped keyboardist Naglis Patamsis.[clarification needed] The musicians tried to experiment more. In the autumn of 2003, longtime band member Marius Giedrys left Katedra. He was replaced by a new drummer, Domas Dėdinas (who has played in bands such as Inquest, Undertaker, Dahmer, Mezopsychya and Herosgamos). After a successful appearance at Lithuania's largest rock festival "The nights of rock 2004" in Plateliai, managers found Katedra and booked the band for a few concert programs, which have been shown with success in Lithuanian club music scenes, and also in several foreign festivals. In the 2005 summer festival "The nights of rock 2005", Katedra presented a retrospective of its old and new songs with the string duo Gleb Pyšniak (cello) and Kristina Baltrušaitytė (viola). In August 2004, the band announced its third album (and first album on CD format) "III". It was presented in 2006 "The nights of rock". 2006 Band bassist Algis Radavičius was replaced by Gediminas Jurgaitis (previously, he had played in the band "Hersh tu"? At the end of 2007, Domas Dėdinas was replaced by Salvijus Žeimys (ex "Ossuary", "Spellbound", "Green Bridge Band" and others), who also performs with bands "Skylė", "Atalyja" and "ExLibris". In September 2008, the group signed a contract with Atra Musica for a fourth album, "Ugnikalnis" (Lithuanian: Volcano) On November 1, 2008, the band's fourth album, "Ugnikalnis", saw the light of day. In the end of 2010 Gediminas Jurgaitis left the band. Bass players place was taken by Rimantas Budriūnas. Significant events [ edit ] Lituanica ’88 ir ‘89“ (Vilnius) „Rock Panorama“ (Moskow) „Rock Summer“ ir „Rock Winter“ (Estonia) „Liepajas Dzintars ’88 ir ‘89“ (Latvia) „Sopot“ (Poland) „Ilosaari Pop“ (Finland) „Baltic Sea Music Fest '91“ (Sweden) Lietuvos kultūros dienos Leipcige '94 (Germany) (Lithuanian cultural days in Leipzig) „Death Comes...2000 ir 2001“ (Vilnius) „Ferrum Frost“ 2003 ir 2004 (Vilnius) „Roko naktys 2003,'04, '05, '06, '07, '08“ (Lithuania) „Riga Bike Show 2005“ (Latvia) Russia biker show „Baltijskij Šturm 2005“ (Kaliningrad). Discography [ edit ] Mors Ultima Ratio (1989) Natus In Articulo Mortis (1992) III (2006) Ugnikalnis (Volcano) (2008)

Borrowers buying homes with bigger and bigger mortgages. Specialist lenders taking business from banks by offering more aggressive loan terms. Analysts claiming there is nothing to worry about. Sound familiar? The real estate market in Canada is starting to share some similarities with the US before its subprime-fueled housing bubble burst. For one thing, mortgage debt in Canada is close to 70% of GDP, not far from the peak in the US before it all went wrong: Canada’s central bank recently warned that increasing household indebtedness is the country’s major financial vulnerability. Thanks to easy credit and foreign demand, property prices in Canada have been skyrocketing—the average home price is now rising at a 13% annual pace, not far off the highest rate recorded before the global financial crisis. As a result, the ranks of Canadian mortgage borrowers with high loan-to-income ratios has jumped in recent years: So, is Canada headed for a crash? Banking regulation in Canada has traditionally been stricter than in the US, and recent changes to mortgage rules have put even tougher limits on down payments, loan-to-value ratios, and the like. Still, the central bank is worried—but not too worried (pdf)—about lightly regulated mortgage finance specialists taking market share from banks. Benjamin Tal, an economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, doesn’t think so (pdf). He claims that the US housing market cratered not because debt levels were high, but because the US built up ”lousy” debt, whereas the composition of Canadian debt is sound. Indeed, less than 1% of mortgages are three months or more overdue (pdf). “There’s no real estate bubble, except perhaps in Vancouver,” notes Marc Pinsonneault of the National Bank of Canada. Canadian homeowners will hope these assessments prove more accurate than the ones on the other side of the border.

Robotic submersible probes depths of up to 4,000m near Antarctic Peninsula to obtain unprecedented data on how mixing ocean waters affect climate change A yellow submarine dubbed Boaty McBoatface has obtained “unprecedented data” from its first voyage exploring one of the deepest and coldest ocean regions on Earth, scientists have said. The robotic submersible was given the name originally chosen for a new polar research ship by irreverent contestants in a public competition. Embarrassed officials decided to ignore the popular vote and instead named the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough in honour of the veteran broadcaster. A storm of protest led to a compromise that allowed the name to live on. The submarine plunged to depths as far as 4,000 metres to obtain information about temperature, water flow speed and turbulence from Orkney Passage, a region of the Southern Ocean about 500 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula. The data will help scientists to understand the complex ways that mixing ocean waters affect climate change. Boaty McBoatface: tyrants have crushed the people’s will | Stuart Heritage Read more Prof Alberto Naveira Garabato from the University of Southampton said: “The Orkney Passage is a key chokepoint to the flow of abyssal waters in which we expect the mechanism linking changing winds to abyssal water warming to operate. “Our goal is to learn enough about these convoluted processes to represent them in the models that scientists use to predict how our climate will evolve over the 21st century and beyond. “We have been able to collect massive amounts of data that we have never been able to capture before due to the way Boaty is able to move underwater. Up until now we have only been able to take measurements from a fixed point, but now we are able to obtain a much more detailed picture of what is happening in this very important underwater landscape.” The submersible was launched from the RRS James Clark Ross as part of the seven-week expedition. It is a new type of autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and can travel under ice and reach depths of 6,000 metres, transmitting the data it collects to researchers via a radio link. The universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, said: “Fresh from its maiden voyage, Boaty is already delivering new insight into some of the coldest ocean waters on Earth, giving scientists a greater understanding of changes in the Antarctic region and shaping a global effort to tackle climate change.” The name Boaty McBoatface was first put forward by the former BBC radio presenter James Hand in response to a public poll organised by the National Environment Research Council to name their new £200m Arctic research vessel. The research council was mobbed with more than 7,000 ideas for names in the month-long competition period, among them RRS Onion Knight, RRS I Like Big Boats and I Cannot Lie, and RRS Capt’n Birdseye Get Off My Cod.

× 1 dead, 1 injured after shooting outside concert SALT LAKE CITY – Police responded to a shooting that left one person dead and another person injured Saturday night. Det. Richard Chipping of the Salt Lake City Police Department said the shooting occurred in the area of 700 West and 1400 South where a concert was taking place, and FOX 13 News first heard reports of the shooting around 9:30 p.m. Police said shots were fired as the victims were leaving the concert. One man was killed in the shooting and another male was injured. The man who was killed was later identified as 24-year-old Bradley Hancock. Chipping said they were searching for a black Jeep Cherokee in connection with the shooting, and a press release issued Sunday stated that a suspect believed to be responsible for the shooting had been arrested. Chipping said the concert was for a band called Soul Search. The group posted on their Facebook page they were playing Saturday night at The Core, located at 700 West 1444 South. FOX 13 News will have more information as it becomes available.

Media playback is not supported on this device Usain Bolt wins in one of his final 100m races in Czech Republic Usain Bolt failed to run a sub-10 second time for the second 100m race in succession as he edged to victory at the Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava. The three-time Olympic 100m champion won in 10.06 seconds, 0.03secs ahead of Cuba's Yunier Perez. Britain's Mo Farah won the 10,000m in 27 minutes and 12 seconds, 2mins 34secs clear of Kenya's Mathew Kimeli. South Africa's Wayde van Niekerk set a 300m world record of 30.81, beating Michael Johnson's 30.85 set in 2000. Van Niekerk is the first man in history to run sub-10 seconds for 100m, sub-20 seconds for 200m, sub-31 seconds for 300m and sub-44 seconds for 400m. 'I'll be fine' - Bolt Bolt was expected to retire at the World Championships in London in August but before this race he said that, while this will be his final season, he may race beyond the event. He is the most successful man in the history of the championships with 13 world medals, including 11 gold. Fellow Jamaican Merlene Ottey, with 14, is the most decorated female at the event. It is the first time in his career that Bolt, 30, has run two successive 100m races of more than 10 seconds. "I'm not happy but I'm just getting into my running and have some training to do," he said. "I'll be fine. I need to get checked over by my doctor and the coach will give me some training, so no worries." Bolt started slowly but hit the front with about 40m to go Farah's London marker Farah's time was only four seconds off the world-leading time over 10,000m this year, held by Abadi Hadis of Ethiopia. The four-time Olympic champion will not compete over the distance again until he bids to defend his title at the World Championships. The 34-year-old's time in Ostrava was well down on the 27:01 he managed to win the world title with in Beijing in 2015, but Kimeli was his only challenger with 10 laps remaining before Farah broke clear for a comfortable victory. Elsewhere at the event, Olympic champion Christian Taylor set a meeting record of 17.57m to win the triple jump.

Monopoly, foreclosure-style By Tom Toles *** Do Tell The gay rights movement is anomalous. I guess everything is anomalous to some degree, but gay people were like this giant INVISIBLE group that was right there amongst us all along, but everybody was pretending they weren't. This worked out nicely for straight people who didn't want to have to think about what they didn't want to have to think about. Well, what do you know, gay people got tired of pretending, because a) nobody likes pretending and b) it occurred to them that they might like the same legal and social rights as heterosexuals. Conservatives promptly labeled equal rights for gay people "special rights", meaning rights for somebody who wasn't them. The good news is that progress has been, by historic standards, fairly swift. What may be the strangest residue of that progress is Don't Ask, Don't Tell. While you can argue that it served a bridging function while a tradition-oriented establishment came to terms with a new reality, history will look back with blinking incomprehension at a policy that will seem to have been thought up by a preschooler, along the lines of "If I cover my eyes, can you see me?" So straight people have had to think a few thoughts that make them squeamish in coming to terms with all this. Sorry about that. But now that you've had those thoughts, you can stop thinking about it now! If you KEEP thinking about it, maybe you have other issues. -- Tom Toles ***

MY JOURNEY, FROM MIKE POWER TO JOHN BUCKLEY, from investigative journalist to drug designer, started six weeks earlier. To understand exactly how access to designer drugs has changed—to see exactly how easy it is to commission, purchase and import powerful new compounds that are beyond the reach of the law—I decided to get one made myself. I chose to focus on the Beatles’ drug, phenmetrazine: a nod to the cultural significance of Prellies and their illustrious user base. How easy would it be to get a legal version made? What procedures would it take, what roadblocks would be put in the way? I phoned a contact with expertise in chemistry and asked if he could think of a simple molecular tweak that would produce a new version of phenmetrazine that would be totally legal. Yes, he said. The change would be trivial. What might its effects be? “A fantastic anorectic if you want to lose weight, and an effective stimulant.” The search began for a laboratory that would make a one-off sample. I decided that I would present myself as a legitimate broker for a UK-based pharmaceutical firm. Taking on my new identity, I posted a buying request for the drug on various public websites that broker deals between individuals and small pharmaceutical manufacturers. Dozens of emails came back. Not all of them were genuine. Some of these early responders were blatant scammers: Cameroon and Ukraine do have chemical industries, but those who work in them tend not to be able to offer large amounts of totally new, extremely rare drugs the very next day. My search headed to India, where three firms offered to synthesize the drug for me. On closer examination, though, none of them seemed up to the task—and they were all asking for very large sums of money, well beyond the actual value and difficulty of the compounds we were requesting. One priced the job as high as $10,000. After weeks of constant searching for a decent lab, one of my contacts sent me the URL of a site in Shanghai that, on the surface of things, has nothing to do with legal highs, analog drugs, or any gray-market activity. They sell organic chemicals on international markets to people in many industries, and offer pharmaceutical drugs to legitimate importers. But insiders in China who prefer to remain anonymous say there is little accountability or oversight of the chemical industry there. Once they are licensed, operators are seldom monitored, a scenario that has led to dozens of high-profile public health scares, including 300,000 children falling sick as a result of melamine being added to milk, and so-called “date rape” drugs appearing in Australian children’s toys. I made an approach to the lab during Chinese business hours, and I heard back within an hour. “First, can I know the application of this compound your client use?” asked the person on the other end. “I just want to make sure it is legal application. We can do custom synthesis of this simple chemical surely. But if you can give synthesis route, it will be very good for us and we can save some time for this project.” I replied, “We are doing basic animal research into the compound’s putative analgesic properties. Based upon its expected effect on monoamines, we believe it will have fairly potent analgesic effects, whilst causing minimal cardiovascular strain. Our intention is to use it as a proof of concept for a new type of analgesic for dogs.” My online identity for this character and for his company are bare bones: nothing but a webmail address. My cover explanation is that I am designing a painkiller—yet phenmetrazine, the clear progenitor of this recipe, is not known to have any analgesic qualities. To anyone who cares to look, my story is blatantly false. But the lab does not seem to care. We agree on a price and discuss quality control standards. The lab eventually agrees to send over data that will, they say, confirm they have created a drug with the makeup I require. The report will be based on high-pressure liquid chromatography, which chemists use to match a sample to library of known compounds, and nuclear magnetic resonance, which can reveal the structure of a molecule, regardless of whether it has been studied previously. Next we agree payment—a few hundred dollars. Rather than an untraceable cash transfer such as Western Union, or an anonymous crypto currency such as Bitcoin, we opt for a simple bank transfer. Delivery is agreed by a well-known courier firm. Two weeks later I receive another email. The compound is ready, though it is currently a liquid. Purity stands at around 93.7 percent; to purify it to 98 percent will reduce yield. I’m happy to accept that loss, as it will never be consumed. I request that it be salted into a solid, powder form using hydrochloric acid. I receive the qualitative data from the firm by email. The NMR readings feature the long, jagged peaks that suggest the existence of the drug. Now that it meets the stringent purity demands of “my client,” I agree: it’s time to ship it. But how? Technically, we are doing nothing illegal, so we needn’t smuggle it, or even disguise it. At this stage, though, I have no guarantee beyond the lab’s word that they have carried out the work as instructed; they could easily send me an illegal drug instead of the one I have asked for. And while the point of this substance is that it is legal to bring it into the UK, this is not a mainstream importing job. I cannot help feeling the paranoia of a novice: what screening do customs officers and law enforcement do to track unidentified substances that are being sent across their borders? I ask for an Material Safety Data sheet, standard paperwork that should accompany any chemical sample in the post. They do not have one—unsurprising, since the chemical is so rare. The unspoken truth hangs in the complicit silence between us: we both know this a modification of an illegal drug, and that it is designed for recreational, not medical purposes. To get around this, the lab offers to send it hidden in a book: an unusual offer from a company claiming to make and distribute entirely legal substances. But I know that one of the most common ways that small-scale smugglers are detected is when a drug is packed inside an object too cheap or trivial to be posted internationally. Who aside from a rare books dealer would spend $100 sending a book from China to London? Instead, I tell the chemist to simply mark it as documents, to be delivered to a London postal dropbox that I have set up in the fictitious company’s name. The package of drugs the author designed Over the next few days I scan the courier’s site nervously watching the package’s progress from Shanghai and out of the country. Paranoia affects would-be drug designers and importers as much as users: after all, while they usually operate legally, their cat-and-mouse game happens at the fringes of the law, not the center—labeling them as not for human consumption—for example. But a few days later my package arrives in the UK, ready for collection. A legal highs vendor would now offer the drug privately to a select number of influential bulletin-board posters, and ask them to review the drug online. Building hype, creating a market, they would then start selling the compound, but the process of testing and legislating means the British government would be powerless to intervene for at least a few months—perhaps even up to a year. They could sell this drug for $130 a gram, or, to make more money, press it into tablets. Instead, I send it by registered mail to Andrew Westwell, a medicinal chemist at Cardiff University, who will analyze its contents.

Costa Rica has again topped the Happy Planet Index rankings with a substantial lead - having previously come top in our 2009 and 2012 editions. This tropical Central-American country is home to the greatest density of species in the world. Costa Rica’s GDP per capita is less than a quarter of the size of many Western European and North American countries, and is primarily based on tourism, agriculture and exports. People living in Costa Rica have higher wellbeing than the residents of many rich nations, including the USA and the UK, and live longer than people in the USA. And all of this is achieved with a per capita Ecological Footprint that’s just one third of the size of the USA’s. What’s working well in Costa Rica? Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949, and has since reallocated army funds to be spent on education, health and pensions . In 2012, Costa Rica invested more in education and health as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product than the UK. Professor Mariano Rojas, a Costa Rican economist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, attributes Costa Ricans’ high wellbeing to a culture of forming solid social networks of friends, families and neighbourhoods. Costa Rica is also a world leader when it comes to environmental protection. The Costa Rican government uses taxes collected on the sale of fossil fuels to pay for the protection of forests. In 2015, the country was able to produce 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, and the government continues to invest in renewable energy generation in an effort to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021. What could be improved? Income inequality in Costa Rica is particularly high - in part because Costa Rica’s tax system does not effectively redistribute wealth across the population. And while Costa Rica’s commitment to environmental sustainability is impressive, its Ecological Footprint isn’t yet small enough to be completely sustainable. Photo credit: CC Pasha Kirillov

Your Bitcoin transactions The Ultimate Bitcoin mixer made truly anonymous. with an advanced technology. Mix coins Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction. Advertise here. nearmiss Offline Activity: 448 Merit: 250 Sr. MemberActivity: 448Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 06:54:27 PM #1802 There's been a breach this afternoon with a number of users reporting payout addresses being changed and manual payouts being triggered to the new address. All payouts have been disabled and we are working on determining the scope of the issue. While its unlikely passwords have been compromised (and nothing is stored plain text in the db anyways), its not a bad practice to assume the worst and change passwords anyways. 40.8 total BTC has been lost. We can't really comment much further on account statuses until we gather data on the full picture. Obviously with the time of year, we all have commitments outside, but we are working every spare moment we've got. I advise people to stop by the irc channel if possible, where live discussions can happen and up to date news provided. The cows apologize to everyone involved, its a terrible time of year to wake up to such things. There will be 0% fees on anything earned as of now and today's btc earned (keeping in mind payout is disabled for the time being). nearmiss Profit-Switching Pool w/ Vardiff -> http://hashco.ws Optionally keep the alts we mine or auto-trade for BTC. In addition can be paid out in any of: 365, AC, BC, BTC, C2, CINNI, COMM, FAC, HBN, MINT, PMC, QRK, RDD, WC, XBC gsrcrxsi Offline Activity: 294 Merit: 250 Sr. MemberActivity: 294Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:00:10 PM #1803 What the mother fuck?! 0.045+ BTC gone. I assume that HC won't do anything about refunding people?? Such a sad state. First the horrible payouts and connection issues, and now they allow everyone to be compromised and have their shit stolen. A lot of good that 4 digit pin for payouts did huh? I was already moved off of HC due to the other issues and now this? Yeah. Safe to say i can never trust this pool again... bronxbob Offline Activity: 9 Merit: 0 NewbieActivity: 9Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:04:24 PM #1805 Quote from: gsrcrxsi on December 24, 2013, 07:00:10 PM What the mother fuck?! 0.045+ BTC gone. I assume that HC won't do anything about refunding people?? Such a sad state. First the horrible payouts and connection issues, and now they allow everyone to be compromised and have their shit stolen. A lot of good that 4 digit pin for payouts did huh? I was already moved off of HC due to the other issues and now this? Yeah. Safe to say i can never trust this pool again... Well to be honest you really can't trust the majority of pools. Its not like we know the backgrounds of the people running this. I assume that a lot of sites are rife with security issues. Doesn't stop me from mining of course, but I am wary of it all. Well to be honest you really can't trust the majority of pools. Its not like we know the backgrounds of the people running this.I assume that a lot of sites are rife with security issues. Doesn't stop me from mining of course, but I am wary of it all. billionaire Offline Activity: 154 Merit: 100 Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:06:57 PM #1806 Woke up to find 0.106427 BTC stolen from my Hashcows account. It went to the same address that stole everyone else's. I even had my withdraw limit set to 0.5 BTC, but it was changed to auto at the same time the person changed the address. I have never had any of the pools or exchanges I frequent ever have my account hacked. Even the lowly two-bit operations. I use a different password and PIN at each site too. 40 BTC seems like a lot for this site to be able to cover in reimbursements due to its own security flaws (which it clearly was since so many were affected). I certainly hope I get paid back, but not holding my breath either. It must be very tempting to simply close down the site and not pay $25,000+ dollars worth of coin to users because of the site's security problems. That's if Hashcows even has enough funds to pay people to begin with. Needless to say, I will not mine on the site or any other future pools that might be created by Hashcows team until I am fully reimbursed. If I am, I will gladly come back. gsrcrxsi Offline Activity: 294 Merit: 250 Sr. MemberActivity: 294Merit: 250 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:08:33 PM #1807 I'm sure the amount that HC has been taking in from fees and their own mining is plenty to cover this 40BTC loss. The RIGHT thing for them to do would be to own up to it and just refund what was taken from each person. As well as fix the security. That's pretty much the only thing they can do to earn the trust of their miners again. Spiffy_1 Offline Activity: 234 Merit: 100 Full MemberActivity: 234Merit: 100 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:12:04 PM #1809 Yeah, not impressed... Log on to see a manual BTC payout with no fee to the address of 13R87ropkDKzDEuVeQoX64kkcLvPWVdTKH. This pool had better do something to fix this issue.. I had a 16 digit random password generated for this site before it was hacked.. I have regenerated another now and my antivirus and spyware detector come up negative on my side. This was a hole in hashco.ws and I expect to be reinbursed. If you like what I've posted, mine for me on whatever algo you like on www.zpool.ca for a minute using my bitcoin address: 1BJJYPRcRPzTEfByCwkeJ8SCBcrnGD1nhL eaglejam Offline Activity: 7 Merit: 0 NewbieActivity: 7Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:38:46 PM #1812 What is even more scary is they got by the 4-digit PIN that is MANDATORY to set. Clearly there is a big security issue here, Most likely several of the Boxes running Hashcows have been r00ted. Clean back-ups should be restored and the servers wiped and rebuilt. It would be nice to have compensation. I also got hit by 13R87ropkDKzDEuVeQoX64kkcLvPWVdTKH, Lost 0.00120115 BTC that didn't get a chance to withdraw.Clearly there is a big security issue here, Most likely several of the Boxes running Hashcows have been r00ted. Clean back-ups should be restored and the servers wiped and rebuilt.It would be nice to have compensation. bronxbob Offline Activity: 9 Merit: 0 NewbieActivity: 9Merit: 0 Re: [ANN][Pool][Profit-Switch][Optional Auto-Exchange per Coin][Vardiff] ~ Hashcows December 24, 2013, 07:43:28 PM #1813 Quote from: eaglejam on December 24, 2013, 07:38:46 PM What is even more scary is they got by the 4-digit PIN that is MANDATORY to set. Clearly there is a big security issue here, Most likely several of the Boxes running Hashcows have been r00ted. Clean back-ups should be restored and the servers wiped and rebuilt. It would be nice to have compensation. I also got hit by 13R87ropkDKzDEuVeQoX64kkcLvPWVdTKH, Lost 0.00120115 BTC that didn't get a chance to withdraw.Clearly there is a big security issue here, Most likely several of the Boxes running Hashcows have been r00ted. Clean back-ups should be restored and the servers wiped and rebuilt.It would be nice to have compensation. Oh yah no doubt they have had a full compromise. It will be interesting to see if they figure out how, and whether they know how to fix it and whether they disclose how it happened. We'll learn a lot about hashco.ws's in the next few days... Oh yah no doubt they have had a full compromise.It will be interesting to see if they figure out how, and whether they know how to fix it and whether they disclose how it happened.We'll learn a lot about hashco.ws's in the next few days...

The Chaplin fan club in Adipur has more than 200 members (Photos: Sanjoy Ghosh) A small town in the western Indian state of Gujarat is an unlikely haven for Charlie Chaplin impersonators. The BBC's Soutik Biswas travelled to the town of Adipur to find out why. In the rising heat of a flaming Indian summer, more than 100 people have gathered in a small town in Gujarat to celebrate Charlie Chaplin's birthday. There are girls and boys, men and women. They are young and old, fit and feeble. They have all trooped out into the streets of Adipur dressed up like the legendary actor's tramp - toothbrush moustache, bowler hat, scruffy black suit, cane. What binds them is a love of Chaplin's cinema - most are members of the Charlie Circle, a local fan club which has been celebrating the actor's birthday every April since 1973. I thought, is Chaplin an actor or a magician? I fell off my seat laughing in the darkness Club founder Ashok Aswani In pictures: India's Chaplins Out on the streets, a colourful party fuses Chaplin worship with Indian song and dance. Scores of impersonators imitate the tramp's bow-legged dance walk and waddle with mixed results. Then they begin jumping up and down to Bollywood songs sung by a portly local singer and pumped out from crackling speakers strung on top of a rickety mobile music cart. Worship In the middle, girls togged out in colourful local costumes swirl around doing the garba, a popular local dance. A couple of camel-drawn carts bring up the rear. One is packed with toddler Chaplin impersonators. In the other, a small statue and a big poster of the actor are "worshipped", complete with a chanting Hindu priest and burning joss sticks. The Chaplin fan club opened in 1973 "The tramp is dead, long live the tramp," cries Kishore Bhawsar, a 52-year-old bus conductor and fan club member who has composed a paean to his favourite actor. Mr Bhawsar says his life changed after watching The Gold Rush, the 1925 comic gem featuring Chaplin chasing fortunes in the icy wilderness of Alaska. "Chaplin absorbs grief and makes you laugh. He said, 'I walk in the rain to hide my tears.' He was a poet," Mr Bhawsar shouts above the din. The gathering roars in approval, as the procession snakes through the town while bystanders gape and traffic comes to a halt. As dusk settles over the town, festivities move to a crummy hall where locals perform mimes, skits and watch a Chaplin film on the big screen. "It's a day we wait for every year. It's our biggest festival in many senses," says Arjunji Bhimji Fariya, a 70-something Morgan Freeman lookalike and retired bus driver. Unusual place Mr Fariya saw his first Chaplin silent short as a 12-year-old in Karachi, Pakistan, where he was born. Now he is one of the oldest members of Charlie Circle. "I have been walking in the Chaplin procession for the last eight years," he says with a hint of pride. Ashok Aswani launched the club after watching Chaplin films Adipur, in arid, sprawling Kutch region, is an unlikely place for Chaplin adulation to grow deep roots. Not very long ago, it was a sleepy town of refugees from Sindh in Pakistan, better known for a urea factory and a thriving port in its neighbourhood. Two cinemas - one quaintly named Oslo after a Norwegian who visited the town - showed mainly Bollywood films. But one man's serendipitous discovery of Chaplin led to the town's obsession with the actor. Back in the summer of 1966, The Gold Rush, thanks to a quirk of cinema distribution, arrived at Oslo and changed the life of Ashok Aswani, the son of a local pharmacist. A drama and cinema buff - early pictures show him as a rakish young man, dressed sharply with an oil-slicked bouffant - Mr Aswani was cycling to his work as a typist when he saw a poster for the film. He screeched to a halt. "I was wonderstruck. I found his dress and look fascinating. How does the man bend his legs like that?" he reminisces, bleary-eyed. He says he got off his bike and gaped at the poster for 10 minutes. Then he forgot about his job, left his cycle outside the hall, bought a ticket and went in. "A whole new world of cinema opened up for me. The music, technique, photography was so different! And I thought, is Chaplin an actor or a magician? I fell off my seat laughing in the darkness," says Mr Aswani. 'Obsession' That day, Mr Aswani watched all four showings of The Gold Rush. He was also fired. The procession is a major festival in the town "I lost my job, but I gained Chaplin. I became obsessed with him, I became interested in acting and wanted desperately to become an actor," he remembers. The young man, his life changed by Chaplin's cinema, dropped out of college and applied for an actor's course in India's most famous cinema school in the western city of Pune. He passed the admission test, joined the school but was thrown out after six months when he failed his tests. Returning to Adipur, Mr Aswani opened the Charlie Circle club in 1973. He became a practitioner of indigenous medicine, giving away free Chaplin CDs with his potions. Chaplin's spirit Over a quarter of a century, the Chaplin fan club has grown (more than 200 members and rising). It has inspired a 74-minute documentary by Australian filmmaker Kathryn Millard, a website and TV offers to participate in reality shows. "When I set out to research a documentary about Chaplin imitators around the world, I had no idea that I would meet a very special community - perhaps Chaplin's most devoted followers - in a small town in India," says Ms Millard. She says whenever she shows the film, people ask her whether there is a way they could join the Charlie Circle: "I hope they may start accepting associate members from other countries!" Chaplin impersonators are to be found all over the world, but it appears his spirit is truly alive and well in Adipur. "The celebrations will never cease," says 60-year-old Mr Aswani, as the party winds down and he shakes off his tramp suit. "Our children and grandchildren are already hooked to Chaplin's films, so our homage to the actor will never end." Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Efforts are on to shape Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency, into the world’s spiritual capital and turn the city’s blatant juxtaposition of life and death into high-voltage commerce. The move, claim those in the know, would possibly help the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government acquire stronger secular credentials and deflect the seemingly endless uproar over cow politics. The department of tourism of Uttar Pradesh, along with top officials in Varanasi, is putting in place a host of plans that will bring members of different religions to a common platform, and turn one of the world’s oldest cities into an ideal spot for global religious travellers. According to the World Tourism Organisation, an estimated 300 to 330 million pilgrims visit the world's key religious sites every year. If this happens, hopefully by the end of this year, Varanasi will be India’s new God’s Own Country, the city being the home to a little over 100 mosques, scores of churches, a popular Buddhist pilgrimage and the highly popular temples of Lord Shiva and Hanuman. “You have to stand on the Manikarnika Ghat to get a feel of the city, and its spirituality. Varanasi is about life, death, respect and religion, the idea is to make it a centre for all religions, and tell visitors that its not all about sadness. The idea is to turn it into a city of liberators,” says Awanish Kumar Awasthi, principal secretary to Adityanath. He is working feverishly on the project, which also includes ensuring the city is free from power cuts and traffic snarls. Linked to both Mecca and Jerusalem, Varanasi is one of the world's oldest cities. “The amalgamation of religion in one city is unique in the world and this will be garner great traction among Indian and global tourists,” says Awasthi. This, in some ways, is the second step. The first happened last year when Varanasi was named as one of the world’s “Cities of World Music” under the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. “The city’s rich musical heritage is famous the world over, its a great tag for Varanasi,” the city’s mayor, Ramgopal Mohle said in an interview. Mohle said the UNESCO tag had already provided a fillip to tourism, helping artists and musicians from Varanasi to visit countries that are a part of this network. Nine cities — Glasgow in the UK, Hanover and Mannheim in Germany, Ghent in Belgium, Hamamatsu in Japan, Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, Bogota in Columbia, Seville in Spain and Bologna in Italy — are a part of the UNESCO chain. “Varanasi is immersed in both religion and history. It is already the world’s spiritual capital, we will be reinforcing the claim,” says Mohle. For decades, the city — claims Awasthi — has remained high on the calendar of international travellers to India, also a large number of domestic travellers. In 530 BC, the Buddha preached his first sermon after enlightenment near Varanasi, but by then the city was already 500 years old. As per Hindu mythology, Varanasi was founded by God Shiva, lord of destruction and creation, and is the physical and spiritual centre of the Hindu universe. The city is home to a little over 1.2 million people and an estimated 1,500 temples and shrines, attracting pilgrims from India, and the world. Hindus who visit Varanasi have strong beliefs, so do Buddhists who visit Sarnath on the outskirts of the city. Hindu devotees believe that anyone who dies within the city limits attains instant moksha, or redemption, freeing the soul from the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Many spend thousands of rupees transporting bodies to be cremated at two sacred ghats — Manikarnika and Raja Harish Chandra — in the city, also home to many sick and elderly living in hospices, waiting to die. Awasthi did not further spell out details of the project but it is reliably learnt that a host of Hollywood and Bollywood stars, performing artists, international and Indian scholars would be roped in for the project. Interestingly, the idea to turn the city into a spiritual centre was triggered after a visit to Varanasi last year by ageing Hollywood star Morgan Freeman for a six-part National Geographic series, The Story of God. Morgan, who had travelled to seven countries for the series, had then told the Press Trust of India (PTI) that his experience was fascinating in Varanasi, one of the most prominent religious and spiritual centres in the world for centuries. “I found Varanasi extremely fascinating. The ambience in Varanasi is extraordinary. It is the holiest of holy cities in India on the holiest river in India. Learning that reincarnation, you can bypass it in Varanasi, did you know that? That was news to me,” said the Bruce Almighty star who loved the cacophonous traffic on the streets. “There were no lights, there were no guides. It just keeps going. How in the world do they do that? You don’t see people lying alongside the road having been run over, you don’t see dead dogs or chickens lying in the road having been run over, everything manages to function on the roads,” Morgan told the agency. It was not immediately known if the state government had approached Morgan. Varanasi chronicler Gaurav Kapoor says the idea is taking shape slow, but steadily. “This is not a new phenomenon, the state government has been at it for long, probably now its taking shape.” It is reliably learnt that the state government would also seek the help of the US-based Dr David Frawley, an acclaimed author on Indian spirituality and yoga practitioner who has deep knowledge of Varanasi and its history. A mail to Dr Frawley, a regular visitor to India, remained unanswered. Kapoor said the move to push Varanasi as the world’s spiritual capital will have great backers, especially from the West. The list of top notch visitors from the West, claims Kapoor, is both huge and impressive. Celebrated sitar artist Pandit Ravi Shankar’s ashes were immersed in the holy waters of Varanasi by his daughters, Anoushka and Norah Jones in March 2013. Celebrated models and actors Seal and Heidi Klum, till they were married, routinely sought priests from Varanasi every year to take vows as per Hindu rites because they were mesmerised by the city and its culture. Singer Madonna took lessons in Sanskrit over the phone from Vagish Shastri of Kundalini Yoga Peeth way back in 1998, for her album Ray of Light, Grammy award winner Sting spent some time in Varanasi in 2013 along with filmmaker Ismail Merchant, then scouting for locales for Goddess, which he could never direct because he died of a heart attack in 2005. Pop icon Tina Turner, selected by Merchant to play the lead in Goddess, visited Varanasi. The move could work wonders for the city, ostensibly because rarely an effort has been made to tag Varanasi as “a home to all religions”. “Varanasi has a place for everyone, the living and the dead, and there’s solace. Its a city where Bismillah Khan lived and practiced on the ghats, a place revered by the Hindus. And he told me once that he had witnessed Ma Durga on the Ganges while practicing his shehnai. In Varanasi, various religions have evolved throughout the course of civilisation and shaped the evolution of society,” says Awasthi. Hopefully soon, one of the holiest places in Hindu lore, will have a new tagline for spiritual seekers from all over the world. Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.

Arthur Paul Pedrick (3 September 1918 – 15 August 1976)[1] was a prolific British inventor who filed for 162 United Kingdom patents between 1962 and his death in 1976.[2] or 1977.[3] His inventions were notable for their humour and almost complete lack of practical applicability. Personal life [ edit ] Very little is known about Pedrick. He worked for many years as a patent examiner at the United Kingdom Patent Office but that it was only after his retirement that he began filing patent applications for his inventions. The Patent Office has stringent restrictions on improbable gadgets, but Pedrick's familiarity with the process enabled him to satisfy the requirements and get his applications granted. During this period he was resident in Selsey, Sussex, England, according to his patents. Sometimes his residence would further be listed as "One-Man Photo-Electric Research Laboratories", or "One Man Think Tank Nuclear Fusion Research Laboratories", and so forth.[citation needed] These laboratories were staffed by himself and a ginger coloured cat, sometimes referred to as "Ginger" although it is not clear whether this was actually his name. Ginger was of great help to Pedrick in developing his inventions.[3] Unfortunately, it is recounted in some of the patents how Ginger was unable to secure financing to put the inventions into practice. His patent for laser induced fusion[4] includes these autobiographical notes: It is my personal experience based on a severe bout of Dive bombing by Stuka dive bombers in a light cruiser HMS "Dido", in 1941, evacuating mainly New Zealanders from Crete, who had been sent in by the late Sir Winston Churchill, but who, after the battle with the Nazi paratroops had made the island untenable, Admiral Cunningham, the Naval C in C in Alexandria, realised must be got out if possible, that the surface warships just cannot survive attacks by large numbers of aircraft, on their own, and it is only the chance of fate that I happened to be in After Engine Room of the ship, when a bomb came down on B turret and created a carnage of twisted steel and bodies forward, that I am writing this now, but the memory of the experience still gives me a "nightmare" at times. I have suffered all my life even from a by product of the 1914–18 war even if I was born after it. It is a personal fact that my father was a Lieutenant (E) serving in the disastrous K class submarines, by which the Royal Navy tried to create a Submarine which could steam on the surface at 20 knots to keep up with the Fleet, and he died of a lung infection created by the appalling conditions in such submarines, even before I was born. If a women [sic] is in bad metal [sic] state when she is in pregnant, it is obvious that she can pass on her state of mind to the foetus. This has made me a nervous individual all my life, and there are many times in my life I wish I had never been born. There are endless arguments about the subject of abortion on the "rights of the foetus", and these could all be settled if, in some way, the future could be predicted for the foetus and it could decide whether it "wanted to be born". Inventions [ edit ] Chromatically selective cat flap [ edit ] Many of Pedrick's inventions related to his cat, Ginger. His crowning achievement in this respect was patent GB1426698 titled "Photon Push-Pull Radiation Detector For Use in Chromatically Selective Cat Flap Control And 1000 Megaton Earth-Orbital Peace-Keeping Bomb". The idea was to detect the difference in fur colour between a ginger cat and a black cat. He came up with this idea because a black cat named "Blackie" from next door kept trying to steal his own cat's food. However, with Pedrick's new catflap design, if Blackie attempted to use the cat-flap he would not be allowed in. Ginger was impressed with the idea, and further suggested that the concept could be applied as a nuclear deterrent. Ginger's concern over the Cold War and the nuclear arsenals threatening the world was a regular motivator for Pedrick's inventions.[citation needed] Extinguishing fires in high rise block buildings [ edit ] Pedrick was also concerned with the safety of his fellow man and thus described, in GB1453920 an "Apparatus For Extinguishing Fires in High Rise Block Buildings of Uniform Transverse Cross-Section Or Plan". Here, Pedrick suggests that fire curtains could be secured at the roof level of a high-rise building. When released, they would envelope substantially the entire building. The curtains could be provided with apertures which when the curtain is released are located opposite rooms in the building, these rooms being designated as ones in which the occupants should congregate in the event of fire. The concern however was that such large curtains would have prevented escape from the building as well as increase the risk of suffocation. Transfer of fresh water [ edit ] Pedrick's concern for his fellow man is again shown in GB1047735, titled "Arrangements for the transfer of fresh water from one location on the earth's surface to another at a different latitude, for the purpose of irrigation, with pumping energy derived from the effect of the earth's rotation about the polar axis". In this patent, Pedrick describes in extremely long detail, with pages of mathematical equations, how snow and ice could be passed along pipelines from the Antarctic to irrigate the dry Australian outback, creating a "granary of the East" that could feed the burgeoning population of the world. Since the flow of water from one region to the other through such pipelines would not be practicable, according to Pedrick, the suggestion is to instead compress the snow into hard balls that could be fired along these pipelines as projectiles. Notable quotations [ edit ] Pedrick would often discuss, within his patents, the problems in the world that led him to his inventions and would also recount conversations between himself and his ginger cat. Some of these tangents in his patents show Pedrick to be a thoughtful, if slightly eccentric man, who was deeply concerned with the well-being of others and for the future of mankind, as well as being dismissive of modern capitalism. Characteristic observations on the world around him include the following: "Almost 2000 years ago, a strange character called Jesus Christ went about Palestine saying we should all love our enemies, but he was crucified before much notice was taken of him, and it is curious that the very land of Palestine is now one of the World "Trouble spots" in 1974." [4] "It being the opinion of my Ginger Cat, that those cats that you see sponsoring various brands of tinned cat food on T/V are just as hypocritical as the various actors one sees sponsoring on T/V various commercial products, and in fact my Ginger Cat prefers ordinary Corned Beef to most brands of Cat food." [4] "Unfortunately it is fact that thermo-nuclear weapons can be contained with the noses of Interncontinental-ballistic-rockets which results in the fact that distrust between governments of nations able to manufacture nuclear weapons, for example the USA and USSR, results in such nations keeping in readiness large numbers of such rockets to be used as a so called "deterrent" against an attack by such other nations. "Clearly if one such nation, for example the USA, could be assured by some system, which would be quite automatic, that any other nation making a nuclear attack upon it, would be sure to bring upon itself a similar nuclear devastation, it could then allow a run-down of its own thermo-nuclear weapons stocks for the deuterium and tritium to be used for peaceful purposes to overcome the "energy shortage"" "As Ginger pointed out to me the whole unfortunate situation might have been avoided if Albert Einstein had not "doodled out" his equation E = mc2, in the Swiss Patent Office around 1905 instead of getting on with the work he was being paid to do."[5] Response [ edit ] "Funny" patents, such as those published by Pedrick, and their popularisation in the media upset many patent examiners who feel they tend to trivialise the subject.[6] Patents [ edit ] A selection from over 160 patents filed between 1962 and 1975.[3]

(Photos: David Bacon)OAKLAND, California – Since the Golden Arches rose above the first Southern California drive-ins, workers have labored in their shadows for the lowest legal wage a boss can pay. Other fast-food chains have mushroomed since, copying the same ideas. Pay workers the least possible. Keep them guessing from week to week how many hours they’ll get. If anyone gets upset, there are always many more people on the street, ready to step behind the counter, clean up the dirty tables or stand at the grill in the heat and smoke. Is it a surprise that many people in those jobs came to this country to feed their hungry children or give a future to those they left behind? People will put up with a lot when they’re hungry enough. They’ll take ibuprofen to get through the shift or line up for food at the local food pantry at the end of the month, because their paychecks won’t stretch that far. All to keep that job. These days, many of those workers have heard about strikes and work stoppages. The word is out about protests asking for $15 an hour instead of the $8 minimum. So fast-food chains are finally discovering what building service contractors and garment sweatshops have known for years. They’ve “suddenly realized” their workers are immigrants, and maybe some don’t have good immigration papers. By asking for papers and firing those who can’t come up with good ones, the restaurants imagine they’ll restore the previous willingness of workers to accept the minimum, no questions asked. Is that what happened at Jack in the Box in Oakland? Did the corporate office simply decide that the time had come to give workers a good scare? And did the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security help them? It wouldn’t be the first time. In each of the past five years, ICE has audited the records of more than 2,000 employers, ordering them to fire undocumented workers. The mass firings include thousands of janitors and sewing-machine operators, as well as workers in farms, factories and meatpacking plants. Now these so-called “silent raids” have arrived at fast-food joints, just in time to scare workers as they stage more walkouts and protests. The government says forcing bosses to fire workers is more humane than deporting them. Instead of mounting the kind of factory raids immigration authorities did a few years ago, with black-clad agents carrying machine guns, ICE now says it uses this “softer” method. It has an electronic system to find and fire the undocumented – a database called E-Verify. ICE says it targets employers who force substandard wages or working conditions on their employees. But curing intolerable conditions by firing or deporting workers doesn’t help the workers. And in the fast-food restaurants, the conditions don’t change just because people get fired for not having good papers. Beneath the benevolent-sounding rhetoric is a whispered subtext, as well. If “those people” without papers can’t work, they’ll leave. But no one is heading for Mexico. People stay, but instead they lose homes and pull their kids from school, while looking for work on street corners or cleaning other people’s homes. In 1999 unions said they would try to put a stop to this. At the AFL-CIO convention, they said they’d help immigrant workers get organized to raise wages and make conditions better. Unions would campaign to repeal the law, called “employer sanctions,” that makes it a crime for someone without papers to hold a job to support his or her family. But today Congress is debating laws that would make these firings even more widespread, and criminalize people even more. These bills come from the Tea Party and mainstream Democrats, who see no problem in firing workers for not having papers. Maybe it’s because they just don’t see or hear the workers. They don’t have to listen to parents wondering how they’ll put the next meal on the table for their kids. But Maria Saucedo and Diana Rivera are not invisible, nor are they willing to be quiet. Both were fired recently at Jack in the Box in Oakland for not having papers. Their experiences are a reality check – the reality of the “silent raid” and its human cost. Today communities and unions are starting to see that the future could change in fast food restaurants because of the willingness of these two women, and others like them, to stand up and ask for that $15 wage. But the organizations that support them have to answer their question: Is it just, to get fired because you don’t have papers? Doesn’t everyone have the right to put food on the table for their families? Maria Saucedo I’ve worked at Jack in the Box in Oakland for 12 years, and now they’re firing everyone. I was a cashier, but I’ve worked in prep, as a fryer, on the grill, in the seating area – every job they have there. You have to know what you’re doing. The company has a way the job should be done. They have their rules, their times. You have to learn their way of doing things. At the end of the day I’m really tired, especially my feet, because I’m standing all day preparing or serving the food. They demand a lot and put a lot of pressure on you to work fast. They’re always telling you, “Hurry up! This is fast food. You have to work faster!” They have a stopwatch, and you have to cook the food in three minutes because they say the customers can’t wait longer than that. If you don’t do the work fast enough, they take you off that job and put someone else on it. And they don’t give you any help. If you’re working on the grill, you’re there by yourself. They threaten that if you don’t work fast enough, they’ll cut your hours or even cut your days. I was working 35, sometimes 39, hours a week and only taking home $500 every two weeks. So if they take away four or five hours, it has a big impact. I can’t even pay the rent and our bills with what I make. Plus, I have to send money to my daughters. Sometimes, I get to the end of the month, and I don’t have enough money to buy food. I have to decide which bills I can pay or only pay part of them. I go to the food pantry on 98th Avenue to get food then, because I don’t have enough money to buy it. Every day on the table where we put our lunch, we have cans of Red Bull. Instead of drinking soda, lots of people drink it so they can get the strength to keep on working. People take aspirin also for the pain. There was one young man who would take Advil with caffeine with his Red Bull, as a way to keep awake while he was working at night. I take Herbalife that also has caffeine to get the energy to keep working. I take ibuprofen and Advil for the pain, especially for the headaches I get because of the pressure and for the aches in my feet. If you’re working on the grill, in the heat, you have to take pills for the pain you get in your hands there, too. In October the woman who’s in charge of the restaurant was up in her office, and I was working down below. She sent the supervisor to call me in and said my Social Security number didn’t match. That was on a Tuesday. She said I could work until Saturday, and that would be it. It was the same Social Security number I gave the company when I began work there 12 years ago. In all that time, they never said anything about it. And I’m not the only one – this happened to many other people, too. They’d been shorting me on my check for weeks. My last check should have been for 40 hours, and instead they only paid me for 21. I told her that if she was firing me, she had to pay me the hours they owed. I told her, “You know my rights – you can’t fire me without paying all you owe me.” She said she didn’t have any money available for that, and I still haven’t been paid. I don’t think it’s fair to be fired for not having papers. We all have the right to work, the right to live. We’re not robbing or hurting anyone. We’re simply working. Every dollar we put in our pocket has been truly earned the hard way. And the people they’re hiring now to take our places don’t stay, not for $8. They work two or three days and then they leave. People who can work here legally don’t have to work for $8. I think this is happening for two reasons. To begin with, I’m making $8.25 an hour, and they’re hiring people at $8, so they’ll save a few cents this way. But I also think this is a racial profile. They’re only asking Latinos. Why just us? They just think, “For sure, if you’re Latino you’re an immigrant.” Now they company isn’t hiring any Latinos or any Asians. I’m not against white or black people working here. We all have a right to work and need to eat, to pay rent, to pay bills. But they shouldn’t fire us. I like these demonstrations for $15 an hour. I went to some. We work much too hard for a wage of $8 an hour. Even in the airport they pay $12 for the exact same work. They’re getting rich while we’re the ones doing all the work. And look at how they treat us. I have two daughters and a husband who can’t work because of an accident on his job. I’m the only person in our family who’s working now. My daughters are both studying in Mexico City – one studying law and the other economy. I’m paying for their school and for everything else they need. Now that I can’t work, it’s going to hurt us a lot – maybe they’ll have to suspend their studies. I haven’t thought yet about what we’re going to do about this. Now I’m going to have to find another job, because I have to keep working. We’re not going to let this beat us. We have to continue struggling. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t find work quickly. But I’m not thinking about going back to Mexico. I’ve been here 13 years. I’m from Mexico City, and maybe things are hard here, but they’re much harder there. You have to ask yourself, “Going back to what?” This country was built by immigrants. Without immigrants, where would it be? They call us illegals, but what they’re doing is even more illegal. Diana Rivera I was off Monday and Tuesday, so I came in to work on Wednesday. I punched in and began to work, and the manager arrived and asked me why I was working. I said, “Because it’s my job.” Then he called me upstairs and asked me for my Social Security number and papers. He said, “You don’t have any job here anymore. None of you have any more work here.” When I asked why again, he explained they had orders from higher up in the company not to give us any work. He didn’t want to say anything that would get him in trouble with the people above him. I asked for a letter that would give the reason for firing me. He said it was because we didn’t have good Social Security numbers – we didn’t have papers. I said they knew that when they hired us. In the two years I worked there, no one said anything about papers or immigration. I asked why they hadn’t asked for papers until now and were firing so many of us. He didn’t know what to say to me, so he just sat there without saying anything. I make $8.15 -15 cents more than the beginning wage. They want to get rid of all those who make more than $8, because that’s the minimum. I think the demonstrations asking for $15 an hour are a good idea, because considering the work we do, $8 is very little. We do too much work for that. So it would be good if the wages went up. They want us to put in a lot of effort and work fast. So it’s not fair to do this to us after that. It seems very unjust to me. They didn’t give us any notice. We just showed up, and they told us we had no more work. At least with more notice we could have been more prepared and looked for another job. But now? With no job? Can you imagine what that’s like? I’ll have to start looking for work all over again, and very quickly. I guess I’ll try to find the same kind of work in restaurants like Jack in the Box. My family is going to suffer because we won’t have my salary coming in. My family can’t survive with just the wage my husband is making. I think it’s unjust to be fired for not having papers because we all have a right to work. We didn’t come here for any other reason. I don’t believe working is a crime. What we’re doing is something normal – we’re not hurting anyone. I come from Guerrero. There’s work there, like in the hotels in Acapulco, but it pays much less. So I’m not thinking of going back to Mexico. I’m thinking about moving forward. I have children who were born here. I think they have opportunities here. I liked that job. When you’re used to working you really put an effort into it. So I think it was really unfair the way they fired us. Just to tell us all of a sudden, you have no more job. Editor’s note: These photographs were taken at a picket line in front of the ICE office in San Jose, California, protesting government demands that another employer, Bon Appetit, fire its workers whose papers are in question. Bon Appetit manages the cafeterias in many of the high tech buildings in Sillicon Valley, from Stanford University to Google. All photos by David Bacon.

The Fall Earth First! Newsletter is Out! Download Free or Read Online Happy Samhain, folks. In celebration of the beginning of the darker half of the year, we’ve released 12 pages of environmental resistance that you can read online or download. Inside is a chronology of actions carried out around the world in defense of the wild—everything from chasing off politicians to burning shit down. You’ll also find an article on this summer’s string of ALF actions in Ontario, Canada; a list of current eco-prisoners; a directory of environmental resistance groups; an announcement from a new prisoner writing project; and a call for support from the ZAD, which includes suggestions for how you can help fight the airport expansion from afar. As always, Earth First! News is anti-copyright. Read it, print it, share it, wheatpaste it. Whatever. The Earth First! Journal Collective sends free copies of EF! News to prisoners. Throw us a donation to help us do it! Share this: Google Reddit Twitter Facebook Print Email More LinkedIn Pinterest Pocket Tumblr Like this: Like Loading... Check out these related Newswire posts:

ADELAIDE • Two Singaporeans busted in Australia for trying to leave the country with illegal cash of about A$520,000 (S$566,000) had tried to throw off airport sniffer dogs with steaks and chops stuffed in their suitcases. Ryan Marc Pereira and Edward Choi Gou Hang, both 34, were caught red-handed at Adelaide Airport on Dec 4 last year, when a sniffer dog by the name of Utana approached one of them in the check-in area. Suspicious, police searched their belongings and found A$270,000 alongside T-bone steaks in one bag and A$250,000 concealed beside a tray of lamb chops in another, the Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported. They were arrested and charged with dealing with money suspected of being proceeds of crime. Pereira was yesterday sentenced to 14 months behind bars but was ordered to serve only nine months of his term. Choi received 12 months' jail in the ruling, but will serve only six months. The duo claimed that they had planned to take the meat home for consumption, according to South Australia-based news outlet The Advertiser. But district court judge Geraldine Davison yesterday did not buy the men's story. "You have been caught not only red-handed with the money in the suitcases, but also having attempted to disguise the smell of the money from the detection dogs by the purchase and placement of meat in your suitcases," she was quoted as saying by The Advertiser. The two men initially told police that they had won the money on the gambling tables after flying in from Singapore on Dec 2. But they later dropped their story and could not explain where the money came from. Choi's lawyers argued that Pereira was the mastermind in the scheme, while Choi was merely a "mule". Pereira, a father of two whom the judge said had committed similar crimes in previous trips from Singapore to Adelaide, admitted that the cash could be proceeds of crime. Based on time already served in custody, Pereira will be released on Sept 4 and Choi on June 4, according to AAP. They will be deported upon release.

Brussels reacted furiously on Friday to claims that British and US intelligence agencies spied on the European commissioner in charge of sensitive antitrust cases, including one involving Google. Joaquín Almunia, the EU's competition commissioner, has access to highly confidential commercial information: he is charged with breaking up cartels, approving mergers and imposing fines on those who break the bloc's antitrust rules. (Read more: After 'cataclysmic' Snowden affair, NSA faces winds of change) The claim that Mr Almunia was on the surveillance list of UK and US spy agencies follows news earlier this year that Angela Merkel, German chancellor, had also had her private phone calls targeted. Mr Almunia was said by European Commission officials to be "upset" by the claims, with particular anger in Brussels being aimed at Britain, whose relationship with the EU executive has grown tense. Although he did not address the issue specifically at his end-of-year press conference on Friday, President Barack Obama acknowledged that the US "would have to provide more confidence to the international community" about its spying. "Just because we can do something doesn't mean we necessarily should," said Mr Obama. (Read more: NSA advisory panel: More spying, more 'transparency' ) The news about Mr Almunia is especially embarrassing, as the US has criticised countries like China for economic espionage while insisting it does not itself spy for the commercial benefit of domestic companies. An expert panel appointed by the White House to review US intelligence, which reported to Mr Obama this week, said programs should not be directed to "illicit or illegitimate ends, such as the theft of trade secrets or obtaining commercial gain for domestic industries". Mr Almunia was at the eye of the eurozone storm as EU monetary affairs commissioner before switching in 2010 to the competition brief, where he has presided over antitrust cases involving Google and Microsoft and cracked down on banks suspected of rigging global interest rate benchmarks. In other prominent cases involving US companies, the Spanish politician blocked the NYSE's planned takeover of Deutsche Börse and UPS's bid for TNT. His scrutiny of state support for the UK's planned Hinkley Point nuclear plant has been a matter of keen interest to the British government. (Read more: World of spycraft: NSA infiltrates gamers' data) A commission spokeswoman said: "This is not the type of behaviour that we expect from strategic partners, let alone from our own member states." The claims come as part of a joint investigation by the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times based on revelations from documents dated from 2008 to 2011 and leaked by Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor. The Guardian reported that British and US intelligence agencies had a list of surveillance targets including Mr Almunia, German government buildings in Berlin and overseas, and charities working Africa. It also cites one document from Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping centre, drafted in 2009, which makes clear that it was targeting an email address listed as belonging to "the Israeli prime minister". Ehud Olmert was in was in office at the time. More from the FT: Spy ruling sets up a fight and a dilemma for Obama Edward Snowden offers Brazil help on spying in return for asylum US judge rules against NSA surveillance methods The collaboration of GCHQ with the NSA in targeting Germany will be embarrassing to David Cameron, British prime minister, who has sought to foster a warm relationship with Ms Merkel. But the targeting of the European Commission by British spies will be equally damaging; Mr Cameron will have been relieved that the latest leaked documents only emerged hours after he left an EU summit in Brussels on Friday. Hours earlier Mr Cameron was involved in a row with the commission after Downing Street announced he would challenge plans for an EU surveillance drone programme at a summit in Brussels. A spokesperson for the commission said it had no plans to own or buy drones. "They've been caught with their pants down," said one Brussels official. "They're not exactly in a comfortable position." Privately, many in the commission's Berlaymont building suspected they were the target of industrial espionage. Downing Street declined to comment. Despite Washington's protestations that it does not conduct commercial espionage, the US intelligence's top-secret budget, also leaked by Mr Snowden, set aside money for spying to track other countries' adherence to trade agreements.

Police say the New York police lieutenant who killed himself at Floyd Bennet Field on Thursday morning, apparently used another officer's gun to commit suicide. According to reports, Lieutenant Michael Pigott's suicide note indicated that he was afraid of being charged for the death of a man in Brooklyn who died after he authorized the fatal use of a Taser stun gun on the naked psychiatric patient. The officer was remorseful and distraught. He apologized and sought the family's forgiveness. Then he married father of two sons and a daughter, went to his unit's headquarters Thursday morning and shot himself to death, just hours before the family laid the victim to rest. The suicide marks another tragic turn in a case that has raised questions about the use of Tasers by the nation's largest police force. Authorities say Pigott directed a fellow Emergency Services Unit officer to use his Taser on 35-year-old Iman Morales as he teetered on a Brooklyn building's ledge on September 24. The 50,000-volt shock caused Morales, a troubled psychiatric patient, to topple 10 feet headfirst onto the sidewalk, killing him. Officers had radioed for an inflatable bag as the incident unfolded, but it had not yet arrived when Morales fell. After the episode, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered refresher training for the NYPD's Emergency Services Unit on how to deal with the mentally ill, and appointed a new commander of the unit. Pigott, a 21-year veteran who lives in Suffolk County, told a reporter earlier this week that he was "truly sorry for what happened." Pigott was one of two officers disciplined by NYPD commanders for violating Taser-use guidelines. "The lieutenant was deeply distraught and extremely remorseful over the death of Iman Morales in Brooklyn last week," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "Sadly, his death just compounds the tragedy of the loss of Mr. Morales." Pigottt was stripped of his gun and badge and assigned to a job with the department's motor vehicle fleet. Police say the officer who used the taser, Nicholas Marchesona, was placed on desk duty. The Brooklyn district attorney's office and the NYPD are investigating. Pigott's suicide came on what was his 46th birthday. According to the Post, he placed photos of his wife and kids next to him before taking his own life. "This is horrible," said Morales' aunt, Ann DeJesus Negron. "I mean, for me personally, I know it's horrible because I would have never wished this on anyone and we never wanted of course this for Iman and we would never wanted this to happen to the officer at all or anybody at all." The episode also cast the spotlight on the NYPD's Emergency Services Unit, an elite team of officers who deal with dozens of hostile scenarios every day, such as hostage situations, suicidal suspects, building collapses and hazardous materials threats. "These guys are the best of the best, they really are," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "When people need help, they call the police, and when police need help, the call the ESU." O'Donnell said even though the mistake was caught on camera, it should not take away from the caliber of work the unit and the officers do on a daily basis. "You have a guy who made a mistake where there's no allegation of malice or ill-will," he said. "And what happened after he made a mistake? He was named in the paper, shamed in the paper, suspended, and there was a strong storyline that he could be criminal suspect." NYPD officers are allowed to use Tasers if they believe emotionally disturbed people are a danger to themselves or to others. The NYPD uses stun guns about 300 times on average. So far this year, stun guns have been used 180 times. The department has used Tasers since 1984, but policy previously called for sergeants to store the stun guns in their trunks while patrolling. Police said the use of the stun gun in the death of Morales appeared to violate department guidelines, which explicitly bar their use "in situations where the subject may fall from an elevated surface." --- WEB PRODUCED BY: Lakisha Bostick and Bob Monek ---- Click here for more New York and Tri-State News Report a typo || Send a story idea || Send news photos/videos

This article is going to be somewhat different in that I’m not really writing it for the typical embedded systems engineer. Rather it’s kind of a specialized topic, so don’t be surprised if you get bored and move on to something else. That’s fine by me. Anyway, let’s just jump ahead to the punchline. Here’s a numerical simulation of a step response to a \( p=126, q=130 \) Padé approximation of a time delay: Impressed? Maybe you should be. This is a goal that’s been bugging the heck out of me for a few months, and I’ve finally reached something useful. Let’s start with a quick overview. 1. Denial Padé Approximants If you’ve done any studying of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, you know that the transfer function of a time delay T is \( H(s) = e^{-sT} \). An exponential function. Very simple, but it’s kind of an oddball. That’s because most transfer functions are written as a ratio of polynomials \( H(s) = \frac{P(s)}{Q(s)} \) — in other words a rational function — and analyzed by standard techniques to find their poles and zeros and do some sort of numerical calculation with them. So we can’t find the “poles” of \( H(s) = e^{-sT} \), because there aren’t any. Huh. Okay, so what do we do instead? If you’re using Simulink to model something, it’s fine to just add a time delay. Simulink has some secret recipe for handling time delays and it works just fine. But what if you want to perform some kind of continuous-time analysis where you need a rational transfer function? Well, you could try to convert everything to a discrete-time approximation, where a time delay is very easy and becomes a shift in a state variable array. Or you can approximate a continuous-time delay with a rational function. And whenever you see the words “approximate… rational function”, the first thing that should come to mind is Padé approximation. This is a technique to compute the “closest” rational function to a given function using power series. It’s kind of the rational-function equivalent to a Taylor series — it’s based upon the function and its derivatives at a single point — and if you’ve read my article on Chebyshev approximation, you’ll know I don’t particularly like Taylor series, but it has its place, and so does Padé approximation. Padé approximation has a reputation for being a “magic” solution that somehow captures more of the essence of a smooth function than a power series, with a wider range of convergence. Let’s look at a mildly interesting example: \( f(x) = 10 \tan^{-1} (x-2) + \frac{2}{x} \) near \( x=1 \). import numpy as np import scipy import matplotlib.pyplot as plt %matplotlib inline def f(x): return 10*np.arctan(x-2) + 2.0/x x = np.arange(-3,5,0.002) # fixup plot so it doesn't draw an extra line across a discontinuity def asymptote_nan(y,x,x0list): x0list = np.atleast_1d(x0list) for x0 in x0list: y[np.argmin(abs(x-x0))] = float('nan') return y y = asymptote_nan(f(x),x,x0list=[0]) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.plot(x,y) ax.set_ylim(-40,40) ax.grid('on') We can use scipy to figure out numerical coefficients of a Taylor series and the Padé approximations, using scipy.interpolate.approximate_taylor_polynomial and scipy.misc.pade : (warning: scipy.misc.pade expects its input coefficients to be in order of ascending degree, whereas the return values of both functions are numpy.poly1d objects that yield coefficients in order of descending degree. Hence the T10.coeffs[::-1] expression to reverse the order.) import scipy.interpolate import scipy.misc x0 = 1.0 T10poly = scipy.interpolate.approximate_taylor_polynomial(f,x=x0,degree=10, scale=0.05) P5poly,Q5poly = scipy.misc.pade(T10poly.coeffs[::-1],5) T10 = lambda x: T10poly(x-x0) R5_5 = lambda x: P5poly(x-x0)/Q5poly(x-x0) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.plot(x,y,label='f(x)') ax.plot(x0,f(x0),'.k',markersize=8) yR5 = R5_5(x) # use real roots of Q5(x-x0) for finding asymptotes yR5 = asymptote_nan(yR5, x, [r+x0 for r in roots(Q5poly) if np.abs(np.imag(r)) < 1e-8]) ax.plot(x,T10(x),label='T10(x)') ax.plot(x,yR5, label='R5,5(x)') ax.set_ylim(-40,40) ax.legend(loc='lower right',labelspacing=0) ax.grid('on') So there’s an example of Padé magic. The rational function does a better job than the polynomial. Why is that a big deal? Well, the two functions \( T_{10}(x) \) and \( R_{5,5}(x) = P_5(x)/Q_5(x) \) each have 11 degrees of freedom: \( T_{10} \) has 11 coefficients, \( P_5 \) and \( Q_5 \) each have 6 coefficients but we lose one degree of freedom since we can scale \( P_5 \) and \( Q_5 \) by the same arbitrary constant \( K \) and leave the resulting rational function unchanged. Moreover, we derived \( T_{10} \) directly from \( f(x) \), but derived \( R_{5,5} \) from \( T_{10} \). So there’s no additional “information” in \( R_{5,5} \) beyond what’s in \( T_{10} \), just some freedom of structure, since \( T_{10} \) is required to be a polynomial whereas \( R_{5,5} \) is a rational function. But \( R_{5,5} \) has a much wider range of applicability than \( T_{10} \): while \( T_{10} \) is a decent approximation to \( f(x) \) over a range of about \( x \in [0.2, 1.9] \), the function \( R_{5,5} \) looks very good over the range \( x \in [-3, 2.3] \). And here’s the kicker: somehow the function \( R_{5,5}(x) \) “knows” about the discontinuity at \( x=0 \) just from looking at the polynomial \( T_{10}(x) \). We lost the pole at \( x=0 \) going from \( f(x) \) to the Taylor series \( T_{10}(x) \), but somehow got it back when we used Padé approximation to go from \( T_{10}(x) \) to the rational function \( R_{5,5}(x) \). Magic! In the words of the authors of Numerical Recipes (see page 202): Padé has the uncanny knack of picking the function you had in mind from among all the possibilities. Except when it doesn’t! The structure of a rational function usually lets it do a better job of approximating, but sometimes it doesn’t. Anyway, this article isn’t really about Padé approximation in general, but about the use of Padé approximation for time delays. Time Delays and Padé Approximants The Padé approximation \( R_{p,q}(x) = \frac{N_{p,q}(x)}{D_{p,q}(x)} \approx e^{-x} \) is well-known, and its coefficients can be determined exactly using these formulas (see Moler and Van Loan for a reputable reference for \( e^A \)): $$ \begin{eqnarray} N_{p,q}(x) &=& \sum\limits_{j=0}^p\frac{(p+q-j)!p!}{(p+q)!j!(p-j)!}(-x)^j \cr D_{p,q}(x) &=& \sum\limits_{j=0}^q\frac{(p+q-j)!q!}{(p+q)!j!(q-j)!}x^j \cr \end{eqnarray} $$ Here the numerator \( N_{p,q}(x) \) has degree \( p \) and denominator \( D_{p,q}(x) \) has degree \( q \). The expression \( n! \) denotes n factorial, namely the product of all positive integers between 1 and \( n \), so \( 5! = 5 \times 4 \times 3 \times 2 \times 1 = 120 \). The various combinations of \( p \) and \( q \) can be used to show the various approximations in tabular form, known as a Padé table. Just for some examples, $$ \begin{array}{ll} R_{1,1}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{1}{2}x} {1 + \frac{1}{2}x} & R_{1,2}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{1}{3}x} {1 + \frac{2}{3}x + \frac{1}{6}x^2} & R_{1,3}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{1}{4}x} {1 + \frac{3}{4}x + \frac{1}{4}x^2 + \frac{1}{24}x^3} \cr R_{2,1}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{2}{3}x + \frac{1}{6}x^2} {1 + \frac{1}{3}x} & R_{2,2}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{1}{2}x + \frac{1}{12}x^2} {1 + \frac{1}{2}x + \frac{1}{12}x^2} & R_{2,3}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{2}{5}x + \frac{1}{20}x^2} {1 + \frac{3}{5}x + \frac{3}{20}x^2 + \frac{1}{60}x^3} \cr R_{3,1}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{3}{4}x + \frac{1}{4}x^2 - \frac{1}{24}x^3} {1 + \frac{1}{4}x} & R_{3,2}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{3}{5}x + \frac{3}{20}x^2 - \frac{1}{60}x^3} {1 + \frac{2}{5}x + \frac{1}{20}x^2} & R_{3,3}(x) = \frac{1 - \frac{1}{2}x + \frac{1}{10}x^2 - \frac{1}{120}x^3} {1 + \frac{1}{2}x + \frac{1}{10}x^2 + \frac{1}{120}x^3} \cr \end{array}$$ which can be seen in the following semilogarithmic graph: fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) x = np.arange(-5,5,0.0005) ax.semilogy(x,np.exp(-x),'--',label='e^-x') ax.grid('on') def pade_coeffs(p,q): ''' Calculate the numerator and denominator polynomial coefficients of the Pade approximation to e^-x ''' n = max(p,q) c = 1 d = 1 clist = [c] dlist = [d] for k in xrange(1,n+1): c *= -1.0*(p-k+1)/(p+q-k+1)/k if k <= p: clist.append(c) d *= 1.0*(q-k+1)/(p+q-k+1)/k if k <= q: dlist.append(d) return np.array(clist[::-1]),np.array(dlist[::-1]) def argbox(y,ymin,ymax,imin,imax): ''' find limits (we hope) where y[i] is between ymin and ymax ''' ii = np.argwhere(np.logical_and(y>ymin,y<ymax)) ii = ii[ii >= imin] ii = ii[ii <= imax] return np.min(ii),np.max(ii) nx = len(x) xmin = min(x) xmax = max(x) xlim = (xmin,xmax) ylim = (1e-4,1e4) for p in [1,2,3]: for q in [1,2,3]: pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) num = P(x) den = Q(x) ax.semilogy(x,num/den,label='p=%d, q=%d' % (p,q)) # now label the end lines it = argbox(num/den, ylim[0], ylim[1], 0, nx/2)[0] atend = it == 0 xt = x[it] * (0.99 if atend else 1) yt = P(xt)/Q(xt) if atend else ylim[1]*0.95 ax.text(xt,yt,' (%d,%d)' % (p,q), va='top', rotation='horizontal' if atend else -90.0) it = argbox(num/den, ylim[0], ylim[1], nx/2, nx)[1] atend = it == (nx-1) xt = x[it] * (0.99 if atend else 1) yt = P(xt)/Q(xt) if atend else ylim[0]*1.2 ax.text(xt,yt,'(%d,%d)' % (p,q), va='bottom', ha='right' if atend else 'left', rotation='horizontal' if atend else -90.0) ax.set_xlim(xlim) ax.set_ylim(ylim) ax.set_xlabel('x') ax.set_ylabel('y = f(x)') ax.legend(labelspacing=0) <matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x107935810> Increasing either \( p \) or \( q \) expands the region of close convergence by a little bit. But we were talking about simulating time delays. So we don’t really care too much about \( e^{-x} \) for real values of \( x \); instead we care about Bode plots of \( e^{-s} \) for \( s=j\omega \). w = np.arange(0,10,0.001) s = 1j*w fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) for k in [1,2]: ax = fig.add_subplot(2,1,k) if k == 1: f = lambda H: 20*np.log10(np.abs(H)) ylabel = '$20\\,\\log_{10} |H(j\\omega)|$' else: f = lambda H: np.unwrap(np.angle(H))*180/np.pi ylabel = '$\\angle H(j\\omega)$' ax.set_yticks(np.arange(-720,0.01,45)) ax.set_xlabel('$\omega$', fontsize=16) ax.plot(w,-w*180/np.pi,'--',label='e^jw') for q in [1,2,3]: for p in np.arange(1,q+1): pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = P(s)/Q(s) ax.plot(w,f(H),label='p=%d,q=%d' % (p,q)) ax.set_ylabel(ylabel, fontsize=16) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) These are Bode plots, but linear rather than logarithmic in frequency, so that we can compare to \( e^{-s} \) which has a unity gain and linear phase responses. Here we are only using \( p \leq q \), otherwise the gain increases as \( \omega \rightarrow \infty \), which is not realizable. When \( p = q \), the gain is 1, independent of frequency. The higher \( p \) and \( q \) are, the more the phase response approaches the ideal \( e^{-s} \) for larger frequencies. Looks great, right? Let’s try using the Padé coefficients in the time domain, with scipy.signal.lti to simulate the step responses: import scipy.signal t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [1,2,3]: for p in np.arange(1,q+1): pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=%d,q=%d' % (p,q)) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) <matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x105479e10> Well, that doesn’t look very satisfying. Not even close to a step. This is the problem with time ↔ frequency transforms; if something looks great in the time domain it usually looks bad in the frequency domain, and vice-versa. Let’s just look at the \( p=q \) case since the degree of the transfer function denominator is the main determining factor in realizability; once we’ve decided, for example, that we’re going to use a 7th degree polynomial denominator, it doesn’t really matter much for realization purposes whether the numerator is just 1 or it’s a 6th or 7th degree polynomial. And for a fixed-degree denominator, the higher degree numerator does a better job of approximating \( e^{-s} \). Besides, when you see implementations of Padé approximations, like in MATLAB, they’re usually just using \( p=q \). This gives a unity gain at all frequencies (“all-pass”) without any low-pass-filtering. Here’s the step responses for the first 10 \( p=q \) Padé approximations to a unit delay: import scipy.signal t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in np.arange(1,11): p = q pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) <matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x1087c7b10> They get better as \( q \) increases, but there’s still this nasty jump near \( t=0 \), and ringing between \( t=0 \) and \( t=1 \) that’s kind of like the phenomenon of Gibbs ears in partial Fourier sums to approximate a square wave. But still, that’s kind of cool; we can approximate a time delay with a rational transfer function. Great! So let’s use just keep on going in degree: import scipy.signal t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [5,10,15,20,21,22]: p = q pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.set_ylim(-0.5,2.5) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) <matplotlib.legend.Legend at 0x1055b8d50> Uh oh. Things look good until about \( q=21 \), and then BAM! we get instability. The footnote in MATLAB’s Padé approximation says this: High-order Padé approximations produce transfer functions with clustered poles. Because such pole configurations tend to be very sensitive to perturbations, Padé approximations with order N>10 should be avoided. And maybe four or five years ago, when I was last messing around with Padé approximations for a time delay, I left it at that. Because why would you need a high-order Padé approximation anyway? It’s rare to have systems where there’s a time delay but no additional high-frequency rolloff, and when you add that, the ringing doesn’t look as bad. Here’s the step response of a unit time delay cascaded in series with a 1-pole low-pass filter. We’ll show time constants 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1.0, and we’ll look at the exact answer and some Padé approximations of order 5, 10, and 15. t = np.arange(0,4,0.001) Tdelay = 1.0 for tau in [0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1.0]: fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') y_exact = (t>Tdelay)*(1-np.exp(-(t-Tdelay)/tau)) ax.plot(t,y_exact,'--k',label='exact') for q in [5,10,15]: p = q pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) _,y = H.step(T=t) # 1-pole LPF _,y2,_ = scipy.signal.lsim([[1/tau],[1, 1/tau]],y,t) ax.plot(t,y2,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.set_ylim(-0.1,1.1) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.text(1.1*Tdelay,0,'tau=%.2f' % tau, fontsize=16) The longer the time constant, the less relevant are those ripples from the time-delay approximation. See? There’s no problem here. No problem at all. 2. Anger But then a few months ago I needed to get the step response (in a Simulink-free manner) for some systems that had time delays that weren’t very small, and I needed to know if the ripples were due to numerical simulation issues or they were real, so a clean response was important. Grrr. Padé Problems: Take Two Something’s fishy here. MathWorks says we should avoid orders more than 10, but the step responses of \( q=15 \) and \( q=20 \) look reasonable. Let’s take a look at this “clustered poles” explanation by plotting the poles and zeros: import scipy.signal t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,10)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) for q in [5,10,15,20,25]: p = q pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) #poles = np.roots(qcoeffs) #zeros = np.roots(pcoeffs) poles = H.poles zeros = H.zeros for z,m in [(poles,'x'),(zeros,'o')]: ax.plot(np.real(z),np.imag(z),'.k',marker=m,mfc='none') plt.axis('equal') ax.set_xlim(-50,50) ax.set_ylim(-50,50); Huh — that doesn’t look bad. The poles and zeros are symmetric for \( p=q \) and line up along arcs that get further away from the origin as the value of \( q \) increases. I don’t see any “clustering” here, and we’re showing values up to \( p=q=25 \). So why do we get instability in simulation? It really depends on how simulations are implemented. For scipy.signal.lti , the key is that time-domain simulations ( lsim , step , impulse , etc.) depend on state-space representation of an LTI system. This means we rely on converting from transfer function form (arrays of numerator and denominator polynomial coefficients) to state-space via tf2ss . How does tf2ss work? Pigs in State-Space Here’s a sample system: let’s look at \( H(s) = \frac{P(s)}{Q(s)} = \frac{1}{(s+1)(0.5s+1)(0.2s+1)(0.1s+1)} = \frac{100}{s^4 + 18s^3 + 97s^2 + 180s + 100} \): ABCD = scipy.signal.tf2ss([100],[1,18,97,180,100]) for k,suffix in enumerate('ABCD'): print '%s= %s' % (suffix, ABCD[k]) A= [[ -18. -97. -180. -100.] [ 1. 0. 0. 0.] [ 0. 1. 0. 0.] [ 0. 0. 1. 0.]] B= [[ 1.] [ 0.] [ 0.] [ 0.]] C= [[ 0. 0. 0. 100.]] D= [ 0.] What’s all this A B C D stuff anyway? State-space is a representation for LTI systems using matrices, that has a couple of advantages over the rational transfer function approach we tend to learn in introductory control systems courses. One is that it can be used to model multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. Another is that we can transform a multi-order scalar differential equation (e.g. \( \frac{d^4y}{dt^4} + 18\frac{d^3y}{dt^3} + 97\frac{d^2y}{dt^2} + 180\frac{dy}{dt} + 100y = 100u \)) into a first-order matrix differential equation. It can simulate aspects of systems (non-controllable / non-observable systems) that aren’t easily modeled with transfer functions. It’s also more amenable to computerized analysis, and it has some numerical advantages over the transfer function approach that we’ll look at in a bit. An LTI state-space system looks like this: $$ \begin{eqnarray} \frac{d}{dt}\mathbf x &=& A\mathbf x + B\mathbf u \cr \mathbf y &=& C\mathbf x + D\mathbf u \end{eqnarray} $$ where \( \mathbf u \) is a vector of input signals, \( \mathbf x \) is a vector of internal state signals (which is why it’s called state-space) and \( \mathbf y \) is a vector of output signals. You can still use state-space in the SISO case, in which case \( u \) and \( y \) are scalar values but \( \mathbf x \) remains a vector of length equal to the order of the system. In our example case, we have $$ \begin{eqnarray} A &=& \begin{bmatrix} -18 & -97 & -180 & -100 \cr 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \cr \end{bmatrix} \cr B &=& \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr \end{bmatrix}^T \cr C &=& \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & 0 & 100 \end{bmatrix} \cr D &=& 0 \end{eqnarray} $$ The \( A \) matrix here has a particular structure. It’s a variant of what’s called a companion matrix of the monic denominator polynomial \( Q(x) \) of the transfer function (monic just means that the term of highest degree has a coefficient of 1); what’s special about it is the first row is -1 times the coefficients of \( Q(x) \) aside from the leading coefficient the subdiagonal elements are 1, and the remaining elements are 0, forming a shift matrix in the lower rows the characteristic polynomial of the companion matrix is equal to \( Q(x) \), meaning its eigenvalues are equal to the roots of \( Q(x) \) Furthermore — and this applies to any square matrix \( A \) — if all the eigenvalues, which are equal to the roots of \( Q(x) \), are distinct, then \( A \) is similar to any other matrix \( M \) with the same eigenvalues, meaning that there is some transformation matrix \( T \) such that \( M = T^{-1}AT \), and \( A \) is diagonalizable, meaning it can be factored as \( A = V\Lambda V^{-1} \) where \( V \) is a matrix of eigenvectors and \( \Lambda \) is the diagonal matrix of corresponding eigenvalues. Matrix matrix eigenblahblahblah — if you’re not familiar or comfortable with linear algebra, this stuff will just make your eyes glaze over. (Especially when you ask how to obtain the transfer function, which ends up being \( H(s) = C(sI-A)^{-1}B + D \); computing the inverse term gets ugly very quickly, and this equation always makes me think of some obscure Hungarian mathematician for some reason.) Don’t worry; I’ll walk you through the implications. In our particular example, the state equation can be written out as $$ \frac{d\mathbf x}{dt} = \frac{d}{dt} \begin{bmatrix} \frac{d^3x}{dt^3} \cr \frac{d^2x}{dt^2} \cr \frac{dx}{dt} \cr x \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} -18 & -97 & -180 & -100 \cr 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \cr \end{bmatrix} \begin{bmatrix} \frac{d^3x}{dt^3} \cr \frac{d^2x}{dt^2} \cr \frac{dx}{dt} \cr x \end{bmatrix} + \begin{bmatrix}1 \cr 0 \cr 0 \cr 0\end{bmatrix} u = A\mathbf x + B u $$ so in this representation of the transfer function, the elements of the state vector are just a scalar state variable \( x \) with transfer function \( \frac{1}{Q(s)} = \frac{x(s)}{u(s)} \), and the first \( n-1 \) derivatives of \( x \). The \( n-1 \) bottom rows fall out from the relation between successive elements of the state vector: each element is the derivative of the next element. And the top row is self-evident from the differential equation relating \( x \) and \( u \). This is called the controllable canonical form, which tf2ss uses, and its main virtue is that it is easy to construct the \( A \), \( B \), \( C \), and \( D \) matrices directly from the transfer function. It has some lousy properties, though. Betrayal: The Perils of Polynomial Coefficients and the Companion Matrix For symbolic analysis of LTI systems, use of the companion matrix is fine. But things can get ugly if we try to use them in numerical analysis. The problems start because of finite computational precision and something called conditioning, which measures the relative error gain from “input” to “output”, where “input” and “output” here are interpreted loosely, depending on the context. Usually when someone talks about ill-conditioning, it’s in the context of solving the linear matrix equation \( Ax=b \) for \( x \), in which case the condition number is \( \kappa(A) = \|A\| \cdot \|A^{-1}\| \) — this involves matrix norms, which you can read about at your leisure. When solving \( Ax=b \), it means that if I have some relative error \( \epsilon_b \) in \( b \), the relative error \( \epsilon_x \) in the solution \( x \) can be bounded by \( \epsilon_x \leq \kappa(A) \epsilon_b \), so the condition number \( \kappa(A) \) represents a error magnification ratio. For example, if you have the ill-conditioned equation $$Ax = \begin{bmatrix} 2&1 \cr 4&1.998 \end{bmatrix}\begin{bmatrix}x_1 \cr x_2\end{bmatrix} = b$$ where \( \kappa(A) \approx 6248 \), the solution for \( b = [1,2]^T \) is \( x_1 = 0.5, x_2 = 0 \). If we have \( b = [0.99,2]^T \), a small change, the solution shifts drastically to \( x_1 = -4.495, x_2 = 10 \). The problem input \( b \) only changed by a relative error of \( 0.01/\sqrt{5} \approx 0.004472 \), whereas the problem output \( x \) changed by a relative error of \( \sqrt{4.995^2 + 10^2}/0.5 \approx 22.3562 \) — a magnification factor of 4999. Ill-conditioning in numerical analysis is kind of like the biomagnification of mercury in fish, only worse. If you eat a lot of tuna, the mercury content in your body can accumulate to a higher concentration than it was in the tuna, which in turn had higher concentrations than in the fish eaten by the tuna. There’s not a practical way of removing the mercury once it’s in the fish. But you can control how much of it you eat, and the human body does get rid of it (albeit very slowly). Whereas once you have introduced numerical errors into mathematical calculations, there’s rarely any way to get rid of them. Let me say this again: Numerical errors are even worse than toxic poison! The best way to avoid their problems is to keep them out of your system in the first place; once they’ve made their way into calculations it’s too late. And unfortunately, ill-conditioned numerical problems are error magnets that turn the very small but unavoidable errors of floating-point calculations into large errors. Anyway, the sensitivity of solving linear systems is only one way to define condition numbers. Another is to look at sensitivity of the roots of a polynomial given its coefficients. For example, let’s take \( Q(s) = s^4 + 18s^3 + 97s^2 + 180s + 100 \) and find the sensitivity of its roots to the non-leading coefficients. There are four roots and four non-leading coefficients, so we can find a 4 × 4 matrix of sensitivities. If we increase the last coefficient by \( 1+\delta \) with \( \delta = 0.0001 \) (from 100 to 100.01), the roots change from \( [-10, -5, -2, -1] \) to approximately \( [-9.99997222, -5.00016666, -1.99958324, -1.00027788] \), which is a relative change of approximately \( \delta \times [-0.02777811, 0.33331204, -2.08380389, 2.77882873] \). This is the first column of a sensitivity matrix, and we can repeat the same thing for the other three columns: Q = np.poly1d([1,18,97,180,100]) def find_root_sensitivities(Q, delta=1e-10, extras=False): """ Returns a relative sensitivity matrix S from coefficients to roots. If extras is True, returns S, kappa, v, with: kappa = the norm of the sensitivity matrix v = a unit vector of maximum sensitivity which produces sensitivity gain kappa """ Q = np.poly1d(Q) n = Q.order roots = np.roots(Q) S = np.zeros((n,n), dtype=roots.dtype) # allow for complex numbers for k in xrange(n): # find approx numerical derivative # from symmetric differences Qplus = Q*1.0 Qminus = Q*1.0 Qplus[k] *= (1+delta/2.0) Qminus[k] *= (1-delta/2.0) rplus = np.roots(Qplus) rminus = np.roots(Qminus) if np.any(np.iscomplex(rplus)) or np.any(np.iscomplex(rminus)): S = S.astype(np.complex128) S[:,k] = (np.roots(Qplus) - np.roots(Qminus)) / roots / delta if not extras: return S # extras: find a direction of maximum sensitivity u,s,v = np.linalg.svd(S, compute_uv=True) # largest singular direction in reverse order # to match polynomial coefficients n-1:0 return S,s[0],v[0,::-1] S,kappa,v = find_root_sensitivities(Q, extras=True) S,kappa,v (array([[-0.02777334, 0.50001248, -2.69444733, 4.99999508], [ 0.33334402, -3.00002156, 8.08333667, -7.49996509], [-2.08332684, 7.50000284, -8.08332734, 2.99997693], [ 2.7777769 , -5.00000152, 2.69445133, -0.49999782]]), 17.015155693892876, array([-0.48543574, 0.70522631, -0.49695306, 0.14158266])) # double-check that this direction vector v works: # if we perturb the coefficients towards v and away from v, # we should be able to see that the magnitude of change # in the coefficient vector is amplified by kappa to yield # a larger magnitude of change in the root vector Qplus = Q*1.0 Qminus = Q*1.0 r = np.roots(Q) delta = 1e-10 Qplus.coeffs[1:] *= 1+v*delta/2.0 Qminus.coeffs[1:] *= 1-v*delta/2.0 rplus = np.roots(Qplus) rminus = np.roots(Qminus) dr = (rplus - rminus)/r/delta print dr np.linalg.norm(dr,2) [ -4.57977833 10.8794147 -11.17900439 5.02097586] 17.015180620416512 We can adjust each non-leading coefficient \( c_k \) by some relative factor \( 1 + v_k\delta \), where \( \sum |v_k|^2 = 1 \) and \( \delta \) is a magnitude of adjustment. The resulting measure of relative change of the roots \( R = \sqrt{\sum |\delta r_k|^2} \) where \( \delta r_k \) is the relative change in each root. If we choose the \( v_k \) appropriately (and it turns out that we can obtain \( v_k \) by calculating the singular value decomposition of the sensitivity matrix \( S = U\Sigma V \), and then take \( v_k \) as the first row of \( V \)), then we can get the maximum value of \( R = \kappa \delta \): the root-sum-square of relative changes in the roots, is equal to the root-sum-square of relative changes in the coefficients, magnified by this factor \( \kappa \) which is the Euclidean norm of the sensitivity matrix, and can be considiered as a condition number because it tells the relative gain of input error to output error. For our example, \( Q(s) = s^4 + 18s^3 + 97s^2 + 180s + 100 \), \( \kappa \approx 17.015 \). Numerical errors in the coefficients produces numerical errors in the roots that, depending on the direction, can be as much as just over 17.015 times as large. All monomials (1st-degree polynomials) have \( \kappa = 1 \), but as the degree of a polynomial increases, the condition number of its roots generally increases to a very large number. For example, the 10th-degree polynomial \( P_{10}(x) = \prod\limits_{k=1}^{10} (x-\frac{1}{k}) \), the condition number \( \kappa \) is over a million. In fact, it’s difficult to estimate this condition number accurately. P10 = 1.0 for k in xrange(1,11): P10 = P10*np.poly1d([1, -1.0/k]) P10 poly1d([ 1.00000000e+00, -2.92896825e+00, 3.51454365e+00, -2.31743276e+00, 9.41614308e-01, -2.48582176e-01, 4.34780093e-02, -5.00165344e-03, 3.63756614e-04, -1.51565256e-05, 2.75573192e-07]) S,kappa,v = find_root_sensitivities(P10, extras=True) kappa 1586991.6991524738 This matters because small changes in polynomial coefficients can produce large changes in the roots. In fact, polynomial coefficients expressed as floating-point numbers are a really lousy way to analyze and evaluate polynomials unless the polynomial degree is small. Let that sink in for a moment: Large degree polynomials specified by floating-point coefficients are poorly conditioned for numerical analysis. (And by “large”, we’re talking above the 5-10 degree range, depending on the application.) In terms of simulation, this is important: the roots of the transfer function’s denominator polynomial determine the dynamics of the system, and high sensitivity of these roots to errors in coefficients (which is how we specify the \( A \) matrix in tf2ss ) make simulating high-degree transfer functions very error-prone. We can look at the root sensitivity condition number for the \( (p,q) \) Padé approximation of a unit time delay, as a function of the polynomial degree: for n in [5,10,15,20,25]: pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(n,n) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) S,kappa,v = find_root_sensitivities(Q, extras=True) print 'n=%d, kappa=%g' % (n,kappa) n=5, kappa=71.3885 n=10, kappa=28069.6 n=15, kappa=1.43265e+07 n=20, kappa=8.28673e+09 n=25, kappa=1.52504e+11 OUCH! No wonder the transfer function approach fails for large degree polynomials. This really stinks. In fact, if we continue to try to compute the poles and zeros of the Padé approximations from their coefficients, the results start to become inaccurate above about degree 25. Plotting those results looks like a marching band about to go berserk: import scipy.signal t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,10)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) for q in [22,24,26,28,30,32]: p = q pcoeffs, qcoeffs = pade_coeffs(p,q) P = np.poly1d(pcoeffs) Q = np.poly1d(qcoeffs) H = scipy.signal.lti(P,Q) #poles = np.roots(qcoeffs) #zeros = np.roots(pcoeffs) poles = H.poles zeros = H.zeros for z,m in [(poles,'x'),(zeros,'o')]: ax.plot(np.real(z),np.imag(z),'.k',marker=m,mfc='none') plt.axis('equal') ax.set_xlim(-60,60) ax.set_ylim(-60,60); The scipy simulation functions ( lsim , step , impulse , etc.) for scipy 0.15.x and earlier are even worse in this regard than finding roots of polynomials, because they try to diagonalize the \( A \) matrix as \( A = V\Lambda V^{-1} \), which has its own problems at large degree. For example, if we diagonalize the companion matrix of the 10th degree polynomial \( P_{10}(x) = \prod\limits_{k=1}^{10} (x-\frac{1}{k}) \), we get an eigenvector matrix \( V \) that has a condition number of more than \( 10^{11} \), whereas the eigenvalue sensitivity we computed earlier was only about 1.59 million. A10=np.polynomial.polynomial.polycompanion(P10.coeffs[::-1]) Lambda,V = np.linalg.eig(A10) print '%g' % np.linalg.cond(V) 1.36681e+11 Drat. Drat drat drat. 3. Bargaining Throwing Polynomial Coefficients out the Window Well, if one major cause of problems is the expression of transfer functions as a pair of polynomials by listing their coefficients, then maybe there’s another way to make them work. There are other ways to describe polynomials. Two of them which don’t suffer from the ill-conditioned problems of polynomial coefficients are factoring polynomials — write a polynomial as a product \( P(x) = A\prod\limits_{k=0}^{n}(x-r_k) \) rather than a sum \( P(x) = \sum\limits_{k=0}^{n} a_kx^k \) sum of Chebyshev polynomials — write \( P(x) = \sum\limits_{k=0}^{n} c_kT_k(u) \) with \( u = \frac{2x-a-b}{b-a} \) to scale \( x \in [a,b] \) to \( u \in [-1,1] \) Chebyshev polynomials \( T_k(u) \) work well because they are bounded between \( \pm 1 \) and don’t run into the numerical problems we get when we evaluate large powers of \( x \) that partially cancel each other out. Evaluating them from the recurrence relation \( T_n(u) = 2uT_{n-1}(u) - T_{n-2}(u) \) is numerically stable. But they only work well in a bounded range \( x \in [a,b] \). If we have an unbounded range then they won’t help. So factoring is another approach. But then we have to find the roots of the polynomials. And the formulas we have for the Padé approximation to \( e^{-s} \) give us the coefficients; we already know finding the roots from coefficients is a badly-conditioned problem. If we have to start from coefficients, the poison is already there, and we’re dead in the water. Zeros of the Hypergeometric Function \( {}_1F_1 \) Both the numerator and the denominator of the Padé approximation to \( e^{-s} \) have the same form, which can be written in terms of the hypergeometric function \( {}_1F_1(a;b;z) \): $$ \begin{eqnarray} N_{p,q}(x) &=& \sum\limits_{j=0}^p\frac{(p+q-j)!p!}{(p+q)!j!(p-j)!}(-x)^j &=& {} _ 1F_1 (-p;-p-q;-x)\cr D_{p,q}(x) &=& \sum\limits_{j=0}^q\frac{(p+q-j)!q!}{(p+q)!j!(q-j)!}x^j &=& {} _ 1F_1 (-q;-p-q;x)\cr \end{eqnarray} $$ Now we just need a way to find the zeros of these functions so we can dispense with having to deal with their coefficients. There are tons of obscure mathematical papers on the zeros of special functions; Saff and Varga’s 1975 paper On the Zeros and Poles of Padé Approximants to \( e^x \) prove theorems about the locations of the poles and zeros in the complex plane, but say nothing about how to numerically compute them. After a bunch of floundering around, I found two very interesting papers that are relevant to finding these poles and zeros: Campos and Calderón’s paper on the Bessel polynomials explore a different special function, but they have the same general problem and they make a rather off-hand remark about finding zeros using a property of the Bessel polynomials: $$\sum\limits_{k eq j}\frac{1}{z_j - z_k} + \frac{az_j + 2}{2z_j^2} = 0$$ This set of nonlinear equations can be solved by standard methods. We have used a Newton method to solve them up to \( n=500 \) and \( a=100 \). This intrigued me — they found roots of a 500th degree polynomial using some equations and Newton’s method — but it was unclear how to repeat the approach or adapt it to the Padé approximants. Grünbaum’s article states that for any polynomials with simple (nonrepeated) roots, If $$P(x)=(x-x_1)(x-x_2)\ldots (x-x_n)$$ then at any root \( x_k \) of \( P \) we have $$P’‘(x_k) = 2P’(x_k)\sum\limits_{j eq k}\frac{1}{x_k-x_j}$$ This means that at any root \( x_k \), then $$\frac{P’‘(x_k)}{2P’(x_k)} = \sum\limits_{j eq k}\frac{1}{x_k-x_j}$$ For our Padé polynomials, the Wikipedia page on \( {}_1F_1 \) has \( w={}_1F_1(a;b;z) \) satisfying the differential equation $$z \frac{d^2w}{dz^2} + (b-z)\frac{dw}{dz} - aw = 0$$ and at the roots where \( w=0 \), $$z \frac{d^2w}{dz^2} + (b-z)\frac{dw}{dz} = 0$$ so that $$ \frac{\frac{d^2w}{dz^2}}{2\frac{dw}{dz}} = \frac{z-b}{2z} $$ Therefore, at all zeros \( x_k \) of the denominator polynomial \( D_{p,q}(x) = w={}_1F_1(a=-q;b=-p-q;x) \), we have $$0 = -\frac{1}{2} + \frac{-p-q}{2x_k} + \sum\limits_{j eq k}\frac{1}{x_k-x_j}$$. There are \( q \) of these equations and they can each be treated as one component of a vector equation \( \mathbf F(\mathbf v) = \mathbf 0 \) where \( \mathbf v \) is the set of the \( x_k \) roots. The Newton-Raphson method applied to vector equations is that if we have some estimate \( \mathbf v[m] \), we can calculate the next estimate \( \mathbf v[m+1] \) as follows: calculate \( \mathbf y = \mathbf F(\mathbf v[m]) \) calculate the Jacobian matrix \( \mathbf J = \frac{\partial \mathbf F}{\partial \mathbf v} \) evaluated at \( \mathbf v[m] \) solve for \( \Delta \mathbf v \) where \( \mathbf J \Delta \mathbf v = \mathbf y \) calculate \( \mathbf v[m+1] = \mathbf v[m] - \Delta \mathbf v \) We also need an initial guess; some empirical messing around trying to approximate the zeros for \( D_{p,q}(x) \) in the q=10-20 range led me to the initial guess $$ \mathbf v[0] = -p - \frac{q}{3} + \frac{2q}{3}\mathbf u^2 + \frac{2j(p+q)}{3}\mathbf u $$ where \( \mathbf u \) is the vector with the \( k \)th component \( u_k = \frac{2k - (q-1)}{q} \) for \( k = 0 \ldots q-1 \) — this leads to the \( u_k \) nearly spanning the range \( (-1,1) \) — and \( \mathbf u^2 \) is the element-by-element square of the vector \( \mathbf u \). This approach actually surprisingly well. What I don’t understand is why it converges to the right answer, rather than getting stuck at some other solution or running into some numerical problems due to ill-conditioning; Newton’s methods can be very iffy and don’t always converge well. But in this case it can easily be used to get the poles and zeros for \( p \) and \( q \) in the range of several hundred. (The numerator \( N_{p,q}(x) \) has the same exact method and its vector of zeros \( v \) are equal to -1 times the zeros of the denominator polynomial with \( p \) and \( q \) swapped.) And here’s an example of it in action with \( p=200, q=200 \): import sspade def plotpolezero(z,p,ax=None): if ax is None: fig = plt.figure(figsize=(8,8)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1, aspect='equal') ax.plot(np.real(z),np.imag(z),'ok',markersize=3,mfc='none') ax.plot(np.real(p),np.imag(p),'xk',markersize=3) return ax ax=None for q in [25,50,75,100,125,150,175,200]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk ax=plotpolezero(zeros,poles,ax) Things get more interesting if we look at \( p<q \); if \( p \) is small enough, some of the poles can drift into the right half-plane, indicating an unstable system: ax=None for p in [15,20,25,30,35,40]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(p,40) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk ax=plotpolezero(zeros,poles,ax) ax.grid('on') The minimum value \( p_{min}(q) \) that produces all poles in the left half-plane is less than but close to \( q \); if we graph \( q - p_{min}(q) \) we get values that gradually increase: pminlist = [] qlist = np.arange(250) p = 0 for q in qlist: pprev = p while p < q: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(p,q) zeros,poles,k = pe.zpk if np.all(np.real(poles) < 0): break else: p += 1 if (q-1 - pprev) < (q-p): print p,q pminlist.append(p) plt.plot(qlist, qlist-pminlist,'.') plt.xlabel('q') plt.ylabel('q - p_min') 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 1 6 3 9 7 14 11 19 17 26 25 35 34 45 45 57 59 72 75 89 93 108 114 130 139 156 166 184 196 215 <matplotlib.text.Text at 0x104c57950> Let’s shift our attention back to actually trying to use the Padé approximation. Now that we can find the poles and zeros using Newton’s method, we can avoid the ill-conditioned poison of the polynomial coefficient expression, and start using it in the frequency domain even for large values of \( p \) and \( q \), since it’s just a matter of evaluating the transfer function at the frequencies of our choice. The phase angle of the transfer function \( \frac{N_{p,q}(s)}{D_{p,q}(s)} \) roughly matches a pure unit time delay \( e^{-s} \) up to a frequency of approximately \( \omega = p+q \); here’s a graph showing the \( p=q \) case up to \( p=q=120 \): w = np.arange(0,300,0.01) s = 1j*w plt.plot(w,-w, ':', label='e^-s') for q in [20,40,60,80,100,120]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) plt.plot(w,np.unwrap(np.angle(pe(s))), label='(p=q=%d)' % q) plt.xlabel('$\\omega$', fontsize=16) plt.ylabel('$\\angle H(j\\omega)$, radians', fontsize=16) plt.legend(loc='lower left', labelspacing=0); The tough part is going to be dealing with our system in the time domain. We have the technology, though, now that we can get the poles and zeros without having to go through the polynomial coefficients. 4. Depression Okay, so now the question is how we setup a linear system for time-domain simulation. If you look at the documentation for scipy.signal.lti , you’ll see that The lti class can be instantiated with either 2, 3 or 4 arguments. The following gives the number of elements in the tuple and the interpretation: - 2: (numerator, denominator) - 3: (zeros, poles, gain) - 4: (A, B, C, D) Each argument can be an array or sequence. So we’ll just use the 3-argument constructor so we can utilize the zero, poles, gain triple directly: t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [18,20,22]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = scipy.signal.lti(zeros, poles, k) _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.5,1.2); Huh? We’re in trouble again at \( p=q=22 \). What’s going on? The key here is how scipy.signal.lti handles simulations. This behavior changed between version 0.15 and version 0.16, but in both cases simulation always utilizes the (A,B,C,D) state-space form, and if the system is specified in one of the other two methods (numerator/denominator coefficient vectors, or ZPK = zero-pole-gain), it is converted to state-space first. In version 0.15 the calculation of the state-space matrices in the scipy.signal.lti class goes through the _update method which, in the case of ZPK, calls zpk2ss : def _update(self, N): if N == 2: self._zeros, self._poles, self._gain = tf2zpk(self.num, self.den) self._A, self._B, self._C, self._D = tf2ss(self.num, self.den) if N == 3: self._num, self._den = zpk2tf(self.zeros, self.poles, self.gain) self._A, self._B, self._C, self._D = zpk2ss(self.zeros, self.poles, self.gain) if N == 4: self._num, self._den = ss2tf(self.A, self.B, self.C, self.D) self._zeros, self._poles, self._gain = ss2zpk(self.A, self.B, self.C, self.D) This is promising, but then if we look at zpk2ss , we see this: def zpk2ss(z, p, k): """Zero-pole-gain representation to state-space representation Parameters ---------- z, p : sequence Zeros and poles. k : float System gain. Returns ------- A, B, C, D : ndarray State space representation of the system, in controller canonical form. """ return tf2ss(*zpk2tf(z, p, k)) We call zpk2tf which goes from zero-pole-gain form to transfer function coefficients, and then call tf2ss . Horrors! That’s right — we went to great lengths to avoid polynomial coefficients because of their ill-conditioning, and instead work directly with the poles and zeros, but zpk2ss throws all that care away and goes right back to the error-prone polynomial coefficient approach. Version 0.16 has been refactored to separate classes for each form of construction, and the ZeroPolesGain class has a to_ss method that’s used in simulation: def to_ss(self): """ Convert system representation to `StateSpace`. Returns ------- sys : instance of `StateSpace` State space model of the current system """ return StateSpace(*zpk2ss(self.zeros, self.poles, self.gain)) And in version 0.16 it’s the same old sloppy zpk2ss function that goes through transfer function coefficients: def zpk2ss(z, p, k): """Zero-pole-gain representation to state-space representation Parameters ---------- z, p : sequence Zeros and poles. k : float System gain. Returns ------- A, B, C, D : ndarray State space representation of the system, in controller canonical form. """ return tf2ss(*zpk2tf(z, p, k)) It’s the same in scipy 0.17. So we lose! Dammit. Controller canonical form really sucks for numerical purposes. The Right Way to Implement zpk2ss We need a better way to implement zpk2ss , and since scipy won’t do it for us, we’ll have to do it ourselves. A little research on matrices easily shows that the way to keep the condition number of the \( A \) matrix to a minimum is to make it a pure diagonal matrix. Let’s go back to the 4th-order system we talked about earlier: $$H(s) = \frac{P(s)}{Q(s)} = \frac{1}{(s+1)(0.5s+1)(0.2s+1)(0.1s+1)} = \frac{100}{s^4 + 18s^3 + 97s^2 + 180s + 100}$$ which has a controller canonical form of $$ \begin{eqnarray} A &=& \begin{bmatrix} -18 & -97 & -180 & -100 \cr 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 1 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & 1 & 0 \cr \end{bmatrix} \cr B &=& \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr \end{bmatrix}^T \cr C &=& \begin{bmatrix} 0 & 0 & 0 & 100 \end{bmatrix} \cr D &=& 0 \end{eqnarray} $$ where the \( A \) matrix has a condition number of just over 521: A,B,C,D = scipy.signal.tf2ss([100],[1,18,97,180,100]) np.linalg.cond(A) 521.33808185890325 We could diagonalize \( A = V\Lambda V^{-1} \) numerically: Lambda,V = np.linalg.eig(A) print "Lambda = ", Lambda print "V =" print V print "V*diag(Lambda)*V.inv =" print np.dot(np.dot(V,np.diag(Lambda)),np.linalg.inv(V)) Lambda = [-10. -5. -2. -1.] V = [[ 9.94987442e-01 -9.79797151e-01 8.67721831e-01 -5.00000000e-01] [ -9.94987442e-02 1.95959430e-01 -4.33860916e-01 5.00000000e-01] [ 9.94987442e-03 -3.91918861e-02 2.16930458e-01 -5.00000000e-01] [ -9.94987442e-04 7.83837721e-03 -1.08465229e-01 5.00000000e-01]] V*diag(Lambda)*V.inv = [[ -1.80000000e+01 -9.70000000e+01 -1.80000000e+02 -1.00000000e+02] [ 1.00000000e+00 4.27435864e-15 1.19904087e-14 -3.55271368e-15] [ 1.04083409e-17 1.00000000e+00 1.02140518e-14 3.55271368e-15] [ 2.42861287e-17 5.55111512e-17 1.00000000e+00 -8.88178420e-16]] But then we’ve already picked up the poison of ill-conditioning, by working with controller canonical form. It works okay for small matrices, but we shouldn’t have much hope above \( n=10 \) or so. Instead we have to diagonalize things analytically, and that means working through the modal form, which uses a diagonal \( A \) matrix with elements equal to the transfer function poles: $$ A = \begin{bmatrix} -10 & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & -5 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & -2 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & 0 & -1 \cr \end{bmatrix} $$ Now the only hard part is coming up with \( B \) and \( C \) matrices to make things work properly. There isn’t a unique choice here; we just need to make sure that the net transfer function \( H(s) = C(sI-A)^{-1}B + D \) is what we need, and for a diagonal matrix, the \( (sI-A)^{-1} \) term is also a diagonal matrix with terms \( \frac{1}{s+p} \) along the diagonal: $$ (sI-A)^{-1} = \begin{bmatrix} \frac{1}{s+10} & 0 & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & \frac{1}{s+5} & 0 & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & \frac{1}{s+2} & 0 \cr 0 & 0 & 0 & \frac{1}{s+1} \cr \end{bmatrix} $$ The reason to use modal form is that with modes as state variables, there is no cross-coupling between modes, and in the time domain each state variable represents an independent first-order system. Very easy to analyze! As far as figuring out the \( B \) and \( C \) matrices goes, since \( (sI-A)^{-1} \) is diagonal with terms \( \frac{1}{s+p_k} \), any choice of \( B \) and \( C \) is fine that satisfies \( H(s) = \sum\limits_k \frac{b_kc_k}{s+p_k} \). We need to compute the residue coefficients \( r_k \) such that \( H(s) = \sum\limits_k \frac{r_k}{s+p_k} \) and divide up factors \( r_k \) between \( B \) and \( C \) as desired: for example, taking \( B \) as all ones and \( c_k = r_k \), or \( C \) as all ones and \( b_k = r_k \), or make them identical as \( b_k = c_k = \sqrt{r_k} \). In our specific fourth-order case, we can use the Heaviside method to determine the residues as $$\begin{eqnarray} a _ 0 &=& \left.\frac{100}{(s+1)(s+2)(s+5)}\right| _ {s=-10} = -\frac{5}{18} \cr a _ 1 &=& \left.\frac{100}{(s+1)(s+2)(s+10)}\right| _ {s=-5} = \frac{5}{3} \cr a _ 2 &=& \left.\frac{100}{(s+1)(s+5)(s+10)}\right| _ {s=-2} = -\frac{25}{6} \cr a _ 3 &=& \left.\frac{100}{(s+2)(s+5)(s+10)}\right| _ {s=-1} = \frac{25}{9} \end{eqnarray}$$ and therefore if we take \( B = \begin{bmatrix}1 & 1 & 1 & 1\end{bmatrix}^T \), then \( C = \begin{bmatrix}-\frac{5}{18} & \frac{5}{3} & -\frac{25}{6} & \frac{25}{9}\end{bmatrix} \), which we can verify: H2 = scipy.signal.lti(diag([-10,-5,-2,-1]), [[1]]*4, [-5.0/18, 5.0/3, -25.0/6, 25.0/9], 0 ) print 'num=',H2.num print 'den=',H2.den print 'cond(A)=',np.linalg.cond(H2.A) num= [[ 0.00000000e+00 -1.06581410e-14 -8.52651283e-14 -1.13686838e-13 1.00000000e+02]] den= [ 1. 18. 97. 180. 100.] cond(A)= 10.0 The modal form expresses any state-space system as the parallel sum of separate first-order systems; the condition number of the \( A \) matrix is just the ratio of the largest and smallest eigenvalue magnitudes. Actual physical systems rarely have only real poles, but rather at least one pair of complex conjugate eigenvalues, so we have to be cautious with this approach, because it means the \( A \), \( B \), and \( C \) matrices will have complex coefficients; an alternative is to group any complex poles in conjugate pairs and use a block-diagonal \( A \) matrix with block elements that are either 1x1 for real poles, or 2x2 of the form \( \begin{bmatrix}-\sigma&\omega\cr-\omega&-\sigma\end{bmatrix} \), which has eigenvalues \( -\sigma\pm j\omega \). This yields real-valued matrices and can be used with all of the scipy functions; some of them don’t work well with complex-valued state-space matrixes. Okay, so let’s do it; in the sspade.PadeExponential class I’ve included properties lti_ssmodal (pure diagonal state-space matrix) and lti_ssrealmodal (block diagonal state-space matrix): t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [18,20,22]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = pe.lti_ssrealmodal _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.5,1.2); Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!!! It works! Let’s march onward to higher degree: t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [20,22,24,26,28]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = pe.lti_ssrealmodal _,y = H.step(T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.5,1.2); Oh, it doesn’t work. Argh.... after a bunch of looking around, I noticed the lsim2 and step2 functions, which use ODE solvers to simulate; the lsim and step functions try to be smart and use closed-form solutions to linear systems (relying on matrix exponentials), and this works better for some systems but causes numerical problems in others, and high-order systems is one of those times. So let’s use scipy.signal.step2 instead: t = np.arange(0,3,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [20,22,24,26,28]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = pe.lti_ssrealmodal H.D = np.array(1) # TODO: FIX FIX FIX _,y = scipy.signal.step2(H,T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.5,1.2); We managed to push things out further by another 4 degrees, to \( p=q=24 \); it’s borderline stable at \( p=q=26 \), and then fails at higher values. Damn, damn, damn. 5. Acceptance…? After I managed to figure out how to compute poles and zeros of high-order Padé time delay approximations using Newton’s method, I spent a very long day trying to get the ZPK implementation working, first stymied by the implementation of scipy ‘s zpk2ss , and then in a failed attempt at a modal form implementation. It took me a long time to figure out why the modal form doesn’t work, even though the condition number of the \( A \) matrix is much lower: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(12,12) zeros,poles,k = pe.zpk H1 = scipy.signal.lti(zeros, poles, k) H2 = pe.lti_ssrealmodal print "controller canonical form K(A)=%g" % np.linalg.cond(H1.A) print "modal form K(A)=%g" % np.linalg.cond(H2.A) controller canonical form K(A)=1.63807e+15 modal form K(A)=1.28474 Wow. The modal form has a condition number of 1.28 for \( p=q=12 \), whereas the controller canonical form has a condition number of over \( 10^{15} \). The modal form shouldn’t be causing us numerical problems at all.... but the problem is that the ill-conditioning has been “swept aside” into the \( B \) and \( C \) matrices: print "B=" print H2.B print "C=" print H2.C B= [[ 18.05591692] [ 132.91771897] [ 851.69993802] [ 304.37549706] [ 2894.68914148] [ 2500.50514786] [ 3177.55610818] [-1303.54031239] [ 1898.61079121] [ 126.23776885] [ -223.46066064] [ 37.6807615 ]] C= [[ 18.05591692 132.91771897 851.69993802 304.37549706 2894.68914148 2500.50514786 -3177.55610818 1303.54031239 -1898.61079121 -126.23776885 223.46066064 -37.6807615 ]] My implementation uses \( b_k = c_k = \sqrt{r_k} \) to reduce magnitudes, but there’s still a delicate cancellation between modes. Each of the modes is oscillating at its own characteristic frequency, most of them with a relatively large amplitude, and they are supposed to sum up to small values. This doesn’t work too well once the system order gets fairly large: for q in [16,18,20,22,24]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros,poles,k = pe.zpk H2 = pe.lti_ssrealmodal print "C_%d=" % q print H2.C C_16= [[ 1.55868479e+01 5.19857547e+02 2.04887023e+03 2.57337115e+03 1.82882935e+04 7.10695442e+03 4.31275008e+04 3.60662991e+04 -4.50120393e+04 2.09511572e+04 -3.21075818e+04 -6.80395204e+02 7.59499100e+03 -1.63614662e+03 2.48124131e+02 6.35855671e+01]] C_18= [[ 6.59640301e+01 1.13979997e+02 3.42432615e+03 1.23189110e+04 1.02201903e+04 7.85142459e+04 3.08958948e+04 1.65125772e+05 1.36577005e+05 -1.69418842e+05 8.21961937e+04 -1.28145915e+05 -3.50145127e+02 3.68157292e+04 -8.01311715e+03 2.46639032e+03 -8.02882151e+02 -4.43317147e+01]] C_20= [[ 7.71477361e+01 1.09480088e+03 2.20976889e+03 1.89068039e+04 6.52104021e+04 3.93204917e+04 3.27775187e+05 1.29770199e+05 6.30151994e+05 5.16584425e+05 -6.37675797e+05 3.19757062e+05 -5.05485067e+05 6.73972798e+03 1.68214908e+05 -3.63903841e+04 1.72063240e+04 -6.14389658e+03 -1.86962826e+02 5.54803332e+01]] C_22= [[ 2.92848728e+01 6.92739882e+02 9.76114462e+03 1.95615111e+04 9.45543017e+04 3.19193112e+05 1.48199173e+05 1.34170005e+06 5.32633296e+05 2.39897177e+06 1.95222307e+06 -2.40016773e+06 1.23634882e+06 -1.97709719e+06 5.41285003e+04 7.38679949e+05 -1.57696485e+05 1.01020692e+05 -3.78633338e+04 5.91146021e+02 1.31571948e+03 -1.08300118e+02]] C_24= [[ 1.30410652e+02 1.35369198e+03 3.24570356e+03 6.70668054e+04 1.32333628e+05 4.44087115e+05 1.48231772e+06 5.50774714e+05 5.41332494e+06 2.15076021e+06 9.11611817e+06 7.37282635e+06 -9.03411488e+06 4.75871679e+06 -7.68407951e+06 3.05267070e+05 3.15357164e+06 -6.62292235e+05 5.35078004e+05 -2.06529518e+05 1.42833365e+04 1.38783403e+04 -1.40768237e+03 -1.29015506e+01]] The modal form has good numerical stability in the \( A \) matrix, but sacrifices numerical stability in the system as a whole, so unfortunately it’s not a good choice either. Cascade The right choice is a cascade (series) implementation. If we can break down the system into 1st- and 2nd-order systems with appropriate eigenvalues that can be cascaded into a high-order system, then we don’t require additive cancellation between modes. The algebra of cascaded state-space implementations is as follows: If we have two state-space systems \( S_1 = (A_1, B_1, C_1, D_1) \) and \( S_2 = (A_2, B_2, C_2, D_2) \) such that the inputs of \( S_2 \) are the outputs of \( S_1 \), then the combined system \( S_{12} = (A_{12}, B_{12}, C_{12}, D_{12}) \) can be computed as $$ \begin{eqnarray} A_{12} &=& \begin{bmatrix}A_1 & 0 \cr B_2C_1 & A_2\end{bmatrix} \cr B_{12} &=& \begin{bmatrix}B_1 \cr B_2D_1 \end{bmatrix} \cr C_{12} &=& \begin{bmatrix}D_2C_1 & C_2\end{bmatrix} \cr D_{12} &=& D_2D_1 \cr \end{eqnarray} $$ This cascade combination can be continued to more than two systems; for example, the three-system cascade looks like this: $$ \begin{eqnarray} A_{123} &=& \begin{bmatrix}A_1 & 0 & 0 \cr B_2C_1 & A_2 & 0 \cr B_3D_2C_1 & B_3C_2 & A_3\end{bmatrix} \cr B_{123} &=& \begin{bmatrix}B_1 \cr B_2D_1 \cr B_3D_2D_1\end{bmatrix} \cr C_{123} &=& \begin{bmatrix}D_3D_2C_1 & D_3C_2 & C_3\end{bmatrix} \cr D_{123} &=& D_3D_2D_1 \cr \end{eqnarray} $$ And the four-system cascade looks like this: $$ \begin{eqnarray} A_{1234} &=& \begin{bmatrix}A_1 & 0 & 0 & 0\cr B_2C_1 & A_2 & 0 & 0 \cr B_3D_2C_1 & B_3C_2 & A_3 & 0 \cr B_4D_3D_2C_1 & B_4D_3C_2 & B_4C_3 & A_4 \end{bmatrix} \cr B_{1234} &=& \begin{bmatrix}B_1 \cr B_2D_1 \cr B_3D_2D_1 \cr B_4D_3D_2D_1\end{bmatrix} \cr C_{1234} &=& \begin{bmatrix}D_4D_3D_2C_1 & D_4D_3C_2 & D_4C_3 & C_4\end{bmatrix} \cr D_{1234} &=& D_4D_3D_2D_1 \cr \end{eqnarray} $$ In general, the resulting cascaded state-space system has an \( A \) matrix which is block lower triangular; if the \( D \) terms are zero then it’s block lower bidiagonal. The condition number of this matrix isn’t as low as with the modal form (though still much lower than controller canonical form!), but overall it’s much more stable: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(12,12) zeros,poles,k = pe.zpk H3 = pe.lti_sscascade print "cascade form K(A) = ", np.linalg.cond(H3.A) print H3.C cascade form K(A) = 7056.31427616 [[ -66.02737609 -628.04637117 -63.9781648 -196.10488621 -59.72456992 -102.02762662 -52.888034 -56.65414163 -42.63766873 -28.21917019 -26.74418646 -8.83087886]] So finally we can try our time-delay step response with high-order systems using a cascaded implementation: t = np.arange(0,2,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [20,40,60,80,100]: pe = sspade.PadeExponential(q,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = pe.lti_sscascade _,y = scipy.signal.step2(H,T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=q=%d' % q) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.1,1.1); SUCCESS! We did it! We can reduce the ringing during the delay time (with a minor increase in ringing after the delay time) if we use a slightly lower order polynomial in the numerator of the transfer function: t = np.arange(0,2,0.001) fig = plt.figure(figsize=(10,6)) ax = fig.add_subplot(1,1,1) ax.set_xlabel('t') ax.plot(t,t>=1,'--k') for q in [20,40,60,80,100]: p = q-4 pe = sspade.PadeExponential(p,q) zeros, poles, k = pe.zpk H = pe.lti_sscascade _,y = scipy.signal.step2(H,T=t) ax.plot(t,y,label='p=%d, q=%d' % (p,q)) ax.grid('on') ax.legend(loc='best', labelspacing=0) ax.set_ylim(-0.1,1.1); And that’s pretty much all there is to say here.... Taking it further Hmmm. The overshoot is kind of annoying, though, isn’t it? What if, instead of taking all 100 poles and putting them into a time delay, we put some of them into a very slight low-pass filter to attenuate the ripples? We have to be careful here, because most sharp-cutoff low-pass filters introduce more overshoot rather than less overshoot. The best one to use is probably a Bessel filter, for two reasons: it has very little overshoot it has a very flat group delay; in the passband the frequency-dependence of time delay is very low There’s another reason too; the transfer function of a Bessel filter happens to be the same as the \( p=q \) Padé approximation to a time delay, but with a numerator of 1, and the cutoff frequency scaled by a factor of \( \frac{1}{2} \). (There’s those pesky hypergeometric functions again!) So we already have all the machinery to construct a state-space system for Bessel filters. B5 = sspade.Bessel(5, 1.0) print "5th order unit Bessel filter denominator polynomial" Bp5 = np.poly(B5.poles) assert np.all(np.imag(Bp5)<1e-12) print np.real(Bp5) B = sspade.Bessel(10, 1.0) H = B.lti_sscascade _,y = scipy.signal.step2(H,T=t) plt.plot(t,y); 5th order unit Bessel filter denominator polynomial [ 1. 15. 105. 420. 945. 945.] A unit Bessel filter has a low-frequency group delay of 1.0, so what we can do is allocate some of the time delay to a Bessel filter and some of the time delay to a Padé delay: a = 0.05 # 5% of the delay goes to Bessel, the rest to Pade n = 100 # order of the whole system m = 10 # order of the Bessel filter peb = sspade.Bessel(m,1.0/a) Hb = peb.lti_sscascade pe=sspade.PadeExponential(n-m,n-m,1/(1-a)) Hp=pe.lti_sscascade H1 = sspade.cascade(Hb,Hp) # System #1: cascaded Bessel + Pade t = np.arange(0,2,0.001) # System #2: Pade only pe2=sspade.PadeExponential(n-m,n) H2=pe2.lti_sscascade # System #3: Bessel only H3=sspade.Bessel(n).lti_sscascade fig=plt.figure(figsize=(10,10)) ax=[fig.add_subplot(2,1,k+1) for k in xrange(2)] for label, H in [ ('Pade %d,%d' % (pe2.p,pe2.q), H2), ('Bessel %d $\\rightarrow$ Pade %d,%d' % (m,pe.p,pe.q), H1), ('Bessel %d' % n, H3) ]: _,y = scipy.signal.step2(H,T=t) for axk in ax: axk.plot(t,y,label=label) for k in xrange(2): if k > 0: axk.set_xlim(0.9,1.1) ax[k].legend(loc='best') ax[k].set_ylim(-0.1,1.1) The pure Bessel filter of order 100 is very smooth but not very steep. The pure Padé filter of order 100 (with numerator degree 90) is very steep but has quite a bit of ripple. The hybrid cascade isn’t quite as steep as the Padé filter but it greatly attenuates the ripple. The thing about the Padé filter is that it optimizes the frequency response, and comes closest to any other filter of the same numerator/denominator at meeting the frequency response of a pure time delay. But time domain and frequency domain characteristics conflict to some degree: a low-pass filter with a perfectly sharp cutoff in the frequency domain implies ripple in the time domain, and vice versa. If we were optimizing, we might want to find the order-100 IIR filter that is the best least-squared approximation to the step response of a time-shifted version of a Gaussian filter: $$h(t) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}\tau}e^{-\frac{t^2}{2\tau^2}} \leftrightarrow H(s) = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}}e^{s^2\tau^2}$$ This is a noncausal filter, which has a step response \( ewcommand{\erf}{\mathop{\rm erf\,} olimits} y(t) = \frac{1}{2}\left(1 + \erf{\frac{t}{\sqrt{2}\tau}}\right) \) where \( \erf{x} \) is the error function; it ramps up smoothly from 0 to 1 with maximum slope \( \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}\tau} \): import scipy.special t = np.arange(-6,6,0.001) tau = 2.0 plt.plot(t,0.5 + 0.5*scipy.special.erf(t/np.sqrt(2)/tau)) slope = 1.0/np.sqrt(2*np.pi)/tau plt.plot([-0.5/slope, 0.5/slope],[0,1],'--r') plt.ylim(-0.02,1.02); For certain particular combinations of delay/order/steepness, we can come pretty close to a Gaussian filter. The Bessel filter of order \( N \) and cutoff frequency \( f_0 \) is supposedly the best approximation to the Gaussian with time constant \( \tau = T_0/\sqrt{2N} \) and an added time delay \( T_0 = 1/f_0 \): n=15 f0=2.5 T0=1.0/f0 tau=T0/np.sqrt(2*n) t = np.arange(0,2,0.001)*T0 B = sspade.Bessel(n,f0) Hb = B.lti_sscascade _,y = scipy.signal.step2(Hb,T=t) plt.figure(figsize=(8,6)) plt.plot(t,0.5 + 0.5*scipy.special.erf((t-T0)/np.sqrt(2)/tau)) plt.plot(t,y) plt.ylim(-0.05,1.05) plt.legend(['Gaussian filter tau=%.3f' % tau, 'Bessel (n=%d, f0=%.3f)' % (n,f0)], loc='upper left'); The thing is, I’m not sure if there’s a straightforward procedure for finding the best nth-order IIR filter approximation to a Gaussian filter with arbitrary time delay — where “best” here means least-squared error in the time domain. It’s one of those things that Gauss or Fourier or Legendre probably wrote a paper about some general topic, at the age of 23, of which my problem is just one special case, and they stuck it in a drawer because at the time there weren’t any applications. So I’m just going to leave it at that. Wrapup The Padé approximation to \( e^{-sT} \) (PAEST) is a rational function with specified degree \( p \) in the numerator and \( q \) in the denominator, that comes very close to matching a time delay in the frequency domain, and can be used as a rational transfer function for simulating a delay of time T. Padé approximation in general is similar to a Taylor series approach, but it uses rational functions instead of polynomials, and can produce a better approximation for certain functions that aren’t well-suited to polynomial approximation. Polynomial coefficients for this approximation are integers (for T=1 at least) and can be computed in terms of factorials or combinations using recurrence formulas. scipy.signal.lti can be used with numerator and denominator polynomials to simulate a Padé time delay. can be used with numerator and denominator polynomials to simulate a Padé time delay. The low-order approximations don’t look very good (especially with \( p=q \); if \( p \) is slightly less than \( q \) they’re not too bad) Padé time delays don’t necessarily have to be very accurate, if they are combined with other systems that have similar or slower dynamics. Using scipy.signal.lti with polynomial coefficients of PAEST breaks down just above order 20. with polynomial coefficients of PAEST breaks down just above order 20. The reason this approach breaks down is because numerical conditioning of polynomial coefficients becomes TOXIC as the degree increases. (And, no, TOXIC isn’t some clever acronym, I’m just emphasizing it loudly.) as the degree increases. (And, no, isn’t some clever acronym, I’m just emphasizing it loudly.) State-space formulations of a linear system are not unique, and have several forms. The default state-space form used by scipy.signal.lti is the controller canonical form, which expresses a state-space system directly from the TOXIC polynomial coefficients of the transfer function numerator and denominator. is the controller canonical form, which expresses a state-space system directly from the polynomial coefficients of the transfer function numerator and denominator. Analysis of the poles and zeros of PAEST is an end-run around ill-conditioned polynomial coefficients, and can be accomplished using Newton-Raphson iteration to obtain poles and zeros directly, with high-accuracy, based on residue sums using the second-order differential equation form for the hypergeometric function \( {}_1F_1 \). PAEST with \( p<q \) is unstable if \( p \) is too small, because of the presence of right-half-plane poles. scipy.signal.lti has a constructor that can use ZPK form (zeros, poles, DC gain) but it fails miserably because scipy.signal.zpk2ss converts ZPK form to TOXIC polynomial coefficients as an intermediate form before converting to state-space has a constructor that can use ZPK form (zeros, poles, DC gain) but it fails miserably because converts ZPK form to polynomial coefficients as an intermediate form before converting to state-space We can convert poles and zeros of PAEST to state-space, but we have to take care in doing so. The best-conditioned state-space \( A \) matrix uses a diagonalized (“modal”) form, but this fails on most high-order systems as well, because the ill-conditioning is pushed out to the \( B \) and \( C \) matrices, and convergence relies on delicate cancellation of sums of first-order systems. The cascaded series form appears to be the best overall method of formulating a high-order state-space system from poles and zeros, by first grouping them into order-1 (for real poles and zeros) or order-2 (for complex conjugate poles and zeros) systems and then forming overall state-space matrices using combination formulas. PAEST of order 100+ works well using the cascade form with scipy.signal.step2 and scipy.signal.lsim2 to simulate time-domain response. and to simulate time-domain response. The ripple of PAEST can be reduced greatly for a given order system, by sacrificing some bandwidth and combining with a Bessel filter. References and other stuff The sspade module I’ve included the sspade Python module on my bitbucket account; it is free to use under the Apache license, and has a number of features I’ve used in this article, including these: cascade(sys1,sys2) — computes the state-space system that is the series cascade of systems sys1 and sys2 — computes the state-space system that is the series cascade of systems and zpk2ss_cascade(z,p,k) — converts ZPK = a list of zeros, poles, and DC gain, to a state-space LTI system using the cascade approach outlined in this article — converts ZPK = a list of zeros, poles, and DC gain, to a state-space LTI system using the cascade approach outlined in this article zpk2ss_modal(z,p,k) — converts ZPK to a state-space LTI system using a diagonal A matrix — converts ZPK to a state-space LTI system using a diagonal A matrix zpk2ss_realmodal(z,p,pk) — converts ZPK to a state-space LTI system using a real block diagonal A matrix composed of at most 2x2 blocks — converts ZPK to a state-space LTI system using a real block diagonal A matrix composed of at most 2x2 blocks PadeExponential(p,q,f0) — utility class for creating Padé approximations of numerator order \( p \) and denominator order \( q \) for a time delay — utility class for creating Padé approximations of numerator order \( p \) and denominator order \( q \) for a time delay Bessel(n,f0) — utility class for creating Bessel filters Technical references Numerical Analysis The classic numerical analysis books I have on my bookshelf are: Numerical Recipes in C, Press, Teukolsky, Vetterling, and Flannery — the math explanations are invaluable and fairly easy to understand. The C code is awful, a straight port of Fortran from the days when alphanumeric characters were a scarce resource and so variable names had to be cryptic in order to fit in memory. The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 2, Donald A. Knuth. This doesn’t get into linear algebra, but the foundations of scalar floating-point arithmetic are covered here. If you can understand a section of TAOCP fully without your brain hurting, you must be a mathematician. Matrix Computations, Gene H. Golub and Charles Van Loan. (Also known as “Golub and Van Loan”) I have the 3rd edition. This book is dense, and if you don’t understand the basics of linear algebra you will get lost quickly, but it includes error analysis bounds and order of operation counts on many matrix algorithms. It’s also worth reading the paper What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic by David Goldberg, which is a little bit more accessible (and more in-depth) than Knuth’s treatment, in my opinion. These books may be useful as well to the advanced reader, and are on my to-get list — I can’t vouch for them yet, but their authors are well-reknowned. Linear Systems and State-Space Sorry, I don’t have anything I can recommend here; what I’ve read is either mediocre or falls deeply into theoretical matrix hell without really coming up for air. (The Dahlehs at MIT fall into this latter category.) Linear Systems Theory by João P. Hespanha may be of use. Chapter 1 is freely available online, and I found it useful for the various state-space interconnections. But it looks like a typical textbook overreliance on MATLAB. Oh, and I can’t stand the heading typography; textbooks shouldn’t look like ships’ logs from Star Trek. Padé Approximants Other stuff Dedicated to A.R., who was frequently upset. © 2016 Jason M. Sachs, all rights reserved.

Thursday afternoon, a steady stream of coffee-seeking customers pulled into the parking lot at the Crockett Shopping Center on Manchaca Road only to find the front door of Strange Brew padlocked. Employees sat outside trying to make sense of their unexpected day off. They had no advance notice of the lockout. Sources had reached out to the Chronicle this week claiming recent employee checks from Strange Brew had bounced, while also painting an overall dire financial picture for the business. Founding owner Scott Ward divested several months ago, leaving partner Shane Widner in charge. Neither returned calls this week. A notice, posted on the front door this morning by landlords Republic Commercial, read, “Notice of lockout for non-payment of rent.” Republic’s Trayce Miller refused to speak on record, but intimated that the business owed several months’ rent. One high-ranking employee on the scene, speaking anonymously because he wasn’t authorized to talk to media, said that Strange Brew had been dealing with money-related issues since Ward’s departure and there was dissent in the ranks and widespread rumors. He believes Widner had recently met with all of Strange Brew’s investors. The venue’s music annex, Strange Brew Lounge Side, quickly became an important venue for local and touring singer-songwriters since opening in 2012. Regarded as one of Austin’s best listening rooms, the space won Best Live Music Venue, Best Venue to Play, and Best Club Sound in last year’s Austin Music Poll. Their online concert calendar still shows listings two months out, including Slaid Cleaves in February and two shows by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in early March. Updated at 5:10pm: Strange Brew booker Kacy Crowley contacted the Chronicle late this afternoon to say that they’ve raised enough money to re-open tomorrow and that weekend shows will go on as previously scheduled. She clarified that while Ward left as a manager to pursue other interests, he remains a partner in the business.

Julia Greenshields is back for a brief stay in her hometown before rejoining the Rugby Canada national women’s program in B.C. Where is she spending most of her free time during her two-week stint in Sarnia? On the rugby pitch, of course. “It keeps me busy, it keeps me in shape while I’m here anyways,” she said. “I like keeping on grass, especially when it comes to injuries to help rehab and stay fit while I’m here. You learn when you coach, too.” Greenshields, 23, has been helping out various local sides, including the Sarnia Saints U14 and U16 boy’s teams that brought medals back from a 7s tournament in Oakville last weekend. On Tuesday at Norm Perry Park, she was offering some tips to the U18 girls. She took in one of their matches last week and noted a need to work on tackling, staying in a line defensively, and passing. “Something to work on,” she said. “They’re young.” Greenshields played for the Saints for a few seasons until moving out to Victoria – that’s where Rugby Canada centralizes the national teams – and has remained based out of the west coast since January 2012. The former Queen Elizabeth II and St. Clair student was eligible but ultimately wasn’t selected to be part of the Canadian Pan Am Games 7s entry that won gold over the U.S., partly due to a recent sprained ankle she suffered in practice in April. With the aid of rehab and an ankle brace, though, she’s back in action now. In Victoria, her schedule usually consists of six-days-a-week training featuring sprints, skills, weightlifting and general conditioning. “Long days for us,” she said with a chuckle. The national team competes in a series of tours in locations such as Dubai, Atlanta, Brazil, China and London. The most recent tour stop she participated in was in Amsterdam in May with the developmental side called the Maple Leafs. There they won the championship, defeating Ireland in the final. “A really cool experience,” she said. Carded as a Canadian player, Greenshields has played with both the main team and the developmental side at times. Overall, Canada’s women are ranked second after New Zealand, she added. Despite the fact Greenshields plays 7s, which will be in the 2016 Olympics, she is still able to pass on some useful tips to Sarnia’s 15s sides, such as the U18 group. “It’s a different game, but still requires a lot of the same skills,” she pointed out. Greenshields’ first exposure to 7s was while attending her first year at Western University in 2011. She was invited to a Maple Leafs’ tournament in Barbados, and after a strong performance the coach invited her to continue competing with them in Dubai. “I couldn’t say no,” she recalled. On the last day of that competition, she was offered the opportunity to move to B.C. and join the national team on a full-time basis. It was a great opportunity, sure, but not an easy decision to leave family, friends and school behind. “It was really tough,” she said. “You give up a lot and other people give up a lot, too. “You put a lot on hold, and it’s weird now that I’m 23 all of my peers from Sarnia are graduating university and they’re on their way to other careers, right? And I mean, I can’t take back anything, I love what I do and I’m so, so grateful and I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. So, no regrets but it was definitely a tough decision.” Looking ahead, the Canadians reconvene in August with several months of intensive training leading up to the next tour in December in Dubai. terry.bridge@sunmedia.ca @ObserverTerry

There are two universal languages in the world: mathematics and music. In Japan, Vocaloid has made thousands of songs using synthetic voices and sounds. The most popular model is Hatsune Miku, who has gotten international attention as well as quite a few video game appearances. While music-based video games (and even music-based movies) are nothing new, Muya Agami, in collaboration with [email protected], has set out to create a novel based upon one of the most popular (and hardest) Vocaloid songs in Japanese history. The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku is a solid light novel with a few surprisingly heartfelt moments sprinkled within the pages. The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku revolves around the life of Shinosato Asano, a reserved university student that works at a research lab and part time at a nightclub. One day, his professor assigns him a mysterious task: he must conduct a field test for an android named Hatsune Miku. While the task is open-ended, Asano initially struggles to interact with the robot, and it doesn’t help matters when his friends Kurose Aika and Ishiii Juhachi wonder what he’s doing with a girl who looks like a fish out of water. Within a couple of weeks, however, Asano and Miku form a bond as they become intertwined with each other; however, Miku holds some devious secrets that may change Asano’s life forever. The novel’s chapters are separated by date and time, with the main story focusing on Asano’s point-of-view. His first interactions with Miku are weird and jilted, but it’s understandable due to his somewhat timid personality. He struggles to open up to her, and his character development is actually quite heartwarming, if somewhat tragic near the end. In addition, I really enjoyed the supporting cast of Asano’s friends; Aika is the resident shipper-on-deck who provides some comic relief, while Juhachi is the tough guy dropout that’s sometimes too confident for his own good. The trio play off each other’s personalities really well, and I love the best friends dynamic they share. It was quite interesting to see how the author portrayed Miku (who doesn’t have a canon personality due to her being, well, synthetic). Here, she’s peppy and charismatic, attracting those around her with her signature outfit and singing voice. Near the end, however, her character morphs into something more robotic and stoic, which marks the change of tone in the novel. The story does reference some of the more well-known aspects of her character (such as her trademark hair and food, as well as the fact that she had multiple “voices” in an update to the Vocaloid software). While many liberties are made in order to explain the technology to create her, the story does note her limitations as an android. The most remarkable thing about Disappearance was how the authors could extrapolate so much story out of a single song. [email protected], the artist who created the eponymous song, took great lengths to explain the true meaning behind The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku. Essentially, the song marks Miku’s existential crisis as she “dies” throughout it, slowly losing control as well as her memories. To be fair, the song is filled with motor mouth exposition, as this English cover demonstrates, so it’s not like there’s a scant amount of lyrics here. While Disappearance does move at a brisk pace due to the medium, the first third of the book was a bit slow to build up. We get the generic “boy meets girl” plot for the first eighty or so pages, with Asano struggling to come up with activities to do with Miku, and coming up with increasingly absurd reasons as to why he’s hanging out with her. By the time the story moves out of the introductions, however, it really picks up, with the second half correlating to the events of the titular song. When the overall novel shifts from a romantic slice-of-life to a science-fiction drama, it becomes much more thrilling. However, near the end it starts to go into a slight cosmic horror plot, which doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the story. It comes out of nowhere, and the resolution appears just as quickly. Keeping the story firmly into softer science-fiction/slice-of-life territory would have been preferable to the last dozen or so pages. A small point to note with the translation is that it does contain a few grammatical errors at times. They’re noticeable but not dealbreaking; still, it’s something that should probably be tightened up in future printings. 75 Good The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku Review Guidelines While a bit inconsistent with translation and pacing, The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku is a poignant and heartwarming light novel that explores Japan’s virtual pop superstar in a surprisingly human way. Just make sure to bring tissues near the end of it. —Elisha Deogracias Elisha Deogracias is an aspiring accountant by day, freelance writer by night. Before writing for Gaming Trend, he had a small gig on the now defunct Examiner. When not being a third wheel with his best friends on dates or yearning for some closure on Pushing Daisies, he's busy catching up on My Hero Academia and wacky rhythm games. Still doesn't know if he's a kid or a squid.

Times Online Are men surplus to requirements? The answer, after more than half a century of feminism and the welfare state, depends largely on class. Men from the employable and educated classes are still in strong demand among women. But much lower down the socioeconomic scale, among the least privileged, men have become — or have come to seem — entirely optional. As many of these women become grandmothers, a new pattern has emerged of three generations of mothers without a man in the house — lone granny, lone mum and fatherless children, all expecting the state to stand in for daddy, as of right. These women are not so much welfare queens as matriarchal dynasties of welfare Amazons... The culture is passed on, as you might expect. Lone grannies are significantly more likely to have lone and workless daughters than grannies with husbands or employment, and the same is true of their daughters’ daughters. Baby daughters (and baby sons, too) are imbibing with their mother’s milk the idea that men, like jobs, are largely unnecessary in any serious sense. The problem with this new type of extended family, Dench says, is that it is not self-sustaining but tends to be parasitic on conventional families in the rest of society. In fact, it appears to lead inexorably to the nightmare of an unproductive dependent underclass. A reader sends in this article fromabout the new generations of male-free homes:Nightmare for the poor and for the conventional families who support them but perhaps a boondoggle for the political class. Isn't this what socialism is all about?

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to North Dakota, where on Thursday hundreds of police with military equipment raided a resistance camp established by Native American water protectors in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline, which has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of hundreds of other tribes from across the Americas. On Thursday afternoon, over a hundred officers in riot gear with automatic rifles lined up across North Dakota’s Highway 1806, flanked by multiple MRAPs—that’s mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles—sound cannon, Humvees driven by National Guardsmen, an armored police truck and a bulldozer. Water protectors say that police deployed tear gas, mace, pepper spray and flash-bang grenades and bean bag rounds against the Native Americans and shot rubber bullets at their horses. This is a video shot by Unicorn Riot, followed by a Facebook Live video from Sacheen Seitcham of the West Coast Women Warriors Media Cooperative. SACHEEN SEITCHAM: They’ve been pepper-spraying. They’ve maced. They’ve tasered. They’ve thrown percussion bombs and smoke grenades at us. All for water. Over 300 pigs. We are protecting the water. They’re protecting oil. That’s what’s happening. AMY GOODMAN: Water protectors set up a blockade of the highway using cars, tires, fire in order to try to protect their camp, parts of which were demolished by police. Four people locked themselves to a truck parked in the middle of the highway in order to stop the police advance. Elders also led prayer ceremonies in front of the police line. Some were arrested in the middle of prayer. In total, more than 100 people were arrested. Ahead of the police raid, the Federal Aviation Administration also issued a temporary no-fly zone for the airspace above the resistance camps for all aircraft except for those used by law enforcement. Police appeared to be evicting the frontline camp in order to clear the way for the Dakota Access pipeline company to continue construction. Company cranes and bulldozers were active Thursday just behind the police line on the site of the sacred burial ground where Dakota Access security guards unleashed dogs on Native Americans on September 3rd. We’re going to turn to Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, this clip from the front line. DALLAS GOLDTOOTH: This is at the front line of the Dakota Access pipeline fight right here. And we are about one—about two miles from the river to the west here—or east, sorry. And to the west, right over this hill, Dakota Access is doing construction, trying to get to this road right here. So there is a police line on top of the hill here with Dakota Access workers and police protecting the workers. AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dallas Goldtooth. And before that, you hear the LRAD, the long-range acoustic device. For more, we’re joined by Tara Houska, national campaigns director for Honor the Earth. Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tara. Explain what took place yesterday, I mean, the video and the photos that we have of the military hardware, a raid against the protesters. TARA HOUSKA: Yesterday we saw that—you know, we saw—we learned a lot about the relationship of people to fossil fuels. We learned a lot about the relationship of North Dakota to Native people. And we learned a lot about America and where we stand. Yesterday, we saw folks being maced. I was standing right next to a group of teenagers that were all maced in the face, maced right—like all kinds of people. Myself, I actually was almost shot in the face by bean bag round. It ricocheted off a truck right next to my head. These police were actively trying to hurt people, pushing them back to allow construction of the Dakota Access pipeline. They were defending monetary interests as human beings were being physically hurt. You know, I saw—I saw, right in front of me, a group of police officers pull a protester forward and begin beating him over the head with sticks. There’s video of it that you can see. I mean, this was an all-out war that was waged on indigenous protectors that were doing nothing more than peacefully assembling. There was no fires, there was nothing like that, until the police began their violent attack on us. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tara, where was this incident in—for instance, in relationship to the September 3rd dog attacks at the tribal burial site? TARA HOUSKA: When Dakota Access jumped ahead over 20 miles to destroy the site that had just been identified by the tribe the day before as a sacred place, that happened on September 3rd. That’s also the anniversary of the Whitestone Hill massacre. That was the exact place the day that Dakota Access was basically constructing its pipeline, right in the background, as literally hundreds and hundreds of people came to stand and pray and bring all of their energy forward to stop this from happening. And it was right at that site where Native American men, women and children had been attacked by private security, by dogs and mace and all the same things that we saw yesterday—this incredible escalated violence against people that were doing nothing more than trying to stop the destruction of sacred sites right in front of their eyes. AMY GOODMAN: Tara, you saw rifles aimed directly at people, police aiming those rifles? TARA HOUSKA: Yes, there were police walking around everywhere with assault rifles. Directly across from us, there was actually a policeman holding his rifle trained on us, directly on us. Bean bag rifle assault—bean bag non-lethal weapons were also aimed at us. Every time we put our hands up, they’d put them down. As soon as our hands came down, they would aim back at us. Police officers were smiling at us as they were doing these things. There were police officers filming this, laughing, as they—as human beings were being attacked, being maced. I mean, it was a nightmarish scene. And it should be a shame to the federal government, it should be a shame to the American people, that this is happening within U.S. borders to indigenous people and to our allies, to all people that are trying to protect water. Yesterday was a really shameful moment for this country and where we stand. AMY GOODMAN: And the number of people you estimate were arrested, Tara? TARA HOUSKA: I saw dozens of people being arrested. I mean, they were just pulling people out and arresting them. You know, I saw—I actually had to get pulled back from a group that—I mean, the police were pushing forward and just grabbing people at will. We had a number of lockdowns, like that were right in front of us in this truck in the middle of the road, that was used to attempt to blockade these police from advancing forward. There were five people, actually, that were locked to that. They attempted to construct a tipi in the middle, right behind people that were praying and singing. And they—there were folks that locked down to that tipi, or attempted to. The police ripped that tipi down and ripped those people out. It was—it was a really horrible scene yesterday.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images When Australian research professor Paul Glasziou checked off the 68th box on a list of ailments for which homeopathy had no effect, he let out a sigh of relief. Homeopathic remedies are sold in thousands of health stores as tinctures, tonics, pills, and pastes. The practice's origin can be traced to an 18th-century German physician named Samuel Hahnemann, who theorized that taking extremely diluted doses of the thing that is causing an ailment can cure it. Glasziou looked at nearly 200 scientific studies about the effectiveness of the regimen for 68 conditions, ranging from arthritis to HIV. Overall, the treatment had "no discernible effect" on any of those conditions, which led Glasziou to conclude that homeopathy was "a therapeutic dead-end." That was two years ago. Since then, Britain's government health system (NHS) had continued to pay for thousands of patients to receive homeopathic treatment. But on July 21, the NHS included homeopathy in a lengthy report on items that primary care doctors should not prescribe. That effectively bans patients from using government funds for homeopathic treatment. The NHS currently spends upwards of £92,412 (more than $120,400) on homeopathy prescriptions each year, according to the report. But the authors cited a "lack of robust evidence of clinical effectiveness" for the treatment and suggested physicians should stop prescribing it to patients. Simon Stevens, chief executive of the NHS, said in a statement announcing the decision that homeopathy is "at best a placebo." He called the previous decision to cover the remedy "a misuse of scarce NHS funds which could better be devoted to treatments that work." The US government doesn't support the treatment either — last year, the Federal Trade Commission released guidelines requiring producers of homeopathic treatments to add a disclaimer to their packaging saying "there is no scientific evidence that the product works." Across the globe, however, homeopathy remains a booming industry. "I can well understand why Samuel Hahnemann — the founder of homeopathy — was dissatisfied with the state of 18th century medicine's practices, such as blood-letting and purging, and tried to find a better alternative," Glasziou wrote in a blog post for the medical journal The BMJ after publishing his research. "But I would guess he would be disappointed by the collective failure of homeopathy to carry on his innovative investigations, but instead continue to pursue a therapeutic dead-end."

Image copyright AP Tight security is in place as airlines start to bring home Britons stranded in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh. The UK government cancelled flights to and from the resort on Wednesday amid fears a Russian passenger plane had been brought down by a terrorist bomb. Only hand luggage will be allowed on flights, with hold baggage being transported later by the government. UK investigators believe a bomb was put in the hold of the Metrojet Airbus A321 before take-off, the BBC has learned. The government says it received a crucial new piece of intelligence on Wednesday, which the BBC understands was based on intercepted communications between militants in the Sinai. The Russian aircraft was flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg last Saturday when it crashed in the Sinai desert, killing all 224 people on board. Easyjet, Monarch, Thomson, Thomas Cook and British Airways have scheduled UK-bound flights from mid-morning local time for some of the estimated 19,000 British nationals on holiday in Sharm el-Sheikh. But Easyjet says its flights to Luton and Gatwick due to depart at 11:00 GMT have been delayed "due to congestion within the terminal building in addition to additional security procedures in place". Your travel questions answered Britons speak of Sharm el-Sheikh 'tension' Could IS have bombed Flight 9268? How has airport security changed? There will be additional security measures for passengers, put in place by British security officials who have assessed the airport. Queues were reported to be building up in the departure area of Sharm el-Sheikh airport where Britons are being asked to complete a form for each piece of hold luggage as they arrive to check in. British tourist Kate Dobbs in told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she hoped to be on one of the flights returning to the UK later. Passengers on her flight have been told they can bring up to 5kg of hand baggage, she said. "They've given us a list of the kind of thing we can take - phones and keys, that type of thing." Ms Dobbs added: "There are lot's of anger among some people although the majority... are like us. We understand we need to get home safely and that's the way in which they decided they are going to do it." Image copyright Wael Hussein/BBC Image caption British passengers have been arriving at Sharm el-Sheikh airport for their flights home Image copyright Wael Hussein/BBC Image caption Queues started building up in the terminal as more passengers arrived Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin told the BBC UK security officials were at the airport monitoring the baggage screening process. He said reports the luggage would be transported back to the UK by the RAF was incorrect but the government was making arrangements to ensure it would be returned to passengers in a week to 10 days. He said more than 20 flights would be leaving the resort later and the "vast majority" of British tourists who "should have come back Wednesday, Thursday and Friday... will be back by tonight". Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Patrick McLoughlin: "In excess of 20 flights" will bring British holidaymakers back from Egypt on Friday Outbound flights from the UK to Sharm el-Sheikh remain suspended and the Foreign Office continues to advise against all but essential travel by air to or from Sharm el-Sheikh airport. Egypt's tourism industry has suffered in the unrest after the Arab Spring in 2011, but the Red Sea resorts including Sharm el-Sheikh have remained popular and hundreds of thousands of Britons said to visit the area every year. Mr McLoughlin told the BBC: "We don't have any problems with the safety of the resort itself but we are concerned about flights into Sharm el-Sheikh." He said the restrictions on hold luggage and the suspension of UK passenger flights into Sharm el-Sheikh would stay in place "until we've got longer-term assurances about the security at the airport". 'Rescue flights' Flights are scheduled to leave Sharm el-Sheikh for Glasgow, London Gatwick, London Stansted, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester on Friday. Image copyright Wael Hussein/BBC Image caption Officials from the British embassy are also at the airport British nationals in Sharm el-Sheikh are encouraged to check with their airline or tour operator on their travel plans: Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How important is tourism to Egypt's economy? BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says that although British officials have not ruled out the possibility of a technical fault bringing the plane down, they think that is increasingly unlikely. Investigators in the UK's security service suspect someone with access to the aircraft's baggage compartment inserted an explosive device inside or on top of the luggage just before the plane took off, our correspondent adds. Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday it was now "more likely than not" that a terrorist bomb caused the crash. But both Egypt and Russia say its too soon reach such a conclusion. It came as he held talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in London during a previously scheduled visit. President Sisi, told reporters security at the airport was tightened 10 months ago at the UK's request. He said British experts had then assessed security at Egyptian airports and found the measures were "good enough". Mr Cameron also discussed "joint counter-terrorism" with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a telephone call.

Yelling and swearing and even threats of violence have come to characterize public-engagement sessions in Calgary, but the city is far from alone in seeing its civic gatherings devolve into such uncivil behaviour, council heard Monday. "Things are changing," said city manager Jeff Fielding, who held top administrative jobs in Kitchener, Burlington, and London, Ont., before taking on his current role in Calgary in 2014. "People are not only engaged, but they're angry-engaged." Fielding said he's observed a marked increase in "the degree of acrimony" in the public's behaviour over the past five years, in particular. His comments came during a special council meeting on the city's public-engagement policies. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said Monday's meeting had been planned months earlier but acknowledged the coincidental timing with the "elephant in the room" — last week's testy information session on the southwest transitway project. The day after that public meeting, Nenshi announced all subsequent info sessions on the project would be cancelled due to verbal harassment and even threats of violence against city staff. "I heard of 20-odd incidents that had happened, including the following: one member of the public saying about one of my colleagues, 'Where is that bitch? I'm going to strangle her,'" Nenshi said in explaining his decision. The mayor also revealed a city employee had been physically assaulted at an earlier public-engagement session on the same project in October, with her clothing pulled at and her name tag ripped off. 'Berated, demeaned, physically assaulted' The mayor didn't name that employee but she came forward via a public Facebook post, saying the pattern of behaviour at such sessions is nothing new. "I have been berated, demeaned, physically assaulted and disrespected by complete strangers on too many occasions," Emma Stevens wrote. "I'm sorry for the Calgarians that now won't get the chance to provide their input in person because of the behaviour of some of their neighbours," she added. "But I'm also, frankly, relieved that I won't be put in a position that compromises my safety and well-being." The city will continue to carry out online engagement as it finalizes plans for the bus rapid transit expansion in the southwest, but all in-person gatherings have been called off. Fragmented media reinforces worldviews The shift toward angrier people at public-engagement sessions has also been noticeable in the United States, according to public-participation specialist Wendy Green Lowe, who visited Calgary to work with council at Monday's meeting. Lowe blamed fragmentation of media, in large part, for the growing lack of civility. With so many sources of information now available, she said people often pick and choose what to believe, eroding the common ground once shared by even the most ideologically opposed citizens. "When I was growing up, there were three channels on the television and all three of them provided news in an objective way — they tried very much to provide a balanced explanation of what was happening," she told council. "Right now, people are choosing their news sources to affirm their worldview, and what that means is we don't have a level playing field in society's understanding of issues. People believe fundamentally different things about all kinds of topics." Discussion or disruption? Coun. Druh Farrell said some recent open houses have created unsafe situations, as large groups of agitated citizens gather in relatively cramped spaces. "As a councillor, you're swarmed by people," she said. "And that puts certain individuals at great risk, I believe." Mac Logan, the city's general manager of transportation, said last week's meeting on the southwest transitway, in particular, was unlike any he had seen. "It's one of the only times I've ever seen a group of people in an engagement process try to disrupt the discourse with other people, who were either supportive or who were neutral and just coming for information," Logan said. "I've never experienced that, in the last decade, certainly."

When the Iraqi military claimed it would swiftly force the Islamic State group to give up control of the Sunni city of Tikrit, they probably didn't expect the battle to last quite so long before finally claiming victory. But the Iraqi government announced Wednesday it had pushed insurgents out of the city, reclaiming the city of Saddam Hussein's birth and a key strategic position in relation to the Islamic State group's northern Iraq base in Mosul. "Most of Tikrit today is liberated," Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban said, according to Reuters. "Only small parts remain [outside our control]. We will give you the good news in the next few hours after eliminating the pockets that are still in the city." The battle: After incurring heavy casualties attempting to breach the city, Iraqi military forces and Iranian-led Shiite militias had to stall their war efforts in mid-March. This stemmed from what U.S. commanders called "poor overall planning," reports the Washington Post. According to U.S. commanders, Iranian leaders were trying to keep the U.S. out of the fight, but the lack of intelligence or firepower needed to smoke the Islamic State out of its holdings made it difficult to push forward. Eventually the stall ended when Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi requested U.S.-led airstrikes against the city last week, pounding IS fighters until Iraqi and Shiite forces were able to resume. While the city has been liberated and brings the Iraqi military closer to reclaiming its country, the battle for Tikrit left the city broken and scarred, a war zone in the extreme sense of the word. And while it seems like this is the time to rebuild, there isn't much time to breathe. The Islamic State threat from Mosul looms nearer — now, only 140 miles away.

Sarah Kliff covers health policy for The Washington Post and writes for Wonkblog. Coined by the health insurance industry, the term “young invincibles” has come to describe 18-to-34-year-olds who go without coverage because they expect to remain healthy. But young invincibles are crucial to making the Affordable Care Act work: The White House is counting on them to buy coverage under the new law, helping to spread the risk and hold down premiums for everybody. Let’s debunk a few myths about who these uninsured young people are and what they want from the health-care system. 1. Young adults are uninformed about the health-care law. Young adults tend to be about as aware of the health-care law as the rest of the population. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in August found that 33 percent of adults had heard nothing about their state health insurance exchanges. That figure was 43 percent among 18-to-25-year-olds and 41 percent among 26-to-35-year-olds. Separate polling from the Pew Research Center found that young adults were more aware than any other demographic that the health-care law offers subsidies for low-income Americans to purchase insurance. However, they were less aware of the requirement to buy coverage. Young Americans are especially aware of the provisions that affect their own coverage options, most prominently the option to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26. A Commonwealth Fund poll in March found that 62 percent of young adults knew of that program. 2. They don’t want health insurance. Young adults do have the highest uninsured rate of any demographic, with about 27 percent of people between 19 and 34 lacking insurance coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Health-care experts say this doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t want insurance, but rather that they are less likely to be offered coverage through their employers. That’s because more young people work part-time or hourly-wage jobs that do not offer health benefits. When offered coverage by their employers, about 80 percent of young adults sign up — about the same rate as older workers. Millions of young adults have also gained coverage under the health law’s provision that allows them to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they’re 26. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that, since this option became available in 2010, more than 3 million young adults have taken advantage of their parents’ insurance plans. When the Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed young adults about health insurance coverage in June, it found that about three in four said it is “very important” to them to have health insurance. 3. They don’t need health insurance. While young adults tend to have lower health-care costs, without coverage they can incur substantial bills. One Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that 17 percent of women ages 18 to 29, and 13 percent of men, have a chronic condition such as cancer or diabetes. Federal data show that young adults have higher rates of car accidents, which could lead to pricey medical bills. The high cost of maternity care can be another concern for young adults, with the average charges ranging upward of $32,000, according to a study published this year by Truven Health Analytics. Young adults without insurance report difficulties accessing care and paying their medical bills. A 2011 study from the Commonwealth Fund found that more than half of uninsured young adults reported having a medical problem but not seeking treatment. Among insured young adults, that number was 19 percent. That same survey found that 51 percent of uninsured young adults had difficulty paying medical bills, with 26 percent having been contacted by a collection agency. 4. Young people will face steep premiums in the insurance exchanges. The health-care law makes radical changes to the market for buying health coverage as an individual. For the first time, it requires insurers to accept all customers regardless of any preexisting health conditions. It also limits the amount that insurers can charge the oldest adults — premiums for elderly customers can’t exceed three times the amount charged to the youngest subscribers. To make the math work — and to cover the medical bills of older, sicker enrollees — insurers have often had to raise rates for young adults. They have also had to cancel some of the plans they offer younger subscribers, which tend to have lower premiums but less-robust benefit packages. That means that, in the exchanges, young shoppers might see much higher sticker prices and experience what the news media has called “rate shock.” However, many young adults won’t have to pay the full price. Instead, most will qualify either for Medicaid — the public health program that serves low-income Americans — or for tax subsidies to help buy coverage. The nonprofit Families USA, which supports the health-care law, estimates that about 9.3 million people between 18 and 34 will qualify for a subsidy to purchase health insurance. Between these subsidies and Medicaid, the government estimates that about four in 10 young Americans will pay a monthly premium of less than $100 for a plan under the federal law. Emily Wright, a 28-year-old student in Tennessee who had previously been without health insurance because of a preexisting condition, found a top-tier plan that cost $244 per month. Because she qualifies for a federal subsidy of $119, she is paying only $125 each month toward that premium. Since Tennessee isn’t expanding Medicaid, she worried that she might not receive financial help: “I was nervous about what I was going to be paying, but it was actually a great deal.” 5. Young people aren’t signing up for Obamacare yet. While they haven’t made up the majority of the health-care law’s participants so far, young adults do account for some enrollment. In states that have released demographic information, such as Washington and California, young adults were about 20 percent of the first month’s enrollment. In California, the state exchange had 6,924 people between ages 18 and 34 sign up for coverage, accounting for almost 24 percent of all enrollments in October. Officials at state insurance exchanges say they expected older and sicker consumers to sign up first. They think younger people will sign up later in the open-enrollment period, which runs through March. “Those are pretty solid enrollment numbers for a younger demographic,” said Michael Marchand, a spokesman for Washington state’s Healthplanfinder. “Ideally we’d like to see the number go up in coming months.” White House officials have said they need about 40 percent of the consumers who buy plans on the exchanges to be younger than 35. sarah.kliff@washpost.com Read more from Outlook: Five myths about the Affordable Care Act Why are we still fighting over Obamacare? Because America was designed for stalemate. Why Obamacare isn’t settled Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

The Brooklyn Nets have a real shot of pulling off one of the biggest upsets in recent NBA history. The No. 8 seed hasn't just tied their series with the Atlanta Hawks at 2-2 because of a couple fluke victories. They've tied it by playing the East's best regular-season team to a draw through four games. The aggregated score in the series: Nets 394, Hawks 393. It's tempting to focus on the Hawks' problems. They've been far too good at their peak to be in a dogfight against a sub-.500 regular season team with the point differential of a 33-win club. Even if they win this series -- and they still have the edge thanks to home-court advantage -- they have shown major weaknesses that teams can exploit down the road. Yet, it wouldn't be fair to analyze what Atlanta is doing wrong without highlighting what Brooklyn is doing right. The Nets have slowed the Hawks' vaunted offense to a crawl and are slowly figuring out ways to attack Atlanta's pressure defense. They could have defeated the Hawks in Game 2, even with an average Deron Williams game, then they did hold off the Hawks' best offensive performance in Game 4 thanks to a vintage one. Why is a series that was so lopsided on paper tied? It's a combination of multiple factors. 1. Cutting off Kyle Korver Nets coach Lionel Hollins scoffed at reporters after the all-star shooting guard hit 5-of-11 from three-point range to lead the Hawks to a Game 1 victory. His implication: Korver wasn't important enough to change the game plan. "How many shots did he take yesterday and how many did he miss? See, if he's that good, he'd make all of them." Hollins said. "Everybody misses, man. He's a good shooter, I acknowledge that, we acknowledge that as a team, we game plan for him because he is a great shooter. But until he starts shooting 100 percent, we've got to play and be in position to help, and then recover, and close out. "It's not like we're talking (Stephen) Curry. Korver, he's a great come-off-the-screen guy, he's great with moving without the ball, but he rarely puts the ball on the floor like Curry and shakes you up." But Hollins' actions speak much louder than his words, because the Nets have changed their game plan to make sure Korver doesn't get any clean looks. He's making just 28 percent of his threes since Game 1 and has barely had any room to fire without at least one hand in his face. Even those numbers don't measure all the times he's curled off a screen prepared to shoot, only for the Nets to be right there with him. The Nets decided that because they don't have one single player that can chase Korver around screens, nobody should have to try. Instead, they're are playing similar-sized players at the 2, 3 and 4 positions and switching all screens. It's hard to get Korver open when Bojan Bogdanovic is picked off, only for Joe Johnson or Alan Anderson to help him out. Stopping Korver has become a collective effort. Even when he escapes the switching wings, other Nets have stepped up to prevent his opportunities. Watch the lumbering Lopez jump out to prevent a Korver three. And notice here how Williams very subtly comes off Teague to help prevent Korver from getting a look in transition. The Nets have correctly identified Korver as the most important member of Atlanta's offense. During the regular season, the Hawks scored nearly 111 points with Korver in the game and less than 99 with him on the bench. Hollins was right with his crabby comments in one respect: While Korver can hit jumpers from anywhere, he's not a driving threat like Stephen Curry. Take away his threes -- a difficult, but doable task -- and he doesn't have too many other ways to score. Better yet, by switching effectively, communicating and addressing threats only as they present themselves rather than overreacting to decoys, the Nets can take away Korver's threes without giving up openings elsewhere. That's the holy grail teams haven't pulled off all year. As the Nets are showing, though, life is different in the playoffs. 2. Giving the point guards space By contrast, the Nets seem willing to let the Hawks' point guards do all the creating they want. Jeff Teague was an all-star and Dennis Schröder was one of the league's most promising backups, but given space to roam they've both been confused at not having to create every inch of the way. Teague broke out in Game 4, but has otherwise been quiet. Schoreder has been worse than quiet, alternating spectacular drives with out-of-control attacks that have killed his team. Brooklyn has varied their coverages on both players, but generally are willing to give them space to shoot jumpers. Neither is an expert marksman and both like to dribble into their shot, which ruins Atlanta's offensive flow. These are logged as open shots, but they're not the type of look Atlanta wants. The correct thing for both players to do is to attack the space given, but they're struggling to do that effectively. Teague went back to being a tentative player overwhelmed by his options against soft coverages earlier in his career before a Game 4 breakout. Schröder is attacking, but lacks the precision to actually make the most of those attacks. He in particular has missed open teammates multiple times in an attempt to be "aggressive." The Nets' blueprint will be copied if the Hawks manage to pull out the series. If Teague and Schröder can't improve against these coverage, they're in for a world of pain against Washington's ferocious pick and roll defense in the next round. If they make it that far. 3. Brooklyn's "short rolls" The Nets' offense struggled against Atlanta's relentless pressure in the first three games, but came alive in Game 4. Deron Williams' revitalization was a major reason, of course. The former superstar turned big-money albatross poured in 35 points after the Hawks, convinced his shooting slump would continue, stopped defending him. Williams converted wide-open looks early in the game and carried that confidence and hot shooting for the rest of the contest. But the Nets' offense broke out for many other reasons. Brooklyn generated plenty of good looks at the three-point line, taking advantage of a Hawks weakness that hadn't been exploited during the regular season. The Hawks surrendered the most three-point attempts in the league, but teams hit just 34 percent of those shots because they were under duress from the Hawks' aggressive traps. Brooklyn's answer: Accept that the traps are coming, quickly move the ball and profit before the Hawks can rotate. Brook Lopez is no longer rolling all the way down the lane. Instead, he's stopping at the free-throw line -- NBA people call this a "short roll" -- and taking the pass from the point guard or a wing sliding up to the ball. Once he gets it, he can either swing a pass to the open shooter in the corner ... ... or taking a floater himself. And if the Nets miss the initial shot, they often had Atlanta's defense scrambled enough to get an offensive rebound. This is how Brooklyn is using Lopez's size. Calls for formulaic post-ups missed the point, because Atlanta can help and recover on those. As long as the Nets can manipulate the floor before these pick and rolls happen, he can get the ball at the free throw line in the middle of the floor and be a difference-maker. 4. The Hawks' All-Star frontcourt isn't at 100 percent It should be noted that the Nets' strategy is working because Al Horford and Paul Millsap are not themselves health-wise. Under normal circumstances, these two play in concert with Korver and the point guards perfectly. Both roll smartly to the basket, either can score from the perimeter or inside and each has a strong understanding of spacing so they don't get in the way. But both are feeling the effects of injury in this series. Millsap's right shoulder is not fully healed and he is thus reluctant to mix it up inside. He's making his perimeter shots, but those slippery drives and dives to the rim aren't as quick, which slows Atlanta's motion. He's oddly been more comfortable driving and finishing with his left hand, which was not the case when he was healthy. Most importantly, he hasn't been effective punishing smaller players in the post, which allows Brooklyn to switch perimeter assignments to cover Korver without worrying about the consequences. Horford has not felt comfortable since suffering a pinky injury earlier in the series. When he's going well, he fires mid-range shots with confidence and nails them at a very high rate. The Hawks' offense may be three-point oriented, but it needs Horford as a bail-out option, particularly when teams send extra help to Teague and Korver. That bail-out option isn't there anymore and the other Hawks scorers are suffering. ★★★ This series illustrates how the Hawks are only the Hawks when all of the links are strongest. The Nets are shutting off Korver, which in turn forces Teague to do too much, which is especially difficult because Horford and Millsap are not themselves. The four All-Stars thrived because of their symbiotic relationship, but that also means they're only as good as the weakest link in the chain. Without DeMarre Carroll, the forgotten fifth starter that's having the series of his life, Atlanta would be losing this series. As it stands, the Hawks are in trouble, and the Nets should be credited for that.

Michael Hogan: Brian, your speech at the recent Sandford St Martin Trust awards for religious broadcasting said TV was blighted by "ever-increasing vulgarity and ever-lower intellectual levels". Strong words. Did you have a particular programme in mind? Brian Sewell: Nothing and everything. Now it all conforms to a formula. Even Islam: The Untold Story (C4), to which we gave one of the awards, immediately descended into a travelogue and became virtually indistinguishable from anything in which Michael Palin rambles around. Religious broadcasting, all broadcasting, ought to be better than that. We looked at David Suchet's In the Footsteps of St Paul and again, it just turned into a travelogue. Someone in the city of Tarsus said, "St Paul's father was a tentmaker here." Off at once goes Suchet to weave some canvas himself. Does someone sitting in a room in the 21st century weaving flax tell us anything about St Paul? It's childish and idiotic, but fits that Michael Palin formula which the BBC inflicts on everything. MH Not everything, surely? You talked in your speech about the "dread sameness" of the BBC, but the corporation has eight TV channels with a vast variety of programming – and a lot of it's brilliant. BS Yes, I'm not really talking about the entertaining things. Hateful though I find them, the BBC does those perfectly well. But anything they tackle that is intellectual, historical, biographical, cultural… It all turns into a travelogue of some kind. Whether it's Andrew Graham-Dixon on the Italian Renaissance or that rat-faced young man [Simon Reeve] wandering round Australia, it's the same, because this is what the BBC asks for. The channel controllers are of little education and no background. The editors are very technically clever but know nothing about the topic, so they fit everything to this comfortable format. We deserve better. It's patronising rubbish. MH But the Beeb's historical programming is admirable – all the way from CBBC's superb Horrible Histories to BBC2's recent Tudor season. BS All those Simon Schama and David Starkey programmes inevitably turn into walking about and arm-waving. Poor Mary Beard, trundling around the ruins of Rome on a bicycle. Why? These devices even creep into news bulletins: some wretched reporter suddenly emerges from behind a car or tree and walks towards the camera. For God's sake, you have news to communicate. Stand still and tell us what it is. I don't want to be entertained, I want to be informed. MH OK, but what about one of the BBC's major strengths: science and nature? Surely David Attenborough and Brian Cox escape your wrath? BS Attenborough does very well because he is just there, talking as the omnipotent voice. He's good at that. That's infinitely more convincing than Brian Cox with his sibilant delivery, trying to be the sex symbol of science. MH As an art critic, what did you make of Grayson Perry's Bafta-winning Channel 4 series, In The Best Possible Taste? BS I can't bear Grayson Perry. He's today's equivalent of Sister Wendy Beckett. You spend all your time looking at his get-up and he's a total distraction from the subject. It may be amusing for some people but you learn nothing about the work, just a lot about Grayson, his motorcycle and his teddy bear David Measles, or whatever it's called [it's Alan Measles]. MH If the terrestrial channels aren't to your liking, the likes of Sky Arts and BBC Four are home to more weighty programming. BS I'm not criticising the commercial channels. They all have obligations to shareholders and advertisers. The BBC doesn't. It has only one obligation and that's to the public who pay for it. When the BBC is covering something serious, it shouldn't be afraid to be serious. It was scandalous when the National Gallery had that miraculous Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition last year. What did the BBC do? Give an hour-long programme to Fiona bloody Bruce. She gushed like a sixth-form girl, questioned nothing and none of us learned a thing. MH I get the impression that Mr Palin and Ms Bruce aren't your favourites. BS I know many people who groan at the mere mention of Fiona Bruce. What Michael Palin does, he does perfectly well but it isn't serious television. It's tomfoolery. He goes to Outer Mongolia and sleeps in a yurt, but you don't learn anything about Outer Mongolia's politics, economics, future or past. You're merely having an adventure holiday by proxy. It's unambitious and complacent. The BBC plays it far too safe. It's got little Alistair Sooke on everything now. He has a certain gauche, boyish charm but – and this isn't professional jealousy – he doesn't know anything. The BBC clearly think it's good to have programmes presented by people with no knowledge or experience. A few years ago, [Alan] Titchmarsh hosted the Proms – an absolute insult to anyone who knows or cares about music. You wouldn't ask a conductor to go on Gardener's Question Time. MH So is the problem, to your mind, that BBCs 1 and 2 are trying too hard to be populist? BS Absolutely. It's terrified of being too intellectual. There's no debate, no critical discourse or differing viewpoints. The BBC has forgotten the tradition of the Third Programme, which was introduced on radio in 1946. It was fundamentally serious: we didn't talk down to you, we talked to each other as we normally would and you'd better hurry along behind. I taught history of art in Brixton jail for 10 years and one lesson I learnt very quickly is never talk down to people. If you treat them as equals, you've got them, they're with you. But talk down, they smell it a mile off and hate it. That's what the BBC does all the time. MH But the BBC remains a great source of pride to many of us. It's arguably the best broadcaster in the world. BS Bollocks. It could be 10 times better. The camera is a wonderful instrument for showing people things. It could work miracles in appreciation of the visual arts but it's never used properly. We get Waldemar Januszczak standing in front of a painting, looming at the camera like some kind of North Korean dictator, while you can see two square inches of Van Gogh behind him. He's another walking-about, waving-his-arms merchant and it's not a pretty sight. Same with Alan Yentob. He's not exactly an engaging screen presence, so why is he even there? MH It can't all be bad, Brian. There must be some TV shows you like. BS I'm a secret devotee of Casualty and Holby City. They're wonderfully soporific. Good for emptying the brain after a working day. MH I hear you're also a fan of The Apprentice. BS I'm not sure I like The Apprentice but I watch it, fascinated that these awful people even exist. That's rigidly formulaic too, but it's funny. MH You're a car aficionado too. Ever watch Top Gear? BS Yes but I see it as three clowns enjoying themselves and nothing whatsoever to do with motor cars. They never talk about the aesthetic beauty of cars, their history or future. They're just overgrown schoolboys. MH You should go on it and be the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. BS (Laughs uproariously) I don't think that's a good idea. I'd be terribly rude in the interview.

Halifax police say they are investigating an alleged case of assault in front of an Argyle Street bar this weekend after a Halifax musician spoke out about a violent incident he witnessed. John Wesley Chisholm says he was at the Carleton Music Bar Saturday around midnight. He often plays there as a musician, but was there as a customer. A young, drunk patron was involved in an exchange with another patron and a doorman ejected him. "The doorman rough-handles him out the door. He gets belligerent, swings at the bouncer, and the bouncer beats him down on the street," Chisholm said Monday. That sparked a "melee" with other patrons. Chisholm says the doorman "grabs him by the hair and beats his head over and over against the ground." Excessive force? Chisholm says a female friend of the patron's tried to stop the bouncer, but was shoved out of the way. The police arrived and cuffed the patron before taking him home. Chisholm said he felt the doorman used excessive force. He says he offered to make a statement to police, but that they declined to take it. Chisholm says he tried to re-enter the bar, but the doorman told him he was banned. The incident happened after midnight in the city centre. (Preston Mulligan/CBC) Chisholm, who works in television, wrote a Facebook post about the incident to generate a conversation. "I’m writing it because our streets are soaked with blood and people are dying. We have to speak out and we have to cause change," he says in the open letter. He says it was the ordinariness of the incident that upset him most. "I'm not around any kind of violence in my regular life and it's always really upsetting to see it," he told the CBC's Information Morning Monday. "It seems to have touched a nerve because so many people have shared my experience." His post has been shared almost 2,000 times and attracted almost 600 comments. Patron didn't want to lay charges The Carleton says it has spoken to staff and is trying to figure out what happened. The bar confirmed the doorman, who has worked at the Carleton for four years, is no longer on the schedule On Monday, Halifax police said they had assigned Supt. Sean Auld to look into the matter further. Auld is responsible for policing and public safety in the downtown core. The force said officers will be interviewing everyone involved in the confrontation, but Auld said the patron didn't want to press charges. "I spoke with him this morning and he was uninjured and doesn't wish any further charges and doesn't wish any further action on part of the police," said Auld. The police superintendent said he's concerned about the "culture of alcohol consumption" in Halifax and says he is hoping the community will work with the police to help address the problem. Chisholm says his concern isn't ultimately with this particular bar or experience, but with what he sees as a wider trend toward violence. His post produced some remedies, including licensing doormen, creating better communication with police and producing a "patrons' bill of rights." Nova Scotia last discussed regulating bouncers in 2010. He also said he plans to return to the Carleton for lunch Monday to talk about the issue.

And opponents of Star Citizen tried to say there was no market for a PC-only space simulator... We all knew that Chris Roberts' Freelancer spiritual successor, Star Citizen was a big deal, but did you know that it has now sailed past $55 million in crowdfunding? This milestone means that not only is it the most crowdfunded video game, but it is now officially in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most crowdfunded anything, ever. Roberts, in a blog post on Robert Space Industries responding to the new world record, tries to ascertain just where all this money is coming from, and why people keep dumping more and more into the still unreleased title. "The answer is that Star Citizen isn't a normal game," he said. "It's not being developed like a normal game and it's not being funded like a normal game. I've had to toss aside a lot of my knowledge from the old way of developing and embrace a completely new world. There is no publisher. There is no venture capitalist wanting a massive return in three years." "There is no need to cram the game onto a disc and hope we got it all right." He continued, "Star Citizen is not the type of game that will be played for a few weeks, then put on a shelf to gather dust. Instead of building a game in secrecy we can be fully open with you as a community who have made this game possible." Roberts also announced that the team building Star Citizen has now increased in number to 280, which is quite a sizable team to be working on the game. From the sounds of things, Roberts is definitely in it for the long haul, and Star Citizen will most likely be the game to look out for this generation. Backers can already alpha test the dogfighting module of the game, and the FPS module is expected to be revealed at this year's PAX Australia expo in November. Just don't hold your breath on the title coming to next-gen consoles, as it is apparently too big of a game for Sony and Microsoft's machines to handle. Source: Roberts Space Industries via Games.on.net

JACKSON HEIGHTS — A Queens gas station owned by a taxi tycoon is refusing to sell gas to anyone but yellow cabs — with preferential treatment for his own drivers — even as desperate motorists line up for blocks to get fuel amid a massive shortage caused by Hurricane Sandy. On the eve of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's mandatory gas-rationing plan, a Shell station on Northern Boulevard and 71st Street was giving away a seemingly endless supply of gas — mainly to members of taxi mogul Evgeny Freidman's taxi fleet. Freidman's gas station had three working pumps on Thursday and has been flush with gas in the wake of the hurricane, even as dozens of others around the five boroughs ran dry and closed, sparking massive lines. The station waved away at least five pleading motorists trying to fill up at the pump within an hour that evening while yellow cabs flew through the line and filled up, as officials from the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission stood by and watched. "We're just here to provide security," said a TLC official, who turned up at the station at 5 p.m. Thursday, along with several NYPD officers, after getting "hundreds" of 911 calls about fights at that station. Two pumps were reserved for Taxi Club Management, Freidman's massive fleet of cabs. All other cab drivers, who had been turned away from the station until the TLC intervened Wednesday, had to wait in two-block-long lines to use the third pump, even when the Taxi Club lines were empty. The scene came as the city rolled out a controversial odd-even gas rationing plan gas rationing plan, only allowing those whose license plate ends in an even number to get gas on even-numbered days, and those whose license plate ends in an odd number, a letter or another character to get gas on odd-numbered days. The order does not apply to taxis or livery vehicles, because they are a part of the "public transportation system," city officials said Thursday. Police who were briefly on hand at the Jackson Heights station Thursday directed traffic and tried to keep order, telling one angry driver waiting in a long line that there was nothing he could do because it was a private facility. "If you're serving the public, you should serve the public at all times," Maribel Egipciaco, 52, who waited in line for 15 minutes before an attendant came out and shooed her away. Egipciao added that she plans to boycott the station long after the gas situation returns to normal, and recommended others do the same. Freidman, who has 232 medallions, the most owned by anyone in the city, according to Crain's, defended his tactics. "It's my gas that I'm paying a ridiculous amount of money for," said Freidman, adding he's been shipping the gas in from places like Boston and New Hampshire, "I think we're providing an essential service for taxi cabs." Gas at the station was going for $4.50 a gallon for drivers not in Freidman's fleet, with a maximum purchase of $40. Freidman, 41, emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1976, according to Crain's New York Business, and became giant of the taxi industry who owns one of the city's largest fleets, Taxi Club Management, Inc. His cab companies include: 28th Street Management, which is based in Chelsea; the Queens-based garage Woodside Management; Downtown Taxi Management, which is based in Park Slope; and Tunnel Taxi Management, which is based in Long Island City. Drivers had other words for the lockout. Woodside resident Will Wade-Pentel, 25, was driving around on Wednesday looking to fill up his parents' car. He waited for 15 minutes, and the car was below a quarter-tank of gas when he was turned away. "The subways are back," Wade-Pentel said. "There doesn't seem like any reason to be doing this 'taxis only' rule." Cab driver Maurice Jiminez, 43, who said he drove as far as Westport CT in search of gas, was among one the drivers turned away by attendants at Freidman's Shell station. "They asked me 'what garage do you belong to?' and I knew what was happening," said Jiminez, who does not drive for Taxi Club. "They were basically just supplying their [fleet of] cars with gas." A TLC spokesman said the agency was aware of the station, and confirmed that they had dispatched a detail of 8 TLC officers and supervisors to the site Thursday night after police requested help with crowd control. TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg said he was not aware of any other stations where the TLC had to become involved in a similar manner. He added that agents were there purely for crowd control, not to stop private drivers from getting gas. “It would not be our role to turn people away,” he said. He said he wasn't sure whether that station is typically reserved for cabs — but said his understanding was that the owner uses it mostly to service his own fleet. He added that the TLC distributed free gas to livery cabs and yellow cabs at Floyd Bennett field from 9 p.m. Thursday night to 6 a.m. Friday. The TLC also has a facility in Woodside, a few blocks from Freidman's station, where cabbies can also fuel up for free, officials said. Fromberg noted that a single cab can transport as many as 70 passengers in a given day. The spokesman said that he was unaware of any other station refusing service to locals while selling gas to cab drivers. A TLC official asked the attendants Thursday if they could let the other cabs use the open pumps, to no avail. "I was just saying to this guy, 'Why can't you open the rest of these to serve these cabs faster?'" the official said.

Manchester United goalkeeper Sam Johnstone is poised to rejoin Aston Villa on Monday. The 24-year-old has been a target for a number of Championship and Premier League sides but will sign for Villa on a season-long loan. Johnstone, who spent the second half of last season on loan at Villa Park, still has another year left on his contract at United after this one. Manchester United goalkeeper Sam Johnstone is poised to rejoin Aston Villa on Monday He has been back in training at United's Carrington complex and will not be part of the tour party that travels to the USA on Sunday. Villa have signed John Terry and hope to add Glenn Whelan from Stoke City, while experienced defender Chris Samba has also been training with the squad in Portugal. Manager Steve Bruce said: 'We hope to be able to announce something in the next 24/48 hours if we can. That would be ideal. 'It’s no big secret that I am still hoping we can tie up Sam Johnstone from Manchester United. I think that’s still ongoing but ultimately we have to respect United. 'I know they go on tour on Sunday. We will see what develops in the next 24/48 hours.'

CARSON, Calif. (Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014) – LA Galaxy and Major League Soccer announced today that defender A.J. DeLaGarza was named the 2014 MLS WORKS Humanitarian of the Year. DeLaGarza, who was also named the 2014 LA Galaxy Humanitarian of the Year, becomes the first player in Galaxy history to earn the award. As part of the award, DeLaGarza has been awarded $5,000 by MLS and will donate $2,500 each to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and spcaLA. DeLaGarza, 27, is notorious for being the first to volunteer for LA Galaxy Foundation events and has given his time to support numerous initiatives in the Los Angeles community. This season, DeLaGarza has spent countless hours in the local community, visiting patients at CHLA, unveiling a new public soccer field for youth in South Los Angeles and supporting the Galaxy’s Heroes Night initiative by purchasing tickets for our troops and participating in a California Highway Patrol (CHP) ride along. The Maryland product also participated in the LA Galaxy Foundation’s Annual Golf Tournament and volunteered for the LA Galaxy 5K & Cozmo Family Run. Earlier this month, he helped fundraise for the LA Galaxy Foundation’s involvement in LAFEST, a charity-based soccer tournament held at StubHub Center. Additionally, DeLaGarza visits local schools and spends time participating in youth soccer clinics including the annual LA Galaxy Camps for Kids. The 2014 Galaxy Defender of the Year is also an avid animal lover and has volunteered multiple times at spcaLA. This year when A.J.’s unborn son Luca was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect he immediately thought of the other families affected by a similar illness. A.J. and his wife Megan created a fundraising page for the Heart Institute at CHLA. Due to the generosity of soccer supporters across the country, DeLaGarza helped raised $25,000 to fund heart care and research. He continues to support the hospital and other families affected by heart disease. Fundraising efforts have not stopped, and donations in Luca’s memory are welcomed at support.chla.org/pages/lucaknowsheart. DeLaGarza already has plans to support LA Galaxy Foundation partner, A Place Called Home, with service through the holidays by donating his time and holiday gifts for youth in need. For more information on the LA Galaxy Toy Drive, please visit www.lagalaxy.com/community.

Press Release Blue Light Observations Indicate Water-Rich Atmosphere of a Super-Earth September 3, 2013 A Japanese research team of astronomers and planetary scientists has used Subaru Telescope's two optical cameras, Suprime-Cam and the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), with a blue transmission filter to observe planetary transits of super-Earth GJ 1214 b (Gilese 1214 b) (Figure 1). The team investigated whether this planet has an atmosphere rich in water or hydrogen. The Subaru observations show that the sky of this planet does not show a strong Rayleigh scattering feature, which a cloudless hydrogen-dominated atmosphere would predict. When combined with the findings of previous observations in other colors, this new observational result implies that GJ 1214 b is likely to have a water-rich atmosphere. Figure 1: Artist's rendition of a transit of GJ 1214 b in blue light. The blue sphere represents the host star GJ 1214, and the black ball in front of it on the right is GJ 1214 b. (Credit: NAOJ) Super-Earths are emerging as a new type of exoplanet (i.e., a planet orbiting a star outside of our Solar System) with a mass and radius larger than the Earth's but less than those of ice giants in our Solar System, such as Uranus or Neptune. Whether super-Earths are more like a "large Earth" or a "small Uranus" is unknown, since scientists have yet to determine their detailed properties. The current Japanese research team of astronomers and planetary scientists focused their efforts on investigating the atmospheric features of one super-Earth, GJ 1214 b, which is located 40 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, northwest of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This planet is one of the well-known super-Earths discovered by Charbonneau et. al. (2009) in the MEarth Project, which focuses on finding habitable planets around nearby small stars. The current team's research examined features of light scattering of GJ 1214 b's transit around its star. Current theory posits that a planet develops in a disk of dense gas surrounding a newly formed star (i.e., a protoplanetary disk). The element hydrogen is a major component of a protoplanetary disk, and water ice is abundant in an outer region beyond a so-called "snow line." Findings about where super-Earths have formed and how they have migrated to their current orbits point to the prediction that hydrogen or water vapor is a major atmospheric component of a super-Earth. If scientists can determine the major atmospheric component of a super-Earth, they can then infer the planet's birthplace and formation history. Planetary transits enable scientists to investigate changes in the wavelength in the brightness of the star (i.e., transit depth), which indicate the planet's atmospheric composition. Strong Rayleigh scattering in the optical wavelength is powerful evidence for a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere. Rayleigh scattering occurs when light particles scatter in a medium without a change in wavelength. Such scattering strongly depends on wavelength and enhances short wavelengths; it causes greater transit depth in the blue rather than in the red wavelength. The current team used the two optical cameras Suprime-Cam and FOCAS on the Subaru Telescope fitted with a blue transmission filter to search for the Rayleigh scattering feature of GJ 1214 b's atmosphere. This planetary system's very faint host star in blue light poses a challenge for researchers seeking to determine whether or not the planet's atmosphere has strong Rayleigh scattering. The large, powerful light-collecting 8.2 m mirror of the Subaru Telescope allowed the team to achieve the highest-ever sensitivity in the bluest region. The team's observations showed that GJ 1214 b's atmosphere does not display strong Rayleigh scattering. This finding implies that the planet has a water-rich or a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere with extensive clouds. (Figure 2). Figure 2: Artist’s rendition of the relationship between the composition of the atmosphere and transmitted colors of light. Top: If the sky has a clear, upward-extended, hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, Rayleigh scattering disperses a large portion of the blue light from the atmosphere of the host while it scatters less of the red light. As a result, a transit in blue light becomes deeper than the one in red light. Middle: If the sky has a less extended, water-rich atmosphere, the effect of the Rayleigh scattering is much weaker than in a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere. In this case, transits in all colors have almost the same transit depths. Bottom: If the sky has extensive clouds, most of the light cannot be transmitted through the atmosphere, even though hydrogen dominates it. As a result, transits in all colors have almost the same transit depths. (Credit: NAOJ) Although the team did not completely discount the possibility of a hydrogen-dominated atmosphere, the new observational result combined with findings from previous research in other colors suggests that GJ 1214 b is likely to have a water-rich atmosphere (Figure 3). The team plans to conduct follow-up observations in the near future to reinforce their conclusion. Figure 3: Observed transit depths and theoretical models for GJ 1214 b. The blue and sky-blue points are the data taken with Subaru Telescope's Suprime-Cam and FOCAS, respectively (Narita et al. 2013). The red points are taken with the IRSF 1.4 m telescope located in South Africa (Narita et al. 2013). The three solid lines (yellow, green, and purple) represent hydrogen-rich, water-rich, and extensive cloud atmosphere models based on Howe & Burrows (2012). The Subaru Telescope data indicate no strong Rayleigh scattering in the blue wavelength. (Credit: NAOJ) Although there are only a small number of super-Earths that scientists can observe in the sky now, this situation will dramatically change when the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) begins its whole sky survey of small transiting exoplanets in our solar neighborhood. When new targets become available, scientists can study the atmospheres of many super-Earths with the Subaru Telescope and next generation, large telescopes such as the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Such observations will allow scientists to learn even more about the nature of various super-Earths. References: Howe, A.R. & Burrows, A.S. 2012 "Theoretical Transit Spectra for GJ 1214b and other "Super-Earths", Astrophysical Journal, Volume 756, article id. 176. Narita, N., Fukui, A., Ikoma, M., Hori, Y., et al. 2013 "Multi-color Transit Photometry of GJ 1214b through BJHKs Bands and a Long-term Monitoring of the Stellar Variability of GJ 1214," Astrophysical Journal, Volume 773, Issue 2, article id. 144. Acknowledgements: This research was supported in part by the following:

First, Apple revealed a critical bug in its implementation of encryption in iOS, requiring an emergency patch. Then researchers found the same bug is also included in Apple's desktop OSX operating system, a gaping Web security hole that leaves users of Safari at risk of having their traffic hijacked. Now one researcher has found evidence that the bug extends beyond Apple's browser to other applications including Mail, Twitter, Facetime, iMessage and even Apple's software update mechanism. On Sunday, privacy researcher Ashkan Soltani posted a list of OSX applications on Twitter that he says he's determined use Apple's "secure transport" framework, the coding library that developers depend on to build programs that securely communicate online using the common encryption protocols TLS and SSL. The full list, which isn't comprehensive given that Soltani only analyzed the programs on his own PC, is shown below. (Soltani has underlined the vulnerable application names in red.) Soltani, an independent researcher whose recent work has included analyzing the surveillance documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden on behalf of the Washington Post, warns that the security of several applications on that list are severely compromised, including Apple's email program Mail, scheduling app Calendar and its official Twitter desktop client. The bug affects how Apple devices authenticate their secure connection with servers, allowing an eavesdropper to fake that verification and hijack or corrupt traffic using what's known as a "man-in-the-middle" attack. "All these apps would be vulnerable to the same man-in-the-middle vulnerability outlined on Friday," Soltani says. Some of the affected apps such as iMessage and Facetime have added security that could reduce the effects of the security vulnerability, though Soltani warns that for the iMessage instant messaging application the initial login at Apple's me.com website may be compromised, even if the messages themselves remain encrypted, and that similar problems may exist for Facetime. "There are going to be parts of the protocol like the initial 'handshake' that rely on TLS, and those will be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks," Soltani says. Equally troubling is the notion that Apple's Software Update application is affected, which means that Apple's mechanism for pushing new code to OSX machines, including security updates, could be compromised. Soltani notes that in addition to SSL and TLS, Software Update also checks for Apple's signature on any code that it asks users to install. But he adds that the code-signing protection hasn't stopped malware from spoofing those updates in the past to install spying tools on victims' machines. I've reached out to Apple for comment on Soltani's findings, and I'll update this post if I hear from the company. Apple's newly discovered security flaw, dubbed "gotofail" by the security community due to a single improperly used "goto" command in Apple's code that triggered it, initially came to light Friday when Apple issued a security update for iOS. Researchers at the security firm Crowdstrike and Google quickly reverse engineered that patch to show how it affected OSX as well, and initially recommended that users stay away from untrusted networks and avoid Safari, which is more dependent on Apple's implementation of SSL and TLS than other browsers such as Chrome or Firefox. Soltani's work, however, shows that the problem extends further, leaving many users with few options for secure communications until Apple issues a fix for its desktop software. The company promised in a statement to Reuters Saturday to make that fix available "very soon." Given the widening gaps in Apple's security the flaw exposes, it can't come soon enough. – Follow me on Twitter , email me, anonymously send me sensitive documents or tips , and check out the new paperback edition of my book, This Machine Kills Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to Empower Whistleblowers. Also on Forbes:

Development Manitoba Museum Announces $160-Million Expansion Plan The Canadian Human Rights Museum has been getting all the glory, the budget and the capital investment from private donors and government but the Manitoba Museum has announced a $160 million plan as Manitoba’s 150 birthday looms. The first stage of the building is an expansion of Alloway Hall to just under 10,000 feet to bring in larger touring museum programs like the recently completed Real Pirates! The closure of the 20,000 square foot MTS Exhibition Hall showed Winnipeg just how many shows out there we could get with the right sized space. The space needed for a museum tour might be smaller though. Still can’t help thinking it would have been better to go with an extra 10,000 square feet. Five years ago, I practically begged for a new science museum for our 150 birthday. I looked longingly at the parking lot north of the museum and suggested a connecting tunnel. Now, it appears the major aspect of the museum expansion will be a $100 million science gallery on that very parking lot. The $100 million pricetag is about right. The Science Museum of Minnesota was built in 1999 for $99 million. It is a gorgeous building but it was built with flaws and now requires $26 million of water damage repairs. Manitoba can’t afford to have those type of mistakes. The exhibits the Minnesota Museum has are outstanding and one can imagine how successful such a gallery would in Winnipeg. The $5.3 million Alloway Hall expansion will just be the first part of what we actually see of the museum work. So much else is in the planning stage and the sources of funding still not announced. The province announced $10 million for the the $16 million initial phase. The timetable and other funds beyond 2020 are yet to be determined. Hopefully, it won’t have to wait till Manitoba’s 200th birthday. The Manitoba Museum’s yearly budget is just a fraction of what the Human Rights Museum. Ballpark is $4 million versus $20 million. Still, the provincial museum punches above its weight class. It is time for a big capital project to ensure the museum continues to do what it does best which is entertain, inform, preserve and educate. This has been a guest editorial by John Dobbin. To read more from John, visit his blog Observations, Reservations, Conversations

Can a dog help to replace a person's failing memory? I recently wrote an article describing some new programs designed to train dogs to assist people with disease and dementia ( click here to see it ). Only a day or two after that article appeared I received a phone call from an academic colleague who protested that dogs simply could not successfully serve in that capacity because they lack a particular form of memory that is needed. My colleague pointed out that Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and scientist from Tufts University has stated unambiguously that he was convinced that dogs have no episodic memory, and this is a viewpoint which is shared by a number of other philosophers and some behavioral scientists. To understand what he meant you must first know that there are many types of memory. Psychologists often start by dividing memory into to large groupings that they call “explicit” or “implicit” memory. The easiest way to distinguish these is to note that explicit are the ones that you can describe or call into your mind at will, while implicit memories are automatic and not really conscious. Learned skills are good examples of implicit memories. Thus although you might remember how to ride a bicycle (since you can easily do it) trying to describe to someone else what you have to do to stay upright on a bicycle is virtually impossible. You know what to do, but you can’t make these actions conscious in such a way as to communicate them to others. Explicit memories are memories are the ones which are easily brought into consciousness and which we can describe verbally. When we consider explicit memory it comes in two varieties, namely “episodic” and “semantic” memory. Episodic memory is memory for what you have personally experienced. When you answer a question about what you had for dinner last night, which clothes you wore yesterday, or you describe your first romantic kiss, you are recalling episodic memories. This is different from semantic memory which involves memory for facts. To answer a question such as “Who was George Washington?” or “What is the climate like on the moon?” will involve semantic memory. It is not episodic memory since you never met George Washington, nor have you visited the moon. Some people say that episodic memory is a sort of mental time travel in which you revisit events that you experienced by bringing them into consciousness. Episodic memory is not based upon practice or repetition, since most life events occur only once, and nonetheless are remembered. An important characteristic of episodic memories is that each contains specific data about “what,” “when,” and “where.” I knew about Dennett’s beliefs since, in fact, we had once had a brief discussion about dogs' memory capacity and the nature of canine consciousness when he had visited my university to give a series of lectures. His beliefs about this matter puzzled me, even in light of only casual observation of dog behaviors. For example, many dog owners have a variety of "Find the object" phrases that they use and to which the dog responds appropriately. For example my dogs respond to, "Where's your ball?" by dashing around to find the ball and then bringing it to me. If it is inaccessible, they will usually stand near where they believe it to be and bark. My dogs also respond to "Where's Joannie?" which is a convenient phrase which helps me to locate my wife. On hearing it the dog goes to the room where they last saw my wife. If she is upstairs on in the basement, the dog will move the appropriate set of stairs and wait there. If she is out of the house the dog will usually go to the door that she used when she left. If the dog doesn't know where she is, or if she has moved since he last saw her, he will usually start to search for Joan. Each of these is an instance of episodic memory since the dog must remember where he last saw the item. This memory clearly has the required “when,” “what,” and “where” components, since we are asking for a location of a particular object when it was most recently seen based upon the dog's personal experience. I pointed out the “Where’s Joannie?” situation to Dennett who did not appear to be much impressed. He would only grant that this was “episodic memory-like behavior.” He went on to note that he would have to think about this further and would get in touch with me when he found the flaw in my reasoning. He never did contact me again about the matter. My colleague's protests that we simply could not have something like a "memory assistance dog" reminded me of what might have been the first dogs actually used in such a capacity. Around 2003 I interviewed John Dignard who lives in Wetaskiwin, a town in Alberta, Canada. Dignard was hit by a car at the age of five, and the accident caused brain damage. In the end he was left with difficulties and a very unreliable short-term memory. Before anything makes it into his long-term memory, it must be repeated and relearned many times. Early memories are still there, so that he can remember his phone number from when he was four, but new ones that are a problem. For instance it took him a year after his to remember his wife's name. He told me "When you ask someone's name 600 times because you can't remember, it's very frustrating." At a very pragmatic level, in the absence of short-term memory, simple tasks became nightmares. If Dignard went to a shopping mall, by the time he came out he usually had completely forgotten where his car was parked. It is in such situations where the episodic memory ability of a dog becomes important. Dignard can now go shopping with because of a German Shepherd Dog named Goliath, who is his memory aide. Goliath is the third such memory assistance dog that he has had. Obviously Goliath can't help with names, phone numbers, or shopping lists, but the dog does serve the same purpose as the ball of string that Theseus let out as wended his way through the labyrinth in order to find his way back out after he slew the Minotaur. Goliath’s task is to lead his master back to the places that he can't remember, such as the way out of a building has only been in this one time. In other words, the dog must use his episodic memory to remember where an exit is, or where his owner's car was parked. Dignard says “I'd be lost all the time without him. Now I just tell him ‘go to the exit door,’ or I tell him ‘back to the car,’ and he takes me there.” It is thus Goliath’s episodic memory that substitutes for the episodic memories that his master has such difficulty retrieving. It would be interesting to hear what Dr. Dennett might have to say about this. Stanley Coren is the author of many books including: The Wisdom of Dogs; Do Dogs Dream? Born to Bark; The Modern Dog; Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? The Pawprints of History; How Dogs Think; How To Speak Dog; Why We Love the Dogs We Do; What Do Dogs Know? The Intelligence of Dogs; Why Does My Dog Act That Way? Understanding Dogs for Dummies; Sleep Thieves; The Left-hander Syndrome Copyright SC Psychological Enterprises Ltd. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission

It’s back to work day for Castle star Stana Katic, who today begins filming Season 8 of the popular ABC series. It was a busy three-month hiatus for Katic, during which she shot two indie movies, The Rendezvous and Sister Cities, and got married. In addition to playing the female lead opposite Nathan Fillion, Katic has added a new role on Castle as part of her new contract: a producer. In her first interview since signing on for Season 8, Katic talks about the decision to return, provides a glimpse at next season that promises to shake things up under new showrunners Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter, addresses her future on the show and what she would like to do next. It was a nail-biting few weeks for Castle fans last spring when the contracts of both Fillion and Katic expired. By mid-April, Fillion, who plays Rick Castle, had agreed to a new deal, but Katic’s new pact did not close until hours before ABC was to announce its 2015-2016 schedule in May. Behind the scenes, things weren’t as dramatic, Katic says. “For me it wasn’t necessarily down to the wire,” she says. “I didn’t really start speaking about that until after we had wrapped the (7th) season. A lot of the discussions were happening while I was filming The Rendezvous, so I let my reps handle. It went rather quickly in the end.” For Katic, signing on for Season 8 was way more than a business decision. “Part of my thought process making the decision whether to do another season was creatively, what would that would look like,” she said. Factoring into the consideration was the fact that Castle creator Andrew Marlowe was leaving the series after Season 7. “He was part of making this character (Kate Beckett) what she’s become, and he has been part of this dialogue about how to create a strong female heroine,” Katic said. When Hawley and Winter — both experienced Castle writer-producers — were named as new showrunners, “I started to feel the character would be safe in the next chapter of Castle. I felt confident that they knew the story, the character — Terence has been on the show since Day 1, and some of the most interesting episodes for my character were penned by Alexi — and while they are eager to shake things up and aim at telling challenging stories, they would also protect the integrity of the character.” After taking a day to move offices from his previous job as co-showrunner of The Following, Hawley, along with Winter and the Castle writing staff, went on a writers retreat where they hashed out a bible for Season 8. How will Hawley and Winter shake things up? “There are a lot of shifts” planne d, Katic said, noting that is excited about Hawley and Winter’s ideas while being coy about next season’s storyline and the resolution of Season 7 finale cliffhanger, which saw Beckett left pondering an offer to run for the New York State Senate. Still, she revealed some information about the opening two episodes and beyond. Katic called Episodes 1 and 2 of Season 8 “brother and sister.” Each reflects Castle and Beckett’s perspective on “an event that shifts the entire season into a higher velocity” and “is part of what will set everything up for the next 20 episodes.” Here are more clues about Season 8. “Part of the exciting thing about this season is the way Alexi and Terence have envisioned the cosmic version of why the two characters (Castle and Beckett) have come together, how did these roads combine. It delves into the mythology of Rick’s disappearance and memory loss as well as into what inspired Beckett to become a cop in the first place.” Will Season 8 be Katic’s last on Castle? It is too early to discuss that, according to Katic. “I don’t know what is going to happen with Castle and its future as we are at the beginning of what this season is going to be.” But she was quick to point out that “as an actor, if we can tell many stories and have a creatively fulfilling experience, we love to jump and explore a character.” Katic, who has won two People’s Choice Awards for Castle, also is looking to expand beyond acting to directing as well as “finding great projects and helping to put them together.” She calls that a natural progression for actors, especially women, noting that many actresses who have won an Oscar have done so with movies that they had helped develop and produce. “It’s about finding great pieces and stories that I can be part of” that may or may not be starring vehicles, Katic said. Katic is starting work on Castle a week into production so she could wrap production on her second hiatus movie, Sister Cities with Alfred Molina and Jackie Weaver, which she just did over the weekend, and thanked ABC for graciously letting her carve time out for the film, which tells the story of four estranged sisters who reunite to mourn after their mother’s alleged suicide. While Sister Cities wa s shot in LA, action adventure The Rendezvous, in which Katic plays the female lead opposite Homeland‘s Raza Jaffrey, was a completely different experience. It was filmed in Jordan and marked Katic’s first trip to the Middle East. “It was unique and amazing,” Katic said about the shoot that had to deal with traveling through the desert in 50° C heat (112° F), holding the camera for camel crossing or redoing a take interrupted by a call to prayer. Because Jordan’s economy is not as strong as America’s, the local film industry has to make do with less. “People try to make films happen with a bit more ingenuity, and there is something very charming about people’s generosity and desire to make it happen,” Katic said. In addition to the two movies and the wedding, Katic took time this summer to work on her ATP foundation, which promotes alternative travel. She spent time meeting with people from Google, Metro as well as the White House discussing the issue that she is very passionate about. “I think this project is part of next chapter of what our planet will look like as within the next 10-20 years 70% of the planet’s population will live in cities,” she said. Katic is trying to set an example — making the commitment to travel by public transport or bike at least once a week.

Tasmania's Opposition casts doubt over $16m Cadbury grant Updated Tasmanian Opposition Leader Bryan Green has used Question Time to ask the Premier to confirm whether a controversial federal grant to Cadbury would be paid. The grant of $16 million was promised by the Federal Government to the Hobart-based chocolate maker during the 2013 election campaign to help the company upgrade its Claremont factory and restart tours. But Mr Green pressed Premier Will Hodgman to lobby the Federal Government to hand the State Government the money to instead help create jobs on Tasmania's struggling west coast. "Can you confirm that the $16 million that was committed to the tourism development at Cadbury's has been withdrawn, and if so will you finally stand up for Tasmania and demand the money is invested on the state's struggling west coast?" he asked during Question Time. That is a matter between Cadbury and the Federal Government, and I am not going to pre-empt any announcement they may make. Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman Mr Hodgman did not deny Mr Green's claim about the $16 million grant, saying he understood Cadbury would make an announcement today. "That is a matter between Cadbury and the Federal Government, and I am not going to pre-empt any announcement they may make," Mr Hodgman told Parliament. In mid-Feburary, Hobart-based independent MP Andrew Wilkie raised the controversial grant in federal Parliament. Prime Minister Tony Abbott defended a delay in handing over the money and indicated it would only be handed over if the business case stacks up. At the time, Mr Abbott said: "We've only had the business case for a matter of weeks, we are carefully studying the business case, if the case stacks up the project will go ahead". Topics: government-and-politics, hobart-7000, tas First posted

Solar For After Dark: How CSP Works October 31st, 2016 by Susan Kraemer Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is the form of solar that can store the sun’s energy thermally for on-demand electricity generation at any time. CSP is clean energy, like solar PV or wind, but the back end or the power block works like any thermal energy power station (coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants are thermal energy power stations). The difference is that instead of digging up a finite fuel from the earth, CSP harvests sunlight to make thermal energy. Because of its ability to store solar energy thermally, CSP can be fully dispatchable. In other words, it can be switched on when needed — in the evening, before sunrise, or at whatever time the utility needs power. It can respond to new demand within the same day. The speed of start-up is limited only by the time it takes to start the turbines, about half an hour. How CSP Works In general, all CSP plants operate by aiming mirrors (heliostats) to reflect the sun’s light onto a receiver which then heats a fluid that ultimately generates thermal electricity like any other thermal power plant. That is where the similarities among the various types of CSP plants end. There are four types of CSP, with the oldest (Trough) being the most widespread, the newest (Tower) being the most likely to succeed, and two lagging technologies (Stirling Dish and Fresnel) that have yet to break more than a few megawatts of installed capacity. Why the Need for Storage Means Tower CSP is the Future Tower CSP is most likely to be the CSP of the future because it is the most economical technology to incorporate storage. And increasingly, storage is becoming a requirement of CSP. For utility-scale applications, the thermal storage possible with tower CSP is typically cheaper, more durable, and longer lasting than battery storage, rivaling the almost limitless recycling capability of pumped hydro. At grid scale, CSP thermal storage is cheaper than batteries, depending on how long the storage is — a half hour is better served by fast-acting batteries. Two tower CSP projects in Chile actually have both battery and thermal storage in order to combine the speedy reaction time of batteries with cheap long-term thermal storage. (Behind the meter, of course, the uncertainty of net metering makes battery storage sensible financially for solar homeowners — and in such applications, a battery is the only option.) How Tower CSP Works (with Storage) In tower CSP with storage, molten salt is heated by reflecting sunlight with mirrors onto a receiver atop a tower. The heated fluid then descends the tower and can either be used right away or be stored thermally in a “hot” tank for use later. When the thermal energy in the molten salt is to be used, it is sent to a heat exchanger where the heat is extracted. Once the heat has been extracted, the now cooled molten salt is stored in a “cold” tank ready to be sent up the tower to be heated again by the sunlight reflected onto the receiver. Whether sent immediately or stored first, the extracted heat is then used to make steam to run a steam turbine in a power block that is the same as any other thermal power plant (like a combined cycle natural gas, coal, or nuclear plant). Basically, electricity is generated from steam that turns a turbine. If the heated molten salt is left in the hot storage tank, it is stored as thermal energy that can be tapped later to generate electricity, and it loses only about 1% of heat a day. Normally, of course, it will be used the same evening or next day, but it is possible to size the storage capacity so that it could supply a longer period if desired. Unlike batteries that can only be cycled so many times, molten salt thermal energy storage be heated and cooled daily for at least 30 years. At that point, the tanks might need corrosion repair, so the molten salt would be emptied and then returned to the tanks to supply another 30 or more years. How Tower CSP Works (without Storage) One of the earliest tower CSP plants was direct steam. BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah (2014) used the reflected sunlight to simply boil water in the tower and operate directly off the steam produced. In 2008 when they negotiated their PPAs, California utilities were not interested in the inclusion of storage. Direct steam tower CSP like Ivanpah does not lend itself to storage (because steam just doesn’t hold its heat as long as molten salt). It is not economically feasible to add storage after a project has been permitted and constructed as a non-storage project. The only CSP plant to try storage with steam, Abengoa’s Shams I, did include 2 hours of steam storage on a trough plant, but most industry insiders do not consider it a success. It is telling that, when faced with having to sell off assets in its bankruptcy restructuring, the only CSP Abengoa sold, despite being a global leader in CSP, was Shams 1. (The other assets that Abengoa put on the chopping block were not its dozen or so trailblazing CSP plants, but ethanol and other projects.) How Trough CSP Works In trough CSP, the receiver is not atop a tower, but is simply a small pipe running continuously in front of the rows of the parabolic mirrors throughout the solar field. A heat transfer fluid (HTF) runs through the piping and is heated by the sunlight that is focused by the reflection on this continuous point in front of the rows of parabolic trough-shaped mirrors. This HTF traverses the solar field and when it gets to the power block goes through a heat exchange system where the hot oil is ultimately converted to steam to make electricity thermally. (Luz’s SEGS I-IX, 1980–1990) Trough CSP is not ideally paired with storage because trough operates at a lower temperature and adding storage makes it more expensive than the gravity-fed storage tanks of a molten salt tower CSP project. But when trough CSP includes storage there is an extra step. The HTF is a hot oil, and then the heat is transferred to molten salt for storage there, and when the heat is needed to generate electricity, steam is run through the turbine to generate electricity (Abengoa’s Solana, 2013). One possible idea for reducing the extra step of converting from hot oil to molten salt is this idea from Chiyoda, to try molten salt as the HTF throughout the solar field. Despite papers from as far back as 2003, this has not been used commercially, however. Why the Changing Grid Needs Dispatchable Clean Energy Solar PV and wind are intermittent renewables. As more PV and wind have come online, the grid has changed. The old model — a baseload resource that is always on, like a coal plant — has now even become a liability. Baseload energy has gone from being a feature to a bug. In a grid with various renewables, an unresponsive base load, always on, regardless of grid saturation with solar or wind, is out of sync. So, as the world adds more PV and wind, the need is shifting towards a dispatchable “switch-on” supply to fill in the gaps, rather than a baseload resource that is always on, regardless of whether it’s needed or not. CSP solar generation can be switched on quickly on demand, because of its thermal storage. Why CSP is Controversial: It Displaces Gas- & Coal-Fired Electricity CSP is the renewable that most directly threatens natural gas–fired electricity, because of its ability (with storage) to deliver power on demand. With its ability to store its solar energy, CSP can extend clean solar into the evening, overnight (if the grid needs that!), before sunrise the next day, at times when plants are down for maintenance, and when there are some cloudy mornings or days. CSP is perfectly suited to smoothing out the increasingly fat “duck curve” of new demand as the load is time shifted by the solar power generated by ever-increasing daytime PV. In most places, as more solar PV comes on line in the daytime, evening is when there is the need for new generation — to smooth out the ramped-up demand that builds up as the sun goes down (i.e., the duck curve). Smoothing the duck curve is a job now performed by very dirty natural gas plants in states like California, and by coal plants in states like Arizona. All this fossil-fueled dirty energy gets switched on when the sun goes down to cover the evening peak till bedtime. So CSP is an important renewable because it can actively edge dirty energy off the grid.

window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-5', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 5', target_type: 'mix' }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-8', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 8', target_type: 'mix' }); Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Image 2 of 9 The second of three handguns recovered Sunday after police arrested four suspects in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. The second of three handguns recovered Sunday after police arrested four suspects in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. Image 3 of 9 The third handgun recovered Sunday after police arrested four suspects in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. The third handgun recovered Sunday after police arrested four suspects in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. Image 4 of 9 Lendale Warren, 21, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on forgery warrants and suspicion of felony burglary. Lendale Warren, 21, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on forgery warrants and suspicion of felony burglary. Image 5 of 9 Image 6 of 9 Marvin Session, 23, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Marvin Session, 23, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Image 7 of 9 Orlando Ware, 23, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Orlando Ware, 23, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Image 8 of 9 Paul Antoine, 28, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Paul Antoine, 28, was arrested Sunday in San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations charges. Image 9 of 9 Cops bust 4 armed suspects in SoMa neighborhood 1 / 9 Back to Gallery Officers chased down and arrested four suspects armed with handguns in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, police said. Around 7:30 p.m. Sunday, someone called police about several armed men near Ninth Street and Market Street. Responding officers drew their weapons as they approached four men matching the suspects’ descriptions, police said. The suspects then took off running in different directions around Hallidie Plaza, but they were eventually caught and taken into custody, police said. Police arrested Orlando Ware, 23, Paul Antoine, 28, and Marvin Session, 23, on suspicion of resisting arrest and weapons violations. Officers also arrested Lendale Warren, 21, on forgery warrants and suspicion of felony burglary. All four suspects are from San Francisco. Police recovered three handguns in the case.

Topics: air pollutants, air pollution, health disparities, health inequities, urban health, urban populations Despite overall reductions in ambient air pollution in Massachusetts, exposure continues to fall unequally along racial/ethnic, income, and education lines, according to a new study led by a School of Public Health researcher. The study, published in Environmental Research, found concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) decreased across the state between 2003 and 2010, but exposure remained higher in predominantly Hispanic and non-Hispanic black communities. Within the state’s cities, the researchers found exposure inequality actually increased slightly between racial/ethnic groups during the study period. “Although ambient air pollution concentrations have decreased across all of Massachusetts, these reductions had a higher relative impact on populations that were already in the lowest exposure categories, hence the increase in exposure inequality,” says Patricia Fabian, research assistant professor of environmental health and the study’s senior author. While numerous previous studies have shown disparities in air pollution exposure at one point in time, the current study was one of the first to track those disparities over space and time, allowing for a more nuanced picture of exposures as demographics shift in a given area. Using data from the 2000 and 2010 Census and the 2006–2010 American Community Survey on race/ethnicity, income, educational attainment, and rural/urban land classification, the researchers calculated exposures using modeled PM 2.5 concentrations from 2003 to 2010 and NO 2 concentrations from 2005 to 2010. The researchers then characterized the disparities using the Atkinson Index, a quantitative measure for relative inequality. The researchers found the average annual PM 2.5 concentrations across the state decreased by 35 percent between 2003 and 2010 and the average annual NO 2 concentrations decreased by 24 percent between 2005 and 2010. However, non-Hispanic black populations continued to have the highest exposures, followed by Hispanic populations. The gap between exposures for non-Hispanic black populations and non-Hispanic white populations remained the same, while the gap between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white populations slightly increased. The authors noted that exposure to NO 2 was more dramatically unequal than exposure to PM 2.5 , perhaps because NO 2 is strongly linked to automobile exhaust, which can vary within a city based on traffic patterns, while PM 2.5 is derived from a wide variety of sources and tends to have more regional concentrations. “Greater inequalities in urban areas, where there is often substantial segregation, reinforces the importance of targeted exposure reduction strategies within vulnerable populations and neighborhoods,” the authors wrote. By looking at these inequalities over time, the authors said, the study points to the possibility that sociodemographic changes may impact land-use decisions, environmental policy enforcement, and other factors influencing emissions. More longitudinal, individual-level studies are needed to understand this “complex dynamic,” the authors wrote. The study was led by doctoral candidate Anna Rosofsky. Other authors were: Jonathan Levy, professor of environmental health; Patricia Janulewicz, assistant professor of community health sciences; and Antonella Zanobetti, principal research scientist in the Department of Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study came out of the Center for Research on Social Stressors in Housing Across the Life Course (CRESSH). It was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institutes on Minority Health and Health Disparities and the Environmental Protection Agency. —Michelle Samuels

Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. Rise of the Tomb Raider's sequel--which has been hinted at but not announced--might be called "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" and it's possible Crystal Dynamics won't be its developer. This information comes from an unexpected source: a person on a subway. Reddit user Tripleh280 posted the picture below, which shows the name Shadow of the Tomb Raider on a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation for the game. There is more text on the slide, reportedly detailing some element of the game's visuals, but it's too blurry to make out. Kotaku heard from a source today that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the name of the next Tomb Raider. That Square Enix would make another Tomb Raider game is no surprise, but what stands out more is that the site claims Thief and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided developer Eidos Montreal is working on the unannounced game. A Square Enix representative told GameSpot, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation." At Gamescom 2015, Square Enix boss Phil Rogers let slip that a third game in the Tomb Raider franchise that began with the 2013 reboot was on the way. This came up when we asked him about the controversy and backlash surrounding Rise of the Tomb Raider's exclusivity deal with Xbox. "We believe first and foremost this is the right thing to do with Tomb Raider right now," Rogers said about the deal with Microsoft. "What it's done for the sake of the studio and the next beat with the Tomb Raider trilogy [emphasis added]... But the backlash is--we've watched carefully and we believe it's the right thing to do." In August this year, Crystal Dynamics hired Visceral Games veteran Ian Milham to become a game director for the Tomb Raider franchise, which furthered the suggestion that the studio was making a new Tomb Raider game. Crystal Dynamics is also working on a new IP. Rise of the Tomb Raider finally came to the PlayStation 4 in September in the form of the 20 Year Celebration Edition.

An Oklahoma high-school teacher charged with raping her 17-year-student is getting no jail time, leaving the parents of her victim stunned and outraged. Erin Kathleen Queen of Sand Springs, Okla., was arrested March 17, 2012, after she was found at the Candlewood Suites hotel in Tulsa with the teen son of Shasta and Adam Belty. Queen was a 27-year-old English teacher at Charles Page High School at the time. Although Queen was originally charged with second-degree rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor for supplying the boy with vodka, the case was dismissed this month when Queen pleaded guilty to a different felony count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. She received three years of probation, was fined $600 and ordered to surrender her teacher’s license. Read the WND story that started it all! The big list: Female teachers with students According to Title 21, Section 1115 of the Oklahoma Statutes, sex may be considered rape if “… the victim is at least sixteen (16) years of age and is less than eighteen (18) years of age and is a student, or under the legal custody or supervision of any public or private elementary or secondary school, junior high or high school, or public vocational school, and engages in sexual intercourse with a person who is eighteen (18) years of age or older and is an employee of the same school system.” On March 21, Tulsa County District Judge William Kellough gave Queen a three-year suspended sentence with no prison time and no community service hours. The outcome has the teen’s parents livid. “I think it’s crap,” Adam Belty told the Tulsa World. “Should it be rape? No. Should she be charged with a sexual count for something? Yes, but the way (it) was explained, there’s no count (less than) second-degree rape that they can charge her with.” “It’s very frustrating to us that she basically got a slap on the wrist,” said the boy’s mother, Shasta Belty. “I cussed. I cried. I totally disagreed with it. (Assistant District Attorney Amanda Self) was under the impression that we were OK with a conviction as long as (Queen) never taught again. Well, we were OK with a conviction of the second-degree rape … or something that represents the sexual misconduct.” The paper reports: “Within hours of Queen’s arrest, it seemed to the Beltys that the whole town of Sand Springs knew what had happened. Their son’s social circle grew smaller as friends and potential prom dates were prohibited from socializing with him. And as the lengthy legal process wore on, the options for his freshman year of college were limited by proximity so he could comply with subpoenas for his testimony.” Shasta Belty says her son’s senior year was completely tainted. “People look at this as, ‘I don’t know why he’s complaining,’ you know? They haven’t been in our shoes. … They know nothing about it,” she said. Mrs. Belty told KTUL-TV she learned of the sexual relationship with a phone call to her son. “He was reluctant to tell me but then he told me he was with Ms. Queen, Erin Queen. And I thought that name sounds familiar. And he said, ‘Mom, it’s my 5th-hour English teacher.’ And I died as a parent,” she told the station. The Tulsa World reports the Beltys don’t believe current law in Oklahoma properly addresses offenses by female teachers, and “they think the legal system hesitates to call a consensual relationship between a student and teacher – especially a student and a female teacher – rape.” “If they’re not going to punish this law to the fullest extent of it, then there should be (a law against) sexual misconduct with students,” Shasta Belty said. “There should be something.” The district attorney’s office disagrees with the Beltys, claiming justice has been served. “We believe a felony conviction holds this teacher accountable under the circumstances of this case,” the office said. “After speaking to the victim and the family, our office decided this was in the best interests of justice.”

"Sea elephant" redirects here. For the superfamily of sea slugs, see Pterotracheoidea Elephant seals are large, oceangoing earless seals in the genus Mirounga. The two species, the northern elephant seal (M. angustirostris) and the southern elephant seal (M. leonina), were both hunted to the brink of extinction by the end of the 19th century, but the numbers have since recovered. The northern elephant seal, somewhat smaller than its southern relative, ranges over the Pacific coast of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The most northerly breeding location on the Pacific Coast is at Race Rocks, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The southern elephant seal is found in the Southern Hemisphere on islands such as South Georgia and Macquarie Island, and on the coasts of New Zealand, South Africa, and Argentina in the Peninsula Valdés. In southern Chile, there is a small colony of 120 animals at Jackson Bay, Admiralty Sound (Seno Almirantazgo), Tierra del Fuego.[1] The oldest known unambiguous elephant seal fossils are fragmentary fossils of an unnamed member of the tribe Miroungini described from the late Pliocene Petane Formation of New Zealand.[2] Teeth originally identified as representing an unnamed species of Mirounga have been found in South Africa, and dated to the Miocene epoch;[3][4] however Boessenecker & Churchill (2016) considered these teeth to be almost certainly misidentified odontocete teeth.[2] Elephant seals breed annually and are seemingly faithful to colonies that have established breeding areas.[5] Description [ edit ] Elephant seals are marine mammals classified under the order Pinnipedia, which in Latin, means feather or fin footed.[6] Elephant seals are considered true seals, and fall under the family Phocidae.[7] Phocids (true seals) are characterized by having no external ear and reduced limbs.[7] The reduction of their limbs helps them be more streamlined and move easily in the water.[6] However, it makes navigating on land a bit difficult because they cannot turn their hind flippers forward to walk like the Otariids.[6] In addition, the hind flipper of elephant seals have a lot of surface area, which helps propel them in the water.[6] Elephant seals spend the majority of their time (90%) underwater in search of food, and can cover 60 miles a day when they head out to sea.[7] When elephant seals are born, they can weigh up to 80 pounds and reach lengths up to 4 feet.[7] Sexual dimorphism is prominently seen in elephant seals due to the fact that male elephant seals can weigh up to 10 times more than females.[8] Also, the large proboscis, which is considered a secondary sexual characteristic, helps males assert dominance during mating season.[7] Elephant seals take their name from the large proboscis of the adult male (bull), which resembles an elephant's trunk.[9] The bull's proboscis is used in producing extraordinarily loud roaring noises, especially during the mating season. More importantly, however, the nose acts as a sort of rebreather, filled with cavities designed to reabsorb moisture from their exhalations.[10] This is important during the mating season when the seals do not leave the beach to feed, and must conserve body moisture as there is no incoming source of water. They are colossally large in comparison with other pinnipeds, with southern elephant seal bulls typically reaching a length of 5 m (16 ft) and a weight of 3,000 kg (6,600 lb), and are much larger than the adult females (cows), with some exceptionally large males reaching up to 6 m (20 ft) in length and weighing 4,000 kg (8,800 lb); cows typically measure about 3 m (10 ft) and 900 kg (2,000 lb). Northern elephant seal bulls reach a length of 4.3 to 4.8 m (14 to 16 ft) and the heaviest weigh about 2,500 kg (5,500 lb).[11][12] The northern and southern elephant seal can be distinguished by looking at various external features. On average, the southern elephant seal tends to be larger than the northern species.[8] Adult male elephant seals belonging to the northern species tend to have a larger proboscis, and thick chest area with a red coloration compared to the southern species.[8] Females do not have the large proboscis and can be distinguished between species by looking at their nose characteristics.[8] Southern females tend to have a smaller, blunt nose compared to northern females.[8] Extant species [ edit ] Physiology [ edit ] Skull of a northern elephant seal. Elephant seals spend up to 80% of their lives in the ocean. They can hold their breath for more than 100 minutes[13][14] – longer than any other noncetacean mammal. Elephant seals dive to 1,550 m (5,090 ft) beneath the ocean's surface[13] (the deepest recorded dive of an elephant seal is 2,388 m (7,835 ft) by a southern elephant seal).[15] The average depth of their dives is about 300 to 600 m (980 to 1,970 ft), typically for around 20 minutes for females and 60 minutes for males, as they search for their favorite foods, which are skates, rays, squid, octopuses, eels, small sharks and large fish. Their stomachs also often contain gastroliths. They spend only brief amounts of time at the surface to rest in between dives (2-3 minutes).[7] Females tend to dive a bit deeper due to their prey source.[7] Male elephant seals fighting for mates. Elephant seals are shielded from extreme cold by their blubber, more so than by fur. Their hair and outer layers of skin molt in large patches. The skin has to be regrown by blood vessels reaching through the blubber. When molting occurs, the seal is susceptible to the cold, and must rest on land, in a safe place called a "haul out". Northern males and young adults haul out during June to July to molt; northern females and immature seals during April to May. Elephant seals have a very large volume of blood, allowing them to hold a large amount of oxygen for use when diving. They have large sinuses in their abdomens to hold blood and can also store oxygen in their muscles with increased myoglobin concentrations in muscle. In addition, they have a larger proportion of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. These adaptations allow elephant seals to dive to such depths and remain underwater for up to two hours.[16] Elephant seals are also able to slow down their heartbeat (bradycardia) and divert blood flow from the external areas of the body to important core organs.[7] In addition, they can also slow down their metabolism while performing deep dives.[7] Elephant seals also have a helpful feature in their bodies known as the countercurrent heat exchanger to help conserve energy and prevent heat loss.[7] In this system, arteries and veins are organized in a way to maintain a constant body temperature by having the cool blood flowing to the heart warmed by blood going to external areas of the animal.[7] Milk produced by elephant seals is remarkably high in milkfat compared to other mammals. After an initially lower state, it rises to over 50% milkfat (human breast milk is about 4% milkfat, and cow milk is about 3.5% milkfat).[17] Adaptations [ edit ] Elephant seals have large circular eyes that have more rods than cones to help them see in low light conditions when they are diving.[6][7] These seals also possess a structure called the tapetum lucidum, which helps their vision by having light reflected back to the retina to allow more chances for photoreceptors to detect light.[6] Their body is covered in blubber, which helps them keep warm and reduce drag while they are swimming.[7] The shape of their body also helps them maneuver well in the water, but limits their movement on land.[7] Also, elephant seals have the ability to fast for long periods of time while breeding or molting.[7] The turbinate process, another unique adaptation, is very beneficial when these seals are fasting, breeding, molting, or hauling out.[7] This unique nasal structure recycles moisture when they breathe and helps prevent water loss.[7] Elephant seals have external whiskers called vibrissae to help them locate prey and navigate their environment.[7] The vibrissae are connected to blood vessels, nerves, and muscles making them an important sensing tool.[6] Due to evolutionary changes, their ear has been modified to work extremely well underwater.[6] The structure of the inner ear helps amplify incoming sounds, and allows these seals to have good directional hearing due to the isolation of the inner ear.[6] In addition to these adaptations, tissues in the ear canal allow the pressure in the ear to be adjusted while these seals perform their deep dives.[6] Breeding season [ edit ] Dominant males arrive at potential breeding sites in November, and will spend 3 months on the beach fasting to ensure that they can mate with as many females as possible.[7] Male elephant seals use fighting, vocal noises, and different positions to determine who will be deemed the dominant male.[7][18] When males reach 8 to 9 years of age, they have developed a pronounced long nose, in addition to a chest shield, which is thickened skin in their chest area.[7] Showing off their noses, making loud vocalizations, and altering their posture are a few ways males show off their dominance.[7][18] When battles come into play, seals will stand tall, and ram themselves into one another using their chest plates and sharp teeth.[7] When the pregnant females arrive, the dominating males have already selected their territory on the beach.[7] Females cluster in groups called harems, which could consist up to 50 or more females surrounding one alpha male.[7] Outside of these groups, a beta bull is normally roaming around on the beach.[7] The beta bull helps the alpha by preventing other males accessing the females.[7] In return, the beta bull might have an opportunity to mate with one of the females while the alpha is occupied.[7] Birth on average only takes a few minutes, and the mother and pup have a connection due to each other's unique smell and sound.[7] The mothers will fast and nurse up to 28 days, providing their pups with rich milk.[7] The last two to three days however, females will be ready to mate, and the dominant males will pounce on the opportunity.[7] During this exhaustive process, males and females lose up to a third of their body weight during the breeding season.[7] The gestation period for females is 11 months, and the pupping seasons lasts from mid December through the middle of February.[7] The new pups will spend up to 10 more additional weeks on land learning how to swim and dive.[7] Life history [ edit ] The average lifespan of a Northern Elephant Seal is 9 years, while the average lifespan of a Southern Elephant Seal is 20–22 years.[19] Males reach maturity at five to six years, but generally do not achieve alpha status until the age of eight, with the prime breeding years being between ages 9 and 12. The longest life expectancy of a male northern elephant seal is approximately 14 years. Females begin breeding at age 3–6 (median=4), and have one pup per breeding attempt.[20] Once they begin breeding, 79% of adult females breed each year.[21] Breeding success is much lower for first-time mothers relative to experienced breeders.[21] Annual survival probability of adult females is 0.83 for experienced breeding females, but only 0.66 for first-time breeders indicating a significant cost of reproduction.[21] More male pups are produced than female pups in years with warmer sea surface temperature in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.[22] Molting [ edit ] Once a year, elephant seals go through a process called molting where they shed the outer layer of hair and skin.[7] This molting process takes up to a month to fully complete.[7] When it comes time to molt, they will haul out on land to shed their outer layer, and will not consume any food during this time.[7] The females and juveniles will molt first, followed by the sub adult males, and finally the large mature males.[7] Predators [ edit ] The main predator of elephant seals is the great white shark.[7] Orcas are also another predator to elephant seals.[7] Cookie cutter sharks can even take notorious bites out of their skin.[7] Status [ edit ] The IUCN lists both species of elephant seal as being of least concern, although they are still threatened by entanglement in marine debris, fishery interactions, and boat collisions. Though a complete population count of elephant seals is not possible because all age classes are not ashore at the same time, the most recent estimate of the California breeding stock was approximately 124,000 individuals. In the United States, the elephant seal, like all marine mammals, is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), passed in 1972, which outlaws hunting, killing, capture, and harassment of the animal.[23] Gallery [ edit ] South Georgia elephant seal Elephant seals ( Mirounga angustirostris ) on Piedras Blancas beach, near San Simeon, California Male, female and pup Northern elephant seals during molting season at Piedras Blancas beach, near San Simeon, California Two bulls fighting Elephant seal snout Juvenile southern elephant seal Beachmasters, the dominant bulls fighting at Macquarie Island Elephant seals at Piedras Blancas, California See also [ edit ]

Jobless benefits cut off for a million US workers 1 March 2010 Inaction by the US Senate last week will result in the cutoff of extended unemployment benefits and COBRA health care coverage to more than one million workers. The cutoff, which began to take effect Sunday night, demonstrates the unbridgeable social gulf between the working class and the denizens of Capitol Hill, both Democrats and Republicans. The bill to extend unemployment benefits and COBRA coverage was blocked by Republican Senator Jim Bunning, an arch-reactionary from Kentucky who took advantage of a Senate rule requiring unanimous consent to bring the legislation to a vote before the weekend. Bunning, who is not running for reelection, was contemptuous of the suffering that he was helping inflict on more than one million workers, including an estimated 60,000 from his home state. He demanded that Senate Democrats agree to pay for the extended benefits without creating new debt, and declared that his actions were intended “to send a message to the American people.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Majority Whip Richard Durbin repeatedly called the bill up for a vote. Each time it was blocked by Bunning’s voiced objection. But the Democratic Senate leaders declined to declare his action a filibuster and invoke cloture, although the required 60-vote majority would have been easily attainable. Under Senate rules, cloture would have led to 30 hours of debate on the bill, followed by a vote. This process would have avoided the cutoff of benefits, but would have caused senators to miss their flights home for the weekend. The Democratic leadership calculated that by allowing Bunning to block the extension they would be able to put the Republican minority in a bad light. Reid, Durbin and Vice President Joseph Biden issued hypocritical statements denouncing Bunning, but there was no move to invoke cloture. Instead, the Democrats said they would bring the bill up again next week. Responding to the political embarrassment, Republican Whip Jon Kyl said Sunday that while he supported Bunning in principle, the Republicans would vote to approve a 30-day extension for the unemployment program while further negotiations were conducted on a bipartisan bill to extend the program for an entire year. The expiration of the unemployment extension will have an enormous impact on working people, particularly in the states hardest hit by the collapse of manufacturing employment. Michigan, for instance, has 300,000 workers receiving extended benefits under the federal program that has been at least temporarily shut down. An estimated 400,000 workers will lose their unemployment benefits during the first two weeks of March if the extension is not quickly approved. If congressional inaction continues, that number will grow exponentially to nearly three million workers by May, according to the Department of Labor. Over 11 million workers are currently collecting unemployment compensation--the first 26 weeks from their state government, and thereafter from the federal program of extended benefits. Economic figures released last week point to a continuation of high unemployment rates for the foreseeable future. Among the data: new home sales plunged 11.2 percent in January from December, hitting the lowest level in 50 years; the February consumer confidence index fell to the lowest level since 1983; new jobless claims for the week ending February 19 shot up by 22,000, confounding forecasts of a decline. At a minimum, the Senate is not expected to reach a final vote on the extended benefits until the week of March 8, meaning those receiving benefits will lose them for at least one week. Given the fragile household budgets of workers who have been jobless for six months or more, the loss of one benefit check can mean failure to make a utility or mortgage payment, and potentially the shutoff of utilities, in the middle of winter, or the beginning of foreclosure proceedings. Even if the bill passes the Senate, it will only provide for an extension of benefits through April 5, meaning that jobless workers will face a new crisis deadline in little more than a month. No senator, Republican or Democrat, will return home to a house that is facing foreclosure or lacking heat because of a utility shutoff. The majority of senators are millionaires, and all of them owe their allegiance to the financial aristocracy. No parliamentary obstacles are allowed to stand in the way of serving the vital interests of Wall Street or the national-security apparatus which defends the profits of corporate America. A case in point: President Obama adjourned his televised health care summit Thursday so that the House members in attendance could march over to the Capitol and cast their votes in favor of the extension of the USA Patriot Act, which gives unprecedented spying powers to the National Security Agency, FBI and other federal security agencies. No such priority was given to ensuring that the long-term unemployed would continue to receive the pittance they are being provided under the extended benefits program. Patrick Martin Patrick Martin

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has hired a Washington lobbying firm that represents insurers and other health care industry companies and groups opposed to single-payer health care to lobby in favor of his insurer-friendly alternative to Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” proposal. The firm was hired by Hickenlooper's government office and is slated to receive a total of $210,000 in taxpayer funds from the Democratic governor’s office budget to lobby on health care after it helped bankroll his election campaign, a spokesperson for Hickenlooper's office confirmed Wednesday. According to federal records reviewed by International Business Times, the Colorado governor's office in February hired Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck — a lobbying powerhouse whose lobbyist Doug Friednash became the governor’s chief of staff in 2015 — for $17,500 monthly from February 2017 to the same month of 2018. Friednash, according to the spokesperson for Hickenlooper, helped select Brownstein Hyatt from a pool of bidding lobbying firms, as did Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne, a former Kaiser Permanente executive who launched her gubernatorial campaign early in September, former Department of Regulatory Agencies Executive Director Joe Neguse, who kicked off his congressional bid in June, and Hickenlooper himself. Lynne and Friednash served as “the primary points of contact” for Brownstein Hyatt at the governor's office, according to the firm's lobbying contract, which was obtained by IBT. The firm’s work for the governor has involved lobbying Congress, the Interior Department, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency on “issues related to federal spending and national service programs.” Brownstein Hyatt has also lobbied federal lawmakers on health care on behalf of Hickenlooper, and the governor's spokesperson, Jacques Montgomery, confirmed that the firm has been advocating for Hickenlooper's proposed alternative to Obamacare and single-payer health care measures. In recent weeks, Hickenlooper’s administration has approved a 27 percent insurance premium increase for Colorado’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges for next year. At the same time, he has been working with Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich on a plan to stabilize the ACA by offering more public money to the private insurance industry. The initiative proposes preserving taxpayer subsidies to insurers and passing a Republican-sponsored measure to create an additional $15 billion fund to further subsidize private insurers when they cover sicker people. Hickenlooper said the health care initiatives he is working on will not involve proposals for a single-payer health care system — the kind adopted in many other industrialized nations in which the government is the sole sponsor of universal health care benefits. Drugmakers and private health insurers have long opposed single-payer because it would put more price pressure on the former and threatens to fully eliminate the latter’s business model. Federal filings show that the same specific Brownstein Hyatt lobbyists working for Hickenlooper also are lobbying for insurance, pharmaceutical and health care interests that have traditionally opposed Medicare-for-all proposals. The lobbying contract between the firm and Hickenlooper's office states, using an acronym for the company name, “to the extent there are any potential conflicts that could arise during the period in which BHFS represents the Office, those will be addressed on a case by case basis if and when they arise.” Brownstein Hyatt did not respond to requests for comment from IBT. Clients represented by the eight Brownstein Hyatt lobbyists registered to lobby for Hickenlooper include: insurers Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and Amerihealth Caritas Health Plan; drugmakers Novartis Corp., AbbVie Inc. and Marathon Pharmaceuticals LLC; medical products conglomerate Baxter Healthcare Corp.; health services firms Ardent Health Services and Borrego Health; and health products conglomerate Johnson & Johnson Services Inc. and the trade group Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Hickenlooper’s office hired Brownstein Hyatt to advocate for the governor’s interests in Washington after the firm and its partners collectively delivered more than $85,000 to groups supporting the Democratic governor’s election campaigns, according to data from PoliticalMoneyLine.com, the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. That included more than $10,000 to the Colorado Democratic Party; $45,000 to the Democratic Governor’s Association and $20,000 to a Colorado independent expenditure committee that boosted Hickenlooper’s 2014 reelection bid. Brownstein Hyatt health industry clients Novartis, Blue Cross and AmeriHealth were among the DGA’s big donors as the group supported Hickenlooper’s 2014 campaign, as was the drug industry’s lobbying group PhRMA. During his two gubernatorial campaigns, Hickenlooper received more than $10,000 in direct donations from Brownstein Hyatt lawyers. Three of the lawyers were appointed to his 2014 campaign’s “Business Leaders for Hickenlooper” committee. Brownstein Hyatt also kicked in at least $10,000 for Hickenlooper’s inauguration, and contributed to an organization that fought the unsuccessful 2016 single-payer health care ballot initiative in Colorado. Hickenlooper opposed the measure, as did his lieutenant governor Donna Lynne, who he appointed to the position from her job as a top executive at the healthcare conglomerate Kaiser Permanente. Luis Toro, the executive director of the nonprofit Colorado Ethics Watch, said that while the hiring of private lobbying firms is common among municipalities, it is practically impossible to avoid some conflict of interest in choosing corporate lobbying firms to advocate for taxpayers. “I think it’s fair to surmise that whatever they’re pushing is not going to be adverse to the other clients of the lobbyist,” he said. “The lobbyist is not going to undercut their clients by promoting a health care plan from somebody else.” Careful vetting of private lobbyists ahead of their employment by public officials, Toro added, was not likely a “feasible” answer, as “pretty much all lobbyists are going to have connections like this.” “You could have an in-house lobbyist, if you had the budget for it,” he said, citing general concerns related to taxpayer dollars going to private lobbying firms. “I suppose, with whatever you’re spending on these outside lobbyists, you could try to have an in-house lobbyist do the same thing.” Brownstein Hyatt is a major player in Washington, ranking second among lobbying firms by revenue for the past two years, a status “almost unheard of for a Denver-based firm,” according to its website. A recent Denver Post profile noted that Norm Brownstein — who is one of the firm’s three founders and is registered to lobby for Hickenlooper — has been dubbed “our 101st senator” by members of the Senate. This story was updated at 5 PM on Wednesday with a response from Gov. Hickenlooper's office.

The Seattle Aquarium has a new sea otter pup named Mishka – that’s “little bear” in Russian. She was orphaned in Alaska last July, after she got caught in a fishing net. Now she's getting used to her new home. At the aquarium earlier this week, Dr. Lesanna Lahner stands among throngs of elementary school kids. “What kind of animal is that?” asks one little girl. "It's a sea otter, a little baby sea otter," Lahner says. Lahner nods to Mishka behind the glass and explains what she's doing now. The sea otter pup is undergoing a beauty parlor type treatment. A biologist is fluffing her fur, blowing it dry with a blow dryer and combing out little knots. Clean fur is crucial, Lahner says, because if her coat is compromised, she can’t thermo-regulate. Sponsor “She’s in there all fluffy and happy and eating. That makes me happy,” she says. The signs to watch are really quite simple: “Eating, sleeping and pooping. Really just like a baby.” In a lot of ways, Mishka is just like a human baby. She drinks formula from a bottle. She plays. And just like the mom of a newborn, Lahner is sleep deprived. She’s been with Mishka almost around the clock. “They are really cute little critters,” Lahner says. But also, “it’s important not to anthropomorphize too much, because it may not be the best thing for the animal.” A sea otter needs things that sea otters need, Lahner says, not needs they might have if they were human. Like, say, cuddling. Sponsor

Contributing to GHC via Phabricator zw3rk Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 21, 2017 About two weeks ago I gave a talk on “Contriubting to GHC via Phabricator” at the local haskell.sg Meetup. Sadly the microphone died after a few minutes into the recording, and as such the video has no audio for most of the talk and is pretty useless. As the topic might be of interest to those who could not attend, I’ll write down the content of the talk as good as I can. Phabricator?! Let’s start with what Phabricator is, Phabricator is the code review tool GHC uses. It was originally developed at Facebook by Evan Priestley, who has since founded Phacility, Inc where the development of Phabricator continues. Phabricator is not just used at GHC, it is also used for other projects like LLVM, the Wikimedia Foundation, FreeBSD, and a many more. I will now try to demonstrate the usage of Phabricator for a simple change (with many pictures!). Creating an account When visiting phabricator.haskell.org, this is the first screen you will be greeted with. We will proceed to open an account so we can do something useful. Upon clicking the “Log in” button you will reach the Log In form. While you can register a new account, I would suggest to use on of the available alternative account connectors. For this example, we’ll use GitHub. It will pull some username and Real Name from GitHub, but you will still be required to provide an email address. With the account we could not start reviewing other peoples code, or even submit our own code for review. So let’s do this next. I have a change in my tree Phabricator is not really concerned how your local tree looks like. It essentially only cares about differences. So you can go wild with your local branch management; use git however you like. For Phabricator try to think in patches (differences) instead of commits. For the following example, I’ve been working on cross compiler related issues and while doing so, I usually accumulate lots of different fixes in my branch. As such I now have some commit ( c93b5bbf1c adds -latomic to ghc-prim ) somewhere in my history, which I’d like to get into GHC proper. Let’s go ahead and create a new branch from origin/master and cherry-pick the relevant commit onto it. You could do this however you like. Just make sure you have a handle on the range for your patch. Let’s ask git what the actual patch looks like. git diff origin/master should tell us. Note the stupid white space! Enter arcanist Phabricator has a companion tool called arc anist: “arc — arcanist, a code review and revision management utility” To install it, we need to clone the following two repositories: $ git clone https://github.com/phacility/libphutil.git $ git clone https://github.com/phacility/arcanist.git Then add arcanist/bin to your PATH . Link arc with your phabricator account Next we’ll need to tell connect arc with our phabricator account on phabricator.haskell.org. To do this we need to run the follwing command from within the ghc repository ghc $ arc install-certificate arc will request an API Token, and tells us where we can get it from. Navigating to the URL arcanist gave us, presents us with the following page. Simply copying the API Token … … and pasting it into the terminal should be enough for arc to properly link your haskell phabricator account with your ghc repository. This needs to be done only once! Let’s send the patch for review. I like to be explicit about the offset, but usually arc should figure out the origin/master offset on its own. Next we might be greeted with this. What is this?! arc wants to be helpful here and tell us that we have lots of untracked files in our repository. If you are sure you have committed everything you want to submit for review, it’s safe to say y here. Alright, so now your $EDITOR will open, and you will be asked to fill out some metadata about your patch. Here’s an example of the filled out metadata. I’ve added a summary and added Ben Gamari as a reviewer. Let’s hope he’s not too busy! Upon existing your editor, arc will run a few linters over the patch. And of course it found the stupid white space from before. It is however helpful enough to ask us if we just want to have this change (removal of white space) applied. Removing the white space seems reasonable. So let’s have arc apply the patch. Next it wants to know if we want to amend HEAD. And yes it makes sense to just amend this into the last commit. So I’ll go with y here. Alright and we are done. arc has sent the patch to phabricator; and we got a Differential identifier back D4253 in this case. Navigating to the URL of the Differential will present us with this page. A bit further down we’ll see the summary we entered and the Reviewer(s) we specified. And even further down we can see the patch we submitted. Now those lines look suspicious, why is this only for linux? Let’s do a self-review here. After adding our comment to the line range we selected, it is displayed but not the gray dashed border. It is not submitted. I think phabricator UI could be a bit better. We still need to scroll to the bottom and hit “Submit” so that our remarks are actually submitted and others can see them. At the top, Phabricator will now show the added comment in the timeline. Let’s go back to our source and change the patch. Adding a comment probably doesn’t hurt and might help the next one reading the “code”. Next, create a new commit and let’s take a look at the new patch. Here we now see the new patch. Note that not much from the previous patch is left, because we essentially rewrote everything. The second commit reversed everything from the first after all. Time for arc diff origin/master again. And again we are greeted with the untracked files screen. However the $EDITOR now has a slightly different template because we are updating a differential and are not creating a new one. Here we can specify what we changed. By default it will pull information from the commit messages. After exiting the $EDITOR arc tells us it has updated the Differential. Looking at the timeline we see the new update item as well. Of course the patch now looks different and our new patch is displayed. We’ll mark the comment as Done… … and again we’ll need to hit Submit for this to be actually submitted. The marking of the comment as done is now also reflected in the timeline. Where to go from here?

Growing up in a Recession Individuals who grow up during recessions tend to form life-long beliefs, including that success in life depends more on luck than on effort. In Growing up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy (NBER Working Paper No. 15321), co-authors Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo substantiate the importance of the historical economic environment in shaping economic attitudes, affecting individuals' views of the role of government, and influencing whether those beliefs change later in life. One of the key findings of their study is that individuals who grow up during recessions tend to form life-long beliefs, including that success in life depends more on luck than on effort. Individuals who grow up during recessions also tend to support more government redistribution, but they have less confidence in public institutions. On the whole, the authors find, orientations formed during difficult economic times can help to determine the economic system, institutional outcomes, and the role of the government across countries, although this study focused on the United States. One of the strongest results from this research is the long-lasting effect of recessions on individuals' confidence in government and its role in society. For example, individuals have a significantly lower level of confidence in Congress and the executive branch of the federal government when they experience poor economic conditions while they are coming of age. But there are off-setting tendencies, too. "On the one hand, recession-hit individuals believe that the government should intervene more, so they lean more to the left. On the other hand, these individuals distrust institutions, believing them to be ineffective, therefore leaning more to the right." And, while recessions substantially decrease the confidence in government institutions, they do not appear to have an effect on the individual's level of generalized trust -- that is, his or her trust in others or other sectors of society. The authors also report that individuals' propensity to distrust government institutions after macroeconomic shocks occur is highest when they are between the ages of 18 and 25. Although also possible between age 25 until roughly age 40, after that age people tend not to change their beliefs in response to negative economic shocks. This research is based on data culled from self-reported individual answers collected by the General Social Survey (GSS) regarding individuals’ socioeconomic beliefs. The GSS conducts basic scientific research on the structure and development of American society using a standard set of behavioral and attitudinal questions, many of which have remained unchanged since 1972. The researchers focus on the 18-to-25 age group who came of age in a recession. This age focus is based on social psychologists' findings that these are among the most impressionable years, during which time one's beliefs and values about how society and the economy work are formed. Guiliano and Spilimbergo match each generation's responses to yearly economic events, nationally and regionally, and refine them to include other economic factors such as volatility, booms, and regional GDP growth. The GSS data also contain background information on each individual, including religion, family income, parents’ education, and location when the individual was 16, which the authors incorporate into their analysis of the respondents' answers in the survey. -- Frank Byrt The Digest is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source.

A Hobby Lobby store in Antioch, Calif. The privately owned company is seeking a religious exemption from Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The Supreme Court wisely decided Monday not to hear the appeal of a New Mexico photography studio that didn’t want to take pictures at a gay wedding for religious reasons. Good call. The owners of the studio lost in state court because New Mexico—like some states but far from all—has a law protecting against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. By taking a pass, the Supreme Court seems to be saying: This is a state-by-state issue at the moment, and there was no need for us to interfere with the balance New Mexico has opted to strike between religious rights and the rights of gay people. But claims in the name of religious liberty are very much alive in other cases, some involving gay customers, and also at the Supreme Court in the pending decision in the Hobby Lobby case. The craft store, as you may have heard, is challenging the requirement in Obamacare that employer-provided health insurance include coverage for certain forms of birth control. The link between fundamentalist objections to birth control and to gay weddings makes the meaning of religious liberty one of this year’s biggest legal battles. I’ve tried to defend a version of religious liberty that balances religious rights against the costs they impose on other people. (My views are heavily informed by the work of a group of scholars including Brooklyn law professor Nelson Tebbe.) In a couple of thoughtful posts, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat responded that my defense of religious liberty is really no defense at all, arguing that it doesn’t concede “an inch to actual-existing dissenters.” I’m only in favor of pluralism for the “truly powerless,” he says—the Amish, as opposed to evangelicals. Other conservatives have also weighed in, and they don’t like my conception of religious liberty either. This is deep and important stuff. So here’s Round 2. The Hobby Lobby case pits the religious freedom of a business that employs 13,000 people against the rights of its female workers to comprehensive preventive care. The idea that such care should include coverage for birth control comes first from Congress, which mandated preventive coverage when it passed the Affordable Care Act. And it comes from the Institute of Medicine, which has plenty of research to cite showing the health benefits of averting unintended pregnancy. The first question about this case is whether a business has religious rights—in lawyer’s terms, is it a “person” within the meaning of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act? I would say no, and more about why in a minute. But even if the Supreme Court mistakenly recognizes Hobby Lobby’s claim to religious freedom (the company is privately rather than publicly owned, which could make the difference), here’s the remaining key question, posed by Justice Anthony Kennedy at argument. As Kennedy pointed out, Hobby Lobby’s view that it need not cover birth control would allow “the employer to put the employee in a disadvantageous position. The employee may not agree with these religious beliefs of the employer.” Kennedy then asked: Do “the religious beliefs just trump?” My answer is no. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act says the government can burden religious beliefs if it has a compelling interest in doing so and uses the least restrictive means. As I learned from Tebbe, in the past the Supreme Court has ruled that preventing a religious group from shifting the costs of accommodating its beliefs to another group or individual counts as compelling interest. The government shouldn’t exempt Hobby Lobby from the contraception mandate because that will force its workers to bear the cost of contraception. As Linda Greenhouse pointed out, the Supreme Court could compromise by letting Hobby Lobby offer contraception coverage through third-party insurance carriers, which is what religious nonprofits organizations are allowed to do (though some of these groups object to signing the relevant form). But Douthat thinks my whole balancing approach is wrong. By siding against Hobby Lobby and the companies that have refused to bake cakes or take pictures or arrange flowers for gay weddings he says, I’m stifling dissent, in an overabundance of self-certainty: Because as Bazelon’s blithe (and increasingly typical) dismissal of current religious-liberty concerns suggests, it’s precisely when people in liberal societies see themselves as out on the vanguard of history that they’re least likely to concede that they might, just might, be making a mistake, and most inclined to feel instead that the thing to do is shatter the shield wall around the remaining bastions of unenlightenment rather than permit them to persist. It’s when a consensus is at its most self-confident, in other words—and therefore most vulnerable to the errors of overconfidence—that the kind of pluralism that might serve as a corrective becomes hardest for that consensus’s exponents to accept. This is where I’m supposed to show a little humility. Hmm. The thing is that I am certain of the benefits of both gay marriage and birth control, based on the evidence. Like I said, the Institute of Medicine knows what it’s talking about on the benefits of access to contraception. And while Hobby Lobby says it doesn’t want to cover the IUD and the morning-after pill in particular, because it sees them as abortifacients, that’s a seriously shaky claim. Even more so the claim that gay marriage hurts kids, or anyone else, which has been thoroughly debunked. Opposing these aspects of sexual modernity, as I put it in my last piece, is a pretty tough position to defend, rationally as opposed to theologically speaking. My conservative critics will surely say I’ve revealed myself as irredeemably smug here, but honestly my conception of religious liberty doesn’t rest on who is right or who is wrong. If I thought the IUD caused abortions, I’d still argue for balancing religious freedom against other values rather than deploying it as a trump card. God bless our tradition of religious pluralism. But crucial to it, always, has been the understanding that the views of one religious group can’t trample all over the rights of another religious group or the rights of nonbelievers. That’s why the Constitution bars the establishment of one religion. We all get to live here. Here’s another way to get to a similar pluralistic result. I am all for dissent and criticism by religious folk of all stripes. Shout it from the rooftop of your house, or your church, or your school or missionary group or your service project. Just don’t invoke the shield of religion if you’re the owner of a business who has chosen to incorporate for profit. Because at that point, you are shielded from personal liability. You’ve opted to become a “legally distinct entity,” as the Supreme Court has put it. For all intents and purposes, because it serves your interests, you’re not you anymore. Unless I’m missing something, Douthat didn’t address this part of my argument. He said I’m only willing to allow for the religious liberty of powerless groups, like the Amish, who won the right to keep their children out of regular school, in the face of a state law that required attendance, back in 1972. Douthat points out that if the Amish kids disagreed with their parents, then the cost to them was real and searing. True. But courts generally treat the family unit as one in this kind of case, letting the parents speak for the children, and I was going along with that legal framework. Here’s another Supreme Court decision I’m OK with: a 1987 ruling in which the court allowed the Mormon Church to fire a building engineer for “failing to observe the highest standards of Mormon belief and practice.” The engineer was building a gymnasium run by the church, which isn’t the same as building a temple. But the court recognized the trickiness for a church of separating its religious activities from its secular ones. And the justices emphasized the nonprofit nature of the church as a whole. So this ruling makes sense to me, even though it does impose an obvious cost on the guy who got fired. I can see balancing the scales differently when a church itself is involved. And I’d feel the same way if another case like this substituted Catholic or Baptist for Mormon. At the National Review, Yuval Levin says my conception of religious liberty comes out of a progressive vision in which “society really only consists of individuals and the government, and that the various institutions and power centers that lie between the two are inherently illegitimate and should either be seized or pushed aside when they get in the way of public-policy objectives.” I hope I’ve made it clear why this is not an accurate description of my position. I’d group churches and nonprofit organizations—just not businesses—with individuals. The history I keep flashing back to is the sit-ins at lunch counters in the South in the 1960s. Those businesses invoked their right to refuse to serve black customers. The courts said no, because they were open to the public. If you are a public accommodation, you have to be open to everyone. The same has to go for businesses today, in states that protect against anti-gay discrimination. Douthat disagrees, in another piece called “The Terms of Our Surrender.” He argues again that requiring the New Mexico photography studio to serve a gay couple over its religious objections means the end of “carving out protections for dissent.” It’s like saying “you bigots don’t get to negotiate anymore.” And Douthat can call on Andrew Sullivan here, who has said he doesn’t want photos or cakes or flowers from a business that doesn’t want him as a customer. “We’re not talking logic here,” Sullivan says. “We’re talking religious conviction. My view is that in a free and live-and-let-live society, we should give them space.” The pragmatist in me feels the same way. As Sullivan and Douthat both argue, the gay-rights side is winning. What harm does it really do if a few businesses insist on holding out? If this were just about private lawsuits, I could live with that. But it’s not. It’s also about the responsibility of a state to enforce its own anti-discrimination laws. Here’s what the Washington attorney general recently wrote to a florist that refused service to a gay couple: “It is my job to enforce the laws of the state of Washington. Under the Consumer Protection Act, it is unlawful to discriminate against customers based on sexual orientation.” Exactly. Remember, this kind of discrimination is still lawful in plenty of states. But where it is not, businesses shouldn’t be allowed to flout the rules of their own communities. That’s my problem with Douthat’s argument. It’s what the New Mexico case comes down to—and why the Supreme Court was right to stay out of it.

A lot of people have been wondering if Nintendo Directs will continue after Iwata's passing. Nintendo hasn't commented on the matter, but a recent job listing seems to indicate that the presentations will continue. Check out this blurb from a Nintendo job posting for a 'motion graphics artist' position. Description of Duties Work with members of the team to create motion graphics for various projects Help team members by creating animations for use or by helping editors design graphics that they can implement themselves Help determine typography choices for use in trailers, sizzle reels etc. Plays games to obtain game footage and/or screen captures Edits video/audio for TV commercials, game trailers, Nintendo Direct, web content, demo kiosks, internal and external presentations, and general marketing purposes as needed Facilitates file transfers with other groups, agencies, and subsidiaries Maintains audio/video equipment and editing Macs Recommends and installs new editing/computer equipment and software Ability to work overtime required Be able to receive feedback from various groups, analyze it, and implement it in a timely manner Certainly seems to indicate that we'll have more Nintendo Directs in the future. Thanks to LED-MirrorKnight for the heads up!

Abstract Neuroimaging evidence suggests that the parietal lobe has an important role in memory retrieval, yet neuropsychology is largely silent on this topic. Recently, we reported that unilateral parietal lobe damage impairs various forms of visual working memory when tested by old/new recognition. Here, we investigate whether parietal lobe working memory deficits are linked to problems at retrieval. We tested two patients with bilateral parietal lobe damage in a series of visual working memory tasks that probed recall and old/new recognition. Stimuli were presented sequentially and several stimulus categories were tested. The results of these experiments show that parietal lobe damage disproportionately impairs old/new recognition as compared to cued recall across stimulus categories. The observed performance dissociation suggests that the posterior parietal lobe plays a particularly vital role in working memory retrieval. General Methods Participants Patients with bilateral parietal lobe damage are extremely rare. The survival rate after suffering the type of cerebrovascular event that produces bilateral parietal lobe damage is low. We were able to identify to patients with bilateral parietal lobe damage in our database. These patients have been discussed previously (Berryhill, Phuong, Picasso, Cabeza, & Olson, 2007); we summarize their profiles here. Patient EE555 is a 39-year-old former teacher with 16 years of education. Between April and June 2004, she suffered three infarcts in the watershed between the posterior and middle cerebral arteries. EE555’s MRI revealed symmetrical lesions in lateral aspects of the inferior parietal lobe, extending from superior aspects of the occipital lobe through the angular gyrus (Brodmann areas (BA) 39) in and around inferior and middle portions of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Damage did not encroach into the midline (e.g. precuneus). EE555’s lesions are depicted in . Open in a separate window EE555’s physical and perceptual symptoms are currently stable. Patient EE555’s primary deficit is simultanagnosia as defined by her inability to apprehend the contents of a visual scene, her abnormal performance on line cancellation tasks, in which she crosses off items only at the center, and her tendency towards local bias, as illustrated by her report of the local but not global elements in Navon letters. Language comprehension and speech fluency are unimpaired as assessed by her conversational skills, and performance on the auditory tests of the Western Aphasia Battery (Kertesz, 1982), which were uniformly at ceiling. Reading and writing are impaired due to her simultanagnosia and spatial disorientation. Her visual acuity is normal. EE555 was tested 1.5 – 2.5 years post insult. Patient TQ591 is a 49-year-old former preschool teacher with 15 years of education. She suffered bilateral parieto-occipital damage due to CNS cerebral vasculitis in March 2006. TQ591’s MRI revealed signs of previous subacute posterior cerebral artery infarctions. The primary lesions are in bilateral parietal regions; see . The left parietal lesion extends into IPS (BA 39) and precuneus (BA 7). There are two right lesion sites: the inferior lesion is in superior aspects of the occipital lobe (BA 18 and 19), and the superior lesion is in the superior parietal lobe (BA 7). In both hemispheres, the lesions extend slightly into temporo-occipital (BA 19) regions and parietal white matter. TQ591’s cortical damage is now considered stable. TQ591’s primary deficit is simultanagnosia, similar to that described for patient EE555. Language comprehension and speech fluency are unimpaired as assessed by her conversational skills, ability to follow instructions and comply with requests, and performance on the Western Aphasia Exam (Kertesz, 1982). Reading and writing are somewhat impaired due to her simultanagnosia and spatial disorientation (she loses her place on a page). Her eyesight is corrected-to-normal. TQ591 was tested 6 – 12 months post insult. Standardized Test Performance The subtests of the Wechsler memory scale (WMS-III, Wechsler, 1997b) that do not require comparing complex visual elements were conducted and index scores calculated for the following measures: auditory immediate, auditory delayed, auditory recognition delayed and working memory (see for standardized test performance). Patient EE555 performed at least one standard deviation below the mean across all measures. TQ591’s performance was more than one standard deviation below the mean on the auditory immediate and working memory indices but normal on the auditory delayed and auditory recognition delayed tests. These findings provide an initial indication that posterior parietal lobe damage may slightly impair memory performance. Table 2 Test Subtest EE555 TQ591 WMS-III Immediate 86 80 Delayed 77 97 WM 83 79 Recog delayed 55 110 Forward Span 6 8 Backward 4 4 Span CVLT-II Immediate free recall, trial 5 −2.5 −.5 Short delay free recall −1.5 −1.5 Long delay free recall −3.0 0 Long delay −5.0 −.5 yes-no recog hits Total .5 −.5 Intrusions Forced-choice 100% 100% Open in a separate window The California Verbal Learning Test-II (Delis, Kramer, Kaplan, & Ober, 2000) is a measure of an adult’s ability to learn and remember verbal material, such as word lists. The CVLT-II data provides additional insight into verbal short-term and long-term memory. Patient EE555’s performance on the CVLT-II indicates that she has impaired verbal memory at both short and long delays. She is most impaired on measures of delayed recognition. In contrast, Patient TQ591’s performance on the CVLT-II indicates that she has spared immediate free recall for verbal information, but moderately impaired verbal free recall memory at short delays. At long delays, her free recall and recognition memory is normal. In both patients, forward and backward digit span was normal. It should be noted that digit span measure is known to be well-preserved in diverse lesion populations, including amnesics (Black, 1986). Control Participants Twelve normal control subjects participated in each experiment (Experiment 1a: Mean (M) age = 42.5, M years of education (edu) = 14.6, 4 males; Experiment 1b: M age = 45.0, M edu = 14.8, 6 males; Experiment 2a: M age = 47.3, M edu = 13.9, 6 males; Experiment 2b: M age = 39.7, M edu = 15.4, 7 males; Experiment 3: M age = 47.3, M edu = 14.1, 7 males). Stimuli Three stimulus categories were used in Experiment 1a–2b: colors, abstract shapes and common objects. The color category consisted of 20 circular color patches selected from the full color spectrum. The shape category consisted of 36 black, bilaterally symmetrical abstract shapes generated by a computer algorithm that has been previously employed in studies of visual WM (Jiang et al., 2000). The common objects or ‘tool’ category consisted of 36 grayscale photographs and was limited to the subordinate category of tools in order to be consistent with the other stimulus categories. Stimuli measured approximately 6 cm by 6 cm and were presented on a white background. In Experiment 3, colorized line drawings of common objects were used (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004). To accommodate the simultanagnosia in both patients and the fact parietal damage slows visual processing (Peers et al., 2005), all stimuli in all experiments were presented sequentially at the center of the monitor at the rate of 1000 ms/item. Perceptual Control Tasks To insure that EE555 and TQ591could accurately perceive the stimuli that were used in the WM tasks, two perceptual control tasks were administered. (1) Perception of tools. Thirty-six grayscale photographs of household tools were presented on a white background using ePrime software (Psychology Software Tools). The task was to verbally label each tool under free viewing conditions. The experimenter recorded the responses. EE555 was able to identify 89% of the tools. TQ591 identified 72% of the tools. Errors for both subjects were for low-frequency items: clamps, a leather punch, a wood plane, an eggbeater, and a whisk. (2) Perception of colors and abstract shapes. Multicolored geometric shapes were printed on cards. There were eight different shapes and eight different colors creating a set of 24 cards. The task was to match a particular card based on color, shape, or color-shape. Both subjects were accurate when asked to match colors (100%), shapes (100%) or color/shape conjunctions (100%). Analysis In the recall experiments, Experiments 1a and 2a, the dependent measure is raw accuracy. In Experiment 1a, chance performance was .25. In Experiment 2a, chance performance was nearly 0. In the recognition experiments, Experiments 1b, 2b and 3, the dependent measure is corrected recognition (CR). CR is equal to the hit rate (responding “yes” on a match trial) minus the false alarm rate (responding “yes” on a non-match trial). Chance performance corresponds to a CR value of 0. Trials were excluded if no response was registered within two standard deviations of the mean reaction time (Excluded trials: controls 2.9%, patients 3.3%). Data was analyzed with non-parametric permutation analyses approximating independent sample t-test (Experiment 2a, 3) and a repeated measures analysis of variance (Experiments 1ab, 2b). Permutation tests are an alternative to parametric tests for cases of small numbers of participants and can be accurately used for sample sizes larger than one. For the repeated-measures ANOVA tests, a permutation test was used in which we first computed the F statistic under the standard mixed two-factor ANOVA model. Then the observed values were randomly permuted across the patient and control subjects. The F statistics were recomputed for the permuted data set and a one-tailed count over 1000 replicates was used to compute the significance values (Legendre, Oden, Sokal, Vaudor, & Kim, 1990; Manly, 1997). For the t-test version, no t-value is calculated. In the first stage of analysis, the null hypothesis (that there is no difference between the patient and control groups) is tested using a t-test (Experiment 3). During the second stage, two groups were randomly defined and subjected to the same comparison. This continues until 1000 random samples are taken. The reported p-values refer to the proportion of scores below the observed experimental value (Good, 1994). Statistical analyses were conducted using Matlab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA). SPSS (SPSS, Chicago, IL) was used to perform paired t-tests and one-sample t-tests for the comparison of recall and recognition task performance. Experiment 1a: Order Recall In our first study, subjects were required to remember item order. This task was chosen because there is neuroimaging evidence that the parietal lobe is involved in order WM. Marshuetz and colleagues found order WM related activity in bilateral superior parietal regions (Brodmann areas 7 and 40), which they hypothesize is involved in tracking the temporal spacing between items in order WM tasks (Marshuetz, 2005; Marshuetz, Smith, Jonides, DeGutis, & Chenevert, 2000; see also Majerus et al., 2007; Majerus et al., 2006). One recent neuropsychological study found that bilateral parietal lobe damage impairs order WM (Malcolm & Barton, 2007). To assess whether parietal lobe damage affects order recall, subjects encoded four sequentially presented items and after a brief delay, were required to recall the temporal position of a particular item. Methods Task Prior to the onset of the actual experiment, all subjects performed several practice trials to become familiar with the trial design. Each trial began with a central fixation cross (1000 ms), followed by the sequential presentation, in the center of the screen, of four randomly selected stimuli (1000 ms/item) from one stimulus category (color, shape, tool) at the center of the monitor. Items appeared contiguously with no inter-stimulus interval. After a 1000 ms masked delay interval, a probe stimulus was presented at central fixation until a response was made, (see ). The task was to report the temporal position the probe item had occupied during the memory sequence (position 1, 2, 3, or 4). Responses were unspeeded in this and all subsequent experiments. Each position was equally likely to be probed, making chance performance equal to 25% correct. After the response was entered, the next trial was initiated by pressing the space bar. There were 20 trials per stimulus category. Open in a separate window Note that although it is common to use concurrent verbal memory loads to minimize the possibility that visual items are remembered by verbal labels (Luck & Vogel, 1997; Olson & Jiang, 2002) this type of task is difficult to implement in older and patient populations and introduces additional variables that may confound the effects of interest. Each stimulus category varied in the degree to which verbal encoding could reasonably be used, from a high level in the tool category, an intermediate level in the color category, and none in the shape category. Results and Discussion Because this experiment employed a recall task in which false alarms were not possible, the dependent measure was raw accuracy. The accuracy values for each group (control, patient) and temporal position (1, 2, 3, 4) were subjected to permutation analyses (see ), collapsing across stimulus category. The groups did not differ (F 1, 12 = 62.17, p = .10, M patients = .64, M controls = .69). The main effect of temporal position was significant (F 3, 36 = 5.67, p = .002) although no pairwise comparisons reached significance, performance was best when the probe item appeared at the 4th temporal position (p = .07). The interaction of group and temporal position reached significance (F 3, 36 = 3.06, p = .05) as the patient group showed a stronger primacy effect than did the control subjects. To determine if there were accuracy differences for different stimulus types, the data were collapsed across temporal position and a permutation analysis examined group (control, patient) and stimulus category (color, shape, tool). Again, the groups did not differ (F 1, 12 = 9.65, p = .86). There was a main effect of stimulus category (F 2, 24 = 8.92, p = .001), such that performance on the tool category was better than performance with shape stimuli (p = .04). The interaction of group and stimulus category failed to reach significance however (F 2, 24 = 1.86, p = .23), see . Open in a separate window Finally, the errors were examined in order to evaluate differences between the patient and control groups. Both groups erroneously chose temporal neighbors of the correct answer (i.e. responded ‘3rd’ when the answer was actually ‘2nd’) more often than temporally distant non-neighbor (M neighbor errors: patients: .61; controls: .64). The patients showed particularly strong recency and primacy effects as demonstrated by the lower proportion of errors when the correct answer was in the first or last position (M patients: .29; M controls: .45) than when it was embedded at the second and third positions. These results suggest that the patients’ performance was unimpaired in a visual order WM task when recall was probed. Experiment 1b: Order Recognition In Experiment 1a, patients demonstrated normal order recall performance. To assess whether order recognition performance is similarly spared by parietal lobe damage, we conducted a recognition version of the order task. Methods Task The stimuli and task design were identical to that of Experiment 1a with the following exceptions: after the delay period, the four previously viewed items were repeated in either the same or a different order. The task was to make an unspeeded response as to whether the two order sequences were the same or different by pressing one key for ‘same’, another key for ‘different’. The second order could differ from the first order by 0 (same order), 2, 3, or 4 changes in position. After a response was made, a key press initiated the next trial. Ten trials per stimulus category were conducted. Results and Discussion The corrected recognition scores for each group were subjected to permutation analyses (see ). Unlike the findings of Experiment 1a, the patients were impaired relative to controls (F 1, 12 = 744.62, p = .03; M patients = .34, M controls = .75). The main effect of stimulus category also reached significance (F 2, 24 = 4.46, p = .03), this was due to overall better performance on the tool stimuli than shapes (p = .04). The interaction of group × stimulus category did not reach significance (F 2, 24 = 1.03, p = .40). When performance was assessed as a function of the number of changes in the presented order (either 0, 2, 3, or 4), it was found that patients were worse at detecting changes (F 1, 12 = 996.84, p < .001) and that their performance did not steadily improve as the number of changes increased (M 0 changes = .75, M 2 changes = .54, M 3 changes = .42, M 4 changes = .65). In contrast, more changes improved control subjects’ performance (M 0 = .85, M 2 = .77, M 3 = .96, M 4 = .92). The interaction of group and number of changes did not reach significance (F 3, 36 = 2.14, p = .15). These results show that the patients’ performance was impaired in an order recognition task. This finding provides preliminary evidence that PPC lesions may differentially affect recall as compared to recognition. Experiment 2a: Object Recall One possible criticism of the order recognition task is that poor performance was due to the higher memory load imposed by maintaining one order while observing a second order. In fact, some researchers might consider Experiment 1b a long-term memory task, given the large number of items presented. In Experiments 2a, 2b and 3, we probed the recall/recognition dissociation further using paradigms designed to extend our findings and allay methodological concerns. Experiment 2a examined WM for objects using a recall task that imposed no temporal ordering demands. Following a brief delay, subjects were required to verbally report the identities of four items. Methods Task Four tool images were presented sequentially (1000 ms/image) and followed by a masked delay (1000 ms). After the mask, a cue appeared and prompted the subject to name aloud the four previously viewed images. The experimenter recorded responses. Correct answers consisted of accurately named items from the encoding phase, regardless of order. Intrusions were also tallied. Only tool stimuli were used because the items in this category are easily named. After the responses had been made and recorded, a key press initiated the next trial. A total of 10 trials were performed. Results and Discussion The raw accuracy scores for each group (control, patient) were subjected to permutation analyses (see ). The results showed that patients and controls had similar levels of accuracy (p = .23, M patients = .69, M controls = .78). An examination of the erroneous responses indicated that the patients reported fewer intrusive responses than the controls (M patients = 1.0, M controls = 4.8). This difference was marginally significant (p = .06)1. These results confirm the findings from Experiment 1a, suggesting that the patients’ performance is unimpaired in recall tasks of visual WM. Open in a separate window Experiment 2b: Object Recognition In Experiment 2b object memory was assessed in an old/new recognition paradigm. The task and stimuli are identical to that used in Experiment 2 of Berryhill and Olson (in press). Methods Task Trials were similar to those used in Experiment 2a except for the probe task. On one half of all trials, the probe image was a new item that had not been in the memory set; in the other half of trials the probe image was an old item. Thus, chance performance was 50%. The task was to report whether the probe image was old or new. Four-item trials were organized into three 20-trial blocks. To make this experiment directly comparable to Experiment 1b, three 20-trial blocks of color and abstract shape recognition trials were also tested. Subjects performed several practice trials to become familiar with the trial design. Results and Discussion The corrected recognition scores for each group (control, patient) and stimulus category (color, shape, tool) were subjected to permutation analyses (see ). The patient group was significantly impaired relative to the control group (F 1, 12 = 637.51, p = .01, M patients = .40, M controls = .65). There was also a main effect of stimulus category (F 2, 24 = 32.43, p < .001) such that performance on the tool stimuli was better than color (p = .003) and shape (p = .001) performance. It should be noted that for the color stimuli, but not for the tool or shape stimuli, patient EE555’s performance drove the group effect (see ). There was no interaction of group × stimulus category (F 2, 24 < 1, n.s.). This was confirmed by evaluation of the difference scores between the control and patient groups, which differed by a constant value across stimulus categories. In order to make this experiment directly comparable to Experiment 2a, only the performance in the tool category are shown in . A permutation analysis of only the tool data revealed a significant effect of group (p = .02, M patients = .59, M controls = .84). The pattern of performance was identical across stimulus types. Table 3 Exp. 1b. Order Recognition Exp. 2b. Object Recognition Exp. 3. Non-Repeating Object Recognition Color Shape Tools Color Shape Tools Common Objects EE555 .86, .33 .67, .50 1.0, .43 .96, .74 .97, .74 1.0, .38 .79, .22 TQ591 .83, .75 1.0, .44 .56, 0 .54, 07 .75, .50 .71, .15 .73, .04 Controls .80, .05 .80, .16 .92, .07 .80, .22 .74, .20 .90, .05 .92, .03 Open in a separate window These results show that the patients’ performance was impaired at visual WM tasks testing recognition across three very different stimulus categories - colors, abstract shapes, and tools. Overall performance was highest in the tool condition and lowest in the novel shape condition. However, deficits were observed to a similar degree for all three stimulus types, suggesting that the WM deficit exists when a verbal strategy could be employed for nameable items, such as tools, and even when such a strategy would be challenging, such as with the novel shape stimuli. Experiments 1a–2b: Combined Analyses To directly compare patient’s performance on the recall and recognition tasks, their performance was converted into z-scores and t-tests were performed (see ). This showed that only the recognition scores differed from that of the controls (t 3 = −9.4, p = .003). When the patient’s scores on the recall (Order Recall, Object Recall) and recognition (Order Recognition, Object Recognition) tasks were directly compared, significantly worse performance was found in the recognition tasks compared to the recall tasks (t 3 = 3.1, p = .05). Open in a separate window Experiment 3: Non-Repeating Object Recognition WM In Experiments 1a–2b only a limited number of stimuli were used, giving rise to repeated exposures across trials. One explanation for the poor patient performance on the recognition tasks is that parietal lobe damage causes source memory impairments such that patients confuse the probe item on trial N with target items previously viewed on other trials. If true, patients should perform normally on recognition tasks that use unique stimuli in each trial. This was tested in Experiment 3. Methods Task The trial design was identical to that used in Experiment 2b. The only difference was the stimuli which were colorized line drawings of animals, objects, and buildings (Rossion & Pourtois, 2004), shown without repetition. There was a single block of 56 trials. Two controls were excluded due to a failure to understand and comply with instructions. Results and Discussion The corrected recognition scores were subjected to two-tailed permutation analysis comparing the two groups (see ). This analysis found that the patients were significantly impaired (p = .03, M patients = .63, M controls = .89). Open in a separate window These results confirm that the patients were generally impaired in recognition WM tasks. This cannot be attributed to increased intrusions from one trial to the next because patients exhibited recognition impairments even when there were no stimulus repetitions. Acknowledgments We thank Junhyong Kim and Eiling Yee for help with permutation analyses and Youssef Ezzyat, Page Widick and Olu Faseyitan for help with MRIcro. We thank Lisa Phuong for testing control subjects. We thank Marianna Stark and Branch Coslett for their advice and assistance, and EE555 and TQ591 for their time. This research was supported by RO1 MH071615-01 to I. Olson. Footnotes 1Both patients exhibited normal levels of intrusions on the CVLT.

PuppetConf, the operations conference of choice, is back this year. The 2012 incarnation will be larger, and located at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, CA on Sep 27 & 28. Last year we had an amazing conference with presentations on Puppet, great operations, and of course, an excellent hallway track. So we’re doubling down on the past success, and we're adding some fresh activities, too. New to the docket: hands-on technical labs to show off some new technologies, offering our first bout of Puppet Certifications, and having an entire track devoted to community and modules. You can be a part of PuppetConf in several ways. The call for speakers is open, and we're looking for presentations in long-form format (45 minutes or so), as well as openspace/unconference ideas. Our Call for Presentations closes July 31, so don't delay too long. PuppetConf CFP: What we want We're interested in presentations and topics around expanding Puppet deployments, using Puppet at scale, module authoring, Puppet Forge usage and anything else related to Puppet. We also love talks on operations teams and practices that make us all better. These talks don't have to focus on Puppet at all. We love hearing about scaling to tens of thousands of nodes, test driven infrastructure, next generation monitoring, operations with dozens of lines of business, and more. This is a great chance to let people in the DevOps world know what you're doing. For the unconfernce topics, nothing is off limits. We'll tackle hard problems, we'll theorize, deliver conjecture, and have a great time. Get feedback before you submit (optional) If you're looking for ideas and wondering if something would be hit, it's sometimes a good idea to run the topics by the folks in #puppet on freenode IRC. Send ideas to the puppet-users list as well. PuppetConf for non-presenters If speaking isn’t your thing, it’s perfectly ok. Attending is an awesome experience. You’ll see some blog posts from featured speakers coming soon. You’ll be able to learn from listening, some from experiencing things in labs, and some from great discussions in between sessions and at night. No matter what reasons you have to get to PuppetConf, just get there. I look forward to chatting with you and sharing our infrastructure experiences. Learn More: Cross-posted from puppetconf.com

Detroit Lions: So this is it for Jim Caldwell, right? by Payne Schanski After getting a late start to his rookie season, Detroit Lions running back Tion Green could become a breakout star for the Motor City in 2018. The Detroit Lions season essentially ended after Sunday’s loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. Although it’s hard to think positively right now if you’re a Lions fan, there is a silver lining I want to point out. That silver lining is rookie running back Tion Green. Green, who was the final player selected to make the 53-man roster after the preseason didn’t even see the field until the Lions Week 13 game against the Baltimore Ravens. In his debut, the former Cincinnati Bearcat had 11 carries for 51 yards and his first NFL touchdown. Fast forward to Sunday’s game in Cincinnati. The Lions were facing 3rd and short. This is something they’ve struggled with all season, converting only seven of their 18 previous attempts. Not this time, as quarterback Matthew Stafford pitched the ball to Green with ease. And the rookie runner got the first down. Green would go on to help the Lions convert on a crucial 4th and 1, and score the go-ahead touchdown later in the drive. Unfortunately, the Lions couldn’t hold onto that lead – but we already know how that turned out so there’s no need to revisit those gruesome details. Whether general manager Bob Quinn and the L:ions’ front office select a running back in this year’s draft – which I’m assuming they will – Green should still be an important asset to Detroit’s offense. The 24 year-old chimes in at 6’0, 220 pounds. Green’s a strong back that can lower his shoulders and can power himself past multiple defenders at once, making him perfect for those 3rd and short conversion opportunities. As well as being an excellent goal line rusher. Tion ran for well over 700 yards in each of his final two seasons at Cincinnati, averaging 4.75 yards per carry. That is exactly what the Lions need from him and as he continues to learn his way around the league he will only get better. Much like defensive end Kerry Hyder during the 2016 season, Green seemingly came out of nowhere while barely making the team. They both quickly became a fan favorite for having such an immediate impact. With running back Ameer Abdullah‘s future with the Lions uncertain and veteran back Theo Riddick clearly being used more as a receiver out of the backfield, Green could find himself playing a major role in Detroit’s offense next season. And with the right coaching (Josh McDaniels?) Tion could thrive. If I would have told you at the beginning of the season that Tion Green, the running back from Cincinnati who signed with the Lions as an undrafted free-agent, someone whom barely made the team would have more hype surrounding him than Ameer Abdullah or Theo Riddick by the end of the season; fans would have looked at me like I was crazy. But now, the Tion-hype train is ready for take-off. All aboard!

Yuri Drozdov, handler of Soviet undercover spies during Cold War, dies at 91 June 26, 2017 by Joseph Fitsanakis General Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, who held senior positions in the Soviet KGB for 35 years, and handled a global network of Soviet undercover officers from 1979 until 1991, has died at the age of 91. Drozdov was born in Minsk, Soviet Belarus, in 1925. His father, Ivan Dmitrievich Drozdov, was an officer in the tsarist army who sided with the communists in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. After serving in World War II, Yuri Drozdov joined the KGB in 1956. Following his training, he was appointed liaison officer between the KGB and East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi. His knowledge of East German intelligence affairs prompted his involvement in the famous 1962 spy-swap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets surrendered the American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been captured in May 1960, when the U-2 spy plane he was piloting was shot down over Soviet airspace. In return, they received Rudolf Abel (real name Vilyam Fisher) a Soviet undercover spy who was captured in New York in 1957, posing as an American citizen. From 1964 until 1968, Drozdov was stationed in Beijing, China, where he served as the KGB rezident, effectively the agency’s chief of station. He returned to Moscow and in 1975 was posted under diplomatic cover in the United States, where he commanded the KGB’s station in New York until 1979. Upon his return to the USSR, Drozdov was promoted to chief of the KGB’s Directorate S, which handled the agency’s worldwide network of so-called illegals —intelligence officers serving abroad without official cover or formal connection to the Soviet Union. Shortly after his return to Moscow, Drozdov also headed Operation STORM-333, a daring attack on the presidential palace in Afghanistan, during which Soviet special forces killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and essentially fired the opening shots of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war. The experience prompted Drozdov to recommend to his superiors the establishment of a new KGB special-forces unit. It was created in 1981 under the name Vympel (Pennant) and headed by Drozdov himself. He commanded several Vympel missions in and out of the USSR before resigning from the KGB in 1991. Little is known about the specifics of Drozdov’s death. It is believed that he died on June 21, surrounded by his family. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor agency of the KGB, issued a brief statement commemorating Drozdov’s service. It was followed by a statement issued by the office of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which praised Drozdov as “a legendary spy, outstanding professional […], incredible person and true patriot”. ► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 June 2017 | Permalink Advertisements

And now here’s my recap and review of the 5th disc from this classic Softcore TV series. Once again produced by Alain Siritzky and this is directed by David Cove with Mark Evan Schwartz listed as screenwriter. The theme of this disc, as evidenced by the title, is dreams. The alien crew doesn’t dream, and so Emmanuelle decides to teach them about dreams, and how you can explore sexual fantasies in them. So while she sleeps on a special table in the spaceship, the Haffron (Paul Michael Robinson) and the crew gather around her and use their special head-band devices to telepathically monitor her dreams, and that’s what we see acted out on screen. First, Emmanuelle dreams of going to some big castle, and settles into her room. Raymond (Reginald Chevalier) and Cara (Debra K. Beatty) are already there when she arrives, and then Pierre (Brad Nick’ell) and Tascha (Tiendra Demian) show up. Then two other female crewmembers, Jay (Lori Morrissey) and Gee (Holly Hollywood aka Stacey Mobley), arrive. And when Emmanuelle hears a noise in the room next to hers, she looks in and sees Theo (Timothy Di Pri) and a woman (I dind’t catch her character’s name) naked on the bed. Later that night she looks out her window and see Raymond and Cara having sex in an outdoor hot tub. That’s our first full sex scene of the disc, about 9 minutes into it, and it’s pretty hot (again notable for being an interracial sex scene, which is rare in softcore), and also give the real Raymond and Cara some idea up on the ship. In a flashback we get a replay of a sex scene from A Lesson In Love where Emmanuelle had sex in a dark room with a man (Carl Ferro), but we can’t see much. Then Emmanuelle takes a shower, and we’re treated to lingering close-ups of Krista’s nude body. Meanwhile, Emmanuelle has a crystal ball that she found somewhere, and while she’s in the shower a male genie (Andre Lemay) appears out of it. He introduces himself to Emmanuelle, and she names him Gene. That night there’s a big banquette at the castle, with all the couples from earlier eating at the table. And Emmanuelle inadvertently makes a wish that results in everyone getting naked and having sex on the table (Pierre and Tascha, Raymond and Cara, Jay and Gee, Theo and that woman ) while she and Gene watch. It’s an interesting scene, but it’s hard to concentrate on any one couple as the camera pans around the table. Later, Gene tells Emmanuelle of his very first “master” centuries ago in the Middle East. A man named Kareem who has a harem filled with multiple wives, the youngest and one who loves him the most is Zanzi (played by Krista). All he seems to do is lay around in his fancy tent while his other wives (played by the various women who are from the alien crew) massage him or some of them do a sexy dance for him and strip. There are 3 different scenes, including one in a bath, where he is in bed with all of the other wives at once. For some reason, we’re lead to believe that Zanzi in considered the ugly duckling of the wives (which is hard to believe when you see Krista in her cleavage-bearing outfit), the wives make fun of her and Kareem under-appreciates her. We get a scene where one of the wives (I don’t know which actress it is) gets naked an masturbates while Tasha secretly watches her. That’s where Gene reveals himself to her and offers to grant her deepest wish, which is to be to have Kareem to himself. When Zanzi tries to join in with Kareem and the other wives, she gets frustrated and wishes that all the other wives would go away and tries to have sex with Kareem one on one, but he’s not satisfied being with just one woman, so it doesn’t go well. Then we get another hot scene of Raymond and Cara having sex on the spaceship, after getting turned on from watching Emmanuelle’s dreams. The finale dream sequence has Emmanuelle as herself, back in the middle east, meeting a mysterious man that is supposed to be her “dream lover,” who turns out to be Haffron, and they have sex in one of the tents. It’s a very hot scene. The Emmanuelle finally wakes up, and the crew disperses, leaving her alone with Haffron, and they kiss. Not as much Krista as previous volumes, but what we got here was fantastic. Another great disc. FIVE STARS Emmanuelle in Space – The Complete Collection

giffgaff claims to be “the network run by you”, so perhaps it shouldn’t be quite so surprised when the online community objects to what was a mobile phone company suddenly deciding it’s a bank. The “run by you” bit means that the company worries a lot about what customers say in the forums. And what the “owners” are saying is that they don’t like it. One contributor says “giffgaff [are] selling their soul”, while others are questioning how the model where “owners” get commission on getting others to sign up for a giffgaff phone will translate to siging up for a giffgaff loan. giffgaff did originally propose a “payback” scheme, but this was shouted down and the plans to do that now seem to have been nixed. The mechanism by which the loan works is that it’s through a company called RateSetter, which co-ordinates peer-to-peer lending. In its FAQ, giffgaff says: Is giffgaff money a niche product within the financial sector?: The financial services market is still dominated by the big banks, but there have been new entrants. The supermarkets have launched banks to compete and the growth of peer-to-peer lending has provided an alternative opportunity for investors to gain better returns and lower borrowing rates. giffgaff believes that by working with RateSetter to promote a fairer, more transparent way of borrowing that we can help grow this sector of the market. At the moment, it is fair to say that it is a niche sector, but one that is growing fast.” Which hints at ambitions to be a big lender. The scheme allows people over 21 to borrow sums of between £750 and £7,500 for up to five years. There are light credit checks and the rate depends on the person doing the borrowing. It’s grown out of a system of loans for buying a handset. giffgaff will allow customers to take out a loan, using RateSetter to buy the handset with the mobile deal being SIM only. Despite the forum malcontents, a spokesperson for giffgaff told El Reg that the move into moneylending followed consultation both online and offline, adding that giffgaff was “all about the individual”. Of course, giffgaff isn’t truly run by you: it’s 100 per cent owned by O2, which for the moment is owned by Telefonica. It remains to be seen what Three will do with giffgaff when it acquires O2. RateSetter and giffgaff are clearly well matched to one another. One has a capital too many and one has a capital too few. giffgaff money is due to launch in a couple of weeks. ®

Image caption Microsoft claims it would cost it $4bn a year if it met all of Motorola's licensing demands Microsoft has suffered a setback in a patent row over technologies used by its Xbox 360 games console. A judge at the US International Trade Commission has ruled that the firm infringed four patents owned by Motorola Mobility . The full commission will review the judgement in August. If the final ruling goes against Microsoft and it does not settle, Motorola could theoretically force it to halt imports of the Xbox to the US. The claims relate to technologies involved in the H.264 video compression standard and wi-fi connectivity. Licensing fees This is just one of several cases involving about 50 intellectual properties that the smartphone maker says Microsoft should have licensed. Microsoft has said that if it met all of Motorola's demands it would face an annual bill of $4bn (£2.5bn). Motorola - which is in the process of being taken over by Google - disputes the figure. A spokesman for Motorola said: "Microsoft continues to infringe Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio, and we remain confident in our position." However, Microsoft signalled it planned to fight on, saying: "We remain confident the commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft's favour." 'Essential' innovations Patent consultant Florian Mueller, who advises Microsoft, noted on his blog that three of the four disputed patents involved Frand-type technologies . These are inventions recognised as being essential to an industry standard. In other words, Microsoft could not offer wi-fi or the ability to play H.264 videos without using them. Such patents must be offered under "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms". At the start of April, the European Commission said that it had launched two investigations into whether Motorola's efforts to enforce its Frand-type innovations amounted to "an abuse of a dominant market position". German ban The next significant ruling involving the two firms is due on 2 May from a court in Mannheim, Germany. It will decide whether Motorola should be allowed to order a ban on the distribution of Windows 7, Windows Media Payer and the Xbox console in the country because of the H.264 patents dispute. Microsoft has already moved its European software distribution centre from Germany to the Netherlands to minimise potential disruption. However, a US court has ruled that Motorola must not enforce such a ban until a Washington-based judge considers evidence about the company's Frand-related behaviour. A hearing is scheduled for 7 May.

It was planned as the most daring operation undertaken by the IDF in recent years — exceptional in courage and complexity. The mission: take captive the head of Hamas’s military wing, Ahmed al-Jabari, in the heart of the Gaza Strip, and bring him back to Israel as a bargaining chip for Gilad Shalit’s release. Details of the Entebbe-style raid of the 21st century are being published here for the first time. One can only imagine the stories generations of fighters from special units would have grown up on had it succeeded. But the soldiers — men from an elite unit who were sent into position and were ready to carry out the capture of Jabari in Gaza — ultimately returned empty-handed. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up From the moment the operation received approval in late 2008, the defense establishment kicked intelligence gathering on Jabari into high gear. They quickly identified a weak spot, a routine: the man would often come back from a visit with one of his two wives, then travel across the Gaza Strip in a way that would allow an IDF team to ambush him. He also made a habit of not driving in a secure convoy, and preferred moving about in a private car with just one or two bodyguards. More information collected by military intelligence and by the Shin Bet paved the way for the operation. The fighters began to train. On the designated day, “D,” the commander of the unit, oversaw the operation at a location not far from Gaza, while another commander took up a position in the field. Jabari was expected to arrive at the location and encounter a well-planned ambush, carried out under cover of darkness. According to sources involved in planning the operation, “the likelihood that he would have been taken alive was high. We have the necessary equipment to have ensured his survival of the ambush, and if we would have wanted, we could have taken out the bodyguards.” After a long wait, the troops received the green light and started making their way into Gaza for the operation — a daring raid, directed at the heart of the Islamist group that was holding Shalit hostage, a reassertion of IDF potency designed to attain the leverage to secure the soldier’s release. But at the last minute they received an order to turn back. Their disappointment was palpable. But the mission had only been delayed, not aborted. Several days later, the forces again received the go-ahead and again set out for the ambush in early evening. Meanwhile, Israeli top brass convened at the Shin Bet headquarters in Tel Aviv, to monitor the operation. Those present included Yoav Galant, then-head of the IDF’s Southern Command and the commander running the operation; G., head of the Shin Bet’s southern command; representatives of the executive branch of the Shin Bet; Nimrod Sheffer, director of the IAF headquarters; and A., the deputy commander of the unit carrying out the operation. Behind a glass window sat then-defense minister Ehud Barak, IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and head of the Shin Bet Yuval Diskin. Hours passed until the forces on the ground took up their positions. It was approximately 9 pm. In retrospect, Jabari’s fate was sealed on that night in 2008, though he could not have known it. Had he been taken hostage, he would not have been assassinated in November 2012 at the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense and it’s possible he would have been released in an exchange deal for Gilad Shalit. (The captured IDF soldier was finally released in a prisoner exchange in October 2011, after five years in Hamas captivity. The deal was partly negotiated by Jabari, who was part of the Hamas group that handed Shalit over to the Egyptians when the deal was implemented.) At first, that night, things proceeded as planned. Jabari did not exhibit unusual behavior. Galant gave the order for the operation to begin. In just a few moments, Jabari was supposed to have arrived on the road where the forces were waiting. The tension in Tel Aviv was profound. The defense minister and the chief of staff moved into the main command room. The car containing Jabari was expected to make a turn in the direction of the fighters in position, just as it had a few days earlier. This was supposed to trigger the operation. But the vehicle, departing from Jabari’s routine, proceeded in a different direction. The brass in Tel Aviv watched with immense disappointment as the car drove further and further away from the ambush. D. and his men were ordered to pull back and make their way home — without Terrorist No.1. The full story of the operation will be published on Friday.

Florida Republican Rep. Allen West's Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy declared victory - again - in the tight-locked House race today after the St. Lucie County canvassing board missed its noon deadline to certify recount results, according to the Palm Beach Post. Florida law states that if the deadline to certify final results to the state Division of Elections passes, the unofficial certified results stand. Those counts, submitted last Sunday, show Murphy ahead by 0.58 percent, just above the 0.5 percent spread that would trigger an automatic recount. Murphy has already declared victory once, and is in Washington, D.C., for freshman orientation. In a prepared statement shortly after noon, his campaign manager Anthony Kusich said: "It is beyond time to put this campaign behind us and put the interests of the people on the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches first." West's campaign, though, is calling for an emergency hearing over "concerns" raised during the recount process, including 900 votes it says were cast in precinct 93, where there are only seven voters registered. "As usual, Murphy's people are full of garbage," West's campaign manager Tim Edson told the Post. "This is something the secretary of state and governor will have to sort out." One day earlier, Edson had said he was encouraged by the efficiency of the recount, which began at 9:40 a.m. Saturday and went until 10 p.m. The process resumed Sunday at 8 a.m. Canvassing board member Tod Lowery said Sunday the board still had to review write-in and other questionable ballots from eight days before early voting ended. The canvassing board agreed to recount ballots cast during the last three days of early voting after discovering some of the county's election machines had been unable to read some electronic memory cartridges. But when the elections office admitted to double-counting some ballots and ignoring others on Nov. 6, West, among a mass of legal complaints filed following Murphy's initial declaration of victory, moved that the board recount all votes cast during early voting.

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin zoomed past $11,000 (£8,185.5) to hit a record high for the sixth day in a row on Wednesday after gaining more than $1,000 in just 12 hours, stoking concerns that a rapidly swelling bubble could be set to burst in spectacular fashion. After soaring more than 1,000 percent since the start of the year, bitcoin rose as much as 15 percent on Wednesday, but by mid-afternoon in New York, the virtual currency was trading at $9,500, down 3.7 percent on the day on Luxembourg-based Bitstamp BTC=BTSP, one of the largest and most liquid cryptocurrency exchanges. “As many seasoned traders know all too well, anything that rockets higher, tends to fall down faster when the time comes, and the time will come,” James Hughes, chief market analyst at FX broker AxiTrader, said. Bitcoin topped $10,000 for the first time in early Asia trading, before surging above $11,000 less than 12 hours later to reach $11,395. Bitcoin’s rapid ascent has led to countless warnings that it has reached bubble territory. But the warnings have had little effect, with dozens of new crypto-hedge funds entering the market and retail investors piling in. (For a graphic on Bitcoin price rockets, click reut.rs/2zPekGm) London-based Blockchain.info, one of the biggest global bitcoin wallet-providers, told Reuters on Wednesday that it had added a record number of new users on Tuesday, with more than 100,000 customers signing up, taking the total number to more than 19 million. The evidence suggests that few of the users are buying bitcoin to use it as a means of exchange, but are speculating to increase their capital. “What’s happening right now has nothing to do with bitcoin’s functionality as a currency – this is pure mania that’s taken hold,” said Garrick Hileman, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Hileman, who last week gave a lecture to the Bank of England on the risks of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, also flagged the risk of the whole market collapsing entirely. “There’s always the possibility that some fundamental cryptographic flaw that we can’t solve craters the whole space, or that regulators unite and decide this represents systemic risk and actually could trigger the next financial crisis,” he said. “EXIT RAMPS” Created in 2008, bitcoin uses encryption and a blockchain database that enables the fast and anonymous transfer of funds outside of a conventional centralised payment system. It has far outstripped gains seen in any traditional asset classes or currencies this year. Its rise accelerated in recent months as exchanges such as the CME Group Inc (CME.O) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange announced plans to offer futures contracts for the cryptocurrency. On Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the matter said Nasdaq Inc (NDAQ.O) plans to launch a futures contract based on bitcoin in 2018. Sceptics say it is a classic speculative bubble with no relation to real financial market activity or the economy - most famously JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon, who labelled it a “fraud”. But even Dimon and others who say bitcoin represents a bubble - now the consensus view among mainstream investors - do not deny its price rise could still have further to go. “It’s got all the shapings of your tulip bubble chart (but) that tells you nothing about where that price line could go depending on the number of people who wish to own it,” Standard Life’s head of investment strategy, Andrew Milligan, said on Wednesday. “Who is to say it doesn’t reach $100,000?” In some emerging markets, bitcoin had hit well over $10,000 previously. In South Korean exchanges, too, bitcoin was already close to $11,000 or higher early this week. On Zimbabwe’s local exchange golix.com bitcoin touched a new high of $18,500 on Wednesday before retreating to $18,000. The fact that bitcoin now provides “exit ramps” from national currencies that were becoming easier to use, Hileman said, could exacerbate any future financial crisis. Coordinated regulatory action might therefore be necessary in order to stave off an “economic calamity”, he said. Despite its mushrooming value, however, Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe said on Wednesday bitcoin was not big enough to pose a risk to the global economy. FILE PHOTO: Bitcoin (virtual currency) coins placed on Dollar banknotes, next to computer keyboard, are seen in this illustration picture, November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley said the Fed is in the early stages of considering “what it would mean” to offer digital currencies sometime in the future and whether it may be necessary as an alternative to cash. Mike Novogratz, a former macro hedge fund manager at Fortress Investment Group, said in a Reuters Investment Summit this month that mainstream institutional investors were about six to eight months from adopting bitcoin.

Previous Next I had gone to a lot of trouble to build my first phase of an army, all individuals with reasonably respectable backgrounds and some degree of know-how. It had required planning, subverting the gangs of a small city, subverting Fray’s plans, and then weeks and months of acclimatizing the students to life beyond the academy. Months more work still remained to do. “I can’t believe they lost,” I said. “Surrendered,” Jessie said. “I’m so disappointed,” I said. I surveyed the situation. The area we’d left our people in had seen some sparse gunfire and some fires that had already petered out. We were in the process of creeping up on a row of apartments where our guys’ carriages were still parked outside, only half of the bags still mounted on them. “Against a tenth their number,” I said. “There’s no evidence of that,” Jessie said. “There’s no telling what their numbers are.” Our guys were inside and we could only see glimpses. Their guys were mostly inside, with a few standing guard. Helen draped over Jessie, who was helping her to walk. Helen wasn’t lifting her head, and our improvised medical care had her wrapped up awkwardly in several places, but she was an oddity, a creature that only a very select few could really work on. That was what made me worry. Halfway across the city, her brother was hunched over, only his shoulders and part of his back visible over the skyline. Now and then he moved, producing a horrendous crashing sound. “I wonder if he’s having fun,” I asked. Helen smiled through the curtain of blood-stained hair that covered her face, moving her head to try and look up at her brother. She couldn’t seem to see him with the way she slouched forward and then let her head droop, conserving energy. Her resilience in the face of multiple gunshots was giving me a newfound respect for what her brother must be like. “Does he enjoy things? Does he have good days? Imagine the Lambs with him in tow. There’s Evette, there’s Jessie, then you’ve got Ashton, Gordon, Helen, Lillian, and-” “You’re leaving yourself out? And including me as a girl?” “Just imagining hypotheticals. So you’ve got the core group, and the dice fell down differently and so there’s no Sylvester, maybe throw Hubris in there from an earlier point of view, because I like the idea that the real Evette would come up with something like that as part of her problem solving mindset, and so Gordon gets Hubris as a puppy that grows with him. Because I really think he took to that dog and other-Gordon deserves to have him for longer.” “That’s a nice thought, Sy,” Jessie said. Helen nodded. “And then you just stick Neph in the group. Subtlety out the window. Gordon’s got Hubris and sends him to go attack the bad guy. Nope! Neph strikes, attacking with his sleeping dragon.” “And the nice glowy what-if is ruined,” Jessie said. “They could totally have a rivalry, even. Because Gordon would need to have one with someone to be happy and healthy.” “Okay, Sy,” Jessie said. “You’re getting off track.” “It makes for interesting thoughts on which lines the group breaks on. Is it the unconventional thinkers, with the Ibbot siblings and Evette on one side, and the rational, serious types with Gordon, Ashton, Jessie and Lillian-” Jessie covered my mouth with her hand. “You’re always a little fuzzy around the edges when you come back from the brink, Sy,” she said. “Mmph,” I said. Then I gestured. Lies. “It’s true,” she said. “You get a little bit wobbly. Minor blood loss and exhaustion might be helping to keep you wobbly. But those are our people in there. We made pledges to them.” I nodded, Jessie’s hand clamped against my lower face. “Of the last forty-five times we’ve been in a situation like this, me asking you to be serious, with good reason to be serious, you’ve only listened half the time. It’s actually very close to fifty percent, which… really says a lot. Are you actually going to be serious?” I stuck my tongue out, and as slowly as I was able, I licked the palm of the hand that was clamped over my mouth. I did get the faint break in composure I was looking for. A flash, too brief for my battered senses to even fully assess before they were gone, then a glance away, as if she was disappointed in herself for giving me that. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, her hand dropping away. “It was either that, or I was going to gesture something like ‘big sleep dragon’.” “We don’t really have a gesture for dragon. Lizard-beast?” I gestured. Man. Meat. Her composure broke for real. She was so caught off guard that she snorted a little. She pushed her glasses up to cover her face with her hands. “It sounds quiet,” I said, getting serious. “No sound from inside, except maybe the patter of talking. We’ll know more as we get close. The gunfire was brief, it really does look like a surrender, like you said. What can see through windows suggests that they’re calm, not agitated.” “We should still focus,” Jessie said. “I don’t know about you, blushing and thinking about Helen’s brother’s pendulum, but it’s an established fact that I can think about multiple things at once and it’s usually pretty good thinking.” “Yeah? Then regale us with your brilliant idea, sir.” “I don’t have the slightest of clues how to tackle this.” “Why am I not surprised?” “This is your turn to step up, say you know the building layout and we’ve got this.” “In a strange city, with no prior experience?” “That’s where you say that you recognize the building design, it’s by so-and-so an architect, he builds things certain ways, and so we know there’s going to be an access point here and here and there.” “I don’t have anything. But I’m going to read up on architects, if I get a chance. There can only be so many tall building designers.” Helen reached out, waving a hand in front of us. Her hands moved, and I could see the concerted effort she was making to get shaking fingers into specific shapes. The more effort she put in, the more her fingers seemed to shake, until they locked up. She remained like that for a long moment, hands in claws, head bowed and face covered by hair, before I reached out to take her hands. Her head moved, resting so it lay sideways on Jessie’s shoulder. “You want to say something?” I asked. Helen nodded, her head still sideways. The phantom Helen, intact, stepped to the fore, Fray’s arms around her shoulders, a possessive embrace. Think like Helen thinks. I can finish the sentences of any of the Lambs. The other Lambs have changed some, but I can figure her out like this, can’t I? Her hand pulled free of mine, and as if it were heavy, she lifted it, indicating a direction. As if answering, her brother tore up the next part of the street. I could hear the distant avalanche of falling construction as he let it all settle. “Okay,” I said. She indicated the building that Cynthia’s soldiers and our rebels were gathered in. “Right.” Then, with uncooperative hands, she reached for the side of her skirt. There was a pocket hidden among pleats, and a small weight in the pocket. My mind skipped along possibilities. Both Mary and Helen often kept some money in the same leather fold that had the badge we’d been given ages ago, that bore the Radham crest and the short message and signature that gave us a degree of access. Had given. The intact Helen held up the badge, indicating the emblem. “Radham,” I said. Helen nodded. I then eyed the other Helen, who beat bloody Helen in touching her throat. “Buildings and cities are lifeforms. They need air, water, food of a sort, they need a spine.” Helen was nodding with as much energy as I’d seen from her since she got shot. “The building has its own veins and arteries, airways. You want to use the airways?” Helen nodded. “I’ll have you know that those airways are almost always half-filled with dust, they have nails sticking through everywhere, and half of them have ecosystems to keep them clear of rodents and pests.” “But it’s a way of accessing them,” Jessie said. Helen made a clumsy gesture. “And Helen thinks it’ll be a healthier, more robust system, because it’s a taller building,” I said. “I’m halfway convinced that you’re just making this nonsense up and saying Helen said it because I trust her sincerity more than I trust yours,” Jessie said. I made my best ‘innocent’ face. Jessie brushed at my face with her hand. “Don’t do that. Put that away. It’s creepy.” I smiled and looked up at the building. It was tall, it wasn’t especially pretty, and it didn’t look like it did a fantastic job of being utilitarian either. “Our kids deserve some sacrifice, huh?” I asked. “They gave up their old lives,” Jessie said. “They deserve more than just some.” “How long do you think we have to wait until the next shift comes to relieve the guys standing outside?” I asked. “I couldn’t begin to guess,” Jessie said. “Guess,” I said. “And come on. We want to be ready when they do.” “It’s already been a while, but it wouldn’t be too trivial a length of time. I’d have to guess ten minutes. Fifteen at most.” “I bet it’s one,” I said. “Want to bet who’s more right?” We crossed the street from a point they couldn’t easily see us, and then we made our way closer to the building. I mentally counted the seconds, and gestured clearly as the time limit hit. I was off by twenty seconds. We spotted the soldiers guarding the side door of the apartment building, and the relief guard stepped out to greet them as we took stock of their number. I’d figured a minute because I had seen soldiers checking their watches with increasing frequency, because they weren’t lighting up new cigarettes, and because they were increasingly antsy, as if they were only feeling the cold now that there was a very short time before they could go inside. Three soldiers to a door. Their job was less to shoot and more to keep watch and make sufficient noise to alert the rest if trouble came up. That posed us the task of going through them to get inside. “You should wait here,” I told Helen. She shook her head. “I know you aren’t going to. But you should,” I told her. She made her hands into claws, scratching them in the general direction of the soldiers. I wondered if that was perhaps a little overly optimistic. She barely had it in her to stand straight, let alone fight. Three was doable, in a specific set of circumstances. We needed the drop on them, we needed them to be unarmed, or we needed them to be out of earshot of any reinforcements. Preferably two of the three. “Helen,” I said. “Can you give me a cat noise?” She barely moved, but my version of Helen gave me a theatrical-quality unimpressed look. “Fine. Can you give me a dying cat noise?” I asked. “Those are the best ones.” Helen opened her mouth, and she managed to produce a sound that resembled an old cat in a screw press; it was tortured, ragged, and yowly. I motioned for her to stop, and I listened, waiting. As predicted, the soldiers commented on the sound. They were concerned, they didn’t want to leave their post, but a sound like that bore investigating. I wanted to draw them out, to create a window where they could be ambushed or where we could slip past. Then I heard one of them say it. “Get some of the others from inside.” I sighed. This wouldn’t be easy. ☙ All in all, it had taken us far too long to find a chink in the defenses, prodding and testing the waters at three different entry points. At the last one, the side door at the opposite end of the building to the one we had tried first, we ended up waiting until one of them was distracted before making our move. When one had stepped off to the side to take a leak, we got the attention of the remaining two. One had stepped inside, and Jessie and I had each taken one of the other two before the three of us slipped inside, just ahead of the incoming group of reinforcements. They were careful, organized, and they had patrols throughout the ground floor of the building. But Jessie had enough of a sense of how these places were designed that she’d been able to lead us to the utility closet with access to the access door. The access door featured a hatch in the floor that would lead down to whatever beast in the cellar was providing the voltaic power to keep the building lit, probably. The hatch in the ceiling led to the air ducts, which kept heat and airflow available in the various large apartments. There were few enough doors that I suspected that one apartment had nearly the same footprint as any small, one-level house. Valentina was talking. The student council vice president, she was good at talking, at the emotional appeal, the marketing end of things. It sounded like she and her former superior on the student council disagreed on something important. Davis sounded as heated as I’d ever heard him as he responded, “Is this how we’re supposed to forge a path ahead, now? We abandon anything that doesn’t show the slightest sign of working out?” “Yes,” Valentina said. “Yes, absolutely yes. What do you expect, Davis? Sylvester and Jessie are brilliant, but they were never people I expected to be working with in five or ten years. This is a stepping stone. Just like time in the Academy was.” “You see us with them in five years?” “Maybe! Listen, Davis- no, Davis, listen to me, don’t turn your back. Listen. The seas are stormy out there. We’re individual ships without a port to call home. If our current employers aren’t up for keeping us fed, sheltered, safe, and giving us an opportunity to grow and learn, then we go someplace with someone who can.” “That’s disingenuous. You’re arguing to your audience, not me.” “Explain,” the Treasurer cut in. “She buried the appeal to safety in there. All of you are feeling pretty darn unsafe right now. That’s alright, that’s natural. But what we’re doing, going rebel, it was never going to be safe. Now that’s finally hitting home, and I’ll be first to admit it’s lousy, but this was the deal with the devil I and every single one of you happened to sign. We knew this day would come. Anyone who pretended different was lying to themselves.” “I have heard Sylvester admit a half dozen times that he doesn’t expect to live another two or three years. The deal with the devil was that we would make ourselves available to Sylvester and Jessie so long as they made themselves useful enough to deserve us. It was always going to be transient.” “Can I break your confidence?” Davis asked. “About?” There was a pause. I began to crawl further along the wooden ventilation shaft, feeling my way to avoid the nails and carcasses. The pause, I realized, was Valentina and Davis having a brief whispered conversation. “Enough of that,” I heard a man say. “It wasn’t meat to be in confidence,” Valentina said, at normal speaking volume. “It was a private conversation, I wanted to be sure,” Davis said. “You told me you fell in love with Sedge and what it represented. That you felt happy. Our bosses provided that. That’s worth something. It’s worth us not turning around and immediately jumping ship.” “They have guns. I don’t want to get shot at, I don’t want anyone that I’ve gotten to know to get shot at. I fell in love with Sedge because of the people who occupied it, because of the freedom it represented. I’m grateful to our employers for giving us that venue and giving us some direction, but what made Sedge Sedge wasn’t that. We did it. Collectively.” “You’re pulling a ‘queen and all her subjects’ on me.” “What’s this?” another student asked. “Appealing to loyalties of the crowd,” the Treasurer said. “Ah.” It looked like our students were defecting, or enough were defecting that it was impacting how the enemy was handling them. Cynthia’s soldiers had to have seen us enter the city. They had adjusted and moved their forces, and moved against our people as we were getting sorted out. But the forces here were now holding position, which meant they expected company to arrive. “A gun to my head counts for a lot. I don’t know about you,” Valentina said. “But if they’re willing to give us work and shelter and do what Sylvester and Jessie were willing to, I’m willing to accept the gun as a motivator and do what I might be willing to do otherwise.” “That rebel group that’s sitting in the other room is ninety-nine percent male. Beattle, by virtue of association with all-girl’s schools, has a disproportionate fifty-fifty balance. Do the math, Valentina. They won’t necessarily want you for your brains.” “That can be taken two ways, Davis. Both are unflattering.” “Hold up,” the Treasurer said, talking over Davis’s response. “Stop.” “I phrased that poorly,” Davis said. “You did,” Valentina said. “Why don’t we give someone else a chance to raise their voices?” The discussion continued, with Mabel taking the floor. I moved on, with Jessie and Helen following behind. I could guess how most of the conversation would unfold, who would go where, and how things might flow from that point. The surrender hadn’t been enticing enough. The prospect of recruiting several hundred students had been. I wasn’t sure who had fought for it or against it, but they had made the offer and now all bets were off. Valentina and Davis were debating things with students as an audience. But they weren’t the voices I wanted or needed to listen to. The real danger was the rebel group that inhabited the building. They were the ones who were holding our people hostage. The trick was to navigate the vents until we found a point where we could overhear the rebels. It made for a lot of crawling through ducts, two fingers on one of my hands in bad shape, my shoulder protesting at my being bent over. I’d offered Helen a chance to sit out, and she hadn’t. I could most certainly do my share while she was struggling. We found a spot where acoustics brought noise into the vents, a crossroads between multiple vents, with the next best thing to an open space in the middle of the chosen sector. A ladder extending up was especially useful, because it provided headroom. Helen, Jessie and I sat there, Jessie in the middle. Helen clung to her and draped over her, and Jessie turned away from Helen to fixate on my shoulder, undoing sodden bandages. I called out, using those same acoustics to speak out to this entire part of the building. “Cynthia is dead or dying. The woman crawls desperately through the drains, and the giant is tearing up the street as fast or faster than she can move. She will make a mistake. She will get tired. Your leader will die, if she isn’t dead already.” All chatter had died down. Someone in the enemy ranks shouted out, “Where are you?” I was tempted to give a joke answer, but then Jessie pre-emptively elbowed me. I elbowed her back. “Cynthia is your lowest priority,” I spoke. “There’s a group of your people due east of here. They sent you ahead, or you reported to them. Franz led that particular group.” I let the words hang. There was more shouting and there were more attempts to provoke a direct response from me. Some even called out for me to show myself. That could come later, if they were especially uncooperative. “Franz is dead,” I announced. I paused, to give that reality some gravity. “The others… paralyzed. Eyes lost from sockets. It was messy and wholly deserved. I focused on disabling them. Smoke inhalation will have helped. The building is made of treated wood, so it wasn’t burning well, last we saw. There are two places you could be, and they aren’t here.” There were more shouts, more threats. There were several gunshots, aimed at the ceiling. From our vantage point, we could see down the length of most of the ducts. None of the shots seemed to penetrate the ducts themselves. They could come in after us, was the big threat, but that was a tricky proposition for all involved. “I’ve told you what I did to the others. That was for hurting a friend of mine. Use your imagination to figure out what I’ll do to you if you kill anyone important to me.” I heard more gunshots, and the timing was such that I was pretty sure that it was a response to my threat. Jessie pointed, however, and I could see the faint light that was coming into one of the long ducts near us, a faint shaft of light spearing up. Shooting at us, not at the kids. It was too difficult, with what went into sturdy buildings like this one. I could hear the frustration in the words they exchanged, even if they had been closer or louder so I could make sense of it. “Cynthia is desperate, a giant on her heels, and she’s resorted to crawling through ice cold water in the drains. Franz’s group burns. Every second counts. You can go if you let us slip the noose. “Never forgive,” I heard a voice. One of Cynthia’s diehards. “Then try forgetting, not forgiving. This whole embarrassing rebel-on-rebel episode has to stop.” There were more responses, more shouts, many vulgar. I could sense the change in tone though. I could hear the conversation between groups. “Killing me gets you small fame and a small bounty,” I said. “Then because you chose this, you chose to tie my hands and force me to act, you’re left leaderless. No Franz, no Cynthia.” It was, in a way, a turning of tables. They had been exploiting much this situation with our own rebels. All that said and done, the best thing to do was to be quiet. Opposing discussions continued and intermingled in a way that mirrored the debates I’d heard between Davis and Valentina. They started talking about the people who should go, if anyone went. Following that, the if disappeared, they started talking about more people going. I closed my eyes, my role done, and rested my head Jessie’s shoulder, my hand on her leg. We gave them time, and they used it to make their decision. They’d known something was wrong, I suspected. The communication and coordination was too great. When I emerged, I found the area empty. They’d left our people alone and vacated the area. A mutual truce. They were soldiers, but they were soldiers of a stripe that needed someone to follow. Threatening the loss of Cynthia gave them pause. Taking Franz would take away more security. With the first and second in command out of the picture, there wasn’t much to be said and done. The congregation of Beattle rebels emerged from the rooms they had been sequestered in. I met Valentina’s eyes, and she looked away. “It was good,” I told her. “Good bluff.” “That was a bluff?” Mabel asked. It wasn’t a bluff, but I wasn’t about to say it. If she was going to stick around after making a vehement case against going, I needed to give her the chance to save face. She smiled, and it wasn’t a sure smile, and I smiled back, with roughly the same confidence. Something would have to be done longer-term. Previous Next

How does a poet represent two distinctly different cultures in their work? How did James Berry interpret his experience and those of other Jamaican’s that migrated to England in the late 1940’s into his writing? James Berry was born in Jamaica in 1924, but moved to England during the wave of immigration from the West Indies led by the Empire Windrush. From a young age Berry had an interest in language, and showed an aptitude for spoken word and through writing soon realised he could explore the world from different perspectives. He became part of a new generation of post-colonial poets who drew inspiration from their country of birth in addition to British culture. This album focuses on a selection of poems from his collection titled Windrush songs. This material forms part of The Open University course A230 Reading and studying literature.

Enjoy an exclusive stream of Wisdom In Chains‘ new album, The God Rhythm, available in full below the fold in advance of the official street date of June 16th, 2015. The members of this Pennsylvania-based powerhouse are nothing short of hardcore heroes to a legion of loyal fans and friends, having built a rock-solid reputation through years of consistently devastating releases and riotous live performances alongside many of the genre’s mainstays. Blow The Scene has had the pleasure of catching up with Wisdom In Chains on many occasions, everything from stacked Philly shows to the mighty This Is Hardcore Fest, which the band is scheduled to hit again this July 23rd-26th in Philadelphia, PA. With The God Rhythm, Wisdom in Chains has upped the ante on previous efforts, offering a smoldering concoction of oi-laced hardcore punk. The God Rhythm was recorded by Len Carmichael at Trax East and Carmichael Sound, with the vocals recorded at Mountainside Studios by Rich Rescigno. LP and merch pre-orders for The God Rhythm are now available at Fast Break! Records, and all pre-orders will ship the week of June 1st so fans get their hands on the gear ahead of the new June 16th street date. Catch Wisdom in Chains Live 6/27/2015 Club Reverb – Reading, PA * record release show 7/23/2015 The Electric Factory – Philadelphia, PA @ This Is Hardcore 8/05-08/2015 Fortress Josefov, CZ @ Brutal Assault Top photo by Aga Hairesis