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Sometimes, a bra can look too small when it fits well, because the strip of fabric/elastic under the top of the lace is too tight across the top of the breast. European bras, in particular are nearly infamous for this. If you have firm breast tissue, your breasts will fight against the elastic and shape the bra. Not all of us are that lucky. Soft tissue molds to the shape of the bra, so the elastic pulls down over the top of the breast. If the bra is not a full coverage style, it will not sit against the breastbone, but actually against the breast tissue, causing the breasts to bulge out of the top of the bra and give the appearance of a bra that is too small. This seam is put in place to pull the top of the cup closer to the chest and prevent the bust from spilling out. That’s probably just fine for someone who is predominantly full on bottom, but someone with a more even or full on top shape will run into this problem pretty consistently in European bras, so I’m going to talk about how to fix that. Tools You’ll Need: 1 seam ripper & 1 pair of scissors. Seriously, that’s it. Difficulty Level: Easy. Seriously, a well behaved toddler could do it. The bra I will be performing this alteration on is the Samanta Hana (A122 cut) in 70I. Samanta is a Polish brand, and I will refrain from discussing the finer points of the style in detail, as the brand has already been broken down quite well by Miss Underpinnings, but I will say for the purpose of this post that I would refer to this as a mesh balconette. As you can see above, the bra looks too small on close up. I’m clearly bulging out the top of the cup. If you look closely at the top center, you can even see my bust trying to escape through the gaps in the lace. What may not be obvious in photographs is that there is actually plenty of room in this cup for me, but the top of the cup is being pulled down very tightly across the top of my breast, causing me to quadboob even though the bra actually fits. This is the problem: This seam is slightly elastic, and so makes the top of the cup too closed off for me. It fits beautifully everywhere else. Now, you’re going to work from the inside of the bra. Grab your seam ripper. We need to remove the stitches from inside of the elastic. You want to work from the elastic side to avoid potentially tearing any mesh or lace with your seam ripper. You can stab a piece of elastic to your hearts content and it doesn’t really matter, but stab a bit of lace and you might poke a hole in your bra. As you start to remove these stitches, you’ll see the elastic start to come away from the bra, like so: Keep going. You have to remove all of them. At which point, you’ll have something that looks like this: Now, up to this point, we’re doing fine. We haven’t cut anything. We are still at a place where this alteration can be reversed by sewing the elastic back down, but we won’t be for long. This alteration always has the potential to open the cup too much for you (You can correct this by sewing a dart near the wire, but that’s another alteration.), so you definitely want to try the bra on again at this point to make sure the alteration is going to work for you before you move onto the next step, at which point the alteration can not be reversed. As you can see, this is probably going to work out well for me. There’s a tiny bit of gaping, but that’s mostly due to the position I have to put my arm in to take the photo and the elastic still being connected on both ends. You’re done with the seam ripper now. Grab the scissors. We need to cut the elastic out on both sides beside the wire. Cut as close to the wire as possible. That’s it. The alteration is complete. There is no need to finish the elastic or add no fray. You’re welcome to if you’d like, but if you cut it as close to the wire as you can, the bra won’t give you any issues with fraying or loose threads, and you won’t really even notice that there was ever a seam there in the first place. This is what you’ve removed – you don’t need them, so unless you have some other use planned for them, just throw them out. And this is what your bra will look like when it’s done: The Final Fit Test: This bra now fits me pretty darn well. It will gape slightly when I move my arms certain ways, but not enough to make me fall out, not enough to cause fit issues, and not enough to show under clothing. This alteration has made this bra the best fit of my current rotation. If I hadn’t altered it, I would only be able to wear it under loose t-shirts and tunics, and so it would probably spend most of its time in the back of the lingerie drawer. If this is a problem you find you run into consistently, this is an alteration you definitely want to consider. The entire alteration can be completed in less than 30 minutes, and there is absolutely no sewing required. Advertisements

B. Sherwood Lollar et al. A scientist takes a sample of water from a mine deep underground in Ontario, Canada. The water turned out to be 2.6 billion years old, the oldest known water on Earth. By Charles Q. Choi LiveScience A pocket of water some 2.6 billion years old — the most ancient pocket of water known by far, older even than the dawn of multicellular life — has now been discovered in a mine 2 miles below the Earth's surface. The finding, announced in the May 16 issue of the journal Nature, raises the tantalizing possibility that ancient life might be found deep underground not only within Earth, but in similar oases that may exist on Mars, the scientists who studied the water said. Geoscientist Barbara Sherwood Lollar at the University of Toronto and her colleagues have investigated deep mines across the world since the 1980s. Water can flow into fractures in rocks and become isolated deep in the crust for many years, serving as a time capsule of what their environments were like at the time they were sealed off. In gold mines in South Africa 1.7 miles (2.8 kilometers) deep, the scientists previously discovered microbes could survive in pockets of waterisolated for tens of millions of years. These reservoirs were many times saltier than seawater, "and had chemistry in many ways similar to hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean, full of dissolved hydrogen and other chemicals capable of supporting life," Sherwood Lollar said. [Strangest Places Where Life Is Found on Earth] To see what other ancient pockets of water might exist, Sherwood Lollar and her colleagues investigated copper and zinc mines near the city of Timmins in Ontario, Canada. "As the prices of copper, zinc and gold have gone up, mines now go deeper, which has helped our search for long-isolated reservoirs of water hidden underground," Sherwood Lollar said. 'Mind-blowing' find "Sometimes we went down in cages — they're not called elevators underground — that dropped us to the levels we wanted to go," Sherwood Lollar told OurAmazingPlanet. "Other times, we went down ramp mines, which have curling spiral roadways, so we could actually drive all the way down." The scientists analyzed water they found 2 miles (2.4 km) deep. They focused on noble gases such as helium, neon, argon and xenon. Past studies analyzing bubbles of air trapped within ancient rocks found that these rare gases could occur in distinct ratios linked with certain eras of Earth's history. As such, by analyzing the ratios of noble gases seen in this water, the researchers could deduce the age of the water. The scientists discovered the fluids were trapped in the rocks between 1.5 billion and 2.64 billion years ago. "It was absolutely mind-blowing," Sherwood Lollar said. "These weren't tens of millions of years old like we might have expected, or even hundreds of millions of years old. They were billions of years old." The site was formed by geological activity similar to that seen in hydrothermal vents. "We walked along what used to be ocean floor 2.7 billion years ago," Sherwood Lollar said. "You could still see some of the same pillow lava structures now seen on the bottom of the ocean." Signs of life? This ancient water poured out of the boreholes the team drilled in the mine at the rate of nearly a half-gallon (2 liters) per minute. It remains uncertain precisely how large this reservoir of water is. "This is an extremely important question and one that we want to pursue in our future work," Sherwood Lollar said. "We also want to see if there are habitable reservoirs of similar age around the world." Sherwood Lollar emphasized they have not yet found any signs of life in the water from Timmins. "We're working on that right now," she said. "It'd be fascinating to us if we did, since it'd push back the frontiers of how long life could survive in isolation." And the implications of such a finding would extend beyond the extremes of life on Earth. "Finding life in this energy-rich water is especially exciting if one thinks of Mars, where there might be water of similar age and mineralogy under the surface," Sherwood Lollar said. If any life once arose on Mars billions of years ago as it did on Earth, "then it is likely in the subsurface," Sherwood Lollar said. "If we find the water in Timmins can support life, maybe the same might hold true for Mars as well." Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+.Original article at LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Aug. 28, 2016, 12:14 PM GMT / Updated Aug. 28, 2016, 1:37 PM GMT By The Associated Press AMATRICE, Italy — Bulldozers and other heavy equipment rolled through Italy's quake-devastated town of Amatrice on Sunday, pulling down dangerously overhanging ledges and clearing rubble as investigators tried to figure out if negligence in enforcing building codes added to the quake's high death toll. Investigations will focus on a number of structures, including an elementary school in Amatrice that crumbled when the quake hit Wednesday. The school was renovated in 2012 to resist earthquakes at a cost of 700,000 euros ($785,000). Questions also surround a bell tower in Accumoli that collapsed, killing a family of four sleeping in a neighboring house — including a baby of 8 months and a 7-year-old boy. That bell tower also had been recently restored with special funds allocated after Italy's last major earthquake, in L'Aquila in 2009. Firefighters gather near the damaged Sant'Agostino church in Amatrice on Sunday. ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP - Getty Images The quake early Wednesday killed 290 people and injured hundreds as it flattened three medieval towns in central Italy. Giuseppe Saieva, the prosecutor in the regional capital of Rieti, said the high human death toll "cannot only be considered the work of fate." He said for now, police investigators remained focused on recovery efforts but once that emergency phase has passed, they will concentrate on the investigations. Italy's state museums, meanwhile, embarked on a fundraising campaign, donating their proceeds Sunday to relief and reconstruction efforts in the earthquake zone. Wednesday's 6.2 magnitude quake destroyed not only private homes but also churches and other centuries-old cultural treasures. The idea is to use art for art — harnessing the nation's rich artistic heritage to help recover and restore other objects of beauty in the hard-hit towns. Related: Tears Flow as Italy Holds Mass Funeral for Quake Victims Overnight was relatively calm, the first since the quake struck without strong aftershocks. In all, the region has seen 1,820 aftershocks, according to the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. On Saturday, mourners prayed, hugged, wept and even applauded as coffins carrying earthquake victims passed by at a state funeral in the town of Ascoli Piceno. The caskets of 35 people had been brought to a community gym — one of the few structures in the area still intact. The local bishop, Giovanni D'Ercole, celebrated Mass beneath a crucifix he had retrieved from one of the damaged churches. Relatives mourn over a coffin of one of the earthquake victims prior to the funeral service Saturday. Gregorio Borgia / AP Emotions that had been dammed up for days broke in a crescendo of grief. One young man wept over a little girl's white coffin. Many mourners were recovering from injuries themselves, some wrapped in bandages. As all of Italy observed a day of national mourning, Bishop D'Ercole urged residents to rebuild their communities. "Don't be afraid to cry out your suffering — I have seen a lot of this — but please do not lose courage," D'Ercole said. "Only together can we rebuild our houses and our churches."

The American coal industry is terminally ill — and that should serve as a warning to investors who might be tempted to put their money into other fossil fuels. That’s the gist of a new report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which warns that oil and natural gas could also wind up becoming stranded assets — property that under other scenarios could be worth a lot of money, but not in the real situation we face as the climate warms and the market shifts in response. Coal use has been decoupled from America’s economic growth for a number of reasons, the report finds. The biggest is the availability of other cheap sources of energy — since 2008, the abundance of shale gas from America’s fracking boom has played a big role in driving that trend, but so have renewable energies like solar and wind. Increasingly strict regulations on air pollution and the energy sector from the Obama administration’s EPA have also played a role. “Cheap gas has knocked coal off its feet, and the need to improve air quality and ever-lower renewables costs has kept coal down for the count,” said Luke Sussams, co-author of the report and a Carbon Tracker senior researcher. He and his colleagues posit that investors in oil, and eventually even natural gas, could see a similar trend. The Carbon Tracker Initiative was one of the first groups to promote the idea of a “carbon bubble,” in which, as the world confronts global warming, fossil fuel investors would see the value of their assets collapse. Companies stand to lose billions, the think tank said. This week’s Carbon Tracker report comes on the heels of a separate report from CoalSwarm and the Sierra Club that looks at international coal use. That picture, too, does not look good for fossil fuel investors. From “Boom and Bust: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline”: In India, projects shelved or cancelled since 2012 outnumber project completions by six to one, and new construction initiations are at a near-standstill. In both Europe and the U.S., the coal fleet is shrinking, with retirements outnumbering new plants. China faces a looming glut in coal-fired generating capacity, with plant utilization rates at a 35-year low. The report also finds that more than two dozen U.S. coal companies have gone bankrupt in the past three years, and those that haven’t lost more than 80 percent of their share value. The coal industry, of course, disputes these gloomy assessments. Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the U.S., recently predicted that U.S. coal usage would increase 10 million to 30 million tons by 2017, and global demand could grow by 500 million metric tons during the same period. The company and its coal-loving friends are also making every effort to challenge forthcoming EPA regulations that could hasten coal’s collapse. The company is paying well-respected constitutional scholar and former Obama mentor Laurence Tribe to argue that the administration’s Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional. And coal’s allies in Congress are trying to undermine the EPA plan with, among other things, an amendment to a big budget bill that would allow states to opt out. If the amendment passes, it will likely face a presidential veto, spurring yet another budget standoff. But, as the Carbon Tracker report shows, the EPA’s efforts are just one factor among many that have weakened coal’s prospects. Ultimately, the industry is up against a global energy economy in which coal, with its huge environmental and health costs, increasingly just doesn’t make sense. And no amount of lobbying Congress or arguing in court will slow that trend.

Here are some Larry King statistics: • Larry King has had a talk show on CNN for 73 years now. • Larry King owns 4700 pairs of suspenders. • Larry King doesn’t look good in any of them. • Larry King has been married 56 times. • Larry King’s real name is Saul Rabinowitz. • Larry King is 206 years old. • Larry King has fielded thousands of phone calls from wackos over the years. I am one of those wackos. *** One night in the mid-80s, I was sitting on my ratty couch in my one-bedroom apartment in Peoria, Illinois. I had smoked a lot of pot and drank a bunch of beer and Larry King was on the television with the sound muted. My stereo was blaring “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who. I remember feeling great pity for poor Pete Townshend. Someone had fooled him and I wondered who would do such a mean thing to that big-beaked guitarist. While pondering this thought, I absent-mindedly glanced at my 14-inch Panasonic color television set with real plastic wood-grain on the sides, and I saw that Larry’s guest for the evening was Jay Leno. Now this was way before Leno became the host of The Tonight Show. This is back when he used to do bits on the David Letterman’s show when Letterman was on NBC. I thought he was pretty funny back then and so I turned the Who off and turned up the volume. Larry King was speaking. “Our guest tonight is funnyman Jay Leno. If you have a question for Jay call the number below,” Larry croaked out in that old-man, froggy voice of his. As I looked at the number at the bottom of the screen, all of the sudden I had a desperate urge to call the show, so I scribbled it on a well-worn one-dollar bill that I yanked from my pocket, as a tampon commercial came on the air. Brenda Vaccaro’s deep mannish voice extolled the wonders of Playtex tampons, and I tried to think of a good question for Jay Leno. Marijuana can cause unusual focus in obsessive moments, and this was one of those moments. I wanted to ask Jay Leno a question and I wanted it to be funny. I wanted to make Jay and Larry laugh. I had to make Jay and Larry laugh. This was more important than who fooled Pete Townshend. This was more important than Brenda Vaccaro. This, I daresay, was more important than a tampon. I had to think hard and I had to think funny. I was furiously pacing the room back and forth, like a tiger in a zoo cage that’s two sizes too small. Then it hit me like 12 tons of mashed potatoes. I had the question and the question was thus: “I’d like to ask Jay what his favorite sandwich is.” Ha! Now that’s what I call comedy. Everybody else would be asking about his comedy, his background, his influences and then I would roll in and hit him with, “What’s your favorite sandwich, Jay?” Ha! It was kind of Andy Kaufmanesque. And I loved Andy Kaufman. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. The line started ringing and my heart was racing wildly. On the fourth ring, it was picked up and a woman with a monotone voice said, “Larry King show, do you have a question for Jay Leno?” She sounded almost robotic. “Yeah, I’ve got a question,” I answered the robot operator enthusiastically. “I want to ask Jay what his favorite sandwich is.” This was greeted by silence. Dead silence. For a nanosecond, I thought I had been accidentally disconnected. “Hello?” I queried to the silence. “Hi,” the robotic woman replied. Great! We were still connected. She continued in her monotone voice, “Ummm, why do you want to ask Jay Leno what his favorite sandwich is?” “Because it’s hilarious!” I told her. “This is really going to crack Larry and Jay up,” I assured her, and then I shut up I didn’t want to oversell the bit. “It will?” she asked in her robotic monotone. “Oh hell yes,” I said hoping that throwing in a minor curse word would bond us like kids hatching a plan to egg mean old Mr. Wilson’s house. “Can I put you on hold for a few seconds?” she asked. “Of course you can,” I responded in relaxing voice, trying to soothe her weary robot mind so she would see the genius of this question. Well, it worked. Within 15 seconds, she was back on the line. “Okay, you’ll be caller number three, turn the volume down on your TV. When you hear Larry talking on your phone, get ready to ask your question just like you said it to me.” I was on. I WAS ON! I was the third caller. I was the king of the fucking world. Larry and Jay would love my question. They were going to crack up. We would all laugh together. They would laugh with me, not at me. Maybe Jay would talk about it on the Letterman show the next week. Maybe David Letterman would want to have me on as a guest. Maybe I would become a star out of this. I was just about to become the man who asked Jay Leno what his favorite sandwich was and soon the world would love me. Strangers would want to embrace me and take me into their homes and feed me pizza. About five minutes later, as I came to this realization, all of a sudden I heard Larry King’s voice in my phone. “We have a caller from Peoria, Illinois. Do you have a question for Jay Leno?” Oh, boy, did I have a question. And I asked it. “Yeah, Larry,” I said, and then paused for comedic effect. “I’d like to ask Jay what his favorite sandwich is.” Baboom. It was asked. I waited for heaven to part and the angels start singing and Jay and Larry to acknowledge my genius. I looked at the Panasonic and Larry was grimacing. Jay Leno looked like he had a sour stomach. Did they hear my question? Did I somehow speak in a foreign tongue? After an uneasy few seconds, Jay Leno spoke. “Well, I guess I’d say a Philly cheese-steak sandwich. Gee, Larry, what an inquisitive audience you have,” he said his voice dripping with sarcasm and contempt. “What’s the next caller going to ask me: What’s my favorite color?” Larry was scowling. All of the sudden my world was spinning in the wrong direction. My stomach twisted into a pretzel knot as Larry uttered the following words: “Next caller.” Next caller. Fuck. Then my phone went dead. When the dial tone came on, I finally surrendered it to the base. They didn’t get it. Nobody laughed. Jay Leno thought I was stupid. Larry King hated me. David Letterman was never going to call me. And the poor robotic phone screener, she probably got handed her walking papers 10 seconds after the call hit the airwaves. Fuck! I turned the TV off and put the Who back on. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Pete Townshend would’ve gotten it. He would’ve thought it was funny. And Keith Moon? Shit, he would’ve busted a gut over it. “What’s your favorite sandwich?” That’s funny fucking stuff. I’m cracking myself up right now as I type the words. Fuck Larry King. Fuck Jay Leno. A lot of people never got Lenny Bruce, either. Shit, they locked that son of a bitch up in jail over some of his bits. Nobody knows the trouble me and Lenny have seen. Jay and Larry didn’t get my humor, but I knew as I passed out after drinking six more beers and cursing the lives of Jay Leno and Larry King, that Lenny was looking down at me and he was laughing. With me. Not at me. The next day I woke up hungover and still a little high from the pot. I took a shower, took a bunch of aspirin, washed them down with a can of Diet Coke and wearily drove downtown to the printing factory where I worked as a four-color film stripper. I parked, made my way into the room where I worked with around nine other people, swiped my timecard and started making my way back to the light table where I sat. On my way there, I heard one of my coworkers, Dick Maurer, talking. “I was watching Larry King last night and he had Jay Leno on,” Dick explained to about five co-workers gathered around his light table. “All of a sudden some guy from Peoria gets on, and this asshole asks Leno what his favorite sandwich is!” “Hey, that asshole was me!” I shouted out to Maurer and his compatriots. “Holy shit! I thought I recognized that voice last night and it was you,” Maurer said, breaking out into laughter. “Why the hell did you call in and ask Jay Leno what his favorite sandwich is?” “Because it’s funny. You know, everybody else is asking questions about his career, his background, his family and then I hit him with, ‘What’s your favorite sandwich, Jay!’ It’s on the level of an Andy Kaufman bit,” I explained to the group. They all just stared blankly at me. “It was funny!” I shouted out, and stomped my left foot on the concrete floor for emphasis. No one said anything. They all slowly went to their light tables and went to work. I went to mine, muttering “fucking assholes” under my breath. For over 10 years, I never talked about that night of the Larry King show. By then, I was living in New York City, working nights and publishing my own humor magazine, fishwrap. It was 1996 and Ellen and Tracie, the two women who ran the company that distributed my magazine, were in town. We were having lunch at an outdoor cafe on the Upper West Side. About three bites into my grilled chicken sandwich, Tracie’s eyes got wide and she said, “Oh, my God, look who’s walking towards us.” I turned around and saw a tall, stunning fortysomething blonde strutting our way on the sidewalk. Next to her, all slouched over, carrying all kinds of bags and a huge scowl coloring his face, was none other than Larry King. I started laughing. “What’s so funny?” Ellen asked. “Years ago,” I explained, “Larry King had Jay Leno on his show and I called in and got on air,” still laughing at the memory. “Oh, yeah,” Ellen inquired, “What did you ask him?” “I asked him,” I said, looking at the both of them while smiling widely and holding my hands up in the air for emphasis: “ ‘What’s your favorite sandwich?’” Ellen looked at me like I was nuts. Tracie just said six words: “Why did you ask him that?” I decided right then and there that I’d never tell that fucking story again. This essay originally appeared in Marty Wombacher's book The Boy Who Would Be a Firetruck.

Chapter Text The world turned upside down on a Tuesday. Thomas had been sitting at his computer, looking at pictures of other peoples’ cats. There was a brief moment of unaccustomed weightlessness, followed by a lurching feeling as he started falling. He hit the ceiling half a second later, denting the plaster and hurting his head. He lay there for a moment, rubbing his scalp, which was bleeding profusely in the way that minor head wounds sometimes did. Thomas let out a groan and moved slowly. When he looked up, he saw his cat, Bartleby, staring at him. From the floor. “Help?” asked Thomas. His cat meowed. He placed a hand on the ceiling, where he’d cracked the plaster. Bits of it fell past him, to where his cat was sitting. Bartleby, having seen enough, sauntered out of the room. Thomas stayed where he was. He touched the wound on his head, causing his fingers to come away bloody. He stared at them for a moment. There was enough blood for it to drip down; it fell toward the ceiling for a few brief fractions of a second, then reversed direction and fell toward the floor. Thomas looked up at the plaster and blood next to his computer chair, which had fallen over. Everything in the room was sitting just where it had been. Thomas did what any savvy young person would do in a time like this; he pulled out his smartphone to consult the internet. Unfortunately, when he pulled it from his pocket, he suddenly realized that it was trying to get away with him, fleeing toward the floor. If he’d been prepared, it would have been no work at all to keep it in his grasp, but while he had decades of practice keeping a phone from falling from his grasp, he had no experience whatsoever with keeping a phone from falling up. The whole concept of gravity had been sundered into two pieces: the objective (everything in the world) and subjective (just Thomas). This would have been a pleasant epiphany had it not immediately followed his phone crashing into the ground. He winced when he saw the shattered screen. The internet wasn’t going to be any help. It was unlikely that the internet would have been any help anyway, since Thomas was certain that he would have heard about it if anyone had ever had their personal gravity reversed; there wouldn't be any readily available FAQs or decades-old forum threads where the issue was hammered out. Still, he would have been able to go online to ask some pointed questions, which might have led him somewhere. He rose on slow, unsteady feet, until he was standing on the ceiling. When he reached (subjective, Thomas oriented) up, he could just barely touch the phone. The screen was cracked, but there was no way of telling whether it was still working. Even going up to the balls of his feet, he only really succeeded in pushing the phone around. He was finally able to grab it by jumping for it, which brought another dusting of plaster past him as he landed back on the ceiling. Thomas looked down. He was on the ceiling of the second floor of his house. The actual floors were built for the strain of people walking on them, but he wasn’t so sure that the same could be said for the ceilings. He had no idea what was beneath the plaster. There were probably some joists and insulation, then shingles beyond that. If he fell through the ceiling, what would happen? Would he continue falling into the sky? The thought was sobering enough that he moved away from the windows. The phone wasn’t working, even after pulling the battery out then putting it back in to reset it. With the idea that this might actually be a dangerous situation to be in, Thomas reached up to grab his keyboard; luckily, it was a wireless one. While he was standing, he wasn’t in too bad of a position to look at his computer screen, though he had to hold into the keyboard with one hand so it wouldn't go falling to the floor, which meant typing with a single hand. It took a few moments to get his computer to flip the output of his monitor (Ctrl+Alt+F1), but then he was in business, with an open conduit to the internet and the wealth of problem-solving it contained. It was all anyone was talking about. That was a relief -- it was proof that Thomas wasn’t crazy and wasn’t alone -- but it also meant that Thomas was nothing special. There were brief, half-buried thoughts at the back of his mind, that perhaps something strange and unique had happened to him. Maybe he wouldn’t have been Upside-Down Man, but there had been plenty of thoughts percolating, thoughts of money and attention. These all evaporated in the face of the worldwide news. The thing that really brought it home was a video. It looked like a traffic cam, but it was much better quality than that, so Thomas thought perhaps it was one of those static cameras that TV stations cut to during commercial breaks. It showed a crowded pedestrian crosswalk somewhere in Asia. It was evening in America, which meant that it was early morning in China; people were going to work. One moment the mass of people were crossing the street, the next they were accelerating toward the sky. It was almost exactly what the Rapture was supposed to look like, at least in the movies and television shows that Thomas had seen. There was nothing peaceful about it though; these people were falling, their mouths open in screams that the camera's microphone wasn’t close enough to pick up. It only took a small slice of time for the crosswalks to be devoid of people. That was when Thomas saw the cars; there were people inside them, pressed up against the roofs. A few of the cars started to idle forward, heading towards collisions that their drivers weren't in control enough to stop. That was where the video cut out. Thomas stared at the computer screen in mute horror. Then he rewound the video and did the math. He advanced it frame-by-frame, making best-guess measurements for height. Because there were so many people, it was easy to get references. He charted the seeming ascent of the people to confirm their acceleration away from the Earth. In the first second, they’d gone ten meters. In the second second, they’d gone thirty meters. That meant acceleration approximated ten meters per second per second, which was almost exactly equal to the force of gravity, only working in reverse. The second half of the math was much more grim. Terminal velocity for a human was about two hundred kilometers per hour, which they would reach in about twelve seconds. People started having substantial trouble with oxygen deprivation at eight kilometers above sea level, which the people falling into the sky would reach in about two minutes. From there, the air would get thinner, increasing their speed and hastening their death from asphyxia. All this would have happened within five minutes. While Thomas was rubbing his head and fumbling with his phone, people had been dying. Anyone who had been standing outside when the change happened was almost certainly dead by the time he finally watched the video. It was more than that though. Anyone in a car would have been lifted from their seat, jolted and disoriented even if they were wearing a seat belt. Thomas had felt mildly dizzy after his fall, which must have been from the fluid in his inner ear sloshing around. There would be car crashes, lots of them. Car crashes aside, even if you were stuck in an unmoving car, what would you do? How would you escape to the safety of indoors if you were under threat of falling into the sky? How would people get food? How was anyone who survived this first day supposed to keep on living? Thomas began downloading a local copy of Wikipedia. If the change had happened worldwide, then it was only a matter of time until basic services were interrupted. Men and women at the power plants would have been thrown to the ceiling, which wouldn’t immediately cause the electric grid to shut down, but would impact their ability to correct any problems. That would lead to eventual failure. The same went for water pressure and internet service. While the five minute download of Simple English Wikipedia was going, Thomas began charging his e-reader to full power and moving over likely looking books from Amazon, grabbing everything that looked like it might be relevant. He reached up to grab his laptop from its satchel and began charging that as well. When he had all the transfers going, he moved to the bathroom and turned the water on full blast. If water pressure went, a bathtub full of water would keep him from dying of dehydration. Once all that was finished, Thomas sat on the ceiling of his bedroom and thought about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Physiological needs came first; that meant food, water, air, clothing, and shelter. The bathtub full of water would take care of dehydration for the time being. Assuming that he could get down to the first floor, he could eat something in the kitchen. He made a quick mental note to eat things that were frozen or refrigerated first, in case the loss of electricity was imminent. He would have to take inventory, but he doubted that he had enough food for more than two weeks, and that was with rationing factored in. He had shelter and clothing covered just fine, though his shirt and pants seemed to follow the regular laws of gravity, which meant that they would need some modifications in order to reduce annoyance; his shirt was resting on his armpits rather than his shoulders. He'd have to find some suspenders and garters to keep everything where it was supposed to be. Reducing annoyance was high up the hierarchy of needs though; comfort would have to come later. Thomas began preparing to go looting without any real conscious decision; it simply came to him as a thing that needed doing. Getting downstairs was a challenge, one that mostly involved standing on the second floor ceiling in order to try to find a grip on the first floor ceiling. He’d never really taken note of the fact that the stairs from the first floor to the second floor had a high ceiling, but now it was all too apparent. If he planned to stay in his house, Thomas was going to have to put some upside down stairs there, secured with nails, or at least make an incline of some sort. Once on the first floor, he made his way to the hall closet, where he found one of the things he’d need to make it in this new world; his climbing kit. He and Lillian had gotten into rock climbing together. There was an indoor rock-climbing gym downtown that had cheap prices and an auto-belay system that didn’t really require any sort of knowledge except how to wear a harness and how to clip in a carabiner. That had been the gateway that they’d needed. From there, it wasn’t too big a jump to buying his own harness instead of renting one. The shoes had followed soon after, a pair that he and Lillian had bought together, so that their kit matched. He’d bought the rope and carabiners for outdoor climbing, though they’d only done that two or three times at a few of the local spots. As with most hobbies, Thomas had eventually dropped climbing. He’d considered himself fortunate to have come away from it having only spent a few hundred dollars. There had been other hobbies that had taken him in much more completely, which had eaten thousands of dollars before he’d eventually grown bored. Lillian had kept up with climbing though; that was one of the things that had driven a wedge between them. Climbing had been something they’d done together, a few hours three or four times a week. After Thomas had stopped, it became something that kept them apart for a few hours three or four times a week. It wasn’t too much of a surprise when Lillian said that their relationship had run its course, though it still hurt. The only reason that his climbing gear was in a closet in his home instead of a cubby at the climbing gym was that Lillian had called him up to ask him whether she could use it. Thomas had said yes, because he didn’t want to feel like an ass, but the only explanation for Lillian borrowing a men’s harness was if she was going climbing with an uninitiated man who didn’t have equipment of his own. Thomas had gone down to the gym the next day (careful to go at a time when he knew that Lillian wouldn’t be there) in order to take his climbing gear back. If she called him to ask again, he could simply say that he’d decided to sell it, or that he’d gone outdoor climbing, or some other excuse. They’d had a reasonably amicable breakup, but that was no reason to let Lillian’s new boyfriend have something of his. That small, admittedly petty act was now going to put Thomas in the top percentile of people most likely to survive. He started by stepping into the harness, which needed only a few straps loosened to compensate for the pudge that came with months of a sedentary lifestyle. After that, he threaded the rope through and tied the necessary knots, then tested them, mostly to make sure that he still remembered how to tie them correctly. The next question was where to find the appropriate counterweight. Thomas weighed 190 lbs. He would need to find something that weighed that much just to keep him stuck to the earth. Anything less would just be pulled with him as he fell into the sky, like a teddy bear being pulled from a child’s hand by a helium balloon. Just for the sake of safety, Thomas figured on needing an extra twenty pounds of weight. His other big parameter was movement; the nearest place to stock up on food was a gas station, but that was still three full blocks away. In addition to the problem of getting there, Thomas also needed to consider the problem of trying to get back. There were weights in the basement, but only two adjustable dumbbells that totaled up to a hundred pounds. They were fancy, because you could dial in however much you wanted to exercise with to within five pounds. In this particular situation (one he had never considered when he was buying the dumbbells) Thomas would have been much better off with separate weights that could all be tied together. After looking around his house for a bit, Thomas settled on using the coffee table in the middle of the room as additional weight. It was a huge, ugly thing, but it was also a hundred pounds, which served his purpose. Lifting the coffee table was far easier than he’d expected it to be; all he had to do was reach up, grab it, and then pull down on it using his full weight. It didn’t feel like carrying anything at all; instead, it felt like hanging down from a pull-up bar so that he was only putting a small amount of weight on his feet. He assembled everything in the basement, where the ceiling was much lower. That way he could reach up towards the floor without having to try for extra height. He used the coffee table and the weights together, wrapping his rope around them several times and tying the knots as tight as he could. When he was finished, he pulled himself up and dangled from this contraption, so that his feet were a few inches from the ceiling. He tugged on it in a few different ways, then began swinging himself from side to side in order to do a stress test. If it failed here, he would fall a foot or two to the basement ceiling. The worst that would happen would be that he would bruise his tailbone. If the counterweight system failed out there, he would fall into the sky, where he would die of hypoxia and presumably become a floating corpsicle. Everything held, which meant that it would be safe enough. The only thing keeping him back was the thought that perhaps gravity would take another turn. Before today, his prior probability for the personal gravity of everyone in the world reversing direction was in the thousandths of a thousandth of a percent, but after it had happened once, his prior probability that it would happen again necessarily had to increase by a very large margin. If he knew that gravity was going to go back to normal in the next few days, he would certainly stay in his house instead of venturing out; food and water weren’t going to be an issue in the immediate future. If he knew that gravity was going to stay in its current configuration indefinitely, or at least as long as the next month, he would leave the house as quickly as possible in order to gather enough food to prevent starvation, and ideally gather whatever supplies would be needed to survive into the future, beyond the timescale of months. He could try to split the difference and bide his time. Even though he had no way to gauge the odds of gravity returning back to normal, he knew that if t was the time since the change, then as t increased, the odds that gravity would change back at t+1 decreased. Every passing minute made him marginally more confident that this was simply the new order of the world. So as t increased, the confidence in the necessity of making this perilous journey would also increase. Unfortunately, looting had definitive advantages for the people who moved first. Worse, waiting too long would begin to exhaust Thomas’ supplies, not just in terms of material things like food, but willpower and mental acuity as well. If he stayed at home with not much to do, with the gears turning, would he still have the courage to embark tomorrow? He wore an old biking helmet, which would hopefully protect him in the event of a sudden acceleration towards the ground. In his backpack, one he hadn’t used since college, he put two liters of water, a number of snacks like trail mix and protein bars, a first aid kit from the bathroom, his wallet, and his laptop, which was now full of charge and loaded down with every resource he’d thought to cram it with. Backpacks were unfortunately designed to be assisted by gravity; their straps rested the weight on the shoulders. He had to use carabiners in order to secure it to his climbing harness, but that put the weight right on his legs, which were already carrying the weight of his body in a way that the human musculoskeletal system wasn’t designed for. The last thing he grabbed before setting out were two flashlights, in case it had grown dark by the time he returned. His cat watched these preparations with idle curiosity. Thomas’ inner ear had finally stopped fighting with his visual cortex. In the beginning, the inner ear had been saying that he was right side up when his feet were on the ceiling but his visual cortex had been saying that he was upside down, likely based on decades of training in making just that determination. It was mildly disorienting, but nothing that he hadn’t been able to handle. Now though, the inner ear -- which was much more insistent -- had won out. The houses and trees were stalactites on the roof of an enormous cave so tall that the bottom was invisible. With a deep breath and not too much more time for second guessing, Thomas set out toward the garage. Movement was a matter of lifting up one of the dumbells and swinging it forward, then swinging the other one forward, then reaching up to grab the coffee table and awkwardly rocking it. It was slow, but seemed safe enough. After a few cycles of this, Thomas was out of the house and dangling into the open air. There was nothing to catch him if his counterweights or ropes failed. After debating it for a few moments, he left the door partly open so that Bartleby could escape. There was no sense dooming the cat to death by starvation if Thomas fell into the sky. The trip to the garage took fifteen minutes of awkward movement, where before it had taken a handful of seconds. Extrapolating from that and accounting for increases in efficiency as he got better at it, Thomas still would have taken half a day to get to the gas station, which was the nearest point where there was food to be found in quantity. It was bad enough without the psychological terror of looking at the sky and seeing a quick death by oblivion there. Fortunately, he had a car. Getting into the car was an ordeal. Opening the car door was easy enough from his dangling position, as was lifting the weights in, but the coffee table proved unwieldy. Without it, Thomas would have no way to get out of the car without risking death by falling. He eventually crammed it into the backseat with some difficulty by moving his weight around, but the ropes meant that he wouldn’t be able to fully close his doors. He got in the driver’s seat by flipping himself around, pushing his hands against the ceiling of the car, and then hastily buckling himself in. The average seat belt wasn’t really designed to keep someone from floating up, but it was better than nothing. He clipped himself to his seat belt as well, so that in the event of a crash he would have some redundant mechanisms keeping him stuck to the earth. Driving was a slow, painful process. In fact, everything outside the house seemed to consist of awkward and tedious processes. The car functioned the same as it ever had, but the pedals that controlled the gas and brake were difficult to reach because he had to work against gravity. Blood was pooling in Thomas’ brain from almost the moment he had turned himself upside down, so after he was out of the driveway, he had to turn the car off, turn himself around so he was sitting on the ceiling of the car, and wait to regain some semblance of proper blood flow. This mostly confirmed his initial thought that everyone who had been in a car or truck when the change happened was not long for the world. During that rest, Thomas began thinking in the long-term. Stocking up at the gas station would mean that he could survive for a matter of months. He would be able to set out rain barrels, which would take care of water easily enough by the time his bathtub cache had gone dry. It was early September, which meant that winter would need some thinking about. His house was insulated, but he had to assume that electricity would be a thing of the past when he would need to heat the house. That meant he would either need to move to a warmer climate, with all the problems that driving there would involve, or find a way to make a fire every day in a house that didn’t have a fireplace. Thomas was thinking like a scavenger, but eventually there would be nothing left to scavenge. He would have to learn how to farm, but with all the added effort of clipping weights to himself. He would also have to scavenge weapons from somewhere in order to be able to hunt. But beyond those concerns, was there a life worth living in this new world? A conservative estimate said that maybe 20% of the people in his city were now dead. More would die from wounds they had sustained in those brief, unexpected falls that had marked the change. How many people had broken bones with no hope of emergency services or doctors coming to help? Starvation (and the desperation that came with it) would eventually claim more lives. Everyone that survived would be reduced to subsistence farming. Yet even with these thoughts, Thomas continued on. If there was no life worth living with things the way they were, suicide was as easy as unclipping his harness, but there was no way to chart out the course of the future with the information he had available to him. When he pulled up to the gas station, he was surprised to see people inside. He maneuvered the car as close to the front door as possible, then opened his car door. An older man, who was standing on the ceiling of the gas station next to a rack of postcards, opened the door. “You an idiot?” he asked. “Excuse me?” asked Thomas. “Why in the hell are you out driving?” asked the man. He rubbed his head. “We seen too many fall into the sky. Indoors is the only place that’s safe.” “I needed supplies,” said Thomas. He wasn’t sure why he had thought there wouldn’t be people in the gas station. In his head, he’d matched what was happening to the patterns that the movies always presented of apocalypses. Maybe that was because he’d seen the video of all those people falling to their deaths; it was easy to imagine what had happened as being the Rapture. He’d thought that if he was going to run into anyone, it would be another looter. Yet now that he thought about it for five seconds, of course it made sense. A gas station almost always had at least one person in it. When the flip happened, they would have ended up on the ceiling. In a zombie apocalypse, the gas stations ended up abandoned, because the workers didn’t really have a reason to be there. But here, they wouldn’t have had any ability to leave. “Supplies?” asked the man. He rubbed his head again. “Well, come on in, I guess. How is it out there?” “I didn’t come too far,” said Thomas. “Just three blocks.” A woman was sitting cross-legged on the ceiling with a phone in her lap. She wore a t-shirt with the local college’s name emblazoned on the front. The older man was wearing a button-down shirt with his name on a patch. Thomas mentally labeled them customer and attendant. There were two cars out by the pumps though, which meant there was an extra person not accounted for. “So you’re here to loot us?” asked the woman. “I can pay,” said Thomas. He was about to unzip his backpack when he realized that it would be disgorge its contents onto the floor if he did that. “I can pay,” he repeated lamely. Most of his money was in the form of credit cards, not cash. Both were now of dubious worth. “I don’t blame you for looting,” said the woman. “It’s what I would have done, if I thought I could make it to my car.” She pointed to a silver Toyota next to one of the pumps. “No one is looting anything,” said the attendant. “I don’t know that I can let you just buy things though.” He frowned in thought. “You can have whatever you want,” said the woman, “So long as you help us get out of here.” “Now hold on just a minute,” said the man. He turned to the woman. “You don’t have any claim on what’s in this store.” “What’s the plan then?” asked the woman. “We were stuck here until he showed up. Our options included trying to get into one of the cars or staying here until the power went out and we ran out of food. You were planning on splitting food with me, right?” “I suppose,” the man said slowly. “Well, if you take into account the fact that I would be eating half the food in this place, then if this guy leaves with me, it seems like he should be entitled to some amount of the food as a reward.” “My name’s Thomas,” said Thomas. “Juliette,” said the woman. She held out her hand, which Thomas shook. “Randall,” said the attendant with a nod. “Now I suppose I would split some food, if it came to that, but maybe this whole thing works itself out. Maybe I can explain to my boss that I couldn’t let you starve, but that’s a whole heap different than letting you take off with half the food.” “It won’t just be food,” said Juliette. “We’ll need batteries, rope, flashlights, I saw some patching kits over there, tools we can use, things like that.” “No,” said Randall. He shook his head. “That’s too much. Things you need to survive, that’s one thing, but you’re talking about the long term. You can’t use these resources to hunker down on your own.” “I’m not hunkering down,” said Juliette. “I’m going to launch a rescue mission.” “You’re what?” asked Thomas. “A rescue mission,” replied Juliette. She turned to look at him. “Most people are trapped inside their houses or places of business. Everyone who survived the initial fall into the sky is safe, so long as they stay in one place. But in the long term, we’re going to need to work together if we want to pull through this. Right now, I think our first priority is going to be mobility.” She pointed at the ropes and harness that Thomas was wearing. “I assume you know where we can find more of those?” “There’s a climbing gym downtown,” said Thomas. He felt slightly dazed. Though neither of them had mentioned it, his head was still sticky with blood where he’d hit it on his ceiling. “We’ll go there first,” said Juliette. “Wait, there’s a gym a block from here, maybe we’ll stop there first in order to get some weights. We’ve got to figure out a foolproof method of moving around and weights are going to be part of that.” “I didn’t agree to anything,” said Thomas. “You have some rudimentary understanding of rock climbing,” said Juliette. “I need you. And what are our other options here? Grab as much food for ourselves as we can, hide out until civilization crumbles, then starve to death or be reduced to hunter-gatherers? That’s crap.” Thomas wavered. “I don’t think two people can keep civilization together.” “Of course not,” said Juliette. “Civilization is a process, one that take more than a handful. But the first step is getting mobility, not just for us, but for a small core of people. We need to do it while the communication networks are still up and running. Furthermore, we need to build communication networks that can survive a temporary or even semi-permanent loss of power. Hand-cranked radios, if we can find them. Walkie-talkies, maybe. If I’d had my laptop, I’d be downloading as much information from the internet as possible, survival manuals and schematics for how to build things back up if it comes to that … but before any of that, I need to secure a way out of this gas station. How about it?” Thomas paused. She’d just thrown his plans into disarray. She’d driven a sense of hope into him like a stick stuck into the wheel of a moving bicycle. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll give it a shot.”

Nine hundred years ago an Arab traveler, as he walked through what is today Iraq, observed: “To the right of the road to Mosul is a depression in the earth, black as if it lay under a cloud. It is there that God causes the sources of pitch, great and small, to spurt forth.” (washingtonpost.com, Oct. 21) That pitch was oil, which should be a source of wealth and prosperity to all of Mosul’s and Iraq’s residents. But the craving by U.S. imperialism for control over the ocean of oil in Iraq, which led to the overthrow of the Iraqi government in 2003 and long years of the Pentagon’s occupation of the country, has wreaked terrible death and destruction on the Iraqi people. And nowhere is that suffering more clearly evident than in the city of Mosul. For nearly nine months, 100,000 troops from the Iraqi central government and from the Kurdish region, supported by 5,000 U.S. trainers and special troops and U.S. air power, battled the Islamic State group (IS) that had seized and occupied the city of Mosul since 2014. This “coalition” dropped 29,000 bombs on the city. The second largest city in Iraq, Mosul had a population of 1.8 million in 2003. But the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation took a terrible toll on the city’s residents. And in the battle with IS, some 897,000 people were made homeless, with just 600,000 remaining in the city. (pri.org, July 13) During an eight-year occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British officials maintained their rule by creating and exacerbating religious and ethnic conflicts in the country. When the bulk of U.S. forces left in 2011, the imperialist-supported Iraqi government, and reactionary sectarian militias associated with it, carried out punitive measures against the resistance forces close to the former ruling Ba’ath Party, which were often majority Sunni Muslims. Thus, when IS forces invaded the country in 2013 and took control of Mosul in 2014, Mosul residents hostile to the Baghdad regime at first gave them some support. But over time the fanaticism and brutality of the IS regime caused Mosul residents to drop their support. And as the battle raged for control in the city, the population became hostages of the war between IS and the U.S-supported Iraqi government. Airwars, a group that monitors casualties caused by the anti-IS coalition, estimates that at the least nearly 6,000 civilians were killed in the western Mosul battle between February and June. Some 1,200 were killed by the U.S. bombing. Uncounted thousands of bodies still lie under the rubble. (pri.org, July 13) On March 17, a single 500-pound bomb dropped by a U.S. war plane on Mosul’s al-Jadidia neighborhood killed some 200 civilians. A report by Amnesty International, released a day after Iraqi forces declared victory in Mosul, stated that it had “identified a pattern of attacks by Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led military coalition backing them that violated international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.” The report also accused IS of committing war crimes by deliberately using civilians as human shields. (aljazeera.com, July 11) In the same Aljazeera article, United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein told reporters: “The women, children and men of Mosul have lived through hell on earth, enduring a level of depravity and cruelty that is almost beyond words.” He said that thousands of residents will not be able to go back to the city because of “extensive damage caused during the conflict.” The destruction of Mosul is of concern to neither the tycoons on Wall Street nor the generals at the Pentagon. They only care about the unimpeded flow of oil from the region and profits into their banks. But the terrible suffering caused by their wars and occupations must be recognized by all those who oppose their rule here and abroad. U.S. out of the Middle East!

The world has gone cuckoo for cold brew and let us tell you, we don’t blame them. First a disclaimer: making cold brew is not push-button simple. It takes a long time (12-24 hours, to be exact) and can be a bit of a mess. Which is why we try to make it easy on y’all with Stubbies, growlers, and cans, oh my. But if you’re a DIY-er, big batch cold brew at home is as delicious as the summer day is long. We sell the Filtron Cold Brewer online so we are obviously Filtron fans, but we decided to do a round-up of several options on the market and see how it fares against our home team favorite. For the round-up, we brewed up our House Blend, a great choice for cold brewing, and brewed each method according to the directions in the box. The next day we did a blind taste test to find our favorites. We looked for things like ease of brewing and clean-up, functionality of brewer and most importantly, the resulting flavor and profile of the brewed coffee.

The Jelly Bean (JRO03O) update that popped up on a Verizon Galaxy Nexus last night is now available for download. If you want to flash it though, there are a couple of things you should know. First, you need to make sure your stock G-Nex is running IMM76Q. Second, this is a test build and apparently not the official build that users will see. So if neither of those things bother you, then you should jump all over this. It’s being reported that this JB build contains both a new bootloader and, wait for it, new radios (FF02 CDMA/FG02 LTE). That may make it worth it, right there. Download: Google Link [mirror] Instructions: The easiest way to do this, is to get yourself back to stock IMM76K. That may mean that you will need to flash factory images and wipe everything. From there, install ClockworkMod Recovery, download the IMM76Q file and flash it using “install zip from sd card.” After that, download the new Jelly Bean (JRO03O) file to your phone and flash it in CWM Recovery just like you did with IMM76Q. (This is a fantastic resource.) Also, you could wait until someone turns this into a flashable .zip for any ROM. Update: Radios from the update have been posted here. Via: XDA Cheers El Madhatter, oldblue910, Jason and Manny!

A Google logo is seen at the garage where the company was founded on Google's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California September 26, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam (Reuters) - Google Inc has acquired solar-powered drone maker Titan Aerospace as the Web search giant ramps up plans to deliver wireless Internet access to remote parts of the world. Titan Chief Executive Vern Raburn declined to provide information on the price of the deal, which he said closed on Monday morning. The 20-person company will remain in New Mexico for the foreseeable future, Raburn said, with all employees joining Google. The deal could further Google’s efforts to deliver Internet access to remote regions of the world. Last year Google launched a small network of balloons designed to deliver Internet access over the Southern Hemisphere, dubbed as Project Loon. “Atmospheric satellites could help bring internet access to millions of people, and help solve other problems, including disaster relief and environmental damage like deforestation,” Google said in an emailed statement confirming the Titan acquisition. Google’s acquisition of Titan comes several weeks after rival Facebook Inc announced plans to build solar-powered drones and satellites capable of beaming Internet access to underdeveloped parts of the world. A few weeks before Facebook’s announcement, press reports said that Facebook was in discussions to acquire Titan. Titan is developing a variety of solar-powered “atmospheric satellites,” according to the company’s website, with initial commercial operations slated for 2015. The drones, which fly at an altitude of 65,000 feet and can remain aloft for up to five years and have a 165-foot (50-meter) wingspan, slightly shorter than that of a Boeing 777. News of the acquisition was first reported on Monday by the Wall Street Journal.

A new Pokémon Rumble game will become the first to feature Skylanders style interactive toys, as Nintendo takes a typically cautious approach to NFC technology. We wouldn’t bother catching ‘em all You’d never guess it at the moment but the Wii U GamePad has NFC (near field communication) technology built into it, the same tech that the powers the Portal Of Power from Skylanders. But at the moment not a single game uses it or has even been announced for it – until now. Unfortunately though you could barely get anything less exciting than downloadable game Pokémon Scramble U, the third entry in what is known in the West as the Pokémon Rumble spin-off series. The game was announced last month in Japan and seems to be the same sort of low grade arena-based shooter as 2011’s Super Pokémon Rumble, which we awarded a scathing 2/10 in our review. Advertisement Advertisement For some reason Nintendo keep making the games though (we assume that means they’re popular in Japan, although we’ve seen no evidence for that in the sales chart) and Japanese magazine CoroCoro has revealed that Pokémon Scramble U will have its own range of toys to accompany it. The conceit in the Pokémon Rumble games is that you’re not actually controlling real pokémon but instead little wind-up toy versions of them, hence the odd angular designs. As you can see in the image above that means the physical toys don’t look much like regular pokémon either, so presumably wouldn’t be reused for other games. Only six basic figures and a special character have been announced so far though, which suggests Nintendo are merely testing (or perhaps muddying) the waters. Each toy will cost the equivalent of £1.40, which is considerably cheaper than any Skylanders toy. By placing the Pokémon toy near the GamePad it opens up the character to be used within the game. Given the low price though the figures are unlikely to store any game data, unlike their Skylanders equivalents. Skylanders has been such a success, becoming the second biggest money-maker in gaming, after Activision’s own Call Of Duty, that Disney has overcome its usual distaste for console games and announced its own take on the idea called Disney Infinity. Thoughts? Email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk or leave a comment below

The Pentagon budget will shrink slightly next year for the first time since 1998, the Obama administration said Thurs­day, in an attempt to chip away at the federal deficit while reorienting the armed forces toward Asia. Under the proposal, the administration will reduce the size of the Army and Marine Corps, trim the number of fighter aircraft and ships, and seek congressional approval for another round of military base closures. The administration will instead spend more on unmanned vehicles and Special Operations forces that can be deployed quickly and will not require large, expensive bases. The military will also largely preserve its manpower and weapons systems geared toward the Middle East. The Pentagon said it would ask Congress for $525 billion in 2013, which represents a 1 percent decrease from the current year. While the difference may sound small, it represents a new era of austerity for the Defense Department that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, when the military was still accustomed to huge annual raises after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Pentagon leaders characterized the cuts in solemn tones. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called them a “difficult undertaking.” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added: “Make no mistake, the trade-offs were tough. The choices were complex.” The changes are part of a broader effort by the Pentagon to decrease its projected spending by $487 billion over the next decade in accordance with a deficit-reduction deal President Obama reached with Congress in August. Those cuts could soon swell substantially. If Obama and Congress cannot agree on another package of spending reductions or tax increases by next January, the Pentagon could be forced to slash an extra $600 billion over 10 years. “It basically takes a chain saw to the budget,” said Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many analysts say that the chances of that happening are small, and that Obama and Congress are likely to work out a compromise ahead of time. But even if they do, many believe the Pentagon is in for more pain as lawmakers search for a long-term solution to the nation’s fiscal troubles. “In terms of the overall federal budget, these changes are a rounding error,” Thomas Donnelly, a defense analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said of Obama’s Pentagon budget for next year. Donnelly said the Pentagon’s fiscal future will depend on the outcome of the presidential election in November. “Either it will get worse for the Department of Defense if Obama gets reelected or Newt Gingrich gets elected, or it will get better for the Pentagon if Mitt Romney gets elected.” Aside from the cuts to the Army, which will eventually reduce the number of active-duty soldiers to 490,000 from 547,000, most of the reductions revealed Thursday had been previously announced or involved less costly items. Panetta noted that the Army and the Marine Corps will still be slightly larger than they were in 2001, before the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent war in Iraq. Among the few weapons systems getting the ax are a defense weather satellite, a version of the Global Hawk surveillance drone and a radar with a mouthful of a name: the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. Of the total $259 billion in cuts to projected spending over the next five years, almost one quarter — $60 billion — will come from what the Pentagon obliquely called “efficiencies.” Defense officials said they would save more on “streamlined staff,” better use of “information technology” and “inventory management” but weren’t more specific. Several big-ticket items that had been under scrutiny survived. The Pentagon said it will preserve all versions of its next generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jet, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, although some planned purchases will be delayed. The Air Force will also eliminate six of its 60 tactical air squadrons. Each has from 18 to 24 fighter aircraft, mostly older F-15s or F-16s. The Navy got to keep all 11 of its aircraft carriers, although it will have to retire seven aging cruisers earlier than expected. It will also cut back production of two Littoral Combat Ships and eight Joint High Speed Vessels. Panetta signaled that the Pentagon is willing to tackle a couple of politically sensitive topics: closing military bases and limiting compensation for troops and veterans. He said the Obama administration will ask Congress to establish a new Base Closure and Realignment Commission, which would enforce another round of military base closures nationwide. Congress approved the last round of base closures in 2005. Most lawmakers, however, hate the idea of shuttering bases in their districts. “Make no mistake, the savings we are proposing will impact all 50 states, and many districts across America,” Panetta said. “This will be a test — a test — of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action.” He also said he will ask Congress to approve a separate commission to authorize reductions in retirement benefits, which have accounted for an increasingly steep share of the defense budget. Moreover, he said the Pentagon would limit pay raises for active-duty troops — another idea that is unlikely to win much favor from lawmakers, who consistently award pay hikes larger than those sought by defense officials. Panetta emphasized that any changes to retirement benefits would affect only future recruits, not those currently in the armed forces. He also said the less-generous pay raises would not take effect until 2015. Also declining will be a separate budget dedicated to the cost of fighting the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and certain other overseas operations. Obama is asking Congress for $88 billion for the Afghan war next year, down from $115 billion in the current fiscal year, which included the costs of winding down the war in Iraq. Although the defense budget will decline next year, to $525 billion from this year’s $531 billion, under Obama’s current projections it will inch upward in constant dollars between 1 percent and 2 percent annually thereafter. Some analysts, however, said those projections are far too optimistic and that the Pentagon will be squeezed further. Gordon Adams, a professor of international relations at American University, predicted that if lawmakers are to stabilize federal finances, they will have to agree on about $4 trillion in spending cuts and revenue increases over the next decade. “Defense budgets will come down deeper than the secretary thinks,” said Adams, a former White House official for national security budgets who worked for Panetta in the Clinton administration. “To find those cuts, everything, including defense, will still be on the table.”

On his fourth full day in office, President Trump signed an executive order that was supposed to settle this whole Dakota Access Pipeline thing—no more delays due to protests, no more reconsidering the route because of environmental worries. And for a while, it seemed to work. The protest camps are gone, and the pipe has been pumping oil since March. But Thursday, a federal judge ordered a do-over on the rush-job environmental review Trump ordered back in January. Trump came into office aiming for a blitzkrieg on environmental regulations. He got trench warfare. That's because firing from the other side of no man's land is a nimble alliance of environmental groups that have spent decades preparing for the likes of him. You have probably heard of many of them: the Sierra Club, National Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, and so on. Others are smaller, focused on regional issues—like the Standing Rock Sioux that just won a small victory against the Dakota Access Pipeline. What they all have in common are stubborn, attrition-minded legal teams. Trump's assault is just a more bombastic version of what these lawyers have weathered under past administrations. And if there's any green left in the government by 2020, they'll be the ones responsible. President Trump is famous for, among other things, his love of infrastructure and hatred of regulations. His January 24 executive order didn't actually target the Dakota Access Pipeline specifically. It was a sweeping declaration, meant to fast track every new, large, high priority infrastructure project through environmental review. "The White House's strategy is to deconstruct the administrative state and give favors to the fossil fuel industry," says Pat Gallagher, director of the Sierra Club's environmental law program. So these environmental NGOs are changing tack to adapt. "This is not an abrupt change in our overarching goals," says Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. "This is just a change in footing from offensive to defensive." Obviously, things were different under the Obama administration. Groups like the Western Environmental Law Center often worked with the government to develop policy. For example, the Bureau of Land Management's Methane Waste Prevention Rule. Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, with more than 86 times the warming potential as carbon dioxide, plus a tendency to leak out of oil and gas drilling equipment. A lot of that drilling happens on public lands, managed by the BLM. So starting in 2008, the Western Environmental Law Center led a coalition of environmental groups in an effort to have the BLM force drillers to plug up their leaks. Their efforts paid off in November 2016—a week after Donald Trump's election night victory—when the BLM published a rule that was very close to what the groups had been pushing for. If you happen to be an environmental news junkie, you already know that the past six months have been quite a ride in methane rule land. First came challenges from drill-happy states like Wyoming and Montana, then more challenges from the drilling industry itself. Congressional Republicans tried to rescind the rule in May, but that effort failed in the Senate. The latest twist came just this week, when the Department of Interior (which is the BLM's parent agency) announced it was delaying implementation of the rule. Schlenker-Goodrich says the Western Environmental Law Center plans to sue. Back to defense. So far, some of that defensive action has been relatively easy. "They pulled the plug on a lot of stuff without consideration of requirements they are required to go through to change the rules," says Michael Wall, the NRDC's litigation lead. For example, on inauguration day, Trump's chief of staff ordered all federal government agencies to immediately withdraw any last minute rules made by the Obama administration that hadn't yet been published in the Federal Register. One of these rules had to do with mercury discharges from dentists’ offices. On February 1, the NRDC filed the first environmental lawsuit of the Trump era, charging that the Environmental Protection Agency didn't go through the right procedures before rescinding the rule. Long story short, the NRDC caught them on a technical foul. "This mistake probably reflects an interest by the administration in appearing to get something done without putting in the effort to make sure it was done right," says Wall. Trump's EPA eventually relented, and lo and behold the Federal Register finally published the rule this week. But what the Trump administration's tactics lack in sophistication they make up in volume. His pan-deregulatory agenda has even environmental lawyers who survived George W. Bush's eight years of oil industry coziness on their heels. And that's on top of the usual threats to the environment and public health from various states, local governments, and private industries. So, in addition to litigating, these lawyers maintain intelligence networks to keep track of all the emerging patterns. "We work with grassroots and community groups, or meet with individuals in coffee shops and cafes to learn about local issues," says Schlenker-Goodrich. He says they also maintain requisite ties in Washington, and use things like Freedom of Information Act requests to keep up on the latest machinations within the federal agencies. The Standing Rock Sioux's court victory against the Dakota Access Pipeline is another type of defense. The tribe's case is essentially fighting to uphold the National Environmental Policy Act, a law passed in 1970 that requires federal agencies to review the environmental impacts of any of their activities. The Dakota Access Pipeline passes under Lake Oahe, which is actually a reservoir created by a dam built by the Army Corps of Engineers on the Missouri River. In early December 2016, after their prolonged standoff, the tribe successfully sued the Army Corps to withdraw the pipeline's easement under the lake. The Corps said it would begin looking for alternative routes, "through an Environmental Impact Statement with full public input and analysis." Then came Trump's January 24 executive order. Two weeks later, the Army Corps trashed the environmental review and granted the pipeline's original easement through Lake Oahe. Despite this week's court victory, the Dakota Access Pipeline is still pumping oil. For now, the ruling only requires the Army Corps of Engineers reopen its environmental assessment of the pipeline. Depending on how that turns out, the pipe could get shut down for good. And the outcome could have an even longer reach. "Without environmental review, the $1 trillion infrastructure Trump has promised will be a bulldozer for the environment," says Schlenker-Goodrich. So this is where he, and the other lawyers, will hold the line. Fighting to protect what remains of US environmental protections. Until 2020, or as long as is necessary.

Ethereum’s (ETH) troubled but uncontentious Byzantium is officially here as the cryptocurrency’s fifth hard fork. As creator Vitalik Buterin celebrated with other developers Sunday, Byzantium fought off last-minute bugs and calls for delays to have a stable issuance. The move was notable in its lack of contention, with no significant community arguments resulting from Byzantium’s creation. Similarly, ETH prices remained relatively stable both before and after the fork’s execution, rising around $40 October 13 and maintaining new levels since. This takes ETH towards the upper end of its price spectrum, which this year saw all-time highs of around $410 and a July low of $146. Despite the frenetic growth of investment in Ethereum this year, Byzantium is part of a package of improvements to the protocol that has been in development since 2015. Known as Metropolis, its roadmap currently extends to an unknown date in 2018, when a further hard fork, Constantinople, will activate. “Metropolis is a planned Ethereum development phase that includes two hard forks: Byzantium and Constantinople. Byzantium is occurring at block number 4.37mil. Constantinople does not currently have a release date, but is expected in 2018,” a blog post from late last week confirms.

The most popular article in the leading economics Web archive doesn’t concern tax policy, international trade, or the theory of the firm. It’s about an online fantasy game. During the past year, nearly 16,000 people have downloaded a 40-page economic analysis of EverQuest, Sony’s popular online fantasy world of Norrath. “Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier,” by California State Fullerton economics professor Edward Castronova, is the No. 1 article in the history of the Economics Research Network, an Internet library of tens of thousands of professional journals and research papers in economics. The article, which you can download here, not only outpaces the online works of every Nobel laureate, it is also the fourth-most popular article on the entire Social Science Research Network, which contains more than 75,000 professional articles and abstracts in range of social sciences. For cybergaming naifs—most males over age 30 (me included) and almost all women—virtual worlds are elaborate, multiplayer, role-playing online environments in which each player’s actions can affect many others. At any given moment, 50,000 or more people from more than 120 countries are online at EverQuest, moving their personal “avatars”—wizards, trolls, amazonlike women, and a dozen other types—through the fanciful landscapes of Norrath. These dramas unfold on more than 40 dedicated Sony servers, each accommodating up to 2,000 players interacting with the program and each other. (EverQuest is only one of several popular MMORPGs—”massively multiplayer online role-playing games.” The oldest, Ultima Online, has 225,000 players; and the largest, Lineage, has more than 4 million subscribers, mostly in Korea.) What intrigues Castronova and other economists about EverQuest—beyond the fact that more than 500,000 people pay Sony $13 a month to participate—is that something resembling a nascent economy has emerged in Norrath. Inadvertently, EverQuest has become a virtual experiment in some of the fundamental questions in economics: What are the necessary conditions for markets; how much government does capitalism require; and how do equality and inequality affect economic development? According to Castronova’s account of it, EverQuest has something to gratify economists of all political stripes. For natural-law types, Norrath suggests that the conditions for vibrant markets to develop are pretty minimal. Libertarians can delight that “government,” in the form of rules restricting a player’s activity, is also limited in Norrath. And liberals can take heart that Norrath’s market and society rest on initial conditions of radical equality. The most basic condition for market activity built into EverQuest is that resources in Norrath are limited. In particular, a player chooses his avatar’s initial traits, but a character with the power to heal wounds, for example, will lack agility; and another smart enough to decipher codes will be physically weak. Unlike real life, therefore, everyone in Norrath starts out with roughly equal resources. The second basic condition of self-regulating economic life in this virtual world, as in our own, is that nothing is free. An avatar’s initial assets aren’t enough to make much headway in the game, so players intent on navigating Norrath’s challenges have to work at either developing new skills or earning new assets. The intriguing part is that most MMORPG players expand their assets and abilities not through violence or chicanery, the modus operandi of a typical single-player computer game, but through virtual market transactions. Hundreds of thousands of EverQuest players spend most of their time in Norrath trading or cooperating with other avatars, buying goods from creatures (“bots”) built into the program, or using auction sites inside the game. To facilitate this, EverQuest adopted two other key conditions from real economic life: A currency called “platinum pieces,” or PP, can be earned by completing various tasks, and there are rudimentary rules for buying, selling, and bartering. These few conditions are apparently all it takes to precipitate capitalism in cyberspace. As in a real economy, virtual market conditions change in response to how players behave. For example, shrewd players who know Norrath’s nooks and crannies will purchase goods in a game zone where they’ve become abundant and then sell them in another where they’re in greater demand. The kicker for economists is that these virtual economic relationships have broken into the real U.S. economy. When players found EverQuest’s bartering rules inadequate, they started exchanging the armor, spells, and other Norrathian objects of value at real-world auction sites. These transactions are conducted not in Norrathian PP but in U.S. dollars and then completed between avatars inside the game. (You pay in dollars at a real-world site, then the seller’s avatar gives your avatar the goods in Norrath.) You can even buy another player’s avatar, complete with its accumulated skills and assets. Sony tried to stop all these transactions and persuaded eBay and Yahoo! Auctions to bar them on the grounds that they involve Sony’s intellectual property. But this kind of protectionism is hard to enforce whether the goods are real or virtual: Trade in Norrathian goods and services simply migrated to other sites. The exchange of goods and services in Norrathian PP, inside the game, and U.S dollars, outside, creates an exchange-rate relationship between the two currencies. Based on surveys of these market exchanges, Castronova calculated that one unit of PP was worth a little more than one U.S. penny. That technically makes Norrathian PP a “stronger” currency than the Japanese yen or Italian lira, albeit a thinner and less liquid one. (But Sony apparently could use lessons in central banking: As in real-world Japan, price deflation has hit the market for Norrathian goods.) The economic dynamics of EverQuest also allow Castranova to calculate wage levels in Norrath. Take the PP value of an average avatar’s skills and assets, divide it by the average number of hours required to accumulate those holdings, and an average avatar “earns” 319 PP/hour, or $3.42/hour at the prevailing exchange rate. (This doesn’t sound like much, but Norrath’s deflation means that “real” wages are actually rising.) Castronova estimates that Norrath’s per capita GNP is higher than India’s or China’s. The similarities to real-world market behavior certainly owe much to the fact that EverQuest players know how real markets work and probably believe in markets. In this respect, Norrath resembles the more successful transitional economies of Central Europe, whose citizens had a history of capitalism to draw on when their communist regimes crumbled. (Russia, by contrast, had no history of market capitalism and has struggled to make the transition to free markets.) EverQuest liberates its players from some of the dismal restrictions of real economic life. Norrath is a truer meritocracy than our own, with no one hindered or helped by personal history or family background. The game also offers the ultimate safety hatch (a superenhanced version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection): Fail at one of Norrath’s deadly challenges, and you can start over with a new avatar and new identity. What may be most striking about Norrath is that the virtual market doesn’t require a powerful government. Norrathian economic life, conducted in PP or dollars, proceeds without laws stipulating the terms of exchanges, regulations dictating who can participate in various activities, or authorities enforcing contracts. There are no monetary or fiscal policies to manage demand and prices, and no safety net. In this virtual world, a powerful government appears only briefly at the start, in the iron rule that everyone starts out with roughly equal assets. Then it retreats and lets economic nature take its course. In Norrath, more equality permits freer markets. This may provide the most important lesson of all from the EverQuest experiment: Real equality can obviate much of a democratic government’s intervention in a modern economy. Many of our own government’s current policies—progressive taxation, securities regulation, social insurance—are aimed at offsetting some form of inequality. If EverQuest is any guide, the liberal dream of genuine equality would usher in the conservative vision of truly limited government.

Month after month I've taken the "over" for the employment report ("over" the consensus), and that has been correct most months. However, for January, I'll take the "under" ... however I think there is a good chance that employment will be up 3 million year-over-year (it would take 192 thousand jobs added including revisions). Friday at 8:30 AM ET, the BLS will release the employment report for January. The consensus, according to Bloomberg, is for an increase of 230,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January (with a range of estimates between 215,000 and 268,000), and for the unemployment rate to be unchanged at 5.6%. The BLS reported 252,000 jobs added in December. Here is a summary of recent data: • The ADP employment report showed an increase of 213,000 private sector payroll jobs in January. This was below expectations of 220,000 private sector payroll jobs added. The ADP report hasn't been very useful in predicting the BLS report for any one month, but in general, this suggests employment growth slightly below expectations. • The ISM manufacturing employment index decreased in January to 54.1%. A historical correlation between the ISM manufacturing employment index and the BLS employment report for manufacturing, suggests that private sector BLS manufacturing payroll jobs were unchanged in January. The ADP report indicated a 14,000 increase for manufacturing jobs in January. The ISM non-manufacturing employment index decreased in January to 51.6%. A historical correlation between the ISM non-manufacturing employment index and the BLS employment report for non-manufacturing, suggests that private sector BLS non-manufacturing payroll jobs increased about 115,000 in January. Combined, the ISM indexes suggests employment gains of 115,000. This suggests growth below expectations. • Initial weekly unemployment claims averaged close to 298,000 in January, up from 291,000 in December. For the BLS reference week (includes the 12th of the month), initial claims were at 308,000; this was up from 289,000 during the reference week in December. Generally this suggests a few more layoffs, seasonally adjusted, in January compared to the previous four months (employment gains averaged 284,000 per month for the previous four months). • The final January University of Michigan consumer sentiment index increased to 98.1 from the December reading of 93.6. This was the highest level in over ten years. Sentiment is frequently coincident with changes in the labor market, but this increase is probably mostly due to sharply lower gasoline prices. • On small business hiring: The small business index from Intuit showed a 20,000 increase in small business employment in January, down from 30,000 added in November and December. • Trim Tabs reported that the U.S. economy added between 190,000 and 220,000 jobs in January. This was down from their 210,000 to 240,000 range last month (that was low but close). "TrimTabs’ employment estimates are based on analysis of daily income tax deposits to the U.S. Treasury from the paychecks of the 141 million U.S. workers subject to withholding" December and January are challenging for TrimTabs due to year end bonuses - so they provided a range again this month. • Conclusion: There is always some randomness to the employment report, but most indicators suggest fewer jobs added in January compared to the previous several months. The consensus forecast reflects some slowdown in employment growth, but I'll take the under this month (below 230,000). Special Note: In addition to the normal revisions, the annual benchmark revision will be released with the January report. The preliminary estimate was an additional 7,000 jobs as of March 2014 (not a large revision). Also, the new population controls will be used in the Current Population Survey (CPS) estimation process. The BLS notes that the "household survey data for January 2015 will not be directly comparable with data for December 2014 or earlier periods".

The economic pessimists are winning the argument in the U.S. Treasury bond market. Yields on Treasury issues have fallen across the board Monday to their lowest levels in more than a year as some investors continue to seek a haven. The 10-year T-note yield (charted below), a benchmark for mortgage rates, was at 3.04% at about noon PDT, down from 3.11% on Friday and the lowest since April 2009. The two-year T-note was at 0.63%. That’s about half the yield investors were demanding as recently as April 5. Traders say some investors are taking their cue from budget-cutting promises made over the weekend by the world’s wealthiest nations at the G-20 group summit. The biggest countries committed to slashing their budget deficits in half by 2013. The more the industrialized nations talk about reducing spending, the greater the risk that the global economy tilts back toward recession and deflation. At least, that’s how new bond buyers see it, said Tom Di Galoma, head of U.S. rates trading at Guggenheim Partners in New York. “This is carryover from the ‘double-dip,’ deflation outlook” that fueled heavy buying of Treasuries last week, Di Galoma said. The 10-year T-note yield was 3.24% a week ago. Economist Paul Krugman has been leading the pack of analysts warning about the risk of sinking into a new morass if governments and central banks pull back on policies to boost the economy. “We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression,” Krugman wrote in the New York Times over the weekend. The first two U.S. depressions were in the years following 1873 and in the 1930s. The stock market wasn't buying the bond market’s grim message Monday. After slumping last week, stocks were up modestly with about an hour of trading to go. The Dow Jones industrials were up 42 points to 10,185. Some of the fresh demand for Treasuries is tied to end-of-quarter book-juggling, as banks and other financial players look to bolster their balance sheets with liquid securities, traders say. But buyers also must be betting that the raft of economic data this week won’t tell a story of a stronger recovery that could fuel a sudden snap-back in interest rates. A tepid report Monday on May consumer spending helped bolster the econ bears’ case. On Friday the government will report on June employment trends. The private sector is estimated to have added a net 111,000 jobs this month, up from a dismal 41,000 in May, according to economist estimates tracked by Bloomberg News. Di Galoma thinks the 10-year T-note yield will soon fall through 3%. Any backup in yields just brings out more buyers, he said. -- Tom Petruno

The Los Angeles River is on the verge of a new era. In the few years since the flood control channel was reclassified as a “navigable waterway,” the region has re-embraced its oddball amalgam of concrete and nature, which winds roughly 51 miles from the San Fernando Valley out to the ocean in Long Beach. A $1-billion-plus plan to restore 11 miles north of Downtown LA is (slowly) working its way through federal approvals. Famed architect Frank Gehry is working with Los Angeles County officials and numerous nonprofits and stakeholder groups to create a comprehensive plan for the whole river. The river was one of the selling points in the city’s winning bid for the 2028 Olympics. Developers are still clamoring to build along the river’s banks. The last time the LA River was reborn it was the late 1930s, and it had been drowning the young city periodically since its birth. At some points, the river was just a trickle; in other parts, it was uncontrollably wild, and flooded frequently and devastatingly. After a terrible flood in March 1938, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work to lower the riverbed, widen the channel, and choke the whole thing in “a continuous trapezoidal concrete channel to carry the river from Elysian Park to Long Beach,” as described in The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth. Gehry thinks the LA River can be great again with its concrete still intact; the Army Corps aims to remove at least some of it. In 2013, just as the LA River’s moment was beginning, we looked at 25 photos from the LA Public Library’s collection showing just how unrecognizable it was before it was paved. Peter Bennett, who runs the Los Angeles River Photos blog, found where nine of those photos were taken, and, using his iPad to match up with the originals, took the same shots of the river as it is in the 21st century. In an email, Bennett writes: The idea was to get as close to the original spot the older photos were taken, and try to match up the lens and framing with the original… There was a sense of time travel as I viewed the landscape as it is today and... as it was back in the ’30s. The visual contrast was quite striking, and the changes apparent in the 75 years or so since the photos were taken was at times quite dramatic. Below, the two versions are matched together, along with Bennett’s notes, so you can take the trip yourself. “The first photo I took was from the Glendale Hyperion Bridge. It was probably one of the easiest to match up as the lamppost is still there, and I felt like I was standing on the exact spot where the photographer of the original photograph stood when they took it back in 1937.” “The shot south of Compton Boulevard had no real landmarks, so I took it just south of the Compton Avenue Bridge. In the 1926 photo, you can see the river veer off to the right a bit, but I cannot say if that was a result of the flooding heading inland or if it was taken farther Downstream, where the river does veer to the right. In either case, you get a good idea of the contrast.” “The most difficult photo to match up was the one from Elysian Park toward Cypress/Glassell. It took a couple of trips to find the location from where this photo was taken, but I finally spotted a blocked off fire road and walked down it a ways and found the view between some old eucalyptus trees... I could not get to the exact spot, because it was simply too steep now, but the contrast between the 1898 rural farmland setting and the urban landscape it is now is quite stunning. The small country road in the foreground has been replaced by the multilaned 5 Freeway, and the crops just behind them are now a schoolyard in the densely packed Elysian Valley (Frogtown) community.” “The photos of the Downtown bridges are interesting as you can really contrast the original unpaved river with the paved version that we are familiar with today. The photo [previously] labeled looking north from the Seventh Street Viaduct was actually taken from the Olympic Boulevard Viaduct, and while you can see the Seventh Street Viaduct in the distance. Today that view is blocked by the 10 Freeway." “The photo of the dry section of Studio City was taken from Lankershim Boulevard, and you can see the edge of Universal Studios on the right.” “The Dayton Avenue bridge hardly exists in its original form. It has become a mishmash of bridges that have been added to over the years. But if you look closely at the recent photo, in the upper left corner, you can still see some of the balustrades of the original railing of the bridge that still remain. The Riverside-Figueroa Bridge, which is what it is currently called, is being replaced again by a new bridge, and it is unclear whether anything from the original bridges will remain after the construction.” [Update: The Riverside-Figueroa bridge’s replacement opened in January 2017.]

Once we enter Open Beta, we will stop selling the current set of Many people who have supported Path of Exile financially will receive physical goods posted to them (such as t-shirts, posters, copies of the game and soundtrack). We are about to start preparing these and we expect that they will be printed and posted before August. A few months ago, we stated that we hoped to enter Open Beta in June. Some of the crucial features that we must enter Open Beta with are not yet finished, so we will delay the Open Beta until they are. As mentioned above, we expect that this will be mid-August. While we strongly believe that this estimate is accurate, we will update it over time if work progresses ahead or behind of schedule. One of the advantages of not having a publisher is that we are able to create our own deadlines without being forced to open up the game to the public in an unfinished state. While I am sure that many of our patient fans are disappointed by this announcement, please rest assured that the game is almost done - lucky testers (and our generous supporters) have been playing the Closed Beta for ten months and can hopefully attest to our high quality standards. Here's the plan for the last remaining patches before Open Beta. The patches will take approximately three weeks each, and will be available to Alpha testers a week before they are deployed to the Beta realm. 0.9.10: Will be deployed Tuesday, June 5. I've discussed its contents 0.9.11: Among other changes, this patch will enable the new end-game (which we have been hinting at for a while) and the Act Two final boss. It will include the ability to swap between weapon sets. 0.9.12: This patch will fix most of the issues with Minions. It will also introduce PvP arenas and the ability to challenge other players to duel. We expect to improve the Brutus fight in this patch as well. 0.9.13: A secure trade screen and substantial update to server stability and capacity is scheduled for this patch. 0.10.0: The official Open Beta release, which we expect will be deployed a week or so after 0.9.13. It will have Act Three enabled, voice acting for most of the NPCs and characters, as well as a range of cosmetic micro-transactions to purchase. There are hundreds of minor bug fixes and small features such as additional skill gems and monsters scheduled during the above timeline as well, but they are too small to individually list here. While the Closed Beta has expanded in features and some content in the last year, most of our artists have been working on Act Three. We expect that Path of Exile will enter Open Beta in mid-August. At that point our final character wipe will occur and the game will be permanently available for everyone to play.Once we enter Open Beta, we will stop selling the current set of Supporter Packs and will instead offer other options for purchasing micro-transaction credit. If you want to buy a Kiwi pet, you will need to do so while Path of Exile is still in Closed Beta.Many people who have supported Path of Exile financially will receive physical goods posted to them (such as t-shirts, posters, copies of the game and soundtrack). We are about to start preparing these and we expect that they will be printed and posted before August.A few months ago, we stated that we hoped to enter Open Beta in June. Some of the crucial features that we must enter Open Beta with are not yet finished, so we will delay the Open Beta until they are. As mentioned above, we expect that this will be mid-August. While we strongly believe that this estimate is accurate, we will update it over time if work progresses ahead or behind of schedule.One of the advantages of not having a publisher is that we are able to create our own deadlines without being forced to open up the game to the public in an unfinished state. While I am sure that many of our patient fans are disappointed by this announcement, please rest assured that the game is almost done - lucky testers (and our generous supporters) have been playing the Closed Beta for ten months and can hopefully attest to our high quality standards.Here's the plan for the last remaining patches before Open Beta. The patches will take approximately three weeks each, and will be available to Alpha testers a week before they are deployed to the Beta realm.: Will be deployed Tuesday, June 5. I've discussed its contents here : Among other changes, this patch will enable the new end-game (which we have been hinting at for a while) and the Act Two final boss. It will include the ability to swap between weapon sets.: This patch will fix most of the issues with Minions. It will also introduce PvP arenas and the ability to challenge other players to duel. We expect to improve the Brutus fight in this patch as well.: A secure trade screen and substantial update to server stability and capacity is scheduled for this patch.: The official Open Beta release, which we expect will be deployed a week or so after 0.9.13. It will have Act Three enabled, voice acting for most of the NPCs and characters, as well as a range of cosmetic micro-transactions to purchase.There are hundreds of minor bug fixes and small features such as additional skill gems and monsters scheduled during the above timeline as well, but they are too small to individually list here.While the Closed Beta has expanded in features and some content in the last year, most of our artists have been working on Act Three. Here's a teaser of some of their recent work. YouTube | Lead Developer. Follow us on: Twitter Facebook | Contact Support if you need help! Last edited by Chris on Oct 31, 2012, 9:43:40 AM Posted by Chris on Grinding Gear Games on

America may be one of the richest countries in the world, but its people are less healthy and more likely to die early from disease or accidents than those in any other affluent country, a damning official US report has found. Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour – are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says the report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. "We were struck by the gravity of these findings," said Steven H Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. "Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What really concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind." The report, US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health. It compares the US with 16 affluent democracies, including Australia, Canada and Japan and many in Europe including Britain. There have been similar findings from the Commonwealth Fund over some years, but they have compared the US with only a handful of nations. The new report looked in detail at data from the late 1990s to 2008. "Over this time period, we uncovered a strikingly consistent and pervasive pattern of higher mortality and inferior health in the United States, beginning at birth," it said. For many years, Americans have had a shorter life expectancy than people in almost all the comparator countries and for the past three decades the gap has been widening, particularly for women. The US does badly in nine specific areas. It has the highest infant mortality rate of any wealthy country and also does poorly on other birth outcomes, such as low weight babies. Deaths from injuries and homicides are far higher than elsewhere and a leading cause of death in children, adolescents and young adults. US adolescents have had the highest rate of pregnancies of affluent countries since the 1990s and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections. The US has the second highest HIV rate and the highest incidence of Aids among the 17 countries. Even taking out drunk driving, Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and other drugs than people in other affluent countries. The US has the highest obesity rate and, from age 20, one of the highest levels of type 2 diabetes. The death rate from heart disease is the second highest in the 17 countries. There is more lung disease and more deaths from it than in Europe and older people report more arthritis and other limitations on their activity than in Europe or Japan. The US is, however, good at looking after the health of the most elderly. People who reach 75 are more likely to live longer, have lower death rates from stroke and cancer, better-controlled blood pressure and cholesterol levels and lower rates of smoking than elsewhere. But death and disease take a huge toll on the younger American population, even though the US spends more on healthcare per capita than almost any other country in the world. Poverty, inequality, racial and ethnic differences and lack of health insurance are part of the story but not all. Even non-Hispanic white people with money and insurance who are not smokers or obese do less well than those in other countries. Unless action is taken, the report says, the health of Americans will probably continue to fall behind. "The tragedy is not that the United States is losing a contest with other countries but that Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are demonstrably unnecessary. Superior health outcomes in other nations show that Americans also can enjoy better health," says the report. The US public is unaware of the issues, says the report. "I don't think most parents know, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the US die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries," said Woolf. The report says the situation will not improve unless Americans wake up to the truth about their health and a public debate begins.

About With most of my time spent remaking the game i loved to play when i was younger and at school, i have really noticed my passion for game designing and this project has taken me just over 3 years to make and i have hit a point where i can take it no further. which for me is very sad but i am only just a designer, i have made contact with coders who would love to help with this project and get it finished aswel as music artist to make custom soundtracks for the game but sadly that funding so with this so to speak wall in front of me i have come here to kickstarter the last line of defence for my game to finally get finished, i just hope that some of you have played the original thing thing arena and would love to see a remake. To all those who pledge i thank you from the bottom of my heart and promise to not let you down in bringing back a classic flashplayer game with a new and wonderful twist,

On October 26, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued their successful operation on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and entered the oil fields of al-Tanak and Galban, according to pro-Kurdish sources. Earlier, the US-backed force reportedly established control over the oil fields of Azraq and Jarnof, Saban, Northern Omar, Maleh and Mqaat. Thus, the SDF de-facto won the race for the oil and gas infrastructure located in the area with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). Pro-opposition sources reported that ISIS just handed over the al-Tanak oil field to the SDF within the framework of the previously reached agreement. No more details were provided. Most likely these reports are linked to the alleged SDF-ISIS deal reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on October 22. According to this report, ISIS was set to surrender the entire area including Hajin village to the US-backed force. Pro-SDF sources explain the situation with the top-class US air support and combat characteristics of SDF troops. On October 25, the SAA liberated the Industrial Area and a large part of Khassarat district from ISIS in the city of Deir Ezzor. Now, government forces are aiming to separate further Saqr Island from the rest of the ISIS-held area in Deir Ezzor. When this is done, the SAA and the NDF will be able to isolate the remaining ISIS units in Saqr Island and to clear it from the terrorists. The separatist Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is facing hard times in Iraq. On October 24, the Department of Foreign Relations of the KRG released a statement asking for a ceasefire with forces of the Federal Government. In return, it promised to “freeze the results of [independence] referendum”, and asked for “an open dialogue between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Iraqi Federal Government on the basis of the Constitution.” However, on October 25 and October 26, Iraqi forces advanced further in areas seized by KRG forces beyond the borders of the Kurdish autonomous region. Experts believe that the army and its allies will continue operation in the contested areas until KRG military forces fully withdraw from it. If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront Featured image is from South Front.

As the film Philomena heads into awards season, draped with nominations for Oscars and Baftas, you might think nuns are having a bad PR moment. But then over at Team Convent, Call the Midwife is the star of BBC TV's Sunday nights with a much more sympathetic crew. Both these are fictionalised versions of real stories, and they are just the tip of the iceberg: there are large numbers of nuns in books – surely higher than their incidence in the real-life population – with nearly all the descriptions coming from women authors, though there are a few good men below. (Strangely, I made the same point about flat-sharing in books – is it something to do with women and single-sex groups?). Muriel Spark liked her nuns – one of the main characters in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie ends up as Sister Helena, and there is a Marxist Church of England convent in Symposium: in one splendid scene the haloes on the figures in a mural are revealed as the fur hats of Lenin and friends. The Abbess of Crewe is wholly set in a convent, but is well known to be a satire on the Watergate scandal. And that demonstrates a key feature of convents, fictional or otherwise – they are not actually mysterious hotbeds of unknowable religious transcendence or wickedness. They are communities like any other, with secrets, dramas and troublesome elections. And so, ideal as a vehicle for a good story: any closed community is interesting (see also: country house party, boarding school), there is an opportunity to have good strong female characters without their being framed by their relationships with men, and there is always the underlying question: "Why did these women become nuns?" Roman Catholic women of a certain age will remember being obsessed as teenagers with Kathryn Hulme's The Nun's Story, book and film – "Is God calling me to be Audrey Hepburn?" It's still a good strong read, and even more fascinating when you know the story behind it. It is a novel, but based on the life of the author's long-term companion, a former nun. One aspect of nuns in books is that the names are confusing and you get your Sister Mary mixed up with Sister Maria – and apparently the considerable profits from The Nun's Story are languishing unclaimed because no one knows which nuns should have inherited them. More straightforwardly non-fiction are books from Karen Armstrong (Through the Narrow Gate) and Monica Baldwin (I Leap Over the Wall – so much the better name) dealing with the challenges of leaving the convent behind in, respectively, 1981 and 1949. Of course we all like to read about nuns going off the rails: Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus is an overwrought and enjoyable look at a convent in the Himalayas, and a nun who wants a last chance. There is also the very splendid Lambs of God by the Australian author Marele Day, with its feral nuns including sheep in their community. Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun (overshadowed now by the 1971 notorious-in-its-day Ken Russell film) is non-fiction, full of hysterical and demonic sisters in 17th-century France. The book very much reflects its author's non-believing, child-of-the-enlightenment stance, though it's a rattling good read, and he does his best to be fair. Other men who have bravely written about nuns include the American novelist Ron Hansen, with his well-imagined Mariette in Ecstasy (1991), paralleling the story of St Therese of Lisieux, and Mark Salzman with Lying Awake (2000) – an extraordinary look at a nun who has visions and writes poetry, but fears both may disappear if she has treatment for epilepsy. These have all been books with the nuns as the direct focus, but there is also a subgenre looking at them through the eyes of girls attending convent schools. In Edna O'Brien's Country Girl (1960), Cait and Baba deliberately get themselves expelled, amid some fairly unsympathetic nuns. Antonia White wrote what amounted to a misery memoir in Frost in May (1933), a lightly fictionalised version of her own experiences. (But then it turns out her memories weren't reliable – Samantha Ellis writes rivetingly about this in her new book on literary heroines.) Much more enjoyable is Land of Spices (1941) by the under-rated Kate O'Brien – the title comes from a George Herbert poem and shouldn't be taken to imply anything exotic or cosmopolitan in the content (it means prayer) but, the relationship between Reverend Mother and a child at the convent school is engrossing. And adults get pulled in too: Iris Murdoch's The Bell (1958) is set in a religious community attached to a convent, but the nuns' role is mostly symbolic. There are astonishing numbers of detective stories with nuns as sleuths or key characters: Antonia Fraser's 1977 Quiet as a Nun (convent, boarding school and the estimable Jemima Shore – triple threat) stands out, and the US author Jane Haddam's crime books often feature religious settings to great effect. Once you start looking at nuns in history from a modern perspective, there comes a whole new topic – was it actually fun being a nun? Of course there must have been an unknown percentage of women closed up against their will, but it's rewarding to examine the idea that being a nun wasn't that bad an option in earlier times. In fact, dare we say it, was it the feminist choice? Look what they missed: a nun was free from the horrors and dangers of childbirth and the rigours of unwanted marriage. Often they could pursue an interest in medicine, horticulture, art or music. They didn't have to wear corsets or attract men … This is what fascinates female authors and readers. Sarah Dunant's marvellous Sacred Hearts – published 2009, set in 1570 in Italy – looks at the idea of different choices for different women. Sylvia Townsend Warner in The Corner That Held Them (published 1948, set in an English convent in 14th-century Norfolk) gives us gossip, politics, particular friendships and details of church music. Charlotte Brontë – daughter of the parsonage – is deeply suspicious of Roman Catholicism in general, and the figure of the nun in Villette is quite troublesome. But as s/he isn't a real nun – well, perhaps we won't examine the psychology of that too closely. She was certainly reflecting back to Gothic fiction and supernatural, creepy religious figures, rather than looking at career opportunities, and she and her heroine Lucy Snowe take a good Protestant line against Papist nonsense. But Brontë is the exception: most authors understand more and condemn less. Which other writers created convents worth reading about, and which books make the life sound attractive? Please offer up your thoughts …

​Thor, the classic God of Thunder in the Marvel comics, exploded onto the screen in 2011's "Thor". The film did well, both with critics and financially, giving Marvel even more momentum to push its planed cinematic universe forward. Surprisingly though, Thor's debut film was a make or break moment for Marvel. In a recent interview with the director of the film, Kenneth Branagh, discussed just how nervous the company was about the film. Branagh had the following to say in the interview, as reported by ​Comicbook.com: "Remember, there were only two pictures in the Marvel Universe. Iron Man, genius, the first one. [The Incredible] Hulk hadn’t worked as they’d hoped," he continued, "And then [ Thor was] number three, it was sink or swim before Captain America and then suddenly, oh, it was fine after that. We make Iron Man 2 and Avengers and everything’s tickety-boo." "But everybody who was there knows that that was an incredibly sweaty time," he continued. When asked if Thor failing would have hurt Marvel and the plan for their film timeline, Branagh had the following to said, "That’s certainly how they felt." What a twist! Sounds like Thor succeeding was the best thing that could have happened for everyone! Thor recently starred in the third film for the character, "Thor: Ragnarok", which has become a smash hit. Looks like everyone has this thunder god to thank for making sure we would continue to enjoy high quality superhero films produced by Marvel! "Thor: Ragnarok" is out now, be sure to check it out! ​​

This product hasn't received any reviews yet. Be the first to review this product! Read reviews all over internet... So I watched some Unboxing vids, and read online reviews, and freaked myself out, AFTER ordering this jacket. Some people online are really NOT fans of this website, or their products. All I can do is speak from MY experiences... The item shipped fast. The item arrived fast. The packaging was perfect. Well sealed, compact without damaging the jacket. Professional looking. The jacket was exactly how it was advertised. It fits perfect (which for me is the hardest part of shopping online). I really can't say anything bad about my experience with this company or product. In fact, I'll probably order myself the Star Lord jacket for Christmas. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Look NO further tha right here I could not believe the quality of the product I received. It is expertly made, uses very supple and attractive leather and fits like a glove. READ the measurement chart and make sure you USE it to guaranteed the right fit. Had a little bit of a time with communications BUT the item arrived within 4 days. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Tis a good buy a great medium to light jacket, good color not exactly like the movie which is good because i dont want to look like im cosplaying in everyday life. The best part about this jacket is not being attacked by a girl with a big metal stick and a droid that shocks you. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Recommended It is the best and most amazing jacket of Finn. Recommended Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. OH MY GOSH. I don't usually review products but I could not resist for this item. So this jacket just arrived (within a week!!!) in time for the holidays. I purchased it as a gift for my brother. Not only is the material soft, comfortable, and warm, but it seems very durable and high quality. I am usually skeptical about ordering online, but this gamble was worth every penny. If this jacket fit me, my brother would be getting something else for Christmas. I would have kept it myself! Overall, wonderful product and it even comes with a garment bag for easy storage and wrapping. Would order it again ten times over. True to size, true to description. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Good jacket. Probably best option for the money Good quality leather jacket. The beige color is a little light but I weathering it it seems a little darker and more movie accurate. I originally got the distressed brown which starts out way too dark, so I figure this is the way to go and glad I did. It fits a little big in the shoulders and a little long in the sleeves and a little shorter in length than the movie. I'm 5'11" ~150 and the medium is good on me. Large would be too big and small would be too small... Also ships super fast, got mine within 6 days I think! I got some greeblies from Barton and bishop on etsy to make it more movie accurate too and now it looks awesome! Not a 5 star bc of the shoulder fit and sleeve length, but overall very satisfied with this jacket! I would recommend! Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. I've got a good feeling about this After looking at the few Finn jackets on here repeatedly I ended up going for this one. Arrived within a week. Fits great, feels good quality and nice soft leather. Detailing is great and even has some loops below the left hand pocket which aren't too obvious. The 3 inner pockets are decent size with one of them just right for an iPhone 6 which is also true of the breast pocket. Love this jacket and only wish weather was cooler so I could wear it more. I'm 5'10, 190 lbs and 43" chest and the Large is just right. If anything, the sleeves could do with being 1 to 2" shorter but that is not big problem. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Great quality, excellent customer service Mistakenly ordered this jacket instead of the Distressed brown jacket which includes a zipper. I'm currently exchanging it for that one, but I must say that I was still impressed with the quality of the jacket. I did try it on to check if my sizing was accurate, I ordred a large and it was a bit snug on me so I made sure to go with the XL on my exchange. I'm 5'9" and about 220 pounds. The customer service team here is outstanding, highly responsive and does a great job of letting me know what is going on during the exchange process. I'll definitely be recommending this company to others! Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Good opinion from France Sorry for my english, I'm a french buyer. I have to say that I was very surprised of the quality of this Jacket, that is really really good, for only 169 $ and that is real leather. I found no defaults. I received it 6 days after I ordered it. That is the exact model of the film. I choosed the Finn Beige Leather Jacket, because it looks "fresh" and not so "tired" that another model of jacket, (Poe Dameron Finn Brown Waxed Jacket) so I can wear it frequently. Just one thing about the measure, I usually wear XL clothes in France, my chest measure is 109 cm, so I choosed the L model, and I have to say it is not too small. Perhaps a little little bit large, but, only if I wear a small t-shirt under. If I change and choose the M model, the arms will be too shorts. If I wear a shirt under, it's perfect. So you made me very happy. Thank you. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. It's calling to you...just let it in. Out of all the many Star Wars replicas I own, this is without a doubt the one of the highest caliber. Not only is it well-crafted, but it is also light, comfortable, and has the spot-on character quality that you need to be a part of the Star Wars universe. It is great to wear around the house or for Halloween. You can even become "that guy" that wears a Star Wars jacket in public with this one (it is that cool!). Now all I need is a starfighter, and I'd be set for life. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Great quality, quick delivery The jacket is near identical to the actual thing, high quality materials and feels sturdy. Delivery was great, went with the cheapest delivery option and it arrived to me in the uk in 5 days. The jacket fits well in the chest and is a good length, only problem I have is it is very tight on the upper arms around the armpit/deltoid area Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. OH.MY.GOD. Seriously, you have no idea how happy you made me. I got this jacket for my fiancee as a wedding gift to him and I swear, it is beyond gorgeous! It is worth every penny and the leather is seriously soft as described. Although the colour is slightly lighter than in the photos but it is still very gorgeous. Now, it would be so great if you could tel me how to maintain this jacket because I am all the way in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with scorching tropical weather. It is very humid here and it can go up to 38 degrees on a normal day. What is the best way to care for this jacket? I would hate it if anything were to happen to it. Alright then, thanks so much guys for an amazing jacket and superb service. Be sure to hear from me again soon. I would surely come back for more ;) Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Great quality and excellent service. The jacket is of really great quality and is very comfortable to wear. The delivery has been lightning fast and the support team has been of great help regarding sizing and so on. Highly recommended you will not regret it. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Can't complain except that it's tailored a little wide I'm going to first say the quality is very impressive and is a soft leather, looks fantastic just like the movie. Wish the back upper shoulder area had the vertical stitching like the authentic and the back of the collar with the horizontal stitching (Maybe they'll add it in the future ;) but aside from that this jacket comes as close as it could. You could be nit picky and ask for the loose straps on the bottom left of the front of the jacket but there are straps there, just not loose. So once again this is a raving review its quite a beautiful jacket. Here is my one legitimate complaint, I am 5'9" very active with a muscular build I weigh 175. I always wear a medium in my clothing and was skeptical if for a jacket I should be ordering a large or medium but decided to go medium seeing it's to be a fitted jacket instead of like a winter one. I should probably have gone with a small, the arms fit me pretty snug but the armpits down to the bottom of the jacket were made rather large, boxy could be the best description. Obviously I can't expect a tailored look because they don't know if it's someone fit or wide so it's tough to complain but I thought a medium would fit slimmer. Shoulders were a little wide too like a suit jacket instead of rounded and relaxed to the body. Maybe I just need to break it in some, I'm writing this as of the day that it arrived. Shipping took about 3 weeks from order day, but rest assured people I am from Pennsylvania and live in the States. This is not a fake site and you will receive your product with a smile on your face. My only advice is that if you think ehh maybe I should get a small then you probably should, idk what the small fits like but I sure wish I could have tried them on before purchasing because I may have gone with it. I doubt I can exchange Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Vary wary but super happy with purchase I was very wary of ordering a jacket, hoping the jacket would look and fit as advertised and not to get ripped off. My concerns were for naught, as the jacket arrived fitting well and looking just like the product pictures. This is a tremendous jacket, and shipping was prompt. I think I had the jacket within 2 weeks of ordering and discussing the fit with customer service. I will order again and I recommend the company. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. A very pleasant surprise I was very skeptical when I first ordered this jacket but I'm a HUGE fan of Star Wars and I had to take a chance. Well that chance paid off. This jacket is amazing. It really is real leather, it fits like a glove. I don't know what else to say. The shipping took a little longer than I anticipated, but I placed my order around Christmas. When I did contact their customer support they responded very quickly and assured me it would ship as soon as it was done being processed. If you're reading this review, don't buy this jacket from ANYWHERE else. This is the best choice. This jacket is amazing and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. I'll definitely buy from these guys again. Keep up the good work! Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Best Reproduction Out There I ordered this jacket while they were switching from the brown and bright red shoulders, to the weathered beige with darkened red shoulders. They gave me an option of choosing, to make sure I received the item I wanted. Seeing that the beige was closer to the movie, I ordered that one. There are a few differences between this and the real on but the main color and details of the jacket are accurate, and looks much better than any other out there. I am 6'2" and 200 lbs, and the Large fits just the tiniest bit larger than optimal, but is light and comfortable. Can't wait for the weather to warm up and give this jacket a real weathered look. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Quality Product! I ordered this for my son for a surprise for his 22nd birthday. He is a huge Star Wars fan and had shown it to me before. When he opened his gift and saw it he was in shock! It is so well made and fits perfectly and didn't think I had gotten it for him. This jacket is gorgeous and the customer service is amazing! It arrived quicker than expected. I highly recommend this company and jacket for any Star Wars fan. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. I love this jacket so much To any customer that is thinking about purchasing this jacket i am a verified happy customer.I have ordered multiple jackets from this company before this one and have never had a problem with shipping except this last time but that shipping mishap actually ended up working to my benefit to where i ended up extremely happen with the product in the long run. If you order this jacket, It will take a week maybe less to actually reach your doorstep once you get the confirmation email that your order was shipped. My particular experience they use Fedex and the package comes in a very professional package. The quality of the jacket is very professionally well done. I was expecting a little bit heavier cowhide leather almost like camel leather which is what finn wore in the movie but its really fine light real leather. My jacket is a distressed brown color, not the antique beige color. I got that particular jacket because i wanted zippers and the jacket to function, and it works out perfectly. I don't understand why there aren't zippers in the movie jackets (apparently in a galaxy far far away a long time ago zippers didn't exist lol). Overall, everything i particularly requested was worked on and my jacket turned out perfect. I am really glad i took the extra time for the perfect jacket design because Fjackets really delivered a quality product. I will order more jackets from them they are the best website in my opinion to order your film replica jackets from. Even if they don't have the jacket design you want from your favorite movie, they remain in constant communication within a day of your email. Which is another aspect about this company i love and what keeps me coming back. Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. 5 star for sure Great jacket... Good customer service 5 star for sure...:) Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product. Hope He Likes It and Hope It Works The jacket looks really good but I won’t buy it for myself. I’m going to gift it to my bro, whose room is filled up with SW collectibles. I showed him the jacket and he liked it but he didn’t have the money to buy it so he felt down. Being the awesome sibling, I plan to buy it for him. I had full confidence that this will definitely work. I’m thankful that you guys made the delivery process quicker so that it arrived on time and I can gift it to him. You guys are the best! Yes, I recommend this product. Verified Purchase. I recommend this product.

Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? A few years ago, when I was still teaching at Yale, I was approached by a student who was interested in going to graduate school. She had her eye on Columbia; did I know someone there she could talk with? I did, an old professor of mine. But when I wrote to arrange the introduction, he refused to even meet with her. “I won’t talk to students about graduate school anymore,” he explained. “Going to grad school’s a suicide mission.” Ad Policy The policy may be extreme, but the feeling is universal. Most professors I know are willing to talk with students about pursuing a PhD, but their advice comes down to three words: don’t do it. (William Pannapacker, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education as Thomas Benton, has been making this argument for years. See “The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind,’” among other essays.) My own advice was never that categorical. Go if you feel that your happiness depends on it—it can be a great experience in many ways—but be aware of what you’re in for. You’re going to be in school for at least seven years, probably more like nine, and there’s a very good chance that you won’t get a job at the end of it. At Yale, we were overjoyed if half our graduating students found positions. That’s right—half. Imagine running a medical school on that basis. As Christopher Newfield points out in Unmaking the Public University (2008), that’s the kind of unemployment rate you’d expect to find among inner-city high school dropouts. And this was before the financial collapse. In the past three years, the market has been a bloodbath: often only a handful of jobs in a given field, sometimes fewer, and as always, hundreds of people competing for each one. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. When I started graduate school in 1989, we were told that the disastrous job market of the previous two decades would be coming to an end because the large cohort of people who had started their careers in the 1960s, when the postwar boom and the baby boom combined to more than double college enrollments, was going to start retiring. Well, it did, but things kept getting worse. Instead of replacing retirees with new tenure-eligible hires, departments gradually shifted the teaching load to part-timers: adjuncts, postdocs, graduate students. From 1991 to 2003, the number of full-time faculty members increased by 18 percent. The number of part-timers increased by 87 percent—to almost half the entire faculty. But as Jack Schuster and Martin Finkelstein point out in their comprehensive study The American Faculty (2006), the move to part-time labor is already an old story. Less visible but equally important has been the advent and rapid expansion of full-time positions that are not tenure-eligible. No one talks about this transformation—the creation of yet another academic underclass—and yet as far back as 1993, such positions already constituted the majority of new appointees. As of 2003, more than a third of full-time faculty were working off the tenure track. By the same year, tenure-track professors—the “normal” kind of academic appointment—represented no more than 35 percent of the American faculty. The reasons for these trends can be expressed in a single word, or buzzword: efficiency. Contingent academic labor, as non-tenure-track faculty, part-time and full-time, are formally known, is cheaper to hire and easier to fire. It saves departments money and gives them greater flexibility in staffing courses. Over the past twenty years, in other words—or really, over the past forty—what has happened in academia is what has happened throughout the American economy. Good, secure, well-paid positions—tenured appointments in the academy, union jobs on the factory floor—are being replaced by temporary, low-wage employment. * * * You’d think departments would respond to the Somme-like conditions they’re sending out their newly minted PhDs to face by cutting down the size of their graduate programs. If demand drops, supply should drop to meet it. In fact, many departments are doing the opposite, the job market be damned. More important is maintaining the flow of labor to their domestic sweatshops, the pipeline of graduate students who staff discussion sections and teach introductory and service courses like freshman composition and first-year calculus. (Professors also need dissertations to direct, or how would they justify their own existence?) As Louis Menand puts it in The Marketplace of Ideas (2010), the system is now designed to produce not PhDs so much as ABDs: students who, having finished their other degree requirements, are “all but dissertation” (or “already been dicked,” as we used to say)—i.e., people who have entered the long limbo of low-wage research and teaching that chews up four, five, six years of a young scholar’s life. If anything, as Menand notes, the PhD glut works well for departments at both ends, since it gives them the whip hand when it comes to hiring new professors. Graduate programs occupy a highly unusual, and advantageous, market position: they are both the producers and the consumers of academic labor, but as producers, they have no financial stake in whether their product “sells”—that is, whether their graduates get jobs. Yes, a program’s prestige is related, in part, to its placement rate, but only in relative terms. In a normal industry, if no firm sells more than half of what it produces, then either everyone goes out of business or the industry consolidates. But in academia, if no one does better than 50 percent, then 50 percent is great. Programs have every incentive to keep prices low by maintaining the oversupply. Still, there’s a difference between a Roger Smith firing workers at General Motors and the faculty of an academic department treating its students like surplus goods. For the CEO of a large corporation, workers are essentially entries on a balance sheet, separated from the boardroom by a great gulf of culture and physical distance. If they are treated without mercy, that is not entirely surprising. But the relationship between professors and graduate students could hardly be more intimate. Professors used to be graduate students. They belong to the same culture and the same community. Your dissertation director is your mentor, your role model, the person who spends all those years overseeing your research and often the one you came to graduate school to study under in the first place. You, in turn, are her intellectual progeny; if you make good, her professional pride. The economic violence of the academic system is inflicted at very close quarters. How professors square their Jekyll-and-Hyde roles in the process—devoted teachers of individual students, co-managers of a system that exploits them as a group—I do not know. Denial, no doubt, along with the rationale that this is just the way it is, so what can you do? Teaching is part of the training, you hear a lot, especially when supposedly liberal academics explain why graduate-student unions are such a bad idea. They’re students, not workers! But grad students don’t teach because they have to learn how, even if the experience is indeed very valuable; they teach because departments need “bodies in the classroom,” as a professor I know once put it. I always found it beautifully apt that my old department occupies the same space where the infamous Milgram obedience experiments were conducted in the early 1960s. (Yes, really.) Pay no attention to the screams you hear coming from the next room, the subjects were told as they administered the electric shocks, it’s for their own good—a perfect allegory of the relationship between tenured professors and graduate students (and tenured professors and untenured professors, for that matter). Well, but so what? A bunch of spoiled kids are having trouble finding jobs—so is everybody else. Here’s so what. First of all, they’re not spoiled. They’re doing exactly what we always complain our brightest students don’t do: eschewing the easy bucks of Wall Street, consulting or corporate law to pursue their ideals and be of service to society. Academia may once have been a cushy gig, but now we’re talking about highly talented young people who are willing to spend their 20s living on subsistence wages when they could be getting rich (and their friends are getting rich), simply because they believe in knowledge, ideas, inquiry; in teaching, in following their passion. To leave more than half of them holding the bag at the end of it all, over 30 and having to scrounge for a new career, is a human tragedy. Sure, lots of people have it worse. But here’s another reason to care: it’s also a social tragedy, and not just because it represents a colossal waste of human capital. If we don’t make things better for the people entering academia, no one’s going to want to do it anymore. And then it won’t just be the students who are suffering. Scholarship will suffer, which means the whole country will. Knowledge, as we’re constantly told, is a nation’s most important resource, and the great majority of knowledge is created in the academy—now more than ever, in fact, since industry is increasingly outsourcing research to universities where, precisely because graduate students cost less than someone who gets a real salary, it can be conducted on the cheap. (Bell Labs, once the flagship of industrial science, is a shell of its former self, having suffered years of cutbacks before giving up on fundamental research altogether.) It isn’t just the sciences that matter; it is also the social sciences and the humanities. And it isn’t just the latter that are suffering. Basic physics in this country is all but dead. From 1971 to 2001, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English declined by 20 percent, but the number awarded in math and statistics declined by 55 percent. The only areas of the liberal arts that saw an increase in BAs awarded were biology and psychology—and this at a time when aggregate enrollment expanded by something like 75 percent. On the work that is done in the academy depends the strength of our economy, our public policy and our culture. We need our best young minds going into atmospheric research and international affairs and religious studies, chemistry and ethnography and art history. By pursuing their individual interests, narrowly understood, departments are betraying both the values they are pledged to uphold—the pursuit of knowledge, the spirit of critical inquiry, the extension of the humanistic tradition—and the nation they exist to serve. We’ve been here before. Pay was so low in the nineteenth century, when academia was still a gentleman’s profession, that in 1902 Andrew Carnegie created the pension plan that would evolve into TIAA-CREF, the massive retirement fund. After World War II, when higher education was seen as an urgent national priority, a consensus emerged that salaries were too small to attract good people. Compensation soared through the 1950s and ’60s, then hit the skids around 1970 and didn’t recover for almost thirty years. It’s no surprise that the percentage of college freshmen expressing an interest in academia was more than three times higher in 1966 than it was in 2004. But the answer now is not to raise professors’ salaries. Professors already make enough. The answer is to hire more professors: real ones, not academic lettuce-pickers. Yet that’s the last thing schools are apt to do. What we have seen instead over the past forty years, in addition to the raising of a reserve army of contingent labor, is a kind of administrative elephantiasis, an explosion in the number of people working at colleges and universities who aren’t faculty, full-time or part-time, of any kind. From 1976 to 2001, the number of nonfaculty professionals ballooned nearly 240 percent, growing more than three times as fast as the faculty. Coaching staffs and salaries have grown without limit; athletic departments are virtually separate colleges within universities now, competing (successfully) with academics. The size of presidential salaries—more than $1 million in several dozen cases—has become notorious. Nor is it only the presidents; the next six most highly paid administrative officers at Yale averaged over $430,000 in 2007. As Gaye Tuchman explains in Wannabe U (2009), a case study in the sorrows of academic corporatization, deans, provosts and presidents are no longer professors who cycle through administrative duties and then return to teaching and research. Instead, they have become a separate stratum of managerial careerists, jumping from job to job and organization to organization like any other executive: isolated from the faculty and its values, loyal to an ethos of short-term expansion, and trading in the business blather of measurability, revenue streams, mission statements and the like. They do not have the long-term health of their institutions at heart. They want to pump up the stock price (i.e., U.S. News and World Report ranking) and move on to the next fat post. If you’re tenured, of course, life is still quite good (at least until the new provost decides to shut down your entire department). In fact, the revolution in the structure of academic work has come about in large measure to protect the senior professoriate. The faculty have steadily grayed in recent decades; by 1998 more than half were 50 or older. Mandatory retirement was abolished in 1986, exacerbating the problem. Departments became “tenured in,” with a large bolus of highly compensated senior professors and room, increasingly squeezed in many cases, for just a few junior members—another reason jobs have been so hard to find. Contingent labor is desirable above all because it saves money for senior salaries (as well as relieving the tenure track of the disagreeable business of teaching low-level courses). By 2004, while pay for assistant and associate professors still stood more or less where it had in 1970, that for full professors was about 10 percent higher. What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the American economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise. * * * But now those prerogatives are also under threat. I am not joining the call for the abolition of tenure—a chorus that includes two of last year’s most widely noticed books on the problems of America’s colleges and universities, Higher Education?, by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, and Crisis on Campus, by Mark Taylor. Tenure certainly has its problems. It crowds out opportunities for young scholars and allows academic deadwood to accumulate on the faculty rolls. But getting rid of it would be like curing arteriosclerosis by shooting the patient. For one thing, it would remove the last incentive for any sane person to enter the profession. People still put up with everything they have to endure as graduate students and junior professors for the sake of a shot at that golden prize, and now you’re going to take away the prize? No, it is not good for so many of academia’s rewards to be backloaded into a single moment of occupational transfiguration, one that sits like a mirage at the end of twelve or fifteen years of Sinaitic wandering. Yes, the job market would eventually rebalance itself if the profession moved, say, to a system of seven-year contracts, as Taylor suggests. But long before it did, we would lose a generation of talent. Besides, how would the job market rebalance itself? If the people who now have tenure continued to serve under some other contractual system, the same surplus of labor would be chasing the same scarcity of employment. Things would get better for new PhDs only if schools started firing senior people. Which, as the way things work in other industries reminds us, they would probably be glad to do. Why retain a 55-year-old when you can replace her with a 30-year-old at half the price? Now that’s a thought to swell a provost’s revenue stream. Talk about efficiency. And what exactly are you supposed to do at that point if you’ve spent your career becoming an expert in, say, Etruscan history? Academia exists in part to support research the private sector won’t pay for, knowledge that can’t be converted into a quick buck or even a slow one, but that adds value to society in other ways. Who’s going to pursue that kind of inquiry if they know there’s a good chance they’re going to get thrown out in the snow when they’re 50 (having only started to earn a salary when they were 30, to boot)? Doctors and lawyers can set up their own practice, but a professor can’t start his own university. This kind of thing is appalling enough when it happens to blue-collar workers. In an industry that requires a dozen years of postsecondary education just to gain an entry-level position, it is unthinkable. Nor should we pooh-pooh the threat the abolition of tenure would pose to academic freedom, as Hacker and Dreifus do. “We have scoured all the sources we could find,” they write, “yet we could not find any academic research whose findings led to terminating the jobs of college faculty members.” Yes, because of tenure. If deans and trustees and alumni and politicians rarely even try to have professors fired, that is precisely because they know they have so little chance of making it happen. Before tenure existed, arbitrary dismissals were common. Can you imagine what the current gang of newly elected state legislators would do if they could get their hands on the people who teach at public universities? (Just look at what happened to William Cronon, the University of Wisconsin historian whose e-mails were demanded by the state Republican Party after he exposed the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council in Governor Scott Walker’s attack on public employee unions.) Hacker and Dreifus, who recognize the importance of academic freedom, call instead of tenure for presidents and trustees with “backbone” (a species as wonderful as the unicorn, and almost as numerous). Sure, and as long as the king is a good man, we don’t need democracy. Academics play a special role in society: they tell us things we don’t want to hear—about global warming, or the historical Jesus, or the way we raise our children. That’s why they need to have special protections. * * * But the tenure system, which is already being eroded by the growth of contingent labor, is not the only thing that is under assault in the top-down, corporatized academy. As Cary Nelson explains in No University Is an Island (2010), shared governance—the principle that universities should be controlled by their faculties, which protects academic values against the encroachments of the spreadsheet brigade—is also threatened by the changing structure of academic work. Contingent labor undermines it both directly—no one asks an adjunct what he thinks of how things run—and indirectly. More people chasing fewer jobs means that everyone is squeezed for extra productivity, just like at Wal-Mart. As of 1998, faculty at four-year schools worked an average of about seven hours more per week than they had in 1972 (for a total of more than forty-nine hours a week; the stereotype of the lazy academic is, like that of the welfare queen, a politically useful myth). Not surprisingly, they also reported a shrinking sense of influence over campus affairs. Who’s got the time? Academic labor is becoming like every other part of the American workforce: cowed, harried, docile, disempowered. In macropolitical terms, the erosion of tenure and shared governance undermines the power of a large body of liberal professionals. In this it resembles the campaign against teachers unions. Tenure, in fact, is a lot like unionization: imperfect, open to corruption and abuse, but incomparably better than the alternative. Indeed, tenure is what professors have instead of unions (at least at private universities, where they’re banned by law from organizing). As for shared governance, it is nothing other than one of the longest-standing goals of the left: employee control of the workplace. Yes, professors have it better than a lot of other workers, including a lot of others in the academy. But the answer, for the less advantaged, is to organize against the employers who’ve created the situation, not drag down the relatively privileged workers who aren’t yet suffering as badly: to level up, in other words, not down. Of course, some sectors of the academy—the ones that educate the children of the wealthy and the upper middle class—continue to maintain their privilege. The class gradient is getting steeper, not only between contingent labor and the tenure track, and junior and senior faculty within the latter, but between institutions as well. Professors at doctoral-granting universities not only get paid a lot more than their colleagues at other four-year schools; the difference is growing, from 17 percent in 1984 to 28 percent in 2003. (Their advantage over professors at community colleges increased during the same period from 33 percent to 49 percent.) The rich are getting richer. In 1970 (it seems like an alternative universe now) faculty at public colleges and universities actually made about 10 percent more than those at private schools. By 1999 the lines had crossed, and public salaries stood about 5 percent lower. The aggregate student-faculty ratio at private colleges and universities is 10.8 to 1; at public schools, it is 15.9 to 1—almost 50 percent higher. Here we come to the most important issue facing American higher education. Public institutions enroll about three-quarters of the nation’s college students, and public institutions are everywhere under financial attack. As Nancy Folbre explains in Saving State U (2010), a short, sharp, lucid account, spending on higher education has been falling as a percentage of state budgets for more than twenty years, to about two-thirds of what it was in 1980. The average six-year graduation rate at state schools is now a dismal 60 percent, a function of class size and availability, faculty accessibility, the use of contingent instructors and other budget-related issues. Private universities actually lobby against public funding for state schools, which they see as competitors. In any case, a large portion of state scholarship aid goes to students at private colleges (in some cases, more than half)—a kind of voucher system for higher education. Meanwhile, public universities have been shifting their financial aid criteria from need to merit to attract applicants with higher scores (good old U.S. News again), who tend to come from wealthier families. Per-family costs at state schools have soared in recent years, from 18 percent of income for those in the middle of the income distribution in 1999 to 25 percent in 2007. Estimates are that over the past decade, between 1.4 million and 2.4 million students have been prevented from going to college for financial reasons—about 50 percent more than during the 1990s. And of course, in the present climate of universal fiscal crisis, it is all about to get a lot worse. * * * Our system of public higher education is one of the great achievements of American civilization. In its breadth and excellence, it has no peer. It embodies some of our nation’s highest ideals: democracy, equality, opportunity, self-improvement, useful knowledge and collective public purpose. The same president who emancipated the slaves and funded the transcontinental railroad signed the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, which set the system on its feet. Public higher education is a bulwark against hereditary privilege and an engine of social mobility. It is altogether to the point that the strongest state systems are not to be found in the Northeast, the domain of the old WASP aristocracy and its elite private colleges and universities, but in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina and, above all, California. Now the system is in danger of falling into ruin. Public higher education was essential to creating the mass middle class of the postwar decades—and with it, a new birth of political empowerment and human flourishing. The defunding of public higher education has been essential to its slow destruction. In Unmaking the Public University, Newfield argues that the process has been deliberate, a campaign by the economic elite against the class that threatened to supplant it as the leading power in society. Social mobility is now lower in the United States than it is in Northern Europe, Australia, Canada and even France and Spain, a fact that ought to be tattooed on the foreheads of every member of Congress, so directly does it strike at America’s identity as the land of opportunity. But it was not only the postwar middle class that public higher education helped create; it was the postwar prosperity altogether. Knowledge, again, is our most important resource. States that balance their budgets on the backs of their public universities are not eating their seed corn; they’re trampling it into the mud. My state of Oregon, a chronic economic underperformer, has difficulty attracting investment, not because its corporate taxes are high—they’re among the lowest—but because its workforce is poorly educated. So it will be for the nation as a whole. Our college-completion rate has fallen from second to eighth. And we are not just defunding instruction; we are defunding research, the creation of knowledge itself. Stipends are so low at the University of California, Berkeley, the third-ranked research institution on the planet, that the school is having trouble attracting graduate students. In fact, the whole California system, the crown jewel of American public higher education, is being torn apart by budget cuts. This is not a problem; it is a calamity. Private institutions are in comparable trouble, for reasons that will sound familiar: too much spending during the boom years—much of it on construction, much of it driven by the desire to improve “market position” relative to competitors by offering amenities like new dorms and student centers that have nothing to do with teaching or research—supported by too much borrowing, has led to a debt crisis. Among the class of academic managers responsible for the trouble in the first place, an industry of reform has sprung up, along with a literature of reform to go with it. Books like Taylor’s Crisis on Campus, James Garland’s Saving Alma Mater (2009) and the most measured and well-informed of the ones I’ve come across, Robert Zemsky’s Making Reform Work (2009), propose their variously visionary schemes. Nearly all involve technology to drive efficiency. Online courses, distance learning, do-it-yourself instruction: this is the future we’re being offered. Why teach a required art history course to twenty students at a time when you can march them through a self-guided online textbook followed by a multiple-choice exam? Why have professors or even graduate students grade papers when you can outsource them to BAs around the country, even the world? Why waste time with office hours when students can interact with their professors via e-mail? The other great hope—I know you’ll never see this coming—is the market. After all, it works so well in healthcare, and we’re already trying it in primary and secondary education. Garland, a former president of Miami University of Ohio (a public institution), argues for a voucher system. Instead of giving money to schools, the state would give it to students, and the credit would be good at any nonprofit institution in the state—in other words, at private ones as well. The student would run the show (as the customer should, of course), scouring the market like a savvy consumer. Universities, in turn, “would compete with each other…by tailoring their course offerings, degree programs, student services, and extracurricular activities” to the needs of our newly empowered 18-year-olds, and the invisible hand would rain down its blessings. But do we really want our higher education system redesigned by the self-identified needs of high school seniors? This is what the British are about to try, and in a country with one of Europe’s most distinguished intellectual traditions, they seem poised to destroy the liberal arts altogether. How much do 18-year-olds even know about what they want out of college? About not only what it can get them, but what it can give them? These are young people who don’t know what college is, who they are, who they might want to be—things you need a college education, and specifically a liberal arts education, to help you figure out. * * * Yet the liberal arts, as we know, are dying. All the political and parental pressure is pushing in the other direction, toward the “practical,” narrowly conceived: the instrumental, the utilitarian, the immediately negotiable. Colleges and universities are moving away from the liberal arts toward professional, technical and vocational training. Last year, the State University of New York at Albany announced plans to close its departments of French, Italian, Russian, classics and theater—a wholesale slaughter of the humanities. When Garland enumerates the fields a state legislature might want to encourage its young people to enter, he lists “engineering, agriculture, nursing, math and science education, or any other area of state importance.” Apparently political science, philosophy, history and anthropology, among others, are not areas of state importance. Zemsky wants to consider reducing college to three years—meaning less time for young people to figure out what to study, to take courses in a wide range of disciplines, to explore, to mature, to think. When politicians, from Barack Obama all the way down, talk about higher education, they talk almost exclusively about math and science. Indeed, technology creates the future. But it is not enough to create the future. We also need to organize it, as the social sciences enable us to do. We need to make sense of it, as the humanities enable us to do. A system of higher education that ignores the liberal arts, as Jonathan Cole points out in The Great American University (2009), is what they have in China, where they don’t want people to think about other ways to arrange society or other meanings than the authorized ones. A scientific education creates technologists. A liberal arts education creates citizens: people who can think broadly and critically about themselves and the world. Yet of course it is precisely China—and Singapore, another great democracy—that the Obama administration holds up as the model to emulate in our new Sputnik moment. It’s funny; after the original Sputnik, we didn’t decide to become more like the Soviet Union. But we don’t possess that kind of confidence anymore. There is a large, public debate right now about primary and secondary education. There is a smaller, less public debate about higher education. What I fail to understand is why they aren’t the same debate. We all know that students in elementary and high school learn best in small classrooms with the individualized attention of motivated teachers. It is the same in college. Education, it is said, is lighting a fire, not filling a bucket. The word comes from the Latin for “educe,” lead forth. Learning isn’t about downloading a certain quantity of information into your brain, as the proponents of online instruction seem to think. It is about the kind of interchange and incitement—the leading forth of new ideas and powers—that can happen only in a seminar. (“Seminar” being a fancy name for what every class already is from K–12.) It is labor-intensive; it is face-to-face; it is one-at-a-time. The key finding of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift (2011), that a lot of kids aren’t learning much in college, comes as no surprise to me. The system is no longer set up to challenge them. If we’re going to make college an intellectually rigorous experience for the students who already go—still more, for all the ones we want to go if we’re going to reach the oft-repeated goal of universal postsecondary education, an objective that would double enrollments—we’re going to need a lot more teachers: well paid, institutionally supported, socially valued. As of 2003 there were about 400,000 tenure-track professors in the United States (as compared with about 6 million primary- and secondary-school teachers). Between reducing class sizes, reversing the shift to contingent labor and beefing up our college-completion rates, we’re going to need at least five times as many. So where’s the money supposed to come from? It’s the same question we ask about the federal budget, and the answer is the same. We’re still a very wealthy country. There’s plenty of money, if we spend it on the right things. Just as we need to wrestle with the $700 billion gorilla of defense, so do universities need to take on administrative edema and extracurricular spending. We can start with presidential salaries. Universities, like corporations, claim they need to pay the going rate for top talent. The argument is not only dubious—whom exactly are they competing with for the services of these managerial titans, aside from one another?—it is beside the point. Academia is not supposed to be a place to get rich. If your ego can’t survive on less than $200,000 a year (on top of the prestige of a university presidency), you need to find another line of work. Once, there were academic leaders who put themselves forward as champions of social progress: people like Woodrow Wilson at Princeton in the 1900s; James Conant at Harvard in the 1940s; and Kingman Brewster at Yale, Clark Kerr at the University of California and Theodore Hesburgh at Notre Dame in the 1960s. What a statement it would make if the Ivy League presidents got together and announced that they were going to take an immediate 75 percent pay cut. What a way to restore academia’s moral prestige and demonstrate some leadership again. But leadership will have to come from somewhere else, as well. Just as in society as a whole, the academic upper middle class needs to rethink its alliances. Its dignity will not survive forever if it doesn’t fight for that of everyone below it in the academic hierarchy. (“First they came for the graduate students, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a graduate student…”) For all its pretensions to public importance (every professor secretly thinks he’s a public intellectual), the professoriate is awfully quiet, essentially nonexistent as a collective voice. If academia is going to once again become a decent place to work, if our best young minds are going to be attracted back to the profession, if higher education is going to be reclaimed as part of the American promise, if teaching and research are going to make the country strong again, then professors need to get off their backsides and organize: department by department, institution to institution, state by state and across the nation as a whole. Tenured professors enjoy the strongest speech protections in society. It’s time they started using them.

TUESDAY AM UPDATE, WRITETHRU with actuals: Disney/Pixar’s Coco has struck a chord in China — and is expected to keep strumming along as play continues. The movie from directors Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina has quickly become the top-grossing Pixar title ever in the market with guitar hero Miguel and his trusty dog Dante tuning up $75.6M after 10 days there ($80M through Monday, based on local estimates). The sophomore Middle Kingdom session came in 148% above last weekend’s opening, pointing to the fantastic buzz and relatable themes. Coco led overall overseas play for the weekend, followed by Justice League which came in at a higher than estimated $36.8M, and helped to push Warner Bros across the $3B mark at the international box office. Murder On The Orient Express (also better, at $23.7M), Daddy’s Home 2 ($15.6M) and animated Japanese title Fireworks, Should We See It From The Side Or The Bottom? ($10.7M in China) round out the frame’s Top 5. The full international box office weekend on Coco was $69.6M in 33 markets for an offshore cume of $172.3M and a global tally of $281M. There are still such majors to come as Australia, Italy, Brazil, Korea, the UK and Japan. Pixar has traditionally been soft in the Middle Kingdom, but local auds are extra sweet on Coco. The movie had the 2nd best sophomore weekend ever for an animated film in the market, behind only Zootopia — and that title multiplied like rabbits with an ultimate $235M there last year (after it was granted an extended run). This past week, Coco saw increases throughout with a No.1 weekend that far outdistanced the market’s other players (including Justice League which is moving close to $100M at Chinese turnstiles). Marvel Coco, which saw another No. 1 performance domestically this session, earlier this week helped Disney across the $5B global box office mark for 2017. So did Thor: Ragnarok which has now nailed $817.5M worldwide. The hammer-wielder grabbed another $6.6M this frame to lift the international cume to $526.1M, passing X-Men: Days Of Future Past’s $514M. Warner Bros. In other superhero news, Warner Bros/DC’s Justice League dropped 48.5% from last weekend to lasso $36.8M in the 3rd outing for an overseas cume of $371.8M. The global total to date is $569.2M. In highlights for the group, the China cume of $98.6M (RMB 654M) has now surpassed the lifetime totals of both Wonder Woman and Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice to become the highest-grossing DC film ever in the PROC. Elsewhere, Fox’s mystery train, Murder On The Orient Express, has crossed $150M internationally, with strong openings in Italy, Korea, Indonesia and Brazil. STX’s A Bad Moms Christmas decked the halls by passing $100M global, as did Lionsgate/Participant’s Wonder. And, Paddington 2 is thisclose to $50M overseas. As we wait for Star Wars: The Last Jedi to storm the world beginning December 13, next weekend will see expansions and holdovers while China gets a roster of new pics including Paddington 2, Only The Brave, Loving Vincent and 47 Meters Down. In the meantime, breakdowns and actuals on the titles above and others have been updated below. NEW DARKEST HOUR Focus Features Gary Oldman’s star turn in Working Title’s Darkest Hour has been heating awards talk since the film debuted during the fall festival circuit. Universal is just beginning offshore release of the drama from Joe Wright with China kicking things off. The weekend was $2.1M in the Middle Kingdom for 5th place in a frame that was dominated by overwhelming support of animated family pic, Coco. Oldman plays newly-appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the early days of World War II. With the fall of France imminent, Britain faces its darkest hour as the threat of invasion looms and Churchill must maneuver his political rivals while confronting the ultimate choice: negotiate with Hitler and save the British people at a terrible cost or rally the nation and fight on against incredible odds. International dates roll out through February. The UK and European majors should see solid play on the prestige title — premieres are being held in London and Paris the week of December 11. Upcoming dates include France on January 3, Brazil on January 4, Australia and Germany on January 11 and Spain and the UK Ireland on January 12. HOLDOVERS/EXPANSIONS COCO Disney Leading the international box office this session, Disney/Pixar’s Day of the Dead-themed family pic continues to charm offshore audiences, and with many majors still to come. The movie had already become the No. 1 film ever in Mexico, and this weekend set a Pixar record in China where it is the animation label’s biggest grosser to date. With $75.6M in the Middle Kingdom, Coco is flying in the face of Pixar’s traditional underperformance in the market. Themes of love, leaving and the world of the dead are really striking a chord locally. In total, Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina’s Coco plucked up another $69.6M in 33 material markets this weekend, lifting the international cume to $172.3M and the worldwide songbook to $281M. This weekend saw Coco open in France, Germany and Spain. In the former, the colorful pic stirred up $5.2M ($6.4M including previews), landing it at No. 1 and more than doubling the openings of both Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6. Spain was also a No. 1 start with $2.8M, ahead of the debuts of Moana and Big Hero 6. Germany too grabbed No. 1 with $2M to top Moana and Wreck-It Ralph. Elsewhere in Europe, Coco had an especially impressive opening in Belgium, posting $900K, ahead of all three comps above and with a Saturday that topped Frozen. In holds, the China performance truly is impressive. After a $17.8M start and lots of social sentiment last frame, this week saw each weekday increase before the sophomore session’s $44.2M. That’s 148% above the opening frame and ranks as the 2nd highest second weekend ever for an animated release in China behind only Zootopia. Recall that Zootopia was a massive hit last year with $235M in Middle Kingdom coin. Coco is already the highest grossing Pixar release ever in China and third highest Pixar/Disney release after only Zootopia and Big Hero 6. Fun fact: The second weekend $44.2M China gross, if ranked against animated opening weekends, would stand at No. 3 all-time, behind only opening frames of Despicable Me 3 and Kung Fu Panda 3. Elsewhere, Coco held terrifically with increases in a further five markets: Indonesia (+49%), Malaysia (+30%), Portugal (+18%), Taiwan (+15%) and Vietnam (+9%). The Top 5 plays so far are China, Mexico ($55.6M), France ($6.4M), Russia ($5.8M) and Spain ($2.8M). JUSTICE LEAGUE Warner Bros. With a 48.5% drop in its third weekend, Warner Bros/DC’s Justice League added $36.8M on 20,375 screens in 66 markets. That billows Superman’s cape to $371.8M overseas and $569.2M worldwide. There’s a new milestone for the league of superheroes in China where a running cume of RMB 654M ($98.6M) cuffs the best DC score ever, surpassing the total cumes of Wonder Woman and BVS. Brazil remains the No. 2 offshore market for the Batman and crew. The film is still No. 1 there and saw a small 24% dip to bring the total so far to $31.3M. Mexico is next best with $21.7M to date after ranking No. 2 this weekend. In the UK, the crew has racked up $20.2M, and Korea is now at $12.9M. MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS 20th Century Fox Rolling into a handful of new stations this session, Fox’s Kenneth Branagh-helmed mystery unearthed $23.7M in a total 72. That lifts the overseas cume to $153.4M. Italy saw a great start at $3.8M, 12% bigger than comp The Great Gatsby and good for No. 1. Korea, where two local movies are leading, gave MOTOE $3.4M, on par with Gone Girl and including previews. Also new this weekend was Indonesia at $1.8M for No. 1, and Brazil bowed at No. 2 with $1.5M. In holds, Germany was down 30% for a $9.5M total so far; the UK dipped 39% with a cume of $28.8M; and Australia fell off by just 20% to cume $9.9M so far. Overall, Orient Express is the top film in seven markets and is outpacing The Great Gatsby by 39% and Gone Girl by 68% in the same bucket of markets and at current exchange rates. Next weekend, the film opens in Belgium, Japan and Taiwan. DADDY’S HOME 2 Paramount Paramount’s holiday comedy grossed $15.6M this weekend in 49 markets, including 25 new openings. The international cume is now $34M. Playing to the family crowd, the drop was 32% from last session. Mexico got off to No. 1 with $4.8M at 764 cinemas becoming the 2nd biggest all-time opening weekend for a Hollywood comedy behind Pixels. The result is 108% above Daddy’s Home. The UAE was also a No. 1 debut with $650K at 45 cinemas for 26% over the original Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg-starrer. Argentina roosted at No. 2 in the debut with $408K at 179 locations; the result is 40% above Daddy’s Home which opened during school holidays). Colombia started at No. 3 with $357K at 182 sites. The bow is 26% below Daddy’s Home which likewise opened during school holidays. Israel stepped in at No. 2 with $275K at 27 sites; 17% above Daddy’s Home. Ecuador scored the best opening ever for a comedy with $170K at 40 cinemas. In holds, the UK added $2.7M in frame 2 on the pic that features Mel Gibson and John Lithgow. The total is currently $10.6M. Other cumes include Australia at $5.3M; Russia with $2.5M; and Brazil’s $1.6M. The next major to go is Germany on December 7. WONDER Lionsgate Lionsgate/Participant Media’s sleeper broke the $100M worldwide mark this weekend, thanks to a further $7.8M from 46 markets. The worldwide and international totals stand at $100.2M and $12.2M respectively through Sunday. Australia started off at No. 1 with $2.3M from 290 locations. The Julia Roberts-starrer also bowed in the UK, with $1.5M from 526 screens, and Spain debuted to $753K from 241. Brazil is the next major to launch (December 7) with the rest of international rolling out through the holiday season into early next year. PADDINGTON 2 REX/Shutterstock The little bear with the big heart is closing in on $50M at the international box office after a weekend that added $7.5M in about 30 markets. That lifted the offshore total to $49.9M through Sunday. The UK still leads totals at $36.3M. China and France are on deck this coming session. Both were sizable plays for the Peruvian ursine’s first outing, with $16.8M and $25M, respectively. This is all ahead of the U.S. debut via Warner Bros on January 12. THOR: RAGNAROK Disney The son of Odin crossed $800M global as expected this week, lifting to $817.5M. Internationally, Taika Waitit’s take on the Marvel property added $6.6M in 52 markets for an offshore total of $526.1M to date, passing X-Men: Days Of Future Past ($514M). Holds are good in such plays as the UK (-9%), Israel (-9%), Australia (-13%), Sweden (-28%), Mexico (-29%), Argentina (-30%), the Netherlands (-31%), Japan (-43%) and Germany (-45%). In the UK, Thor 3 hammered past the £30M mark and will soon surpass the lifetime total of Spider-Man: Homecoming. China remains the top market at $112.1M, followed by the UK, Korea ($34.9M), Brazil ($29.9M) and Australia ($25.2M). A BAD MOMS CHRISTMAS STXfilms The STX sequel opened in seven more international markets this weekend and added $3.9M from 2,597 locations. The offshore cume is $38.2M which helps push the comedy across the $100M mark worldwide. The global cume to date is $102.9M. In the Netherlands and Belgium this weekend, frosty weather kept some folks home as the weekend approached, but on Saturday both markets saw the sequel outperform the original. The former opened Bad Moms Christmas at No. 3 with $546K from 115 sites. That’s 24% ahead of the previous film and outranks comps like Horrible Bosses 2, Neighbors 2 and Office Christmas Party. In Belgium, the Mila Kunis-starrer opened at No. 3 with $206K from 68 locations, 26% behind Bad Moms, but ahead of the other comps. France came in lower than comps with $444K at 197 locations, 44% behind Bad Moms. The UK leads holds with a tiny 13% drop for a $9.7M cume. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are at $9.6M to date, followed by Australia/NZ with $8.1M after five frames. Still to come are Italy, Russia, Spain and Latin America this weekend. JIGSAW Lionsgate’s eightquel carved out another $2.5M in 65 markets this weekend, for a $60.4M running offshore cume. Brazil launched to $1M on 480 screens, surpassing Saw 4 (+89%), Saw 5 (+85%), and Saw 6 (+156%), based on local currency. The UK remains the lead market at $6.7M after weekend 6. Venezuela ($5.7M), Russia ($5.1M), Germany ($5.1M) and France ($4M) follow. HAPPY DEATH DAY Universal The Universal/Blumhouse micro-budget horror pic scared up $2.3M in 39 markets this session for an international total of $53.2M. Argentina got off to a strong start in the search for the co-ed killer with $418K at No. 3. France, where the movie’s titled Happy Birthdead, was the top hold at $601K for a total $3.6M. The global tally lifts to $109M. Russia releases this week. MISC UPDATED CUMES/NOTABLES STX Entertainment The Snowman (UNI): $1.6M intl weekend (19 markets); $34.9M international cume The Foreigner (STX): $1.2M intl weekend (3 new markets); $103.5M intl cume The Mountain Between Us (FOX): $1.46M intl weekend (26 markets); $27.5M intl cume Girls Trip (UNI): $676K intl weekend (5 markets); $23M intl cume Marrowbone (UNI): $245K intl weekend (Spain only); $7.7M Spanish cume NEW LOCAL TITLES Universal Perfectos Desconocidos, a Spanish comedy that Universal is distributing in Spain, opened Friday and placed No. 2 for the weekend with $2.2M. This is the second-best opening of the year for a local film and should see solid holds and extended run through the holiday period. Critics and audiences are responding well to the Álex de la Iglesia-helmed pic that stars Belen Rueda. It’s a remake of Paolo Genovese’s Italian hit Perfetti Sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) which released last year and scored the Best Film and Screenplay prizes at the David di Donatello awards. The story unfolds at a dinner party during which it’s proposed that everyone leave their cell phone in the center of the table, with text messages, calls and social prompts visible to all and revealing secrets that are perhaps better kept hidden. Warner Bros Japan released Full Metal Alchemist this weekend with the film grabbing No. 1 at $3.4M on 411 screens. The results are on par with WB’s local hit Rurouni Kenshin. Directed by Fumihiko Sori and based on the manga series, it’s an action story about alchemist brothers Edward and Alphone Elric in search of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone. New in Korea, mystery thriller Forgotten bowed via Megabox with $3.42M at No. 2 behind holdover The Swindlers. From writer/director Zhang Hang-jun, the film stars Kang Ha-neul and Kim Moo-yeol as brothers Jinseok and Yuseok. When Yuseok is kidnapped on their first day at a new house, Jinseok suffers from hallucinations until Yuseok returns home on the 19th day with a memory loss and exhibiting strange behavior. Finding himself in a hidden murder case inside Yuseok’s twisted memory, Jinseok faces a heartbreaking truth. Netflix recently acquired the pic for global rollout in 2018.

Don't start thinking that landing a rocket's first stage is routine just yet, as SpaceX has just posted video of its latest attempt. The Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered two satellites to orbit, however when it returned to Earth everything did not go exactly to plan. The live video feed cut out so we weren't sure exactly what happened, but now Elon Musk has tweeted video from afar showing the landing process. According to Musk, one of the engines cut out before it hit the deck of the droneship, causing a landing hard enough to "destroy the primary airframe and accordion the engines." We're guessing there's not enough left for this one to join the trophy case, but that's just how it happens in 2016, which Musk is calling "the year of experimentation."

An 18-year-old man is seriously hurt in a possible fireworks explosion in Central Park. Authorities say it happened shortly before 11 a.m. Sunday, inside the park near 68th Street and 5th Avenue. At a press conference held by the NYPD's bomb squad at the park Sunday night, authorities said the victim and two friends who were with him were not responsible for the explosion. Police say the man's foot was severed above the ankle in what they believe was a fireworks accident, but the exact cause is still being investigated. "The explosion could have been an experiment with fireworks or homemade explosives," said Counterterror Chief John O'Connell. "We do not have any evidence of a constructed device or commercial grade fireworks. We believe this could have been put here as some sort of experiment. "It should also be noted, the victim and his two friends, we do not consider them to be part of the construction of this object," O'Connell added. One man who was close by when it happened described the scene. "Everyone in the park, or this end of the park, heard a loud boom," the man said. "It was a loud report. Clearly not a car backfiring, more than a firework. Then heard some young men yelling, went over there on the rocks, and their friend was lying down whose foot was severely injured. And they claim he stepped on something." Lieutenant Mark Torre, commanding officer of the bomb squad, suggested that the device was made by someone with knowledge of chemistry, but said the result of the explosion seems to have been accidental rather than deliberate. "There is some forsenic evidence that indicates that it was not meant to go off by somebody stepping on it," Torre said. "It may have not gone off at an earlier time and was just left there." Authorities say the victim was taken to the hospital. No one else was hurt. The bomb squad was still on the scene conducting its investigation as of 6 p.m. Sunday. Stay with Time Warner Cable News and NY1 for more on this developing story.

Honestly, people, why wait to fall asleep with your shoes on when you can just draw dicks on your own face, am I right? Asia Brautigam, 19, as she was poking fun at our obsession with beauty bloggers, experimented with some eyeliner, and well? It’s dick liner. Cat eyes are out. Dick eyes are in. Wow MUA Twitter has been so creative with their eye looks, thought I'd have my take ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/Nsfm460HVV — asia (@asialbx) November 18, 2016 And a bunch of people began following her lead. @asialbx sooo in LOVE with your look my new everyday eye makeup pic.twitter.com/bxlP3NEPJC — jas♡ (@jasmin_c_) November 19, 2016 Asia got ahead of the curve and told Buzzfeed she wasn’t trying to shade makeup artists just in case people started saying she was “makeup shaming.” She assured “I think they’re all creative and amazingly talented!” she said, and added, “My dick-liner will never compare!” There ya have it, folks..

Bitcoin’s momentum among key merchants and platforms on the web keeps accelerating. After hinting at it a few weeks ago when Braintree enabled Bitcoin-based transactions for PayPal developers, the company is now enabling Bitcoin across the PayPal network for merchants of digital goods. The company has expressed interest in bitcoin for a while, with eBay CEO John Donahoe saying in the past that it would play an “important role” in the company’s future. Now that large players from Overstock to Wikipedia are now relying on the cryptocurrency for a part of their transactions or donations, PayPal is stepping in. Through partnerships with BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin, PayPal will let its merchants accept bitcoin for digital goods transactions. They decided to go with a handful of launch partners instead of a single one, as PayPal’s Braintree did with Coinbase earlier this month. To be clear, this isn’t about adding Bitcoin to PayPal’s digital wallet and it’s only in North America for the moment. These are baby steps for now. “This is a huge endorsement to the digital currency community,” said GoCoin CEO Steve Beauregard. PayPal will earn transaction revenue through referral fees, which are pretty common throughout the payments world. “PayPal is playing the role of the intermediary, but the cost will be left up to the merchant and the payment processor,” said Scott Ellison, who is PayPal’s senior director of competitive intelligence and corporate strategy. A few weeks ago at TechCrunch Disrupt, Braintree CEO Bill Ready said that it was adding Bitcoin as a payment to its SDK.

After the most unprecedented denigration of a presidential candidate in US history, the worst may be yet to come, beginning Friday with Trump’s inauguration as America’s 45th president. Pro-Hillary dark forces call him illegitimate. Media scoundrels beat on him relentlessly. Whatever he does or says or doesn’t do or doesn’t say is criticized. Nothing in memory resembles what’s gone on since mid-2015. The problem isn’t Trump. It’s America’s debauched system - fantasy democracy, not the real thing. Leaders like Obama govern by the script handed them, doing the bidding of powerful dark forces running the country. Trump’s anti-establishment sounding rhetoric scares them, especially talk of getting along with Vladimir Putin - anathema in neocon infested Washington. Days before his inauguration, a disgraceful Huffington Post article contemptuously headlined “Hillary Clinton is the Legitimate President,” saying: “The evidence is clear. Hillary Clinton is the rightful president-elect, and courts must use the broad discretionary powers with which they are vested to enjoin an illegitimate president from taking office.” Shocking stuff, here in America, not in some faraway tinpot dictatorship. The evidence is very clear. Trump won convincingly. Hillary lost whining, whimpering, simpering and groaning, believing it was her turn as a woman to claim the nation’s highest office. Her defeat let humanity dodge a possible nuclear bullet. Huffpo saying US courts should intervene on her behalf is seditious or treasonous - despicably promoting coup d’etat action to prevent an elected US president from taking office. Huffpo: “Every major intelligence agency in the country has reached the same conclusion: Russian hackers engaged in cyber attacks with the express purpose of helping Donald Trump win the election.” “They operated at the directive of Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently motivated by his hatred for Clinton.” Fact: This is what passes for mainstream news and information - utter rubbish, knowing, or should know, not a shred of evidence suggests Russian US election hacking. The whole dirty story was fabricated - a disgraceful scheme to delegitimize Trump and prevent normalizing ties with Russia. Promoting the notion of Hillary as America’s legitimate president is scandalous, stuff commonplace in banana republics or despotic monarchies. It’ll likely continue after Trump enters office - instead of focusing solely on how he governs, judging him by what he does or doesn’t do for good or ill. A rough ride awaits him. Fidel Castro’s advice to Hugo Chavez before his death applies to Trump, saying “(t)ake care what you eat, what they give you to eat. They inject you with I don’t know what.” Watch your back is also sound advice, including carefully vetting security personnel assigned for protection. Threatening dark forces make survival Trump’s top priority. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Entire neighbourhoods of Fort McMurray were under water on Sunday, less than three months after a fire roared into the northern Alberta city and destroyed one-tenth of its buildings. Residents of Canada's oil sands capital are wondering what will come next. They've lived through the rushed evacuation of more than 80,000 people and a wildfire that broke records in how aggressively it pressed forward – as well as years of heavy job losses and plunging profits because of oil prices that have stayed low far longer than most expected. "There was just an incredulous feeling as people were like, 'Are you kidding?' They aren't too upset, they're just shrugging their shoulders at this point," said Tany Yao, the MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo. Story continues below advertisement GLOBE ARCHIVES: A week in Hell: How Fort McMurray burned At least 37 homes were flooded on Sunday when 85 millimetres of rain fell on Fort McMurray in two hours. Some residents of the city water-skied through areas that had been on fire on May 3. The flooding caused the area's emergency operations centre to be activated for the first time since the wildfire. "It's important that our community continues to be resilient and work together," Chris Graham, Fort McMurray's deputy director of emergency management, said in a statement. As crews pumped water from flooded areas, ash was dusted off barricades so they could be put to use keeping motorists away from waterlogged roads. During the wildfire, those barricades blocked access to acres of scorched homes. Some people were once again told to boil their water, only weeks after similar advisories put in place for the fire were rescinded. "You saw the terrible thing in Fort McMurray. My God, I'm sure they were wondering would the locusts be next. I mean, it's so biblical," said David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist. "They had the fires and the drought and now the floods. They clearly had more than a month's worth of rain in Fort McMurray in two hours, and it's almost as if they couldn't get rain when they prayed for it back in April and May." Fort McMurray isn't the only place in Alberta to encounter bad weather this year, Mr. Phillips said. A number of tornadoes have careered across prairie farmland, a large hailstorm forced an Air Canada jet to execute an emergency landing and thunderstorms have been a near daily occurrence across the province. The typically dry region has also experienced an unusually humid summer. Both Calgary and Edmonton have been hit by episodic flooding over the past month. More than 206 millimetres of rain fell on Calgary in July, the most in 89 years. In Edmonton, stranded motorists had to be rescued from a flooded highway last week. One downpour even flooded the provincial legislature building. RELATED: Wildfires like 'the beast' in Fort McMurray can have a major impact on water quality Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement A spokesman for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, the local government that includes Fort McMurray, said the flooding won't hamper recovery efforts after the fire, the costliest disaster in Canadian history. Much of the rebuilding hasn't yet started. Officials from the Alberta and federal governments, as well as the Red Cross, will be in the city on Wednesday to announce more funding to aid in the recovery. Mr. Yao and Alberta's Official Opposition Wildrose Party are pressing the provincial government for answers on the timeline for rebuilding. There's been little progress in rebuilding or even cleaning up the ash and debris, nearly a month after the wildfire was declared under control, Mr. Yao said. According to Mr. Yao, the government is waiting on toxicity tests before making a decision on rebuilding three largely destroyed neighbourhoods that remain off limits to residents. With a report from The Canadian Press

Christina here…. One “Million” Mom’s sent me an email! Dear Christina, As the Christmas shopping season begins full swing, here is our annual “Naughty or Nice” retailer list. We have taken the top 100 national retailers and reviewed their websites, media advertising and in-store signage in an effort to help you know which companies are Christmas-friendly. Over the past seven years, OMM has stood firm in the “War on Christmas.” Companies who used to refuse to acknowledge Christmas now have Christmas “shops” inside their stores. Many of them now liberally use “Christmas” in their advertising and in-store signage. Sadly, there are still some companies which refuse to use “Christmas.” They continue to insult and offend Christian shoppers by sticking with their politically correct “holiday” term. Yaay! I love how OMM can Dixie Dogwhistle what is really a “War Against Inclusion” and pretend that when businesses attempt to be more inclusive during the holidays, that they are somehow unfriendly to Christmas. I really don’t understand why Christians feel insulted and offended when businesses use the word “holiday” instead of “Christmas” – fuck inclusion, right? YOU MUST ACKNOWLEDGE OUR HOLIDAY EXCLUSIVELY OR WE WILL HURT YOU WITH OUR WALLETS. Criteria – AFA reviewed up to four areas to determine if a company was “Christmas-friendly” in their advertising: print media (newspaper inserts), broadcast media (radio/television), website and/or personal visits to the store. If a company’s ad has references to items associated with Christmas (trees, wreaths, lights, etc.), it was considered as an attempt to reach “Christmas” shoppers. So even carrying your religious tchotchkes aren’t enough for the AFA? Not mentioning Christmas does not mean someone is against Christmas. You’re confusing neutrality for persecution, AFA. If prayer actually did anything, I’d pray that you guys get over your petty persecution complex. p.s. Here are the companies “against” Christmas: Companies AGAINST “Christmas” Banana Republic Barnes & Noble Family Dollar Foot Locker Gap Stores L.L. Bean Limited Brands Maurice’s Office Depot Old Navy Radio Shack Staples Supervalu Victoria’s Secret Learn more about Christina and follow her @ziztur.

It was Dec. 1, 2013. With the score at 7-7 in the second quarter, the Philadelphia Eagles marched to the Arizona Cardinals’ 6-yard line. It was at this moment when Chip Kelly unveiled a surprising wrinkle. From Video If Nick Foles was there, who was lined up as quarterback? From Video Meet Brad Smith. He has experience as a wide receiver, running back, quarterback, kick returner and special teams ace. A few things about this play made people believe this was the Wildcat formation. The starting quarterback was positioned as a receiver, and a player who wasn’t the starting quarterback took the snap. In fact, the Wildcat formation doesn’t require either of those things. From Video The Wildcat formation always uses an unbalanced line, specifically the tackle-over set. The tight end lines up next to the weakside guard, while the two offensive tackles are next to each other on the playside. From Video Motion always sets up the play’s run from the Wildcat formation: usually a power run by the player taking the snap, a jet sweep by the motion man or a pass. Kelly insisted after the Eagles-Cardinals game that he did not call the Wildcat formation. “It was not a Wildcat play,” head coach Chip Kelly said. “It’s just Brad Smith plays quarterback. So let’s straighten that out right now. We don’t run the Wildcat. It’s just a play. He played quarterback. Nick played receiver because Brad’s really good with the ball in his hands.” From Video There was no tackle-over set or motion man. Kelly was absolutely correct when he said this play was not the Wildcat. So, if it wasn’t the Wildcat, what was it? Look at where running back LeSean McCoy lined up. This should be familiar to Oregon and Eagles fans who know how the Inside Zone Read works. From Video Ignore the fact that Smith fumbled the ball. That isn’t the important part. McCoy was preparing for the mesh point with Smith, as he would during an Inside Zone Read. The offensive line was zone blocking the defense. It left the outside linebacker unblocked, probably because Smith was supposed to be reading him on this play. It is also noteworthy that there were three receivers (Riley Cooper, Jason Avant, Foles) who each faced single-coverage. From Video Cooper ran what appeared to be a corner route. Avant ran a crossing route. Foles took All-Pro Patrick Peterson out of the play by lining up at receiver. It is possible Kelly called a packaged play, an Inside Zone Read packaged with an intermediate pass. It might be reasonable to blame Kelly for inadequately preparing the Eagles to execute this play, but his play-calling should not be at fault. I’ve concluded that this play was either the Inside Zone Read or a packaged run/pass play. Because these plays are staples of the Eagles’ offense, the notion that this play was a flashy gadget play is nonsense. Yet, it is reasonable to ask the following: Why even bother making Smith the quarterback for a play when Foles was playing well on this drive? Or for that matter, why not use Michael Vick since he rejoined the active roster as Foles’s backup? It is likely there are some play-calls that Kelly is more willing to make with Smith at quarterback than with Foles or Vick. From Video Against the Bears, the Eagles used a tackle-over set with right tackle Lane Johnson positioned between left tackle Jason Peters and left guard Evan Mathis. There was no motion man, so this was still not the Wildcat. From Video This was a classic power play. The linemen on the play-side were down-blocking. Running back Chris Polk was the lead blocker and did a nice job blocking the defensive tackle. Right guard Todd Herremans pulled to the left and entered the crease to block the playside linebacker. From Video Smith entered the hole for a two-yard gain. His versatility allowed Kelly to simultaneously avoid risking the health of his top two quarterbacks and keep an inside QB power run on the table. Defenses must always be aware of the possibility that Smith will pass the ball. In fact, this could happen in a formation where he isn’t even lined up at quarterback. From Video Smith came into this game as a receiver. Nothing too unusual so far. From Video He motioned over and prepared for the surprise. From Video Smith ran to the right, as if this was a sweep. From Video Smith looked at Foles, who wasn’t even looking for the ball. He was likely just a decoy on this play. From Video Foles attracted double coverage, as the safety read Smith’s eyes and assisted the cornerback covering Foles. This allowed Zach Ertz to get open in one-on-one coverage against a linebacker. Unfortunately, Smith’s pass was behind him and he couldn’t make the catch. There was one Oregon player who resembled Smith as an offensive weapon: Chris Harper. While Kelly was the offensive coordinator in 2008, Harper played quarterback, running back and receiver. He transferred the next year to Kansas State. From Video Kelly and head coach Mike Bellotti experimented with putting Harper at quarterback in the middle of games. Against Purdue, they instructed pocket-passer Justin Roper to get off the field. From Video Harper was a running threat and raw passer. Bellotti and Kelly didn’t mind tipping their hand close to the red zone. This QB sweep was effective because of Harper’s speed down the sideline. Roper returned to the game after this play. From Video Additionally, Harper sporadically played quarterback on zone read plays. It is noteworthy that Harper earned meaningful playing time when Oregon lacked a true “dual threat” quarterback. Foles’s performance last season proved Kelly did not need a mobile quarterback to make his offense flourish, but it is possible he viewed Smith as a means of compensating for Foles’s lack of mobility. Smith is a situational player who makes the read option more potent and makes Kelly more comfortable calling inside QB runs. If Smith makes the roster this season, expect to see more of the formation with him at quarterback. Just don’t call it the Wildcat. Top photo from video

The Mayor of London has said Brexit could be halted if the Labour Party made staying in the European Union a manifesto policy, and won the next election. Sadiq Khan said it could still be possible to ‘trump the referendum’ result by effectively putting it back to the public as a manifesto pledge. The Mayor has made the intervention at a time his party is in turmoil over its own position, though he has never waivered in his pro-EU stance. He told the Guardian: ‘For it to have credibility with the British public, there would have to be a Labour manifesto offer, because the public would say, not unreasonably “Hold on a sec, we voted to leave and you’re now sticking two fingers up at us”. Read more

ADVERTISEMENT Today is the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a movement born from outrage over bank bailouts, as well as a belief that the nation's richest had gotten richer following the Great Recession while everyone else got hammered. Coincidentally, the Census Bureau is out Tuesday with its annual report on income and poverty in America, and the findings lend some credence to that argument. After declining markedly every year since the financial crisis, median household income in the U.S. remained flat compared to last year at $51,017. (Technically median household income declined slightly, but by a statistically insignificant amount.) On the surface, that's a positive sign that the economy is finally starting to turn around. Yet for those at the top, in the 95th percentile, household income has already begun to go up, according to the Census Bureau. Though income in the 95th percentile is still down from its peak in the mid-2000s, the uptick is striking when you consider that income for average households is only just beginning to bottom out. Further, median household income is still down 8.3 percent from its pre-recession level in 2007. For those in the 95th percentile, household income is down just 2.5 percent. And as the Washington Post's Neil Irwin notes, median household income is actually a hair lower than it was in 1989, in inflation-adjusted terms, when the average household earned $51,681. "Growth is not fast enough," Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said before the report's release. "And the very definition of what it means to be middle class is being undercut by trends in our economy that must be addressed." The divergence is more pronounced at the apex of the income ladder. The top one percent saw their income spike 31.4 percent between 2009 and 2012, according to a research paper released earlier this month by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez. With income for everyone else remaining relatively flat, that means the top one percent raked in 95 percent of the nation's total growth in wealth since the economic recovery began. In a speech Monday, President Obama acknowledged there has been a rise in income inequality during the economic recovery, saying, "The trends that have taken hold over the past few decades of a winner-take-all economy, where a few do better and better, while everybody else just treads water or loses ground, those trends have been made worse by the recession." But the chances that a gridlocked Congress will actually do anything about it are close to zero. Indeed, analysts are more concerned that the legislature will end up shooting the economy in the foot.

Huffington Post contributor Yashar Ali said Sunday that Fox News's Eric Bolling is attempting to intimidate him into silence by filing a $50 million dollar defamation lawsuit against his reporting. "He is trying to intimidate me. He sees me as a young reporter that may be scared by big lawsuits. But if he wants to wade into this pond, I'm happy to go in with him," Ali host Brian Stelter on CNN's "Reliable Sources." Ali pointed out that the lawsuit goes after him personally, rather than naming The Huffington Post. The media outlet has said it will stand with Ali regarding a story that included claims by multiple women who allege Bolling sent them lewd pictures. "My life history has given me a lot of experience to not be scared by these things," Ali said. ADVERTISEMENT Ali also said he stands by his report, which he said he verified with 14 sources. Bolling has denied the allegations. Ali called Bolling "wrong" for his decision to take legal action. "He's wrong because I spent three months on this story. As you said, I have 14 sources. I've spoken to the victims, and that's on a factual basis. I know he's wrong," Ali continued, adding that "the best defense of defamation is the truth." Ali said Bolling's intent to intimidate him is clear because Bolling filed the lawsuit against him personally, not against his company that has a multibillion-dollar parent. "It's really important to note, Brian, that he's suing me personally for $50 million. He did not include HuffPost, which is owned by Verizon, in this lawsuit. If he wants $50 million, if you feel that you've been aggrieved and you deserve damages, you go after the multibillion-dollar conglomerate, not an individual reporter," Ali told Stelter. Ali said he welcomes the opportunity to depose the Fox News host, saying he hopes his case will serve as an example to other journalists should they face similar legal actions. "I relish the opportunity to see and being deposed and to stand up for not only my First Amendment rights, the First Amendment Rights of many reporters who messaged me after this came out, saying that they would be scared by this kind of action," Ali said. "And, you know, I'm not trying to turn myself into a representative for the media here, but I feel like I have to really fight this because of other reporters who would be frightened by this kind of action," he added. Ali has demanded Bolling dismiss his lawsuit over a report, published earlier this month on HuffPost, detailing allegations that the host sent lewd photos of male genitalia to two female coworkers at Fox News and Fox Business. In a statement included in Ali's article, Bolling's attorney Michael Bowe said the host "recalls no such inappropriate communications, does not believe he sent any such communications, and will vigorously pursue his legal remedies for any false and defamatory accusations that are made.” Bolling was suspended from Fox a day after the article was published and the network launched an investigation into the matter. Fox News told CNN that Bolling remains suspended while an outside law firm investigates the allegations.

Two charts from Think Progress make the case that Occupy Wall Street has already won a major victory. First, here is a look at the focus of economic discussion on cable news during the last week of July: Now, here is a look at economic discussion on cable news over the last week:Granted, Occupy Wall Street is not the sole cause of this change. For one thing, President Obama has been stumping for his jobs legislation for the past several weeks. Also, the last week of the July was the peak of the debt default showdown, making it perhaps not the best point of comparison. Still, Occupy Wall Street has made an undeniable impact in shifting the terms of debate on our current economic woes away from a focus on spending cuts, and toward a focus on unemployment and the culpability of Wall Street. That is a big deal.

"Cinder block" redirects here. For the American singer, see Cinder Block (musician) "Breezeblocks" redirects here. For the song by Alt+J, see Breezeblocks (song) An interior wall of painted CMUs A concrete masonry unit (CMU) is a standard size rectangular block used in building construction. CMUs are some of the most versatile building products available because of the wide variety of appearances that can be achieved using concrete masonry units.[1] Those that use cinders (fly ash or bottom ash) are called cinder blocks in the United States, breeze blocks (breeze is a synonym of ash)[2] in the United Kingdom, and hollow blocks in the Philippines. In New Zealand and Canada they are known as concrete blocks (a name common in the United States also). In New Zealand, they are also called construction blocks. In Australia they are also called Besser blocks and Besser bricks, because the Besser Company was a major supplier of machines that made concrete blocks. Clinker blocks use clinker as aggregate. In non-technical usage, the terms cinder block and breeze block are often generalized to cover all of these varieties. Composition [ edit ] Concrete blocks are made from cast concrete (e.g. Portland cement and aggregate, usually sand and fine gravel, for high-density blocks). Lower density blocks may use industrial wastes, such as fly ash or bottom ash,[3][4] as an aggregate.[5] Recycled materials, such as post-consumer glass, slag cement, or recycled aggregate, are often used in the composition of the blocks.[6] Use of recycled materials within blocks can create different appearances in the block, such as a terrazzo finish, and may help the finished structure earn LEED certification. Lightweight blocks can also be produced using autoclaved aerated concrete. Sizes and structure [ edit ] The use of blockwork allows structures to be built in the traditional masonry style with layers (or courses) of staggered blocks. Concrete blocks may be produced with hollow centers (cores) to reduce weight or improve insulation. Blocks come in modular sizes, with the most popular typically referred to (by their thickness) as "4-inch", "6-inch", "8-inch", and "12-inch". In the US, CMU blocks are nominally 16 in (410 mm) wide and 8 in (200 mm) long. Their actual dimensions are their nominal dimensions, minus ⅜ in any direction (to allow for mortar joints regardless of their orientation as laid).[7] In Ireland and the UK, blocks are usually 440 mm × 215 mm × 100 mm (17.3 in × 8.5 in × 3.9 in) excluding mortar joints. In Australia, New Zealand and Canada, blocks are usually 390 mm × 190 mm × 190 mm (15.4 in × 7.5 in × 7.5 in) excluding mortar joints. Block cores are typically tapered so that their top surface (as laid) has a greater surface on which to spread a mortar bed and for easier handling. Most CMU's have two cores, but three- and four-core units are also produced. A core also allows for the insertion of steel reinforcement to span courses in order to increase tensile strength. This is accomplished by grouting the voids of blocks containing rebar with concrete. Thus reinforced, CMU walls are better able to resist lateral forces such as wind load and seismic forces. A variety of specialized shapes exist to allow special construction features. U-shaped blocks or knockout blocks with notches to allow the construction of bond beams or lintel assemblies, using horizontal reinforcing grouted into place in the cavity. Blocks with a channel on the end, known as "jamb blocks", allow doors to be secured to wall assemblies. Blocks with grooved ends permit the construction of control joints, allowing a filler material to be anchored between the un-mortared block ends. Other features, such as radiused corners known as "bullnoses" may be incorporated. A wide variety of decorative profiles also exist. Concrete masonry units may be formulated with special aggregates to produce specific colors or textures for finish use. Special textures may be produced by splitting a ribbed or solid two-block unit; such factory-produced units are called "split-rib" or "split-face" blocks. Blocks may be scored by grooves the width of a mortar joint to simulate different block modules. For example, an 8-by-16-inch (200 mm × 410 mm) block may be scored in the middle to simulate 8-by-8-inch (200 mm × 200 mm) masonry, with the grooves filled with mortar and struck to match the true joints.[11] United States [ edit ] Uses [ edit ] Concrete block, when built with integral steel reinforcing or in tandem with concrete columns and tie beams and reinforced with rebar, is a very common building material for the load-bearing walls of buildings, in what is termed concrete block structure (CBS) construction. American suburban houses typically employ a concrete foundation and slab with a concrete block wall on the perimeter. Other common uses for concrete block wall is interior fire-rated partition walls, and exterior backup wall for attachment of building envelope systems and façades. Structural properties [ edit ] Concrete masonry walls may be ungrouted, partially grouted, or fully grouted, the latter two enhancing their structural strength. Additionally, steel reinforcement bars (rebar) can be used both vertically and horizontally inside a CMU wall to maximize its structural performance. The cells in which the rebar is placed must be grouted for the bars to bond to the wall. For this reason, high seismic zones typically only allow fully grouted walls in their building codes. The American design code that guides design engineers in using CMU as a structural system is the Masonry Standards Joint Committee's Building Code Requirements & Specification for Masonry Structures (TMS 402/ACI 530/ASCE 5). The compressive strength of concrete masonry units and masonry walls varies from approximately 1,000 psi (7 MPa) to 5,000 psi (34 MPa) based on the type of concrete used to manufacture the unit, stacking orientation, the type of mortar used to build the wall, and other factors.[12][13][14] See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Sources [ edit ]

Ireland 24 France 9 The scoreline takes some believing. So too the performance. To lose their two most important players, their talisman and their leader, and then respond to put France away handsomely, also takes some beating given Ireland’s history at World Cups. The mutual love-in when the players returned moments after the end was entirely justified. But despite losing first Johnny Sexton at the end of the first quarter and then Paul O’Connell on half-time, no blow rocked this Irish side. Phenomenal, unyielding mental strength and unquenchable spirit, helped by an umbilical link with a raucous Irish crowd which had the Millennium Stadium rocking, ultimately devoured a blunt, one-dimensional France. The collective, as ever with this Ireland, amounted to more than the sum of the individual parts. And in the face of a ferociously physical French assault, Irish players kept looking for what little daylight there was in the thick blue line, kept clearing out, kept tackling and, in a game where line breaks were like hen’s teeth, managed a couple before drawing strength from an improved scrum in the endgame. Heroes nonetheless abounded, none more than Ian Madigan, who epitomised this team’s mental strength with the assuredness and daring of his running and kicking game, while Iain Henderson somehow made light of losing O’Connell with his leg-pumping in contact. Others, such as Rory Best and Devin Toner, have rarely played better, the entire back-row rose to the occasion with big, big games, as did Conor Murray and the immense Robbie Henhsaw. But there were no weak links in the chain. Ireland’s world appeared to fall in before the 25-minute mark when Sexton was tackled hard by Louis Picamoles, and felt the full force of the number eight’s shoulder. Despite the ferocity of the hit, it appears Sexton had suffered a groin injury. Nearing half-time Ireland suffered another body blow, and a huge psychological one, when O’Connell was stretchered off after the end of the first-half with what seemed like a serious hamstring injury. O’Connell tried to get to his feet, but couldn’t. Given a rousing reception, he managed a one-hand wave through his pain and crushing disappointment as he was stretchered off, but it was a cruel way to see his test career come to an end. Ireland would also lose Peter O’Mahony, who had a towering match, clearing out, poaching, tackling and counter-rucking. Thierry Dusautoir’s crunching hits and tackle count were reminiscent of his stunning performance against New Zealand in this stadium eight years ago, and France had plenty of oomph, but little ooh la la. Ireland’s exit strategy focussed mostly on a kick-chase rather than kicking long. The problem was that Brice Dulin and Scott Spedding gathered the first three of them, and in addition to conceding territory, Ireland also began by conceding four of the first five penalties. Second Captains Ireland 24 France 9 - match highlights Happily for the Irish crowd, Frederic Michalak struck the post when shanking his first kick, and Spedding hit the upright from long-range, before Sexton opened the scoring after his little chip led to Mathieu Bastareaud playing the ball from an offside position. Spedding would cancel out that Sexton penalty, and another one, with long-range kicks, before Madigan spread confidence through his teammates and the Irish support when unerringly making it 9-6. Ireland should have been more ahead when a lovely strike move from off-the-op line-out ball saw Tommy Bowe, another big game player, drift through the French line from Henshaw’s inside pass and draw Spedding but Earls couldn’t hold onto the pass. Ireland went through many painstaking phases before Henshaw kicked possession away and then, after Spedding kicked downfield, Madigan attempted a risky touch-finder rather than an up-and-under, which went out on the full. Ireland would pay a hell of a price, if not on the scoreboard. As France attacked off the ensuing line-out in the Irish half, O’Connell’s foot seemed to get caught in the turf as he attempted a poach and was cleared out. Earls redeemed himself to some degree with a try-saving tackle from behind on Spedding, as did Henshaw by lifting the siege when poaching for a turnover penalty on half-time. But the players left the pitch with O’Connell out of the game, the tournament and test rugby. About the only positive of that grim scenario, was that Ireland had 15 minutes to regroup. They had responded impressively to losing Sexton and even more so now. With the battle resumed, an injury break in the 48th minute led to the best version yet of ‘The Fields’ heard on this, or any other day. Almost immediately Henshaw stood up Bastareaud and set off. Although the move stalled, from the ensuing scrum Ireland went through the phases before Rob Kearney broke Michalak’s tackle and took Dulin’s to score. When Dusautoir knocked on, the crowd chanted “Ole, Ole, Ole.” The French could not be heard. Rory Best was pinged for coming in from the side and Sean O’Brien, not for the first time, was penalised for a turnover that could well have been given prior to this tournament. O’Brien’s response was to pound the turf but, undeterred, make a brilliant turnover at the next ruck. Back came Ireland through the phases, but there was no way through, so Madigan chipped for the increasingly influential Henshaw to gather. But France won the turnover penalty, and after launching Louis Picamoles up the middle, O’Brien was pinged for not rolling away. A Morgan Parra penalty brought the French to within a score, but Henderson, at the peak of his stirring second-half effort, drove Bernard le Roux back ten metres off a French line-out and when Alexandre Dumoulin crossed in front of the carrier, ‘The Fields’ reverberated around the Millennium once more. It also summed up France’s blunt attacking game. When Madigan found a huge touch, it felt like a momentum shift, and it was, the final one. Ireland attacked through the phases, O’Brien, Henderson, Toner and Best making yards in contact that they had no right to make. This was as much about desire and seeking relatively softer shoulders as sheer strength. Murray then had the wit to touch the ball against the base of the posts with the well-placed Owens having no need to take recourse to the TMO. A scrum penalty for the revamped Irish front-row followed. Madigan nailed it from 45 metres. More ‘Oles’. Another Irish scrum penalty. Ireland now bossing it to the backdrop of The Fields. One of the great days. Scoring sequence: 13 mins Sexton pen 3-0; 16 mins Spedding pen 3-3; 19 mins Sexton pen 6-3; 23 mins Spedding pen 6-6; 29 mnins Madigan pen 9-6; (half-time 9-6); 51 mins R Kearney try 14-6; 64 mins Parra pen 14-9; 72 mins Murray try, Madigan con 21-9; 76 mins Madigan pen 24-9. France: Scott Spedding (Clermont Auvergne); Noa Nakaitaci (Clermont Auvergne), Mathieu Bastareaud (Toulon), Wesley Fofana (Clermont Auvergne), Brice Dulin (Racing 92); Frederic Michalak (Toulon), Sebastien Tillous-Borde (Toulon); Eddy Ben Arous (Racing 92), Guilhem Guirado (Toulon), Rabah Slimani (Stade Francais), Pascal Pape (Stade Francais), Yoann Maestri (Toulouse), Thierry Dusautoir (Toulouse) (capt), Damien Chouly (Clermont Auvergne), Louis Picamoles (Toulouse). Replacements: Benjamin Kayser (Clermont Auvergne) for Guirado (69 mins), Vincent Debaty (Clermont Auvergne) for Ben Arous (43-48 and 65 mins), Nicolas Mas (Montpellier) for Slimani (63 mins), Alexandre Flanquart (Stade Francais) for Pape (73 mins), Bernard le Roux (Racing 92) for Choully (55 mins), Morgan Parra (Clermont Auvergne) for Tillous-Borde, Remi Tales (Racing 92) for Michalak (55 mins), Alexandre Dumoulin (Racing 92) for Bastareaud. Ireland:Rob Kearney (UCD/Leinster); Tommy Bowe (Belfast Harlequins/Ulster), Keith Earls (Young Munster/Munster), Robbie Henshaw (Buccaneers/Connacht), Dave Kearney (Lansdowne/Leinster); Jonathan Sexton (St. Mary’s College/Leinster), Conor Murray (Garryowen/Munster); Cian Healy (Clontarf/Leinster), Rory Best (Banbridge/Ulster), Mike Ross (Clontarf/Leinster), Devin Toner (Lansdowne/Leinster), Paul O’Connell (Young Munster) (capt), Peter O’Mahony (Cork Constitution/Munster), Sean O’Brien (UCD/Leinster), Jamie Heaslip (Dublin University/Leinster). Replacements: Ian Madigan (Blackrock College/Leinster) for Sexton (28 mins), Iain Henderson (Ballynahinch/Ulster) for O’Connell (half=time), Chris Henry (Malone/Ulster) for O’Mahony (55 mins), Jack McGrath (St. Mary’s College/Leinster) for Healy (57 mins), Luke Fitzgerald (Blackrock College/Leinster) for Earls (62 mins), Nathan White (Connacht) for Ross (65 mins), Richardt Strauss (Old Wesley/Leinster) for Best (74 mins), Eoin Reddan (Old Crescent/Leinster) for Murray (75 mins), Referee: Nigel Owens (Wales)a

8.1K Shares Share Originally published in two parts at Skepchick and Queereka and cross-posted here with permission. Disclaimer: I’ve chosen to focus this article on trans women only for the sake of brevity and clarity. It is not my intent to contribute to the ongoing cultural erasure of trans men, and I believe their voices, experiences and identities deserve to be heard and understood. Cis readers, please note that much of this can be applied to transsexuality in general. Debunking myths is one of those things that us skeptics are supposed to do, right? Okay then… (my triskaidekaphilia isn’t showing, is it?) Myth 1. Trans women are just really, really, REALLY gay. This one is impressively persistent, and unbelievably common. It was even pulled out recently while Lance Bass, an openly gay man, was guest-hosting Access Hollywood. The truth is fairly simple: gender identity and sexual orientation have nothing whatsoever to do with one another. A fairly common adage used to address this misunderstanding is “sexual orientation is about who you want to go to bed with, gender identity is about who you want to go to bed as.” My own preference in addressing it is to simply point out the existence of trans lesbians (that is, trans women who are attracted to other women). Problem solved. Let’s go have tea and scones. Or so one would hope, anyway. I think a lot of this confusion stems from how strongly we associate behaviour with gender. The cultural assumption of heterosexuality is so intrinsic, we see gay men as being somehow in defiance of what it is to be a man. They become regarded as female-like or transgender simply by engaging in a mode of sexuality that is more common amongst women than men, even though many gay men express themselves in an almost hyper-masculine way. This misconception is amplified by our overemphasis of sex and sexuality when thinking about gender and what gender means, so we can end up regarding any expression of gender as being about sexuality. Such as the widespread assumption by men that women dress nice or stylishly or sexily primarily as a means of attracting men, rather than simply an expression of their own identity and feelings that day. This myth is damaging to both trans women and gay men alike. It also often leads to trans issues being swept aside or subsumed within broader discussions of LGBTQ stuff. Such as how this ad that ran in the Canadian newspaper The National Post was largely decried for being homophobic rather than transphobic despite being almost entirely based around promoting fear of transgenderism, and how the narrative of PFC Manning has been written as the story of a gay man in the military, despite the fact that the evidence clearly shows she had been planning to transition immediately upon return to civilian life. She continues to be described even by her supporters in male and masculine terms. Short answer: sex / gender and sexuality do not have a deterministic relationship to one another. Which is why there are such things as gay, lesbian and bisexual people in the first place. Myth 2. So you’re going to get your penis cut off? Another impressively common one. In short, no. That’s not how it works. I hope I don’t squick you all out too much, but I’ll provide a really rough, basic explanation of one of the common forms of MtF lower surgery (aka SRS, sexual reassignment surgery, aka GRS, genital reconstruction surgery, aka vaginoplasty), using the “inversion method”. The penis is basically split into three pieces. The tip is sort of detached from the bulk of the shaft to be formed into a clitoris. The skin of the shaft is removed and the shaft itself split down the middle. It is then inverted into a vaginal canal such that the exterior circumference of the shaft serves as the vaginal lining. This preserves sensation in the event of penetrative sex as well as allows for a certain degree of natural lubrication during arousal. The testes are indeed discarded but they’re pretty much the only bit of tissue that doesn’t get used. The scrotal tissue is used to form outer labia and create the aesthetic appearance of a typical female vulva. Remaining tissue and skin get used to form a clitoral hood and add additional depth to the vaginal canal as needed. The procedure is remarkably effective, and has come quite a long way over the decades. Trans women today are able to preserve considerable sensation (often no loss of sensation reported at all), and very many report greatly improved sexual satisfaction and full orgasmic potential. The outward appearance is virtually indistinguishable from any other woman’s vulva. The only two things that are typically at all noticeable are that if your partner is particularly well-endowed, he may notice a slight lack of depth, and the vaginal canal is often a little bit steeper than in cis women, though that can be prevented by a trans woman taking care to exercise proper technique while dilating (a process required to ensure the vaginal canal doesn’t close). There are a few things that I find particularly troubling about this misconception, or even just casual joking reference to “cutting off your dick”. One is reinforcement of the classic misogynist myth that women are incomplete men. Women are men, minus a few pieces. Female genitals are just the absence of male genitals. Castration anxiety, penis envy, blah blah blah, etc. Clearly, that is not true. Women are their own sex, not simply lesser men. So why should we assume that acquiring girl bits is as simple as lopping off the boy bits and carving a gash? The other problem is how it reinforces an image of trans women as sexless, mutilated Barbie dolls. It reinforces the idea that we have simply discarded our sex rather than creating for ourselves a new one. It is reductive, and imagines our new state as “less” than our previous one. It reinforces the sense that we’ve rendered ourselves inferior in sacrificing our maleness. The reality is that transition is not a de-sexing of the body, it is a re-sexing of the body. Our genitals are not discarded, they are simply reshaped. Myth 3. So you’ve chosen to get a sex change operation? SRS is not what changes our sex. That’s only one tiny piece of the puzzle. And many trans women choose not to, or can’t, undergo SRS. A woman is not defined by what’s between her legs. I lay this one at the feet of the media. Unless a film or TV show is explicitly about the long, gradual, complex, multifaceted, emotionally harrowing, highly individual process of transition, it is impossible to really portray it accurately or fit it into a plot. Most of the times transition shows up in movies or TV, it’s as a plot device. Why waste time portraying something so complex and gradual when it’s just a little hinge in your narrative? We’ve all seen it a million times. Bob goes into the hospital as a big, burly, manly dudely dude. Out walks Roberta in her heels and mini-skirt, with her D-cup breasts suddenly magically having appeared out of nowhere, her hair miraculously 12 inches longer, and goes swishing off to sleep with the first unsuspecting guy she can find. No recovery time! No pain! No blood! No dilation! No bandages and packing! No long, tedious four year process for hormones to do their breast development, skin tone, body hair, fat redistribution thing. No irritating legal hassles with changing name and documentation. No emotional roller-coaster. No spontaneous bursts of tears. No voice training. No re-learning your body language and mannerisms. No anxiety about passing. No joyful revelation the first time you realize you are passing. No crying with happiness the first time you discover you can look in a mirror without hating what you see. No dealing with the scariness and awkwardness of beginning to date again. No re-learning the entire language of fashion and how to dress. No getting accustomed to bras and heels and earrings and annoying nightmarishly fiddly little jewelry clasps. No wondering whether the better orgasms are worth their infrequency. No rediscovering your sexuality. No long, complex process of reacquainting yourself with new genitalia and learning to understand them. No learning what you are and aren’t comfortable wearing. No getting nail polish all over your fingers and eyeliner in your eyeball because you never got a chance to learn how to do that stuff as a little girl. No coming out. No losing friends. No being disowned by family. No growing closer to the people who supported you. No adapting to the loss of male privilege and learning how to deal with cat calls. No nothing. Basically? No transition. None of any of the stuff that makes it such an intense and incredible and traumatic and rewarding and beautiful experience. And she’s wearing a mini-skirt! After SRS! Which in real life basically amounts to your entire lifetime’s worth of periods condensed into a two month period of recovery. Bloody, hormonal, moody, painful recovery. And she goes and gets laid, too. Trivializing? Kinda. Myth 4. “It’s a trap” / Trans women are just gay guys trying to attract straight dudes. See above about us not being gay guys. But this one goes a lot deeper, a lot nastier, a lot more demeaning, and a lot more dangerous. Dangerous in that a great many trans women have lost their lives to sexual partners who felt they were “tricked”. The concept of “deception” is a tricky one, and it can be very complicated to unpack the various ethical dimensions of disclosure and where a trans person’s responsibility lies in terms of informing her partner. That’s far too big a subject to tackle here, but Zinnia Jones provides a fantastic explanation in this YouTube video. I’d just like to say that I really don’t think it’s our responsibility to give you the opportunity to inflict your bigotry and hang-ups on us; it’s your responsibility to ask (if it’s that big a deal to you). And if a woman was attractive to you one moment and a repulsive, lying whore the next, when all that has changed is that you now know a largely irrelevant detail of her history, the problem is with your perceptions, not her body. The problematic implications of us being “traps” are a bit too numerous to name them all. A few that come to mind are the basic assumption that we’re “really” men, believing that our decisions all revolve around you andwe’re doing this for your sake, not our own (kind of like the earlier example about how men may interpret how a woman dresses), the issues of conflating gender expression with sexual motivations, the concept that femaleness and femininity are artifice and fake, etc. But I guess the one that I’d most like to unpack is how, like the thoroughly debunked theory of “autogynophilia”, it looks at trans women’s sexuality and motives through a lens of male sexuality and motives. A hypothetical cis male sits on his couch and is absent-mindedly flipping through a porn magazine. He comes across an ad for “shemale” porn. He wonders, “why would anyone ever do that? Why would a man want to become a woman? That’s crazy!” (yeah, let’s put aside the implicit misogyny there… we can talk about that some other time) and rather than think about it in terms of why a woman would want a female body and not a male one, he thinks about it in terms of why a man would want a female body. The conclusions he draws, based upon the assumption that a man is fundamentally a sexual agent and a woman is fundamentally a sexual object, are that the “shemale” is doing it to get laid, to attract men to him with his new hot, curvy, sexual-object of a body. Either that or, as in “autogynophilia”, doing it to have himself as his very own personal sex object. Never mind what happens to a trans woman’s libido during HRT. Never mind that for very many trans women, that period of time, exactly when the libido starts diminishing, happens to be when commitment often deepens, and any remaining doubts and questions are resolved. Forget that. It MUST be about sex. Because that’s all the female body is good for: sex. Right? Myth 5. Aren’t you sort of reinforcing stereotypical gender roles? Aren’t you just going along with the idea that having a feminine personality means you must be female? Doesn’t that perpetuate the idea that there are certain ways women and men are “supposed” to be like? Much like the existence of trans lesbians serves to disprove the “really, really gay” myth, in this case we can point to the existence of butch or tomboy trans women. Ta da! Myth vanishes in a puff of logic. But to explain further… This is about a very basic confusion: lack of understanding the difference between gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is an internal sense of self and what one fundamentally is. It’s the sense of being a man or a woman (or both, or neither, or in-between, or something else). It is divorced from concepts of what a man or woman is or isn’t supposed to be like, and appears to be very much innate and unchanging. It also appears to be related to the neurological “body map” and relationship to one’s body- feelings of either comfort or alienation. Gender expression is the degree to which one’s personality, interests and manner of self-expression is culturally regarded as “masculine” or “feminine” (or “androgynous”). This is heavily culturally and socially mediated. What is regarded as feminine in one culture may be regarded as masculine in another. There seem to be some gendered traits that are in varying degrees innate to an individual but gender expression is an aggregation of many, many, many such traits which can occur in an immense variety of combinations. An imperfect but very helpful breakdown from the Center For Gender Sanity (which I think I’ve used before, actually) can be found here. What makes a person transsexual, and motivates one to pursue physical transition, is typically a conflict of gender identity with physical, assigned sex. It is not a conflict of gender expression or role with physical, assigned sex. We transition not because we feel we’re too feminine to be men, or that the presence of feminine characteristics means we must be female. The motivation is far deeper and far less analytical than that. We transition simply because we know ourselves to be female… totally independently of how well we do or do not fit into female stereotypes. Hence we are not simply basing this off of an overly strict concept of gender roles where we need to get our bodies to conform to a socially mandated binary. We are only seeking to get our bodies to conform to our sense of self so that we can feel that they are our own rather than a creepy gross alien thingy that happens to be attached to us. And our existence does not in any way support, perpetuate or rely upon those binaries… we are fundamentally transgressing them and asserting that they may be broken, and sometimesmust. Myth 6. If our culture didn’t have such strict gender roles, there would be no need for transition. This is another mistake stemming from the confusion of gender identity with gender expression, and also again the belief that a trans woman makes her decision because she is uncomfortable with the male gender role rather than the male body. The argument runs that, basically, if we were to break down the socially arbitrated binary and “gender straitjacket” we would no longer feel any sense of conflict between our selves and our assigned sex. But, again, we do not transition out of discomfort with the male gender role. We transition out of discomfort with the male body. No matter how open, enlightened and non-gendered our society could be, most women would go right on feeling just as alienated and disturbed by having a penis, a pair of testicles pumping her full of testosterone, a hairy face and body, a masculine distribution of muscle and fat, a flat chest, that acidic male locker room smell, ruddy oily skin, etc. And most men would go right on feeling creeped out and appalled by having a vagina, menstruating every month, having breasts, soft and smooth skin, no beard, a feminine shape, wide hips, the rising and falling cycle of estrogen and progesterone, etc. Transsexuality is first and foremost about us and our bodies and our right to be happy within them, not all about social conventions or the politics of gender or what you think society should be or what you think is best for us. People whose gender identity is in conflict with their physiological sex will continue to exist no matter how well we accommodate for variation in gender expression. Solving society’s problems of gender won’t solve all the problems of sex. Please, take it as a reasonable assumption that we’ve thought this stuff through, our decisions are our own, and we haven’t just been duped by the patriarchy or whatever. It sucks to have people who are ostensibly your allies tell you you’re living your life wrong and that the biggest, most important, most difficult, most thought-through decision you ever made was just a result of being brainwashed by the system, maannnn. Myth 7. You’re so brave! No. That’s a lovely idea, it is, and thank you. I do appreciate the sentiment and we often enjoy hearing that kind of thing. It’s an enormously tempting idea, too, and hard to give up. It would be terrific to believe that I’m this wonderfully brave, courageous, strong woman who overcame unimaginable odds to assert her true self without compromise to a hostile, bigoted world. But it just isn’t true. We aren’t brave. We’re scared shitless and in tremendous pain and desperate for a way out, and don’t really have much of a choice. Imagine you’re being chased by a pack of snarling wolves through a darkened, stormy forest. They’re nipping at your heels, just behind, barking and growling with long strings of saliva dangling from their bared fangs. Your body is aching and sore and straining against the exhaustion, just barely maintaining your sprint through a combination of adrenaline and the terrifying certainty of death should you give in. Somewhere in the darkness and gloom you suddenly catch a glimpse of light. You run towards it, screaming for help as best you can through your bursting, panting lungs. It is a cabin. You finally make it to the door, you throw it open, and just in nick of time as one of the wolves lunges for your throat, you slam the door shut behind you. At last you’ve escaped. You’re safe. Inside the cabin sits a friendly old man smoking a pipe and mulling some wine. As you stand there, shaking and gasping for breath and crying and terrified out of your wits, he smiles and says, “wow, you’re really brave.” Some of us are brave. Some of us are strong. But that’s not always the case, and can’t necessarily be inferred from our transition. We do what we have to do, however we can, no matter how scared we are. But on the other hand, as it was articulated in Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, one of my favorite novels: “Courage is being scared shitless and doing it anyway.” Myth 8. You’re appropriating the female body. Appropriation is about co-opting someone else’s identity. We’re not doing that. We’re expressing our identity. It is not an act of attempting to emulate or express ourselves as The Other, we are attempting to more accurately and honestly express The Self. We don’t transition into being a new or different person. We become more ourselves. We don’t put on a mask, we take one off. We don’t another cliché metaphor, we just cliché metaphor. It is not YOUR body or sex that is being in any way appropriated or affected. We are making decisions about our own bodies, our own sex, specifically just trying to feel at home within them…. Which is our choice to make. Our bodies, our choices, yeah? Myth 9. Why can’t you just accept yourself? Why not just learn to be comfortable with who you are? This one is usually based on analogy to cosmetic surgery and eating disorders. After all, we do teach people to do their best to accept their bodies and not treat themselves with loathing. We rightly teach people that self-acceptance is of great importance to one’s mental and emotional well-being. The appropriate response to body-image issues is therapy, and to reinforce self-acceptance, not to facilitate an obsession with cosmetic surgery or enable an eating disorder. But gender dysphoria is not as simple as a “body-image issue”, and has been proven unresponsive to therapy and psychotropic medication. There are certain reasonable expectations a person can have for their body, and there are certain conflicts between body map or self image and physical configuration of the body that deserve to be addressed through medical means. Consider, for instance, the case of skin grafts for a burn victim, plastic surgery for someone with an extreme socially and psychologically debilitating deformity, or prosthesis for an amputee. In these cases, we don’t simply teach self-acceptance. That is part of the process, sure (as it is with gender transition), but we do provide medical intervention and don’t question or belittle their desire for it. They are only asking for a relatively basic level of bodily integrity. That line is subjective but it is present. If you’re cisgender, ask yourself: were your genitals to be lost or disfigured in an accident, would you want someone to chastise you for wanting a prosthesis or cosmetic surgery? A body consistent with one’s internal conception of sex and gender is a perfectly reasonable thing to want and a very difficult thing to live without. Furthermore, these kinds of procedures, and gender transition, have specific, defined end-points and goals. Eating disorders and cosmetic surgery do not. Someone with a severe psychological body-image disorder will, presumably, never feel pretty or thin enough. They will remain unhappy, and the physical changes won’t solve the underlying issue. In the case of gender transition, and cosmetic procedures for burns and deformities, there is an end-point and the procedures consistently produce a great deal of psychological and emotional benefit with significant improvements in the patient’s well-being. Most medical procedures are not simply about sustaining life. They are about maintaining well-being and improving quality of life. That is what transition provides… a quality of life an individual may reasonably expect. No other procedure or treatment has ever been proven effective or helpful in addressing the extreme detriment to mental health caused by Gender Identity Disorder. Myth 10. You don’t really become female. The process is only cosmetic. You’re still technically a man. I addressed much of this a few weeks ago in this article. It has chickens! To summarize: there is no particularly valid reason to prioritize the genetic definition of sex above all other aspects of physical sex: hormones, secondary sexual characteristics, genital configuration, etc. Chromosomes actually don’t play nearly as much of a role in human sexual differentiation as we often think they do. The Y chromosome is mostly deteriorating junk DNA that’s only real function is to turn the gonads into testes. In an XX cell, one of the X chromosomes is deactivated. As such, there’s no real functional difference between a “female” cell and a “male” cell. The process of sexual differentiation in humans is not genetic in nature, but hormonal. As for the matter of being “cosmetically” female… a trans woman’s secondary sexual characteristics are in no substantial way different from that of a cis woman and are formed through the exact same physical processes. If my breasts are to be deemed “cosmetic”, so too must the breasts of any woman at all. There is no single variable we can point to that suggests someone is “really” female or not. Doing so for any individual trait will necessarily require excluding some cis women from the category. There are some traits that no trans woman possesses, but there will always be cis women who don’t possess those traits either. As such, there is no definitive way that you can suggest trans women are outside of the category “woman” but all cis women are in. At least not without going into tautologies like “only cis women are really women because trans women aren’t really women”. In so far as the term “woman” is to be at all meaningful and consistent, trans women must be included. Myth 11. Drag queens, transsexuals, transgenders, cross-dressers, what’s the difference? First, don’t say “transgenders”. Nouning-the-adjective places the category above the person. Say “transgender women/men/people”. Transgender is an umbrella term that includes all significant deviation from the norms of gender and sex. Drag queens, transsexual people, cross-dressers, transvestic fetishists, people who identity as trans-masculine or trans-feminine, people who are genderqueer, etc. are all included. Transsexual refers specifically to people who permanently transition from one sex to another, usually through one or more medical treatments such as hormone replacement therapy and/or genital reconstruction surgery, usually along with legal and social changes such as change of legal name and documentation, alternate gender presentation (clothing, make-up, etc.), voice training and so on. The adjective “trans”, as in “trans woman”, usually means transsexual but sometimes means transgender. It’s usually clear from context. This article, for instance, has been about transsexual women. Drag queens are men (typically but not always gay) who dress in an exaggeratedly, campily female way for the sake of performance or entertainment. There is typically very little emphasis placed on actually passing as female but instead on having a particularly ostentatious and fun outfit. This is an act of playing with gender roles, not an act based on expression of a deeper internal sense of self. A drag queen adopts a female persona but will (almost always) have a male gender identity. Cross-dressers are men with a male gender identity who, for a variety of possible reasons, choose to occasionally dress in women’s clothing and accessories and present as female. The acts of cross-sex presentation are temporary and do not reflect their “true self”. A transvestic fetishist is a cross-dresser who does so for sexual motivations, due to being aroused or getting an erotic thrill from the cross-sex presentation. They also maintain a male gender identity and the cross-sex presentation is temporary. These distinctions are important. Seriously. Myth 12. Transsexuality is just an invention of the modern medical establishment, a symptom of Western culture. Hormone replacement therapy and genital reconstruction surgery are modern medical treatments developed to address and accommodate a long-standing human issue. Gender variance, although it may vary in its particular iteration, will not always be socially accepted or accommodated, and is sometimes only accommodated in very specific ways, occurs in pretty much all cultures and societies throughout human history. Many cultures were actually fairly accepting and tolerant. Some even imagined transgendered identities to be especially blessed, lucky or powerful… such as a shamanic role for certain North American First Nations “two spirit” identities, the Galli priestesses of Cybele in ancient Greece, the paradoxically respected-and-stigmatized social status of Kathoey in Thailand, the positive social standing of Hjira in India prior to British colonial rule (which brought with it British attitudes towards gender variance), etc. Gender variance has existed as long as human beings have. Transsexuality is simply a relatively new option for addressing it and meeting the needs of people with a sense of strong disharmony between gender identity and physical sex. It didn’t create us, it is just a means of allowing us to live full, happy, meaningful lives and feel comfortable and at home in our bodies. Myth 13. You’re infiltrating women’s spaces and making them unsafe. First of all, we are women. So there’s that. I’m not sure why whatever discomfort may arise from a cis woman’s hang-ups about the thought of a trans woman in the same bathroom or changing room or whatever, and the perceived risk, should take precedence over the extreme discomfort and actual physical risk that a trans woman would be forced to endure in using men’s facilities. An argument I’ve encountered repeatedly is “well what’s to stop some male rapist or child molester or voyeur from putting on some lipstick, claiming to be transgender, and then sexually assaulting your daughters!” (Ominous scary organ chord!). Well… there has never, ever been such an incident. No man has ever disguised himself as transgender for the sake of perpetrating such a crime. And if what you are worried about is sexual assault and voyeurism then those are the issues you should be targeting, enacting policies against, and the people whom you should be demonizing. Don’t demonize and punish innocent trans people over some wild, imagined hypothetical. Would you ban lesbians from women’s facilities on the possibility of their voyeurism? No, probably not, and it’s extremely statistically unlikely for lesbians to commit sexual assault in such a setting. But… it’s just as unlikely for trans women to do so. And remember that stuff about our libidos? Our difficulty achieving erection if we even have a penis? If prevention of sexual assault is something you’re keenly interested in, then please start by focusing on dismantling a misogynistic culture that objectifies and devalues women and places their humanity as secondary to their bodies. There is also a lot of anger and controversy within the feminist community about other types of women’s spaces. A particularly prominent example is the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, which enforces a trans-exclusionist “Womyn-Born-Womyn” policy (though they allow trans men to attend and perform). Many of the justifications are parallel to those of the Christian right in forbidding us access to women’s bathrooms and changing rooms: we’re really men, it makes the environment unsafe (again, there is absolutely no data whatsoever to support this), what’s to stop men from attending under the pretense of being trans, etc. But there are additionally complex issues. One is the general transphobic attitudes within certain branches of feminism (particularly radical feminism)…. The notion that we’re enforcing the gender binary (which relates to the “why can’t you just accept yourselves” thing and the confusion of gender identity with gender expression), the weird hypocritically gender-essentialist insistence that although gender is “just a social construct” we are nonetheless completely bound to our assigned sex and may not transcend it, many bio-essentialist claims (such as, literally: “rape is encoded on the Y chromosome”… I’ve actually come across that claim), etc. It is also sometimes insisted that because we lacked female childhoods and the concomitant gender-socialization that we can’t possibly understand the female experience. That’s true in a sense… there are many aspects of a female life I did not experience and some I never shall. But this is true of every woman. There is no universal, unwavering female narrative that everyone experiences exactly alike. There are as many stories as there are women. To act like any particular thing being absent means someone isn’t “really” a woman and can’t understand womanhood would necessarily mean excluding a whole lot of cis women, too. All of these notions seem to be acts of bending over backwards and performing intellectual acrobatics to try to disguise their transphobia as being somehow an extension of their feminism when it in fact runs directly contrary to several of the fundamental tenets of feminism… that our lives, choices, identities and what we do with our bodies should not be dictated by external forces or forced upon us to conform with what society tells us those with our particular anatomy are supposed to be. Biology is not destiny. Remember? … In summary, almost all of these misconceptions stem from the assumption that we’re really men, and considering us, our lives, our implications and our choices through a male frame of reference. A woman who is attracted to men is not gay. The existence of a woman as a woman does not reinforce traditional gender roles, nor would the breakdown of those roles cause her to disappear. A woman would not be asked to simply accept a male body. A woman would not be accused of appropriating womanhood, or infiltrating women’s spaces. A woman’s body, and the aspects of it that render it female, are not simply cosmetic. If there is one myth to debunk from which all others would perish, it’s the notion that our gender is not legitimate. We are women. Just think of us as such, and you’ll get it. … ETA: When I said that a cross-dresser’s acts of cross-sex presentation do not reflect their “true self”, I should have been more clear: in the case of a CD (as opposed to a trans woman in denial who simply believes herself to be CD), the female presentation / persona isn’t MORE true than the male identity. Both are aspects of that individual’s sense of self. But the primary difference between a genuine CD and a trans woman is that the male identity is not held to be false while the female identity is held to be genuine. Instead, the male identity is still the primary expression of self that is inevitably returned to. Error: Your Requested widget "id=‘text-101' " is not in the widget list. 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Natalie Reed is a trans-feminist grrl blogger, queer, recovering addict, […]-survivor, etc. She got her start blogging at Skepchick, and now writes for Freethought Blogs. Her many ridiculous interests include linguistics, feminism, trans-feminism, anarchism, gender theory, queer theory, poetry, neuroscience, biology, Doctor Who, comic books, cartoons, shoegazing and punk rock. She was born with a Y chromosome but totally kicked its ass. Follow her on Twitter @nataliereed84. Found this article helpful? Help us keep publishing more like it by Help us keep publishing more like it by becoming a member!

Doug Mataconis · · 7 comments Today’s New York Times tries to figure out why there was a group of English soccer hooligans at the protests against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” on September 11th: Among the non-New Yorkers who traveled to Lower Manhattan on Saturday to protest the neighborhood’s decision to allow an Islamic community center to be built were seven men who came from England bearing flags with slogans and the cross of St. George — a symbol of their nation and of the Crusades. Those flags are often seen at soccer stadiums, when ultranationalist fans of England’s soccer team gather to cheer (and to fight fans of other nations), but they have been cropping up regularly at anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim protests in English cities over the past year. That is because the men are members of the English Defense League, formed last year to counter what the men see as the threat posed to their national identity by immigrants to England and British-born Muslims who are neither white nor Christian. As the British anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate explained last month, the E.D.L. is led by a former member of the British National Party, whose leader has made common cause with the Ku Klux Klan, and has “mushroomed from a coalition of former football hooligans into an enormous street army with the propensity for large-scale disorder and city center confrontations with the police.”[ (…) After spending months working undercover on an 11-minute documentary about the group, Matthew Taylor reported, “A Guardian investigation has identified a number of known right-wing extremists who are taking an interest in the movement — from convicted football hooligans to members of violent right-wing splinter groups.” (…) In a report on the group, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz asked, “What are Israeli flags and Jewish activists doing at demonstrations sponsored by the English Defence League?” The newspaper answered the question this way: “Call it a struggle against a common foe: Islam. Or a journey into the heart of darkness. Or perhaps further proof that Europe is starting to lose its mind again.”

“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” said President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning during his maiden speech before the United Nations General Assembly. “Rocket Man”—Trump’s new nickname for North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un—“is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” If there is a war on the Korean Peninsula, as appears increasingly likely, what happens after the guns go silent? The reconstruction of the Korean nation, after more than a century of tragedy and division, would be one of the most difficult and expensive projects in history. The cost of rebuilding the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as the North calls itself, is beyond the means of Seoul. There are South Korean estimates ranging from $50 billion to $229 billion. Add in rebuilding the South, and the tab can soar to over $5 trillion. Yet the real cost is the suffering of more than 25 million North Koreans. Many tell us they would try to move north in the event of the destruction of the Kim regime so Beijing is worried about the influx of refugees in its northeastern provinces. It does not appear, however, that Chinese officials are especially concerned about the ability of the People’s Liberation Army, backed up by the People’s Armed Police, to close the border with the North. After all, that border is defined by three natural boundaries: the Yalu and Tumen rivers and an active volcano, Mt. Paektu. In any event, it is unlikely that North Koreans want to leave their fate to the hated Chinese when they can more easily walk across the Demilitarized Zone, the strip of land separating the two Koreas. In an era of considerably less tension, north-south corridors in the border area were de-mined. Refugees, therefore, merely have to stroll south—to be with other Koreans—along safe paved highways and railroad tracks. That means, if North Korea were to be “totally destroyed,” the first job of South Korean and U.S. troops would be to stabilize the population of North Korea. The South Korean military would likely execute “stabilization operations that will focus on two key objectives: establish security and restore essential services with the intent to keep the Korean population fixed in their villages receiving essential support to minimize the humanitarian crisis,” David Maxwell, of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. At the same time, South Korean forces, assisted by the U.S., would have to go on the most important Easter egg hunt in history. They would have to, as Maxwell said, “search, locate, secure, render safe, account for, and as appropriate destroy any remaining weapons of mass destruction.” And they’d have to do this in a hostile environment, one “exponentially more complex than Iraq,” says Maxwell, a former U.S. Army Special Forces colonel with five Korea tours. The North Koreans are indoctrinated to hate Americans, almost all males have military training, and they will have guns. Moreover, the population has been raised on a myth glorifying “partisan warfare.” So what could be more dangerous? As South Korean and American forces move north, the Chinese would probably move south. China’s military would also want to find nuclear weapons, stocks of chemical and biological agents, and ballistic missiles. Beijing, however, covets something even more important to China: paper. The Chinese would need to secure North Korean archives, which will likely show their complicity in the Kim family’s weapons programs and its horrific crimes. This means China almost certainly would try to secure the capital of Pyongyang and weapons sites before South Korean and American forces did so. South Korean and American military officers and diplomats have, for decades, tried to discuss with their Chinese counterparts what happens when, for whatever reason, the Kim regime can no longer rule. Maxwell points out that “this can hardly be called coordination.” Why not? “These engagements,” he said, “are generally one-way with no reciprocal sharing from the Chinese side.” Therefore, Beijing, at least at this time, does not seem to be particularly interested in attempts to “minimize misunderstanding and miscalculation.” It is often said that Chinese officials do not participate in these discussions for fear of offending their North Korean allies. Another reason, however, may be that Chinese military officers do not want to reveal their plans because they want to control the northern portion of the Korean Peninsula. Leading Korea watcher Bruce Bechtol of Angelo State University told me that the Chinese would undoubtedly end up talking to Washington and Seoul if and when the time comes. Bechtol, the author of North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era, is probably correct, as the specter of great-power war should tend to convince Beijing that it has no choice but to coordinate. But should the Chinese decide not to do the right thing, the total destruction of North Korea could lead to two large armies with incompatible objectives coming into contact with each other in a wartime setting. Miscalculation in these fluid circumstances haunts war planners like Robert Collins, who has worked with U.S. Forces Korea in this area. As he told The Daily Beast, if Kim loses control, planning for all sides becomes “exceptionally complex and challenging.” That’s when the real fighting in Korea could begin.

Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Man, is there anything that makes a person feel as fundamentally good about the collective experience of humanity than a really well-designed Lego model? I doubt it. This model of an original Mini may be Lego's best iconic vintage car set yet. Previous Lego kits have been for the original Beetle (especially challenging, given the Beetle's curves and the Lego brick's brickishness), the Microbus (much more suited to Lego bricks), and they appear to be keeping with the iconic economy car theme with this British Racing Green Mini, complete with racing stripes and fog lamps. Advertisement The basic Mini shape lends itself well to Legoization, and this one is even a Mini Cooper. If you don't trust the little badge, you can verify the Cooper-status by looking at the hood, which has an engine that even has the twin air cleaners of the dual side-draft SUs of the actual car. That's a nice touch. This thing has more nice touches than a night with a masseuse: a flip down trunk lid that reveals a removable picnic basket and blanket, a rear fog light, spare tire under the boot floor, plaid-pattern seats, a removable roof, and so much British charm you better put down a drop cloth if there's anything around it you don't want all britcharmed. Advertisement It'll be available August 1, and these sorts of kits tend to be pricey, so start planning your low-level smash-and-grabs now.

Earlier today we brought you word that one LSU offensive lineman would be (controversially) returning to the Tigers. Now there’s word of a loss at the same position group. The university has confirmed that Jonah Austin (pictured, No. 71) has decided to take his leave of the football program and transfer to an undetermined location. No reason for the decision to leave was given, although a search for a better opportunity at playing time would be a good place to start. If Austin were to end up at another FBS institution, he’d be eligible to play in 2015 as a graduate transfer. Austin was a three-star member of LSU’s 2011 recruiting class who was rated as the No. 58 tackle in the country. He did not see any game action his first two seasons in Baton Rouge, then played in a total of 12 games the past two years — five in 2014, seven in 2013. As was the case each of the past two seasons, the 6-6, 330-pound Austin was slated for a backup role in 2015.

A clown urges passersby to sign a petition calling for the retirement of Ronald McDonald as a mascot for the fast-food chain. The demonstrators, organized by Corporate Accountability International, claim McDonald's uses the corporate mascot to market unhealthy, fatty foods to children. UPI/Brian Kersey | License Photo HYATTSVILLE, Md., July 23 (UPI) -- Nearly a third of American children and adolescents aged 8 to 15 years misperceive their weight, according to a new CDC study. The majority of that 30 percent chunk are obese and overweight children who don't see their weight as an issue. The study, conducted and published by researchers at CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, found that 76 percent of overweight boys and girls believe they are "about the right weight," while about 42 percent of obese kids consider themselves about right. Although new evidence suggests obesity rates among kids has leveled off in recent years, the problem is still prevalent and the health risks more and more apparent. "I am seeing people younger and younger coming into my office with osteoarthritis from weight," explained Dr. Daniel Neides, director of medicine at the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. "We weren't learning about kids with these problems when I was in medical school." RELATED Somali member of Parliament and folk singer assassinated The CDC study found minority children and those from poorer backgrounds -- demographic groups with higher rates of adult obesity -- were more likely to misjudge their weight. The evidence suggests kids with obese parents may be more likely to misperceive their own weight issues. "As our country gets heavier, children don't necessarily see it as abnormal," Neides, who was not involved with the CDC study, told TIME. Neda Sarafrazi, a nutritional epidemiologist with NCHS and the report's lead author, told NPR that a child's proper perception of his or her weight is important for inspiring behavioral changes -- like eating healthier and getting more exercise. "Children who don't have a correct perception of their weight don't take steps to lose weight," she said. But Marlene Schwartz, a psychologist and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale University, warns against the dangers of labeling. "Shame is a terrible motivator," she said. Schwartz thinks education and encouragement are more effective at inspiring healthy change than ensuring kids' weight issues are properly categorized and labeled. RELATED New Harris tactical radios for Middle East country

A searcher walks through the debris of a deadly mudslide in Oso, Wash. At least 18 people have been confirmed dead. Up to 30 more are probably entombed in a thick gray muck, swallowed by the land, perhaps never to be seen again. March 29, 2014 A searcher walks through the debris of a deadly mudslide in Oso, Wash. At least 18 people have been confirmed dead. Up to 30 more are probably entombed in a thick gray muck, swallowed by the land, perhaps never to be seen again. Elaine Thompson/AP People are still unaccounted for after a March 22 massive landslide in rural northwest Washington state killed at least 18 people, authorities said. People are still unaccounted for after a massive landslide in rural northwest Washington state killed at least 16 people and forced evacuations of the area because of fears of flooding, authorities said. People are still unaccounted for after a massive landslide in rural northwest Washington state killed at least 16 people and forced evacuations of the area because of fears of flooding, authorities said. LoAnna Langton saw the mountain move. It roared. It shook. It tossed aside trees — 100 at a time, she said — as it tumbled in an avalanche of mud and rock toward her back door. It moved so fast she immediately gave up any hope of surviving. Langton gathered the children and hugged them close, so they would be buried in the same spot. “I just knew,” she said, “we were going to die.” But Washington state’s deadliest natural disaster since the 1980 Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption — and one of the worst in a century — came to a miraculous stop in Langton’s back yard. Elsewhere in her small rural town of Darrington, residents were killed in a variety of ways: Some were swept off a highway in their cars, others were crushed by huge mud balls that demolished everything in their path, and many simply disappeared. At least 18 people have been confirmed dead, and up to 30 more are likely entombed in a thick gray muck, swallowed by the land, perhaps never to be seen again. For two tiny logging towns — Darrington’s population is 1,400 and Oso’s is 180 — the death on such a wide scale is unimaginable. Bogged down by relentless rain that continued Saturday, workers have failed to unearth many bodies, all but assuring that the landscape will be preserved in the short term as a mass graveyard. Nearly every adult in this part of Snohomish County, a patchwork of little towns about 50 miles north of Seattle, knew someone who died or knows someone close to them. It is a tightknit community of loggers who earn low-wages in jobs cutting timber, and wealthy people, some of them retirees, who built dream homes on emerald hills with scenic views of the Cascades, near a river teeming with steelhead and salmon. But some are now questioning whether many of the homes should have been built at all in the valley below a hillside that commonly shifts, sending mud raining down about once a decade. At least four new homes have been built since the last major landslide muddied the valley eight years ago. The Snohomish County officials who control land use permits asserted last week that there was no way of knowing a giant mudslide would ever happen there. In fact, the area was primed for just such an extraordinary event, according to geologist Daniel J. Miller, who twice surveyed the area for local Native American tribes who rely on the river’s health for fishing and for the Army Corps of Engineers. He wrote in his 1999 report that the Hazel Landslide, as the mountain is known, was constantly shifting, experiencing landslides and would one day suffer “a catastrophic failure.” “This landslide moves every year when it gets wet, and pieces fall off,” said Miller, a consultant in Seattle, in a telephone interview Friday. It was a nightmare waiting to happen. An ancient glacier is jutting out of the mountain, making its flat plateau unstable, Miller said. The Stillaguamish River was eroding it from below. Rows of conifer trees that helped to mitigate erosion by sucking water through their roots and releasing it into the atmosphere were chopped down by loggers. Rain fell on the bald spots they left, drenching dirt and sand, making the mountain even more precarious. March 2014 has been a ­record-breaker, the wettest in Seattle’s history. Miller realized his warning was not heeded when he visited the site following a major landslide in 2006 that did not do nearly as much harm. He could not believe what he saw. “There was new construction,” he said. “The sound of hammering competed with the sound of [destabilized] trees snapping after the mudslide. I can’t believe that someone wanted to build their home there. It was a very bad idea.” Charity Prueher, 41 and raised in Oso, said homeowners rarely mentioned the slides. When they did, the coursing mud was considered a small disruption, more of an annoyance than a major problem. “They’re so content with the beautiful place where they live, they don’t think anything would happen,” Prueher said. Prueher said she helped clear debris from the 2006 mudslide when she was a volunteer firefighter. The thought that another slide could come that was far worse never occurred to her. “It was nothing compared to this,” she said. State geologists estimated the volume of the March 22 slide at about 7 million cubic yards, covering an area equal to 545 football fields and six feet deep in parts. As Prueher bowled with friends Thursday at Rocket Alley Bar and Grill in Arlington, the largest town nearby, reality sank in. “I’ve been over this in my head many times in the last five days,” Prueher said. “I know close to 20 people who are missing and haven’t been found.” That includes a family of four who own a store across from the school where Prueher works. When she thought of the family’s two little boys, laughing and playing outside in the spring, her eyes started welling with tears. “I know I’m never going to hear them laughing again,” she said. Then she caught herself. “You should always have hope,” she said. But her expression reflected the grim reality that has washed over this county. She feels deep down that all the missing are dead, but “I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.” After a tragedy writ large, disbelief and grief often turn to anger and a demand for accountability. Already, some engineers have criticized local and state officials for failing to recognize the dangers of development on the mountain. David Montgomery, a professor of geology at the University of Washington, said questions must be asked, but he is not sure blame is deserved. Predicting mudslides is like forecasting the weather or an earthquake, he said. The science is not exact. Montgomery praised Miller, a colleague, because his 1999 prediction appears prophetic in hindsight. But Miller had no way of knowing when his prediction would come true, and he did not take the added step of estimating where debris would flow when the slide happened. A report such as that might have gotten the attention of policymakers, he said. And then again, it might not have. Geologists have recorded landslides around Seattle for generations, but dire warnings about shaky ground in their reports are not always greeted as good news. It can hurt homebuilding and businesses that generate tax income. Regardless of who is to blame, Montgomery said, the state and other stakeholders must do whatever is needed to better understand the geology of its mountains and hills. “We have to use that information to identify the true hazard areas and run-out zones,” where the cascading debris is likely to go. When the mountain began to move on an ordinary Saturday morning across the Stillaguamish River, it sounded “like a 747 jet was directly overhead,” said Langton, 30. She was feeding her baby when it started. Her kids playing outdoors yelled for her to come out. Right away, she knew something was weird. “There was this gray cloud . . . and then I saw it taking out trees 100 at a time,” she said. “I started screaming for my kids to get out of there. I’m screaming, ‘It’s a mudslide!’ ” Within minutes, the roar was gone, and Langton opened the back door. “I looked out on complete devastation,” she said. “I heard two ladies shouting for help. I heard another voice screaming, ‘Help.’ I couldn’t see him. I said, ‘Sir, could you raise your arms so I can see you?’ He said he only had one arm. The other one was just hanging there.” She helped rescue them. Now she lives in a basement of a friend’s home, because her house is flooded. Her husband, Kris, is among the volunteers slogging through the mud in the pelting rain and wind to find his neighbors. He rarely talks about what he sees. “We’re a little logging community,” she said. “There are so many missing, so many dead. We definitely feel God protected us. My neighbor’s house is gone. My husband’s out there digging for bodies.” Richard Johnson in Oso and Julie Tate and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report.

By: Laura Meyers You know that one neighbor that always gets their mail in a dangerously short bath robe? And that other neighbor that you avoid because he’s a talker and if you say hi, you’re stuck for hours? And those other pesky neighbors that shoot you if your dog takes a dump in their yard? Oh, wait. A Florida man spent Father’s Day in the hospital after being shot over some dog poop. Jose Rey was walking his dog home Saturday night when the pup started to drop a load in neighbor’s yard, and the neighbor, Omar Rodriguez, was not having any of that shit. Neighbors told police that the two men began arguing loudly and Rodriguez told police that Rey threatened to return and fight him. Moments after the men had retreated, Rodriguez told police that he spotted what appeared to be a shiny object in Rey’s hand. So he went to his car and retrieved a gun from his glove compartment. He then pointed the gun at Rey, and shot him in the stomach and spinal cord. The police report says Rodriguez also threatened to shoot Rey’s wife, Lissy, when she ran over to help her husband. Neighbor’s aren’t surprised to see this kind of violence from Rodriguez, however. “He did not like anyone walking on his sidewalk. He considered it his; and if you went by, you were able to become a victim of his aggressiveness,” one neighbor told reporters. Rey, a father of two, remains in critical condition and has already undergone two surgeries. Rodriguez was arrested and faces charges of second-degree attempted murder and aggravated assault. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help the Rey family with medical expenses. Until then, I say we march to Rodriguez’s house armed with our pups and have every single one of them take a crap in his yard.

New Zealand drug-trafficking accused Sharon Armstrong has admitted she knew of a secret package hidden inside her suitcase, but insists she believed it was nothing more than confidential papers. Ms Armstrong, 54, a former Maori Language Commission deputy chief executive, was arrested on April 13 after Buenos Aires Airport police allegedly found 5kg cocaine hidden in her suitcase. Ms Armstrong has said she did not know about the drugs and was tricked by a man she met online. She is being held in a medium-security women's detention centre in Ezeiza, about 30km southwest of Buenos Aires. She made a private court appearance on Thursday, where Judge Daniel Petrone ruled he would proceed with a full investigation court appearance, dashing any hopes of an early release. Yesterday she told the Herald on Sunday an online boyfriend who lives in London, who she had been dating for six months, tricked her into being a drug mule. "He said that it was documents and a contract. I don't know any more about it and I didn't ask. I just thought it was really important and that the contract was worth a lot of money." Armstrong refused to say how she came into possession of the suitcase, but it was understood the switch was made with the case she brought from New Zealand just before she attempted to board a British Airways flight to London on April 13. She said she did not notice the 5kg of cocaine. If convicted, Ms Armstrong faced at least eight years behind bars. Speaking to NZPA from jail last week, Ms Armstrong said she needed help but was reluctant to talk about her case because she feared for her safety. "I'm just a little bit concerned that this might be a lot bigger. I've never been involved in anything like this ever before." She refused to name the man who she said scammed her. "I'm not wanting to protect him, but I'm not prepared to name any names for fear of any retribution." Ms Armstrong said reports she was carrying four driver's licences when arrested were wrong. She told NZPA she had three licences -- New Zealand, Australian, and Cook Islands -- with her at the time. She said the Australian licence was for when she visited family, and the $10 Cook Islands licence had expired. Staff from the New Zealand embassy in Buenos Aires had visited her in prison and had given her a Spanish dictionary, magazines and writing paper so she could write a journal.

(AP Photo/David Goldman) Jeff Ploussard waves an American flag during a rally protesting the NRA's annual convention in Atlanta on April 29, 2017. We are in the midst of what many pundits call the “Trump era,” but in fact most Americans neither like nor agree with President Trump, as Tuesday’s election results strongly suggest. Since June, Trump’s job approval ratings have hovered between 33 percent and 40 percent, according to the Gallup poll. This is lower than any other president’s approval rating at this point in his presidency. Nine months into the “Trump era”, 65 percent of Americans say he has accomplished “not much” or “little or nothing,” according to a Washington Post-ABC News survey. A national poll conducted in October asked Americans to name the first word that comes to mind when they think of Trump. The most popular words were “strong,” “determined,” and “bold,” followed closely by “arrogant,” “egocentric,” and “narcissist.” The next most popular words were “incompetent” and “unqualified,” with “idiotic,” “ignorant,” and “great” not far behind. These words—both positive and negative—focus on Trump’s outsized personality, not his policy ideas. But when it comes to key policy areas, polls show that a vast majority of Americans also depart from Trump by leaning left. That lean isn’t generally reflected in Americans’ self-designations, nor is ideological consistency a notable American trait. A new Pew survey found that about one-third of Americans hold both liberal and conservative views, depending on the specific issue. Another Pew report divides Americans into nine categories based on their political and social views, from core conservatives (13 percent) to solid liberals (16 percent). But even those on the extreme right and left ends of the spectrum share some views in common. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, much attention has focused on how his racist rhetoric toward immigrants and Muslims, disdain for the rule of law, and hostility toward the free press have polluted the nation’s public discourse and given legitimacy to hate groups associated with the “alt-right.” But the focus on division and bigotry can obscure views that most Americans share, especially when it comes to such matters as economic fairness, protecting the environment, and the drift toward plutocracy. The vast majority of Americans are liberal or progressive when it comes to these matters. Even some Trump supporters, Republicans, and people who call themselves “conservatives” have liberal views on many topics. Americans are generally upset with widening inequality, the political influence of big business, and declining living standards. Public opinion is generally favorable toward greater government activism to address these and other problems, like climate change and health care. Most Americans worry that government has been captured by the powerful and wealthy. They want a government that serves the common good. They also want to reform government to make it more responsive and accountable. The figures cited below come from surveys conducted by Gallup, Pew, and other reputable polling organizations on the key issues facing the nation. These are the most recent national polls on each topic. Most of them are from the past year, although a few go back further. Each poll is hyperlinked so readers can look at the original sources. The Economy 82 percent of Americans think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington. 69 percent think large businesses have too much power and influence in Washington. 59 percent—and 72 percent of likely voters—think Wall Street has too much power and influence in Washington. 78 percent of likely voters support stronger rules and enforcement on the financial industry. 65 percent of Americans think our economic system “unfairly favors powerful interests.” 59 percent of Americans—and 43 percent of Republicans—think corporations make “too much profit.” Inequality 82 percent of Americans think economic inequality is a “very big” (48 percent) or “moderately big” (34 percent) problem. Even 69 percent of Republicans share this view. 66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more evenly. 72 percent of Americans say it is “extremely” or “very” important, and 23 percent say it is “somewhat important,” to reduce poverty. 59 percent of registered voters—and 51 percent of Republicans—favor raising the maximum amount that low-wage workers can make and still be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, from $14,820 to $18,000. Money in Politics 96 percent of Americans—including 96 percent of Republicans—believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the U.S. political system. 84 percent of Americans—including 80 percent of Republicans—believe money has too much influence in politics. 78 percent of Americans say we need sweeping new laws to reduce the influence of money in politics. 73 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Taxes 80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. 78 percent think some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. 76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes. 60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes. 87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans. 67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages. Minimum Wage 66 percent of Americans favor raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. 59 percent favor raising the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour. 48 percent support raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. (A survey of registered voters found that 54 percent favored a $15 minimum wage.) 63 percent of registered voters think the minimum wage should be adjusted each year by the rate of inflation. Workers’ Rights 61 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—approve of labor unions. 74 percent of registered voters—including 71 percent of Republicans—support requiring employers to offer paid parental and medical leave. 78 percent of likely voters favor establishing a national fund that offers all workers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. Health Care 60 percent of Americans believe “it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.” 60 percent of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.” 58 percent of the public favors replacing Obamacare with “a federally funded healthcare program providing insurance for all Americans.” 64 percent of registered voters favor their state accepting the Obamacare plan for expanding Medicaid in their state. Education 63 percent of registered voters—including 47 percent of Republicans—of Americans favor making four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free. 59 percent of Americans favor free early-childhood education. Climate Change and the Environment 76 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about climate change. 68 percent of voters think it is possible to protect the environment and protect jobs. 72 percent of voters think it is a “bad idea” to cut funding for scientific research on the environment and climate change. 59 percent of voters say more needs to be done to address climate change. Gun Safety 84 percent of Americans support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. 77 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Criminal Justice 57 percent of Americans believe police officers generally treat blacks and other minorities differently than they treat whites. 60 percent of Americans believe the recent killings of black men by police are part of a broader pattern of how police treat black Americans (compared with 39 percent who believe they are isolated incidents). Immigration 68 percent of Americans—including 48 percent of Republicans—believe the country’s openness to people from around the world “is essential to who we are as a nation.” Just 29 percent say that “if America is too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation.” 65 percent of Americans—including 42 percent of Republicans—say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26 percent say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.” 64 percent of Americans think an increasing number of people from different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities makes the country a better place to live. Only 5 percent say it makes the United States a worse place to live, and 29 percent say it makes no difference. 76 percent of registered voters—including 69 percent of Republicans—support allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children (Dreamers) to stay in the country. 58 percent think Dreamers should be allowed to stay and become citizens if they meet certain requirements. Another 18 percent think they should be allowed to stay and become legal residents, but not citizens. Only 15 percent think they should be removed or deported from the country. Abortion and Women’s Health 58 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 68 percent of Americans—including 54 percent of Republicans—support the requirement for private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control. Same-Sex Marriage 62 percent of Americans—including 70 percent of independents and 40 percent of Republicans—support same-sex marriage. 74 percent of millennials (born after 1981) support same-sex marriage. All this should be good news for Democrats. Although public opinion on these issues varies by geography, many voters in GOP-leaning states and House districts share these liberal and progressive views. Of course, public opinion on its own doesn’t translate into public policy. It has to be mobilized. For example, a vast majority of Americans—and even a majority of gun owners—support background checks for gun purchasers. But the National Rifle Association, of which only 5 percent of all gun owners are members, is better organized, and more passionate and vocal, than the supporters of background checks. These survey findings should compel Democrats running for Congress and governor next year, and for president in 2020, to promote a bolder progressive policy agenda. To have credibility with voters, Democratic candidates can’t be close to Wall Street. And candidates must be able to explain how these policy ideas translate into improving voters’ lives. Democratic candidates will need to draw a sharp contrast between their views and their GOP opponents’, linking them with the unpopular Trump. Few Americans call themselves “progressive,” or think they share similar views with citizens of social democracies like Canada, Denmark, and Germany. But on most major issues, Americans lean left. Although Trump, the corporate plutocracy, and the so-called alt-right may think otherwise, the United States is a more decent and democratic society than we give it credit for.

Turkish policeman fined for voluntarily escorting Paris Hilton ISTANBUL - Hürriyet REUTERS Photo An investigation into two police officers who voluntarily escorted U.S. celebrity Paris Hilton without an official order when she was in Turkey last year has been completed. One of the officers has been handed a warning fine, while no legal action has been ruled for the other investigated officer.When Paris Hilton was in Istanbul for a commercial shoot last October, two motorcycle policemen voluntarily escorted her car to a TV studio, before waiting outside the building during the show. Later, they accompanied her from the studio to the hotel.An investigation was launched by the Istanbul Police Department when the incident was revealed.In the investigation, the two officers reportedly said they had decided to voluntarily escort Hilton in order to reflect Turkey’s image well.The disciplinary committee fined one of the officers on charges of acting against instructions.Paris Hilton was in Istanbul to appear in a clothing brand’s advertising campaign with Turkish football star Arda Turan.

DIY Audio Home The "NuHybrid" Headphone Amp - Hybrid headphone amp using the Korg Nutube (Note most photos are hyperlinked to full resolution photos). I've made some updates to the Mouser BOM due to a few items being out of stock for an extended period. The power switch, and two electrolytic capacitors, have been swapped for parts that are compatible and in stock (at least as of today). This is a hybrid headphone amplifier that uses the Korg Nutube 6P1. It's based somewhat on the original "Millett hybrid" design that I published way back in 2002. Like the original, this one can be built as an open PCB, mounted into a plastic base, with the parts (and glowing Nutube) exposed for all to see. Of course, you could also package it in a normal case if you wanted to. Also like the original, it uses a low-voltage tube stage to do the voltage amplification, and solid-state circuitry (this time an OPA551 opamp connected as a follower) to drive the current into the headphones. The tube used here is the new Korg Nutube 6P1. The Nutube is a dual, very low power, directly-heated triode tube. It is built using a process originally used for Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFDs) - that is why you can see a bluish-white glow when the tube is powered up. I've been working with the folks at Korg in Japan for a while with this part, and use it in the Apex Sangaku headphone amplifier. I also arranged with Korg to distribute the 6P1 to DIYers and small OEMs. To that end I created www.nutube.us. You can find additional info on the 65P1 there, including the full datasheet. The entire thing, including power supply, knob, etc. will cost you about $116. I am basically giving away the PCB for free with a Nutube in order to try and generate some interest in it. Like the DIY Butte headphone amp, I want this to be a very easy project for somebody who has little electronics experience. To make it as easy as possible, I put together a comprehensive instruction manual, as well as a BOM (parts list) on Mouser's website, so it makes ordering the parts simple. More on that a bit further down the page... The Circuit (Download a full size schematic in PDF form) The input signal comes from RCA jacks, through a volume control pot, and is capacitively coupled into a pair of emitter followers using 2N3904 NPN transiostors. This is needed because the Nutube 6P1 is operated in "class A2" - that is, the control grid is biased slightly positive, so the grid draws a little bit of current when driven. The output of the buffer is coupled using a 10uF capacitor into the Nutube grids. A positive grid bias of 0V to 3.3V, adjustable using trimpots, is applied to the grids through a 33k resistor. Filament power - which is only 700mV at 17mA per triode - is supplied via 150 ohm dropping resistors from a 3.3V linear regulator (which also supplies the positive grid bias). Note that the regulator WILL get hot - it's normal. 24V is supplied by a standard wall adapter. The plates of the Nutube are loaded with 475k resistors to the positive supply, which is a filtered (by R10 & C11) version of the 24V input. The plates of the Nutube are directly coupled to a pair of opamp buffers. I used the OPA551 here, because I've had good success using it. Others will work, including the BUF634 open-loop buffer. I found that the OPA551 gave better performance, especially in that it contributed very little high-order harmonic distortion. The opamp output is capacitively coupled to the headphone jack through some large electrolytic capacitors (bypassed with small film caps). In addition, a pair or RCA jacks can be used to get a line output, for use as a preamp. One addition that is not in the original Millett hybrid is the inclusion of an output muting circuit. This keeps the output disabled for about ten seconds after power-up, eliminating the big "thump" that you would otherwise hear as the output capacitors charged. This circuit is a simple MOSFET to drive the relay coil, and some diodes and an RC circuit on the gate. When the power is turned on, the capacitor on the gate is slowly charged until the gate voltage gets high enough to turn on the MOSFET, which pulls in the relay. When power is turned off, a diode quickly discharges the cap and drops the relay. The PCB The PCB is just under 5.5" x 2.7". The size was chosen to fit into one half of a standard plastic box from Serpac. Construction Assembly is as simple as soldering all the parts into the PCB. To make it easier to build, I've put together a complete detailed assembly manual. It has a lot of pictures,. so it's a pretty big (113MB) file (!) It also includes the parts list (BOM) and schematic. Since the details are all in there, I won't repeat them here on the web page. You can also download the parts list (BOM) by itself in PDF or XLS format. Parts come from two sources: the PCB and Nutube are sold by me through my eBay store. The rest of the parts can be bought from Mouser or DigiKey. To make things easier, I have shared a project at Mouser that you can access and pretty much automatically buy all of the parts needed, including the plastic case, knob, and AC adapter. You can edit your cart after loading the project if you want to change anything. To access the shared project, go to http://www.mouser.com/ProjectManager/ProjectDetail.aspx?AccessID=b68a30231c or http://www.mouser.com/Tools/Tools.aspx and enter this access code: b68a30231c Upgrades I am often asked what can be done to upgrade the designs that I publish. In this case, there are a couple of upgrades that I will mention right out of the gate. They are also shown in the notes section of the parts list. One is the volume control pot. Unfortunately, all small (and cheap) volume controls suck. They have lots of channel mismatch, and they are noisy or get nosier with time. The pot I used here is not bad, but it is noisy at the bottom end of travel, which bugs me. So on this PCB I put in pads for the standard (Alps or others) small cheap control, and also a TKD 2CP601. The TKD pot is available from audiophile parts sources, like Parts Connexion. It IS expensive - it costs about $40, which is a lot considering the rest of this entire amplifier will cost about $116 to build. But if you do one upgrade, I would recommend this one. Although it is possible to build it with the standard pot and install the upgrade later, it is painfully difficult to remove the small pot to replace it - if you try it, I would suggest enlist the help of a soldering expert to avoid damaging the PCB pulling it out. You can also upgrade capacitors - the electrolytic caps I used are pretty good (Nichicon "fine gold" audio electrolytic caps and Wima polyethylene film caps), but you may want to use something else. You can also upgrade the connectors to have gold plating for a few dollars if you want. You can substitute your favorite opamp or buffer for the OPA551. It needs to support a 24V power supply, and be unity gain stable. Other than that it's up to you. Although the 2N3904 transistors make surprisingly good followers, it's possible to swap in a JFET like the 2SK170 (or LSK170). If you do that, add a gate stopper resistor to prevent oscillation - 1k in series with the gate terminal works. Performance & Measurements In general, the NuHybrid amp performs a lot like the original Millett hybrid amp. I made no attempt to tweak or trim the gain, so the gain is what you get from the Nutube stage. In this case it gives a voltage gain of about 6x. This seems OK for most applications, though its a little on the high side for IEMs and a few very high sensitivity headphones. Drive capability is limited by the output buffer. With the OPA551 used all headphones that I know of can be driven. The frequency response is pretty flat. LF response is limited by the coupling caps, both at the input (in the case of high impedance headphones) and at the output (for lower impedance headphones). In any case the LF response is -3dB well below 20Hz, and the HF response drops well over 40kHz: You can see a 0.5dB difference in level between L and R channels. This is due to gain mismatch between the two halves of the Nutube. I didn't provide a way to trim this, because so far the channel matching has been within 1dB, which is better than the matching of the channels in the volume control pot, and for most people inaudible. An FFT of the output shows typical single-ended triode harmonic characteristics: One of the cool things about this amp is that, by tweaking the bias, you can alter whet the harmonic makeup is. You can easily take the line output and feed it into a sound card input, and use a program like Audiotester to look at an FFT of the output. Then you can tweak the bias pots to tune the distortion. This FFT was taken with the bias set to give 11V at the opamp output, which is close to the minimum overall THD. Speaking of which... This plot shows THD+N vs. output level. At 1V RMS out (often the point we specify headphone amps), THD is about 0.6%. No, this is NOT a low distortion amplifier - it is very much like a triode amplifier with no NFB (which, in fact, it is). Clipping (5% THD) - if you can call it that, since it is more like gain compression - occurs at about 6V RMS out. Distortion shows a nice gradual rise with output voltage, with the typical noise "hook" at very low levels. In the frequency domain, the THD is pretty flat. The rise aat high frequency is likely slew rate limiting. But look at the scale - even at 20kHz, the THD only rises form 0.63% to 0.73%. The Sound I always hate to try and answer the question, "Yeah, I see the measurements, but what does it sound like?" The engineer in me will simply say that it sounds like the measurements look! OK... it sounds like what it is - a single-ended triode amplifier. The characteristics of the Nutube dominate the sound of the amplifier. The solid state parts have such low distortion that they really do not contribute much. Along the same lines, I would say that it sounds a lot like the original "Millett Hybrid" - perhaps slightly more "tubey", especially at high volumes. Using the OPA551 removes a little of the high-order distortion products that were caused by the BUF634 in the original hybrid. Or... I think it sounds pretty good! I've been sitting here listening to it the entire time I've been writing this web page, through some Sennheiser HD600's. Very pleasing.

BACK UP YOUR SAVE! So, this is basically my favorite game on the vita!I made this save editor today.(It's in C#, I have never used that before, I'll put the source up on github later when it is cleaner and updated a bit more, don't worry.)Windows only, never thought I would do this, sorry!I want to add inventory/storage editing.I can already do simple stuff, like changing amounts, good for the dlc exp boosts(I will see if I can inject the dlc exp boosts to the save without needing to buy them)We can do cool stuff like having 255 scapedolls (I guess more, it's 16bit), instead of the normal max of 5.When I set scapedolls to FFFF, it didn't get used upon death, so that wasn't good.But stuff like monomates, if you set to FFFF, you can still use them (and the value won't even go down to FFFE)If anyone can have a look at items, how they are stored in the save, please shareI think items are stored in 16 bytes, but I might be wrong.I assumed monomates, dimates, trimates would be together in memory, but no they are spread out... strange.I can edit stuff like gran arts/technique levels, but I will add this stuff to the editor later.Any bugs etc, please tell me.Enjoy

TOKYO — He was celebrated as a prolific musical genius whose compositions appeared in popular video games and the competition routine of a top figure skater in the coming Sochi Olympics. His deafness won him praise as Japan’s modern-day Beethoven. It turns out his magnum opus was his own masquerade. On Thursday, Japan learned that one of its most popular musical figures, Mamoru Samuragochi, 50, had staged an elaborate hoax in which someone else had secretly written his most famous compositions, and that he had perhaps even faked his hearing disability. Across a nation long captivated by Western classical music, people reacted with remorse, outrage and even the rare threat of a lawsuit after Mr. Samuragochi’s revelations that he had hired a ghostwriter since the 1990s to compose most of his music. The anger turned to disbelief when the ghostwriter himself came forward to accuse Mr. Samuragochi of faking his deafness, apparently to win public sympathy and shape the Beethoven persona. The scandal began on Wednesday, when Mr. Samuragochi publicly confessed that someone else had written his most famous works. These include Symphony No. 1 “Hiroshima,” about the 1945 atomic bombing of his home city, which became a classical music hit in Japan; the theme music for the video games Resident Evil and Onimusha; and Sonatina for Violin, which the Japanese Olympic figure skater Daisuke Takahashi is scheduled to use in his performance in Sochi.

Technology firms have turned several industries on their head. The way people buy books, hail a ride home from the bar or find a room for the night while on vacation have all changed. And now financial technology or fintech firms are turning their sights on the banking industry, but Canada's big banks aren't going to give up their dominant position without a fight. Joanna Rotenberg, head of personal wealth management at BMO Financial Group, says the needs of customers are shifting and clients are seeking out digital tools to access and manage their money. In response, earlier this year the Bank of Montreal launched its SmartFolio investment service, which offers a professionally managed portfolio online for a low fee. "It's for clients who want support from human professionals," Rotenberg said. "It's not a robot behind the scenes, but people who want to be able to access that digitally versus needing the hand-holding and face-to-face support." The BMO offering comes as companies like Wealthsimple, Nest Wealth and ModernAdvisor look to take a bite out of the big players by making easy-to-open accounts online and cheaper by using exchange-traded funds. Rotenberg says it has been more than just digital-savvy millennials opening accounts with the new BMO service, adding that it has attracted the attention of a wide range of clients in both age and amount of savings they have to invest. "You can't stereotype people in terms of who is interested. It really is about people who are looking for something that they can use on their smartphone, but they are going to get the money management support that they need," she said. And it isn't just investing where the big banks are fighting off new competitors. Retail banking, long the bedrock of the big banks, is seeing new challengers offering basic banking services to Canadians who have long complained about the fees they pay. Online banks like EQ Bank, which is backed by Equitable Bank, and Zag Bank, which is supported by Desjardins Group, have launched with promises of lower fees and high interest rates on deposits as well as apps to help people manage their money. Among the big banks, Scotiabank and its Tangerine brand is the largest player in the online banking business. The former ING Bank of Canada operations, which Scotiabank acquired in 2012, was one of the first online banks in the country. But the other big banks have also been upping their game in a bid to remain competitive by cutting fees and making it easier to open accounts and manage money online. The Royal Bank has started offering unlimited free Interac e-transfer payments for personal chequing accounts, while CIBC is offering an account with a flexible fee that varies depending on how many transactions customers make. TD Bank has launched a real-time money management app to track spending habits from eligible TD accounts and credit cards. Linda Mantia, executive vice-president, digital, payments and cards at RBC, said mobile applications have been a key focus. "There's very few things that allow you to be more relevant to the client, more convenient to the client, more secure than other channels and obviously incredibly cost-effective," she said. Royal Bank has recently launched a new version of its RBC Mobile and RBC Wallet apps and revamped the look of its online banking website. A redesign of its online brokerage site is on the way. Mantia said RBC both works with and competes against fintech companies. "We're pretty lucky in a lot of ways that we're able to work with some of the smaller players," she said. "It is a bit win-win for us — to be scared of them, to meet with them, to visit them — because the last thing you want is for people who have always been in banking trying to reimagine banking. You need the stimulus of outsiders."

VRFocus catch up with Justin Ng from Gattai Game, a Singapore based company who have taken their award-winning student videogame previously known as Lurking into virtual reality (VR). This is a first-person mic-enabled sound-based stealth thriller. This narrative single player game uses sound to enable you to see but also allow enemies to hear you. VRFocus has covered this extensively in this preview here. Inspired by an animation of a young blind girl who taps around her to see they locked down the art style and decided to make a VR game. With two to five hours of gameplay the game will be available for the PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Gattai Game is composed of fresh grad students who have a few more ideas in the pipeline which are both VR and non-VR. VRFocus will keep you up to date of their endeavours. Watch the video below to find out more.

‘Faculty rights and the sufficiency of law students’ education’ at risk One of the worrisome trends in law-school education is students seeking to avoid uncomfortable areas of the law, particularly sexual assault. But it was a law professor’s exam question on an uncomfortable area of the body that got him in trouble with his university. As in, 504 days of trouble, and potentially many more. Howard University is hanging the Sword of Damocles over the head of Reginald Robinson if he ever offends a student again by the content of his legal pedagogy. The historically black school in Washington, D.C., has yet to respond six months later to a warning letter from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education about its year-plus Title IX investigation of Robinson (left) for an exam question on groping and drugging involving a Brazilian wax. Though Robinson’s lawyer said this summer that they “believe we have reached a mutually satisfactory solution” in discussions with the university,” that resolution fell through, FIRE told Howard President Wayne Frederick in a Tuesday letter: Robinson has now informed us that no agreement was finalized. Accordingly, as he plans to return to teaching next semester, his and other Howard professors’ free speech rights remain threatened. To our knowledge, the unjust sanctions against Robinson remain in place, including the threat of termination for protected expression simply because someone may find it offensive. The letter from Susan Kruth, staff attorney for FIRE’s Stand Up For Speech Litigation Project, is copied to the chair of Howard’s board of trustees, its general counsel, provost and law school dean, as well as the Title IX investigator who investigated Robinson and Title IX coordinator: Howard’s finding is at odds with the plain language of several written university policies and could chill professors’ teaching of basic legal principles. As a result, it puts at risk both faculty rights and the sufficiency of law students’ education. Though Howard is private, it has two written policies that on their face apply to Robinson’s classroom conduct. One seems explicitly designed to encompass controversial legal subjects, from the Faculty Handbook, last updated 24 years ago: Faculty members are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects, but they should be careful not to introduce matter into their teaching that has no relation to their subjects. Another is less than a year old, directed to the entire community from President Frederick (in response to a political vandalism incident), though it explicitly prioritizes safety over freedom of speech: Howard University is committed to the principles of free speech, public protest, and inclusivity, even though these ideals may sometimes conflict with one another. However, our commitment to the safety, well-being, and support of the Howard University community remains our highest priority. Read FIRE’s letter to the university. MORE: 504-day investigation of law professor for ‘Brazilian wax’ question MORE: Howard vandalized with ‘Trump plantation’ after DeVos visit IMAGE: ‘The 40-Year-Old-Virgin’ Read More Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter

A pictorial look at the career of City's latest recruit An Italian Under-21 International, Federico joined the Manchester United youth set-up from Lazio in 2007, going on to top the Under-18 scoring charts in his first season at Old Trafford, netting 12 goals in 21 appearances. A man whose experience defies his tender years, Macheda burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old as he came off the bench against Aston Villa in 2009. 2-1 down at the time, Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed an equaliser for United before the Italian curled home a debut goal in stoppage time to win the match for Sir Alex Ferguson’s title challenging side. Macheda continued to feature in the United squad that season, scoring his second goal for the club against Sunderland just 46 seconds after taking the field to replace Dimitar Berbatov before being rewarded with his first Barclays Premier League start for United against Middlesbrough that season. It was a remarkable breakthrough campaign that saw him named the Jimmy Murphy Academy Player of the Year, an award also won by Mats Møller Dæhli, in recognition of his rise to the senior set-up at Old Trafford. A Champions League debut against CSKA Moscow followed the next season before injury started to hinder his progress in establishing himself as a United first-team regular. He returned to score in a top-of-the-table clash against Chelsea later in that season, with his fourth goal for United coming the following year against Aston Villa. The following few years saw him look to impress away from Old Trafford as he undertook a series of loan spells away from the club. 2011 saw him return to his native Italy for a spell with Sampdoria before 2012-13 saw him have stints at Queens Park Rangers and VfB Stuttgart. It was 2013-14 campaign that saw ‘Kiko’ enjoy his most fruitful spell away from his parent club, first scoring three goals in two stints at Championship Doncaster Rovers before aiding Birmingham City’s push for survival with ten goals in 18 appearances for Lee Clark’s side. WATCH AN EXCLUSIVE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH FEDERICO MACHEDA ON CARDIFF CITY PLAYER NOW. FOR A TEASER, WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO BELOW.

The number of patients waiting to be admitted for operations or other treatment in June was a quarter of a million higher than in the same month last year, official figures show. Labour claimed that overflowing accident and emergency departments and cuts to nursing jobs were to blame for the figures, which were published by NHS England on Thursday. But the Department for Health insisted that average waiting times are remaining stable and said demand for services had increased significantly since 2010. The figures come after a report by Monitor, the NHS regulator, which warned that some trusts were cancelling non-emergency procedures to deal with a higher load of emergency cases, resulting in longer waiting times. The "referral to treatment" data reveals that waiting lists, which have hovered around 2.5 million patients in recent years, reached 2.88 million in June, the highest level since May 2008. However, the figures also show that the median waiting time for treatment is currently 5.7 weeks – the same duration as in June 2012. A&E departments have been under growing strain with ministers blaming a rapid rise in demand for emergency care, but opponents have claimed the introduction of the 111 non-emergency phone line and restructuring of the NHS have made the problem worse. Andrew Gwynne MP, shadow health minister, said: “This year, thousands of extra patients are facing the agony of a long-awaited operation being cancelled as overflowing A&E departments need more and more hospital beds. “David Cameron wasted £3 billion on an NHS reorganisation that took the focus off patient care. At the same time, almost five thousand nursing jobs were axed and cuts to older people's care budgets left thousands more vulnerable people arriving at A&E." A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "The NHS is performing well – it is treating over a million patients a month. "But despite this average waiting times are low and stable and the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks is nearly 55,000 lower than in May 2010, and the number of people waiting for more than a year to start treatment is the lowest it has ever been."

'Maturity Is Greatly Overrated': The Conversation With Ronda Rousey UFC Champion Ronda Rousey explains why she doesn't like calling herself a "role model." NEXT VIDEO Ed Mullholland for ESPN Who could doubt Ronda Rousey's seriousness on press day for UFC 184? In this signature espnW series, we sit down for a candid Q&A with a remarkable person. Our aim is to cover topics high and low, deep and less so, to present a fresh look at folks we think we know and meet some others we wish we'd known all along. Welcome to The Conversation. Caution: Adult themes and language ahead. *** Who: Ronda Rousey, undefeated women's UFC bantamweight champion. Who else: Her best friend, Marina Shafir. Where: Threadgill's Restaurant, Austin, Texas. When: March 14, 2015. Ronda Rousey: I think we should have a prickly pear margarita. I worked hard the last couple days. I deserve it. Allison Glock: I wholeheartedly agree. What size? RR: [side-eyeing] Uh, large. I'm f------ Ronda Rousey. [Laughs.] I'm officially changing my name to "F------ Ronda Rousey." WAITRESS: Can we get your drinks? RR: I want a prickly pear margarita! Ten ounce. And get some top-shelf tequila. WAITRESS: It only comes one way. Can I just see your ID? RR: Here's my bartender's license. Do you want to see that? AG: You have to have a license to bartend? RR: In California, yeah. As soon as I turned 21, I was bartending. I learned so much from the job, social lessons I didn't learn from judo. Especially about doing press. AG: How's that? RR: As a bartender, I am having pretty much the identical conversation over and over all day, but I still have to be present and genuine with every single response and try to get the other person to like me because that's what gets you tips. And really, how is that different from media? I did an appearance with fans recently, and people were like, "Are you getting tired of this?" And I'm thinking, "No, this is the same as Mother's Day at Gladstones. Instead of giving out drinks, I'm giving out signed pictures." AG: You worked at Gladstones in Malibu? RR: I wore the red polo and the blue hat. The khakis. And then they made me start wearing skirts. It was bulls---. I got skorts instead. I wasn't about to be working in a skirt. AG: You've evolved from not caring about clothes at all to being somewhat into fashion. RR: Actually, my coach started it. All the guys at my gym are Armenian and extremely well dressed. I was rolling in looking like a bum, mostly because I was wearing clothes I'd had since I was 17. I owned, like, four outfits, and they weren't in the best of shape. So my coach said, "Ronda, you have to dress up a little more. Put on makeup in the morning. Make it a habit." When I started making a bit of money, I got better clothes, and now I'm sponsored by Buffalo David Bitton. I'm wearing it right now [points to her gray, perforated T-shirt and camel-colored leather jacket]. Rod Mar for ESPN Rousey does interviews in Los Angeles ahead of her last fight, which lasted all of 14 seconds. AG: Yours is the first fashion sponsorship anyone in MMA has ever gotten. RR: Yes! And now that I'm into it, I look at fashion all the time. You know, "Who are you wearing?" I kinda feel bad because sometimes the worlds clash. The last fight, at the staredown on press day, I was wearing this white, leather Alexander McQueen dress, and I was going to post it, but then I worried maybe I shouldn't because people might think that I'm not serious about MMA. AG: I don't think there is any risk of that. Besides, it would be a bit of a double standard given someone like Conor McGregor is such a dandy. No one is accusing him of not being a serious athlete. As a bartender, I am having pretty much the identical conversation over and over all day, but I still have to be present and genuine with every single response and try to get the other person to like me because that's what gets you tips. And really, how is that different from media? Ronda Rousey RR: No kidding, right? Ultimately, though, I didn't tag the photo. I was like, "Alexander doesn't pay me. Screw it." I do get gifted some things. I have a stylist now because I've got several trips coming and I don't have that many outfits. A lot of my best clothes I buy at photo shoots because I don't have time to shop. I actually bought that McQueen dress from the ESPN 15th anniversary photo shoot. I bought it from you guys, so thank you for making me look really hot. AG: You're welcome. [She puts on an oversized trucker cap the restaurant just gave her, snaps a photo.] That looks pretty hot, too. RR: [Makes a goofy face] I've got a really good hat head. But my hair is still done, so the struggle is real. Do I cover the amazing hair? Or do I show how great my head is in hats? AG: You gotta go back and forth. You gotta mix it up. RR: I gotta gesture with it and take it on and off. [She does just that, starts laughing.] AG: Are you fussy about your food when you're not training? RR: I try to keep healthy-ish, but I'm so on point when I'm in camp that having a vegetable wrap would actually only be healthy-ish because of the wrap on it. AG: The wrap is the sin? That's a lot of sacrifice. RR: Yeah. Like last night, I got the fried calamari and I took all the bread off before dipping it, and that was my treat. And I had one little rip of the cotton candy because I thought maybe gourmet cotton candy would be different. It wasn't. And I ate all the raspberries off the desserts. Everyone else had dessert. I ate the raspberries. And I wouldn't even do that during camp. Let me show you what my training diet looks like. [Takes out her phone, pulls up a sample menu.] Here we go. 8 a.m.: Two teaspoons oat bran, two teaspoons chia seeds, two teaspoons hemp seeds; 10 a.m.: Train; 11:45: Post-exercise smoothie; 12 p.m.: Farmer's scramble: one whole egg, plus two egg whites, two sides of turkey bacon; 4 p.m.: Snack: one apple, one-fourth cup raw almonds, one-fourth cup raw cashews; 6 p.m.: Train. Post-exercise smoothie, da, da, da. Before bed: Chamomile tea. Everything's got an hour, an amount, everything. AG: And you follow it to the letter? Esther Lin/Getty Images No one puts more pressure on Ronda Rousey than Ronda Rousey. RR: Yeah. And instead of vitamins, I have this giant shake twice a day, so it's all fresh vegetables and fruits: a whole beet, a whole apple, two carrots, four strawberries, one cup of blueberries, two handfuls of red grapes, one whole lemon, one handful of spinach, one handful of kale, one-fourth handful of parsley, two stalks of celery, two tablespoons of hemp seeds, two tablespoons of chia seeds, one tablespoon of coconut oil, one chard leaf, no stem. AG: Just the one chard leaf. RR: [Laughs.] Just the one, yeah. Listen, after I stopped competing in judo, before I began fighting MMA, I partied hard. I felt like I'd been training my whole life and missed out on the whole good-time club scene. AG: How long did that debauchery last? RG: Long enough. It ended after being on the other side of the bar. Bartending took the romanticism out of drinking. Any time I saw a white chick go, "Woo!", it was not hot. There is nothing sexy about a drunk girl. You really don't know how dumb you look. AG: Speaking of letting off steam, do you dance or sing? RR: I'm a terrible singer, but I'm not shy about it. I'm shy about dancing. AG: Do you do karaoke? RR: I sang karaoke in Japan, but they didn't have the right song. I've always wanted to sing "Take Me Home Tonight," but I've never gotten the chance. Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images AG: Wow, if only we had more time. Do you prefer a shower or bath? RR: A bath. I have a candle permanently on my Jacuzzi, because I love me some candles. AG: Cat person or dog person? RR: Dog. My dog, Mochi, she changed my life. AG: In what way? RR: Knowing I was responsible for another living thing. When I got her, I decided even if I was a loser, my dog didn't deserve to suffer for it. So though I was bartending and working three jobs, I made sure I woke up extra early in the morning to drive her to doggy day care. The first $35 of my shift went to Mochi. Even when I was eating Top Ramen noodles, I bought her top-shelf dog food because it wasn't her fault that I was broke. There were times when I lived in my car, and I was like, "I have a dog, I need to ..." AG: You lived in your car? RR: For a week or so once, yeah, after judo, before MMA. And I realized I couldn't let that situation ever happen again because what would my dog do? It put pressure on me to succeed when I was responsible for another living thing. Allen Berezovsky/Getty Images Rousey attends the 2014 premiere of "The Expendables 3" in Los Angeles. AG: You seem to put pressure on yourself regardless. RR: Pretty much. I figure, what's the worst that could happen? AG: You could have projectile diarrhea in front of everyone you respect. RR: Yeah, I guess. But compared to soldiers fighting wars or families in refugee camps, that's really not a big deal, is it? AG: What do you wish you could change about yourself? RR: A lot of things. I wish I could cook. I wish I could speak Spanish. I want to speak Spanish and Armenian and Russian. AG: What is your biggest vice? RR: Buffalo wings. AG: What is the last television show you binge-watched? RR: [The HBO documentary series] "Vice." I watched all of the first two seasons. And I like Bill Maher a lot. AG: Have you been on his show? RR: No, I'm not that cool. There's a lot of pressure on that panel. Some people, they just bomb. I don't want to look dumb in front of Bill Maher. [Pauses for a beat.] Is he single? AG: I think he is aggressively single. I realized I couldn't let that situation ever happen again because what would my dog do? It put pressure on me to succeed when I was responsible for another living thing. Ronda Rousey, on living in her car RR: Really? He's got that Richard Gere, grey-haired sexy look. AG: I noticed you were killing time watching Ryan Gosling .gifs earlier. RR: Mmm, we do love us some Ryan Gosling. AG: Why? RR: I don't know. Why is a margarita delicious? What can I say? It just f------ is, man. AG: Tell me a bit about your romantic history. RR: Any guy that I've ever really been into, I never liked him at first. I grow into liking people. And I'm not into guys from afar. People are always asking me about my celebrity crush, and I'm like, I don't know. I can say people are cute. Brad Pitt is a sculpture of a man, but I'm not squealing "Oh my God!" because I don't know him. I have to know somebody to have a crush on him. AG: What about other relationships? What kind of friend are you? RR: I don't know. [She turns to her best friend, sitting nearby.] Chime in, Marina. What kind of friend am I? Marina Shafir: Very loyal. RR: Ferociously loyal, almost to a fault. Do I have makeup all over my face? MS: No. AG: Are you a birthday rememberer? RR: No. To be honest, I don't know some of my family members' birthdays. MS: The only reason she knows my birthday is because it's her lucky number. AG: What's your lucky number? RR: Fourteen. AG: How did you guys meet? RR: Judo. MS: You didn't like me. RR: I liked you. MS: No, you didn't. I complimented you on your Sponge Bob laces, on all sorts of things. Every time I tried to speak with you, you were a b----. RR: I just had a b----- demeanor. Listen, the first time she tried to talk to me, I was listening to my music, and I'm really into my music. And she taps me and says, "That's Rage Against the Machine." And I'm like, "You made me stop listening to Rage Against the Machine so you could tell me that I was listening to Rage Against the Machine?" MS: Such a b----. Josh Hedges/Getty Images Rousey had an image epiphany at age 22. AG: How old were you? How many years ago? RR: We were both 13. AG: How did you get past that rocky beginning? RR: It was at a judo tournament. Everybody left to go eat after we all made weight, and I don't know why, we were on a sugar high and I was like, "Hey Marina, you want to see something I've never shown anybody before?" And I twerked for her, before twerking was a thing. Way back in 2005. MS: We've been like sisters ever since. AG: Is your friendship the kind that you give advice to each other? MS: Only about boys. We're like, "No, no, no! He should not be doing that to you. No, no, no!" RR: "Girrrl, you can do a whole lot better than that!" I've definitely had worse boyfriends than her. AG: Do you have bad taste in men? RR: Well, I'm single, so ... AG: Would you rather date a bald guy or a short guy? RR: I would rather date bald and tall. It's how I was raised, to have a place and a purpose and know everything happens for a reason. I have faith that even missed opportunities are a blessing in disguise, and the very worst things that have happened in my life have resulted in the best things that have ever happened in my life. Ronda Rousey, on faith AG: What movie have you watched more than any other movie? RR: I think it's a four-way tie between "Fight Club," "The Fifth Element," "Pulp Fiction" and "When Harry Met Sally." AG: What's the worst advice you've ever been given? RR: Don't do MMA? [Laughs.] Thanks, Mom! AG: How important is faith in your life? RR: Every single good thing in my life happened because I had faith that there was goodness coming for me. It's how I was raised, to have a place and a purpose and know everything happens for a reason. I have faith that even missed opportunities are a blessing in disguise, and the very worst things that have happened in my life have resulted in the best things that have ever happened in my life. AG: Does nature play a part in your outlook? RR: Yes. I'm a big Southern California beach girl. AG: What is it about the ocean that speaks to you? RR: Being able to feel small. AG: How do you imagine your old age? RR: I never want to put a perfect body into the ground, so I'm going to wear my body out. What do I need two perfect knees at age 60 for? I picture myself as one of those floating heads in a tank like in "Futurama" because my body quit. AG: Are you an organ donor? RR: Yes. AG: What virtue do you think is overrated? RR: Maturity. Maturity is greatly overrated. That's one of my mom's favorite lines. AG: When did she start telling you that? RR: As a kid, so I wouldn't take myself too seriously. What is that Dr. Seuss quote? "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind." I think that's what she wanted me to take away from that. Ed Mulholland for ESPN Did we mention her last fight lasted 14 seconds? AG: And did you? RR: As I got older I learned to be comfortable enough to act like myself. It took awhile to gain the confidence in every setting. I was extremely introverted and shy growing up. A lot of people are surprised to hear that since I'm so over the top now. AG: Were you the kind of kid that would sit back and observe? RR: I didn't talk coherently until was 6, so I was forced to be an observer. Not having that many words, I learned a lot of patience. AG: How important is patience in your career? I would imagine it's pretty critical. RR: One of my problems fighting is I am sometimes too impatient, and that's something I've had to really train. One day my coach made me hit the bag for 30 rounds so that I would learn patience. AG: What is your idea of perfection? RR: I like having a day where I can balance everything. My idea of paradise is to wake up in the morning, have coffee, go surfing or skimboarding, get in the ocean somehow. Then eat breakfast and go train, come home, chill with my dog and my friends and a big plate of buffalo wings and some sort of dessert a la mode. It's got to be hot and cold. I need two temperatures in my dessert. AG: Do you think it's a good time or a tough time to be a woman in this culture? RR: I think it's the best time yet, because it's always improving. AG: How do you feel about how women are treated on social media? I'm an ovarian goldmine. I can't waste these genes. Ronda Rousey, on wanting to have kids RR: It can be creepy and weird. Personally, I wasn't allowed to have a cellphone until I was 16. I think having a cellphone becomes a social crutch, especially during those uncomfortable puberty years. If I had a kid, I would try to keep them out of social media until they were at least in their teens. AG: Do you want to have kids some day? RR: Definitely. I'm an ovarian goldmine. I can't waste these genes. AG: Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? RR: Arm. AG: Would you rather be stronger than you are now or smarter than you are now? RR: Smarter. I'm strong enough. AG: Who do you want most to make proud? RR: My mother. She lives on the border of Santa Monica and Venice. My sister and their family live nearby, too. We have the most entertaining family dinners. There is no topic off the table, and no one ever gets offended. It's a wit competition every time. AG: Is everything a competition for you? RR: Yes. Notice that I finished my drink first. Not an accident. Worse is, if I feel like I'm in a competition that I'm not going to win, I'm not playing. If people want to play Monopoly and I don't think I'm taking the victory, I'm like, "F--- it." I'm either in it to win or I'm not in it at all. AG: What's the biggest lie you've ever told yourself? RR: That I would be happy bartending for the rest of my life. I really tried to convince myself of that. That it would be great for me. But it just wasn't. I was meant for something else. And now I see why I felt that way. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill Rousey, not one for team sports, is a big fan of Serena Williams. AG: Did you ever have body image issues? RR: Huge body image issues growing up. Big time! I absolutely loathed how I looked until I was around 22 years old. AG: What happened at 22 that changed that trajectory? RR: I stopped caring. I stopped looking at the scale. After the Olympics I didn't weigh myself. I ate as much as I wanted all the time. The feeling of having my belly full was something I was compelled to do, and once I got that out of my system, I felt like I was able to break my emotional dependency on food. AG: Conflating food with feelings is a complicated struggle for many women. If the best thing about your day is what you eat, there's something wrong with your f------ day. Ronda Rousey, on body image RR: Listen, there's nothing wrong with your discipline or you just because you ate whatever. But if the best thing about your day is what you eat, there's something wrong with your f------ day. What changed for me is I was always thinking I wanted to make my body look a certain way so I would be happy. But when I made myself happy first, then the body came after. It was a journey of self-discovery and trial and error. AG: When you say you wanted your body to look "a certain way," what was the image in your head? RR: The image in my head was the Maxim cover girl. In the end, instead of making my body resemble one of those chicks, I decided to try to change the idea of what a Maxim chick could look like. AG: And then, in September 2013, you were on the cover. RR: I wasn't conventional, but apparently, I was acceptable. [Laughs.] AG: Do you have a soundtrack for your life? RR: Right now, my song is "Bad Reputation" by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. That's my walk-out song. When I was going to the 2004 Olympics I was constantly playing to "Waiting" by Green Day. I was 17 and I was listening to that song and picturing myself surprising everyone by winning the gold. Didn't pan out that way. The most-played song on my iPod is "Strangers In The Night," a cover by Cake. AG: Really? RR: Yeah. It's a good driving song. No one would think that would be my song. AG: It's pretty emo. Does anything scare you outside of your career? Spiders? Heights? RR: My only fear is failure. I like spiders. I used to collect bugs when I was a kid. I love heights. I've been bungee jumping a bunch of times. I would love to go parachuting. I'm cool with snakes. I can hook a rattlesnake. I've done it before. AG: What makes you feel out of control? RR: Drinking too much, which is why I barely do it now. It's like a once-a-year event, and I always regret it. I'll start to feel like, "Ahhhh, let's go dancing tonight, yes, woo!" I'll do the "white-girl woo," and it's not good. Alcohol is bad, kids. Stop at buzzed. "Stop at buzzed" is my mantra. AG: What about feelings? Do your feelings ever make you feel out of control? RR: Not out of control, but I won't say I'm a control freak, either. I'm an extremely emotional person and kind of impulsive. I'm calculated in business, impulsive in my life. Allison Glock/espnW Ronda Rousey, with the self-proclaimed "really good hat head," signs photos for fans at South by Southwest. AG: What sports do you watch? RR: Boxing, MMA and tennis. I like individual sports the most. I feel like team sports dilute pressure, and I don't really understand why everyone likes them so much. AG: What other women do you admire? RR: Serena Williams, and, of course, my mother. But I love watching Serena. I think she's awesome. AG: Do you play tennis? RR: I'm really bad with ball sports. I have been hit in the face with every type of ball. AG: Are you sure you want to say that? RR: [Laughs.] I'm serious. Basketball, football, softball, baseball, foosball, pinball, ping-pong ball, rugby ball, cricket ball. They have all hit me in the face. AG: Why? RR: I have tiny hands. I can't catch things. I have the smallest hands in the UFC. My hands are smaller than 115-pound girls'. I have the strongest chin and the most tiny, fragile hands. AG: The bantamweight champion of the world has elf hands? RR: [Holds up her palms, wrinkles her nose.] Carnie hands. I was a muscular girl. I never wore make up a single day. I always had my hair up, dressed in baggy clothes because I was embarrassed about how my body looked. Ronda Rousey, on high school AG: How was high school for you? RR: I dropped out sophomore year. It was not cool for me. I was far from popular. I got teased a lot. AG: Teased for what? RR: I was a muscular girl. I never wore makeup a single day. I always had my hair up, dressed in baggy clothes because I was embarrassed about how my body looked. I was shy. Having cauliflower ears and ringworm are another sure way to get teased. AG: So you said goodbye to all that and pursued athletics? RR: I decided to go to the Olympics instead. AG: Do you believe in destiny? RR: Definitely. AG: When you look in the mirror, what do you see? RR: It depends on the day. Usually, I look in the mirror and ask, "What have you gotten yourself into now?" I will literally ask myself that question. Right before a fight, for example. Or I'll be on a photo shoot, tanned up in a swimsuit. Or say I'm in a trailer on a movie set and I'm in costume. Or a week after a fight, when I've gained a few pounds and can't see the bones in my feet anymore. Then, as I always do, I will stare at the reflection of my marshmallowy face and ask, "What have you gotten yourself into now?" AG: And what's your answer? RR: I just shrug and say, "I don't know, but you're here, so you better f------ deal with it, girl."

Overview AVEXIR’s AVD3UH31001204G-2CI is a Dual channel 512M x 64-bit 4GB single side (4096MB) x2 DDR3-3100MHz CL12 SDRAM(Synchronous DRAM) memory modules, based on eight 512M x 8–bit DDR3 FBGA components per module. Each module kit supports Intel XMP 1.3 (Extreme Memory Profiles). Total kit capacity is 8GB. It supports newest generation of Intel Haswell Z87 Chipset. Each module pair has been tested on various motherboards to run at rated speed at timing of 12-15-15-35 2T at 1.65V. The SPDs are programmed to JEDEC standard latency DDR3-1600MHz timing of 11-11-11-28 at 1.5V. Features -Intel Haswell Z87 motherboards Optimized -Every Avexir Memory is 100% tested on PC motherboard environment -Dynamic blue LED light -High conductive light guide bar -High performance voltage stabilizing generator -AIST every single IC examined by AVEXIR IC Sorting Technology -Golden Finger Protector -8 layers PCB for maximum thermal conduction -Double Copper PCB to maximized overclocking ability Caution **Not every motherboard could operate such high speed **Make sure your motherboards and CPUs are capable to overclock **Please update motherboard BIOS to the newest version Verified motherboard - Asrock Z87 OC Formula Series

The New York Islanders will welcome captain John Tavares back to the lineup for their contest against the Montreal Canadiens, head coach Jack Capuano confirmed. The 25-year-old has missed the Islanders' last three games with what the team deemed "flu-like symptoms," but after taking an optional skate Thursday, he was inserted into the lineup. Tavares explained the severity of his illness Thursday, saying it rendered him unable to eat until Monday, when he was then forced to try to put on the weight he lost, according to NHL.com's Arpon Basu. With Tavares returning to the lineup, forward Steve Bernier will draw out. Bernier comes out with Tavares back in. Capuano very pleased with Bernier's play. — Arthur Staple (@StapeNewsday) November 5, 2015 Despite missing three games, Tavares leads the club in scoring with five goals and 11 points in 10 games.

By Ray Charlston Several weeks ago, Margaret O’Reilly began seeing a local psychiatrist in her city of Seattle Washington. Dr. Ahmed Abdullah Rahman is a licensed psychiatrist who originally practiced in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He has been practicing psychiatric medicine in the US for more than 10 years. After one session, according to Mrs. O’Reilly, Dr. Rahman stunned her by suggesting that she was suffering from “Disobedient Wife Disorder.” The treatment for “Disobedient Wife Disorder” (or DWD), which is even more controversial, involves light beatings using a stick called a “miswak.” The punishment is administered by the woman’s husband, along with verbal admonitions from him for his wife to be obedient, or to end her rebellion. The practice is designed, allegedly, not to injure a woman or to harm her, but to shame and humiliate her into compliance. The controversial treatment is allegedly about “Bringing the woman back to her senses and back to reality” according to one booklet on the topic. “Disobedient Wife Disorder” remains a controversial diagnosis, sparking strong feelings among those on both sides of the issue. Most of the psychiatrists in the West who do accept the existence of DWD are Muslim, and this fact is often cited by Islamophobes and reactionaries. The American Psychiatric Association, as well as the American Psychological Association, both reject the diagnosis. When I began writing this article, Margaret O’Reilly was suing Dr. Rahman for medical malpractice. According to Mrs. O’Reilly “I have always been progressive and strongly anti-racist. I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my entire body! When I learned that Dr. Ahmed was a devout Saudi Muslim, that he had a special room just for praying in his office, and that the government of Saudi Arabia expelled him from their country for alleged ‘extremist’ activities and associations, I didn’t judge. This has nothing to do with Dr. Ahmed’s religion; this is about discrimination against women and medical malpractice. For a male doctor to tell me that I have “Disobedient Wife Disorder”, and that I require beatings from my husband, is outrageous and intolerable. This isn’t about Islam at all; it’s about male-chauvinism. Islam is a beautiful religion of peace and moderation practiced by millions of people around the world.” When I asked Dr. Rahman for his comment, responding to Mrs. O’Reilly’s quote, he stated that “I am a devout Muslim. I strongly object and take exception to Mrs. O’Reilly’s statement that my treatment has nothing to do with Islam. Islam fully informs my practice as a doctor, and inshallah (God-Willing), I hope it informs everything I do in this life. I was trying to help her and her husband and family in sincerity as a Muslim psychiatrist. I never had any malicious intent. I believe in the Hippocratic Oath; I will not do any harm. If I failed to warn Mrs. O’Reilly as to her mental sickness, I would be negligent in my responsibilities! She is a very sickly disobedient woman. She needs help very badly. I hope her husband helps her soon.” When I pointed out that many reputable psychiatrists reject the existence of DWD, Dr. Rahman responded, “Some in the West reject my treatments and advice. As a matter of fact I think most do. The fact is, while most American psychiatrists deny the existence of Disobedient Wife Disorder, they now label homophobia a mental illness! If you think homosexuality is wrong, they say you are mentally ill and need treatment! They say, if you don’t want to ‘experiment’ with homosexual activity, you cannot know that you wouldn’t enjoy it! These people are sick and evil, not me as a Muslim psychiatrist or my practice! They should be sued, not me, by Allah, I swear it!” I tried very patiently and calmly to explain to Dr. Rahman that homosexuals are born that way, and that it is just as valid, moral and healthy to be homosexual as it is to be heterosexual or any other sexual orientation. Dr. Rahman became enraged, and told me that “Homosexuals will dwell in the fires of hell, so too will all their advocates! There is only one God, Allah, and Muhammed is His Prophet! Get out now, you deviancy defending degenerate! Get out! I won’t let you infect my patients with your satanic mental diseases.” Dr. Rahman then opened the door demanding again that I leave his office. I complied and walked outside. Reflecting on the day’s events, I wanted to believe that some kind of misunderstanding occurred. Could this all be some sort of cultural or religious misunderstanding or snafu? Is it possible that some Muslims actually believe a husband should command his wife, rather than marriage being an equal partnership, and that if she disobeys, it is ok to hit her? I refused to believe it. No, it has to be a mistranslation or a miscommunication. Islam is a religion of peace and not violence. I vowed to investigate the matter further. I contacted King Saud University, in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. I spoke with Professor Tariq Aziz at length on the phone. Prof. Aziz explained to me that I had not misunderstood. Disobedient Wife Disorder is an accurate translation of the Arabic name for the condition in question. Beating a rebellious wife with a miswak a small stick, and demanding that she cease her rebellion, is the prescribed treatment. I was stunned. I asked Prof. Aziz how he could possibly consider this practicing medicine. He told me that this treatment has its source in the Hadith, an old collection of alleged sayings of the Prophet Muhammed, handed down orally and then codified into written form. I read several booklets about Disobedient Wife Disorder before I reached the obvious conclusion. Actually DWD was fairly new. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that DWD was officially classified as a mental disorder by psychiatrists in the Middle East. No doubt, it was under chauvinistic white-colonialist influence. While the idea of punishing a disobedient wife may have some basis in obscure Islamic writings, the idea of treating this as a mental illness was something new. It was clearly the result of western influence! I discovered through my research that originally, Middle Eastern psychiatrists relied heavily on associations from abroad, including the American Psychiatric Association, for their information and knowledge! The next day, I contacted Margaret O’Reilly and explained my research to her. She cordially agreed to drop all charges against Dr. Rahman, and instead to sue the real culprit. Margaret O’Reilly is now suing the American Psychiatric Association. We both agreed that obviously the AMA failed to adequately explain the discipline of psychiatry to Middle Eastern psychiatrists now practicing in the US. It was, in reality, their fault that Disobedient Wife Disorder was being propagated as a diagnosis. Fortunately, a great injustice against a Muslim-American was averted through some investigative journalism. Margaret O’Reilly personally called Dr. Rahman to apologize for initially attempting to sue him. Dr. Rahman, understandably still stinging from the threatened lawsuit, hung up on her, after calling her a “lowly kafir sharmootah” before adding “I feel very sorry for your unfortunate husband.” Of course, the doctor’s anger is perfectly understandable given the misunderstanding that transpired. Mrs. O’Reilly, realizes that she almost brought about a major injustice against an innocent immigrant doctor. Wishing to cleanse herself of her misdeed, she has decided to donate a large sum of money to an Islamic charity. Fortunately, in a world where so much has gone wrong, some stories still have happy endings. It is events like these that make me especially proud to be a writer for Diversity Chronicle, knowing that we are making a real difference in the world. Copyright © 2014 Diversity Chronicle All Rights Reserved. Advertisements

1893 New York hurricane Category 3 major hurricane (SSHWS/NWS) Map of the hurricane on August 24 over New York City Formed August 15, 1893 Dissipated August 25, 1893 Highest winds 1-minute sustained: 115 mph (185 km/h) Lowest pressure 952 mbar (hPa); 28.11 inHg Fatalities At least 34 Areas affected Eastern United States Part of the 1893 Atlantic hurricane season The 1893 New York hurricane, also known as the Midnight Storm,[1] was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that struck the New York City area in August 1893. First identified as a tropical storm on August 15, over the central Atlantic Ocean, the hurricane moved northwestward for most of its course, ultimately peaking with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure reading of 952 mbar (hPa; 28.11 inHg). It turned due northward as it approached the U.S. East Coast and struck western Long Island on August 24. It moved inland and quickly deteriorated, degenerating the next day. The storm inflicted severe damage with storm tides as high as 30 ft (9 m). Trees were brought down, houses were demolished, and Hog Island was largely washed away by the cyclone. Several areas suffered extensive effects from the hurricane, and at least 34 sailors lost their lives. The storm is regarded as one of the most severe hurricanes to strike the city. Meteorological history [ edit ] The system was first classified as a tropical storm while situated in the central Atlantic Ocean on August 15, 1893. It steadily intensified as it tracked generally toward the west and attained hurricane force. Gradually curving northwestward, the storm continued to gain power and, on August 18, it achieved wind speeds corresponding to Category 2 intensity on the modern-day Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.[2] This scale was devised in 1971 to categorize tropical cyclones based on their maximum sustained winds.[3] The storm is estimated to have maintained winds of approximately 100 mph (155 km/h) for several days as it passed well to the north of the Lesser Antilles. As the hurricane turned more northerly still, approaching the United States, it strengthened to major hurricane intensity, Category 3, on August 22. At this point, it peaked in intensity with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). The lowest known barometric pressure in relation to the storm was 952 mbar (hPa; 28.11 inHg).[2] Less than a day later, the storm deteriorated to Category 2 strength.[2] Cape Hatteras, North Carolina experienced the hurricane on the morning of August 23 while its center passed less than 100 mi (160 km) offshore. Heading nearly due northward, the cyclone skimmed the New Jersey coastline, passing just east of Atlantic City,[4] and weakened further to Category 1 status.[2] On August 23 the storm was one of four hurricanes occurring simultaneously within the Atlantic Ocean.[5] On August 24 the storm moved ashore on western Long Island, in the New York City area. At 1200 UTC that day, while centered just inland, its maximum winds were estimated to have been 85 mph (140 km/h). It progressed northward through New England, quickly weakening. It was briefly downgraded to a tropical storm before becoming extratropical.[2] It dissipated fully on August 25, near the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River.[4] Impact [ edit ] Winds from the storm exceeded 50 mph (80 km/h) at Atlantic City and New York, initially blowing from the northeast before shifting southwesterly.[4] The hurricane wrought severe destruction,[6] described by The New York Times on August 25 as "a mighty war of winds and a great tumbling of chimneys" and 3.82 inches (97 mm) of rain falling from 8:00 PM Wednesday to 8:00 AM Thursday.[7] A 30 ft (10 m) storm surge impacted the shore, demolishing structures as large as an elevated railway.[6] The storm has been cited as an example of a noteworthy New York City tropical cyclone.[8] The cyclone is known for largely destroying Hog Island, a developed resort island along the southern Long Island coast, which had been as long as about 1 mi (1.6 km) in the 1870s.[9] The worst of the damage was reportedly confined to a 50 mi (80 km) area surrounding New York City. In a 12-hour period, 3.82 in (97 mm) of precipitation fell, breaking the daily rainfall record. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses accompanied the severe impact. Low-lying areas of the city, particularly those near the coast, were flooded. Roofs and chimneys were ripped off buildings and windows were broken in many homes and businesses. In Central Park, "More than a hundred noble trees were torn up by the roots, and branches were twisted off everywhere."[7] The park was devastated and thousands of dead birds fell to the ground after being washed out of, or drowned in, their nests. Groups of children gathered the birds and picked them up, with the apparent intention of selling them to restaurants.[7] The storm took the lives of 34 sailors as vessels were blown ashore and men swept overboard. The tugboat Panther, towing two coal barges, was wrecked; 17 crew members perished and three lived.[7] High winds brought down telegraph wires and left the city almost entirely cut off from communication with outside locations. At Coney Island, the storm completely destroyed many buildings, walkways, piers, and beach resorts. Brighton Beach was hit particularly hard. The raging seas swept inland, washing out tracks of the Marine Railway.[7] Bathing houses were moved a great distance by the cyclone. Near the Sheepshead Bay, Emmons Avenue was heavily damaged. Further to the east, at Greenport, numerous yachts were wrecked and scattered. Corn crops on land were ruined and fruit trees lost their fruits.[7] At Brooklyn, still an independent city from New York, houses were dismantled and uprooted trees blocked streets. Damage was widespread throughout the area and flood waters reached waist-high levels. The storm was the most severe in years at Jersey City, New Jersey, despite the fact that its damage was moderate. Trees were blown down and cellars filled with water there and in nearby areas, such as Hoboken.[7] See also [ edit ]

Forty years ago, NASA landed a spacecraft on the surface of Mars, giving us our first close-up view of the so-called Red Planet. And, in what seems to be standard protocol for NASA missions, the 90-day operation stretched into a six-year mission, paving the way for later Mars rovers like Opportunity and Curiosity. The Viking 1 spacecraft touched down on the Martian surface on July 20, 1976, seven years after Apollo 11 astronauts stepped out onto the moon. The landing was originally scheduled for America’s Independence Day, July 4. But once in orbit around Mars, the satellite carrying Viking revealed that the landing site was incredibly rocky, notes Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian. So mission controllers adjusted the date so the spacecraft could find a smoother place to land. The Viking mission was a huge success from an engineering perspective, an 11-month journey through space to a perfect landing on another planet. The heat shield and parachute design were updated and used in subsequent missions to Mars. And Viking’s measurements of the Martian atmosphere and surface are being used and analyzed to this day. But scientists were really anticipating the results from the life sciences payload carried by the lander. This apparatus housed four different tests in a space the size of a soccer ball, according to Glenn Bugos, historian for the NASA Ames Research Center. A week after landing, soil samples were put through this barrage of tests to look for evidence of life: mainly carbon molecules and gases released by organisms metabolizing a variety of nutrients that had been added to the soil. Three tests came up negative. But the fourth one had a promising result… at least initially. In this test, water, nutrients and a radioactive form of carbon were added to the Martian soil. If any organisms ate the radioactive nutrients, they would emit a specific gas. The lander detected this gas spewing out of the soil during the first time it ran the test. But during the next two trials, there was nothing. This has puzzled scientists for decades. Some researchers have tried to recreate the tests here on Earth and their results have led some scientists to say the tests were “inconclusive” instead of “negative.” At a panel discussion on the history of the Viking 1 mission, Bugos said that the lack of definitive results killed the desire to search for life on Mars. Erik Conway, a historian for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, added that a change in political focus towards NASA’s shuttle program and the failed 1984 Mars Observer mission also contributed to the 17-year gap before another lander was sent to Mars. Opportunity and Curiosity, two of the new rovers, focused more on studying the ancient conditions of Mars to see if it was once suitable for life. They each found evidence of water on Mars in the past. Curiosity also noticed that methane periodically increases, which is most likely because of chemical reactions between the Martian rocks and water. But there is a small chance it could be released by living organisms. So, 40 years after we reached it, humanity is still holding onto hope that life exists - or once existed - on the Red Planet.

One of the best parts of Wear OS is the ability to customize your watch face. It’s a small thing, but making it look how you want it to look adds a uniqueness that can make your watch truly yours and distinguishable from everyone else’s. There are a ton of great selections, but here are a few Android Wear watch faces that we think shine above the rest. As of the time of this writing, these watch faces should work on most Wear OS and Android Wear smartwatches. Check out more excellent Android Wear apps and games! 10 best Android Wear apps (Wear OS apps) 5 best Wear OS games (Android Wear games) AccuWeather Price: Free / $2.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY AccuWeather is a decent weather app. On top of all of its mobile features, it also has support for the newer Wear OS features. It's not a watch face on its own. It's a fully usable Android Wear app. It just so happens to also have Android Wear watch faces. To be honest, they aren't the most amazing watch faces ever. However, they're clean, they show you the weather, and they're Wear OS compatible. Since it can cover your phone, watch, and watch face, you can kill several birds with one stone using this app. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Black Metal HD Watch Face Price: Free / $2.49 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Black Metal HD is an ideal middle-of-the-road watch face. It features a black, brushed metal style look. The watch face itself has customizable elements as part of the Wear OS Complications feature. It can show things like battery status (for phone and watch), Google Fit, current weather conditions, and more. The watch face does virtually everything you'd want a watch face to do. It has a few bugs, but otherwise it works well. It's definitely one of the simpler, but better Android Wear watch faces. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Bubble Widget and Wear Launcher Price: Free / $3.95 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Bubble Widget and Wear Launcher bills itself as a widget and launcher for Android Wear. As it turns out, it also has an interactive watch face. Essentially, the launcher becomes the watch face. You'll see the time, of course. The watch face will also have a variety of shortcuts to quickly open the apps you use most frequently. It's one of the most unique Wear OS watch faces available. Make sure to take a look at the device compatibility list on the Google Play page to make sure your watch will work with it. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Facer Price: Free with in-app purchases DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Facer is the original app that lets you make your own Wear OS watch faces. The app gives you a template, some instructions, and then you go nuts from there. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it's nothing bad. You can always download watch faces that other people make if the task proves too daunting. It boasts a selection of over 15,000 watch faces. Some of them are free and some of them will require a small fee to buy. It should work pretty well with newer versions of Wear OS as well. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Material Style Watchface Price: $0.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Material Style Watchface is a simple, but functional Wear OS watch face. It boasts over 625 total configurations across three styles, 15 accent colors, and 15 background colors. The watch face can show a variety of stuff, including alarms, battery life, calendar events, and other data from basically any other app on your watch. It won't turn any heads like some others on this list. However, those looking for something very clean, simple, and functional have a great option with this one. It's also relatively cheap, supports four languages, and the developer seems amicable to feedback. This one only works with round watch faces, but that's about its only potential issue. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY You're halfway there! Here are some more excellent apps and games! 10 best Google Daydream apps! 15 best Google Daydream games thema watch faces Price: Varies DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY thema is a developer of Wear OS watch faces on Google Play. They have dozens of options. Most of them are individually themed, but they all mostly have the same features. You'll get a variety of features in the free version of the watch face. You can then pay for the pro version to get all of the features. They all look relatively nice, even if some (like the Jack Daniels themed one) can be a bit tacky. There are even themed ones for stuff like Halloween. They're all free to install if you want to see them for yourself. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Twelveish Price: Free DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Twelveish is a quirky and free Wear OS watch face. It does the basics like display the time in a variety of colors. However, this one adds a bit of comedy. Along with the full time, it also gives you estimations in large words in the middle of the display. Thus, it may tell you what it's a quarter to ten or so or twelveish. Sometimes it's okay to just have fun with this stuff, right? Some other features include an app data slot (via Complications) on the bottom and two on either side of the display for a total of three configurable slots. It worked just fine in our testing. This one is also totally free with no ads or in-app purchases. We'll take it! The developer has an optional Support Development app for $1.49 if you want to toss them some money. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Ultimate Watch 2 Price: $0.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Ultimate Watch 2 is one of the most powerful Wear OS watch faces available. Its feature list reads like a grocery list and it is exceptionally long. Basically, it comes with 21 watch faces or you can build your own. It comes with support for IFTTT, Tasker, and IoT stuff for automation purposes. You also get Wear OS Complications for support for almost any app on your watch right on the watch face. Some other features include full Google Fit support along with direct support for plenty of other apps. This thing is a functional all-star and it took us a long time to sift through its various functions. The price isn't half bad either. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Watch Face Price: $1.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY As you might imagine, this watch face bills itself as being minimal and elegant. It also has choices. The developers boast over 20,000 total watch faces that you can use. Of course, it also has Android Wear 2.0. It also has a variety of other options, including the usual stuff like interactive features, Google Fit integration, and other customizations. It also has support for specific apps like Spotify, Pocket Casts, and other apps. It's cheap and has a ton of features. It's one of the better Android Wear watch faces. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY WatchMaker Watch Faces Price: Free / Up to $9.99 DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY WatchMaker is a DIY watch face. It competes directly with similar apps like Facer. You'll have plenty of tools to make your own Android Wear Watch Faces. Additionally, you can fork out for the pro version and get access to over 20,000 community-made watch faces. You can nab even more for free on the app's Google+ page. It's not as in-depth as some watch face makers, but you can still get creative and have some fun. You'll get some of it for free and the rest when you fork out $3.99. DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY DOWNLOAD ON GOOGLE PLAY Thank you for reading! Here are a couple final lists to check out! 15 best Android apps of 2019! 10 best Android themes If we missed any of the best Android Wear watch faces, tell us about them in the comments! Thanks for reading!

Invested interests: the UK's Overseas Territories' hidden role in developing countries Konstantinos Todoulos Added 18 Jun 2013 Eurodad member Christian Aid and the IF campaign released a new report entitled “Invested interests: the UK's Overseas Territories' hidden role in developing countries.” It reveals that UK-linked tax havens are at the centre of a global financial system that encourages crime, corruption and aggressive tax avoidance in developing countries. The report also reveals that the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Gibraltar, Anguilla and Turks and Caicos - all British Overseas Territories - together with the Crown Dependencies of the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are now the largest source of Foreign Direct Investment in developing countries. The amount totalled US$556bn by 2011, the most recent year for which we have figures, and accounted for one in every ten US dollars of foreign direct investment made there. This figure is concerning because investment is often structured through such jurisdictions specifically to enable tax dodging in poor countries. Other abuses they facilitate include the laundering of crime money, and ‘round tripping’, in which money originating in the developing country where it is to be invested is sent offshore and then returned disguised as foreign funds to qualify for major tax breaks. Finally among the report findings are that the British Virgin Islands alone was the fourth largest investor to developing countries in 2011, with the amount involved US$388bn. It provides globally investment more than 860 times the size of its own GDP. That same year it was revealed that 45 newly incorporated companies in the BVI had acquired mining assets in the Democratic Republic of Congo at a loss, it was claimed, to the DRC’s economy of US$5.5bn. The identity of those behind the companies remains secret. Download full report here.

Anyone who has ever been near a dairy knows that cows can be smelly beasts: they fart and poop constantly, filling the air for miles with the acrid scent of their bowels. For anyone who may find that aroma repulsive, California is on the case. California Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed into law a bill that would place limitations on emissions of greenhouse gasses like methane and black carbon. Those types of gasses, known collectively as super pollutants, have some of the biggest impacts on global warming but remain in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time than carbon-dioxide (CO2). The new California law requires the state to approve and begin implementing a strategy to cut super pollutant emissions from dairy, livestock, organic waste and landfills. They must reach a goal that includes a cut of methane emissions by 40 percent, hydrofluorocarbon gases by 40 percent and anthropogenic black carbon by 50 percent below 2013 levels by 2020. Cow farts, for their part, are rich in methane. “Cutting black carbon and other super pollutants is the critical next step in our program to combat climate change,” Brown said Monday in a statement after signing the law. “This bill curbs these dangerous pollutants and thereby protects public health and slows climate change.” Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are used in refrigeration and air conditioning and began being used to replace ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons. Black carbon is created when fossil fuels aren’t burnt completely — it's basically soot. Methane comes from a variety of organic sources, including living animals and landfills. The three gasses have varying levels of potency and lifespans. Methane is roughly 30 times better at trapping heat than CO2 and stays in the atmosphere for an average of roughly 20 years. HFCs are 3,830 times more potent than CO2 and have a 14 year lifetime. Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for just weeks and is very potent, though it has a variable potency. Removing just one ton of diesel black carbon from the atmosphere, Brown’s office said, is equivalent to taking out 1,000 to 2,000 tons of CO2. “The policies that California is implementing, if achieved worldwide, would cut the expected rate of global warming in half by 2050, save millions of lives, avoid millions of tons of crop losses per year and slow dangerous climate feedbacks such as melting ice caps and rising sea levels," Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a distinguished professor at the San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said in a statement accompanying Browns’ comments. The potential to eliminating greenhouse gasses is an obvious goal for California. The state, which is in its fifth year of a blistering drought, is already being impacted by the effects from a warming climate which exacerbates conditions that may extend that drought, new research this week showed. If those effects aren’t mitigated, the state could potentially be looking at prolonged drought for decades or centuries to come, that report suggested.

Donald Trump. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) This story has been updated. In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made what appeared to be some of his most extensive comments yet about international climate change negotiations. In particular, Trump said he didn’t like the Paris climate agreement, recently signed by 175 countries, including the United States, and would either renegotiate it or do something more than that. “I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else,” Trump told Reuters. “But those agreements are one-sided agreements and they are bad for the United States.” [U.S. and 170 other nations sign historic climate agreement] The main reason given, in the Reuters story about the interview, was that Trump didn’t believe other countries would comply with what Paris requires. “Not a big fan because other countries don’t adhere to it, and China doesn’t adhere to it, and China’s spewing into the atmosphere,” he said. While the White House press secretary Josh Earnest dismissed the remarks Wednesday — “I don’t know if there’s anyone losing sleep here at the White House,” he said at a press briefing regarding Trump’s plans — environmental groups quickly denounced the statements. However, Trump’s words in many ways appear less a rehash of Trump’s overall climate change skepticism and more just baffling. Consider some of the things that don’t make much sense about what Trump appears to be saying, in light of what the Paris agreement actually is and how it works. [Trump: ‘I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change’] Trump suggests the agreement is “one-sided” or “bad” for the United States. It’s not entirely clear why he thinks that, but if the implication is that it imposes something on us from outside, that isn’t how the agreement works. Under Paris, each country makes its own individual commitments to reduce emissions. The United States sets its own targets, in pledges made to the United Nations, and like every other country, it is supposed to increase them over time. Thus, in the end, the United States does as much as it can or wants to under Paris. In fairness, the agreement certainly does assume that all countries are earnestly committed to cutting emissions. The current U.S. pledge, to reduce emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, is fairly ambitious, and without such a pledge by the world’s second largest emitter, the Paris agreement would have been harder to reach. Equally surprising is Trump’s assertion that China “doesn’t adhere” to the Paris agreement. [As the planet flashes warning signs, U.S. and China pledge hasty signing of climate accord] China’s commitments, too, are self-generated under the agreement, but no less significant for that reason. Getting on the same page with the world’s top emitter, as President Obama did in late 2014, was key to setting the world on the road to achieving Paris. And if China did balk at those commitments — a commitment, principally, to have its greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2030 and to “make best efforts to peak early” — that would pose a problem just like any balking by the United States would. For the agreement to work, countries individually must live up to what they say they’re going to do — which then gives the entire agreement credibility in the eyes of its many parties. That’s the nature of the Paris game. And there will be many tests ahead to see whether this all works as intended. But we don’t really have any reason to think China isn’t serious about the Paris accord. If anything, there is evidence suggesting that China could have its emissions peak, and start reducing them, well before 2030. The country is striving to burn less coal and increase the production of renewable electricity, and also to electrify transportation. [Apple’s big bet on China is also a bet on driverless cars] It is, in fact, leading the world in both areas. Last year China invested more than any other country — and twice as much as the United States — in clean energy, at $ 110.5 billion, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. And more plug-in electric vehicles were sold in China last year than in any other country. Most of all, though, the problem with Trump’s statement it that it isn’t clear what renegotiating the Paris agreement would even mean, or look like. The agreement is the result of a multi-year process under the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, and one that 195 countries already agreed to after assembling their negotiators in Paris in an enormous, long-planned event. You don’t just suddenly pull them all back into a room and require changes. Indeed, if ongoing ratification efforts move fast enough, it’s possible that the agreement could come into force this year, binding a future hypothetical president Trump to comply with it. Even if he wanted to, Trump then couldn’t completely withdraw, once the agreement is in force, for four years. [Obama’s rapid move to join the Paris climate agreement could tie up the next president] “Countries gave considerable thought in Paris to creating a durable agreement that would outlive occasional lapses in political will,” Nigel Purvis, the president and chief executive of Climate Advisers, said in an April interview with The Washington Post. Among all these hurdles to renegotiating the Paris agreement, there’s also this: Trump would be negotiating with, among others, Patricia Espinosa, the new executive secretary of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change. Espinosa was previously the minister of foreign affairs for Mexico under then-President Felipe Calderón, who has slammed Trump for his pledge to build a “huge” wall on the Mexican border and make the Mexican government pay for it. Calderón said of Trump: “We won’t pay a single cent for that stupid wall. It’s pathetic. . . . Trump is completely demagogical.”

LISTEN: Your browser does not support the audio element. As in the past, Seattle police anticipated the actions of self-proclaimed anarchists on May Day. But the Seattle Police Department’s incident commander for the protests said this year was notably different. “I was surprised at the numbers of people at Seattle Central (Community College) that wanted to get into a confrontation,” Captain Chris Fowler told KIRO Radio’s Jason Rantz. “I have not seen that many black bloc anarchists — people dressed up in that vein — that wanted to cause problems that early.” Related: Mayor, chief praise police response to violent May Day protest in Seattle “I would say that it was a substantial difference between the small groups of people that wanted to commit violence from years past, or the small groups that we’ve seen glom onto peaceful protest,” Fowler said. “This was a group of people in a large group — 75, 100, 200 mixed into a crowd of much larger size — that facilitated that violence and destruction.” What is to blame for the uptick, Rantz asked. “I don’t know if it’s just levels of frustration or there was a need to make some sort of statement,” Fowler said. “Clearly, they were out to commit violence and crime. So it’s hard for me to relate to people that want to do that. It’s hard to say.” Officers confiscated a hammer, wrenches, batteries, and a machete with “death” written on it. A total of 17 arrests were made Friday night. Three officers went to the hospital for injuries. Rioters smashed over 20 cars, including a KIRO Radio truck. Photos from May Day protests As in years past, the Seattle Police Department is expected to release photos and ask people to help identify rioters for further arrest. Fowler said the department still has a lot of video and photos to look through, and that the investigation is underway. He noted that just because they arrest someone, it doesn’t mean that they will eventually be charged. That is up to prosecutors, he said. In the meantime, police are making arrests for a range of crimes from felony assault to obstructing. After the protest-turned-riot, Fowler said that he knew those crimes were likely coming as he watched the anarchist crowd gather. “When they left Seattle Central Community College and moved down Broadway, it was relatively peaceful, but we knew before they left that there were going to be issues,” Fowler said. “You could hear the crowd talk about what they were going to do as you were standing there. You saw the sticks, you could see them putting wrenches into their sleeves. It was unlike anything I had seen before.” The Seattle Police Department is expected to brief the Seattle City Council Wednesday afternoon about the actions officers took on May 1.

'Give It To Your Woman, It's Her Job' Laundry Tag Doesn't Wash With Many When Emma Barnett saw the laundry tag in her boyfriend's pants she was shocked. "Give It To Your Woman," it read. "It's Her Job." So Barnett did what you would expect the digital media editor of The Telegraph would do. She posted the photo online and started tweeting. One day later, the twitterverse was in a tizzy and she had turned up the name of the company responsible. "The beige pair of chinos in question were purchased in London at Madhouse's flagship Oxford Street store last month," Barnett reported Tuesday. And a company spokesman told her "the care instructions on this product were not proofed by our buyers who normally concern themselves with quality, style and price of the products they order. ... The wording is clearly meant as a joke but now it has been pointed out to us it is something we will need to be more careful about in the future." If you're interested in following the Twitter debate, which continues, the proper search term is #sexisttrousers.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton believes women’s health, child marriage, and climate change are “interconnected.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVWDgz23Ino “Just listening to the concerns around education and climate change, women’s health, child marriage, access to technology, all of those are of course interconnected,” Clinton said while participating on a panel at the CARE National Conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. She added, “We have to focus on each of them in their interconnectedness, as well as individual outrages that do demand our attention.” The event was broadcast live on C-SPAN. The event host introduced Clinton as an “activist, thought leader, and change agent.” Clinton did not elaborate or explain why she believes climate change and child marriage are “interconnected.” Child marriage has existed for thousands of years. Clinton appeared on the panel with fellow former first daughter Barbara Bush. Also on the panel was Global Fund for Women President and CEO Musimni Kanyoro and founder and Editor-in-Chief of Muslimgirl.com Amani al-Khatahtbeh. In March, Bush delivered the keynote address at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in North Texas. “I am proud to stand with Planned Parenthood not only because women, regardless of where they are from, deserve to live dignified, healthy lives,” she said, “because it’s a really good investment. We know that when women are healthy, their families and their children are healthier too.” Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

‘Notorious B.I.G.’ Name and Likeness Rights Sold to Marketing Company Written by Tyler Hakes. Published: the_date('l, F j, Y'); ?>. Biggie’s name gets hocked. Expected outcome: Huge number of products bearing his name and image. According to a report from Undercover.fm, the rights to the name and likeness of the late Biggie Smalls has been handed over to a specialty marketing company and will be turned into a range of new products. The estate of Christopher Wallace (Notorious B.I.G.) have apparently struck a deal with a large marketing company which allows them to create products with Christopher’s name and likeness. Although there isn’t any information on who was involved in the decision, it is reported that trustees for the estate include Biggie’s former wife, Faith Evans, and his mother, Voletta Wallace. Brand Sense Partners, the company names in the report, boasts relationships with past and present celebrities such as Chuck Norris, Brittney Spears, Jimi Hendrix and Halle Berry. The explain their relationship with these “brands”, by saying that they have the, “ability to consistently identify and unlock hidden value, allowing clients to maximize brand equity and growth.” Undercover.fm reports that the line of Biggie products will be managed by Teresa Brown, who currently manages products from Albert Einstein and Steve McQueen. Wayne Barrow, who formerly served as Notorious B.I.G.’s manager and now works as an advisor to Voletta Wallace is quoted as saying, “The family and I are excited to move forward with the exceptional team at [Brand Sense Partners]. Their understanding of Christopher’s cultural impact, as well as their vision for our brand mission made them the best partner possible for the task. We look forward to working hand in hand with them to build on Christopher’s unique legacy.” It’s unclear at this time when and what products should be expected to come from the deal. Get The Latest More Culture Comments

By Ralph Nader The editor of The Hill, a newspaper exclusively covering Congress, said that Congress was not going to do very much in 2012, except for “the big bill” which is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment compensation, which expire in late February. That two month extension will likely reignite the fight between Democrats and Republicans that flared last month. In 2012, Congress, the editor implied, would be busy electioneering. That is, the Senators and Representatives will be busy raising money from commercial interests so they can keep their jobs. There won’t be much time to change anything about misallocated public budgets, unfair tax rules, undeclared costly wars, and job-depleting trade policies that, if fixed, would increase employment and public investment. So this year, Congress will spend well over $3 billion on its own expenses to do nothing of significance other than shift more debt to individual taxpayers by depleting the social security payroll tax by over $100 billion so both parties can say they enacted a tax cut! That is what the Democrats in Congress and the President call a significant accomplishment. Will someone call a psychiatrist? This is a Congress that is beyond dysfunctional. It is an obstacle to progress in America, a graveyard for both democracy and justice. No wonder a new Washington Post-ABC news poll found an all time high of 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing. Both Republicans and Democrats say they want to reduce the deficit. But they are avoiding, in varying degrees, doing this in any way that would discomfort the rich and powerful. One would think that, especially in an election year, the following legislative agenda would be very popular with the voters. First, restore the taxes on the rich that George W. Bush cut ten years ago which expanded the deficit. So clueless are the Democrats that they have not learned to use the word “restore” instead of the Republican word “increase” when talking about taxes that were previously cut for the millionaires and billionaires. Second, collect unpaid taxes. The IRS estimates that $385 billion of tax revenues are not collected yearly. If the IRS budget increased and more people were hired, every dollar it spent would return $200 from tax evaders, including corporations and the wealthy. When taxes are not collected, the large majority of honest taxpayers are left with the unfair consequences. Imagine that money being applied to jobs that repair our crumbling public works. Third, end the outrageous corporate loopholes that allow profitable large corporations to pay just half of the statutory tax rate of thirty-five percent. More than a few pay less than five percent and many pay zero on major profits. During a recent three year period, according to the Citizens for Tax Justice, a dozen major corporations such as Verizon and Honeywell paid no taxes on many billions of profits, and the legendary tax escapee, General Electric, managed to pay zero and even receive billions in benefits from the U.S. Treasury. Fourth, do what most U.S. soldiers in the field have believed should have been done years ago–get out of Afghanistan and Iraq and nearby countries like Kuwait where thousands of U.S. soldiers based in Iraq have moved. Fifth, to increase consumer demand, which creates jobs, raise the federal minimum wage from the present level of $7.25–which is $2.75 less than it was way back in 1968, adjusted for inflation–to $10 per hour. Businesses who keep raising prices and executive salaries (eg. Walmart and McDonalds) since 1968 should be reminded of their windfall in that period. In addition, President Obama can urge mutual and pension funds and individual shareholders to demand higher dividends from companies like EMC, Google, Apple, Cisco, Oracle and others firms hoarding two trillion dollars in cash as if this money was the corporate bosses’, not the owner-shareholders. More dividends, more consumer demand, more jobs. Want to know why Congress doesn’t make such popular and prudent decisions for the American people? Because the people are not objecting to all the power that their Congressional representatives and their corporate allies have sucked away from them. Because the people are not putting teeth and time into the “sovereignty of the people” expressed in the preamble to our Constitution which begins with “We the people,” not “We the corporation.” So citizens, it’s your choice. If you don’t demand a say day after day, you’ll continue to pay day after day. By the way, the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Putting all that aside, if you like politics— if you like America, dammit—it'll be tremendously fun to watch for several reasons. For starters, it's going to be awkward. Christie and Booker are friends, as close as two politicians with identical aspirations can be. They don’t attack each other, they text all the time, and they shot an amusing parody video together. Over the summer they cut away from a party at the gubernatorial Jersey Shore house and took a stroll on the beach, just the two of them. They're even Facebook friends, having sat on Oprah Winfrey's couch last year and collected a $100 million investment from Mark Zuckerberg for Newark's schools. From education reform to a property tax cap, they have supported each other in a bipartisan way that is unfathomable in the nation’s capital. Second, this will be Campaign 2.0. They may love a good TV interview, but Booker and Christie have drawn much of their popularity by circumventing traditional news and developing their own social-media channels for disseminating information. Booker has the second-most Twitter followers of any politician who hasn’t run for president and he recently cofounded a video-based social media company called Waywire. Christie, meanwhile, has amassed an online following from countless video clips, posted by his staff, of his dressing down journalists, constituents, Democrats, academic researchers and the New Jersey Supreme Court. YouTube against Twitter: Which is more effective? And finally, perhaps most importantly, the race represents a stark contrast in style. The mayor who meditates and quotes poetry versus the governor who…what's the opposite of meditation and poetry? Booker is a chameleon, able to give any audience what it needs. To the Florida delegation at the Democratic convention, for example, he dropped “Jesus Loves You” and the Hebrew equivalent, “Baruch Hashem,” in the same sentence, bringing black women and Jewish grandmothers to their feet. Christie, on the other hand, keeps his finger on the trigger—choosing respect, as he always says, before love. While Christie is a married father of four and the fattest national politician since the dawn of television, Booker is a fit, single man often dubbed “America’s sexiest mayor.” His sex life is of more than a little interest in political circles, and his name was appropriated for an erotic novel, “Cory’s Salvation.” He is crushed on by 20-something female progressives across the country, as evidenced by the question recently asked about him on Jezebel: “Is it hot in here or is that just the rising temperature of a million vaginas?” Booker, a vegetarian, often points to the contrast: “The governor is a Republican, I’m a Democrat. The governor likes steak, I like tofu. The governor is bold, I am bald. But we both recognize that we have common ground between us.” When the Klieg lights are turned on at the must-see debates next fall, though, don't expect the candidates to tread on such common ground. Christie will look to smash what one Republican operative described as Booker's “glass jaw” by attacking him for being the same kind of tax-and-spend Democrat that brought New Jersey the highest property taxes in the nation. He will say that Booker followed the playbook of his tarnished ally, former governor and bank boss Jon Corzine, by failing to address Newark’s structural deficit and continued reliance on suburban taxes. Like Democrats in Congress who ignore the cost of entitlements, Christie will argue, Booker failed to do the “big things.” Christie’s been to war before as a federal prosecutor, challenger to Corzine, and chief surrogate for Romney. Booker won his mayorship in a nasty race against a longtime state senator, but he's the relative newbie on the national scene. So he will first try to deflect Christie's shots with some of the platitudes he peddles on Twitter. Failing that, he will follow the advice of the focus groups and attempt to exploit Christie's gender gap by repeatedly bringing up the governor's opposition to abortion and gay marriage. He will frame these as civil rights matters, then go for the gut by questioning Christie's blue-collar-hero status—that the governor reduced a tax credit for the working poor, while vetoing taxes for millionaires. Most of all, Booker will wait for the inevitable insult, some word that Christie lets slip that a few thousand independent voters think goes too far. This isn't a state where we want our leaders calling lawmakers “numbnuts” and Navy SEALs “idiots,” as Christie has done. Booker will wait for that gaffe, and then let it simmer. The message: Christie's tough talk, his Insult the Comic Dog routine, is growing too old, New Jersey. You've done bold; now is the time to go bald. Matt Katz covers Christie for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Photo Ballots were stacked up as a statewide presidential election recount began Thursday, in Milwaukee. Credit Morry Gash/Associated Press LANSING, Mich. — Supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have filed legal challenges in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan in a suddenly robust effort to stop the presidential election recount efforts there. Bill Schuette, the attorney general of Michigan, said that the recount, initiated by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, put Michigan voters at risk of “paying millions and potentially losing their voice in the Electoral College in the process.” “This court cannot allow a dilatory and frivolous request for a recount by an aggrieved party to silence all Michigan votes for president,” Mr. Schuette, a Republican, said in a court filing. A lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission filed in Federal District Court by the Great America PAC, the Stop Hillary PAC and Ronald R. Johnson, a Wisconsin resident, argued that the recount could “unjustifiably cast doubt” on Mr. Trump’s victory in that state. The plaintiffs argued that the recount, which began across the state’s 72 counties on Thursday morning, should be halted immediately, in part because there is a substantial chance that it cannot be accurately completed by the deadline of Dec. 12. In 2011, a statewide recount took close to a month. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In Michigan on Friday, where the recount is still pending, the Board of State Canvassers met to consider an objection to the recount by Mr. Trump. Lawyers for Mr. Trump told the canvassing board, which is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, that it should not allow a recount to proceed, describing it as needless, too expensive and not required by Michigan law. Besides, Ms. Stein came nowhere near winning the state. “This recount petition is absolutely unprecedented in the history of Michigan election law,” said Gary Gordon, a lawyer for Mr. Trump and his campaign. A lawyer for Ms. Stein, Mark Brewer, said Mr. Trump’s campaign was making a “desperate attempt” to avoid a recount. “I would remind everybody that the original source of the allegation that this election was rigged was Mr. Trump,” Mr. Brewer told the board. The Michigan board split, 2-2, along party lines, meaning the recount objection failed. Lawyers for Mr. Trump and his allies are also seeking to halt legal proceedings by Ms. Stein to contest the statewide election results in Pennsylvania. Lawrence J. Tabas, general counsel of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, said in an interview on Friday that Ms. Stein’s lawyers had fallen short of demonstrating that there was fraud or illegal action in the Nov. 8 election. “They know they have no claim,” he said. “This action by Jill Stein and her supporters — I couldn’t even call it a Hail Mary pass, because that would be insulting to the Hail Mary pass,” said Mr. Tabas, who along with other lawyers, submitted a lengthy brief filed in Pennsylvania court on Thursday. The recounts bids are widely viewed as having little chance of making a difference. But Ms Stein, in a statement, said the challenges to them were an effort to put “party politics above country.” “In an election already tainted by suspicion, previously expressed by Donald Trump himself,” she said, “verifying the vote is a common-sense procedure that would put all concerns around voter disenfranchisement to rest. Trump’s desperate attempts to silence voter demands for recounts raise a simple question: why is Donald Trump afraid of these recounts?” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Ms. Stein has raised millions of dollars for an effort to force recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states that have recently voted Democratic and where Mr. Trump won by relatively thin margins.

Museum hopping is a favourite Vancouver past time during the rainy winter months … but it isn’t necessarily cheap. Full-price admission to the city’s top museums and galleries can run from $15 to $25 and up. Except, that is, for one magical day of the year when you can visit five of the city’s cultural attractions for $5. Winter Wander returns this Jan. 23, transforming waterfront Vanier Park, home to a bumper crop of museums, into a moving cultural feast. Located in Kitsilano, at the edge of English Bay, Vanier Park is a favourite with sun worshippers, dog walkers and kite flyers in the summer months. But tucked away in this idyllic setting are some of the city’s largest museums and cultural attractions. In the space of a short walk, you can: learn about downtown’s neon era at the Museum of Vancouver; explore the first ship to circumnavigate North America at the Vancouver Maritime Museum; stare deep into the night sky at the planetarium inside the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre; and browse through endless stockpiles of old photos at the City of Vancouver Archives. This year’s Winter Wander takes place from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 23. Apart from the bargain museum access, there will be live entertainment, plus plenty of street eat options from the city’s top local food trucks. The $5 admission price gets you access to all five cultural attractions, and kids 5 and under are free. Tickets are available at any of the participating venues. Here are some more detail on each of the five offerings: Museum of Vancouver: Vancouver-focused exhibits show what the city was, is, and can be. Permanent exhibitions tell the city’s stories from the early 1900s to the late 1970s and are complemented by contemporary, groundbreaking feature exhibits. H.R. MacMillan Space Centre: This non-profit community resource brings the wonders of space to Earth. See real rocket engines and space suits or sit back and zip off to outer space inside the Planetarium Star Theatre. Vancouver Maritime Museum: Explore exhibits on pirates, shipwrecks, lighthouses and more in this seafaring museum. The highlight is the restored RCMP Arctic schooner St. Roch, which in 1944 made a voyage through the treacherous Northwest Passage. City of Vancouver Archives: Step into the city’s official archives, where records documenting the Vancouver’s public and private history are preserved. Browse through more than 1 million old photographs or pore over maps, architectural plans, news clippings and heritage artwork.

The other day, FedEx showed up at my door with a little surprise. I spotted my username on the shipping label and knew right away how it got here. I was so excited and opened it up as quickly as possible. The first thing I saw was a little note saying: "Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy your gifts! We tried to get all the items based on what you said. The LEDs for running, the sign for your guinea pigs, the minecraft keychain, and of course a lava lamp! Enjoy!!!" I jumped with so much joy because my gift last year was not even CLOSE and personal to this one. It took a few business days for all FOUR gifts to arrive. The first two gifts I received were the lava lamp and the LED light. They both constantly switched to different colors in time. The lamp is super neat and entertaining! The LED light will DEFINITELY come in handy when running in the night when no one can see you. Thank you for taking this into consideration! The last two gifts were the "BEWARE OF GUINEA PIG" sign and Minecraft pickaxe keychain. The sign is so perfect for my guinea pigs' cage! I've already had a few people giggle from reading it. The last gift was a Minecraft keychain. Man, you have no idea how long I've been wanting one of these! It's a perfect addition to my dorky keychain collection! I was looking all over for a username so I could thank them. All I have is the Secret Santa's full name. James, whoever you are, I can guarantee you that you made my Christmas a whole lot more hopeful this year. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING! Merry Christmas, Reddit!

SAN ANTONIO - A man is dead and woman has been taken to the hospital in a shooting on the city's far North Side, San Antonio police said Friday. The shooting was reported just before 7:30 a.m. in the 3600 block of Ivory Creek. That's in a neighborhood found near Loop 1604 and Rodgers Ranch. Police said when they arrived on scene they found a man and a woman both in their 40s with gunshot wounds in separate rooms, on the ground floor of a two-story home. The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman in the home was taken to an area hospital. Her condition is not presently known. Officials tell KSAT 12 that they are not searching for anyone else in regards to the shooting. However they would not confirm who shot who. A next-door neighbor said she was told that the husband did the shooting. Two other neighbors said the couple who lived in the home had not been married long. Additional neighbors said the children who live in the home were not present at the time of the shooting and had likely gone to school. KSAT 12 will continue to follow this story and have more information as it develops. Copyright 2016 by KSAT - All rights reserved.

New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is locking up the baby formula, because he wants newborns to drink breast milk instead. He’s using his mayoral power to direct maternity-ward nurses to hide baby-milk formula after Sept. 2 so that new moms feel pressured to provide breast milk to their newborns. Bloomberg’s mammary-mandate is supported by white-coated public-health officials, who say the scientific data shows that mothers’ milk aids infants’ digestive systems and shields them from some diseases. His wishes are law because he controls much of the city’s health network in a city-wide version of Obamacare. But Bloomberg’s lactate-dictate is likely to get him a slap in the face from women who prefer to choose how they will raise their children, and how they juggle child-rearing and work in a city where unemployment has reached at least 14 percent in the Bronx. The “reality is that some women may not want to breastfeed their baby and it is simply their choice,” said Cherlyn Harley LeBon, a lawyer, mom and member of the libertarian-minded Project 21’s advisory board. “I completely support breastfeeding our babies… [but] the government should not force them to do it,” she said in a July 29 statement. “Mayor Bloomberg is now playing the role of pediatrician and neonatal specialist… [who has declared that] a mother is now forced to breastfeed unless she has a medical reason for not doing so.” The story was broken by The New York Post, where commentators were merciless. “I’m another former member of La Leche League who nursed all my kids,” said Rosemarie Scott, at Marymount Manhattan College. “I’m all for encouraging women to breastfeed but agree that this is NOT the way to do it. Leave it to Bloomberg to be so heavy-handed as to turn off even a breastfeeding advocate like myself.” The mayor’s formula-fatwa follows his earlier effort to stop moms — or any one else — from buying cups of soda larger than 16 ounces. Babies, however, will be pushed to drink from cups sizes A to DDD under the new rules, dubbed “Latch On NYC.” Women who refuse to nurse their infants face no penalty, because there’s no requirement that they discharge milk before they’re discharged from the hospital. Twenty seven of the city’s 40 hospitals are complying with Bloomberg’s nursery rules. The breast-behest is the newest feature of Bloomberg’s big-government, nanny-state, experts-first-citizens-second, progressive outlook. He’s a social liberal, but is eager to impose rules when allied professionals say they’re good for city government. He’s a self-declared feminist and outspoken supporter of unrestricted abortion-choice who opposes any limit on women’s ability to buy abortion services. But once the infant escapes from the womb, they’re now under the rule of Bloomberg’s nanny-state rules. Bloomberg’s personal involvement in the private lives of citizens extends far beyond cup sizes. He’s an outspoken critic of protests against the now-moribund effort to build a mosque alongside the Twin Towers’ ground-zero, where Islamists killed almost 3,000 Americans on 9/11. He’s been in the news recently because of his — quickly recanted — call for cops to go on illegal strikes until Americans lose their constitutional right to guns, and because of his applause for President Barack Obama’s decision in June to offer a campaign-trail de-facto amnesty to at least 800,000 illegal aliens, despite a record national unemployment rate. New York’s unemployment rate is at least 10 percent, and half of African-American adults in the city lack jobs. Follow Neil on Twitter

I got lots of wonderful things, and they were all wrapped -so fun! I got: a big sketch book (how did my match know I was on the last page of my old one? awesome timing) a pack of Micron pens for drawing. My old ones had dried out, so also awesome! A National Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography (digital). Perfect! I love doing nature photography and I'm a beginner. I've been trying to figure out how to get better and this is exactly what I needed. A Falcon Guide to the Best Easy Day Hikes near my Oklahoma City. I love hiking and I just moved here, so this will be great for helping me explore the area and find good hiking spots! Thank you so much Legotech! These were all very thoughtful gifts, you are awesome!

NEA KAVALA, Greece — As her young children played near heaps of garbage, picking through burned corn cobs and crushed plastic bottles to fashion new toys, Shiraz Madran, a 28-year-old mother of four, turned with tear-rimmed eyes to survey the desolate encampment that has become her home. This year, her family fled Syria, only to get stuck at Greece’s northern border with Macedonia in Idomeni, a town that had been the gateway to northern Europe for more than one million migrants from the Middle East and Africa seeking a haven from conflict. After Europe sealed the border in February to curb the unceasing stream, the Greek authorities relocated many of those massed in Idomeni to a camp on this wind-beaten agricultural plain in northern Greece, with promises to process their asylum bids quickly. But weeks have turned into months, and Mrs. Madran’s life has spiraled into a despondent daily routine of scrounging for food for her dust-covered children and begging the authorities for any news about their asylum application. “No one tells us anything — we have no idea what our future is going to be,” she said.

Untangling Evented Code with Ruby Fibers Event-driven programming requires a mind-shift in how you architect the program, and oftentimes directly affects the choice of language, drivers, and even frameworks you can use. Most commonly found in highly interactive applications (GUI, network servers, etc), it usually implements the reactor pattern to handle concurrency in favor of threads: the “reactor” is a main loop which is responsible for receiving all inbound events (network IO, filesystem, IPC, etc) and demultiplexing them to appropriate handlers or callbacks. Turns out, the reactor pattern performs extremely well under heavy loads (C10K challenge), hence the continuous rise in adoption (Nginx, Beanstalkd, EventMachine, Twisted, Node.js), but it does have its downsides: it requires reactor-aware libraries, still relies on background processing capabilities for long running computations, and last but not least, once you have nested several callbacks, it results in much more complicated code. Functional purists will disagree with the last statement – after all, we all love JavaScript, and node.js is the new hot thing on the block – but what if we could write event driven code without the added complexity imposed by hundreds of nested callbacks? Accidental Complexity of Event-Driven Code Anyone who has written a non-trivial event driven application will be familiar with the following pattern: you often start reading your code bottom-up and then navigate your way up the callback chain. In addition, since there is no single execution context, each callback requires its own nested exception handling, which adds to the complexity - debugging is non-trivial, to say the least. Of course, this is usually not too bad in a context of a simple demo, but it also quickly spirals out of control. EventMachine . run { page = EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( 'http://google.ca/' ) . get page . errback { p "Google is down! terminate?" } page . callback { about = EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( 'http://google.ca/search?q=eventmachine' ) . get about . callback { # callback nesting, ad infinitum } about . errback { # error-handling code } } } Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer the if-then-else control flow, with top-down execution and code I can actually read without callback gymnastics. And as luck would have it, turns out these are not inconsistent requirements in Ruby 1.9. With the introduction of Fibers, our applications can do fully-cooperative scheduling (worth a re-read to make sense of the rest), which with a little extra work also means that we can abstract much of the complexity of event driven programming while maintaining all of its benefits! Fibers & EventMachine: under the hood Ruby 1.9 Fibers are a means of creating code blocks which can be paused and resumed by our application (think lightweight threads, minus the thread scheduler and less overhead). Each fiber comes with a small 4KB stack, which makes them cheap to spin up, pause and resume. Best of all, a fiber can yield the control and wait until someone else resumes it. I bet you see where we're going: start an async operation, yield the fiber, and then make the callback resume the fiber once the operation is complete. Let's wrap our async em-http client as an example: def http_get ( url ) f = Fiber . current http = EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( url ) . get # resume fiber once http call is done http . callback { f . resume ( http ) } http . errback { f . resume ( http ) } return Fiber . yield end EventMachine . run do Fiber . new { page = http_get ( 'http://www.google.com/' ) puts "Fetched page: #{ page . response_header . status } " if page page = http_get ( 'http://www.google.com/search?q=eventmachine' ) puts "Fetched page 2: #{ page . response_header . status } " end } . resume end First thing to notice is that we are now executing our asynchronous code within a fiber (Fiber.new{}.resume), and our http_get method sets up the call, assigns the callbacks and then immediately yields control as it tries to return from the function. From there, EventMachine takes over, fetches the data in the background, and then calls the callback method, which in turn resumes our fiber, passing it the actual response. A little bit of fiber gymnastics, but it means that our original code with nested callbacks can now be unwound into a regular top-down execution context with if-then-else control flow. Not bad! EM-Synchrony: Evented Code With Less Pain Of course, we wouldn't gain much if the net effect of introducing fibers into our event driven code was swapping callbacks for fiber gymnastics. Thankfully, we can do better because much of the underlying implementation can be easily abstracted at the level of the driver. Let's take a look at our new helper library, em-synchrony: EventMachine . synchrony do page = EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( "http://www.google.com" ) . get p "No callbacks! Fetched page: #{ page } " EventMachine . stop end Instead of invoking the default EM.run block, we call EM.synchrony, which in turn wraps our execution into a Ruby fiber behind the scenes. From there, the library also provides ready-made, fiber aware classes for some of the most common use cases (http: em-http-request, mysql: em-mysqlplus, and memcached: remcached), as well as, a fiber aware connection pool, iterator for concurrency control, and a multi-request interface. Let's take a look at an example which flexes all of the above: EM . synchrony do # open 4 concurrent MySQL connections db = EventMachine :: Synchrony :: ConnectionPool . new ( size : 4 ) do EventMachine :: MySQL . new ( host : "localhost" ) end # perform 4 http requests in parallel, and collect responses multi = EventMachine :: Synchrony :: Multi . new multi . add :page1 , EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( "http://service.com/page1" ) . aget multi . add :page2 , EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( "http://service.com/page2" ) . aget multi . add :page3 , EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( "http://service.com/page3" ) . aget multi . add :page4 , EventMachine :: HttpRequest . new ( "http://service.com/page4" ) . aget data = multi . perform . responses [ :callback ]. values # insert fetched HTTP data into a mysql database, using at most 2 connections at a time # - note that we're writing async code within the iterator! EM :: Synchrony :: Iterator . new ( data , 2 ) . each do | page , iter | db . aquery ( "INSERT INTO table (data) VALUES( #{ page } );" ) db . callback { iter . return ( db ) } end puts "All done! Stopping event loop." EventMachine . stop end Synchrony implements a common pattern: original asynchronous methods which return a deferrable object are aliased with "a" prefix (.get becomes .aget, .query becomes .aquery) to indicate that they are asynchronous, and the fiber aware methods take their place as the defaults. This way, you can still mix sync and async code all in the same context (within an iterator, for example). For more examples of em-synchrony in action, take a look at the specs provided within the library itself. Towards Scalable & Manageable Event-Driven Code Event driven programming does not have to be complicated. With a little help from Ruby 1.9 much of the complexity is easily abstracted, which means that we can have all the benefits of event-driven IO, without any of the overhead of a thread scheduler or complicated code. Node.js, Twisted, and other reactor frameworks have a lot going for them, but the combination of EventMachine and Ruby 1.9, to me, is a clear winner. We should also mention that fibers have been ported to Ruby 1.8, but due to their implementation on top of green threads they incur much larger overhead - in other words, this is your reason to switch to Ruby 1.9! And last but not least, fibers or not, don't forget that Ruby 1.9 still has a GIL which means that only one CPU core will be used. Until we see MVM (multi-VM) support, the solution is simply to run multiple reactors (one or more for each core).

OAKLAND, Calif. — One message on the web forum asked neighbors to be on the lookout for “two young African-Americans, slim, baggy pants, early 20s.” Another warned of a “light-skinned black female” walking her dog and talking on her cellphone. “I don’t recognize her,” the post read. “Has anyone described any suspect of crime like her?” These postings appeared on the Oakland forums of Nextdoor.com, a website intended to be a virtual neighborhood hangout for the tens of thousands of neighborhoods and hundreds of local police departments that use it to communicate with residents. The site’s chief executive and co-founder, Nirav Tolia, describes it as a place to find a babysitter, a plumber or a missing cat, and to have a “kind of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ chatter.” But people also use it to report suspected crimes. And as Nextdoor has grown, users have complained that it has become a magnet for racial profiling, leading African-American and Latino residents to be seen as suspects in their own neighborhoods. In response to the complaints, the company has begun testing ways to prevent these kinds of postings.

Before I get started, I want to point out that this article is aimed at pre-field graduate students and undergraduates, and that the context is working with American funding agencies. YMMV. As I mentioned in my previous blog, my dissertation research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSFGRFP) and the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship (FHDDRA). The former provides three years of funding that must be used in five years of graduate school. I can use it in place of a TA stipend while I’m on campus or I can use it during fieldwork. In my case, I’ve opted to defer it while I’m in the field so that I can use the Fulbright-Hays, and then I’ll use it when I get back so that I don’t have to TA while I write-up. The proposal that I wrote for the NSFGRFP was submitted during my senior year in college, and I’m sorry to say that I can’t recall a particular process that I used to write it. For those looking for information on how to write a proposal for the NSFGRFP, there are some useful websites, guides, and resources on the internet, and you can read my dreadful proposal here. The FHDDRA is another – much longer – story. Start Early and Construct a Prototype The sociocultural curriculum at Washington University is designed with very specific goals in mind, perhaps none more important than “get your research funded.” So, while I would like to say that the Proposal Writing course that we are privileged to have at WashU was the most influential to my ability to win money, the process started before that. First, I consider the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (NSFDDRIG) as a prototype, as it may be the longest and most comprehensive form of a dissertation research grant for sociocultural anthropologists. My proposal for the NSFDDRIG was ten pages, single-spaced, Times New Roman, 11pt font, justified, with one-inch margins on all sides. (Additionally, there was a four-page section of References Cited in the same format. I used the Chicago Manual of Style author-date citation.) That gives me an enormous amount of room to explain my project, and that’s important because proposal writing (for me) amounts to the spectre of my mentors watching as I write while incessantly asking, “Why is that important?” and “How do you know that?” The headers of the NSFDDRIG are up to the author, so I took some winning proposals which were generously donated by more senior graduate students and constructed my own in this order: Problem Statement: What is the problem? Why is it important? Foreshadow every major point you’re going to make in the rest of the proposal. This section is constantly being retooled as new things are being added later in the proposal because you don’t want readers to find something out half-way through. At the same time, you’ve got to keep it brief. Research Objectives (1, 2, and 3): Once I’ve explained the problem, I’ve got to explain what my objectives are to figuring out an answer to the problem. Here, you should foreshadow what kinds of data counts as satisfying these objectives and what kinds of methods are most appropriate for collecting that data. Literature Review (with subsections): Backup a second. Your work is a response to other scholars’ work – you’re having a conversation – so you need to catch the reader up on what has been said so far and how your project proposes something new and different. Research Methods (includes Timeline, Sampling Design, Data Collection, and Data Analysis) Research Timeline: A broad overview of your plan. I put mine into a table that took up half-a-page and basically said, in “Months 1-2” (first column), I’ll be “Hiring research assistants; conducting focus group interviews with community stakeholders and gatekeepers; recruiting interview participants” and so forth. Sampling Design: Who do you need to talk to and why? What methods will you use with them and what kind of data do you expect to get from them? How will those data answer objectives 1 or 2 or 3? (Tie it back to the rest of the proposal.) Data Collection Methods: What are the methods you will use, what data do you expect to get from them, why are those data important to helping you make your argument, and how do those data relate to your objectives? Data Analysis: Once you collect your data, what will you do to confirm that they address your objectives and how will you recognize that they do? Broader Impacts: “encompasses the potential to benefit society and contribute to the achievement of specific, desired societal outcomes” (from NSF 15-556). For me, this meant giving back to the community and participants with which I work, giving back to the academic community in Dakar, and (lastly) engaging my home public though social media. Research Experience: Who are you and why are you the right person for the job? This is an important first consideration because it serves as a kind of checklist. One of the first things that I needed to do as a graduate student at WashU was prepare my “Second Year Paper,” a sort of part lit review, part non-thesis made up of three parts: two theoretical (I chose Postcolonial Theory and Masculinity) and one Area Studies (i.e. Senegal for me). This paper needed to be submitted to my committee by early-January of my second year. Just before that, in the fall semester of the second year, we’re taking a Research Methods in Anthropology course. Therefore, by the time we begin our Proposal Writing course in the spring of our second year, we’ve already got our literature review and our methods roughly done – which were a full seven pages of my ten-page proposal. The biggest challenge for me in the Proposal Writing course was not designing the research (much of that had already been cooking for a couple years), but stringing it all together in a cogent, deliberate, and airtight argument. While we spent weeks writing and re-writing and re-writing the Problem Statement and Objectives in a class dedicated to fine-tuning the argument, I was also taking a course in Argumentation through Ethnography which was teaching me – by deep-reading newly published ethnographic monographs – how to piece together arguments and turn data into evidence. That semester completely changed the way I thought about writing and the most significant lessons I learned were simple: Say what you’re going to do and don’t leave loose ends. Cut, cut, cut. The reason, I think, that it’s important to begin with the NSFDDRIG is that it is easier (for me) to trim and cut material than it is to add. It is true that some agencies are asking different kinds of questions. The Social Science Research Council, for example, wants Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship proposals to draw heavily on interdisciplinarity, so I wrote about feminist geography, urban studies, global health, and the sociology of space. The Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant Application asks the dreaded Question 5: “What contribution does your project make to anthropological theory and to the discipline?” – an overwhelming question that one must answer in half of the space allotted to the other four questions! NSF and SSRC do care about your answer to this question, but they aren’t asking so explicitly, and having seen previous NSF and SSRC dissertation award proposals, I’m fairly certain that someone could skate by with barely a consideration to their contributions to anthropological theory and still be awarded money. Indeed, they have. Aside from these differences in questions, the major components remain the same: What is the problem? What is the context of the problem? How are you going to figure it out? The most significant difference between the NSFDDRIG and the rest of my proposals is the page count. While the NSFDDRIG is up to ten pages, single-spaced, the Wenner-Gren is essentially four and a half pages, single-spaced; SSRC was ten pages, double-spaced; Fulbright U.S. includes a two-page, single-space “Grant Purpose” and a one-page, single-spaced personal statement; my Fulbright-Hays was eight pages, double-spaced. I think that completing the NSFDDRIG first, if possible, will allow you to get the fullest view of your research plan. Find a community! Lastly, I recommend joining a writing group, either on campus or online, where members are committed to regularly reading and commenting on each other’s writing. It, of course, helps if those members are either at the same level of proposal writing or are experienced and winning proposal winners in anthropology. Importantly: A winning proposal does not make it a model for future writers. First, sometimes people win because the problem statement is just that irresistible and compelling, despite their dreadful methodologies and incomplete literature reviews. (I know! I’ve seen them!) Second, as long as judges, entry rules, annual budgets, and trends in anthropology are changing from year to year, the target will always be moving. Do not take winning examples and attempt to replicate their formulas. It won’t work. So, in the end, between April 2016 and June 2017, I wrote and submitted two FHDDRA proposals, I wrote three NSF-DDRIG proposals and submitted two, I wrote two Wenner-Gren proposals and submitted one, and I wrote and submitted one proposal to SSRC and one for the Fulbright U.S. That’s nine written proposals, seven submitted, and one awarded. But let’s be honest – they’re all basically the same. To recap: Develop a prototype. I recommend the NSFDDRIG. Be recursive. Tie everything you write into something else you’ve already written. Justify every word and sentence. Find a community of writers to work with. Write a lot and submit a lot, but also don’t write too much because you already have a prototype. (That doesn’t make sense. I know.) Next up: Ethical review or writing the interview instruments? Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com. http://www.dickpowis.com

Silence on human rights encourages despots, discourages activists. President Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on April 3, 2017. (Photo11: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images) To the extent that the Trump administration's foreign policy has started to take shape — and it seems to be a work in progress — advocacy of human rights and democracy doesn't seem to be very high on the agenda. If anything, Trump's "America First" foreign policy is looking more like a sort of realpolitik, where ethical and moral considerations are shed in favor of achieving transactional "wins" on jobs and security. The president seems drawn to autocrats and cynical about promoting cherished American ideals. Asked in February about Russian President Vladimir Putin's reputation for ordering political killings, Trump didn't miss a beat: "Do you think our country is so innocent?" Last month, the administration lifted human rights conditions on the sale of F-16 fighters to Bahrain, where political dissidents are locked up without due process. And the annual State Department report on global human rights was issued without fanfare or the usual news conference. This week, Trump gushed about Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when the two met at the White House. Sisi overthrew his democratically elected predecessor in 2013 and has brutally cracked down on political dissent, a sure route to fomenting more violent extremism. "He's done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation," Trump said, vigorously shaking Sisi's hand, something he didn't do with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a staunch ally, two weeks earlier. It's true, as the foreign policy realists like to point out, that America can't right every wrong in the world. Trump needn't go as far as President George W. Bush, whose grandiose vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East, by military invasion if necessary, led to the fiasco in Iraq. Or even as far as President Carter, who made human rights a cornerstone of his foreign policy. But there’s nothing wrong with private nudges, public rhetoric and material incentives to make clear America stands for basic freedoms. There’s no reason to cede the moral high ground and every reason to try to hold it. Silence on human rights discourages the pro-democracy activists who put their lives on the line for the rights Americans take for granted — and encourages the bad actors such as Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad. As Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Wednesday, it's probably no coincidence that a horrific chemical weapons attack occurred in Syria soon after U.S. officials suggested that Assad could stay in power. (Later in the day, Trump condemned the attack but didn't say what he'd do about it.) Which brings us to the meetings between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping planned for Thursday and Friday at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. The White House has said that human rights will be raised discreetly, if at all. Xi's regime imprisons peaceful critics, detains people accused of violating Communist Party rules, holds hundreds of activists for years without trial, and engages in widespread Internet censorship. For all this, Xi avoids accountability to the Chinese people. Shouldn't America at least advocate — for a moment during the discussion of trade imbalances, currency rates and North Korea — doctrines of freedom for the leader of the world's largest, repressive regime? Would it do any harm if Trump diplomatically pressed Xi to release Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, whose "crime," for which he's serving an 11-year prison sentence, was to circulate a petition for placing human rights, democracy and the rule of law at the core of the Chinese political system? As much as Trump might disdain moralizing, part of his job is to send the message that America cares about its values. USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature. To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2oD96ro

Image copyright Austin Police Department Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf has been arrested and charged with public drunkenness, police in Texas say. Police arrested the actor on Friday night on Sixth Street in Austin's entertainment district. The actor has had numerous brushes with the law throughout his career. Witnesses said LaBeouf initially caused a disturbance on Friday after being refused a drink at a bar, and later jaywalked in front of police. Officers are reported to have subdued him and put him in handcuffs before arresting him, the TMZ website reported. Jail records quoted by the AP news agency say that he spent Friday night in the Travis County Jail and has now been released. In September 2014, he pleaded guilty to a charge of disorderly conduct over his disruption of a Broadway performance of Cabaret. He was also arrested after a fight in a bar in Los Angeles in 2011, although he was later released without charge. Image copyright EPA Image caption The actor has had numerous brushes with the law Shortly before that arrest, a publicist for the actor said that he was receiving treatment for alcoholism. There have also been a series of instances where LaBeouf is said to have behaved erratically in public - on one occasion appearing on the red carpet with a paper bag on his head, on which was written: "I am not famous anymore." LaBeouf - who also writes screenplays - found fame at age 14 as the star of the Disney series Even Stevens and has also starred in three Transformers films. The star's movies include Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

I’ve recommended it to many people over the years, mostly elders who hadn’t considered the internet being that useful, and usually they’re like, “aw? A website? No thanks, it’s not necessary”. Which is fine even if internally I was like “plsssss no it’s so good”. A lot of gen-z are getting into fiber crafting and that is exciting. So, here’s a little intro This is the homepage, after making an account Up on the top right is your notebook, which you’ll probably visit the most because it contains all of the tools for organizing your projects. That’s your notebook, on the left bar are your various tools. Projects are lined up neatly on the rest of the screen. There’s a Handspun tab for spinners, Stash is where you organize your yarns, uQeue is where you list upcoming projects, Favorites is where you can save and organize your favorite projects/patterns, Needles & Hooks gives you a chart that you can fill in with what you already own, Library is a digital library of patterns and even representations of the physical books that you own. Each of these can be customized, for example in favorites in there is a place to bundle them, so that if you wanted to say make a bundle of everything you want to knit as Christmas presents throughout the year, you can do that. In Queue you can link the called for yarn and the yarn you are going to use, linked from stash or otherwise, you can make notes on each entry. I will often note whether I need needles and what kind, so that if I drop by the store, the info I need is just a couple of clicks away. There is even a place in the stash to note where you got your yarn and how much it cost. I’m not going much more deeper into that, but if ya’ll want me to do a post about specific tools let me know. The most attractive part of Ravelry for me is easily searchable database of patterns. If you click on the Patterns button at the top left of the homepage, it takes you here. I typically go straight to pattern browser & advanced search through the link under the search bar. The great part of this are the filters on the left. You can filter by category of clothing, if and how it’s in your notebook, by craft type, by it’s availability (like whether it’s free, downloadable, or purchased elsewhere), whether or not it has photos (because there are many self-published designers), by attributes such as shape, techniques, texture, and types of colorwork, by age, size, ease, fit, and gender, by weight of the yarn called for, by yardage required, by number of colors used, by pattern source, by needle size, by star rating, by difficulty, by origin of crochet terminology, and by language. There are many more search options after the main filters. So for example if I had exactly 700 yards of worsted eight yarn in two colors, and I knew I wanted to make a scarf, using bobbles and colorwork, I could search that. Not only that, but you can customize the filters to combine traits: I could make my selections and hit advanced where I’ve circled in red and, specify that I want merino, and cashmere, or silk, but not nylon. I still got 27 matches from that search, but that’s how big the database is. And the same goes for the yarn tab at the top left of the homepage next to patterns. You can search through pretty much every yarn available, from red heart to indie fiber artists, using similar characteristics to narrow it down. I hope someone found this useful and if you’re a knitter or crocheter, it’s seriously worth a look. I’m not very active lately, but It’s where I go for inspiration if nothing else.

Alan McConnell is the new coach of the Giants' AFLW team ALAN McConnell will replace Tim Schmidt as coach of Greater Western Sydney’s NAB AFL Women’s team. McConnell, the Giants' director of coaching, will continue working with the AFL team. The club said Schmidt, who coached the NSW/ACT team in the NAB AFLW Under-18 Championships, had stepped down to focus on his expanded role with AFL NSW/ACT’s talent programs. He also operates a kicking academy business. "When the opportunity arose, it made sense to look internally to continue to build the relationship between our AFL and AFLW teams," Giants CEO David Matthews said. "Alan had already assisted our AFLW players and coaches across the inaugural AFLW season and to secure him in this role is a real win. "Importantly, he will continue to be across the men’s program during the women’s season, and return to the men’s program during the AFLW off-season." Matthews thanked Schmidt for his contribution to the club’s inaugural AFLW season. "Many of the values and processes he implemented will continue into 2018 and beyond," he said. "Pleasingly Tim’s role at AFL NSW/ACT will ensure he continues to work with the Giants' AFLW program as the key person identifying and developing young female talent in New South Wales and the ACT." McConnell played 37 games for Footscray and was the last coach of Fitzroy before it merged with the Brisbane Bears at the end of 1996. He was previously an assistant coach at Geelong and the AIS-AFL Academy’s high-performance coach. He has been with the Giants since 2009.

Image copyright AP Image caption The Greek coastguard said it had tried to save the migrants The UN has called for an inquiry after a boat carrying migrants capsized while being towed by a Greek coastguard vessel, leaving up to twelve dead. Two bodies were found but a further 10 people were missing after the incident near the island of Farmakonisi on Monday. Sixteen people were rescued. The coastguard says it judged it safer to keep migrants on their own boat than to take them aboard in bad weather. Greek officials say panicking migrants caused the boat to capsize themselves. According to reports, two migrants fell or dived overboard and others rushed to one side of the boat to rescue them, causing the boat to tip. The deaths of a woman and a child have been confirmed. One non-government organisation, Pro Asyl, accused the Greek authorities of trying illegally to prevent the migrants, believed to be 26 Afghans and two Syrians, landing in Greece. "It is highly likely that this action by the Greek coastguard was an illegal push-back operation rather than a rescue at sea," said Karl Kopp, the NGO's director of European affairs. Another NGO, Ecre, said: "Survivors tell that they were crying out for help, given that a large number of children and babies were on board." Greece is one of the main destinations for clandestine migrants and refugees seeking to enter the EU, through its land or sea borders. Correspondents say there has been a sharp increase in sea-borne refugee traffic over the past year because of stricter controls on the Greek-Turkish land border to the north and the ongoing war in Syria. 'More bodies' In a statement on Tuesday, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was "dismayed" at the events off Farmakonisi. It quoted survivors on the island of Leros as saying the Greek coastguard had tried to tow the boat towards the Turkish coast at high speed when it capsized. "UNHCR is urging the authorities to investigate this incident and how lives were lost on a boat that was under tow," said Laurens Jolles, its southern Europe regional representative. "In addition survivors need to be quickly moved to the mainland so that their needs can be better looked after." Responding to the UN on Wednesday, the Greek coastguard insisted it had been trying to tow the boat, which had broken down, to Farmakonisi - and not to Turkey - after receiving a distress signal. It put out a fire on the stricken boat and rescued 16 people from the water, it said. Following the disaster, a Greek helicopter searched the area, which is near the Turkish coast, for survivors. According to a report in Greek newspaper Kathimerini, two more bodies have been found by the Turkish authorities - those of an 11-year-old child and a 38-year-old woman. There have been persistent reports of Greek officials forcing migrants back into Turkish waters. Pro Asyl and Ecre called for an "independent and effective investigation of the circumstances that caused such loss of life". "The NGOs reiterate that push-backs are illegal, endanger people's lives and have to end immediately," they said in a press release.

On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015 Right-wing radio: Romney loses, GOP dies Leading conservative talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are both arguing that the Republican party will or should be shut down if Mitt Romney loses in November -- an idea that, however hard to believe, gives you an indication of the right wing's dissatisfaction with the Republican party. "If you can't beat Barack Obama with this record, then shut down the party. Shut it down, start new, with new people. Because this is a gimme election, or at least it should be," Ingraham said on her radio program yesterday. "Election after election, we hire people who have lost previous campaigns, who have run campaigns that have failed, who have messaged campaigns where the message fell flat, and they keep getting re-hired." Where Ingraham made an argument, Limbaugh made a prediction: The Republicans would fall, but not before blaming the conservative base for their woes and opening a window for a third, more conservative party to take their place. "If Obama wins, let me tell you what it's the end of: The Republican Party. There's gonna be a third party that's gonna be oriented toward conservatism. I know Rand Paul thinks libertarianism. And I know if Obama wins, the Republican Party is gonna try to maneuver things so conservatives get blamed," he said. "The only problem is, right now Romney's not running a conservative campaign. But they're gonna set it up to say, 'Well, the right sat home,' or, 'The right made Romney be other than who he is.' They'll try to deflect the blame, but they got who they want."

In a bid to keep the city streets cleaner, the Maharashtra government on Tuesday approved an anti-spitting law. If you now decide to spit on the streets, you will be fined Rs 1,000 and will have to spend a day performing community service at a public office or a government office, reported The Times of India. However, this is for first-time offenders, and the punishment and fine is higher for repeat offenders. For a second-time offender, the fine will be Rs 3,000 plus three-day community service, and for repeat offenders the fine will be Rs 5,000 plus five-day community service. Maharashtra will become becomes the first state in India to get an anti-spitting law if cleared by the Assembly. The state government has been planning to have a proper law in place for quite some time now. Deepak Sawant, state Public Health Minister told The Indian Express,"We had to bring in a punishment that would shame the offenders and hurt their ego. Simply paying a penalty is not enough deterrent. Offenders pay the paltry amount, and often don’t think twice before repeating the act. So, we decided to bring in compulsory community service." The report said that offenders will be given a broom and asked to sweep a state government office or hospitals or a school. The law has been in the making for a few months now and Sawant said that the law will be in force in the next six months. "A law against spitting in public places is already in existence and in Mumbai, the BMC acts against people who spit in public. But it is not that effective," Sawant had said in January 2015, pointing to a rise in the number of cases of tuberculosis. "We will also check if we can suspend driving licence of a taxi or auto driver who spits in public places like roads. We will make the legislation effective so that there will be a deterrent for people who indulge in such activity," the minister had said. The new law is a precursor to banning chewing tobacco in public. Experts said an effective anti-spitting law will bring down incidences of airborne diseases. "It will also affect the tobacco-chewing habit as people will be restrained from spitting out tobacco. This is a move towards a healthy lifestyle," said Dr A Bamne, executive health officer of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Even if this is the first attempt by the state government to make Mumbai a spit-free zone, earlier efforts by the BMC and the Maharashtra government have not been too fruitful. As early in 2007, the BMC had deployed 'cleaning marshals' to keep spitters, those who litter, tobacco chewers in check. But the scheme came under a lot of flak over its implementation. Soon, complaints started pouring in against the 'clean-up marshals.' Political interference, high-handedness of the marshals and corruption rendered the the entire system useless, an article in Firstpost said. Dr Sawant, however, reassured that there would be no political intervention with the anti-spitting law. "The committee will suggest who will be the implementing authority at various places and how to collect the fines. For instance, in Mumbai city, BMC commissioner will be the in-charge, but traffic police or police could be authorized to collect fine on the roads," The Times of India quoted the health minister as saying. 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.

45% of video gamers, and 46% of game purchasers, are women. More complex storylines, more personalized characters, more acceptance of ‘geekiness’ as something to be proud of and a wider variety of games available are just a few of the reasons why gaming is no longer being seen as a boys-only club. Women are finding their place in the gaming world. , a YouTuber and gamer with 60,000 subscribers, is excited about the change. “More and more I feel like it is normal for a woman to play video games too. It's no longer "a guy thing". Growing up I often heard "What, you play video games?! That's so awesome, girls never play video games!", but now when you tell someone you play video games you'd sooner get the question what kind of games you're into, which is really nice.” GirlGamerGaB , a YouTuber and gamer with 60,000 subscribers, is excited about the change. “More and more I feel like it is normal for a woman to play video games too. It's no longer "a guy thing". Growing up I often heard "What, you play video games?! That's so awesome, girls never play video games!", but now when you tell someone you play video games you'd sooner get the question what kind of games you're into, which is really nice.” And yet, even the fantasy world still isn’t equal. But from gamers, to game developers, to women in games, we still have a long way to go before gaming becomes an gender-equal world. ...for women who play games: On paper, a female gamer’s customer experience should be no different to that of a man’s. In practice, the communal nature of gaming means that male gamers can make life pretty unpleasant for a female gamer… a ‘side effect’ of the product she didn’t sign up for. Women face roughly three times more harassment than men when playing online. Gamer and YouTuber Yasmin Uddin (known as Yammy xox) said she experienced sexism first hand, “mostly during games like Call of Duty and Gears of War. I was ashamed to speak in online game chat as I felt as if I’d be ridiculed for my voice.... I’d be told to ‘get back into the kitchen.” It’s not always that aggressive – but unwanted attention is still a distraction to women just looking to play the game. “A lot of people try to make flirty conversation whenever they find out I’m a female gamer, and ask for my personal details, like Facebook or Skype,” says Hayley W, an avid gamer. And sometimes, men will be unnecessarily forgiving towards a woman – skewing her results in the game. “They’re a lot more forgiving to me if I make mistakes. They assume I’m not as good as them and sometimes give me game money in an attempt to flirt.” ...for women in games: In a make-believe universe where anything is possible, is it really so hard to picture female characters without pinched waists, hourglass curves, and tiny, tiny skirts? Despite managing to come up with a seemingly endless amount of alternate worlds and fantastical societies, games often fall back on the same old tropes of women wearing clothes which, if you think about it, are highly impractical for the things they’re expected to do within the game. Still, things are improving: a recent survey pointed to a decrease in the sexualization of female protagonists in games over the last eight years. More and more women are being given three dimensional roles and complex personalities. Just give them some clothes, too? ...for women in the gaming industry: Most games are created by men, for men. Governments around the world are talking about the lack of women in STEM (science, tech, engineering, maths) – for the gaming world, the problem manifests itself in fewer female coders and developers to create games. Those who do make it into the industry, face lower salaries for doing – you guessed it – exactly the same job – women in gaming in the US, for example, make 86 cents for every dollar made by a man in the industry. Women working in gaming have also been known to face vicious and sexist abuse from gamers – you need only to look at the #GamerGate controversy, where several women working in the industry faced an orchestrated online campaign of misogynistic harassment and threats, to see that the cost of working in gaming for women is higher than just the pay gap.

Yakitori Alley in Yurakucho, Under the JR Yamanote Tracks I previously wrote about a couple of other places in the Yurakucho area and mentioned Yakitori, the classic Japanese dish of grilled meat or... Candy and Snacks From Japan February 2019 Over the last couple of months I ordered some food and snacks from Hobbylink, Candysan, and Jbox, and also picked up stuff from local Asian ... UHA Mikakuto Croquette, Cheeza, and other Japanese Snacks (Beer Optional) Savoury Japanese snacks like traditional sembei rice crackers are really good. Japan has produced all kinds of more modern snacks since and... Tokyo 2013 Trip Highlights: Day 6 - Nissin Cup Noodle Museum, Yokohama Ramen Museum, Ekibenya, Tokyo Character Street, Pokemon Store Today is RAMEN DAY! We're heading down south to Yokohama for a fun filled day of ramen education and dining. I plotted a path that doe... Ekiben Matsuri (Train Bento Festival Store) at Tokyo Station Ekiben (駅弁)are the "legendary" bento lunch boxes sold at Japanese train stations to feed you on the long train ride. Ekiben and... Ajinomoto Tokyo Style Shoyu Ramen with Chicken Ajinomoto USA makes a bowl of frozen ramen soup with toppings that is ready after adding water and microwaving for 4 minutes. Hmmm... That ... Funny Airline Safety Videos and Custom Airliner Paint Jobs This post isn't exactly about Japan, but is related to the process of getting there in the air, unless you're going by container shi... Asakusa Tori No Ichi Shrine Festival This is a very popular and busy shrine festival that happens two or three times in November (depends on how the calendar works out) at the O... Kyushu Marugoto Ramen Pack By Marutai This was a nifty find at the local T&T Market the other day. It was a big gift box / sampler pack of Kyushu ramen made by Murutai, a we...

In a recent interview, Angela Merkel made a statement that may be considered the signal for the implementation of the brutal Greek experiment inside Germany itself: I am concerned with trying to provide jobs for as many people as possible. We have improved in the last years and have managed to halve unemployment since 2006, but we have also made sure that minimum earning capacity has improved through the minimum wage. This means that people who work the full day should not be reliant on welfare. Economist Heiner Flassbeck explained to Sharmini Peries and The Real News how much the German chancellor and her party is devoted to the 'ideology' of lowering wages in the name of job creation. As he said: What Angela Merkel says is an ideology. It's an ideology of her party, but also it's affecting the Social Democrats, that says if you go for a policy that reduces unemployment, this is the best kind of social policy that you can have. Even if people suffer or if wages fall, this is then absolutely necessary and is justified because falling wages do a good thing, produce a good thing, namely more jobs, which is not true. Unemployment is falling very slowly, but it's falling quite steadily, but it is not, so to say, the immediate result of the reduction of the social contributions to the poorer people or the reduction of the wages. It's mainly the result of Germany's huge export surplus, which cannot be copied by other countries. Germany has now a very low minimum wage. It's eight euros and a little bit, which is much too low given the productivity of Germany. If Madam Merkel would really be realistic and would not have her ideology of low wages producing jobs, she would increase the minimum wage. There would be no problem at all given the very high German productivity. The Social Democrats and the Green Party were those in the beginning of the century who reduced the social contributions, who said we have to lower the contributions dramatically to make the people search for work and that will reduce unemployment. The Social Democrats have never distanced from their own mistakes and so there is no difference between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats on this. The most probable outcome will be a continuation of the Grand Coalition, so we will go on for the next four years. And the poor people will not change the outcome of the election because they are four or five million people and many of them will not even go to the election, so that will not change anything. Flassbeck's remarks show that current German leadership actually continues to lower wages, not because this is a policy that helps towards the creation of jobs, but, essentially, because of its ideological devotion to the destructive neoliberalism. Furthermore, check out again Merkel's last sentence: "This means that people who work the full day should not be reliant on welfare." Actually, Merkel is showing the policy that her party, or coalition, is about to implement in case she will get elected for another term. Next step according to the Greek experiment: the destruction of the welfare state, which has a long tradition in Germany. As already described , German oligarchs promote another "haircut" of multiple dimensions across Europe. They proceed into a violent cut of salaries and pensions, trying to equalize them in a first phase with those of countries of the former Eastern bloc, and disolving the welfare state. Federalism means however, that the same policies will be applied totally, definately and very soon, also against German citizens and workers. As Flassbeck rightly pointed out, the Social Democrats in power, or as leaders in a coalition with Cristian Democrats will not make much difference. Both these two parties in Germany, and more or less in Europe, have been occupied completely by the neoliberal doctrine. Their single mission will be to federalize Europe with the Greek experiment as a pattern.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966) – mythologised in popular imagination as ‘Veer Savarkar’ – not only refrained from participating in the freedom struggle after the British released him from prison on account of his relentless pleas for mercy, but also actively collaborated with the English rulers to whom he had declared his loyalty. At the time when Subhas Chandra Bose was raising his Indian National Army to confront the British in India, Savarkar helped the colonial government recruit lakhs of Indians into its armed forces. He further destabilised the freedom movement by pushing his Hindutva ideology, which deepened the communal divide at a time when a united front against colonial rule was needed. Post independence, Savarkar was also implicated in Mahatma Gandhi’s murder. Such is the man who was declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to be “the true son of Mother India and inspiration for many people”, in his Twitter salutation to Savarkar on his birth anniversary on May 28 last year. In 2015, commemorating Savarkar on his 132nd birth anniversary, the prime minister bowed before a portrait of the Hindutva icon in remembrance of “his indomitable spirit and invaluable contribution to India’s history”. Finance minister Arun Jaitley was quick to follow up on the act. “Today, on birth anniversary of Veer Savarkar, let us remember & pay tribute to this great freedom fighter & social-political philosopher,” he tweeted. And somewhere in the stream of Twitter accolades from numerous BJP ministers that followed, the TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai joined the chorus, albeit with a caveat. While he disagreed “with his ideology”, Sardesai said he honoured Savarkar’s “spirit as freedom fighter”. A freedom fighter he definitely was, for a certain period in the first decade of the previous century, long before he’d begun articulating the notion of Hindutva. Savarkar was then an atheist and a rationalist, who had started out on a revolutionary road to rid India of her colonial yoke, asserting: “whenever the natural process of national and political evolution is violently suppressed by the force of wrong, the revolution must step in as a natural reaction and therefore ought to be welcomed as the only effective instrument to re-throne Truth and Right.” On sailing to England to study law in 1906, Savarkar founded the Free India Society to organise Indian students studying in England to fight for independence. In a famous declaration before the society, he said: “We must stop complaining about this British officer or that officer, this law or that law. There would be no end to that. Our movement must not be limited to being against any particular law, but it must be for acquiring the authority to make laws itself. In other words, we want absolute independence.” However, when the time came to pay the price for being a revolutionary under an oppressive colonial government, Savarkar found himself converted and transformed into “the staunchest advocate of loyalty to the English government”, to use his own words. This was after he was arrested and sentenced to serve 50 years in the infamous Cellular Jail on the Andaman islands after he was found guilty of supplying the pistol that a member of the Abhinav Bharat Society used to assassinate the then collector of Nasik, A.M.T. Jackson, in 1909. ‘Veer’ Savarkar pleading with the British for mercy Barely a month into the hardships of prison, Savarkar wrote his first mercy petition, which was rejected in 1911. The second mercy petition, which he wrote in 1913, starts with bitter complaints about other convicts from his party receiving better treatment than him: “When I came here in 1911 June, I was along with the rest of the convicts of my party taken to the office of the Chief Commissioner. There I was classed as “D” meaning dangerous prisoner; the rest of the convicts were not classed as “D”. Then I had to pass full 6 months in solitary confinement. The other convicts had not… Although my conduct during all the time was exceptionally good still at the end of these six months I was not sent out of the jail; though the other convicts who came with me were. …For those who are term convicts the thing is different, but Sir, I have 50 years staring me in the face! How can I pull up moral energy enough to pass them in close confinement when even those concessions which the vilest of convicts can claim to smoothen their life are denied to me?” Then, after confessing that he was misguided into taking the revolutionary road because of the “excited and hopeless situation of India in 1906-1907”, he concluded his November 14, 1913 petition by assuring the British of his conscientious conversion. “[I]f the government in their manifold beneficence and mercy release me,” he wrote, “I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of… loyalty to the English government (emphasis added)”. “Moreover,” he went on to say, making an offer which few freedom fighters could even think of making, “my conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide. I am ready to serve the Government in any capacity they like, for as my conversion is conscientious..The Mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the paternal doors of the Government?” In his fourth mercy petition, dated March 30, 1920, Savarkar told the British that under the threat of an invasion from the north by the “fanatic hordes of Asia” who were posing as “friends”, he was convinced that “every intelligent lover of India would heartily and loyally co-operate with the British people in the interests of India herself.” After reassuring the colonial government that he was trying his “humble best to render the hands of the British dominion a bond of love and respect,” Savarkar went on to exalt the English empire: “Such an Empire as is foreshadowed in the Proclamation, wins my hearty adherence”. “But”, he added: “if the Government wants a further security from me then I and my brother are perfectly willing to give a pledge of not participating in politics for a definite and reasonable period that the Government would indicate… This or any pledge, e.g., of remaining in a particular province or reporting our movements to the police for a definite period after our release – any such reasonable conditions meant genuinely to ensure the safety of the State would be gladly accepted by me and my brother.” Finally, after spending ten years in the cellular jail and writing many mercy petitions, Savarkar, along with his brother, was shifted to a prison in Ratnagiri in 1921, before his subsequent release in 1924 on the condition of the confinement of his movements to the Ratnagiri district and his non participation in political activities. These restrictions were lifted only in 1937. Self-glorification of a defeated man One might have argued in 1924 that the promises he made about his love and loyalty to the British, about his readiness to serve the government in any capacity required and so on were a part of a tactical ploy – perhaps one inspired by Shivaji – employed to make his way out of prison so that he could continue his freedom struggle. However, history has proven him to be a man of ‘honour’, who stood by the promise he made to the colonial government. How then, one might wonder, did Savarkar acquire the title ‘Veer’? A book titled Life of Barrister Savarkar authored by Chitragupta was the first biography of Savarkar, published in 1926. Savarkar was glorified in this book for his courage and deemed a hero. And two decades after Savarkar’s death, when the second edition of this book was released in 1987 by the Veer Savarkar Prakashan, the official publisher of Savarkar’s writings, Ravindra Ramdas revealed in its preface that “Chitragupta is none other than Veer Savarkar”. In this autobiography masquerading as a biography written by a different author, Savarkar assures the reader that: “Savarkar is born hero, he could almost despise those who shirked duty for fear of consequences. If once he rightly or wrongly believed that a certain system of Government was iniquitous, he felt no scruples in devising means to eradicate the evil.” Without mincing words in the name of modesty or moderating the use of adjectives in the name of literary minimalism, Savarkar wrote that Savarkar “seemed to posses no few distinctive marks of character, such as an amazing presence of mind, indomitable courage, unconquerable confidence in his capability to achieve great things”. “Who,” he asked about himself, “could help admiring his courage and presence of mind?” Perhaps in polite society, we ought to quietly look the other way with an embarrassed smile when an ex-revolutionist, after breaking down in prison, indulges in self-glorification under the cover of a pen name after his release. And, indeed, no one who did not suffer the conditions the inmates of that infamous prison on the Andaman islands had to endure, can claim the right to castigate Savarkar for refusing to contribute to the freedom movement after he was released from jail. But his purporting of an ideology which destabilised the freedom movement by deepening the divisions along sectarian lines and his active rendering of support to the British government – which was determined to subdue the anti-colonial struggle – was a betrayal that must be hard to forgive, especially for a ‘patriot’ and a ‘nationalist’. Derailing the freedom movement with his Hindutva ideology The sectarian mindset, which eventually culminated into the articulation of Hindutva ideology, was evident – as Jyotirmaya Sharma has demonstrated in Hindutva: Exploring the Idea of Hindu Nationalism – in the early Savarkar, that too from a tender age. Only a boy of 12, Savarkar, leading a pack of his schoolmates, attacked a mosque in the aftermath of the Hindu-Muslim riots in Bombay and Pune in 1894-95. Holding back the Muslim boys of the village using “knives, pins and foot rulers”, Savarkar and his friends mounted their attack, “showering stones on the mosque, shattering its windows and tiles”. Recollecting the incident, he later wrote, “We vandalised the mosque to our heart’s content and raised the flag of our bravery on it.” When the news of Hindus killing Muslims in the riots and its aftermath reached him, little Savarkar and his friends “would dance with joy”. The sectarian nature of Savarkar’s social and political thinking not only bred in him a deep-rooted resentment against Muslims but also clouded his understanding of historical events, leading him to perceive the 1857 War of Indian Independence as a retaliation by Hindus and Muslims against Christianity, in response to Britain’s efforts to Christianise India. In his 1909 book, The War of Independence of 1857, published during his revolutionary days, years before he had declared his loyalty to the British government, Savarkar wrote, quoting Justin McCarthy, “The Mahomedan and the Hindu forgot their old religious antipathies to join against the Christian.” What was to stop the British government, which had passed a law against the practice of Sati (widow burning), from meddling further with Hindu customs by passing a law against idolatry, he asked. After all, “[t]he English hated idolatry as much as they did suttee.” Describing a process he perceived to be the destruction of Hinduism and Islam in India, Savarkar wrote in his book:: “The Sirkar (government) had already begun to pass one law after another to destroy the foundations of the Hindu and Mahomedan religions. Railways had already been constructed, and carriages had been built in such a way as to offend the caste prejudices of the Hindus. The larger mission schools were being helped with huge grants from the Sirkar. Lord Canning himself distributed thousands of Rupees to every mission, and from this fact it is clear that the wish was strong in the heart of Lord Canning that all India should be Christian.” The sepoys, according to Savarkar, were the primary targets in this mission to spread Christianity in India. “[I]f any Sepoy accepted the Christian religion he was praised loudly and treated honourably; and this Sepoy was promoted in the ranks and his salary increased, in the face of the superior merits of the other Sepoys!” “Everywhere”, he argued, “there was a strong conviction that the Government had determined to destroy the religions of the country and make Christianity the paramount religion of the land”. By thus giving religion an unwarranted centrality in his analysis of the causes of the rebellion, Savarkar, says Jyotirmaya Sharma, expressed jubilation in his accounts of the rebellion “at every instance of a church being felled, a cross being smashed and every Christian being ‘sliced’.” While the seeds of communalism had been sown in his mind at a very young age, the poison fruit of Hindutva ideology was to blossom only in his late 20s, after Savarkar’s will to fight the British (or the Christians, as he often referred to them in his book on the 1857 uprising) had been defeated during his imprisonment. It was during his last few years of imprisonment that Savarkar first articulated the concept of Hindutva in his book, Essentials of Hindutva, which was published in 1923 and reprinted as “Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?” in 1928. This ideology was a deeply divisive one which had the potential to distract attention from the British and cast it on Muslims instead. While he was careful to specify that Hindutva, or ‘Hinduness’, was different from Hinduism and encompassed a wide range of cultures including, among others, the “Sanatanists, Satnamis, Sikhs, Aryas, Anaryas, Marathas and Madrasis, Brahmins and Panchamas”, he nonetheless made it a point to warn that it “would be straining the usage of words too much – we fear, to the point of breaking – if we call a Mohammedan a Hindu because of his being a resident of India.” “Mohammedan or Christian communities”, he argued, “possess all the essential qualifications of Hindutva but one and that is that they do not look upon India as their Holyland”. A cohesive nation, according to Savarkar, can ideally be built only by those people who inhabit a country which is not only the land of their forefathers, but “also the land of their Gods and Angels, of Seers and Prophets; the scenes of whose history are also the scenes of their mythology.” The love and loyalty of Muslims, he warned, “is, and must necessarily be divided between the land of their birth and the land of their Prophets… Mohammedans would naturally set the interests of their Holyland above those of their Motherland”. One might wonder whether this line of reasoning implies that Muslims cannot be nationals of Pakistan or Afghanistan either, because they would place the interests of Saudi Arabia, wherein lie Mecca and Madina, above the interests of their own country. Back in the 1920s, the damage that could be done to the freedom movement by his ideology did not fail to come to the notice of the colonial government. Even though Savarkar was released on condition that he should not participate in political activities, he was allowed by the British to organise the Ratnagiri Mahasabha, which undertook what is in today’s lingo called “Ghar Wapsi” and played music in front of mosques while prayers were on. He was also allowed to meet K.B. Hedgewar, a disillusioned Congressman, who, inspired by his ideology of Hindutva, intended to discuss with him a strategy for creating a Hindu Rashtra. A few months after this meeting, in September 1925, Hedgewar founded the RSS, a communal organisation which, like Savarkar, remained subservient to the British. In spite of the blanket ban on political participation, Shamsul Islam pointed out: “The British rulers naturally overlooked these political activities as the future of colonial rule in India rested on the communal divide and Savarkar was leaving no stone unturned in aggravating the Hindu-Muslim divide.” Collaboration with the colonial government Savarkar was elected as the president of Hindu Mahasabha in 1937, the year when the Indian National Congress won what we today call a landslide victory in the provincial elections, decimating both the Hindu Mahasabha and that other communal party, the Muslim League, which failed to form a government even in Muslim-majority regions. But just two years later, the Congress relinquished power in protest when, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared India to be at war with Germany without any consultation. In September 1939, the working committee of the Congress declared that it would render support to Britain’s war efforts in her time of crisis only if the colonial government recognised India’s independence and “the right of her people to frame their constitution through a constituent assembly”. When dominion status was the last concession Linlithgow was willing to grant to India, the ministers of the Congress resigned in protest. Quick to grab the opportunity, the very next month, Savarkar, in his capacity as president of the Hindu Mahasabha, met Linlithgow. In the report about the meeting sent to secretary of state, Linlithgow wrote: “The situation, he [Savarkar] said, was that His Majesty’s government must now turn to the Hindus and work with their support…. Our interests were now the same and we must therefore work together… Our interests are so closely bound together, the essential thing is for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends and the old antagonism was no longer necessary. The Hindu Mahasabha he went on to say favoured an unambiguous undertaking of Dominion status at the end of the war.” Two months later, addressing the Mahasabha’s Calcutta session, Savarkar urged all universities, colleges and schools to “secure entry into military forces for youths in any and every way.” When Gandhi had launched his individual satyagraha the following year, Savarkar, at the Mahasabha session held in December 1940 in Madura, encouraged Hindu men to enlist in “various branches of British armed forces en masse.” In 1941, taking advantage of the World War, Bose had begun raising an army to fight the British by recruiting Indian prisoners of war from the British army held by the Axis powers – efforts which eventually culminated in his invasion of British India with the help of the Japanese military. During this period, addressing the Hindu Mahasabha session at Bhagalpur in 1941, Savarkar told his followers: “..it must be noted that Japan’s entry into the war has exposed us directly and immediately to the attack by Britain’s enemies…Hindu Mahasabhaites must, therefore, rouse Hindus especially in the provinces of Bengal and Assam as effectively as possible to enter the military forces of all arms without losing a single minute.” In reciprocation, the British commander-in-chief, “expressed his grateful appreciation of the lead given by Barrister Savarkar in exhorting the Hindus to join the forces of the land with a view to defend India from enemy attacks,” according to Hindu Mahasabha archives perused by Shamsul Islam. In response to the Quit India Movement launched in August 1942, Savarkar instructed Hindu Sabhaites who were “members of municipalities, local bodies, legislatures or those serving in the army… to stick to their posts,” across the country. At that time, when Japan had conquered many Southeast Asian countries in India’s vicinity, Bose was making arrangements to go from Germany to Japan – from whose occupied territories the INA’s assault on British forces was launched in October the following year. It was under these circumstances that Savarkar not only instructed those serving in the British army to ‘stick to their posts’, but had also been involved for years in “organising recruitment camps for the British armed forces which were to slaughter the cadres of INA in different parts of North-East later.” In one year alone, Savarkar had boasted in Madura, one lakh Hindus were recruited into the British armed forces as a result of the Mahasabha’s efforts. Even though the British Army, with which Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha were collaborating, managed to defeat Bose’s INA, the subsequent public trials of INA officers at the Red Fort roused in the Indian soldiers of the British armed forces a political conscience, which played a crucial role in triggering the Royal Indian Naval Mutiny in 1946, after which the decision was made by the British to leave India. In coalition with the Muslim League when Pakistan resolution was passed That Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha actively collaborated with the British may not be difficult to comprehend, since it is widely known that the Hindutva groups regarded Muslims, and not the British, as their primary enemies. What is likely to raise more eyebrows today is the collaboration of the Hindu Mahasabha with the Muslim League. When the Congress leaders were arrested during the Quit India movement, the Hindu Mahasabha, still presided over by Savarkar, entered into a coalition with the Muslim League to run the governments in Sindh and Bengal – a move Savarkar justified as “practical politics” which calls for “advance through reasonable compromises”. After all, in spite of the deeply-held conviction by Savarkar and his party that the Muslims – whose holy land lies in a foreign country – cannot be regarded as Indian nationals, the Hindu Mahasabha nevertheless had a great deal in common with the Muslim League. Both parties made no contribution to the struggle for independence from the colonising empire and both were communal parties whose ideologies antagonised the prospects of India remaining undivided after independence. Even after the Sindh assembly passed a resolution in 1943 demanding that Pakistan be carved out of India as a separate state for the Muslims, the Mahasabha ministers continued to hold their positions in the coalition government. Not entirely surprising, given that Savarkar had put forth his two-nation theory “a clear sixteen years before the Muslim League embraced the idea of the Hindus and the Muslims as two distinctive nations and demanded the division of India.” And when India was eventually partitioned, Savarkar blamed Gandhi for allowing Pakistan to break away from India, an accusation that stoked the fires of hatred against Gandhi among many of his close devotees, including his ‘lieutenant’ – Nathuram Godse. The second part of this series will focus on Savarkar’s role in Gandhi’s assassination. Pavan Kulkarni is a freelance journalist.

T.J. Rivera’s transition to third base is a work in progress the Mets are willing to withstand. Since moving to the position on a regular basis three weeks ago, Rivera has struggled with his fielding and throws, but is earning praise for his approach to the experiment. “He knows he doesn’t have to be Nolan Arenado at third base to be a big league player,” infield coach Dick Scott said, referring to the Rockies’ Gold Glove third baseman. “[Rivera] looks at video and he’s out here doing the work and it might take time, but it’s going to happen. I have a lot of confidence in him.” Rivera has six errors in 28 games at third base, but the Mets want to find out if he’s a viable option at the position for this season and beyond. The Mets continue to like Rivera’s bat: He entered Friday’s game against Oakland with a .289/.333/.437 slash line with five homers and 25 RBIs. He then delivered two singles and drove in two runs for the Mets in their 7-5 victory over the Athletics. “Honestly, I think [third base] is going to happen for him,” Scott said. “It might take some time. The worst thing we all can do on anything is say, ‘Next spring training we’re really going to get after this.’ Then three wasted months go by. I give him all the credit: He wants to do all the work. Every day he is finding me and we come out. That is all we can do.” Neil Walker is expected to begin a rehab assignment Saturday for Triple-A Las Vegas in his comeback from a partially torn left hamstring. The veteran second baseman played a simulated game Friday at Citi Field. The Mets’ .523 winning percentage in interleague play, is the best among National League teams. After this three-game series against Oakland, the Mets have interleague series remaining this season against the Mariners, Rangers and Astros. Amed Rosario missed his fourth straight start for Triple-A Las Vegas because of a bruised finger he sustained earlier in the week. Lucas Duda has one less error after an MLB scoring change from last Sunday against Colorado: Trevor Story was awarded a hit on a play in the eighth inning in which Duda originally received an error.

It’s already hard enough to part with a quarter-of-a-million dollars to buy a Ferrari 458 Italia, but can you imagine the rationale behind the man who would fork over that much money to buy a book? Yeah, neither can we. Now if you’re wondering if such a book even exists, then prepare to be introduced to the “Official Ferrari Opus”. The book’s publisher, Opus Media Group, is calling it the “most exclusive book in the world”, and with the most expensive version retailing at $275,000, we find it hard to believe that there’s another book that’s being sold for that much. Ridiculous as the price tag of this book may be – believe us, there’s nothing justifiable about a book that costs more than an actual car – those interested in it do have options to choose from. The 852-page book weighs in at 82 lbs and is printed using heavy-duty paper. It’s got over 2,000 photos of every Ferrari vehicle that Maranello has ever produced, be it a road car or a race car. On top of that, the book contains over 200,000 words detailing literally everything and anything you need to know about the Italian automaker. Check out how much each version of the Official Ferrari Opus book costs after the jump.

Arctic Methane Emissions ‘Certain to Trigger Warming’ As climate change melts Arctic permafrost and releases large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, it is creating a feedback loop that is “certain to trigger additional warming,” according to the lead scientist of a new study investigating Arctic methane emissions. The study released this week examined 71 wetlands across the globe and found that melting permafrost is creating wetlands known as fens, which are unexpectedly emitting large quantities of methane. Over a 100-year timeframe, methane is about 35 times as potent as a climate change-driving greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and over 20 years, it's 84 times more potent. Permafrost terraces in Alaska. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildife Service Alaska/flickr Methane emissions come from agriculture, fossil fuel production and microbes in wetland soils, among other sources. The study says scientists have assumed that methane emissions from wetlands are high in the tropics, but not necessarily in the Arctic because of the cold temperatures there. But a spike in global methane concentrations in the atmosphere seen since 2007 can be partly traced back to the formation of fens in areas where permafrost once existed, according to the study, led by University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) biology professor Merritt Turetsky. The methane emissions stemming from melting permafrost could be critical to determining how fast the climate will change in the future. “Methane emissions are one example of a positive feedback between ecosystems and the climate system,” Turetsky said. “The permafrost carbon feedback is one of the important and likely consequences of climate change, and it is certain to trigger additional warming.” Warming and thawing permafrost stimulate methane release, which enhances the greenhouse effect, creating a feedback loop, she said. “Even if we ceased all human emissions, permafrost would continue to thaw and release carbon into the atmosphere,” Turetsky said. “Instead of reducing emissions, we currently are on track with the most dire scenario considered by the IPCC. There is no way to capture emissions from thawing permafrost as this carbon is released from soils across large regions of land in very remote spaces.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected in its fifth assessment on climate change report that the earth’s average temperatures could warm by as much as 8.64°F above 1986-2005 temperatures if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Coastal erosion reveals the ice-rich permafrost underlying the Arctic Coastal Plain in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Credit: USGS Turetsky’s study shows that fens in the northern latitudes created when permafrost thaws can have emissions similar to wetlands in the tropics. Emissions from fens are generally higher than bogs and some other wetland types because fens, fed by groundwater, have higher nutrient levels and more grasses than bogs, leading to more methane production. “Our study highlights that northern wetlands without permafrost emit more methane than wetlands with permafrost,” U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist and study co-author Kimberly Wickland said. “When permafrost is absent, wetlands can be more connected to groundwater, allowing for wetter conditions — the main ingredient for methane production,” she said. “It is possible that methane emissions from wetlands will continue to increase with continued permafrost thaw, but that will depend primarily on whether wetlands stay wet. If they dry, then methane emissions will decline.” Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at NASA's Goodard Institute for Space Studies in New York and not part of the study, said it's too soon to draw conclusions about how much wetland methane emissions will impact global warming, though scientists widely agree that the amplified feedback is generally going to increase. The paleo record shows that the Arctic was several degrees warmer during the last interglacial period 120,000 years ago, and there is no evidence of increased levels of methane in the atmosphere during that period, he said. “It's not to say at some point it won't become an issue,” Schmidt said, adding that there is evidence of many “methane burps” across the globe in the very distant past. “The planet is very capable of surprising us,” he said. By surveying many wetland sites across the globe as Turetsky and her team have, scientists can gain a much broader understanding of the source of methane emissions from melting permafrost and their role in the feedback loop, Schmidt said. Many previous studies have examined just a single site whereas Turetsky's team examined numerous sites across the globe. “The work these people are doing in terms of trying to synthesize that information and bring it all together, I think it's certainly going in the right direction,” he said. Turetsky's study, “A synthesis of methane emissions from 71 northern, temperate, and subtropical wetlands,” was published this week in the journal Global Change Biology. You May Also Like April Becomes 1st Month With CO2 Levels Above 400 PPM Despite Spate of Tornadoes, 2014 on Track for Low Total Astronauts Capture Arctic Sea Ice Melt Season in Progress The Explosive Growth of California’s Drought in 1 Chart