Datasets:

mychen76

/

openwebtext-100k

like 0

Before Twitter, Instagram, Tout or even Friendster were popular social networks, WWE was experimenting with different ways to interact with the WWE Universe. WWE Livewire was the high point of the company’s foray into interactive media in the ’90s. Every Saturday morning, Todd Pettengill, Sunny, Dok Hendrix and whatever Superstars happened to pass through WWE’s TV studios would take the airwaves for 60 minutes of unprecedented insider info. WWE fans could call in with questions, send a fax with their thoughts or install one of the millions of AOL discs they got in the mail to join a chat room to discuss WWE with like-minded fans. Watch Livewire's most shocking moments Livewire viewers got unprecedented access to ask anything they wanted to stars like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels and even Mr. McMahon, who pulled back the curtains and talked openly about the industry like never before — making for some truly shocking moments. What are some of these WWE Livewire shockers? Get your dial-up modem connected and find out. Mr. McMahon talks candidly about WCW and Ted Turner Mr. McMahon discusses his rivalry with Ted Turner on Livewire. When WWE Livewire hit the airwaves in September 1996, Mr. McMahon was still a mild-mannered commentator, calling all the wild action in the ring for the WWE Universe. His position as WWE Chairman was still the worst kept secret in the industry, unacknowledged on television. That made it all the more surprising when Mr. McMahon appeared on Livewire in October 1996. On an edition of Livewire hosted by Michael Hayes, Jim Cornette, Sunny, and WWE Magazine editor Vic Venom (a young Vince Russo), The Chairman faced a ton of hard-hitting questions about behind-the-scenes happenings. One question, though, pressed Mr. McMahon to address matters that had previously gone unspoken on WWE TV — “What are your feelings on Ted Turner?” The WWE Chairman explained what led to the end of the business relationship between him and Turner after the infamous Black Saturday. He further went on to talk about the business dealings between both media moguls that led to the souring of their relationship. However, Ted Turner wasn’t the only rival promoter that Mr. McMahon would address on the show that day. Learn more about Black Saturday “Bruce from Connecticut” confronts Mr. McMahon Paul Heyman sneaks his way on the air to discuss ECW. The format of WWE Livewire meant that pretty much anything could happen. When Mr. McMahon appeared on the show, that was absolutely true. One of the show’s phone screeners patched through a phone call from “Bruce from Connecticut” to pose a question to the WWE Chairman. It became quite clear that it wasn’t a native of The Constitution State when the caller launched into a tirade, accusing Mr. McMahon of stealing ideas and talents from Extreme Championship Wrestling. Everyone realized rather easily that Paul Heyman was trying to hijack the broadcast to promote the renegade ECW. Paul Heyman dishes on the birth of "Extreme" The mad scientist of extreme shouted over the hosts like only he could, but was eventually cut off after he got a little too vulgar for Saturday morning TV. Heyman made a mark, though, as ECW would be invited to have a few matches on Raw just a few months later. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin takes WWE fan questions "Stone Cold" Steve Austin isn't pleased with the phone calls from the WWE Universe. The WWE Universe was intrigued by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin when he broke out in the summer of 1996. The foul-mouthed brawler had no interest in making friends, which made WWE fans even more curious about him. Though he agreed to appear on WWE Livewire, that didn’t mean The Texas Rattlesnake was going to be happy about it. Austin stormed onto the set, berating and belittling anyone and everyone who spoke to him, whether it was hosts Todd Pettengill and Sunny, or the WWE Universe who called in and emailed questions. Oddly enough, it was “Stone Cold’s” surly disposition that made him one of the most beloved figures in WWE history. Bob Backlund joins the show Bob Backlund becomes every television producers nightmare when he shows up on live TV and fan questions. During his crusade to bring morality back to the WWE Universe, Bob Backlund stopped by the Livewire studios to further educate the “plebeians.” Plenty of people called in with questions for the would-be presidential candidate, but Mr. Backlund refused to let anyone get a word in. The former WWE Champion refused to speak with younger fans. Though he eventually acquiesced and spoke to the youth of the WWE Universe, grilling them on their education, Backlund’s answers devolved into screaming nonsensical rants at fans and the show’s hosts, making for awkward TV. Vic Venom makes a bold prediction Vic Venom reveals who will be WWE Champion at the end of 1997. Was he right? Before Vince Russo took the reins of WCW, he was known in WWE as Vic Venom. An outspoken editor of WWE Magazine, Venom was rarely seen on television, which was probably for the best. The loudmouth journalist forced his way onto WWE airwaves during several episodes of Livewire. His first appearance was rather grating, as he ridiculed Michael Hayes for adopting the name Dok Hendrix upon his WWE arrival, criticizing him for ditching his Fabulous Freebird roots. Venom grilled Mr. McMahon on his treatment of Jim Ross, among other things. But the magazine editor ended up making a bold prediction later in the year. On one of the final LiveWires of 1996, Russo fielded a question from a fan who noticed a little attitude adjustment in WWE, thanks to Superstars like Steve Austin and Brian Pillman. The audience member asked him who he thought the WWE Champion would be at the end of 1997. The man then known as Vic Venom forecasted that Shawn Michaels would be the champion one year later. He ended up being right, but there’s no way he could have ever predicted how Michaels the means by which HBK would infamously claim the title in November 1997.

JR Smith (Screenshot/WCHSTV) A West Virginia pastor was accused of sexual abuse of a young boy last year, and the allegations were so graphic that local WCHSTV couldn’t publish them. Now the same pastor is behind bars on another allegation of abuse. James Robert “JR” Smith was arrested last year on charges he sexually abused a boy since 2009, starting when the boy was 10 years old, WCHSTV reports. He was out on bond when he was arrested again Tuesday for molestation charges in a different state. Smith was a pastor at Morning Star House of Prayer in West Virginia. The second allegation happened in Indiana. Last year, a member of his church continued to support him after he was arrested the first time on counts of first degree sexual abuse and sexual abuse by a parent or guardian. “I just think that it’s somebody that’s out to sabotage him and I won’t believe no different,” church member Janice Allen told the station. “Ever seen he’s been here, there’s been tales told on him. He’s been confronted with it. Nobody can prove anything that’s even been said on him.” The first victim, now 15, came forward last May and said that the most recent incident of abuse happened in April. The boy told authorities that Smith told him “bad things” would happen if he told anyone. Smith apparently lived with the boy and his family. The alleged abuse happened in multiple states. Smith was arraigned Tuesday on the second set of charges and is held without bail pending an extradition hearing, WCHSTV reports. Watch the original report from WCHSTV here:

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Carlos Valderrama was recently given the Golden Foot award in Monte Carlo Colombia's biggest rebel group, Farc, has accepted a challenge from national football great Carlos Valderrama to play a match for peace. Valderrama, a former Colombia team captain also known for his golden Afro hairdo, has joined a state programme to support victims of the armed conflict. In an open letter, the left-wing rebels said they were happy to play matches that helped foster reconciliation. The first leg would be played in Cuba, where the Farc is holding peace talks. In their letter, published on the rebels' negotiating team blog, the Farc admitted they were "fanatical about football" and suggested a second match in Colombia and a parallel women's contest. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Carlos Valderrama played for Colombia 111 times, retiring in 2004 'Merry games' "The members of our fronts and companies organise merry, informal games in which dribbles, overhead and scorpion kicks and goal saves camouflage themselves into the colours of the mountains," an online letter reads. The rebels also say they frequently play football in between negotiation sessions and are ready to take part in games as soon as possible. In their open letter, they suggest Valderrama should call on other Colombian legends, such as goalkeeper Renee Higuita – famed for his extravagant saves and scorpion kick. Valderrama played for his country on 111 occasions and starred in the 1998 World Cup in France. He has also been given a Golden Foot award in Monte Carlo. But he recently became involved in controversy when Colombia's governing party declared him a Senate candidate for next year's elections. The former midfielder adamantly denied being a candidate next day. Farc rebel leaders are currently participating in a new round of peace negotiations with the Colombian government, after recently agreeing on the second part of their six-point agenda. Both sides have so far partially agreed on land reform and on a political future for the left-wing group if a peace deal is reached. The latest round of talks is due to tackle illicit drugs and drug trafficking.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Former "Hamilton" star Lin-Manuel Miranda led a march in Washington, D.C. on Sunday for hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. He's calling on Congress to address the crisis still unfolding in the American territory. Nearly two months after Hurricane Maria barreled through, about half of Puerto Rico is still in the dark, and school children in the American territory are getting lessons in patience and perseverance. Daylight is the only way these first graders can practice English at Julio Henna Elementary School. But no matter what the language, the struggles are easy to see. Meals come in ready-to-eat packages, or from the one gas stove. But at least this school is open -- even if it is a little dark. But the government can't tell us how many of the 1,100 schools have power. Teacher Juan Hernandez is still cleaning up after the hurricane. "Parents, they think they can come to the school, but the Department of Education says they can't," Hernandez said. "We are waiting for answers." The contractor hired to certify the schools are safe was fired, so the National Guard has taken over. Principal Debra Hernandez has a list of hazards. "There is a leak that is important to fix," she said. But six weeks after the storm, many of her students have left the island. "Since the storm we have lost 25 students confirmed, some of the moved to the States," Hernandez said. "The reality is we are not going to have the system we had on the 18th of September," said education secretary Julia Keleher. Keleher said Maria devastated a school system already in trouble, but she won't put kids back into unsafe schools. "Some school communities are willing to open their schools even though those schools have conditions that wouldn't meet minimum standards in the States," Keler said. It doesn't meet her bar, though, and she said she thinks "some of the conditions are unacceptable." For her and a lot of parents. There's one school that's been without power for three weeks, but it's still open. Fifty-six kids have transferred to Florida. Across the island, about 6,400 left for the mainland and enrolled in school there.

Are you a Destiny player with no interest in buying The Taken King? You might want to find another game to play. As it turns out, The Taken King doesn’t just add a ton of excellent new stuff to Bungie’s ambitious MMO-shooter—it also locks out much of the old content both in PVE and PVP. Year-one-only Destiny players can still access all the original story missions and raids, but they can’t do heroic strikes or nightfalls anymore. And because Bungie has totally revamped the way playlist strikes work, players without The Taken King can only run through the relatively useless level-20 Vanguard Legacy playlists—a big departure from the last incarnation of the game, which offered different tiers of playlists that anyone could access. In the Crucible, while anyone with The Taken King installed can play through all the old modes and then some, year-one players are stuck with three types of PVP playlists: Classic free-for-all, classic 3v3 (Skirmish/Salvage), and classic 6v6 (Clash/Control). If you don’t have The Taken King but only want to play one of those 3v3 or 6v6 modes, your only option is to pick a playlist and bail every time you get the one you don’t want. Also, as you might expect, Destiny players who haven’t upgraded to Year Two can’t get the new subclasses, shiny gear, and cool quests that ship with The Taken King, which runs for $40. Year-one-only players are also stuck with the old level cap of 34. On one hand, this feels like a no-duh move: Of course people are going to have to buy all the expansions to keep up with all the stuff that Destiny’s developers tweak and add every few months. And from what we’ve seen so far, The Taken King is well worth the asking price, even if previous DLC has been a bit lacking. Advertisement But for Destiny players who aren’t yet sure if they want to upgrade—or can’t afford it yet—it’s something of a slap in the face to see half the old endgame content suddenly disappear. On September 14, anyone with a copy of Destiny could play a variety of crucible modes or take on the nightfall and weekly heroic strikes; as of September 15, they can’t. Quite a few people aren’t pleased about that, and they’ve taken to Reddit, forums, and Kotaku’s email inboxes to get out the message. (One Redditor has put together a good compilation of all the stuff that’s locked out now.) Bungie’s forums are full of Destiny players complaining about this problem in colorful ways. “Is this even legal?” writes one player. “Say you buy a couch for 100. After a year the company you bought it from comes to your door and asks you 40 dollars extra for the couch and if you buy it you get a nice pillow. You say you don’t want to pay. They saw your couch in half and take one half with them... That’s how I feel about TTK so far.” Advertisement “I didn’t buy the DLC for Elder Scrolls Online yet, and the total content that was taken away, or that I am locked out of as punishment is NOTHING,” writes another player. Of course, Destiny is very different than other MMOs in a lot of ways, and many of the changes brought with The Taken King are huge, much-needed fixes to problems the game has had since it first launched last September. But Bungie never warned anyone that they’d be locking old players out of so much of the game, which is one of the main reasons so many people are upset about this paywall. We’re dealing with growing pains, here. And the folks who didn’t upgrade are hurting most of all. Advertisement Top wallpaper via Planet Destiny. You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.

Following up on yesterday’s report regarding the return of AT&T BYOD SIM cards to Straight Talk, another new development has transpired in the saga between Tracfone and AT&T as Net10 customers are now reporting that they are receiving the following email from the virtual operator regarding their AT&T data service: TracFone Wireless, Inc. is very pleased to announce the return of Unlimited Data* on GSM, no contract 30-day monthly plans. Effective immediately, the 1.5 GB data cap for AT&T SIM cards has been removed and replaced with Unlimited Data* for all new as well as existing customers already in their current billing cycle. *Tethering is prohibited. Other limitations apply. See latest NET10 Terms and Conditions of Service at net10.com for full details A request for confirmation has been sent to NET10’s PR firm, but should this indeed be the case, this will mark the latest positive move by AT&T towards Tracfone in as many days as the virtual operator previously enacted a hard 1.5GB monthly cap beginning in March and shortly followed the removal of AT&T SIMs for sale from Straight Talk. The initial news of the cap was followed by speculation that Straight Talk was going to follow in Net10’s lead and enact the same 1.5GB monthly data cap, speculation that turned out to be unfounded. To add to the validity of the email, the Net10 Data portal that was rolled out ahead of the data cap implementation in March has been pulled offline without any explanation. Attempts to access the portal through Net10’s own site result in being redirected to the Net10 Wireless homepage. Update: Tracfone dealers that sell Net10 are also being sent the same email confirming the removal of the 1.5GB cap with the same message above being sent to customers: Update 2: Net10’s new PR firm has now confirmed the veracity of the above emails. Another request for further comment has been sent regarding the extent of the new unlimited service and whether it applies to all Tracfone brands or just Net10.

Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world A Jewish community centre is facing a boycott led by ultra-Orthodox rabbis because it runs gay-inclusive sessions. The JW3, located in Finchley, North London, is the largest community hub for Jewish people in London. But the centre is facing a backlash over a number of LGBT-inclusive events, igniting fury earlier this year ‘GayW3’, a week dedicated to celebrating the gay community and exploring a Jewish approach to LGBT issues. The centre has since moved forward with another event with Jewish LGBT group Imahot v’Avot – sparking a boycott of the centre from ultra-Orthodox leaders. A letter signed by 25 rabbis was distributed at London synagogues, urging people to boycott the centre and shun JW3 entirely. It accuses the centre of “promoting a way of life which is in total contradiction to Orthodox Judaism and [Jewish law]”. The letter adds: “Members of our community should distance themselves fully from JW3, its activities and services and refrain from visiting JW3 even for recreational purposes only.” The letter, which states it is “not intended for circulation outside the strictly Orthodox communities of the UK”, was promptly leaked to the media and published by the Jewish Chronicle. The GayW3 events were intended to celebrate 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK. Posters relating to the event were vandalised amid an outcry from Orthodox Jews. Orthodox rabbis previously accused the centre of crossing the “red line” by discussing LGBT issues. A previous letter earlier this year referred to the programme as Toievah – the Hebrew word for “abomination” – and cited a verse from the Torah calling for gay men to be put to death. It added: “We are of the strong opinion that a red line has been crossed in launching campaigns and initiatives that promote lifestyles and behaviours forbidden and condemned by the Torah.” JW3 has thus far failed to explicitly condemn homophobic comments made about the programme. Raymond Simonson, the chief executive of JW3, told the Guardian: “JW3 is cross communal – it reaches every aspect of the Jewish community and outside the Jewish community, “We work hard to build relationships with diverse groups and individuals. We’re trying to hold up a Jewish lens to the 21st century, and in particular a British-Jewish lens. And also we’re holding a 21st-century lens to Jewish life.” He added that the centre’s work had overwhelming support from the Jewish community, adding the letter’s signatories “represent just a very small, specific bit of the Jewish community”. He added: “The vast majority of British-Jewish communal leadership want to create tolerant spaces for people of all different backgrounds. It’s a changing world and we want to be open and inclusive – and we believe we’re reflecting mainstream Jewish opinion. “[Imahot v’Avot members] may be secular, Orthodox, Reform or other Jews. “Some are avid attendees of synagogues; some don’t care for synagogue life. We’re providing a warm, safe Jewish community space for them.” Earlier this year, an unknown offender graffitied the word “SHAME” over a banner promoting its programme of LGBT events. Keshet UK, a Jewish LGBT group, told PinkNews: Through their programming, JW3 has created unique spaces celebrating LGBT+ Jewish lives. “KeshetUK wants to see more spaces like this, in which help to create a world where no-one has to choose between their Jewish and LGBT+ identities. “Attacks on individuals or organisations that support LGBT+ inclusion only alienate LGBT+ Jews and allies, many of whom already feel marginalised. “Chief Rabbi Mirvis has clearly stated there should be no place for homophobia in Jewish communities. There must be no place for cultural boycotts either.” Danny Rich, the chief executive of Liberal Judaism, said the rabbis’ letter encouraged violence against LGBT Jews. “You don’t know whether to be ashamed, embarrassed or angry that seven teachers of Torah encourage prejudice and bigotry against the Jewish LGBTQI community and its allies. “Notwithstanding the particular attack on a vulnerable section of the community, this action fails to understand that contemporary Jewish culture is wider than a certain medieval interpretation of it. “I know the Leviticus passages and using them in this way seems a clear incitement to intolerance and violence.” According to the JW3 website: “The aim of JW3 is to transform the Jewish landscape in London by helping to create a vibrant, diverse and proud community, inspired by and engaged in Jewish arts, culture and community.”

Sushil Modi Sushil Modi While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hoping to ride on the Modi wave in the Lok Sabha elections, it may be counterproductive for the party in Bihar. Former chief minister and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi says Muslims will not vote for the BJP because of the constant negative campaign against the party's prime ministerial nominee."Muslims will not vote for us in Bihar, partly because of the negative campaign against Narendra Modi by our opponents and also because Lalu Prasad is back in the political arena. They're comfortable with Lalu and this will give some jitters to Nitish Kumar," he said."The upper castes and the vaishyas, who comprise 25 per cent, are with the BJP. We are also reaching out to the Yadavs who are divided between the RJD and BJP," Sushil added.So BJP leaders in Bihar know that it will be a battle royal. Sushil said: "This time every vote and every caste will count, especially with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad going full steam with the Congress." Even though the party has been out of power after its alliance with Nitish Kumar- led JD (U) fell apart in Bihar, BJP central leadership is aiming at no less than 20-22 Lok Sabha seats from the state. However, Sushil avoided stating a figure even as he claimed that BJP will emerge as the single largest party. " We will emerge as the single party with majority," Sushil told Mail Today at his residence in Patna.Taking a jibe at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for parting ways with the BJP, Sushil said the JD (U) government is busy fighting the BJP and development of the state has been sidelined. " The voter in Bihar is disenchanted with JD (U) government under Nitish Kumar for breaking away from the NDA. The common man, including professionals and intellectuals, consider this to be a great betrayal by the chief minister," Sushil said."The agenda of development has taken a backseat as the chief minister is only busy fighting us and has put the development projects on the backburner," he added.Alleging that law-and-order in the state has deteriorated, the BJP leader said the state government is not dealing with the Naxals and criminals."Governance has been the biggest casualty of this alliance break-up. Law-and-order situation is deteriorating as kidnappings and murders are being reported all over again.The government is busy fighting political opponents and not Naxals and criminals," Sushil said."Anti-incumbency is growing as social schemes are not reaching to the beneficiaries," he added.In the context of speculated partnership between JD (U) and the Congress, Sushil said the chief minister was left embarrassed as the partnership "eluded" him and the " Centre didn't oblige with a ' special status' to Bihar." Sushil asserted that all of these did not escape the voters.So, the growing anti-incumbency mood against Nitish government has become a blessing in disguise for BJP. With the Modi wave catching up Bihar fast, the BJP is aggressively raising the pitch."Narendra Modi has become a household name in Bihar just for what Nitish Kumar did about seven months ago...no one wanted the BJP-JD (U) alliance to break for the sake of Bihar which was high on development and good governance in the last eight years," Sushil claimed.And that message will go loud and clear in the election rallies BJP is planning. "Three to four big rallies by Narendra Modi in major district towns will further boost BJP's prospects.We're also arranging BJP president Rajnath Singh's rally for the economically-weaker sections.We will tell the electorate about our contribution in the NDA government and its achievements in Bihar over eight years," Sushil said."Now we are taking ' Modi for PM' campaign more aggressively and trying to put across the point that Bihar will get at least Rs 50,000- crore package which will include demands made under the ' special status'," he added.With the Aam Aadmi Party ( AAP) eyeing Bihar in the Lok Sabha polls, calculations may go haywire, as was seen in Delhi.But Sushil said that AAP cannot impact BJP's poll prospects in the state. "AAP will have no impact in Bihar as made out by the media. Can Narendra Modi win Bengal and Kerala for BJP? It requires local leadership and foothold to do that," Sushil said, hinting at the lacunae in party organisation of AAP in Bihar.

Man United's Coentrao move hangs in the balance after La Liga retract statement confirming deal Manchester United's 11th-hour loan swoop for Real Madrid left back Fabio Coentrao is on the rocks as the club wait to find out if the necessary paperwork was completed in time for the deal to go through. Having missed out on Leighton Baines, Red Devils manager David Moyes turned his attentions to Coentrao and it seemed he had pulled off an amazing last-ditch coup when the move was officially confirmed by La Liga officials. On the rocks: Coentrao's move to Man United hit a snag late on Monday night At around 10.45pm on Monday night, La Liga announced the Coentrao deal and Real Madrid's signing of Brazilian left back Guilherme Siqueira on a season-long loan from Granada. But both of those statements were later retracted, with reports in Spain claiming that Benfica have hijacked Real's deal for Siqueira, resulting in the Spanish giants pulling the plug on the Coentrao move at the last minute. United confirmed the £27.5million arrival of midfielder Marouane Fellaini on their official website and they are expected to make an announcement on Coentrao on Tuesday morning. Should the deal fall through then the news will be greeted with dismay by United fans, who have been less than impressed with the club's dealings during the window. Highly rated: Coentrao is considered among the best left backs in Europe Done deal: Everton have confirmed the £27.5m sale of Marouane Fellaini to Old Trafford And it leaves Moyes in the tricky position of needing to explain to Patrice Evra why he felt another left back was required. One theory was that Coentrao would have operated at left back, with Evra in a more advanced role, which he played during his early years as a professional. Nevertheless, Evra's form last season and the early weeks of the current one was not that of a man who needed replacing.

Too much effort is put into trying to prosecute British soldiers for their actions in Northern Ireland while those in high office allegedly behind IRA killings remain uninvestigated, ex-Army chief Colonel Richard Kemp has said. The comments follow reports that former members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), a clandestine group of hand-picked British soldiers, killed unarmed civilians during undercover operations in Belfast in the 1970s. Col Kemp defended the MRF's actions, praising the "very brave" soldiers who made up the unit and saying their "extremely valuable" work helped bring the provisional IRA to the negotiating table. While agreeing that any hard evidence of the killing of unarmed civilians should lead to investigations and convictions, Col Kemp told the BBC's Today programme that alleged IRA murders should get as much attention. "It seems to me that more vigour currently is being put in to investigate the alleged killings by security forces than by the terrorist groups, who of course were responsible for the overwhelming majority of killings," he said "The majority of killings by the security forces, of course, were of terrorists killed to protect the civilian population." He continued: "The point I am making really is that yes, of course soldiers should be investigated thoroughly if there are allegations or suspicions, but so should those people who for example are responsible for the Disappeared, the 17 people who were allegedly killed and just disappeared by the provisional IRA. "Some people who are in high positions in public life today are alleged to have been responsible for that and that should be investigated with the same degree of vigour in my view." Col Kemp, who formerly led British Forces in Afghanistan, also defended the MRF's at a time when lines were "blurred" and terrorists were "operating in civilian clothes and in civilian communities". He said the work of the MRF was "primarily covert surveillance" and "led to the penetration of the provisional IRA to such an extent that they could be considered defeated and eventually came to the negotiating table". The comments follow news that former MRF soldiers have admitted the secretive unit killed unarmed civilians during the Troubles. Speaking under the condition of anonymity the ex-members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF) told the BBC they "occasionally" made the assumption people were armed even if no gun was visible. They described how the unit would patrol Belfast disguised as road sweepers, dustmen and "meth addicts" while "hunting down" IRA members before the unit was disbanded in 1973. Records of the MRF's 18-month operation were destroyed and little is known about how the unit operated or how many people they killed. The revelations come a day after John Larkin, Northern Ireland's attorney general, proposed that prosecutions against Troubles-era murders should be banned in an attempt to draw a line under the country's divisive past. The suggestion has been likened to an amnesty by opponents – even those who admitted crimes to police could not be prosecuted under the plans – but Mr Larkin said it was a natural extrapolation of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Details of the MRF's clandestine operations emerged from a Panorama investigation which interviewed three former members of the unit, which consisted of 40 hand-picked British soldiers. One said the unit fired on suspected IRA members, describing their mission as "to draw out the IRA and to minimise their activities ... if they needed shooting, they'd be shot". Another told the BBC: "If you had a player who was a well-known shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations ... then he had to be taken out. [They were] killers themselves, and they had no mercy for anybody." A third described how the unit would never wear uniform and said its targets were "hardcore baby-killers" who would kill without a moment's hesitation. When asked if MRF would assume someone had a weapon even if one was not visible, one of the former members interviewed reportedly replied: "Occasionally". More than 10,000 shootings took place in Northern Ireland in 1972, the year before the MRF were disbanded. It is not known how many attacks the army unit was responsible for, though the BBC said its investigation had identified 10 unarmed civilians shot by the MRF. The former soldiers said their targets were terrorists and believed the unit had saved many lives. The Ministry of Defence did not comment on whether the MRF was behind the shooting of the 10 unarmed civilians.

By Norma Erickson The SaneVax team believes the narrow scope of the current investigation regarding the safety profile of HPV vaccines being conducted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), will leave parents and medical professionals without answers to questions which may help them solve the mystery surrounding new medical conditions being reported not only in Denmark, but around the globe, after the administration of HPV vaccines. Has the EMA put POTS and CRPS under an investigative microscope in order to blur the overall picture regarding the safety profile of HPV vaccines? Have those in charge never heard the expression, “you can’t see the forest for the trees?” Norwegian journalist, Per Egil Hegge, puts the entire issue into focus when he stated: A scientific environment, no matter the subject, where it is not allowed to ask questions, has thrown its future on the scrap heap and nailed its own death sentence on the wall. Apparently, open discussions on the topic of HPV vaccines are tabu. This is simply not acceptable. If open honest scientific investigations are not forthcoming, young people around the world will continue to have their futures thrown on the proverbial scrap heap. If serious investigations are not conducted, it may well be the public’s trust in national health authorities that is thrown on the trash heap. Parents and anyone who administers HPV vaccines need to ask: How is it possible that HPV vaccines account for as many adverse event reports as all other vaccines administered in most childhood immunization programs, yet national health authorities still consider them safe? HPV vaccines do not eliminate the need for regular cervical screening. They are simply an addition to current healthcare budgets. How can HPV vaccines be considered affordable in any country that currently has an established cervical cancer screening program? The HPV virus has never been proven to cause cancer without other risk factors being present. Pap screening programs with good follow-up care has proven to be a safe and effective means of controlling abnormal cervical cell growth prior to the development of cancer. How can HPV vaccines be deemed necessary? How can the efficacy of HPV vaccines be judged against endpoints that frequently resolve without medical intervention and still be considered effective? Until such time as HPV vaccines are proven to be safe, affordable, necessary and effective – everyone needs to remember that national health authorities are not infallible. Questions must be asked – answers must be forthcoming! In view of the fact a request from Denmark was the impetus responsible for instigating the EMA investigation, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority was the logical place to try and obtain some of the answers so desperately needed by medical professionals trying to diagnose and cure the survivors of potential reactions to HPV vaccines; answers which are also needed by the hundreds of Danish parents of affected girls. Note from the SaneVax Team: The following recounts a 2-day interchange initiated by us via email to Mr. Henrik G. Jensen, Unit Leader of the Family and Consumer Affairs Division, Danish Health and Medicines Authority (Sundhedsstyrelsen). Communications began at the request of multiple Danish parents concerned about their daughter’s future health due to the host of mysterious medical conditions experienced soon after the administration of HPV vaccines. Mr. Jensen is to be commended for his rapid response to all communications from the SaneVax team. However, Mr. Jensen was not quite as efficient at answering the questions which were asked of him. This is unfortunate. Mr. Jensen was not forthcoming with adequate answers to the questions posed by the SaneVax team and has declared, ”I think we should conclude our discussion here.” Therefore, in the interest of public health and safety the SaneVax team is left with no alternative but to move the conversation to a public venue. Original email from SaneVax to Mr. Henrik G. Jensen, Unit Leader Family and Consumer Affairs, Sundhedsstyrelsen transmitted at 9:20 am, 20 July 2015 (Denmark time zone): Dear Mr. Jensen, SaneVax Inc. is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of only Safe, Affordable, Necessary and Effective (SANE) vaccines and vaccination practices. As president of SaneVax, I am writing to you on behalf of the many Danish families who have daughters with mysterious new medical conditions after the administration of HPV vaccines. One of these parents recently sent the SaneVax team a transcript of your interview for TV2’s Good Morning Denmark show which was broadcast on July 14th. During this interview, you were questioned about the current review of HPV vaccines being conducted by the EMA’s Pharmacovigilance committee (PRAC). Some of the statements you made during this interview were mildly disturbing. For instance, you stated 2 women die of cervical cancer every week in Denmark, when the actual rate is only 1.5 according to the latest available World Health Organization statistics. But, we understand sometimes public health officials do things like rounding incident rates to the next higher number to make an impact on the public perception so as to help increase vaccination compliance. The primary reason for this letter is your statement that Denmark is the only country having problems with high rates of serious adverse events after HPV vaccines. The interviewer responded to this by stating: And let’s focus a bit on this, that it’s here in Denmark, that we experience that some of these girls who get the HPV vaccine get suspected symptoms afterwards. Because this is not the picture in, for example our neighboring country, Sweden, or basically in the rest of the world. They do not experience the girls come in and say that they are in pain, or I feel that my heart behaves ’weird’ after being given this vaccine. Why is it only here in Denmark? You answered: Yes. But that we, of course, have asked ourselves too, and we are also asked by our European colleagues – what is it that you experience? What is it that you are doing in Denmark? But Denmark is a tiny very well regulated, orderly country. We are good at reporting side effects. We care about it. And I think if there is a country you have to find something like this, it’s Denmark. When we talk rare side effects, it may well be a side effect which is not found in any of the clinical trials as the basis for approval, and then it will typically be such a small Scandinavian country one finds it, as Denmark. With all due respect, Mr. Jensen, this is simply not accurate. Please consider the following: India: 2009, Gardasil was administered to 13,791 girls in Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh. Cervarix was administered to 9,637 girls in Vadodara district in Gujarat. An estimated 5% of those were left with chronic health problems and/or autoimmune disorders. A case resulting from this is currently pending in the Supreme Court. 2009, Gardasil was administered to 13,791 girls in Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh. Cervarix was administered to 9,637 girls in Vadodara district in Gujarat. An estimated 5% of those were left with chronic health problems and/or autoimmune disorders. A case resulting from this is currently pending in the Supreme Court. Spain: AAVP is petitioning the government to stop HPV vaccinations until safety, efficacy and need are proven. AAVP is petitioning the government to stop HPV vaccinations until safety, efficacy and need are proven. Japan: 2013, after only 6 weeks of being included in the national vaccination program, the government rescinded their recommendation for the use of HPV vaccines due to the number of adverse events being reported. 2013, after only 6 weeks of being included in the national vaccination program, the government rescinded their recommendation for the use of HPV vaccines due to the number of adverse events being reported. France: In 2014, MEP Michelle Rivasi called on all 28 members of the European Union to institute a moratorium on Gardasil vaccine until more studies are conducted on its effectiveness and its dangers. In 2014, MEP Michelle Rivasi called on all 28 members of the European Union to institute a moratorium on Gardasil vaccine until more studies are conducted on its effectiveness and its dangers. Scotland: A petition was launched less than a week ago on behalf of the UK Association of HPV Vaccine Injured Daughters calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to convene a roundtable discussion on the safety of HPV vaccines with medical/scientific professionals from both sides of the debate. There are over 1500 signatures from people around the world supporting the request. This is but a small sample. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of January 2014 fifty-two countries have included HPV vaccines in their national immunization programs. The SaneVax Team has been contacted by representatives from well over half of them seeking to understand the vast array of new medical conditions occurring in the wake of these programs. Can you please explain how a person in your position as a department head within an organization whose mission is ’health for all – through safe and effective prevention and treatment’ is not aware of any of these events? Also, according to Dr. Jesper Mehlsen’s best estimate as of June 11th, one in 500 girls who were vaccinated with Gardasil in Denmark experienced serious side effects. This translates into 200/100,000. I am sure you are well aware of the fact that the cervical cancer diagnosis rate in your country is only 12.1/100,000. Can you please explain why your advice to those you are charged with protecting is to continue to use HPV vaccines despite the fact that the reported rate of serious adverse events in your own country far exceeds the risk of obtaining a cervical cancer diagnosis? Medical consumers anxiously await your reply. Signed on behalf of Danish families, Norma Erickson, President SaneVax Inc. References: SaneVax received the response below from Mr. Jensen at 9:41 am the same day: Subject: SV: SaneVax Inc. on behalf of Danish Medical Consumers Dear Norma Erickson, Please be aware that in 2013 (latest official update) 114 women died of cervical cancer in Denmark. Denmark is in accordance with advice given from EMA, FDA and WHO. Best Henrik G. Jensen Danish Health and Medicines Authority SaneVax response 10:36 am, 20 July: Subject: Re: SV: SaneVax Inc. on behalf of Danish Medical Consumers Dear Henrik Jensen, Thank you for your prompt response. I understand Denmark introduced HPV vaccines in 2008. Do you have any theory as to why the cervical cancer mortality increased from 97 in 2012 to 114 in 2013? Thank you for any insights you can offer. Regards, Norma Erickson Mr. Jensen’s response 10:44 am July 20 Subject: SV: SV: SaneVax Inc. on behalf of Danish Medical Consumers Dear Norma Erickson, Tahnk you for your mail. Do you recognize that the number in your mail ”1.5” is wrong? Do you recognize that the discussion on the tv program was about POTS and CRPS and not a general discussion on ADR? Please be clear! Best Henrik G. Jensen SaneVax reply 8:38 am, July 21 Subject: Re: SV: SV: SaneVax Inc. on behalf of Danish Medical Consumers Dear Henrik Jensen, Thank you for bringing the error in the original letter to my attention. I went back and checked the figures and found that I had inadvertently transposed a number when calculating the number per week. I sincerely appreciate your assistance. I did indeed recognize that the television program was limited to a discussion of POTS and CRPS. Once again, these are conditions being diagnosed after HPV vaccine administration in many countries – NOT just Denmark! That being said, on behalf of all the families in Denmark whose lives have been transformed after HPV vaccine use, I renew my request for answers to the following questions: Can you please explain how a person in your position as a department head within an organization whose mission is ’health for all – through safe and effective prevention and treatment’ is not aware of any of the adverse events being diagnosed after HPV vaccines in other countries – particularly POTS and CRPS? Can you please explain why your advice to those you are charged with protecting is to continue to use HPV vaccines despite the fact that the reported rate of serious adverse events in your own country far exceeds the risk of obtaining a cervical cancer diagnosis? Since HPV vaccines were introduced in Denmark in 2008, do you have any theory as to why the cervical cancer mortality increased from 97 in 2012 to 114 in 2013? Thank you in advance for providing this much needed information to the people of your country. Please show them you are not allowing POTS and CRPS to be put under the investigative microscope in order to blur the overall picture regarding the safety profile of HPV vaccines. Let them know you are looking out for their health and well-being. Signed on Behalf of the Citizens of Denmark, Norma Erickson, President SaneVax Inc. Mr. Jensen’s response 9:42 am SV: SV: SV: SaneVax Inc. on behalf of Danish Medical Consumers Dear Norma Erickson, Thank you for your mail. Your information ”I sincerely appreciate your assistance” is simply not good enough. You owe me an apology – I think you should be serious about this and think once again about the words you use. About the number of POTS associated with Gardasil – please be aware of the official numbers in Europa. The last official information from EMA dated December 2014 was 66 cases of POTS with the largest number in Europe from Denmark – one of the smallest countries in the world. Please check the official numbers. The EMA conclude that a link between Gardasil and POTS can neither be confirmed nor be ruled out. Once again you owe me an apology. As far as your first question EMA concludes that the overall benefit/risk balance of Gardasil remains positive. And please be aware that this opinion is shared by FDA, WHO and all European countries. And you also knows this! Denmark included Gardasil in the childhood vaccination program January 1, 2009. As far as the mortality rate is concerned you have to look at a wider span of years to have the full picture. We will expect to see a significant decrease in the numbers in the years to come – and combining the screening and vaccination programs we will be able to almost eradicate cervical cancer. More than 20.000 European women die from cervical cancer every year. New Danish research by the Danish Cancer Society has already shown that the Danish vaccination program for HPV works. Among the HPV vaccinated women born in 1993 and 1994, the risk of having precursors to cervical cancer is reduced by 73% compared with unvaccinated. Scientific studies from among others US, Australia and Sweden has shown the same. I think we should conclude our discussion here. Best Henrik G. Jensen Errors and Omissions by both parties? First, it must be noted that there was an error in the initial email SaneVax sent to Mr. Jensen, a fact which he pointed out only after being asked if he had any theory as to why the cervical cancer mortality incidence in Denmark increased from 97 in 2012 to 114 in 2013 – an increase which occured after the introduction of HPV vaccines. The information on 2013 cervical cancer mortality rates was not available to the SaneVax team at the time the email was written. Nevertheless, the 1.5 cervical cancer deaths per week in Denmark should have read 1.8 cervical cancer deaths per week according to the 2012 statistics compiled by the World Health Organization which were referenced in the email. Despite the math error (which was the author’s fault) the correct figure available to the author was still lower than the 2 cancer deaths per week Mr. Jensen quoted on the Good Morning Denmark Show. The truth be told, whether the most accurate figure is 1.5, 1.8 or 2.0/100,00 is immaterial – all three numbers pale in comparison to the number of serious medical conditions occurring in Denmark (and other countries) after Gardasil administration. Both Mr. Jensen and the SaneVax team were working with the data available to them at the time the emails were composed, hence some of the confusion. The truth of the matter is neither SaneVax nor Mr. Jensen have a clear picture of the benefit/risk profile of HPV vaccination programs. That is precisely why open scientific discussions are needed. It is worth noting that SaneVax provided references to all data sources used in their communications, unless the information referenced had been provided by Mr. Jensen. Mr. Jensen did not grant SaneVax the same courtesy. The clear implication was the SaneVax team should simply trust his word. A prime example of this is Mr. Jensen’s request that SaneVax check the official numbers for POTS cases reported after HPV vaccinations in Europe without providing the source of said data. Mr. Jensen stated, The EMA conclude that a link between Gardasil and POTS can neither be confirmed nor be ruled out. This statement is true. However, at no time has any SaneVax team member stated a link had been established between HPV vaccine administration and any subsequently experienced medical condition. Throughout the history of our organization, we have simply called for scientific investigations to determine whether or not such a link exists. One could justifiably state a link between HPV vaccines and any adverse health condition will never be established unless one is looked for. Another reason open discussions with scientific professionals from both sides of the debate followed by serious investigations are such a critical need. Mr. Jensen’s statements regarding the EMA/FDA/WHO positions on HPV vaccines was irrelevant to the subject being discussed. He was correct in stating that the SaneVax team was well aware of their position. However, all questions from SaneVax to Mr. Jensen were exclusively referring to Sundhedsstyrelsen’s position. Mr. Jensen stated: New Danish research by the Danish Cancer Society has already shown that the Danish vaccination program for HPV works. Among the HPV vaccinated women born in 1993 and 1994, the risk of having precursors to cervical cancer is reduced by 73% compared with unvaccinated. Scientific studies from among others US, Australia and Sweden has shown the same. Mr. Jensen and all of the health authorities quoted should be well aware of the fact that reducing the prevalence of an infection which clears on its own 90% of the time (within two years) does not necessarily translate into a reduction of cervical cancer cases in the future. The same health authorities should be well aware of the fact that reducing so-called pre-cancerous lesions, which also frequently resolve on their own without medical intervention does not necessarily predict a reduction in cervical cancer rates. Theoretically, these health authorities are aware of the following quote from Chapter 2 of the IARC’s COLPOSCOPY AND TREATMENT OF CERVICAL INTRAEPITHELIAL NEOPLASIA: A BEGINNER’S MANUAL, published by the World Health Organization, which states: Despite women’s frequent exposure to HPV, development of cervical neoplasia is uncommon. Most cervical abnormalities caused by HPV infection are unlikely to progress to high-grade CIN or cervical cancer, as most of them regress by themselves. The long time frame between initial infection and overt disease indicates that several cofactors (e.g., genetic differences, hormonal effects, micronutrient deficiencies, smoking, or chronic inflammation) may be necessary for disease progression. Spontaneous regression of CIN may also indicate that many women may not be exposed to these cofactors. The only true measure of HPV vaccine efficacy will be a reduction in diagnosed cervical cancer cases in those vaccinated along with a similar reduction failing to occur in those who are unvaccinated. All national and international health authorities referred to by Mr. Jensen should be well aware of this fact. If they are not, they are deluding themselves and the public. Questions left unanswered by Sundhedsstyrelsen Until such time as a real reduction in cervical cancer cases is demonstrated, medical professionals and medical consumers are left with multiple questions for which they deserve answers – if they are to have any hope of preserving the health and well-being of the next generation. Among these questions are those Mr. Jensen left unanswered: Why is the staff of Sundhedsstyrelsen apparently not aware of the reports of adverse events after HPV vaccinations in other countries, particularly the reports relating to POTS and CRPS? Why is Sundhedsstyrelsen’s advice to doctors and medical consumers to continue to use HPV vaccines despite the fact that the number of serious adverse events currently being reported in Denmark far exceeds the risk of being diagnosed with cervical cancer? Since HPV vaccines were included in the Danish childhood vaccination program on 1 January 2009, do you/ Sundhedsstyrelsen have any theory as to why cervical cancer deaths in Denmark increased from 97 to 114 from 2012 to 2013? These 3 questions are but the tip of the iceberg. Questions Sundhedsstyrelsen left unasked: If Denmark’s health authorities were seriously interested in determining the true risk/benefit profile of HPV vaccines, they would have considered posing some questions being put forth by medical professionals, scientific research teams and medical consumers in Denmark and around the world. Some of these questions are: When vaccinating a healthy population, what is the rate of serious adverse event reports required before the risks outweigh the perceived benefits? Currently, serious adverse events after HPV vaccine administration in Denmark is estimated at 200/100,000 recipients; the cervical cancer diagnosis rate is 12.1/100,000. How much collateral damage is acceptable before a vaccine is no longer considered safe? Merck’s own Gardasil 9 prescribing information packet reports serious adverse event reported during clinical trials to be 2300/100,000 for Gardasil 9 and 2500/100,000 for Gardasil. This is higher than the cervical cancer diagnosis rate in any country in the world. Why does this not alter the perceived benefit/risk profile? What was the rate of cervical cancer cases in Denmark 5 years prior to the introduction of HPV vaccines versus the cervical cancer diagnosis rate 5 years after the introduction of Gardasil? At what ages were these cancers diagnosed? What were the rates in other European countries before and after HPV vaccine introduction? What was the hospitalization rate for the targeted population prior to including HPV vaccines in the Danish childhood immunization program versus the hospitalization rate in the same population after the inclusion of HPV vaccines? Other countries? How do the serious adverse event reports being filed in Denmark after HPV vaccine administration compare to the reports submitted in other countries? What is different about the girls reporting severe adverse events when compared to those who report minimal or no events after HPV vaccine administration? Why are the the vast majority of adverse event reports considered psychosomatic until proven otherwise; instead of being examined as potential side effects until proven otherwise? Again, the above questions are simply a sample of the questions the Danish Health and Medicines Authority should have put forth to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) if they were serious about investigating the benefit/risk profile of HPV vaccines. One has to wonder why Sundhedsstyrelsen seems content to put two quite specific conditions under the microscope while ignoring the rest of the picture. Could it have anything to do with the fact that around half of the Danish Health and Medicines Authority’s (Sundhedsstyrelsen) funding comes directly, from global pharmaceutical giants? Only time will tell. In the meantime, medical consumers and those who administer HPV vaccines are on their own. They need to start asking pertinent questions such as those listed above and demanding answers. Until such time as HPV vaccines are proven to be safe, affordable, necessary and effective, everyone needs to remember that national health authorities are not infallible. Every prescription medication ever removed from the market was first deemed safe and effective by national health authorities such as the FDA and Sundhedsstyrelsen, not to mention international authorities like the EMA. (A list of 35 such drugs approved by the FDA and later pulled from the market is here.) Gardasil, Cervarix and Gardasil 9 are rapidly becoming ’poster children’ for vaccines by demonstrating everything that can possibly go wrong with a vaccine. The laundry list of unanswered questions about these vaccines seems to expand on a daily basis. Medical consumers have a right to receive satisfactory answers to any questions they have regarding medical interventions prior to granting their consent. This is particularly true of vaccines – injected material is not easily removed. Anyone who administers HPV vaccines has a duty to ask relevant questions until they are satisfied with the answers. No medical intervention is right for everyone. Clearly, HPV vaccine risks outweigh the benefits for some people. Medical professionals must be completely and accurately informed in order to make sure HPV vaccines are the right choice for the person sitting in front of them. Medical professionals and medical consumers: Remember the consequences resulting from use of Thalidomide, Darvon, Darvoset, DES, antipsychotic drugs, and Vioxx – just to name a few. All of them were approved as safe and effective before leaving massive devastation in their wake. Do your research – it is easy to halt medications when there is a problem – you cannot unvaccinate!

Introduction A few days after releasing the Android 2.3 SDK, Google officially pushed Gingerbread to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Shortly thereafter, developers (such as the CyanogenMod crew) immediately started working on their custom ROMs based on the AOSP code (e.g. CyanogenMod 7). It has only been a few days since CyanogenMod released version 6.1.1, their most recent stable update, so it's still likely to be a few weeks before a stable release of CM 7 is available. Nevertheless, a group of eager CM developers and enthusiasts have taken the liberty of packaging early unstable releases of CM 7 (with Android 2.3 Gingerbread) for a variety of Android devices. CyanogenMod 7 T-Mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z) Earlier this week, a video appeared showing an incomplete build of CyanogenMod 7 RC-0 running on the T-Mobile G2. The Gingerbread bits were ported from the AOSP code. While the phone was mostly functional, the camera/camcorder was not working, GPS was slow, Wi-Fi was buggy, and the soft keyboard was in Japanese. XDA forums member rubino90 posted a link to download CM 7 RC-0 on the XDA-Developers Forum, but some forum members were concerned as this was not the official CM release. Cyanogen confirmed that the release was not official and issued the following warning: Also a BIG FAT WARNING for anyone going into CM7-land.. We are using EXT4 now, and it doesn't exactly play nice with the current release of Clockwork Recovery. Don't be surprised if you can't do backups, restores, or even flash anything at all afterwards. If you build it yourself it will spew out a version that works with ext4 (and only ext4, there's no interchangeable solution yet). Don't even think of bothering Koush about it. Download: CyanogenMod 7 HTC Desire (CDMA Version) Soon after, another member of the XDA forums, ipfreelytech, compiled Gingerbread from source for the CDMA version of the HTC Desire by following the guide provided on the CyanogenMod Wiki. This port is primarily based on the AOSP code, rather than on CM. Also, the GPS radio, 3D video acceleration, video camera and Google contacts sync are not working in this build. Download: CyanogenMod 7 | Google Apps Nexus S CyanogenMod developer Koush recently released a semi-official version of CM7 for the Google-branded Samsung Nexus S. Although there were a number of ports of the Gingerbread SDK, Koush’s release is perhaps the most complete. Initial usage indicates that it is relatively stable, but be warned - it is still an alpha release and there are some issues. Download: CyanogenMod 7 | Google Apps HTC EVO 4G Soon after Koush’s release, another CM developer, lithid-cm, released a guide to compiling CM 7 with Android 2.3 for the HTC EVO 4G. Shortly after, a pre-compiled version of CM 7 appeared on the thread. Most of the hardware on the phone works, but there's no support for HDMI, 4G, lock screen animations, camcorder, MMS downloads and some LED lighting. It is also necessary to install the appropriate kernel for the phone. Download: CyanogenMod 7 | Google Apps | Savage-Kernel | ZenDroid Kernel Other Gingerbread Ports Although CyanogenMod is perhaps the most popular Android custom ROM, since the release of Gingerbread, a number of developers have used the raw 2.3 source code to create custom ROMs for a variety of other devices. Nexus One The release of the Nexus S has lessened the priority Google will be placing on its original flagship phone. Nevertheless, XDA forums member MicroMod777 decided not to wait for Google to push an update to the Nexus One and instead compiled and installed a custom Android 2.3 ROM himself. This build supports any version of HBOOT and comes bundled with all the latest Google Apps as well as a number of other useful apps, such as Quickboot, Astro File Manager, Titanium Backup, Terminal Emulator, Trackball alerts, Call Blocker and many more. In addition, Darktremors Apps2SD is available, but must be manually activated from the Terminal Emulator app, or through ADB commands: a2db shell ("su" in Terminal Emulator) a2sd check a2sd reinstall (I usually only use this) a2sd zipalign (This is extra if wanted) a2sd cachesd (This is extra if wanted) Download: Gingerbread ROM (current v0.11) HTC MyTouch 3G / Magic Earlier this month, XDA forums member seo created a custom ROM using the AOSP code for the HTC MyTouch 3G / Magic. However, this initial release is not for regular use and extreme caution is advised before you flash your phone with this image. Nothing save for the the data, radio and Wi-Fi works using this build, so be wary. Download: Android 2.3 Port HTC Dream Many Android developers have a soft spot for the first Android phone: the HTC Dream. Recently, XDA forums member Dominating compiled a Gingerbread build for this device, but as with all the other builds, this one is slow and buggy. The latest version (0.2) of this port has a number of improvements, including support for Google Apps, Google Sync, Facebook integration and general interface improvements, as well as working Wi-Fi. This port seems to be updated quite regularly, so keep a look out for v0.3. Download: Pryon_Gingerbread v0.2 | 2708 Kernel HTC Desire XDA forums member AdamG decided to create his own Gingerbread ROM, and came up with "Oxygen ROM." It too is built from the Gingerbread AOSP source. In his own words this ROM is "minimal, superfast and 99.9% bugfree". The ROM comes with Android 2.3.1 built from AOSP, all the latest Google Apps, and the latest Zeam Launcher. In addition, the ROM features a customizable power widget with the option of having the power widget in the status bar, FM radio, legacy A2SD with support for EXT2/3/4, support for connecting to Ad-Hoc Wi-Fi networks, and a number of other custom features. Download: Oxygen v2.0-RC3 (Gingerbread RC) HTC Droid Incredible Team WeDoDroid successfully ported a stable version of Android 2.3 to the HTC Droid Incredible. So far, 5 versions of the ROM have been released, with the current being OMGB v6. As of now, the camera, GPS, and microphone are all working. The ROM also packs Facebook sync, lock/unlock screen sounds, a pull-down notification slide, multi-touch gestures in a number of apps, a full featured web browser, auto-correct in the soft keyboard, MMS support, USB mounting, and the MIUI music application. However, the camcorder, LED lights, and some apps still refuse to work, as Gingerbread is still relatively new. Download: OMGB v6 HTC Wildfire XDA forums member HCDR.Jacob has compiled an Android 2.3 basic emulator port for the HTC Wildfire. The build is still highly experimental and only the Wi-Fi, touchscreen, calling, texting, USB (for charging), and SD card are working. As of the v0.2a release, the sensors, camera, Bluetooth, audio (for media), USB (for storage), and most other features are currently not working. Download: HCDR.Gingerfire v0.2a Samsung Captivate The Tech Demo ported an experimental build of Gingerbread to the Samsung Captivate. Most of Gingerbread's features are available in this port, however, as of now, the camera and GPS are not working at all. Additionally, the data and voice network has some connectivity issues and letting pone sleep with the Wi-Fi switched on may cause a kernel panic. This build requires you to be running a Android 2.2 ROM with "Voodoo5" enabled (or anything that converts /data to ext4). Either the Perception or Cognition ROM will work fine. Download: USB Drivers | Gingerbread for Captivate V6 Build-3 Samsung Galaxy S Developer François Simond (a.k.a. supercurio) successfully ported Android 2.3 to the Samsung Galaxy S. He has kindly provided BriefMobile with a video of the build in action: While the port brings much of the Android 2.3 improvements to the Samsung Galaxy S, the build is not completely functional and is missing some key features such as Wi-Fi access, a working camera, and a working GPS. Installing this port is a little bit more complicated than the other builds; fortunately, BriefMobile has provided a helpful guide: Download system-dump-as-root.tar.gz Place the system-dump-as-root.tar.gz on your internal storage in the root/main folder Run these commands from ADB (need help? adb guide) adb shell su cd /data mkdir gingerbread cd gingerbread busybox tar zxvf /sdcard/system-dump-as-root.tar.gz busybox cp -a /efs efs sync reboot download Download nsongs.tar (version 6) Use Odin to flash nsongs.tar in the PDA slot Open Odin (download here) Click on PDA and load up nsongs.tar Make sure Auto-Reboot and F.Reset Time are checked Press start and you’ll flash the kernel HTC Droid Eris XDA forum member punk.kaos first ported Android 2.3 to the HTC Droid Eris in early December. Since then, his build has been refined over six versions and is now relatively stable. The data, radio, sensors (ambient, rotation, etc), LED notification lights, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, OpenGL, speaker audio, and in-call microphone are all working without any major bugs. Download: Kaos.Gingerbread V6 | Google Apps Nokia N900 Finally, Daily Mobile recently featured a video from drunkdebugger that showed off Android 2.3.1 running on a Nokia N900. There is little information about this port; however, the video shows the device running without any apparent bugs, a full-featured web browser, and no network connectivity issues. Sources: T-Mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z): XDA-Developers and PocketNow HTC Desire (CDMA): XDA-Developers Nexus S: XDA-Developers via Addictive Tips HTC EVO 4G: XDA-Developers via Addictive Tips Nexus One: XDA-Developers via Addictive Tips HTC MyTouch 3G / Magic: XDA-Developers via AliWaqas HTC Dream: XDA-Developers HTC Desire: XDA-Developers HTC Droid Incredible: XDA-Developers via AliWaqas HTC Wildfire: XDA-Developers Samsung Captivate: XDA-Developers (Thanks to Bobby for the tip) Samsung Galaxy S: BriefMobile (Thanks to Kenneth for the tip) HTC Droid Eris: XDA-Developers Nokia N900: Daily Mobile (Thanks to Daniel for the tip)

The acceleration of price increases in Canada’s two most expensive cities is showing no signs of stopping, something sure to add fuel to arguments that housing markets in Toronto and Vancouver are overheated and need some type of intervention. Vancouver, long a hotbed of frothing anger over prices many blame on offshore buyers, just keeps shattering records. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said this week the overall index for prices in the city rose 25.3 per cent in April from a year ago, eclipsing the 23.2 per cent year-over-year increase the market saw in March. An average detached home in the metro Vancouver area sold for $1,817,027 in April. In Toronto, the evidence is that home price increases in the Canada’s largest city are now spilling into the suburbs and even distance municipalities like Guelph and Waterloo. The Toronto Real Estate Board said Wednesday that the average price in the metro area rose 16.2 per cent in April from a year as the average detached home in the city of Toronto reached $1,257,958. Just over a year ago, the average existing detached home topped $1 million. “I don’t think governments should be doing anything to try and curtail demand right now,” said Peter Norman, chief economist and vice-president of Altus Group. “If anything, government should be trying to reduce the barriers to building, whether it’s land development to encourage more supply to come forward.” Norman, who believes foreign investment is not the reason behind price increases, but is actually stimulating supply of high-rise construction, says Toronto is poised to add new low-rise supply because of a number of developments that have finally made it through the planning process. “Where we do have foreign investment in the GTA and Vancouver, it is driving supply. Most of the discussion is foreigners are buying product and not using it. That’s a small part of the question. Most of the foreign money is financing new construction,” said Norman, adding that the falling Canadian dollar has been the real driver of foreign demand. “People are just telling the wrong narrative.” The government has introduced multiple measures to try and cool the housing market, the latest being a Liberal initiative in February that increased the minimum down payment from five per cent to 10 per cent for any amount of a purchase over $500,000. The measure only applies to insured government-backed mortgages, which are now limited to homes valued at $1 million or less. Homes sold for more than $1 million require a down payment of at least 20 per cent. “I think it’s now safe to say that the measures Ottawa introduced late last year did nothing to cool Vancouver or Toronto, or indeed any of the regions surrounding those cities,” said Douglas Porter, chief economist with the Bank of Montreal. “There has been relatively strong job growth in both Vancouver and Toronto over the past year, and interest rates are lower than a year ago — but enough to explain this strength? No,” he said. “The risk here is what had been a previously robust market is clearly now in danger of entering speculative-land, which ultimately is good for no one.” The Liberals have indicated they have no immediate plans for further tightening of regulation and just last month the Bank of Canada said it would not shape its monetary policy based on housing. It said the “cost” of curtailing the market — something that might be done by raising interest rates — “outweighed” the benefits to the overall economy. Porter thinks it’s time the provincial governments step in to contribute more to housing policy, something that can be done through land use policy. Foreign investment is within the powers of provinces to regulate and Prince Edward Island has long restricted out-of-province purchases. “Since the red-hot market conditions are so focused on two particular regions (as opposed to the whole country), it seems that the provincial governments in B.C. and Ontario have a role to play in avoiding a speculative boom — without hampering legitimate homegrown demand for housing,” Porter said . Bryan Tuckey, of the Building Industry and Land Association, which said in April that the average new detached home in the Greater Toronto Area passed $1 million, said restrictive land use policy in his region has been driving prices in both old and new low-rise homes. “New homes are the feeder for existing homes. If you don’t build new homes, the industry doesn’t have the supply of homes to sell,” said Tuckey, adding that the planning process means land can take up to a decade to develop. With the focus on high-rise intensification, the gap between new low-rise and high-rise homes is at an all-time high. For those still dreaming of low-rise homes, the news could get worse as the baby boomers continue to live longer and show less and less interest in moving out of their longtime single-family homes to increase supply, said Doug Norris, chief demographer for Environics Analytics. “Four or five years ago, I thought we’d see (boomers moving out of their homes), but it hasn’t happened,” Norris said. “We were looking too early. It might not happen until they hit 75, we could be five or 10 years away.” twitter.com/dustywallet gmarr@nationalpost.com

India on Tuesday voted against a declaration of the World Trade Organisation that supported gender equality in trade. At the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires in Argentina, 119 of the 164 members of the agency backed a non-binding declaration that sought women’s economic empowerment by speedily removing barriers to trade. The declaration provides a framework for members of the trade body to adopt “gender-responsive” trade policies, now that the link between promoting women’s participation in economic activities and improved economic performance has been proved, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, said. India, however, voted against the decision, saying that while it supports gender equality, gender is not a trade-related subject, The Hindu reported. Developed countries, Indian officials argued, could use their high standards of gender equity to curb exports from the developing world. They said gender-related concerns should be discussed at appropriate fora, and that this precedent would bring in other non-trade subjects, such as labour and environment standards, into the WTO’s purview. An alliance of more than 160 women’s rights and allied organisations criticised the declaration. They had called on member nations not to adopt it as they said the declaration failed to “address the adverse impact of WTO rules on women and instead appears to be designed to mask the failures of the WTO and its role in deepening inequality and exploitation”.

The looong road to xfce 4.14. I hope you still want some news about Xfce ! As usual, the xfce development is slow, has some organisation problems (only few members have access to servers, and are often not present), and lack “core” maintainers/mentors. But hey, we do our best :). The bigger change for 4.14 is the port / upgrade to GTK+ 3.x. It will be a like-for-like port. New and “big” features are postponed to 4.16. You can read the thread on the ML https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-February/031146.html about the decision of only port to gtk3 and not introduce any new features for now. The roadmap is available on the Wiki : http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.14/roadmap. The minimum requiered version has been fixed to be GTK+ 3.14. Roadmap / Planned Features : All components of -core will be ported to Gtk+ 3. Replace dbus-glib with GDbus. Review icon-names in all components and use consistent naming, following the fd.o spec where possible Use symbolic icons for panel plugins and in apps where suitable Replace deprecated widgets. Here is a quick (and somewhat incomplete) overview of what is already done ! Core components Work is on progress for core components, with “users” branches availables on http://git.xfce.org/ (xfce4-panel, libxfce4ui, xfce4-session, panel etc). Nothing really available for daily use though. Lots of works on xfwm4’ compositor (in master), with implementation of vsync using OpenGL, libepoxy support, adding of DRI3/Present to the compositor, use of GLX for compositing instead of Xrender… Libxfce4ui 4.12 already compile with gtk2 and gtk3 support, exo git master have a gtk3 preliminary support, garcon is already ported. xfdesktop have a gtk3 branch The panel support GTK-3 plugins since 4.12, but it core need to be upgraded to use gtk3. Xfce4-power-manager One of the most active project. Version 1.6 (released last month) is a complete port to gtk3 and gdbus, see http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/tree/NEWS Xfce4-notifyd A GTK3 branch exist, you can read the thread on the ML : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-October/031504.html. I use it since few months, and it works pretty well :) Xfce4-Appfinder xfce4-appfinder progress to gtk3 : https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce4-dev/2015-August/031438.html Can you guess which one use GTK3 ? (hint: the left one ;)) Plugins Some plugins are still active, and are already ported to GTK-3 (xfce4-indicator-plugin, xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin), as xfce4-panel support both gtk2 and gtk3 plugins. Last months have seen new versions of xfce4-equake-plugin, xfce4-embed-plugin, xfce4-verve-plugin, xfce4-notes-plugin, xfce4-cpufreq-plugin. One of the more usefull new plugin is the pulseaudio-plugin, a replacement for xfce4-mixer : http://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin/, I use it and it works well. Stay tuned !

Jodie Whittaker: what an inspired choice for the new Doctor. Not only is she a very fine actress, whether she’s playing stricken with grief, as she did in Broadchurch, or a comedically exasperated trainee nurse stressed out by aliens and chavs in the wonderful little film Attack the Block. She also exudes that quality every good Doctor needs: the everyman touch. Or everyperson touch. The sense that while this creature might be a Time Lord with two hearts and a police-box time machine, he — now she — is nonetheless like us. Special but connectable. Otherworldly but worldly. Whittaker can do that. I think she’ll be brilliant. But my joy at seeing an actress I admire land a coveted role has been dampened by the crazy reaction to the news. You’d be forgiven for thinking that making the thirteenth Doctor a woman is on a par with women getting the vote. Twitter has evaporated into a paroxysm of joy. This will transform life for the female of the species, apparently. We cannot underestimate ‘how important a female Doctor is’, says the Huffington Post. This casting helps ‘break the glass ceiling’, says a self-congratulatory BBC (inflaming suspicion that it chose Whittaker because she’s a woman rather than because she’s good at her job). Whittaker will inject ‘girl power [into] space and time’, says one observer. Writing in the Guardian, the sixth Doctor, Colin Baker, says Whittaker’s arrival reverses ‘the exclusion of [the female] gender from the Tardis’ — as if not having a female Doctor was an act of misogynistic repression rather than just a quirk of TV history. A writer for Variety says women have ‘won a victory’. She hails the casting of Whittaker because it ‘sends a message’ — that women and girls will no longer be ‘shut out of seeing themselves on screen in plum roles’. Women don’t land plum roles? Is that true? Tweeting, weeping liberals claim a female Doctor will have a revolutionary impact on their daughters’ sense of self-worth. I don’t know what I find more dubious: the notion that teen girls watch Doctor Who or that a Whittaker Time Lord will boost feminine self-esteem across the land. The overblown response to the thirteenth Doctor confirms how stupid, and worse, identity politics is. It confirms how obsessed the virtual left is with cultural messaging. This flimsy group gabs about imagery far more than it does matters of substance. Gone are the old cries for full employment or marches for jobs, and in their place we have an irritating, myopic, often self-serving demand for greater diversity on TV, radio, in magazines. We need a female Doctor, a black James Bond, more female voices on the Today programme, plumper mannequins in shops, traffic lights that are gay-friendly (seriously), in order to make sections of the populace feel less depressed, apparently. There’s something deeply conservative, distinctly un-radical, in this obsession with the surface of things. It leaves society itself unchanged. Sticking with women: after yesterday’s announcement, vast numbers of women will still struggle to make ends meet, and having a female Time Lord will make not one, solitary, infinitesimal iota of difference to that. Whittaker’s turn as the Doctor might boost the happiness of teenage daughters of Guardianistas — allegedly — but it will do nothing to improve the esteem or lot of working women or hard-up new mums or white working-class girls who are less likely than middle-class girls to stay in education up to A-Level. Identity politics polishes the exterior of society while leaving its deeper problems untouched. It’s such a con. The frenzy over the female Time Lord also shows how patronising identity politics is. How insulting to suggest that women needed the thirteenth Doctor to be female, or that trans people will crumble if they hear the phrase ‘Ladies and gentlemen’ on the Tube, or that black people need to see people like themselves in a story if they’re really going to connect with it. The idea is that ordinary people are tragically fragile, going about in a permanent state of self-doubt, and so we must have our esteem massaged by cultural overlords. ‘You ARE valuable!’, these powerful people must tell us. It’s anti-universal too. The notion that black people better understand art featuring black people, or that girls will get more from stories written by women, as Caitlin Moran suggests, grates horribly against the humanist idea that what unites us — our aspirations, our autonomy, our capacity for love and greatness — is far more important than accidental differences in gender and pigmentation. What’s really off in the celebration of the new Doctor is that it makes the whole thing reek of tokenism. It implies that the most important thing about Whittaker is her gender. We’re actively invited to judge her by her gender. We should refuse. We should judge her by her performance alone, and by how well or differently she inhabits this most British of TV characters. I predict she will do it well, not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a very talented person.

MILTON KEYNES, a new town of 249,000 people some 50 miles from London, is famous among Britons for its American-style road grid, its bright high-modernist shopping mall and an unfortunate sculpture of cows made in concrete and fibreglass. But these pleasant and dull acres of suburbia have become a lot more colourful of late. Competing with the chain stores of the mall, there is now a collection of stalls selling African and Asian food. In the sun of a weekday afternoon, women in multicoloured kaftans gossip in the spacious squares and underpasses. Milton Keynes now has some of the “vibrancy” of multicultural London. On December 11th the latest batch of data from the 2011 census of England and Wales was published (Scotland and Northern Ireland collect figures separately). As was widely anticipated, this showed a big increase in the number of people who say they belong to an ethnic minority, or were born somewhere other than Britain. Those who define themselves as “white British” now make up just 81% of the population, down from 88% in 2001, when the last census was conducted. Britain is also less religious than it was: around a quarter of people now say they have no religion, up from about 15% a decade earlier. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. But beneath these broad trends the data reveal a more subtle pattern. In 2001 fully 45% of the minority population of England and Wales lived in London. Now, they are more spread out. As the maps below show, in London ethnic minorities have diffused from inner-city boroughs such as Newham (1) and Tower Hamlets (2) into farther-out places like Barking and Dagenham (3). Meanwhile, the rest of the country is coming to look more like London: less white, more diverse. In 2001 around 80% of black Africans in the country lived in London. Now, just 58% do. There have been similar, if smaller, reductions for every other main ethnic group, even those not thought to have dispersed much, such as Bangladeshis. Overall, the ethnic-minority population outside London has increased by 90%, against a more modest rise of 63% in the capital. In Kent, an affluent county south of London, the size of the ethnic-minority population has grown by 115% since 2001, albeit from a low base. In Hertfordshire, a rural and suburban county north of London, it has doubled. Many of the incomers are moving into Milton Keynes-esque places such as Ashford, in Kent, and Welwyn Garden City, in Hertfordshire. These towns have boxy houses, rational road layouts, plentiful but not especially distinguished greenery, and “herringbone” brick paving. Local politics revolves around blocking development on greenbelt land. It is not hard to see why ethnic minorities are moving to these towns. There is little crime. Schools are pretty good. Housing is far cheaper than in London, while speedy transport links make it easy to return. The main newcomers are black Africans and Indians from London, as well as Poles, who have settled all over the country since 2004, when the citizens of new members of the European Union were allowed to work in Britain. Similar trends are visible elsewhere. In Solihull, a well-heeled suburban town on the southern fringe of Birmingham, there has been an influx of Indians and Pakistanis since 2001; in less-wealthy Salford, near Manchester, black Africans have moved in. The flight to the suburbs is changing inner London too. Lambeth (4, on the maps), a south London borough, has long been known as the first home of the capital’s black-Caribbean population: the passengers of the Empire Windrush mostly settled there in 1948. But since 2001 black Caribbeans have moved out while Africans have moved in. Shop displays advertise cheap money transfers and phone calls to Ghana and Nigeria. The influx of Africans partly helps to explain why, despite a huge fall in the number of people describing themselves as “Christian” nationwide, Lambeth, together with a few other London boroughs, has managed to increase its tally of the faithful. Taken with the rapid overall increase in immigrants in the past decade or so, this dispersal may be one reason why immigration has become so controversial. In many of the suburban places migrants are moving to, white British folk are seeing foreign faces in large numbers for the first time. Existing residents often resent the newcomers, who compete for school places, doctors’ appointments and public housing. Politicians are rushing to call for cuts to immigration. On December 12th Theresa May, the Conservative home secretary, denounced “uncontrolled, mass immigration”, which “displaces British workers, forces people onto benefits and suppresses wages for the low-paid”. But other evidence suggests that most migrants and children of migrants are integrating effectively. The number of people who say they are of mixed ethnicity has almost doubled, from 661,000 in 2001 to 1.2m. According to Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a think-tank, mixed couples are now more common in Britain than almost anywhere else, including the United States. And despite the increasing diversity, 91% of people filling out their census form claimed some sort of British national identity, calling themselves English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or indeed British, sometimes with ethnic additions. According to the Oxford Migration Observatory, a think-tank, opposition to immigration is weaker in London, where different groups have lived cheek-by-jowl for centuries, than in the rest of the country, even among white-British Londoners. Boris Johnson, its mayor, lauds the benefits of open borders. Contrary to Ms May’s suggestion, growing diversity need not mean lack of cohesion, or strife. Indeed, if the rest of Britain follows London’s path, it may well eventually reduce them.

Only about two years ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry was convinced that he had found the Archimedean point, which if he would hold onto, he would be able to solve all the problems of the Middle East – Israel. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter This was also the perception of President Barack Obama and his Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel: A solution in Israel would allow stability in all of the Middle East. War on Terror Strong yet hesitant coalition facing determined enemy Dr. Yaron Friedman Analysis: Why are the Middle Eastern forces, whose integrity is being threatened by ISIS, afraid to attack the murderous organization? What will the offensive look like in the end and what role will Israel play in it? Strong yet hesitant coalition facing determined enemy Now that same Kerry is trying to build a "coalition" to fight ISIS , and he didn't even bother to come to Israel, because what good can Israel do? Are we Sunnis or Shiites? Or maybe we are part of the conflict of Arab nationalism against radical Islam? Indeed, he was very late in understanding that not only are we not an Archimedean point with which the problems of the Middle East can be solved, but that we have a very weak connection to these problems. Only now, the Americans have realized that our conflict is at the margins of the margins of the real problems in the region. But in the meantime, two years have passed. While Kerry wasted at least 13 journeys here, which showed just how wrong the Americans were in understanding the Middle East, Syria became a den of jihadist murderers, Iraq fell apart and ISIS grew stronger, along with the Islamic defiance to forcibly establish an Islamic caliphate aspiring to reach Western Europe and the United States as well. Kerry should have dedicated this time to the real problems, not to the imaginary problems, and everyone in the Middle East followed this waste of time and drew their own conclusions. There is no wonder that the coalition the Americans are now recruiting is agreeing to take shape only through words. Washington's inability to understand the Middle East is still deterring, because for the local elements, misunderstanding means an existential danger. The Obama regime's misunderstanding is keeping every potential partner away from this coalition, as it is afraid that it will also be betrayed and abandoned by the Americans, as usual. The Muslim sides in the Middle East want the United States to fight ISIS, and the US wants the local Muslim groups to fight this organization. Between all these, a real coalition is impossible and remains on the level of rhetoric. What's irritating is that in the meantime, ISIS has not wasted any time and is now building a coalition based on passive armistice agreements, while Obama and Kerry's coalition is supposed to be based on active warfare, which no one is interested in, including the Americans themselves. The ISIS coalition already includes Turkey, through which military equipment and thousands of fighters are flocking to the organization (ISIS already has 31,000 fighters, and they all arrived through Turkey), and it is even buying cheap oil from ISIS which is flowing to the country through pipes in Iraq and Syria. There is no point in establishing a global coalition against ISIS as long as Turkey supports this organization and ensures that it prospers. It's such a shame that the US wasted so much time and effort on marginal things of secondary importance instead of immediately dealing with the main and key issues. Now it's already too late.

The police chief of a Westchester County town has been arrested on child pornography charges. Mount Pleasant Police Chief Brian Fanelli, 54, was taken into custody by Homeland Security agents at his home in Mahopac on Thursday morning. Fanelli, who joined the department in 1981, has been chief of police in Mount Pleasant for just two months. Mount Pleasant Police Chief Arrested On Child Pornography Charges “Given the allegations, this case is particularly disturbing and sad,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Thursday. “A senior law enforcement officer, sworn to uphold the law, stands accused of breaking the law. And it is the law designed to protect the youngest and most vulnerable of our population from vile exploitation.” According to the allegations in the criminal complaint filed Thursday in White Plains federal court, Fanelli used a peer-to-peer file-sharing program to download more than 120 files containing images and videos believed to be child pornography from as early as October 2013, through in or about January 2014. The complaint also states Fanelli made those files available to other online users through his computer’s shared folder on the program. LINK: Read the complaint against Brian Fanelli On three occasions, undercover DHS agents using the peer-to-peer network downloaded from Fanelli’s computer files containing images and videos believed to contain child pornography, according to the complaint. According to the complaint, Fanelli voluntarily told DHS agents that he has taught sexual-abuse-awareness classes to elementary and middle school-age students for more than a year, and that approximately one year ago, he began viewing child pornography from his home using the network – at first as research for the classes he was teaching — but shortly thereafter for personal interest. Fanelli was arraigned Thursday evening on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted. “Given his position in the law-enforcement community and the community at large, it is a significantly disturbing activity,” Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes Jr. told 1010 WINS’ Al Jones. CBS 2’s Lou Young reported that Fanelli was being released on $50,000 bond Thursday evening. A judge ordered him to home confinement with electronic monitoring. His computers and guns were confiscated, Young said. Mount Pleasant Supervisor Joan Maybury said Fanelli has been suspended with pay in accordance with his contract. She said the town is cooperating with prosecutors in the investigation. Check Out These Other Stories From CBSNewYork.com: (TM and © Copyright 2014 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

A printable PDF of this piece is available for download here. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others – W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks He who is reluctant to recognize me is against me – Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary — Malcolm X, Speech at the Founding of the OAAU Frantz Fanon is one of the most important 20th century thinkers on race, and any serious theory and strategy dealing with the reality of race has to grapple with his work.[1] At the same time, Fanon remains one of the most misunderstood revolutionary thinkers. Part of the reason lies in the hybrid nature of his work, which draws from, among other fields of knowledge, philosophy, psychiatry, literature, anthropology and marxism. Another reason for the conflicting interpretation of his work may be the conditions under which his writings were produced, often addressing the immediate theoretical issues of the day, whether in France, Algeria, the Caribbean, or the anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Further, dying of leukemia at the young age of 36, Fanon was robbed of the opportunity to more fully develop and synthesize his diverse and fragmented work. During his lifetime, Fanon was first and foremost known as an associate of the FLN, the leading party of the Algerian Revolution, a proponent of the Algerian Revolution as a model of anti-colonial revolution, and a critic of the emerging national bourgeoisie. In addition, Fanon fostered relationships with French intellectuals, most famously Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. However, Fanon’s work was never widely known in his lifetime in France, or, more broadly, in the metropoles. It was not until Les Damnés del la terre was translated into English in 1965 as The Wretched of the Earth that Fanon reached a wider audience. The emergence of nationalist and Third Worldist movements, both globally and in the “Western” countries, meant new life for Fanon’s work, as these movements drew on his work in various ways. Wretched of the Earth was at the center of this Fanon revival, while other important works, such as Black Skin, White Masks, were relatively ignored. Later, after these movements subsided, Fanon was the subject of intense appropriation and critique within American universities. The different moments and places in the reception and interpretation of his work meant that Fanon has been interpreted in widely different, and contradictory ways. The purpose of this essay is to briefly examine some of the core tenets of Fanon’s understanding of race, and it by no means provides an exhaustive account of his work.[2] Important areas of his writing are left untouched, as is most of the historical context. Instead, this essay explores some of the key categories and methodology Fanon uses in his analysis of race, with the aim of drawing out some of the lines in his thought. A particular emphasis is placed on his concept of racial alienation. The hope is to encourage others to take up Fanon, or engage with those who have already done so, as one step in the necessary reconstruction of a revolutionary theory of race and white supremacy for today. The notes below approach the question primarily through a close reading of the important chapter in Black Skin, White Masks, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” although other parts of his work are touched on. This chapter is important because it lays out his core concepts of racial alienation and its self-abolition. Fanon and the Dialectic of Race It is difficult to understand Fanon’s concept of race unless we grasp his methodology. Important sources for Fanon’s approach were the Heideggerian phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the Hegelian-influenced phenomenology of Jean-Paul Sartre, which he encountered as a young man recently discharged from the military and pursuing a degree in medicine and psychiatry. Sartre, in particular, drew from Alexandre Kojève’s lectures on Hegel in the late 1930s, later published in English as Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1947). These lectures interpreted Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit through a Heideggerian and Marxist lens, and had an important impact on the development of phenomenology in post-war France. Fanon found in the Hegelian theory of intersubjectivity a methodology for thinking about race and white supremacy. Just as Marx appropriated Hegel’s theory as a foundation for his concept of social labor and class conflict, so Fanon established an approach to racial formation, alienation and struggle. However, as he states in the pivotal chapter, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” the premise of Hegel’s theory had to be altered to address the contemporary reality of racism. For Hegel the problem of inter-subjectivity rested on the assumption that both parties struggled for recognition. Yet, Fanon seems to argue, the dialectic of mutual recognition does not apply to black people, who have not struggled for recognition in white supremacist society. However, Fanon’s argument here can be misleading. When it comes to the incompatibility of the dialectic and recognition and black existence, Fanon has in mind a specific kind of “black man.” In “The Black Man and Hegel,” located in the appendix of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon writes that, since there is ”no open conflict between White and Black,” the process of struggle and recognition posited by Hegel is blocked. Reflecting on the end of slavery in the Americas – the formative historical experience of the African Diaspora – Fanon argues that “the white master recognized without a struggle the black slave. But the former slave wants to have himself recognized. There is at the basis of Hegelian dialectic an absolute reciprocity that must be highlighted.”[3] Setting aside the questionable historical accuracy of this statement, Fanon argues that, since there was no authentic struggle on the part of freed slaves, there can be no genuine recognition on the part of the white man.[4] As a result, black people are denied the chance to achieve self-awareness since the process of recognition through struggle fails to take shape. Fanon makes a similar claim in the pivotal chapter in Black Skins, White Masks, “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” again qualifying Hegel’s dialectical theory of recognition. “Ontology,” he writes, “does not allow us to understand the being of the black man,” concluding that “The black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man” (90). Fanon suggests that black social being has been emptied of content and its agency immobilized, preventing the process of self-becoming from getting under way. Black being is marked by a profound absence. As he answers elsewhere in the chapter, in a white supremacist society, black social being is characterized by its non-existence: “A feeling of inferiority? No, a feeling of not existing” (118). However, Fanon’s initial step in a dialectical approach to race and white supremacy must be qualified. In Black Skin, White Masks he identifies this static condition of non-existence only within segments of the African Diaspora, in particular those from the Caribbean, an idea that reflects a preoccupation of many thinkers from the region during the 1940s and 1950s.[5] In short, the ‘condition’ Fanon identifies is not a universal one and he contrasts it with the African American: “We say the black Frenchman because the black Americans are living a different drama. In the United States the black man fights and is fought against. There are laws that gradually disappear from the constitution. There are other laws that prohibit certain forms of discrimination. And we are told that none of this is given free” (196). As Fanon makes clear, black people in the U.S., and presumably elsewhere, have moved from a state of non-existence to one of existence. Once this history of ontological and material resistance is established, Hegel’s dialectic of self-realization becomes a useful tool that Fanon adapts to grasp the actual movement of racial struggle against white supremacy. So, Fanon considers how racialized people rupture their objectification through a confrontation with white supremacy and their own conditions of existence. This rupture makes possible an active transformation of those conditions, thereby bringing the racialized subject into existence, and making it possible to establish its objective power in the world. It is only on such a foundation, Fanon argues, that mutual recognition is possible, and a trajectory toward the abolition of race is constituted. Masters and Slaves At the center of Hegel’s dialectic of self-realization, or the “movement of self-consciousness,” is the so-called “Master and Slave dialectic.”[6] Hegel, who may have been meditating on the Haitian Revolution at the time[7], and not just the emergence of bourgeois civil society and its private individuals, argues that consciousness arises as a result of the coexistence of human beings and the world around them. The concept of self-consciousness as a developing process that emerges from the relation between human beings and the world is an important one. As Herbert Marcuse writes, for Hegel “the subject of thinking is not the ‘abstract ego’ but the consciousness that knows that it is the ‘substance’ of the world.” When true self-consciousness is achieved, Marcuse continues, “thinking consists in knowing that the objective world is in reality a subjective world, that it is the objectification of the subject. The subject that really thinks comprehends the world as ‘his’ world.”[8] Self-consciousness emerges to the extent humanity “abandons the abstract freedom of thought and enters into the world in full consciousness that it is ‘his own’ world.”[9] For Hegel, the struggle for self-realization unifies the world and self, which is the process of history itself. Since people are immediately social, Hegel views the relation between individuals as a necessary unity. However, reflecting on the organization of bourgeois society, Hegel argues in the Phenomenology that, at the same time, each person exists separately as “distinct moments” of the whole — as private individuals — and in conflict with all others (111). In Hegel’s language, as a result of this contradictory unity, people are both a “being-for-others” and a “being-for-self.” On the one hand, each person exists through another, and must see oneself through another’s eyes. Consequently, each consciousness knows that it is not universal, “aware that it at once is, and is not, another consciousness”: Each is for the other the middle term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself; and each is for itself, and for the other, an immediate being on its own account, which at the same time is such only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another. (112) Therefore, on the other side of the relation, each person is in danger of losing his or her distinctiveness in the other. The contradiction must be resolved and, inevitably, there must be a struggle. Consequently, each “does not see the other as an essential being,” and, believing in their own universality, they struggle to achieve recognition from the other on their own terms (111). At this point, the social whole “splits into the extremes.” Each person no longer recognizes the other, and they only relate to each other through their own “determinateness” (112). They now lack self-conscious of each other as a unity, as distinct and yet belonging together as two sides of a whole. Hegel says, we now have “two self-conscious individuals” who must “prove themselves and each other through a life-and-death struggle” (113-114). They must have “certainty of being for themselves,” and conceive of themselves as the “truth” in the “absolute negation” of the other (114). The victor of the struggle becomes the “master” and the loser finds himself a “slave.” While the master achieves self-certainty, the slave is reduced to a thing, a mere object or extension of the will of the master. As Hegel writes, the master ends up being “recognized, the other only recognizing” (113). Importantly, the master achieves subjective certainty by establishing his certainty as objective truth. In other words, the master remakes the world in his image, and he uses the slave to do so. The slave is not simply an extension of the master’s will, but he has, in fact, no place in the world, which only expresses the will of the master. The slave exists as the object of the master and must work for him. However, though subdued by the master and turned into a thing, the slave now becomes a “consciousness forced back into itself.” Given his active, self-constituting relationship to the world through labor, the slave is slowly “transformed into a truly independent consciousness.” It may appear that the world reflects the master’s reality, but, because of his active relationship to the world, the slave has “within itself this truth of pure negativity and being-for-self” (117). Through his work the slave must confront the world as an independent reality, where his “formative activity” transforms him from nothing into a new positive—a new “being-for-self”—in which he discovers his “own independence” vis-à-vis the world (118). The slave is no longer an object, but becomes a self-active subject who internalizes the world as his own and, in the process, realizes that he and the world are subject to change according to his own will. As Hegel puts it, the slave’s “attachment to natural existence” is dissolved and the consciousness of a “being-for-self” arises (117). The slave now initiates a struggle with the master: this objective negative moment is none other than the alien being before which it has trembled. Now, however, he destroys this alien negative moment, posits himself as a negative in the permanent order of things, and thereby becomes for himself, someone existing on his own account…this shape that is his pure being-for-self, which in this externality is seen by him to be the truth. (118) By negating the master there is an “absolute melting-away of everything stable,” and the slave becomes a being for himself and not for the master. Charles Taylor argues that, for Hegel, the desire to risk struggle comes about when the slave can no longer “undergo the life-process unconsciously.”[10] In his newly found self-consciousness, Hegel argues, the slave becomes an “absolute negativity,” a “pure being-for-self” who has attained his own determination face-to-face with the master and his world (117). The slave seeks to reappropriate an alien world and self, making it his own by changing it to express himself. The struggle for reappropriation is critical because it signals a new consciousness that explodes the objectification of the slave. Hegel argues: Without the formative activity, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself. If consciousness fashions the thing without that initial absolute fear, it is only an empty self-centred attitude; for its form or negativity is not negativity per se, and therefore its formative activity cannot give it a consciousness of itself as essential being. If it has not experienced absolute fear but only some lesser dread, the negative being has remained for it something external. (119) Finally, the overthrow of the master can just as well lead to the rise of new masters and slaves. Hegel presented a method to grasp the abstract movement of what he believed was the meaning of human history: the development of self-consciousness towards a universal freedom. Therefore, the slave, like the master, and all specific determinations, must be negated. Only then can there be “universal formative activity” (119). As Hegel says, it is not the mastery of particular kinds of being that is at stake. What is not needed is “skill which is master over some things”; instead, the goal is the mastery of “universal power and the whole of objective being” (119). In other words, freedom is defined by the power to interchangeably be any determination, and not confined to only a few. Therefore, the overthrow of the master does not automatically lead to universal self-consciousness, where the whole of the world is conceived as one’s own and subject to change. After all, the rupture with the dead objectivity of the master is accomplished through a negation by a new determining subject. As Hegel argues, this new determination is still a particular existence posed against another. The universal potential of human consciousness remains in contradictory unity, divided against itself. It is only when there is a negation of the new particular – in this case the slave who has destroyed his master – is itself negated that a universal consciousness emerges, one that is in immediate unity with itself. Reviewing Hegel’s dialectic of recognition and non-recognition helps in understanding the approach Fanon uses in his approach to race. Fanon argues that race is a process in which the unity of the world and self becomes mediated by a racialized objectification of the subject. Therefore, according to Fanon, race is a form of alienation. For Hegel the slave’s existence is an expression of the objective reality or power of the master. The master is “recognized” and the slave lives in a state of “non-recognition.” Similarly, for Fanon the alienated racial subject exists as an expression of the objective reality of whiteness. Racial existence, then, is a negation of the human content of racialized people; it is a profound state of ‘non-recognition” and derealization. The process of racial objectification, according to Fanon, turns people into things, identified by their skin, racial or ethnic features, as well as culture. However, since race is a social relation, it is constantly reproduced and subject to change. Similar to Hegel’s dialectic, Fanon sees the conditions of racial existence as the basis for the self-abolition of race, just as the conditions of Hegel’s “slave” becomes the ground for the negation of the “master,” and the possibility for a universal society. Fanon conceives of the black subject emerging in the active negation of whiteness and the social relations of white supremacy. Since blackness is the objective condition of its existence in a white supremacist society, the black subject thereby establishes its own “determinateness” on this basis by inverting its objectification, effectively making the conditions of its existence subject to its own power. The human content of racialized people now becomes real and actual in the world by changing it to fit its own needs. In the struggle, the black subject establishes independent self-consciousness of itself, and begins to exist as a being for itself with a new positive content in relation to the whiteness that would deny its existence. Finally, like Hegel’s dialectic, Fanon concludes that blackness itself becomes its own limit. The necessary determinate negation of white social relations reproduces the racial relation and its associated alienation. Blackness itself must be negated and overcome. In its struggle to destroy white supremacy, blackness abolishes itself. For Fanon the tendency in the struggle against white supremacy is to abolish race, and therefore destroy the racial form of alienation. Only then can a true, universal society emerge. Race as Alienation Fanon conceives of race as a form of alienation. This idea is at the center of “The Lived Experience of the Black Man,” and Fanon’s work as a whole. The chapter uses a pastiche-like narrative of black experience, where the problem of racial alienation drives the story forward. The narrator, which we can consider not only Fanon, but every black person, is confronted by a typical racist act of everyday life. The confrontation throws him off balance and disrupts his assumptions about himself and the way the world works. As the chapter continues, racist situations and voices periodically intervene, increasing the tension in the anxiety-ridden and delirious atmosphere. The narrative, then, represents the narrator’s struggles to understand his subordinated situation in the white supremacist society in which he lives. By the end of the chapter, the narrator has reached a new self-awareness of his racialized, alienated existence, if not a way out. The central focus on racial alienation is announced in the opening passage of the chapter. Fanon starts the narrative with a jolt of recognition that begins the struggle of self-realization: I came into the world anxious to uncover meaning in things, my soul desirous to be at the origin of the world, and here I am an object among other objects. Locked in this suffocating reification, I appealed to the Other so that his liberating gaze, gliding over my body suddenly smoothed of rough edges, would give me back the lightness of being I thought I had lost, and taking me out the world put me back in the world. But just as I get to the other slope I stumble, and the Other fixes me with his gaze, his gestures and attitude, the same way you fix a preparation with a dye. I lose my temper, demand an explanation….Nothing doing. I explode. Here are the fragments put together by another me. (89) The narrator experiences a verbal assault – captured in the racial epithet that opens the chapter – revealing a social conflict previously hidden by everyday life. Apparently, the narrator assumed his place in society was based on merit. However, he begins to realize that he must conform to a pre existing categorization of himself, captured in the racial epithet. The narrator becomes a prisoner of a racial situation in which he is objectified. However, at the same time, the incident has shook the narrator out of himself. This kind of situation or conflict becomes the foundation for a self-awareness of his true condition in a white supremacist society. In the opening passage of the chapter, Fanon emphasizes the dialectical relation between white supremacy and the black subject. The narrator must “experience his being for others” (89) as a racial object, which is “the moment when his inferiority is determined by the Other” (90). Racialized existence, then, gives rise to a split in the self. The narrator is objectified, embodied in the very language of the racial identification that began the encounter, and transformed into something he is not. The subject, seeking to create life as his own object, is instead turned into an object. The narrator does not live for or determine his existence. He is perceived and identified as a racialized other, and confronted by this alien being. In response, the narrator “demand[s] an explanation” and, ultimately, “explodes” in response to his objectification. Fanon further suggests that objectification is internally reproduced, where “the fragments [are] put together by another me,” and not simply imposed from the outside. The other, racialized self, exists independently and, recalling Hegel’s dialectic, for-itself. The narrator exists racially as another self, one he perceives as alien, but is determining of, or expresses his social being, nonetheless. Here, Fanon indicates the contradiction between the capacity to create and determine oneself, and the conditions in which one exists, which determine us. Thus, if we keep Hegel’s subject and object relation in mind, Fanon proposes that the racialized self is reproduced by the narrator’s own activity as a result of his social position, or relations in society. It is important to notice that Fanon emphasizes the active, rather than passive dimensions of the encounter that opens the chapter. The narrator is acted upon and disassembled, even as he, too, tries to act to preserve himself by “appealing” to the white man and, eventually, “exploding.” Fanon presents a social relation that is created and does not simply exist as such. He poses the idea that society is composed of a racial relation that is in constant motion, conflict, and reproduction, which only moves forward, or is resolved through action and struggle. The emphasis on the constructed nature of the social world, and the centrality of self-activity in its reproduction, highlights the concept of “lived experience” in the title of the chapter. “Experience” must be distinguished from the passive consciousness of everyday life. Instead, lived experience is a moment or threshold that produces a change in consciousness and self-understanding. As David Macey explains, Fanon’s focus on experience was a result of his engagement with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, where the category of experience does not refer to typical everyday existence, but has a particular philosophical meaning. In its phenomenological context, the idea of experience refers to an essential truth of a situation, and suggests an active seizing of the world and shaping it by a subject.[11] Therefore, Fanon is concerned, then, with how a black subject emerges to confront its racialized existence, and change it. Despite the narrator’s attempt to confront his situation, his initial bid for self-determination fails. The narrator has yet to realize that the confrontation with white supremacy is not an individual, but a social process. The first act of the chapter narrates the agony of the individual appealing to the white Other in an attempt to dissociate himself from the appearance of his racialized self. However, the racialized subject is founded on a set social relations – expressed in the “gestures and attitude” of the white man – with a deep history and institutional presence that precedes the encounter. The actions of the white man arise from the structure of society and have a particular history that shapes the existence of the narrator. Accordingly, Fanon emphasizes the materiality of the subject. Theoretically, there is a free development of the subject in society: A slow composition of my self as a body in the middle of a spatial and temporal world—such seems to be the schema. It is not imposed on me; it is rather a definitive structuring of my self and the world—definitive because it creates a genuine dialectic between my body and the world. (91) Fanon draws on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty to illustrate the materiality of racial alienation by considering the subject or self as it concretely exists and constructs itself in the social world. As David Macey points out, Fanon had in mind Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the construction of the self, embodied or actualized through the body. Our sense of self, or “being-in-the-world,” is actualized, or authentically enacted and perceived to the extent it corresponds to, or expresses our desire and ability to shape the world around us.[12] When this process is short-circuited, an inauthentic, or alienated existence is the result. Thus, in a white supremacist society, no such freedom exists. Fanon writes: And then we were given the occasion to confront the white gaze. An unusual weight descended on us. The real world robbed us of our share. In the white world, the man of color encounters difficulties in elaborating his body schema. The image of one’s body is solely negating. It’s an image in the third person. All around the body reigns an atmosphere of certain uncertainty. (90) The narrator is reduced to his appearance, as his skin color and racial features become fetishized. The narrator despairs that “I am overdetermined from the outside, I am a slave” to “my appearance” (95). Once again, he has been “fixed,” or objectified as “a new type of man, a new species” (95). To fetishize is to reduce social relations to things.[13] In this case, the narrator finds himself objectified, though he considers himself no different from any other person, filled with the desire to determine his own existence. What is obscured by his “racial” appearance – the way he exists in society – is the fact that his objectified existence as “black” is the result of a social relation between black and white. This socially mediated relation takes independent form as race and seems to be imposed from the outside. The self-determining agent is turned inside out, and the object creating human being exists as an object that is created by another subject. The narrator becomes subject to blackness, which seems to be an inherent, natural property of a racial essence. The inversion of subject and object is the central dynamic of alienation, but it is critical to grasp its dialectical character. The alien being that determines the narrator’s existence is not simply the white Other, but himself. In an immanent sense, he is both the racialized ‘black man’ and a ‘man’. Given the social relations of race, the narrator is both the alien being and the person who desires to create his own life. He exists as something he is not – a “third person” – whose alien quality both negates his subjectivity and expresses his existence. Fanon dramatically illustrates this dialectic at the end of the chapter. When the narrator goes to the movies to watch Home of the Brave, a Second World War story about a black soldier, he anticipates the racial types that will be projected on the screen. Filled with anxiety, the narrator apprehensively states, “I can’t go to the movies without encountering myself. I wait for myself. Those in front of me look at me, spy on me, wait for me” (119). Though he tries to posit himself, he ends up confronting himself as another being, which has an independent, objective existence he cannot escape. It is for that reason Fanon emphasizes not only the objective character of racial alienation, but its reproduction and self-reproduction. The narrator cannot simply rethink himself or act differently in an idealistic fashion. He “composes,” or reproduces his self as an expression of the objective relations of a white supremacist society. For the narrator, this “definitive structuring of my self and of the world” takes place within a “spatial and temporal world” marked by a particular historical development, based upon “a historical-racist schema,” which had “woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, and stories” (91). Further, the marked inferiority of the black subject, naturalized in its appearance, is cast backward into history to justify racial oppression and exploitation. Racial appearance is the fetishized expression of a false history that is equally expressed ideologically in white supremacist society: I couldn’t take it any longer, for I already knew there were legends, stories, history, and above all historicity…I was responsible not only for my body but also for my race and my ancestors. I cast an objective gaze over myself, discovered my blackness, my ethnic features; deafened by cannibalism, backwardness, fetishism, racial stigmas, slave-ships…(92) Here, Fanon’s emphasis on “historicity,” the concrete conditions of human existence and the conscious will to change them, marks the moment in which the subject is both brought into being and has the potential to shape it to its own ends. The narrator rejects “this thematization” of a false history, so that he might be “a man among men,” and “to enter our world young and sleek, a world we could build together” as a common humanity (92). Yet, he learns that, given existing social relations, such a world is not possible. In order to do so, the narrator must negate “The white world, the only decent one, [which] was preventing me from participating” (94). In his struggle for self-realization, the narrator must directly confront and explode from within the conditions of his existence, thereby subjecting those conditions to his conscious will. The Necessity of Racial Struggle The narrator now understands that, in order to be a “human being,” the objective basis of his existence as a racially oppressed person, and as a being alienated from himself, is an absolute limit that must be overcome. The objectivity of his existence has its own necessity that he must obey, and therefore, by necessity he must destroy it in order to live at all. The narrator confronts the objectivity of his racialized existence in the form of his fetishized body and culture, and all the relations and interactions that make up social life, where “blackness was there, dense and undeniable,” heavy with the determined weight of history (96). He must confront the fact that the naturalized appearance, “facticity,”[14] or common sense everydayness of racial existence and white supremacy is an all-encompassing reality. As such, the racialized self and its social relations are inescapable. In every aspect of life, the narrator continues, a white supremacist society “demanded of me that I behave like a black man” (94). And though a few may climb the hierarchical division of labor, they will remain “the Negro teacher, the Negro physician,” marked by an inferior racial essence (97). Regardless of “merit,” the social position of the non-white remains highly contingent and always open to question. For if that teacher or physician “made one false move, it was over for him and for all those who came after him” (97). As Fanon suggests, the objectivity of alienated racial existence means to live life in constant de-realization of oneself. In other words, the actual material conditions of one’s existence negates or denies one’s self at every turn. It is this contradiction that is the basis for the narrator’s struggle for freedom, which emerges later in the chapter. In response to his dilemma, the narrator begins to run out of options. Consequently, the contingency of black life in a white supremacist society permeates the narrator as a condition of all-encompassing anxiety. The narrator swings back and forth between self-loathing and pleas of understanding to white society, leading him to “becoming a nervous wreck” (98). Filled with “Shame and self-contempt,” the narrator tells us how “I slip into corners; I keep silent; all I want is to be anonymous, to be forgotten” (96). And yet, in other moments, he “wanted to rationalize the world and show the white man he was mistaken” (98). At times, the narrator insists that all people are equal, and therefore “Reason was assured of victory”; however, even as he “reintegrated the brotherhood of man” in his mind, he is “soon disillusioned” in how such a “brotherhood” was impossible (99). As Fanon’s narrative dialectically unfolds, the narrator painfully learns that his problem is not rooted in individual prejudice, as his liberal friends insist: “We can only hope it will soon disappear” (97). He finally realizes that racial alienation is an objective social relation, and that his anxiety arises from this fact. Thus, “armed solely with reason, there is nothing more neurotic than contact with the irrational” (98). Idealistic and subjective appeals to “equality,” “justice,” and “reason” in an objectively white supremacist society lead nowhere. Criticizing this society from the standpoint of a principle that has no objective basis ends in misdiagnosing the source of one’s own “neurosis.” Only when the narrator directly confronts the material conditions of racial existence is he able to move forward in resolving his alienation. The chapter began with a street scene in which a white woman and her child call out, “Look! A Negro!” (89). This moment of racialization is not simply an act of naming, as if language on its own constituted material reality, but an expression of the material reproduction of the race relation. However, whereas before the narrator simply internalized the moment, or attempted to rationalize it, he now acts upon this reality in order to change it: “The handsome Negro says, ‘Fuck you,’ madame.’ Her face colored with shame. At last I was freed from my rumination. I realized two things at once: I had identified the enemy and created a scandal” (94). The word “ruminate” emphasizes the contemplative, passive character of the narrator up to this point. Therefore, Fanon implies that the static, objectified condition of the narrator is shattered only through the practical act of negating the power of the white woman – and by extension the reproduction of white supremacist social relations as a whole – to reproduce his own objectification. White supremacy’s denial of human recognition is premised on the materiality of the racial relation. In his struggle, the narrator now understands that he must interrupt the reproduction of this relation in order to live: “The black man is a toy in the hands of the white man. So in order to break the vicious circle, he explodes” (119). Therefore, “I made up my mind, since it was impossible to rid myself of an innate complex, to assert myself as a BLACK MAN. Since the Other was reluctant to recognize me, there was only one answer: to make myself known” (95). Here, the racial relation is turned inside out to negate the structuring and material power of whiteness, and the conditions of black existence become the basis for a struggle of self-emancipation. On the basis of immediate racial existence an inversion occurs. In Fanon’s narrative immediate existence becomes the condition for self-activity that struggles to “explode” objectification. Such a leap is central to Fanon’s thinking, which he expands upon in the context of the anti-colonial struggle in The Wretched of the Earth: Decolonization never goes unnoticed, for it focuses on and fundamentally alters being, and transforms the spectator crushed to a nonessential state into a privileged actor, captured in a virtually grandiose fashion by the spotlight of History. It infuses a new rhythm, specific to a new generation of men, with a new language and a new humanity. Decolonization is truly the creation of new men. But such a creation cannot be attributed to a supernatural power: The “thing” colonized becomes a man through the very process of liberation.[15] The object is transformed into a subject and works upon the conditions of its existence to the extent that it disrupts and alters prevailing social relations. Through this inversion the black subject begins to realize itself by turning the world into its object and making it subject to its will. Like Marx, Fanon traces a movement in which the object in-itself becomes a subject for-itself. The fetishized racial body is no longer an expression of an eternal, natural essence, or a symptom of a false history, but the basis for a powerful negation of existing relations of race. It is on this ground that the capacity for a truly practical consciousness of race, and its self-abolition, emerges. Blackness and the Self-Abolition of Race Fanon argues that racial struggle is an immediate and necessary reality. However, he concludes the determinant negation of white supremacy is only one moment in an overall historical process that involves abolishing race. In the act and process of negation, the structuring, normative, ‘common sense’ and presupposed reality of the racial relation begins to crumble. A new human content is brought forth in response to the de-realization of racialized people. The black subject is actualized in the world with claims upon what it means to be human. Yet this content cannot be fully realized in racial form and comes up against its own limits. For Fanon, race remains a form of alienation. Freedom is the self-emancipation from, or the abolishing of race. This process of self-abolition establishes the conditions for a universal humanity to emerge. The dialectical supersession of race, in which one’s existence as race is abolished, means that the emancipatory content of racial struggle and thought is preserved and realized in new, universal form. As we have seen, the necessity of negation leads to the “creation of new men,” in which the object is turned into a subject. The new content of blackness, then, establishes the self-certainty of the subject in an objective sense by actualizing itself in the world. In Black Skin, White Masks, the content of blackness is represented by Fanon’s critical engagement with Négritude, the French-speaking black cultural movement primarily of the 1930s into the 1950s. Négritude, like its forerunner, the Harlem Renaissance, developed at a time when the very existence of a specifically black history was still questioned by the white world. Such denial, of course, was foundational to white supremacy, and the figures of 19th and early 20th century black thought did much to establish the terrain of black history. Fanon’s narrator confronts the denial of black history within the context of the non-recognition at the heart of the race relation. Indeed the narrator must confront the fact that such a history, he is told, does not exist: “Too late. Everything has been predicted, discovered, proved, and exploited. My shaky hands grasped at nothing” (100). It is only when the narrator tells us “I finally made up my mind to shout my blackness” (101), that he discovers “On the other side of the white world there lies a magical black culture” (102). In discovering a specifically black history, the narrator invokes the tropes of a Senghorian influenced Négritude.[16] As opposed to the self-proclaimed ‘rationality’ of the white man, the narrator embraces declarations of intuition, poetic creativity, and communion with nature as the domain of the black man. As “the drums jabber out the cosmic message. Only the black man is capable of conveying it, of deciphering its meaning and impact” (103). The narrator, returning “In a frenzy” to the past of great African civilizations, “excavated black antiquity. What I discovered left me speechless…it allowed me to regain a valid historic category. The white man was wrong, I was not a primitive or subhuman; I belonged to a race that has already been working silver and gold 2,000 years ago” (109). The reestablishment of Black history provides a foundation for the contemporary black subject by demonstrating the existence of a black subject that was combated and denied by white supremacy. The new black subject finds its footing in the present on the basis of the past, and offers the world an alternative humanity, another way of being. As the narrator tells us, sitting “Astride the world, my heels digging into its flanks,” he claims the world as his own (103). The recovery of the past provides a content through which the narrator is able to claim and alter the present, establishing a continuity of the black subject in the world: So here we have the Negro rehabilitated, ‘standing at the helm,’ governing the world with his intuition, rediscovered, reappropriated, in demand, accepted; and it’s not a Negro, oh, no, but the Negro, alerting the prolific antennae of the world, standing in the spotlight of the world, spraying the world with his poetical power, ‘porous to every breath in the world.’ I embrace the world! I am the world!…. above the objective world of plantations and banana and rubber trees, I had subtly established the real world. The essence of the world was my property. Between the world and me there was a relation of coexistence. (106-107) Fanon embraces Négritude, even as he critiques its middle class limitations, with its intellectual interest in a ‘magical black culture” that uneasily intersects with the ‘objective world’ of black farm laborers in the plantations of Africa and the Americas. In Fanon’s view, the critical importance of Négritude is not the move to depict a fetishized racial essence, as in the hands of Senghor, but its ironic, polemical and historically contingent character, as developed by Aimé Césaire. The history of blackness creates a foundation for the expression of the relation between the self-active black subject and his self-actualization in the contemporary world. In effect, the black subject is able to not only show how the attempt by whiteness to erase it from history failed, but that the present trajectory of black subject can be understood in light of its historical development. The relation to the world is no longer mediated by whiteness in a direct sense, though, as we will see, black presence must, by definition, be conditioned by white supremacy. What is crucial here is the absolute character of the subject’s claim on the world, as narrator states, “At last I had been recognized; I was no longer a nonentity” (108). Indeed, it is the fact of black existence, its objective character now also mediated by its own activity, that throws “the white man back in his place; emboldened, I jostled him and hurled in his face: accommodate me as I am; I’m not accommodating anyone” (110). Further, the self-determination of the black subject establishes, for the first time, the basis for mutual recognition. Blackness has now established itself, not as moral plea, like in the beginning of the chapter, but as material, immanent fact. Blackness remakes the world in its own image. On this ground of self-certainty, a dialectic of joint becoming within the racial relation has been achieved. Fanon emphasizes the objective character of this self-certainty by contrasting his approach to that of Jean-Paul Sartre, who was at the time an influential commentator in France on Négritude and anti-colonial movements. Sartre wrote one of the definitive commentaries on the Négritude movement for a French audience in the preface to Leopold Senghor’s important Négritude anthology, Black Orpheus. There Sartre argues that blackness is a subjective stance in which the person affirms their “solidarity” with, or belonging to, the “objective, positive, exact notion of the proletariat” (111). Therefore, “race,” Sartre continues, “is concrete and particular,” while class “is universal and abstract” (112). Sartre concludes that blackness is the “negative moment” in an overall “transition” of the non-white toward integration into the proletariat. Fanon strongly criticizes Sartre’s preface for its approach to the dialectic of racial alienation. He takes particular issue with Sartre’s use of negation. In Sartre’s hands, negation explicitly lacks positive content and, consequently, any objectivity. The event-like rupture with racial objectification brings forward its own content – new ways of organizing social life, a set of ideas, a whole ‘structure of feeling’ – which contends, as a practical critique, with existing white supremacist society. Therefore, in Sartre’s hands, the negativity expressed by this rupture is a critique of existing reality, but does not generate new conditions – a new reality – based on its own self-active negation of white supremacist social relations. In a practical sense, the non-white is subsumed into a pre-existing, white reality: “I did not create a meaning for myself; the meaning was already there, waiting” (113). Sartre, Fanon argues, is forced to conclude that the proletariat already exists universally. Yet, Fanon argues that a universal proletariat does not exist. Instead, the proletariat is always racialized, and the universal Sartre claims exists must, in fact, be created upon the conditions of mutual recognition. However, establishing the conditions of mutual recognition depends upon the disarticulation of racial alienation and establishing the claims of a non-white humanity. He argues Sartre misses the point that such a process unfolds immanently within the racial relation: black existence can only become the grounds of disalienation to the extent that the specifically black subject becomes conscious of itself and the white recognizes the absoluteness or claim to humanity of those who exist as non-white. In the dialectic of recognition, Fanon maintains, “consciousness needs to get lost in the night of the absolute,” which is “the only condition for attaining self-consciousness” (112). As black existence becomes conscious of itself, new conditions for recognition are created in an immanent, concrete, and sensuous sense. Like Sartre, Fanon sees race as a form of alienation, and that the tendency is towards abolishing of race. Fanon, however, particularly emphasizes the self-abolition of racial existence. In Fanon’s critique, Sartre is guilty of idealism because his concept of negation subsumes the concrete, for-itself activity of black existence into a universal proletariat, forgetting that “black consciousness claims to be an absolute density, full of itself” (113). Sartre, he contends, misses the immanent, concrete process of the self-abolition of race, which develops as a series of negations. Fanon expands on the point: The dialectic that introduces necessity as a support for my freedom expels me from myself. It shatters my impulsive position. Still regarding consciousness, black consciousness is immanent in itself. I am not a potentiality of something; I am fully what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. There’s no room for probability inside me. My black consciousness does not claim to be a loss. It is. It merges with itself. (114) Fanon’s subject does not look for a universal because, in distinction to Sartre, no universal objectively exists, so far. Fanon’s implicit point is the conditions for a universal proletariat do not yet exist and only emerge through self-active blackness. Initially, in a state of non-existence, blackness establishes itself as a conscious subject, making the world its object, and laying the foundation for recognition. Only as a series of concrete and immanant moments in the negation of race do the conditions for a universal humanity – a humanity without race — materialize. In “The Black Man and Hegel,” found in the appendix of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon explains further: In its immediacy, self-consciousness is simply being-for-itself. In order to achieve certainty of oneself, one has to integrate the concept of recognition. Likewise, the other is waiting for our recognition so as to blossom into the universal self-consciousness. Each consciousness of self is seeking absoluteness. It wants to be recognized as an essential value outside of life, as transformation of subjective certainty [ ] into objective truth [ ]. (192) The self-abolition of race and the appearance of a universal humanity are predicated on mutual recognition. And recognition arises only in conflict with, and negation of, white supremacy. “Only conflict,” Fanon writes, can “make human reality, in-itself-for-itself, come true” (193). However, blackness, in the moment of absoluteness, becomes its own limit. At the end of the “Lived Experience of the Black Man” chapter, the narrator has established blackness, but remains alienated. Fanon argues that blackness becomes a limit that must be overcome. In the “Conclusion” of Black Skin, White Masks, he lays out the idea that freedom emerges only when the form of race is abolished. After all, blackness remains an alienated, one-sided, and objectified existence – “locked in thinghood,” as Fanon laments (193). The imperative of “Disalienation will be for those Whites and Blacks who have refused to let themselves be locked in the substantialized ‘tower of the past’,” which “will come from refusing to consider their reality as definitive” (201). Once again, Fanon emphasizes the movement of self-activity inverting its own objectification. He declares, “I am not a prisoner of History” and “I must constantly remind myself that the real leap consists of introducing invention into life” (204). Only universality – the ability to determine oneself in infinite, multi-sided ways – is true freedom. As Fanon reminds us, “There should be no attempt to fixate man, since it is his destiny to be unleashed” (205). The struggle against race, Fanon suggests, is not for “equality,” which assumes the reproduction of bourgeois civil society and its narrowly determined individual. Instead, he conceives of a revolutionary abolition of race and the foundation of the truly social individual. “Let the Dead Bury the Dead”? Fanon begins the conclusion of Black Skin, White Masks with a well-known quote from Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: The social revolution cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped itself of all its superstitions concerning the past. Earlier revolutions relied on memories out of world history in order to drug themselves against their own content. In order to find their own content, the revolutions of the nineteenth century have to let the dead bury the dead. Before, the expression exceeded the content; now the content exceeds the expression. (198) Marx was reflecting on the limitations of the proletarian rebellion during the revolutions of 1848. For Marx, the specifically proletarian revolution was aimed toward the self-abolition of class existence, which, nonetheless, had yet to escape the limits of the bourgeois revolution. Similarly, in the conclusion of Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon considers the necessity and limits of Négritude, the predominate black nationalism in the French-speaking world at the time of its writing. Like Marx, Fanon’s point is not only that people bring themselves and society into being, but that even their forms of thought and organization can reproduce their own alienation. As Fanon argues, in a white supremacist society the conditions of racial existence are the necessary ground for the self-abolition of race, and such conditions are not obviously overcome because their tendency is to reproduce themselves. Fanon saw Négritude as trapped in this contradiction. To put the issue more abstractly, the problem of form and content posits itself as a series of necessary limits whose tendency is towards the reproduction of obsolete, alienated forms of race and, at the same time, a new universal humanity – a humanity without race. Fanon is not alone in tackling the problem of self-realization and its frustrations. He echoes and develops this dilemma, which periodically appears throughout 20th century black thought. One of the earliest and most precisely to formulate the contradictions of race and the problem of self-realization was W.E.B. Du Bois. In the opening chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, he writes, the black person is: born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others…The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.[17] Du Bois’ concept of double-consciousness perfectly captures Fanon’s line of thought, which he went on to develop in a broader historical scale in his writings on anti-colonialism in Wretched of the Earth and elsewhere. For Fanon, the history of race and racialized people is, indeed, the history of the struggle of self-realization – a society in which content is free to determine its own form. Du Bois was writing at a moment of renewed terroristic white supremacist reaction. In a time in which we are faced with a steady retrogression in race thinking in the U.S. and around the world, decades in the making, we must address the need to approach the problem of race again, and in new ways. Fanon’s work is undoubtedly one part of that process, and we need to dig into it deeply. Like Du Bois before him, even if Fanon himself did not, and could not, solve the problem in his own day, he left a framework and way of thinking that captured the contradictions of race and white supremacy in their fullest development in the period that gave rise to our own and that, unfortunately, we have not surpassed. Notes [1] W.E.B. Du Bois, Hubert Harrison, and Malcolm X, among others, could be added here. [2] The literature on Fanon is extensive. Some important works include Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man ( New York: Routledge, 1995), Renate Zahar, Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and Alienation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), Nigel C. Gibson, Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), L. Adele Jinadu, Fanon: In Search of the African Revolution (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishing, 1980), Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), and James Saki Sayles, Meditations on Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth: New Afrikan Revolutionary Writings (Chicago: Spear and Shield Publications, 2010) [3] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 2008) 191. [4] The history of black revolt in the Americas, and its pivotal impact on ending slavery, is ignored by Fanon. [5] Fanon was not alone in his preoccupation with the Caribbean person as, in essence, a colonial being. Some Caribbean thinkers thought of this condition as a consequence of the radical discontinuity in black history as a result of slavery. It is a recurring theme among some, though not all, Caribbean thinkers of the period. For instance, see George Lamming, “The Occasion for Speaking” in The Pleasures of Exile, V.S Naipaul, The Middle Passage, and C.L.R. James, Party Politics in the West Indies. [6] G.W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111. [7] See Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). [8] Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999), 118. [9] Ibid., 119. [10] Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 153. [11] David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Life (London: Granta, 2000), 164. [12] Ibid., 165-166. [13] See Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1, (New York: Penguin, 1990), 163-177. [14] See Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, 30-31. [15] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 2. [16] The Négritude milieu was ideologically divided between its more culturalist wing, identified with Leopold Senghor, and its more political milieu, whose forerunner was the Marxist and Surrealist group around Légitime défense and, later, Tropiques. Fanon can be identified as belonging to the latter camp. For more on these debates see Michael Richardson ed., Refusal of Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean (London: Verso, 1996); Abiola Irele, The Negritude Moment: Explorations in Francophone African and Caribbean Literature and Thought (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2010); Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism; Aimé Césaire, The Collected Poetry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). [17] W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin, 1989) 5.

The last time I visited my congressman (when I was 12 years old), he was both drunk and senile and I couldn’t understand a word he said. His administrative assistant had to translate everything he said. And then he got re-elected four more times before finally dying. Did he really represent my interests? I’m the most apolitical person I know. But I do like to think of things that can improve the country. Let’s forget July 4th for a second, which was a war fought mainly between the values of the East India Company and the values of colonial tea smugglers that cost the lives of the children of 35,000 mothers. Note we tried to invade Canada twice to get them to help us but they would have none of it. Now they are our biggest supplier of oil. Go Canada! Most importantly, lets not view the Constitution as gospel. Countries, people, systems, technology evolves. As they do, its important to see what from the past is good and what can be discarded. I’m talking about the Legislative Branch in our system of checks and balances. It costs us billions a year, its fully corrupt, and is taking perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars out of our economy through inefficient allocations. Time to Replace the Legislative Branch with Mass Internet Voting on the Issues But don’t we need it? Don’t we need to Check the President? Of course! So lets YOU AND I do it! I’m not going to rant. I hate blogger rants. So here it is: 1) The Founders, who were all male, white, landowners, didn’t trust the servants. Several were on record saying the servants (and certainly not women or slaves) should not vote since their votes would just go the way of the landowner. (Noted HBO star, John Adams said, “…men who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own”.) So they wanted to set up a system where even if the masses were against an issue, the landowners could force it through. Hence, Congress, since it was almost certain that a landowner (at that time) would have the means, money, and wherewithal to be elected (it’s still true). 2) Congress was needed because information was slow to travel. Everyone had to be gathered in Washington DC to communicate with each other (there were no phones, telegraph, or Internet then) to get the information about laws that needed to be passed and then to vote. This is obviously no longer necessary since we now have the Internet. 3) It wasn’t until 1919 that people were even allowed to vote for their Senators (Senators were selected by state legislatures) so half of the legislative branch was two levels removed from the masses until recently anyway, ,which again shows the original inclinations of the Founding Fathers. So what should we do: 1) Get rid of the whole thing. Shut down Capitol Hill and make it a museum. Get rid of Congress and replace it by a true democracy. In a democracy we each have a vote and get to vote on the issues important to us. 2) Every single citizen should have the right to directly vote on laws via the internet. Only 19% of Congress admitted reading the healthcare bill last year. Which is probably why the courts keep overturning parts of it and its hard to implement. So Congress is probably even less informed then the masses. Get all the information online. We’ll vote directly from our homes, thank you. No help necessary by our Senators. 3) How would laws get introduced? Most major legislation is introduced by the President anyway in his State of the Union address and then is put together by whoever his stooges are in Congress. Now people can submit laws based on a Digg-like system and the laws that are voted to the top are the ones we’ll vote on. Chances are the President’s suggestions would still rise to the top but instead of being voted on by a basket of his friends, it would be voted on by “We the People”. In most cases, we don’t really need new laws. The first law passed in 2011 was the “Polar Bear Delisting Act” that took polar bears off the endangered species list? Do you really need to spend billions of infrastructure to get that law on the table and passed. 4) The President and Supreme Court are still there to provide checks and balances on anything outrageous. But my guess is this would get millions of people more involved in the political system than are currently involved. 5) The costs of lobbying would go up astronomically. You no longer can just buy dinner and a prostitute for your local congressman to corrupt him. Now you’d have to spend tens of billions on TV and newspaper advertising/manipulation to convince the masses of a law. Would probably save those industries from extinction. 6) The House & Senate costs tens of billions to maintain and they can hardly be considered to represent us anymore in an information age where access to all information on laws and bills are at our fingertips anyway. The legislative branch should be made up of you and me, not the incumbents that get elected year after year automagically. 7) No more earmarks. No more deals for “bridges to nowhere” in exchange for “highways to hell”. This will save billions in inefficiently allocated capital. How much fun would this be? We’d all get to really vote. We don’t currently live in a democracy, by definition. We live in a republic where we chose others to represent us on important issues. Heck, we don’t even directly elect the president (hence the Electoral College). We elect electors by state and then they elect the President. Lets get rid of the electoral college and the state-by-state system. Two reasons: 1) Why can’t we all just directly elect the President? Why does it have to be state by state? There’s only 4 states that aren’t blue states or red states. So most people feel their vote is meaningless anyway because of the current system. Let’s do away with it. 2) Again, the electoral college was set up just in case the people went a little crazy. The electors could take charge and put someone in power more to their liking. Note that your elector doesn’t have to vote for the person you think he has to vote for. He can vote for anyone he wants (example: in 1972, a Nixon elector voted for the Libertarian candidate). On election day we can simply log into our web browsers. Go to vote.gov and cast our vote. Then add it all up (not by “state”, but by human) and see who wins? Easy! Finally, lets get to July 4th and the reasons we fought for “Independence”. I put it in quotes because the majority of people still couldn’t vote (so couldn’t be considered independent) in the first 20 or so elections. (e.g. women, African-Americans). And after our “Independence” we genocided another 10 million Native Americans so I’m not sure what values make us so great but whatever. It’s just history: A) We supposedly were upset about taxation without representation. But the Stamp Act, the Sugar Tax, and the Townshend Acts were all repealed before the war even started. So all the things you read about in grade school were just wrong. B) Two things were happening: the East India Company was going bankrupt because prices on tea were being kept artificially high. So the Tea Act reduced the duties so that we would actually get CHEAPER TEA. But guess what: smugglers were already selling 900,000 lbs of tea (versus East India’s 560,000 lbs) so they were pissed off! Hence they riled people up and organized the Boston Tea Party, which led to the Intolerable Acts, which led to every able-bodied 18 year old in the country invading Canada to get the British out. Canada promptly told us to get the hell out and the rest of the war was fought near our homes. C) Well what about our “values”? England got rid of slavery in all of its colonies in 1833 and allocated money to directly buy the slaves from slaveowners in every colony. 620,000 people died in the Civil War 30 years later. A war that would’ve been totally avoided if we had no Revolutionary War. And the only reason Lincoln freed the slaves was because we (“the North”) were losing that war and needed help. That war was also fought over economics: the South wanted to control their own tariffs on the enormous amount of cotton being shipped abroad. So they seceded so the wealthier North wouldn’t get to play with that money. Again, Britain would’ve just freed the slaves 30 years earlier than they would’ve been if we were still a colony or, by then, a commonwealth. (I’m summarizing 50 history textbooks so I’m sure there’s room to criticize me but I’m largely correct here). D) Canada is still a commonwealth. Queen Eizabeth is their queen. Does it matter at all? Of course not! Canada avoided Iraq also. Politics is not only useless, it kills people. Before people argue with me, this was not intended as a rant. It’s good to question the institutions we hold dear. That’s real checks and balances in an evolving world. Things get better when technology and information exchange get better. The Constitution no longer reflects the new reality. A) These institutions are never as dear as we think. The killing of 10 million Indians shows us that. B) With the Internet, information flows more freely. We don’t need to be in DC to get information. We don’t need to have people represent us. Instead of reading about Bristol Palin for a few minutes we can read about the laws important to us and vote on them. TRUE DEMOCRACY. Checks and balances would still exist even more strongly and a corrupt system ruled by lobbyists would be dead. Important laws could be passed more quickly. And the public could get better informed. C) With no electoral college, solves the problems that most votes in a Presidential election now are meaningless if you live in a solidly blue or red state. D) July 4th itself needs to be better understood. (We actually voted for independence on July 2, for instance). It wasn’t about being “free”. Nor was it really about “taxation without representation”. The main act of rebellion (the Boston tea party) was about smugglers versus the East India Company. After meeting with my Congressman when I was 12 years old my dad and I took a walk around Capitol Hill. My dad said, “boy he was crazy. Could you understand a word he said?” And I said no. My dad voted for him another four times. —- Related Posts:

has struck up a partnership with a specialty importer in New York City that will allow the Denver brewery to sell its beers there while Crooked Stave will distribute some rare and unique beers in the Denver area. The distributor, Brooklyn's 12 Percent Imports, is focused on bringing a handful of boutique Belgian beers into the United States, but it also handles distribution in New York City for a limited number of small or unusual U.S. breweries. Continue Reading See also: - Crooked Stave will triple in size in 2013, sell sour beers out of state - Crooked Stave extends tap room hours, releases newest beer, Origins - Loveland's Grimm Brothers teams up with Tivoli to distribute beer in Denver "We're coming together at a time when we're both ready to expand slightly, and he's exactly the kind of person we want to partner with," says 12 Percent's Brian Ewing. Beginning next month, 12 Percent will send beers to Colorado from: Evil Twin, a "gypsy" brewing company that started in Denmark and is now in New York; Stillwater Artisan Ales, a renowned Baltimore-based gypsy brewery that is focused on Belgian-style and sour ales; Brouwerij Hof Ten Dormaal, a very small farmhouse brewery in rural Belgium; and Gueuzerie Tilquin, a new Belgian brewery that makes lambics. Crooked Stave owner Chad Yakobson, who formed his distributorship in Colorado to handle his beers and 12 Percent's, will be the only company to have them here; none of 12 Percent's breweries has sold beer in Colorado before. Ewing and Yakobson met last year at a beer festival on the East Coast, but they had known about each other for some time, Ewing says. "Here was this young, up-and-coming brewer doing amazing stuff in Colorado and we had his beers at our beer-geek tastings. The artisanal beer world is small. It seemed like a natural connection." Yakobson recently added capacitt at his barrel cellar in Denver and plans to distribute beer to some select markets in Oregon, California and elsewhere, in addition to New York; he says he's looking forward to the partnership with 12 Percent. He's also looking forward to bringing new and different beers to Colorado, something that Ewing says he's wanted to do for a long time. "Chad is going to put our beer in the hands of people who are excited about it," Ewing adds. "We will start small, but with a meaningful enough amount of beer so that the people who want it will be able to get it. We're very excited about it." Follow Westword 's Beer Man on Twitter at @ColoBeerMan and on Facebook at Colo BeerMan

Swapping the lush green soccer fields of Australia for the arid dusty plains of Kenya, Awer Mabil will make the long journey back again to his birthplace at the Kakuma refugee camp to deliver hundreds of pairs of football boots and sports gear to children. Barefoot to Boots, an Australian initiative to provide football boots, shirts and balls to refugees, can provide joy and improve health and safety for those living in refugee camps, its creators said today ahead of their trip later this month. Supported by Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop, Barefoot to Boots will kick off on June 20 when a five-person team leaves for Kakuma Refugee Camp in north-western Kenya. Australian and Adelaide United star Awer Mabil and his older brother Awer Bul, fellow United player Osama Malik, former diplomat Rachael West and businessman Ian Smith have formed Barefoot to Boots with the backing of Qantas, FFA, UNHCR, UNICEF Australia and the Australian Government. Minister Bishop said: "The Australian Government is happy to support initiatives, such as Barefoot to Boots, which build friendships and promote development through sport. Participation in sport helps people learn important life skills like teamwork, leadership and respect.” Kakuma is the second largest refugee camp in Kenya, home to around 180,000 refugees. The majority comes from South Sudan and Somalia. “My brother and I lived in Kakuma for many years. We returned in 2014 with a few football shirts and realised from the response that we could do more if we brought together the right people and created a sustainable program,” Awer Mabil, 19, said today. “With our friends, Ossie, Rachael and Ian, and with the support of Qantas and the Government and wonderful people at FFA, UNHCR and UNICEF Australia, we are returning this year with several hundred pairs of boots and shirts and many footballs. “To make this sustainable, we aim to transport more gear during the year, once we have built stronger relationships through this visit with the relevant organisations and refugees in Kakuma. We also plan to return each year,” added Mabil, who was born in Kakuma. Born in Sudan before finding refuge in Kakuma as a young boy, Awer Bul said: “Our trip is not just about football. Working with UNHCR and UNICEF programs we believe we can help, even in a small way, improve refugees’ health, provide a greater sense of safety, particularly for girls and women, and give people greater happiness. “Having lived in the camp and now having my own children, I realise how important it is for children to play sport. It helps them with education and it helps their health. If they play sport they are more likely to be more alert in school. “Girls and women should be able to play as much as boys and men. For many reasons in these camps, it can be very difficult for women and girls. We want our gear to be shared in the camp to encourage everyone to be able play together.” Osama Malik’s father is from northern Sudan and the trip has special meaning to him. “Dad comes from the same part of the world and Mabil and I have a bond at United that we share with players of similar backgrounds here and overseas; football has given us a privileged position and we want to give back. “It is the only global sport that can bring people together and reflecting these links we will link up with the Kenyan Football Federation, through the help of the FFA, to see how we can work together with fellow footballers over there in the future.” Rachael West worked previously with the Australian Embassy in Washington before returning to Adelaide, and welcomed the opportunity to get involved. “These sorts of trips can be complex, requiring goodwill from governments and, through the NGOs, an understanding of cultural sensitivities to ensure they are successful,” Rachael said. “There will be a lot to learn from this trip to make it work for the future. Upon our return we have committed to writing a report in order to see how Barefoot to Boots can have a meaningful and lasting impact for Kakuma and other refugee camps,” Rachael said. Awer Mabil, and his older brother Awer Bul, fellow United player Osama Malik and the rest of their travelling team will leave Kakuma Refugee Camp on June 20. Facebook: Barefoot to Boots Foundation For more information on Kakuma Refugee Camp visit http://kakuma-project.org/

The Silver Fire destroyed several structures, including homes, injured two firefighters and a severely burned a civilian, forced residents to evacuate and charred a 6,000 acres between Banning and Idyllwild. Conan Nolan reports from Banning for NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. (Published Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013) A raging wildfire on Wednesday destroyed several structures, including homes, injured two firefighters and a civilian, forced residents to evacuate and charred a wide swath of land between Banning and Idyllwild, Calif. Dubbed the "Silver Fire," the blaze began about 2 p.m. and grew to at least 6,000 acres before 10 p.m., prompting Cal Fire officials to expand mandatory evacuations in rural areas of Riverside County. At least 15 homes have been destroyed and some 1,500 people were under evacuation orders, officials said. The condition of the three people injured in the blaze was not known late Wednesday. However, officials said the civilian suffered extreme injuries. Silver Fire Destroys Homes as Evacuees Scramble to Safety The Silver Fire has reduced some homes to rubble, others still stood - at least for now - as evacuees try to escape to safety. Jacob Rascon reports from Poppet Flats for NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. (Published Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013) "The civilian -- very, very tragically -- was very badly burned," said Cal Fire Riverside Chief John R. Hawkins. The civilian suffered full-thickness burns "from head to toe" and was at a hospital burn center, he said. Adding to firefighters' worries is the fact that the blaze is in the same treacherous area as the 2006 Esperanza Fire, a wildfire that killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters. Aerial video showed multiple structures burning, including homes with vehicles still in the carport and driveway, pictured below. Some residents rushed out, leaving animals behind. Silver Fire Burns on Historically Dangerous Terrain The Silver Fire was burning in an area where a 2006 blaze killed several U.S. Forest Service firefighters. Already, two firefighters and a civilian have been burned, the civilian seriously. Beverly White reports for NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2013. (Published Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013) Photos: Silver Fire Scorches Homes| Send Your Photos to isee@NBCLA.com The blaze was first reported in the area of Poppet Flats Road and Highway 243 (map), which was closed to traffic between Banning and Azalea Trail, according to the Riverside County Fire Department. The mountain communities of Poppet Flats, Twin Pines and Silent Valley were under mandatory evacuation order due the blaze, which the department said was "burning at a critical rate." Evacuations were also ordered in the Vista Grande and Mt. Edna communities, according to Cal Fire. "Silver Fire" in Banning Prompts Mandatory Evacuations A fast-growing fire burning in Banning prompted hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes Wednesday. More than 5,000 acres have burned. Choppers and tankers from all over Southern California were called in to help fight the flames. Jacob Rascon reports from Banning for the NBC4 News at 5 and 6 p.m. on August 7, 2013. (Published Thursday, Aug. 8, 2013) Just after midnight Thursday, new evacuations were ordered for portions of Cabazon including Peach, Plum and Eucalyptus streets, and Riza, Ida, and Helen avenues. "The biggest challenge for us is the people who are in their homes, and when we try to evacuate them, them moving on the same streets as the fire engines," Cal Fire Capt. Lucas Spelman said. An evacuation center had been set up at Hemet High School 41701 East Stetson Ave. in Hemet. Air quality warnings have been issued for a large portion of Riverside County. In addition to the Silver Fire, the 1,400-acre Falls Fire continued to burn Wednesday about 5 miles west of Lake Elsinore. Residents in the following areas are being told to avoid unnecessary outdoor activities: Lake Elsinore, Perris Valley, Hemet/San Jacinto Valley, Banning Pass, Coachella Valley and Temecula Valley. Anywhere that residents can see or smell smoke from the wildfires is also included in the warning, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. An NBC4 viewer in Palm Springs -- 25 miles away from the Silver Fire -- said remnants of the fire were present in the resort town. "The smoke is so thick here in Palm springs, the ashes are coming down like snow, and the air quality is really bad!!" Michelle Renee Robinson-Scruggs wrote on NBC4's Facebook page. The Silver Fire broke out in an area about 20 miles north-northwest of the origin of the Mountain Fire, which burned 43 square miles last month. In that blaze, which prompted the evacuation of thousands of area residents, fire officials had warned of extremely flammable fuels due in part to a dry winter. The Silver Fire had scorched more than 300 acres within its first hour, according to the fire department’s online incident report. Four air tankers, five helicopters, 450 firefighters and 71 engine companies have been assigned to the firefight so far. Temperatures in the area were in the high 80s Wednesday afternoon with wind gusts up to 17 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Humidity was about 17 percent. On the other side of the San Jacinto Mountains, on the edge of Palm Springs, a fire broke out Tuesday and grew to 60 acres in the extremely steep, rocky terrain near the base of the popular Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. The tram had reopened by Wednesday. Refresh this page for updates. More Southern California Stories:

The best way to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing. When it comes to the gospel, the best way to spot a counterfeit gospel is to know the biblical gospel – not only to master it in a cerebral, objective sense, but to be captured by the beauty of what God has done for us in Christ. In Counterfeit Gospels, I lay out three aspects of the biblical gospel: There’s the Gospel Story – the grand narrative of Scripture (Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration). – the grand narrative of Scripture (Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration). Within that overarching framework, we make the Gospel Announcement about Jesus Christ (His perfect life, substitutionary death, resurrection, exaltation). about Jesus Christ (His perfect life, substitutionary death, resurrection, exaltation). The gospel announcement then births the Gospel Community: God’s church – the embodiment of the gospel, the manifestation of God’s kingdom. Counterfeit gospels zero in on one of these three aspects. Below is a handy chart included in the book that lays out the six counterfeits we deal with in the book and how each counterfeit affects the gospel Story, gospel Announcement, and gospel Community. Take a look at the chart below and let me know what you think. Does your heart drift toward any of these counterfeits? Why or why not? Which counterfeits do you see as particularly dangerous in our day and age?

For those of you who are unaware of a small controversy occurring at Wheaton College (and online), a political science professor has been suspended because of her show of solidarity with Islam on the basis that we are “people of the book” and that “we worship the same God.” Even the Chicago Tribune got in on the action! This has led to many voicing their agreement or disagreement with the actions of Wheaton College. In this post I will argue that Francis Beckwith’s defense of the “same God” argument is a weak analogy. Beckwith rightly recognizes the etymological history of the terms YHWH and Allah while incorrectly arguing that these identities share the same properties. His main argument is one via analogy, that YHWH and Allah are the same in the same sense that we recognize “Muhammad Ali” and “Cassius Clay” as the same person. Of course, the issue gets a bit more complex when we consider that some people believe these identities have different properties. Imagine that Fred believes that the evidence is convincing that Thomas Jefferson (TJ) sired several children with his slave Sally Hemings (SH), and thus Fred believes that TJ has the property of “being a father to several of SHs children.” On the other hand, suppose Bob does not find the evidence convincing and thus believes that TJ does not have the property of “being a father to several of SHs children.” Would it follow from this that Fred and Bob do not believe that the Third President of the United States was the same man? Of course not. He concludes, “The fact that one may have incomplete knowledge or hold a false belief about another person – whether human or divine – does not mean that someone who has better or truer knowledge about that person is not thinking about the same person.” I agree with him on this concluding principle. However, I fail to see how that applies here. Allow me to use a counter-analogy. In the USA we have a word we use called “pants.” This refers to an article of clothing that you place your legs through and it covers some of your body. In the UK, they too have a word called “pants.” And, lo and behold, it is also an article of clothing that you place your legs through and it covers some of your body. See definitions of ‘pants’ under the American English and British English entries. Same word, similar properties … different articles of clothing. So why ought we to think that YHWH and Allah, having some similar properties are similar enough that we should think of them as being the same? Beckwith fails to provide any reasons why we should think they are similar enough, but that wasn’t his intention of his article. This is to say, we ought not be persuaded by his analogy until further evidence is brought forward. I think once further evidence is brought forward to compare the conceptions of god, we will see that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. Want to Help Others Learn Apologetics? Share This Content!

A man in China has been arrested for fraud, after being caught out by his SEVENTEEN girlfriends, none of whom knew about one another. The man, who has not been named, only got found out when he was in an accident and ended up in hospital. Doctors contacted his ‘loved ones’ – as is procedure when someone injures themselves seriously – only for 17 different women to show up at his bedside. Some of the women he had been dating for years, while another even had a child with the cheater. ‘I was really worried when I hear that he was in hospital,’ one of his girlfriends told a local paper in the area. ‘But then I started seeing more and more beautiful girls show up, I couldn’t cry any more.’ Another woman, who has a child with the man, was horrified by what she discovered. ‘What can I do now? I don’t love him any more, but I do love my son.’ Infidelity isn’t illegal in China, but many of the women have alleged that the mage committed fraud. The women have even set up a ‘revenge alliance’ chatroom and through this have discovered that the man regularly took money from them. One of the women had been giving him money for nine years. Check out the video: BBC, Via

Last week I was in Nairobi and Cape Town giving a talk on Remote Config and Test Lab in Firebase. I had such a great time and thought I should share some of the content I presented online. What is A/B Testing? A/B testing is the process of experimentally testing your UI on different audiences in order to determine the best (or most profitable) user experience. Firebase Remote Config enables us to do A/B testing by allowing us to randomly segment our app audiences easily. Example A/B Test In this example, we are going to test out a different version of a checkout button that we have in our app. For variant A of the experiment, we want to show a pink “Checkout” button. For variant B we want to show a blue “Cart” button. For the rest of our users, we will show the original “Finished” button. Now for the fun part, setting up the experiment![adwords_square] Set up Firebase Remote Config for A/B Testing Create a Firebase Project. Head to Remote Config section. Create a parameter – let’s call this parameter experiment_variant . Make the default value return no_experiment . Click “Add value for Condition”. Then click “Define a new Condition”. Give it the name “Variant A”. We will select “User in Random Percentile” as the conditional. We will then choose the users from 0% – 10% that will receive variant A as their experiment. Click “Create Condition“. Now you will see that conditional appear for the experiment_variant parameter. Assign variant_a to the value that should be returned for that variant. We will repeat the same for variant B, by creating a conditional for the users from 10% – 20%. This means that only 20% of the entire user base will be running the experiment and 80% will see no change in the standard UI. The percentage of the experiment is totally up to you. Then return variant_b for the parameter value: Make sure to update and publish the changes. We have completed the server side setup of our experiment. Setting up the A/B Test on Android Devices Once you have configured the server, the hard part is done! The next section will cover how to get setup for Android but the code is really similar for iOS too – so don’t be deterred! In your android app, make sure you have the Firebase dependencies set up. Place the following in your top level build.gradle: buildscript { // ... dependencies { // ... classpath 'com.google.gms:google-services:3.0.0' } } Add the following in your app level build.gradle: dependencies { // ... compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-core:9.6.0' compile 'com.google.firebase:firebase-config:9.6.0' } // At the bottom apply plugin: 'com.google.gms.google-services' Download google-services.json file from Firebase console and add it to your app/ folder. Create a remote config defaults file in the res/xml folder like the one below. This file will be used if the user has no internet connection when loading up the app for the first time. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <defaultsMap> <entry> <key>experiment_variant</key> <value>no_experiment</value> </entry> </defaultsMap> Initialise Firebase remote config. This is also where we set the defaults to the file we created in the previous step. remoteConfig = FirebaseRemoteConfig.getInstance(); FirebaseRemoteConfigSettings config = new FirebaseRemoteConfigSettings.Builder() .setDeveloperModeEnabled(BuildConfig.DEBUG) .build(); remoteConfig.setConfigSettings(config); remoteConfig.setDefaults(R.xml.remote_config); Then fetch the remote config values. Firebase will automatically cache the values for the specified time that you provide. By default, it caches for 12 hours. remoteConfig.fetch(CACHE_TIME_SECONDS).addOnCompleteListener(new OnCompleteListener<Void>() { @Override public void onComplete(@NonNull Task<Void> task) { if (task.isSuccessful()) { Log.d(TAG, "Fetch Succeeded"); remoteConfig.activateFetched(); } else { Log.d(TAG, "Fetch Failed"); } runExperiment(); } }); In order to run our experiment, we should fetch the experiment_variant parameter from our remote config and use it in our app. String experiment = config.getString("experiment_variant"); FirebaseAnalytics.getInstance(this).setUserProperty("Experiment", experiment); if (experiment.equals("variant_a")) { //.. } else if (experiment.equals("variant_b")) { //... } else { //.. } In this example, we fetch the parameter and set a custom analytics user property with the variant that has been assigned to the current device. This will allow us to properly track how our A/B test is performing. In the conditional, we are free to make the changes we want to the app. We can set the text to different things and change the colours depending on the variant. Now that we have the experiment running, we need to track when a user clicks on the “Checkout” button in order to determine which button variant a user is more likely to tap on. We then log the event to Firebase analytics which will include the user property that we set previously. buttonCheckout.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(final View view) { //.. firebaseAnalytics.logEvent(“CheckoutClicked”, new Bundle()); } }); It is worth noting that there are a bunch of default events and parameters that you can make use of with Firebase Analytics. [adwords_square] In order to determine the success of your A/B test, you need to analyse your data to decide which UI is the most successful. After logging into the console, we can see there were 24 counts of the “CheckoutClicked” event. After applying the filter for the user property “Experiment = Variant A”, we can see that 19 of the 24 clicks were from variant A of the experiment (granted this was just me clicking around in my sample app – but you get the idea). For larger data sets where the result of the experiment may not be obvious at first, you can export your events to BigQuery. This will allow you to make more complex deductions from your experiments. For now at least, we know the clear winner (in this very large test 😬) is Variant A – the pink checkout button wins! There you have it, an easy way to experiment with your UI using Firebase Remote Config. Sample code can be found here (It is not very complex as all the hard work is done by the Firebase APIs.) 😊 Happy AB Testing! Subscribe to Blog via Email

Get the biggest daily news stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Hillary Clinton has been taken ill due to 'overheating' during the 9/11 memorial service in New York. She had joined President Barack Obama and other dignitaries at the 15th anniversary of the the 2001 attacks where a recital of the names of the dead was read out. The Democrat presidential candidate is reported to have felt ill during the service and was rushed to her daughter Chelsea's apartment to recover. A video appeared on social media showing Clinton being helped into a car and stumbling. (Image: @neilturner) (Image: @neilturner) (Image: Facebook) She was held up by her staff as she got into the vehicle. Footage later appeared of her reappearing from Chelsea's home in much better health, and smiling at the crowd. Clinton has recently hit back at conspiracy theories that she is hiding a secret illness. The Presidential hopeful said rumours that she is in poor health are part of a “wacky strategy” against her. And the 68-year-old last month poked fun at claims by rival Donald Trump that she is “weak” by opening a jar of pickles on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show. The Democratic nominee told the audience: "Back in October, the National Enquirer said I would be dead in six months. So with every breath I take I feel like I have a new lease on life. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now “I don't know why they are saying this. I think on the one hand it is part of the wacky strategy - just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you." It comes after a heartfelt tribute to 9/11 victims was held at Memorial plaza in lower Manhattan. Family members and first responders slowly read the names and delivered personal memories of the almost 3,000 victims killed in the worst attack on U.S. soil since the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. Tom Acquarviva lost his 29-year-old son Paul, who worked at financial services firm Canter Fitzgerald on the 101st to 105th floors of the North Tower, just above where the first plane struck. Acquarviva was one of 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees killed in t (Image: Reuters) he attack. (Image: Reuters) (Image: AP) "We miss him terribly. Terribly, terribly, terribly. Not a day goes by that we don't remember him," Acquarviva told Reuters. But he said he felt a sense of hope: "There are more people here today than there ever have been." The ceremony paused for six moments of silence: four to mark the exact times four hijacked planes were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon near Washington D.C., and a Pennsylvania field. The last two record when the North and South towers of the Trade Center crumpled. It was held by two reflecting pools with waterfalls that now stand in the towers' former footprints, and watched over by an honor guard of police and firefighters. More than 340 firefighters and 60 police were killed on the that sunny Tuesday morning in 2001. Many of the first responders died while running up stairs in the hope of reaching victims trapped on the towers' higher floors. At the Pentagon, a trumpet played as U.S. President Barack Obama took part in a wreath-laying ceremony. "Fifteen years may seem like a long time. But for the families who lost a piece of their heart that day, I imagine it can seem like just yesterday," Obama said. No public officials spoke at the New York ceremony, in keeping with a tradition that began in 2012. But many dignitaries attended, including Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. "We'll never forget the horror of Sept. 11, 2001," Clinton said in a brief statement. "Let's honor the lives and tremendous spirit of the victims and responders." Trump said in a statement that it was a day of sadness and remembrance, but also of resolve. "Our solemn duty on behalf of all those who perished ... is to work together as one nation to keep all of our people safe from an enemy that seeks nothing less than to destroy our way of life," Trump said. Houses of worship throughout the city tolled their bells at 8:46 a.m. EDT (1246 GMT), the time American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower. At 10:03 a.m. (1403 GMT) United Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the final moment of silence was observed at 10:28 a.m. (1428 GMT) when the North Tower fell. As evening falls across New York City on Sunday, spotlights will project two giant beams of light into the night sky to represent the fallen twin towers, fading away at dawn. In the twin towers' place now rises the 104-story 1 World Trade Center. Also known as the Freedom Tower, it is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere, at 1,776 feet (541 meters). Fifteen years after the attack, the U.S. government marked its return to the site on Friday, moving its New York City offices there. Nineteen hijackers died in the attack, later claimed by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, which led directly to the U.S. war in Afghanistan and indirectly to the invasion of Iraq. In Kabul, the top American commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, paid tribute to members of the NATO-led coalition and Afghan security forces who had been killed since the Taliban regime fell. But in an address which touched on his own experience as an officer in Afghanistan, stretching back a decade, he also underlined how far from peace the country remains. "As we know, sadly, the number of terrorist groups has only grown since 9/11," he said. "Of the 98 groups now designated globally, 20 are in this region, the Afpak region."

Home > Japanese Entertainment > Mobile Suit Gundam Launched First Official Fan Club Japanese Entertainment "Mobile Suit Gundam" has launched its first official fan club in Japan and a smartphone app named "Gundam Fan Club" is distributed via App Store and Google Play from October 1. Members are able to watch the brand new series "Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans", which begins airing on October 4, as well as 18 other previous series. Film and OVA installments will also be accessible for a limited period. In addition, special bonus videos and live broadcasts will be available exclusively to the fan club members. Members can contribute by commenting on images and videos received via the app, and will also be able to communicate with other fans. The app also provides a service in which members will periodically receive legacy Gundam figurine photos and event photos to add to their collection. Furthermore, in addition to VIP treatment at events, presales, and limited rewards, the app will also contain a "digital membership card" which can be presented at facilities like Gundam Cafe in exchange for special privileges. Beginning at noon on October 1, and limited to the first 200 people, members are able to purchase tickets for the "Mobile Suit Gundam The Origin II Red Determination: Artesia's Sorrow Premiere Screening" at Toyosu PIT in Tokyo on October 17. The membership fee is 600 yen per month. During first 7 days, you can use free of charge. Of those who register during the month of October, 100 people will have a chance to win the tickets for "Artesia's Sorrow", and 1900 people have a chance to win the rights for viewing the film in the apps.

Emergency aid workers in the area said on Tuesday that helicopters dropped barrels that may have been full of chlorine gas over the town of Saraqeb, in western Syria, the same area where a Russian helicopter was downed the previous day. Members of different rescue groups confirmed that 33 people were admitted to the hospital following the apparent attack, which occurred late Monday night. It was not clear if the helicopter belonged to the Syrian regime or to Russia. Ten of the patients were children, a member of the White Helmets told dpa news agency. Another emergency aid group, Syria Civil Defense, posted a video on YouTube showing people being handed oxygen masks. If exposed to chlorine gas, people can have problems breathing and foam blood from their mouths. President Bashar al-Assad has been repeatedly accused of using the toxic substance during the country's five-year conflict. Men inspect the wreckage of the downed Russian helicopter in Idlib province Russian helicopter shot down The alleged attack came shortly after a Russian helicopter was shot down near the same city earlier on Monday. Russian state news agency Interfax said the aircraft was carrying three crew members and two officers and had just delivered aid to the war-torn city of Aleppo. "As far as we know from the information we've had from the Defense Ministry, those in the helicopter died. They died heroically, because they were trying to move the aircraft away to minimize victims on the ground," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. If confirmed, the attack will be the deadliest against Russia since it entered the conflict in Syria last year. No group has claimed responsibility for the downing of the helicopter. blc/kms (Reuters, dpa)

While many Americans spend their days in a sea of cubes, people who work at tech companies in New York spend their time in custom built workplace palaces — or at least workplace-playgrounds. Forget cubicles and break rooms, we're talking amusement park level themed rooms, game rooms, on-site chefs, full bars and views of the city that tourists will pay for only a glimpse of. This is what it looks like to work at seven of New York's swankiest tech companies: DigitalOcean provides cloud infrastructure that provisions virtual servers for developers. Their Soho offices are so modern that their elevators have no buttons — they just magically whisk you to the correct floor. And look at that view! Look at that view! It's weird to watch the madness on the street, yet have it be so quiet up here. How long have you been in this space? We moved into the building in September 2014. We completed the buildout on the 11th floor in July 2015. It seems really big. We have a total of 45,000-square-feet, 32,000-square-feet of which is actual working space. The other 13,000-square-feet are dedicated to our internal and external community spaces. We currently have 55 percent of our staff in the NYC DOHQ for a total of 140 people. Well, the build-out looks great. What's your favorite part? The space consists of multiple pockets of breakout space. These are areas designated for getting away from your desk and enjoying the view from a different seat and setting! Is there anything you wish the space had? Showers! We could host midday or early morning workout sessions if we had a place for people to wash the sweat! Maybe you could get Mini Me in on the action! Are you, by any chance, doing any hiring? We are definitely hiring! Justworks has a platform that lets HR teams automate things like payroll, benefits and compliance. Their offices are also in the Flatiron District, on a block stuffed with bars, restaurants and tea shops. Between the huge windows, natural light, high ceilings and comfy couches, this place is just like my dream house — all it needs is a bar. Is that a bar! When did you move into the space? The end of October in 2015. So, it's still kind of new. How large is it? We have 16,800-square-feet with 118 people — we've quickly grown out of the space. I suppose that's a good problem to have! What’s your favorite part of the space? It's so open and bright with windows and our super high ceilings. Is there anything you wish the space had, but doesn't? Hammocks, a pool and a barista (basically a resort with a tiki bar). Any chance you're hiring? Yes! Stack Overflow is a hugely popular website where software developers can learn, share and find a new job. Their offices in the Financial District are huge — insanely so, considering their prime location. Although their offices are in a part of town you'd usually put a suit on to visit, you'd be the only person there not wearing a t-shirt and jeans. It must really piss the bankers off that the guy wearing shorts and boat shoes to work is getting a gourmet lunch prepared by in-house chefs everyday. How long have you been in this space? We moved into our current location at 110 William Street on March 25, 2013. This place seems massive, how big is it? Between our two and a half floors of office space, we occupy 38,000-square-feet. Our 103 employees here have plenty of room! I think I'd get lost in here. What's your favorite part? Personally, my favorite area of the office is our Snack Overflow wall, a floor to ceiling bounty of treats for those 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. pick-me-ups. I also really enjoy the menus our chefs put up for lunchtime — I like to say it was actually the Bob's Burgers style puns that sold me on working here. Your chefs are the things of legend at the Built In NYC office. Seriously, send them our love. What else is cool around here? My less culinary-focused coworkers might say things like 'our incredible view of the Brooklyn Bridge from the coffee bar,' or 'our couch cubbies that allow for a comfortable work space away from a desk,' or 'the FIFA area outside sales where you can nearly always find a game in progress at 5 o' clock...' What don't you have? We need a room full of puppies!!! Our one weakness is that our building has a pretty strict 'no animals' rule. Ya, I guess there's a downside to such close proximity to so many people in suits. We almost certainly have never snuck a dog past security... Luckily our Office Managers play livestreams of rescue pups on our lunchroom's projector screens for those in need of their canine fix. Well, I'm sold. Are you hiring? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! LittleBits makes easy-to-use electronic building blocks that let you create all sorts of fun, creative things. Their offices are a tinkerer's dream. Located out by Hudson Yards, their employees get to play with toys at work, while enjoying a view of the Hudson. And yes, that last photo is of a 'Drinkerbot'. So, from what I've heard, for tinkerers at least, this is the most fun office in Manhattan. When did you move in? In October of 2014. How much space do you have? It's about 18,000-square-feet, with a little over 100 employees. Other than all the gadgets, what’s your favorite part of the space? The lounge — it has great light, comfortable couches, with views of the Hudson. We hold team meetings there every week, occasionally interrupted to watch helicopters land at the heliport nearby. What do you really wish you had in the space, but don’t? Dog doors on the conference rooms. Are you hiring? Yes! Animoto's software makes it so that ordinary people can turn photos and videos into HD videos that people actually want to watch. Their offices are basically on top of Astor Place and are as eclectic as the neighborhood that surrounds them. Their breakout spaces are themed, including the 'Camelot' themed conference room pictured below. I'm not sure why the conference table isn't round, but it seems a forgivable oversight considering how elaborately decorated the place is. My personal favorite part of the office — besides the fact that the fridge was stocked with Anheuser-Busch's 'America' beer — was the surfboard someone was storing in the bike rack. Wow, you must have a lot of people here that can play the guitar. How long have you been in this space? We moved into the space in 2012. It's pretty cool that you can fit a stage, a pingpong table and a surfboard in here. How big is the space? Our office is approximately 15,000-square-feet and we've got about 70 people working here. This is a really fun space. I now know what it's like to be a knight sitting at the square table. What's your favorite part of the space? We refer to the front of our offices that face Lafayette Street as 'The Atrium.' It's a large open space with lots of big windows and natural light — we have it laid out with communal lunch tables, an open format kitchen, and a space for doing presentations or hosting events. It encourages employees to get up from their desks to socialize during the day — and sometimes even stick around at night for fun meet-ups. Is there anything you wish the space had? We actually have a cohort of employees that have been trying to figure out the logistics of turning one of our conference rooms into a ball pit. Actually, are you hiring? Yes! PolicyGenius is bringing the insurance industry online and putting the consumer back in the power-position. They also have an adorable French Bulldog running around their offices. PolicyGenius was nice enough to give us a peak at their existing offices, but they're growing so quickly that even if you do manage to land a job here, you'll likely never see it in person. They're moving to bigger, swankier digs in Manhattan in a month. We'll be sure and get you a sneak peak as soon as they can get us in with a photographer. Until then, their existing space is pretty sweet. So, I hear you guys are moving soon? We are leaving our current offices at the coworking space GreenDesk in Williamsburg, at the end of May this year. We launched PolicyGenius in these offices as a team of 5, working out of a single 4-person office about the size of a walk in closet. Wow, talk about a coworking success story. How big have you grown to? Our team of 32 now occupies five offices in our coworking space and more than 1,500-square-feet. We share the space with several other great companies, and hundreds of startup entrepreneurs. What’s been your favorite part of this space? Our space offers a beautiful roof deck with 360-degree views of midtown and downtown Manhattan, along with the Williamsburg Bridge. Let's say you're dreaming — what would this space have? While we would really love a swimming pool on the roof, the fact of the matter is, we need a space of our own. So, we’ll be moving to the eighth floor of 22 W. 19th St. at the end of May and couldn’t be more excited about the new space. I'm gonna go ahead and guess the new office isn't going to have a pool on the roof. What are you most excited for in the new space? We’re excited to have an open floor plan with standing desk islands and breakout rooms for collaboration along with our own cafeteria and video game center for catch-ups. The space has been built out to be uniquely PolicyGenius, and will include themed conference rooms and even specialized names for our bathrooms that are true to our sense of humor. I assume your big move means you'll be doing some hiring? Yes! Betterment is an online investment company that gives users personalized financial advice. Their offices in the Flatiron District are basically on top of Madison Square Park. As bustling as the neighborhood is, the offices themselves were incredibly relaxed — I'd even go so far as to say serene. Let's just say that someone was napping in the dedicated nap room, which happened to be located across from a beautiful kitchen where an on-site chef was preparing the team a meal. I love that everyone is hanging out in the kitchen. It gives the office a homey feel. How long have you been in the space? We been here since August of 2013. So you've had time to settle in. How big is the office? Each of our three floors is about 7,800-square-feet. I have to be honest, I'm incredibly jealous of this kitchen. It looks like something from the Cooking Channel. What's your favorite part of the space? The open layout which promotes a lot of internal communication and productivity. Is there anything this place is missing? An escalator to travel between the floors! Are you hiring? YES!

As premiere season approaches, T.V. fans are awaiting their favorite characters. So let’s pay tribute to the hottest stars currently on T.V. Remember boys and girls, I am a chick and my opinion may be different from yours. If there are you think should be added to this list, leave a comment and they might be in my next list. 12. Jennifer Love Hewitt There’s a lot to say about Jennifer Love Hewitt—she has been acting since age eleven, is number 20 on Maxim’s 2012 Hot 100, and likes to bedazzle her vagina. Hewitt is staring in a new show, The Client List, as massage therapist Riley Parks who gives “extras” to some of her clients for more money. Sounds like porn to me. 11. Kaley Cuoco Kaley Cuoco is best known for her role as the cute aspiring actresses, Penny on The Big Bang Theory. Her character maybe the cute blonde, Cuoco is actually a huge nerd. She loves Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. 10. Kat Dennings Though 2 Broke Girls seems to be a hit and miss show, just seeing Kat Dennings brings a smile to my face. Dennings plays Max Black, a working class waitress, who helps out a once high society girl. Together they plan and save to start their own cupcake business. She is super cute, has huge boobs and can make you laugh. Who wouldn’t want a girl like that? Plus she will be reappearing in Thor 2. Plus boobs. 9. Cobie Smulders Canadian hottie, Cobie Smulders can be anything you want. This once model now plays Robin Scherbatsky on the hit T.V. show How I Met Your Mother. Cobie also played Maria Hill in The Avengers. Though Smulders doesn’t have many films under her belt, I’m sure we can look forward to her roles in the future. 8. Elisha Cuthbert You may remember sexy Canadian, Elisha Cuthbert for her role in the Girl Next Door—as the hot pornstar next door. Well, she is currently in a newer T.V. show called Happy Endings. Her character, Alex Kerkovich is the ditzy blonde who’s off in her own world. 7. Emilia Clarke Emilia Clarke is taking the world by storm as the mother of the dragons on Game of Thrones. Her character, Daenerys is one of the most powerful female characters currently on television. Also, she’s hot. 6. Blake Lively Blake Lively has been rising to the top ever since The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. She currently stars as Serena Van Der Woodsen on the hit show Gossip Girl and is the new gal on Ryan Reynold’s arm. Lively is number 13 on Maxim’s 2012 Hot 100. 6. Leighton Meester Leighton Meester plays the most loving bitch, Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl. Though she hasn’t had as much big screen time as co-star Blake Lively, I still prefer Leighton. Her on-camera chemistry is sexy and more believable then Lively’s. 4. Zooey Deschanel By far the quirkiest girl on television, Zooey Dechanel is an original. With her retro style and unique scene of humor, Zooey rocks all her roles. Currently starring in New Girl as Jess Day, a naïve optimistic kind girl living with three dudes she meet on Craigslist. This show is a hit and miss for me but it’s good to Zooey having fun and being herself. 3. Naya Rivera I’m not a gleek but there is one thing I love about Glee, that’s Naya Rivera as sassy cheerleader Santana. Definitely a strong female role, as Santana is a strong willed bitch that just came out of the closet. That’s right folks, Naya plays a lesbian. Besides being so damn pretty, she has a killer voice. Naya will be returning to Glee later this year. 2. Alison Brie One of my favorite actresses, Alison Brie currently stars on Community and has a small role in Mad Men. She can play any role, from the bitchy assistant in Scream 4 to cute innocent Annie Edison in Community (who we don’t sexualize). 1. Sofia Vergara Hot Latina, Sofia Vergara is the highest paid actress on a television series. Her role as Gloria Pritchett on Modern Family is amazing. I love the show but her character cracks me up. If you have trouble with the accent, just look at her instead—she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Shockingly, Sofia only ranked 71 on Maxim’s 2012 Hot 100; she should easily be in the top 20 if not higher. Honorable Mentions: These honorable mentions go out to some beauties returning to T.V. Lucy Liu and her upcoming role as Watson in the new Sherlock Holmes show, Elementary. Kristin Kreuk‘s new series Beauty and the Beast which premieres in October. Good luck to Selma Blair, who stars on the new Charlie Sheen show Anger Management. **Bonus**

If you’re like a lot of college graduates, you probably left school with at least a little bit of student loan debt. Starting life shackled to debt can feel overwhelming, so you might be chomping at the bit to pay it off as soon as possible. And while paying off your debt is a fantastic goal, there are some other financial moves that will do more to help you build a secure financial foundation and work towards financial independence. Before you start throwing all your extra money at your student loans, here are 10 financial moves you should make first. 1. Pay your minimums The very first priority is paying all your bills on time, including the minimum payments on your student loans and other debts. However, it’s best for your wallet to pay your credit card bills in full each month. This will not only keep the lights on and a roof over your head, but it will ensure that you build up a positive credit history, which will make it easier and less expensive to do things like buy a house and even find a job later on. 2. Get health insurance You may feel young and indestructible, but the last thing you want is an enormous medical bill that ends up adding to your debt and making it even harder to reach those long-term goals. Health insurance will protect you from that worst-case scenario. Hopefully you can get it through work, but if not the new insurance exchanges make this coverage available to everyone. If you’re starting a family, check out these health insurance lessons learned from our contributor Cat, a new mom of twins. 3. Build some savings Even if you have high-interest credit card debt, I think it’s a good idea to keep $1,000-2,000 in savings to help you handle all the little (and sometimes big) unexpected things life throws your way. Car maintenance. Home repairs. Traveling to your best friend’s wedding. These are the kinds of expenses that can pop up unexpectedly and force you to resort to a credit card if you’re not ready for them. The last thing you want to do is take on even more debt, and having a little bit of cash in a savings account will prevent that. 4. Write your wills (and other estate planning) If you’re single, you can probably skip this step. But if you’re married, and DEFINITELY if you have kids, getting some basic estate planning in place is a good idea. The biggest reason to have a will is to name the guardians for your children, which is a decision that would otherwise be left up to the state. But even if you don’t have kids, a simple will allows you to make sure that your spouse would get your assets if you died, assuming that’s what you want. A lot of states would otherwise default to giving at least some of your assets to your parents. Other basic documents to get done here are a durable power of attorney, healthcare proxy and living will. All of these things are fairly simple and can be done for a low cost. 5. Get term life insurance Term life insurance is a great way to make sure that your family would always have the financial resources it needs, no matter what. For working parents, life insurance would serve to replace your income while your family adjusts. And for stay-at-home parents, life insurance would help your family pay to replace all of the things you do, like childcare, cooking, cleaning, etc. If you don’t have kids, you probably don’t need life insurance unless you’re married and have joint debt. For example, a couple with a mortgage that would be difficult for either spouse to afford on their own might want enough life insurance to pay off the mortgage or at least help with the payments. For more detail on who needs life insurance and how to get it, here’s a good resource: Does the Average Millennial Need Life Insurance? 6. Get long-term disability insurance Long-term disability insurance is one of the best protections you can buy, but for some reason it’s also one of the least talked about. Basically, long-term disability insurance would provide a payment that replaced some portion of your income if health issues keep you out of work for an extended period of time. And since your future income is your single biggest financial asset as a young professional, protecting it is really a must. 7. Secure your 401(k) employer match Paying off your student loans, or any other debt for that matter, earns a rate of return equal to the interest rate of the loan. For example, putting extra money towards a 6.8% would net you a 6.8% return on investment. In most cases, that guaranteed return is a pretty good deal. But there’s one place where you can find an even better guaranteed return, and that’s your employer match. Many employers offer a dollar-for-dollar match of your 401(k) contributions up to a certain point, which is a guaranteed 100% return on investment. But even if your employer only matches half of your contribution, that’s still a guaranteed 50% return. Either way, it’s better than what you’ll get from even the highest interest rate debts. 8. Get liability insurance Liability insurance protects you financially in case you accidentally injure someone or damage their property. It’s part of both your auto policy and your homeowners or renters policy, and you can also look into getting an umbrella policy for a little extra protection. 9. Pay off high-interest debt If you have credit card debt or other loans with higher interest rates than your student loans, simple math again says that it’s a better idea to pay those off before putting extra money towards your lower-interest student loans. You will save more money by paying off those higher-interest loans first. 10. Find a balance If you’ve handled everything above, first off give yourself a big pat on the back! You’ve built an incredibly strong financial foundation for yourself that gives you a lot of freedom to make some exciting choices going forward. At this point, I would encourage you to find some balance between your financial goals. Paying off your student loans is a fantastic goal, but so are things like investing more for your future, building up a bigger emergency fund, and increasing your side income. As you find yourself with extra money, think about spreading it around towards multiple goals. That will leave you with a well-rounded financial plan that gives you the best of all worlds. Advertiser Disclosure: The products that appear on this site may be from companies from which MagnifyMoney receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). MagnifyMoney does not include all financial institutions or all products offered available in the marketplace.

By PSW Staff • January 26, 2017 To coincide with the launch of dLive C Class, Allen & Heath has released a major firmware update to all dLive mixers, further enhancing the functionality and processing capabilities of the system, plus a package of warranty and service upgrades to customers of its flagship dLive S Class. New features in V1.4 include advanced dynamic processing with the Dyn8 plugin, providing 4 bands of dynamic EQ and 4 bands of multiband compression, DCA spills, quick Virtual Soundcheck mode, plus the Dimension Chorus Rack FX unit. There are also new additions to the array of DEEP embedded plugins, comprising the Peak Compressor/Limiter 76 emulation of a classic compressor, plus the Multi-Stage Ducking Processor. Also new to V1.4 is the option to display a third, independent view on an external monitor. “We have been working with A&H modelling classics from Sawmills stock, measuring differences and relevance for live use,” comments John Cornfield, engineer at Sawmills (Muse, Supergrass, The Verve, Oasis). “I think the results are astounding – 16VU is an excellent rendition, Opto captures both the rough and smooth of optical compression, and 76 peak limiter is a faithful model of two particularly pleasant units, one old, one new.” Further to the firmware update, owners of dLive S Class systems will also benefit from a free warranty extension to 3 years. In support of the dLive Rental Network, a community of almost 200 professional PA companies stocking dLive S Class Systems around the world, Allen & Heath has also introduced a Fly&Hire service, through which the company will help facilitate local hire of the system wherever in the world an engineer, band or production company might be travelling. V1.4 is available to download immediately from the A&H website. Allen & Heath

Alpha NEX-7 Digital Camera with 18-55mm Lens (Black) is rated 4.6 out of 5 by 196 . Rated 5 out of 5 by Bbymjay1 from Top Of the Line Lives!!!! I upgraded from Nex 5n which is already a great camera to NEX 7. This Nex 7 i a pleasure to use, all the buttons are so easy to access, user interface is not the traditional like most cameras but it like any other camera brand, it takes a learning curve. Pics are crystal clear, just what a dslr is suppose to deliver, its fast, low lights are amazing if u know how to use the camera : ) . I love evrything about it, people are amazed on how my little NEX 7 compare to their Heavy DSLR and does the same thing, and faster than their dslr. Dont be fooled on people saying its bad in low light. Check out my pics!!! Rated 4 out of 5 by cocoone from ATTENTION UNPACKING YOUR NEX-7 Just got my NEX-7. Be very careful unpacking your new toy. Sony uses very nice looking box, but unfortunately this black look alike velcro covered inner box is a nightmare. The whole camera and lens was covered with tiny black particles from the velcro kind of fabric. You won't be able to see them unless you use reading glasses or eye loop. Clean all the camera and lens BEFORE you do anything else. Use a lens blower and microfiber cloth to get rid of all black dust and particles. I was aware about this problem and still got some dust on the sensor. Thankfully all is clean now, but if you are not careful you may have a lots of problems cleaning again and again. Hope this can be in help before enjoying your new toy . Rated 5 out of 5 by Keith B. from LOVE THE SONY NEX-7 I sold my Canon 5D Mark iii (my dream camera) and bout the NEX-7 along with the 10-18mm lens and the 55-210mm lens. I am getting the same quality end results as I did with my Canon in a MUCH SMALLER & LIGHTER PACKAGE! After just 2 weeks I have shot 2500 exposures wit it. I've shot family pics, a day at Disney World & I even shot 1100 exposures for a wedding last weekend. It is great for landscapes and HDR photography especially with the 10-18mm lens. I am extremely pleased with this camera! Great photos! and a VERY SMALL FORM FACTOR. I also do not get a soar shoulder when carrying it around all day. My camera plus the 2 additional lenses I bought weigh less than my original 5D Mark iii. Rated 5 out of 5 by Innocent Bystander from Game Changer Up to 13x19 enlargement I see no difference between NEX-7 and my Nikon D800 at lower ISO ranges. Nikon will go up for sale soon. I use the camera for landscapes, florals and copy work. It's small, lightweight and very portable. Exemplary image quality and malleable files. A relief not to have to carry a full frame DSLR. I find myself taking the camera with me much more frequently than I would have with a bigger DSLR. When I return from a photo expedition I know that I have not compromised image quality. Would have preferred a full frame. Anticipate that Sony has a full frame compact camera (as in RX-1) with interchangeable lenses in the works. Rated 2 out of 5 by Chris B. from Can't believe Sony released this!! The NEX 7 takes gorgeous photos... no arguement here. My complaint is the overheating in video mode. I can not believe Sony (who I've been a fanboy of for years) released this to the public with such a glaring flaw. Do not purchase this camera if you plan on capturing video. It is so sporadic... sometimes it'll record 22 minutes before overheat shut-down, the very next day it'll shut down after 3 minutes of recording. Not even usable in a pro setting. Thanks Sony for taking my money and leaving me with a non-usable camera. And don't even get me started on the lack of lenses for this platform. Very, very disappointed. Think twice before you buy this camera if you need it to shoot video. Rated 5 out of 5 by Don from A New Kind of Camera I think the NEX7 was the camera of the year of one of the photography publications. It deserves it. This is not a full camera system. We have many of those, and they do their jobs well. This is probably not the camera for work that needs long, fast telephotos, for example, and other specialized kinds of work that needs big heavy lenses. But for the picture taking that most people do, the light weight, ergonomically well designed, and extremely high image quality are just what is needed. It can be carried all day without noticing that you are carrying a camera. It cannot be put in a shirt pocket, but this is next best. Rated 5 out of 5 by The Captain from Buy body only then add 18-200mm LE lens. Exceptional small package camera. Universal usage. I bought it for travel rather than carry heavy pro Olympus digital system. Forget about the NEX-7 package with 18-55mm lens. Go for body only then purchase 18-200mm LE lens. Add B&W 62mm MRC haze and B&W 62mm circular polarizer. A couple of NFPW50 batteries. Add a high quality 32GB card. Vello LCD protector is a must. The lens comes with a wide angle shade. Hang it around your neck and takeoff. Sharp, saturated photos. You WILL like this camera. BH Photo answered many of my questions on LIVE CHAT. Try it. Caution the strangely placed record button. Shutter will not release if video in progress. Recovery easy. Delete video. Read manual for guidance. This camera has deep exposure management options.

Controversy tends to follow the ABC Family hit Pretty Little Liars. For most of its run, critics and fans have argued over whether it’s acceptable for the teen drama to depict high-school student Aria’s relationship with her teacher, Ezra, in a positive light. Earlier this month, in its midseason finale, the show gave viewers a new, arguably offensive twist to debate. (Spoilers after the jump.) In its final episode of the summer, PLL revealed the identity of “A,” the mysterious villain who has tortured the show’s four young protagonists since the series premiere — and, without getting too deep into the show’s labyrinthine plot, “A” turned out to be a transgender woman. Plenty of commentators have outlined everything that was right and wrong about this storyline; as Heather Hogan of Autostraddle wrote in the introduction to a thorough and nuanced consideration of the episode, “Pretty Little Liars made a transgender woman A, and in some ways it was remarkable and wonderful, and in other ways it was painful and damaging.” In an interview after the finale, PLL creator I. Marlene King explained that the villain, born Charles but now known as Charlotte (and introduced to the show’s characters and viewers as CeCe), isn’t supposed to be unhinged because she’s transgender. “Actually, we tried to be very clear that Charles comes from a very crazy family,” King said. “Crazy runs in the family, I say, and it just so happens that this person, I think, suffered some tragic consequences of a crazy family, but having nothing to do with [being] transgender.” That may well be true, but even if viewers assume the best about King’s intentions with the Charlotte storyline, it will be very difficult for them to do the same with the language PLL is using to promote it. A tweet posted this afternoon to ABC Family’s official Pretty Little Liars account reads: The tweet was deleted shortly after it was posted, presumably in response to followers’ protests that referring to a trans woman as “he” and “it” is flagrantly transphobic. But the fact that it was created in the first place is a disappointing, potentially hurtful misstep from a show that has handled LGBT issues well in the past — and a network that has proven itself one of TV’s most progressive, on issues ranging from race to class to disability. It’s also a reminder that, even in the age of Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox and Transparent, the entertainment industry still has a long way to go in learning how to respectfully represent a wide range of gender identities. After all the conversation Pretty Little Liars‘ plot twist and, now, this unfortunate tweet have generated, it would be wonderful to see ABC Family treat the pushback it’s been getting as an opportunity to bridge that knowledge gap — among both the members of its own team and the network’s young audience.

BENTON HARBOR, Michigan (CNN) -- Former President George W. Bush on Thursday repeated Dick Cheney's assertion that the administration's enhanced interrogation program, which included controversial techniques such as waterboarding, was legal and garnered valuable information that prevented terrorist attacks. Former President George W. Bush defended his administration in speech Thursday in Michigan. Bush told a southwestern Michigan audience of nearly 2,500 -- the largest he has addressed in the United States since leaving the White House in January -- that, after the September 11 attacks, "I vowed to take whatever steps that were necessary to protect you." In his speech, Bush did not specifically refer to the high-profile debate over President Obama's decision to halt the use of harsh interrogation techniques. Bush also didn't mention Cheney, his former vice president, by name. Instead, he described how he proceeded after the capture of terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003. "The first thing you do is ask what's legal?" Bush said. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives." Bush avoided the sharp tone favored by Cheney in recent weeks and stressed he does not want to disparage Obama. "Nothing I am saying is meant to criticize my successor," Bush said. "There are plenty of people who have weighed in. Trust me, having seen it first-hand. I didn't like it when a former president criticized me, so therefore I am not going to criticize my successor. I wish him all the best." The former president was speaking to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan. In a change in format, he agreed to answer questions directly from the audience instead of responding to pre-submitted questions provided to a moderator. He repeated his disclaimer about not passing judgment on Obama later when asked about North Korea's nuclear test. Before answering, the 43rd president said he is "in no way trying to shape my successor's decisions or criticize them." "I know there are news people here, and they love conflict," he said. Bush then went on to say that diplomacy is impossible without leverage. "A lot of times people want to give out the carrots," he said. "My attitude is, you give out the carrots when the behavior changes." After his opening remarks, Bush engaged in a nearly hour-long back-and-forth with audience members that touched on nearly all aspects of his presidency, from the September 11 attacks to his ban on embryonic stem cell research, to his consultations with advisers as the economic crisis hit last year. He strongly defended his Troubled Asset Relief Program in response to the economic crisis at the end of his presidency, calling it crucial to preventing capital markets from freezing up, which he said would have led to another Great Depression. However, he said he remains "a free-market guy." Asked what he thinks about conservative pundits who say the Obama administration's fiscal policies are opening the door to socialism, Bush said: "I think the verdict is out. I think people are waiting to see what all this means." The former president received a noisy standing ovation when answering a question about what he wants his legacy to be. "Well, I hope it is this: The man showed up with a set of principles, and he was unwilling to compromise his soul for the sake of popularity," he said. He also revealed the topic of the first chapter in his forthcoming book, which he said will be about "the stories of my administration, as I saw them." That first chapter, he said, will answer the question: "Why did I run for president?" All About George W. Bush • Khalid Shaikh Mohammed • Dick Cheney • Barack Obama • Michigan

Looks like some of the folks at SNK wish to further milk some of their old games. For our own good though, the game that they have decided to put up on the largely popular Steam website is Metal Slug 3. It has also been announced that the game is now in a closed beta period. All you need to do is ask SNK for a code through their Twitter or Facebook. The Closed Beta announcement reads: “We are pleased to announce that we are currently running a “Closed Beta” for Metal Slug 3. If you’d like a key, be sure to “Follow” us on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook! Alternatively, make some noise here!” The “closed beta – bug reporting/feedback” section has been put up for your insights into the game, which of course is the prime reason for the Metal Slug 3 closed beta in the first place. Not that you will need telling but Metal Slug 3 is a classic 2D run and gun action shooting game that still engulfs millions of fans to its gameplay. It has been regarded as one of the most highly praised titles among the Metal Slug series. Once you get the game, you will get the Arcade Mode, Mission Mode and Online Mission (multiplayer) Mode along with leaderboards and the usual gallery. Requesting a code then, aren’t we?

For those of us that rely on being but a series of digits away at all times, Google Voice is a godsend. Regardless of which phone I’m closest to, be it the home line, my iPhone, or any of the phones we’ve got out on review, I’m reachable. As helpful as it may be, it’s not perfect – at least, not right out of the box. Google provides a fantastic backbone, but some of the solutions they provide for basic functionality (such as making a call or sending an SMS from your Google Voice number) aren’t reasonable replacements for what we’ve all grown accustomed to. Dialing another number before dialing the one I actually want? Pft. Loading up my browser and waiting for the web interface to load to send a new SMS? No thanks. I’m a whiny iPhone user, and thus expect every product to have a companion App that caters to my every need. Back when Google Voice was still Grand Central and lacked all of the features that the new name carried in tow (SMS, Voicemail transcription, etc), an application called GrandDialer was released which allowed iPhone users to dial out from their Google Voice number through an interface nearly identical to that of the default Phone application. Unfortunately, enough changed when a user would migrate from GrandCentral to Google Voice that GrandDialer no longer functioned properly. This, of course, resulted in deafening cries for an update from a userbase now once again stuck with the more tedious dialing process. Alas, there would be no such update – the day after Google Voice went live, GrandDialer was pulled from the app store, with its developer announcing that the project had been retired. It wouldn’t be long before we started hearing about an app in the works, ready to step up and fill the shoes left empty by GrandDialer’s demise. In fact, there are now two applications (that we’re aware of) sitting in Apple’s moderation queue: RiverTurn‘s VoiceCentral, and GV Mobile by Sean Kovacs. Both are ready to hit the App Store at any moment, and both are going for the exact same price. We’ve obtained pre-release copies of both and pitted them head-to-head – so which one should get your hard earned $2.99? Note: It’s worth reiterating here that both of these applications were tested in their pre-release, freshly submitted forms. The versions we used for testing are very close to what we’ll see when they hit the App Store, though bug fixes and new features could have slipped in by the time they get approved. Cost: Whether by pure coincidence or not, both of the applications are set to sell for $2.99 when they make their way to the App Store. Important to note here, however, is that GrandDialer was free – but lacked much of the functionality found in either of these new applications. This is the App Store, where every third review on any given 99 cent application is complaining that said app isn’t free. GV Mobile will be releasing a gratis feature-for-feature GrandDialer replacement, called GV Mobile Free. It lacks the voicemail, history, and SMS of the premium version. SMS: If any one thing kept people from GrandCentral, it was the absence of SMS – what good is having one unified number if text messages sent to it disappear into the oblivion? At the time of testing, only GV Mobile had support for text messaging. VoiceCentral’s developers tell me they are hard at work on SMS functionality, expecting to have it implemented within the next few days. Depending on when Apple gets around to giving it the green light, it may well have SMS support at launch. Contacts: Both applications allow you to dig through your iPhone’s contact list. VoiceCentral places a Contacts key in the static bottom navigation bar, while GV Mobile places a Contacts icon in the dialer and SMS screens. Of the two design methods, we prefer the latter; with the contacts icon off of the bottom bar, more space is available for other icons. The contact screens of both apps are identical to that of the default Phone app’s screen, as it’s simply being pulled up through the API. History: Both applications will show recent incoming/outgoing Google Voice calls. The build of VoiceCentral we used for testing does not currently have it built in, but the developers have shown us that it is ready to go in the next build. Visual Voicemail: Both GV Mobile and VoiceCentral support playback of voicemail messages left on your Google Voice account, and both feature easy to use Visual Voicemail interfaces. In our test builds, however, VoiceCentral’s voicemail interface was much better than GV Mobiles. Both support playback (through the ear piece or the speakerphone), and message deletion. However, only VoiceCentral allows you to scrub to any point in a message, manually refresh the voicemail list, or create new contacts from the voicemail caller’s number. Voicemail is one place where VoiceCentral really shines. Startup Time: In our completely unscientific testing of start-up times (recording each app starting up 3 times, timing how long it took for them to fully load after the icon was tapped, then calculating the average), GV Mobile started up nearly a whole second faster than VoiceCentral, coming in at 3.7 seconds and 4.6 seconds respectively. It may seem trivial – but when you’re constantly clicking into an application to make calls, each second of load time feels like an eternity. One thing involving startup struck us as a fairly notable difference: when GV Mobile starts up, it launches into the dialing keypad. When VoiceCentral starts up, it launches into the voicemail screen. Which is better is a matter of personal preference, though we’d imagine that most users would prefer the quick keypad access. GrandCentral Support: For whatever reason, a number of people plan on stickin’ with GrandCentral until Google makes the jump to Voice mandatory. Of the two, VoiceCentral is the only one to support this legacy option. GV Mobile only plans on supporting Google Voice. Conclusion: It’s a bit tough to recommend one application over the other when what we’re seeing isn’t the absolute final release. However – judging solely on what we have in front of us, we’d recommend GV Mobile. While VoiceCentral’s Voicemail screen is quite superior to GV Mobile, that seems to be its only real advantage. As mentioned above, it also has GrandCentral support going for it – but how many legacy users are only hanging on until applications like these make Google Voice as iPhone-friendly as GrandDialer made GrandCentral? VoiceCentral plans on implementing a number of features that would balance things out significantly – but GV Mobile has a drastic lead. We prefer a number of GV Mobile’s user experience choices, and the overall design of the application – so in the end, that’s where we’d spend our 3 bucks. Whichever application you go for, look for it to hit the App Store within the next few days.

CHICAGO (CBS) — A suspect tried to rob a man using a pellet gun early Sunday but instead was shot multiple times with a handgun in the Oakland neighborhood on the South Side. A 23-year-old man was walking into his home about 1:20 a.m. when a 20-year-old walked up behind him in the 500 block of East 38th and pulled out what appeared to be a gun while he announced a robbery, according to Chicago Police. The older man took out his own legally-owned handgun and fired at the robber, police said. The younger man was shot in the abdomen and both legs. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where his condition stabilized, according to police. The robber’s gun turned out to be a pellet gun, police said. Area Central detectives were investigating the incident. (Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2017. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

CHICAGO -- Major credit card companies, including American Express, Visa and MasterCard, will no longer let their cards be used to purchase adult ads on Backpage.com, a popular and controversial classified-ads site that critics say serves as a hub for sex trafficking and exploitation. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, a longtime and vocal opponent of Backpage's adult services business, sent letters to the credit card companies earlier this week. Dart will publicly announce the call to action during a press conference in Chicago on Wednesday. “Backpage has significantly lowered the barrier to entry for would-be sex traffickers, giving them easy access to millions of johns while cloaking them in anonymity and putting all risk on the shoulders of their victims," Dart said in a statement. "Raising that barrier will lead to less would-be sex traffickers entering the business as well as less victims." Dart's office had previously reached out to American Express, which already complied. Visa and MasterCard confirmed to The Huffington Post on Tuesday that they have also dropped Backpage. "MasterCard has rules that prohibit our cards from being used for illegal or brand-damaging activities," said Seth Eisen, MasterCard's external communications leader, in an email to HuffPost. "When the activity is confirmed, we work with the merchant’s bank to resolve the situation. Based on a request from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, we contacted Backpage’s acquiring bank about the issue. They have advised us that they are terminating acceptance at this time." Fighting sex trafficking and child exploitation has for years been a major focus of Dart's department. In 2009, Dart sued Craigslist in an effort to have the popular site remove its adult services ads. Since 2011, his team has worked with sheriff's departments nationwide for the National Day of Johns Arrests initiative, a high-profile sting of pimps and prostitution customers that coincides with the Super Bowl. “I’m pretty happy with how fast the response was. The civic responsibility shown by the companies is really fantastic,” Dart told HuffPost on Wednesday, adding, "I guess I’ve been so tainted with having to deal with Backpage and the responses from them that I’m used to things taking a long time." Dart said he didn't know exactly when the credit card companies will remove their logos and service from Backpage. But, he said, "I’m under the distinct impression it’ll be very quick.” With American Express, Visa and Mastercard all agreeing to stop processing payments for Backpage, anyone who wants to place an adult services ad on the site will have to pay with the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Backpage was spun off in 2012 from Village Voice Media, which publishes the New York City alt-weekly of the same name. That move came after years of pressure for online classifieds sites to scrub their listings of dubious "adult services" and escort listings. When Craigslist shuttered its lucrative adult services section in 2010, much of the business then jumped to Backpage. The website now does approximately $9 million a month in revenue, according to Cook County Sheriff's Department spokesman Ben Breit, who told HuffPost the figure was "a very conservative estimate." "Our researchers put the number at about 1.4 million adult ads published in the U.S., in April alone," Breit said. The website's finances are difficult to trace, and Backpage did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its financials and about the Cook County Sheriff's Department's efforts to wipe out its payment options. The compliance of the credit cart companies marks a rare victory for law enforcement and other officials fighting Backpage's adult services section. In 2013, the National Association of Attorneys General asked Congress to amend the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 to empower state and local governments to investigate and prosecute online classified-ads sites that were proven to promote prostitution and child sex trafficking. The American Civil Liberties Union called the effort "misguided" and argued that it would "cripple" free speech. The law was left unchanged. In 2014, two alleged victims of child sex trafficking in Massachusetts sued Backpage, claiming that it had assisted in their abuse and exploitation. The alleged victims, who said they were 15 when they began to be trafficked by pimps, said they were sold a combined 1,900 times between the ages of 15 and 17. Earlier this year, a judge dismissed the suit, noting that the site is protected under the CDA. After the legislative and litigious efforts failed, Breit said the Cook County sheriff's office finally looked to the financial route. "We needed to come up with an out-of-the-box idea," Breit said. “A lot of this would simply not be possible if Visa and MasterCard would say ‘no more.'" When they hit upon that realization, Breit said they moved "full speed ahead" and devoted a team to working "almost full-time" on the effort.

Google hasn't officially made any announcements about what watch hardware will receive the Android Wear 2.0 update when it's released later this year, but it looks like at least a few of the first-generation watches will be missing out. LG says it has no plans to update the original LG G Watch, and now Motorola says it plans to drop support for the original Moto 360. Given Samsung's disinterest in continuing on with new Android Wear hardware, the future doesn't look rosy for the Samsung Gear Live, either. This news comes just two years after Android Wear and many of these watches were originally introduced. The Moto 360's hardware was always underpowered even when it was brand-new, but the LG G Watch uses the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC that many newer Wear watches have included. As is usually the case with Android phones, your OEM's willingness to provide updates for hardware it has already sold you has more to do with whether you get updates than your actual hardware does. Many Android Wear updates, version 2.0 included, have added features that require new hardware components—support for Wi-Fi, internal speakers, LTE, and more has all been added since these first watches launched, and only more recent watches have included the necessary hardware in the first place. Those watches will continue to work for the foreseeable future, in all likelihood. But all of the other software improvements, including the redesigned interface, security updates, and other tweaks, will be skipping your wrist unless you pay for something new. If that's what you decide to do, make sure the watch's manufacturer has committed to updating its software first.

As Ebola Cases Spike, WHO Asks For More Money And Help Enlarge this image toggle caption Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA/Landov Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA/Landov The world's largest Ebola outbreak continues to surge at a troubling rate. The number of cases has climbed by nearly 20 percent in the past week, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Enlarge this image toggle caption Data from WHO/Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR Data from WHO/Michaeleen Doucleff/NPR At least 759 people have caught the hemorrhagic fever and 467 of those have died in three West African countries since March. The WHO has been so concerned about the disease spreading to other countries that the agency held an emergency meeting this week in Accra, Ghana. To contain this "unprecedented outbreak," the agency said Thursday, it needs more people on the ground to find cases, and to track down the family, friends, co-workers and other contacts of these infected patients. The agency called for more money and better communication among the countries involved. The WHO is also setting up an Ebola control center in Guinea to coordinate the effort. As NPR's Jason Beaubian explained Thursday on All Things Considered, while the outbreak shows signs of slowing down in Guinea, it continues to expand in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ebola cases have appeared in more than 60 cities and villages, some far-flung — up to 400 miles apart. That's about the distance between Boston and Baltimore. So why has this outbreak been so hard to contain? Many factors have come together to create the crisis. This is the first Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The illness has symptoms that are similar to other hemorrhagic fevers found in the region, such as Lassa fever. So it took weeks, perhaps even months, for doctors to realize people were catching the deadlier Ebola virus, and for these infected to be quarantined. That delay gave Ebola a jump-start. Since the virus is new to the area, doctors and other medical staff weren't initially equipped or trained to handle it — which slowed the response further. The leaders in many communities also weren't aware of the virus and how it spreads. The custom in many parts of West Africa is to wash a dead body before burial. Ebola is transmitted through bodily fluids. So many people have likely caught the infection during this practice. Travel and commerce along the three borders has also helped spread the disease from country to country. And the virus has reached densely populated urban centers, including Conakry, Guinea, where nearly 2 million people live. Finally, resources to fight the disease have been scarce. Some health workers in the affected regions have faced violence and protests. On Wednesday, the Red Cross in Guinea said it halted its Ebola awareness campaign after its staff was threatened. "Locals wielding knives surrounded a marked Red Cross vehicle," a man with the nonprofit told Reuters, asking that his name not be used. "We've suspended operations for safety reasons," he said.

UPDATED with new accusations from second actress: Following Lind’s accusation and a set of two apologies from Bush’s camp, another actress has come forward admitting that the former president touched her inappropriately. Jordana Grolnick said in August 2016 while she was working on a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Maine, Bush came backstage during intermission and grabbed her as they posed for a picture. She claims, “He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo he asked the group, ‘Do you want to know who my favorite magician is?’ As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, ‘David Cop-a-Feel!’” EARLIER with second apology from George H.W. Bush: Since the accusations from Lind, former President George H.W. Bush has issued a second apology to the first. According to The Washington Post spokesman, Jim McGrath, released a full statement on Wednesday: At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures. To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologizes most sincerely. EARLIER: Turn: Washington’s Spies actress Heather Lind has come forward with accusations that President George H.W. Bush sexually assaulted her during a photo opportunity with his wife Barbara Bush standing by his side. Bush has since apologized for the incident saying that it was an “attempt at humor” and that he didn’t mean to offend Lind. Lind made the accusations through a lengthy Instagram post that has since been deleted. She recently saw a photo of the 93-year-old wheelchair bound Bush shaking hands with Barack Obama at the One America Appeal hurricane relief concert which prompted her to share her alleged experience saying, “…when I got the chance to meet George H. W. Bush four years ago to promote a historical television show I was working on, he sexually assaulted me while I was posing for a similar photo.” The Instagram post continued saying that Bush touched her from behind and told her a dirty joke — all while being photographed. All the while Barbara Bush “rolled her eyes as if to say ‘Not again’.” “It seems to me a President’s power is in his or her capacity to enact positive change, actually help people, and serve as a symbol of our democracy,” she continued. “He relinquished that power when he used it against me and, judging from the comments of those around him, countless other women before me. What comforts me is that I too can use my power, which isn’t so different from a President really.” She closed the post saying, “My fellow cast-mates and producers helped me that day and continue to support me. I am grateful for the bravery of other women who have spoken up and written about their experiences. And I thank President Barack Obama for the gesture of respect he made toward George H. W. Bush for the sake of our country, but I do not respect him. #metoo.” In a statement to the New York Daily News, Bush’s spokesperson said, “President Bush would never — under any circumstance — intentionally cause anyone distress, and he most sincerely apologizes if his attempt at humor offended Ms. Lind” Lind’s accusations come in the wake of the Weinstein scandal and the fallout of many film and TV executives due to sexual harassment allegations. As mentioned in her now-deleted Instagram post, her colleagues have come forward to support her allegations. Turn co-star and Pirates of the Caribbean actor Kevin McNally tweeted, “My full support for @heatherglind for speaking out about the horrible event in Houston. All of which is true.” This was followed by numerous tweets about sexual harassment. Author of Washington Spies, the book on which Turn is based also tweeted saying, “@heatherglind & ex-Pres. Bush, her account is 100% accurate. I was there. It was not a ‘joke’ gone awry.” The official Turn account also chimed in, tweeting, “Sexual assault is always about abusing power over their victims. The fact that this has been politicized is avoiding the real issue.” My full support for @heatherglind for speaking out about the horrible event in Houston. All of which is true. — Kevin McNally (@exkevinmcnally) October 25, 2017 Re: @heatherglind & ex-Pres. Bush, her account is 100% accurate. I was there. It was not a "joke" gone awry. @westratenick — Alexander Rose (@AlexRoseWriter) October 25, 2017

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Michael Picker stood in the freezing cold outside of the Environmental Protection Agency early Thursday morning passing out fliers that read, “Come work for California. Fight climate change.” Picker was far away from his home in Sacramento, where he is the president of California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), for meetings with the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. He decided to try to recruit demoralized EPA staffers, who are facing deep program cuts and controversial new leadership. The EPA’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, has a long record of opposing the agency’s work. Picker hopes to entice them to work for a state government with one of the most ambitious climate goals in the country. California is looking to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The flyers pointed people to a webpage to sign up for more details. “I don’t agree with the president and certainly am not going to shy from an opportunity to give people good work to pursue their goals.” Picker’s timing was good: The White House had just unveiled cuts of 31 percent to the agency’s budget, the smallest proposed budget in 40 years. In Michigan, Trump had announced his plan to roll back the EPA’s fuel efficiency standards for cars. And, any day now, the president’s executive orders gutting EPA’s climate change work are expected to be announced. “I don’t agree with the president and certainly am not going to shy from an opportunity to give people good work to pursue their goals,” Picker told Mother Jones. He’s hoping to find a handful of DC-based federal workers willing to move west to work for the utility energy regulator and add some fresh insight and much-needed talent to the CPUC. Picker squeezed in the EPA visit—and another one at the Department of Energy—because the CPUC faces a hiring problem. CPUC needs to replace about 60 percent of its staff in the next three to five years because its older workforce is approaching retirement. Two other government agencies that work on helping the state cut greenhouse gases—the California Air Resources Board and California Energy Commission—are also recruiting for the same reason. But CPUC was the only agency targeting EPA employees; Picker joked representatives from the other regulators probably just didn’t want to wake up that early. The unusual hiring drive isn’t a political stunt, argues the California energy regulator, even if it might appear to be another example of California’s antagonism towards Trump. Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who appointed Picker, promised after the presidential election, “If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite.” Trump has opened the door to weakening the EPA and Department of Transportation’s fuel efficiency standards, and lawmakers in California are poised to fight if the administration rescinds the waiver that gives California the freedom to pursue tougher standards on automotive emissions. California still has a way to go to meet its climate goals. It will have to tackle the transportation sector, its single-largest source of emissions, and compensate for ditching nuclear power, which cuts down on carbon emissions, after its last nuclear plant closes in the next decade. Still, the electricity sector has made strides, with solar, wind, and natural gas now comprising a majority of electricity generation. (Prior to the prolonged drought, large hydropower projects accounted for a lot of generation too, at 18 percent). “Who would’ve thought [a few years ago] you’d have wind and solar so competitive with hydropower?” Picker asks. So far, Picker’s unconventional recruiting drive has resulted in some interest from federal workers. When he went through the same exercise in front of the Department of Energy from 7 to 9 a.m. on Wednesday, one staffer even helped him pass out fliers. CPUC’s executive director texted him later that day, excited to inform him that one other federal worker found his contact information on the website and expressed interest in a job. The verdict is still out on if this approach is the most effective solution for the state’s recruitment challenges. But after his long day on Wednesday, Picker seems to have sympathy for the federal workers in DC. “I feel bad for them,” Picker says about the Department of Energy staffers. “I noticed some folks coming in late.”

On June 5, Brand New Music’s Rhymer gave a warning to those who write malicious comments about the agency’s contestants on “Produce 101 Season 2.” The rapper and CEO of the agency started by saying, “I want to sincerely thank all the fans that have given endless love and support to the Brand New Music trainees participating on ‘Produce 101 Season 2.'” He then went on to state, “The levels of unfounded rumors, personal attacks, and sexual harassment has become too severe and hard to manage for the young trainees.” Rhymer continued to say that with the documents submitted by fans and information they have gathered, they will be taking strong legal action against those that spread malicious rumors. He concluded, “As the guardian of young trainees, I will do my best to protect the trainees of our agency. Thank you.” All four of Brand New Music’s trainees on “Produce 101 Season 2” are still in the competition, having secured spots in the top 35 in the most recently revealed voting results from May 26 (with last week’s results not announced in full). The agency’s trainees are Kim Dong Hyun (who came in at No. 29 overall as of those results), Park Woo Jin (at No. 14), Lee Dae Hwi (at No. 4), and Im Young Min (at No. 5). “Produce 101 Season 2” airs every Friday on Mnet at 11 p.m. KST. Let us know who you’d vote for in Soompi’s “Produce 101 Season 2” international prediction polls here!

Never miss the latest news from ScoopDuck! Join our free email list The commit run continues for Coach Taggart and Oregon.This time Oregon snares the behemoth 6-foot-7, 340-pound Justin Johnson . The three-star from Philadelphia (Pa.) Neumann Goretti is the 64th ranked offensive tackle and 783rd ranked player overall, per the 247 composite.His unofficial visit to Eugene could not have gone any better, which was a big reason for his commitment."Oregon just met a lot of what I was looking for in a school," Johnson told ScoopDuck. "I love being around the coaches and how they make you a better player and a man. I want to be around guys like that. They make me feel important."The coaches were a big reason Johnson decided to commit to Oregon. However the structure for the student-athletes and the support were also major factors in his decision."They offer all of the support you need to succeed. There is almost no way you can't get it done with their help unless you just don't try. All of the resources to keep you healthy and help you get your schoolwork done is top notch."Oregon's newest commit didn't rule out taking other visits later this Fall despite the commitment.Johnson chose Oregon over offers from Michigan St, Wisconsin, Pitt, Maryland, Boston College and others. Johnson is Oregon's 3rd offensive line commit for 2018.

By Jeff Aranow: The IBF won’t stand in Anthony Joshua’s way from fighting Wladimir Klitschko in a rematch, as long as he does it by December 2. Joshua is supposed to be defending his IBF heavyweight title against his mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev next if he wants to keep the belt. However, the International Boxing Federation has decided to let Joshua fight Wladimir in a rematch FIRST before he defends the IBF title against Pulev. The condition for the IBF letting Joshua fight Wladimir next is that he needs to defend the IBF belt against Pulev in his next fight. Where things could get a little bit sticky is if Wladimir beats Joshua in their rematch. Wladimir has already knocked out Pulev 3 years ago in a 5th round knockout. It’s hard to believe that Wladimir would want to Pulev a second time. As such, we could see Wladimir requesting that the IBF let him swerve Pulev so that he can fight Joshua in a trilogy, which would surely make a lot of money. It would be tough for the IBF to turn Wladimir down, because if he vacates the IBF belt, the IBF will be stuck with a less popular heavyweight scooping up their IBF title. Wladimir has made it clear that he’s only interested in fighting Joshua in a rematch if he opts to continue his boxing career. That’s good news for Joshua, because he really needs a second fight with Wladimir in order to increase his popularity. That fight did more for increasing Joshua’s popularity than all of his previous 18 fights in the pro ranks. Joshua has only been matched against 2 semi-decent heavyweights besides Wladimir in Dillian Whyte and Eric Molina. Joshua was staggered by Whyte, and he gassed out in their fight in 2015. Joshua still won the fight, but he already showed at that point in his career that he’s going to have stamina issues throughout his career. Wladimir has now lost his last 2 fights to Joshua and Tyson Fury. Wladimir was a heavyweight champion for 10 years before losing to Tyson Fury in 2015. Wladimir then burned up a year of his career waiting on a rematch with Fury that never took place. Instead of Wladimir taking a tune-up fight to get the rust out, he went straight into a big money fight against Joshua. It was a risky thing to do for Wladimir, but at 41, he obviously didn’t want to waste time with tune-up fights. Even a tune-up could be a risky proposition for Wladimir given his advanced age and the long period of time he’d been out of the ring. Klitschko, 41, was stopped in the 11th round by Joshua (19-0, 19 KOs) on April 29 at Wembley Stadium in London, England. The fight was televised by Sky Box Office PPV, and it brought in big numbers. Wladimir had a rematch clause in his contract with Joshua. However, Wladimir still hasn’t come out and said that he will exercise the rematch clause. We’ve heard Wladimir talk about how happy he is in losing the fight to Joshua, because he’s been getting a lot of love from boxing fans from all over the world. However, Wladimir has been dragging his feet in exercising the rematch clause, which could mean that he’s conflicted about taking the rematch. It’s understandable why Wladimir might not want to fight Joshua again. If Wladimir retires off of the Joshua fight, he can leave boxing with his head held high, given that he came close to beating him. Wladimir clearly exposed Joshua in a major way in their fight. If Wladimir does take the rematch with Joshua, he could lose the fight and get knocked out badly. Things wouldn’t be so rosy for Wladimir. The love that he’s getting from boxing fans would disappear overnight, as the fans would likely see Wladimir as a fragile-chinned old guy that needs to retire from boxing before he gets hurt. The venue for the Joshua-Klitschko II rematch hasn’t been decided yet by Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn. “We’ve had so many offers – Nigeria, Dubai, America, and also we have the opportunity of Cardiff here in the UK,” said Hearn to skysports.com. “Financially, Cardiff’s not the best choice, but also at the same time, if it’s not broke don’t fix it, and we have that mentality with ‘AJ’ moving forward.” Staging the Joshua-Klitschko rematch in the UK makes the most sense, because Joshua is a big star over there. His boxing fans are there in the UK. If the fight is staged in Nigeria, Dubai or the U.S, it’s going to be a hardship for Joshua’s British fans to make that long trip to go over to those areas in high numbers in order to support him. Hearn wants to turn Joshua into a star in the U.S, but he doesn’t seem willing to have him fight in front of smaller crowds in that country than what he’d bring in if he stays in the UK and continues to fight consistently over there. Pulev has earned the right to challenge Joshua for the IBF title after his win over Dereck Chisora. It’s not a great fight for Joshua, but that’s what he’s going to have to deal with from time to time as long as he holds down the world titles. Joshua probably doesn’t need a world title at this point in order for him to continue to gain boxing fans. Joshua is above the titles. He just needs to make sure he beats Wladimir in the rematch, and then continue to fight the best fighters he can each time out. Holding down the IBF and WBA titles is going to put Joshua in position where he has to defend against guys that don’t bring much to the table in terms of boxing fans and talent. If Joshua beats Wladimir, then he’ll need to make a decision whether it’s worth it to keep the IBF title and the other title. I looks like Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn wants him to collect world titles in order to validate him in the eyes of the boxing public. It sounds better if Joshua is announced as a world champion than just a regular fighter, I guess. It just gets bad if Joshua is going to be stuck defending against guys that aren’t all that great, and who did little in the first place to earn a title shot. I think the boxing public would rather see Joshua fight guys like Deontay Wilder, Luis Ortiz, Lucas Browne, Daniel Dubois, Joshua Parker, Tyson Fury, Hughie Fury and Dereck Chisora. If Joshua loses to Wladimir I their rematch, it’s going to open up a lot of questions whether the British heavyweight was hyped too quickly by his promoter Eddie Hearn and the boxing public in the UK. After all, Joshua’s gold medal from the 2012 Olympics in London, England was a very controversial one with a lot of boxing fans feeling that Joshua was beaten by Erislandy Savon and Roberto Cammarelle. Joshua lucked out in winning the gold medal. Obviously, fighting in his home country of England in the Olympics had to help him win the fights against Savon and Cammarelle. Before Joshua’s fight with Wladimir, the last fight against a good heavyweight had been in 2012 against Cammarelle. As a pro, Joshua has been matched very carefully by Hearn in electing not to put him in with tougher opposition like Wilder, Luis Ortiz, David Haye and Joshua Parker.

2NE1’s leader CL revealed that she was offered roles on Hollywood movies. On December 5, 2NE1 appeared as guest on the “Big Star Special Show” segment of SBS Power FM’s “Choi Hwa Jung’s Power Time.” During the show, CL disclosed, “I received a few casting offers for Hollywood films, but I turned them down.” She added her explanation saying, “It doesn’t feel like I’ve established anything significant musically. I want to concentrate on 2NE1 and on my solo activities. But if opportunities arise in the future, I would take on the challenge.” Meanwhile, the members of 2NE1 have been actively promoting their new song “Missing You.” They are topping various music charts for the third consecutive week. 2NE1 also won first place on MBC’s “Music Core” and SBS’ “Inkigayo” last week.

A History Of Nike Featured On The “What The” LeBron 12 4.35 / 5 562 VOTES This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. The opinions and information provided on this site are original editorial content of Sneaker News. The “What The” series will officially continue with the LeBron 12, seen here through Nike’s official images of what may be one of the top releases of September, but the core category appears to transcend the LeBron line and cover a broad history of Nike. The stand-out detail is obviously the huge “23” on the Hyperposite of the right shoe, which could possibly be a nod to Michael Jordan, but peep the other details like Safari print, Royal posite, Safari print, speckling from the Air Tech Challenge II, and the heel-tabs inspired by the Air Trainer SC High. Continue on for an official look at the What The LeBron 12 and stay tuned to Sneaker News for more updates on this monumental release. Nike LeBron 12 SE EP Color: Multi-Color/Multi-Color Style Code: 812511-909 Release Date: September 5th, 2015 Price: $250

Philadelphia Union have acquired General Allocation Money from Colorado Rapids in exchange for midfielder Sebastien Le Toux. “Sebastien has been a wonderful servant to the Philadelphia Union and we cannot thank him enough for his exemplary time and commitment,” Union Sporting Director Earnie Stewart said. “We want to wish him the best of luck in Colorado and in his future endeavors.” Le Toux, 32, was selected by the Union on Nov. 25, 2009 in the MLS Expansion Draft after being left unprotected by Seattle Sounders FC. His impact was immediate, leading the expansion Union with a career-high 14 goals during the 2010 season. After being traded to Vancouver Whitecaps prior to the 2012 season, he re-joined the club the following year and provided a career-high 12 assists in 2013. So far in 2016, Le Toux has played in 21 games and scored two goals. Philadelphia Union are back in MLS action on Saturday, Aug. 6 against D.C. United. The Union next return home to Talen Energy Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 20 against Toronto FC. Single game and group tickets are still available by visiting PhiladelphiaUnion.com/tickets or by calling 1-877-21-UNION. TRANSACTION: Philadelphia Union acquire General Allocation Money from Colorado Rapids in exchange for Sebastien Le Toux on Aug. 3, 2016.

Foto: Index "TA SLIKA predstavlja snažnu vrijednost i znanje osoblja", stoji u opisu logotipa koji predstavlja Međunarodnu zračnu luku Zagreb, odnosno Zračnu luku Franjo Tuđman. U knjižici od 48 stranica u kojoj se objašnjava knjiga standarda za logo Zračne luke gdje ističe se kako novom logotipu Zračne luke suvremeni stil i forma daju logu moderan štih. Knjižica o "novom" logotipu Zračne luke "Franjo Tuđman" by Index.hr on Scribd No, istina je kako je društvo koje je potrošilo oko 330 milijuna eura za uređenje Međunarodne zračne luke u Zagrebu vizualni identitet jednostavno skinulo s interneta prikazavši ga kao vrhunsko rješenje koje predstavlja "spremnost MZLZ-a za stvaranje lokalnih partnerstava i interesa u ekonomskim izazovima regije". Tekst se nastavlja ispod oglasa Prije tri godine tvrdili da je samo privremeno Logo tako nije plod rada grafičkih stručnjaka koji su spajali povijest zagrebačkog aerodroma i budućnost koncesionara već je riječ o besplatnoj vektorskoj grafici koja je tek prilagođena bojama tvrtke. No, čini se da tu nije kraj jer u uvjetima korištenja stoji kako se mora jasno naznačiti autor, no to nigdje nije navedeno. Naime, prije tri godine trebao je biti raspisan natječaj za vizualni identitet Zračne luke Zagreb, no očigledno su odlučiti uštedjeti pa su "novi" logo jednostavno uzeli s interneta. Da je riječ o logotipu koji može koristiti svatko, otkrili smo još prije tri godine, no tada su se iz Uprave Zračne luke Zagreb pravdali kako je riječ tek o privremenom rješenju. Dovoljno dobro za zagrebačku Zračnu luku "Logotip je prilagođen i usklađen sa smjernicama grafičkih standarda definiranim u sklopu konzorcija ZAIC, prilikom javljanja na natječaj za koncesiju zagrebačke zračne luke. U pozicioniranju Međunarodne zračne luke Zagreb ključan trenutak će biti otvaranje i početak poslovanja na novom putničkom terminalu, stoga ne isključujemo mogućnost promjene vizualnog identiteta i s njim povezanih komunikacijskih poruka u toj fazi", stoji u odgovoru Međunarodne Zračne luke Zagreb od listopada 2014. godine. Novi putnički terminal otvoren je prije nekoliko dana, no očigledno je procijenjeno da je za Tuđmana dovoljno dobar i logo koji je skinut s interneta. Podsjetimo, novi aerodrom u rukama je Francuza, budući da je Zračna luka Zagreb 2012. godine predana u 30-godišnju koncesiju francuskoj tvrtki ZAIC, odnosno konzorciju kojeg čine Aeroports de Paris Management, Bouygues Batiment International, TAV Airports, Viadukt, Marguerite Fund i IFC, član grupacije Svjetske banke, a za upravljanje tom lukom koncesionar je osnovao tvrtku MZLZ.

Bugs, defects, issues, glitches, hidden features—call them what you want, but inevitably we discover that something in our software system is not working as expected. As a responsible Software Crafter you do not tolerate known defects, so you need to find and fix that bug, and fast. When an issue is affecting customers in production, the pressure is really on. Under this pressure, it’s easy to start flailing around, aiming blindly at the system and hoping to hit the problem with one quick shot after another. A couple of hours later, you are right back where you started, no closer to a solution than you were when you started. I want to share with you my methodical approach to finding and squashing bugs in a production system. Follow and practice these steps, and you will be smashing those bugs like an Orkin exterminator with a truck full of roach poison. Reproduce The first step to fixing any problem is to be able to reproduce it. Bug reports often come in with sketchy details and partial information. In order to fix the problem, you need to know that you fixed the problem, which means that you’ll need to see the problem for yourself. If you have trouble reproducing the issue, consider going back to the reporter. Ask them more detailed questions about what they were doing when they observed the problem. Ask them to show you. Sometimes bugs are time-sensitive or appear sporadically. These are especially hard to reproduce, but you must keep at it. Grab data from production, alter time-stamps, change your system clock. Isolate Once you have the bug reproduced, start eliminating variables until you get down to the simplest use case that still exhibits the undesired behavior. The scenario where the bug first popped up probably has dozens of details associated with it that are not relevant. The user was doing several things at once, on a particular computer or browser with a particular OS version. As you trim away details from the scenario, you must only eliminate one variable at a time. Keep a checklist and cross things out as you eliminate and isolate. A quick feedback loop will help you try the scenario over and over, taking away one factor at a time until you get the simplest reproduction of the problem possible. Locate Now that you have a good feedback loop and a minimally complex bug scenario, it’s time to actually find where in the code the problem is. Oftentimes, the effort of reproducing and isolating was enough to zero in on the problem. But if you are still stumped, try some of these bug-finding techniques. Fix Aha! You found it. You know exactly what is causing the problem. Just fix it and you’re done, right? Slow down just a second. How do you make sure that it doesn’t happen again? If you haven’t written a test while trying to find the bug, do it now, before you fix the code. This will ensure that you can see a failing test and know that you’ve found and fixed the right thing. Even if you happen to have already fixed the problem, back out your changes, write a failing test, then reintroduce your fix and verify that the test passes. Ask Why No debugging process is complete without a little bit of reflection. Ask yourself, “Why did this bug get introduced?” When you have an answer, ask yourself “Why” about that answer. Do that five times, and you’ll likely find yourself talking about an important problem that can be addressed to improve your team. Having trouble tracking down a bug on your system? Our team can help you! What more? Check out the rest of this series: Doug Bradbury is a maker, a thinker, a craftsman, and a learner. Follow @"dougbradbury"

Vertcoin (VTC) is a cryptocurrency that professes to stay true to the original concept behind Bitcoin: to be a financial system developed for the people. The decentralized currency, which is fairly distributed because it wasn’t subject to a premine or ICO, is funded by donations and has low transaction fees. The algorithm that secures the network has been designed to be resistant to custom miners so that as wide a network as possible can verify transactions. 84 million Vertcoin coins will be generated and there is a block time of 2.5 minutes. The volunteer development team implemented a number of new features in 2017 including SegWit activation. This paves the way for Lightning Network transactions which can be completed extremely quickly. The team are also working on privacy features to allow for discreet transactions.

The rights of the American people have been, and are being trampled into the dust, as the pseudo-representatives glut themselves from the trough of lobbyists and oligarchs alike. It could be proven, but won’t be proven: the investigating “authority” is not accountable to the people and there is no oversight. The FBI, and any investigations under special counsel? Look at Fast and Furious and how the Attorney General’s office covered that one up. What is needed to prove it? Something that doesn’t exist. Here is what is needed: A team of spotless individuals with a leader of unquestionable character and service…with complete authority and impunity: unable to be hindered by any federal, state, or local police and army of “authorities.” This Special Investigative Team would have the power to investigate fully any and all ties to Congressmen, Senators, and Supreme Court judges…to find evidence of bribery, kickbacks, and influence peddling…and then arrest them and bring them to trial. Everyone can jump up and down, desiring to boil in oil anyone making such a suggestion; however, without some kind of accountability, these elected officials are running rampant and trampling the rights of the citizens. Who is going to stop it? The courts? The courts are the biggest pack of crooks of all. Yes, “Your Honor,” and “The Honorable,” ad infinitum. I guarantee that a Special Investigator with impunity would have found plenty of coral snakes under Chief (in)Justice John Roberts’ front porch…if Obama and Holder had been made to step aside and an investigation had been done. This should have been done after he cast his deciding vote on Obamacare. Going back a few years, Obamacare would have never made it to the floor of the Senate if Olympia Snow (R, ME) had not allowed it to come up for a vote. Who paid her off? In order to follow the money, you have to be allowed to follow it: or you’ll just end up arrested or dead. The special unit of investigators I suggested? They need to be armed to the teeth, and they need giant, shiny badges that every human in the Western Hemisphere will recognize. And why not? It worked for Elliot Ness and his team. This won’t be done, of course, for one reason: The method would work and the crooked politicos would be caught. In a system replete with corruption, we can’t have a group of investigators who are not corrupt and “untouchable,” because that would threaten the existing social, political, economic, and religious order. We have a Supreme Court that selectively interprets legislation, effectively bypassing checks and balances under the Constitution and establishing themselves as lawmakers, or “law-breakers,” whichever you prefer. But they are “jaw-breakers,” and in essence breaking the people’s jaws to prevent argument as they stick the rings in their noses and then recess for three months to hide. There is no accountability fostered upon them, no recourse for their “Supreme Decisions” that affect 315 million people. The “Tyranny of the Majority” in action once more. McCain. McCain is the epitome of the reason that term limits should be placed upon representatives. McCain is the prime example of why a Special Investigative Unit is needed. Really? Champion McCain, just coming off of the deck from brain surgery in the 13th round, to score a knockout against the American people? Who lined his pockets? Who? Was it the insurance companies, or was it Soros? Where do we find the individuals who will not be bought to investigate this matter? We will never be allowed to have such special personnel to investigate a matter such as McCain’s “vote”: this is because the people are not in charge. We are ruled , not governed. McCain was the one who orchestrated the ousting of the duly elected President of Ukraine, Yanukoyvich, who was elected under Ukrainian Constitutional law. Is that in itself not a violation of the Logan Act? Oh, but since McCain and company were acting on behalf of the American people as their elected officials, it’s all well and good, then. McCain is part of the bigger picture, and look at the titanic struggle that has already transpired for clarification: the struggle between the establishment to impose an individual mandate, and the public to resist it. The vote? It is scripted at this point. McConnell and Ryan all “ooh’s” and “aah’s” with the Don Adams/Agent 86 line: “Missed it by that much!” Wrong. They didn’t miss a beat. All of the Congress (in this latest vote…the word “vote,” what a joke) with a final tally of 49-51…making it appear to be a close one. They only did it that way to not unseat half of Congress (Republican or not), and the Republicans who voted to repeal could point at it, “They voted to repeal”…when the failed vote was a done deal long before it came to the floor. McCain did his job for the Establishment, and he’ll be on his way out of the Senate to retire soon enough…. andvoila! The individual mandate remains. The individual mandate is the prize they have fought for more than 100 years. They will not relinquish that stranglehold from the throat of the American people. The steppingstone to a single-payer system, the individual mandate assures that you will be accountable to the State whether you are a housewife or a homeless beggar. Of course, Congress, the Administration, the Courts, and the rest of the Politburo are exempt from the individual mandate, now, aren’t they? The President has no effectiveness. I wrote a piece earlier this year, entitled The President Needs to Purge and Start Fresh: White House Staff Has Been Infiltrated and Infested. Here is an excerpt from that piece: “…the President is beset by forces in Washington and in the White House who are determined to derail his “cleansing” efforts and continue with their own actions. Those forces are spearheaded by the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) “5th Columnists” either working directly for and with the Democratic Party or independently of them but for the interests of the Globalist Network.” I also wrote another article entitled Trump Off and Running But He Can’t Do It Alone: Six Things Americans Must Do To Make Real Change Happen. Please read this: “Around November [2017] the Congressmen and Senators will begin to campaign. They will be a year out, and in order to keep their seats in the midterm election in November of 2018, there will have to be a good track record for the next year, with visible results within 6 to 8 months. There is also no excuse, now. The Republican Party holds the House and the Senate. There is nothing from a legislative perspective that the President cannot accomplish, at least for the next year and nine months. Of course, this will take solidarity within the Republican Party, and the Republicans have not had a very good track record in this department…” I also wrote about this , after the President was elected, but before his inauguration, with this article entitled Trump Can’t Stop It: The People Who Have Been Orchestrating the Collapse Have Not Halted Their Agendas. This excerpt explains the entire point of this current piece, as well: “The globalists need the illusion of a two-party system to enable a “reprieve” in the minds of the people with the rise of a Bush or a Trump…but the reprieve is merely an illusion. If these Marxist traitors forced their agenda on the people all at once, there would have been a revolution at its inception. They alternate: destroy the society and the culture to the max under a Democrat administration, and then “scale back” a bit under a Republican administration while still nipping away at the edges with an “Act” here or a “piece of legislation” there. It may take them a little longer, but Trump will not be able to undo the current course toward the collapse of the United States and the relinquishing of national sovereignty in favor of global governance.” McCain just became the key player in the “it just takes one man” mantra…with the refusal to repeal Obamacare and negate the individual mandate. In the meantime, the Cloward and Piven, Alinsky, and Van Jones methods employed to collapse American society are paralleled by the threats of war, either orchestrated by the U.S. or otherwise. Bush Jr. was flagging in popularity and then decided to invade Iraq. It gave him the election and another 4 years. History repeats itself. War is right around the corner, and the globalist agenda is being met: to collapse the United States internally and attack it externally. I stand by my prior statements regarding the latter: The next world war will be initiated by an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon detonated over the continental U.S., followed by a nuclear exchange and an attack by conventional forces. ***Visit our new FREE SPEECH community built exclusively for our readers. Click to Join The Deplorables Network Today!*** In the meanwhile, traitors such as McCain continue to collapse the system within and advance the agendas of their paymasters. Can anyone honestly take one look at McConnell and say that he did not know of McCain’s vote prior to it being cast? They are not representatives…they have misrepresented themselves and do not reflect the will of the American people. Because of this, the U.S. has been on its deathbed for more than 8 years. We all hoped that with a new President things would turn around, but that doesn’t appear to be very likely at this point in time. Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here. This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

Short Story The Rat’s bucket prison was set very close to the red hot burning stove. Even though, the ship’s cook was busy for hours cutting vegetables and melting hat into the pats the Rat knew its time was coming. In fact, anticipation along with the heat was vacuuming all its sanity away. The metal bucket was so hot the Rat couldn’t stay in one place. Instead it was racing around and occasionally point at tiny rust holes on the bottom edge of the bucket. The Rat could smell the stew and somehow subconsciously was scared of it. All it’s hunger had evaporated in the face of the more immediate need to save its skin. The ship’s kitchen was a busy and seemingly disorganized place. One corner held crates and bags of dry goods mostly potatoes. A limited selection of dry meats hung from the sealing. On old wine barrel held seawater in which a skinny apprentice washed the rusty metal bows for serving. A few giant pots were crowding the stove steaming away with stew and beans. Their master was short and round giant that had forgotten how to smile. He was angry that the best food was locked away in the captain’s storage along with fine wine. So he was forced to drink burning run and eat rat meat. Currently all his negative energy was directed towards the last live chicken on board. Some drunken sailors had broken all the chicken cages and the captain’s order was to cook the chickens first. The last of the chickens had eluded capture over the past few days of massacre. But now by accident it had stumbled into the kitchen and cook had shut all doors in order to hunt it down. Everything else was on hold because the hefty giant was planning to eat it himself and serving rat meat to the crew as chicken. He was only giving one leg away to the rascal that had suppled him with the rats. So this determined angry giant leaped as light as air from one corner of the kitchen to the other after the last of the chickens. That was the only reason the rat in the bucket was still alive. The Chicken itself had not survived because of sheer luck. It had done so because it had a difficult upbringing. It grew up on a turkey farm and the few chickens that were raised there were mixed in with the much larger and more powerful birds. So they had to endure immense discomfort and fend for their lives daily. That had made the Chicken as cunning and as tough as a turkey. For the first few days out of the cage it had hidden alone away from the pack of chickens, which had saved its life. It was never out in the open and only moved about at night. That is when it had stumbled on some grain in the kitchen and was spotted by the apprentice in the supply corner. Now it was flying frantically through the rafters like successfully evading the cook. The giant threw pots at it and sweated like a monster in distress. The bird was light and fast while the cook was clumsy and had to take frequent breathing breaks. The bird was alert and used the cooks slacking to position itself on cross roads with several escape routes. The giant was turning red and clutching a bottle of rum stumbled in the chicken’s direction. All the while the Rat was grilling with anxiety and anticipation of its fate. The Chicken was navigating around the stove while the cook was taking a rum break. The bird climbed on the metal grill over the bucket to have a better view of its adversary. The Rat felt the animal above and looked up praying for an act of humility. The bird was composed and relaxed. It knew it was in control and had more than several moments until the cook would drag himself to strike. So it decided to use those moment to relieve itself of the digested grains. The only witness to the runny odd colored feces exiting the Chicken was the mentally exhausted Rat. The rodent could even react and move as the fecal mass dripped on its face. It just stared up and thanked its fate it wasn’t the knife. Shortly after the cook was approaching and in a fit of rage threw the empty rum bottle vaguely in the direction of the Chicken. The birds leaped and landed behind the stove. The cook managed another step forward before his heart froze in panic of the excess toxins and the giant plunged forward like a rock. His body knocked the bucket over and freed the Rat. The cook was dead. The Rat was free and through a crack in the wall ran and hid deep in the ship’s hull and never tasted anything but dry hey again. The Chicken vanished like a skilled magician without a sound or trace. It was there and then it was not. next story: ANIMAL DILEMMAS – ANTS CHICKEN previous story: ANIMAL DILEMMAS – RAT HORSE all stories: Animal Dilemmas photograph by freeimages The Writers Manifesto

Going to a music festival can be equal parts exhilarating/incredible and exhausting/terrifying. Here are 23 things you’ll definitely see at the next music festival you attend. 1. You’ll have to wait in line for an hour just to play lead guitar. 2. You’ll see a barely alive dolphin being volleyed around a crowd like a beach ball. Advertisement 3. Someone will try to sneak their own mosh pit into the festival and get thrown out. 4. Yep. You’re gonna see this couple at some point: Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Advertisement 5. A fight will break out between a guitar fan and a bass fan. 6. Everyone will sneak their drugs in no problem, but you’ll get arrested for pretending to play a cigarette like a recorder. 7. The smoke from many different joints will converge in a giant moose-shaped cloud, which will angrily stampede around the festival grounds vomiting scalding brown tar onto those who don’t seek cover. Advertisement 8. Some idiot will rush the stage and this will happen: Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF 9. The security guys will cordon off the area in front of the stage for an all-security-guy mosh pit. Advertisement 10. Jeff Tweedy will frantically, desperately try to explain to the audience that he didn’t write Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and has no idea who did, but his pleas for help will be drowned out by the sound of people demanding that he shut up and play “Heavy Metal Drummer.” 11. The Garage Assholes, the worst band in the world, will sing one of their unpopular songs about the joys of touching other people’s food. 12. You’ll see someone crowd surf onto the stage to serve a singer divorce papers. Advertisement 13. When you dance, you think you’re going to look like this: Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF But you’re actually going to look like this: Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Advertisement 14. Eight bands that all independently thought of the name Hell’s Belfry will fight each other to the death to determine which band is the true Hell’s Belfry. 15. You’ll stand in line for so long that you’ll miss your favorite band and the music festival will end and America as we know it will be a long-forgotten blip in the interminable history of ruined civilizations, and as the buildings of some perverse city far into the future crumble all around you, post-apocalyptic farmers armed with spears carved from human bones will forcibly drive you from where you stand on the only remaining patch of arable land on a carbon-choked, ash-covered planet that is hurtling straight toward the sun. 16. Some teen will eat a waffle. 17. A guy will try to sell you Nebraska. 18. You won’t be able to walk five feet without bumping into a guy who dressed up like Bruce. Advertisement 19. Some huge guy will put his girlfriend on your shoulders and sob, “Be good to her.” 20. You’ll see cleavage and then spend hours futilely searching for a policeman to report it to. Advertisement 21. You’ll bump into your parents as teenagers, and they will panic and take cyanide pills. 22. A guitar will be used to gesture to where the porta-potties are. 23. You’ll get kicked out for saying “Guitars are just not my cup of tea!”

... Xiaobao leaned back against the cold grey brick of a shuttered fabric shop across the street from the Silver Snake Playhouse. Beside the theater's glittering entrance there were several uniformed city guards leaning in much the same position as they provided their own security for the distinguished patrons inside. Xioabao saw those men give a few nervous glances down at the darker sections of the street in each direction as they thumbed their sword hilts. There were a lot of other people out tonight in Kuang Harbor and many of them were wearing black headbands. Xiaobao was proud of the behavior of the town. Whatever this neighborhood watch had grown into, he knew that it was rooted in a core of anger, frustration, and fear. It would have been all to easy for any such organization to turn against those who had been calling them traitors for making their living off foreign trade. So far that had not happened. There had been a few close calls but as much as he hated to admit it, those college boys had given some good suggestions. Assigning patrol routes and regularly circulating postings kept people busy and moving. When they were doing something they did not feel as helpless in fear of fire, spirits, and the furious government. Suddenly something caught his ear. It took Xiaobao a moment to decide what it was that had made him look up from the oil lamp lit paving bricks that his eyes had been absently focused on. On a night when even he was expecting to see the suggestion of spirits flitting through the shadows he had to assess a great many possibilities for a strange noise. But this sound was the slap of human sandals against the ground in an alley. Across the street and up ahead, two men in the uniforms of theater staff came running out of the shadows into the pool of light spilling forth from the blindingly bright playhouse facade. Xiaobao reached out to bump his brother's arm for his attention. "Look at that. Ayika and them must be making their move." Xinfei looked over at the two who had run out, and he was joined by Ma'er and Mua. The two runners were wearing uniforms that Xiaobao had to guess were those of the theater workers. They must have fled as soon as the first accusation started flying inside. That was sensible of them but Xinfei still frowned. "Wait, why would Public Safety risk anyone like that getting out to spread rumors?" Mua grunted dismissively. "Maybe you're overestimatin' the competence of..." "No," Ma'er interrupted. Underneath his granite-like expression the earthbender was worried. "The boy is right. Yang should have had every exit watched and barred before there was even a hint of crisis. With the warning I sent him he would have taken no chances. Something is wrong." The guards at the theater front had also heard the fleeing workers and turned towards them. Those workers, however, were not about to deal with any officers of the law at the moment. They were spreading the news. "The Fire Nation is burning down the city! The masked spirit warriors are Islanders! They murdered the minister!" They yelled out to the town in general and the guards in particular before continuing to bolt on down the street. Ma'er gave a short powerful curse before saying, "And that is why you lock down the exits. Yang isn't here." Xiaobao felt the panic rising up in his chest. "Your Public Safety aren't here? Damn it, damn it!" This could all go up in flames if that story spread. Well, that is why Ayika had trusted him to have sensible people out here as a second line of defense. He ran forward into the middle of the street and waved his arms as he yelled out down the direction the theater workers were running at the black bands who were posted there. "Hey! Stop those crazy guys until we know what's going on!" Xinfei ran up to Xiaobao's side with a pained expression on his face. "It's going to be a mess in there, and the girls are in the middle of all that! Tailang and his goons are probably going to firebend their way out to escape, and they've got no one to stop them! He'll cut through them!" Their own benders they had as insurance were paying disturbingly little attention. Ma'er was looking out towards the city wall looming darkly in the distance. High up in the night there was a light flashing from the battlements far above the gateway fortress. Xinfei called out to him, desperate for information. "What's that say? What's going on?!" The earthbender shook his head. "It is coded but such an obvious method is only used in moments of crisis. Something has kept Yang from responding to my message. Someone must be making a move in the city." "Someone's makin' a move here too," Mua broke in, walking slowly in the direction of the theater front. One of the guards had opened the front door to investigate and now they could hear the sounds of screams and running feet spilling out from within. "I can feel it. The Masks are here in force!" She wavered slightly. "Grah! They're going to cross over. There are too many holes in this city!" Another group of people, again mostly theater workers but with a few who looked like guests, burst running out of the building. Now some of the the city guards and the approaching volunteer black bands joined in the shouting on the street as confusion spread. The sounds of panic were rippling out into the distance of neighboring roads. This stampeding fear could consume the town. Everyone who feared the Islanders would have their worse fantasies confirmed. Xiaobao roared out at the no one in particular or the entire night-enveloped world in general. "Hold on! We've got to hold on to the peace!" If the people of the town wanted to invest a no-one like him with authority then maybe, just maybe some might listen to him now when everything was falling apart. To do what, he did not know. The plan inside had failed. Now Xinfei was running forward, bolting toward the theater doors. Xiaobao shouted after him, "Xinfei!" His brother only ran faster. "They're in there! Have to save them!" Mama Mua sprinted along beside the boy, throwing herself into the heart of the turmoil of people hurrying out of the building. Then Ma'er was following those two. As he passed he called out to Xiaobao. "Do what you can! Hold for the government response!" Then Xiabao was left in the street. He black band friends were running towards him but for that brief moment he was alone with the spectral shadows made by the glass housed lanterns whose flames were dancing a strange dance. ... Chao Erliao stood on the edge of the stage with the spirit mask in his hand, backlit by hooded lanterns meant to illuminate the actors He was alive. Ayika saw the mask, recognized the purple marks, and at once knew the terrible mistake they had made. She remembered being pursued by a man possessed by purple wings. A man who had burst forth from Erliao's quarters after they heard a scream. There had been no mysterious attacker laying in wait, Erliao himself had put on the mask to fight Mua. "Surprised?" Erliao glared up at Tailang in the upper balcony before him. "The Fire Nation's attempt on my life was a failure!" Tailang goggled down at the seeming resurrected minister, for brief moment forgetting the slate of accusations Ayika's friends had just levied against him. "Erliao? Where have you been? I knew those idiotic students were not competent enough to have actually killed you." "I was saved!" Here Erliao raised up the mask to present it triumphantly to the crowded theater. "The spirit gods of our great city have preserved me from your harlot assassin!" The astonished crowd of theatergoers murmured. Some few had fled at the first hint of disruption but those who remained were entranced by the conflict that was unfolding before them. Tailang leaned back slightly as he said, "Ah, you have completely lost it. And your old water witch sweetheart tried to kill you? Well, I had just thought she would be an embarrassment but I can not completely blame her." Now he suddenly remember the personal political crisis that had just erupted moments prior to Erliao's emergence. He turned to the astonished Zhangyi and Jiang near him in his balcony and resumed his powerful orator voice. "You see boys, you have been made into fools! All these accusations against me are completely baseless; the invention of petty, jealous men!" Erliao yelled out, his voice shaking with fury. "No, you are not the leader of those called the Masks! Because I have reclaimed them from you!" Tailang was momentarily silenced by surprise and confusion at this outburst. Erliao continued, growling out each word thick with anger and hate. "Did you think you could build a fake nationalist society under your secret control and I would not find out? It was clear to any idiot who bothered to look that those student fools were being used as puppets by someone. The so called nationalist movement was directed to create only harmless demonstrations and mild vandalisms that you could cite as evidence of persecution against your criminal enterprise of a Trade Mission! You must have felt so clever." He rook a breath, his hands were trembling. Then Erliao resumed at a calmer pace. "The movement had to be taken out of your control. Doing away with your assistant Hiro, your degree of separation from them, was the easiest thing for me to arrange and after that your so called organization was mine. One little death to save the city and the gods themselves smiled on it! They provided me a timely whisper that told me how to turn your own spirit weapons against him and against you. These masks! Every day their power grows stronger as they are wielded by the just and righteous servants of our city! With them I had soldiers! I had warriors to strike back against the invaders and the corrupt! You have underestimated the spirits of our great culture!" Ayika heard Lili's high pitched stifled scream from the opposite balcony and she looked down to see more audience members pulling out masks from hiding places within their clothes. There were a lot of them; far too many. Ayika gripped the wooden railing in front of her, as to her shaman's eyes the air seemed to ripple around that many masks held so close together. Ayika now knew that their plan had been doomed from the start. They had gotten it wrong, disastrously wrong. But at least Ma'er had arranged for government agents to be here. Surely they would... "You murdered Hiro?!" Tailang was now raging back, completely oblivious to the danger of the masks below him. "Guards! Seize that man! He has just admitted to a capital crime in front of two hundred witnesses!" As the Representative thrust his pointing finger out, Erliao began to slowly raise the mask up nearer to his face. Tailang yelled out triumphantly, "It is a little late to disguise yourself, you..." "No!" The cry tore its self out of Ayika's throat as she felt her chest ache from pushing out so much air so quickly. "Erliao, don't!" People snapped up to look towards the righthand box, most of them staring at Mizumi first, expecting her to have spoken again. Ayika panted. If this was the man who had truly been behind the Masks' violence, behind them murdering Professor Lizhen and old Chouyu then she hated him. But she had seen what manner of being had chased Mizumi and her on the night of the Festival. It had not been an angry politically motivated man, but an inhuman spirit that wore him like a puppet. She had to try and stop that, even if it meant saving a murderer. "Those masks are not powered by your cause or your patriotism! Your men stole the funeral mask of Ambassador Naruhama and disrupted a ceremony to quiet his soul before the city-god rituals! Your weapons are empowered by a half-deified Fire Nation ghost who is bringing down the barrier to the spirit world no matter what peaceful desires he had when he was alive! Last time you wore the purple mask on the festival we..." To explain Mua and Blind Dog Lord would take too long. Seconds were precious here. "You won't get the spirit mask off the same way again! The barriers are falling! If you put that mask on now you may be consumed forever!" Erliao looked up and narrowed his eyes as he recognized the two foreign girls who had saved him from Mua's murderous intent. Consideration and a touch of fear flashed across his face. He looked down at the mask in his hands. The theater paused in a breathless confused hush. Ayika breathed out, "Please." Erliao did not look up. "So be it. It is a sacrifice I gladly make to save my culture." Then he pressed the wooden mask to his face and a sound beyond hearing screeched through the fabric of the world. Ayika felt a pressure behind her eyes as colored auras flared into life around Erliao and many others down on the lower floor. The chorus of screams told her that everyone else in the audience could see it too. Phantasmal purple wings boiled into existence, flaring out from Erliao's arched back and then his masked face snapped up, focusing on Tailang with an animalistic intensity. He crouched and sprang, rocketing through the air like a dart from a bow. The possessed man then came crashing down; he smashed through the wooden railing of the upper box and lashed out at the seats and people there. A sudden blast of fire bloomed into existence as some firebender in the Exclusion party fought back. Erliao wavered before the force but the licking flames did not sear his skin, shielded as it was in the expanding body of the spirit that was using his as a doorway into the material world. Mizumi sprang forward from her seat. In half a moment, her foot was on the railing as she prepared to climb around the outside of the balconies in a heartrendingly heroic attempt to join the fight. Panicked, Ayika reached out to clutch her but Mister Miohuito was faster. He seized his daughter's arm with enough force to cause her to gasp in pain as he tugged her back. Mizumi yelled out, "Father! We have to...!" Mister Miohuito did not say a single thing but bodily pulled Mizumi with him as he rushed for the exit from the box driven by fear-driven strength. Ayika ran after him, even as some poor victim from below was tossed through the air to slam heavily into the wall beside the box before falling back down to smash onto wooden chairs. Amid the first floor tables and in the Fire Nation box above, the other Masks had already lost focus on their political goals. The spirits that inhabited them had been drawn forth by the desire for the strength to fight and now they were fighting everyone and everything regardless of politics. These spirits were not the orderly gods of the city, but the wild and distant powers who now had a gateway for their inhuman power. They were playing, and humans were dying. Ayika ran and could only hope that Lili and the students could get away. ... Lili staggered out into the street as a wide chunk of the front of the playhouse exploded into splinters behind her. The silver head of an ornamental snake went flying over her shoulder. As she had run through the shuddering halls of the theater she had briefly seen Ma'er and Mua enter the fray, joining their elemental magic with the bender members of the audience who had attempted to fight the Masks. A moment later, as she half ran, half slid down the lobby staircase she had seen some of those same well dressed benders lying as dark crumpled piles amid holes in shattered walls. Now she was outside but the screaming and roar of magical strength was no less deafening. She felt a tug on her arm that was hard enough to hurt her shoulder socket and remembered the pressure of Xinfei's hand gripping her own. He had found her stumbling in the lobby and together they had managed to force their way out the front doors that were clogged with screaming, fleeing patrons. Somewhere along the line Lili had lost track of Mengre. She wondered if he had gotten out. She had known him in her father's house all her life. Now Xinfei was saying something to her: "Come on! Maolin's out here! We'll get you away. Where's Ayika?!" Lili looked back at the playhouse that already had smoke spilling out the holes that earthbenders or Masks had knocked in its walls. Some Islander firebenders had tried to fight back, but once the fire they summoned left their control and caught on material fuel it did not need their magic to sustain it. The building was going to be an inferno very soon. Suddenly a thick arm wrapped around Lili's waist and half lifted her as she was hauled back across the street. Xinfei's face lit up with a small measure of relief as he recognized Xiaobao grabbing Lili and dragging her farther from harm. "Maolin! Where's...!" "Ayika and Mizumi got out! They're over there!" Xiaobao pointed over down the street. Lili managed to focus her eyes and saw Mizumi struggling against the grip of her father, resisting his attempts to make her flee. Then the stream of panicked running people that filled the street shifted and Lili saw Ayika standing firm in the middle of the brick-paved space, somehow by pure will forcing the crowd to part around her as her face turned back and forth in constant searching. Then she saw Lili and called out something at Mizumi behind her. A man wearing a black headband ran up to Xiaobao. He was panting and heaving as he said what he had heard others say. "They said the benders are all dead! You've got to get out of here!" "No!" Xiaobao was not the shy, polite laborer boy Lili had first seen. He was firm and somehow looked even taller and stronger than he already was. The black cloth band stretched across his forehead. "There are still people in the theater! We've got to try and help them!" Others had different priorities. Some of the civilian earthbenders who had escaped were using their magic to raise up crude brick barriers in front of the first floor doors and windows, as if that could seal the masked monsters inside. The ladies among them struggled against the formal playgoing clothes that restrained their magical motions. A glance back through the remaining doors to the destroyed theater lobby revealed that the space was now filled with thick white smoke. Then that false smoke swirled together into a compacting stream of water drawn from mist, revealing Mua and Ma'er rushing out of the vanishing fog, vaulting over a rising earthen barrier. They were followed by Zhanyi and Jiang who did not manage to clear it with the same ease and tumbled across the rough ground beyond. Jiang yelled out in pain as he did so. Mua coughed as her magic guided the floating water back into her large stoppered pouch before she bent over, propping her hands against her thighs for support. Ma'er did not take a moment to rest. He yelled out at the other earthbenders and their futile walls, "Forget that! Fires have spread! The building is lost! We have to bring it down!" With that, he sank down into a wide low stance and thrust out his fists, causing the stone at the corner of the playhouse to crack and shudder. The other earthbenders were not government trained, just theater fans with the appropriate family lineage for the gift to manifest, but in the chaos like this anyone who sounded like they knew what to do was grabbed onto like a raft in a flood. The message spread out and the earth magic users ran to undermine more points of the structure. Xiaobao ran up to Ma'er, shouting. "You can't! There are probably still people in there!" Off to the side, Zhangyi unsteadily climbed to his feet. "If there are, none of them are getting out. Those masked...things are playing with the fallen like cats with injured mice. Erliao... what was Erliao, he beat down two firebenders and then focused on Tailang. I saw it break the Trade Representative's arms one by one, and then it snapped his neck. I think it was curious." There were soot marks across Zhanyi's torn jacket and a bloody scrape on his forehead. Jiang looked worse for the wear, favoring his left leg, but he had been in Tailang's balcony box when the Masks attacked so the fact that he was alive at all was remarkable. Lili felt dazed. She stood dumbly in the middle of the street, distantly wondering how their plan had gone so wrong. Then she was suddenly moving and it took her a moment to realize that Xinfei was pulling her. "I've got to get you out of here," he said. "Ayika!" "Here." Suddenly, Ayika was at her side and the three of them were running over to Mizumi and her father. As soon as she saw them, Mizumi broke free from her father's pulling grasp and proceeded to reverse the action by pushing him in the direction he had been trying to make her go. She yelled something at him in the Islander language as they took off. Mister Miohuito yelled something back and Mizumi broke into the Kingdoms' language out of sheer frustration. "We are not getting the carriage! Look around! Are you insane?! We run!" They dashed down the dark and chaotic streets as behind them there was a creaking, rumbling crash as the earthbenders began to bring down the playhouse. Xiaobao, Zhangyi, Jiang, and the benders were not with them. They must have stayed behind to organize some sort of response from the black bands. Ayika called out the plan in between pants. "We're going to the Exclusion! What was left of the Fire Nation party passed us a few moments back! Mizumi's dad can get us past the bridge and that place has their army people!" They rounded a corner and from down another street they suddenly heard an outburst of screams. Then there was a familiar inhuman screeching roar. The Masks had escaped the theater and were loose in the town. A few seconds later, as they ran down a long street under stars towards the distant orange glow of the Exclusion that was just visible over the roofs of dark tiled buildings, they heard the soft rustle of something flying overhead. Lili yelped in fright for a sudden Mask ambush, but then she wheeled around and saw three humans in the dark green robes of Public Safety bounded across rooftops towards the center of the disturbance, black against the starry sky. Each time they landed, the clay tiles beneath them reached up to cushion the fall and then launch them off again in less than a second. Their bounding path was heading toward the center of the disturbance. Lili prayed that those men stood a chance against what they would meet. The fleeing party ran on and then the red towers of the Exclusion were in front of them. The illuminated forest of tall buildings now at once represented foreign danger and sanctuary. There were city guards in their green uniforms bunched around the entrance to the arching Bridge of Fire and beyond them on the bridge its self was another group of martial men, these dressed in red and looking considerably more committed to their assignment. Mister Miohuito began to yell out to the city guards as they approached but one hint of his accent led to that nervous detachment hurriedly opening up a path for the strange fleeing party. These men had no orders to keep foreigners from secluding themselves in their own territory. The Fire Nation marines on the body of the bridge were more cautious, but after a brief shouted conversation with Miohuito they grabbed him and Mizumi to bring them in past their human barricade. However, they were less welcoming to Lili, Ayika, and Xinfei. Their reaction sparked Mizumi to start shouting out loudly in the Islander language. Whatever she said earned the three of them passage, though the welcome was filled with much less concern for their well-being. As she passed the soldiers, Lili noticed that many of these men were not armed. That meant they were firebenders and more deadly than any sword. The strangle little group of theater refugees were just cresting the half way point of the Bridge of Fire when Mizumi began to call out her plan. "We must halt the magic of the Masks, somehow. If Mua can not summon up the dog spirit again then perhaps Fire Sage Huitzlan can aid! Even if it is a temporary fixing we must try. Ayika?" The tribal woman nodded. "Yes. Tailang clearly had no idea about Naruhama's funeral mask and we have no hope of finding that now. Erliao is in no state to question." "Hold it!" Mister Miohuito yelled out, startling his daughter and Ayika who had both seemingly forgotten there was anyone else there. He confronted Mizumi as his voice escalated to a roar. "Mizumi, what have you gotten into?! How could you accuse...?! And who is this tribal girl, really? No, we are going straight to the house and we are going to remain there. They attacked the Trade Representative!" Mizumi understood her father's fear but she clearly still felt that she could not simply hide. She said, "Father, we..." "No! You have put yourself in terrible danger! This must have something to do with that school if both Gaoli's daughter and the tribal are involved. I never should have brought you from the Nation but now..." "Father!" Mizumi stamped her foot down so hard Lili could have sworn that the entire bridge vibrated. Mister Miohuito froze for a brief moment in the middle of his panicked paternal anger. Then Mizumi continued: "There is a terrible spiritual threat to both our people and the people of the city. I am trying to solve it. Ayika knows more about spirits than anyone here and together with Fire Sage Hutizlan we are going to stop this magic before more people get hurt. I love you, and I am sorry, but there is no time to adequately explain things to you at this moment!" There was a moment of shocked silence followed by an interruption: "Tailang stole some shaman masks for a conservative group he secretly controlled but he didn't know the true spiritual power. Erliao figured it out and desecrated the funeral of Naruhama to call in spirits and steal control of Tailang's men but now the spirits are too powerful to be controlled and everything's messed up." There was a brief pause. Miuzmi blinked. "...Yes. Thank you, Ayika." Mister Miohuito let out a single word, "But..." Mizumi interrupted. "Get back to the house. Organize protection for the staff. Ayika and I will go to the temple and hope they can help banish the spirits, at least for tonight. I have seen such a thing done before." Mizumi and Ayika did not wait for Mister Miohuito to say another thing. They broke into a sprint and hurried off the bridge, down to the Exclusion streets, striking off deep into the compact settlement towards the Fire Temple at the opposite end. Lili began to move to follow them but there was a gentle tug on her hand. Xinfei quickly let go as she turned back to face him. He said, "You'll be safe here, Lili. I'm sure these people will burn down half a ring before they let anyone in to harm their own." Lili noticed what he was not saying. "And you are here too so it will be all of us who are safe here." Xinfei threw up his arms. "I don't understand any of this spirit stuff! How could I help Ayika with any of that?" He turned back to the Kingdoms side of the bridge. "But my brother's out there. All my people are out there, such as they are, and if I can't fight any Masks at least I could maybe do something while you girls are talking to priests and ghosts. Stay safe." He actually managed to take three steps back up the bridge before a soft, smooth hand gripped onto his wrist like a vice. Lili glared him in the eyes, all the bewildering fear she had been drowning in melting away beneath the righteous fury that he would try something like this. "They are my people too! This is our city!" She took another step closer, looking up very slightly to meet his wondering stare with her own furious one. "I don't know anything about spirits. I don't know that Mua woman or the Fire Sage. Mister Miohuito doesn't want me and I think Mizumi and Ayika have forgotten me entirely. But I know that I would be able to stay here huddling in safety for about ten minutes before I could not stand it any longer! I ran, but that was a mistake. Let's go find Xiaobao, Mengre, Zhangyi and the others!" The dockworker and the merchant's daughter held still for a long moment. Then they nodded together and began to run back across the the bridge. They pushed past the startled Fire Nation marines who were not expecting anyone to come from behind them. Lili called out at them as she ran by. "Tell Mizumi Miohuito that Lili Gaoli has gone to join the Black Bands! Find us if she can!" Then Xinfei and her were running off to the town. Lili spent a last spare thought hoping those men had been able to understand her language. ...

A new Unreal Tournament is happening. Fiiiiiiinally! It feels like it’s been eons since the decent-ish Unreal Tournament III brought hoverboards to a shock rifle fight, but Unreal Tournament 2014 is coming to the rescue. This one, though, stands to be a massive departure from previous entries in the arena shooter pioneer series. Epic is keeping its team lean and developing the entire game – from day one – alongside fans. Meanwhile, the whole thing will be free, with Epic making precious pennies off cuts from a user-driven mod/map store. Sounds pretty neat, right? But it’s also a logistical can of worms that could fit 100 of the things from Tremors. How will Epic stop its audience from fragmenting, especially if maps aren’t free? Do creators *have* to charge for maps? With source code out in the open, won’t it be especially easy for cheaters to meander their mucky fingers into this game’s DNA? Will the basic game even have much meat on its bones? I asked Unreal Tournament 2014 project lead Steve Polge all of that and more. RPS: Arena shooters have kinda gone extinct on the triple-A side of things, but there’s still a hunger for these things. You’ve just got to know where to look, and your community’s been especially vocal. What was stopping you from bringing UT back over the years? Why wait until now? [pullquote]As we develop this game of course we’re going to be doing a lot of work ourselves.[/pullquote] Polge: Well, I mean Epic is… we have limited resources and we’ve always had other projects that were demanding a lot of our resources. And really you know, we’ve been kind of in transition and so it just hadn’t been the right opportunity, all the right things hadn’t come together, Now we think with the tools, the opportunity and the market place, we’ve got kind of a unique community of people that are both passionate about the game but also have contributed in the past, and shown that they can create amazing additions to our game. So I really think we have a unique opportunity to explore making a game this way. RPS: How many people are on the Unreal Tournament team at this point? Polge: At Epic we’ve got… I’m not sure [what the final number will be]. We’re still building the team. It’s about 7 or 8 full time people working on the game, and these are all very senior guys. They have got a lot of experience with Unreal Tournament and we feel like they provide leadership to the community. As we develop this game of course we’re going to be doing a lot of work ourselves. There’s a ton of people at Epic that in some cases came from the Unreal Tournament community to start with, are passionate about it, so we have a whole lot of people who are wanting to contribute as they have the opportunity to and they’re going to be doing things in their free time or here at Epic. So it’s certainly an effort that we’re putting the resources we need in to make it successful. RPS: That’s an interesting dynamic though, with people working in various capacities on it – some full-time, others in their free time. In terms of full-time team members how many are you hoping to have when it’s all said and done? Polge: I’m not sure. We want to stay small. We want this to be a joint development with the community and we want it to be something where we have the freedom to be able to make this game and not feel a lot of pressure from the point of view of how much resources we’re having to use to make it. Like I said, we’ll put in the resources we know. We’ve built this kind of game before and the key elements that we need to make sure are taken care of, and that’s what we’re focused on. We’ve got some programmers that are very experienced with Unreal Tournament. I’ve actually been the lead programmer on every Unreal Tournament game we’ve made, and so we’re very confident that we have the right people to lead this project and make sure it’s a success. Over time we’ll see exactly what we need in terms of resources. So we’re going to stay really small. Frankly in terms of full time guys we’re going to grow a little bit more but we’re not going to turn into a big team here at Epic. RPS: I imagine from that perspective it’s going to be very different from development on the last couple Unreal Tournaments. Those were more traditional triple-A projects, so I’m guessing that the team sizes were significantly larger. In the double digits, easily. Polge: Well compared to Unreal Tournament III yeah. In contrast Unreal Tournament III was a very traditional triple-A development with a relatively large team. Although not very large by industry standards, but by Epic’s standards, because we try to run very lean. We’re closer to Unreal Tournament 2004, which was already a project where we got a lot of contributions from the community, and actually we had less full time involvement on that project than we will on this project. We had some contractors we were working with that were very talented, we had key Epic people contributing, I was full time on the project. Of course the difference is we’re trying to be even more open and involved with the community more in a really open fashion, both in terms of setting the direction of the game as well as building the final product. And final product is really a misnomer, because it’s an ongoing process. We want to make a platform for making this kind of shooter for a long time to come. I think that the opportunity that we have here with having a lot of community… we want to move the game forward in every direction and all areas that make sense. We want it to still feel like an Unreal Tournament game, but I think one of the opportunities we have with a large community of people who are participating in the design and participating in testing and development is to be able to iterate and prototype on a much larger audience than we did before. In the past whenever we created a game internally we’d have a relatively small team of people that are testing the game and iterating on it, and so we’re really limited not in our ability to implement, but in our ability to playtest and iterate on and really balance and fit into the overall game, new ideas. And so with the big community of people I think we’ll have a real opportunity to try out a much bigger variety of ideas, and then refine those down to something that both is appealing to a different audience but also very well balanced at different levels. I mean if you’ve got people playing it at all scales and skill levels, and providing feedback on gameplay mechanics and balance, then hopefully we can get something where we can make decisions where we understand the impacts at all levels. I’m really excited for the potential of that. RPS: The way you’re doing that is pretty interesting too, in that you’re going to be making your money from the game by taking a cut from community driven maps and mods. Do you know how much of a cut you’re looking at yet? Polge: We haven’t really thought through the details of that yet. I mean frankly we’re confident and if we’re generous in how we provide the game to the community and we build a game that is successful and that we have a passionate community around it, then we’ll be able to [find decent success]. We don’t know the details of exactly how we’re going to do that and what were expecting to get out of that. We’re focusing more on making sure we have a platform that makes it easy for mod developers to make cool stuff and be successful with that. RPS: Will people be required to charge for maps and mods that they put in the store, or will they be able to just give them away completely for free? Modding has a legacy of freedom, of course, but when that’s the only way you’ll be making money… Polge: Absolutely mod makers will have a choice of whether they charge or not. I mean the idea is that the market place is going to be a very seamless and easy way for players to get content, and the core UT game that you download will be a relatively small game. There’ll be lots of additional content in the store, and we expect that will be free, and basically will allow mod authors to define how they want to distribute what they make with the world. RPS: If that’s the case, are you afraid that people may not have a reason to buy anything at all? Polge: Well, we’re not making this game with expectations that everyone will pay. What we’ve seen in the industry is if a game is successful, has lot’s of people playing it, and lot’s of people spending time enjoying that game, then people are happy to pay for the things that increase their enjoyment of that game. And so we’re confident we’ll figure that out. [pullquote]This is not a scripted evil corporate thing where we have this nefarious plan underneath.[/pullquote] Right now our focus is getting the word out to get more people to learn about Unreal Engine 4, and check out the tools that we’re using to make this game and to see how they can create their own games and realize their own creative visions with it. The exact details of how much money we’re going to make and how we’re going to make money is not something that we’re too focused on right now. I realize that…. this is not me with a scripted evil corporate thing where we have this nefarious plan underneath and and we’re just saying it. That’s really where we’re at. We just believe that this type of development scheme can be successful, and its success depends mostly on us building a game that can engage a large community, and from that [community] will naturally follow. RPS: How much was this inspired by things like, for instance, what Valve is doing? Valve has kind of adopted a similar model with TF2 and Dota – albeit more focused on items than full-blown mods. Polge: Absolutely. I would say that those are example of our inspiration of… when I say that we’ve seen it in the market that this can work, certainly Valve has done a good job with that. I think League of Legends also is an example of a company being very generous with the game they provide. It’s a situation where nobody has to pay to play the game, and people only pay if they feel like it improves their experience but they can have a great experience without every spending any money. So we’re really relying on the generosity of our fans based on them being so happy that they want to reward us, and not that they feel like we’re scheming to take their money. RPS: Will you let people sell hats? Polge: [laughs] We haven’t really thought about hats. I mean clearly Unreal Tournament supports a wide variety of modifications. There’s going to be people making new game types, new weapon sets, whatever. So there will be room for that. There will be new levels. If there’s a market for hats, if people want to give away hats, it more depends on what the players want to get. We clearly don’t find there being a vibrant market for Unreal Tournament hats, so that’s not our basic business model. We’re not designing our hat system right now. RPS: Are you worried that having such an open and vibrant store – one where certain things are free and other things go for oodles of cash – could fragment your audience? In all likelihood there will be countless possible map configurations and rulesets and weapon loadouts and vociferous opinions on the best explosion. Polge: I agree that that’s a challenge and that’s something that we’re going to have to work with. I think that’s a challenge for both us and our mod makers, in terms of choosing whether you charge for stuff, or how you charge for it and how you present it. We’ll have to figure that out, because our goal here is we want our mod makers to be successful, because they’re creating cool content that increases our players’ enjoyment of the experience. But at the same time I think maps are a perfect example. A map is only valuable to users if lots of other people have it also, and are playing with it. So we’ll have to come up with the right mechanisms for encouraging that. That’s something we’ve not figured out yet, so we understand that it’s an important issue that we’ve go to think about. RPS: How much are you going to look into everything that players are submitting, especially in terms of say, weapons, where somebody could create something that’s hideously unbalanced and put it into the game? Polge: There’ll be a core UT that is kind of adhered for everyone, sort of like in the past when we shipped the core game. And that will, we’re working with the community to develop that, but we feel ultimate responsibility for making sure it is balanced and a great game. But on top of that there’s never been anything keeping people from, with UT mods and stuff, making whatever they want. And we’ll make it clear in the market place when something is a mod that kind of goes off in it’s own direction, and we want players to choose and decide what those things are. So we’re not going to ban mods because we think that they’re imbalanced. We want our developers to have a chance to create whatever they want to create, and to let the community decide what they want to play. Our job with the market place is just to make it easy for people to get and to understand what they’re seeing and how it fits into Unreal Tournament. RPS: Are you going to going to moderate it at all for objectionable content and stuff like that? Polge: I’m sure we’ll have to do that. Right now we’re just focusing on getting the core of the game done. But yes, obviously with the marketplace, we have to take responsibility for the content that is on there. We want to allow our developers as much freedom as possible, but they can’t be ripping off other people’s work, or…. I don’t think we’re going to want porn on our market. But again, we’re aware of that issue and it’s something that we’ll have to figure out, but we haven’t figured out the technical answer to that yet. RPS: Awwww, but you could call it Unreal Pornament. Surely a third-rate porn pun will change your mind. Polge: [laughs] RPS: With having fans help you develop the game, how much are you going to take their input? Where do you draw the line between your own decisions on the game, and what fans want or even demand? I think that’s a very different thing for every developer, especially depending on the sort of game they’re making. Polge: Yes, it’s a challenge, but that’s really… we feel like the advantage we could get from this in terms of people really buying into the game we’re building and also providing a lot of really valuable development effort and design effort. I mean there are a lot of our fans who really have a great understanding of the mechanics and the design issues around Unreal Tournament. So we see that as very valuable. We want the whole design process to be very open, and ultimately again with the core game we are responsible for making sure that the right decisions filter up. But those decisions, I don’t see how we can have a mechanic that goes against what all the people in our community that are asking for this game want. So for the most part I think it’s going to be a matter of consensus building to make it clear to people what all the issues and trade-offs are. While we’ll never get complete agreement on any specific design decision, I think we’ll make sure the community feels like they participated, their voices were heard, and that it’s a decision that fits with what our community wants to build. Separate from that though, Unreal Tournament has always been known for it’s mutators and mods, so we’ll encourage the community as well to, if their visions or any developer differs too much from ours, go off and create the game type that really shows what you think Unreal Tournament should be. And so the final arbiter of what is successful will always be our players. RPS: When you first announced UT 2014, I saw some people express fear that you might take a “design by committee” approach. How is this different from that? Because what you just said sounds kinda like that. Polge: That’s certainly not what is happening, and we understand very much the potential pitfalls of what we’re doing, and frankly I think the only way to answer the cynics is come participate in our design forum, see how it’s working out, and let us prove to you that we’ve got a process that’s inclusive, that will lead us in a clear direction to a game that we can all be proud of. Part of that is understanding that at Epic we’ve always tried to have an open design process where everybody has a voice, and frankly no one ever ends up with exactly the design of game that they dreamed of, right? There’s always some level of understanding, taking the value of people’s suggestions and understanding what the greater right decision is. I think if people can understand that then maybe, any specific element didn’t work out like you wanted, but at the whole it’s a game that you can really enjoy and feel like you were part of creating it. RPS: Epic will still be steering the ship as a whole, then. What do you, as a developer, want to improve from previous Unreal Tournaments? What do you feel like were the most glaring flaws in, say, UT III? Polge: Well, there’s been a lot of changes in the standards for how shooters work since we came out with Unreal Tournament. Some of the mechanics that we have are integral to the fast action shooter that we’re making, and we’re certainly not going to go away from any of those elements, but at the same time we want to look at and see what game and how we want to evolve Unreal Tournament to fit properly in the modern world. RPS: Are there any evolutions to the shooter genre in particular that you are most interested in trying out or prototyping in Unreal Tournament? Polge: We’re looking a lot to our community to tell us how and why to evolve. We’ll also be providing ideas. Matchmaking for example, Unreal Tournament’s basically all about browsing and picking which servers you want to play on. And we still feel like that’s a valuable way to go find matches. We’re sad that a lot of games don’t do that any more because going and finding the server where you like to hang out, where you know you’re friends are going to come and hang out, there’s always a good match, there’s no [trolling or griefing], that server works and you like those guys. That’s really great. But at the same time there’s lot of cool things that people do now with parties and grouping your friends and finding a match, and different ways to find a match. We need to come up with a synergy of those approaches that really provides the best of all the approaches, and lets people find matches where they want. I’m sure we’ll have a traditional set of browsers that works exactly like it did in the past. But we want to make sure that we do a good job of getting people into the game they want to play. RPS: On a fundamental level would you say that you’re building on from Unreal Tournament III, or is your starting point more generally UT as a whole? Because a lot of people have said, “Man, I remember old-school UT, and my favorite was UT ’99, or 2k3, or 2k4!” How do you approach that? Polge: We don’t really have a specific UT that we’re building on. We’re really trying to understand and talk about what it was that everyone liked and didn’t like from the various UTs, and figuring out how to bring the game forward and being together the best elements of each ones. There’s very passionate fans from each one, and I would say UT III was our first attempt at sort of merging gameplay mechanics between UT ’99 and UT 2K3 and 4, and in some ways I think we did some things right, but there’s some things that we know we could definitely have improved on. Our fans have a lot of new ideas about balance between those two game types. We do too. Again, it’s a challenge when you have people who are passionate about each one, but we think we can come up with something that is… we don’t expect that what we end up with will be any one of those games, it will be something new, but that feels both new and really familiar and appealing to most of our fans. RPS: Which specific elements of UT III do you think you could have improved on the most? [pullquote]We’ve set ourselves that bar now. We can’t have DRM because everybody has access to the source code.[/pullquote] Polge: Well at the high level I’d say the things that we could most improve upon in UT III are back end server browsing in our menus when we shipped. I don’t know if you ever tried the UT III Black Edition that we put out on Steam about a year after we shipped, where we gave a much truer version of what we wanted to present to out community. When it comes to gameplay mechanics I think there’s things that we maybe tried to do, like for example coming up with a compromise between the double jump movement of UT2K3 and UT2K4 and the movement of UT ’99. We had a take that was reasonable, but we think we can do better now. Other than that I think we’ve also learned a lot. With UT III there were some art style decisions that we’re probably going to revisit in how we want to present the game. Basically we want to be sure that we have an amazing looking game but that what we do serves game play first. RPS: How much thought have you put into the art direction side of it? People have some really, really strong feelings about what a UT game should look like. If you didn’t let them wage virtual wars, I feel like they’d start a real one over art alone. Polge: We’ve got an extremely talented artist who’s been our art director, and he’s a fantastic guy to work with. He’s already got some forums set up where we started talking about our thoughts for that direction. Frankly, I’m not sure. I expect that to end up not being controversial, though. I feel very comfortable with the tools that we have in UE4, that we are going to be able to come up with an art direction and a style that everyone will agree I think, frankly, is an improvement over all the previous Unreal Tournaments. I think we really understand what we need to do to make gameplay uncluttered while at the same time making a game that’s visually appealing. And I think our art director’s got some great ideas for how to perform like that. That’s an area where I know there are lots of strong opinions about. I’m comfortable that that’s somewhere where people will all agree there’s a net advance and it will end up not being that controversial. RPS: Multiplayer’s obviously in, but what about a single-player campaign or bots? Polge: In the short term we’re just focusing on the core game, so we don’t have any plans at Epic to be involved in the development of a single-player or any other kind of meta game type elements like that. We’ll certainly support any efforts to do that. I mean I feel like that’s the kind of thing that’s a win-win. If people are excited about building that kind of experience, and people are excited about playing that, then we want to make it happen. Certainly in the longer term, I mean who knows where we’ll go? We’re figuring out the direction of Unreal Tournament with the community, and if that was what it would be to move the game forward then we would think about it, but we’re a long ways right now in terms of building the game, we’re not really thinking about stuff like that here at Epic. RPS: Are you going to allow for LAN support? People who want to play on Local Area Networks? Polge: Yes. I expect we are going to. We’re going to let people run servers, and we will run servers as well. But if people don’t want to do that, we still want them to be able to play too. Our goal is to have servers that people want to play on because they’re the best servers, not because it’s the only way you can play the game. Frankly that’s our thinking now. We’ve got to figure out all the details of that. We want to make sure we’re doing a good job of figuring out how to get people in the game, and play the games they way they want to play them. We’re also providing the source and the engine source for the game on Github. So we have to win now, not based on keeping players from doing what they want to do, but making it easy for them to do what they want in the context of the experience we’re trying to deliver. We’ve set ourselves that bar now. We can’t have DRM because everybody has source. They can take it. It’s going to allow us to work with the community on a great game, but at the same time we have to give up [total control]. I mean it’s never true control you have, and the community will always figure out how to play the game they want the way they want, but it’s even more clear now with this developmental approach that that’s going to be the case. RPS: You’re providing the source code upfront – which is really amazing, honestly – but are you worried that cheaters are going to declare open season on your game? I mean, that sounds like heaven for them. Polge: That’s a great question. That’s certainly one of the things we know is going to be an important issue. We expect we’re going to have to use various approaches to address that. We expect there will be both community lead efforts, and probably Epic internal efforts to come up with server side mechanisms for detecting cheating. Probably through a combination of automated detection and taking advantage of having the community admins that can follow up on that kind of stuff. We also want the community to come up with ways of moderating servers and walling off servers to police their population so you know that people playing on your server are known to be playing by the rules. Having the source makes it more clear to us what the issues are, but the issue isn’t whether you have the source or not. Cheaters are not stopped. They’re barely slowed down by not having the source in other games. So we just know that security isn’t even an option for us. We’re going to have to come up with better approaches from the start, and we’re already thinking hard about how we’re going to do that. RPS: Thank you for your time.

Pity Russian propagandists. They must stage scenes of massive and violent demonstrations in East and South Ukraine. They must patch together actual demonstration footage with images of exploding grenades, intermittent automatic weapon fire, wounded pro-Russian civilians, and menacing Ukrainian extremists, organized, paid for, and directed by sinister outside forces. They must show valiant local civilians opposing the Neo-Nazi and ultra-nationalist juggernaut from Kiev. The Putin propaganda machine cannot rest. It must provide new footage daily for a viewing public eager for the next Ukrainian outrage, growing angrier with each passing day, and asking: When will our great leader, Vladimir Putin, go in and rescue our poor brethren across the border in Ukraine? Interviews with innocent by-standers and ordinary citizens are a staple fare of the coverage. A woman shows the camera hundreds of spent cartridges she gathered after a night of violence. Extremists turn outraged local residents, on their way to visit wounded comrades, away from the hospital. A babushka, in tears, bemoans the terror in which she lives and pleads for the Russians to restore order and civilization. Pretty good stuff. I’d believe it if I did not know better. The Russian propagandists, trapped on a racing assembly line, are bound to cross wires on occasion. They will make mistakes, which they hope that viewers will not catch. But they have made a huge blunder, for which heads are falling in TV studios in Moscow and in Crimea: Three different channels have featured interviews with one Andrei Petkov, lying wounded in a hospital in the south Ukrainian city of Nikolayev. In the three interviews, he is identified by name. He is on his back in a hospital bed, describing his experiences in the previous evening’s violence, which left him with serious wounds. Petkov is dressed in a black outfit, his nose bandaged. In each interview, he speaks softly, but with earnest conviction. He cuts a sympathetic and credible figure. The problem is that Andrei Petkov is a different person in each interview! Nikolai Petkov, Ordinary Citizen On Rossia 1 national news (Vesti), Petkov describes himself as an ordinary citizen of Nikolayev, who went on April 9 “as usual” to protest against the new Ukrainian government. At the demonstration, he was attacked by Neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, who had been escorted into the city in busses by the Ukrainian police on orders to disperse local demonstrators by force. Petkov testifies that the radicals opened fire on peaceful demonstrators using weapons given them by Europe and the United States. (His interview is interrupted by traumatic scenes of fleeing civilians, rapid gunfire and exploding grenades). Petkov declares that he suffered a brain concussion and other gunfire wounds, which will leave him incapacitated for six months. Petkov, himself, appears to have only a bandaged nose, and the camera crew shows no pictures of the other “heavily wounded victims of the shooting.” They, with the exception of Petkov, appear to have been dismissed from the radical-controlled hospital only one day after the shootings. Andrei Petkov, German Spy NTV national news conducted an “exclusive” interview with the same Petkov, in the same hospital bed, with the same bandaged nose, only this is an entirely different Petkov. In a contrite voice, Petkov confesses he is a German spy for a secret European organization. Since he left his native Nikolayev in 1992, he acquired several citizenships and has German, Ukrainian and Russian passports. Petkov claims to own fifteen gerontology clinics in Germany and a chateau in Switzerland. This Petkov has done well for himself. Petkov says that he flew in from Germany, where he lives, with a half million Euros, which he received from a secret group he refused to name. He bought weapons and hired a squad of fifty European mercenaries to put down both Nikolayev’s civilian protesters against new Ukrainian government and radical neo-Nazi intruders from Kiev. He wanted a “civilized” solution, but in the melee he fell afoul of the Ukrainian extremists, who shot him in the leg and nose. He had to beg the “creepy young” Ukrainian extremists for his life. He is currently waiting to be operated on and is in the hospital under special security protection. Andrei Petkov, Pediatric Surgeon, Benefactor, and Patriot The National Independent News of Crimea interviewed a third Petkov, in the same hospital, same hospital garb, and same bandage on his nose. This Petkov is noble pediatric surgeon who saved the lives of over 200 infants and who returned to his native city of Nikolayev with an “indefinite” sum of his own money to help organize local protesters against the new Ukrainian government. Attending the nighttime demonstration as an innocent bystander, he found himself caught up in a nightmare of exploding grenades and rapid gunfire from the neo-Nazi extremists. As a physician, he attempted to tend to the wounded carried into tents, but the extremists fired into the makeshift emergency facility. During the shooting he himself was wounded in the nose and leg. The defiant Petkov declares that he is not intimidated. He will personally continue to resist until justice is achieved. Internet viewers of Rossia 1 news and NTV report posted on YouTube caught the Petkov fabrications and expressed their outrage. The viewers of the Crimean news fairly tale were given no chance to comment. The Petkov fabrications would make for a good laugh were the situation not so serious. Readers should not think that Petkov affair is an isolated incident. It is the norm rather than the exception. Viewers of Russian television are fed a daily diet of fabrications that show non-existent gun battles, savage beatings of innocent civilians, sinister forces proudly displaying Nazi regalia, and tearful residents of east and south Ukraine longing for annexation into Russia. Readers must understand that the Crimean Anschluss, accepted by many in the West, as a joyous, celebratory reunion was a cynical spectacle organized by Russian special forces, protest tourists, and local mafia thugs. The Petkov Blunder shows that Russian propaganda has no regard for the truth and is willing to resort to the crudest of disinformation to form public opinion at home, in Ukraine, and abroad. Who knows how many Western television stations have carried such lies? They definitely accepted the Russian version – joyful people, band music and dancing, and Soviet-style 97 percent votes -- of the Crimea Anschluss. After the Petkov Blunder how can we believe anything that Russian propaganda says? That many Russian viewers have bought into Putin's Big Lie tells us something about their psychological makeup. The fabricated scenes of mass violence, grenade explosions, and constant automatic weapon fire should raise a number of questions for viewers. Where is the film of solemn funerals of those killed in the mayhem? Russian camera crews, unlike other Russians denied admission, were in the hospital to which the seriously wounded were carried. Why did the camera crews not film the crowded wards full of the victims of Ukrainian violence? Why did the ubiquitous Mr. Petkov not show his leg pierced by a bullet? It seems strange that his nose with the direct hit of a revolver bullet would be treated with a single bandage? Apparently Russian viewers want to believe these fairy tales. They want to think their country is in the right. They want to be proud of their country. Accordingly, they make ideal subjects for Big Lie propaganda. I do not know how they will feel when they eventually learn the truth. I have a more immediate question for the Putin trolls, who earn a living disputing almost every word I write on Putin's actions in Ukraine. How are you going to explain this one? My guess is that the Putin trolls will remain silent. Let's see. The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school. The author’s latest book is Women of the Gulag: Portraits of Five Remarkable Lives. He tweets at @PaulR_Gregory

On the hottest of summer days, officials at DFW International Airport do something that at first might seem counterintuitive -- they turn off the air conditioners. In their place, six million gallons of super-cooled water is pumped through pipes in the terminals to keep passengers comfortable. The high tech solution, along with more prosaic steps like purchasing its electricity from renewable sources, has helped DFW reduce its net emissions to the point where it was recognized last month as the first airport in North America, and one of only 26 in the world, to achieve carbon neutral status. "This started at the airport probably 15 or 20 years ago. I think it's fair to say it started because we saw an opportunity to be smarter with how we ran the airport from an energy perspective," said airport CEO Sean Donohue, who took over in 2013. "Over the last couple of years, it became apparent we were really on the path to carbon neutrality. We said to ourselves, 'What do we need to do to actually attain (that)?'"

The “Planet of the Apes” series reboot may be the most impressive movie cycle of its ilk since the “Dark Knight” trilogy. Rupert Wyatt’s 2011 “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” proved to be a remarkably moving explanation of how the sentient simians Charlton Heston first encountered in 1968’s iconic “Planet of the Apes” got their start. That was in large part due to advances in motion-capture/computer-generated imagery technology, which gave “Rise’s” central character Caesar, a chimp raised by humans and genetically geared toward rational thought, remarkable relatability. Three years later, the film’s sequel, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” benefits from even further advances in interpreting the expressions of Caesar actor Andy Serkis and dozens more ape performers with striking verisimilitude. Impressive as that is, it’s not what makes “Dawn” such an advance over “Rise.” That rainy forest Caesar and his followers are living in 10 years after their escape from human clutches? That’s the breakthrough amazing thing about this movie. Mainly because it’s real. On a real location “It was a breeze,” jokes “Dawn” director Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield,” “Let Me In”). “What blew me away about Wyatt’s film was the way you had emotional identification with Caesar, which was about the leap in mo-cap (motion-capture) technology translating Andy so beautifully. I was really interested in pushing that forward, but also pushing the photo-reality to a place that had never been done before. “The last movie was shot about 75 percent on the stage, and mo-cap is not very friendly to difficult environments. But I felt like, if we could do an ape civilization movie that really is in the woods and in the rain and in the mud, that would add to the photo-reality.” Set in the Bay Area a decade after the events of “Rise,” “Dawn” finds a rustic ape village in Muir Woods where the residents communicate via sign language and, sometimes, outright speaking. They’ve watched the lights across the water dim out as the deadly virus unleashed at the end of “Rise” decimated the human species. The apes then discover that some men have survived, and they want something in Marin County. Attempts at accommodation are made, but they aren’t enough to prevent interspecies combat in the collapsing city. The cameras Reeves had hauled into the woods of British Columbia and Louisiana weren’t only of the sensitive motion-capture sort, which can now register the reference-dot-covered live performers against actual backdrops, as opposed to the empty, green-screen environments required just a few years ago. There were also big, heavy, tandem digital cameras to capture images in native 3-D. “We had fiber-optic cable that was never meant to be buried under mud and sludge,” Reeves says. Nor were people meant to act like outdoor critters. “In Vancouver, we were shooting in rain and freezing cold, and outside of New Orleans we were shooting in the rain, and it was stifling hot last summer,” he adds. “You know, our ape performers wear what are, essentially, flannel bodysuits. They were in some of the most humid, hot, crazy conditions, doing some of the most physically challenging stuff you could imagine. “It was not the way you would normally like to shoot a movie,” Reeves says. “But that was also part of what the movie was supposed to be like. It was supposed to be out in the elements. So it added to the reality. But it was brutal.” Rough ground Moving like apes over irregular, sometimes mountainous ground was also a hurdle for the ape actors. Toby Kebbell, who plays the traumatized, human-hating ape Koba who challenges Caesar’s leadership of their 2,000-member colony, did serious damage to an arm on the crutches they used to approximate the animals’ locomotion. As for that temperamental, high-tech equipment, Reeves says that the cameras worked “sometimes.” “When you’ve got motion-capture cameras, they have technical issues,” he says. “The ideal is to give them as clear a view as possible, and when it’s raining or foggy, or there’s all kinds of stuff around, it’s hard to get reliable information. “And when you’re shooting in native 3-D, every camera is two digital cameras, and one side might go down. I can’t tell you how much we were bound by wires, and the equipment is so heavy, our Steadicam operator was only able to do one shot at a time.” With about 85 percent of its action shot live in this manner, “Dawn” projects an incredible sense of naturalism for such an effects-heavy production. But it would be for naught if the apes weren’t as compelling as they are, and that’s where the real painstaking work on the movie came in. The transformations of actors to apes were done by Weta Digital, the New Zealand effects house that turned Serkis into Gollum for company owner Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies. “What people don’t necessarily understand is that Andy’s performance is the heart and soul of Caesar,” Reeves says. “But it would be one thing if they could just attach an ape face to Andy. They can’t; they have to translate what Andy’s done onto the anatomy of an ape. And I’ve gotta tell ya, Andy doesn’t look like an ape. “You’ve got to figure out how to take a shape in Andy’s eyes and put it on Caesar’s eyes. His mouth, which is very expressive, doesn’t fit on Caesar’s mouth; it’s an ape’s muzzle.” Superior effects Weta rebuilt the characters from the ground up from the last film, the director said, redoing the hair simulations. “The effects are so much better than ‘Rise,’ it’s astonishing.” Reeves is set, at the moment, to direct that third modern “Apes” film. The New York-born, Los Angeles-raised filmmaker is a lifelong fan of the series, and like his close friend and sometime partner J.J. Abrams, who is now directing the next “Star Wars” movie, he feels like he’s living a dream come true. “J.J. and I met when we both making 8 mm movies,” says Reeves, who found a role for Keri Russell, the star of his and Abrams’ first hit TV show “Felicity,” in “Dawn.” “We both were such huge fans of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Planet of the Apes.’ If someone had told us then that one day we’d be directing movies in those franchises, I think our heads would’ve exploded.”

Comstock managed to get New York authorities to grant him the powers to both arrest and censor, and he bragged that he sent 4,000 people to jail for helping women understand, and use, birth control. He seemed to take particular pleasure in the fact that 15 of them had committed suicide . Photo One of his targets was Margaret Sanger, a nurse who wrote a sex education column, “What Every Girl Should Know,” for a left-wing New York newspaper, The Call. When Comstock banned her column on venereal disease , the paper ran an empty space with the title: “What Every Girl Should Know: Nothing, by Order of the U.S. Post Office.” Sanger was the first person to publish an evaluation of all the available forms of birth control. As a reward, she got a criminal obscenity charge. She fled to Europe to avoid going to jail, and her husband was imprisoned for passing out one of her pamphlets. In the end, he got 30 days, and Anthony Comstock got a chill during the trial that led to a fatal case of pneumonia . It was the courts that eventually gave women the right to not only have access to birth control, but also information that told them what was available and how to use it. (The first big victory had the memorable name of U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries.) Sanger, meanwhile, helped bring together the wealthy donors and brilliant researchers who would bring forth the first effective oral contraception . Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “There’s gonna be some changes made right here on Nursery Hill,” sang Loretta Lynn . “You’ve set this chicken your last time ’cause now I’ve got the pill.” And we lived happily ever after. Except that over the last 20 years, protests from the social right have made politicians frightened of mentioning birth control and school boards frightened of including it in the curriculum. Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood , remembers getting a pretty thorough grounding in sex and the ways to prevent pregnancy when she was in school — back in the days when the raciest thing you saw on television was Rob and Laura Petrie waking up in twin beds on the opposite side of the room. “Kids growing up today watch ‘ Gossip Girl ’ and all these shows where every teenager is having sex every day — and now we don’t teach sex education in school,” she noted. Even though 100 million women take the pill every day, to the great relief of 100 million or so of their partners, the terror of mentioning birth control is so great that the humongous new health care reform act has managed to avoid bringing it up at all. Advocates are hoping that when the regulations are finally written, they will require health insurance to cover birth control pills like any other drug. But nobody is sure. “If the administration would announce tomorrow that all birth control would be free for every woman in America, I think the health care plan would gain 30 points in popularity overnight,” said Richards.

A proposal to permanently prevent states from taxing access to the Internet is included in a broader bill expected to pass Congress. Extending the tax ban indefinitely would be a key victory for lawmakers who have tried for years to remove the sunset date on the 1998 ban, which has required several extensions. ADVERTISEMENT The Internet tax ban has been added to the conference report for customs and trade enforcement legislation negotiated by the heads of the tax-writing committees in both the House and Senate. It is soon expected to get a vote. The permanent Internet tax ban has been a key focus of Sen. Ron Wyden Ronald (Ron) Lee WydenSenate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks Overnight Health Care — Presented by National Taxpayers Union — Top Dems call for end to Medicaid work rules | Chamber launching ad blitz against Trump drug plan | Google offers help to dispose of opioids Top Dems call for end to Medicaid work rules after 18,000 lose coverage in Arkansas MORE (D-Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee. "I co-wrote the Internet Tax Freedom Act nearly a decade ago to help spur the growth of the digital economy," he said in a statement. "Today online commerce is responsible for hundreds of thousands of jobs. In my view, when you have something that works, that has stood the test of time, you ought to make it permanent." The ban forbids states or local government from taxing the monthly payments that Internet subscribers dole out to companies, such as Comcast, that provide service. The House and Senate overwhelmingly passed their own versions of customs legislation earlier this year. On Wednesday, negotiators announced a deal to merge the two bills and get it to the president's desk. "Congress is expected to soon vote on the conference report and send it to the President’s desk to be signed into law," the House Ways and Means Committee said in a statement. The stand-alone Internet tax ban that is included in that package has received wide support from both parties in past years and is largely non-controversial. The legislation has 50 cosponsors in the Senate and 191 cosponsors in the House. But it has stalled in past years as some members attempted to tie the measure to a more controversial online sales tax bill, which would give states the power to collect a sales tax from businesses that don’t have a physical presence in their boundaries. Tying the two items together faced resistance in the House last year and would have proven harder in the current Congress, now that Republicans control the Senate. A grandfather clause in the original ban allowed states to continue collecting Internet access taxes if their laws were in place before the 1998 law. Seven states are grandfathered into the system and collect more than a half billion off it each year. That grandfather clause will be phased out over the next four years.

Competing for a chance at gold in the Olympics should be incentive enough for athletes to give it their all in Rio. However, Fox Sports reveals just how financially lucrative winning a medal at the events can be. Singapore is by far and away the leader in gold medal bonuses, offering a mammoth $753,000 USD to any athlete who can bring home a gold. Other hefty sums include Indonesia ($383,000 USD), Azerbaijan ($255,000 USD), Kazakhstan ($230,000 USD) and Italy ($185,000 USD). On the other end of the spectrum British athletes do not receive any bonus for winning a gold medal, while the likes of Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States offer incentives ranging from $15,000 USD to $25,000 USD. Other countries offer other rewards such as military exemption (South Korea), free lifetime supply of beer (Germany) and unlimited sausages (Belarus). Check out the full breakdown of prizes below. Singapore - $753,000 USD Indonesia - $383,000 USD Azerbaijan $255,000 USD Kazakhstan $230,000 USD Italy $185,000 USD France $66,000 USD Russia $61,000 USD South Africa $36,000 USD USA $25,000 USD Germany $20,000 USD Canada $15,000 USD Australia $15,000 USD UK, Norway, Sweden, Croatia – No bonuses.

President Obama’s half-brother says he will attend Wednesday night’s presidential debate in Las Vegas as a guest of Republican nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE. “I’m excited to be at the debate. Trump can make America great again,” Malik Obama, the president’s sibling on his father’s side, told the New York Post. The 58-year-old is a U.S. citizen and splits his time between his home country of Kenya and Washington, D.C., where he has lived since 1985. “I look very much forward to meeting and being with Malik,” Trump told the Post. “He gets it far better than his brother.” Trump has also invited the mother of a Benghazi victim to be his guest at the debate. Pat Smith, mother of the late State Department employee Sean Smith, is a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE and blames the Democratic nominee for the death of her son. Clinton was secretary of State during the attacks on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Rates of colon and rectal cancer are rising sharply among young and middle-aged adults in the United States but doctors have yet to pinpoint why, researchers said Tuesday. The report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that Generation X and millennials face anywhere from twice to four times the risk of colon and rectal cancer as their baby boomer counterparts. The study did not uncover a reason for the change. Experts say colon and rectal cancer can be inherited and can also be influenced by the high-fat, low fiber diets that are common in the Western world. “Our finding that colorectal cancer risk for millennials has escalated back to the level of those born in the late 1800s is very sobering,” said lead author Rebecca Siegel, a researcher with the American Cancer Society. Read more

Story highlights Each weekend, parents gather in Shanghai park to find partners for their children Posters list their offspring's vital statistics -- height, age, weight, occupation and income Odds for a successful match, at least for parents with daughters, do not look good Liu Jianle smiles as he spots a potential suitor for his recently divorced niece among a sea of white personal ads pegged to a board. Pencil in hand, he jots down the man's details -- 33 years old, 1.7 meters tall (5 feet 7 inches), 140 pounds, a property owner, divorced but no kids. The only wrinkle is that his salary is $800 a month, not high by Shanghai standards. No matter, says Liu, his niece has a good job. Welcome to Shanghai's marriage market. Each weekend, mothers, fathers and, in Liu's case, concerned uncles, come to a sun-dappled corner of Shanghai's People's Park to find Mister or Miss Right for their children. Some write posters by hand listing their offsprings' vital statistics -- height, age, income, education and their hukou or registered hometown -- and pin them to umbrellas or shopping bags. Others come with a notebook to see what is available. Liu is a veteran. He found his son a wife here and they've been married for more than a year. "She's 1.69 meters tall (5 feet 6 inches) and beautiful like a movie star," he says. "He was happy to get the introduction." With young Chinese told to put education and work before finding love, many struggle to find boyfriends or girlfriends, a source of deep concern for their parents in a society which emphasizes the survival of the family line. Worried family members are joined by professional matchmakers, who try to make a living from the unusual gathering. The city even organizes an "annual love and marriage expo" to help young people find love that attracts 18,000. "A lot of kids who were born after 1980, they don't have siblings. So they grow up in an environment where you don't have the experience to meet with people of the opposite sex," Song Li, the founder of an online dating service, told CNN at the event in May. The market has been around since 2004, says Li, who runs a professional matchmaking service from the park. With almost three times as many women looking for partners than men, it can be difficult to make a successful match. Men can register for free, while she charges a fee of $500 for her female clients. She also has an age limit; men born after 1970 can sign up, but women must be under 33. "There's a shortage of superior men," she says by way of explanation. It's a similar story at Fan Dongfang's booth. He says he matches 20 to 30 people a year and brandishes a clutch of wedding invitations as if to prove it. He also has a glut of women on his books. "There are too many leftover women in Shanghai," he says, using a popular term to describe an educated, single, urban women over the age of 27. "Their standards are too high." While the numbers stack up in favor of Chinese women -- according to the China Statistics Bureau, t here are now 34 million more men than women in China -- this doesn't mean they will pair up easily. Chinese men tend to "marry down" both in terms of age and educational level, observers say . Plus, many of China's unmarried men live in the countryside. Distance is no obstacle to the parents' matchmaking ambitions, nor is their children's consent. One mother displays a handwritten A4-sized poster in a clear plastic wallet seeking a match for her 36-year-old daughter, who works as an accountant in Toronto. The market has an "overseas corner" for parents who have children living abroad. "I can't give you my name because my daughter doesn't know I'm doing this and I don't want her to find out," she says. "I just want her to find someone with a stable job, who is tolerant and open-minded."

Very broadly, I’d like to suggest that technologies up until now have been a means to an end. The printing press enabled you to read both fiction and fact that gave you insight into the real world. A fridge enabled you to keep your food fresh longer. A car or a plane enabled you to travel farther and faster. What concerns me is that the current technologies have been converted from being means to being ends. Instead of complementing or supplementing or enriching life in three dimensions, an alternative life in just two dimensions — stimulating only hearing and vision — seems to have become an end in and of itself. That’s the first difference. The second is the sheer pervasiveness of these technologies over the other technologies. Whilst it’s one thing for someone like my mum, who’s 85 and a widow, to go onto Facebook for the first time — not that she’s done this, but I’d love for her to do it — to actually widen her circle and stimulate her brain, there are stats coming out, for example, that over 50 percent of kids, between 13 and 17, spend 30-plus hours a week recreationally in front of a screen. So what concerns me is not the technology in itself, but the degree to which it has become a lifestyle in and of itself rather than a means to improving your life. Schmemann : Maria, I’ve seen some amazing statistics on the time you spend online, on your tablet, and also on reading books and exercise. You seem to have about 30 hours to your day. Yet you’ve argued that the information diet works like any good diet: You shouldn’t think about denying yourself information, but rather about consuming more of the right stuff and developing healthy habits. Has this worked for you? How do you filter what is good for you? Maria Popova : Well, I don’t claim to have any sort of universal litmus test for what is valuable for culture at large; I can only speak for myself. It’s sort of odd to me that this personal journey of learning that has been my site and my writing has amassed quite a number of people who have tagged along for the ride. And a little caveat to those statistics: A large portion of that time is spent with analog stuff — mostly books, and a lot of them old, out-of-print books. Which brings me to the cyborg question. My concern is really not — to Baroness Greenfield’s point — the degree to which technology is being used, but the way in which we use it. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Web by and large is really well designed to help people find more of what they already know they’re looking for, and really poorly designed to help us discover that which we don’t yet know will interest us and hopefully even change the way we understand the world. One reason for this is the enormous chronology bias in how the Web is organized. When you think about any content management system or blogging platform, which by the way many mainstream media use as their online presence — be it Wordpress or Tumblr, and even Twitter and Facebook timelines — they’re wired for chronology, so that the latest floats to the top, and we infer that this means that the latest is the most meaningful, most relevant, most significant. The older things that could be timeless and timely get buried. So a lot of what I do is to try to resurface these old things. Actually, in thinking about our conversation today, I came across a beautiful 1945 essay that was published in The Atlantic by a man named Vannevar Bush, who was the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. He talks about information overload and all these issues that, by the way, are not at all unique to our time. He envisions a device called the Memex, from “memory” and “index”; he talks about the compression of knowledge, how all of Encyclopedia Britannica can be put in the Memex, and we would use what we would now call metadata and hyperlinks to retrieve different bits of information. His point is that at the end of the day, all of these associative relations between different pieces of information, how they link to one another, are really in the mind of the user of the Memex, and can never be automated. While we can compress the information, that’s not enough, because you need to be able to consult it. That’s something I think about a lot, this tendency to conflate information and knowledge. Ultimately, knowledge is an understanding of how different bits of information fit together. There’s an element of correlation and interpretation. While we can automate the retrieving of knowledge, I don’t think we can ever automate the moral end on making sense of that and making sense of ourselves. Photo Schmemann : Evgeny, in your book, you paint a fairly ominous picture of the Internet as something almost of a Brave New World — a breeding ground, you say, not of activists, but slacktivists — people who think that clicking on a Facebook petition, for example, counts as a political act. Do you think that technology has taken a dangerous turn? Evgeny Morozov : I don’t think that any of the trends I’ve been writing about are the product of some inherent logic of technology, of the Internet itself. To a large extent they are the product of a political economy and various market conditions that these platforms operate in. It just happens that sites like Facebook do want to have you clicking on new headlines and new photos and new news from your friends, in part because the more you click the more they get to learn about you; and the more they get to learn about you the better advertising they can sell. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In that sense, the Internet could be arranged very differently. It doesn’t have to be arranged this way. The combination of public/private funding and platforms we have at the moment makes it more likely that we’ll be clicking rather than, say, reading or getting deeper within one particular link. As for the political aspect, I didn’t mean to paint a picture that is so dark. As a platform, as a combination of various technologies, the Internet does hold huge promise. Even Facebook can be used by activists for smart and strategic action. The question is whether it will displace other forms of activism, and whether people will think they’re campaigning for something very important when they are in fact joining online groups that have very little relevance in the political world — and which their governments are actually very happy with. Many authoritarian governments I document in the book are perfectly O.K. with young people expressing discontent online, so long as it doesn’t spill out into the streets. What I am campaigning against is people who think that somehow social media and Internet platforms can replace that whole process of creating and making and adjusting their strategy. It cannot. We have to be realistic about what these platforms can deliver, and once we are, I think we can use them to our advantage. Schmemann : You have all spoken of the risk of misusing the new technology. Is not such apprehension about new technology as old as technology itself? Popova : I think one of the most human tendencies is to want to have a concrete answer and a quantifiable measure of everything. And when we deal with degrees of abstraction, which is what any new technology in essence compels us to do, it can be very uncomfortable. Not to cite historical materials too much, but it reminds me of another old essay, this by a man named Abraham Flexner in 1939, called “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.” He says, basically, that curiosity is what has driven the most important discoveries of science and inventions of technology. Which is something very different from the notion of practical or useful knowledge, which is what we crave. We want a concrete answer to the question, but at the same time it’s this sort of boundless curiosity that has driven most of the great scientists and inventors. Morozov : It’s true that virtually all new technologies do trigger what sociologists would call moral panics, that there are a lot of people who are concerned with the possible political and social consequences, and that this has been true throughout the ages. So in that sense we are not living through unique or exceptional times. Advertisement Continue reading the main story That said, I don’t think you should take this too far. Surrounded by all of this advanced technology now, we tend to romanticize the past; we tend to say, “Well, a century ago or even 50 years ago, our life was completely technologically unmediated; we didn’t use technology to get things done and we were living in this nice environment where we had to do everything by ourselves.” This is not true. If you trace the history of mankind, our evolution has been mediated by technology, and without technology it’s not really obvious where we would be. So I think we have always been cyborgs in this sense. You know, anyone who wears glasses, in one sense or another, is a cyborg. And anyone who relies on technology in daily life to extend their human capacity is a cyborg as well. So I don’t think that there is anything to be feared from the very category of cyborg. We have always been cyborgs and always will be. The question is, what are some of the areas of our life and of our existence that should not be technologically mediated? Our friendships and our sense of connectedness to other people — perhaps they can be mediated, but they have to be mediated in a very thoughtful and careful manner, because human relations are at stake. Perhaps we do have to be more critical of Facebook, but we have to be very careful not to criticize the whole idea of technological mediation. We only have to set limits on how far this mediation should go, and how exactly it should proceed. Greenfield : I don’t fear the power of the technology and all the wonderful things it can do — these are irrefutable — but more how it is being used by people. The human mind — this is where I do part company with Evgeny — is not one that we could say has always been a cyborg. There is no evidence for this statement. Niels Bohr, the famous physicist, once admonished a student: “You’re not thinking; you’re just being logical.” I think it actually demeans human cognition to reduce it to computational approaches and mechanistic operations. I’m worried about how that mind might be sidetracked, corrupted, underdeveloped — whatever word you want to use — by technology. Photo Human brains are exquisitely evolved to adapt to the environment in which they’re placed. It follows that if the environment is changing in an unprecedented way, then the changes too will be unprecedented. Every hour you spend sitting in front of a screen is an hour not talking to someone, not giving someone a hug, not having the sun on your face. So the fear I have is not with the technology per se, but the way it’s used by the native mind. Morozov : There are many things I could say in response. The choice to view everything through the perspective of the human brain is a normative choice that we could debate. I’m not sure that that’s the right unit of analysis. It in itself has a cultural tendency to reduce everything to neuroscience. Why, for example, should we be thinking about these technologies from the perspective of the user and not of the designer? Advertisement Continue reading the main story Greenfield : The user constitutes the bulk of our society. That’s why. They’re the consumers and they’re the people who... Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Morozov : I know, but, for example, perhaps I want to spend more time thinking about how we should inspire designers to build better technologies. I don’t want to end up with ugly and dysfunctional technologies and shift the responsibility to the user... Greenfield : But Evgeny, the current situation is constituted by the current users... Morozov : ...but it shouldn’t be left up to the individuals to hide from all the ugly designs and dysfunctional links that Facebook and other platforms are throwing at them, right? It’s not just a matter of not visiting certain Web sites. It’s also trying to alert people in Silicon Valley and designers and... Greenfield : Yes, they’ve got minds as well, so I wouldn’t disenfranchise them. Everything starts with the people. It’s about people, and how we’re living together and how we’re using the technology. Popova : To return to the point about cyborgs — and I think both of you touch on something really important here, which is this notion of, what is the human mind supposed to do, or what does it do? The notion of a cyborg is essentially an enhanced human. And I think a large portion of the cyborgism of today is algorithms. So much of the fear is that rather than enhancing human cognition, they’re beginning to displace or replace meaningful human interactions. With Google Street View’s new “neural network” artificial intelligence technology, for example, they’re able to tell whether an object is a house or a number. That’s something that previously a human would have to sort through the data to do. That’s an enormous magnitude of efficiency higher than what we used to have. But the thing to remember is that these are concrete criteria. It’s like a binary decision: Is this a house, is this a number? As soon as it begins to bleed into the abstract — is this a beautiful house, is this a beautiful number? — we can’t trust an algorithm, or even hope that an algorithm would be able to do that. The fear that certain portions of the human mind would be replaced or displaced is very misguided. You guys have been talking a lot about this notion of choice: The future is choice, both for us as individuals and what we choose to engage with, and what careers we take, and whether we want to hire the designers in Silicon Valley to build better algorithms — those are choices — and also at a governmental and state level, where the choice is what kind of research gets funded. Advertisement Continue reading the main story My concern is that many of the biases in the way knowledge and information are organized on the Web are not necessarily in humanity’s best interest. When you think about so-called social curation — algorithms that recommend what to read based on what your friends are reading — there’s an obvious danger. Eli Pariser called it “The Filter Bubble” of information, and it’s not really broadening your horizons. I think the role of whatever we want to call these people, information filters or curators or editors or something else, is to broaden the horizons of the human mind. The algorithmic Web can’t do that, because an algorithm can only work with existing data. It can only tell you what you might like, based on what you have liked. Greenfield : Maria, you mentioned differentiating information from knowledge. Whilst we can easily define information, knowledge is a little bit more elusive. My own definition of knowledge, or true understanding, is seeing one thing in terms of other things. For example, Shakespeare’s “Out, out, brief candle” — you can only really understand that if you see the extinction of a candle in terms of the extinction of life. In order to have knowledge, you need some kind of conceptual framework. You need a means for joining up the dots with the information or the facts that you’ve encountered throughout your life, not someone else’s life. Only when you can embed a fact or a person or an event within an ever wider framework do you understand it more deeply. Speaking of Google, there’s a wonderful quote from Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google: “I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something. And I worry that we’re losing that.” So whilst we shouldn’t be too awed by the power of information, we should never, never confuse it with insight. Popova : I completely agree. This conflation of information and insight is something I constantly worry about. Algorithms can help access information, but the insight we extract from it is really the fabric of our individual, lived human experience. This can never be replaced or automated. Photo Schmemann : Let me relate what you say to my own craft: journalism. We in what is now condescendingly called “the legacy media” live in terror of the Internet, and the sense that it is creating a kind of information anarchy. Our purpose in life has always been to apply what you have called experience, knowledge, judgment and order to what we call news. Now the Internet and Facebook not only have assumed this function, but they create communities of people who share the same prejudice, the same ideology. To me, this may be a greater danger than shifting newspapers to a different platform. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Morozov : If it’s really happening, it is a danger. But I’m not convinced that it’s actually happening. The groups that are hanging out in bubbles — whether it’s the liberals in their bubble or the conservatives in their bubble — tend to venture out into sources that are the exact opposite of their ideological positions. You actually see liberals checking Fox News, if only to know what the conservatives are thinking. And you’re seeing conservatives who venture into liberal sources, just to know what The New York Times is thinking. I think there is a danger in trying to imagine that those platforms — the Internet, television, newspapers — all exist in their own little worlds and don’t overlap. Greenfield : I think a related issue, if you take conventional print and broadcast media compared to the Internet, is speed. When you read a paper or a book, you have time for reflection. You think about it, you put it down to stare at the wall. Now what concerns me is the way people are instantly tweeting. As soon as they’re having some experience, some input, they’re tweeting for fear that they may lose their identity if they don’t make some kind of instant response. This is a concern for me, apart from the obvious want of regulation and slander and unsubstantiated lies that people spread around, that people no longer have the time for reflection. Popova : If I may slightly counter that, I would argue that there’s actually an enormous surge in interest in a sort of time-shifted reading — delayed and immersive reading that leaves room for deeper processing. We’ve seen this with the rise of apps like Instapaper and Read It Later and long-form ventures like The Atavist and Byliner, which are essentially the opposite of the experience of the Web, which is an experience of constant stimulation and flux. These tools allow you to save content and engage with it later in an environment that is controlled, that is ad-free, that is essentially stimulus-free, other than the actual stimulus in front of you. Greenfield : I’ll just add one more thing, and that is the alarming increase in prescriptions for drugs used for attentional disorders in most Western countries over the last decade or two. Of course, it could be doctors are prescribing more liberally or that attentional illnesses are now becoming medicalized in a way they weren’t before. But my own view, especially for the younger brain, is that if you take a brain with the evolutionary mandate, which the human brain has, to adapt to the environment; if you place such a brain in an environment that is fast-paced, loud and sensory-laden, then the brain will adapt to that. Why would it compete with the other, three-dimensional world? And whilst the apps that Maria raises are fine for the more mature person, younger kids could be handling it in a very different way. My concern is that we are heading toward a short attention span and a premium on sensationalism rather than on abstract thought and deeper reflection. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Schmemann : Susan, having described all these dangers you perceive, do you think this is something that we as people or we as governments or we as institutions need to work on? Does this require regulations, or do you think the human spirit will sort it out? Greenfield : My emphasis would be away from regulation, to education. You can regulate ‘til you’re blue in the face; it doesn’t make it any better. I think that, although, I sit in the House of Lords, as you know, and although we had debates on all the various regulations on how we might ensure a more benign and beneficial society, what we really should be doing is thinking proactively about how, for the first time, can we shape an environment that stretches individuals to their true potential. Schmemann : Picking up a bit where Susan was, Evgeny, in your book you talk a lot about the political uses and misuses of the Internet. You talk about cyber-utopianism, Internet-centrism, and you call for cyber-realism. What does that mean? Morozov : For me, Internet-centrism is a very negative term. By that I mean that many of our debates about important issues essentially start revolving around the question of the Internet, and we lose sight of the analytical depths that we need to be plumbing. The problem in our cultural debate in the last decade or so is that a lot of people think the Internet has an answer to the problems that it generates. People use phrases like, “This won’t work on the Internet,” or, “This will break the Internet,” or, “This is not how the Internet works.” I think this is a very dangerous attitude because it tends to oversimplify things. Regulation is great when it comes to protecting our liberties and our freedoms — things like privacy or freedom of expression or hate speech. No one is going to cancel those values just because we’re transitioning online. But when it comes to things like curation, or whether we should have e-readers distributed in schools, this is not something that regulation can handle. This is where we will have to make normative choices and decisions about how we want to live. Popova : I think for the most part I agree with Evgeny. I think much, if not all of it, comes down to how we choose to engage with these technologies. Immanuel Kant had three criteria for defining a human being: One was the technical predisposition for manipulating things. The second was the pragmatic predisposition — to use other human beings and objects to one’s own purposes. I think these two can, to some degree, be automated, and we can use the tools of the so-called digital age to maximize and optimize those. His third criterion was what he called moral predisposition, which is this idea of man treating himself and others according to principles of freedom and justice. I think that is where a lot of fear comes with the Digital Age — we begin to worry that perhaps we’re losing the moral predisposition or that it’s mutating or that it’s becoming outsourced to things outside of ourselves. I don’t actually think this is a reasonable fear, because you can program an algorithm to give you news and information, and to analyze data in ways that are much more efficient than a human could. But I don’t believe you could ever program an algorithm for morality.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is in discussions with Lyft Inc about a possible investment in the ride-hailing company, potentially deepening an existing partnership between the two firms, a person familiar with the talks said on Thursday. An injection of support from one of Silicon Valley’s largest companies could be a boost to Lyft as the No. 2 ride provider battles rival Uber Technologies Inc for market share. It was not immediately clear how large an investment Alphabet might make. Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported there was at least some discussion of a $1 billion deal. Alphabet and Lyft declined to comment. In May, Alphabet’s self-driving car unit Waymo and Lyft announced a partnership to work together on developing self-driving technology; neither offered many details of the agreement. Recently, Lyft has been in an expansion mode, saying in August that it was available in 40 U.S. states covering 94 percent of the country’s population. Lyft raised $600 million in fresh funding in April, mostly from large global investment funds. The round valued the company at $7.5 billion, up from $5.5 billion at Lyft’s previous financing more than a year earlier. Additional investment could further push off discussion of an initial public offering, which Lyft had planned likely for 2018, according to sources close to the company. Lyft previously planned not to raise any more funding prior to its IPO, the sources said. Alphabet since 2013 has been an investor in Uber through its venture capital arm, known as GV. That relationship, though, became more complicated when Alphabet’s Waymo sued Uber this year for alleged theft of trade secrets.

"Let me take you on a short UN safari around the world, beginning and ending in Washington, D.C., to see just how effectively the United Nations spends our tax dollars... In Paris, France, UNESCO's latest campaign is to rewrite Biblical history and to deny any Jewish historical, archaeological or genetic relationship to the land of Israel. Recently, it has been focusing on the old city of Jerusalem, arguing that there is no long-term connection there between Jewish culture and the city. Somalia is a country engaged in a massive civil war between tribal traditionalists and Islamic radicals called Al Shabaab. As is common in civil wars, simple poor people are often left starving. UN food convoys usually start from the Indian Ocean coast and move inland towards combat zones in the interior. As the government does not control these areas, NGOs and UN workers often have to surrender large amounts of this food to the terrorists. A 2014 audit of this food aid suggested that 80 per cent of it was stolen en route. It is estimated that $100 million of food aid was taken by Al Shabaab during this project, thus rewarding the terrorists and contributing to the escalating violence... Then there is the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which works all over the developing world and, strangely, has more than 637 millionaires among its employees. How can this be? Believe it or not, the UNDP had a program in North Korea during the late 1990s. The Wall Street Journal took an interest in it, pointing out that North Korea and the UNDP had violated all the rules that the UNDP sets up for its projects, and suggested that up to US$100 million of UNDP money was siphoned off by the government of the late Kim Jong Il. Now we know where some of the money for those millionaires may come from... Imagine if you gave $1 million a year to a charity that was supposed to feed the homeless and you found that, instead, the staffers of your NGO were using the money to feast at fancy restaurants. That is what the UN is doing, except on a gigantic scale."

March 29, 1990 Announces service from BUR to LAS with six daily roundtrip flights effective with April 16 schedule. Fares will be no higher than $49 and Fun Fares for as low as $24. Southwest will inaugurate its service from BUR to OAK and LAS with a "cash back" offer. Customers flying from BUR to OAK may purchase a one-way ticket for $186--the same unrestricted "walk-up" coach fare charged by the other airlines in the market--and turn that ticket in for $127 in cash at the gate. This is the difference between Southwest's $59 "Anytime Fare" and the other carriers' $186 regular coach fares. For Customers flying from LAS to BUR, they can purchase a one-way ticket for $131, the same unrestricted "walk-up" coach fare charged by the other airlines in the market--and turn that ticket in for $82 in cash at the gate. The $82 is the difference between other airlines' $131 regular coach fare and Southwest's unrestricted and unlimited $49 "Anytime Fare" to BUR.

The plaintiffs take aim at the City of Brampton, arguing the municipality is also liable for loses caused by Dominus. “Brampton introduced those risks to its neighbours,” the statement reads. The plaintiffs allege Dominus failed to replace landscaping destroyed during construction and did not replace soil excavated from the lands with “quality topsoil” as per an easement agreement with Dominus. The plaintiff’s also claim Dominus violated terms of the agreement by accessing their properties after Jan. 31, 2014. In its statement of defence, Dominus denies allegations of trespassing. The developer claims to have been “frustrated in its inability to complete the terms of the agreement by the unreasonable behaviour of the plaintiffs.” In its statement of defence, the company says it had work scheduled to replace landscaping, soil and fencing but the plaintiffs refused it access to complete the work. Dominus also says it made every reasonable effort to limit disruption, including using commercially acceptable methods and equipment. The downtown redevelopment deal has been the focus of controversy in Brampton since the city awarded Dominus the contract in 2011 using a procurement process that had never been used in Canada called “Competitive Dialogue.” Dominus states in its defence that delays in construction were caused by weather and “other events which were beyond” the company’s control.

The Early Morning Gap Hour Blues SteveChernoski Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 19, 2015 Driving the Lovely Skies (Steve Chernoski) Conditioned for many years, I’m now an early riser who doesn’t mind waking up at 5am. In fact, I kind of like it. The world’s still pretty quiet and you feel solidarity with the local news anchors who go on live at five, as long as the coffee is brewing. The current commutes By 6:15am, I’m out of the door on my hour-long commute to North Jersey where I teach in a public middle school. My wife, a high school guidance counselor, also has to leave around the same time, but in an opposite direction toward Philadelphia. We both have to walk into work by 7:20 — 7:30am. We like our jobs, our bosses and feel we’re compensated well. The worst part of our days is the commute, and even then, at least the early AM ride is smooth. But as we sent our first child off to pre-school in January, we realized that these hushed morning hours, particularly from 6–7am, were now the biggest issue in our lives and would continue to be for the next decade. My son reacting to his new “car buddy.” His sister, two days after her birth in the hospital parking lot. The “Gap Hour” (or in our case 45 minutes) means our son will have to be watched daily from 6:15–7:00am, until the local Day Care opens. Even as he progresses to regular elementary school, someone will always need to watch him (and eventually our daughter) for that early morning hour until they are much older, perhaps 7th grade. We luckily found a qualified (and willing) person, but this gap hour has raised our 2015 projected Day Care costs close to $20K. It’s a lot of money, but not enough for one of us to give up a salary and remain home. We looked into hiring a full-time babysitter, but were laughed at when suggesting prices. Sure there’s light at the end of the tunnel when our youngest reaches kindergarten, but we’ll still be paying for Before and After Care even then. It’s not how I wanted to ease my kids into their own morning routines during crucial development years. And this doesn’t just affect educators, but working parents in various professions.

Uncertainty of trans rights under a Donald Trump presidency has spurred Good Samaritans into action. Donald Trump will be sworn into office as president January 20. For many transgender people, the inauguration has become a deadline for legally changing their names and IDs. Good Samaritans — sharing in fears that the Republican will reverse LGBT rights gained in the Obama years or at least make paperwork more difficult — are offering pro bono legal help to trans folks in completing this process. A hashtag on Twitter, #TransLawHelp, which was created by user @dtwps, is filled with professionals offering free advice, services, notarization, and even money to cover fees. My DMs are now open (yikes) for anyone looking for #translawhelp. — Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) November 9, 2016 This is real. We're matching people. We can help you get the money to pay for your passport. Email me. #translawhelp https://t.co/mvr9DLfY9k — Kendra Albert (@KendraSerra) November 10, 2016 #TransLawHelp Contact me if you need a notary in Chicago. We can meet in a location near you. No charge for help with trans name change docs — Punkkitty312 (@PunkKitty312) November 10, 2016 I am a lawyer in MA who can help people with their documents. Please feel free to DM! #TransLawHelp https://t.co/dW12CoF2GB — steph (@steph_dykes) November 9, 2016 The Advocate advises caution in corresponding with unknown parties online. The website TransLawHelp.org has vetted and listed those offering resources in a state-by-state directory. To submit your name to this list, fill out the website's application form. For other comprehensive guides to changing identity documents, consult the National Center for Transgender Equality or Lambda Legal. In addition to offering legal services, allies of transgender people can also donate money to the Trans Lifeline, a support network that has been flooded with hundreds of calls from trans people since Trump's election. The funds will be used to hire more staffers. Trans folks in need of support can call the Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860.

NEW DELHI : While the judiciary can set aside a law which it considers unconstitutional, it must leave governance and law-making to those elected by the voters, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today.He also said that it was not possible to govern and not be accountable."Of late, I am seeing a great propensity of certain courts to take over governance...there is a need to reflect upon this trend. They must hold accountability to their power. Governance is to be given to those elected to govern," he said.Prasad made the remarks while addressing a seminar organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Commission chairman and former Chief Justice of India H L Dattu was present during the event.The minister said the judiciary must set aside any law which is found to be unconstitutional and it must set aside any order which is found to be arbitrary."Judiciary must hold the executive accountable. Judiciary must have the right to set right an errant politician who is abusing his authority. These are the powers of the judiciary," Prasad said.But at the same time, he said there is a need to recognise the fact that "governance must be left to those elected to govern by the people of India."The minister was of the view that legislation must be left to those elected to legislate by the voters."Why I say so? Governance and accountability go hand in hand. You cannot take governance and not be accountable," he said.Parliament, legislature, media and organisations such as the NHRC are platforms which bring in accountability for the political class, he asserted.Prasad said the framers of the Constitution had envisaged separation of power and accountability.

The last part was to stuff the liner in the bag, trim the top edge to match the zipper, and glue it in. Then punch through the leather, the zipper, and the liner and saddle stitch all three together. I have to give props to author Jessyratfink for this Instructable on saddle-stitching. When I decided to try working with leather, that was probably the most important tutorial I found. The finished bag came out pretty well, my wife loves it! I can't wait to use some more of this beautiful material on future projects... and would have been really sad if it was just getting buried in a landfill somewhere. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment if you like! I especially value tips on construction techniques, as I'm still pretty new to this. If you're so inclined, please throw this a vote, its in the Before & After contest. Thanks!

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. In the wake of the unthinkable massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, pro-gun ideologues are once again calling for ordinary citizens to arm themselves as a solution to mass shootings. If only the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School had possessed a M-4 assault rifle she could’ve stopped the killer, they say. This latest twist on a long-running argument isn’t just absurd on its face; there is no evidence to support it. As I reported recently in our in-depth investigation, not one of 62 mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years has been stopped this way. More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to intervene in shooting rampages are rare—and are successful even more rarely. (Two people who tried it in recent years were gravely wounded or killed.) And law enforcement overwhelmingly hates the idea of armed citizens getting involved. Those pesky facts haven’t stopped the “arm America more!” crowd from pressing the argument with alleged examples of successful armed interventions. The problem is, the few examples they keep using—in which they depict plain old folks acting heroically and with definitive results—fall apart under scrutiny. Here are five cases commonly cited and why they don’t work: Appalachian School of Law shooting in Grundy, Virginia Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage at the law school in 2002 to armed “students” who intervened. They conveniently ignore that those students also happened to be current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammunition by the time they got to him. Middle school dance shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania An ambiguous case from 1998, in which the shooter may well have already been done shooting: After killing a teacher and wounding three others, the 14-year-old perpetrator left the dance venue. The owner of the venue followed him outside with a shotgun, confronting and subduing him in a nearby field until police arrived. The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, who himself recently argued for more guns as an answer to gun violence, told me this week that one police source he talked to about this case said that it was “not clear at all” whether the kid had intended to do any further shooting after he’d left the building. High school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi Another case, from 1997, in which the shooting was apparently already over: After killing two and wounding seven inside Pearl High School, the 16-year-old perpetrator left the building and went outside near the parking lot. The assistant principal—who was also a member of the Army Reserve—ran out to his own vehicle, grabbed a handgun he kept there, and then approached the shooter, subduing him at gunpoint until authorities arrived. New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado In 2007 a gunman killed two people and wounded three others before being shot himself; the pro-gun crowd likes to refer to the woman who took him out in the parking lot as a “church member.” Never mind that she was a security officer for the church and a former cop, and that the church had put its security team on high alert earlier that day due to another church shooting nearby. Bar shooting in Winnemucca, Nevada In 2008, a gunman who killed two and wounded two others was taken out by another patron in the bar, who was carrying with a valid permit. But this was no regular Joe with a concealed handgun: The man who intervened, who was not charged after authorities determined he’d committed a justifiable homicide, was a US Marine. And what about cases in which citizens try to use their guns and things go terribly wrong? There are at least two examples of ill-fated attempts that you won’t see mentioned by those arguing for your kid’s teacher to start stashing a loaded Glock in her classroom: Shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington As a rampage unfolded in 2005, a civilian with a concealed-carry permit named Brendan McKown attempted to confront the assailant with his handgun. The assailant gravely wounded McKown, and shot five other people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. A comatose McKown recovered after weeks in the hospital. Courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas In 2005, a civilian named Mark Wilson, who was a firearms instructor, fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47. Such actions in chaotic situations don’t just put the well-intentioned citizen at risk, of course. According to Robert McMenomy, an assistant special agent in charge in the San Francisco division of the FBI, they increase the danger for innocent bystanders. (Exhibit A: the gun-wielding civilian who came really close to shooting an innocent person as the Tucson massacre unfolded.) They also make it more difficult for law enforcement officers to do their jobs. “In a scenario like that,” McMenomy said recently, “they wouldn’t know who was good or who was bad, and it would divert them from the real threat.”

Last August we quoted outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt saying “There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing.” RJMetrics co-founder and CEO Robert J. Moore calls tk. According to Moore, a more honest quote would have been “23 Exabytes of information was recorded and replicated in 2002. We now record and transfer that much information every 7 days.” A lot less impressive a figure, huh? Moore writes that he used Schmidt’s figure in a talk about big data at TEDxPhilly. But when he went looking for a primary source, he discovered that it’s unlikely. Moore believes that the claim that five exabytes of data is created every two days comes from a May 2010 IDC report titled “The Digital Universe Decade – Are You Ready?” The report predicted that 1.2 zettabytes of digital information would be created or replicated in 2010. That’s 1,228.8 exabytes, or about 6.7 exabytes every two days. So actually a bit more than Schmidt’s number. Moore had a harder time tracking down a source for the claim that only five exabytes of data had been created from the dawn of time until 2003. But he did find a 2003 UC Berkley study titled “How Much Information?” The study claims that “Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks.” That figure apparently includes non-digital information, and doesn’t include the rate of replication. But it does suggest that far more than five exabytes of information was produced before 2003. One commenter on Moore’s blog suggests that if the creation of information has been exponential since the dawn of time, then Schmidt’s claim might not be so far off. But Moore counters: You make a totally valid point. The only thing I don’t totally agree with is that the increase in information generation and transfer is exponential since the dawn of the written human record. You said we have “every reason to believe that has been the case,” but the 2003 study estimated 30% annual growth in the number between 1999 and 2002. That puts those four years alone around 3x of the 2002 number he was using. I understand there is steep decay as you go back in time, but I don’t think its unrealistic to think that all recorded history might represent 5x 2002’s number or more, putting Schmidt’s statement 20x off the mark. What exactly was Schmidt saying, and is Moore’s speculation as to Schmidt’s sources correct? We’ve previously cited Google VP Marissa Mayer’s claim that there was five exabytes of data online in 2002 and that number rose to 281 exabytes in 2009. Could it be that Schmidt actually meant five exabytes of data had been put online between the dawn of time and 2003, not that five exabytes were created between the dawn of time and 2003? Looking at the studies Moore cites it’s clear that no one really knows how much information is out there or how quickly it’s actually being produce, but everyone is certain it’s being produced increasingly quickly. Photo credit: nasa1fan/MSFC

Learners who drive unaccompanied are to receive penalty points for the first time, Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe said. Motorists who overtake dangerously or fail to obey traffic lights face tougher penalties as part of a new clamp down. Mr Donohoe said the authorities were targeting particularly dangerous behaviour. “We need to remember that the main purpose of the penalty points system is to concentrate minds and, ultimately, change driver behaviour. “Learners must be accompanied and must display an L plate as a condition of their learner permit, and should remember that as learners they should exercise caution at all times. The L plate is as much a reminder to them as to other road users.” The new points offences include learner permit holders driving unaccompanied or failing to display an L plate, and failure by novice drivers to display an N plate. Two points will be due on payment of a fixed charge or four on conviction in court. Among the offences for which the penalty points have increased are dangerous overtaking, failure to stop a vehicle before a stop sign and failure to obey traffic lights. The number of points will be increased for nine offences, and a further 14 will attract points for the first time. Two offences which previously involved a court appearance have now been brought within the fixed charge and points system. The minister added: “Since the penalty points system began, there has been a dramatic fall in the numbers dying needlessly on our roads. However, 2013 showed the first increase in road fatalities for many years, and, unfortunately, we are on course for similar figures in 2014. “The penalty points system played an important role in reducing road fatalities and improving safety from 2002 on. We need to keep up the pressure to reduce road deaths, and I am confident that the measures which I am introducing today will make an important contribution to achieving that goal.”

I poke fun at Final Draft all the time, but I try to be nice and respectful. I’m done. Fuck Final Draft. Here’s what pushed me over the edge: As of 16 February 2012, telephone calls to their support line will cost a cool $25.00 per call. This new premium service replaces the previous per-minute billing systems which proved unpopular with many. -MovieScope Magazine February 17, 2012 I had to read that a few times to wrap my head around it. $25 a phone call? Does it come with a lap dance? Final Draft costs $250 for goodness sake. They can’t field questions over the phone gratis for that kind of money? What really upsets me is that Final Draft doesn’t seem to understand how much better other developers are able to approach customer service than they can. You know how I got involved with Screenplay Markdown for Marked in the first place? I whined to Brett Terpstra on Twitter and he e-mailed me some code. I once had some file corruption in OmniFocus; an Omni Group support ninja e-mailed me a fixed copy of my database. LaCie, the hard drive manufacturer, once traded a series of e-mails with me over a bunk drive. None of those experiences cost me a penny. I know, that kind of support doesn’t scale, but I have trouble believing that Final Draft has that many paying customers (with valid serial numbers) who would call in for support. What does $250 buy you, anyway? It’s time to kill Final Draft. If you can, don’t use it. Try Fountain with Marked and the forthcoming Highland, or Scrivener. Or Celtx. Or Trelby. Or anything. Get FDX Reader instead of Final Draft Reader on the iPad. Send a clear message to these idiots that there are alternatives from developers that actually respect users out there.

Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Does the volume of crap raining down on us ever let up anymore? Here’s the latest from the Washington Post: Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race. ….One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he has no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration. Sessions has said repeatedly that he never discussed campaign-related issues with Russian officials and that it was only in his capacity as a U.S. senator that he met with Kislyak. ….Officials emphasized that the information contradicting Sessions comes from U.S. intelligence on Kislyak’s communications with the Kremlin, and acknowledged that the Russian ambassador could have mischaracterized or exaggerated the nature of his interactions. Where is this stuff coming from? If it’s coming from the intelligence community, color me disturbed. I don’t like the idea that the CIA and NSA are basically at war with the Trump administration. But if, instead, it’s coming from folks inside the White House, I’m astonished that anyone there would be interested in bringing down a hammer this colossal on Sessions. Do they want him to resign that badly? Or is it coming from former Obama officials who are just now getting around to leaking it? Is there a single person in the Trump administration with any better morals than your average Mafia hood? POSTSCRIPT: Here’s another thought. In his interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, Trump didn’t just gripe about Sessions recusing himself. He also remarked—without being asked—that Sessions had provided some “bad answers” to the Senate during his confirmation hearings. That struck me as an odd thing to say. Is it possible that Trump (a) knew about this intel, (b) knew it was going to get leaked soon, and (c) was deliberately distancing himself from Sessions before it happened?

There is clearly a problem with policing in America. News of dead innocent Americans at the hands of the police pours in daily. Many people feel a sense of fear – not safety – when they pass a police officer on the street. Am I violating some absurdly specific law? Have I done anything to warrant his attention? It hasn’t always been this way. What happened? To understand both what’s wrong with law enforcement today and how to fix it, we need to examine the history and evolution of police forces in the United States. Everything in what follows is from an interesting article written by police historian Gary Potter of Eastern Kentucky University, who has also written eight books on crime. Potter’s brief history demonstrates that policing followed the same trajectory in American history as other sectors such as education, banking, transportation, zoning, and industrial planning generally. What had in the 19th century been generally provided informally, privately, and spontaneously became by the turn of the century and after formalized, official, publicly provided, and planned. The Night Watchman Before the establishment of the first municipal police department in 1838, law enforcement was a laissez faire enterprise in America. It began with night watchmen. These men would be posted at various locations around any given city to stop any crime they may see taking place. These men were supervised by a constable, who organized their activities. However, this was not a very effective system. Although the night watch position was supposed to be voluntary, it was often forced upon miscreants as a kind of communal punishment. Besides this, night watchmen were often inebriated while on duty. As Potter writes, “Augmenting the watch system was a system of constables, official law enforcement officers, usually paid by the fee system for warrants they served. Constables had a variety of non-law enforcement functions to perform as well, including serving as land surveyors and verifying the accuracy of weights and measures.” Law enforcement officers were paid by the fees from the warrants they served. This creates an important incentive system: law enforcement officers are incentivized to catch criminals because this is the source of their paycheck. However, they did not have the authority to simply apprehend anyone they may think is committing a crime. They could only arrest someone who had an active warrant out for his arrest, which had to be procured from a judge. This means that this system of law enforcement was highly reactionary: officers only became involved after the crime had been committed. A citizen who had been wronged would have to procure enough evidence to show a constable that he or she has been robbed, beaten, etc. The constable then had to take this sufficient evidence before a judge in order to obtain the arrest warrant. This means that a person could only be arrested for committing a crime that had a victim. And a person could be detained only after the crime had already occurred. This ensures that everyone is always innocent until proven guilty, and that the principles of self-ownership and personal liberty are well protected from the enforcement arm of the state. Policing Changes in the Late 19th Century However, this all changed in 1838, when Boston became the first city in America to establish a full-time police force. By the 1880s, all major American cities had municipal police forces. Potter explains what these departments had in common: “These "modern police" organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).” Law enforcement in the South did not arise from any sort of honorable “desire to protect the populace.” Potter explains: “The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the Slave Patrol. The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing Jim Crow segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.” These facts raise the question: why 1838? Why were the mid-1800s a breeding-ground for the creation of municipal police forces? Although a massive crime wave would seem to be a logical explanation, this is not the case. There was no pandemic threat of overwhelming crime. So, why did police departments all spring up around the same time? Potter’s answer displays the authoritarian roots of the modern police state: “More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to ‘disorder.’ What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for-profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the "collective good" (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state.” Thus the conclusion: modern police forces are a result of extremely effective crony capitalism and the authoritarian desires of the political elites. They created the modern police force out of a concerted effort to coerce the masses to ascribe to what the political elites of the time believed is the greatest “collective good.” This concept flies in the face of the principles of personal liberty and voluntary cooperation our society was founded upon. Furthermore, what gives the wealthy few the right to assume the dictation of the lives of millions of sovereign individuals? The injustice in the origins of modern police are striking. However, the problems only get worse. Potter expounds upon the latent inequality at work in the early days of police work: Defining social control as crime control was accomplished by raising the specter of the ‘dangerous classes.’ The suggestion was that public drunkenness, crime, hooliganism, political protests and worker "riots" were the products of a biologically inferior, morally intemperate, unskilled and uneducated underclass. The consumption of alcohol was widely seen as the major cause of crime and public disorder. This isolation of the "dangerous classes" as the embodiment of the crime problem created a focus in crime control that persists to today: the idea that policing should be directed toward "bad" groups (see eugenics), rather than actual criminal behavior that threatened life and property. To Surveil and Control In addition, the creation of the modern police force in the United States also immutably altered the definition of the police function. Policing had always been a reactive enterprise, occurring only in response to a specific criminal act. Centralized and bureaucratic police departments, focusing on the alleged crime-producing qualities of the "dangerous classes" began to emphasize preventative crime control. The presence of police, authorized to use force, could stop crime before it started by subjecting everyone to surveillance and observation. The concept of the police patrol as a preventative control mechanism routinized the insertion of police into the normal daily events of everyone's life, a previously unknown and highly feared concept in both England and the United States. As Potter makes clear, modern policing methods were born out of rampant racism and a desire to suppress American citizens' constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceably assemble. I need not expound upon the plethora of gross injustices intrinsic to this immoral system of law enforcement. The police were created as a brutal enforcement tool of the political elite. Can you imagine the horror Thomas Jefferson or John Adams would view this revelation with? Despite its foundational racism, this form of policing still persists in America today. There have been many attempts at reform, but few have had any lasting impact. Potter explains these reform attempts in great detail, but for brevity’s sake I will leave them with him. Potter does, however, point out an important fact: the overwhelming body of scholarly literature finds that the increasing police, surveillance of the population, heightened arrests, and so on, have virtually no impact on crime. More Police, More Problems Now, let’s fast forward to today: what kind of impact do the police still have on our society? SWAT teams conduct approximately 80,000 no-knock raids per year. Even though America only consists of 5% of the world population, we have almost 25% of the world’s prison population. We have 725 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, which is the highest in the world. The world average is 145 per 100,000 citizens. Nearly 2.2 million Americans are behind bars. The racial disparities within our system are even more appalling. Together, African Americans and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites. Civil forfeiture laws allow police officers to take all of your physical belongings under any “reasonable suspicion” of any criminal activity. You then have to sue the police and prove your innocence to get your belongings back. You will be lucky to receive 75% of everything they took from you, if you are able to win the lawsuit. Clearly, a massive change is needed in the way we, as a culture, enforce property rights and punish aggressors. Only through a proper understanding of the history of policing institutions can we suggest meaningful and ethical remedies to the sickness that currently plagues criminal justice in the US.

Diary of a German soldier who participated in the first chlorine gas attack Enlarge Credit Finally, we decided to release the gas. The weatherman was right. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining. Where there was grass, it was blazing green. We should have been going on a picnic, not doing what we were going to do. … We sent the [German] infantry back and opened the [gas] valves with the strings. About supper time, the gas started toward the French; everything was stone quiet. We all wondered what was going to happen. As this great cloud of green grey gas was forming in front of us, we suddenly heard the French yelling. In less than a minute they started with the most rifle and machine gun fire that I had ever heard. Every field artillery gun, every machine gun, every rifle that the French had, must have been firing. I had never heard such a noise. The hail of bullets going over our heads was unbelievable, but it was not stopping the gas. The wind kept moving the gas towards the French lines. We heard the cows bawling, and the horses screaming. The French kept on shooting. They couldn’t possibly see what they were shooting at. In about 15 minutes the gun fire started to quit. After a half hour, only occasional shots. Then everything was quiet again. In a while it had cleared and we walked past the empty gas bottles. What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive. All of the animals had come out of their holes to die. Dead rabbits, moles, and rats and mice were everywhere. The smell of the gas was still in the air. It hung on the few bushes which were left. When we got to the French lines the trenches were empty but in a half mile the bodies of French soldiers were everywhere. It was unbelievable. Then we saw there were some English. You could see where men had clawed at their faces, and throats, trying to get breath. Some had shot themselves. The horses, still in the stables, cows, chickens, everything, all were dead. Everything, even the insects were dead. — Willi Siebert, a German soldier who witnessed the first chlorine gas attack, wrote this account of the event for his son in English. Courtesy of In Flanders Fields Museum,Ypres, Belgium. Diary of a Canadian Soldier, who witnessed the first chlorine gas attack Enlarge Credit The French troops “saw none of this installation of premeditated murder. Looking across to the German trenches at about five in the afternoon, they saw a series of sharp puffs of white smoke and then trundling along with the wind came the queer greenish-yellow fog that seemed strangely out of place in the bright atmosphere of that clear April day. It reached the parapet, paused, gathered itself like a wave and ponderously lapped over into the trenches. “Then passive curiosity turned to active torment – a burning sensation in the head, red-hot needles in the lungs, the throat seized as by a strangler. Many fell and died on the spot. The others, gasping, stumbling with faces contorted, hands wildly gesticulating, and uttering hoarse cries of pain, fled madly through the villages and farms and through Ypres itself, carrying panic to the remnants of the civilian population and filling the roads with fugitives of both sexes and all ages.” — A.T. Hunter, Canadian Soldier, who witnessed the first chlorine gas attack. Excerpt from “Canada in the Great World War” (1919), The Second Battle of Ypres.

Communist Party officials cited President Trump’s recent travel ban as an example of how to prevent “religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture.” Officials from China's ruling Communist Party warned citizens the rising influence of Islamic extremism in China would result in the country losing its traditional identity. Addressing a group of Chinese politicians at a regional meeting, Ningxia Communist Party secretary Li Jianguo pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent travel ban as an example of a way to prevent “religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture.” "What the Islamic State and extremists push is jihad, terror, violence. This is why we see Trump targeting Muslims in a travel ban," Li reportedly said in reference to Trump’s executive order barring citizens from six Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. on national security grounds. "It doesn't matter whether the anti-Muslim policy is in the interests of the U.S. or it promotes stability; it's about preventing religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture." Read: Is China Going To War With ISIS? Philippines President Duterte Asks Beijing For Military Aid To Combat Islamic State Because the "international anti-terror situation" was destabilizing China, a "people's war" by Chinese citizens is needed to safeguard the country's national identity, Shaerheti Ahan, a top party official in the predominantly Muslim Xingjian region, told a group of political leaders in Beijing Sunday. Municipal lawmakers in the western Xinjiang region, which is home to China's minority Uighur Muslim community, implemented greater surveillance measures and police patrols after a number of attacks, which Beijing blamed on Uighur separatist fighters linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State, killed hundreds of Chinese citizens. The Islamic State released a video in February allegedly showing Uighur fighters training alongside Islamic State militants in Iraq. In the video, the terrorists threatened to launch attacks on China. A number of high-profile anti-terror rallies have been conducted by law enforcement officials in Xinjiang to demonstrate China's military capability to Islamic militants. These demonstrations, which often featured police and armored vehicles parading through the regional capital, were intended to “declare war against terrorists, to showcase the party and the government’s resolve to fight terror, resolve to preserve public safety and [China’s] mighty combat strength,” Ahan told government officials gathered in Beijing. The Chinese federal government allegedly has tried to stop Uighurs from practicing Islam through a law preventing anyone under the age of 18 from entering a mosque, Alim Seytoff, president of the Uyghur American Association, told Al Jazeera in October 2012. The roughly 20 Muslims living in China make up 1.5 percent of its entire population. Related Articles

Goals Team 1st 2nd 3rd Final Team 1st 2nd 3rd Final Penn State 2 2 2 6 Wisconsin 0 2 1 3 Game Comparison Team Shots Saves PP Pen-Min Faceoff Blocks Team Shots Saves PP Pen-Min Faceoff Blocks Penn State 31 30 1-3 6-12 35 24 Wisconsin 33 25 2-4 5-10 42 17 As Penn State (17-6-2) went through its five-game winless streak, Guy Gadowsky routinely noted that the team often sought the “home-run play” and has even forfeited defensive play to create offensive chances. The play in Madison during the first game of a critical conference road series was not lopsided to the offensive side. The Lions played a complete game on the way to breaking their mid-season slump. With the win, Penn State moves back up to the No. 7 spot in the PairWise Rankings. Although Gadowsky recognized the problem during the lull and worked in practice to improve it, in-game scenarios continued to expose the flaws in the Nittany Lions’ game. Earlier in the week in his weekly press conference, Gadowsky commented that the Lions needed strong leadership now more than ever. Fittingly, it was the player who set a program record for games played the moment he stepped on the ice, David Goodwin, who played hero for the Lions. He is also the program’s leading all-time scorer and current nominee for the national Hockey Humanitarian Award. While he entered the night nearing a point-per-game pace for his career, Goodwin was stuck at four goals through 24 games, a pace that would set a career-low in goals, his career low of seven came in his freshman season, after posting 26 over the past two seasons. Fortunately for the Lions, Goodwin seemed to be saving his goals for when his team needed them most. The senior captain notched a pair of timely goals as the Lions defeated Wisconsin 6-3 Friday night in Madison. Goodwin opened the scoring for the Lions on the power play. Stationed in his usual position at the top of the right faceoff circle, Goodwin fired a wrist shot that rose over Jack Berry and found the top corner of the net. A few minutes later, Brandon Biro doubled the Lions’ lead. After dogged work by Nikita Pavlychev below the goal line, he sent a pass to a wide open Biro, who buried a one timer past Berry. The Lions held onto that lead through the remainder of the first and into the second. Just a few minutes into the middle frame, the Lions were met with some adversity. A nifty passing play by the Badgers set up Seamus Malone alone in the slot. The sophomore forward out-waited Peyton Jones before firing a shot over his blocker. A half-minute later, Erik Autio gave the Badgers a chance to build on their momentum by taking a hooking penalty. Early in the power play, leading scorer Luke Kunin took a back-door pass from Cameron Hughes, burying the puck past a helpless Jones. While the past five games have revealed a panic in the Lions’ game when faced with this kind of adversity, this time they made sure to stay focused and regroup. Just 50 seconds after Kunin’s goal, one Penn State player finally emerged from his longest scoring slump of the season, which just happened to coincide with the Lions’ five-game winless streak. After taking a pass from Goodwin, Denis Smirnov broke in on a short breakaway. Berry stopped the initial shot, but could not close his legs quick enough to stop the rebound, as Smirnov tucked the puck through the five hole for his first point since Jan. 14 against Michigan State. Later in the period, the Lions used a set play on a faceoff to double their lead once again. As Nate Sucese won the faceoff, Goodwin jumped on the loose puck and quickly fired a shot on goal. The wrister beat a startled Berry over the glove, giving Goodwin his second of the game. Knowing the dangers of a two-goal lead from earlier in the game, the Lions capitalized on a shorthanded chance early in the third period. Simply killing time by maintaining control of the puck, Sucese turned a strong penalty killing effort into a marvelous set up for Trevor Hamilton, who beat Berry to give the Lions a three-goal lead. The Badgers benefited from a power play with under five minutes to play, as Jake Linhart blasted a point shot past Jones to cut the lead back to two. With the Badgers forced to pull their goalie for the extra attacker, Zach Saar fired the puck from his own end of the ice, hitting the empty net dead center for the dagger. The teams will play game two of the series on Saturday at 8 p.m. Here are some of the highlights of the game.

Today Milo will speak at Texas Tech in Lubbock, TX in a discussion entitled, “Why Do Lesbians Fake So Many Hate Crime Hoaxes?” The talk begins at 8:00 PM EST (7 PM CST) at the Matador Room on 15th Street & Akron Avenue, Boston Ave. The expected crowd is around 200 people. If you live near Texas Tech and want to attend, you can acquire tickets for the event by visiting this link. This is the fist stage of the second leg of Milo’s “Dangerous Faggot” tour around America’s college campuses. Past events brought numerous bouts of chaos, including the infamous red paint debacle at Rutgers University, the stage storming at DePaul University, the Trigglypuff temper tantrum at UMass, and many more. Now equipped with a fabulous new tour bus, Milo is set to trigger even more campus snowflakes. You can watch the event via livestream below.

Clayton Kershaw has pitched pretty well this year, or so they say. In this case, "they" are decidedly correct: He ranks third in baseball in WAR (and second in RA9-WAR) despite missing a month with a back injury. Fawning over his stats, I noticed a few things that stood out about 2014. 1. He no longer predicates his success on beating his peripherals. Entering his age-26 season, Clayton Kershaw had few, if any, doubters. He had won two of the past three NL Cy Youngs, and had led the majors in ERA in each of the last three years — a distinction that only a few other glorious names hold. His 2013 campaign was especially sublime, as he posted a sub-2 ERA, which hadn't happened in a while. Most people would easily dub him the best starter in baseball. At Beyond the Box Score, we aren't most people. We strive to look at baseball through an analytic, objective perspective. We dig deeper, to see who really did well. And here's the thing: While Kershaw undeniably pitched phenomenally over those three years, he wasn't the best starter in baseball, because of two elements: park factors and peripherals. Kershaw plays for the Dodgers, who play half their games in Dodger Stadium, which has a deleterious effect on hitters. In 2011, 2012, and 2013 — his aforementioned three-year run of superiority — it was the fifth, seventh, and sixth-best park for pitchers, respectively. Hence, while he led the majors in ERA in each of those seasons, he came in at fifth in ERA- in 2011 and third in 2012; he still beat out the competition in 2013, but by a closer margin. But why should we look at ERA? It's a new era (no pun intended), and we use better, more advanced stats to evaluate players. Did FIP and xFIP feel as fondly about Kershaw? Not particularly: In 2011, he ranked 2nd in FIP-, and 4th in xFIP-; in 2012, he ranked 7th in FIP-, and 12th in xFIP-; and in 2013, he ranked 3rd in FIP-, and 8th in xFIP-*. Obviously, most pitchers would kill to have these spots, but the point remains: At no point was Kershaw the best pitcher in the show. *It's worth noting that most elite pitchers will outperform their peripherals. However, Kershaw did so to a greater extent than his peers, which is why I used rankings among qualifiers. Why does any of this matter? It renders Kershaw's accomplishments in 2014 all the more impressive. Once again, he owns the best park-adjusted ERA in the world...as well as the best park-adjusted FIP...and the best park-adjusted xFIP. For the first time in his career, he has drawn his quality entirely from talent, with luck's role minimal (if existent). 2. He has succeeded in many categories, to historic extents. So why did Kershaw's advanced stats lag behind (relatively speaking) in years past? He did fan a lot of batters, but he was never the absolute best at it. In 2011, 2012, and 2013, he had strikeout rates of 27.2%, 25.4%, and 25.6%, respectively; those ranked 2nd, 3rd, and 10th, respectively, among qualified starting pitchers. Meanwhile, his control wasn't nearly as big of an asset — in those same years, he had walk rates of 6.1%, 7.0%, and 5.7%, respectively, which ranked 25th, 48th, and 23rd, respectively. In addition, he amassed worm burners at middling levels — he had ground ball rates of 43.2%, 46.9%, and 46.0%, respectively, which ranked 64th, 37th, and 35th, respectively. Now, he's first in strikeout rate (32.2%), fifth in walk rate (3.7%), and eighth in ground ball rate (54.6%). So, yeah. He has, simultaneously, improved his strikeout, walk, and ground ball rates — the three most important variables for a pitcher. I'll cover how he's done that in a second, but for now let's focus on the achievements themselves. Earlier this year, while researching for a post on Dallas Keuchel's hot start, I stumbled across this: Spare tidbit from @triple_r_: Since 2002, Cole Hamels (2011) is the only starter to post K/BB/GB% that were all one standard dev above avg. — Beyond the Box Score (@BtBScore) May 23, 2014 Kershaw's strikeout, walk, and ground ball z-scores for 2014 currently sit at 2.88, -1.61, and 1.44, respectively. Barring a complete meltdown, he should nab this superlative with ease. Let's focus in on the former two numbers briefly, since data for them go back much further than that of grounders. Most high-strikeout pitchers also issue their fair share of free passes, since they must work out of the zone to compile whiffs. Even those who possess good command generally don't rely on it as their asset. In other words, we don't often see a pitcher with lofty K totals and minuscule BB totals. Thus, the fact that Kershaw has struck out batters at a clip 2.88 standard deviations above the qualifier average, and has walked batters at a clip 1.61 standard deviations below the qualifier average, seems somewhat unusual. Kershaw needs 8.2 innings to ensure that he qualifies; he has crossed that threshold in five of his 21 starts so far, so I can probably assume he'll reach it by the end of the season. In that span, however, he'll probably pitch worse, because of that pesky regression to the mean. To account for that, let's lower our parameters to 2 standard deviations for strikeouts, and 1.25 for walks. Aside from Kershaw, how many other pitchers have put up these numbers in a season, since 1920? Only eleven: Year Player z_K% K% z_BB% BB% 2014 Clayton Kershaw 2.88 32.2% -1.61 3.7% 2004 Randy Johnson 2.79 30.1% -1.37 4.6% 2004 Ben Sheets 2.40 28.2% -1.91 3.4% 2002 Pedro Martinez 3.08 30.4% -1.29 5.1% 2002 Curt Schilling 3.24 31.1% -2.29 3.2% 2001 Curt Schilling 2.49 28.7% -1.70 3.8% 2000 Pedro Martinez 3.88 34.8% -1.91 3.9% 1999 Pedro Martinez 4.83 37.5% -1.84 4.4% 1948 Harry Brecheen 2.49 16.0% -1.73 5.3% 1945 Preacher Roe 2.51 15.8% -1.42 4.9% 1936 Dizzy Dean 2.30 15.0% -1.82 4.1% 1929 Dazzy Vance 2.12 12.9% -1.72 4.8% Kershaw's 2014 stacks up with some of the best seasons of some of the best pitchers ever. This shouldn't come as a surprise, of course, but many still don't recognize the breadth of his preeminence. Perhaps they would acknowledge it if they understood how it has happened. 3. His slider has driven much of his success. Whenever I see a pitcher's strikeout and walk numbers fluctuate, I like to utilize Mike Podhorzer's expected strikeout and expected walk formulas to determine if I should take them seriously. In Kershaw's case, the latter equation fully supports his "breakout." Year Kershaw BB% Kershaw xBB% 2011 5.90% 6.7% 2012 7.00% 7.3% 2013 5.70% 5.5% 2014 3.50% 3.1% Although the former equation feels that he's been a bit lucky, it still shows a significant step forward: Year Kershaw K% Kershaw xK% 2011 27.20% 23.8% 2012 25.40% 24.0% 2013 25.60% 24.4% 2014 32.00% 27.6% Looking at the individual variables that comprise these equations, I saw that Kershaw's S/Str% (the percentage of all strikes that are swinging) has spiked in 2014, as has his Str% (the percentage of all pitches that are strikes). So he gets more strikes, leading to a better walk rate, and more whiffs, leading to a better strikeout rate. But how? Pitch usage reveals something interesting: At 30.1%, his slider rate has never been higher; that has come, primarily, at the cost of his four-seam fastball. A peek at the velocities of these pitches makes it clear why he's made that change: His four-seamer speed has stagnated, so he's begun to phase it out; his slider speed has skyrocketed, so he's begun to phase it in. More efficacy has accompanied this uptick: So this explains the strikeouts. As for the walks: He has pounded the zone a bit more so far (52.2% Zone%, compared to 50.9% in the three years prior), but his greater quantity of strikes is largely due to more swings overall. His Swing% now sits at 52.8%, tops in the National League, and a large improvement from his 47.7% figure from 2011 to 2013. Moreover, he has goaded hitters into swinging at pitches both inside (67.3% Z-Swing%) and outside (36.9% O-Swing%) the strike zone. But why would batters offer at a pitch from Kershaw if they know they have a meager 72.9% chance of making contact? Well, let's examine the pitches at which they swing the most: Again, his slider accounts for most of the change here. But why does it deceive hitters so? Its vertical movement might have something to do with that: In case you were wondering, that 4.25-inch break bests all other pitchers (as do so many of Kershaw's stats). His slider's deadly combination of velocity and movement has made it a force to be reckoned with. As you might have guessed, FanGraphs's linear weights have it as the best in the majors (among pitchers who throw it often). But, lest we forget, Kershaw has also collected more grounders this year. No one pitch has done it, either — his slider and four-seamer have seen notable increases. Instead, this seems to have come about as the result of a move downward on his part. Note the pattern in his zone maps: Lower pitches have higher ground ball rates — it's why sinkerballers get so many of them — and Kershaw doesn't break from this rule. Hence, his repertoire as a whole deserve the credit for his recent aversion to the air. Nevertheless, it's clear that his slider has created most of his magisterial 2014. In summation: This man has reached a new echelon of performance — for himself, and for anyone; he has the best slider in the game, and possibly one of the best pitches, period; and he hit Jimmy Kimmel in the face. What's not to love? . . . All data courtesy of FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and Brooks Baseball, as of Monday, August 25th, 2014. Ryan Romano is a featured contributor for Beyond the Box Score. He also writes about the Orioles on Birds Watcher and on Camden Chat that one time. Follow him on Twitter at @triple_r_ if you enjoy angry tweets about Maryland sports.

Just how much money can a scammy iPhone app make in the iOS App Store? You may be surprised. After all, how does $80,000 per month sound to you? The “Mobile protection :Clean & Security VPN” app is estimated to be have earnt its developer $80,000 per month, after tricking users into signing up for an eye-watering $99.99 per week subscription through a careless thumb press. The app, promoted through Apple’s new app store search ads, was spotted by developer Johnny Lin who documented his concerns in a blog post. When first run, the app asks for permission to scan your list of contacts (what possible reason could it want to do that?) before informing you that your iOS device is at risk. Quite why it believes that your iOS device is in peril is a mystery, as the app hasn’t done anything yet. Even more bizarrely, reports Lin, clicking on the “Secure Internet” button pops up a prompt to play a bubble-shooting game! Perhaps wisely Lin declined that offer, but his curiousity was piqued by the subsequent screen that appeared – offering a “free trial” to “instantly use full of smart anti-virus”: How free? Well, you should read the small print before you offer your fingerprint to Touch ID… “You will pay $99.99 for a 7-day subscription” Yes, the “free trial to Full Virus, Malware scanner” is really a shocking 7-day auto-renewing subscription costing $99.99. In short, you could be paying $99.99 per week in order to have all of your internet traffic routed through a complete stranger’s dodgy VPN. And don’t think that no-one would ever be so dumb as to fall for a scam like this. It’s all too easy to offer your fingerprint without reading the small print. In this case, the deal has been promoted as a free trial and you may not notice – until it’s too late – that you could be spending $400 a month for the privilege. Sadly it seems that enough people have been falling for the scam to earn the app’s developer a staggering amount of money. Indeed, Lin reports that “Mobile protection :Clean & Security VPN” managed to make it to the US App Store’s list of top ten grossing productivity apps. Since Lin’s blog post the apps appear to have been removed from the App Store – but one wonders how many other apps have managed to slip through Apple’s vetting process, and have been promoted through the store’s new ads. iOS isn’t perfect, but generally I prefer it to the Android operating system. One of my main issues with Android is that so many owners of Android smartphones have been left in the lurch, unable to update their devices with the latest version of the operating system to protect against the latest security vulnerabilities. Generally, Apple’s customers seem to be much better served in terms of timely fixes and updates. You shouldn’t just measure how well a platform protects you from privacy and security risks, however, by the operating system alone. Probably an even bigger issue are the third-party apps that you run on the device; Have they been coded competently? Are they taking proper care of your sensitive personal information? Are they being updated promptly when security risks are uncovered? And, although Apple is well-known for its policy of strictly vetting apps, it’s clear that neither the iOS App Store or the official Google Play Android App store have a blemish-free record in this regard. In this particular case, Apple needs to do a much better job of removing scams apps and refunding affected users. It should police ads and review apps containing in-app purchases much more closely to avoid scammy behaviour. And, of course, it should be made easier for customers to cancel App Store subscriptions.

A popular mobile-based cab service could be coming to Southwest Florida. The service, called Uber, allows customers to order a vehicle with their smartphone without having to call. One of uber's ads targets a need for drivers in Naples if the service were to expand here. You may have seen the ads on Facebook. The company is also targeting Fort Myers claiming drivers can make up to $45,000 a year. Here's how it works: customers order, pay and tip the driver with an app. They can track if the driver is close and will receive a text message when he or she arrives. Uber drivers use their own vehicles, but the company usually likes drivers to have unmarked, black luxury cars. The company has been controversial in a lot of cities. Cab drivers have been protesting the company saying it's unfair that Uber isn't subject to a lot of the same fees and regulations placed on taxis. Some cities even banned the service because of strict regulations against companies that try competing against regular cabs. Uber hasn't announced any plans to start operating here in Southwest Florida. For now, these ads are simply meant to see how people react to the idea, but Uber already operates in Tampa and Miami and is looking at expanding in Tallahassee and Gainesville too.

× Expand Left: Ford at 3030. Right: The bar on Friday evening, with Dumb And Dumber playing on the TV. Advised by a concerned patron that perhaps he shouldn't be sitting at a booze-filled table in a Junction bar after midnight on a weekday, Mayor Rob Ford dared the woman to drink the triple shot of whisky he'd been reaching for, she says. "And I said, 'Rob, what?' But then I thought, 'Fuck it! If he's giving me a triple whisky shot, this is just too amazing,'" the woman says. "So I drank it - 'cause he dared me to drink it." Ford arrived at 3030 Dundas West after 12 am on Thursday, Feb. 6 (Wednesday night); he left the bar approximately one hour later, according to a person who was serving drinks. When he failed to show up at City Hall on Thursday, his staff said he was taking the day off sick. "The mayor is not feeling well today," his spokesperson told the Sun. Earlier Wednesday evening, Ford participated in the year's first mayoral debate, at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus. That event, which he attended with several staff (including his driver), wrapped up a little past 8:30. It's not clear what the mayor did in the intervening hours or how he got to or from 3030. Ford was "beet-red and sweating" when he showed up, says the woman who later took his whisky dare. "He appeared very red-faced," says the man who was tending bar. (Both spoke on condition of anonymity.) The bar's weekly trivia night had wrapped up around 11, and there were only a small handful of people still hanging about. The woman was incredulous when the mayor appeared. "Can you believe he's here?" she asked a couple sitting nearby. "And nobody really could, because... I would be surprised if he thought he had a lot of supporters there." Ford's associates tried to keep people from taking pictures with him, says the bartender. 3030 is the kind of place that has five vintage pinball machines and 17 (mostly craft) beers on tap. It's played host to Spacing release parties and, on the night after Ford's visit, the provincial NDP's Parkdale-High Park nomination meeting. "So he came in by himself first, and then two younger people came in behind him," the woman says, adding that the group skipped over the front dining room and headed straight to the rear bar area. She says he was "talking about how there's a conspiracy against him," and so cautioned him against putting himself in a potentially compromising situation: "You know, maybe you should have a glass of water or not be hanging out at places where people are coming for you." He bragged about his performance at the UTSC event. "He was like, 'I was at a debate tonight, kicking ass,' and I was looking at him and thinking, 'You're crazy,' because he was beet-red and sweating." She says he did not "look well." He'd come in with two younger people, who immediately joined him at the table. But there was also a "third young man who sat by himself and didn't associate with them until he'd watched the room for a little." Only then did the man go over and sit down next to him. "It was bizarre," says the woman. At one point, the bartender dropped in on Ford's table because a political discussion between the mayor and a customer looked to be "getting heated." But when the bartender offered to intervene, Ford politely declined, saying it was okay for people to have differences of opinion, and engaged in a mutual high-five with the person with whom he'd been arguing. Neither witness saw Ford drink. But the woman, who joined Ford at his table, said he reached for the straight triple whisky before agreeing that it would be unwise for him to have it. "Oh, I guess I shouldn't be drinking this," she says he said. "Maybe you should drink this." She says the mayor dared her, and she took him up on it. He was impressed. The woman left the bar before Ford did ("It was late"), but the bartender recalls waving goodbye to him and his party around "1, 1:15 or so." By Friday afternoon, as word spread of Ford's pre-sick-day night out, journalists began visiting 3030 Dundas. A man who refused to give his name but appeared to be a manager warned reporters against asking any questions and stressed that staff would have nothing to say on the matter. Ford remained silent when asked about the episode by reporters on Friday. From November through mid-January, Mayor Rob Ford repeatedly insisted he had sworn off drinking, before repeatedly being captured behaving to the contrary. Questions have been raised about his state during recent visits to Muzik nightclub, Steak Queen restaurant, and the Foggy Dew pub in Coquitlam, BC. With a file from Ben Spurr. UPDATE #1 (2/12/2014, 12 pm): Following publication of this story, 3030 owner Jameson Kelly got in touch to clearly state that his establishment was not "serving an intoxicated person." He also says that 3030 does not offer triple shots, nor is allowed to under its license.

NZR Chairman, Brent Impey congratulated Dr Palmer on her election as the Maori Representative on the Board, saying her experience on and off the field would be an asset to rugby's future success."I am confident that Farah's understanding of the issues facing rugby gained through roles with the Maori Rugby Board, NZR's Rugby Committee and work for World Rugby, as well as from an exceptional playing career, will be invaluable to the game's future and particularly that of Maori rugby."As well as congratulating Farah on her election, I also want to acknowledge the Provincial Unions for nominating and ultimately electing Farah as their Maori Representative to the Board. While Dr Palmer becomes the first woman elected to NZR's Board in its almost 125 history, she clearly represented the best person for the role and the interests of Maori rugby."Dr Palmer, a senior lecturer in Massey University's School of Management and Director in the university's Maori business and leadership centre said she would build on the work of outgoing Board member, Wayne Peters, in advocating for Maori rugby."It's a great honour and privilege to be elected to an organisation that means so much to so many and plays such a fundamental role in New Zealand society."There are more Maori playing rugby than ever before and an unprecedented number pulling on a black jersey, whether that's with the All Blacks, Black Ferns, Sevens teams or Maori All Blacks."I am grateful to the Provincial Unions for electing me to the position and look forward to building on Wayne's enormous contribution to the game."As the Maori Representative on NZR's Board, Dr Palmer assumes the Chair of the New Zealand Maori Rugby Board (NZMRB). The NZMRB, originally established in 1910, is an affiliated body of NZR.Acting Chairman of the NZMRB, Peter Goldsmith said the appointment of Dr Palmer as Chair of the Maori Rugby Board would ensure a seamless transition of leadership."As a committed member of the Maori Rugby Board over several years, Farah's election to the full NZR Board is great for Maori rugby. She has already worked closely with former Chairman, Wayne Peters and NZR's management team to ensure Maori has a strong voice in the game."On behalf of the Maori Rugby Board, we congratulate Farah and look forward to her leadership in the years ahead."Dr Palmer was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in the 2007 New Year's Honours for services to women's rugby and sport.Earlier this year, the women's provincial championship was renamed the Farah Palmer Cup in recognition of the former Black Fern's contribution to women's rugby."While it's not without its challenges, rugby is in good heart in New Zealand with our national teams excelling on the world stage, record numbers of women playing and increased pathways for Maori to play at the highest level, said Dr Palmer."I'm looking forward to offering a different perspective on the NZR Board and contributing to robust discussion and effective decision-making; ensuring NZR continues to meet the high expectations of not just Maori, but all New Zealanders."Farah Rangikoepa Palmer was born to Bruce Palmer and Judith Palmer (nee King; Waikato [Ngati Mahuta] - descendant of Turanga King from Tahaaroa and Ngati Maniapoto [Ngati Waiora] - Huia Whanau from Piopio).

The Seattle Seahawks took advantage of three Oakland turnovers to hold off the feisty Raiders 30-24 at CenturyLink Field on Sunday. Our takeaways: 1. Marshawn Lynch piled up 143 total yards and two rushing touchdowns as the unquestioned centerpiece of Seattle's offensive game plan. Beast Mode ran with fresh legs and helped offset a Russell Wilson-led passing game that generated just 45 yards at the half. For all the hand-wringing over Seattle's perceived departure from a run-first philosophy, we're much more concerned with their paltry air attack. 2. Wilson's scant numbers -- 17-of-35 passing for 179 yards -- had plenty to do with Oakland's active pass rush. Taking advantage of a Seahawks line missing tackle Russell Okung and center Max Unger, the Raiders repeatedly flushed Wilson out of the pocket and forced the Super Bowl-winning quarterback into a bevy of bubble screens and throws into the flats. His 5.1 yards per attempt were Wilson's second-lowest total all season. 3. Raiders quarterback Derek Carr continues to impress with each start, but the rookie made too many mistakes out of the gate. After throwing a first-quarter pick six to Seahawks pass-rusher Bruce Irvin, Carr ended Oakland's next drive with a Richard Sherman interception that helped Seattle carve out a 17-3 lead they wouldn't lose. 4. After seeing just five snaps against the Browns last week, Raiders cornerback D.J. Hayden was a fixture in Oakland's secondary. It was a rough outing, though, as last year's first-rounder dropped a pair of would-be interceptions while hurting the Raiders with a killer pass interference call that set up Seattle's first touchdown. He also drew a flag for taunting. 5. It wasn't their most impressive triumph, but keep in mind that the Seahawks marched into Sunday minus safety Kam Chancellor, cornerback Byron Maxwell and linebackers Bobby Wagner and Malcolm Smith. Sitting alone in second place in the NFC West behind the surging Cardinals, Seattle has two games left against both Arizona and San Francisco along with one more shot at the Rams. Their season is just getting started. The latest Around The NFL Podcast recaps every Sunday game from an action-packed Week 9. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.

The first X-Men: Apocalypse trailer has already been confirmed to hit with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But ’tis the season for giving, and the folks at 20th Century Fox are feeling generous. So they’re dropping it almost a full week early. You look for it to go up online sometime tomorrow, and you can bet we’ll have it here the moment it drops. And that’s not all. To get you pumped up, they’ve also unveiled a new X-Men: Apocalypse poster, which hints some of the destruction to come. See the X-Men: Apocalypse poster, and get X-Men: Apocalypse trailer details, after the jump. The X-Men: Apocalypse poster arrived on the film’s official Twitter account. It’s a motion poster, which means the red parts glow. As the announcement says, fans should keep an eye on YouTube for the first trailer tomorrow. Director Bryan Singer has previously offered a teensy bit of what to expect in the X-Men: Apocalypse trailer… Finishing up the first teaser. #xmen #xmenapocalypse A photo posted by Bryan Singer (@bryanjaysinger) on Nov 19, 2015 at 1:44pm PST … but if you want an even better idea, maybe check out our footage recap from Comic-Con. We don’t know for sure what the new X-Men: Apocalypse trailer will look like, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see some of that old footage recycled. X-Men: Apocalypse brings back James McAvoy as Professor X, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Evan Peters as Quicksilver, Lucas Till as Havok, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. New characters include Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler, Lana Condor as Jubilee, Ben Hardy as Angel, and Olivia Munn as Psylocke. Fox has X-Men: Apocalypse in theaters May 27, 2016.

April 9, 2011 Box Score Knoxville, Tenn. - South Carolina freshman right-hander Forrest Koumas worked a career-high 7.1 innings and struck out a career-high seven batters and the Gamecocks rallied with two runs in the sixth inning to come from behind and defeat Tennessee 2-1 to sweep a three-game SEC baseball series at Lindsey Nelson Stadium. Carolina is 26-5 and 10-2 in the SEC while the loss drops Tennessee to 19-13 and 2-10 in league play. After yielding a run in the first inning, Koumas settled in and limited the Vols to just three hits on the afternoon and two walks while tallying seven strikeouts. He improves to 4-0 on the year with the win. Sophomore right-hander Matt Price closed the game out with 1.1 scoreless innings with a pair of strikeouts to pick up his 10th save of the season and his third save of the series. Tennessee reliever Carter Watson suffered the loss and is now 5-2 on the year. He allowed two runs on three hits in two innings with two strikeouts and a walk. Tennessee broke ahead 1-0 in the bottom of the first inning. Khayyan Norfork singled to left field and Andrew Toles was hit by a pitch to give the Volunteers a pair of runners. After a sacrifice bunt, Norfork would score on Charley Thurber's RBI ground out to Wingo at second base. Carolina was limited for most the afternoon but broke through in the sixth inning. Robert Beary singled to left field to open the frame, Peter Mooney also singled to left-center and Scott Wingo beat out a bunt for a base hit to load the bases. The Gamecocks would tie it on Jackie Bradley Jr's RBI sacrifice fly to right field. On the play, Robert Beary just beat a throw at the plate by right fielder Charley Thurber. That brought out UT head coach Todd Raleigh, who was ejected in an argument with the home plate umpire. With runners on second and third, Carolina took a 2-1 lead on Christian Walker's RBI single to right field. With a one-run lead, Koumas, John Taylor and Price would lead the way for Carolina to the victory although there was a pair of scoring chances for UT in the eighth and ninth innings. UT threatened in the eighth inning with the bases loaded but Price got out of the jam with a fielder's choice to Wingo at second base. In the ninth inning, Zach Osborne led off with a single and was sacrificed into scoring position. Price settled in though, and struck out Chris Fritts swinging and caught Josh Liles with a called third strike fastball right down the middle to seal a Gamecock win. Wingo was steady with the glove on the afternoon and led Carolina with a 2-for-3 day at the plate. Osborne was 2-for-4 to lead Tennessee. It was a tremendous weekend for the Gamecock pitchers, allowing just one run in 27 innings of work vs. the Volunteers. Left-hander Michael Roth got it started on Thursday with his seventh victory and was followed up by career-long outings by right-handers Colby Holmes and Forrest Koumas. South Carolina will return to action on Tuesday night at The Citadel with first pitch at Joe Riley Park set for 7 p.m. The Gamecocks are back home next weekend hosting a three-game series vs. Vanderbilt.

Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email THE last Clyde-built turbine steamship will return to Scotland next month thanks to Sunday Mail readers and a string of backers. The TS Queen Mary will be towed from Tilbury Docks in Essex to the River Clyde where she was built and launched more than 80 years ago. It will be the first time she has been in Scottish waters since 1985 and will happen ahead of schedule thanks to ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne. Bosses at the ferry firm, who once owned the vessel, made the final donation which made it possible to bring her home. Glasgow charity Friends of TS Queen Mary fought a two-year battle to rescue the ship. They secured more than £300,000 in donations which paid for essential repairs to make her seaworthy again. READ MORE:TS Queen Mary set to return to Scotland Trustee and charity founder Iain Sim said: “It’s been a tremendous effort to raise such a vast amount so quickly. “It wouldn’t have been possible without the fantastic support from prominent businesses like CalMac , the people Scotland and of course the readers of the Sunday Mail.” The charity’s patron, actor Robbie Coltrane, said: “It’ll be absolutely fantastic to have her back where she belongs. “Young people will be able to see just how beautiful boats were in the 1930s and people my age will be able to gaze at her nostalgically.” The Sunday Mail first highlighted the story in 2013 and told how the ship lay rusting in Tilbury Docks. The steamer had been left to decay after being bought by businessman Ranjan Chowdhury in 2011. The Friends of TS Queen Mary bought her at auction last year for £20,000 after the ship was arrested by Forth Ports over non-payment of berthing fees. The Sunday Mail-backed campaign Return of the Queen was launched to bring her back to the Clyde. Forth Ports, V Ships, Ferguson Marine and The RHS Charitable Foundation all helped fund the return of the steamer. The next generation of Clyde ship builders will now help restore her to her original splendour. Iain added: “With an estimated £2million required to fully restore and refurbish her, the hard work will really start in earnest when she returns home. “The trustees have worked hard to ensure apprentices will have a part to play in her restoration.” (Image: DailyRecord) The TS Queen Mary was built by Denny Brothers shipbuilders in Dumbarton and launched in 1933. She started life as a leisure steamer, taking passengers “doon the Watter” from Glasgow to destinations such as Dunoon, Rothesay and Arran. At the outbreak of WWII, TS Queen Mary helped maintain vital passenger and freight service between the mainland and the islands. She was eventually retired in 1977 and spent several years as a floating restaurant. In 2008 she was sold to a private owner but plans to restore her failed and she fell into disrepair. (Image: DailyRecord) Iain added: “We’re determined the people of Scotland get the most out of this national treasure.” Graeme MacFarlan, CalMac’s Head of commercial, said: “The history of TS Queen Mary is very much part of our own heritage and we’re proud to be able to play a small part in bringing her home to the Clyde. “New generations can look forward to marvelling at this grande dame of the golden age of steam.”

Code: available_for = { GER } Code: blocked_for = { GER } Code: roles = { garrison } Code: upgrade_prio = { factor = 2.0 modifier = { factor = 5 OR = { has_tech = basic_medium_tank } } modifier = { factor = 2 has_tech = main_battle_tank } } Code: upgrade_prio = { factor = 2 modifier = { factor = 2 } } Code: production_prio = { factor = 1 modifier = { factor = 1 } } 1. The new 'role' scope;armored_GER = {This can be named anything. It should not even matter if they have the same names across multiple files for different countries. This example will encompass all the target template entries related to this role. If you want several different armored roles, you are free to make multiple entries for armored. Really, it is all up to you.But before we get to the templates themselves, there are a couple of things that need to be set for the role:2. Who is this available for:Doing this means that this role is available only for Germany. Adding any tags will make it available for them as well. If you do something like this:Means that the role is blocked for Germany, and available for everyone else. This field also takes an arbitrary number of tags.If neither of these are set, the role will be available for everyone.3. What actual roles is this entry supposed to fill:This one is important, because it is what the production and deployment AI will be looking at.roles = {armorWhile you CAN use multiple roles, in the typical case it is recommended to stick to only one. The garrison role would have one looking like this:And this would make the AI really want to put them in the garrison order.4. Which existing templates should be included in this role:match_to_count = 0.50Pretty straight forward. There needs to be a way for the AI to guess which template belongs and which does not. Be careful with this one. Make sure you test it to get a limit that works well for your setup.5. How important is this role right now:Setting the base factor to the same for all your roles means that a small random factor will make the AI update different roles each iteration. The modifiers are all multiplied in with the factor given that all the triggers in them are tested as true.And with that, you can paste your existing template entries into the scope. Here are a couple of new features in those scripts:1. The template entry name:light_armor_default_GER = {This used to be vital to be correctly formated. This has no effect anymore, as it is no longer trying to match it to equipment. So name it whatever you want, even the same name within the same role should not matter. You're welcome2. Upgrade priority:This is completely analogous to the role one, except it is only compared to the other templates within the same role, and has not effect on which role is updated, only which template.3. But which template to focus production on:The AI will build the template with the best score for the role it is assigning to a deployment line. This score can be altered with this. You can use triggers in the exact same way as you would the upgrade prio seen higher up.And that is it! The rest is exactly as it used to, only more reliable. Since bugs have been fixed in the match score functionality, you may need to tweak the balance of some numbers, but there is no other new functionality in the system.

Penal reformers say there is an urgent need to determine the nature and scale of sexual abuse in prisons in England and Wales in the wake of estimates that hundreds of inmates are being raped or sexually assaulted every year. The figures come from the commission on sex in prison set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which says that survey evidence from prison inspectors estimate that 1% of prisoners are sexually abused by other inmates or staff. This implies that between 850 and 1,650 prisoners could be victims of sexual attacks every year. Ministry of Justice data shows that the number of officially recorded sexual assaults in prison is now at its highest level since at least 2005, with 170 recorded in 2013 – up from 113 the previous year. However, the real figure is believed to be much higher and the problem has been described by the prisons ombudsman as "a hidden issue in a hidden world". Recent research in the US, where the problem is taken more seriously, shows a high level of under-reporting. The commission, which is made up of former prison governors, academics and health experts, has found there is only very limited research on sexual abuse in jails in England and Wales and that much sexual violence goes under-reported, so the nature and full extent of the problem is not known. The commission was blocked by the justice ministry from interviewing serving prisoners, but ex-inmates told them that the prevailing "hyper-masculine and homophobic" culture on the main wings of most male prisons made it very difficult to report assaults. One former inmate called John told the commission: "People who are sexually assaulted or raped in prison are very unlikely to say anything because they are too scared, have been traumatised and will be bullied and victimised if they do so. Especially in YOIs [young offender institutions] where there are many, many jails that do not have VP [vulnerable prisoner] wings in order to keep vulnerable prisoners safe." The commission was told that some prisoners traded sex for tobacco or other contraband items such as drugs or alcohol. Others used sex to settle transactions or debts with prisoners when they have no other means of paying. Another former inmate, James, wrote in evidence to the commission: "In the past three months I have witnessed a prisoner grooming and coercing at least two prisoners into sex and buying them things in the canteen or knowing there [sic] low on tobacco, bulk buying and then saying to the person who is low on the item if you do me sexual favours then I'll give you some tobacco." Another, William, said coercion existed: "Offers of tobacco in exchange for quick sexual gratification does occur and is sometimes taken up by those in need. Sometimes sexual abuse also occurs." The commission's briefing on the issue says that official investigations into sexual assaults can be slow and the police are not routinely notified about allegations of abuse. Chris Sheffield, commission chair, said: "There is an urgent need to determine the nature and scale of sexual abuse in prisons in England and Wales. The issue is treated seriously in the US, where the government has taken major steps to recognise the problem and prevent abuse. "Despite the limited research available here, what findings we do have suggest there are disturbing parallels between the experiences of prisoners in the US and prisoners in England and Wales." The prisons minister, Andrew Selous, however, insisted that sexual relations between prisoners were not common place: "We do not condone sex in prisons or believe that prisoners in a relationship should share a cell. Reported incidents of sexual assault in prison are rare," he said. "Where an alleged sexual assault is reported or discovered it will be investigated and reported to the police if required. We continue to work hard to understand the reasons for the increase in assaults, including sexual assaults." Sealous added that a comprehensive review of the management of violence, including sexual violence, in prisons was under way and a new approach to investigating such crimes was being developed with the police and crown prosecutors.

Patrick Titus and Sarah Titus are shown at their store, The Comic Book Shop in Brandywine Hundred, on Thursday. Printed comic books still have a strong fan base. (Photo: WILLIAM BRETZGER/THE NEWS JOURNAL) WILMINGTON, Del. — Brent Williams is a hardcore comic book collector. The Wilmington resident will purchase multiple versions of the same book, hunting for issues with variant covers, industry slang for one book with multiple covers. Some of the rarer covers become valuable collectors items. Despite his passion for reading the latest releases from Marvel, DC and other comic publishers, Williams has eschewed the immediacy and convenience of reading his books on a digital device such as a tablet, iPhone or even laptop. Instead, he will make the weekly drive to his local store, The Comic Book Shop in Brandywine Hundred, to add print copies to his already massive collection. "I will always go to the comic book shop until my legs give out," Williams said Thursday, as he was rummaging through back issue bins at the store. "Even after that, I'll find a way to get to a comic shop." Williams' prefers comic books shops over digital downloads because store owners can recommend books he might like, he can discuss the latest developments with other fans and the print issues he purchases have collectors value, something that is lacking in their digital counterparts. "There is a huge benefit to coming to comic book shops," he said. Williams isn't the only comic book fan who prefers the traditional print medium over digital. Although digital has forced publishers of books and newspapers to reduce their print runs, the comic book industry remains largely unaffected by the emerging technology. After six straight years of staggering growth, digital comic sales dropped last year, according to data from ICv2, a website that tracks pop culture business trends. Digital comics sales totaled $70 million in 2012 and jumped to $100 million in 2014, but fell to $90 million last year. During the same period, print sales increased from $805 million in 2012 to $1 billion in 2015. That marks the first time the industry has exceeded $1 billion in print sales. "When digital first came out, I thought it was going to crush us," said Bill Voigt, manager of Comicmania in Milltown. "It was surprising people didn't flock to it." Arizona Dyer and Brent Williams, of Wilmington, peruse comics at The Comic Book Shop in Brandywine Hundred on Thursday. Digital comics sales jumped to $100 million in 2014, but fell to $90 million last year. (Photo: WILLIAM BRETZGER/THE NEWS JOURNAL) Digital comics offer many advantages over print editions of the same book. For example, fans can download an issue instantaneously anytime day or night, they can store all their comics in a small portable device instead of carrying multiple books to the beach or on an airplane, and some publishers offer discounts to readers who download digital copies. But none of that seems to have lured comic book readers away from their local stores. "Digital is actually helping the comic book stores," said Sarah Titus, who owns The Comic Book Shop with husband Patrick. "It has exposed readers to newer content with free first issues, and then those readers come to the bookstore because they want to buy the rest of the series or find something similar." Store owners and readers say customers are willing to sacrifice the ease of digital downloads in favor of the social interaction that occurs at the neighborhood shop. Bill Voigt, manager of Comicmania in Milltown, is shown. Despite technology, printed comic books still have a loyal following among fans. (Photo: Jeff Mordock/THE NEWS JOURNAL) "People don't come to the comic book shop just to buy comics," said Joe Murray, owner of Captain Blue Hen in Newark. "It's like Cheers in here. People come for the experience because they are going to have conversations at the comic shop they are never going to have elsewhere. And we tell you the truth. We will tell you a book is terrible." Another concern for readers is some comic book art doesn't translate to a computer screen. Patrick Titus recalled a recent Batman comic book in which the titular hero was trapped in a maze. Readers of the print copy had to turn their issue sideways and even upside down to follow Batman as he tried to navigate the death trap. He said the same effect could not be replicated digitally. Titus said the best thing retailers can do is embrace the opportunities presented by digital comics and the customers it will bring to stores. "We don't see digital as competition because the industry is better off with it," he said. Follow Jeff Mordock on Twitter: @JeffMordockTNJ Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2cP5tJ0