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This is my buffet strategy, as developed with my classmate during Econs lessons in JC. Pre-buffet week 1. For the week before the buffet, you have to begin conditioning your tummy. What this means is that for at least one meal a day, eat till you're full (even if it's just bread) and when you think you're full, drink as much water as you can. This is to prepare your stomach to stretch like never before. 2. For the week before the buffet, do some brisk-walking or watch fitness videos. This is to prep your mind for the gorging that you are about to do. You have to make sure you don't chicken out halfway through the buffet because of calorie worries. Cheat your mind into thinking you deserve it. Buffet Day 1. Some idiots will tell you not to eat on the buffet day itself, but not Uncle Ben. If you starve yourself, the moment you start on your buffet you'll feel sick in the gut. Snack a bit throughout the day and make sure you're properly hydrated. Stop eating around 4 hours before the buffet. 2. Right before you leave house for the buffet, drink a cup of diluted vinegar. I take apple cider vinegar. Rock and Roll 1. Do not take any drinks. The only drinking you'll get is 1 cup at the end of the buffet. 2. If you want to have soup, take it first and finish it at the start. Then, allow 15 minutes for the soup to pass through you. Great time to play on your phone or chat with your buffet partner. 3. Scout all the food, and take a bit of everything you think is nice. Do not take too much!!! You don't know what's nice until you actually eat it. 4. After you've sampled everything, settle for 3-4 items that appeal most to you. And keep eating. 5. When you think you're full, pee. When you know you're full, take a dump. 6. Push yourself! Tough times never last but tough men/women do! 7. At the end of the day, reward yourself with a tiny drink. You fat-ass, you.

The movie Arrival illustrated the difficulties of communicating with an alien intelligence, but even that may have been an oversimplification of the real challenges. (credit: Paramount Pictures) Stranger danger: Extraterrestrial first contact as a political problem The 2016 film Arrival is simultaneously smart science fiction and wildly optimistic about the outcome of first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Smart because the extraterrestrials appear credible as the products of an extraterrestrial evolutionary process; wildly optimistic both because the extraterrestrials are benign in the way humans have always wanted their gods to manifest themselves and because humans are ultimately able to decode their language. 1 Arrival’s heptapods sudden appear on Earth aboard interstellar spacecraft but then wait for humans to pass a difficult but not impossible language examination. Testing humans to determine their worth is a common trope in mythology and religion, and its presence in the film betrays an appeal to magical thinking. Getting it wrong because decision-making was freighted with unreasonable expectations might result in consequences that range from the merely amusing to the deeply frustrating to the existentially threatening. The 2017 film Life is even smarter science fiction because it doesn’t require interstellar travel, benign extraterrestrials, or communication between species with symbolic language. Instead, it is brutally pessimistic about the outcome of human encounters contact with extraterrestrials, intelligent or otherwise. The test portrayed in Life—biological survival—is far more fundamental and far more plausible. Viewed in succession, Arrival and Life evoke the better angels of our nature and then challenge the reasonableness of our expectations. What follows is a thought experiment, an effort to “game” the test in the most probable presentation of a first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, hereinafter referred to simply as First Contact. If there is a consensus scholarum on the most probable scenario for First Contact, it would begin with human detection of a radio signal with sufficient structure to suggest symbolic language that had been broadcast from an exoplanet. Such an event would present the most formidable of language problems and confront national decision-makers with extraordinarily important choices, which would be made under extraordinary uncertainty. 2 Deciding to respond to such a radio signal would be tempting. Lacking all but the most basic information about the transmitting extraterrestrial entity, buffeted by intense public excitement about the discovery of an intelligent extraterrestrials, and fearing that rival national decision-makers might preempt their decision by being the first to respond, national decision-makers might feel compelled to act based on assumptions that are revealed as incorrect only after the momentous encounter has begun. Getting it wrong because decision-making was freighted with unreasonable expectations might result in consequences that range from the merely amusing to the deeply frustrating to the existentially threatening. So this thought experiment is justified under the cautionary principle. We proceed by first assessing possible risks and benefits of First Contact. The daunting language problem serves as the linchpin between possible risks and benefits. We then examine the underlying political problem before offering some conclusions about optimal public policy making. Possible risks For First Contact pessimists, the Fermi Paradox captures a crucial observation: a universe that ought to be noisy with the radio evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations is instead utterly silent. Searches have yet to detect radio signals operating as distant beacons announcing “we’re here.” 3 Silence can be given an optimistic interpretation: Douglas Vakoch suggests that reflects a norm of respect for the wishes of other creatures that requires a species to announce its desire to communicate by broadcasting their wish to do so and proposes broadcasting such an invitation. “Maybe it takes an audacious young civilization like ours to do that.” 4 What worries pessimists is the possibility that silence is motivated by rational existential fear. A preference for survival as a species and extraordinary uncertainty about possible risks attending contact between different intelligent technological species may have persuaded most species to avoid alerting others to their own existence. 5 Thus, David Brin rejects the idea of broadcasting an invitation as, “seeing my children’s destiny gambled with.” 6 Clearly, that proposition must be qualified with “most” because humans have been violating the proposed norm for decades with radio and television broadcasts. Perhaps we have been fortunate that Earth’s atmosphere bounces back most radio transmissions and that mass communication is increasingly transmitted by means other than broadcasting. When Stephen Hawking warned against alerting any extraterrestrial civilization to our existence he offered as a familiar cautionary example the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus. 7 The resulting series of first contacts resulted in population collapse of up to 90 percent of native populations across the Western Hemisphere, followed by brutal conquest and colonization by Europeans. The results of first contacts between Europeans and other peoples across the insular South Pacific were similarly tragic. Kathryn Denning critiques this and other historical analogies as a poor model for first contact with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and notes that the historical encounters of the early modern era may be perceived less negatively over the longer term because they resulted in vibrant hybrid societies of value in their own right. 8 That there are no Guanches, Tasmanians, or members of many other extinct indigenous peoples available to dispute Denning’s blithe reassurance ought to give one pause before accepting it. 9 It follows that silence is thus a plausible strategy for a risk-averse species because the result for any other species that might be listening is indistinguishable from a universe empty of species with technological civilizations. Given that First Contact would occur between our species and another, as yet unknown, entity, there are analogies that merit consideration. For example, the fate of large animal species after the irruption of humans in virgin soil environments can be seen as tragic. Paleoindians exterminated most of the megafauna in the Americas, including mastodons, dire wolves, giant sloths, giant armadillos, giant beavers, and glyptodonts, soon after their arrival. 10 The moose and bison alone survived. Polynesian ancestors of the Maori exterminated all 13 species of the Moa, giant flightless birds, soon after their arrival in New Zealand. The remorseless encounters between native and invasive non-human species competing for the same ecological niches is similarly tragic, at least from the perspective of those of us who prefer a biosphere with more species diversity. Pathogen transfer due to contact between previously isolated wild and commercial populations of the same non-human species has resulted in population crashes. Examples of the resulting negative outcomes are displayed in Table 1. Table 1. Tragic Encounters same species closely related species unrelated species both populations possess human level intelligent Western Europeans and Native Americans in the Americas 11 modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia 12 no data only one population possesses human level intelligence no data modern humans and chimpanzees in sub-Saharan Africa 13 Paleoindians and megafauna in the Americas 14 neither population possesses human level intelligence wild and commercial bumble bees, salmon, pigs 15 roof rats and rice rats in the Galapagos 16 brown rats and tuatara on Whenuakura Island 17 That all of those encounters ended badly for one party, frequently involving population crashes and extinction, should not be ignored by policy makers. We note, however, that the analytic value of these analogies is constrained by three considerations. First, there are no data for the cell in the upper-right-hand corner of encounters between populations of intelligent but unrelated species, which would encompass First Contact. Second, all of the analogies involve encounters between terrestrial fauna. First Contact might be with a species that evolved amid much less aggressive life forms than those found on Earth. Indeed, First Contact might be with an entity that emerged in an entirely non-competitive environment. Third, all of the analogies involved physical contact between different populations. None were limited solely to long distance communication as is expected in First Contact. 18 What matters here is that terrestrial analogies to encounters between populations offer the only empirical information for assessing the risks of First Contact. It follows that silence is thus a plausible strategy for a risk-averse species because the result for any other species that might be listening is indistinguishable from a universe empty of species with technological civilizations. Even if every intelligent entity would be benevolent towards other intelligent entity given the opportunity to interact, an implicit silence norm might be self-reinforcing as species choose to interpret the uncertainty inherent in the result as possible evidence of the rational behavior by other species. If you do not hear anyone else speaking, then either there is no one to talk to or they may know to be quiet for a very good reason. Language Before surveying possible benefits of First Contact, it is important to examine what is likely to be the most daunting aspect of the encounter. Will humans be able to do more than simply recognize that a radio signal is from an intelligent extraterrestrial entity and actually establish mutually intelligible communications? When we conceive of extraterrestrial minds, they often inhabit entities with radically different body plans: planet-wide unitary organisms or populations of machine successors to biological organisms. Contrawise, similar body plans are expected to produce similar minds. Optimistic assessments of the possibility of communicating abstract ideas other than perhaps mathematics are typically premised on convergent evolution, as in Don Lincoln’s 2013 Alien Universe. 19 John C. Baird’s 1987 The Inner Limits of Outer Space compared the problem of communicating with an intelligent extraterrestrial species with translating ancient hieroglyphics without benefit of a Rosetta Stone. 20 Even that may be much too optimistic. Egyptian hieroglyphics were the work of human minds, merely separated in time by five millennia. 21 The problem is that even if intelligent extraterrestrials resemble humans, their minds may be radically different. Our current understanding is that humans possess an innate capacity for learning and using a language and associated culture. 22 Although language and mind are inextricably linked in humans, they might not be so for an intelligent extraterrestrial entity, no matter how similar in appearance. Their minds may resemble the plastic Standard Social Science Model that dominated social science thinking during the last century and that continues to influence thinking about language among proponents of SETI. 23 Alternatively their minds might be organized with comparable but different innate capacities, perhaps even greater rigidity than our own. The problem is that even if intelligent extraterrestrials resemble humans, their minds may be radically different. The language problem is daunting in part because although linguists are reliable sources for questions about human language, the film Arrival notwithstanding, they are likely to have little to offer in translating messages from extraterrestrials. Experts in foreign tongues are likely to be flummoxed by efforts to communicate with entities without tongues. First Contact would present multiple “firsts,” at least in the annals of humanity. That newness means nothing should be taken for granted, and certainly not the intent to communicate simply because an extraterrestrial radio signal has been detected. If extraterrestrials communicate via something similar to human language, it would be necessary to determine which, if either, of the two types of intentional, signification-based communication that we employ: ‘”natural language” like English, Italian, or Proto-Indo-European; or “code” like C++, syntax for expressing an architecture such as Zermelo-Fraenkel, or binary. There are several differences between a code and a natural language, but their similarities are often a source of confusion. An exacting description of these relationships is beyond the scope of this paper, so we will merely point to a few that shed light for the present strategic darkness. First, a natural language is the product of unintentional evolutionary processes, much the same as the species that makes use of it. It is for this reason that most natural languages have irregularities in structure or spelling which have seemingly no rational basis—sometimes to the great frustration of those attempting to use such a language. A code, by contrast, is formed somewhat deliberately. This usually encourages uniformity in how it is presented and restricts its ad-libbed modification. Second, natural language has ambiguities that codes do not. Sentence structure, tone, pitch, and a hundred other things all come together to provide variation in significance. Often, we have to simply say that it’s a matter of circumstance. These matters of circumstance cut down on the time it takes to communicate immensely. Codes are, by contrast and by design, unambiguous. A message is to be interpreted only one way, and the very grammar of the code is usually tailored in such a way that it can be deciphered purely mechanically—and let us not miss the importance of the term “decipher” here. This means that every relevant detail has to be spelled out, so if there are a lot of details, a message can quickly become enormous. Third, along similar lines, natural language is multi-contextual. This means that it is conveyed in situations where more than one medium gives relevant information as to how the communication is to be interpreted. The ability to detect a tone of sarcasm or earnestness is immensely helpful to truly understanding each other, and it is in these areas of subtext that artificial intelligence interactions with humans find their great challenges. Codes, by contrast, contain everything in the letter. The form of the communication itself is expected to be sufficient to extract everything of relevance. This is necessary to program computers, or write out proofs of mathematical concepts that can be carried out by brute logical operation. To sum up these differences, code operates in highly restricted circumstances on barebones prior information, making it unambiguous but not usually efficient. Natural language operates in situations where multiple external details can be taken into account to clarify, and whole separate channels of information are available, like gesturing or intoning. Humans are so accustomed to dealing with natural language situations that it is easy to mistake any communication with conscious beings for being just that simple. But with so much between us as whole star systems, and little more than a glorified two-way radio, this may be far from the case. “To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.” This statement by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein illustrates partially why the cryptanalyst will likely be more useful to understanding far-flung communication than the linguist. There is little that can be said about the aliens’ “form of life” that isn’t assumption, and though they may have language, this will not be the artifact we pick up when our radios start squawking. We shall merely have a code. The inability to understand the language of the other would likely engender frustration and suspicion. Once we have our code, we may think that the problem is merely decryption. However, there is cause to think that the limitations we’ve just discussed not only render the situation more difficult, they may well put sharp boundaries on just what sort of information can be transmitted, and hence on what can be inferred for questions of strategy. The two problems, intertwined, are whether there is sufficient information for deciphering and whether worthwhile information can be transmitted. The first problem doesn’t seem too difficult, because the message can be expected to provide clues to its interpretation by its form alone. Binary messages, either based on a dot-dash system or an on-off system, allows the transmission of sequences of numbers. Variation of tone around a baseline could simplify this into something like a hexadecimal system. Sequences of numbers that illustrate geometric ratios of importance could thus be a relatively simple matter to transmit and receive. Repeated series like so, replacing an element with a blank or nonsense value, might serve to indicate the variables and operations in equations. The door of mathematics, it seems, is open to us, though interpreting even this enough to get at “interesting” information could take an incredibly long time. Such messages would not only be very long sequences as the operations became more advanced, but would take a long time to respond to indicating understanding. Further, the messages would likely have to be repeated more than once, and any part of the message that didn’t get through could seriously hamper the decryption process. Messages intended to be reinterpreted through another medium, such as pictures described dot by dot through binary, would both be immense, and a gamble, presuming that the far-flung interlocutor has a means of processing visual information. Here is where the second difficulty comes in. Mathematical truths can be transmitted in this way because the form of the message itself bears some kind of direct relationship to the matters being conveyed, in the way that the structure of a code-message bears similarity to the structure of the “meaning.” The only comparative measurements that are needed are provided internally, and little reference to external standards, except perhaps the rules of logic, is needed. This is where the univocal nature of radio communication may put a damper on things. Natural language requires context and the available context is likely to be very thin. Advances in astronomical observation might provide information about the gravity and composition of the atmosphere if a planet is the source of the radio signal. Beyond recognition that mathematics and the natural sciences are shared, radio signals might contain sufficient information to assemble images from binary code. Such communications, if they are to convey much detail, would also have to be quite large, potentially suffering the same difficulties as regards interference as the above-mentioned mathematical operations. After that, however, interpretation is likely to be slow going and perhaps prove impossible. Those who are pessimistic about the possibility of establishing communication will find philosophic support in the work of the mature Ludwig Wittgenstein as it was articulated in his Philosophical Investigations. His general argument is that the meaning of words is derived from linguistic conventions that permit no external justification and are unconcerned with empirically verifiable reference points. What a word means is determined by what everyone who speaks the same language knows it to mean. Moreover, because our access to reality, facilitated by language, is overwhelmingly social in nature, the common sense meanings of words offer as firm a reflection of reality—what Richard Rorty called a “Mirror of Nature”—as is possible. If the view of the mature Wittgenstein is correct, we may be faced with an impassible barrier for translation between human and extraterrestrial languages because they simply cannot belong to the same type of society and therefore there exists no way to construct commonsense meanings. Comparing Chinese with German, Christian Helmut Wenzel notes how the tendencies of (human) languages derived from their cultural evolution create habits of thought. 24 For example, Chinese language requires Chinese speakers to be more context sensitive than German language requires of German speakers, both in text and in speech. In another example, Chinese speakers use vertical spatial metaphors to reference time—for example the future is described as “down”—while German speakers use horizontal spatial metaphors to reference time. 25 The differences in such largely unconscious habits of thought between humans and any intelligent extraterrestrial entity are likely to have more causes deeper than culture. Physical sense-organs are likely to differ. One of the authors of this article is visually impaired and thus aware of the frequency with which visual metaphors are used to reference processes of cognition: “Do you now see what we mean?” The degree to which an intelligent extraterrestrial entity is social might differ. Human sociality lies midway on a spectrum between that typical of arachnids at one extreme and that typical of hymenoptera at the other extreme. The sociality of an intelligent extraterrestrial entity might lie elsewhere along that same spectrum. Thus their capacity for some affect that is equivalent to trust may be less or more than our own. The human mind is designed for communicating with fellow humans. There is no guarantee that we would ever achieve more than the most rudimentary communication with creatures even very similar to ourselves. As Table 2 shows, successful communication and Babelian confusion are not the only possibilities for attempted communication in First Contact. A great deal must be achieved by both parties to this encounter for successful communication to be achieved without frustration and suspicion by one or both of the two parties. The everyday human experience is that all that is necessary for communication between speakers of different languages to be moderately successful. Limited shared language may be sufficient to carry out important exchanges of information. That would not be true of communication between humans and an extraterrestrial entity. Instead, such exchanges would more closely resemble the negotiations between political or business decision-makers, who struggle to define their terminology in both languages so as to maximize value by avoiding future confusion or betrayal. Neither an intelligent extraterrestrial entity capable of calculated deception nor humans would be able to trust that they had properly understood the meaning of messages if they were unable to translate back from the language of the other. The inability to understand the language of the other would likely engender frustration and suspicion. Table 2. Possible communications outcomes Human Language Intelligible by Extraterrestrial Entity Human Language Unintelligible by Extraterrestrial Entity Extraterrestrial Entity’s Language Intelligible by Humans Communication (Shared Fluency) Human Understanding coupled with Frustration and Suspicion by Extraterrestrial Entity Extraterrestrial Entity’s Language Unintelligible by Humans Extraterrestrial Entity Understanding coupled with Frustration and Suspicion by Humans No Communication (Babelian Confusion) Some consequences of unsuccessful communication in First Contact are foreseeable. Humans tend to interpret the “known unknown” with imagined forces and creatures, often elaborated from familiar myths. 26 Fantastic beliefs and desperate action based on those beliefs is a possible result. The urge to project theories of mind appropriate to humans onto non-human animals or natural phenomena is well known. That humans do so with the creatures that we know best—dogs—is telling. Across cultures, humans will attempt to reason with dogs using symbolic logic and dogs will mimic understanding because they are rewarded for doing so. This exchange is noteworthy because it may have begun between 15,000 and 150,000 years ago and might represent a form of co-evolution. What matters here is that incomplete understanding between two utterly familiar terrestrial species endures despite its significance for humans as the best possible opportunity to cultivate an ethical practice with “significant otherness.” 27 Given such failure, is it altogether reasonable to expect the successful exchange of information with an intelligent extraterrestrial entity that presents absolute otherness? What does this mean for the possibility of successful communication between humans and an intelligent extraterrestrial entity? The human mind is designed for communicating with fellow humans. There is no guarantee that we would ever achieve more than the most rudimentary communication with creatures even very similar to ourselves. Perhaps we might succeed in checking our math but the possibility of exchanging much beyond that is limited. Moreover that might be fortunate if the intelligent extraterrestrial entity possesses ideas that might be released among our species as destructive memes. page 2: benefits >>

Post-apocalypses come in many forms. There's your grim, harrowing, struggle-for-survival apocalypse; as seen in STALKER or The Road. Then there's your ridiculous, leather wearing, half-crazed apocalypse of Mad Max or Fallout. Sure, this latter dystopia says, things are bad. But isn't bondage gear fun? This week—I assume due to the recent Mad Max: Fury Road—we've seen a couple of developers announce their ultraviolent apocalypses. There's Crossout, from the War Thunder devs, and now Auroch Digital has announced Dark Future: Blood Red States. It's a PC adaptation of the Games Workshop boardgame, and is cheesily teased in the trailer below. In Blood Red States the player is put in charge of a Sanctioned Ops agency—taking contracts and bounties out in the wastelands. The game is described by Auroch as "a turn-based strategy game, played out in simultaneous real-time action." It sounds a bit like a vehicular Frozen Synapse, which could be pretty nifty if done right. Dark Future: Blood Red States is due out this winter.

There is nothing weirder, wilder, or more magical than a baby’s movement in utero. For many mothers (it certainly was for me), the quickening, those first flutters, are the moment when a pregnancy starts to feel real, when a bump becomes a baby. And as the pregnancy progresses, with each kick and stretch and rollover, the physical and emotional connection between mother and baby grows. Naturally, men want in. Now in Sweden, the Scandinavian diaper brand Libero is providing a way for partners of pregnant women to share in the experience of baby’s movements. After two years of product design and development, Libero’s BabyBuzz—billed as “the world’s first pregnant bracelet”—is ready and promises to help Swedish couples “share every pregnancy more intensely,” by alerting a woman’s partner of in-utero kicks with a buzz on the wrist. It works like this: A pregnant woman and her partner both wear smart bracelets, hers enabled with a button, her partner’s with a buzzer. When the child kicks, or punches, or hiccups, the pregnant woman pushes her button, and her partner’s bracelet vibrates. The bracelets have to be connected to an a iPhone app via Bluetooth and are actually just SMS messages—so like texts, but without the ability to communicate anything other than BZZZZ, though users have the option of sending a short or longer vibration, to replicate the intensity of the movement. As part of the rollout, Libero released a short documentary highlighting the experiences of three product testing couples. All first-time parents, the young adults explain, with unbridled sincerity, how the constant connection of BabyBuzz has engaged them in a way that an actual text or a conversation never could: “As a man, you feel helpless in the situation, because there’s nothing you can do. Sure I can reassure her, talk to her, maybe bring her a warm blanket or something,” one fellow says, describing, in fact, lovely ways to connect with one’s pregnant partner. But there’s something special about that vibration. “If I can feel my wristband vibrating…It feels like I own the situation,” a track-suited, bearded, father-to-be says over tape of him running through a snow-covered landscape. “You start imagining. You haven’t been kept out by her describing it. And that…this is mine. My kick. Completely.” Not only does the buzzing inspire a sense of ownership of the physiological phenomenon once only enjoyed by pregnant women and those with hands to place upon her, the BabyBuzz—an identifiable FitBit style bracelet, also works as signal to the world: a kind of “Ask me about my pregnancy” jewelry. “A lot of people have come over and asked what that thing is,” one partner explains, bemoaning the fact that before his bracelet, he always had to bring up the fact that he was an expectant father first. “I always had to make an active effort,” he said. According to Libero, the impetus for the BabyBuzz was expecting women who posted on its forums the desire for their partners to be more engaged. A follow-up survey of 4,000 Nordic parents conducted by the diaper company reported that a quarter of pregnant women felt alone during their pregnancies and six out of ten said they were more involved in the pregnancy than their partners. This sounds nice enough, but the Swedish advertising agency who came up with the idea of BabyBuzz described the wearable’s actual purpose in less altruistic terms: “Find a way for Swedish diaper brand Libero to establish a relationship with expecting couples who are not interested in diapers yet.” In other words, create brand loyalty before there’s even a product to buy. Corporate motives aside, problems with the BabyBuzz abound. Most glaring is the technology itself which relies solely on pregnant women to report these movements. So along with growing a human, most likely holding down a full-time job, possibly caring for other children, going to doctor’s appointments, and dealing with a grab-bag of physical ailments including aches, insomnia, and incontinence (just to name a few), mom-to-be is now tasked with fetal check-ins to make sure her partner is connected with her experience. It may be only a button to push, but that’s one more thing, one more person to constantly take care of. The documentary suggests a pregnant woman should document these kicks “in real time.” To put that kind of assignment in perspective, on average in the third trimester, that equates to an electronic communique every 12 minutes. In 2013, American diaper brand Huggies commissioned the design of a smarter, yet more impractical product for use in a tear-jerking Father’s Day commercial. Instead of bracelets, expecting parents wore electronic belly bands. Sensors on the pregnant woman’s signaled kicks by setting off LED light bursts and vibrations on the the father’s band, corresponding to the placement and force of the movements. But even if the responsibility for connectedness didn’t fall on a pregnant woman’s aching shoulders, the notion that mothers and their partners must feel identical sensations in order to bond is not only unattainable, it’s misguided, and to be lumped with the terrible idea of shocking fathers with electricity so they sympathize with the pain of childbirth. As one dad in the documentary put it, “You want to do this together, you know? You don’t want to be left out.” But the truth is, you don’t get to do everything. While fathers miss out on the truly extraordinary sensation of carrying a child, they also get to sit out on the disfigurement and the hemorrhoids. Dads may not get the belly conversation piece, but they also avoid having their tummy groped by strangers. Hefty vibrating bracelet or not, you too, are not pregnant. Despite its limitations, BabyBuzz is here. Though it isn’t for sale—yet. For now, Libero is loaning the bands out to expectant parents who sign up for their free program, and agree to return them after the birth of their baby. But Libero’s parent company, SCA, announced last year that the goal of the BabyBuzz program was a “commercial product” for Nordic markets. To be sure, Sweden is an extremely daddy-friendly, egalitarian country where the concept of sharing in every moment of pregnancy may be more strongly desired. (Unlike the U.S. which has no paid leave policy, Swedish parents are entitled to a whopping 480 days of paid leave, three months of which are reserved just for dads.) Still, with the rise of wearable tech and the boom of pregnancy and baby gadgets that no parent or child actually needs, it’s only a matter of time before BabyBuzz is available stateside. At this very moment, women and their partners can purchase products that effectively turn babies into Tamagotchis, allowing them to track their new baby’s oxygen level, heart beat, sleep rhythms and feeding schedules. There are smart onesies, smart bottles, smart diapers, smart formula dispensers, smart pacifiers, smart cribs, and smart thermometers. As such, the BabyBuzz or something like it will surely reach our shores and the The Internet Of Things will fulfill its Manifest Destiny by finally reaching into the uncharted territory of our uteri. Of course not everyone is so cynical. My husband and a few dad friends I spoke to agreed there was something sweet, if gimmicky and unrealistic, about the idea. And one expert told me the only downside he could see was driving partners being distracted by the buzzing. “Fathers are more engaged and involved in their children and family’s lives than ever before,” said Dr. Craig Garfield, an Associate Professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Director of Research at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “Research shows that children with involved fathers have cognitive, psychological, and social benefits and fathers enjoy the involvement. It is a win-win. And fathers are often the number one source of support for mothers during the pregnancy and beyond.” Asked about the BabyBuzz, Dr. Garfield, a dad and expert in the benefit to families of involved fathers, told me, “It is important to remember that from the moment a woman knows she is pregnant she and her partner are dreaming of that baby. They talk about it, they think about it, they try and anticipate that baby coming. So a device like this can help fathers get on board earlier. Woman have an obvious outward change in their bodies; men not so much. So a buzz like this can literally create buzz about their expected baby.” “The more moms and dads can be on the same page, the better their adjustment to having the child will likely be,” Garfield said. Indeed, as one of the Swedish fathers in the documentary puts it, “[BabyBuzz makes] you feel that you’re more a part of it. When it vibrates—like it does—then it makes you, like, think about the baby.” Americans might take more convincing. “Somehow running down a windswept Nordic streetscape and pausing mid-jog because my watch started buzzing isn’t going to do that much to ‘connect me to pregnancy,’” my friend David, a Queens, NY, father of two responded after I asked him to watch the BabyBuzz video. “Also, going out at 11:30 p.m. because my wife had a craving for ‘crappy pizza’ made me feel like I was already pretty connected.”

BY JOHNNY GALL This past Monday night, fans of the romcom-sitcom How I Met Your Mother were finally treated to the finale—in which protagonist Ted Mosby finally met “The Mother,” whose appearance has been foreshadowed for literally the entire season. In keeping with such a momentous occasion in this life of a popular show, the outcry was deafening. While certain grievances (such as the death of the mother in question) have been foreshadowed for years, the disappointments piled up during the show’s final hour. From Barney’s and Robin’s divorce and general years-long tensions within the group to the fact that the show has been moving away from the Ted/Robin relationship, many fans suggest that the nature of the show was misleading; it should have been titled “How I Met Your Step-Mother,” “How I Ruined Nine Years of Television in Forty Minutes” or “How I Used to Bang Your Aunt Robin Before I Met Your Mother. Your Mother’s Dead Now. Can I Bang Your Aunt Robin Again?” The finale was, indeed, sloppy—condensing 20 years of plot into 40 minutes, after extending one weekend into a full season—and consisting of an inconsistent mix of brave refusals to cow to rom-com tropes, and cheap, unearned sentimentality. However, can we say that part of this disaster of a finale to a well-loved show is the fault of the culture we live in? The rampant fan-theorizing that plagues every television show has been speculating about the ending to this show practically since the show’s beginning, and the now-proven, in particular, “Dead Mother Theory” has been gaining traction for years. Such is an inevitable outcome of the boosted communication of the Internet age; small details (such as the “Where’s my wife?” in season three’s “How I Met Everyone Else”) have always drawn the attention of a small few. The difference now is that Internet culture enables these few to widely publicize their notice of these details, and the larger implications they may have for the future of the show. What once might have been the subtlest of foreshadowing is now broadcast via bullhorn. This inevitably leads writers and producers to try all the more to keep twists underwraps and to mislead the audience. After all, no writer wants to be predictable, even those who write sitcom-romcom hybrids. So, we can see in the case of the HIMYM finale a transparent attempt to resist the tropes which audiences now recognize before they are even fully formed: The friend-turned-girlfriend-turned-ex did not continue to hang around and produce tension for the next 10 years, the on-again-off-again-finally-married couple is off-again for good and the stable ensemble of friends were not together forever. Much of the disappointing facets of the finale were a result of the writers refusing to give in to tropes (which audiences can now see coming around the corner), insteadshowing a somewhat true-to-life progression of events. Divorces do happen, friends drift apart, and when you sleep with 31 women in a single month, odds are good one of them will get pregnant. In fact, the only predictable tropes which this final episode fell back on are those the audience has been led away from for nearly a decade (e.g. the Ted-Robin romance). The letdown of this finale comes from the desire to mislead the audience and resist predictability. As fan reactions have shown, such misdirection is an unsuccessful approach. While there is admirable courage on the part of the writers in bucking the fake happily-ever-after sitcom tropes that have become second nature to audiences, it’s just a bad idea in this case. You can’t throw in a twist if the audience doesn’t want to be tricked. HIMYM‘s writers wanted to have it both ways—a storyline that would allow Ted to romance his wife and Robin, too—and failed in each endeavor. Ted might have finally gotten The Mother and The One That Got Away, but judging by the backlash, his ending was anything but happy. Johnny Gall is an aspiring fiction writer, a militant homosexual and an academic seeking a way to address sitcoms, fan-fiction and pop music from a scholarly perspective. He is a graduate of New York University, and is currently a graduate student in Boston University School of Theology, though he has no earthly idea why. Photo via DBarefoot/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

New York subway ridership in the past year grew rapidly — in a surge evocative of the post-World War II era. New data released by the MTA are in line with the miserable commute New Yorkers experience more than any other city-dwellers in the top 30 U.S. cities — with numbers at a 65-year high. The growth spans all NYC boroughs. In 2014, ridership grew to 1.751 billion customers, meaning ridership jumped 2.6 percent in just one year. The average weekday saw over 5.6 million riders, while the average weekend saw six million. Over the last five years, ridership went up by a half million. “At its busiest, the subway system carried more than six million customers on 29 weekdays in the last four months of 2014 — a level not seen since the post-World War II boom,” according to the MTA report. Residential development in areas such as Bushwick and Long Island City played a part in the increase of subway use, with Brooklyn having the largest borough-wide average weekday percentage ridership increase at 2.7 percent. In a country of underfunded transit agencies, MTA took the release of the report as the perfect opportunity to make a point about funding. “The renaissance of the New York City subway is a miracle for those who remember the decrepit system of the 1970s and the 1980s, but moving more than six million customers a day means even minor disruptions now can create major delays,” said MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Prendergast in a statement. “We are aggressively working to combat delays and improve maintenance, but the ultimate solution requires investing in infrastructure upgrades such as Communications-Based Train Control signaling systems to accommodate every one of our growing number of customers.” Some of the infrastructure upgrades requested by the MTA include a push for a $32 billion capital plan for the years 2015 through 2019 to help expedite the commute from Long Island and Queens and add new amenities, among other enhancements.

LONDON (Reuters) - Any extension of the European Central Bank’s asset-purchase scheme to include company debt risks running into a familiar problem - the ECB may not being able to buy enough of them to make a difference. A sculpture showing the Euro currency sign is seen in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt February 29, 2012. Picture effect due to lens zoom burst. REUTERS/Alex Domanski (GERMANY - Tags: BUSINESS) - RTR2YNMF A wave of enthusiasm spread over financial markets on Tuesday after Reuters reported, citing sources close to the situation, that the ECB might decide as soon as December to start buying corporate bonds to complement its covered bonds and asset-backed securities purchase program. But those who own the bonds may not want to sell them, and bond market participants and analysts say a shortage of bonds to buy would make the scheme more symbolic than substantive. It could also highlight the ECB’s difficulties in pressing ahead with more contentious plans to buy sovereign debt. Some even think the corporate bond-buying scheme, intended to revive growth and stave off deflation, could do more harm than good. “Our advice - don’t do it,” said Suki Mann, head of European credit strategy at UBS. The ECB says its Governing Council has not decided to buy corporate bonds. It has previously stated, though, that its aim is to bring its balance back to levels last seen in 2012, to unclog credit channels and stimulate lending to the real economy. Its balance sheet reached around 3 trillion euros in early 2012 and stands at around 2 trillion now. Yet it appears to be struggling to find ways to spend this newly printed money. Rabobank analysts predict that the ECB will only be able to buy around 100 billion euros of covered bonds and ABS, a tenth of the stock the ECB says is eligible for purchase. Economists polled by Reuters predict 250 billion euros of purchases.. Corporate assets eligible as collateral for the ECB’s existing bank lending operation stood at 1.4 trillion at last count. But analysts think the total amount it could buy in a direct purchase scheme would be much smaller. Bank estimates for the pool of corporate bonds likely to be eligible - stripping out those with very short maturities, foreign currencies or issuers and junk ratings - range from 700 billion to 1.1 trillion euros. It would need to buy nearly all of that to hit its balance sheet target. Investors say in reality it will be able to buy few. “The bonds are held currently by the vast number of fund managers and insurance companies that need to hold corporate bonds, and the ECB is going to struggle to suck a lot of those bonds out unless they pay considerably over the market price,” said Adam Cordery, head of euro fixed income at Santander Asset Management. “BROKEN” MARKET Even with record low borrowing costs and ample demand, many companies have little appetite for debt-funded expansion with the threat of a triple-dip recession on the horizon. Bond redemptions have outpaced issuance in the investment-grade corporate bond markets this year, as they have in broader credit markets. That has left a wealth of investors competing for limited supply. This has exacerbated a problem in secondary markets, where a lack of trading prompted the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, to label the corporate bond market “broken” in a note to clients last month. One of the few historical examples that strategists point to for the ECB’s potential expansion into corporate bonds is the UK. In 2009, the Bank of England started buying corporate bonds, but its total purchases peaked at 1.5 billion pounds - or just 0.6 percent of the market. Even if the ECB does find bonds to buy, strategists are worried that all it may serve to do is further inflate a credit bubble as investors are forced into riskier debt to meet yield targets. As the Reuters report broke on Tuesday, the main euro zone corporate credit index dropped to its tightest level in nearly two weeks, peripheral euro zone government bond yields tumbled and European stocks were put firmly on course for their best week in a year. “The credit market is already intoxicated on the drug called negative net supply, and the addictive quest to compensate low rates,” said Jeroen van den Broek, a credit strategist at ING. “The ECB entering the fold would see investment mandates stretched even further to find elusive yield and homework on credit being ignored further.” Analysts are also trying to work out whether this is a prelude to the kind of sovereign bond-buying that could meaningfully increase the ECB’s balance sheet, or evidence that such a program is far from certain. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is struggling to contain a public backlash to ECB president Mario Draghi’s ever-expanding toolbox of unconventional policies. Sovereign bond purchases - which German plaintiffs to Europe’s top court say violates a ban on ECB funding of governments and exceeds its mandate - may prove a step too far. “The ECB’s foray into buying corporate bonds could be a sign that the there remains considerable opposition to government bond QE within the Governing Council,” said Abhishek Singhania, European interest rate strategist at Deutsche Bank.

Here is my take on the dead birds that rained from the sky in Arkansas on 31 December 2010, and on such thing happening elsewhere. Dead birds do not simply fall from the sky — not in great numbers at the same time. Rather, they collide with something first, and then die. That is what happened to the red-winged blackbirds in Beebe, Arkansas on New Years Eve. Similar cases have happened at other times, in locations around the globe. All cases involved species that roost communally in very large numbers: red-winged-blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus), European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), jackdaws (Corvus monedula), and few other species. Their numbers at roosting sites can reach hundreds of thousands, and even millions. When they are being disturbed (by fireworks for example) the birds go on the wing and – in panic – part of the flock may easily get disorientated and crash full speed into buildings, into parked cars, and even straight into the ground. The sight of all these dead birds concentrated on a limited surface may smack of the Apocalypse, but a few thousand casualties – when hundreds of thousands were in the air – is a case of minor mortality. Because the Beebe Massacre got worldwide coverage in the media, each and every find of more that ten dead birds that would normally draw little interest, now gets full attention. Theories about the causes of death are numerous; some even blame Sarah Palin, HAARP, Chemtrails, Microwaving, Phosgene, toxic clouds, the BP oil-spill and, of course God (Hosea 4:1-3: “The land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea are swept away.”) In my archives of remarkable bird deaths I came across other cases similar to the one that the caused the hype: (the numbers of dead birds are lower, but that is just a matter of flock size). November 1896, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA – ‘A shower of birds fell from a clear sky’. Hundreds of wild ducks, catbirds, woodpeckers and ‘many birds of strange plumage, some of them resembling canaries, but all dead’ cluttered the streets of the city. A newspaper report (from the Philadelphia Times and a paper from St.Louis) documenting this case is quoted in The Osprey 1(4): 56 (December 1896) and by Waldo L. McAtee in his seminal paper ‘Showers of Organic Matters‘ in Monthly Weather Review 45: 217-224 (May 1917). 26 October 2003, Steinhaldenstrasse, Stuttgart, Germany – On this Sunday afternoon about 100 starlings from a much larger flock crashed into the pavement, and littered the street for a short time. Pedestrians halted the traffic. A dozen birds died, the others survived. Here is an eyewitness report from the Stuttgarter Zeitung (27 October 2003), which called the incident a ‘Kamikaze Flight’: Gegen 13.30 Uhr pfiff urplötzlich eine Formation von Starenvögeln knapp über die Häuserdächer und zwischen den Gebäuden hindurch auf sie zu. Die Schwarmwolke flog über ihren Köpfen zunächst mehrere rasante Wirbel, schwang sich schließlich geschlossen in die Lüfte, um dann aus etwa 20 Metern Höhe wie auf Kommando abzukippen – und senkrecht nach unten zu rasen. Während der obere Teil des riesigen Schwarms noch rechtzeitig „durchstarten“ konnte, knallten die unteren Vögel wie in selbstmörderischer Absicht auf den Asphalt, die Beobachter hörten „einen Riesenschlag“. [google.translate] 1 January 2009, Gorinchem, The Netherlands – About 600 starlings were found dead in a small area in this quiet little town. Some hung in trees and could not be removed (here is a video). Autopsies revealed the birds were ‘healthy’ and showed no signs of poisoning. Here is the official statement of the Gorinchem Municipality. 7 March 2010, Coxley, Somerset (UK) – 75 starlings ‘appeared to fall from the sky and crash land on to a driveway’. Five of the birds survived the fall but had to be put down because of their severe injuries. Here is the BBC-report, and here the final words, after autopsies. Advertisements

Oak Island is a 57-hectare (140-acre) privately owned island in Lunenburg County on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. The tree-covered island is one of about 360 small islands in Mahone Bay and rises to a maximum of 11 metres (36 feet) above sea level. The island is located 200 metres (660 feet) from shore and connected to the mainland by a causeway and gate. The nearest community is the rural community of Western Shore which faces the island, while the nearest village is Chester. The island is best known for various theories about possible buried treasure or historical artifacts, and the associated exploration. Geography [ edit ] Climate [ edit ] The majority of Nova Scotia is a Humid continental climate with hot and humid summers, and cold or frigid winters. While there are no weather station on the island, or along Mahone Bay, there is one towards the west in the town of Bridgewater. The average annual temperature given in Bridgewater is 7.1 °C (44.8 °F), while the precipitation runs at 1,536.7 millimetres (60.50 in).[3] The ocean has an effect on Oak Island in terms of visibility, as the southern coasts of Nova Scotia can be hidden in fog for as many as 90 days a year.[4] These coasts are also vulnerable to powerful storms which include nor'easters and hurricanes. Ecology [ edit ] Oak Island is made up of a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest, known regionally as the New England/Acadian forests. Wildlife in the Mahone Bay area include great blue herons, black guillemots, osprey, leach's storm petrels, and razorbills. In addition, non-specific eagles and puffins are also mentioned.[5] On a particular note is the Roseate tern, which is considered an endangered species in the area that is protected by the Canadian government. Efforts to restore their habitat such as curbing the population of other bird species have been undertaken.[6][7] Geology [ edit ] The geology of Oak Island was first mapped in 1924, which found a composite of four drumlins (two large and two small) forming the Island.[8] These drumlins are "elongated hills" which consist of multiple layers of till resting on bedrock, and are from different phases of glacial advance that span the past 75,000 years.[9] The layers on top of the bedrock are mainly made up of "Lawrencetown" and slate till. The former of these two is considered a type of clay till which is made up of 50% sand, 30% silt, and 20% clay.[9] In the main area that has been searched for treasure along with the till lies bits of Anhydrite, which become more competent deeper down. Researchers Les MacPhie, and John Wonnacott concluded that the deep deposits at the east end of the Island make up the drumlin formations.[9] There are two types of bedrock that lay under Oak Island; the southeastern portion consists of "Mississippian Windsor Group limestone" and gypsum, while the northwestern part is Cambro-Ordovician Halifax Formation slate.[8] Oak Island and the area that is now Mahone Bay was once a lagoon 8,000 years BP, before the tide rose with the melting glaciers.[9] Human history [ edit ] The first major indigenous people to Nova Scotia were the Mi'kmaq, who formed an Indian nation in present day Canada several thousand years ago. The area that encompasses Oak Island was once known as the "Segepenegatig" region. While it is unknown when Oak Island was first discovered, the tribe had a presence in the overall area which included the entire island of Newfoundland.[10] The earliest confirmed European residents date back to the 1750s in the form of French fishermen, who had by this time built a few houses on the future site of the nearby village of Chester, Nova Scotia.[11] Following the Expulsion of the Acadians during the Seven Years' War, the British government of Nova Scotia enacted a series of measures to encourage settlement of the area by the European-descended New Englanders.[11] Land was made available to settlers in 1759 through the Shorham grant, and Chester was officially founded that same year.[11] The first major group of settlers arrived in the Chester area from Massachusetts in 1761, and Oak Island was officially surveyed and divided into 32 four-acre lots in the following year. A large part of island was owned at the time by the Monro, Lynch, Seacombe and Young families whom had been granted the land in 1759. In the early days of British settlement, the Island was known locally as "Smith's Island," after an early settler of the area named Edward Smith. Cartographer Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres renamed the Island "Gloucester Isle" in 1778. Shortly thereafter, the locally used name "Oak Island" was officially adopted for the Island. Early residents included Edward Smith in the 1760s and Anthony Vaughn Sr. in the early 1770s. In 1784, the government made additional land grants, this time to former soldiers, which included parts of Oak Island.[11][12] It wasn't until July 6, 1818 that the original lot owners' names were mapped for the Nova Scotia Crown Lands office.[13] Oak Island has been intermittently owned by treasure hunters ever since early settler stories started appearing in the late 1700s.[14] The hunt for treasure got so extensive that in 1965 a causeway was built from the western end of the island to Crandall's Point on the mainland, two hundred metres away in order to bring heavy machinery on the island.[15] Oak Island now has several different owners which include a treasure hunter named Dan Blankenship, who had partnered with "Oak Island Tours Inc." run by David Tobias. Oak Island Tours eventually dissolved, and in February 2019, it was announced that a new partnership had been formed with a company called the "Michigan Group".[16] This group consists of brothers Rick and Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, and Alan Kostrzewa who had been purchasing lots from Tobias. It is unclear who is involved to what degree as Blankenship only revealed Kostrzewa's name to the press saying he was "on board".[16][17] Blankenship owns 78% of the island with the Michigan Group, while the remaining 22% is owned by private parties. There are two permanent homes and two cottages occupied part-time on the island.[16][18] The Oak Island mystery [ edit ] Oak Island has been a subject for treasure hunters ever since the late 1700s, with rumors that Captain Kidd's treasure was buried there. While there is little evidence to support what went on during the early excavations, stories began to be published and documented as early as 1856. Since that time there have been many theories that extend beyond that of Captain Kidd which include among others religious artifacts, manuscripts, and Marie Antoinette's jewels. The "treasure" has also been prone to criticism by those who have dismissed search areas as natural phenomenon.[19] Areas of interest on the island with regard to treasure hunters include a location known as the "Money Pit", which is allegedly the original searchers spot. There is also a formation of boulders called "Nolan's Cross", named after a former treasure hunter with a theory on it, and a triangle-shaped swamp. Lastly, there has been searcher activity on a beach at a place called "Smith's Cove". Various objects including non native coconut fiber have been found there.[14] More than fifty books have been published recounting the island's history and exploring competing theories.[20] Several works of fiction have also been based upon the Money Pit, including The Money Pit Mystery, Riptide, The Hand of Robin Squires, and Betrayed: The Legend of Oak Island. The History Channel aired a documentary called The Curse of Oak Island starting in January, 2014 about a group of modern treasure hunters. These hunters include brothers Rick and Marty Lagina of the "Michigan Group".[21][22][23] The series has so far spanned six seasons comprising 75 episodes. Various objects including a lead cross, coins, and some semi precious gems, have been found.

Gang graffiti on a street sign in Chicago, Ill. (Scott Olson/Getty) A return to the paranoid style in African-American politics From time to time, something will leap out to me as an illustration of the fact that blacks and whites often inhabit separate realities. I’ve often told the story of the editorial in a black neighborhood newspaper in Philadelphia warning African-Americans to flee urban areas in the lead-up to the 2004 presidential elections because George W. Bush was planning to — this was presented as unquestionable fact – use nuclear weapons against the inner cities to suppress the black vote. This wasn’t somebody ranting on Twitter — this was in print, in a regularly published newspaper that was, in the early days of the 21st century, still a going concern. Advertisement Advertisement I’ve come to call this sort of thing (with apologies to Richard Hofstadter) the paranoid style in African-American politics. Mild versions of conspiracy theories play a large role in mainstream American politics in the form of folk beliefs about how government works, the role of lobbyists and campaign contributions, and the like. For right-wing populists, it’s the “Establishment” and the “donor class,” for left-wingers it’s the Koch brothers, Big Oil, Big Money, Big Bigness, etc. We’ve all heard the story of how we could be running our automobiles on seawater if not for the fact that the petro-billionaires are suppressing the technology. The closer you get to the fringes, the more prominent the role of conspiracy theories. But it seems to me that conspiracy theory plays an outsize role in mainstream African-American political discourse. RELATED: Racism Isn’t Dead — But It Is on Life Support Advertisement For example, I was listening to a program yesterday on Sirius XM Urban View (one of the half-dozen lefty-dominated stations that Sirius offers to offset its one conservative station, the Patriot) when the hosts presented as uncontested fact that Chicago’s street gangs, which are the source of much of the blood currently running in Chicago’s streets, are a creation of the FBI. Before the FBI, the host said, there were progressive community-improvement organizations in Chicago, not violent street gangs, but the FBI infiltrated these organizations and “turned them against each other.” Of course. “That’s what they do,” the host insisted. Who? They — you know: Them: the FBI, “sellout Negroes,” as the host put it. Never mind that that’s not only untrue but wildly, madly untrue — there are, for example, active Chicago criminal gangs that trace their origins back to the 1950s and earlier — it tells the sort of story that a certain kind of listener wants to hear. There always is just enough of a smidgen of truth: For example, Chicago’s Vice Lords did engage in various kinds of civic projects, partly for the purpose of money-laundering and disguising criminal activities, and they even applied for — and won – a Rockefeller Foundation grant; the FBI did maintain a dirty-tricks division that targeted, among others, the Black Panthers and civil-rights activists, and engaged in illegal spying and harassment campaigns personally authorized by Robert F. Kennedy, the great liberal hero. Advertisement Advertisement RELATED: The ‘Legacy of Slavery’ Is an Excuse for Social Degeneration (Like a great deal of what’s wrong with American government, this really got under way during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, who ordered the FBI to monitor those who opposed his foreign policy and supported the anti-war campaign of Charles Lindbergh. This puts me in mind of a side note: If you’re wondering what could possibly go wrong with empowering the federal government to strip citizens of their constitutional rights with no due process, or even an avenue of appeal, as congressional Democrats currently propose, meditate upon our government’s shameful history of illegally suppressing domestic political critics.) But the FBI did not create Chicago street gangs; the people of Chicago did. This is very much like the folk belief, prominent in black discourse, that the CIA invented crack cocaine and introduced it into American cities. This remarkable claim is spun out of a number of unremarkable facts: In the 1980s, the U.S. government wanted to see anti-Communist rebels in Central America succeed, some of those rebel groups had links to the cocaine trade (as indeed did the Communists they were fighting), and the CIA wasn’t especially interested in that fact. That’s a long way from “the CIA invented crack to destroy African-American communities,” but the salacious version is the one that travels most widely. Advertisement RELATED: The Inconvenient Truth About Ghetto Communities’ Social Breakdown Advertisement Advertisement I have spent many years following the myth of Willie Lynch, the entirely fictitious slave consultant whose blueprint for subjecting black Americans is taken in many quarters as historical fact. #share#Old-fashioned peckerwood-trash racists are in short supply (and very much out of fashion) today, especially on college campuses. When they do show up, the response of college administrations is generally swift and severe: The drunken idiot kid at Mizzou who used a racial slur to refer to some of his fellow students was immediately banned from the campus “pending the outcome of the conduct process,” and it’s unlikely he’ll ever be permitted to return. (Which is fine by me, incidentally: Colleges ought to expect a certain standard of behavior from their students, and expulsion is a perfectly acceptable means of enforcing those standards.) When a student at another college made a racist threat on the messaging app YikYak, University of Missouri police had him behind bars the next day. Compare that with the treatment of Professor Melissa Click, who assaulted a student journalist (the crime is caught on video) on the campus and attempted to arouse protesters to mob violence against him but remains comfortably ensconced in her professorship rather than in jail, despite the student’s having filed a police complaint. Anything with a hint of bigotry to it is prioritized. Advertisement (Some bigotry, anyway: Casual black anti-Semitism is generally permitted to fly under the radar.) Advertisement RELATED: The Mizzou Meltdown In an environment like that, the racial-grievance entrepreneur is reduced to making things up: A racist death threat similar to the one made at the University of Missouri was made at a college in Michigan — by a black student, as it turns out. Phony acts of racist vandalism and manufactured hate crimes on campus are common, probably more common than actual acts of racist vandalism. Missouri students rage about the Ku Klux Klan, whose most prominent act in Missouri in recent memory was adopting a stretch of Interstate 55. The new enemy is attested to by spectral evidence: privilege, invisible but pervasive white supremacy, patriarchy, microaggression. #related#The conspiracy theory is tempting. But Detroit isn’t Detroit because of the FBI or the Ku Klux Klan or microaggression or privilege: Detroit has been for decades under almost exclusively black government, government that is at the municipal level in fact self-consciously black, practitioners of what one Detroit News columnist in 2009 called “the black nationalism that is now the dominant ideology of the council.” Detroit hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957, and after its bankruptcy convulsions it elected Mike Duggan, a Democrat who is the first non–African American to hold that job since Coleman Young came into power in 1974. The implosion of Detroit ought to have occasioned some interesting discussion about the relationship between black-dominated cities, progressive ideology, and the Democratic party, but, instead, we got more conspiracy theory: The Reverend Charles E. Williams II insisted that the situation in Detroit was part of an effort to “suppress and dismantle democracy, break the back of workers, and directly attack our voting rights,” while connecting the state government’s response to Jim Crow. Melissa Harris-Perry insisted that Detroit failed because of — seriously — its excessive commitment to Republican small-government policies. She may as well have argued that George W. Bush nuked Detroit. RELATED: Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe of the Democratic Party’s Own Making Again, this isn’t limited to black political discourse, though such daftness does run deeper into the black mainstream than it does elsewhere. It is difficult to imagine a white equivalent of Louis Farrakhan (George Lincoln Rockwell?) receiving the sort of respectful and deferential coverage given to Farrakhan, who believes that white people were invented by a wicked prehistorical scientist. But sometimes I’ll encounter one of those specimens who want to tell me about how the Jews are secretly running the world, and what always stands out about these types isn’t their hatred, but how sad they are. And it is the sadness that explains the love of conspiracy theory: The truth is too terrible to consider.

Fresh from their 3-0 demolition of Shamrock Rovers last night, league leaders Cork City have further bolstered their ranks with the signing of free agent Iarfhlaith Davoren. Equally adept at left back and on the left wing, Davoren has plied his trade most recently at Sligo Rovers where he won a major trophy in each of the last four years – three FAI Cups and a league. The Tullamore native adds strength and depth to Cork City’s left flank after the departure of Danny Murphy a week into the season, but will have a job on has hand deplacing captain Johnny Dunleavy at left back or red hot Billy Dennehy who has scored three and assisted four in his five league games so far. Speaking to CorkCityFC.ie about on the latest signing, manager John Caulfield was looking forward to welcoming the experienced player into his squad. “I’m really delighted to sign Iarfhlaith. He’s been with Sligo for the past number of years, and he’s a very good player. I think he’s the type of player, and has the type of mentality and attitude, that I feel will enhance our squad.” “Our panel is tight, particularly given the injuries we have, so to get an experienced player like him in at this stage is great for us. I’m looking forward to seeing him in training on Sunday and I hope he will be a big success for us.” “He’s very versatile; he can play left-back or left-wing and has also played up front. He has a lot of experience; he has been in the league for a number of years. We need to bring in guys with the right attitude to mix in with the group we have and I think he is that type of player.” Also speaking to CorkCityFC.ie, Davoren signalled his delight to have joined and his intention to win trophies on Leeside. “I am delighted to be joining such huge club. Having spoken to John, I think I will fit in well with the way he wants to play and I share his ambition to win trophies. “The squad is excellent; obviously I know Matt Gledhill and Anthony Elding from Sligo. If we can maintain some of our momentum there is no reason we can’t challenge. I’m looking forward to settling in and getting back on the pitch.”

Did you know you could get Ebola by breathing it in? That you could catch it in your backyard? Or that tons of enemy countries are stockpiling Ebola in secret labs? No? That’s because the claims border on nonsensical. Yet that’s exactly the sort of wisdom being delivered in the hot new New York Times bestseller The Ebola Survival Handbook. Dr. Joseph Alton’s how-to guide is chock full of important facts—nearly all of which are eclipsed by its blatant falsities. In one sentence, he asserts: “Panic is worse than complacency.” In another, he evokes just that: “It’s in your hands. Will you pick up the flag and get medically prepared? Someone has to.” Written by the physician behind the survivalist website doomandbloom.net, as well as the author of The Survival Medicine Handbook, Ebola Survival purports to teach individuals how to survive an outbreak of the virus should their nation fall. Evidently, it’s information people want. In the two days since the book was released, it has already landed the No. 4 spot on the health section of The New York Times bestseller list and received a four-star rating on Amazon. A retired doctor in Florida, author Dr. Alton says he was inspired to join the survivalist movement after reading horror stories from Hurricane Katrina. Now, he hopes to prepare a single caretaker in every family to be “the end of line” in regard to their family’s health. “I write as if there were no doctors and no hospitals and the average person has become the end of the line in regard to their family, due to some disaster or epidemic,” he tells me over the phone. That said, the book is littered with the type of bad information that drove America’s hysteria over a handful of cases last month. 1. “Inhalation” is a “method of transmission” for Ebola. In a section titled How Ebola Spreads, Alton outlines how exactly readers might catch this disease. Couched in between valid statements like “absorption” through mucous membranes or “injection” from needles, is the dangerously simplistic assertion that Ebola can be contracted through “breathing in” droplets of “blood splatter, vomit, or saliva.” Outside of the absurdity of “blood splatter” flying through the air is the implication that Ebola can be “breathed” at all. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly noted, Ebola is not transferred through air. Unlike influenza, it is incapable of traveling through tiny microscopic particles. Its method of transit is direct person-to-person contact with body fluids. While it is theoretically possible for the virus to travel in the droplets of, say, a sneeze, there is little evidence that this type of transmission occurs. That’s because these droplets, says expert virologist Alan Schmaljohn, “neither travel very far nor hang in the air for long.” Breathing in does not cause Ebola. If it did, the current epidemic would look significantly worse. 2. “It’s a serious health issue that could take you down in your own backyard anytime.” If your backyard is anywhere in America, this statement isn’t misleading—it’s false. Ebola, while terrifying from its high mortality rate, cannot take you down anytime. It is a deadly disease, but a difficult one to catch, too, requiring intimate contact with the bodily fluids of a person that is not only infected, but contagious. Even then, the virus may not necessarily spread. Take for example, the family of Thomas Eric Duncan, who lived with him during the days he was mistakenly sent home from the hospital with influenza. Already days into his Ebola infection, he was highly contagious, suffering from extreme diarrhea and vomiting. Yet none of his family members, one of whom was sleeping in the same bed as him, contracted the disease. Not one. In order to be at risk for Ebola, you have to come face to face with it—an impossible scenario for the vast majority of Americans. As the New York Times writes, the risk of contracting Ebola in this country remains "vanishingly small." With the chance that the average American contracts Ebola at just 1 in 13.3 million, you are more likely to be eaten by a shark. For those in the dense forests, beaches, and towns of West Africa, it is a real threat. On the manicured lawns of America, it is not. 3. “When symptoms arise, it’s important to keep in the back of one’s mind that what might seem like a simple bout of the flu could very well turn out to be Ebola.” In a merry-go-round of sensationalism, Alton perpetuates the pervasive and irrational fears that the virus could strike anytime, anywhere—even to the unsuspecting flu victim. Unless you have traveled to one of the countries with Ebola and/or have been in close enough contact with the body fluids of a contagious victim, this statement is categorically false. A “simple bout of flu” is incapable of mutating into an Ebola infection. If flu symptoms arise, it's most likely the flu. If Americans need to arm themselves from an illness over the next few months, it is indeed this: seasonal influenza virus infections. Approximately 5 to 20 percent of U.S. residents will contract the illness this year. An average of 200,000 will be sent to the hospital for respiratory and heart conditions illnesses associated with it. Unlike Ebola, however, influenza is preventable with a vaccine, treatable with anti-viral drugs, and for healthy adults, rarely life-threatening. 4. “If you are lucky enough to survive a bout with Ebola, you may still be faced with other complications for days, months, or longer.” Survivors of Ebola, as thousands in West Africa can attest to, can—and often do—make a full recovery. Both nurses infected in Dallas, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, have made full recoveries, reunited with their loved ones (including dogs). Craig Spencer, the New York doctor who contracted Ebola in Guinea, was declared “cured” of the virus last week. One study from the Congo shows Ebola survivors suffering from arthralgia (joint pain) and increased inflammation, but does not show this occurring over “days, months, or longer"—nor does it imply that every survivor faces this fate. With higher death rates in the past Ebola epidemics, and fewer infections in general, studies on survivors of Ebola are few and far between. Until more conclusive studies on the topic are performed, it's irresponsible to claim that an Ebola infection will permanently alter your physical state. Doctors main concern, in this epidemic, is the physiological effects of suffering from such a horrific disease. Still, stories of triumphant survivors rejoining their lives, or bravely going on to treat other Ebola patients, shows a brighter road ahead than Alton wants readers to believe. 5. “It has been rumored that Ebola is in inventory at high-level labs in many countries, some of which are not our friends.” For anyone who has yet to be convinced that there is risk of the epidemic spreading through human contact—there’s this nice little read, which Alton begins in the introduction and touches on later in the book. Alton never manages to explain where these “rumors” that countries are stockpiling Ebola come from, nor pinpoint the "non-friends" to which he refers. While Ebola could technically be considered as a biological weapon, history has poked holes in the concept that such an endeavor is even possible—much less successful. The most convincing argument dates back to 1992, when the notorious Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo specifically sent fighters to the Congo (where an outbreak was occurring) to gather samples of Ebola, in the hopes of using it as a bioterrorism weapon. As Scientific American notes, their effort was a "flagrant failure," thwarted by the inability of the fighters to capture even a single Ebola culture. The Soviet Union, too, tried its hand at the project by attempting to "grow the microbes." It, too, soon abandoned the mission, finding it both logistically and financially impossible. As the Combatting Terrorism Center reports "claims that Ebola could be easily transformed into a biological weapon by a terrorist organization are unfounded and sensationalized." *** Amid relatively sane explanations of how to build a “sick room” for a potential victim in your family near the end, Alton routinely asks the reader to dream up dark fantasies of what he considers to be the worst-case scenario. “Imagine infected corpses lining the streets where people walk and commerce occurs and you can see the full extent of the problem,” he says in the introduction. “In the case of Ebola, a blood-splattered mattress may need to be thrown away,” he writes in another section. But the advice, he says, isn’t meant to invoke fear. “I believe it’s more of an empowerment,” he adds on the phone. “I’m trying to empower the non-medical professionals to deal with disasters where help is not on the way.” Survivalists, in Alton’s mind, are the calm in the storm. “I’m warning people against panic by saying they don’t need to panic,” he says. “I really think that this is the anti-panic philosophy.” Alton doesn't solve the problem—he is the problem. Exploiting his role as a medical professional, he passes fiction off as fact and trades knowledge for fear. Under the guise of "self-help," he convinces Americans not only that Ebola is a real threat, but that the scenario in which they are the only one left on earth is a plausible one. Conning people into buying a book to prepare for an "Ebola apocalypse" is not just irresponsible, it's pathetic. It only takes one glance of Alton's Ebola Survival Handbook to recognize the real threat: him.

Federal finance minister Bill Morneau started his day in Edmonton with some exercise, before hitting the streets with local MPs to promote the Liberal government’s recent initiatives as part of a cross-country tour. While no major announcements were made on Wednesday, infrastructure funding and Alberta’s struggling economy were topics of conversation. Many hoped to learn more about what sort of infrastructure funds Edmonton and Alberta can expect from Ottawa. Federal Infrastructure Minister and Edmonton Mill Woods MP Amarjeet Sohi, who joined Morneau at a photo op, said he is waiting for the province’s wish list. “We are working very, very closely with the province and we have been ready since the early July,” Sohi said, adding that his provincial counterpart — Infrastructure Minister Brian Mason — has been working with Calgary, Edmonton and other cities to compile a list of projects they want funding for. “Within the next couple of weeks we will be able to sign an agreement to get the money flowing all throughout the province. As well as going retroactively to April 2016 to support projects that are already underway,” he added. The agreement is expected in about two weeks. READ MORE: Finance minister says weak global growth has been a challenge for Canada Morneau was in town to “discuss economic growth and the Government’s commitment to strengthening the middle class.” He went for a jog through the downtown core with his provincial counterpart, Alberta finance minister Joe Ceci, earlier this morning. They discussed a number of issues on that run: everything from climate change and environmental initiatives to Alberta’s struggling economy. “Our goal is to have a really strong level of collaboration between the government of Canada and the government of Alberta, as we want to have across the country,” Morneau said. “Because we know in a country like Canada that’s the way we actually get to conclusions that will help Canadians.” He then hit up a coffee shop at a local LRT station with Amarjeet Sohi, and Edmonton Centre MP Randy Boissonnault, who is also the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

The Pakistani writer Bapsi Sidhwa, dwelling on the perpetual reproductive deficit vexing her endangered Parsi community, once chuckled: “Half the Parsi men are homosexual and the other half are statues in Bombay." Last week saw the 178th birth anniversary of one of the more celebrated of these statues, a man who not only contributed to the Parsi cause by fathering two brilliant sons—like him, knighted by a king enthroned in a faraway island—but who also made some of the most enduring contributions to the material reinvigoration of India after its industries were systematically smashed in the name of that very king in times before. Jamsetji came from a line of priests 25 generations old in Navsari in Gujarat, though it was after 11 generations of ministrations there that they took on the surname “Tata", destined for glory in the 20th century—and perhaps an awkward display of corporate discord lately in the 21st. Jamsetji would have become a priest had he not studied in what is now Mumbai, a city to which he made very many contributions, and where he elected to turn his decidedly astute head towards business, not god. He was a clever man and accumulated vast riches, most of which were invested in regenerating this growing fortune and distributing its yields generously. He was also a man of vision. As one biographer noted, when Jamsetji was born in 1839, the world was still in the grasp of a generation that belonged to the 1700s. It was a time when bullock carts transported merchandise and stage coaches lugged human beings. In his lifetime, he witnessed the historic upheaval of 1857 as well as the arrival of motorcars and the railways. Sometimes with camels and donkeys as his mode of transportation, he travelled in countries as alien as Egypt and Russia and to places as distant as Shanghai and South Carolina. Everywhere, he absorbed ideas and innovations, proceeding to painstakingly incarnate them in his own land. This, for instance, is what made him the first in Bombay to fit rubber around his carriage wheels, stunning masses of people with the stately quietness of his vehicular progress. It is what inspired him to pursue with vigour, and against all odds, the establishment of Tata Steel (when bureaucrats scoffed that they would eat every ounce of steel an Indian could produce) and the endowment, at considerable personal expense, of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), now ranked the eighth leading small university in the world. By 1924, one in five Indian civil service officers of “native" origin had had his training sponsored by Tata, and it was Jamsetji who first instituted pension funds and accident compensation, and installed humidifiers and anti-fire sprinklers, for the welfare of his factory workers. It was this same spirit that led to the establishment of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, mocked instantly as “Tata’s White Elephant", but which has become an iconic symbol of the city of Mumbai and of India itself. Jamsetji exasperated legions of imperial worthies with his untiring missions—Lord Curzon once irritably remarked that he was “endeavouring to save Tata’s scheme from the shipwreck which (are) his ambitions". Indians, on the other hand, admired him for precisely such ambition. Years later, Jawaharlal Nehru remarked that Jamsetji “formed himself into some kind of a planning commission", not with a Five-year Plan “but a much bigger plan", for posterity itself. There was dignified patriotism too in Jamsetji, who was present at the 1885 inauguration of the Indian National Congress and who once alarmed his fellow rich by suggesting a then unheard of income-tax rate of 20% on their kind. Once, when lambasted for disloyalty by a prominent colonial mouthpiece after he questioned British policy, Jamsetji responded by admitting that while the Parsis had indeed “benefited more than any other class by English rule" (and the opium trade) and would demonstrate gratitude “in due proportion to the advantage derived", “it must not be forgotten that as much is due…to the people of this country which gave (this community fleeing Iran) shelter for centuries before" the advent of the Raj. This was not to suggest that the Parsis lived on anybody’s charity in India. This, he knew, was a land of diversity, and even his sense of aesthetics (while abhorring “abominable yellows and reds as much as possible" in household furnishing) reflected this. When plans were formulated for what would become Jamshedpur, the man wrote to his heir: “Be sure to lay wide streets planted with shady trees, every other of a quick growing variety. Be sure that there is plenty of space for lawns and gardens. Reserve large areas for football, hockey, and parks. Earmark areas for Hindu temples, Mohammedan mosques and Christian churches." Everything—from secular spaces to religious establishments—and everyone had a place in his conception of a modern Indian city. When Jamsetji died in 1904, most of his pet projects were still in the making—it would be eight more years before the Taj Mahal Palace ceased to be a white elephant and stood on its own feet, and seven before the IISc began its remarkable journey. It was four years after his death that the construction of Jamshedpur began, with those avenues, parks and places of worship that he recommended. Jamsetji himself couldn’t behold the fruits of his labour and the outcome of his vision. But it doesn’t seem to have mattered to him. In addition to his big statue in Mumbai, there is one in Jamshedpur, marked with a plaque bearing famous words borrowed from the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect: “If you seek a monument, look around." Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne: Chronicles Of The House Of Travancore. Medium Rare is a weekly column on society, politics and history.

For those interested on this day of horrible crimes being committed with guns, a broad overview of some basics of California gun laws, excerpted from the state Attorney General's Office 2013 document on same. As I write I do not know what laws were or were not violated in the manner in which the killers obtained whatever weapons they used, but this is an overview of what the law qua law tries to do in California, a state with relatively stringent gun regulations. The relevant legal environment in which the crimes did occur is in many ways a model for what politicians mean when they talk about "common sense gun safety laws." California has since 1989 banned a set of long guns it classifies as "assault weapons," see here for details. And "Generally, it is illegal to buy, manufacture, import, keep for sale, expose for sale, give or lend any large-capacity magazine (able to accept more than 10 rounds) in California." California also has a list of types of specific handgun models that are legal for sale, "available on the DOJ website at http://certguns.doj.ca.gov/," with all others presumptively illegal. Here are types of people who can't legally obtain guns in California: Any person convicted of any felony or any offense enumerated in Penal Code section 29905. [A wide variety of violent offenses, including murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping] • Any person convicted of an offense enumerated in Penal Code section 23515. [anyone who had used a firearm in a violent offense] • Any person with two or more convictions for violating Penal Code section 417, subdivision (a)(2) [anyone who has waved a gun in a quarrel, essentially, not in self-defense] • Any person adjudicated to be a mentally disordered sex offender... • Any person found by a court to be mentally incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity of any crime, unless the court has made a finding of restoration of competence or sanity.... There are a wide variety of shorter-term prohibitions on gun ownership, including 10-year prohibitions for: Any person convicted of a misdemeanor violation of the following: Penal Code sections 71, 76, 136 .5, 140, 148, subdivision (d), 171b, 171c, 171d, 186 .28, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244 .5, 245, 245 .5, 246, 246 .3, 247, 273 .5, 273 .6, 417, 417 .1, 417 .2, 417 .6, 422, 626 .9, 646 .9, 830 .95, subdivision (a), 17500, 17510, subdivision (a), 25300, 25800, 27510, 27590, subdivision (c), 30315, or 32625, and Welfare and Institutions Code sections 871 .5, 1001 .5, 8100, 8101, or 8103 . Full copy of penal code here, was unable to provide separate links for every offense above in timely fashion. And 5-year prohibitions for: Any person taken into custody as a danger to self or others, assessed, and admitted to a mental health facility under Welfare and Institutions Code sections 5150, 5151, 5152; or certified under Welfare and Institutions Code sections 5250, 5260, 5270 .15 . Other prohibitions on legal gun ownership cover people on probation, charged with a felony offense as yet unadjudicated, any voluntary mental patient or under "gravely disabled conservatorship," anyone "addicted to use of narcotics," anyone who threatened a licensed psychotherapist within 6 months, and anyone "under a protective order as defined in Family Code section 6218 or Penal Code section 136.2, or a temporary restraining order issued pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure sections 527.6 or 527.8." If you are not one of the prohibited, here are some of the laws you face regarding how to obtain a gun as a prospectively legal gun owner: Only licensed California firearms dealers who possess a valid Certificate of Eligibility (COE) are authorized to engage in retail sales of firearms . These retail sales require the purchaser to provide personal identifier information for the Dealer Record of Sale (DROS) document that the firearms dealer must submit to the DOJ . There is a mandatory 10-day waiting period before the firearms dealer can deliver the firearm to the purchaser .... Generally, you have to be 18 to get a long gun, 21 for handgun. You must have a state driver's license or I.D. card. And there is no "gun show" or private sale "loophole" in the state: Generally, it is illegal for any person who is not a California licensed firearms dealer (private party) to sell or transfer a firearm to another non-licensed person (private party) unless the sale is completed through a licensed California firearms dealer . A “Private Party Transfer” (PPT) can be conducted at any licensed California firearms dealership that sells handguns . The buyer and seller must complete the required DROS document in person at the licensed firearms dealership and deliver the firearm to the dealer who will retain possession of the firearm during the mandatory 10-day waiting period . You can give a gun to a close family member and not go through that process. You also have to have earned a state-issued "Handgun Safety Certificate" for legal handgun ownership purchasing, which requires that "you must score at least 75% on an objective written test pertaining to firearms laws and safety requirements," with tests "administered by DOJ Certified Instructors, who are generally located at firearms dealerships. An HSC is valid for five years." [UPDATE/CORRECTION: As of 2015, this requirement covers all weapons, not just handguns, and is now known as the "Firearms Safety Certificate."] You must also "successfully perform a safe handling demonstration with the handgun being purchased or acquired. Safe handling demonstrations must be performed in the presence of a DOJ Certified Instructor sometime between the date the DROS is submitted to the DOJ and the delivery of the handgun, and are generally performed at the firearms dealership." In addition, all guns bought in California legally "must be accompanied with a firearms safety device (FSD) that has passed required safety and functionality tests and is listed on the DOJ’s official roster of DOJ-approved firearm safety devices." You can only buy one handgun every 30 days by law. You cannot buy a gun for a different person not going through the background check. If you move here with a previously owned weapon, you must inform the state DOJ or get rid of it. As far as how you can legally use your weapon, here are some restrictions. You may in general keep it in your own property or business (including temporary residences and campsites) if you legally own it, loaded or unloaded. You can generally legally transport handguns only unloaded and stored in a locked container, which can include your trunk. Long guns must be unloaded while transported. As of this year, concealed weapons are banned on state schools and universities. As of last year, family members have a legal process to temporarily bar their relatives from getting guns if the family sees the member as unstable. As far as having your weapon outside your home, business, or property, there are a set of restrictions: It is illegal for any person to carry a handgun concealed upon his or her person or concealed in a vehicle without a license....The prohibition from carrying a concealed handgun does not apply to licensed hunters or fishermen while engaged in hunting or fishing, or while going to or returning from the hunting expedition. (Pen . Code, § 25640 .)... It is illegal to carry a loaded firearm on one’s person or in a vehicle while in any public place, on any public street, or in any place where it is unlawful to discharge a firearm .....In order to determine whether a firearm is loaded, peace officers are authorized to examine any firearm carried by anyone on his or her person or in a vehicle while in any public place, on any public street or in any prohibited area of an unincorporated territory. Refusal to allow a peace officer to inspect a firearm pursuant to these provisions is, in itself, grounds for arrest . .... It is generally illegal for any person to carry upon his or her person or in a vehicle, an exposed and unloaded handgun while in or on: • A public place or public street in an incorporated city or city and county; or • A public street in a prohibited area of an unincorporated city or city and county . ... Getting that license to carry is up to local authorities, with varying requirements, and is in many areas very difficult to do. Only around 70,000 such licenses exist statewide, with around 29 million adults in the state. It is legal to use a weapon in self defense under some circumstances: The killing of one person by another may be justifiable when necessary to resist the attempt to commit a forcible and life-threatening crime, provided that a reasonable person in the same or similar situation would believe that (a) the person killed intended to commit a forcible and life-threatening crime; (b) there was imminent danger of such crime being accomplished; and (c) the person acted under the belief that such force was necessary to save himself or herself or another from death or a forcible and life-threatening crime... It is lawful for a person being assaulted to defend themself from attack if he or she has reasonable grounds for believing, and does in fact believe, that he or she will suffer bodily injury . In doing so, he or she may use such force, up to deadly force, as a reasonable person in the same or similar circumstances would believe necessary to prevent great bodily injury or death . An assault with fists does not justify use of a deadly weapon in self-defense unless the person being assaulted believes, and a reasonable person in the same or similar circumstances would also believe, that the assault is likely to inflict great bodily injury. The extent to which this set of laws was relevant either legally or practically to how the weapons used in today's crime were obtained is unknown as I write.

About This Game REVIEWS "RECOMMENDATION: NOCK AND LOAD. THIS ONE IS A BLAST”-UPLOAD VR “A MUST-BUY VR EXPERIENCE FOR ARCHERY FANS”-VR HEADS “TWISTED ARROW MAKE YOU WISH YOU WERE MARVEL’S HAWKEY”-TOMS HARDWARE Twisted Arrow is a full-tilt, no-holds-barred VR-FPS that gives players an adrenaline-packed arcade style game play. Experience urban warfare as never before by immersing yourself in this frenzied fight for survival. THIS IS NOT A WAVE SHOOTER , but a FPS that lets you traverse through a vast city, up and down tall buildings, and position yourself in strategic areas to make the perfect head shot or try using an explosive arrow to launch NPC units 200ft in the air in a fiery ball of fatality! Out-manned and outgunned, you are the last line of defense against a high-tech, paramilitary force occupying your city. But don’t feel sorry for yourself, feel sorry for the poor bastard that gets in your way! Armed with the Manticore, the military’s top secret combat bow, and an arsenal of over powered arrows, you will need to fight your way through an enemy armed with high-tech weaponry, armored mechs, attack drones, and a host of biological secrets yet to be uncovered in the remnants of a city on the brink of ruin. Your mission is simple: recon the city, rescue hostages, and get the hell out of dodge while eliminating any and all resistance with extreme prejudice. If it moves, kill it! If it doesn’t move, it’s probably already dead. Movement: The game was build from the start for fast paced arcade action. Think of the classic arcade game Time Crisis. Its not about discovery or exploration but mayhem and destruction! Designed with predefined teleport areas, allowing you to quickly pick the right path through the city, focusing more on the action then worrying about movement. Yes, it uses teleport locomotion because you have a teleporter! So SHOOT SOMETHING ALREADY! Ok it's time to Nock and Load and let it rain pain! Unleash maximum mayhem and take your pent-up, inner beast out for a joy ride. Don’t forget to stretch, because you’re going to feel this in the morning.

In the late Byzantine period a number of extravagantly large hats were worn as uniform by officials. In the 12th century, Emperor Andronikos Komnenos wore a hat shaped like a pyramid, but eccentric dress is one of many things he was criticised for. This was perhaps related to the very elegant hat with a very high-domed peak, and a sharply turned-up brim coming far forward in an acute triangle to a sharp point (left), that was drawn by Italian artists when the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos went to Florence and the Council of Ferrara in 1438 in the last days of the Empire. Versions of this and other clothes, including many spectacular hats, worn by the visitors were carefully drawn by Pisanello and other artists. [2] They passed through copies across Europe for use in Eastern subjects, especially for depictions of the three kings or Magi in Nativity scenes. In 1159 the visiting Crusader Prince Raynald of Châtillon wore a tiara shaped felt cap, embellished in gold. An Iberian wide brimmed felt hat came into vogue during the 12th century. Especially in the Balkans , small caps with or without fur brims were worn, of the sort later adopted by the Russian Tsars

Between the PlayStation 4 Pro reveal and all the iPhone news on Wednesday, Nvidia quietly rolled out a major upgrade of its own. The company pushed out GeForce Experience 3.0 yesterday—a comprehensive redesign of the popular software found on “tens of millions” of GeForce graphics card-equipped PCs, but one sure to rile some nerves at the same time. Let’s start with the good stuff first. As you can see in the image below, the interface has been completely revamped, with a strong focus on your installed games. If you yearn for a more information-dense dashboard as opposed to the flashy art, switch from Tiles view to Details view. Switching over to the Drivers tab lets you know if your graphics card software is up to date, just like in the old GeForce Experience. But in GeForce Experience 3.0, that banner’s followed by several tiles that display details about GeForce news and features, partner games, and more when clicked on. So where are the My Rig and ShadowPlay options from the older GeForce Experience? They’re still around, lurking in the two icons to the left of your name in the upper-right hand corner. You’ll find system details, the ability to connect Shield devices for GameStream, and much more inside the Settings menu, which is represented by a cog icon. The General section of the Settings dashboard lets you know what’s needed to run GameStream, GeForce Share, Game Optimization, and VR, and checks your PC’s configuration against the list—a handy touch. Meanwhile, if you don’t want to receive emails from Nvidia, you’ll find the option to disable them in the Account section. The tilted triangle to the Settings menu’s left houses GeForce Experience Share, a.k.a. ShadowPlay rebranded and expanded in overlay form. Here’s a list of its features, straight from Nvidia: “Now, GeForce Experience can record gameplay at 60 FPS, at up to 4K, in fullscreen and windowed modes, and upload a complete or trimmed clip to YouTube; livestream to Twitch and YouTube Gaming at 1080p60; capture and edit screenshots, and upload them straight to Imgur without leaving the game; show your FPS during gameplay; and let a friend jump into your game via Chrome to either watch, take control of your character, or play in co-op.” Damn. That’s a lot. Overall, Nvidia says GFE3 is three times faster and consumes 50 percent less memory than the old GeForce Experience, and in practice, this puppy hums. The older GeForce Experience had a microscopic lull when you switched between tabs that irked me to no end. GeForce Experience 3.0 is completely responsive and a joy to use. The automatic installation from the older GeForce Experience failed on my personal PC, but downloading GeForce Experience 3.0 from Nvidia’s website afterward fixed the issue. Now for the somewhat troublesome news. The story behind the story: As promised since last October, Nvidia’s now forcing you to log in to use GeForce Experience, via Facebook, Google, or an Nvidia account tied to your email address. That burns—especially after you’ve already forked over hundreds of dollars for a GeForce graphics card—but fortunately, the company isn’t locking its vaunted Game Ready drivers behind GFE registration as previously threatened. When asked if there are plans to do so in the future, an Nvidia spokesperson said, “You can still get the drivers outside of GFE.” Hostage situation averted. It’s not all bad, though. Nvidia’s also taking advantage of registration to integrate giveaways directly through GFE, starting with VR-ready MSI gaming laptops and the HTC Vive VR headset. One day, the free games that Nvidia sometimes bundles with its cards could even conceivably be delivered via GFE, similar to how Nvidia offered free Witcher 3 copies to Titan X owners last year, along with access to hot gaming beta tests. Game-based goodies like that would require you to log in to register, anyway—as they always have in the past.

It's only been a little over a year since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched its Office of the Whistleblower, but it has already received almost 3,000 securities law violation tips. In a speech this week, Sean X. McKessy, chief of the Office of the Whistleblower, said the SEC receives an average of eight tips a day, "rather than the avalanche of poor quality, frivolous tips that were predicted." The Office of the Whistleblower was formed as part of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010. "As we considered the contours of the rules to implement the Whistleblower program, we heard repeatedly that the implementation of this program would overwhelm the commission and literally shut our program down," McKessy said, addressing the inaugural Securities Enforcement Forum in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. "We also heard that corporate compliance departments that had been built out as a result of Sarbanes-Oxley, would no longer be able to function." As of Aug. 8, 2012, McKessy said the office had received received 2,820 tips from people in the U.S. and from at least 45 countries. Last year, McKessy said the SEC has "already seen an increase in the quality of the tips we have received since the passage of Dodd-Frank in July 2010." The SEC has said only one award has been paid. In August, a whistleblower who did not want to be identified received a payment of almost $50,000 for helping a court demand more than $1 million in sanctions in a securities fraud case. Read More: 7 Biggest Whistleblower Rewards

Paul Krugman thinks libertarian populism is bunk. So bunk, in fact, that he didn’t feel the need to actually tell his readers what it is. Presumably, associating it with the likes of Paul Ryan was enough to discredit the idea in the minds of most of his readers. And discrediting, rather than explaining (or understanding) “right-wing” ideas is what Paul Krugman does best. So what is libertarian populism? And is Paul Ryan really the best exemplar of it? For those who want to know more, Jesse Walker has assembled a nice little reading list. I’ll follow his lead in endorsing the definition originally put forward by Ross Douthat: a strain of thought that moves from the standard grassroots conservative view of Washington as an inherently corrupt realm of special interests and self-dealing elites to a broader skepticism of ‘bigness’ in all its forms (corporate as well as governmental), that regards the Bush era as an object lesson in everything that can go wrong (at home and abroad) when conservatives set aside this skepticism, and that sees the cause of limited government as a means not only to safeguarding liberty, but to unwinding webs of privilege and rent-seeking and enabling true equality of opportunity as well. Libertarian populists are distrustful of big government, but they are also distrustful of big corporations and big banks, especially when the latter benefit from special protections and subsidies from the former. They are therefore opposed to “crony capitalism” in all its various manifestations – corporate welfare, bailouts, the Federal Reserve system, and so on. Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner has been one of the most thoughtful and articulate proponents of libertarian populism, and his agenda for that movement is worth a close look. In practical politics, the movement has a much closer affinity to Ron Paul than to Paul Ryan. Among those currently in office, Rand Paul is a better match than Paul Ryan, though perhaps not quite as populist or as libertarian as his father. Insofar as libertarian populists are fighting the good fight against cronyism, there’s a lot in their movement for Bleeding Heart Libertarians to admire. Whether it’s a promising path as a practical political strategy to win free-market votes from the working masses is an issue about which I have no particular expertise. But the idea that crony capitalism is a serious threat and a grave injustice is one that libertarians of all stripes – populist, bleeding heart, and left – can agree. But what about the other elements of libertarian populism? It’s worth noting, I think, what we tend not to see on the libertarian populist agenda. There’s not much talk about among libertarian populists about the war on drugs, the devastation of which has been disproportionately concentrated in black, urban neighborhoods. There’s almost no talk of immigration liberalization, let alone open borders. talk of immigration liberalization, let alone open borders. There’s very little talk of the moral and economic case for free trade, except insofar as protectionist policies constitute another form of corporate welfare for domestic producers. There’s little discussion of the injustice of war. The expense of war to domestic taxpayers, maybe. But, of course, libertarians don’t think killing civilians abroad is wrong only (or even primarily) because it costs us a lot of money. The common theme here, and the worry I have about libertarian populism, is the marginalization or abandonment of one of libertarianism’s most attractive and distinctive elements – its thoroughgoing cosmopolitanism. Libertarians stand out among other political groups for their rejection of nationalism, and for their commitment to the idea that all human beings, no matter where they live or what state claims authority over them, have the same basic moral rights. We believe that it’s wrong for our government to kill an innocent Iraqi just as much (and for just the same reason) as it’s wrong to kill an innocent American. We believe that it’s wrong to coercively prevent A and B from engaging in voluntary, mutually beneficial exchange, regardless of whether A and B live on the same side of a border or on different sides. Libertarian cosmopolitanism is thus the moral foundation for the longstanding libertarian commitment to the (near-sacred) trinity of free trade, free migration, and peace. Libertarian populists have occasionally come down explicitly on the wrong side of some of these issues. Take, for instance, the “libertarian” argument that immigration restrictions are justifiable because immigrants can receive welfare and otherwise contribute to the violation of the libertarian rights of native citizens. And populist movements more generally have been famously hostile to free trade. Remember Pat Buchanan? But while cosmopolitan ideas are sometimes actively shunned, more often than not they are simply pushed to the side – ignored, rather than actively argued against. If, like me, you think those ideas are central to the libertarian vision, you will find this marginalization troubling. Will Wilkinson might be overstating things when he says that right-wing populism in America “has always amounted to white identity politics.” But if the connection isn’t entirely necessary, it isn’t entirely accidental, either. And it is one that libertarians, especially given our recent and recurring troubles on this matter, should take special care to avoid in ourselves, and confront in our comrades. While I’m on the topic, I should say that it seems to me that there’s a good case to be made for identifying William Graham Sumner as the grandfather of libertarian populism. Sumner’s most famous essay, “The Forgotten Man,” which I recently summarized here, is a celebration and defense of the ordinary working American against the threat of big government. Sumner was a fierce critic of socialism, of course, but he viewed rent-seeking and crony capitalism (he used the terms “jobbery” and “plutocracy”) as an even greater threat to honest working men and women. And, like contemporary libertarian populists, he was a fierce critic of the banking system, of ungrounded paper currency, and the evil of inflation. Moreover, Sumner provides an especially good model for contemporary libertarian populists insofar as he unambiguously avoids the pitfall of nationalism into which populists so often fall. Some of Sumner’s greatest essays are those in which he attacked protectionism, or forcefully critiqued American militarism and imperialism. He thus managed to remember the “Forgotten Man” of American politics without simultaneously forgetting everyone else who didn’t fit the populist mold of white, male, and American. In this respect, at least, contemporary libertarian populists would do well to emulate him.

While we all have differing tastes and opinions, one thing we all have in common is that there was time when each and every one of us was a child who wanted nothing more than to play with our toys. Now a new documentary series coming to Netflix will take a look at the history and culture of some of the most popular toys to ever hit shelves. The Toys That Made Us will bring eight episodes to Netflix starting later this week, and the first trailer has been made available online, giving us a glimpse into the series that looks at the influence of Star Wars, Barbie, G.I. Joe and He-Man. The Toys That Made Us Trailer Focusing on the biggest toy brands that have become staples of pop culture, The Toys That Made Us speaks to collectors, historians and more about all of the play things that went from being objects that kept kids busy so adults could have some semblance of sanity to full-fledged collectors items. It’s no coincidence that the toys which have remained popular over the decades are constantly looked to for film franchises, especially after Star Wars changed the merchandising game forever. The toys that permeate pop culture often do so in a variety of ways, going from shelves to TV screens to books to movie theaters, though not always in the same order. Hearing the perspective of collectors, such as Star Wars superfan Steve Sansweet, should help this series be more than just an audio visual Wikipedia article brought to life. These people add a personal touch to the toys that we love, and many of them feel the exact same way we do about the toys we grew up with. Collectors just take that love to a whole new level. This makes me wish that the Travel Channel series The Toy Hunter was still on. It lasted for three seasons, totaling 41 episodes, and followed toy dealer Jordan Hembrough as he visited collections from some of the most popular cities on the East and West Coasts. I wonder if they talked to Hembrough for this documentary series at all. Maybe Netflix should revive The Toy Hunter along with all the other original programming they have at their disposal. In the meantime, we’ll settle for this dive into our childhoods when The Toys That Made Us debuts all eight of its episodes on Netflix this week on December 22, 2017.

If one is missing some provocation in this year’s cinematic landscape, fear not, as Lars von Trier will premiere a new film next year. His serial killer drama The House That Jack Built completed production earlier this year, and now the first still has arrived. Starring Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Bruno Ganz, Riley Keough, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Ed Speleers, and Sofia Grabol, the film spans 12 years and will be split into “five incidents” (aka the murders) and then the “digressions” in between, as Jack attempts to create the “ultimate artwork” in his vocation. ”I don’t find anything especially interesting about serial killers,” Lars von Trier tells Screen Daily. ”It’s more the women. For some strange reason all the women I have been with have been crazy about serial killers. That might have something to do with me. Also I thought I could fool people to go into the cinema. There are so many books and films and TV-shows about serial killers. But still I picked it up – of course I know I can’t do something drastically different but I had fun writing it.” In the first still below, one can see Dillon’s character in a meat locker, where we presume he is up to no good. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT takes place in 1970s USA. We follow the highly intelligent Jack through 5 incidents and are introduced to the murders that define Jack’s development as a serial killer. We experience the story from Jack’s point of view. He views each murder as an artwork in itself, even though his dysfunction gives him problems in the outside world. Despite the fact that the final and inevitable police intervention is drawing ever near (which both provokes and puts pressure on Jack) he is – contrary to all logic – set on taking greater and greater chances. Along the way we experience Jack’s descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts through a recurring conversation with the unknown Verge – a grotesque mixture of sophistry mixed with an almost childlike self-pity and in-depth explanations of, for Jack, dangerous and difficult manoeuvres. The House That Jack Built will premiere in 2018 and will be released by IFC Films.

Heather Azzi first got interested in medical marijuana as a middle-school student in the mid-1990s when she was asked to write an English paper on alternative medicine. The teacher had in mind acupuncture and biofeedback, she said, but herbal remedies were included in the literature. She read enough, she said, to learn that “marijuana never killed anybody.” At approximately the same time, Kevin Sabet was beginning his own personal war on drugs at the University of California, where he said he founded the improbable campus group Citizens for a Drug-Free Berkeley. She’s now political director of a group called Minnesotans for Compassionate Care, based in St. Louis Park, and a major player in crafting — and advocating for — H.F. 1818/S.F 1641, a bill to permit the medical use of marijuana in Minnesota. And he’s now the country’s most indefatigable and vociferous legalization opponent, director of the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida, co-founder (with Patrick Kennedy) of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) and author of “Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marjuana” (2013). They are poles apart on the issues, of course. Here are some capsule summaries of (just a few) their sentiments. Sabet’s remarks are excerpted from a Feb. 13 presentation he gave at the Mall of America to group of about 300 law enforcement officials, treatment providers and health professionals. Azzi’s remarks are excerpted from an interview she granted this week as she prepared for the start of the 2014 state legislative session and another debate over medical marijuana. (They did not argue face-to-face; the construct is my own.) On marijuana as an alternative for people with debilitating and painful conditions. Azzi: The bill that’s been proposed in Minnesota will provide protection for patients suffering from glaucoma, cancer and [nausea from] chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and other debilitating illnesses that cause chronic pain, especially neuropathic pain, which is very resistant to treatment with other available pain medication. … Our patients in Minnesota are actually afraid. They are afraid of losing their property to drug forfeiture laws, which happens commonly, unfortunately. They’re petrified of losing their children, especially those who are administering CBD [cannabidiol, a nonpsychoactive compound found in marijuana used as an anticonvulsant] to their kids. Many are law-and-order types. They have cancer. And their doctor pulls them aside in the hallway and says, “This is something that might help you get along.” [They think to themselves] “I’m a Minnesotan, I’m an American, and I’m not going to break the law.” It’s not right for us to be putting these people into this position. Sabet: How is it compassionate to tell Granny: You know what? You can’t go to the pharmacy, because it’s not there. You can’t talk to your doctor about it, because they don’t know a thing about it. But what I want you to do is go to that strip mall where the pizza shop used to be. You’re going to see a 300-pound bouncer who’s guarding the bulk cash and marijuana product. Don’t worry about him. Go past him, and you’re going to see a doctor or somebody in a white coat, who, for $50 cash, will look at you for two minutes and write down on a Post-it note that you should get marijuana. Then … you’re going to see the 27-year-old kid with no medical experience who’s going to sell you something called Super Silver Haze. Good luck. How is that compassionate? On marijuana as medicine, and the issue of smoking. Azzi: The reason we don’t have more marijuana-based medicines is because the federal government has blocked most researchers from doing the specific types of studies that would be required for licensing, labeling and marketing of marijuana as a drug. It’s basically created a perfect Catch-22: Federal officials will say that marijuana isn’t a medicine because the FDA hasn’t approved it, while making sure that the studies needed for FDA approval never happen. It gets pretty complicated because the National Institute on Drug Abuse [NIDA] actually has control of the only legal supply of marijuana in the country for testing. Both the American Medical Association and American College of Physicians have recommended that the federal government actually consider rescheduling marijuana to facilitate research. The ACP explained that a research expansion had been hindered by a complicated approval process and limited availability of research-grade marijuana. In 2007, one of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s administrative law judges actually ruled that we should allow the private production of marijuana for research because the current supply … was inadequate. The DEA rejected the judge’s ruling. They just can ignore their own judges. … Not only have they hindered private research, but of course the federal government has shown a complete lack of interest in funding trials into marijuana’s efficacy, including into the kind of large-scale clinical trials that they typically do. Sabet: Do we just want people to grow medicines in their back yard and sell them as such? Or have we moved on, I hope, from the late 1800s? We have medicines, I know it sounds crazy, that have labels. We actually know what’s in it. Other people have tested it. And we know what it does to you if you’re taking any other drugs. And, finally, we have a dosage. Call me crazy that we want to have a dosage level for something. You cannot dose raw marijuana. It’s a raw herbal material that varies from batch to batch — I grow it here under this light, it’s going to be different than if I grow it out there under that light. … We don’t want that in our medicines. We want standardization, so that the aspirin I get when I have a headache in Minnesota is the same aspirin I get when I have a headache in Massachusetts. I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think that’s Big Pharma. If it is, sign me up. For the last 30 years, we’ve had a pill that has [synthetic] THC in it. A lot of people don’t like to take it … but it’s available. It was developed during the height of the AIDS epidemic. People were dying of things like AIDS wasting syndrome, Kaposi’s sarcoma – these horrible things that were related to advanced AIDS. Well, by the way, now we have antiretroviral drugs that are allowing people to live with HIV, and we have no such thing as AIDS wasting syndrome anymore. It’s an amazing public health success … But when we didn’t have that [antiretroviral drugs], we developed Marinol. The good news is that we’re also developing other things. Sativex, [a mouth spray] which is not a synthetic — it’s the whole extract that is put in a liquid form — whose active ingredients are THC and CBD. And because it has CBD on a 1 to 1 ratio with THC, it doesn’t get you high. That is helpful for a lot of different reasons. That doesn’t mean that if it got you high it’s not a medication. A lot of medications that help people are intoxicating. But putting CBD together with THC can be very helpful. It’s in late-stage clinical trials here. Azzi: The science is much more complicated than it seems. First of all, smoking or vaporizing marijuana is a much more effective delivery method than pills for many patients, because the drug works instantly, its dosage is easily controlled because it’s got quick effect, and there’s no problem keeping it down since it can’t be vomited back up. …. Sativex is not quite there yet. Worst of all is that it will likely be several years before it will be approved for use in the United States. We have seriously ill patients in Minnesota right now, and they should not have to wait for a potentially less effective drug when marijuana could be helping them now. … Vaporizers, which have been around for several years now, basically heat the marijuana to the point where the chemical compounds are released, and the person is able to inhale those in a vapor form with no smoking involved. From my experience, that is what most patients prefer. However, with a piece of paper and a lighter, especially for patients who don’t have a whole lot of money, it’s very simple … and very cheap to administer, and readily available. Portable vaporizers are becoming more popular as time goes on, but there’s been some delay in research from the federal government in those as well, so I don’t think there is enough research yet on the safety of those systems to preclude smoking. Fortunately, smoking of marijuana does not have many of the problems that smoking of tobacco has. Research has never shown that marijuana increases rates of lung cancer or other cancers usually associated with cigarette smoking. There was a 10-year, 65,000-patient study conducted by Kaiser Permanente in 1997, [which found that] cigarette smokers had much higher rates of cancer of the lung, mouth and throat than nonsmokers. But marijuana smokers who didn’t smoke tobacco had no such increase. Sabet: It goes without saying that smoking anything isn’t a good idea — bronchitis, cough, phlegm production. I will say that the evidence on lung cancer is mixed. Of course, we didn’t have strong evidence for tobacco and lung cancer up until the early 1900s. We may find something later, we may not. … But certainly the evidence is there for the carcinogens that cause cancer. On marijuana and mental health. Azzi: There’s actually no compelling scientific evidence that demonstrates marijuana causes psychosis in an otherwise healthy individual. Overall, the evidence suggests that marijuana can precipitate schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals, but it is unlikely to cause illness in an otherwise normal person. Epidemiological data show that there’s no correlation between rates of marijuana use and rates of psychosis or schizophrenia. For example, countries that have higher rates of marijuana use don’t have higher rates of these illnesses. Research has consistently failed to find a connection between increases in marijuana use and increases in rates of psychosis. As with all medications, the physician needs to consider what is an appropriate medication in light of the individual patient’s situation. And they will suggest avoiding marijuana in a patient with family or personal history of psychosis. Sabet: The reason why a lot of people lately have been talking about marijuana, and the reason why the National Alliance for Mental Illness is very concerned about this, and the National Institute of Mental Health is very concerned about this, is because of the link of today’s high-potency marijuana and mental illness — things like schizophrenia, psychosis, and, to a lesser extent, depression and anxiety. A lot people say, well, maybe people are using this to self-medicate because in the short term at least it makes them feel better. And that might be true. But the issue to me is not so much is it marijuana and then mental illness, or mental illness and then marijuana? It doesn’t really matter because it’s probably both. The issue for me is that marijuana is the common denominator there that exacerbates and makes those problems worse, whether those problems were there before or those problems came after. I’m concerned with what policy makes marijuana more acceptable and used more. And therefore, whether somebody has a predisposition for this or not doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is that it’s making it worse. On marijuana and teens. Azzi: Fortunately, we actually have state-by-state data in 15 of the 20 of the medical marijuana states, so we can follow [more than] just the national trend. Generally, marijuana use has been increasing in recent years, nowhere near where it was in the 1970s, but it has been trending up. But we can’t say that’s related to medical marijuana laws in any way. In 15 of the states with before-and-after data, not one has reported a statistically significant increase in teen marijuana use. In fact 11 of those states have reported decreases. … Researchers believe the reason for that is that it’s a medicine. We teach our children that medical use is different from recreational use. Sabet: One in 10 or 11 who start using marijuana after age 25 will eventually become addicted. For adolescents, we’re talking about 1 in 6 16-year-olds who try marijuana will at some point in their lives become addicted. … Why is it 1 in 6 when you’re an adolescent and 1 in 10 or 11 when you’re an adult? The brain is under construction from age 0 to 28. That means that anything that brain comes in contact with has the power to stick with a person for a very long time. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, like addiction. On diversion. Sabet: All the statistics of every single state done on medical marijuana programs show that the average user of medical marijuana is a 32-year-old white male with a history of drug and alcohol abuse; no history of cancer, HIV, ALS, Crohn’s, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, allodynia — any of the excruciating horrible things, where I think 100 percent of people, including uniformed law enforcement, would say, whatever you need in your last six months of life, you get it. Azzi: We’re always accused of this being some loophole-ridden proposal. The truth is, the proposed law in Minnesota was drafted very carefully to make sure there are no loopholes, real or imagined. … The Minnesota [proposed] program is modeled after the one in New Mexico, for example, where there are no claims of abuse. … Our goal is to put together the most tightly crafted, responsible and effective bill possible, with the end result of protecting suffering patients from the threat of arrest or jail for treating their illness.

We at LWOS are happy to bring you the latest edition of the weekly radio program – Thursday Night Tailgate (TNT). Each week, Chris Mascaro and Angelo Cane bring you insight, stats, analysis and player interviews you won’t find anywhere else! NFL stars open up on Thursday Night Tailgate – after all, they are just regular guys, without network influence. Tune in each week to hear them tell the real stories. This week our guests are NFL stats guru Russell Baxter, former Bengals RB Pete Johnson, former Bills LB Darryl Talley and Falcons CFO Greg Beadles. There are several ways to listen. You can listen directly from LWOS homepage where you can find their player prominently displayed in these articles, updated every Thursday night. The other way is to visit their homepage at ThursdayNightTailgate.com and follow the link to their broadcast at BlogTalkRadio. To learn more about the program, visit them at their home at LastWordOnSports. In the coming weeks we will be adding special features to the page including host bios, pictures and more! You can also visit them at ThursdayNightTailgate.com. Once again, we would like to welcome TNT radio, and hope you enjoy this fantastic program. “I want to congratulate you on your outstanding show. I’m extraordinarily impressed. I’ve been on a lot of shows over the years in various cities but this one is exceptional.” Andy Russell, Former Pittsburgh Steelers LB You can follow Chris and Angelo on Twitter at @CTMascaro and @flstormz and give the official show twitter a follow while you are at it @TNTpodcast

9:02 a.m., March 8 Episcopal School's marketing director releases a statement about why Shane Schumerth was fired The fired Spanish teacher who killed Episcopal School of Jacksonville head Dale Regan on Tuesday brought with him nearly 100 rounds of ammunition for an AK-47 assault rifle he purchased at a Jacksonville gun show early last month, a police source familiar with the investigation said Wednesday. It's unlikely anyone will ever know why Shane Schumerth chose Regan as his only target, shooting her as many as 10 times before killing himself, the source said. Investigators have yet to find a note or other indication as to Schumerth's motive, said the source, who has not been authorized to speak publicly about the case. Victim advocates meeting for a regular session of the Mayor's Victim Assistance Advisory Council on Wednesday got a sense of the dangers posed by the attack when board member Tom Hackney, chief of detectives with the Sheriff's Office, joined in a brief discussion about the shooting. Related: AK-47, like the one used, a 'quite common' product Related: Officials: Nearly impossible to prevent school shootings like Episcopal murder-suicide "It had a very strong potential to be much worse," said Hackney, who gave no details about the case and didn't elaborate. Schumerth's father said his family shares Northeast Florida's grief over the loss. "We are in shock and grieve for the loss of our son, and for the family, friends and acquaintances of Headmaster Dale Regan," Steve Schumerth of Culver, Ind., said in an email. "Our prayers go up for them and the entire Episcopal School family. We are deeply sorry this happened." A steady stream of mourners visited the school's campus, leaving flowers outside the entrance to remember Regan and sharing their grief. Though the campus is closed until March 19, the school was open Wednesday for grief counseling and for meetings between students and teachers. Sean Halloran and Anna Blake, both 15, said the moments together helped as they begin to deal with the shooting, when Schumerth entered the office with the assault rifle in a guitar case and killed Regan, then himself. "I think it helps the teachers, too," Sean said. "Today is bringing the school together." Parents are struggling, too, to figure out how best to guide their kids through the pain and fear. Shefali Vashi, whose daughter is in seventh grade, said the reality of it hasn't set in yet as her daughter laid flowers at the growing memorial. At first, when she got the email from her homeroom teacher about gathering at the school, her daughter didn't want to come back to the building where Regan was killed. But Vashi reminded her that seeing teachers she cares about might make them both feel better. "She's keeping to herself, so I'm trying to keep her talking about it, asking questions," Vashi said. For Jane Goodwin, whose daughter Casey is also in seventh grade, the school's response to the tragedy has reinforced that Episcopal is a good place for Casey. "They kept us updated, and all kinds of faculty have been available to help our kids," Goodwin said. "It is shocking, but I have no reservations about how it was handled." Justin DiFilippo, 15, and his brother Trenton, 12, stopped at the memorial to say a prayer for the woman whose smile they said they'll never forget. Justin was in the gym when the shooting happened, close enough to hear the pop of the gunshots. "She touched so many people, in more ways than you can imagine," he said of Regan. Their father, Tony DiFilippo, said Regan remembered something about each of his sons, including his older son in college, despite having known thousands of students through her career. She attended every single senior night for graduating student athletes, he said, and every hug she gave was meaningful. "She just cannot be replaced," he said. About 75 people gathered at All Saints Episcopal Church on Wednesday night to celebrate Regan's life and pray for the students, faculty and staff of the school many described as "a big family." They hugged each other while seated in the pews during the service and later stood outside in small groups sharing memories of Regan and the school. Ann and Hal Wills said their son and daughter attended the school in the early 1970s. The couple knew Regan but said they also came to the service to show support for the school. "The school is like one of our family," Ann Wills said. "We love the school and all the teachers and students there. It's one big family, our family." Times-Union writer Teresa Stepzinski contributed to this report. kate.howard@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4697 jim.schoettler@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4385

If an ordinary image is worth a thousand words, then this one deserves a tome: a Thai Buddhist monk, fully decked out in saffron robes, reclining on the plush leather seats of a luxury jet, gold-tinted aviator glasses framing the familiar shaved head, and a Louis Vuitton handbag in the seat next to him. That image, pulled from a viral YouTube video last month, is no irreverent hip-hop artist pandering to Buddhist pop culture (and yes, there is such a thing). It is a real Buddhist monk acting really badly. But the story of Luang Pu Nenkham, the 33-year-old monk in that Hobbesian frame, gets even more sordid. Over the past month, Thai authorities have uncovered a vast network of his disciples allegedly involved in everything from drug trafficking to money laundering. Under the cover of Buddhist simplicity, Nenkham has amassed nothing less than an empire. The luxury cars—including a Ferarri and a Rolls-Royce—are only the tip of this golden pagoda. Nenkham’s alleged excesses read like a Silvio Berlusconi charge sheet: as much as US$1-billion in ill-gotten assets, including hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in 41 bank accounts, money in constant circulation (raising suspicions of money laundering), a fleet of Mercedes cars and villas scattered throughout Thailand. For years, he has been city-hopping around the world on luxury helicopters and jets with, according to one pilot, designer handbags stuffed with American dollars. Most disturbing, however, is the sex. This monk has broken his vow of celibacy with abandon, coupling with perhaps dozens of women, including at least one underage girl, with whom he has potentially fathered a child. If that isn’t enough, there is a manslaughter charge under investigation as well, involving a hit and run in which one man died. Nenkham was allegedly driving a Volvo at the time. For Thais, this latest scandal takes an already sensitive issue to an entirely new level. “I just can’t believe this was happening without anyone knowing,” says Sukrit Pradchaphet, a 42-year-old seller of Buddhist icons at Wat Ratchanatdaram, a temple in central Bangkok. “Monks are human, so we expect some of them will give in to worldly desires. But this . . . this is unbelievable.” As shocking as all of this may sound, however, misbehaving monks are nothing new in Thailand. According to the Office of National Buddhism, 300 monks were reprimanded for breaking their vows in 2012, most often for sexual transgressions. But the sheer scale of this latest scandal has taken even the staunchest supporters of the Buddhist institution by surprise. Other cases have caused less of a ripple. Last June, one of Thailand’s most-respected monks, the 61-year-old Phra Ajahn Mitsuo Gavesako, fell in love with one of his disciples. To the astonishment of many Thais, the Japanese-born monk decided to disrobe, marry his love and run off with her back to his native Japan. The gravity of that scandal was hotly contested, with some Thais arguing that Gavesako could be forgiven: he was in love. “I have sympathy for him,” says Pravit Rojanaphruk, a Thai commentator who has written extensively on Southeast Asian Buddhism. “I don’t blame him entirely. Theravada Buddhism, the kind practised in places like Thailand and Burma, is the most orthodox of all the Buddhist strains. If monks were allowed to marry, like they are in Japanese Buddhism for example, this sort of thing would not happen.” For Rojanaphruk, and a growing number of Thais like him, Buddhism in Thailand is failing, unable to cope with a society increasingly under the spell of consumerism and secular ideals. Nenkham is unique in that he got caught. “But there are likely dozens more monks, senior monks like him, who have the same portfolio,” Rojanaphruk says. “Thai Buddhism has lost touch with reality. The rigours and demands of the system, especially on monks, are out of synch with the realities of life. Times are changing.” Certainly the days of forest monasteries and secluded monks devoted to a spiritual life at the expense of physical desire are quickly becoming a thing of an idyllic past. Rapid urbanization is changing the face of societies in southeast Asia, and along with it, how people engage with faith. Rojanaphruk says he remembers the days when his grandmother would wake up before sunrise every morning to prepare food for the alms bowls of monks. “This was the way it was done for thousands of years,” he says. “But who has time for that these days? It’s easier just to give money.” The result, he adds, is a commodification of Buddhism, particularly in Thailand. Monasteries find themselves competing heavily for the wallets of devotees. According to Rojanaphruk, there are now more than 40,000 temples in Thailand, each looking for a competitive edge over its rivals. Nenkham found that edge by convincing devotees that he possessed supernatural powers including the ability to fly, walk on water and speak directly to the gods. He claimed to be one of Lord Buddha’s original followers, reborn to give people a direct line of communication with Buddha himself. And people bought it. “Merit-making has become big business in Thailand,” Rojanaphruk says. “People offer goods and money to monks as a way to gain favour in the next life. I don’t doubt their faith–they believe in what they are doing. So they build lavish temples and statues, not only in the hopes of having their sins forgiven, but also to gain prestige in society. This is contradictory to Buddhist teaching.” But Thailand has become a land of contradictions, a place where orthodox Buddhism coexists alongside a booming sex industry, rampant consumerism and a degree of hedonism that would put most libertines to shame. The capital, Bangkok, writhes with temptation, its streets an emporium of knock-off brand names, sex toys, mobile bars, brothels and massage parlours. Mega-malls loom menacingly over centuries-old monasteries, where monks struggle to shut out the deafening calls to buy and indulge. In such an environment, monks filled with the desire for worldly pleasures is no hard thing to grasp. Many Thais simply smile at the sight of young monks browsing the latest digital gadgets at Pantip Plaza, Bangkok’s computer and mobile-phone hub. The odd monk caught swigging back a shot of Sang Som whisky elicits some finger-wagging, but little else. Sex remains taboo, but Thais appear to be in denial of the extent to which it is happening among monks. At the heart of it all, according to Rajanaphruk, is the monetization of faith. “If people stopped looking for easy ways to buy merit,” he says, “like becoming a monk temporarily–a feature of Thai Buddhism–monkhood would not suffer the way it has. Buddhism is a way of life. You can’t simply purchase your way to nirvana.” As for Nenkham, nirvana now appears a long way off. A fugitive from the law, he has managed to escape to the United States, where his most devoted followers say he will receive sanctuary. That seems unlikely. Unless he can conjure up some of those magical powers he claims to possess, he is destined for a Thai prison.

We are pleased to announce that the Brazilian Court of Appeals for the state of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil’s second highest court tier) recently ruled in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation in the lawsuit brought by Brazilian musician Rosana Fiengo (also known as Rosanah Fienngo). In a previous blog post, we announced that the 6th Civil Court of Jacarepaguá in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ruled in favor of the Wikimedia Foundation in Ms. Fiengo’s lawsuit. Ms. Fiengo went to court to dispute facts in a Portuguese Wikipedia article detailing her career. She claimed that the article’s facts constituted an invasion of her privacy. Wikipedia volunteers had included facts supported by citations that pointed towards interviews that Ms. Fiengo had given to the media in the past. The Civil Court ruled that using information Ms. Fiengo had previously and personally divulged to the media could not now be considered an invasion of privacy. Ms. Fiengo and her legal representatives decided to continue fighting the case, but the Brazilian Court of Appeals for the state of Rio de Janeiro has now affirmed the lower court’s decision. The Appellate Court’s decision sought to balance the right to privacy with the freedom of expression, deciding here that any restrictions on the former set of rights did not outweigh the benefits of preserving the right to free expression. According to the Appellate Court, biography is a form of history, and censoring facts about history is an unpalatable restriction on the freedom of expression. Additionally, the right to privacy for any particular person may vary — it may be more significant or less significant depending on the actions and career choices of the person in question. The courts have established that the public may have a protectable interest in learning about certain personal facts of well-known artists, and those facts in turn may inspire members of the public to read and write about those individuals. As illustrated by this decision, the Brazilian courts weigh the rights of the public to access such information when they balance those rights against individual celebrities’ rights to privacy. The Appellate Court found in favor of Wikimedia based on the importance of the public’s right to access information about public figures. On the additional claim of sharing false information, the Court pointed to footnotes in the original article which acknowledged that some of the information was contested, and the Court went as far as to say that Wikimedia would not be liable and only be responsible for taking down content if the content was found to be false and defamatory. The Brazilian courts thus have upheld the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission by protecting access to information and the free sharing of knowledge. Wikimedia will continue to assert the rights of its community as cases such as this one arise. Jacob Rogers, Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to Tania Liberman, Eloy Rizzo, Daniel Shingai and André Muriel from KLA – Koury Lopes Advogados for their excellent representation in this matter. We would also like to extend special thanks to legal fellow Alex Shahrestani for his assistance in preparing this blog post.

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. DURING THE 736 DAYS beginning May 9, 2010, Harper Reed walked an average of 8,513 steps, reaching a high mark of 26,141 on September 13, 2010, and a low of 110 on April 21 of this year. (His excuse: broken pedometer.) On that day, Reed, age 34.33 as of this writing, sent one tweet, 55 below his average. Reed was traveling from Chicago to Colorado, where he grew up, where he has spent 39.5 percent of his time away from home since 2002, and where, in 1990, he attended his first concert (David Bowie, McNichols Arena, row HH, seat 8). He has read 558 books in three years—roughly 1,350 pages per week at a cost of 4 cents per page. On May 11, 2011, he slept 14.8 hours before waking up at precisely 2:47 p.m. It was a personal best. On his site, where he describes himself as “pretty awesome,” Reed painstakingly tabulates everything from his weight to his exact location. A certifiable hipster with gauged earlobes and an occasionally waxed handlebar mustache that complements his roosterlike crest of red hair, Reed is a veteran of the professional yo-yo circuit, a devotee of death metal, and a cofounder of Jugglers Against Homophobia. As chief technology officer for President Obama’s reelection effort—responsible for building the apps and databases that will power the campaign’s outreach—he and his team of geeks could provide the edge in a race that’s expected to be decided by the narrowest of margins. Much of Reed’s work now is so under wraps that it’s literally code word classified—Obama for America (OFA) uses terms like “Narwhal” and “Dreamcatcher” to describe its high-tech ops. Over the last year and a half at the campaign’s Chicago headquarters, a team of almost 100 data scientists, developers, engineers, analysts, and old-school hackers have been transforming the way politicians acquire data—and what they do with it. They’re building a new kind of Chicago machine, one aimed at processing unprecedented amounts of information and leveraging it to generate money, volunteers, and, ultimately, votes. Reed describes his campaign role as making sure technology is a “force multiplier.” And that’s about as much as he’ll say on the matter. The campaign declined to make Reed available for an interview, or to offer anyone who could so much as comment on the complexity of Reed’s mustache. “Unfortunately, we do not discuss anything that has to do with our digital strategy,” says spokeswoman Katie Hogan. Much of Reed’s work now is so under wraps that it’s literally code word classified—Obama for America (OFA) uses terms like “Narwhal” and “Dreamcatcher” to describe its high-tech ops. So in the spirit of the sweeping data-mining operation he helped build, I set out to learn as much as I could from Reed’s online footprint. IN APRIL 2011, Reed arrived on the sixth floor of 130 East Randolph Street, the nerve center of the Obama campaign, by way of Chicago’s hacker circuit, where he was, by all accounts, a big fucking deal. After studying philosophy and computer science at Iowa’s Cornell College, he moved to the Windy City in 2001 and began spearheading dozens of digital projects of varying degrees of seriousness. WeOwntheSun.com, produced with two other future Obama hires, invited visitors to purchase plots of land on the surface of the sun (a steal at $4.95 per square kilometer). Eventually, he ended up at the online T-shirt retailer Threadless. It was there, in a converted Ravenswood Avenue print shop cluttered with go-karts, taxidermy, video games, and a full-size Airstream camper, that Reed, who rose to become the company’s chief technology officer, displayed the talents the campaign would later find so valuable. Threadless wasn’t the first company to market arty apparel to the Wicker Park set, but its genius lay in its model. Its website functions as a sort of community center, inviting users to submit T-shirt concepts and vote on their favorites. Out of more than a thousand entries each week, a handful are selected. It’s almost impossible for a new T-shirt to flop because the target audience already has declared it a hit. With Reed’s help, Threadless built a mini social network and seeded it with just enough incentives to boost its bottom line. Customers are advised on the precise number of shirts left in stock, prompting impulse buys. Profiles display a user’s level of involvement in real time. (Reed, for example, “has scored 281 submissions, giving an average score of 3.22, helping 10 designs get printed.”) The brilliance of Threadless is that it turned customers into workers, and the work itself into a game. “Before Threadless, I loved users but didn’t trust them,” Reed told an interviewer in 2009, as he was leaving the company. But now he had no doubt: “Users are king.” Reed’s mission: Assemble a data-mining infrastructure that allows the campaign to determine which voters to target and how on a scale that’s never been seen before. That faith in the power of crowdsourcing informed his other ventures. In 2008, Reed hacked the Chicago Transit Authority’s bus tracker app and made its information public. He also began looking for interesting ways to use it. Although he felt the system—for all its creaky “urine-soaked” cars—by and large worked, he wanted to understand what happened when it failed. Reed used the CTA’s data to track every incident, be it a downed power line or a deer on the tracks, and identify trends. Each day’s incidents were scored according to severity (low: 4; high: 90; average: 26). Freeing the data earned him an award from the city and face time with the agency. Another tool, a site called CityPayments.org that aggregated information on government contracts in Chicago, led to an official commendation from the White House. Yet aside from volunteering briefly for the Obama campaign in 2008, Reed had shown little interest in political work. His plan post-Threadless was to take some time to experiment, immerse himself in cloud computing (he’s taken to calling himself a “nepholologist”—a mashup of the term for atmospheric analysts and LOL), and work with other startups. Then Michael Slaby, a veteran of the 2008 campaign who had been appointed chief integration and innovation officer, came calling. When Reed joined OFA, he didn’t just bring his own expertise; he got the band back together. The campaign counts at least five Threadless alums among its Chicago tech staff, including Scott VanDenPlas, a self-described futurist who runs the campaign’s development operations (a hybrid of programming and IT), and Dylan Richard, the campaign’s director of engineering. A sixth Threadless colleague was invited to design the campaign’s online store, which borrows the layout and some of the crowdsourcing ethos from the company. Reed’s mission is simple but ambitious: Assemble a data-mining infrastructure that allows the campaign to determine which voters to target and how to do it on a scale and scope that’s never been seen before. It’s part of a new, data-driven shift in the way campaigns are run. Think of it as the smart campaign. THE USE OF DATA mining as a political tool traces its origins, at least in spirit, to 1897, when, in the aftermath of William Jennings Bryan’s first failed run for the White House, his wife, Mary, and brother, Charles, combed through letters from supporters for relevant personal information. They built a database of 200,000 index cards tracking things like a person’s religion, income, party affiliation, and occupation. It became the basis for the perennial candidate’s lucrative—although never victorious—direct-mail operation. Knowing your audience is at the heart of politics, but in the last decade, this precept has taken on a new dimension. Obama’s first presidential campaign ushered in a new era of data collection and targeting. The operation’s new-media team, which included Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes (now owner and editor in chief of The New Republic), utilized social-media platforms to raise record sums from small donors and organize supporters. If an Iowa college student joined the Students for Barack Obama Facebook group, the campaign could follow up to ask him to knock on doors too. It also began to look for efficiencies in-house. Dan Siroker, who took a leave of absence from Google to work as director of analytics for the campaign, employed A/B testing to figure out which combination of images, text, and videos were most likely to compel BarackObama.com visitors to reach for their credit cards. (Siroker now provides those services to a vast array of commercial and political clients—including Mitt Romney’s campaign and Mother Jones—through his company, Optimizely.) All told, Siroker estimated A/B testing boosted OFA’s fundraising by $100 million, 20 percent of its online haul. But the campaign struggled with integration gaps. When Reed volunteered his services the weekend before Super Tuesday in 2008, he spent most of his time manually entering voter data into spreadsheets. It was important work, but also tedious: Voter information collected online, via the campaign’s social-media platform, couldn’t be easily synced up with data gathered offline, by canvassers. The campaign could collect information by the terabyte—the Obama team, in fact, expanded the Democratic Party’s voter data by a factor of 10, accruing 223 million new pieces of info in the last two months of the campaign alone—but the issue was integrating and accessing it. That meant, for example, that a volunteer using the campaign’s much ballyhooed phone-bank app, which automatically provided volunteers with the names and numbers of voters, might waste precious time talking to a low-priority target. If in 2008 the Obama operation grew expert at unlocking new tools to mine data and target different constituencies, the challenge—and, by most indications, the major advancement—of 2012 has been to tear down the barriers preventing the campaign from taking full advantage of the information it amasses. That’s where Reed and his geek squad come in. Campaigns typically draw on data from five sources. There’s your basic voter file, publicly available information provided by each state, which includes your name, address, and voting record. The party’s file, compiled by partisan organizations like VoteBuilder, includes more detailed information. Did you vote in a caucus? Did you show up at a straw poll? Did you volunteer for a candidate? Did you bring snacks to a grassroots meet-up? Did you talk to a canvasser about cap-and-trade? Contribution data, which the campaign compiles itself, includes both public information that campaigns disclose to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and nonpublic data like the names of small-dollar donors. By the 2000 election, political data firms like Aristotle had begun purchasing consumer data in bulk from companies like Acxiom. Now campaigns didn’t just know you were a pro-choice teacher who once gave $40 to save the endangered Rocky Mountain swamp gnat; they also could have a data firm sort you by what type of magazines you subscribed to and where you bought your T-shirts. The fifth source, the increasingly powerful email lists, track which blasts you respond to, the links you click on, and whether you unsubscribe. In the past, this information has been compartmentalized within various segments of the campaign. It existed in separate databases, powered by different kinds of software that could not communicate with each other. The goal of Project Narwhal was to link all of this data together. Once Reed and his team had integrated the databases, analysts could identify trends and craft sharper messages calibrated to appeal to individual voters. For example, if the campaign knows that a particular voter in northeastern Ohio is a pro-life Catholic union member, it will leave him off email blasts relating to reproductive rights and personalize its pitch by highlighting Obama’s role in the auto bailout—or Romney’s outsourcing past. A ProPublica analysis revealed that a single OFA fundraising email came in no less than 11 different varieties. Similarly, a canvasser in the field will use her smartphone or tablet to access certain personal info about the voters she’s trying to contact, and will also be able to call up tips on what issues to raise and what kind of pitch to make, which is derived from the campaign’s voter analytics. She is then able to enter more information—what worked and what didn’t, which issues resonated—directly into the system. The effect is to transform the historically tactile practice of canvassing into something more empirical. “In terms of just the sheer amount of data that political candidates have on you, I think everyone finds it creepy.” But perhaps nothing has changed the game for political microtargeters more than the ubiquity of social networks. Privacy rules, which vary from site to site, technically render a lot of data inaccessible; Facebook’s terms of use limit the extent to which outside groups can mine the site. But the Obama campaign has found ways around those barriers too. One of the campaign’s most useful innovations in 2008 was to create a social-media platform, My.BarackObama.com, that encouraged its 2 million members to log in with their Facebook accounts. Those who did consented to the campaign’s harvesting some of their Facebook data. Four years later, the campaign has grown even more sophisticated. Visit Dashboard, the 2012 organizing portal that Reed helped develop, and you’re given a never-ending variety of tasks designed to both engage you and learn more about you. If you sign your name to a petition on the site, that’s tracked. If, as you’re prompted to do time and again, you write a paragraph explaining what the campaign means to you, that text can be mined for relevant signifiers (say, support for LGBT equality) and added to your voter profile. “I teach this, and to a T my students use the word ‘creepy,'” says Daniel Kreiss, a professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill whose new book, Taking Our Country Back, focuses on the rise of the Democrats’ digital machine. “In terms of just the sheer amount of data that political candidates have on you, I think everyone finds it creepy.” In practice, the Obama team isn’t doing anything private companies haven’t already been doing for a few years. But the scope of its operation represents a major shift for politics—voters expect to be able to obsessively analyze information about the candidates, not the other way around. For OFA, though, there’s no such thing as TMI. REED REPRESENTS an approach to technology that distinguishes the Obama campaign from its counterpart in Boston. Whereas Romney has outsourced much of his data-focused operations, this time around Team Obama—which has been advised by representatives from Google and Facebook, according to Bloomberg Businessweek—is trying to emulate a start-up atmosphere in hopes of fostering the kind of innovation rarely associated with stuffy political shops. Fewer consultants, more in-house geeks. “[They’ve] taken this sort of data-driven mentality and expanded it across the entire campaign,” says Josh Hendler, the former director of technology at the Democratic National Committee, who’s staying on the sidelines in 2012. Dashboard, for instance, mimics some of the gaming tactics that Threadless pioneered. Volunteers can see their personal statistics updated in real time—money raised, calls attempted, conversations held, one-on-one meetings convened. A scoreboard allows volunteers to see how they stack up against their peers. The campaign, in turn, can use this data to gauge which field offices are hitting their goals and which ones aren’t. As the campaign becomes ever more absorbed in all things digital, its real-world networks have shifted accordingly. One of Reed’s first moves as CTO was to fly with Slaby to San Francisco, where they held an information session for techies at Zeitgeist, a popular Mission District beer garden. In February, OFA unveiled a new satellite technology office in the city’s ultra-wired SoMa neighborhood, the first of a handful of such offices slated to open across the country. Romney’s Boston campaign operation, by contrast, had no software engineers on staff until well after the end of the primary season, according to a Mother Jones analysis of payroll data provided to the FEC. Its forays into the digital world have caught attention mostly for their miscues, like an iPhone app that featured a misspelled “America.” But the campaign has quietly begun tackling the same challenges faced by OFA, only with a twist. Slate‘s Sasha Issenberg reported in July that the campaign had recently hired eggheads from places like Google Analytics and Apple in an attempt to reverse engineer the Obama campaign’s strategy. Hence Team Obama’s shroud of secrecy around its digital ops. It’s ironic that Romney’s 2012 campaign is reduced to such a reactive mode since the former consultant was himself an early convert to the data-centric campaign. When Alex Lundry’s conservative analytics shop, TargetPoint, approached the Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate in 2002 with the idea of using analytics to identify voters, Romney’s Bain confidants were stunned: “You mean they don’t do this in politics?” Lundry signed on this summer to lead Team Romney’s data efforts but, overall, the campaign has favored contracting the work of microtargeting to private firms. The good news for Romney is that it’s never been easier to buy off the rack. As of late June, the Romney campaign had paid $13 million to Targeted Victory, whose cofounder, Zac Moffatt, is also the campaign’s digital director. Moffatt brags that his firm can beam totally different messages to two voters in the same house. That’s 2005 stuff for commercial advertisers, but in the political world it still counts as innovation. At Moffatt’s direction, Romney is placing an emphasis on “off the grid” voters—the roughly 30 percent of voters who Moffatt has determined don’t watch enough live television to be swayed by commercials. It’s a number that will only increase as more and more people consume media on handheld devices or DVR their favorite shows. In 2010, Targeted Victory began employing Lotame, a company that uses cookies to track your online habits—everything from the websites you comment on to the articles you share with friends. To gauge voter sentiment it even crawled Huffington Post comment sections, according to the Wall Street Journal. (Huffington Post says it ended its relationship with Lotame after the incident due to privacy concerns.) Asked about the company’s political operations, a spokesman says, “Lotame has been asked to stop talking about it.”* “If it’s close, you’re absolutely talking about winning and losing the election based on the quality of your data, and the quality of the program.” The line between data mining and cyberstalking is already blurred, especially in the commercial sector. To illustrate their powers, analysts like to point to Target, which used a 25-element “pregnancy prediction score” that guessed online shopper’s due dates. Political campaigns are just catching up, but once they do, their privacy practices may be tougher to control because of the protections afforded to political speech. “Basically we have a new world of information management that has emerged, and it’s a world that may well claim total impunity from regulation,” says Joe Turow, a University of Pennsylvania professor studying voter attitudes toward political data mining. Crunching data can only take a campaign so far. Microtargeting can help candidates squeeze more dollars out of their supporters, and more value out of those dollars; it can’t change the prevailing political environment. Yet in a tight race—and today, presidential elections come down to a handful of percentage points—obsessive intelligence-gathering can provide a critical edge. “If it’s close, you’re absolutely talking about winning and losing the election based on the quality of your data, and the quality of the program,” Hendler says. IN LATE JUNE, as I finished hoovering up the online traces of the man tasked with assembling the president’s data-mining operation, Reed was polishing off book number 558, A.I. Apocalypse. It’s about a high school computer geek who accidentally unleashes an out-of-control AI program that threatens to overwhelm the world. Among technologists, singularity—the idea that technological forces will one day usher in a new form of superintelligence that will forever change civilization—is something of a Holy Grail. It’s a vision of the future with plenty of appeal for someone who, like Reed, owes his career to the power of collective intelligence. His bio on his personal website notes, right after name-checking Threadless, “I am patiently waiting for the singularity.” The rise of the genius machines probably won’t come in 2012. Until then, Harper Reed will have to do. *This paragraph has been revised from its original print version.

@DCComics @FisherPrice #Imaginext Update on Firestorm, Sinestro and Cheetah Figures WAAAAY back in June of 2015 we showed you images of some newly revealed DC Comics Fisher-Price Imaginext figures. All of the figures were posted on the official Imaginext website and almost all of those figures that were reveled were released over the next year… with 3 exceptions: Firestorm and the Sinestro/Cheetah 2-pack. Those figures were never officially released, were eventually removed from the website and we’ve seen dozens of other figures and sets that have been revealed since that time. I have a LOT of folks asking me about those three figures. I get at least one person every week emailing us, or posting in the comments section asking about the future of these figures, so I reached out to the Imaginext team for an update. They were quick with the answer and the word is: I just confirmed with the marketing team that these figures are part our 2-pack figure assortment – product number BBF20. It’s sold at Target and should be on shelves soon/now. A quick look at eBay shows there don’t appear to be any out there yet, but hopefully they will be out this holiday season and Target is the place to look for them! If you find them please let us know! Thanks to the team at Imaginext for answering my questions!

Getty Images By Amanda MacMillan MONDAY, July 25, 2011 (Health.com) — Affluent countries, including the U.S., tend to have higher rates of depression than lower-income nations such as Mexico, a new study from World Health Organization (WHO) researchers suggests. In face-to-face interviews, teams of researchers surveyed nationally representative samples of people in 18 countries on five continents—nearly 90,000 people in all—and assessed their history of depression using a standardized list of nine criteria. In addition to looking at personal characteristics such as age and relationship status, the researchers divided the countries into high- and middle-to-low income groups according to average household earnings. The proportion of people who have ever had an episode of clinical depression in their lifetime is 15% in the high-income nations and 11% in lower-income countries, the study estimates. France (21%) and the United States (19%) had the highest rates, while China (6.5%) and Mexico (8%) had the lowest. It's not clear what accounts for this pattern, says Evelyn Bromet, PhD, the lead author of the study and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stony Brook University, in Stony Brook, N.Y. But she stresses that wealth—and happiness—are relative concepts. Related links: "Wherever you are, there's always people doing better than you," Bromet says. "You'd think that countries that are better-off should have lower rates [of depression], but just because they have a high income doesn't mean there isn't a lot of stress in the environment." Moreover, she adds, the richest countries in the world also tend to have the greatest levels of income inequality, which has been linked to higher rates of depression as well as many other chronic diseases. The income-related trends did not hold for all measures of depression, however. When Bromet and her colleagues looked only at episodes of depression that occurred in the previous year, the rate was nearly identical in higher- and lower-income countries, about 6%. (Here again, though, the U.S. came out close to the top: Its 8% rate was second only to Brazil's 10%.) This may reflect actual differences in depression rates, but it could also be that people in poorer countries are for some reason less likely to recall or relate episodes of depression from their past, the authors say. Comparing depression rates across different countries is inherently challenging, because survey participants may be influenced by cultural norms or their interactions with the interviewer, says Timothy Classen, PhD, an assistant professor of economics at Loyola University Chicago who has studied the link between economics and suicide. "There are significant disparities across countries in terms of the availability and social acceptance of mental health care for depression," says Classen, noting that there tends to be more stigma surrounding depression in a country like Japan than in the U.S. (Classen says this may explain why Japan has a higher suicide rate, even though its depression rates in the study were three to four times lower than those in the U.S.) Next page: Older people fare better in high-income countries Different age groups appeared to fare better than others depending on a country's level of affluence. For instance, older adults in high-income countries generally had lower rates of depression than their younger counterparts, while the trend was reversed in several poorer countries. In a country like the Ukraine, Bromet says, older people "have enormous pressure on them and they don't have enough money to live and take care of grandchildren and health problems. Their lives are extremely difficult relative to older people in this country." Bromet says the study findings can help countries identify their own high-risk populations, whether it's older adults in Ukraine or young divorced women in Japan. "I hope people in these countries will start thinking about social and medical support for these groups in particular, and what they can do to prevent depression in the future," she says. The study, which was published today in the journal BMC Medicine, is part of the WHO's Mental Health Survey Initiative. Government organizations (including the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health), charitable foundations, and pharmaceutical companies across the world have all helped finance the initiative, but the funders played no role in the data collection, analysis, or publication.

Litex Lovech last won the Bulgarian league in 2010-11 Litex Lovech have been expelled from the Bulgarian league after their players walked off the pitch in protest over the referee's decisions in Saturday's match against Levski Sofia. Litex led 1-0 against Levski but their players left the field after a second red card and a penalty against them. Litex have also been fined 20,000 Levs (£7,434). "It was the only possible decision," said Bulgarian Football Union disciplinary chairman Yuri Kuchev. Litex have been one of most successful clubs in Bulgaria over the last two decades, winning four league titles and four domestic cups since 1998. Bulgarian champions Ludogorets, who currently top the Bulgarian A Football Group table, have said they could quit the league after claiming that referees are favouring title rivals, Levski. Levski are set to be handed a 3-0 win for Saturday's abandoned game with Litex, which would draw them level at the top.

The hype train may have already left the station. The Czech defenseman was named the Saginaw Spirit’s MVP. He was fourth in the OHL for defensemen scoring. He was also named the team’s best defensemen after finishing the season with the best plus-minus on the team. It’s an absolutely astounding season and one that should make Wings’ fans very happy. The Wings’ second round pick had 61 points in 59 games which included 47 assists. The amount of defensemen who score above a point per game in the OHL and then make it into the NHL is a very high rate. He is one of many defensemen in the Wings’ pipeline that are showing some real promise. It’ll be compelling to see how he does in the years ahead. As a right-handed defensemen he is a valuable commodity in this organization. Putting him into a position to succeed is a big, big deal. The Spirit missed the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade but a depleted team was able to showcase Hronek. That is a great sight to see. It is important for growth and hopefully seeing increases in scoring will allow his development to take the fast track. Given the Wings’ season they need reinforcements. Bringing them in too early is going to be a tempting proposition. [Stats courtesy of Elite Prospects]

A couple of months ago, Anthony T. Grafton and James Grossman made a "very modest proposal" that wasn't very modest at all. As president and executive director of the American Historical Association, respectively, the two mounted history's official disciplinary pulpit to endorse a new way of looking at graduate education in the field. "Many of these students," the authors wrote, "will not find tenure-track positions teaching history in colleges and universities"—and it's time to stop pretending otherwise. The job market "is what it is." We face no "transient 'crisis,'" but rather "the situation that we have lived with for two generations." That's a refreshing assertion, and an encouraging sign that the graduate-school-industrial complex is beginning to embrace not just the not-so-new economic reality—which has, after all, been apparent for a long time—but also what that reality means for the future of graduate programs. "A Ph.D. in history opens a broad range of doors," wrote Grafton and Grossman, and graduate programs should prepare students for an "array of positions outside the academy." It's not the first time such ideas have hit the open air, but we need to consider who's airing them. This is an important statement for the official leaders of a discipline to make, and a necessary one. Grafton and Grossman's statement has generated plenty of response since it first appeared in October in Perspectives on History. (It was also reprinted in this newspaper, along with a follow-up essay by the authors.) Most of the response centered on outcomes—that is, the implications of the fact that most Ph.D.'s won't become professors, and the authors' call to prepare historians for a range of employment. But Grafton and Grossman made a second, more ambitious exhortation that has been mostly ignored: History professors, they wrote, need to "examine the training we offer. ... If we tell new students that a history Ph.D. opens many doors, we need to broaden the curriculum to ensure that we're telling the truth." Right now, Grafton and Grossman observe, graduate school in history is designed "to produce more professors." If graduate programs embrace the idea that they should aim to produce other kinds of historians as well, it follows that students' training must change. What should graduate teaching look like when it aims to prepare students for a range of careers? That's a welcome question, but it's not an easy one, because we're still inside the box that we want to teach outside of. I'll take up the problem in two parts, this month from the individual faculty member's perspective, and next month on the curricular level (that is, from the point of view of departments and programs). In history (and other disciplines), the idea that graduate students should perforce become professors arose relatively recently, during the postwar expansion of higher education. Thomas Bender, a history professor at New York University and author of the 2004 report of the AHA Committee on Graduate Instruction, wrote to me in an e-mail that "the most immediate issue is to remove the stigma" that graduate students feel if they don't become professors. Bender has been making that point for a while. He wrote in the 2004 AHA report that we must "escape the expectations inherited from that so-called Golden Age" of nearly full employment in the post-Sputnik era. Any movement away from those assumptions must begin with a concerted "refashioning" of what it means to be a professional historian. Advertisement But graduate students aren't the only ones in need of refashioning. "We need different kinds of training ourselves," declares Leora Auslander, a history professor at the University of Chicago. To move students away from thinking about their possible futures in purely professorial terms, Auslander suggests that graduate-seminar leaders "teach from unconventional stuff." She particularly stresses the need to get beyond books to other media, which she has been doing in her courses, but she also admits that teaching to a new set of goals involves "things I can't think about yet." Edward Balleisen, an associate professor of history at Duke University, has been thinking about those things, and in practical terms. His ideas aim to reconceive the boundaries defining discipline and authorship. He suggested in an e-mail that we "imagine interdisciplinary seminars around a given theme," in which history graduate students would work "with grad students from other disciplines, as well as professional students." The very nature of that idea points to its applicability to other disciplines. Its value goes beyond cool-looking seminars to the cultivation of a wider professional ethos. Such courses would allow graduate students to imagine their work outside of the contexts of their own specialties. In fact, the central virtue of the whole approach lies in its endorsement of a move away from the sort of niche specialization that creates scholars whose work is far deeper than it is wide. Balleisen himself will be teaching such an experimental seminar this coming spring with Jonathan Wiener, a Duke Law School professor, on "Regulatory Governance." The course, says Balleisen, will have "readings from sociology, political science, economics, and cognitive psychology, as well as history and law." The work in such seminars challenges the idea of solitary authorship that prevails in the humanities and some of the social sciences. In particular, Balleisen wants graduate students to collaborate on projects: "perhaps a global history syllabus or a Web site of some kind, which would cultivate technical skills as well as historical analysis and innovative presentation," he suggests, "with some consideration of how to reach out to nonscholarly audiences." Michael Elliott, an English professor at Emory University whose scholarly interests encompass public history, anticipated Balleisen's framework in a graduate course on "Historical Tourism" that he taught a few years ago. Elliott departed from the traditional seminar-paper requirement and instead assigned collaborative projects to be performed by student groups on a historical site. "I formed the groups from their stated interests," Elliott recalled in an e-mail, "and allowed them to come up with the format." The results were wide-ranging: "One group produced a Web site on the World of Coke; another produced a curriculum for high-school teachers on using a historical cemetery as a teaching school; a third worked on an article together; another wrote a series of short papers that could have been a conference panel." Such different responses suggest some of the myriad possibilities that can ensue when teachers give creative intellectuals the opportunity to think in new ways. "I enjoyed these projects much more than the usual batch of seminar papers," Elliott said, "and I think the students learned more about research and design that could be transported outside of the academy." Balleisen further suggests that departments create the option of pursuing an outside field that would orient graduate students toward nonacademic careers. He notes that the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke has been considering a "policy history" track as an option not only for its own Ph.D. students, but also for history Ph.D. students. "It would allow them to put together a cluster of courses, some unambiguously involving history, and others involving 'policy' methodologies from economics and other disciplines," said Balleisen, "possibly including some kind of internship experience with a policy institution." I'll have more to say about such possibilities next month. Professors in other fields can, and should, carve out their own versions of the path that history is trying to blast here. The approaches will naturally differ from discipline to discipline. Graduate students in the lab sciences will need little indoctrination in the spirit of collaboration, for example, because their research already works that way, but the problems for those fields may center on how to contour specialized graduate instruction to the needs of overlapping (and thus more general) audiences. One thing is certain: In the words of Auslander, "If we continue to behave like ostriches, we're dead." Forget the idea that "it will be better tomorrow," she says. If there is to be change for the better, professors must be "willing to be influenced." We need to connect the way we teach to what our students will actually be doing with their degrees. I invite readers to send me accounts of their plans and experiments, and I'll keep reporting on them. Teaching, after all, is another of the collaborative arts. Let's start thinking together.

Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus. Beginning in 2011, one of the first Lagniappe Sessions commissioned was Timothy Showalter’s (then nascent) Strand of Oaks with a pair of disparate covers (Michael Hurley and Moby). True to form, Showalter returns with his second session paying tribute to Glasgow’s Primal Scream and Manchester’s Stone Roses…along with a recent discovery of his own, the music of Phish. Showalter, in his own words, below. Strand of Oaks :: Dirt (Phish) I might be the newest Phish fan in the world. I was never exposed to them until this summer. My manager asked me to go to both nights Phish played at Wrigley. Of course! So in anticipation of the show I started listening to a lot of their music and quickly fell in love. Those two nights at Wrigley we’re some of the most genuinely fun times I’ve had in a long time. Just getting to spend time with my manager Ryan, not in any work capacity, us just having fun. And if anyone ever has doubts about Phish, please just go to a concert. Being basically hugged by 30,000 people is hard to combat against. I needed those fans and needed those four wonderful musicians that night. I chose “Dirt” simply because it basically has the same chord structure of an Oaks song (which is good because I don’t know that many). Its also just a beautiful melody. Strand of Oaks :: Damaged (Primal Scream) Screamadelica is easily one of my top five records ever. I dare you to find another record that creates its own utopia more. I’ve listened thousand of times and it’s one my beacons of inspiration. I wanted to do “Damaged” because the lyrics speak so much to how I love my wife. “Stoned in love with you”, – yup, I could never say it better. Bobby Gillespie’s range is really underrated too. I had to stretch to hit some of those notes. I also refused to touch the guitar solo, no way. That is one of the prettiest, perfect selection of notes I’ve ever heard. Pure ecstasy. Strand of Oaks :: Made of Stone (The Stone Roses) This song has lifted me from darkness ever since I was a teenager. When I decided to cover it, I started to do a pretty literal translation of the song. It obviously wasn’t working because those four humans cannot be replicated EVER. Then I picked up my acoustic guitar and added a shit ton of woozy chorus and delay and the song started working. But so different, it quickly become terrible touching and bittersweet. “Sometimes I fantasize…” took on a whole new meaning, thinking about these dark, dark times we are living in. Knowing how much hope and beauty the Madchester scene represented made me long for that in my own life and the world I live in. I want that light to be in all of our lives. Whether through friends, good chemicals, and general love for another, I just want that so, so bad right now. I recorded these songs in the midst of doing a lot of press for my new record, and having a general sense of anxiety how it will be received. So getting to completely blow off emails, texts, and phone calls, in order to get these songs done before tour was a total gift. I’ve spent hundreds of hours at my little desk and broken midi keyboard demoing and writing. I still don’t know how to make shit sound “normal” but I actually embraced that even more with these three songs. It’s weird the only time I’m ever thrilled with my vocals is at my house with my 50 dollar microphone (that’s also broken, I think). It’s a sensitive mic so typically you can hear my cats fighting in the background or my wife walking around. I love being reminded of that. I have no idea how to properly mix and can barely get the right levels, but those human elements that happen when your home surrounded by people and things you love are what I cherish most. I hope everyone enjoys listening to these as much as I had making them. Music made for no other reason than to make music. That’s heaven for me. Peace – Tim Previously: The Lagniappe Sessions :: Strand Of Oaks / Michael Hurley, Moby Lagniappe Sessions Archives / imagery via d norsen

Translated: THE WORLD GOVERNMENT How Silicon Valley controls our future Oh, My! Jeff Jarvis Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 28, 2015 Just 12 hours ago, I posted a brief piece about the continuing Europtechnopanic in Germany and the effort of publishers there to blame their every trouble on Google—even the so-called sin of free content and the price of metaphoric wurst. Now Germany one-ups even itself with the most amazing specimen of Europtechnopanic I have yet seen. The cover of Der Spiegel, the country’s most important news outlet, makes the titans of Silicon Valley look dark, wicked, and, well—I just don’t know how else to say it—all too much like this. This must be Spiegel’s Dystopian Special Issue. Note the additional cover billing: “Michel Houellebecq: ‘Humanism and enlightenment are dead.’” I bought the issue online—you’re welcome—so you can read along with me (and correct my translations, please). The cover story gets right to the point. Inside, the opening headline warns: “Tomorrowland: In Silicon Valley, a new elite doesn’t just want to determine what we consume but how we live. They want to change the world and accept no regulation. Must we stop them?” Ah, yes, German publishers want to regulate Google—and now, watch out, Facebook, Apple, Uber, and Yahoo! (Yahoo?), they’re gunning for you next. Turn the page and the first thing you read is this: “By all accounts, Travis Kalanick, founder and head of Uber, is an asshole.” Oh, my. It continues: “Uber is not the only company with plans for such world conquest. That’s how they all think: Google and Facebook, Apple and Airbnb, all those digital giants and thousands of smaller firms in their neighborhood. Their goal is never the niche but always the whole world. They don’t follow delusional fantasies but have thoroughly realistic goals in sight. It’s all made possible by a Dynamic Duo almost unique in economic history: globalization coupled with digitilization.” Digitalization, you see, is not just a spectre haunting Europe but a dark force overcoming the world. Must it be stopped? We’re merely asking. Spiegel’s editors next fret that “progress will be faster and bigger, like an avalanche:” iPhone, self-driving cars, the world’s knowledge now digital and retrievable, 70% of stock trading controlled by algorithms, commercial drones, artificial intelligence, robots. “Madness but everyday madness,” Spiegel cries. “No longer science fiction.” What all this means is misunderstood, Spiegel says, “above all by politicians,” who must decide whether to stand by as spectators while “others organize a global revolution. Because what is happening is much more than the triumph of new technology, much more than an economic phenomenon. It’s not just about ‘the internet’ or ‘social networks,’ not about intelligence and Edward Snowden and the question of what Google does with data.” It’s not just about newspapers shutting down and jobs lost to software. We are in the path of social change, “which in the end no one can escape.” Distinct from the industrial revolution, this time “digitization doesn’t just change industries but how we think and how we live. Only this time the change is controlled centrally by a few hundred people…. They aren’t stumbling into the future, they are ideologues with a clear agenda…. a high-tech doctrine of salvation.” Nerdnazis. Oh, fuck! The article then takes us on a tour of our new world capital, home to our “new Masters of the Universe,” who—perversely, apparently—are not concerned primarily about money. “Power through money isn’t enough for them.” It examines the roots of their philosophy from the “tradition of radical thinkers such as Noam Chomsky, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Hayek,” leading to a “strange mixture of esoteric hippie-thinking and bare-knuckled capitalism.” Spiegel calls it their Menschheitsbeglückungswerks. I had to ask Twitter WTF that means. Aha. So must we just go along with having this damned happiness shoved down our throats? “Is now the time for regulation before the world is finally dominated by digital monopolies?” Spiegel demands — I mean, merely asks? “Is this the time for democratic societies to defend themselves?” Spiegel then visits four Silicon Valley geniuses: singularity man Ray Kurzweil; the conveniently German Sebastian Thrun, he of the self-driving car and online university; the always-good-for-a-WTF Peter Thiel (who was born in Germany but moved away after a year); and Airbnb’s Joe Gebbia. It recounts German President Joachim Gauck telling Thrun, “you scare me.” And it allows Thrun to respond that it’s the optimists, not the naysayers, who change the world. I feared that these hapless four would be presented as ugly caricatures of the frightening, alien tribe of dark-bearded technopeople. You know what I’m getting at. But I’m relieved to say that’s not the case. What follows all the fear-mongering bluster of the cover story’s start is actual reporting. That is to say, a newsmagazine did what a newsmagazine does: It tops off its journalism with its agenda: frosting on the cupcake. And the agenda here is that of German publishers—some of them, which I explored last night and earlier. They attack Google and enlist politicians to do their bidding with new regulations to disadvantage their big, new, American, technological competitors. And you know what? The German publishers’ strategy is working. German lawmakers passed a new ancillary copyright (nevermind that Google won that round when publishers gave it permission to quote their snippets) and EU politicians are talking not just about creating new copyright and privacy law but even about breaking up Google. The publishers are bringing Google to heel. The company waited far too long to empathize with publishers’ plight—albeit self-induced—and to recognize their political clout (a dangerous combination: desperation and power, as Google now knows). Now see how Matt Brittin, the head of EMEA for Google, drops birds at Europe’s feet like a willing hund, showing all the good that Google does indeed bring them. I have also noted that Google is working on initiatives with European publishers to find mutual benefit and I celebrate that. That is why—ever helpful as I am—I wrote this post about what Google could do for news and this one about what news could do for Google. I see real opportunity for enlightened self-interest to take hold both inside Google and among publishers and for innovation and investment to come to news. But I’m one of those silly and apparently dangerous American optimists. As I’ve often said, the publishers—led by Mathias Döpfner of Axel Springer and Paul-Bernhard Kallen of Burda—are smart. I admire them both. They know what they’re doing, using the power of their presses and thus their political clout to box in even big, powerful Google. It’s a game to them. It’s negotiation. It’s just business. I don’t agree with or much like their message or the tactic. But I get it. Then comes this Scheißebombe from Der Spiegel. It goes far beyond the publishers’ game. It is nothing less than prewar propaganda, trying to stir up a populace against a boogeyman enemy in hopes of goading politicians to action to stop these people. If anyone would know better, you’d think they would. Schade.

GAINESVILLE -- When opposing offenses view films of Florida's defense, Pat Moorer practically leaps off the screen at them. He is a menacing presence, a linebacker with certain star quality. But has anyone else noticed? Does anyone know Moorer is out there every Saturday, making things happen from his inside linebacking position? Even Moorer has wondered. "For some reason I don't get much attention. It's been like this my whole career," said the 6-foot-1, 225-pound senior from Pensacola. "It happened at Escambia High School, and now it's happened here at Florida. "I really don't know what it is. I just go out there and take care of what I'm supposed to take care of. I don't sit around anymore thinking about why I don't get any recognition." For the past three seasons, Moorer has been one of the Gators' steadiest defensive performers. Some of his achievements have almost screamed for attention. But none has come. Moorer joined UF as a walk-on in 1986 and became the first true freshman starter on defense since Alonzo Johnson in 1981. In his first start, against Auburn, he had a team-high 10 tackles. In his second college game, he intercepted a pass from Miami's Vinny Testaverde and returned it 18 yards to set up a UF touchdown. As a sophomore, he finished fifth on the team in tackles despite missing three games with a knee injury, and last year he's was UF's leader in total tackles and solo stops. Through three games this season, he has a team-leading 30 tackles, a sack and two interceptions. But he remains the unknown defender. "I'm not going to worry about it," Moorer said. "If you're thinking about stuff like that, it's going to distract you and make you play bad. I don't want that to happen. This is a real important year for me. "I want to stay around the football at all times and come up with some big plays. It doesn't matter if I get any recognition in the press. Pro scouts aren't going to believe what they read anyway. They're going to believe what they see. I think they'll notice me." Moorer's identity problem in high school can be traced to teammate Emmitt Smith, who led Escambia to back-to-back state titles. At UF, Moorer has found himself surrounded by high-profile defensive players, from Clifford Charlton and Jarvis Williams, to Trace Armstrong and Louis Oliver. While Moorer is relatively unknown, he is not unappreciated by his teammates. "When teams come at us up the middle, you know Pat Moorer is going to be there," strong safety Ephesians Bartley said. "He's someone you don't ever have to worry about." -- Will White, UF's lonesome safety, has returned to the team this week and may play against Mississippi State Saturday. White is the last of five players who had been suspended before the season to be reinstated. "I was very lonely last week," said White, who missed three games for his involvement in a fraternity fight last spring. "I saw Huey Richardson and Tim Paulk get on the bus to go (to the Memphis State game), and I wanted to get on too." -- Emmitt Smith has rushed for a combined 337 yards and five touchdowns against Mississippi State the past two years. But he expects the yards to come grudgingly Saturday night in Tampa Stadium. "I'm not looking for a big game this week," said Smith, who rushed for 182 yards against Memphis State. "I'm looking for a tough, close game. There won't be a lot of long runs." The Bulldogs have allowed 137.7 yards a game rushing, and 284.3 yards a game overall. -- Bartley, who has made the switch from outside linebacker to strong safety, isn't worried about getting beat deep in pass coverage. "The only thing that scares me (about the new position) is dropping the ball," he said. "I don't think I'm going to be able to catch the ball. If I have a chance for an interception, I'm going to try to take the guy's head off instead."

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from the second episode of Game of Thrones's sixth season, "Home."] There's no word yet from the Lannisters, but someone certainly sent Roose Bolton their regards, and then some. In Sunday's episode, "Home," Roose — played by Michael McElhatton, a staple of the show since season two — received the welcome news that his wife Walda had given birth to a baby boy ... and the new heir of Winterfell. Rather than celebrate the news with friends and a smoke, Roose instead received a blade through the chest, wielded by none other than his own legitimized bastard, Ramsay (Iwan Rheon). Moments later, Ramsay claimed his step mother and half-brother as his next victims, feeding them to his ravenous hounds. It's a brutal end for three-quarters of House Bolton, but for Roose, it was a long time coming. Before becoming the narrative heir to the cold and calculating villainy of Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), Roose was an ally of House Stark, riding alongside Robb (Richard Madden) through numerous war campaigns. In the end, Roose delivered the fatal blow at the fabled Red Wedding, figuratively stabbing the King in the North's back by literally stabbing him in the heart. Now, it's Roose who feels the cold blade of death slip between his ribs … but it comes at the expense of Thrones veteran McElhatton's time on the show. Before moving on from Westeros, McElhatton joined The Hollywood Reporter for one last look back at Roose, the nature of and fallout from his death, memories of the Red Wedding, and more. How long is the journey from Castle Black to Winterfell? Because there's a certain red woman on The Wall who would would be very useful for Roose right about now. Oh… (Laughs.) I don't think she really cares about Roose Bolton, does she? I think she's got other things on her mind right now. When did you learn about Roose's demise, and what did you think about the way in which he goes out? I learned just before we filmed last year. I got a call from [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] in early July, and I accepted it graciously. I thought it was a great mirror to one of the most iconic moments of the series, when I killed Robb Stark. Obviously, that was very deliberate on David and Dan's part, to have me killed in that way. I suppose it was quite fitting, really, that that's the way I was to bite the bullet. That's what I love about death on Game of Thrones. Nobody has dying speeches. Nobody has anything like that. Once you're gone, you're gone. You don't always get to send your regards. No, you don't! (Laughs.) You don't always get to send your regards, or anything. You're just gone. That's the way it is. It's shocking and it's over and you're gone. That's the way you hear about people, isn't it? You just hear, "They're gone. They're dead. You'll never see them again." And look, it could have gone either way in that scene, really. A lot of people have been asking why Roose left himself open [to die], but I think until the news that his baby is a boy — it would have all been very different, if the news was a baby girl. I think Ramsay was a little bit quicker, and that it was a spur-of-the-moment decision on Ramsay's part. He was no longer useful to House Bolton, or of any need. He was definitely not going to be Roose's heir at that point. I think there's a flash of fear and madness, and he was deeply shocked with his own actions afterward, really. I think, bizarrely, he did love his father. And I think there was an affection from Roose to Ramsay, too, even if it was rarely shown. I think [Iwan and I] had to find that in the scenes that we had; you can't just play these as one-dimensional characters. We always felt there was something there, but because they were so psychologically damaged, they just didn't show it. Do you believe Roose would have come after Ramsay, given the chance? Yeah. I mean, who knows? It could have been written differently where I turn around, click my fingers, and 10 guards could drag him down and kill him. That could have easily happened, if he hadn't been done in earlier. At the same time, there were many opportunities where Roose sent Ramsay out to fight, and he could have been killed in battle. He wasn't necessarily protecting his own heir. He used Ramsay, and Ramsay proved very useful to House Bolton at the time. He was good on the battlefield. Your death scene is shot in such a way that at first, it's not immediately clear who killed who. There's initially some confusion, because you can easily see either one of these men killing the other in this moment. Yeah, totally. Totally. From my point of view, I think my last line was, "You'll always be my first born." It was in the profile shot, I think. I remember saying it with such warmth and conviction and honesty, really. I really believed that he meant it. At the same time, I could see him turning around and saying, "You are my first born, I do love you, that's why I didn't kill you… but now? You're of no more use to me." That was always one of the much more interesting dynamics of Ramsay and Roose. It was their relationship. They didn't get to show it much. They're not big huggers, obviously. (Laughs.) But there was something more there than just using each other — definitely for Ramsay, anyway. Beyond his feelings toward Ramsay, how much joy is Roose feeling about the birth of his son in this scene? Again, he's not the most sentimental individual. I did smile the minute I got the news. I have tremendous pride, I smile, and then I look to Ramsay, and within that, my playing of that was absolute joy that it's a boy — fantastic that I have an heir to the throne who isn't psychotic, hopefully. But then, it's straight back into Ramsay: "How do you feel about that now? I want you now to bend the knee and congratulate me." So there's that twisted thing going on with Roose. But there's immense pride and joy, as a human being and as a father. But I think it's also pride that it's not a girl. Girls in Westeros aren't of much use to him, because she's not going to sit on the throne, and she's not going to be the head of House Bolton. The primary goal, and I always say this about Tywin Lannister and Roose and all the heads of the houses, is the longevity of the house, above all. Above everything else. That's their rule and role in life. That's what that moment gave us. Speaking of the Lannisters, Roose's most iconic moment on the show — and arguably still the most iconic moment on Game of Thrones to this day — is the Red Wedding. What do you remember about creating that sequence, both in terms of the build-up to the moment, and the actual shoot? I will always remember it, as an actor who has been doing this for a long time, as an amazing week of filming. It was directed by David Nutter, and we rehearsed it like a play, which is very unusual. You normally direct in segments and all of those things. As actors, from the very start with the camera panning up toward us, with me talking to Catelyn (Michele Fairley) smiling, and Walder Frey (David Bradley) talking, right up to the death of Michele, we ran the whole scene. It was all blocked out. That took a day to work out. That was to show the actors and to show the crew what was going to happen. It was a very rare thing [to be] done on film, and a huge advantage. We knew where we were in the story and how it was going to unfold. Each day, David said, "We're going to do it up to this point on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday." It was a tremendous advantage. The last day, of course, is the day that Richard Madden and Michele's characters were killed. They gave it their all. It was very dramatic. It was very, very emotional, and very palpable in the studio. I remember that very clearly. It was particularly emotional for Michele and Richard. I was there for the beginning of it, but then I run away as the battle starts, and slip back in for the very end. But it was quite palpable. You could feel it. You knew it was going to be something very, very special. I remember Alex Graves, one of the directors, saying, "Wait until that scene hits the internet. They're going to go crazy." And they did. (Laughs.) I showed it to some friends who don't watch the show, and it's just a brilliant thing within its own right, even if you know nothing about the show. It's a riveting scene to watch, the way it's shown, and what isn't shown. It was a real honor. I'll never forget doing that particular scene. Who would? What's the final word on Roose, ultimately? What was his story, from beginning to end? I think he was one of the smartest, coldest, pragmatic and political characters in Westeros. I think he was a guy who would stop at nothing to get power. I think that was his ultimate goal — getting House Bolton back on track, and getting Winterfell, and becoming Warden of the North. It's his lack of feeling for anyone else that made him impervious in a way. When you have a child or you love somebody, that's your Achilles' heel on Game of Thrones, because your enemy will find it. They'll use it again you. But Roose would easily dispense with Ramsay, or any of his children. He would just find another one. When you're dealing with somebody like that, it's a pretty formidable opponent, really. I think that was his modus operandi, really, just getting power. The fact that he was always looking over his shoulders. He never rested on his laurels. Roose is a loathsome individual, but he leaves a villainous void in his wake. Do you think viewers will miss him more than they realize? Listen, I certainly hope they do! (Laughs.) I've heard some people saying it's a shame he's gone. They did keep him in the background very much in season two. I think in the books, he's a much more obviously creepy guy. But on the show, he's kept in the background as a loyal bannerman to the Starks, to preserve the shock of the Red Wedding. I hope people do miss him. But I had an amazing time on the show. It was an amazing character to play. He was a joy to play. I had some really fantastic scenes and some great actors to work with. Seeing as he ended your story, how would you like to see Ramsay's story end? Wouldn't it be nice to see him get some of the treatment he's given to other people, really? Maybe tied to a cross and flayed, getting bits of him chopped off. (Laughs.) Seeing as I died after killing someone famous, it's only fitting that the killer dies the way he killed his own victims. That would be good. Follow THR's Game of Thrones coverage for more interviews, news and analysis.

Our heroine meets a mysterious witch who agrees to help her go back to ancient Rome. However the locket's magic effects last for a limited time and she comes back to the 21st century when it expires. Will she be able to solve the mystery of the locket and stay in ancient Rome for good? Will she break and tell her secret when the emperor ties her up in heavy chains and 'interrogates' her in the dungeon? EXCERPT: A feral look flashed through his eyes as they scanned my naked body. He grabbed my wrists and chained them to the big iron rings on the wall. Feeling the cold iron on my skin made me flinch. He squatted down and fettered my ankles to the legs of the table, spreading them wide. His eyes paused at the wetness between my legs. I felt a flush rise to my cheeks at his eyes on me. I could have sworn I felt his warm breath there, just for a moment. My back arched with a powerful jolt of arousal. He grabbed a length of iron chain, ran it over my belly, and attached the links to the lower set of iron links on my sides, keeping the chain tight enough to restrain my movements. I was totally at his mercy now. I should have been scared. And I was. But still, my body ached for him. Caligula took a final look at his finished work and licked his lips. The muscles on his face tensed in a wild, animal way. “You will tell me everything I want to know,” he said, his voice hard as stone. My God, was he going to torture me? He wouldn’t do that. Would he? The stories I'd read about him... When In Rome Vol 2: The Emperor's Dungeon is the second part of an erotic romance serial short stories exploring ancient Rome from the eyes of a twenty first century college girl. Approximately 5000 words.

Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Courtesy: Humphreys County Sheriff's Office Copyright by WJHL - All rights reserved Courtesy: Humphreys County Sheriff's Office WKRN staff - MCEWEN, Tenn. (WKRN) – An elaborate theft ring involving the men who run a K-9 search and rescue group has been busted by authorities in Humphreys County. McEwen police said both men, Blair Trice and Christopher Williams, were arrested after turning themselves in Wednesday morning. Police said the two men, who run the Southeast K-9 Search and Rescue, which has headed efforts in high-profile cases such as the Holly Bobo and Danny Tomlinson cases, are accused of taking big-ticket items from various Walmart stores. They face felony theft charges and have active warrants in several different cities. News 2 learned that Tuesday night, while executing a search warrant in McEwen, officers found the stolen items in several storage sheds and a truck at a home on Long Street. Investigators believe the two were advertising and reselling the goods for profit. The Department of Children's Services reportedly removed children from the home, and authorities are expecting the structure to be condemned. Eight dogs belonging to the men were also taken by Animal Control Tuesday night. Copyright 2015 WKRN. All rights reserved.

Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. Content can be viewed at actual source page: http://youtu.be/FbUAMDIA4Qw Video by Katie Euphrat Audio Leonard Knight began building Salvation Mountain in the early 80s and never stopped. Just more than a year ago, Knight entered a nursing home, raising questions as to what would happen to his creation. We join Knight on a rare visit to his mountain, which has been called a national treasure. On a recent Sunday, a small group gathered at the base of Salvation Mountain in the Imperial Valley desert, two hours east of San Diego. A shade cloth stretched between four poles provided some shelter from the desert sun. Visitors streamed through, pulling out their phones to photograph the candy-colored hillside. The assembled group of locals, friends and fans were waiting for Leonard Knight, the man who built Salvation Mountain. He would arrive shortly for a rare visit. Some hadn't seen him since he moved to a nursing home just more than a year ago. Leonard Knight And His Mountain Salvation Mountain is a burst of color in an otherwise barren landscape. It’s built onto a bluff and is roughly three stories high. The mountain and its outcroppings (hand-built caves) cover an expanse wider than a football field. It’s brightly painted. Almost every color you can imagine is on it, and it’s covered in scripture. Leonard - everyone calls him Leonard - built the mountain to send a message to the world: "God Is Love." Those words are painted on the front of the mountain. Like some other outsider artists, (Rev. Howard Finster comes to mind), Leonard had a conversion experience, after which zeal and a singular focus drove him to create an artwork with evangelical purpose. Leonard had no training as an artist. He learned to make adobe and visitors gave him buckets of paint. Leonard lived at the base of the Salvation Mountain for 30 years, working on it all day, every day. He slept in the back of a truck (also painted and decorated with bible verses) with no electricity. His only income was a modest check from the VA. Word of Salvation Mountain spread. It was featured in Sean Penn’s film “Into the Wild.” It became a tourist attraction, drawing hundreds of visitors a day from all over the world. Visitors run the gamut from hippies to the devout, snowbirds to photographers, and a lot of the just plain curious. Over a year ago, age and the harsh desert climate conspired against Leonard. His health failed him, and he was forced to leave his life’s work. Getting Care Away From The Mountain At 81, Leonard moved to a nursing home in El Cajon. “People are treating me good here,” Leonard explained. “And I’m happy here.” Leonard looks different now. In the desert, he was energetic and full of purpose. His skin was so sun-soaked it looked warm to the touch. He’s paler now. His hair and body are thinner. Leonard has made a difficult transition. He was completely independent at the mountain, where he painted all day and gave tours to visitors. He’s more isolated now, and he has to rely on others. “A lot of nice nurses here are taking care of me. And sometimes when I get grumpy, I sit back and say ‘I don’t have the right to do that. Don’t get grumpy, get happy,’” he said. Dan Westfall is a close friend of Leonard’s. He visits twice a week and coordinates his care. When a collapsed artery meant amputating one of Leonard’s legs, Westfall was the one to tell him. “He asked a couple of questions, very poignant questions. Then he thought about it for 10 seconds and said, ‘Ok, I guess that’s what we got to do.’” Westfall laughed, still awed. “He just accepted it. That’s Leonard’s gift.” Leonard now gets around in a wheelchair. Westfall first met Leonard in 2008, when he drove out to Salvation Mountain on his motorcycle. “It was the purest ministry I’d ever seen,” Westfall recalled. “He didn’t have a 401K or a crystal cathedral. He had nothing, but he was happy.” Salvation Mountain has been called a national treasure by Senator Barbara Boxer and it’s been designated a National Folk Art Site. When asked about his creation, Leonard won’t take much credit, but his sense of humor comes through. “I just cleaned it up a little bit,” he claimed. Preserving The Mountain For The Future When Leonard left Salvation Mountain, many wondered about its future. The mountain requires a lot of upkeep - Leonard was always adding to it, patching and repainting it. Plus, his constant presence kept vandals from nearby Niland and Slab City away. Westfall helped organize a board of directors. They are working to preserve the mountain. They received non-profit status and now hire caretakers to live and work at the mountain for a small stipend. Whitney Davie and Dave Slothower are the current caretakers. They came down from Eugene, Oregon at the beginning of May, leaving their jobs in a bakery. They’re setting up a newly acquired, onsite trailer where future caretakers will live. “We have electricity and just yesterday they moved the solar panels onto the top of the trailer,” Slothower said. They have wireless internet and will soon have running water. There’s an outhouse out back. “It’s a pretty nice outhouse by Slab City standards,” said Slothower, referring to the off-the-grid community of renegade desert dwellers living just down the road. During the winter months, Slab City's population grows as snowbirds park their trailers on the old military slabs of concrete that give the community its name. Slab City’s motto is “the last free place on earth.” Slothower and Davie are leaving Salvation Mountain at the end of the month. They may come back in the fall or winter to work again. Another caretaker has agreed to come out for the hot summer months. Returning Home Dan Westfall drove Leonard the two hours east to Salvation Mountain for a day-long visit. Leonard’s only been back twice over the last year and a half, so the trip was a big deal for Leonard and those assembled at the mountain's base. Just weeks prior, Leonard had cataract surgery on both eyes. He confessed he hadn’t really seen his mountain in 10 years. When the car pulled up, you could barely see Leonard over the dashboard. But you could see his hat: a large baseball cap bearing his motto "God is Love." Out of the car and on familiar ground, Leonard beamed. There were shouts of “hello” and “welcome home.” Westfall wheeled Leonard over to a good spot. “Take a look at your mountain,” he said. As visitors came up to say hello, Leonard recognized a familiar face. Builder Bill lives just down the road in Slab City and has helped Leonard work on the mountain for over 20 years. Builder Bill was his CB handle when, before cell phones, Slab City residents used walkie-talkies to communicate. Leonard told his old friend: “I’m glad you came by and I’m glad you’re still working on the mountain.” Over the years, many tourists have taken Leonard’s picture in front of Salvation Mountain. He always gave his signature two thumbs up, a gesture he hasn’t forgotten when the cameras come out. Leonard also got to do what he loves best: share his message with the strangers who come to see the mountain. A young man in a tie-dye shirt knelt next to Leonard’s wheelchair. “There are thousands of people just loving God and keeping it simple,” Leonard told him. “Let’s not get complicated with love. Big statement, isn’t it?” As the hours passed, it wouldn't be long before Leonard would have to leave the mountain and return to the nursing home where he gets the care his aging body needs. But for the moment, he was inspired. “Maybe because of this and all this love, I’ll start another mountain.” To view PDF documents, Download Acrobat Reader.

Several hundred Libyan army cadets will be sent home from a Cambridgeshire barracks within days – ending a scheme intended to train 2,000 troops to bring security to the north African state – after sexual offences were committed in the area. Two Libyan cadets who had left Bassingbourn barracks pleaded guilty last week to sexual assault and a third was charged with the same offence. Two others, Moktar Ali Saad Mahmoud, 33, and Ibrahim Abogutila, 22, were charged with raping a man in a Cambridge park on 26 October and were remanded in custody on Tuesday. So serious is the disorder that police are conducting frequent patrols around the Bassingbourn base as residents of the nearby village fear more “escapes” and attacks. The base has been reinforced with further troops from 2 Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers, who were drafted in “to bolster security and reassure the local population” according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The Libyan training scheme has been beset with problems since it began in June and the MoD has admitted that 90 recruits – almost a third of the 325 who were carefully selected to take part in the programme – have withdrawn. About 20 recruits are reported to have claimed asylum in the UK, although the Home Office and the MoD refused to either confirm or deny this. The former Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley, who is MP for the area, said the security problems represented a serious failure by the MoD, which must be held accountable. “A lot of constituents and I are very unhappy that a decision was made that trainees could go off the base unescorted,” said Lansley. “When did it happen and who made those decisions? I feel very disappointed. The consequences are serious and the MoD has to account for that.” Labour said the scheme had collapsed in “scandal and disarray”. Local residents have demanded to know why the MoD did not act earlier to stop the Libyans leaving the barracks when problems had already been reported. One family told how they had to call out the army after finding one Libyan in their driveway and another hiding under their car three days before the alleged attacks in Cambridge. The MoD said the majority of recruits had been making good progress but confirmed the repatriation of the Libyan troops would take place following the disciplinary problems. Lansley said he understood one in 10 of the recruits “were not accepting the discipline and weren’t accepting what they were asked to do and were not becoming part of a military force”. Last week, the Libyan cadets Ibrahim Naji el-Maarfi, 20, and Mohammed Abdalsalam, 27, appeared before Cambridge magistrates court where they admitted two counts of sexual assault. El-Maarfi faces two counts of sexual assault and one count of exposure. Abdalsalam faces charges including sexual assault. Khaled el-Azibi, 18, has also been charged with three counts of sexual assault but has yet to enter a plea. “It felt like it was going wrong a few weeks ago,” said Lansley. “They [the MoD] were probably aware that some trainees were not adhering to discipline from an early stage and I wonder why [they had] not at a much earlier stage recognised that and taken a proportion of the trainees out and repatriated them much earlier.” Peter Robinson, the chairman of Bassingbourn parish council, said: “The main problem has been escapees and the fear that has caused. I have had ladies tell me they don’t want to walk their dogs any more. There have been people who have come out of their house and have discovered Libyans hiding under their car, and it doesn’t give someone the feeling of safety and, following the allegations of what happened in Cambridge, it has made fears all the worse.” He said he spoke for many local residents when he reacted “with joy” to the news the troops were leaving. Colonel Ali el-Karom, the military attache at the Libyan embassy in London, apologised for the bad behaviour and said Libya was “very disappointed that a few people have made stupid choices”. He said tensions between recruits who supported different factions in Libya were behind some of the problems. “When this particular conflict has died down, we will still need the training from the MoD in order to make our country strong and secure,” he said. “I hope that what has happened at Bassingbourn will not lead to a loss of trust between us and the MoD and that our two countries will continue to work together.” The MoD confirmed that some recruits had left over disciplinary and behavioural issues, while others returned home for personal and medical reasons. A spokesman insisted the group was carefully chosen after undergoing immigration, security and medical checks and that the majority responded positively. “As part of our ongoing support for the Libyan government we will review how best to train Libyan security forces – including whether training further tranches of recruits in the UK is the best way forward,” he said. “The majority of recruits have responded positively to training, despite ongoing political uncertainty in Libya, but there have been disciplinary issues. “Training was initially expected to last until the end of November but we have agreed with the Libyan government that it is best for all involved to bring forward the training completion date. The recruits will be returning to Libya in the coming days.” Ian Lucas, the shadow defence minister, said: “Having been significantly delayed in the first instance, the UK-based training programme has now collapsed in disarray and scandal and there are no plans to continue it elsewhere. “The defence secretary needs to explain how this has gone so badly wrong and urgently clarify the government’s strategy for helping to build a safe and stable Libya, including whether or not training Libyan soldiers is part of it. Andrew Lansley said: ‘A lot of constituents and I are very unhappy that a decision was made that trainees could go off the base unescorted. When did it happen and who made those decisions?’

Richard Allan Peterson[1] (September 12, 1946 – October 12, 2009)[2] known as Dickie Peterson was an American musician, best known as the bassist and lead singer for Blue Cheer. He also recorded two solo albums: Child of the Darkness and Tramp. Biography [ edit ] Born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Peterson played bass from the age of thirteen onward, and knew at the age of eight that he wanted to become a professional musician. He came from a musical family: his father played trombone, his mother played piano and his brother, Jerry Peterson, initially played flute. Drums were Peterson's first instrument. Peterson spent much of his youth in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, the twin city to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where he was born.[3][4] He attended Grand Forks Central High School from grade 10 through grade 12.[5] His parents died when he was young, resulting in him living with his aunt and uncle on a farm in North Dakota, for part of his youth.[4] Peterson cited Otis Redding as a significant influence.[6] He credited his brother, the late Jerry Peterson,[7] as being his lifelong musical influence.[8] Jerry was one of the lead guitarists in the initial lineup of Blue Cheer (the other being Leigh Stephens) and played with various formations of the band in later years.[9] Peterson spent much of the past two decades preceding his death based in Germany, playing with Blue Cheer and other groups on occasion. In 1998 and 1999, he played various dates in Germany with the Hank Davison Band and as an acoustic duo with Hank Davison under the name "Dos Hombres."[10] He appeared on the album, Hank Davison and Friends - Real Live. In 2001 and 2002, Peterson played, principally in Germany, with Mother Ocean, a group he formed that included former Blue Cheer guitarist Tony Rainier, as well as brother Jerry Peterson.[11] Throughout his life, Peterson's relationship to music had been all-consuming. Peterson provided the following self-description: "I've been married twice, I’ve had numerous girlfriends, and they’ll all tell you that if I’m not playing music I am an animal to live with. ...Music is a place where I get to deal with a lot of my emotion and displaced energy. I always only wanted to play music, and that’s all I still want to do."[8] In his early life Peterson was a user of various drugs and was a heroin addict for a number of years. In 2007, Peterson said he believed LSD and other similar drugs can have positive effects, but that he and other members of Blue Cheer "took it over the top".[12] He had ceased much of his drug use by the mid-1970s, and stopped drinking ten years before his death.[13] Blue Cheer has been considered a pioneering band in many genres. Peterson did not consider that the band belonged to any particular genre: "People keep trying to say that we’re heavy metal or grunge or punk, or we’re this or that. The reality is, we’re just a power trio, and we play ultra blues, and it’s rock ‘n roll. It’s really simple what we do."[8] On October 12, 2009, Peterson died[2] in Erkelenz, Germany at the age of 63 from liver cancer, after prostate cancer spread throughout his body.[12][14] He was survived by his second wife,[15] his former wife,[16] a daughter from his first marriage,[17] and a six-year-old grandson.[1][14][18][19] Peterson was cremated and his ashes given to his daughter, Corrina. Peterson wished his ashes to be spread in the Rhine River in Germany and in the Redwoods of Northern California, at a site to be determined by his daughter.[20] Neil Peart, the drummer for Rush, said in tribute to Peterson: Dickie Peterson was present at the creation — stood at the roaring heart of the creation, a primal scream through wild hair, bass hung low, in an aural apocalypse of defiant energy. His music left deafening echoes in a thousand other bands in the following decades, thrilling some, angering others, and disturbing everything — like art is supposed to do.[21] Discography [ edit ] 1998: Child of the Darkness Captain Trip Records; released only in Japan Captain Trip Records; released only in Japan 1999: Tramp Captain Trip Records; released only in Japan

Marcus Aurelius was a truly remarkable man. The former ruler of Rome, considered the last of the Five Good Emperors, was also a devout student of the philosophy of Stoicism. During his rule, Aurelius found the time to construct a series of autobiographical writings, now known as the Meditations. In these writings, the Roman Emperor offered a number of key insights on how to live a happy life. So, without further ado, here are 5 of the most important insights from the writings of Marcus Aurelius. Lesson One: Appreciate the shortness of life “There is a limit to the time assigned to you and if you don’t use it to free yourself, it will be gone and will never return.” Human beings can only exist for a tiny fragment of time and occupy an insignificant speck of dust on earth. We may get to live on this tiny speck of dust for 70 or 80 years, if we’re lucky. Time is surely one of our most precious resources, yet we often waste it. When it comes to spending our hard earned money, we are frugal. But, when it comes to our time, we simply let it get away. We play video games, mindlessly surf the internet or worry about problems which, in the grand scheme of things, are not really problems at all. We can always earn more money, but we can never buy more time. The key lesson from Marcus Aurelius here is we should learn to appreciate just how little time we have and to start living our lives today. We often tell ourselves that tomorrow will be the day we start exercising. Tomorrow will be the day we apply for that job. Tomorrow will be the day we start writing that book. In the English language, tomorrow is one of the most dangerous words. Stop living for tomorrow and start living for today. Lesson Two: Stop seeking the praise of other people “It doesn’t matter how good a life you’ve led. There’ll still be people standing around the bed who will welcome the sad event.” If there is one important lesson I wish to have learned earlier in life, it is that there will always be people who dislike you. There are 7 billion people on this planet and to try and live a life that pleases every single one of them is utter madness. Learn to understand that if someone dislikes you, it’s not because you’re not a funny or kind or clever person. There are going to be people who disapprove of you no matter what you do or say, so you may as well live your life as authentically as you can. If you’re a massive Star Wars geek, then embrace that. If you disagree with someone’s political opinion, don’t pretend otherwise. Or if your friends make a comment you find hurtful, let them know. In the words of the French Novelist, Andre Gide, “It’s better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” Lesson Three: Negative emotions are a result of negative thinking “Your ability to control your thoughts—treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions—false to your nature, and that of all rational beings.” The negative emotions we experience are often just the result of how we interpret things. Let’s take the example of two friends, Jack and Jill, who are both invited to a mutual friend’s birthday party. Jack, a very extroverted individual, is excited at the prospect of attending such a party. He views it as a great opportunity to meet a bunch of new people. Jill, on the other hand, is filled with anxiety and dread. She doesn’t know anyone there and fears that she will have nobody to talk to. This is a great example of how two people can have very different reactions to an identical situation. This element of stoic philosophy was so influential that it now remains a core focus of modern day Cognitive-Behavioral-Therapy. We should learn to understand that the anxiety, worry or anger we experience is not a result of our environment. Those things happen because of our way of thinking. Because of that, we have the ability to empower ourselves and take back control of our emotions. See Also: How To Control Negative Thoughts: A Practical Approach On How To Suffer Less Lesson Four: Focus only on what you have control over and ignore the rest “The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That’s all you need to know. Nothing more.” There are only two things in this life we have control over: our thoughts and actions. That’s it. The rest is out of our hands. But, how often in life do we waste time and effort, complaining about things in which we simply have no influence over? Emotions, such as anger, are not always useless. Sometimes, they motivate us to take action in times of injustice. However, there are many occasions where such emotions simply serve no purpose. Take traffic, for example. You can shout, swear and beep your horn as much as you like or you can relax and listen to the radio. Either way, you’re stuck in the traffic jam and there’s nothing you can do about it. The next time you feel frustrated or angry at some situation or comment somebody made, ask yourself, “Is this anger useful? Does it serve a purpose?” You can’t control other people. You can’t control what they say, do or think. So, stop paying so much attention to others and simply focus on your own life. See Also: Changing Perceptions: Understanding What We Can Control In Life Lesson Five: Seek to build your own character “The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates.” We live in a materialistic culture. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements telling us about the latest gadgets we need to own. The media constantly exposes us to the lives of the rich and famous. We’re sold credit cards so we can order whatever we want from Amazon Prime, spending our money before we’ve even earned it. We’ve been led to believe that happiness lies in material things, like getting a big house with a pool or a luxury Mercedes on the driveway. When we seek happiness in the form of material possessions, we will never find joy. There is always something else to want- a bigger house, a faster car, more money in the bank account. Furthermore, when we seek fulfillment in the form of physical things, we place our happiness in the hands of others. I think Aurelius puts this best: “If you can’t stop prizing a lot of other things? Then you’ll never be free—free, independent, imperturbable. Because you’ll always be envious and jealous, afraid that people might come and take it all away from you. “ The point is that no material thing ever really belongs to us. Everything can be taken away. If we define ourselves by how many bedrooms our houses have, what happens if we lose the house? I think the key point Aurelius is making is that rather than seeking material wealth in life, we should learn to build our character. We should seek to become kind, honest and hard-working people. We should educate ourselves and learn to treat others with respect. After all, our house can burn down, somebody may steal our car and our business may fail at some point. The one thing that can never be taken away from us? Our character. Like this Article? Subscribe to Our Feed!

Since it first crashed through movie theater skylights 20 years ago, Batman & Robin has earned the dubious dishonor of being called the worst superhero movie of all time. Not even lovingly sculpted rubber chest plates could protect the franchise from overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and viewers. The superhero franchise received a deadly poisoned kiss on June 20, 1997, but now that 20 years have passed and the superhero genre is alive and dominating the box office, is Batman & Robin still that bad? Holy hockey sticks, Batman, it is that bad. I love loving things. I love loving weird things. I love loving bad things. Batman & Robin is weird and bad and very hard to love. I’m not here to be a stuck-up superhero stickler. I love funny superheroes. Give me Adam West over Christian Bale or Ben Affleck, please! And I can see that director Joel Schumacher was going for a Batman ’66 vibe with B&R. The film is all Dutch angles, cavernous spaces, and corny jokes. The problem is, though, the film is all camp with no heart–and you can’t have camp without heart. The actors perform as if they were tricked into playing out Schumacher’s rubberiest fantasies, and the movie shifts from being downright bizarre to being painfully overwrought. Watching Batman & Robin 20 years later, having both Ben Affleck’s gravel-voiced killing machine and Adam West’s stalwart boy scout fresh in my mind, was a truly unsettling experience. If you think there’s no possible way Batman & Robin could be as insane as you remember, I’m here to tell you that it’s actually even more insane than you remember. Start up a digital copy of Batman & Robin today and you’ll find that the movie wastes no time letting you know what it’s all about: The very first shots of the movie are of Bat-Nips and Bat-Butts and Batt-Bulges. Both Batman (a noticeably upset George Clooney) and Robin (a whiny Chris O’Donnell) immediately get rubbery T&A shots. We see two codpieces in this movie before we see a single face. I get that superheroes are inherently sexy; that’s a driving force behind today’s epic Chris debate. But in this movie? It’s weird because Schumacher’s movie, Bat-Dongs aside, is a live-action cartoon. It literally uses cartoon sound effects multiple times. This is a family superhero movie, one where kids get very familiar with what Batman’s butt looks like. If you don’t think this movie was made with kids in mind, need I remind you that Batman slides down a dinosaur’s back Fred Flintstone-style in the opening scene? Absolutely no one in 1997 was asking for the Batman movies to reboot the campy brilliance of Batman ’66. After comic book writer/artist Frank Miller’s one-two punch of Year One and The Dark Knight Returns in the ’80s, fans expected the Dark Knight to be dark. Tim Burton cemented that idea with his 1989 film, a film that proved a superhero movie could be a serious affair (while also being its own unique brand of morose camp). Instead of giving fans what they wanted, Schumacher returned to the very thing 1989’s Batman was created to replace. And instead of having Batman ’66’s colorfully campy aesthetic, Batman & Robin looks like a music video from U2’s Pop era. Nothing makes me appreciate the late Adam West more than George Clooney’s one-foot-out-the-Batcave Bruce Wayne. Batman & Robin feels like a movie that happened to George Clooney. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more suave and charming leading man, but Clooney mumbles and nails exactly zero jokes. The image above is Clooney’s face after delivering a zinger, BTW. I’m with ya, George. With a zombie George under the cowl, Batman & Robin resorts to more and more ludicrous bat-gadgets as a substitute for a personality. We get a teeny Bat-iPhone, Bat-ice-skates, a Bat-Zamboni, and… a Bat-Credit-Card. It’s good thru “forever.” Get it? Because Batman Forever? At least the credit card sells jokes better than Clooney! Unlike Clooney, Chris O’Donnell–the original superhero Chris, thank you very much–gives his Robin a ton of personality. That personality can be summed up with one screengrab: Dick lives up to his namesake every time he’s on screen. He’s either posturing like a pick-up artist protege or whining about family; when Bruce Wayne declares Alicia Silverstone’s Barbara Wilson a member of their family, Dick manages to do both. Robin gets one kinda cool moment in the film, when he rips off his lips. Along with everything from his eyebrows to his pinky toes, Robin’s lips are also encased in rubber–so they can withstand one of Poison Ivy’s deadly kisses! Maybe Batman and Robin don’t seem cool in this movie because they’re up against the coolest villain of all time: Mr. Freeze! I apologize for that pun, but it’s definitely not worse than the ones Arnold Schwarzenegger drops. The Batman ’66 villains were all about puns, themed henchmen, and branded weaponry. Batman’s DNA is equal parts puns and pearls. Batman & Robin flubbed the pun portion by casting Arnold Schwarzenegger, a guy known for his thick Austrian accent. Schwarzenegger can use his accent for comic effect, like when he says normal lines like “I’ll be back” or “it’s not a tumor.” Having him spit out horrible puns is just a hat on a hat. Still, the Freeze-inator is the most entertaining character to watch, whether he’s conducting his a chorus of henchmen… …watching his wedding video in what looks like a sub-zero Sears… …impersonating a refrigerated Hannibal Lecter… …or crying ice. And because of Mr. Freeze, Batman & Robin could get credit for creating the Women in Refrigerators trope two years before that term was coined–because it features a fridged female character that’s actually kept in a literal refrigerator. Batman & Robin stood apart from nearly every other superhero movie at the time for featuring both a female supervillain and a female superhero. Of course this is Batman & Robin so they’re…well, they’re just as wild as all the other characters. Uma Thurman chews scenery as Poison Ivy, a character whose powers include poison kisses and the stamina to perform monologue after monologue. How did she get her powers? Originally a mousy and anxious botanist, Dr. Pamela Isley was pushed into a shelf stocked with poison and thus gifted the proportional sex appeal of a plant. See? She’s just as sexy as any plant! When Poison Ivy isn’t monologuing, she’s busy blowing pheromone dust in everyone’s face. For her big villainous debut, Ivy crashes an appropriately jungle-themed charity auction while wearing a giant pink gorilla costume. As she slips out of the foam muscle and fake fur, Joel Schumacher reminds us once again what he’s all about. This movie has as many nipple shots as Batman has batarangs. Not to be outdone, Poison Ivy then saunters over to Batman and Robin and proves that she can pun it up with the big boys–of course, her puns are way more suggestive than Mr. Freeze’s. Remember, plants are sexy! By Poison Ivy’s side is the muscular brute Bane, a far cry from Tom Hardy’s muffled and jacked British dandy. This monosyllabic Bane does little more than grunt, push down walls, and sport a jaunty fedora. Twice. Bane doesn’t do much, but Bane does it in style. On the good guy side, Batman & Robin marks the only big screen appearance of Batgirl. Alicia Silverstone’s Barbara was changed from being Commissioner Gordon’s daughter to Alfred’s niece, a move that actually makes sense considering how small a role the commissioner played in this iteration of the Bat-franchise. Still, Batgirl’s part of the film’s most baffling plot: Alfred’s impending death! Yes, a movie with dinosaur surfing and pink gorilla nipples also includes ruminations on mortality. Instead of being a full-on madcap romp like Batman ’66, this movie gets tripped up on dumb dramatic moments as Bruce Wayne struggles with the impending demise of his father figure. Barbara arrives in time to witness Alfred’s mad search for his long lost brother Wilfred, an international butler. This plot gives us a truly priceless moment: But Barbara isn’t just a stuffy English schoolgirl. For one thing, she doesn’t have even the slightest trace of an accent. She also has a dirty secret: she competes in late night motorcycle races against Clockwork Orange characters and what I can only describe as Juggalo drag queens. Those races are, of course, overseen by Coolio. And no, Coolio does not have a song on the Batman & Robin soundtrack. Jewel, however, does. Eventually, Barbara stumbles across the CD-ROM of secrets Alfred was hoping to send to Wilfred. The CD-ROM contained every bit of information about Batman and Robin, as well as an artificial intelligence version of Alfred. Assuming that Barbara would also want to fight crime, Alfred went on ahead and designed a Batsuit for her too. That leads us to the most upsetting part of this film: What the hell, Alfred? She’s your niece! In the final showdown with the united Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, Batgirl jumps into the fray at just the right time, saving Batman and Robin and tossing out a snarky superhero one-liner. Batgirl, you’re a pro already! Of course Batman, being a total drip, asks why Batgirl didn’t pick something more politically correct like “Batwoman” or “Batperson.” Hey Batman–you let your 80-year-old butler dress you up in fetish gear. Maybe don’t judge other people’s choices? The Terrific Trio fights to stop Mr. Freeze’s plan to turn a giant, crystal-powered telescope into a freezing ray. Of course before they move from the Poison Ivy level to the Mr. Freeze level, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl all stop off somewhere to change into cool black and silver versions of their costumes. Seriously, did Alfred design all three of those? Alfred has a life, y’all, and I’d much rather watch Alfred’s octogenarian Project Runway adventures than anything else in Batman & Robin. With their dope new nipple suits, the three of them defrost Gotham City and get the key to curing Alfred (which was coincidentally located in Mr. Freeze’s cryo-armor all along!). So… crazy, right? This movie is exhausting. I genuinely love campy superheroics and ridiculous action, but I now know that I only like it when the actors are actually up to the challenge and the fun isn’t diluted with long monologues and dreary death talk. Batman & Robin is every bit as insane as you remember it being. Bane wears a fedora. Poison Ivy sexes up a monkey suit. Batgirl says the line “suit me up, Uncle Alfred.” Mr. Freeze forces his henchmen to sing carols. Joel Schumacher has no shame. And I’m very, very tired. Until next time… Photos: Amazon Video Where to watch Batman & Robin

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Alexandra Benjamin was pregnant recently with her son, she went shopping for appliances for her new apartment in Jerusalem. At the store, the religious salesman asked about her husband. Benjamin explained that she was having the baby on her own. “That’s so great!” she recalled him saying. “That was the typical reaction I got,” said Benjamin, 39, whose son is now 6 months old. “Not negative, not neutral, but really warm and positive, even from religious people.” Of course, it wasn’t always this way — not too long ago, single motherhood was frowned upon in certain segments of Jewish Israeli society. Yael Ukeles, who like Benjamin is an observant Jewish woman living in Israel, recalled that when she decided to have a child on her own about six years ago, the topic was still somewhat taboo. “I felt like I should whisper, ‘I’m thinking about having a baby,’” she said. Over the past few years, however, Ukeles said she’s seen more religious Jewish women in Israel choosing to become single mothers. “The degrees of separation have gotten smaller,” she said, noting that there are more Orthodox people directly connected to someone in their community who have made this decision. Dvora Ross, a pioneer in Israel among observant single mothers by choice, agreed. Now 54, she had her first child more than 18 years ago and twins a few years later. At the time it was very uncommon for observant women to have children on their own. When she looked to enroll her first child at school, one would not accept him — she said the principal implied it was because of the boy’s unconventional family. Now, “almost every religious school in Jerusalem has a few children with single mothers,” Ross said. As two of the founders of Kayama Moms, an organization that supports observant single mothers by choice in Israel, Ukeles and Ross are well-positioned to observe these trends. Since its founding about five years ago, the organization has helped over 50 single women become mothers. Ukeles will be talking about her experiences as a single mother in a lecture on Sunday at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance conference in New York. Although it’s hard to find precise statistics about rates of single motherhood by choice in Israel — particularly among observant women — the available data suggest the practice is becoming more common in developed countries. In the United States between 2002 and 2012, for example, while unwed pregnancy rates dropped for teenagers and women in their early 20s, they rose for women over 30. In Israel, the Central Bureau of Statistics found that 4,900 children were born to unmarried women in 2010, almost double the number from 10 years earlier. In 2014, conservative estimates put the number at about 8,000. These figures include women cohabiting with partners, as well as single women. Those who note a growing acceptance of single motherhood among observant women often cite Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of a modern Orthodox yeshiva in Petach Tikvah, who issued a ruling saying it was the appropriate choice in particular cases. An adviser to Kayama Moms, Cherlow said that as more observant women have chosen to become single mothers, attitudes toward the practice in religious communities have changed. When women first started discussing the idea with him about a decade ago, he said, they were often concerned about their parents kicking them out of the house or employers firing them. “I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that,” Cherlow said. Now, women’s questions — which he hears “at least twice a week” — typically revolve around more specific issues, such as whether to have a second child on their own. Perspectives among Orthodox rabbis are also shifting, Cherlow said. While the rabbis agree that “the best way to bring children into the world is in a traditional Jewish family, with a father and a mother,” he said, there is a significant minority who say unmarried women who have reached their late 30s should not be denied the opportunity to have children. “I think this minority is getting bigger,” he said, observing that there used to be more public condemnations issued by rabbis against observant single mothers in Israel. For example, at a conference of rabbis in Israel in 2008, Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovich referred to an unmarried woman having a child as an “unthinkable act, adding “there is no greater evil and cruelty.” Ukeles attributed this growing acceptance to the fact that more unmarried religious women are making the choice to become mothers. “The more you hear about it, the less taboo it becomes,” she said. Some rabbis and other critics in the Orthodox community fear that as the decision becomes normalized, more women will choose single motherhood as their first option, bypassing marriage entirely. “All the efforts we are making for treatments and insemination are aimed at starting a family, and here the framework of the family is damaged,” said Rabbi Menachem Burstein, the head of a Brooklyn-based organization that offers fertility advice to Orthodox families, refuting Cherlow at a conference in 2009. Ukeles said she still hears critics express the concern that single motherhood will weaken the social strictures against having children out of wedlock or the institution of marriage. A recent program on Israel’s Channel 10 news about observant single mothers by choice referred to this as a “slippery slope” argument common in very observant circles. Hana Godinger (Dreyfuss), head of the Midreshet Lindenbaum women’s Torah study center and rabbi at the modern Orthodox Pelech girls’ high school in Jerusalem, said concerns about the unintended consequences of single motherhood by choice are valid. But, she added, “A world that is always motivated by the fear of a slippery slope is a small, limited and problematic world.” She sees the increasing openness of rabbis to single motherhood among observant women as a positive step, providing hope and a sense of greater possibility for these women. Ukeles called the “slippery slope” objection “completely ridiculous.” Nearly all the women she knows who chose to become a single mother first made a great effort to get married, she said, and as their biological clocks started to tick down, they “had to make a very hard choice between never being a mother and being a mother on their own.” Benjamin agreed; she bristles at the term “single mother by choice” for that reason. “Had I had a choice, I wouldn’t have chosen to do this alone,” she said. Ukeles also points out that most of the single mothers she knows are open to marriage someday, and that a few women she’s met through Kayama Moms subsequently did marry. Despite the progress in attitudes toward single observant women who choose to have children, there is still much work to be done, Ukeles said. Some women who make this decision are still treated unfairly, she said, pointing to the example of the unmarried teacher at a religious high school in Israel who was fired after she became pregnant. (The woman sued the school in 2013 and won.) One reason she started Kayama Moms, Ukeles said, is to help combat this discrimination. “I feel an existential imperative to educate the Jewish community about this option,” she said. Even in the context of growing societal acceptance, Ukeles added that it’s important that religious women who are contemplating single motherhood integrate into a community first. “Become part of the community and be a giver,” she said. Women who do this, Ukeles said, will reap the rewards when they have a child and need extra support — someone to pick up the child from day care when they are tied up, for example. They’ll also feel less lonely and isolated, common complaints among single women in religious communities. Benjamin said she definitely benefited from being deeply involved in her synagogue community before she had her son. “He’s like the mascot of the shul,” she said, noting that when the pair arrives for services, he is whisked away immediately by doting friends. “There’s a sense in which everyone is involved [in his upbringing], which is beautiful,” Benjamin said. In addition to greater acceptance, Ukeles would like to see legislative changes that would benefit single mothers by choice, including increased regulation of sperm banks. Although the state comptroller has called for updated regulations since 2007, the Health Ministry has yet to issue them, resulting in inconsistent criteria across banks. A recent article in the Hebrew-language edition of Haaretz reported that 14 sperm banks in Israel were operating without regulation, raising the risk of incest — children born from sperm donation may later unknowingly marry someone to whom they are related. Next week, the Knesset will host a roundtable discussion about what the updated regulations should look like. Ross will be attending, as will rabbis, fertility specialists, mothers who used sperm banks and their children. Ukeles said that Kayama Moms is also considering partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters to increase available childcare support to single mothers. Underlying her efforts on all these fronts, said Ukeles, is concern for her son’s well-being. “I had a kid because I wanted to be a mom,” she said. “Now that I’ve had a kid this way, I’ll do everything in my power to make sure the world is as accepting of him as possible.”

Need more Metal Gear? Check out the rest of our coverage or read our review. It was inevitable Metal Gear Solid V would contain secrets, but unlike previous instalments we can readily datamine them with our trusty PCs. I feel like that's ruining the fun a bit, but this particular secret seems otherwise impossible to access – if the theories are true. That's a shame, because it's massive and oddly beautiful. If you want to avoid spoilers, do not continue reading. The video embedded below was uploaded to YouTube by Александр Гольтяев. Watch, and you'll witness a ceremony at the Mother Base celebrating worldwide nuclear disarmament. You see, players can build nukes in Metal Gear Solid, provided they've progressed far enough and have the right materials. They're mainly used against other players, and they're quite sought after. Theory has it that the below cutscene can only be triggered when there are no more nukes left in the game. That means every single player needs to dispose of their nukes. In other words: total nuclear disarmament. So assuming the theories are true, it will take every single player in the world to agree that nuclear war is not the answer. Let's see how that works out. Thanks, Kotaku.

Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here. On the roster: Will racial unrest help Trump again? - Swing state polls shows roily race - Anti-Clinton PAC targets past pardons - The Judge’s Ruling: Due process is vital to freedom - ‘I’m riding it!’ WILL RACIAL UNREST HELP TRUMP AGAIN? Donald Trump’s previous high point in the campaign came after the last spasm of racial discord that gripped America, back in July in the wake of the massacre of five Dallas police officers. He and his campaign clearly hope to replicate that outcome with the protests and riots still gripping Charlotte. Speaking today in Pittsburgh, as well as in remarks Wednesday, Trump called for “a national anti-crime agenda to make our cities safe again,” including an expansion of New York’s now-defunct “stop and frisk” policy in which officers could pat down any individuals they deemed suspicious. “Our country looks bad to the world,” Trump warned to his audience today. “How can we lead when we can’t even control our own cities?” As he heads into the first presidential debate, Trump is reprising the theme he brought into his party’s July nominating convention: law and order. Trump emphasizes what he says is deepening chaos in major American cities, an argument that sounds more convincing when juxtaposed with images of bloodshed, looting and tear gas in the streets of Charlotte. Certainly in North Carolina, Trump could reasonably expect that his argument would be persuasive especially with white suburban voters alarmed at sight of their usually safe city looking like a war zone. As Gov. Pat McCrory, R-N.C., declares a state of emergency in the Tar Heel State, voters would understandably be on edge. The latest Fox News poll taken before the riots began shows Trump leading by 5 points in North Carolina, while a fresh survey from NYT shows the two candidates in a dead heat. But both polls would agree that Trump’s weeks of outreach to black voters in the racially roiled state have found little purchase. In both polls, Trump takes only 3 percent of the African American vote. However, Trump’s outreach on urban crime and the struggles of black Americans would seem to be more about white suburban voters. By highlighting black violence in his outreach to African-American communities, Trump can not only been seen to be working against the broadly held perception that he is racist – a big turnoff for college-educated whites – but also keep the focus on the very issues that instill the most fear in white suburbanites. It’s a twofer. Trump’s 58 percent share of the white vote in the Fox News poll is one of his best showings we’ve seen in any swing state. Compare Trump’s showing of white voters in North Carolina to the 48 percent share he takes in Ohio or the 49 percent he is winning nationally among white voters. So while there’s lots of good news for Trump with the riots in North Carolina, the anxieties about urban unrest and crime don’t seem to be translating on the national level. In a new WSJ/NBC News national poll, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is leading Trump by 6 points. But the real problem in the poll isn’t the horse race overall, but Trump’s performance in the ‘burbs. Trump trails Clinton 5 points with college-educated white voters, a group Trump’s predecessor, Mitt Romney won by 14 points. As he prepares for the first presidential debate on Monday, Trump can be encouraged by the growing national concern about urban strife. Those fears give him a way to push the reluctant minivan set into his column. But when he tried that at his last big moment at the convention, talking about “a moment of crisis for our nation,” it didn’t pan out very well. The key for Trump will be to more subtly stoke anxieties of white suburbanites without sounding like he is a prophet of doom. That’s the test he’ll have to pass next week. I’LL TELL YOU WHAT: EXPECTATIONS GAME As many voters are still on this fence this election cycle, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hope next Monday’s debate will sway those undecided into their column. But will the debates really be the determining test? What can we expect from these two next week? Dana Perino and Chris Stirewalt give their take on what they think on “Perino & Stirewalt: I’ll Tell You What” LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE HERE. THE RULEBOOK: MO’ MONEY, MO’ AMITY “Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 6” TIME OUT: ‘MERICA The Atlantic takes a dive into what makes American universities the greatest research institutions in the world: “The American research university was born a century after the American Revolution, when Johns Hopkins University opened its doors in 1876. It was an amalgam of the British Oxbridge undergraduate system and the German emphasis on research; Hopkins’s focus on inquiry and experimentation drew the attention of some of the late 19th century’s great academic minds—people like Henry A. Rowland, who became the first president of the American Physical Society. America’s research universities, even in their early years, were far more open and democratic than their European counterparts.” Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions SCOREBOARD Average of national head-to-head presidential polls: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +3.2 points [Polls included: ARG, WSJ/NBC, Fox News, NYT/CBS News and Quinnipiac University,.] Average of national four-way presidential polls: Clinton vs. Trump vs. Johnson vs. Stein: Clinton +3.2 points [Polls included: WSJ/NBC, Fox News, NYT/CBS News, Quinnipiac University, and Pew.] SWING STATE POLLS SHOWS ROILY RACE Hillary Clinton’s struggles with young and independent voters is giving Donald Trump the lead in three key battleground states according to new Fox News polls. Clinton is down 5 points in Ohio and 3 points in Nevada overall. In both states, Trump’s advantage comes from a hefty lead with independent voters of 19 and 20-points in Nevada and Ohio, respectively. Also problematic for Clinton is her status with female voters. Clinton leads this group over Trump by 6 points in Nevada and 3 points in Ohio, a major change from President Obama who won this group in both states by double-digits in 2012. And in Nevada, Trump is also within striking distance of Clinton’s 3-point advantage with voters under 45-years-old. And there is a cavalcade of other new state polling: In Florida, Trump leads Clinton by a single point in a six-way (!) race, according to a Suffolk University poll. In Wisconsin, Clinton leads Trump by 6 points in a head-to-head matchup and 3 points in the four-way race in a Marquette University Law School poll. In Colorado, Clinton leads Trump by 7 points in a four-way race according to a Franklin & Marshall College poll. In Virginia, Clinton is 7 points ahead in a poll from Roanoke College. Anti-Clinton PAC targets past pardons - Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC has a new ad featuring the son of a man killed by a Puerto Rican terrorist group. The ad says the Clintons pardoned this group to gain political favorability for Hillary Clinton’s New York Senatorial campaign. The group says the digital ad buy is more than $100,000 and will run in the key swing states. Pro-life action group hits airwaves in new ad - March for Life Action launches its first ad in key swing states leading up to Monday’s presidential debate. The ad features women making the case to viewers that pro-life positions are mainstream points of view and winning issues for candidates. The ad will air on both television and digital mediums through Monday in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia markets as well as the District of Columbia. The Judge’s Ruling: Due process is vital to freedom - Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano cautions those calling for the accused New York City bomber to be stripped of his rights. “Due process -- fairness from the government, the right to silence, the right to counsel and the right to a jury trial with the full panoply of constitutional requirements and protections -- is vital to our personal liberties and to our free society as we have known it. If anyone who appears to have been motivated to attack Americans or American values based on some alleged or even proven foreign motivation could be denied the rights guaranteed to him under the Constitution by a government determination before trial, then no one’s rights are safe.” Read more here. AUDIBLE: IS THAT WITH A BROWN SHIRT “Or maybe like a white power tie.” – Comedian Zach Galifiankis in an interview with Hillary Clinton after she said that she assumed Donald Trump would wear a “red power tie” to the first presidential debate. PLAY-BY-PLAY America’s trust in political leaders hits a new low - Gallup House panel recommends holding former Clinton IT aide in contempt - Fox News GOP Senators claim Dems delay votes to keep them off the campaign trail - WashEx Trump’s campaign paid his business $8.2 million - Politico Government debt watchdog says Trump’s tax proposals would increase federal debt by $5.3 trillion - AP Trump said he made his birther announcement so he could ‘get on with the campaign’ - The Hill David Drucker goes behind Cruz’s coming capitulation to Trump - WashEx FROM THE BLEACHERS “You are selling Power Play way too short when you refer to it as ‘inanity.’ Power play was what made you far and away my favorite political commentator. I was rarely able to watch it live but I would regularly watch it in its entirety while doing dishes after dinner. Where else would I have been able to learn about the political news of the day as well as nearly wet myself over comments such as Charles Hurt’s ‘after hours’ vests. It was a sad day when the 30-minute Power Play went away…I second the request to be able to watch your new show online in its entirety just as I used to watch Power Play. I would happily watch the commercials as well if it would give me the opportunity to experience pure political broadcasting excellence on my schedule. Keep up the good work!” – Matt Nelson, Los Alamos, N.M. [Ed. note: What a delightful thing for you to say, Mr. Nelson! It gives me a very happy feeling to know that I was there with you and the steel wool dispatching the baked on, caked on remnants of dinner. And as for Mr. Hurt’s fashion choices, as the weather cools I believe you will see the return of his Wild West vest and other unusual wardrobe staples. This time of year, it is always good to keep an eye out for blood or feathers on his jackets as I believe he often comes to the studio directly from dove hunting.] “I’ll tell you what, I so look forward to reading the halftime report every day to get all the election lowdown. It makes my day to get the political news and poll numbers with a dose of humor. I also watched the T.V. show Sunday with Dana and Chris. I loved it just as much as the podcast. It’s like sitting with your smartest and wittiest friends for a very enjoyable hour. Keep up the good work. I wish the show would be on after November. Thanks to you both.” – Darlene Beck, Birmingham, Ala. [Ed. note: Isn’t she just the berries? Thanks so much for reading and watching. We’d hope to do you proud.] “Trump’s ‘support’ is multi-faceted. Personally, I will vote for him, trust his trademark promises (judges, wall, 2nd Amendment, religious freedom, etc), encourage his fidelity to those, and hope for the best. Support, in the case of true conservatives, is a stronger word, to me. I have sent no money and I have no bumper stickers or yard signs. In a simple choice of only two options, one can never be the most corrupt, dishonest and morally challenged to ever run for President. Clinton, so transparently, is the latter.” – Michael D. Sumner, Miamisburg, Ohio [Ed. note: Quite right, Mr. Sumner! We’re only ever really talking about votes when we are talking about polls. “Support” does carry a connotation of help beyond the ballot box, but we hope you would be indulgent of our imprecision given the fact that we have to come up with so many daggone ways to talk about voters every day. But we will keep your worthwhile distinction in mind. Thanks much.] “How about quotes from the Anti-federalist Papers, as well?” – John Glover, The Villages, Fla. [Ed. note: While Halftime Report doesn’t necessarily abide by “equal time” precepts for any issues resolved prior to 1792, you raise a great point, Mr. Glover. There certainly was a larger discussion going on among the Founders. Patrick Henry and his cohorts weren’t going in for some federal leviathan they thought Messers. Hamilton, Madison and Jay were serving up. But the real issue at hand for the Anti-Federalists was the inclusion of a bill of particular rights. Madison was worried that by enumerating the limitations on the government, future leaders would take for themselves any power not specifically forbidden to them. And while he was proven quite right, he was quite wrong politically about the need for getting into specific, negative rights. As Thomas Jefferson wrote his fellow Virginian, James Madison, encouraging him to support enumerated rights: "Half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can." Madison was eventually convinced and the deal was done. But certainly, the writings of Henry and his fellows shaped the republic in a profound way. Our aim in presenting The Rulebook, though, is to describe what the founders envisioned for the office of the presidency and its inhabitants to help us all think better on the subject of this election. The Anti-Federalists had extensive thoughts on executive power, but the office as we have inherited it descends from the vision of the guys on the other side.] Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown. ‘I’M RIDING IT!’ CBS Miami: “Don’t play with the manatees, you could end up in jail. That’s what happened to a man in Islamorada when he decided to jump into the water and swim with a few of the endangered animals. According to officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, James Roy Massengale Jr. was charged with annoying, molesting, harassing, or disturbing a manatee on Friday afternoon. A witness told FWC officers that he spotted Massengale when he was in the water approaching two adult manatees and two calves…Massengale reportedly told the witness, ‘I’m riding it!’ The witness said he told him that manatees were an endangered species and it was illegal to bother them then pretended to leave the area…He was arrested by a Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy and placed into an isolation cell at Plantation Key Jail after he refused to provide his information to the correction’s officers.” AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES… “[Yogi Berra] once said ‘it gets late early here.’ It’s getting late early, especially for [Hillary Clinton]. She’s been known for 30 years. [Donald Trump has] been ubiquitous on the air for 15 months. People know who they are. I’m not sure what her advertising advantage is going to do at this point.” – Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Sally Persons contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.

Chris Johnson finished under 4.0 yards per carry for the first time in his career last season. His production had drained to the point that the Tennessee Titans decided he was no longer worthy of his contract. Afforded a fresh start with the New York Jets, Johnson has teammates believing a bounce-back season is in store. "Oh yeah, he still has it," linebacker David Harris said, via the New York Post. "We noticed it the first day when we were in Cortland. He's still the fastest guy on the field. He's still got a lot of juice in those legs." Defense end Sheldon Richardson added, "If he gets behind the defense he's not getting caught from behind by anybody in the league." There's the rub. Johnson's forays to the far reaches of defenses have been few and far between of late. After leading the NFL with seven runs of 40-plus yards in 2009, Johnson has managed just eight total in the last four years combined. He didn't have a single run of 40 yards or more last season. There's little doubt that Johnson still has elite long speed. If he stops avoiding contact closer to the line of scrimmage, we might get to see it again in 2014. The "Around the League Podcast" AFC Season Preview is here. You're welcome.

Knee Armor, Continued As you might remember, in WIP #2 I’ve started reworking knee armor, as I hated the original crown shape. Initially I went with a rather spiky design, reaching much higher than original piece. Once I finished both legs, I realized I didn’t really like the result. Those big spiky knees looked like something from a fantasy game with bad art direction. I filed them down to smaller, flatter shape. Next up is adding some details. In the process of reshaping knees, I also erased some panel lines. As of now I’m not yet sure if I’ll scribe something new in their place. For now, inspired by Freedom 2.0, I decided to add some forward-facing thrusters on the lower knees. Decided on using big, rectangular ones from MS Thruster 01 Builder Parts set, as they contrast nicely with a smooth, curved armor. I’m not sure why I decided to cut out part of the knees where they’d sit, rather than simply filing it flat. I think I just wanted to try the technique, as is the case with most of the mods on this kit. It allowed me to angle them downwards some more though, so that’s a plus. I used AB putty to blend them with the armor. While at it, I also drilled small holes in each thruster frame, so I could easily remove inner part for painting later. More Leg Mods Once knee armor was done, I felt it was time to spice up the back of the legs by adding some verniers from 1/100 MS Vernier 01 Builder Parts. I decided I’ll try to use those yo-yo shaped parts – that way I could snap them in place just like the original piece. First, I needed to glue both halves of the base, as there were no pegs holding it together. Next up I cut off the yo-yo and reshaped the base using some leftover styrene pieces and AB putty. I needed to make it more rectangular to actually have the verniers pointing down. With that done, only thing left to do was adding a ball joint for the vernier to snap on. Rather than gluing on entire joint, I cut off the round base and drilled a hole for the peg to sit in. Otherwise verniers would end up too far out, making them look weird. Downside of this solution – shorter peg somewhat limits the articulation. And here’s the finished mod. I really like how the verniers are mostly tucked under the armor, popping out just a bit. While we’re on the subject of leg mods, you might remember I’ve extended the thigh frame (I described entire process in WIP #2). Because of it, thigh armor would no longer fit, as the back half was sitting much lower and pushing out front piece. I got around the issue by cutting off a fair bit of it, creating some cool armor separation in the process. There was still a matter of exposed seam line on the back of the leg though – something that was originally covered by back armor. Since I kept both halves of the thigh separable, even after the extension, I couldn’t just remove the seam using glue/putty. So rather than remove the seam, I decided to add detail, just like I did with the head. I glued a strip of styrene on one half of the thigh and cut it to match the shape. Added some vents from the MS Thruster 01 set for extra detail. Rebalancing Balance of the original kit was somewhat alright, but with all the extra plastic and putty I added to it (not to mention the sword), I felt I needed to lower its centre of gravity. To do this, I used a product I found while browsing some online RC store – Liquid Gravity. It’s like tiny metal ball bearings that easily fill various cavities. Quite heavy too. Apparently they’re not made of lead though. I poured some into the heels, toes and the frame piece that connects them. Used CA glue to cement the stuff in place. There is definitely a noticeable difference. With all the extra weight in the feet, Barbatos Lupus seems much more stable on the desk. While improved balance is appreciated, I hate how the claws filled with ball bearings and CA glue looked. Sure, feet will be on the ground most of the time, so it’ll be hidden, but it kept bothering me. I closed up the bottoms of the claws with 0.5mm pla-plate. While at it, I did some minor reshaping with AB putty, making them a bit more round. Also extended claws on one foot for some asymmetry. Figured I’ll leave some surface imperfections in – it goes well with the suit and should help weathering stage a bit. Shoulders I really like the Tekkadan logo cutouts on the shoulders. It’s a great detail, which, sadly, has no place in my custom Barbatos Lupus. Filling up the gaps turned out to be rather easy, though slightly tedious. I started out by applying excessive amount of epoxy putty, just to make sure it’d get into all corners. Once dry, I scraped and sanded off the excess. Afterwards – a couple rounds of basic / dissolved putty, sanding and priming, until the surface was smooth. Filled shoulders looked great in black primer. Still, inspired by N.Maker’s GBWC 2017 entry, I tried to cut a new design into them. Didn’t really like the results I was getting and in the end settled for having both shoulder armors filled smooth. They’ll make a good surface for some decals later on.

The December issue of Kodansha's Young Magazine the 3rd magazine revealed on November 6 that Osamu Mitsutani is launching a manga adaptation of writer NisiOisin's ( Monogatari series, Medaka Box ) Himeiden novel in the magazine's next issue on December 4. Mitsutani is currently hiring a regular assistant to help with the manga. Mitsutani won first prize at the Chiba Tetsuya Awards last year. Himeiden is the first novel in NisiOisin's Densetsu (Legend) series of novels. Kodansha published the Himeiden novel in 2012, and will publish the seventh novel in the series, Hibōden , on November 26. This year's 50th issue of Kodansha's Young Magazine also revealed on Monday that Mitsuru Hattori ( Sankarea: Undying Love ) will launch a manga adaptation of NisiOisin's Shōjo Fujūbun novel in the magazine's first 2016 issue on November 30. Kodansha published the original Shōjo Fujūbun novel in 2011.

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