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States Can't Discriminate Against Churches in Secular Aid Programs, Supreme Court Rules Email Print Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin The United States Supreme Court has ruled that a Missouri church should not be prohibited from benefiting from a secular aid program solely because it is a church. In a decision released Monday morning in the case of Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the highest court in the nation concluded that Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia should not be barred from a state program meant to help repair their daycare playground, reversing a lower court decision. The majority opinion was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas joined the majority in part. Justice Stephen Breyer authored a concurring opinion, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented. "... the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand," wrote Chief Justice Roberts. "The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion." In 2012, Trinity Lutheran applied for a grant to modify the playground surface at the church's Learning Center, but their grant was rejected later that year. In the rejection notice, the Learning Center was told their grant request was rejected because Article I, Section 7 of the Missouri Constitution bars the "public treasury" from funding "aid of any church, section or denomination of religion." In response, Trinity Lutheran filed suit against DNR Director Sara Pauley in 2013. A district court ruled in favor of the DNR and a three judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals concurred. In November 2015, the Alliance Defending Freedom petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal, with the high court granting their petition in January 2016 and holding oral arguments in April of this year. During the course of the litigation, Missouri changed its rules regarding its aid program, with Governor Eric Greitens expanding the program to include church-run playgrounds. "Before we came into office, government bureaucrats were under orders to deny grants to people of faith who wanted to do things like make community playgrounds for kids. That's just wrong," stated Greitens in April. Secular groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State expressed concern about the case, arguing that Trinity Lutheran v. Comer could be a "serious threat to religious freedom." "If Trinity Lutheran wins, state and local governments will be required to give taxpayer funds to churches, synagogues and mosques," stated Americans United before the decision was released.

X 1000 Lëtzebuerger Supporter beim Duell Jeff vs. Jeff (30.11.2017) De leschte Sonndeg koum et an der 2. Bundesliga zum historeschen Duell tëscht den 2 Lëtzebuerger Trainer Jeff Strasser a Jeff Saibene. De Jeff an de Jeff, zesummen hu si 162 Lännermatcher um Bockel an allebéid hu se déi legendär EM-Campagne 1994/1995 mat 3 Victoiren als Nationalspiller materlieft.Elo si si Konkurrenten, als Trainer an der 2. däitscher Bundesliga, en Novum an der Geschicht vum Lëtzebuerger Football. A wann de Jeff vu Bielefeld um Betzenberg beim Jeff vu Kaiserslautern op Besuch ass, da loosse sech d'Lëtzebuerger Supporter dat net entgoen. Eng ganz Partie Bussen a Privatautoen hate sech de leschte Sonndeg aus dem Grand-Duché op de Wee a Richtung Kaiserslautern gemaach.1.000 Lëtzebuerger Supporter fir en aussergewéinlechen Zeenario, deen och op Sky a Bild an Toun festgehale gouf.Och de Jan Schneidewind hat sech op de Betzenberg deplacéiert, krut allerdéngs e faden Däiwelsmenu zerwéiert, och wann déi éischt Chance op de Kont vun der Lokalequipe goung. E Stréifeier vum 1. FCK, duerno huet d'Equipe vum Saibene d'Soen um Terrain iwwerholl. Kuerz virun der Paus konnt ee mat 1:0 a Féierung goen, och wa Lautern no der Paus gekämpft huet, ass de KO quasi mam Schlusspëff komm.D'Arminia Bielefeld, déi déi lescht Saison mat engem Been an der Regionalliga stoung, steet elo mat engem Lëtzebuerger Trainer op der 6. Plaz an der Tabell. Kaiserslautern ass d'Schlussliicht.2 Mol Jeff awer nëmmen ee Chef an dee sëtzt zu Bielefeld op der Trainerbänk. De Saibene ass déi lescht Saison op der Alm een ähnlechen Challenge ugaangen, wéi säin Homolog dës Saison zu Lautern.De Jeff Saibene huet sech zu Bielefeld als Trainer bannent kuerzer Zäit en Numm gemaach. De Jeff Strasser zu Lautern als Spiller och. Als Trainer? Do schafft dee Laangen den Ament nach drun.

Charlie Daniels, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter best known for his contributions to country, bluegrass and Southern rock, has made news this week with a suggestion posted on his Twitter account: Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn. Daniels, whose many awards include his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame, has been outspoken on many political issues. His hit song “In America” is a reaction to the 1979-81 Iran Hostage Crisis and the troubled economic conditions at the time. His 2003 book “Ain’t No Rag: Freedom, Family and the Flag” included an Open Letter to the Hollywood Bunch,” in support of President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy. In 2009, he openly criticized the Obama Administration for “changing the name of the War on Terror to the ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ and referring to terrorism as ‘man-caused disasters'”. He is a supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Most recently, in a tweet on March 31, he suggested sanctuary cities where people who don’t pay their taxes can go to avoid the IRS. Charlie Daniels’ opposition to abortion is most likely a reflection of his deep faith. His Twitter page is peppered with Scriptures and prayers, interspersed with his political posts and concert promotions. The songs he’s written have often mentioned the Bible and church, and he’s recorded many Gospel favorites including “I Saw the Light” and “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” as well as “I’ll Fly Away” and “Nothing But the Blood.” He publicly gives glory to God for the opportunities and success he’s found along the way. In a 2014 interview with Tiffany Jothen published on the website of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade, Daniels talks about his priorities: “My priorities,” he says, “are God, family, country and work. I don’t always succeed, but I try to keep those as my most important things in my life.” Jothen writes: Daniels remembers when prayer was taken out of schools decades ago and said “if it had stopped right there, that would’ve been bad enough.” But now, he continued, he has seen so many examples of people removing God from their lives that he fears where the nation is headed. “If America don’t get God back into our daily lives and into our politics and into everything we do, we ain’t gonna make it. We’ve gone too far in the other direction,” he said. “We’ve tried everything else. We’ve tried every kind of sensual satisfaction. … We’ve tried following people who we thought had the answer.” But in the end, he said, “God is the only real help we’ve got.” His memoir “Never Look at the Empty Seats” is scheduled for release in October.

With roughly 72 hours left until the formal commencement of IFA 2015, and a slew of exciting mobile announcements scheduled for September 2 and 3, it became less and less likely in the past few days that Motorola would make an appearance at Berlin’s glitzy trade show to unveil the second-generation Moto 360. Instead, Lenovo, the American device manufacturer’s Chinese parent company, has just notified us of a September 8 Shanghai-set event. The press affair is labeled with a not-so-cryptic “It’s time” tag, and the invitation is made complete by a picture very clearly showing the top half of a new Moto 360 smartwatch. What’s intriguing about the teaser image is it stars a previously unseen gold model of the Moto 360 2, adorned with a swanky matching metal gold band. This is even different from the first-gen “champagne gold” version, and it suggests Lenovo could be planning to tackle upscale Apple Watch configurations head-on. Of course, one must wonder if luxury timepiece buyers can be persuaded to splash their cash on Android Wear gadgets, though starting soon enough, they’ll be able to also pair them with iPhones. Another question on our minds concerns a possible second venue of the Moto 360 2015 announcement, given Westerners will probably want to check out the smartwatch in the flesh ASAP too. Might September 8 see the wearable device debut in China and the United States or United Kingdom? You’ll be the first to find out if you stay in touch. Source: Gizmochina Via: Phone Arena

What are cannabis crystals? CBD crystals (sometimes referred to as CBD isolate) are extracted from the cannabis sativa plant. As with all our CBD products, the CBD within our crystals comes from our EU-certified organic hemp. To achieve a high purity of CBD, we use the state-of-the-art supercritical CO2 method. We then use a second purification process to separate the CBD from the other remaining natural chemicals until we reach the desired purity – 99% to be exact. The remaining 1% is made up of the terpenes Myrcene, Limonene, Alpha & Beta-pinene, Linalool, B-caryophyllene, Caryophyllene oxide, Terpinolene and Humulene. These are the organic compounds found naturally in cannabis plants. This is all important because of what’s called the ‘entourage effect’, which is the special synergy between the botanical substances that can increase the effect of CBD. However, you can still use our crystals if you are sensitive to terpenes.

Like some otherworldly space ship, the cast and crew of the top-ranking German-language television show, "Wanna Bet?" has landed on the outskirts of Salzburg in Austria. The show, one of the most successful in Europe, offers an entertaining mixture of ordinary people making outlandish bets (hence the title) and celebrity interviews and performances. And today the show's hundreds of crew members and technicians are invading the city. Security staff patrol the area, would-be audience members queue at the front entrance to the venue. Backstage, some of the highest-profile members of the entertainment industry are all hands on deck. Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, the singer behind some of the most popular operatic albums in Europe, has just finished her sound check. Oscar-winning British actress Emma Thompson is picking up her backstage pass. Pop singer Shakira, rock icon Beth Ditto of the band Gossip and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber are in hair and make-up. And Lena Meyer-Landrut is sitting on a sofa in her dressing room, awaiting her turn. In a black cocktail frock, grey knit cardigan and large, black glasses, with a somewhat wide-eyed look, Meyer-Landrut comes across more like an intern for the show than someone who is about to perform on it. Bigger than the Beatles and Michael Jackson? Only a few short weeks ago, the only place 18-year-old Meyer-Landrut was singing was in the shower. In April, after winning a national competition to determine who would represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in Norway, Meyer-Landrut made it into the German singles charts. Her songs rocketed to No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 on the charts. Germany has had singles charts for the music industry since 1959. But neither the Beatles nor Michael Jackson achieved what Meyer-Landrut has. By early May she had already recorded her first album and in one week she will represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo. The performance for "Wanna Bet ?" is to be her last public outing before Oslo -- after this, she will have to study for upcoming end-of-secondary-school exams. Meyer-Landrut is popular with her fellow Germans -- and not just because the Eurovision contest, which has seemed a little stupid for quite some time now, has become meaningful again. It is possible the whole country has fallen in love with the teenager from Hanover because she is the first great hope the country has had to win the annual song contest in years. The Eurovision sees singers, voted for by judges and viewers in each of 38 participating countries, compete at a grand, glitzy finale. The 55-year-old contest, which is produced by European public broadcasters, is seen by as many as 125 million viewers, making it one of the world's most widely-viewed television events. In the past, it helped launch the careers of artists including the Swedish band Abba and Canadian singer Celine Dion. Just An Average Girl from Hanover What little the Germans knew about Meyer-Landrut until recently can be summed up in a few sentences. Her grandfather was the head of the Office of the Federal President under Richard von Weizsäcker, who was the president of Germany between 1984 to 1994, as well as the German ambassador to Moscow. Little is known about her parents: She mentions her mother often but never her father. She is an only child and she is far-sighted. She doesn't play any musical instruments and she cannot read music. The subjects in which she will sit exams are biology, history and sports. She has a tattoo on her left, inner arm, and she is smaller in real life than she appears on television. She's an average German girl, apparently. And when reporters ask her friends about her, the answer is often: "She's a bit of a nutter." There are another couple of suppositions one could add. One might imagine that the mother of a teenage girl who was about to graduate from high school would not be completely overjoyed when her only child came to her, out of the blue, and told her, shortly before final school leaving exams, that she was going to be a contestant on a major international television show. "And I really want to do it." The fact that Meyer-Landrut didn't even tell her friends that she had entered the contest is also interesting. She says it is because she wanted to avoid silly comments. But it also indicates that she is someone who was self-aware enough to make a decision like this without consulting anyone else. A not inconsiderable part of Meyer-Landrut's charm also comes from the fact that she prefers not to answer questions about her private life. "It's about the music," she replies in these instances. "I am sitting here because I won the show, 'Our Star For Oslo.' And members of my family have nothing to do with that. Anyway, my life is totally boring." She Dances like Joe Cocker and Sings like Ali G. Meyer-Landrut is a funny sort of a star. She took ballet lessons as a child but when she dances on stage she looks more like rock musician Joe Cocker than a ballerina. Her voice makes an impression but it seems uncontrolled. One of the many "Lena moments" during the program in which she competed to go to Oslo came when the host asked her about her breathing technique while singing. Her succinct answer: "I don't have one." Meyer-Landrut's success can also be credited to a plan of action developed by German entertainment industry giants. Last year, German public broadcaster ARD and the television production company Brainpool, responsible for the successful late night show "TV Total," as well as several versions of talent shows similar to Pop Idol, decided to try and find a German representative for Eurovision. The endeavor was headed up by "TV Total" host Stefan Raab, who himself competed in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2000. But they wanted to do things a little differently. In the past German contestants had already either been successful in German entertainment in their own right, or else they were "manufactured" artists, groomed by seasoned entertainment industry professionals especially for the contest. But this time, in the first co-operative venture between private broadcaster ProSieben and public channel ARD, they decided to put together a talent show which would seek out what is known within the industry as "authentic" performers. That is, performers who were not manufactured by music managers and who had their own artistic style and who were determined to continue to be themselves. "You can't make a star like Lena, you have to find them," says Frank Briegmann, the head of Universal Music in Germany, one of the most powerful executives in the country's music industry. "You can outline specifications, in that you can say, we want artists who are authentic, who have their own ideas, who don't fit into a (tight) corset. So you communicate that and you hope that these kinds of artists turn up. And after that you take care of them." And along came Meyer-Landrut -- with her homemade English accent (she has never been to England), her turns of phrase, now known among fans as Lena-isms, with the enthusiasm with which she sang and with all these funny little quirks that saw her chattering her way into her audience's heart. The 'Nude Pictures' Scandal Early in May Meyer-Landrut also came under fire for what some in the media called "nude pictures" of her. In fact, the singer, who says she always wanted to be an actress, appeared in a docu-drama sitting in a pool with a young man. Apparently viewers get a glimpse of her chest. Interviewed about it, Meyer-Landrut simply told German reporters that it was just a role she played. "I was acting and that means it was not my privacy. Give me one reason why I should be upset about this. IN our family we have always said: today's newspaper is used to wrap the fish in tomorrow." Meyer-Landrut's meteoric rise to the top has been different than the usual one-hit-wonder tale of celebrity among reality TV stars, too. Yes, everyone can have their fifteen minutes of fame these days. You can win a talent show, but it is also still possible to sit your final exams -- because there are other things in life, too. That is down-to-earth Meyer-Landrut's message and that is why people love her. "I don't want to rehearse any choreography or practice being a character. That's too exhausting," she says. "The most important thing is that I am happy within myself." Meyer-Landrut's performance on "Wanna Bet ?" in Salzburg in April was something of an experiment. But how will she fare beyond the television talent show? Can she perform on one of the entertainment industry's biggest stages? And how will she behave when she doesn't have to perform in a competitive situation? Next to the Real Stars, Meyer-Landrut's Limits Become Clear Appearing alongside the world renowned stars that are on offer this evening the limits to Meyer-Landrut's talent are visible. Next to Shakira, who can really dance, and Netrebko, who can really sing, Meyer-Landrut comes across as an 18-year-old with little stage experience. And next to Ditto, an indie-icon for lesbians and overweight girls everywhere as well as style icon to Karl Lagerfeld, Meyer-Landrut comes across as fairly tame. Still, she's quick witted in her talk with the host of the show. It made me feel sick, she says when asked what she thinks of the Russian opera singer. But then the well-brought up young lady quickly rescues the situation by adding, "I thought it was super. I'd listen to it again -- seriously." Last up on the show tonight is the world famous German heavy metal band The Scorpions. The group just released a new album, their 17th, and are starting on a world tour to support it. The seasoned musicians rock out: The musicians are all over 40, most of them closer to 60, and despite their ages they perform in undignified black leather pants. But the Scorpions were not always like this. Forty years ago they too were young men from the German provinces -- in fact they come from the same town as Meyer-Landrut, Hanover. Dreams of Pop Stardom Meyer-Landrut is not as far removed from the heavy rock band as one might imagine, either. Music, and especially pop music, is all about desire and dreams. And these are not the dreams of the cool kids sitting in the cool clubs of New York, London and Berlin. These are the dreams dreamt in the bedrooms of children everywhere from Hanover to Dubrovnik. Most of these teenagers in provincial cities around the world still do the same thing: They hang posters of their idols on their walls, they listen to the same song over and over again, and they look up videos and live performances on YouTube. They dream of exciting, different lives. Many of them pose like their heroes, most likely singing into a hairbrush, in front of the mirror. A few of them even dare to take that act out of their bedrooms. But only a few manage to turn their own love and enjoyment of pop music into something that others can relate to, too. At that stage their dream becomes reality and their new reality, the fodder for other's dreams. The fantasies engendered by pop music are still the same, the European community is growing closer and there are cities like Hanover all over this continent and further afield. Additionally, although the 17-year-old Eurovision candidate from Azerbaijan is also a contender, betting shops all over Europe are calling Meyer-Landrut the favorite to win the Eurovision. In the past these forecasts have been fairly reliable. The view from Germany: There is no reason whatsoever why the love of the German-speaking fans for their new star Meyer-Landrut should be confined to just one country.

“Yes, yes, of course we need someone, but who are you? And why the hell are you in Kinshasa?” – AP editor to Anjan Sundaram. *** Reviewed by Magnus Taylor – In August 2014 the journalist Anjan Sundaram wrote an opinion piece for The Guardian newspaper entitled: “I watched the western media turn away from explaining the world”. The argument was simple: in an era of declining newspaper circulation and a crisis in its business model, the Western media is becoming more self-obsessed and insular; less interested in hard-to-reach parts of the world. Sundaram is well qualified to make this argument, having worked on “the bottom rung of the news ladder” as a lowly-paid AP stringer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he “grasped the role of the imaginary in the production of world news.” Sundaram’s article, widely-shared online, seemed to chime with many people, perhaps because his argument – that reporters should live for long periods in the countries they cover and be properly supported in their attempts to do this – is hard to disagree with. The advantages an extended stay provides are writ large in Sundaram’s perceptive new book, “˜Stringer: a reporter’s journey in the Congo’ – part travel memoir, part meditation on the unknown and ignored. The Congo has however, in the last decade been the subject of several other great books, stemming from its epic recent history – works by Jason Stearns and David Van Reybrouck immediately spring to mind. But the writer Sundaram most reminds me of is Teju Cole, whose meandering fictional and non-fictional narratives in Every Day is For the Thief (Lagos) and Open City (New York) share a similarly meditative and closely observant quality. Sundaram finds himself living in Victoire, a poor neighbourhood of Kinshasa, which initially “appeared as a collusion of secrets only the locals shared” – the meanings of which would only later be revealed. He stays with a Congolese family; the relatives of a refugee, Annie, whom he met whilst a student at Yale, studying algebra under the legendary mathematician Serge Lang. Sandaram is not your average stringer. In Victoire, Sundaram discovers what he terms “˜the donut society’: “with the family at the centre, and the clan (the street) as the ring. Outside this ring the world was chaotic, without clear rules or enforcers.” And living in this house, the author becomes a part of this society, “a piece of luck” that his hosts have come across and, in many ways, “tried to share.” And luck begins to favour Sundaram, he first becomes an unsupported stringer for AP and then, on the strength of a widely-read article on the fate of the Congolese pygmy community (whose forests are been destroyed by illegal logging), his relationship with the wire service becomes more formalised. His travel is funded to visit the distant “˜War in the East’, which for most Congolese is a far away event, better pushed to the back of the mind. For Sundaram however, it exerts a strong emotional pull, drawn from a desire to tell the stories of “one of the greatest manmade disasters of our lifetimes.” Sundaram reaches Bunia in Ituri as militias close in around the city and seems conscious of being the only international journalist within several hundred miles. The process of reporting is primitive and raw – the author describing how he would walk the streets “looking for stories, searching in the broad spaces”. Perhaps simply being there is enough. He then falls sick, weak and vulnerable he relies on newly-made acquaintances to nurse him back to health. The atmosphere is tense, the country is building towards its first election since the 1960s and no one knows what will happen. Sundaram is told that senior AP correspondents are being flown in – “claim[ing] the country for themselves.” He is sent a list of stories that he is not allowed to touch. Feeling betrayed by his editor, himself a former stringer in Congo, the writing is perceptive and intensely self-analytical. The election arrives. Sundaram sees it as a fragile, comic affair; “a performance of democracy.” The vote is peaceful, but chaotic, with multiple irregularities, but the aftermath is violent and the results take weeks to collate. Sundaram returns to Kinshasa. A fight breaks out in the capital between the personal armies of President Kabila and his main rival, the warlord-turned-politician, Jean-Pierre Bemba. The author takes refuge in a hotel with other journalists and then subsequently hides in the compound of an Indian-owned margarine factory. The setting verges on the absurb. From this unpromising vantage point Sundaram becomes one of the few, perhaps the only, foreign journalist still filing from Kinshasa – the others had stayed for the vote but left before the results were announced; therefore missing the real story. It seems incredible that this is how the news we consume and take for granted could really be made. Having “lived the story” Sundaram is now in demand; writing for the New York Times and being offered attractive foreign postings by the AP. The harsh gaze of the international media, briefly settling on Congo, has deemed him worthy of a regular pay check. The stringer has earned his stripes. Magnus Taylor is Editor of African Arguments.

The first massive galaxies were formed during the first few billion of years of the Universe existence. However, the space was quite a violent place at that time, as it was ‘overcrowded’ with large entities according to the Big Bang theory. Therefore, galaxy collisions and mergers were quite regular. In any case, astronomers predict that some of those ancient or relic galaxies still exist and they could offer perfect opportunities for astronomers to study the characteristics of the early Universe. Up to 0.1% of such primordial galaxies may still remain almost unchanged and more-or-less unaffected by strong cosmic disturbances according to the theoretical predictions. It is difficult to prove this theory since most of the oldest galaxies are located in the farthest regions of the universe, making all astronomical observations complicated. Despite this obstacle, the search for relic galaxies is ongoing and one candidate has been probably identified. A joint team of astronomers from Spain and the USA have published their study at arXiv.org. They describe NGC1277, a galaxy, which is located relatively nearby galaxy and which in fact fulfills all the criteria to be considered a relic galaxy. NGC1277 is located in the Perseus cluster at a distance of 73 Mpc from our Solar System, and contains star populations, which are old enough to be formed at the dawn of the Universe. The authors of the study have performed an analysis of the star formation history using a method called deep optical spectroscopy. They found that the age of stellar populations is distributed quite uniformly, with most of them being older than 10 billion years. Furthermore, no evidence of more recent star formation episodes have been determined, supporting the ‘relic galaxy’ assumption. An analysis of the metallicity (a parameter of stars related to their age) also reveals a relatively small content of metals contained in the mass of the objects spanned by NGC1277. Higher metal content typically indicates younger stars. Meanwhile, it is not the case for NGC1277, where, according to the authors of the study, low metallicity dispersion also indicates that most of old stars in this object were formed in a very short period of time, almost resembling a single-burst event. In fact, it took less than few hundred million years to NGC1277 to form its mass – about 10 times faster than “normal sized” galaxies with equal mass. By Alius Noreika, Source: Technology.org

A 70-year-old farmer from Madhya Pradesh's Bundelkhand region died after being made to stand on one leg. The victim identified as Har Singh Lodhi was asked to atone for his sins after a calf was found dead in his farm with a bottle of rat poison beside it, reported The Telegraph. The panchayat in Bada Malhera of Chhattarpur district also asked him to pay a fine of Rs 500. According to his son Dariyab, Har Singh was ready to go through the purification rituals and had also paid Rs 500. Also read: Hindu rule will come: This video by Gau Raksha Dal Punjab celebrates cow vigilantism ''My father was himself keen to undertake the punishment as he had been feeling low since the calf died. After three hours of suffering and constantly changing legs, he fainted. He was taken to hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival,'' he told The Telegraph . Cow-Vigilantism is a practice that is carried out by some self-appointed protectors and similar cases have been reported in the past. In July 2016, four Dalit students were beaten up for skinning a dead cow. Also read: Cattle battle: Cows of Benaras tell us what 'gau-mata' really wants

Motherhood and ambivalence… When it comes to women making decisions to have or not have children, biological imperatives get a lot of coverage these days – from egg-freezing parties to single women using the services of sperm banks ‘before it’s too late.’ Ambivalence about motherhood rarely gets a look in. Some women definitely yearn to become mothers. Some definitely do not and make a clear decision early in their lives not to have children. Good luck to both groups. But there seems little room and no words to describe an in-betweener who has imprecise feelings and emotions about potentially becoming a mum or not. When on occasion the ‘I’m not sure and let’s just see’ approach does come up in conversation, it is often perceived as foolhardy or apathetic. You must know, you must make a choice! Added to this is the increasing social hysteria surrounding the ‘fertility window’. I’m considered an idiot by some for not having made a clear decision on my thirty-fifth birthday to get cracking and take affirmative action to know the exact status of my fertility. We’ve made motherhood a polarized, essentialist issue for women with no room for uncertainty. You’re childfree by choice or by circumstance. You can’t. Or you won’t. Simple. Those too slow to decide and take action to get pregnant get shoved in the hideously termed ‘socially infertile’ to describe those who would like to have children but who regrettably haven’t found themselves with the right partner or in settled circumstances. Rather than go it alone or take a dubious accidently-on-purpose route to become mothers, these women with full and loving lives chose to let fate take its course and deal with life as it happens. At tlfw we’ve decided that we’re not going to give that particular term any more airtime. There are other ways and other words to discuss our lives. What’s the reality of living with ambivalence to motherhood today? Well, the presumption that ‘comment-is-free’ on my maternal status can be hard-going. I really have had an uneasy phone call from a relative asking me if I had thought about freezing my eggs given my age. Even my five-year-old niece is in on it, having taken me aside for a quiet word one day to suggest I become a ‘mum on my own’ like some of her friends from school who have single parents. The most difficult and unpleasant experience around being a childfree woman I’ve had to deal with with are the gloomy soothsayers who barely know me and who shake their heads and insinuate I’ll end up wretched, having ‘missed the boat’. This offends me. I don’t think it can ever be one person’s place to imply another has missed out on a meaningful life before that person has finished living. There is still so much cultural mythology around motherhood being the only natural calling for women. Those women who don’t or can’t or just don’t know if they want to be mothers are still perceived as ‘lesser’. If you are, ambivalent you’re also seen as less smart. Non-mothers are less feminine, less nurturing, less kind and on it goes. Till we get to the logical point that women without children are ‘less natural as women’. That, my friends, is prejudice: and plain wrong. But that’s what happens when we wed women to biological imperatives and keep the myth alive that being a mother is an essential part of being a women. And this takes us back to ambivalence. What does it mean not to know one way or the other and not be driven to make a choice despite the tick tock of the biological clock in the background? Why are women ambivalent about motherhood? Fear of parenting? The legacy of difficult parts of our own childhoods? A subconscious or even conscious rejection of partners and their potential as father material? Concerns about the environment and children already living in terrible conditions across the world? Or, personally speaking, is it that I am indecisive, because deep down really I don’t want to have kids? I do wonder if by not making a firm decision I could be trying to hold on to the illusion I can have it all? All the benefits of childfree living: sleeping in; not ever having to go to Camp Bestival; exotic holidays at the last minute; my disposable income disposed of on me. At the same time I can hold the idea at the back of my mind that I can still be one of those tranquil earth mother types if the stars align. To be honest, it depends on which day of the week it is and what way the wind is blowing what I’ll tell you. That I have no hard and fast explanation is part of my general ambivalence. How can I comprehend what I might regret in the future now? What I am sure of in the present moment is that I can’t make a major life decision on the basis of anxiety. As for the potential for my twilight years lived in the shadow of a sorrow for a child I never had, in the words of Edith Piaf “Je ne regrette rein de rein”. I do not need to live in the shadow of the child-that-never-was. I don’t need a life plan B because I already have a life. If I pop my clogs tomorrow I’m confident my life had meaning and I have given to others. I have experienced what it is to love someone else more than myself. I do not need to to validate my existence as a woman or to prove my love for the human race. As for procreating for and through the deep love of a partner and the desire to create a bonsai version of us, that does sound magnificent in theory/ but in practice? Well you know – I just don’t know. I am ambivalent you see.

Posted by Larry Doyle on January 17, 2010 7:45 AM \| Editor’s Note: Please see LD’s update to this fascinating story just published on Tuesday evening February 2nd at 10:02 PM. With friends like these, who needs enemies? I have written previously on the importance of strong relationships while working on Wall Street. While the Wall Street numbers and dollars are voluminous, ultimately Wall Street is a ‘people business.’ I have also written previously how ‘information is everything’ on Wall Street. Traders work tirelessly to determine what is moving or what will move the market. Utilizing this information, millions of dollars can be made or lost in the course of a very short time span. Combining these two critically important factors, it should be no surprise how some will use – but then abuse – these two primary cornerstones of our financial industry. Folllowing this line of reasoning, are you ever shocked when a guy who cheats on his wife also then cheats on his girlfriend? Where am I going with this? Let’s enter the world of David Slaine, the government’s mole in the insider trading scandal currently rocking Wall Street. I will profess, I am truly shocked this morning reading how Slaine’s identity and story are reported in The Wall Street Journal’s Wired on Wall Street: Trader Betrays a Friend: For more than a year, Mr. Slaine, a senior Wall Street trader, was a government mole who wore a wire strapped to his torso, helping prosecutors to build the biggest insider-trading case in two decades. Using extensive contacts developed over a 27-year Wall Street career, Mr. Slaine has provided leads on possible insider trading by others not yet implicated in a sprawling case involving hedge fund Galleon Group, people familiar with the matter say. That case has rocked Wall Street and Silicon Valley and raised questions about the integrity of the nation’s financial markets. Mr. Slaine’s identity as an informant is being revealed by The Wall Street Journal for the first time. In a brief telephone interview Thursday night, Mr. Slaine said: “You got the wrong guy.” He said he has “nothing to do with that case.” He declined to provide a lawyer’s name. A criminal complaint filed in a New York federal court in November describes in detail the involvement of a cooperating source dubbed “CS-1.” The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Mr. Slaine is that cooperating source. This story of his involvement in the case was pieced together from information contained in the complaint and from interviews with Wall Street traders, lawyers and government officials involved the case. Mr. Slaine’s saga demonstrates how the U.S. has used Wall Street players to go undercover and turn on their colleagues. Mr. Slaine, 50 years old, has told prosecutors, among other things, that his friend and weight-lifting partner, Craig Drimal, traded on inside information. In November, Mr. Drimal was arrested at his Weston, Conn., home. Mr. Drimal declined to comment. The insider trading scandal and investigation is unique in the fact that informants like Slaine are wearing a wire to collect information and implicate co-conspirators. That said, why is The Wall Street Journal revealing Slaine’s identity and story at this point? Is the government sacrificing his identity in order to send a message to others within the industry or did the WSJ actually compromise the investigation with this story? Do you think Slaine will be looking over his back? Do you think others within the industry are now wondering who else is wearing a wire? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. LD

Close Remember Pepper — the humanoid bot that was released in Japan in 2015 and dubbed "emotional" — selling out in just a minute? Guess what, Pepper is set to make its debut in the U.S. and will soon land stateside. On May 18, SoftBank Robotics, the creator of the robot, announced that developers can now create applications for the Linux-based bot Pepper, using Android tools. Yes, Pepper is getting Android developer tools! Pepper will not only be getting support for the Android developer platform, but also Android Studio. Moreover, SoftBank will also push out a new portal for developers that will help them connect with other developers and offer detailed explanations. Since most developers who would be creating apps for Pepper will not have access to the bot, the SDK will have a virtual avatar, which can be easily controlled and programmed. "This is the first opportunity for the Android community to get their hands on an SDK to help them program on this platform," said Steve Carlin, vice president of marketing and business development at SoftBank Robotics America. The move to introduce SDK for Pepper could potentially help give a fillip to the bot's sales and broaden its reach. However, the decision could throw the power baton to Google, which owns the Android OS, giving it the control over app approvals, as well as a cut from the revenue generated. For the unfamiliar, the humanoid bot is 4 feet tall, three-wheel-based and has a childlike upper body. On its chest is a tablet that can be used for communicating or engaging with Pepper, but it can also communicate through speech. The Android software will essentially fuel the tablet on Pepper's chest. The OS will run in tandem with the Naoqi OS from SoftBank, which controls the bot's hardware. Pepper can also detect the change in the tone of voice and facial expressions of humans. The cloud-based bot can be updated continuously with new data. In September 2014, Tech Times reported that SoftBank had plans of selling Pepper in the U.S. via the Sprint stores, after a year of being sold in Japan. With the arrival of the SDK for Pepper, it seems that the dream is not a very distant one. ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

Update, May 22: A Lenovo representative just confirmed that the Moto Z2 Play would have a significantly smaller battery compared to the Moto Z Play. The device, expected in the coming weeks, will feature a built-in 3,000 mAh battery, which is 17 percent lower than its predecessor’s. @AnbhuleAnant Hi Anant. Moto Z2 Play has Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery. Auxen_Lenovo — Lenovo (@lenovo) May 20, 2017 Original post, May 5: A couple of weeks ago, a render of what the Moto Z2 Play from Motorola may look like got leaked to the internet. Now a new report claims to have more information on the upcoming mid-range phone, and how it may differ from the original Moto Z Play. The report comes from VentureBeat and noted gadget leaker Evan “@evleaks” Blass. He claims, based on seeing some unreleased marketing material, that the Moto Z2 Play will only have a 3,000 mAh battery, which will last up to one day and six hours. That’s far smaller than the Moto Z Play’s 3,510 mAh battery pack which could last over two days with a single charge. This difference is apparently due to cutting down the thickness and weight on the Z2 Play. Blass also claims that the Moto Z2 Play will have Android 7.1.1 Nougat out of the box. It will keep the 5.5-inch 1080p display from the original, and inside there will reportedly be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 processor running at 2.2 GHz. It will have 4 GB of RAM, 32 GB of on-board storage, a 12 MP rear-camera with dual auto-focus and a 5 MP front-facing camera. It will be released in Lunar Gray and Fine Gold colors, according to the report. We should not have long before Motorola, and its parent company Lenovo, officially announce the new members of the Moto Z family of phones. In the meantime, what do you think of the rumors that the Z2 Play will get a big dip in battery life? Let us know in the comments!

For 10 years, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid — the outgoing Senate minority leader — has been a punching bag for the right, and sometimes even the left. But, as a slew of recent profiles reveals, Reid has built impressive political machines both in his home state and in Congress — and Democrats will really miss him once he’s gone. Reid's most obvious legacy is the impressive political machine he built in Nevada, the fruits of which could be seen in November. While Democrats up and down the ballot were defeated across the country, the party picked up two House seats from Republicans, and replaced Reid with his handpicked successor, Catherine Cortez Masto. Nevada Democrats also went for Hillary Clinton, and gained control of both houses in the state legislature. Advertisement: "From the top of the ticket to the bottom, we elected Democrats," Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada told Newsweek in November. According to political journalist Jon Ralston, "The overwhelming, No. 1 factor" in the Democratic victories was Harry Reid. (He also told Newsweek the state Republican Party "would have to be upgraded to be called a laughingstock"). Reid brought the state party's disparate leaders and factions together, University of Nevada-Reno professor Eric Herzik told Newsweek,and installed intelligent operators in the state's two main population centers (Clark County and Washoe County). Reid also hired a talented young strategist named Rebecca Lambe to manage the state's political operations. As a result, Herzik said, "by 2008 they had over 100,000 more registrations than the Republicans," despite initially running roughly even with them, a lead that "continues to this day." Just as important to Reid's legacy, the Senate Minority Leader pushed the Democratic Party to move Nevada to the beginning of the primary calendar. By pointing to the overwhelmingly white and rural populations of Iowa and New Hampshire, Reid effectively argued that Nevada deserved to be included among the out-of-the-gate primary states in order to better represent both underrepresented minorities as well, as Western states in general. This helped increase voter enthusiasm in a state that had often seen chronically low turnout, which was supplemented by the advanced data collection and voter mobilization techniques utilized by the powerful Culinary Union Local 226 in Las Vegas. Outside of Nevada, Reid's legacy was strengthening the Democratic Party by making sure its caucus stayed unified behind a progressive agenda. He inspired loyalty by taking the fall for Democratic candidates facing reelection who were facing unpopular votes or opposing bills that progressives believed needed to fail but couldn't openly criticize without facing backlash, intuitively knowing when to fight bare-knuckles battles (such as his famous thwarting of President George W. Bush's Social Security privatization plan in 2005), and managing to keep himself out of the spotlight while wielding tremendous power behind the scenes. By contrast, Schumer has a reputation for loving the spotlight (hence the famous joke that "the most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera") and exercising political caution. Advertisement: "One of Reid’s greatest skills as his party’s leader in the Senate was keeping his caucus unified," New York Magazine pointed out in a profile Tuesday. "That’s a task that will be especially crucial under Trump: With 10 Democratic senators from states Trump won up for reelection in 2018, the temptation for some of them to peel off and vote with Republicans — to demonstrate they can be reasonable — will be strong." Unfortunately, Schumer has already given indications that he may not possess Reid's strengths when it comes to fighting and winning hard battles. "Chuck will go to the ramparts on an issue when it’s polling at 60 percent, but as soon as it gets hairy, he’s gone," one senior Democratic Senate aide told New York Magazine. "Chuck wants issues to have no negatives, but it’s the Trump era. He’s looking at polls showing 60 percent for the Carrier deal and thinking to himself, Maybe we should support that." These concerns were reinforced when, after Trump's initial victory, Schumer began attempting to seek common ground with the president-elect. This prompted Reid to send out a public message stating that Trump is "a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate." As he later explained to Jason Zengerle, "What I was trying to say is, ‘Be careful, because this is not all fun and games. The stuff he has said has been hateful and disruptive and crude and not helpful to anybody, and so be careful what you agree with him about.'" Needless to say, Reid's wisdom — though not widely covered — will be sorely missed when he's gone. And what does he think of the leaders, aside from Schumer, who might take over the party by running for president in 2020? Advertisement: "It depends on who’s running," Reid reportedly told a staffer, according to Politico. "We’ve got [Elizabeth] Warren; she’ll be 71. Biden will be 78. Bernie [Sanders] will be 79."

Ghastly Menace Website Facebook "The Chicago outfit Ghastly Menace may sound like a dangerous and motley crew, but the name belies the band's indie-pop slant. Their songs are crunchy, but delicate – lo-fi indie pop with a little bit of a bite in it." -Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago Public Radio "The guitar-drums based instrumentals have a comfortable shabbiness to them, something along the lines of what a thrift store would sound like if it were embodied on a record." -Reviewsic Croquet Website Croquet is Chaetan Newell's inexorable right to do whatever he wants. This includes aiming a blow dryer at various woodwinds, playing four different instruments at once, and providing handmade stage backdrops for ambience, not to mention surprise hip-hop shows. Beginning in 2007 by way of Boston, this project's live show has spanned from one-man performance art to solid indie-pop quartet, from ethereal jazz improv to balls-to-the-wall psychedelic rock, and two things bind it all together: subtle complexity and raw, concentrated emotion. Part of noise pop label Should Be Flowers's catalog, Croquet's first release in November of 2007 was a split LP with Steve Wood, a homeless man dying of AIDS who claimed to be the original singer for The J. Geils Band. This has yet to be proven or disproven. This texturally diverse 29 track album flows seamlessly back and forth between experimental yet catchy analog bliss and the sound of a man against great odds singing his heart out across Massachusetts Avenue. Two years later, Newell finished the Sodomize the Silence EP leaping out of the bedroom and onto the drum kit with fuller instrumentation and more passion and sincerity than ever. A common fixture of premier Boston venues (TT the Bear's, The Middle East, Great Scott, etc.), Croquet has also toured as far south as Athens, Georgia maintaining a strong presence in Newell's home state of North Carolina (this explains airplay on multiple college radio stations as far as Tennessee). It was here that Newell began his training as a musician, picking up a new instrument every few years. After playing upright bass with various orchestral groups including The North Carolina Symphony and obtaining a Bachelors of Music with guitar, it should come as no surprise that he has worked with members of notable groups such as My Bloody Valentine, The Flaming Lips, Bright Eyes, Pere Ubu, Mercury Rev, Helium, Swervedriver, Pele, Thalia Zedek, Victory at Sea, Dumptruck, Bang Camaro, Head of Femur, Pram, and even legendary Motown group The Chairmen of the Board. After playing lead guitar with St Helena ("every indie enthusiasts dream" according to The Noise Magazine), Newell relocated to Chicago in 2010 and has since played out with much success joining David Baker's new group Variety Lights on drums (who supported labelmates Pere Ubu on their 2013 UK tour with Adam Franklin on guitar). Croquet has also found success in this department at venues such as Double Door, Reggie's, Township, Quenchers and The Burlington with a primary line-up of Tim Butler and Matt Settle on guitar and Matt Fuller on drums weaving intricate soundscapes of sexy post-rock that somehow miraculously flow together to form catchy and cohesive pop songs. Keep an eye out for the next show!" The Western Website Facebook The Western is a Chicago-based post-rock outfit whose new album “On Top of the World and Never Ever Looking Back Again, Ever; Goodbye” has been well received at venues like Schubas and Metro throughout 2014. Opening tracks “On the Sun,” “Tiny Creatures,” and “Zombie Mom” stir around reminiscent of early Stereolab, while guitar-heavy numbers like “Honey” and “Chris in the Backseat” are akin to gritty Deerhunter and Sonic Youth. When “On Top of the World” ventures into the psychedelic with “Ray 2” and “Utah Pt. 1,” the full embodiment of the band’s sound becomes clear. The Western’s overall product is a stellar, multi-layered mix of echo-heavy guitars and vocals that set a mood of enchanting detachment.

The next round of daily deals in the Countdown to 2015 will have you singing and dancing if you have an Xbox One or you can pick up Resident Evil 4 for the Xbox 360. More Daily Deals incoming tomorrow. For a full list of Xbox One deals, click over to the official Xbox Countdown to 2015 site here. Xbox One Content Title Content Type Discount % Dance Central Spotlight Xbox One Game 50% Fantasia (DIGITAL BUNDLE) Xbox One Game 33% Please note: prices and availability are subject to change and may vary by region. Xbox 360 Content Title Content Type Discount % Resident Evil 4 Games On Demand 67% Please note: prices and availability are subject to change and may vary by region. For a full list of Xbox 360 weekly deals, click over to the official Xbox Countdown to 2015 site here. –> –>

President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the murder in 2003 of radio broadcaster Jun Pala, a known vocal critic of the then Davao City mayor, a member of the vigilante Davao Death Squad (DDS) claimed Thursday during a Senate inquiry on the spate of alleged extrajudicial killings in the country. During a hearing of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Edgar Matobato, who claimed to have been a member of the death squad for decades, said that the vigilante group killed Pala on the orders of Duterte. De Lima asked, “Si Mayor (Duterte) mismo nagpapatay (It was Mayor Duterte himself who ordered it)?” Matobato answered, “Opo, siya po. Pinapatay ni Mayor Duterte noong 2003 (Yes, it was him. He ordered it last 2003).” Asked why Duterte ordered Pala’s ambush, the witness said: “Binabakbakan siya sa radyo araw-araw, ma’am (Pala would always criticize Duterte over the radio).” He said he was supposed to join the “operation” but he arrived late. Pala, 49, a radio station dxGO announcer, was gunned down by motorcycle-riding men on his way home in Empress Subdivision in Davao City on Sept. 6, 2003. READ: Duterte turns down justice for slain journalist Matobato said he was waiting at an eatery outside the subdivision while “SPO2 Jun Ayao, SPO3 Jun Loresma and some rebel returnees who joined the DDS” carried out the killing. “In-ambush si Pala. Inabangan paglabas ng bahay. Tapos kami naghihintay kami kung napatay na ba si Pala, naghihintay kami sa carinderia sa Ecoland, doon lagi parati kumakain si Mayor Duterte,” he said. (Pala was ambushed when he left the house. We then waited if Pala was really killed, we waited in an eatery in Ecoland, Mayor Duterte would always eat there.) A few days after Duterte was elected into office, the President was criticized for his tirades against corrupt reporters who extort money from politicians, citing the case of Pala as an example. “The example here is Pala. I do not want to diminish his memory but he was a rotten son of a b****. He deserved it.” JE/rga READ: Duterte endorses killing corrupt journalists Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.

Blending her original photography with hand-drawn illustrations in Photoshop, animator Yoyo the Ricecorpse creates quirky ghost-like characters that live in a world where anime meets Roger Rabbit. Each animation is limited to a single animated GIF that sees her doughy characters living in teapots or lounging around urban backdrops in photos taken from Yoyo’s travels to Tokyo. The illustrator says she’s inspired by animator Hayao Miyazaki, manga artist Eiichiro Oda, and writer Roald Dahl, something apparent in her attention to detail and her ability to suggest a larger narrative with just a few frames of animation. Recently out of school, Yoyo now works full-time as an illustrator and animator in London and has transformed many of her characters into an assortment of shirts, pins, buttons and other objects available in her Etsy shop (we’re particularly fond of the Sausage Bunny). She also tells Colossal that she’s working on an animated music video that should be out soon. You can follow more of her work on Instagram and Behance.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel looks on as President Donald Trump accuses a German reporter of engaging in 'fake news.' (Screen cap) President Donald Trump on Friday hit back at a German reporter who asked him about his obsession with labeling any piece of information he didn’t like as “fake news.” During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a German reporter asked the president both why he supported isolationist trade policies, and why he was “so scared of diversity in the news,” referring to Trump’s repeated attacks on unfriendly media outlets. Trump started off his response by sarcastically calling her a “nice, friendly reporter” before pivoting to her first question about his support for protectionism. “I am a trader, I am a fair trader,” Trump insisted. “I am a trader that wants to see good for everybody worldwide, but I am not an isolationist by any stretch of the imagination.” Trump then moved on to attacking the media for giving off the impression that he’s an isolationist. “I don’t know what newspaper you’re reading, but I guess that would be another example of, as you say, fake news,” he said. As Trump accused the reporter of spouting “fake news,” Chancellor Merkel looked up from her lectern and gave the president a pointed stare. Watch the whole video below.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2009, page 61 Waging Peace An American Jewish Woman Finds Occupation Unacceptable POLITICAL ACTIVIST and author Anna Baltzer spoke to a full house at the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation Conference on Oct. 25 at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC—and it was obvious from the start that she struck a chord with her audience. Baltzer has toured the United States spreading the word about what she saw during her eight months in the West Bank, as well as promoting her book which documents that journey, Witness in Palestine: a Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories (available from the AET Book Club). She went to Palestine to see for herself the conditions for the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, Baltzer explained. What she found was very different from what she had learned growing up a Jew in America. “I didn’t want to believe it,” she said. “I wanted to believe that Israel was being virtuous and the Arabs in the area were the ones preventing peace.” However, she discovered, this was not the truth. Baltzer emphasized that there is a clear difference between a Jewish Zionist and a non-Zionist Jew. “Do not associate Israel’s occupation with Judaism,” she said with full conviction. “Don’t confuse Israel’s actions with Jewish justice.” Social justice is a cornerstone of the Jewish faith, she reminded her listeners. “To speak out is not anti-Semitic; it is in line with Jewish social justice,” she said. She then asked the crowd to imagine Washington, DC under a full military occupation, as the West Bank is today. Imagine well-kept highways for the use of Jews only, while Muslims and Christians are forced to travel over other, neglected roads, or hundreds of roadblocks set up everywhere, between neighborhoods, preventing Muslims and Christians from having any semblance of a normal life—earning a living, receiving an education, enjoying a social or spiritual life. “Everything is affected when you can’t move,” she noted. Baltzer then discussed the other side of the story. In a part of the world where a Palestinian farmer whose family has lived on his land for thousands of years is forbidden to reach that piece of land, Israel grants her, as a Jew, full freedom of movement. She then pointed to a photo of an Israeli billboard beside a West Bank road urging Israelis to move to the illegal settlement of Ariel, which now has a population of more than 18,000. The Hebrew slogan, she told her audience, translated as “Now More Than Ever.” The ad went on to promise each Jewish person who settled in Ariel 100,000 Israeli shekels ($25,000). The majority of Jews moving to these settlements were not doing so to push the Palestinians off their land, Baltzer explained, but were searching for a good deal, and a housing subsidy from the Israeli government—courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. “The Israeli government should be held accountable, not the fanatics,” she argued. “Ideological settlers are in the minority.” Noting that the Israeli government is always talking about its security, Baltzer asked why, if Israel is so worried about the state and its people’s security, it is encouraging and even paying its citizens to move onto the enemy’s land where they are not very safe? The American government is giving Israel more than $10 billion a year, Baltzer reminded her audience. This means that, as Americans, they are assisting Israel in these violations and that every American has a direct responsibility to know how his or her taxes dollars are being spent. “People say ”˜I don’t want to get involved, it’s too controversial,’” she said with some disgust. “You know what? If you are paying taxes, you are already involved.” Baltzer said she thinks the U.S. media are the reason the American public is so uninformed about the issue. To prove her point, she showed the August 2004 cover of an international edition of Newsweek, which a friend bought in Germany, with the headline: “The Plight of the Palestinians.” She then showed the cover of that week’s U.S. edition, purchased in Chicago, in which the cover story about Palestinians is nowhere to be found. She didn’t want her audience to feel bad about the situation, Baltzer said. Instead, she hoped to encourage them to act and, through their action, change the situation. Baltzer’s presentation is available on DVD. For more information visit <www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com>. —Jamal Najjab

This morning a friend of our DIY space project, Gregory Frank, led my attention towards a low cost solution by NASA to overcome problems reading display and control panels caused by launch vehicle oscillations. In short, the NASA Ares-1 rocket is damned with an oscillation frequency at 12 hertz on average, but changing between 10Hz and 13Hz, which makes it almost impossible for astronauts to read any displays, pull knobs and fiddle controls. The cost to mitigate this effect as part of the launch vehicle development or in the construction of the seat is very high so the Human Systems Integrations Division at NASA Ames came up with a somewhat simple and low cost idea to solve the problem, for the astronauts (at least) [1]. The idea is to strobe the display in the frequency caused by the launch vehicle. This freezes the displays and provides clear reading for the astronaut. As everybody else doing rockets, we are no strangers to rocket oscillations! The HEAT-1X Copenhagen Suborbitals launched June 3, 2011 had a well known 9 Hz oscillation which can be seen in the video below. Even though this rocket is a part of the development process and will not be launching one of our guys, oscillations in our rockets will always occur. You might find the remedy within the engine it self or the amplitude might be very low in which case do not have a problem. But if you do, this idea is definitely worth taking into account. Now, there is a bit of contradiction in this, from my part. I have sworn to always make us of mechanical or analog devices, if possible. A pressure reading should come from a manometer to avoid having computers and power running such relatively simple functions. But hey.. if we end up having serious problems reading displays and controls and we could fix this by going digital I might just change my mind. Of course, you need a reliable system to measure the frequency in your seat to know the Hz´s of the strobe. There you go again. One idea never comes without the need for more stuff. Also, engine oscillation might not only be an problem for the astronauts. If it becomes a liability for other systems within the rocket or space capsule architecture you cannot squeeze your way out of this using strobes... However, the questions still stand: What does the astronaut need to read and control? But that is a totally different discussion. Have a great Monday, Ad Astra Kristian von Bengtson [1] Ref.

With a paralyzing spinal cord injury, the biological wiring that hooks up our controlling brains to our useful limbs gets snipped, leading to permanent loss of sensation and control and usually a lifetime of extra health care. Researchers have spent years working to repair those lost connections, allowing paralyzed patients to sip coffee and enjoy a beer with robotic limbs controlled by just their minds. Now, researchers have gone a step further, allowing a paralyzed person to control his own hand with just his mind. In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers report using a “neural bypass” that reconnects a patient’s mental commands for movement to responsive muscles in his limbs, creating somewhat of a synthetic nervous system. The pioneering patient, Ian Burkhart, a 24-year-old man left with quadriplegia after a diving accident almost six years ago, can once again move his hand. In the pilot study he could control movement of individual fingers, grasp big and small objects, swipe a credit card, and play Guitar Hero. The advance may open the door to restorative treatments for paralyzed individuals, allowing them to have independent movement—and lives. These complex types of movement “really can translate into a lot of functional, daily tasks that I can’t do on my own right now,” Burkhart said during a press conference. “So that’s something that, if or when I can use this system outside of the clinical setting, it will really increase my quality of life and my independence, and decrease the amount of assistance I need from other people.” The neural bypass works using a microelectrode array implanted in Burkhart’s brain. The implant picks up activity in a specific area of his left motor cortex, which researchers had analyzed prior to placing the implant. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which tracks brain activity based on blood flow, the researchers pinpointed the hand-controlling area of Burkhart's brain while he repeatedly thought about moving his hand. In the clinic, the implanted electrode hooks into a custom-built “neural bypass system.” The system picks up the signals from Burkhart’s brain activity, then, using machine learning algorithms, translates those signals to control a flexible arm sleeve, outfitted with 130 muscle-stimulating electrodes. To get it to work, Burkhart attended three weekly sessions for 15 months. He mastered controlling his thoughts and could pull off six hand and wrist movements, including the ability to move individual fingers. “The ability to move individual fingers—we were not sure if this would be possible,” first author Chad Bouton, of Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, said. “This result really exceeded our expectations because not only were we able to find those signals in the brain and decipher those signals for that individual finger movement, but we were able to link those signals to Ian’s muscles and allow that kind of movement to be regained.” After that, Burkhart went on to learn more complex tasks, like playing Guitar Hero and putting a cup to his mouth. “This technology has evolved rapidly over the past decade,” notes coauthor Ali Rezai of Ohio State University. “It may be coming of age at this point,” he said. While the study is a milestone, the authors say, researchers need to continue working on the system to fine-tune it, make it adaptable to other types of paralysis patients, and—perhaps most importantly—make it work outside of a clinical setting. Despite the work ahead, Burkhart says he is and has been very optimistic about the research. A few years ago when he moved his hand for the first time after his accident, he realized this might happen sooner than he expected. "And now within two years since then, things are moving along even better than I imagined,” he said. Nature, 2015. DOI: 10.1038/nature17435 (About DOIs).

Chicago State will join the Western Athletic Conference in 2013. The WAC will no longer compete as a FBS conference after this season. However, WAC commissioner Jeff Hurd had previously told ESPN that the league will continue as a Division I conference in all other sports. "It's huge for us," Chicago State men's basketball coach Tracy Dildy said. "It puts us in a legit conference. It now levels the playing field as far as recruiting and everything. We now get to offer everything everyone else does -- a chance for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. People have been killing us on that in recruiting. We can get and recruit a different kind of student-athlete." Chicago State will be the second member to leave the Great West Conference for the WAC, along with Utah Valley State. The addition of those two schools next season will give the WAC seven members, with New Mexico State, Cal-Bakersfield, Idaho, Seattle and Grand Canyon University.

About 200,000 people have been denied help with college costs since a draconian law denying government grants and loans to people with even minor drug offenses took effect in 2000. Congress narrowed the number of people covered in 2005, and now there are bipartisan bills in the House and the Senate that would finally repeal this unfair and counterproductive rule. The student aid restriction grew out of the drug war hysteria of the late 1990s. At the time, Congress believed that the drug problem was confined mainly to poor, minority neighborhoods and thought that the country could arrest and punish its way to a solution. Under the initial law, people convicted of state or federal drug crimes became ineligible for aid for specific periods of time — and in some cases permanently — based partly on the number of offenses. Incredibly, the law did not distinguish between felonies and misdemeanors. Image Credit Jon Elswick/Associated Press The restriction is unnecessarily punitive. It disproportionately affects minority young people, who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system. It unfairly penalizes people a second time, after they have already been punished by the courts, and it discourages many people who would be eligible for aid from applying at all. And by preventing people with convictions from getting the college degree that has become the price of admission to the new economy, it surely contributes to recidivism. Since the change Congress made in 2005 took effect, only people who are enrolled in school and receiving federal aid at the time of their offense are disqualified. This means fewer people now lose aid, but it makes the law no less unfair. Although the House and Senate bills would both repeal the whole provision, the Senate bill would take another welcome step. It would bar the education secretary from allowing any questions about drug convictions on the federal application for financial aid, known as the Fafsa, that is filled out by more than 20 million people each year.

The choice the government would like you to take away from this Fall Economic Statement is as follows: between the Liberals, who plan to put billions more into help for needy children and the working poor, and the Conservatives, who remain obsessed with balancing the budget even as deficits come in under forecast and the debt-to-GDP ratio declines. Put like that, the Liberals can’t lose. The boost in the Canada Child Benefit and the Working Income Tax Benefit are among the very best expenditures a government could make, from any number of perspectives — because they are aimed at the poorest among us, because they help to promote workforce participation and because in the former case the money simply covers the cost of indexing for inflation, which is no more than to maintain the real value of the benefit at the level Parliament voted for in the first place. As for the deficit, while it is true the numbers are higher than the $10 billion (tops!) the Liberals promised in the last election — even if they are less than projected in the last budget — they are, by most of the usual yardsticks, trivial. It is difficult to get worked up about deficits averaging less than $17 billion on an economy averaging roughly $2.3 trillion, even if it means the Liberals have also broken their promise to balance the budget after four years. It’s bad behaviour, certainly, but it will not ruin us. It is the notion that there must inevitably be a choice between the two — that we can either put more money into alleviating poverty or balance the budget — that is the sleight of hand in the Liberal scenario. The fiscal statement may commit to spending another $2 billion or so annually on the CCB and WITB, but there is plenty of other spending in the federal government’s $305-billion annual budget that could be cut, or at least not increased. It is, indeed, only because spending has risen as fast as it has that we have a deficit at all — and it is only because revenues have risen as fast as they have that it is not larger than it is. The story the Liberals liked to put about after they were elected was that it was not so much their own spending increases as an unexpected shortfall of revenues that explained why the deficit was so much larger than they had promised. But in fact revenues, after a brief dip last year, have rebounded to almost exactly the same level as projected in the last Conservative budget: $310.7 billion, in the current fiscal year, vs $313.3 billion. Yet instead of the small surplus the Tories projected, the statement shows a deficit of $20 billion. Why? Because the Liberals will spend $22 billion more this year than the Tories had pencilled in — and $50 billion more than the Tories actually spent in their last full year. It is entirely possible that in all this blizzard of new spending — now at its highest level, after inflation and population growth, in our history — the odd dollar or billion might have gone astray. But it is spending, rather than the deficit, that is the issue; while the level of spending, likewise, is distressing, it is more because it is composed of so much misspending than because of the overall burden it represents. This is an unwelcome message for Conservatives, who have grown too used to letting the deficit do their dirty work for them. It was so much easier, after all, to say of a popular but needless program that “we can’t afford it,” rather than criticize it on its merits, as a silly waste of money. It was easy, that is, so long as deficits were truly monstrous — when they were six per cent of GDP, rather than 0.6 per cent — and the public duly frightened. But now that neither seems to apply, they will need to find a new message. That doesn’t mean deficits are irrelevant. We do not go to hell if we fail to balance the budget in a given year, but the requirement does impose a needed discipline on spending — on the quality, as much as the quantity. If you have to choose between A and B you’re likely to subject both to far more scrutiny than if you’re told you can have both A and B. And while the deficit and debt do not look like serious threats now — the debt-to-GDP ratio is to fall to 30.5 per cent this year, its lowest level since before the crisis and the third-lowest it has been since 1982 — that does not mean they could not become so in future. We are still running deficits even after a year in which the economy grew 5.5 per cent in nominal terms — and nearly 10 years after the last recession. But there are storm clouds gathering: the possible collapse of NAFTA talks, the pipelines logjam, the cumulative impact of new regulations in the labour market and the still-precarious state of the housing market, especially in the face of a probable rise in interest rates. It doesn’t take much to change a virtuous debt cycle into a vicious one. And of course the federal deficit is only part of the picture: the provinces collectively are running much larger deficits, and will bear most of the costs of population aging, largely for health care, in the long term. We should be running surpluses in these relatively good times, to guard against the day when we will have no choice but to run deficits. That is what is so troubling about our current deficits: they are deficits of choice, not of necessity. That may be the best way to measure their size: not relative to what was promised, or what was forecast, but relative to the surpluses they should be. It is not necessary to jettison aid to the poor to close that gap. It is enough to jettison aid to the wasteful.

America's best new restaurant won't blow you away with high-priced steak or seafood, but it does have one killer bologna sandwich — and flair that's tough to beat. New Orleans' Turkey and the Wolf, a quirky sandwich shop in a neighborhood between the Lower Garden District and Irish Channel, earned top honors in Bon Appetit magazine's annual "hot 10," a ranking of the top new restaurants in America. Can't see the video below? Click here. "To understand the weird and wacky appeal of Turkey and the Wolf, it helps to learn about its 31-year-old ringleader, Mason Hereford. Picture a cross between Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Willy Wonka—laid-back but not lazy, with the curiosity and heart of a (big) kid. He sports what can only be described as a mullet, rollerblades without irony, and uses words like “dank” and “f*#%er” with abandon," read the magazine's writeup. "Don’t think for a second that just because Turkey and the Wolf serves its food on goofy plates or has a framed poster of a cat dressed like a sandwich that the cooking is a sloppy, intoxicant-fueled afterthought. What they are offering—wildly inventive sandwiches, salads tossed with ingredients like pig’s ear cracklin’s, and cheeky snacks like homemade Bagel Bites—is as difficult to pull off as most tweezer-built dishes found at so-called serious restaurants." For the full report, click here.

Harlem’s notorious “stone homos” pastor James David Manning will be spending the 4th of July in Gettysburg with Stewart Rhodes, founder of the right-wing Oath Keepers group. Naturally, Manning drew on the Civil War theme during his radio ministry on Tuesday, boasting that a group of armed neo-Confederate soldiers will launch a new Civil War in response to the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. “Surely the Confederates and the South will win this time,” Manning said. “You are not going to push this sodomy.” Manning, who said that he will join these fighters, reported that the neo-Confederates will storm the Supreme Court and the White House, proudly flying the Stars and Bars over the Capitol. “Now the nation must be rescued from the liberal God-haters and Constitution-haters and those that are pushing this sodomy agenda,” he continued. “America will be rescued and the rescuers will be the Confederates, the Southerners, those that have been the blood-washed, Bible-believing, locked-and-loaded. I’m James David Manning and I want to be one of them. I’m the Lord’s servant. ”

A Fort Bend County man is in jail, accused of threatening on social media to 'shoot up a mosque.'The Ft. Bend County Sheriff's Office first learned of the threat around 3pm Tuesday. They were notified by the Gloucester Township Police in New Jersey who had been alerted by a man there. He told them he had been sent a disturbing photo of weapons and ammunition along with a direct message on Facebook saying "I'm going to shoot up a mosque. I'm sorry." "Doing it for Lisa and everyone I love," the sender added.Authorities identified the sender as Clayton Alexander Cansler, 26, a resident of New Territory in Fort Bend County.Cansler was found and arrested at the Sugar Land Airport, where he works. No weapons were found and investigators say Cansler cooperated."When they confronted him at the airport, where he works, he did say he sent it and he sent it because he had a close friend die in the 9/11 attacks and also with the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, he felt this is something he wanted to do," explained Caitlin Espinosa with the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office.Cansler lives less than a mile from a mosque.He is listed in online FAA records as being a certified pilot. His family declined comment.Cansler was booked into the Fort Bend County jail on $10,000 bond and charged with making a terroristic threat, a felony. The charge is a third-degree felony punishable upon conviction by 2 to 10 years in prison.

view: topics flat nest brianiscool join:2000-08-16 Tampa, FL brianiscool Member Scare Don't let these ISP's bother you ! King Boo @charter.com King Boo Anon Re: Thank you browser add-ons they bother me all the time with their slow ass speed. brianiscool join:2000-08-16 Tampa, FL brianiscool Member Re: Thank you browser add-ons How can that be if your on charter? nonamesleft join:2011-11-07 Manitowoc, WI 1 edit nonamesleft Member Be responsible att, and... be responsible for your crimes first! Guess that "Rethink possible" slogan is an oxymoron. Is this educational material something they stole from someone else? Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by nonamesleft: be responsible for your crimes first! Guess that "Rethink possible" slogan is an oxymoron. Is this educational material something they stole from someone else? So two wrongs make a right? I hardly think so. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... Maybe not but it certainly makes them hypocrites along with the MAFIAA members who were caught pirating. Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by skeechan: Maybe not but it certainly makes them hypocrites along with the MAFIAA members who were caught pirating. Maybe so, but that doesn't make pirating excusable. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... Sure, but it is a matter of priorities. We apply more resources to stopping murder than jaywalkers. That doesn't mean jaywalking is okay. AT&T and the MAFIAA should be applying their resources to their own wrongdoing before applying resources toward 13 year olds downloading Happy Birthday. Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by skeechan: Sure, but it is a matter of priorities. We apply more resources to stopping murder than jaywalkers. That doesn't mean jaywalking is okay. AT&T and the MAFIAA should be applying their resources to their own wrongdoing before applying resources toward 13 year olds downloading Happy Birthday. I don't think ISPs should be policing their customers. Leave that to the proper authorities. That being said, it seems that the ISPs are being ordered to do this. I don't think that AT&T and other ISPs are doing this of their own free will. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... Ordered by whom? No one is big enough to 'order' an MSO or telco to do anything. Even when the FCC tells them to do something they don't roll over for it. Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by skeechan: Ordered by whom? No one is big enough to 'order' an MSO or telco to do anything. Even when the FCC tells them to do something they don't roll over for it. Ordered by the court system. Either that or the threat of suing by the RIAA or MPAA. Either way, just by the way the ISPs are going about this, they are not taking it seriously, and neither should we. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... That is beyond the purview of the court, they can't make law or policy and no court has such nationwide jurisdiction aside from the Supreme Court. Besides, Orders of the Court are public record and we would know about it. You could be right about the threat of litigation however the MAFIAA isn't big enough to threaten the MSOs and the telcos. The MSOs lawyers can beat up the MAFIAA lawyers. The MSOs and telcos aren't actively facilitating piracy in that they comply with DMCA requests. Twaddle @sbcglobal.net Twaddle to skeechan Anon to skeechan "No one is big enough to 'order' an MSO or telco to do anything." Don't be too sure of that statement. If the right people want something to happen in the US of A it will happen or people will commit suicide, have accidents etc. Please recall J. Edgar Hoover and his antics, many completely illegal. Even MSOs or Telcos can bleed. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... The MSOs and Telcos only fear the left side of FCC and even that fear is waning. Congress along with the legislatures of the 'several states' has been bought and paid for. nonamesleft join:2011-11-07 Manitowoc, WI nonamesleft to Nightfall Member to Nightfall said by Nightfall: said by nonamesleft: be responsible for your crimes first! Guess that "Rethink possible" slogan is an oxymoron. Is this educational material something they stole from someone else? So two wrongs make a right? I hardly think so. No...Where did you see that? Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by nonamesleft: said by Nightfall: said by nonamesleft: be responsible for your crimes first! Guess that "Rethink possible" slogan is an oxymoron. Is this educational material something they stole from someone else? So two wrongs make a right? I hardly think so. No...Where did you see that? By addressing AT&T's wrongdoings "first", its a simple insinuation. nonamesleft join:2011-11-07 Manitowoc, WI nonamesleft Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by Nightfall: By addressing AT&T's wrongdoings "first", its a simple insinuation. So what! You want to praise them? Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by nonamesleft: said by Nightfall: By addressing AT&T's wrongdoings "first", its a simple insinuation. So what! You want to praise them? At this point, neither side should be praised or scolded. Pointing out the skeletons in a company's closet and using it as a reason to pirate is just as faulty as pirating in itself. Its wrong on both ends. skeechan Ai Otsukaholic Premium Member join:2012-01-26 AA169\|170 skeechan Premium Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... Only one side needs scolding and that is the hypocrites at AT&T and the MAFIAA pirates. nonamesleft join:2011-11-07 Manitowoc, WI nonamesleft to Nightfall Member to Nightfall said by Nightfall: said by nonamesleft: said by Nightfall: By addressing AT&T's wrongdoings "first", its a simple insinuation. So what! You want to praise them? At this point, neither side should be praised or scolded. Pointing out the skeletons in a company's closet and using it as a reason to pirate is just as faulty as pirating in itself. Its wrong on both ends. I never mentioned pirating, your just taking what I said out of context. I don't pirate anyways! So get off it! Nightfall My Goal Is To Deny Yours MVM join:2001-08-03 Grand Rapids, MI Nightfall MVM Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by nonamesleft: I never mentioned pirating, your just taking what I said out of context. I don't pirate anyways! So get off it! I think we both did a little bit of that there. I apologize for doing that. Talk about taking what you say out of context. I never mentioned that you pirate.I think we both did a little bit of that there. I apologize for doing that. nonamesleft join:2011-11-07 Manitowoc, WI 1 recommendation nonamesleft Member Re: Be responsoble att, and... said by Nightfall: said by nonamesleft: I never mentioned pirating, your just taking what I said out of context. I don't pirate anyways! So get off it! I think we both did a little bit of that there. I apologize for doing that. Talk about taking what you say out of context. I never mentioned that you pirate.I think we both did a little bit of that there. I apologize for doing that. Yeah, I checked, your right, I apologize for doing the same. axus join:2001-06-18 Washington, DC axus Member Maybe it's meant to be ineffective So copyright cartels can say "We tried", and proceed to lobby for a law, instead of this industry agreement. Then, the big ISPs will already have the infrastructure in place, and it won't be a huge burden on them to follow that law. It's another huge barrier to entry for smaller ISPs, though. turtlespeed join:2013-02-21 united state turtlespeed Member Six Strikes is meant to be a joke Right!!! So, if an AT&T Internet Subscriber Believes they are Wrongly Accused who gave AT&T the Right to Prevent that Subscriber from hiring a Lawyer and Suing them in Court. The Courts have Already found that an IP address Is Not A Person how can anybody get into trouble over anything since the Courts Ruled an IP Address is not a person. I think Six Strikes is just meant to be a Joke??? There will be thousands of Lawsuits I predict and Six Strikes won't last 6 Months. gjrhine join:2001-12-12 Pawleys Island, SC gjrhine Member Dear ISP send me my 6, I'll click through all and we'll be all done OK? turtlespeed join:2013-02-21 united state turtlespeed Member The Key Is Lawsuits, then Six Strikes Goes Away!!! If you are Wrongly Accused Sue it's that Simple, Lawyer will be Lining up for FREE to take your Case They use the Net Too Remember. Remember, an IP Address is Not a Person. It's a Slam Dunk!! cdru Go Colts MVM join:2003-05-14 Fort Wayne, IN cdru MVM Re: The Key Is Lawsuits, then Six Strikes Goes Away!!! said by turtlespeed: If you are Wrongly Accused Sue it's that Simple, Lawyer will be Lining up for FREE to take your Case Good luck finding a lawyer to work pro bono or on a contingency basis fighting an accusation to your ISP that, at worst, results in a stern popup telling you not to do it again, or else you'll get another popup... ndwbr join:2003-07-10 Atlanta, GA 1 edit ndwbr Member thwart with VPN? Just one question: won't a simple VPN service (e.g. StrongVPN) and/or compressed/encrypted files (are torrents compressed/encrypted? -- follow up: sure they are: » bit.ly/nyAZdn ) easily thwart any attempt on the part of big brother to determine what is being downloaded? I think this is a big hoax and they are simply trying to intimidate people into believing they have the ability to track every byte that you are downloading... DeathK Premium Member join:2002-06-16 Cincinnati, OH DeathK Premium Member Re: thwart with VPN? said by ndwbr: (are torrents compressed/encrypted? -- follow up: sure they are: »bit.ly/nyAZdn ) Now, if you're on a VPN the IP they see doesn't lead back to you. This part doesn't matter since some copyright holders set up bogus seeds for their own content and see what IP's are downloading/sharing.Now, if you're on a VPN the IP they see doesn't lead back to you. David Premium Member join:2002-05-30 Granite City, IL David Premium Member VPN VPN and it won't matter. ndwbr join:2003-07-10 Atlanta, GA ndwbr Member Re: VPN i don't buy it - how can an ISP read encrypted data ••••••• show 7 replies your comment..

After agreeing to all opt out of their contracts together, Miami Heat stars LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade have been discussing financial terms of new contracts among each other, sources told ESPN.com. Bosh's agent, Henry Thomas, said he told Heat president Pat Riley of Bosh's decision to opt out on Sunday afternoon. Wade's decision came Saturday, and LeBron's on Tuesday. The deadline for the players to declare free agency is midnight Monday The talks between the three players is the strongest indication yet that James plans to re-sign with the Heat after he becomes a free agent on Tuesday. Unlike in 2010 when all three took nearly identical contracts, the discussions this time have included the possibility that James would draw the highest salary among the three, sources said. James, 29, has never been the single highest-paid player on his team in his 11-year NBA career. Under league rules, players are not allowed to negotiate new contracts with their teams until July 1. However, there is nothing preventing the players from working it out among themselves, and cutting up the Heat's upcoming record $55 million in available cap space is believed to have been a major part of the discussion when Wade, James and Bosh held a meeting last week in Miami. The trio of Heat stars working collectively have three general options on how to put together their deals that could affect how aggressive the team will be going after other free agents. The Heat's front office, led by president Pat Riley and general manager Andy Elisburg, will consult but have different plans for all three contingencies, sources said. James, Bosh and Wade could all re-sign and take raises to the maximum salary starting at $22 million each, which would carry the Heat into the luxury tax and significantly limit their spending options this season and in the following seasons. They could all take significant pay cuts, perhaps in excess of $5 million per year each, that would take the Heat below the salary cap and leave enough room to chase a major free agent like point guard Kyle Lowry. Though the Heat may ultimately investigate the possibility of Carmelo Anthony, that option has not been seriously discussed among the parties yet, sources said. The last option is that the Heat stars could all take moderate pay cuts and stagger their salaries at different levels. This would likely not leave significant cap space but it would take the Heat below the luxury tax line and enable them up to use the full mid-level exception of $5.3 million and the biannual exception of $2 million to bring in multiple role players. With James saying the team needs to improve "at every position," it seems possible the third option may end up being the most likely, especially after the Heat players all took pay cuts when they came to Miami four years ago. Udonis Haslem, who declined a $4.6 million player option for next season to add more flexibility, is also expected to be a part of the plans as he works out a new long-term deal that reduces his annual salary.

Over the past several years, health care for the American poor has become a curious patchwork where most blue and purple states expanded Medicaid but the solidly red ones — especially in the South — generally did not. When congressional Democrats drafted the Affordable Care Act back in 2009 and 2010, they took it for granted that all states would accept federal funding to expand their Medicaid programs. But then the Supreme Court ruled that a key element of the law, which essentially forced states to do that, was unconstitutional. This created a weird and unenvisioned gap in the law’s coverage provisions. If your income is slightly too high to qualify for Medicaid, you receive a pretty generous subsidy to buy health insurance on your state’s exchange. But if you are just below the threshold and you live in a state like Texas or Florida that hasn’t expanded Medicaid, then you get nothing at all. The Senate’s health bill, while drastically cutting Medicaid, does address this “Medicaid gap” issue by making subsidies available all the way down the income chain. Texas-based journalist Erica Grieder argues this makes the bill a good deal for low-income people in those states. Still, in this respect BCRA is better for people below 100% FPL in the states that didn't expand Medicaid https://t.co/4THAWamXCn — EricaGrieder (@EricaGrieder) June 26, 2017 The reality is not so clear. According to the Congressional Budget Office score of the plan, “despite being eligible for premium tax credits, few low-income people would purchase any plan,” because the plans available are essentially useless to the poor. Many patients using ACA exchange plans complained that they had deductibles so high that the insurance was hardly worth using. The law did, however, attempt to address that by offering special additional subsidies to limit out-of-pocket costs to the lowest-income patients. It also required insurance companies to cover preventive medicine with no copayment or deductible. The Senate bill changes all of this, and creates a situation where even with subsidy, a typical person poor enough to qualify for Medicaid is probably worse off buying insurance. BCRA will create extremely high deductible plans Under Obamacare, tax credits were tethered to the cost of plans covering 70 percent of medical expenses. The Better Care Reconciliation Act would reduce that amount to plans that cover 58 percent — meaning higher copayments and deductibles. It also allows states to waive out of the “essential health benefits” requirements that cover preventative care and other things. Many states, of course, won’t waive those requirements. But since we’re talking about non-expansion states, we are already specifically talking about the states with the most rigorously conservative politicians, so they probably will waive them. The result is that you’re talking about plans that likely won’t cover any services without cost sharing, and whose deductibles are likely to be in the range of $6,000 or more. People losing Medicaid under the BCRA would get a tax credit...which would enable them to buy insurance with a deductible of over $6,000. — Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) June 26, 2017 The people currently ineligible for subsidies are people earning 100 percent of the federal poverty level or less. For a single individual, that means less than $12,060 a year. Even if the subsidized cost of your premium was very low, it’s difficult to see what the actual value of a plan with a deductible that high would be. You’re going to end up indigent and relying on emergency room care well before you hit that level. Of course, it’s possible in theory to have very low income and also have $15,000 stashed away in the bank. But according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the bottom 25 percent of the population had a median net worth of $50 back in 2013. When the data is updated later this year, it will probably show a modest increase. But outside of a handful of weird edge cases, there’s just no way people with incomes below 100 percent of the poverty line can afford to use the kind of high-deductible plans the BCRA envisions.

Cian Healy’s playing future was confirmed after he penned a three-year central contract with the IRFU that will see him stay at Leinster and Ireland until after the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. It brought to a swift conclusion speculation that he had been considering offers from the Worcester Warriors and Toulon. The priority for the player now will be to try and concentrate on the rugby side of affairs and hope that a ridiculously unfortunate run of injuries, that included neck, hamstring, ankle and knee setbacks can be consigned to the past. He returned to competitive fare against Zebre at the RDS last weekend and, depending on what Ireland coach Joe Schmidt decrees, may further hone his match fitness by playing for Leinster this weekend in a Guinness Pro12 game against the Cardiff Blues at the Arms Park. The Irish squad is currently training at Carton House ahead of their Six Nations game against England at Twickenham on Saturday week. Healy made his senior debut for Leinster against Border Reivers in May 2007 and has amassed 148 appearances for Leinster scoring 17 tries. Last cap Healy toured with the series winning British & Irish Lions in Australia (2013) although his tour was cut short due to an ankle injury. He has won three European Cups, a Challenge Cup and two Pro12 league titles with Leinster and two Six Nations Championship titles with Ireland. Second Captains He has watched Jack McGrath take a firm grip on the number one jersey for club and province in his absence with a series of excellent performances. Healy said of his decision: “I feel that I am coming back to full fitness now and would like to thank the medical and S&C teams for their ongoing support. “There are a lot of exciting young talented players coming through at Leinster and Ireland and I am looking forward to competing for silverware over the next few seasons.” The IRFU’s performance director David Nucifora said: “Cian is one of the most explosive athletes in world rugby and has proven for both Ireland and Leinster his ability to compete at the highest levels of the game. We are delighted that Cian has committed to playing in Ireland up until after the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.” Meanwhile, Pro12 leaders Ulster have a number of injuries ahead of their clash with the fourth-paced Scarlets at the Kingspan Stadium on Sunday. Hooker Rob Herring will learn the outcome of a scan on a hamstring soon, scrumhalf Ruan Pienaar is going through the return-to-play protocols following a head injury while Louis Ludik and Rory Scholes are back in training. There is still no word on a return to play date for Dan Tuohy (foot). Ulster scrumhalf Paul Marshall admitted that the memory of their performance against the Scarlets earlier in the season would be a motivating factor. “I think that’s the only game when we didn’t get any points. We gave away the penalty at the end right in front of the posts and it was a big disappointment. “They’re a good outfit. They started the season so well. They were winning every week. They beat us, they beat Glasgow, from our point of view we know it’s going to be tough game. Scarlets, and then the likes of Edinburgh and Connacht, for me they’re the most improved teams in the league. The boost they’ve had has made the league so competitive.” Roger Wilson will make his 200th appearance for Ulster if he is selected and Marshall enthused: “It’s phenomenal. As a backrower as well, 200 games here, over 100 at Northampton. I admire him as a player and a person in his willingness to keep going. He’s available to train almost every day. ‘Brilliant career’ The Ireland women’s sevens team have been drawn in Poll A alongside Australia, Canada and Fiji in the second round of the HSBC World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series in Sao Paulo on Saturday and Sunday.

0 0 0 0 Kids grow up so fast. One minute they’re playing pokemon and talking incessantly, the next minute they’re ready to kill themselves after working 60 hour weeks to support the family they never expected to have. What a wonderful world! Growing up has been a theme in all aspects of human culture for thousands of years. Literature, myth, religion, art, much of it has had something to tell us about what it means to pass from Childhood to Adulthood. You’ve got your Jesus with his God-the-Father, your Icarus and Daedalus, your Phaethons and Helioses, and so many more that inform us, in varying ways, about what it means to become an adult. We all start out wishing we could just skip childhood and join our parents as equals. It seems like such a glamorous life. You can go out whenever you want, drive a car, tell people what to do, buy things, and watch R rated movies. The sad news, that we learn all too late, is that it comes at a heavy price. That price is often our very souls. I exaggerate. Excuse me. Toil is, sadly, the human condition. Very few people get away with a life of pure leisure and those people are generally degenerate pricks that the majority of humanity looks upon with a mixture of envy and disdain. These people are the stars of various reality shows, the sons and daughters of millionaires with nothing better to do and it shows. While work can (and often does) ruin people, turning them into smoking ruins, it is also pretty obvious that not having to work destroys what makes people good and decent. As with all things, work requires moderation and if your job sucks, it nearly demands you get some totally bitchin’ hobbies to make up for it. Luckily for us, childhood doesn’t have to be completely forgotten, discarded like an old newspaper filled with content that is no longer relevant. Being a child teaches us a great deal about creativity, imagination, and possibility. Truly losing your soul to work means forgetting that these ideals are important to us as human beings, not just as children. One of the most spiritually depressing things (in the western world at least) is to see people give up, not just on the world, but on themselves. The human experience is a tough thing to deal with. The Buddha might say it is traumatizing; a situation that causes us to recreate suffering constantly. I’m inclined to agree with that for the most part. The thing is that it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to be innocent and gullible in the manner of children, but we also don’t have to be jaded and pessimistic either. Retaining the possibilities of childhood and the strength and perseverance of adulthood gives us the opportunity to be well adjusted humans: something that is easily within reach of all of us. Just look at old photos of your childhood, the old drawings you used to do, or just remember what it felt like to be a kid. Maybe you can capture some of that and turn things around if they aren’t going so well. Otherwise, we might as well start feeding our kids to the corporations as soon as they hit puberty. I guess that’s always an option. Another great way to lighten the load in today’s economy.

There were only three people on board the Pomme when we approached despite a lengthy queue. My immediate thought was there must be a technical problem of some kind, and it turned out that there was; when the train was fully loaded the front car was overshooting the station brakes. In some parks this might lead to a maintenance closure, but here the train was being sent round for three laps, partially unloaded, then sent round for a final lap so that car one could be emptied. This didn't help throughput very much, to put it mildly, but it was better than a missed credit. After nearly thirty minutes in line we had a free choice of seats and decided to take the front so that we'd get in our bonus lap. By the time we'd disembarked it was almost lunch time, and the various rides were beginning to close for lunch. We spent a few minutes taking photographs before deciding that it was time to hit the road for the three hour drive to our next target. We began our day at the very back of the park, where we found Western Luge , my first encounter with a Turbobob from local company Polyplast . Riders push individual plastic tubs to the top of a hill, then climb on board and wait for a start light to illuminate. From that point a gentle push is all it takes to begin an experience that is probably best described as a hybrid of a roller coaster and a water slide; the cars accelerate gradually as they traverse a layout that turns from side to side on its way back to the start point. There are no brakes or controls of any kind in the car, and as a result heavier passengers hit the station quite hard at the end; it would probably be unwise to disregard the posted weight restriction. The experience was a lot of fun, and we rode twice. Some weeks ago Parc de la Vallée announced a new coaster for 2018, widely believed by enthusiasts to be the Schwarzkopf City Jet that has operated at Nigloland since 1995. Under ordinary circumstances this knowledge would have led us to reschedule our planned visit today, but we decided it was worth proceeding as both of us were interested in riding a unique Togo-built shuttle coaster that once operated at Odakyu Mukogaoka Yuen in Japan. Unfortunately it was closed today due to a leaking water pipe within its safety envelope, a definite candidate for the most abstruse reason for a missed credit yet. On the plus side, we now have a second good reason to return to the park in the near future. Kingoland 6th August 2017 Kingoland is a family park in the Plumelin area of Brittany that premiered in 2014. It was set up by local entrepreneur Dominique Leroux, who reportedly spent almost ten years acquiring and refurbishing rides before he was ready to open, a process that is evidently continuing as the park continues to grow. Though the place has no stand-out attractions as of this writing it does include two relocated coasters, a walkthrough haunted house, a target shooting dark ride, and a good selection of flats, notably a Huss Enterprise and a Fabbri Pirate Boat. The various rides are backed up by a colourful home-spun theming package that looks very good despite having obviously been created on a minimal budget. We decided to begin our visit at Apollo Coaster, now the only Pinfari Z64 in Europe following the closure of the version in Wales at the end of 2007. The hardware dates from the early seventies before guest throughput became a serious consideration, and despite upgrades remains hobbled by the fact that it can only run two cars at a time. The operators were doing their best today, achieving something close to the theoretical maximum of one hundred and fifty an hour, but we nevertheless had to endure over thirty minutes in a queue filled with smokers and locals whose understanding of personal space was broadly equivalent to my understanding of particle physics. The wait wasn't made any more pleasant by the distorted pop music coming from a nearby speaker. As with many coasters of this era the trains are afflicted with over-the-shoulder restraints despite the lack of inversions. We thus boarded in the full expectation that we were in for a beating, but much to our surprise there wasn't a single jolt around the entire course which was negotiated with a level of finesse more commonly associated with B&M. Though this gave it some bonus points it's worth recording that the lack of violence was matched by a lack of forces of any kind; there was no airtime, no perceptible laterals, and only two brief moments of speed at the base of the first and second drops. The remainder of the layout was eminently forgettable, to the point that I doubt we'd have gone back for a second lap even if the queue had been shorter. We decided that we'd tick off the powered coaster before seeing what else the park might have on offer. Speed Chenille was operating as we approached, and both of us immediately noticed how fast the train was going; despite a diminutive height of just a few feet the figurehead of a bug on bad acid was clattering around the course at a speed that looked to be at least double that of the common Zamperla Dragon. There were no restraints at all, allowing a solitary ride operator to complete an unload and load process in about thirty seconds. We ended up in the front seat, and though there was no airtime in that location the three circuits we were given were lively and several orders of magnitude more thrilling than the Pinfari. Our third stop was at the walkthrough Maison Hantée, one of seven attractions added to the park last year. Eight people were allowed into the building at a time, starting in a pre-show room where a skeletal animatronic near the ceiling recited safety rules in a funereal monotone made only slightly less impressive by the squeaking of its motorised jaw. At the conclusion a sliding door opened and we were free to explore. The interior was particularly dark even by the standards of this sort of attraction; though there were occasional animatronic scenes along the route most of it was in almost complete blackness with only tiny LEDs for illumination. There was a small outdoor section for respite at the half way point, followed by another indoor area that concluded with a vortex tunnel that exited back out onto the midway. The nicest looking attraction at the park was Old West Shooting, a target shooting dark ride with a lengthy layout and hugely elaborate scenery that looked fabulous. Unfortunately it was let down badly by its hardware, which was apparently acquired from the defunct Parc Avenue in the south of the country. The targets were much larger than those seen on the various Sally rides, but despite that they were extremely difficult to hit; I found myself missing from as little as three feet away. There was no scoring on board the car, and though there was a scoreboard at the exit there was absolutely no way to figure where we placed on it. If we'd known that ahead of time we'd probably have sat back and enjoyed it as a dark ride rather than trying to shoot; perhaps next time we'll do just that!

BY: An assistant professor at South Carolina's Clemson University has called for violence against white supremacists and labeled Republicans "racist scum" on his Facebook page. Bart Knijnenburg, who teaches in the School of Computing, allegedly wrote in recent posts, "I admire anyone who stands up against white supremacy. Violent or non-violent," with the hashtag "#PunchNazis." He also denounced "All republicans" as responsible for alt-right violence and demanded they either "denounce" and "renounce" their GOP affiliation, "or admit you're a racist." The posts were republished by Campus Reform, which also included responses to Knijnenburg in his Facebook comments. One individual wrote, "We must be careful not to generalize as this is arguably the root cause of the extreme right's existence." "I've always looked up to you, as my 1st yr mentor but also for passing on the idea to study abroad. But it saddens me a bit to see this coming from you," the man added. "You should come live in the south for a while. It's exhausting," Knijnenburg responded on Aug. 16. "Many of my students belong to minority group (black, immigrant, LGBTQ+)…The pushback they get from conservatives — even decent, non-Trump-voting ones — is incredibly disheartening. The republican ideology of ‘everyone is equal and nobody deserves a handout' is naive at best, covertly racist at worst." In another post Knijnenburg wrote, "This society is aggressively structured to make cis white males succeed, at the expense of minorities." In his online academic profile, Knijnenburg described his research as answering questions such as, "Should I post this on Facebook or not?" John Gouch, assistant director/online news manager of the Clemson Newsstand and Mark Land, vice president for university relations, said in a statement, "The university is aware of remarks attributed to a Clemson faculty member, which appear to have come from his personal Facebook account. Those remarks are not reflective of the university's views, and university leadership has consistently made it clear that expressions advocating violence or hatred have no place on this, or any, college campus." The university would not say if they would be taking any further action. Neither Knijnenburg nor the School of Computing responded to requests for comment.

The optimal characteristics for nanowire-based charge-trapping memory devices may have been found by physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The technology is based on silicon formed into nanowires, approximately 20 nanometers in diameter. These nanowires form the basis of non-volatile memory. Nanowire-based devices are being studied extensively as the possible basis for next-generation computer memory because they hold the promise to store information faster and at lower voltage. Using a combination of software modeling and electrical device characterization, the researchers explored a wide range of structures for dielectrics (thin layers of material that store electrical charge). Based on the understanding they gained, the researchers said an optimal device can be designed. The design could provide a path to creating portable computers and cell phones that can operate for days between charging sessions, the researchers said. Ref: X. Zhu, Q. Li, et al., Fabrication, characterization and simulation of high performance Si nanowire-based non-volatile memory cells, Nanotechnology, May 16, 2011, 22 254020 doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/22/25/254020

Share Previous Next 1 of 4 The GyroCycle keeps upright by using internal flywheels to create a gyroscopic effect. While this is generally felt by every rider at higher speeds, the stabilization here will occur even while standing still. An added benefit from the same technology is that the bike will be less likely to lose traction and slide under itself during a turn. This grants the rider greater control and increased safety. Self-balancing motorcycles could open up a new market for new and old riders alike. Those who are hopping on for the first time won’t have to learn how to balance such a heavy vehicle. Likewise, older riders often lack the strength to hold a motorcycle up. This has fueled much of the market for three-wheeled trikes. The GyroCycle would provide another alternative with a more traditional, two-wheel design. While Thrustcycle is aiming to bring the first gyroscopic motorcycle to market, this doesn’t mean it will be alone. Not too long ago, BMW unveiled its very own Motorrad Vision Next 100 concept motorcycle. With either case, these new bikes are safer, cleaner, and quieter. The lack of a gas-powered motor will be a turn-off for some, but tech heads will love the futuristic look of these gyroscopic motorcycles. Price is going to be a big issue with such high-tech vehicles. This is where the GyroCycle is likely to edge out the competition. No official price has been released yet, but Thrustcycle has suggested that the price will be under $20,000. With multiple self-stabilizing motorcycles in development, it seems like we are getting one step closer to owning a Tron lightcycle. Someone just needs to get those Disney rights.

On Friday Alexander M. Kozak, a security guard Coral Ridge Mall in Iowa, shot a woman three times in the back. Court records from Kozak’s Saturday morning arraignment show that the murder was likely premeditated, done in retaliation over complaints about sexual harassment. River City radio station 1630 KCJJ reports: Kozak had been a security guard at the mall but was fired earlier in the day due to complaints of sexual harassment of store employees. It’s believed he targeted the woman, who reportedly worked at the Iowa Children’s Museum, because her complaint was the last in a series and led to his firing. Advertisement After he was fired, Kozak drove to his apartment to retrieve his gun and returned to the mall where he shot and killed the woman. According to the Gazette, police have not yet released the name of his victim. The paper reports that she was shot around 7:30 p.m. and taken to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, she was pronounced dead at the hospital. Image via Getty.

A Fox News guest said that a Missouri teen who says she was raped by a classmate was asking for it by going out late at night. He also accused her of lying. “What did she expect to happen at one in the morning after sneaking out?” attorney Joseph DiBenedetto said on Shephard Smith Reports. “I’m not saying — assuming that these facts are accurate and this did happen — I’m not saying she deserved to be raped, but knowing the facts as we do here including what the prosecutor has set forth, this case is going nowhere and it's going nowhere quick.” Shep Smith immediately jumped in and refuted his claims. “What you’ve done, Joseph, is taken an alleged victim of rape and turned her into a liar and a crime committer,” he said. “That’s a far jump from a 1,000 miles away." Watch a video of the exchange above. Daisy Coleman and her mother have spoken out against the town of Maryville, which they say helped to cover up the assault. She claims that the student, from a well-connected family, raped her and a friend, but the charges were dropped. The Maryville Police Department have denied a coverup.

President Obama Tells Laid Off General Motors Workers They are Sacrificing for the Future The following statement is what the president had to say to all of those General Motors employees who will be laid off under his restructuring plan: I will not pretend the hard times are over. Difficult days lie ahead. More jobs will be lost. More plants will close. More dealerships will shut their doors, and so will many parts suppliers. But I want you to know that what you’re doing is making a sacrifice for the next generation — a sacrifice you may not have chose to make, but a sacrifice you were nevertheless called to make so that your children and all of our children can grow up in an America that still makes things; that still builds cars; that still strives for a better future. The president claims that soon to be laid off General Motors employees are making a sacrifice for the future but that is not entirely accurate. One particular part of his statement sums it up, “a sacrifice you may not have chose to make, but a sacrifice you were nevertheless called to make.” Who called upon them to make this sacrifice? The president did. The president oversaw the restructuring of GM, he ordered the dealerships closed. He ordered the plants to close, and he ordered the parts dealers to close. He decided that it was time for thousands of General Motors employees to sacrifice their jobs. Whose future is the president asking these people to sacrifice for? It certainly isn’t for the families of those who will be laid off and trying to find a way to feed their families. The president is trying to distance himself from what he has done by claiming that he is a “reluctant equity partner” and will not interfere in the day to day operations but the bottom line is, if you work for GM and the dealership that you work for has been ordered to close you can thank the president for that. He has made you a sacrificial lamb. Advertisements

The man arrested Wednesday and accused of being the "Flint serial killer" is a Christian from Israel who tried unsuccessfully to put down roots in Northern Virginia and once worked with troubled children at a Leesburg mental health facility, according to friends and court records. Elias Abuelazam, 33, married twice and tried to settle down in the region, first in Fairfax County and then in Leesburg. Both marriages ended in divorce, and after the last one in 2007, Abuelazam's life became more nomadic. He bounced between Loudoun County, Michigan, Florida and Israel, the friends and court records say. Nothing in Abuelazam's past could have predicted what authorities say he has done since May, the friends said. Over the past 11 weeks, Abuelazam began randomly stabbing and attacking men -- most of them black -- in Michigan, Virginia and Ohio, police say. About 10 p.m. Wednesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents paged him over a loudspeaker at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where he was about to board Delta Flight 152 for Tel Aviv. Abuelazam was being held Thursday in Georgia, awaiting extradition to Michigan to face charges in one of the stabbings. Police in Michigan said Thursday they think he fatally stabbed five men in the Flint area and slashed nine others. Leesburg police said he stabbed two men there and attacked a third with a hammer last week. He is also suspected of stabbing a man Saturday outside a Toledo church. Sixteen of the victims were black; one was a dark-skinned Hispanic man; and one was white. "There's no understanding why he would have done such a thing," said Virginia Scott-Bey Kage, whose 15-year-old son, Anthony, was stabbed Aug. 3 as he jogged in Leesburg. Leesburg Police Chief Joseph R. Price said Thursday that he was confident that the attacks were racially motivated. "My belief is he selected the victims in Leesburg based on the color of their skin," Price said. That doesn't jibe with the way friends and family remember Abuelazam. "I just can't see him doing this," said Paul Lozinsky, 39, who worked with Abuelazam at the Piedmont Behavioral Health Center, now called North Spring Behavioral Healthcare, in Leesburg in the early 2000s. "I can't believe he's the type of guy who would do this. He was a nice guy to me. We got along together." But Lozinsky and others said that although they found Abuelazam friendly, they weren't really friends. His private life was a mystery. Even Lozinky's brother Daniel, whom Abuelazam asked to testify at his first divorce proceeding, said they didn't socialize outside work and had not kept in touch. Their chatter, he said, was always casual. "Wow. Maybe a lot has changed," said Daniel Lozinsky, 37. "I really didn't know that side of him. He seemed like a caring guy to me." Patrons and colleagues at the Michigan liquor store where Abuelazam most recently worked said nothing seemed unusual about the man behind the counter.

You only need eggs and bananas to make these tasty pancakes that fit almost every hyphenated category: dairy-free, Paleo-friendly, grain-free, gluten-free, low-carb, and high-protein. Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily It sounds too good be true, but these pancakes are easier to make than traditional pancakes and don't have any of that troublesome white flour. I've also included a three-ingredient recipe below for a slightly thicker pancake recipe. How Do These Work? It's a bit of a miracle when these come together, because mashing together bananas with eggs to make pancake batter doesn't inspire confidence. And these petite pancakes don't taste exactly like thick, traditional pancakes. Their texture is a combination of crêpes, blintzes, and the egg-y middle of French toast. Most of the reason that this "recipe" works comes from the egg: a binding agent, eggs keep everything together and provide structure for the pancakes. Meanwhile, bananas can contain up to 25% starch and have lot of natural sugars. Mixed together, these two ingredients make a sweet flour-less pancake. in fact, banana flour, a wheat flour alternative made out of green bananas, is actually used for gluten-free baking and cooking. 2-Ingredient Pancake Recipe Ingredients: 2 small bananas, not too ripe 2 medium eggs The ratio of banana to egg is important: you need one small banana to one regular-sized egg. If you have a large banana, then that can pair with two eggs. If you have very large eggs, then you might need more banana. Adjust the recipe accordingly to the size of your two ingredients. Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily Instructions: In a large bowl, beat your eggs. Add the banana and mash into the eggs. Mix everything together well so that it makes a smooth batter. (You can also combine the batter together in a blender). In a lightly oiled pan over medium-low heat, pour out pancake batter into small circles. Cook for about 2 minutes until the edges begin to dry and brown, and then flip and cook for another 2-3 minutes, or until cooked through. Flip carefully. Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily This recipe makes 5-7 petite pancakes that are naturally sweet, so you won't need a heavy pour of syrup if you're using it. Their texture is more crepe-like and less bread-y than traditional pancakes, but they have a lovely banana flavor. You can add nuts, chocolate chips, or fruit to the batter to mix it up a little bit. 3-Ingredient Pancake Recipe Ingredients: 2 small bananas 2 medium eggs 1 graham cracker square, crushed The addition of just one crushed graham cracker into this pancake batter makes the texture more similar to traditional pancakes. It also adds a nice flavor to your high-protein pancakes. Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily Instructions: Follow the recipe for two-ingredient pancakes above but add the crushed graham crackers to your batter in your blender or mixing bowl. Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily Image by Naomi Imatome-Yun/Food Hacks Daily

U.S. President Barack Obama will likely miss him. Jewish settlers in the West Bank won’t. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, one of the country’s most influential politicians over the past two decades and the chief confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on Monday that he’s retiring from politics and will not be contesting January’s general election. At a hastily convened news conference in the defense ministry, Barak said he had “exhausted” his political activity and wanted to spend more time with his family. The decision surprised political analysts and even members of Barak’s own party, who had bought billboard space around the country for ads featuring his face. But Barak, a centrist who served as chief of the Israeli Army in the early 1990s and as prime minister in 1999–2000, appeared to be headed for a drubbing in the election. Most polls showed his party would get no more than three or four seats in the 120-member Parliament. The move highlighted the disarray in the center of Israel’s political map, where at least four parties with similar platforms are fighting each other for votes instead of banding together to counterbalance the right-wing alliance of Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Two other centrists with name recognition, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, are still weighing whether to enter the race. The announcement also seemed to ensure that Netanyahu’s next government, should he be reelected, will be more hawkish than the current one. On some issues, including settlement expansion in the West Bank, Barak had at least a slight moderating influence on the government. “This means that the next government’s foreign and security policies will turn even more rightward than they already have, and become more nationalist and resistant to any concession or compromise,” wrote Aluf Benn, editor of the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz. Until 2000, Barak’s political trajectory was meteoric. As Israel’s most decorated soldier, he went almost directly from the Army into the government of Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin, serving as interior minister in 1995 and later as foreign minister. As prime minister in 1999, he withdrew Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after a 17-year occupation, a move that many now view as his most significant political achievement. He also offered to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians and withdraw from large parts of the West Bank in landmark peace talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000, concessions that no previous Israel leader had put on the table. But when Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat rejected his offer, Barak declared that there was no partner for an agreement with the Palestinians, a move that many analysts believe helped precipitate the second Palestinian uprising and the steady shift of Israeli public opinion rightward over the ensuing decade. Barak was defeated by another former general, Ariel Sharon, in early 2001 and left politics for several years. His alliance with Netanyahu over the past four years has been surprisingly strong, considering their divergent political leanings. It has also been welcomed by Washington, where members of the Obama administration have preferred dealing with Barak over Netanyahu. Some people in Washington credit Barak for the fact that Israel did not strike Iran’s nuclear installations before the U.S. election in November. Others feel he let Obama down by not pushing Netanyahu hard enough to engage with the Palestinians. “They assumed that Barak would deliver Bibi [on the peace process with the Palestinians]. And Barak kept reassuring them that Bibi is on board,” a former official told me earlier this year, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “At some point they became pretty disappointed with Barak.” As defense minister, Barak was in charge of authorizing housing construction for settlers in the West Bank—territory that remains under Israeli military control. Though settlements expanded steadily over the past four years, settler leaders saw Barak as an obstacle. “Barak will go down in the history of Israel’s governments as the worst defense minster the Jewish settlements have ever had,” said Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein of Netanyahu’s Likud party. “Today is Likud’s independence day.” Barak declined at the press conference to address whether he might serve in Netanyahu’s next government as a “personal appointment”—through a procedure that allows prime ministers to choose cabinet ministers from outside the political establishment. “There are many ways for me to serve the country, not just through politics,” he said.

Sometimes you have to give things up to be an honest skeptic. * Few situations are more trying to a skeptic’s worldview than that of a suffering loved one for whom there is as yet no adequate scientifically-supported help. It’s the same for non-skeptics, of course: snake-oil salesmen have been forever taking advantage of the absence of adequate (let alone perfect, or even pleasant) treatments for cancer, but really anywhere that a dearth of scientifically-proven treatments exists there are people to fill that gap with one thing or another. And the problem isn’t that these people are always malicious. Oh, certainly many of them are. Make no mistake about it, “woo purveyors” have been knowingly selling snake-oil and fake cures for centuries. But if you ask me, the real problem isn’t them. It isn’t even the willful ignorance that believers often employ, the differing standards of evidence they have for their own beliefs vs. those of the scientific establishment, or the confirmation bias that backs up the way they read cherry-picked studies that only support their initial conclusions. These are all problems, yes. But surpassing them all is something rather tragic. The tragedy is that the weak link, the flaw that leads to magical thinking in the absence of evidence, to the “god of the gaps” thinking, is hope. Take the recent ruling by an advisory panel in Michigan, recommending that severe Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) be added to the list of things treatable with medical marijuana (the final say on legality is still months off). This was hailed as a victory by hopeful parents, but as David Gorski points out over at Science Based Medicine, there doesn’t appear to be any convincing evidence upon which to base this decision. They weren’t even clear on what kind of cannabis oil would be permitted, leaving it to parents to be “responsible for growing the plants or acquiring the cannabis, and they are in charge of dosing, frequency of use, and method of ingestion.” For example some cannabis oil is high in THC — which gets you high — and some is high in CBD — which doesn’t (or both). Does that matter? Shouldn’t we determine that? Are there some promising studies that suggest further examination of the effects of specific cannabinoids in specific applications? Yes, but further research is definitely needed. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any benefits found in cannabinoids, but it also suggests we should be really cautious when deciding whether or not to administer them to children. Especially when — and Gorski really makes this distinction clear, too — we’re talking about the difference between pharmacognosy and herbalism, between finding out what the active compounds are and administering them after careful review, and not really knowing what’s in it but just administering the whole plant and hoping for the best. But when the options that have been examined scientifically hardly seem to have an effect, when your child is scratching himself and biting others, unable to be calm or to communicate in even the most basic of ways… well it doesn’t take a whole lot of empathy to see where these parents are coming from. They’re scared, they’re hurting, and they’re finding nothing from science but the cold hard reality that we don’t have an answer for them. At least not yet. And that’s where the maybes creep in. “I heard from Susan at work that her best friend’s sister’s kid is like little Jimmy, and that they’ve had a lot of success with cannabis oil.” “I read online, because, you know, people talk about it. Do you think we should try it?” “I’m at my wits’ end, I don’t know what to do — maybe it would help. What have we got to lose?” Anecdotes start taking the place of research, bad research starts taking the place of peer-reviewed and double-blinded trials, and then the activism starts. “I can’t believe they won’t let us try it. What’s the harm?” “Pot isn’t dangerous, I smoked a lot in my teens and I’m fine.” “It’s my child, what right do they have to tell me how I can and can’t try to help my child?” When it comes to medical marijuana, I don’t know what to tell you. The science isn’t really there yet, but I’m a proponent of legalizing recreational marijuana, so if you’re an adult, and you want to smoke it because you say it makes you feel better, then really, who am I to stop you? I don’t care if you drink, why should I care if you smoke pot? But when it comes to administering drugs to children, especially ones who can’t communicate with you enough to even offer a hint at self-determination, I think we have to be really, really circumspect. Administering drugs to someone is, I would argue, in the same category as sex and boxing: as John Oliver recently put it, if only one of you has agreed to it, the other person is committing a crime. We allow medical professionals to administer drugs to children because we have scientific evidence that it is in their best interests, and if it later turns out not to be, there is almost the guarantee of lawsuits. Medical marijuana and cannabis oil have not, in my opinion, cleared that hurdle, regardless of comparisons with the recent legalization of OxyContin for 11-16 year olds. In that case, one has been proven effective, if potentially hazardous when used incorrectly. The other has been proven neither. And so we wait. But even as we wait, it’s important to remember that behind it all — behind the premature justifications, the self-righteous defenses, the anecdotes and the deliberate cherry-picking of evidence — is often nothing but an honest desire to help a loved one, and the desperate hope for a solution. And that’s what I mean by the “tragedy of hope:” that sometimes often the only thing that keeps us going — hope — is something you have to pass up, or at least save for later, when you view the world through the eyes of a skeptic. * Richard Ford Burley is a writer, library worker, and doctoral candidate in English at Boston College, where he’s studying remix culture and the processes that generate texts. In his spare time he writes about science, skepticism, and feminism (and medical marijuana) here at This Week In Tomorrow.

Previously I wrote an article which looked at template literals which were introduced with ES6 (if you missed it, you can find it here). It got a great reception on Medium and sparked plenty of conversation on Reddit. Although most of the discussions that took place talked about the benefits and use cases for template literals, people were also interested in the more advanced and less commonly spoken about feature, tagged template literals. I previous didn’t touch on this as it was outside the scope of the article, but as there seems to be a demand, I have written this follow up article to cover the topic. Tagged Template Literals Template literals are great and allow you to create strings with embedded javascript expressions in a very clean and simple to read syntax. But where they really stand out is when you start to understand and use tagged template literals. Tagged template literals basically allow you to parse the template literals using a function, which is passed the template literal and its broken down interpreted data. Lets look at an example. The tag function that is passed data from the template literally for which the literal will be processed. The function automatically breaks down the template literal and passes the data contained in it as seperate arguments. The first being an array of the literal strings contained in the template, followed by a list of the processed substitution expressions as they interpreted by Javascript. In the above example, the first parameter of the tag function literals would be ['Hello ', '.'] This is an array of the actual literal strings contained in the template literal, the breakdown of this array is caused by the ${name} variable breaking the literal string. The second parameter is the Javascript interpretation of ${name} which is ‘Dave’. If the template literal included multiple substitute expressions then the tag function would receive each of these as seperate arguments. Here is another example showing a tagged template literal with 3 substitute expressions, each being passed into the tag function separately.

A duck has helped a dog in Tennessee overcome its depression after the two formed an unlikely friendship. Jacquie Litton said her dog George was near death after mourning the loss of his friend, Blackie the lab, until the large white duck improved his mood. Screen capture/WCCO/AOL CORRYTON, Tenn., Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A duck became an unlikely source of relief for a Tennessee dog which had been grieving the loss of its canine friend. Jacquie Litton told WVLT her dog George had been severely depressed since the family's other dog, Blackie the lab, died two years ago. "He's almost died twice. He doesn't eat. He starves himself, and he has anxiety. He has a multitude of skin conditions from chewing on himself," she said of George. George's mood suddenly changed when a large white duck appeared at their home and seemingly developed a friendship with the mourning dog. "Since the duck has showed up, he's been fine," Litton told WKOW. "He's not wanted in the house. He's not whined. He's not meeting you at the car, ya know, looking sad." The duck has not left George's side since appearing and the dog allows it to sleep in his bed and rest its bill on his leg. "They're totally different species and they found company and comfort in each other," Litton said.

ENGLISH TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson has the hit the streets of Perth today and he’s not liking all that he sees. “Just saw a man with a horrible ginger beard on Ad. Terrace in Perth,” he tweeted to his almost four million followers this afternoon. The tweet was in response to Perth man Gareth Williams, who tweeted that he had spotted the Top Gear host on Adelaide Terrace and insulted his dress sense. “I just spotted @JeremyClarkson on Adelaide Tce. Dear god he actually dresses like that. #perth” Williams posted. Upon seeing Clarkson’s witty response, Williams conceded defeat. “Well played sir,” he tweeted. It’s not the first time that Clarkson has taken offence to fanta-coloured beards. He heckled an audience member in 2009, during an interview. “Why do ginger people always grow more of it on their faces?” he joked. No stranger to controversy, he received a “final warning” from broadcaster BBC earlier this year after reportedly using racist language while filming BBC motor show Top Gear. I just spotted @JeremyClarkson on Adelaide Tce. Dear god he actually dresses like that. #perth — Gareth Williams (@notGareth) October 30, 2014 Just saw a man with a horrible ginger beard on Ad. Terrace in Perth. — Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) October 30, 2014 “@JeremyClarkson: Just saw a man with a horrible ginger beard on Ad. Terrace in Perth.” Well played sir. — Gareth Williams (@notGareth) October 30, 2014 Clarkson arrived in Perth yesterday to see The Rolling Stones perform at Perth Arena last night. “F*** me, the Stones are good still,” the controversial star tweeted after last night’s performance. The Perth Arena also got the thumbs up. “Great venue. Better than the submarine we played in,” he tweeted.

If you preordered the Oculus Rift headset, you might still be waiting for it — but that’s not because of the Xbox One controller. Microsoft has debunked allegations that it is responsible for the delays customers are experiencing with their Oculus Rift headset orders. Yesterday, a post on Reddit from someone claiming to have “insider” status at Oculus VR (the company responsible for the impressive head-mounted display) went into great detail about how Rift shipments weren’t going out on time because Microsoft failed to deliver enough Xbox One controllers. This claim picked up some traction among VR-news sites, and this prompted GamesBeat to reach out to Microsoft — who debunked this claim. “This is false,” a Microsoft spokesperson told GamesBeat. “And questions about Rift should be directed to Oculus VR.” Oculus confirmed in a statement last week that it is facing a “component shortage,” and the Reddit post provided a compelling narrative that enabled some people to put all of the blame on Microsoft. But no matter what the source of the problem is, the delays could turn into a problem down the line for an industry that analysts like tech adviser Digi-Capital and SuperData Research predict could generate between $30 billion and $40 billion in revenue by 2020. Reddit has since tagged the post as “confirmed fake” because an Oculus customer-support specialist, who has confirmed their identity with the moderators of the forum, laughed off the claim. “Totally fake, but super-entertaining,” reads TheTwistgibber’s post. “Thanks for this! Keep the fanfic coming!” The original claim doesn’t make a lot of sense. The Xbox One controller is one of the few components inside the Oculus Rift package that doesn’t require a new manufacturing pipeline. Microsoft started producing the device in 2013. Even if you consider that this is the revised edition of the gamepad with the built-in microphone jack, Microsoft started making those in early 2015. That’s opposed to the custom Fresnel lenses, an array of ARM-chip-powered sensors, and a new display for the headset. To mass produce those items, Oculus needed to spin up a whole new supply chain, and that is notoriously difficult. And it doesn’t take a ton of demand to experience delays. The now-forgotten Ouya Android-powered microconsole went through something similar, and it had absolutely no dealings with Microsoft.

Darian Hall (Photo: File photo) A Springfield man was found guilty of murder Thursday, almost three years after he shot and killed another man in a drug deal gone bad. A jury found Darian Hall, 21, guilty of second-degree murder and three other felonies in the 2012 death of Trent Brewer. During a four-day trial this week, Hall testified he shot Brewer in self-defense, but prosecutors pointed out the fatal shot hit Brewer in the back. Prosecutors said Hall tried to rob Brewer during a marijuana transaction in the parking lot of the Vision Clinic on South National Avenue — and when Brewer turned to run, Hall fired at least four shots at the fleeing man. Brewer, who was hit twice, stumbled back toward his nearby apartment before collapsing and dying on the evening of Dec. 12, 2012. During closing arguments Thursday, Greene County assistant prosecutor Dawn Diel showed the jury a photo of Brewer’s body face-down outside of his apartment. “Here’s the kid who got ripped off and shot in the back,” Diel said. “He’s the victim.” A witness testified Hall and another man, Marquay Marshall, planned to buy marijuana from Brewer. Court documents say another witness told police Hall pulled a gun from a bag and pointed it at Brewer, who put his hands in the air and backed away before turning to run. Hall’s attorney David Smith said in closing arguments that Hall was scared and that Brewer came at him prior to the shooting. Smith argued the fatal shot hit Brewer more in the side than in the back. Smith also cast doubt on the state’s evidence that Brewer was unarmed. Hall took the stand in his defense earlier this week. He said he closed his eyes “and pulled the trigger three to four times.” Hall argued that the shots were fired because he thought Brewer was going to kill him. The jury deliberated for two and a half hours before returning a guilty verdict on several counts — second-degree murder, robbery and two counts of armed criminal action. Brewer’s mother, Veronica Brewer, said it has been a long three years, but Thursday’s verdict felt like justice. “I was relieved,” Veronica Brewer said. “I was glad they found him guilty on all four counts. I was really happy.” Veronica Brewer said her son was a caring person who loved to joke around. Trent Brewer had a son of his own a month before he was killed. That boy will turn 3 in November. The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. News-Leader reporter Stephen Herzog contributed to this report. Read or Share this story: http://sgfnow.co/1FiPwnA

23-year-old transgender model Stav Strashko is proud of her body. But she needs you to know something: unlike many other transgender people in the media, she has no plans for gender reassignment surgery. Let her explain. The Israeli-born model recently told Teen Vogue, I do consider myself a trans person. By definition, transgender doesn’t include only those who have had surgery; it’s just someone who identifies with another gender. But I never wanted to go through the surgery — I feel comfortable in my body. I have a boyfriend who loves me the way I am. I don’t want to change anything.” Beautifully said! But while Stav is currently comfortable in her skin, it took her a while to understand her identity as a trans person. “No one ever told me what being gay or transgender was. The only time I heard those words used was as an insult. So, when I realized I was attracted to boys and to my feminine side, I didn’t know how to deal with it. It took me a long time to build the confidence to know that this is normal.” Related: Androgynous Model Madison Paige Opens Up About Becoming A Gender Fluid Role Model for Over 216K People She added, “I didn’t understand that I wanted to live my life as a girl.” We’re so happy that Stav found her way and now she can be a role model for others.

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