Datasets:

stas

/

openwebtext-10k

like 19

Cancun, Mexico (CNN) -- Delegates at the United Nations climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico, approved an agreement early Saturday, despite objections from Bolivia and with praise from the United States government. On Saturday, the White House said President Barack Obama congratulated Mexican President Felipe Calderon on the conference's conclusion in a phone call. "Obama congratulated President Calderon for his leadership and Mexico's excellent work chairing the Cancun conference to a successful conclusion," the White House said in a statement, "that... advances the effort to address the challenge of climate change." Bolivia's government, meanwhile, claimed rich nations "bullied and cajoled" other countries into accepting a deal on their terms. Protesting the overrule of its country's vote, Bolivia's Foreign Ministry called the Cancun text "hollow" and ineffective in a written statement. "Its cost will be measured in human lives. History will judge harshly," the statement said, adding that developing nations will face the worst consequences of climate change. The agreement includes plans to create a $100 billion fund to help developing nations deal with global warming and to increase efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation. Mexico's Calderon hailed the deal, the culmination of an marathon overnight session at the end of two weeks of talks. "It begins a new era of cooperation in climate change. They are the first steps in this long and renewed campaign," he said. Christiana Figueres, the UN's chief negotiator at the conference, said the results had "reignited" hope in climate change talks. "Nations have shown they can work together under a common roof, to reach consensus on a common cause. They have shown that consensus in a transparent and inclusive process can create opportunity for all," she said in a statement. But Bolivia said Saturday's agreement did not go far enough. A key sticking point was the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and sets greenhouse gas emissions targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union. "For us, this is not a step forward. It is a step back, because what is being done here is postponing without limit the discussion on the Kyoto Protocol," Bolivian Ambassador Pablo Solon told delegates early Saturday. The agreement does not specify what will happen once the Kyoto Protocol expires, postponing the debate until the next scheduled climate talks in South Africa in 2011. Despite Bolivia's objections, Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, who chaired the summit, said a decision had been reached and swiftly banged her gavel, saying the text had been approved. "It is less than what is needed, but it represents a significant step in the right direction," Calderon told delegates. CNN's Catherine E. Shoichet and Mario Gonzalez contributed to this report.

Detroit (CNN) -- Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to detonate an explosive device in his underwear aboard a flight to Detroit, surprised courtroom officials and spectators on the second day of his trial Wednesday by pleading guilty to all the counts against him. He previously had pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism, and possession of a firearm or destructive device in furtherance of an act of violence. AbdulMutallab acknowledged in a courtroom statement Wednesday that he had previously traveled to Yemen and was "greatly inspired" to participate in such a plot by U.S.-born militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen September 30. U.S. officials say the terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula helped foment the bombing attempt. "I carried with me an explosive device to avenge the killing of innocent Muslims," AbdulMutallab said, adding that the failed plot was in retaliation for "U.S. tyranny and oppression of Muslims." "I am guilty of this by U.S. law, but not in the Koran," he added. "If you laugh at us now, we will laugh to you later." The prosecution made its opening statement Tuesday and had already called its first witness in the case. U.S. District Attorney Barbara McQuade said the case shows the value of civilian courts. "We should not limit ourselves to military tribunals," she said. The case shows "the world that our system of justice works," McQuade added. Sentencing will take place on January 12. AbdulMutallab was a passenger aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 en route from the Netherlands to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 when he attempted the bombing. Jonathan Tukel, chief of the National Security Unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Michigan, laid out details of the flight in his opening statement. Pointing to AbdulMutallab, Tukel said, "His sole reason for being on Flight 253 was to kill all of the passengers and himself. He thought he'd end up in heaven." After taking numerous trips to the bathroom, AbdulMutallab went back to the bathroom about an hour before the plane was to land, "to purify himself to die," Tukel said. AbdulMutallab did not eat or drink on the plane, a fast that was part of his ritual purification, Tukel said. A witness testified that AbdulMutallab was in the bathroom for about 15 to 20 minutes, which seemed long to the passenger, Tukel said. When AbdulMutallab returned to his seat, he pulled a blanket over his head, "pushed the plunger on the bomb and prepared to die," Tukel said. Passengers heard a loud noise, which sounded like a firecracker, Tukel said. AbdulMutallab became enveloped in a fireball which then spread to the wall and carpeting of the plane, yet he remained in his seat "expressionless, completely blank," Tukel said. Four passengers helped subdue him and tried to put out the fire, Tukel said, and AbdulMutallab was escorted up to the first-class section of the plane. Georgia resident Dimitrios Bessis, a passenger aboard that 2009 flight who was scheduled to testify Wednesday, said he was among the passengers who put out the fire. Bessis, who used his hat to stamp out the flame, said he thinks AbdulMutallab is "a very confused person that's misguided." "This nightmare is over for everybody," he added, in reference to the guilty plea. Tukel said that when a flight attendant asked AbdulMutallab what he had in his pockets, he called it "an explosive device." AbdulMutallab was very verbal and spoke with many people, Tukel added, including some on the flight and officials once the flight landed. The prosecution also called its first witness Tuesday, Michael Zantow, who was on the flight one row behind AbdulMutallab. Zantow, a 20-year veteran of the Army, was among those who tried to restrain the defendant. Within a minute of the loud sound on the plane, a passenger said to AbdulMutallab, "Hey man, your pants are on fire!" Zantow testified. The passenger repeated himself two or three times, and AbdulMutallab did not respond, Zantow said.

As news about the health benefits of vegan and vegetarian diets spreads, people are getting more and more creative with how they eat their greens. Anyone who’s dedicated to plant-life knows it’s not easy. Finding a good veg-friendly restaurant is a struggle, and homemade meals can be bland and unsatisfying, unless you’re a chef. Sure, you can jump on the meal-kit bandwagon, but what’s the likeliness that they’ll cater to your tastes, literally? Well, we just found out that it’s likelier than you might think. In an effort to maintain a balanced meat-free plant-based diet and squeeze all the nutritious juice out of those fruits and veggies, we’ve dug up highly regarded vegetarian and vegan friendly meal delivery services and tried them out. Here are our 10 favorites. 1. Purple Carrot A plant-based meal kit company, Purple Carrot delivers fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and simple step-by-step recipes to your doorstep to be turned into healthy, plant-based meals at home. Why? Because eating plant-based meals “has a positive impact on people’s health, the environment and animal welfare.” Purple Carrot encourages people to eat consciously while not completely giving up meat, fish and dairy, and become a “balanceatarian”—someone who consciously integrates plant-based eating into their life while not completely giving up meat, fish and dairy, according to the brand. Each week their chefs create new, seriously creative plant-based dishes inspired by seasonal flavors. Our favorite was a dairy-free quesadilla with a unique lime enhanced twist on vegan mayo that provided the creaminess you’d want from a sour cream without tasting all … mayo-y. The instructions were easy to follow, and the recipes actually were all under 30 minutes. 2. Sakara When the premade Sakara meals arrive at your door, you’ll feel like the effortlessly beach-chic and fit blonde woman you’ve always wished you were. And it makes sense—that’s kind of the vibe their founders give off. Sakara is an organic, plant-based nutrition plan delivered to your door. They rely on high-quality ingredients and superfoods to create inventive dishes like the celery root and buffalo cauliflower burger. These are the kind of meals you look at and worry how you’ll be full after, where you’re not entirely sure what you’re eating but you’re confident it’s OK. Then, somehow, at the end of the meal, you are totally satisfied. The waters are a little weird, but we dig it. 3. Terra’s Kitchen If you’re looking for more comfort food, Terra’s Kitchen is the way to go. Another recipe-reliant option, Terra’s Kitchen sends pre-prepped high-quality ingredients in a very impressive climate-controlled Vessel. The eco-friendly delivery Vessel is reusable, and Terra’s Kitchen picks it up the next day to reuse up to 100 times on future orders. Protecting your body, and the environment in one bite. Their recipes are based on the “Mediterranean lifestyle.” And we’ve all heard how healthy—and stunning—that is; it reduces inflammation and has proven cardiovascular benefits, according to Terra’s Kitchen. While it’s not exclusively vegetarian or vegan, those diets are taken care of. But it’s also a great option for those who have a meat-eating (even paleo) family member. We highly recommend the Buddha Bowl and Vegan Power Bowl, if only for the super creamy and flavorful veggie-based dressings. The tofu tacos are a satisfying yet healthy substitute for your Taco Bell craving. 4. Veestro Veestro provides incredibly delicious plant-based meals—all organic, no preservatives and non-GMO. They are already cooked and freezer friendly. Just heat when you are ready to eat. Their mantra is: Plants Please. Your taste buds. Your body. Your schedule. Their veggie empanadas are the perfect easy lunch or afternoon snack, and their curry turned this fearful curry-eater into a fan. 5. Chef’d This meal plan marketplace has partnered with healthy havens like Atkins, Runner’s World and Vegetarian Times (our favorite publication, after Paste) to create meals that fit into the health and wellness category. You can subscribe to a plan or order a la carte. And while Chef’d offers tons of meats and some guilty pleasure foods, too, everything is relatively good for you (you, your soul, same thing) and they have a handful of options for us healthy herbivores like pesto zucchini noodles. 6. Urban Remedy If you ever considered doing a cleanse but didn’t think you had it in you or needed a gradual transition, Urban Remedy is the meal plan for you. This colorful company delivers plant-based, organic prepared meals that embody the belief that “food is healing” and encourages consumers to eat ultra-fresh and clean. That might not sound so good, but they make it easy by bringing creative dishes right to your door. And believe it or not, eating clean tastes pretty good. Their better-for-you foods, from a spicy Thai noodle salad to “Blue Magic” juice to almond brownies, all contribute to their ultimate mission of emphasizing freshness and nutrient density. None of the food is processed or stripped of its nutrients. The meal plans provide more than just food; they range from the Kate Upton to the keto to the anti-inflammation to the immune to the Cindy Crawford. The kits consist of juices and food, and while meat is an option, their menu is completely dairy-free (and also gluten-free), making it easy for vegans. 7. Hungry Root If you’re reading this article, you’ve likely seen Hungry Root’s crisp yet colorful ads on Instagram. That might even be why you’re here. Well, you’re in luck, because we’ve test-driven this kit to see if is actually as good as it looks. And the answer is, yes. They take indulgent, comfort foods, and recreate them using vegetables, legumes and nuts. Some of their most impressive dishes include sweet potato pad thai, cheesy butternut squash fries and almond chickpea cookie dough. The dishes are easy to make, requiring no more than 10-15 minutes. But know this: the servings are small, so if you’re on a crazy strict diet, their delicious dishes will really tempt your taste buds. 8. Sun Basket If you want farm to your table, but don’t have the farm, Sun Basket will deliver. Literally and figuratively. Sun Basket works with the country’s best farms, ranchers, and fishermen and is CCOF-certified organic. They offer vegetarian and vegan meal plans, but you’re meat-eating partner can also indulge in some of their paleo, lean and clean, and pescatarian meals. And the award-winning chef created menus are always fresh, so it’s unlikely you’ll have the same exact dish twice. 9. Green Chef The “green” in Green Chef doesn’t mean they’re completely plant-based, but it does mean they make every effort to be eco-friendly and veg-friendly. They have vegan and vegetarian meal plans that include an array of diverse and fun to cook meals that allow you to enjoy everything an unrestricted eater does, like spiced chickpea “meatloaf,” vegan crab cakes and a grilled BBQ tempeh sandwich. 10. Epicured Many people become vegan to cut out dairy and stomach aches. If you’re that person, Epicured will become your new best friend. The only meal delivery service preparing low FODMAP and gluten-free meals is perfect for people living with IBS, Crohn’s, Colitis, Celiac, and gluten sensitivity. In case this is new to you, FODMAP is an acronym for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols. These are short-chain carbohydrates found in many foods and food additives that can be hard for some people to digest. A low FODMAP diet requires cutting down on dairy, wheat and many fruits and vegetables, among other things; basically, it can be really hard. Epicured makes it easy with their seriously delicious low-FODMAP Michelin-star chef created dishes like tacos, sesame ponzu soba noodles, energy bite snacks, and breakfast parfaits. The best part is the that meals are already cooked and just need heating up and preparing.

The poll reveals that the gap between those who want independence and those who don't is widening and if a referendum on Catalan independence took place, the "no" vote would be 50 percent while the "yes" vote would be 42.9 percent. The study was carried out by the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO), Catalonia’s opinion polling office and will be unpleasant reading for pro-independence supporters, including President of the regional government of Catalonia, Artur Mas. The latest poll shows an increase in the percentage of Catalans who would vote “no” to independence; in the previous poll, published in March 2015, the "no" vote was at 48 percent while the "yes" vote was 44.1 percent. The survey also shows voter intentions in the upcoming Catalan regional elections. The pro-independence CiU-ERC would win the most votes, with 13.3 percent, followed by Podemos, the left-wing protest party that is barely more than a year old, with 10.8 percent. Catalonia is home to 7.5 million people and accounts for a fifth of Spain's economy. Proud of their distinct language and culture, many Catalans, including the region's conservative leader, Artur Mas, want to create a new state in Europe in defiance of the Spanish government. But support is continuing to wane; in June three ministers from the junior party in the coalition that runs Catalonia pulled out of the regional government due to disagreements over its push to break away from Spain. And the rise of Podemos, a protest-party that grew out of the Indignados (the Outraged) movement, is also blowing independence plans off course. Barcelona recently voted in its first woman mayor, left-wing candidate Ada Colau who replaced staunchly pro-independent Xavier Trias She ran for office at the head of Barcelona En Comu (Barcelona In Common), an alliance of grassroots groups including members of the left-wing party Podemos. Many pro-independence Catalonians believe Colau will put the breaks on the independence movement.

Photos by Durty Harry Mick Jenkins is not your typical Chicago rapper. Having grown up two blocks away from where the Glo Boyz reside, Mick has a completely different outlook on the world than his neighbors. Mick’s video for “Martyrs” is the best example of that contrast. His imitation of Chicago rap videos isn’t about poking fun at his competitors, but poking everyone’s cerebellum to try to wake them up. We sat down with the 23-year-old emcee to talk about his upcoming project The Water[s], his purpose as an artist, and the moving “Martyrs” video. Mass Appeal: When did you start rapping? Mick Jenkins: During my sophomore year in college at Oakwood University. There was a rap competition called “Who Got Bars” and a couple homies were in it. I always had been a creative writer, my mother was a journalist, and because they were taking rap so serious, I just started taking it more seriously. I really became a student of what it is to rap and make music. That’s what’s gotten me here today. MA: Were you listening to a lot of rap at a young age though? MJ: Well, my father would played a lot of Christian music. I’m a Seventh-day Adventist. He played a lot of Fred Hampton and stuff. My mother played a lot of neo-soul; Jill Scott, Erykah, Prince, and whoever else you could think of. My older cousin got me into a lot of hip hop via Talib, Little Brother— I really like Phonte, Q-Tip, Common. The first album I bought was College Dropout, like a lot of people coming up with me, just because we all the same age and shit. Those were the musical influences I was listening to. I wasn’t into the radio heavy, and that’s continued into today. It’s just… the same shit over and over. MA: You’re from the South, you must’ve listened to Wayne. MJ: I mean, we listened to Wayne heavy. Who didn’t? But the way I think about music now… MA: How do you think about music now? MJ: You’re not going to make it on my iPod if you’re not talking about anything. I understand the culture, and I tolerate the music when it’s around, but how many songs can I hear about the exact same shit? And that’s what they make. Wayne’s making music about the same shit he’s been making music for the past 15 years, and the radio is doing the same thing. I don’t really listen to mainstream music. MA: What constitutes as meaning to you? MJ: A purpose. It doesn’t even have to be my purpose. Just a focus. For example, I feel like Beyoncé wants to be more personal with this album and release it in a way she’s never done before. And that’s because she’s done this seven times already. We’re looking for new ways to do things and be more innovative. I feel like a lot of, at least with [hip hop], isn’t looking for new ways to be innovative. We really just recycling the same formula for these new artists that come out. Migos and, what’s that boy? “Danny Glover”? MA: Young Thug? MJ: Yeah, Young Thug. They could have been interchanged and nobody would’ve known the difference. It’s the same shit over and over. MA: What’s your meaning as an artist? MJ: I want to wake people up to the ways of the music industry and the ways of the world. I feel like there’s very jaded views as to what love is, what being real is, what happiness is. I feel like the world, society in general, people have the the wrong idea about how to achieve these things and what will bring you happiness. I just want to poke people’s brains and be like, ‘Hey, this is definitely a better way than what they’ve been telling you.’ That’s the goal. “Klondike Shit” is a song off Trees & Truths, and it’s blended in to make you want to listen to it, but it’s really talking about the beauty of a woman. There’s real messages in it. It’s challenging what we define as beautiful. MA: Talking about Trees & Truths, what’s the difference between that project and The Water[s]? MJ: The Water[s] has just been taking so much more time. Trees & Truths is the first 14 songs I recorded and we put them out. The Water[s] is choosing from a group of songs. What is really going to make this tape the best? Making sure that sonically they’re all in sync. On Trees & Truths the production is all over the place, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I want a project to be a project. To be more in sync and thought out on the sonic side rather than just on the conceptual side. A lot of the songs on Trees & Truths I felt like I couldn’t perform. I wouldn’t perform them just because I didn’t feel absolutely comfortable performing them. I want people to leave with a certain amount of appreciation for my live performance, and the music needs to cater to that. It’s only so hype someone can get to some chill shit. With The Water[s] there’s definitely a lot more upbeat shit like “Martyrs.” MA: How did the concept for the video “Martyrs” come about? MJ: With “Martyrs” I knew I had to do the house scene, where I imitate the typical Chicago rappers. Just because the statement that I’m actually trying to make in “Martyrs” is that we used to be martyrs. Martyrs is usually associated with people who have died for a good purpose. That’s what we used to be. We were actually being hung, being persecuted just for being black. For different reasons, but we were standing up for ourselves, fighting back. Sometimes that would result in not so pleasurable outcomes. I feel like these days we’re killing ourselves for no reason. A lot of that is fueled by the music. Not to say that it is the inception for it, but in that clip during the “Marytrs” video, that guy, I really should have put this on there, when they asked him what else would you say to the families of the men that you killed he said, “Fuck ’em, fuck ’em, fuck ’em. Even if they celibate. I know the game is crazy, it’s more crazy than it’s ever been. I’m married to that crazy bitch. Call me Kevin Federline.” What more proof do you need that this music influences you? It may not be the reason he did that shit, but he was asked what would he say to the families of the victims he killed and he recited Wayne. That’s not an accident. That shit really effects you and that’s the statement I was trying to say. I knew I wanted to do that that scene. MA: It’s interesting that you decided to imitate the Chicago rap scene being that you’re from there. There seems to be two sides to it; these kids are shining light on what’s happening, or they’re fueling the violence out there. What do you think is happening? MJ: It starts with that drill shit because that’s what’s made this surge of attention come to Chicago. People turn their heads to Chief Keef and drill music, and that in turn had people listening to Chance The Rapper. It’s definitely not nationally realized, but you know. I feel like it starts with that shit, and that does bring light to the situation— just not in the way you would think. People are having the discussion because of Chief Keef. I think three of them aren’t even allowed to perform in Chicago right now because of the violence their shows might incite. But then, on the other side of it, myself and other artists who are my friends– it’s real. We grew up in Chicago two blocks away from where Glo Boys be at. I went to a terrible school. I grew up in the same thing, but I am not the same. We have the same stories we just see it from different angles. Me personally, I want to figure out solutions and think of what we can to do create change. I think Common and Kanye helped with like 20,000 jobs in Chicago with the project that they’re working on. I want to do things like that. MA: How were you able to come out of a situation that was bleak and have a more solution based outlook than other artists? MJ: I couldn’t even say because I don’t know what goes on in those people’s lives. I attribute it to my parents and the way I was raised. I’ve definitely had my fair share of hardships. My parents are divorced. My mother got lupus and I thought she might die. There’s a lot of different things that have happened in my life. But whatever I want I’m going to work at it. That’s just my past. Here is a new track featuring Mick Jenkins and Supa Bwe titled “Treat Me (Caucasian).” Produced by Mulatto Beats and Supa Bwe, the beat is lackluster but the hook provides some excitement. Jenkins saves the track with his bombastic voice and engaging wordplay. “Treat Me (Caucasian)” is off the Hurt Everybody EP set to drop next week.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- General manager Mike Maccagnan, who once considered a career on Wall Street, showed last season that he has the ability to identify undervalued stocks. His trades for Brandon Marshall and Ryan Fitzpatrick cost him only two late-round draft picks, and the payoff was huge. Those moves changed the New York Jets’ season. He might have done it again with Ryan Clady. Because he's an offensive lineman, Clady won't grab as much attention as Marshall and Fitzpatrick, but he will be vital to the Jets' chances in 2016. It's still early, of course, but this has the look of another winning trade. The Jets hope Ryan Clady can return to the Pro Bowl form he displayed during his time in Denver. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images Capitalizing on an unusual left-tackle situation in Denver, Maccagnan bought low and landed a player with a Pro Bowl pedigree. He got Clady on the cheap because of his injury history -- Clady missed last season because of knee surgery -- but the lineman has shown no residual ill effects. He's taking the vast majority of the practice reps, perhaps more than any other starter on the offensive line. This could be a new version of the Marshall trade. The Jets gave up a fifth-round pick, receiving a seventh-rounder and a highly motivated, elite player looking to recapture his previous form. Clady's last three injury-free seasons (2011, 2012 and 2014) all culminated with a Pro Bowl selection. And he believes it can happen again. "I'm feeling really good right now," Clady said. "[The Pro Bowl] is definitely always the goal. My main goal is to stay healthy and win a lot of games." Clady is replacing the popular D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who retired abruptly in April. Ferguson didn't miss a practice in 10 years, much less a game, but his performance slipped last season in the opinion of the organization. Truth be told, the Jets went into the offseason with a succession plan. They made a bid for Kelechi Osemele, but he signed a monster deal with the Oakland Raiders. They continued to explore the free-agent market and draft prospects. Meanwhile, the Jets watched from afar as Clady's situation in Denver deteriorated. The Broncos wanted him to take a massive pay cut and, when he refused, they signed Russell Okung to a below-market contract. Just like that, Clady was looking for a new team. Cold business, the NFL. As they monitored Clady, the Jets floated the idea of a pay cut to Ferguson, who decided he'd rather be an ex-Jet than stick around for a discount. The Clady trade was announced the day after Ferguson retired, but in reality it had been in the works for several days. Essentially, Clady is stepping into the shoes of football's Cal Ripken Jr. If Clady misses a game, he'll hear about Ferguson's ironman streak -- 160 straight games and no plays missed because of injury. Just the other day, Clady and left guard James Carpenter were talking about it after practice, marveling at Ferguson's durability. "Unbelievable," Clady said. Clady always admired Ferguson, ever since Clady's college days at Boise State. In a way, Ferguson inspired him. "Great dude," he said. "When I was a younger guy in college, I started looking at the draft and thinking, 'Yeah, maybe I can make it to the NFL.' He was a high pick, a few years before me. I always looked at his career and always respected him. "When my agent first told me I had the opportunity to come here, I was like, 'What's going on with Brick?' My agent was like, 'I don't know, I think he may retire.' I was happy for him. It was a great career." Clady is similar to Ferguson in that he's quiet and studious, not a "me" guy. Center Nick Mangold raved about Clady's "attention to detail" and work ethic. This is an unusual situation for Mangold, who played with Ferguson for 10 years. It's surreal not seeing No. 60 to his left. "It's been a long time since I had to think about the left-tackle perspective, because I always knew Brick was there," Mangold said. "Carp and I have our own little language and we have to make sure [Ryan] gets that. It's been fun doing that because I haven't done it in 10 years." No one wants to disparage Ferguson, who will be in the Jets' Ring of Honor someday, but Clady is younger, more cost effective and simply better than his esteemed predecessor. The Jets were lucky that he was available and that they could make it happen. Trader Mike has done it again.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The man accused of stealing $81,000 in sapphires from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is an employee in the physics department at John Carroll University, school officials confirmed. Hans T. Wrage, 36, was arrested on Friday at the university on a warrant obtained by Cleveland police, according to a release from Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia. Wrage, a part-time employee, was placed on administrative leave while the university investigates the allegations, said university spokeswoman Tonya Strong-Charles. Jeffrey Dyck, chair of the physics department, said the department learned about the arrest Friday afternoon. Dyck declined to comment on the incident, but said members of the department are in shock. A profile on the university's website says Wrage is a teaching and research support technician with expertise in introductory physics, laboratory development and apparatus designing, building and machining. Wrage smashed a display case in the museum's mineral collection and stole seven sapphires on Dec. 3, police said. Wrage is charged with grand theft, a fourth-degree felony. Information on his upcoming court appearance was not immediately available. Ciaccia did not say whether the sapphires were recovered. Museum spokeswoman Glenda Bogar said the museum was pleased to hear about the arrest, but would not provide other information because of the ongoing investigation. Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said Wrage was a faculty member, but a school spokeswoman said he is a part-time employee. Cleveland.com reporter Karen Farkas contributed to this story.

Cats and pandas are available right meow, for free! Explore infinite worlds and build everything from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles. Play in creative mode with unlimited resources or mine deep into the world in survival mode, crafting weapons and armor to fend off dangerous mobs. Create, explore and survive alone or play with friends on all different devices. EXPAND YOUR GAME: Marketplace - Discover the latest community creations in the marketplace! Get unique maps, skins, and texture packs from your favorite creators. Slash commands - Tweak how the game plays: you can give items away, summon mobs, change the time of day, and more. Add-Ons - Customize your experience even further with free Add-Ons! If you're more tech-inclined, you can modify data-driven behaviors in the game to create new resource packs. Minecraft Realms auto-renewable subscription info: Minecraft now comes with the option to buy Minecraft Realms. Realms is a monthly subscription service that lets you create your own always-online Minecraft world. There are currently two subscription options to choose from depending on how many people you want to invite to play in your realm simultaneously. A realm for you and 2 friends costs 3.99 USD/month (or local equivalent) and a realm for you and 10 friends cost 7.99 USD/month (or local equivalent). A 30-day trial of Minecraft Realms for you and 10 friends is available. Any unused portion of a free trial period will be forfeited when the user purchases a subscription. The payment will be charged to your iTunes account at confirmation of purchase and the subscription automatically renews unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24-hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24-hours prior to the end of the current period, at the subscription price option you have previously selected. Your subscription can be managed by the user and auto-renewal may be turned off by going to the user's Account Settings after purchase. There is also a button in-game that take you to these settings. If you cancel after your subscription has activated, you won't be refunded for the remaining active period of the subscription. Here are links to our privacy policy and terms of use: - Privacy policy: https://account.mojang.com/terms#privacy - Terms of use: https://account.mojang.com/terms

A Halifax veterinarian is using stem cells to treat dogs suffering from arthritis. Eamon Draper, a vet at the Fairview Animal Hospital, said they take stem cells from the dog's fat and inject that into its joints. The procedure takes a few hours and Draper says the improvements can last for years. "What we're looking for is an animal that's more comfortable and moving around more easily," he said. The $1,900 process encourages extra blood flow and repairs damage. David Peyton's 12-year-old black lab Athena was hobbled by arthritis, but the procedure helped her. "She was sore moving. Getting up and out of her bed and taking her out for her walk, she would come back limping and sore," he said. A week after the treatment, he said she is moving easier. He's planning a long walk with her at Point Pleasant Park this weekend. "We wanted to make sure that the last few years of her life were comfortable and pain free and that she can still have a nice quality of life for her senior years," Peyton said. Draper has treated eight dogs so far. It's a new use of the technology. "For us it's very new. The technology in the human field has been around a few years, but it's pretty ground-breaking stuff at this stage," he said. "I think it will become more and more prevalent as time goes, but we have an advantage in the veterinary field that we can push ahead a little bit faster than humans."

The reaction from Angela Merkel's government to the dramatic referendum on Sunday was typically phlegmatic. The first priority, it seemed, was to pour cold water on Greece's hopes of a quick new deal to help the country out. The giddy Sunday-afternoon talk of the since-resigned Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who said a deal could be reached within 24 hours, was swiftly doused in Berlin: "At the moment there is no basis for entering negotiations about a new aid program," the chancellor's spokesman Steffen Seibert said at the government's regular Monday morning press conference. The ball, it appeared, was still very much in Athens' court, where it often seems to be: "It depends very much on what proposals the Greek government puts on the table," Seibert said. Merkel may be stalling ahead of her trip to Paris to confer with her French counterpart and more talks in Brussels on Tuesday. But in fact, the "ball" is very much in Merkel's court too. The fact that the Greek referendum failed to remove the troublesome left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, as she obviously hoped, means that the pressure on her to react has grown measurably. "She has a real problem now," Josef Janning of the European Council on Foreign Relations told DW. "She's not leading with a grand vision, but with this pragmatic step-by-step approach. But that depends a lot on success. When you get to a situation where the problem isn't solved, but is getting more profound, you don't have a longer-term idea you can refer to. Her muddling isn't working in the way it is supposed to." 'What exactly are the Greeks celebrating?' one German paper wondered 'What now, chancellor?' Merkel's problem is that the referendum appears to have tipped the popular mood in Germany even further against Greece. Almost all of Germany's newspapers reacted to the landslide "No" vote with a mixture of anger and bewilderment towards the country. News network N-TV came up with the most succinct headline: "Are you mad?" Even the moderate left-wing daily "Süddeutsche Zeitung" offered no sympathy for the Greek people's decision, writing, "The shrill ideological screaming of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has thrown his country into a triumphant chaos. But what exactly is the majority there celebrating?" The financial daily "Handelsblatt" was equally unforgiving. "The Greeks' 'No' to the reform conditions does not strengthen their negotiating position," it wrote. "No one wants to support a state where the loaned money simply drains away. In reality, only a Grexit will help." And yet, beneath the irritation, there was also a note of impatience towards the German government. The tabloid "Bild" seemed to be demanding action from Merkel on its front page: "What now, chancellor?" Faced with the anger towards Greece, it's difficult to see how the chancellor can now offer Tsipras a new, more conciliatory deal without losing face at home and damaging her famous "Teflon" reputation. But the alternative - allowing Greece to collapse and leave the euro - would perhaps be equally damaging to her reputation as the guardian of the single currency and the continent-wide solidarity it stands for. News magazine "Der Spiegel's" typically provocative new cover - which went to print before the referendum - distilled just how definitive the crisis has become for Merkel: "If the euro fails, Merkel's chancellorship fails," it read, above an image of the chancellor sitting on a pile of Greek ruins in a devastated wasteland. Tsipras, the troublesome leftist who won't go away Merkel's pragmatism rebounds In fact, there is a growing feeling that the Greek crisis may already have damaged Merkel's aura of competence and control. The majority of the German media may be blaming the Greeks more than their chancellor for the disaster, and she may still have excellent approval ratings to fall back on, but many are also saying that Merkel's passive leadership style has contributed to the impasse. "She tried to fix the problem with recipes she had used in German domestic politics: delaying, hiding and allowing things to remain vague," wrote "Der Spiegel" in this week's cover story. "I believe she has underestimated the political-cultural elements of this crisis," Janning said. "She has underestimated the degree to which the narratives and stereotypes have split people so deeply that it's hard to see how they can come back together again." Merkel's decision to allow Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to lead negotiations, even though he has long since clearly lost patience with the Greek government, has also been criticized, but Janning thinks this is unfair. "Schäuble is probably the most committed European of her whole cabinet - he does have those bigger ideas about Europe," he said. "He has a reference point that is further into the future than the chancellor herself does." The problem with the Greek crisis, in other words, is that it doesn't play to Merkel's strengths. "She's been active enough when it comes to upgrading the institutional mechanisms of the eurozone," Janning said. "But what she didn't do, as the leading political actor in Europe, is realize she would have to address the Greek people directly. This is an existential crisis for many people. When there is an earthquake or a flood, you go there, talk to the people, you signal that you're with them, but also make clear that they have to develop their own effort." Merkel, Janning points out, has barely visited Greece once since the crisis began, and never made a public speech there: "That is not good enough in the political environment that we're in."

CHICAGO (AP) — A judge has found a Chicago police detective not guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed woman. Cook County Judge Dennis Porter, in a directed verdict Monday, ruled the state had failed to prove recklessness on the part of 46-year-old Officer Dante Servin in the March 2012 shooting death of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd. Porter also cleared Servin, who was off-duty, of reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct. Boyd died after one of the five bullets from Servin's unregistered Glock handgun pierced the left side of her head. Servin has maintained he fired only because he felt threatened when he confronted a group at a park about the noise they were making. The city settled a lawsuit for $4.5 million with Boyd's family in 2013.

Waitlisted passengers will soon get status messages on their mobile phones if their tickets get confirmed before their train journey. A senior Railway Ministry official said the waitlisted passenger will get a SMS about the status of the ticket on the mobile phone number given at the time of ticket booking before the journey. Currently, one has to either dial the enquiry number 139 or use the Internet to know the status of the waitlisted ticket. Others get to know the status of their tickets only after reaching the respective station. "Once the SMS-based service is operational, passengers will get the updated status of their waitlisted tickets automatically," the official said, adding "only those passengers will get the message whose tickets get confirmed." CRIS, which is the technological arm of Railways, is making the software for the SMS-based service. IRCTC has already launched a system which allows passengers to book tickets using mobile phones. PTI Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.

This game is a good shooter for multiple reasons. One reason is that it is pretty universal in terms of guns for the support, recon, medic, and assault. While it is not quite realistic to the time period based on the guns you use, it is not a ww1 simulator, its battlefield. It brought new game modes such as: Operations where you can play as defense which is defending the flags against the attackers who are trying to capture them. War Pigeons is where you get a pigeon, write a note (sort of like capturing a flag) and setting it free to gain a point out of three. And Fog of War which is Hardcore Team death match and normal team death match. The vehicles are improved, tour bullets can do damage to the planes (not much) and the dogfights seem better and more balanced. They added motorcycles with the seat on the side like in the movies. The artillary truck which has an AA gun on top of it and a Vickers Mk1 (the normal mounted machine gun in that game) and a new thing called Behemoths. If the enemy team is loosing in operations they will receive a behemoth on most maps you will get an Airship which is a blimp outfitted with powerful explosive round machine guns, and the pilot can drop bombs on top of it there are mounted machine guns (vickers mk1). On other maps where there is water you will receive a Dreadnought, this is a Cruiser with heavy hitting artillary and AA guns. The last behemoth is an Armourd train. This has the same guns as the Dreadnought but with added machine guns (for infantry). This is a fun game in all, but it is for the person who likes fast paced battlefield games, such as bf4 and bf3. So if you liked those games and hardline I would suggest getting this one. Read more

"PETA constituents are not fat cats but pigs, cows, orcas, mice and any other animal in trouble," says the 'Real Time' host, a longtime board member of 35-year-old animal rights organization. This story first appeared in the Aug. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. When an organization has been as effective as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it's hard to believe they've been around for only 35 years. It all started when some forward-thinking people launched a group that would rip the lid off corporate and government wrongdoing to animals, get behind the scenes in everything from fur ranching to chicken farming and demand that we replace cruel choices with kind ones. Where would we be today without PETA? Before PETA was around, you could pretty much do anything you wanted to animals, anytime, anyhow. And now you can't — think about that. Being on PETA's board is a perfect fit for me because PETA takes on the status quo and challenges conventional thinking. I push the envelope because the envelope needs pushing, so I love that PETA doesn't tiptoe over the line — they jump over it with both feet. Take PETA president Ingrid Newkirk's comments about the twisted killing of Cecil the lion. Perhaps her tongue was planted firmly in cheek when she said Cecil's killer should be "tried and preferably hanged," but she put into words what most of us were feeling. Serial killers, like trophy hunters, are cowards who kill in cold blood so they can decorate their "man caves" with animals' heads. They deserve about as much empathy as they afford their victims: none. In a news cycle of sound bites, PETA is a household name — they're the Beyonce of charities. They never waver in their belief that they can win for animals. Sure, they face pushback for forcing us to take a hard look at ourselves, but we do look. That kind of approach gets things done, like having Ringling Bros. finally recognize that people "get" that elephants aren't meant to wear silly hats and do headstands. Unlike lion killers, PETA only goes after fair game: anyone who hurts animals. They are equal-opportunity critics — they'll call anyone out and praise anyone who does right. PETA has closed animal labs and convinced the top 10 U.S. ad agencies to stop exploiting great apes. They've gotten Tesla to offer all-vegan car seats, Zara's parent company to donate about $1 million worth of angora garments to refugees rather than sell them and Ikea to dish up vegan Swedish meatballs. Who would have imagined any of that 35 years ago? PETA's goal is to make a kinder world for animals. I agree with that. And so does my rescue dog, whom I love for a lot of reasons — one being that every time I come home, he greets me like I'm The Beatles. We need more people who stick up for the underdog and undermouse. This country is not overrun with rebels and freethinkers; it's overrun with conformists. And PETA has never conformed. That's why I'm right there with them, full on. Bill Maher is a comedian, author, host of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher and an 18-year board member of PETA. Read more from THR's philanthropy issue below. How Cecil the Lion Rescued a Wildlife Program on the Verge of Extinction How Tom Rothman, Mark Gordon and the Fulfillment Fund Are Improving L.A.'s Graduation Rates Why Hollywood Loved the Ice Bucket Challenge (Guest Column) Lady Gaga 'Hunting Ground' Song to Become Campus Rape PSA Directed by Catherine Hardwicke How 100 Hollywood Moms Are Supporting Foster Kids Who Become Mothers Matthew Perry on Sobriety and Service: "Two Alcoholics Talking to Each Other is a Big Deal" Bill Cosby, Donald Sterling and the "Nightmare" Naming-Rights Problem The Entertainment Industry’s Biggest Givers Why Kirk and Anne Douglas Are Giving Away Their Fortune The Hollywood Indies Little League Swings and Connects With At-Risk Youth Lionel Richie Named MusiCares Person of the Year How Ted Danson, Cobie Smulders and Mary Steenburgen Are Fighting for the Oceans

For all the fuss about Bitcoin — it is turning us all into tax-dodging, drug-taking criminals, etc., etc. — its most important impact might have nothing to do with money at all. The technology at the heart of Bitcoin is the world’s biggest and most powerful supercomputer. It could be this that has a real impact on all our futures. A network that is already as powerful as 500 supercomputers has to be taken seriously. Google, Facebook and the other internet giants spend billions of dollars on their networks of data centers. Companies switch computer processing from data centers around the world depending on off-peak electricity costs or the presence of colder temperatures to reduce cooling costs. The industry depends on tiny improvements in power or heat performance to cut prices for hosting websites or more complex computing functions. But the Bitcoin architecture of a perfectly distributed computer would allow its network to run almost any computing function. This isn’t the first such network … anyone remember SETI@home? SETI, which stands for the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” describes a variety of scientific efforts that have taken place over past decades to find and identify signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The SETI@home computing project, hosted by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California-Berkeley, launched in May 1999. It asked ordinary internet users to download a small piece of software to help researchers search for aliens. This software used your computer downtime to check radio telescope signals for unexpected radio waves. The network of millions of machines was used to replace an actual supercomputer. Now with some three million client machines, the SETI@home network is still working and still looking for evidence of life on other planets. Various BitTorrent clients provide similar networked services. The Bitcoin network is even more sophisticated and more secure than either of these. Much has been made of how Bitcoin solves the problem of micro-payments. But what if it solved that problem in a totally different way? What if, for example, the Bitcoin network could be used to let future websites ask their users to provide computing power if they wished to access the site or services for free? “This could be a way to monetize your website,” computer security expert Mikko Hypponen told CoinDesk. “People’s computers could mine an alternative currency while they’re looking at your site or using your service. This could be better than funding sites through advertising.” But mining might just be the first iteration. You could use a network like Bitcoin’s to carry out almost any computing function currently provided by a data center. If your business can attract users — and their computers — it could use those machines to crunch numbers, send emails or handle any other processing required. Of course, online criminal types have been doing this for years with botnets. But Bitcoin might be the technology that makes the botnet mainstream, even if the currency itself does not survive. Just imagine: harnessing the Bitcoin network could give even the smallest startup access to an amazing amount of computing power.

Wolves develop from pups at an incredible rate. Pups are born, in late April, after just a two-month pregnancy. They are born deaf, blind, and weigh no more than a can of soda pop. At this time, pups can do basically just one thing – suckle their mother’s milk. Within a month, pups can hear and see, weigh ten pounds, and explore and play around the den site. The parents and sometimes one- or two- year old siblings bring food back to the den site. The food is regurgitated for the pups to eat. By about two months of age (late June), pups are fully weaned and eat only meat. By three months of age (late July), pups travel as much as a few miles to rendezvous sites, where pups wait for adults to return from hunts. Pups surviving to six or seven months of age (late September) have adult teeth, are eighty percent their full size, and travel with the pack for many miles as they hunt and patrol their territory. When food is plentiful, most pups survive to their first birthday. As often, food is scarce and no pups survive. A wolf may disperse from its natal pack when it is as young as 12 months old. In some cases a wolf might disperse and breed when it is 22 months old – the second February of its life. In any event, from 12 months of age onward, wolves look for a chance to disperse and mate with a wolf from another pack. In the meantime, they bide their time in the safety of their natal pack. From birth until his or her last dying day, a wolf is inextricably linked to other wolves in a complex web of social relationships. The ultimate basis for these relationships is sharing food with some, depriving it from others, reproducing with another, and suppressing reproduction among others. Most wolves live in packs, a community sharing daily life with three to eleven other wolves. Core pack members are an alpha pair and their pups. Other members commonly include offspring from previous years, and occasionally other less closely related wolves. Pups depend on food from their parents. Relationships among older, physically mature offspring are fundamentally tense. These wolves want to mate, but alphas repress any attempts to mate. So, mating typically requires leaving the pack. However, dispersal is dangerous. While biding time for a good opportunity to disperse, these subordinate wolves want the safety and food that come from pack living. They are sometimes tolerated by the alpha wolves, to varying degrees. The degree of tolerance depends on the degree of obedience and submission to the will of alpha wolves. For a subordinate wolf, the choice, typically, is to acquiesce or leave the pack. Alphas lead travels and hunts. They feed first, and they exclude from feeding whom ever they choose. Maintaining alpha status requires controlling the behavior of pack mates. Occasionally a subordinate wolf is strong enough to take over the alpha position. Wolf families have and know about their neighbors. Alphas exclude non-pack members from their territory, and try to kill trespassers. Mature, subordinate pack members are sometimes less hostile to outside wolves – they are potential mates. Being an alpha wolf requires aggression, control, and leadership. Perhaps not surprisingly, alpha wolves typically possess higher levels of stress hormones than do subordinate wolves, who may not eat as much, but have, apparently, far less stress. Pack members are usually, but not always friendly and cooperative. Wolves from other packs are usually, but not always enemies. Managing all of these relationships, in a way that minimizes the risk of injury and death to one’s self, requires sophisticated communication. Accurately interpreting and judging these communications requires intelligence. Communication and intelligence are needed to know who my friends and enemies are, where they are, and what may be their intentions. These may be the reasons that most social animals, including humans, are intelligent and communicative. Like humans, wolves communicate with voices. Pack mates often separate temporarily. When they want to rejoin they often howl. They say: “Hey, where are you guys? I’m over here.” Wolf packs also howl to tell other packs: “Hey, we are over here; stay away from us, or else.” There is so much more to wolf communication. Scientists recognize at least ten different categories of sound (e.g., howls, growls, barks, etc.). Each is believed to communicate a different, context-dependent message. Wolves also have an elaborate body language. As subtle as body language can be, even scientists recognize communication to be taking place by the positions of about fifteen different body parts (e.g., ears, tail, teeth, etc.). Each body part can hold one of several positions (e.g., tail up, out, down, etc.). There could easily be hundreds to thousands of different messages communicated by different combinations of these body positions and vocal noises. Scientists apprehend (or misapprehend) just a fraction of what wolves are able to communicate to each other. Wolves also communicate with scent. The most distinctive use of scent entails territorial scent marking. Elusiveness makes wolves mysterious. This is true and fine. However, true love cannot survive mystery due to ignorance. Mature love requires knowledge. In some basic ways the life of a wolf is very ordinary, even mundane, and its comprehension is fully within our grasp if we just focus. The life of a wolf is largely occupied with walking. Wolves are tremendous walkers. Day after day, wolves commonly walk for eight hours a day, averaging five miles per hour. They commonly travel thirty miles a day, and may walk 4,000 miles a year. Wolves living in packs walk for two basic reasons - to capture food and to defend their territories. Isle Royale wolf territories average about 75 square miles. This is small compared to some wolf populations, where territories can be as large as 500 square miles. To patrol and defend even a small territory, involves a never-ending amount of walking. Week after week, wolves cover the same trails. It must seem very ordinary. The average North American human walks two to three miles per day. A fit human walks at least five miles/day. If you want to know more about the life of a wolf, spend more time just walking, and while walking, know that you are walking. What do wolves think about much while walking? Wolves defend territories. About once a week, wolves patrol most of their territorial boundary. About every two to three hundred yards along the territorial boundary an alpha wolf will scent mark, that is, urinate or defecate in a conspicuous location. The odor from this mark is detectable, even to a human nose, a week or two after being deposited. The mark communicates to potential trespassing wolves that this area is defended. Territorial defense is a matter of life and death. Intruding wolves, if detected, are chased off or killed, if possible. Wolves are like humans for having such complex family relationships. Wolves are also like some humans in that they wage complete warfare toward their neighbors. An alpha wolf typically kills one to three wolves in his or her lifetime. Because territories are a pack’s hunting grounds, giving up territory to other wolves is to give up food for the family. Territories are large enough to contain all the prey that a pack needs. Between 1998 and 2000, Isle Royale’s Middle Pack (MP) increased from four to twelve wolves. During this period they expanded their territory westward, ultimately causing the extirpation of West Pack. This left Isle Royale with just two well-organized packs, and three pairs of wolves all trying to carve out a territory. In February 2000, a lone, dispersing wolf trespassed on the east end of MP’s territory. MP chased this wolf into the icy waters of Lake Superior, attacked it, and left it for dead. The lone wolf, a female, survived. A few hours later, a male wolf from MP found the female on the shore, stayed with it, and licked its wounds. We believe that this pair of wolves became the alpha pair of the Chippewa Harbor Pack (CHP). In the following years, CHP became a successful pack and caused MP to give up significant portions of its territory. In 2006, East Pack (EP) killed the alpha male of CHP, who was ambushed at the site of a calf moose CHP had killed. Afterward, EP began to take over part of CHP’s territory. To the left, EP is seen examining a CHP scent mark on Chickenbone lake – disputed territory in 2006. Much drama in a wolf community is attributable to territoriality and the behavior of tenacious and opportunistic wolves. For most North American and European humans eating a meal is a pretty simple affair: get some food from the cupboard, heat it up, and eat. What if every meal required exerting yourself to the point of exhaustion, holding nothing back? What if every meal meant risking serious injury or death? Under these circumstances, you might be happy to eat only once a week or so – like Isle Royale wolves. Isle Royale wolves capture and kill, with their teeth, moose that are ten times their size. Think about it for a moment – it is difficult to comprehend. A successful alpha wolf will have done this more than one hundred times in its life. Wolves minimize the risk of severe injury and death by attacking the most vulnerable moose. Somehow wolves are incredible judges of what they can handle. Wolves encounter and chase down many moose. Chases typically continue for less than ½ a mile. During chase and confrontation wolves test their prey. Wolves attack only about 1 out of every ten moose that they chase down. They kill 8 or 9 of every ten moose that they decide to attack. The decision to attack or not is a vicious tension between intense hunger and wanting not to be killed by your food. Wolves typically attack moose at the rump and nose. The strategy is to inflict injury by making large gashes in the muscle, and to slow the moose by staying attached, thereby allowing other wolves to do the same. Eventually the moose is stopped and brought to the ground by the weight and strength of the wolves. The cause of death may be shock or loss of blood. Feeding often begins before the moose is dead. A moose, with a wolf clamped to its rump is still formidable. They can easily swing around, lifting the wolf into the air, and hurl the wolf into a tree. Most experienced wolves have broken (and healed) their ribs on several occasions. Moose deliver powerful kicks with their hooves. Wolves occasionally die from attacking moose. After a chase, wolves may kill and begin feeding within 10 or 15 minutes. Or they may wound and wait several days for the moose to die. To some, wolves are evil for killing without cause and without eating much of what they kill. This is more a poor rationalization to justify killing wolves, than an observation rooted in fact. Typically, wolves consume impressive portions of their prey, eating all but the rumen contents, larger bones, and some hair. They routinely eat what you and I would not dream of eating – the stomach muscles, tendons, marrow, bones, hair and hide. They typically consume 80 to 100% of all that is edible. By wolf standards, every American deer hunter I know, including me, is wasteful. A wolf’s gut is not so different from ours that we can’t appreciate what it means to resort to eating such parts. These eating habits make sense: starvation is a very common cause of death for wolves, killing prey requires a tremendous amount of energy and is a life-threatening prospect for a wolf. Two circumstances give false impressions. First, it may take several days for a pack to consume a carcass, or they may cache it and consume it later. The ultimate utilization of what may appear to be a poorly utilized carcass is routinely verified by merely revisiting the site of a moose carcass at a later date. Occasionally prey are unusually abundant, prone to starvation, and easy to capture. Under such conditions wolves may eat relatively small portions – only the most nutritious parts – of a carcass. In this regard, wolves are no different from any other creature in the animal kingdom. Along migration routes during spring, when song birds many be extremely abundant, hawks sometimes kill many of these birds and eat only the organs, leaving behind all the muscle. Spiders suck a smaller portion of juice from their prey when prey are more common. These are examples of an inviolable law of nature – utilization decreases as availability increases. The average American throws away about 15% of all the edible food that they purchase. Ten percent of our landfills are food that was once edible. Finally, waste is a matter of perspective. What wolves leave behind, scavengers invariably utilize. Foxes, eagles, and ravens are among the most important scavengers on Isle Royale. However, even smaller scavengers may benefit greatly. To a chickadee, for example, a moose carcass is the world’s largest suet ball. Scavengers make waste an impossibility. After feeding for a few hours on a fresh kill, wolves sprawl out or curl up in the snow and sleep. To eat a large meal with one’s family, and then to rest. To stretch out and just rest. When we observe wolves during the winter, about 30% of the time they are just sleeping or resting near a recent kill. Wolves have plenty of reason to rest. When wolves are active, they are really active. On a daily basis, wolves burn about 70% more calories compared to typical animals of similar size. While chasing and attacking a moose a wolf may burn calories at ten to twenty times the rate they do while resting. Its heart beats at five times its resting rate. For context, a world class athlete can burn calories at no more than about five times the calories they burn at rest. The intensity at which wolves work while hunting is far beyond the capabilities of a human. While spending all this energy, wolves may eat only once every five to ten days. During the time between kills a wolf may lose as much as 8-10% of its body weight. However, a wolf can regain all of this lost weight in just two days of ad libitum eating and resting. When food is plentiful, wolves spend a substantial amount of time simply resting, because they can. When food is scarce, wolves spend much time resting because they need to. Wolves work tremendously hard, but they also take resting very seriously. In some important ways, wolves and humans are alike. We are both social, intelligent, and communicative. In other ways, we differ. With thoughtful reflection, however, we can understand or imagine some of these aspects of a wolf’s life – their endless walking and their feast or famine lifestyle. However, in a fundamental way wolves perceive a world that is simply beyond our comprehension and imagination. Through their noses, wolves sense and know things that we could never know. We can build tools to help us visualize things we can’t see directly, like x-ray telescopes and electron microscopes. However, it is difficult to imagine a tool that would allow us to sense or experience the olfactory world experienced by the everyday life of a wolf. Wolves have 280 million olfactory receptors in their nasal passages – more than the number of visual receptors in their retinas. Wolves can detect odors that are hundreds to millions of times fainter than what humans can detect. A wolf often walks with its head down, nose close to the ground. Wolves rely on their noses for two of the most basic activities – hunting and communicating with other wolves. Smells, more than sights or sounds, determine where a wolf will travel next. While hunting, moose are most often detected first by smell. Wolves commonly hunt into the wind, and by doing so can smell moose from 300 yards away. A moose with jaw necrosis is vulnerable, and wolves can almost certainly smell that a moose has jaw necrosis before even seeing it. The life of a wolf is difficult and typically, short. The chances of pup survival are highly variable. In some years, for some packs, most or all pups die. In other years, most or all survive. Of the wolves that survive their first six to nine months, most are dead by three or four years of age. Every year, one in four or five adult wolves dies in a healthy wolf population. Alpha wolves tend to be the longest lived. They commonly live for between six and nine years. Of the pups that survive their first year, only about one or two of every ten rise to the level of alpha. Most die without ever reproducing, and few wolves ever live long enough to grow old. These rates of mortality are normal, even when humans are not involved in the death of wolves. Wolves are intensely social. They are born into a family, and spend most of their time with other wolves. Wolves know each other and they know each other well. Imagine a world where it is common for one out of every four or five of the people you know to die. The causes of wolf death are primarily lack of food and being killed by other wolves in conflict over food. This fact denies all credibility to perceiving wolves as wasteful gluttons, as they are often portrayed. Most wolves die in the process of dispersing. Dispersal is a tremendous risk, but one worth taking. Ultimately, the only thing that matters is reproducing. Reproduction is very unlikely within the pack to which a wolf is born. It is better to risk death for some chance of finding a mate and a territory, than to live safely, but have virtually no chance of reproduction.

Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? Hillary Clinton is running for president not only on her record as secretary of state, but also by presenting herself as tougher than Barack Obama on foreign-policy issues. With this stance, she presumably plans to distance herself from a president increasingly branded as “weak” in his approach to international issues, and to appeal to the supposedly more hawkish instincts of much of the electorate. Ad Policy It is therefore necessary to ask a number of related questions, the answers to which are of crucial importance not just to the likely course of a hypothetical Clinton administration, but to the future of the United States in the world. These questions concern her record as secretary of state and her attitudes, as well as those of the US foreign-policy and national-security elites as a whole. They are also linked to an even deeper and more worrying question: whether the country’s political elites are still capable of learning from their mistakes and changing their policies accordingly. I was brought up to believe that this is a key advantage of democracy over other systems. But it can’t happen without a public debate—and hence mass media—founded on rational argument, a respect for facts, and an insistence that officials take responsibility for evidently disastrous decisions. The difficulties that a Democratic politician must overcome in designing a foreign and security policy capable of meeting the needs of the age are admittedly legion. These include US foreign-policy and national-security institutions that are bloated beyond measure and spend most of their time administering themselves and quarreling with one another; the weakness of the cabinet system, which encourages these institutions and means that decisions are constantly thrown in the lap of the president and a White House staff principally obsessed with the next election; an increasing political dysfunction at home, partly as a result of the unrelenting American electoral cycle; a Republican opposition that is positively feral in its readiness to use any weapon against a Democratic White House; a corporate media that, when not working for the Republicans directly, is all too willing to help turn minor issues into perceived crises; and problems in some parts of the world (notably the Middle East and Afghanistan) that are indeed of a hideous complexity. * * * Even more important and difficult than any of these problems may be the fact that designing a truly new and adequate strategy would require breaking with some fundamental American myths—myths that have been strengthened by many years of superpower status but that go back much further, to the very roots of American civic nationalism. These myths, above all, depict the United States as—in one of Clinton’s favorite phrases—the “indispensable nation,” innately good (if sometimes misguided), with the right and duty to lead humankind and therefore, when necessary, to crush any opposition. It is the strength and centrality of these nationalist myths that have prevented our elites and the American public from learning or remembering the lessons of Vietnam—a failure that helped pave the way for the disaster of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the consequences of which are still unfolding in the Middle East today. And as Clinton’s entire record—all her writings and all the writings about her—show, she has made herself a captive of those nationalist myths beyond any possibility of escape. As she asserts in her new book, Hard Choices: Everything that I have done and seen has convinced me that America remains the “indispensable nation.” I am just as convinced, however, that our leadership is not a birthright. It must be earned by every generation. And it will be—so long as we stay true to our values and remember that, before we are Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or any of the other labels that divide us as often as define us, we are Americans, all with a personal stake in our country. It’s the same old nationalist solipsism: all we have to do is stick together and talk more loudly to ourselves about how wonderful we are, and the rest of the world will automatically accept our “leadership.” This is not a case—as has sometimes appeared with Obama—of a naturally cool and skeptical intellect forced to bow to the emotions of the masses. To all appearances, Clinton’s nationalism is a matter of profound conviction. And let us be fair: this may help to get her elected president. Once she is, however, it is likely to constrain drastically her ability to shape a foreign policy appropriate to the new circumstances of the United States and the world. Above all, perhaps, it hampers her ability to learn from the past, and from her own and America’s mistakes—a defect blazingly on display in her latest memoir. Instead, even when (on very rare occasions) she does make the briefest and most formal acknowledgment of a US crime or error, it is immediately followed by the infamous statement that we must put this behind us and “move on.” This phrase is dear not only to Clinton, but to the foreign-policy establishment as a whole. It makes any serious analysis of the past impossible. Of course, one hardly looks for great honesty or candor in what is, in effect, election propaganda—and one must always keep in mind the presence of a Republican Party and media ready to tear into even the slightest appearance of “apologizing for America.” Nonetheless, a passage early in the book did give me hope that it would contain at least some serious discussion of past US mistakes and their lessons for future policy. It concerned what Clinton acknowledges as her own greatest error—the decision to vote for the Iraq War: As much as I might have wanted to, I could never change my vote on Iraq. But I could try to help us learn the right lessons from that war and apply them to Afghanistan and other challenges where we had fundamental security interests. I was determined to do exactly that when facing future hard choices, with more experience, wisdom, skepticism, and humility. Neither in her book nor in her policy is there even the slightest evidence that she has, in fact, tried to learn from Iraq beyond the most obvious lesson—the undesirability of US ground invasions and occupations, which even the Republicans have managed to learn. For Clinton herself helped to launch US airpower to topple another regime, this one in Libya—and, as in Iraq, the results have been anarchy, sectarian conflict and opportunities for Islamist extremists that have destabilized the entire region. She then helped lead the United States quite far down the road of doing the same thing in Syria. Clinton tries to argue in the book that she took a long, hard look at the Libyan opposition before reporting to the president her belief that “there was a reasonable chance the rebels would turn out to be credible partners”—but however long she looked, it is now obvious that she got it wrong. She has simply not understood the fragility of states—states, not regimes—in many parts of the world, the risk that “humanitarian intervention” will bring about state collapse, and the inadequacy of a crude and simplistic version of democracy promotion as a basis for state reconstruction. It does not help that the US record on democracy promotion and the rule of law—including Clinton’s own record—is so spotted that very few people outside the country take it seriously anymore. Her book manages simultaneously to repeat the claim that the United States and its allies were only enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya and to try to take personal credit for destroying the Libyan regime. And she wonders why other countries do not entirely trust her or America’s honesty! There is also no recognition whatsoever in her book that those who opposed US military action were in fact right and not “despicable,” to use her phrase about Russian opposition to the US military intervention in Syria. Nor has her disastrous record on Iraq led her to take a more sensible stance toward Iran. On the contrary, in her anxiety to appear more hawkish than Obama, she has clearly aligned with those who would make a nuclear deal with Iran impossible and therefore leave the United States in the ridiculous and unsustainable position of trying to contain all the major forces in the Middle East simultaneously. This kind of nationalist faith in American strength and American righteousness is no longer adequate to the challenges the country faces. Above all, such a faith makes it impossible to deal with other nations on a basis of equality—not only on global issues or those of great interest to Washington, but on issues that other countries regard as vital to their own interests. This also makes it far more difficult for US officials to do what Hans Morgenthau declared is both a practical and moral duty of statesmen: through close study, to develop a capacity to put themselves in the shoes of the representatives of other countries—not in order to agree with them but to understand what is really important to them, the interests on which they will be able to compromise and those for which they will feel compelled to fight. Clinton displays not a shred of this ability in her book. * * * The greatest future challenge in this respect is our relations with China. The arrogance with which Washington treats other countries is at least understandable given that none of them are or are likely to be equals of the United States—though some, like Russia, can often compete successfully in their own regions. China is another matter. If, as now seems all but certain, its economy soon surpasses that of the United States, then on issues of interest to Beijing, it will indeed demand to be treated as an equal—and if Washington fails to do so, it will propel the two sides toward terrifying confrontations. In terms of the day-to-day conduct of relations with Beijing, Clinton had a generally good record as secretary of state—though in this, she was following what has generally been a restrained policy by both political parties. But if Clinton’s day-to-day record was pragmatic, her long-term strategy may prove disastrous. This was the Obama administration’s decision—in which she was instrumental—to “pivot to Asia.” As Clinton’s writings make clear, “pivot” means the containment of China through the enhancement of existing military alliances in East Asia and the development of new ones (especially with India). This strategy is at present reasonably cautious and somewhat veiled, but if Chinese power continues to grow, and if collisions between China and some of its neighbors intensify, then a containment strategy will inevitably become harsher—with potentially catastrophic consequences. This is not simply a case of a knee-jerk US reaction to the rise of a potential peer competitor. Some of China’s policies have helped to provoke the new strategy and also enabled it by driving China’s neighbors into America’s arms. This is above all true of Beijing’s territorial claims to various groups of uninhabited islands in the East and South China seas. While some of its claims seem reasonably well founded, others have no basis in international law and tradition; and by pushing all of them at once, Beijing has frightened most of its neighbors and created real fears that in East Asia, at least, its “peaceful rise” strategy has been abandoned. But if aspects of China’s strategy have been aggressive, that does not necessarily make the US response to them wise—especially since Obama and Clinton’s announcement of the pivot to Asia, at least in part, preceded the new aggressiveness of Chinese policy. In particular, Clinton appears to have forgotten that a key difference between the Cold War with the USSR and the current relationship with China is that during the Cold War, Washington was careful never to involve itself in any claims by neighbors on Russian territory. In consequence (as I can testify from my work as a British journalist in the USSR during the years of its collapse), there was no successful mobilization of Russian nationalism against the United States. That has come later, when with monumental folly the United States (under the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations) involved itself in the quarrels of the post-Soviet successor states. As a senator, Clinton was entirely complicit in the disastrous strategy of offering NATO membership to Georgia and Ukraine, which led to the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 (and a de facto US strategic defeat) and helped set the scene for the Ukraine crisis of this year. This is not to excuse Russia’s mistaken and criminal reactions to US policy; but to judge by her book, Clinton never bothered to try to understand or predict likely Russian reactions—let alone, once again, to acknowledge or learn from her mistakes. On the Georgia War, she simply repeats the lie (which, to be fair, she may actually believe) that this was deliberately started by Putin and not by Georgia’s president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili. In her policy toward China, Clinton and the administration in which she served have embroiled the United States in the islands disputes. Formally, Washington has not taken sides concerning ownership of the islands. Informally, though, by emphasizing the US military alliance with Japan and its extensive character, it has done so—at least in the case of the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. As a result, Clinton may have helped put her country in a position where it will one day feel compelled to launch a devastating war to defend Japanese claims to uninhabited rocks, and at a time dictated by Tokyo. As the Australian realist scholar Hugh White has suggested, underlying the other disputes between the United States and China is Washington’s refusal to accord legitimacy to China’s system of government, something repeatedly demonstrated in Clinton’s book. White argues that such recognition is essential if the two countries are to share power and influence in East Asia and avoid conflict. This is admittedly a very difficult moral and political issue, given China’s human-rights abuses. Clinton made human-rights advocacy a hallmark of her tenure at the State Department (without, it seems, understanding the disastrous effects on this advocacy of the US international record). More substantial has been her contribution to raising global awareness of women’s rights; and perhaps most praiseworthy of all (because it is deeply unpopular with many Americans as well as others around the world) is her staunch defense of gay rights. It would be an immense help, however, if American representatives could recognize the degree to which the US model at home and abroad is now questioned by enemies as well as concerned friends—at home due to political paralysis and the increasing and obvious inadequacy of an eighteenth-century Constitution to deal with a twenty-first-century world; abroad due to a series of criminal actions carried out in defiance of the international community, as well as the catastrophic failure of the US war and state-building effort in Iraq—and very likely in Afghanistan, too. There is not the slightest indication of such a recognition in Clinton’s book. * * * When it comes to the Obama administration’s dysfunctional policy toward Afghanistan, Clinton herself cannot be held chiefly responsible. As her work and books by others make clear (notably Vali Nasr’s The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat), this was a policy driven chiefly by the White House, and for domestic political reasons. Nonetheless, she can hardly evade all responsibility, since on issues that can in any way be presented as successes, she is so anxious to claim responsibility. At the core of the administration’s failure (leaving aside the horribly intractable nature of the Afghan War itself) was the combination of a military surge with the announcement of early US military withdrawal. As far as hardline Taliban elements were concerned, this meant they only had to wait. As far as actual or potential moderates were concerned, Washington failed to accompany the surge with any serious attempt at a peace settlement. For this failure, opposition by the US military and Afghanistan’s then-president, Hamid Karzai, was chiefly responsible, together with the fear of a political backlash in the United States. But as Clinton makes clear, there was no way that she would have supported any peace offer that even the most moderate Taliban elements would have discussed. In her words, “To be reconciled, insurgents would have to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda and accept the Afghan Constitution.” In other words, not a settlement but surrender. Such an offer should indeed have been made by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003; it probably would have been accepted by many Taliban commanders, since at the time the Taliban appeared to have been thoroughly defeated. That opportunity was missed, and today—with the United States withdrawing, the Afghan “constitution” deep in crisis, and the Taliban conquering more and more of the east and south—it will not even be looked at. And this syndrome, of either pretending or genuinely believing that Washington is offering compromise when it is actually demanding surrender, is a leitmotif of Clinton’s work. It is very sensible to make such offers if you are winning, not so if you are retreating. This is not to say that, in Afghanistan or the Middle East, there are easy answers that Clinton has somehow missed. In both cases, there are no real “solutions,” only better or worse management of crises based on a choice of lesser evils. Perhaps as president, Clinton would prove to be a competent manager of these crises; but on the basis of her record and writings so far, the verdict on this must at best be “unproven.” So far, her actions and those of the United States have succeeded only in making things worse. Can the United States escape the trap created by its belief in its own supreme morality and right to lead? To do this would require its leaders to tell the American people a number of things that a majority of the country’s political classes (which on foreign policy can generally manage to impersonate the people) really do not want to hear: about the relative decline of US power and the need to adjust both policy and rhetoric to accommodate this development; about the consequent need to seek compromises with a number of countries that Americans have been taught to hate; about the insufficiency of the American ideology as a universal path for the progress of humankind; and, most important of all, about the long-term unsustainability of the US economic model and the absolute need to take action against climate change. In an ideal world, an astute president with popular support should be able to reach past the elites to appeal to the generally sensible and generous instincts of the majority of Americans. As recent polls have demonstrated, on the question of arming Syrian rebels and of seeking a reasonable compromise with Iran, large majorities have shown much more cautious and pragmatic instincts than Clinton, let alone the Republicans. Only 8 percent of Americans want Washington to attempt to lead the world unilaterally, compared with overwhelming majorities in favor of seeking cooperation (and cost-sharing) with other powers. But as Peter Beinart has shown in a recent essay in The Atlantic, there is a yawning gap on these issues between the American public and the political and media elites—and, most crucial of all, the big donors on whom candidates increasingly depend. If, as many now believe, the United States is heading toward a de facto oligarchy, then the views of that oligarchy on foreign-policy and security issues are clear—and they’re close to those of Hillary Clinton. There is certainly little basis for the belief that she would be prepared to challenge the oligarchy on these issues. Thus, on the crucial question of climate change, she has indeed taken a rhetorical stand sharply different from the Republicans and a number of conservative Democrats. On the other hand, the chapter on it in Hard Choices begins with an extended passage in which Clinton crows about a tactical victory over China at the 2009 Copenhagen summit—a victory that did nothing to combat climate change and only managed to alienate further the Chinese, Indians and Brazilians. Clinton’s verbal commitment to this central issue is impressive and commendable, her actual record much less so. But again, the real question is whether any US statesman could do better, given that most Republicans—who now dominate Congress and control federal legislation on this issue—have managed to convince themselves that the problem does not even exist. How is it possible to implement rational policies if much of the political class has abandoned respect for facts and evidence? Given the US record of the past dozen years, there is a great deal to be said in principle for a long period in which Washington simply pulls back from involvement in international crises. In practice, though, as several administrations have found, international affairs will not leave a US president alone. Crises blow up suddenly, and to craft an appropriate response requires a consistent philosophy, deep local knowledge, a firm grip on the US foreign-policy apparatus, and the ability to frame that response in ways that will gain the necessary support from the policy establishment, media and population. These are sufficiently great challenges in themselves. To expect in addition that a statesman will display originality, moral courage and a willingness to challenge national shibboleths is probably too much to ask of anyone. On the evidence to date, it is certainly too much to ask of Hillary Rodham Clinton. More on Hillary Clinton in this issue… The Editors: “Wanted: A Challenge to Clinton” The Editors: “How Many Ways Can Goldman Give?” Michelle Goldberg: “David Brock’s Long Strange Trip” Kathleen Geier, Joan Walsh, Jamelle Bouie, Doug Henwood, Heather Digby Parton, Steven Teles and Richard Yeselson: “Who’s Ready for Hillary?”

Most of the problems in bioinformatics are now the challenges in computing. This paper aims at building a classifier based on Multiple Attractor Cellular Automata (MACA) which uses fuzzy logic. It is strengthened with an artificial Immune System Technique (AIS), Clonal algorithm for identifying a protein coding and promoter region in a given DNA sequence. The proposed classifier is named as AIS-INMACA introduces a novel concept to combine CA with artificial immune system to produce a better classifier which can address major problems in bioinformatics. This will be the first integrated algorithm which can predict both promoter and protein coding regions. To obtain good fitness rules the basic concept of Clonal selection algorithm was used. The proposed classifier can handle DNA sequences of lengths 54,108,162,252,354. This classifier gives the exact boundaries of both protein and promoter regions with an average accuracy of 89.6%. This classifier was tested with 97,000 data components which were taken from Fickett & Toung , MPromDb, and other sequences from a renowned medical university. This proposed classifier can handle huge data sets and can find protein and promoter regions even in mixed and overlapped DNA sequences. This work also aims at identifying the logicality between the major problems in bioinformatics and tries to obtaining a common frame work for addressing major problems in bioinformatics like protein structure prediction, RNA structure prediction, predicting the splicing pattern of any primary transcript and analysis of information content in DNA, RNA, protein sequences and structure. This work will attract more researchers towards application of CA as a potential pattern classifier to many important problems in bioinformatics. Introduction Cellular automata Pattern classification encompasses development of a model which will be trained to solve a given problem with the help of some examples; each of them will be characterized by a number of features. The development of such a system is characterized as pattern classification. We use a class of Cellular Automata (CA)[1,2] to develop the proposed classifier. Cellular automata consist of a grid of cells with a finite number of states. Cellular Automata (CA) is a computing model which provides a good platform for performing complex computations with the available local information. CA is defined a four tuple Where G -> Grid (Set of cells) Z -> Set of possible cell states N -> Set which describe cells neighborhoods F -> Transition Function (Rules of automata) As Cellular Automata consists of a number of cells structured in the form of a grid. The transitions between the cells may depend on its own state and the states of its neighboring cells. The equation one sates that if ith cell have to make a transition, it has to depend on own state, left neighbor and right neighbor also. ---- Equation 1 Problems in bioinformatics Bioinformatics can be characterized as a collection of statistical, mathematical and computational methods for dissecting biological sequences like DNA, RNA and amino acid. It deals with the design and development of computer based technology that supports biological processing. Bioinformatics tools are aimed at performing lot of functions like data integration, collection, analysis, mining, management, simulation, visualization and statistics. The central dogma shown in the figure 1 of molecular biology was initially articulated by Francis Crick [3] in 1958. It deals with point by point transfer of important sequential data. It states that data can't be exchanged back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid. So once data gets into protein, it can't stream again to nucleic acid. This dogma is a framework for comprehension about the exchange of sequence data between sequential data carrying biopolymers in living organisms. There are 3 significant classes of such biopolymers ie DNA, RNA and protein. There are 9 possible immediate exchanges of data that can happen between these. This dogma classifies these nine exchanges into three transfers (Normal, Special, and Never Happens). The normal flow of biological information is DNA is copied to DNA (DNA replication), DNA information is copied into RNA (Transcription) and protein are synthesized by using the protein coding region exits in DNA/RNA (Translation). Protein coding region identification DNA is an important component of a cell and genes will be found in specific portion of DNA which will contain the information as explicit sequences of bases (A, G, C, T).These explicit sequences of nucleotides will have instructions to build the proteins. But the region which will have the instructions which is called as protein coding regions occupies very less space in a DNA sequence. The identification of protein coding regions plays a vital role in understanding the gens. We can extract lot of information like what is the disease causing gene, whether it is inherited from father or mother, how one cell is going to control another cell. Promoter region identification DNA is a very important component in a cell, which is located in the nucleus. DNA contains lot of information. For DNA sequence to transcript and form RNA which copies the required information, we need a promoter. So promoter plays a vital role in DNA transcription. It is defined as "the sequence in the region of the upstream of the transcriptional start site (TSS)". If we identify the promoter region we can extract information regarding gene expression patterns, cell specificity and development. Some of the genetic diseases which are associated with variations in promoters are asthma, beta thalassemia and rubinstein-taybi syndrome. Literature survey Eric E. Snyder et al. [4,5] has developed a PC program, Geneparser, which distinguishes and verifies the protein coding genes in genomic DNA arrangements. This program scores all subintervals in a grouping for substance facts characteristic of introns and exons, and for destinations that recognize their limits. Jonathan H. Badger[6] et al. has proposed a protein coding region identification tool named CRITICA which uses comparative analysis. In the comparative segment of the investigation, regions of DNA are straightened with identified successions from the DNA databases; if the interpretation of the arranged groupings has more stupendous amino acid than needed for the watched rate nucleotide character; this is translated as proof for coding. David J. States[7] proposed a PC project called BLASTX was formerly indicated to be viable in distinguishing and allotting putative capacity to likely protein coding districts by identifying huge likeness between a theoretically interpreted nucleotide query arrangement and parts of a protein grouping database. Steven Salzberg, et al. [8] has used a decision tree algorithm for locating protein coding region. Genes in eukaryotic DNA spread hundreds or many base sets, while the locales of the aforementioned genes that code for proteins may possess just a little rate of the succession. Eric E.Snyder, et al. [4] has used dynamic programming with neural networks to address the protein coding region problem. Dynamic Programming (DP) is connected to the issue of exactly distinguishing inside exons and introns in genomic DNA arrangements. Suprakash Datta, et al. [9] used a DFT based gene prediction for addressing this problem. Authors provided theoretical concept of three periodicity property observed in protein coding regions in genomic DNA. They proposed new criteria for classification based on traditional frequency approaches of coding regions. Jesus P. Mena-Chalco, et al. [10] has used Modified Gabor-Wavelet Transform for addressing this issue. In this connection, numerous coding DNA model-free systems dependent upon the event of particular examples of nucleotides at coding areas have been proposed. Regardless, these techniques have not been totally suitable because of their reliance on an observationally predefined window length needed [11] for a nearby dissection of a DNA locale. Many authors[10,12-15,16] have applied CA in bioinformatics. Rakesh Mishra, et al. [17] has worked on search and use of promoter region. Look for a promoter component by RNA polymerase from the to a great degree extensive DNA base arrangement is thought to be the slowest and rate-confirming for the regulation of interpretation process. Few immediate investigations we portrayed here which have attempted to accompany the robotic suggestions of this promoter look[18]. Christoph Dieterich, et al. [19] made an extensive study on promoter region. The robotized annotation of promoter districts joins data of two sorts. To begin with, it recognizes crossspecies preservation inside upstream districts of orthologous genes. Pair wise too a various arrangement examinations are processed. Vetriselvi Rangnanan, et al. [20] made a dissection of different anticipated structural lands of promoter [19] districts in prokaryotic and in addition eukaryotic genomes had prior shown that they have a few normal characteristics, for example, lower steadiness, higher curve and less bendability, when contrasted and their neighbouring areas [20]. Jih-Wei Hung[21] has developed an effective forecast calculation that can expand the recognition (power =1 - false negative) of promoter. Authors introduce two strategies that utilize the machine force to ascertain all conceivable examples which are the conceivable characteristics of promoters. Some of the other authors [22-26] has worked on promoter identification and succeeded to some extent. AIS-INMACA(Artificial Immune System- Integrated Multiple Attractor Cellular Automata) Multiple Attractor Cellular Automata which is used in this report is a special class of fuzzy cellular automata which was introduced thirty years ago. It uses fuzzy logic [27,28] to handle real value attributes. The development process / implementation of Multiple Attractor Cellular Automata is administered by AIS technique, a Clonal Algorithm with the underlying theory of survival of the fittest gene. Artificial Immune System is a novel computational intelligence technique with features like distributed computing, fault /error tolerance, dynamic learning, adaption to the frame work, self monitoring, non uniformity and several features of natural immune systems. AIS take its motivation from the standard immune system of the body to propose novel computing tools for addressing many problems in wide domain areas. Some features of AIS which can be mapped with bioinformatics framework are chosen and used in the thesis to strengthen the proposed CA classifier. This paper introduces the integration of AIS with CA which is first for its kind to produce a better classifier which can address major problems in bioinformatics. This proposed classifier named artificial immune system based multiple attractor cellular automata classifier (AIS-INMACA) uses the basic frame work of Cellular Automata (CA) and features of AIS like self monitoring and non uniformity which is potential, versatile and robust. This is the basic motivation of the entire research. The objectives of AIS based evolution of MACA [13,14,28] is 1. To improve the conception of the ways CA performs calculations. 2. To Figure out how CA may be advanced to perform a particular computational job. 3. To follow how advancement makes complex global behavior into locally interconnected cells on a grid. 4. To extract innate classification potential in CA and use Clonal algorithm for producing better rules with fitness. Design of AIS-INMACA The proposed AIS based CA classifier uses fuzzy logic can address major problems inbioinformatics like protein coding region identification and promoter region prediction .Even though some scientists have proposed different algorithms, all of these are specific to the problem. None of them have worked towards proposing a common classifier whose frame work can be useful for addressing many problems in bioinformatics. The general design of AIS-INMACA is indicated in the Figure 2. Input to AIS-INMACA algorithm and its variations will be DNA sequence and Amino Acid sequences. Input processing unit will process sequences three at a time as three neighborhood cellular automata is considered for processing DNA sequences. The rule generator will transform the complemented (Table 2) and non complemented rules (Table 3) in the form of matrix, so that we can apply the rules to the corresponding sequence positions very easily. AIS-INMACA basins are calculated as per the instructions of proposed algorithm and an inverter tree named as AIS multiple attractor cellular automata is formed which can predict the class of the input after all iterations. Algorithm 3.1 is used for creating of AIS-INMACA tree .This tree will dissipate the DNA sequence into respective leaves of the tree. If the sequence is falling into two or more class labels, the algorithm wills recursively partition [29] in such a way that all the sequences will fit into one of the leaves. Every leaf will have a class .Algorithm 2 will be used for getting the class as well as the required transition function. The best fitness rules with a score more than .5 is considered. Algorithm 3.3 [7] uses, algorithm 3.1, 3.2 for predicting the protein and promoter coding regions. Rules of AIS-INMACA The decimal equivalent of the next state function, as defined as the rule number of the CA cell introduced by Wolfram [2], is. In a 2-state 3-neighborhood CA, there are 256 distinct next state functions, among 256 rules, rule 51 and rule 254 are represented in the following equations. The transition function Table 1 was shown for equations 1,2. The tables 2, 3 show the complemented and non complemented rules. Algorithm 3. 1 Input: Training Set S= {S1, S2,…………….., Sx) with P classes Output: AIS-INMACA tree Partition(S, P) 1. Generate a AIS-INMACA with x attractor basins (Two Neighborhood CA) 2. Distribute training set in x attractor basins(Nodes) 3. Evaluate the patterns distributed in each attractor basin. 4. If all the patters say S' which are covered by the attractor basin belong to only one class, then label the attractor basin ( Leaf Node) as the class 5. If S' of an attractor basin belong to more than one class partition (S',P') 6. Stop Algorithm 3.2 (Partial CLA Algorithm) Input: Training set S = {S1, S2, • • • , SK}, Maximum Generation (Gmax). Output: Dependency matrix T, F, and class information. begin Step 1: Generate 200 new chromosomes for IP. Step 2: Initialize generation counter GC=zero; Present Population (PP) ← IP. Step 3: Compute fitness Ft for each chromosome of PP according to Equation Step 4: Store T, F, and corresponding class information for which the fitness value Ft>0.5 Step 5: If number of chromosomes with fitness more than 0.5 are 50 then go to 12. Step 6: Rank chromosomes in order of fitness. Step 6a: Clone the chromosome Step 7: Increment generation counter (GC). Step 8: If GC > Gmax then go to Step 11. Step 9: Form NP by selection, cloning and mutation. Step 10: PP← NP; go to Step 3. Step 11: Store T, F, and corresponding class information for which the fitness value is maximum. Step 11a: Output class, T,F Algorithm 3.3 1. Uses the AIS-INMACA Tree construction Algorithm 3.1 2. Uses the AIS-INMACA Evolution Algorithm 3. 2 3. Trace the corresponding attractor 4. Travel back form attractor to the starting node 5. Identify the start codon 6. Identify the stop codon 7. Report the boundaries of protein coding region. 8. From fist codon of the sequence to start codon Search for TAATAA. 9. Report the promoter boundary located at upstream Experimental Results & Discussions Experiments were conducted by using Fickett and Toung data [30] for predicting the protein coding regions. All the 21 measures reported in [30] were considered for developing the classifier. Promoters are tested and trained with MpromDb data sets[31]. Figure 3 shows the interface developed. Figure 4 is the training interface with rules, sequence and real values. Figure 5 shows the testing interface. Table. 4 show the execution time for predicting both protein and promoter regions which is very promising. Table. 5 shows the number of datasets handled by AIS-INMACA. Figure 6and Figure 7 shows the accuracy of prediction separately which is the important output of our work. Figure 8gives the prediction of extons from the given input graphically. Figure 9. gives the boundary of the location of extons. Figure 10. gives the promoter region prediction and boundary reporting. Conclusion We have successfully developed a logical classifier designed with MACA and strengthened with AIS technique. The accuracy of the AIS-INMACA classifier is considerably more when compared with the existing algorithms which are 84% for protein coding and 90% for promoter region prediction. The proposed classifier can handle large data sets and sequences of various lengths. This is the first integrated algorithm to process DNA sequences of length 252,354. This novel classifier frame work can be used to address many problems in like protein structure prediction, RNA structure prediction, predicting the splicing pattern of any primary transcript and analysis of information content in DNA, RNA, protein sequences and structure and many more. We have successfully developed a frame work with this classifier which will lay future intuition towards application of CA in number of bioinformatics applications.

Cass Sunstein, the former Obama administration "regulatory czar," has warned the campus crusade against "microaggressions" could potentially be enforced by a "new cadre of thought police." In an article in the Bloomberg View, "Picking the Right Words to Ban from Campus," Sunstein presents a sympathetic view on the topic of microaggressions. He writes that certain language can be "humiliating" and can cause "real psychological damage." However, Sunstein admonishes measures taken to curb microaggressions on campuses as attacks on "freedom of thought and expression": "At the same time, it's important to maintain perspective. Some microaggressions can and should be laughed off. Offensive words are usually far less harmful than violence or the worst forms of discrimination. And if charges of microaggressions are taken too far, they can impose a stifling orthodoxy -- undermining freedom of thought and expression." Sunstein chastises the University of California at Berkeley for its "willingness to consider disciplining people for making one of a large number of statements, many or all of which most Americans would consider harmless or even correct." He also mentions another university, the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, has taken a stand against microaggressions by publishing a list of "examples of racial microaggressions." In his article, Sunstein concludes,

change colors (e.g. background, window decoration, tooltips) change sizes of widgets (e.g. of buttons, scrollbars or the main padding) allow use of bright or dark wallpapers without getting icons or panel text unreadable adjust the size of start and panel menues or large toolbars colorize desktop icons and activate hover effects configure your gtk engines and let your current theme be drawn by an installed gtk engine of your choice Click on the System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager You will be prompted to put your administration password. After that in the Search field put gnome color chooser and click on Mark for Installation. The final step is to click on Apply button. If everything is working correct you should find the program in the System - GNOME Color Chooser. Or you can enter in the terminal (press ALT+F2 and write Gnome-terminal) and write sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooser Tip: if you write for example in terminal sudo apt-get install gnome-co and after that you press TAB key two times you will see that will appear all the programs/scripts that begins with gnome-co characters and that are on synaptic or in our repositories from source.list. This is helpful when you don't remember exactly the name of a program or maybe you don't know how is correctly written. An other way to install is entering on the program's website This is how my panel looks now with my font changed (I've print screen it all my desktop): : if you write for example in terminaland after that you press TAB key two times you will see that will appear all the programs/scripts that begins withcharacters and that are on synaptic or in our repositories from source.list. This is helpful when you don't remember exactly the name of a program or maybe you don't know how is correctly written.An other way to install is entering on the program's website http://gnomecc.sourceforge.net/ and download and install from there (this I haven't tried).This is how my panel looks now with my font changed (I've print screen it all my desktop): (For full view please click the image) For understanding how to change the font and also the colors you can watch on this youtube video. It's the tutorial from where I've heard about this program, and I thank to For understanding how to change the font and also the colors you can watch on this youtube video. It's the tutorial from where I've heard about this program, and I thank to Caesarjulii for putting this how to on the web. Also I've inspired from this site: Give this tool a try and hope that you'll be satisfied with it! Also I've inspired from this site: Decolonized Pagan Give this tool a try and hope that you'll be satisfied with it! Update: this post can be found also on my Linux Blog called Ubuntu4Beginners :)For some time I wanted to change my panel's font but I didn't know how to do it! One day, looking on deviantart.com for some inspiration for my conky script I saw on one picture a nice panel with beautiful font.After that I've started to search aor a simple program which could change the font of my panel. My salvation was the programThe features of this program are:OK, I admit that I've used this program only for changing the font but you can do all that features from above. Is your choice!This program I've installed on my Ubuntu Karmik Koala system and let me explain in short how I've done it!

Makoto Shinkai 's your name. ( Kimi no Na wa. ) anime film sold 637,000 tickets on 296 screens for 860 million yen (about US$8.57 million) over the September 24-25 weekend to maintain its #1 ranking for its fifth time. In total, the film has sold 8,500,000 tickets for 11.1 billion yen (about US$111 million) as of September 25. The film is now 2016's highest-grossing film in Japan. The film reached 10 billion yen faster than Disney's Frozen , which closed in Japan after earning 25.4 billion yen in the box office to become Japan's #3 highest-grossing film of all time after Spirited Away and Titanic . Frozen reached 10 billion yen in 37 days while your name. reached the same milestone in 28 days. Kyoto Animation 's anime film adaptation of Yoshitoki Ōima 's A Silent Voice ( Koe no Katachi ) manga fell from #2 to #3 in its second weekend. The film opened on September 17 on 120 screens. The third live-action Ushijima the Loan Shark film ( Yamikin Ushijima-kun Part 3 ) film opened on September 22 on 184 screens and ranked at #4 for the weekend. The live-action film of Naoshi Arakawa 's Your Lie in April ( Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso ) manga fell from #5 to #6 in its third week. The film opened in Japan on September 10 on 294 screens. The film is projected to earn 1.5 billion yen (about US$15 million). Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi 's Shin Godzilla film fell from #6 to #9 in its ninth week. As of September 6, the film sold more than 4.2 million tickets, the highest among all Heisei-era Godzilla films. Sources: Eiga.com, Movie Walker via Yaraon!

Ambling across the lobby with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, my antagonist nodded to me and said, "Hello, darling." It was almost time for another public debate with Christopher Hitchens. For the past few years, Christopher Hitchens (never Chris -- I made that mistake exactly once) and I have been on an "atheist vs. rabbi" roadshow, debating the worth of religion and the reality of God in cities across America. Clutching our books -- his best-selling "God Is Not Great" and my lesser-known "Why Faith Matters" -- we have been invited by universities and synagogues to be partisans in the most recent culture clash: the fight over faith. My opponent is one of the nouveau scourges, a debunker of religion and the idea of God, along with fellow combatants such as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. Hitchens is particularly distinguished by the aggressive elegance of his wit. This evening I would protest his many interruptions, complaining that, after all, not once had I interrupted him. "Ah," he said, "you weren't quick enough." I'm just trying to keep up. I have no right to complain about the bruises, I suppose, since I always wanted to debate the best. As the Talmud teaches, "If you are going to hang yourself, do it from a tall tree." Hitchens is a California redwood. He is also part of a powerful cultural moment. After Sept. 11, 2001, religion seemed to many to be less a consolation for suffering than a cause. Science, not spirituality, offered the promise of a moderate, prosperous and anchored life; reason would deliver salvation. Never mind that science is morally neutral and reason is used as often to upend as to build; the dangers of technology easily fade when we see clerics debasing faith through all sorts of moral outrages. And nobody puts a more entertainingly toxic spin on those outrages than Hitchens. We began our acquaintance in New York in November 2008, when Temple Emanu-el, reputedly the largest synagogue in the world, invited us to debate each other. At a reception before the event, we were approached by someone who noted one of the blurbs on the back of my book: "Wolpe answers these challenges with such kindness and thoughtfulness that even Christopher Hitchens might find his heart warmed." The man asked Hitchens: So, did it warm your heart? "Oh, no," Hitchens replied, holding the book up for skeptical inspection. "My heart is far too reptilian for that." Well, hello to you, too. As we climbed the podium, I mentioned that his book title, "God Is Not Great," (which, on the book's cover, has a pugnaciously lowercase "god") was exactly correct. Maimonides said in the 12th century that any affirmative statement about God must be incorrect because it's inherently limiting. You can say "God is not bad," and that leaves an infinite number of things for God to be. But, strictly speaking, to say "God is great" might be taken to mean not very great, or not transcendent. So you see, I told him, we agree. "Good," he answered. "Why don't we begin with that?"

Microsoft has made an addition to Office 365 on the security front, with the introduction of a Service Assurance Dashboard to bolster the confidence businesses have in the online productivity suite. Nestling in the Security and Compliance Centre, the idea is that the dashboard will impart information on the implementation of privacy, security and compliance controls – including full details of third-party auditing of these controls to ensure they're watertight. Of course, Office 365 is a cloud service and there are traditionally worries about heading cloud-wards with your precious business data, and Microsoft wants to reassure companies they have nothing to worry about. Security tips The dashboard will also offer businesses guidelines on how they can use the productivity suite's various security controls to better protect their data In a blog post, Redmond noted: "Service Assurance helps you to stay secure and compliant with an 'end-to-end' view of controls implemented by you as well as by Microsoft. For controls owned by you, it provides actionable implementation plans for relevant features that help you to implement these controls and manage your risks." The Service Assurance Dashboard is now available to all Office 365 tenants and also to those trialling Office 365 E3/E5. Microsoft will certainly want Office 365 to be seen as more secure and transparent, given that the service was struck by a major ransomware attack earlier this year – one that exposed some 57% of subscribers to phishing attempts. Via: Winbeta

Members of the U.S. Naval Academy's football squad, dressed in navy blue tracksuits, poured hot chocolate from pitchers this morning for hundreds who lined up in downtown San Francisco for the annual Christmas Day meal at St. Anthony's dining room. Inside the room at 150 Golden Gate Avenue, other Navy Midshipmen began loading trays with sliced honey baked ham, sweet potatoes and orange Kool-Aid for the first of 4,000 diners expected for the day, according to St. Anthony's spokesman Karl Robillard. About 100 Navy players, coaches and staff dished up holiday meals for the needy at St. Anthony's as part of yearly charitable effort by organizers of the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, a college gridiron game that this year will pit Navy versus Arizona State at AT&T Park on Saturday. "It's the only collegiate football game with a philanthropic cause," said Robillard, adding that Arizona State's team is handing out holiday meals to the poor today at the Glide Memorial Church at 330 Ellis St. The Kraft Hunger Bowl football contest has been played at AT&T since 2002, and this is the third year that teams selected for the bowl have served Christmas meals at St. Anthony's and Glide, Kraft bowl spokesman Doug Kelly said. Colin Osborne, a Navy freshman running back, dressed in his dark blue tracksuit and wearing plastic serving gloves, said the team, based in Annapolis, Md., has been in San Francisco since Saturday and still feels jetlagged from its cross-country flight. "I don't see it as a chore," Osborne, 20, said of the team's call to provide for the poor. "It's definitely for them, like we're Santa Claus, giving them food and helping them enjoy their Christmas." "Us being in the Navy, we always want to help the community," Osborne said. "We are doing a good thing sacrificing our time. You get to socialize, meet new people." Sitting at a table covered by a green tablecloth and beneath white paper snowflakes hanging overhead, Carliss "Smoky" Dorsey, 62, looked down at his dinner tray amid the din of loud conversation in the somewhat cramped dining room. Dorsey, 62, a native of New Orleans, moved to Austin, Texas, in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated his hometown and has visited San Francisco off and on since, and is now living at the St. Vincent de Paul-MSC South shelter at 525 Fifth Street. "I'm blessed that the good Lord let me live another day and I appreciate what other people are doing for me and many others," Dorsey said. Before arriving at the dining room, Dorsey said he spoke by phone with his aunt in New Orleans to wish her a happy holiday and after he eats, he'll return to the shelter to watch TV. "I feel real good," he said. "I thank God that people give up their time to give us food to nourish our bodies." In the morning, first-comers at St. Anthony's were given prepared meals in bags to bring home later and then directed to stand in line for their dinner trays, according to Kathryn Murphy, event coordinator for St. Anthony's. Seniors like Dorsey were served first, at 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., then others were served until 2 p.m., Murphy said. After the meal, each diner received a gift bag containing one of the more than 3,000 hand woven scarves sent each year to St. Anthony's from as far away as Australia and Japan, plus a new pair of socks, some toiletries, and this year, a Star Trek ball cap, Murphy said. Today's Christmas meal was the 62nd provided by the Catholic Mission since Father Alfred Boeddeker launched it in a former auto-supply shop beside the St. Boniface Church, across Golden Gate Avenue from the current dining room, in 1950. Since then, the Catholic Mission has served 38 million meals, Robillard said. St. Anthony's old dining room, at 45 Jones St., was demolished recently and the charity will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Jan. 24 for its planned new nine-story facility set to open in 2014, Robillard said.

Hot and not Martin Jones, San Jose Sharks Jones threw up a wall against the Calgary Flames, making 47 saves in a 2-1 overtime victory that improved the Sharks' road record to a league-best 24-9-3. Roberto Luongo, Florida Panthers Luongo was pulled from the Panthers' 5-4 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins after allowing four goals on 16 shots in the first period. He has now lost back-to-back starts Is Claude Julien the coach of the year? @Real_ESPNLeBrun: Shouldn't Claude Julien be in the conversation for the Jack Adams Award, given to the league's coach of the year? A 5-4 overtime win against the Florida Panthers moved Julien past Art Ross to become the Boston Bruins' all-time wins leader with 388. It was also yet another key win in a surprising season for a team that many, including myself, predicted during the preseason would take a step back as a public retooling took place under first-year GM Don Sweeney. As you may remember, Julien's future hung in the air for a good six weeks last offseason before Sweeney announced Julien was coming back as coach. Smart move by Sweeney, because a first-year GM should always keep his first coaching change in his back pocket as long as he can. Still, Julien was seen by many as candidate to be fired if things went off the rails this season, and deep down he probably felt the same way. And I know of a few teams that were ready to pounce on him if that happened. Thing is, he's just so good a coach that he has the Bruins overachieving. What say you, gang? @ESPN_Burnside: I was thinking about our post-trade deadline assessment of the Bruins as Lee Stempniak delivered the winner against the Panthers on Monday night. Seeing Sweeney send out a second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-round pick (plus a prospect) to bring in pending free agents Stempniak (who added two assists in Monday's win) and John-Michael Liles (who collected an assist on Stempniak's game winner) seemed a bit counterintuitive for a team that looked to be stockpiling assets. But here the Bruins are, tied with Florida at 81 points, and just a point back of the first-place Tampa Bay Lightning in the compressed Atlantic Division. Could Julien lead the Bruins to another division title? Sure, but either way this is a team that looks like it's going to be a handful come playoff time. I still think the Washington Capitals' Barry Trotz and the Anaheim Ducks' Bruce Boudreau, who squared off in a dynamite game in Anaheim on Monday night, will be in the discussion, as will the Chicago Blackhawks' Joel Quenneville. Still, I think it's fair to say the Bruins are one of the most surprising teams headed down the stretch towards the playoffs. @CraigCustance: One of the things I'm looking for in a coach of the year candidate is a guy who has cultivated growth and improvement in a group throughout the season, and there's no doubt Julien has done that in Boston. You mentioned this season perhaps being a step back in Boston, Pierre, but I wonder if that's being reconsidered now, especially with the way management handled the trade deadline. You don't trade a slew of draft picks if you're truly in the middle of retooling of the organization. Julien has done a fantastic job this season in Boston and definitely should be in consideration, although if I'm giving it to an Eastern Conference coach, it's Trotz. Still, you can't go wrong with either selection. @ESPNJoeyMac: Julien should undoubtedly be a serious contender for the Jack Adams. Until last season, the Bruins knew nothing but consistency under Julien, and Bruins owner Jeremy Jacons said during a conversation in December that he applauded the job by Julien, and said the coach should be a candidate for the Jack Adams. Julien has dealt with a restructuring of the organization, both on and off the ice, and the roster is completely different during this soft rebuild. Boston is still in the playoff structure, though, and should earn a postseason berth. Many believe Julien's job would once again be at risk if the team went one-and-done in the playoffs, and if that was the case it wouldn't take him long to land another job. Imagine if he ended up back with the Montreal Canadiens? The Bruins have survived this season for a few reasons, but you have to give Julien his kudos. I wasn't in Florida for that game Monday, but I'm sure Julien said he was humbled by his accomplishment. All he needs now is a few more championships to catch up to the status of Bill Belichick in Boston. Around the league

Michael Dalder/Reuters Over the weekend, the lines in Greece stretched along the street. Around the corner. Down the block. Lines to get cash. Lines to buy gas. Lines of people eager to get their hands on something of value. Food. Fuel. Cash. Pity the poor guy who was last in line… …the poor taxi driver, for example, standing behind 300 other people, trying to get 200 lousy euros out of an ATM. Like a tragic nightclub customer… among the last to smell the smoke. By the time he headed for the exit, it was clogged with desperate people, all struggling to get through the same narrow door at the same time. Remember: When a bear attacks in the woods, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than at least one other hiker… The Beginning of the End Likewise, you don't have to be the first one to get your money out of an ATM. You just want to be sure you get your money before the machine runs out of cash. And when a bear attacks Wall Street, you don't have to be the first to sell. But you definitely don't want to be the last. The Dow lost 350 points yesterday - its biggest point drop in two years. Today, Greece is expected to default on a $1.7-billion payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). And on the other side of the planet, analysts are looking at "the beginning of the end for Chinese stocks." We doubt it is the beginning of the end. More likely, it is just the end of the beginning. On Friday, the People's Bank of China cut rates to a record low, after stocks in Shanghai slipped 7% in a single day (the equivalent of about 1,300 points on the Dow). Analysts expected a big rally in response to the rate cut. Instead, the Shanghai Index plunged again on Monday, dropping 3%. Greece… China… said one commentator interviewed by Bloomberg: "You have a potentially very ugly situation this week." Our guess: Stocks in the U.S. and China have topped out. Old-timer Richard Russell, who has been studying markets since 1958, agrees: I believe the top has appeared, like the proverbial thief in the night. The Dow has fallen below the 18,000-point level, and is now negative for the year. The Transports, which have led the way recently, are down triple digits for today and are only 89 points above the critical level of 8,000. The Nasdaq has closed under 5,000. At the market's close, gold was up 5.3 at 1,179. When Gold Is Declared Illegal… But wait… What about silver and gold? As regular readers know, we recommend having some cash on hand in case of a monetary emergency. But a reader asks: In the same vein as your reader's question as to what good cash is when it's declared illegal, what good is gold when gold is declared illegal? First, precious metals aren't illegal, so far. Second, making something illegal doesn't necessarily make it unpopular. President Roosevelt banned gold in 1933. The feds wanted complete control of money. The dollar was backed by gold. So getting control of the dollar meant getting control of gold. Once the feds had the gold, they could devalue the dollar by resetting the dollar-gold price from $20 to $35. In an instant, people lost more than 40% of their wealth (as measured by gold). That ban lasted for 42 years. It ended in 1975, largely because of our old friend Jim Blanchard. Jim set up the National Committee to Legalize Gold and worked hard to get the ban lifted. Today, the feds don't need to outlaw gold. It is regarded as "just another asset," like Van Gogh paintings or '66 Corvettes. Few people own it. Few people care - not even the feds. They are unlikely to pay much attention to it - at least, for now. That could change when the lines begin to grow longer. Smart people will turn to gold… not just in time, but just in case. It is a form of cash - traditionally, the best form. You can control it. And with it, you can trade for fuel, food, and other forms of wealth. Lots of things can go wrong in a crisis. Cash helps you get through it. Generally, the price of gold rises with uncertainty and desperation. (More on the current outlook on gold in today's Market Insight below…) Gold is useful. Like Bitcoin and dollars in hand (as opposed to dollars the bank owes you), gold is not under the thumb of the government… or the banks. You don't have to stand in line to get it. Or to spend it. Yes, as more and more people turn to gold as a way to avoid standing in lines, the feds could ban it again. But when we close our eyes and try to peer into a world where gold is illegal, what we see is a world where we want it more than ever.

Going into Election Day, few industries seemed in worse shape than America’s private prisons. Prison populations, which had been rising for decades, were falling. In 2014, Corrections Corporation of America, the biggest private-prison company in the U.S., lost its contract to run Idaho’s largest prison, after lawsuits relating to understaffing and violence that had earned the place the nickname Gladiator School. There were press exposés of shocking conditions in the industry and signs of a policy shift toward it. In April, Hillary Clinton said, “We should end private prisons.” In August, the Justice Department said that private federal prisons were less safe and less secure than government-run ones. The same month, the department announced that it would phase out the use of private prisons at the federal level. Although most of the private-prison industry operates on the state level (immigrant-detention centers are its other big business), the news sent C.C.A.’s stock down by thirty-five per cent. Donald Trump’s victory changed all that: within days, C.C.A.’s stock had jumped forty-seven per cent. His faith in privatization is no secret, and prison companies aren’t the only ones rubbing their hands. The stock price of for-profit schools has also rocketed. Still, the outlook for private prisons is particularly rosy, because many Trump policies work to their benefit. The Justice Department’s plan to phase out private prisons will likely be scrapped, and a growing bipartisan movement for prison and sentencing reform is about to run up against a President who campaigned as a defender of “law and order.” Above all, Trump’s hard-line position on immigration seems certain to fill detention centers, one of the biggest money spinners for private-prison operators. The boom in private prisons in the past two decades was part of a broader privatization trend, fuelled by a belief in the superior efficiency of the private sector. But privatizing prisons makes little economic or political sense. Some studies find private prisons to be less cost-effective than government ones, some more, and further studies suggest that any savings are likely the result of cutting corners. In a study of prisons in nine states, Chris Petrella, a lecturer at Bates College, found that private ones avoid taking sick and elderly inmates, since health care is a huge expense for prisons. They employ a younger, less well trained, and less well paid workforce and have higher inmate-to-guard ratios, all of which saves money but also makes prisons more dangerous. When you consider that the government still spends money monitoring private prisons, and that it’s stuck running the parts of the system that private companies thought were money losers, the case that private prisons save money looks shaky. Even if they did, the ethical cost would be too high. Imprisoning people is one of the weightiest things that government does, yet outsourcing imprisonment means that treatment of inmates is shaped by bottom-line considerations. This has led to understaffing, inadequate mental-health care, and, in some cases, inadequate meals. Worse, private prisons have an obvious incentive to keep people inside as long as possible. Last year, Anita Mukherjee, an assistant professor of actuarial science at the University of Wisconsin, studied Mississippi’s prison system, and found that people in private prisons received many more “prison conduct violations” than those in government-run ones. This made it harder for them to get parole, and, on average, they served two to three more months of prison time. The perversities of profit-driven prison policy don’t end there. The need for inmates leads companies, in effect, to lobby state and federal governments to maintain the current system of mass incarceration. Government-run prisons aren’t blameless here—prison-guard unions lobby for longer sentences and tougher laws—but the private companies know how to throw their weight around, and they benefit from strong local support, as they are often in rural towns without many other sources of jobs or tax revenue. Since the mid-aughts, the industry has spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying on the state and federal levels. Its successes include an Arizona law that required cops to stop suspected undocumented immigrants, major increases in spending on immigration enforcement, and the blocking of congressional efforts to ban private prisons. It’s become common to speak of “the prison-industrial complex,” and the analogy to the military-industrial complex is a good one: in both cases, government spending helps fund very profitable businesses, which, in turn, lobby legislators and regulators to keep the funds flowing. Just as we spend billions on weapons systems that we may not need, so, too, we jail more people than we need for longer than necessary, because it keeps someone’s balance sheet healthy. In recent years, an unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals had made some progress in weakening this system, going after policies like mandatory sentences. Trump’s election will make it much harder to sustain that progress. Private prisons, he said earlier this year, “work a lot better,” and he’ll doubtless look to expand their reach. And he has a simple and grim answer to how many people we should put in prisons and detention centers: More. ♦

ES Lifestyle Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account It’s rush-hour and I’m standing on a packed Tube train, like a sweaty sardine, looking at the Young Couple sitting next to the seats reserved “for people who are disabled, pregnant or less able to stand.” They’re not disabled or pregnant and they’re not sitting in those seats themselves. Their luggage is. They’ve wedged two enormous rucksacks into those seats, which have a big blue sign stuck on the window right above them explaining exactly who those seats are reserved for. I’m waiting for somebody to say something, preferably something beginning with the full version of the acronym “FFS”, followed by an instruction to move their f***ing bags from the f***ing seats and offer their own f***ing seats to someone else. But of course it doesn’t happen. Everyone just stands there, silently seething disapproval in their direction. One or two people shake their heads sadly. One or two others give a bit of an eye-roll. Some do that ‘knowing look’ to one another to show that we share our disdain. Another one – my friend Simon, because this isn’t actually me witnessing this; it happened to him earlier this week – gets out his phone and takes their photograph. The young couple just stare back implacably and impassively. The girl, who looks fit and healthy and in her early 20s, almost looks as if she’s going to smile for the camera. She could be on holiday, visiting London for the first time with her boyfriend. She doesn’t look as if it’s ever crossed her mind to offer up her seat, or her rucksack’s seat, for someone else who might need it more than her. Perhaps she comes from a country where nobody has ever done that, if such countries exist. Her giant rucksack, and her boyfriend’s giant rucksack, just sit there, in their Priority Seat, doing nothing. Simon, in common with everybody else in the packed carriage, does nothing either. He is not a confrontational guy – I play cricket with him and he is more likely to apologise for dropping a catch than swear and kick a hole in the pitch in fury like some of his team-mates - so I would have been surprised if he had intervened. He says he was on the verge of doing something, saying something, when the train stopped at a station and a whole new batch of passengers squeezed in, pushing him further away from the Young Couple. I imagine he was glad the potential for confrontation had receded. Meet the Tube lines as people 11 show all Meet the Tube lines as people 1/11 Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines Muriel's Comedy 2/11 Central line Muriel's Comedy 3/11 Central line and Jubilee line Muriel's Comedy 4/11 Victoria line Muriel's Comedy 5/11 Uber Muriel's Comedy 6/11 Piccadilly line Muriel's Comedy 7/11 London Overground Muriel's Comedy 8/11 Northern line Muriel's Comedy 9/11 Metropolitan line Muriel's Comedy 10/11 Metropolitan line and DLR Muriel's Comedy 11/11 District and Bakerloo lines 1/11 Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines Muriel's Comedy 2/11 Central line Muriel's Comedy 3/11 Central line and Jubilee line Muriel's Comedy 4/11 Victoria line Muriel's Comedy 5/11 Uber Muriel's Comedy 6/11 Piccadilly line Muriel's Comedy 7/11 London Overground Muriel's Comedy 8/11 Northern line Muriel's Comedy 9/11 Metropolitan line Muriel's Comedy 10/11 Metropolitan line and DLR Muriel's Comedy 11/11 District and Bakerloo lines There is, sadly, nothing new or surprising about this scene. It’s played out every single day on Tubes, trains and buses. My friend Carina was once standing in another crowded carriage on a summer’s day, eight and a half months pregnant, when she began to feel dizzy in the stifling heat. Worried that she might collapse, she asked the lady in the Priority Seat next to her if she wouldn’t mind letting her sit there instead. “Why should I?” the woman asked aggressively. “Because I’m pregnant?” suggested Carina, “and because I’m asking you politely?” “How do I know you’re pregnant?” the sitting woman responded angrily, without moving. “You could just be fat.” And of course nobody did anything to support Carina, even though they’d heard the whole exchange and no doubt sympathised entirely. You know what we’re like: English people, being English, doing nothing about it except tutting quietly to ourselves, shrugging helplessly at fellow onlookers, and posting social media updates about it afterwards. At that point we finally come out of their shells, cocooned behind our laptops and phones, and say all the things we should have said at the time, but didn’t. That’s what Simon did, and I noted an interesting thing about the replies. While most were content to share his silent grumble, it was left to a fellow who has spent the last quarter-century of his life living in New York, Las Vegas and Texas, and thus forgotten his native etiquette, to voice what so many others had merely thought, saying he would have issued the instruction to "Move that f***ing s**t!" (but without the asterisks).But he wasn’t there. So it will carry on, ad infinitum, as will all the other things that annoy Londoners about the Tube – most of which we don’t do anything about. The reason Simon’s experience caught my eye was because it took place on the very day that a new survey asked Londoners what most annoyed them on the Underground. And refusing to give up a seat for someone elderly, disabled or pregnant only came seventh, while placing bags on a seat was eighth. So what winds us up the most? People getting on before letting people off, obviously – the English love a queue and have no time for queue-bargers. So we’re more concerned about something that’s simply not polite than we are by something that causes massive inconvenience. Which is so very typical of us. You want to know what else annoys us on the Tube? Numbers two and three are variations on the number one – “not getting out of the way of others trying to get off” and “pushing ahead of you while getting on”. People don’t just have to queue; it’s important to queue properly. 10 amazing facts you may not know about the Piccadilly line 10 show all 10 amazing facts you may not know about the Piccadilly line 1/10 Did you know that... Covent Garden station is said to be haunted by a man in formal evening wear. Rumour has it that he’ll appear to staff and passengers and then suddenly disappear. Some staff members have refused to work in the station because of his ghost. Shutterstock / Luciano Mortula 2/10 Did you know that... Arsenal is the only station on the Underground named after a football club. The club moved from Woolwich to Gillespie Road in 1913 and the station was renamed from Gillespie Road to Arsenal (Highbury Hill) in 1932. The suffix was dropped in 1960 and it’s been simply “Arsenal” ever since. Shutterstock / Bucchi Francesco 3/10 Did you know that... The shortest distance between two stations is from Leicester Square to Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line, which are a mere 300m apart. Shutterstock / Bikeworldtravel 4/10 Did you know that... The extension of the Piccadilly line northwards was largely down to passenger pressure; In 1923, a 30,000-signature petition was delivered to the Ministry of Transport. Shutterstock / Russell Wykes 5/10 Did you know that... The earliest trains run on the Piccadilly Line from Osterly to Heathrow and start at 4:45 A.M. The final stop on the Piccadilly Line is Rayners Lane at 1:19 A.M. Shutterstock / alice-photo 6/10 Did you know that... The Piccadilly line has 35 listed stations - more than any other line. Of these, Oakwood, Southgate, Arnos Grove and Sudbury Town are Grade II listed - that's twice as many as any other line. Shutterstock / sevenMaps7 7/10 Did you know that... During World War II the Aldwych branch's eastern tunnel was used to hold valuables from the British Museum, while the western tunnel was used as an air-raid shelter. Shutterstock 8/10 Did you know that... There is an old corridor and abandoned escalators at Earl’s Court station that used to be a way in and out to the exhibition centre. Shutterstock / Dutourdumonde Pho 9/10 Did you know that... If you paid a full cash fare between Covent Garden and Leicester Square (0.16 miles) it works out at over £28-a-mile. Shutterstock / nito 10/10 Did you know that... There are seven disused stations along Piccadilly Line, including Brompton Road. The others are York Road, Aldwych, Down Street, Park Royal & Twyford Abbey, Osterly & Spring Grove, and Hunslow Town. Shutterstock / littleny 1/10 Did you know that... Covent Garden station is said to be haunted by a man in formal evening wear. Rumour has it that he’ll appear to staff and passengers and then suddenly disappear. Some staff members have refused to work in the station because of his ghost. Shutterstock / Luciano Mortula 2/10 Did you know that... Arsenal is the only station on the Underground named after a football club. The club moved from Woolwich to Gillespie Road in 1913 and the station was renamed from Gillespie Road to Arsenal (Highbury Hill) in 1932. The suffix was dropped in 1960 and it’s been simply “Arsenal” ever since. Shutterstock / Bucchi Francesco 3/10 Did you know that... The shortest distance between two stations is from Leicester Square to Covent Garden on the Piccadilly line, which are a mere 300m apart. Shutterstock / Bikeworldtravel 4/10 Did you know that... The extension of the Piccadilly line northwards was largely down to passenger pressure; In 1923, a 30,000-signature petition was delivered to the Ministry of Transport. Shutterstock / Russell Wykes 5/10 Did you know that... The earliest trains run on the Piccadilly Line from Osterly to Heathrow and start at 4:45 A.M. The final stop on the Piccadilly Line is Rayners Lane at 1:19 A.M. Shutterstock / alice-photo 6/10 Did you know that... The Piccadilly line has 35 listed stations - more than any other line. Of these, Oakwood, Southgate, Arnos Grove and Sudbury Town are Grade II listed - that's twice as many as any other line. Shutterstock / sevenMaps7 7/10 Did you know that... During World War II the Aldwych branch's eastern tunnel was used to hold valuables from the British Museum, while the western tunnel was used as an air-raid shelter. Shutterstock 8/10 Did you know that... There is an old corridor and abandoned escalators at Earl’s Court station that used to be a way in and out to the exhibition centre. Shutterstock / Dutourdumonde Pho 9/10 Did you know that... If you paid a full cash fare between Covent Garden and Leicester Square (0.16 miles) it works out at over £28-a-mile. Shutterstock / nito 10/10 Did you know that... There are seven disused stations along Piccadilly Line, including Brompton Road. The others are York Road, Aldwych, Down Street, Park Royal & Twyford Abbey, Osterly & Spring Grove, and Hunslow Town. Shutterstock / littleny Oddly, my own biggest Tube annoyance – people eating smelly hot food in the carriage – was way down at number 11, behind such comparatively mild offences as manspreading (a bugbear for women, but usually easy to fix, for men at least, with a sharp glance or a braced thigh), leaving litter, and not moving down the carriage. I just can’t see how they compare to the time a man opposite me got out a plate, and a knife and a fork, and transferred the contents of a bag on to his plate and started eating his hot meal without a care in the world, while all I could think about was the stink, and the fact that the place he bought the food must have had some seats, and why the f*** didn’t he eat it there instead. But of course I said nothing, though I did change carriages at the next stop. I decided to look up older surveys to see if attitudes have changed much and was interested to find that in a previous one in 2014 people were less concerned about etiquette and more worried about personal comfort. Smelliness and germ spreading were by far the biggest complaint. The number one gripe was poor hygiene from smelly passengers sitting or standing next to you, followed closely by people who cough or sneeze in your direction, without covering their mouth. I can sympathise: not long ago I was on a night bus in Dalston where a man swaying from side to side was eating a vile-smelling kebab and picking up chips in his fingers – then using the same greasy hand to hold the pole that we all have to use when we get off. On that occasion I too silently seethed: there’s not much point in confronting a drunk bloke at 2am at the best of times, least of all when the damage has already been done. But really they’re all just symptoms of the same thing, aren’t they: in 21st century London people are increasingly self-absorbed, and have less and less consideration for the feelings of anyone apart from themselves. Eating and drinking, playing music, talking on the phone, having inappropriate conversations in front of children, pushing and shoving to get what you want... it’s all part of the society we live in today. It’s just ironic that we also live in a time when people are quicker than ever to take offence at perceived insults and slights, while ignoring all the offensive behaviour right under their noses. I can’t help thinking that if we spent less time sealing ourselves off from everything and everyone around us, our eyes glued to our phones and headphones plugged into our ears, with more awareness of our surroundings, we would be more relaxed. So, while I am resigned to the idea that most Londoners don’t like talking to strangers, it was doubly depressing to read that more than half of us (55 per cent) “feel angry” when someone strikes up a conversation with us on the Tube. That’s something to remember next time you’re asking for directions.

WATCH ABOVE: Animated map of Sunday’s parade route TORONTO – Toronto police have released a list of road closures ahead of Sunday’s annual Santa Claus Parade. Towing of illegally parked along the parade route will begin at 6 a.m. Sunday. The event, which begins at 12:30 p.m., will result in the following closures: – Bloor Street West, from Ossington Avenue to Christie Street, at 8 a.m. – Bloor Street West, from Christie Street to Bathurst Street, at 10 a.m. – Bloor Street West, from Bathurst Street to Bay Street, at 10:45 a.m– Avenue Road/Queen’s Park, from Davenport Road to College Street, at 10:45 a.m.– University Avenue, from College Street to Dundas Street, at 11 a.m.– University Avenue, from Dundas Street to Front Street, at 11:15 p.m.– Wellington Street, from University Avenue to Jarvis Street, at 11:30 p.m.– Front Street, from Bay Street to Jarvis Street, at 11:45 p.m. Meanwhile the parade route, which will last two and half hours, is as follows: Start: Bloor Street West and Christie Street – Eastbound on Bloor Street West – Southbound Queen’s Park Crescent East – Southbound University Avenue – Eastbound Wellington Street West – Eastbound Front Street East Finish: Front Street East & Jarvis Street

The Democratic Party primary has revealed a sharp divide in the nation’s progressive movement. The national leaders of a wide range of unions and activist organizations have endorsed Hillary Clinton while state and local chapters, and many rank-and-file members, support Bernie Sanders. The 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT) became the first national union to weigh in on the Democratic primary last July when it endorsed Clinton. The endorsement was met with a petition calling for a retraction and thousands of Facebook comments supporting Sanders. AFT Vice President Jerry Jordan told WhoWhatWhy that the endorsement was based on interviews the union conducted with Clinton, Sanders, and Martin O’Malley. (O’Malley has since dropped out of the race.) Republican candidates were invited, but none responded. Additionally, a nationwide survey was sent out to AFT members in June, and among the 1,150 respondents, 67% said they supported Clinton. Clinton’s endorsements came from “organizations where the leaders decide,” while “every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.” It’s worth noting, however, that Clinton officially announced her campaign in April, just two months before the survey, while Sanders announced the following month in May, when he lacked the name recognition he currently enjoys. Concerning the timing of the AFT’s endorsement, Jordan said that “we all knew the track record of the three candidates,” and that the AFT had long working relationships with all three. “When we interviewed them,” Jordan said, “Clinton really shined that afternoon and spent time talking about all the issues.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Vermont state chapter of the AFT endorsed Sanders in January. Four years ago the same state chapter declined to second the national endorsement of Barack Obama, president Ben Johnson told WhoWhatWhy, but “2016 is different because Bernie Sanders is from Vermont, man.” There’s no question Brooklyn-born Sanders, Vermont’s junior senator, enjoys a significant home-field advantage in New England: the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association and the New Hampshire chapter of the Service Employees International Union endorsed Sanders, while the national leadership of both unions endorsed Clinton. But it’s not just upper New England. When the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, backed Clinton last November, the reaction closely mirrored that following the AFT’s endorsement. There was a deluge of complaints on Facebook and criticism from the rank-and-file, many of whom pointed out that Sanders did better on the group’s “scorecard” than Clinton did. The timing of the endorsement also drew criticism: an op-ed written the following month claimed that “it’s far too early in this primary for the nation’s most powerful environmental political organization to endorse.” According to In These Times, over 40 local unions have endorsed Sanders, often diverging from the national unions’ endorsements of Clinton. The Intercept observed that all of Clinton’s endorsements came from “organizations where the leaders decide,” while “every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.” It seems clear that the fight over endorsements is an extension of the familiar media narrative of Clinton versus Sanders: the pragmatist versus the idealist, the frontrunner versus the underdog, and the well-connected insider versus the perennial outsider. “I think there’s a difference in how people view presidential races depending on their vantage point,” said Johnson, the VT AFT president. “The vantage point of a lot of grassroots activists has to do with broad questions about what kind of society they want to live in and which candidate is telling the story best about the society they want to envision.” From this perspective, Johnson said, Sanders appears to be the more attractive candidate. On the other hand, voters who are a bit higher up in political organizations are more concerned with “who’s going to be able to put something through Congress and try and get things done,” Johnson said. “Through that lens, Hillary Clinton looks a lot more likely than Bernie Sanders.” In the end, an undemocratic endorsement process rewards the connected insider and stacks the deck against “insurgent” campaigns like the one Sanders is running. While that might benefit the establishment candidate in the short run, it also ends up alienating the base — and the Republican primary shows that taking such a path can lead to chaos. Related front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from We Can Do It! poster (The U.S. National Archives / Flickr), Hillary Clinton (Gage Skidmore / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0), Bernie Sanders (Gage Skidmore / Flickr – CC BY-SA 2.0) Where else do you see journalism of this quality and value? Please help us do more. Make a tax-deductible contribution now. Our Comment Policy Keep it civilized, keep it relevant, keep it clear, keep it short. Please do not post links or promotional material. We reserve the right to edit and to delete comments where necessary. Related print

Cole Whitt, shown in November, is one of two Sprint Cup drivers for Swan Racing. (Photo: Jerome Miron, USA TODAY Sports) CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Swan Racing has added a new investor to its race team: Iowa businessman Anthony Marlowe is now a minority owner. Marlowe joins Swan Racing team owner Brandon Davis and investor Bill Romanowski. Marlowe is co-founder and president of domestic customer relationship management firm TMone. He is also the managing member of private investment firm Iowa City Capital Partners. Swan Racing will field two full-time Sprint Cup entries in 2014. Cole Whitt will drive the No. 26 Toyota and Parker Kligerman will drive the No. 30. The team announced last week that Randy Cox will be Whitt's crew chief. Steven "Bones" Lane will be both competition director and Kligerman's crew chief. Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Taiwan is reportedly pushing ahead with plans to upgrade its indigenous anti-ship and air-to-air missile arsenal, while the development status of its land attack cruise missiles remains uncertain. Media reports in Taiwan say the island's National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, or NCSIST, is currently working to improve the range, guidance systems and electronic counter-countermeasures of the Hsiung-Feng (Brave Wind) series of anti-ship missiles, the Tien Kung (Sky Bow) surface-to-air missile and the Tien Chien (Sky Sword) II air-to-air missile. No timelines or specific details have been given for the various programs. The reports say NCSIST has successfully increased the range of the subsonic Hsiung-Feng II and ramjet-powered Hsiung-Feng III anti-ship missiles to 156 and 250 miles respectively. Both types of missiles are deployed by the Taiwanese armed forces in the road mobile and shipboard versions. The HF-3 is an inertial navigation system-guided missile with terminal active radar homing. It uses a 500-pound explosively-formed projectile fragmentation warhead and is reportedly equipped with a smart fuse designed to direct most of the explosive energy downward once it has detected that the missile is inside the target ship's hull. In the event of a cross-strait conflict with China, the HF-3 will be Taiwan's most advanced anti-ship missile to be fielded against the rapidly modernizing People's Liberation Army Navy and will almost certainly be used to target the PLAN's high-value warships, such as its aircraft carriers and Type 055 cruisers. Development is also reportedly underway to increase the range of the Tien Chien II radar-guided air-to-air missile to 56 miles. Taiwan has recently completed an upgrade program to its Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation F-CK-1 Indigenous Defense Fighter, which among other improvements allows it to carry four TC-2 air-to-air missiles, up from the current two. A naval variant, designated the TC-2N, is fitted on Taiwanese Navy ships for defense against aircraft and anti-ship missiles. The Tien Kung III medium- to long-range surface-to-air missile will also be in line for an upgrade. First fielded in 2011, the TK III also has the capability to intercept tactical ballistic missiles and is deployed alongside the U.S. Raytheon MIM-104 Patriot, with early warning against incoming ballistic missiles provided by a Raytheon AN/FPS-115 PAVE Phased Array Warning System, or Pave Paws, which entered service in 2013. × Fear of missing out? Fear no longer. Be the first to hear about breaking news, as it happens. You'll get alerts delivered directly to your inbox each time something noteworthy happens in the Military community. Thanks for signing up. By giving us your email, you are opting in to our Newsletter: Sign up for our Early Bird Brief Pave Paws is a Cold War-era radar and computer system developed to "detect and characterize a sea-launched ballistic missile attack" that first became operational in the U.S. in 1980. Taiwan acquired a single system, which became operational in 2013. Stationed in Hsinchu County in northern Taiwan, it is claimed to have a range of 3,100 miles and gives a six-minute warning of an impending missile attack. Raytheon was awarded a $26 million U.S. Department of Defense contract in November 2016 to upgrade the system for Taiwan "to address obsolescence concerns," with work expected to be complete by the middle of 2018. The company had previously won a $289.5 million contract to provide sustainment support for the radar in 2012. Taiwan also has offensive land attack cruise missiles and standoff weapons known to be either in service or under development. NCSIST has been working on a ground-launched land attack cruise missile since 2001, which has been reported to have been cleared for production in 2011. The HF-2E (not related to the HF-2 anti-ship missile mentioned above) is claimed to be a subsonic missile capable of delivering a 440-pound unitary warhead up to 375 miles away. In 2014, Taiwan unveiled the Wan Chien (Ten Thousand Swords) standoff weapon for its upgraded F-CK-1 aircraft. As its name suggests, the Wan Chien is a delivery system for submunitions, with its unpowered, streamlined dispenser reportedly having a range of up to 135 miles. Taiwan's extensive indigenous defense industry is a result of a highly successful effort by China to diplomatically isolate the island, and has in the past successfully lobbied hard to restrict any significant arms sales to Taiwan. China sees Taiwan as a renegade province and does not recognize the island as a sovereign nation. The U.S officially abides by the "One China" policy, but does not recognize China's sovereignty over Taiwan nor does it recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.

The Georgia Institute of Technology has recently introduced a ticketing policy that would allow graduating students a maximum of six guests at their commencement ceremony. This action has come as a surprise to most and has angered many who have heard about it. Graduation is one of the biggest accomplishments a person will ever have and his/her friends and family should be allowed to be present to view their loved one graduate as opposed to having to view it online. Students have contributed monetarily to the institution, and will be asked to contribute at commencement after they graduate via donations. These prior and future contributions should allow students to be granted their choice of guests as has been the policy previously at the institution. I would also like to offer some possible solutions to the problems because I understand that the new pavilion can only hold a certain amount of people. 1. Have the ceremony at the Georgia Dome. 2. Split the ceremonies into morning and afternoon commencement as was done in Alexander Memorial Coliseum to allow more tickets.

“JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there is,” he said while taping an interview on the ABC program “The View” to be broadcast Tuesday. “Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting. We don’t know all the details. It’s going to be investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street reform.” Photo “You could have a bank that isn’t as strong, isn’t as profitable managing those same bets and we might have had to step in,” Mr. Obama added. At Barnard, the president referred only obliquely to Wall Street, saying, “Some folks in the financial world have not exactly been model corporate citizens.” Instead, he kept the focus squarely on women’s issues. Squabbles over federal financing of Planned Parenthood and coverage of contraceptive services have emboldened Democrats who believe they can exploit a gender gap in the November election. Mr. Obama tried to leap into that gap on Monday, with a speech that drew heavily on his childhood, reared by a single mother and an ambitious but frustrated grandmother; his marriage to a strong-willed professional woman; his high hopes for his two daughters; even his cabinet, filled with accomplished women, from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis. At one point, after assuring the crowd that “all of you will help lead the way,” Mr. Obama cheerfully acknowledged he was pandering. “I recognize that’s a cheap applause line when you’re giving a commencement at Barnard,” he said. Much of Mr. Obama’s address offered the bromides common to such speeches. At times, he recited standard policy messages on health care, education and alternative energy sources. At other times, he mixed fatherly advice with thoughts of his own daughters and reminiscences of his younger days. Yet the timing gave it an unmistakable political subtext. Hours before Mr. Obama spoke, the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee circulated reminders via Twitter and e-mail about how tough the job market has been for college graduates in the past few years. Photo For the last several months, Democrats have tried to leverage women’s issues against Republicans, attacking them for targeting Planned Parenthood, for resisting Mr. Obama’s contraception mandate, and over the Paycheck Fairness Act, which Senate Republicans have rejected. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the latest skirmish, the parties are battling over competing versions of the Violence Against Women Act, a measure that usually sails through Congress without controversy. The Republican-controlled House this week is set to vote on a basic extension of the act, which aids local law enforcement agencies and finances shelters and other programs for battered women. That has set up a showdown with Senate Democrats, who have already passed legislation that would expand efforts to reach Indian tribes and include same-sex couples in programs for domestic violence. 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. Mr. Obama cited the travails of Lilly Ledbetter, for whom his administration’s equal pay law is named, as well as pioneering legislation pushed by two senators, Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, and Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine. Still, his tone was upbeat and he was on familiar ground. Mr. Obama’s sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, graduated from Barnard in 1993. Ten years earlier, he graduated from Columbia. (“I know there can be a little sibling rivalry here,” he said.) Mr. Obama later spoke at a fund-raiser, where one of the hosts, Ricky Martin, the openly gay pop star, said he admired the president for his courage in endorsing same-sex marriage. For his part, Mr. Obama said: “I want everyone treated fairly in this country. We have never gone wrong when we’ve extended rights and responsibilities to everybody. That doesn’t weaken families; that strengthens families.”

Year after year, Americans are horrified by the relentless gun violence in this country – and feel despair that it can’t be stopped. This resignation is a direct result of the stranglehold that the National Rifle Association has on legislators, who fear the dire political ramifications of supporting common sense gun safety measures. It’s long past time to take the issue directly to the people. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing just that, with his breakthrough proposal of a state ballot measure to advance gun safety. Among other things, the measure would make California the first in the nation to implement point-of-sale background checks for ammunition purchases, giving them the same level of scrutiny as gun purchases. It would also require gun owners to get rid of their large-capacity magazines, and report lost or stolen firearms to law enforcement. “If we continue to fight the National Rifle Association on their home court, which is the legislative front, I think we’ll continue to be frustrated,” Newsom told MSNBC. “But when you have an ability to go directly to the public, that’s a completely different field of engagement.” Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Sacramento Bee The NRA is widely acknowledged as one of the nation’s most influential advocacy groups. It has poured more than $27 million into the campaign coffers of elected officials and more than $35 million into lobbying since 1989. State and federal legislators fear ending up in the NRA’s crosshairs, most notably by being punished with a less-than-perfect grade on its annual legislative scorecard. It is no surprise there have been no meaningful gun control policies since the 1994 assault weapon ban, which was allowed to expire in 2004. Too often, the debate over gun safety has focused on the rights of gun owners, not the rights of people to feel safe in their communities. More than 1.35 million Americans have been killed by guns since 1970, nearly as many as have died in all the wars in U.S. history. On average, 89 people die in the United States every day from gun violence, including preschoolers, gun owners and bystanders in mass shootings. Contrary to gun industry spin, owning a gun doesn’t make a person safer. Gun owners are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than non-gun owners. We should be able to send our children off to school, pray in our houses of worship, and walk the streets of our neighborhoods without the fear of gun violence. Indeed, the public overwhelmingly supports common-sense gun safety measures, including background checks for all gun sales. Even among the NRA rank and file, measures such as universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines attract strong support. A successful gun control initiative in the nation’s largest state would send a clear message that elected officials should take the will of the people seriously – and would crack the armor of the NRA. Passage of California’s ballot measure would lead not only to voter initiatives in other states, but also to greater confidence and courage among policymakers to take up gun safety legislation. Newsom’s proposals are a great start to replace frustration and resignation with hope and community empowerment.

When people think of the technology behind video games and movies, they often just focus on the visuals. True, when creating an immersive experience, the video is probably the most important aspect from a technological perspective. With that said, audio quality is very important too. Today, Microsoft announces that both Xbox One And Windows 10 will be getting Dolby Atmos support in future updates. If you aren't familiar, it is a surround sound technology with a focus on immersion. Don't have compatible audio hardware? Don't worry -- the Windows-maker is promising a "virtual" Atmos experience too. "Xbox will be the first game console to feature Dolby Atmos and game developers are excited about using the new capabilities to make their games richer and more engaging. Atmos support for the Blu-ray app on Xbox is already available in Preview and will be released to GA soon -- and we're very excited now to offer Atmos support to games on Xbox One and Windows 10. You'll be able to experience Dolby Atmos in your home theater, assuming you have a Dolby Atmos enabled speaker system or soundbar. But you don’t need to have that kind of equipment -- it will be possible to enable virtually any pair of headphones with the Dolby Atmos experience", says Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson. Hryb also shares, "of course, Dolby Atmos is great for more than just games. The technology began in the cinema and many of Hollywood's top films are available on Blu-ray disc or streaming with Dolby Atmos sound. With Dolby Atmos, you're immersed in the movie like never before, with sounds moving all around you, just as it does in real life. You'll get that immersive experience whether you’re playing a Dolby Atmos film on your Xbox One or a Windows 10 PC or tablet". Dolby Atmos support is coming to both the original Xbox One and Xbox One S. Microsoft's newest "S" console features 4K Blu-ray support too -- something the PlayStation 4 does not have. Dolby Atmos is yet another Xbox feature that Sony's consoles lack. While Xbox One got off to a slow start against Sony, it looks like Microsoft is starting to really pull away. In other words, Xbox One could very well win this generation of the console wars. This addition of Dolby Atmos to Windows 10 will make an already wonderful operating system even better. Seriously folks, if you are clinging to Windows 7 or 8x, it is finally time to move on. Microsoft's latest OS rocks! Are you excited for Dolby Atmos on Xbox One and Windows 10? Tell me in the comments. Photo credit: Milles Studio / Shutterstock

Since the Itanium series was such a smash hit (two whole people read it!), here's another series for a now-defunct processor architecture which Windows once supported. The next who-knows-how-many days will be devoted to an introduction to the Alpha AXP processor, as employed by Win32. The Alpha AXP follows in the traditional RISC philosophy of having a relatively small and uniform instruction set. The first Alpha AXP chip was dual-issue, and it eventually reached quad-issue. (There was an eight-issue processor under development when the Alpha AXP project was cancelled.) This series will focus on the original Alpha AXP architecture because that's what Windows NT for Alpha AXP ran on, and it will largely ignore features added later. The Alpha AXP is a 64-bit processor. It does not have "32-bit mode"; the processor is always running in 64-bit mode. If the destination of a 32-bit operation is a register, the answer is always sign-extended to a 64-bit value. (This is known as the "canonical form" for a 32-bit value in a 64-bit register.) This one weird trick lets you close one eye and sort of pretend that it's a 32-bit processor. An Alpha AXP program running on 32-bit Windows NT still has full access to the 64-bit registers and can use them to perform 64-bit computations. It could even use the full 64-bit address space, if you were willing to jump through some hoops. Each instruction is a 32-bit word, aligned on a 4-byte boundary. Unlike other RISC processors of its era, the Alpha AXP does not have branch delay slots. If you don't know what branch delay slots are, then consider yourself lucky. Memory size terms in the Alpha AXP instruction set are byte , word (two bytes), longword (four bytes), and quadword (eight bytes).¹ In casual conversation, longword and quadword are usually shortened long and quad . The Alpha AXP defines certain groups of instructions which are optional, such as floating point. If you perform an instruction which is not implemented by the processor, the instruction will trap into the kernel, and the kernel is expected to emulate the missing instruction, and then resume execution. Registers There are 32 integer registers, all 64 bits wide. Formally, they are known by the names r0 through r31 , but Win32 assigns them the following mnemonics which correspond to their use in the Win32 calling convention. Register Mnemonic Meaning Preserved? Notes r0 v0 value No On function exit, contains the return value. r1 … r8 t0 … t7 temporary No r9 … r14 s0 … s5 saved Yes r15 fp frame pointer Yes For functions with variable-sized stacks. r16 … r21 a0 … a5 argument No On function entry, contains function parameters. r22 … r25 t8 … t11 temporary No r26 ra return address Not normally r27 t12 temporary No r28 at assembler temporary Volatile Long jump assist. r29 gp global pointer Special Not used by 32-bit code. r30 sp stack pointer Yes r31 zero reads as zero N/A Writes are ignored. The zero register reads as zero, and writes to it are ignored. But it goes further than that: If you specify zero as the destination register for an instruction, the entire instruction may be optimized out by the processor! This means that any side effects may or may not occur. There are a few exceptions to this rule: Branch instructions are never optimized out. If a branch instructions specifies zero as the register to receive the return address, the branch is still taken, but the return address is thrown away. as the register to receive the return address, the branch is still taken, but the return address is thrown away. Load instructions are always optimized out. If a load instruction specifies zero as the destination register, the processor will never raise an exception. Instead, these "phantom loads" are used as prefetch hints to the processor. Whereas the behavior of the zero register is architectural, the behavior of the other registers are established by convention. Win32 requires that the gp , sp , and fp registers be used for their stated purpose throughout the entire function. (If a function does not have a variable-sized stack frame, then it can use fp for any purpose.) Some registers have stated purposes only at entry to a function or exit from a function. When not at the function boundary, those registers may be used for any purpose. Register marked with "Yes" in the "Preserved" column must be preserved across the call; those marked "No" do not. The ra register is marked "Not normally" because you don't normally need to preserve it. However, if you are a leaf function that uses no stack space and modifies no preserved registers, then you can skip the generation of unwind codes for the leaf function, but you must keep the return address in ra for the duration of your function so that the operating system can unwind out of the function should an exception occur. (Special rules for lightweight leaf functions also exist for Itanium and x64.) What does it mean when I say that the at register is volatile? Direct branch instructions can reach destinations up to 4MB from the current instruction. When the compiler generates a bsr instruction (branch to subroutine), it typically doesn't know how far away the destination is. The compiler just generates a bsr instruction with a fixup and hopes for the best. It is the linker who knows how far away the destination actually is, and if it turns out the destination is too far away, the linker changes .... BSR toofaraway .... to .... BSR trampoline .... trampoline: ... set the "at" register equal to the ... address of "toofaraway." JMP (at) ; register indirect jump The linker inserts the generated trampoline code between functions, which also has as a consequence that a single function cannot be larger than 8MB. Anyway, this secret rewriting means that any branch instruction can potentially modify the at register. In between branches, you can use at , but you cannot rely on its value remaining the same once a branch is taken. In practice, the compiler just avoids using the at register altogether. The gp register is not used by 32-bit code. I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that in 64-bit code, it serves the same purpose as the Itanium gp register. Note that some register names, like a0 look like hex digits. The Windows debugger resolves them in favor of hex values, so if you do ? a0 thinking that you're getting the value of the a0 register, you're going to be disappointed. To force a symbol to be interpreted as a register name, put an at-sign in front: ? @a0 . Even more confusing is that the Windows debugger's disassembler does not put the 0x prefix in front of numbers, so when you see an a0 , you have to use the context to determine whether it is a number or a register. For example, LDA a0, a0(a0) ^^ ^^ ^^ register | register number The first parameter to LDA and the parameter inside the parentheses must be a register, so the outer a0 's refer to the register. The thing just outside the parentheses must be a constant, so the middle a0 is the number 160. Yes, it's confusing at first, but the uniform instruction set means that these rules are quickly learned, and you don't really notice it once you get used to it. Another point of confusion is that the conventional placeholder names for registers in instructions are Ra , Rb and Rc . This should not be confused with the ra register. There are thirty-two floating point registers. Formally, they are known as f0 through f31 , but Win32 assigns the following mnemonics: Register Mnemonic Preserved? Meaning f0 No Return value f1 No Second return value (for complex numbers) f2 … f9 Yes f10 … f15 No f16 … f21 No First six parameters f22 … f30 No f31 fzero N/A Reads as zero. Writes are ignored. There are four floating point formats supported. Two are the usual IEEE single and double precision formats. Two are special formats for backward compatibility with the DEC VAX. That's about all I'm going to say about floating point. Finally, there are some special registers. Register Mnemonic Meaning pc fir program counter lock_flag For interlocked memory access phys_locked For interlocked memory access fpcr Floating point control register Why is the program counter called fir ? Because that stands for "faulting instruction register". Clearly named by somebody wearing kernel-colored glasses. These special registers are not directly accessible. To retrieve the program counter, you can to issue a branch instruction and save the "return address" into the desired destination register. We'll learn more about the lock_flag and phys_locked when we study interlocked memory access. Note that there is no flags register. I repeat: There is no flags register. Here's what a register dump looks like in the Windows debugger: v0=00000000 00000016 t0=00000000 00000000 t1=00000000 00000000 t2=00000000 00000000 t3=00000000 00000009 t4=00000000 00000001 t5=00000000 0006f9d0 t6=00000000 00000008 t7=00000000 00000000 s0=00000000 00000001 s1=00000000 00000000 s2=00000000 00081eb0 s3=00000000 77fc0000 s4=00000000 00081dec s5=00000000 77fc0000 fp=00000000 7ffde000 a0=00000000 750900c8 a1=00000000 00000001 a2=00000000 00000009 a3=00000000 0006f9d0 a4=00000000 00000001 a5=00000000 00000001 t8=00000000 0000004c t9=00000000 00000001 t10=00000000 0000004c t11=ffffffff c00ea124 ra=00000000 77f4df08 t12=00000000 00000001 at=00000000 77f548f0 gp=00000000 00000000 sp=00000000 0006f9e0 zero=00000000 00000000 fpcr=08000000 00000000 softfpcr=00000000 00000000 fir=77f63bf4 psr=00000003 mode=1 ie=1 irql=0 I never needed to know what softfpcr is. The psr is the processor status register, the mode is 1 for user mode and 0 for kernel mode, ie is the interrupt enable flag, and irql is the interrupt request level. The calling convention is simple. As noted in the tables above, parameters are passed in registers, with excess parameters spilled onto the stack. There is no home space. The return address is passed in the ra register, and the stack must be kept aligned on a 16-byte boundary. Exception dispatch is done by unwind tables stored in a separate section of the image. Okay, that's the register set and calling convention. Next time, we'll look at integer operations. Exercise: The x64 calling convention reserves home space so that the register-based parameters can be spilled onto the stack and remain contiguous with the other stack-based parameters, so that the entire parameter pack can be enumerated with the va_start family of macros. Why doesn't this requirement apply to the Alpha AXP?

Earwolf Presents #39 The Mysterious Secrets Of Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium is an epic, richly sound-designed comedy adventure, created by a truly unique trio of writer/director Duncan Sarkies, musician Lawrence Arabia, and artist Stephen Templer. This Howl Original 12-part mini-series stars Jemaine Clement (Flight Of The Conchords) and an ensemble of creative friends from Wellington, New Zealand. Travel back to 1768, when the Fortitude sailed from the famous port of Damprot, the Jewel of the Gravy Isles. The ship, commandeered by Lord Joseph Banks–nephew of the infamous botanist Bertie Banks–was on a mission to find a plant known to be the very source of pleasure in the world: Heaven’s Clover. This is the tale of that fateful journey. To hear the rest of the story, told week-by-week, sign up for Howl Premium today. Use the promo code BERTIE at Howl.fm, and get your first month free.

CoinDesk’s 2016 State of Bitcoin and Blockchain report summarizes key trends, data and events from 2015, details findings from our annual Thought Leader’s Survey and includes predictions on what to expect in 2016. This article highlights a few of the key findings from the report. 2015 Review The major story from 2015 is undoubtedly the increasing focus on bitcoin’s underlying technology, commonly referred to as blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT). Many parties, from government authorities to financial institutions, began to examine potential applications of DLT for securities transaction settlement and other use cases. Meanwhile, bitcoin’s price and exchange trading volume bounced back strongly after a gloomy first half of the year. Venture capital investment increased 36% year-on-year, although the pace slowed down in the second half of 2015. Mainstream retail adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to lag due to a lack of compelling use cases, and there are also signs that bitcoin’s use on the dark web has peaked. Bitcon’s scalability debate was a hot topic in software developer circles in 2015, and it recently spilled over into mainstream discussion with the high-profile departure of developer Mike Hearn. While many proposed scalability solutions exist, none have achieved sufficient consensus for deployment. However, industry leaders who were surveyed state they are confident that the question of bitcon’s scalability will be resolved, at least in the short-run. Overall, the tempo of industry regulation slowed 2015. The New York BitLicense, the state’s industry-specific licensing regime, went into effect in August, and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) announced that bitcoin transactions are exempt from value-added tax (VAT) in October. ‘Blockchain, blockchain, blockchain!’ R3CEV has made significant progress by gathering 42 major banks and financial institutions to participate in its DLT initiative. The combined market cap of the consortium is $600bn, and 60% of the financial institutions participating are global systemically important financial institution (SIFIs) (Slide 99). However, R3 has attracted criticism (Slide 101) and now faces competition in the form the recently announced SWIFT consoritum. Looking ahead, expect to see various deployments of DLT, along with further attention given to arguably DLT’s ‘killer app’, smart contracts (Slide 95). Of particular interest will be whether the Open Ledger Project, which will be managed by the the Linux Foundation, can address the many governance problems observed around software development in 2015 (Slide 118). Also expect to hear more about Ethereum in 2016 and the decentralized applications being built on its public blockchain, including Slock.it, Augur and Vunk (Slide 109). Bitcoin price ends at one-year high After gradually picking up in Q3, bitcoin’s price reached its one-year high of $430.05 in Q4. Following, a dismal 2014, bitcoin once again sits atop the world’s best performing currencies leaderboard (Slide 28). Most believe bitcoin’s price has been largely driven by financial instability in China (Slide 30), while other’s point to the expected July 2016 halving of the block reward to 12.5 BTC and the resultant reduction in the supply of new bitcoins entering the market. Sixty percent of the top 10 most-viewed stories on CoinDesk in Q4 were price-related (Slide 42). Furthermore, media coverage of bitcoin on China’s Sina increased 42% quarter-on-quarter (Slide 43) as Chinese yuan denominated trading represented 95% of total exchange volume (Slide 44). Total exchange volume, which tends to increase during periods of higher volatility, was eight times greater in December than in September (Slide 33). VC investment continues to slow Total bitcoin venture capital increased by 3% to $949m in Q4. The growth rate of VC investment has been declining for the past three quarters after peaking at 50% in Q1 2015 (Slide 14). Investors may be concerned by the viability of current business models and slow consumer adoption. New investment in digital wallets and payment processors has effectively ceased over the past year (Slide 58). Two more startups announced closure this quarter, bringing the bitcoin ‘deadpool’ to a total of 24 companies (Slide 17). In addition to lack of funding, ‘security’ is the most commonly cited reason for closure. However, most survey respondents remain optimistic about the venture capital investment in the bitcoin and blockchain ecosystems in 2016, and Digital Asset Holding’s recently announced $50m round lends this view some early support. Regulation and central bank digital currency initiatives Towards the end of the 2015, the European Court of Justice announced its decision to exempt bitcoin transactions from value-added tax (VAT). European bitcoin companies welcomed this rule and regarded it as a milestone in bitcoin regulation (Slide 81). Overall, regulation remained ‘light touch’ in 2015, and some European countries, like Luxembourg, are are actively seeking to attract startups by fostering a friendly regulatory environment. The Bank of England recently released a paper examining the macroeconomic consequences of central bank digital currency (Slide 79), and is also actively developing the technology that would allow the bank to deploy its own bitcoin-like currency. Along with a recent announcement by China, it would not be surprising to see one of the world’s governments deploy its own digital currency or blockchain-based system in 2016. View the full State of Bitcoin and Blockchain 2016 report by subscribing to our research newsletter.

$16 BILLION SPENT ANNUALLY LOCKING UP PRISONERS 50 YEARS OF AGE AND OLDER WHO POSE LITTLE SAFETY RISK FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 14, 2012 CONTACT: Will Matthews, (212) 549-2582 or 2666, media@aclu.org; Ryan Kiesel, Executive Director, ACLU of Oklahoma, (405) 524-8511, rkiesel@acluok.org NEW YORK/OKLAHOMA CITY – States would save on average more than $66,000 per year by releasing each elderly prisoner they needlessly keep behind bars, a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union finds. Despite evidence showing that elderly people are far less likely to commit crime than the rest of the population, more than $16 billion of taxpayer money is spent annually locking up hundreds of thousands of relatively low-risk prisoners who are 50 years of age and older, according to the ACLU’s report. Age 50 is the criminological consensus of when a prisoner becomes elderly because people age physiologically faster in prison. “Extremely disproportionate sentencing policies, fueled by the ‘tough on crime’ and ‘war on drugs’ movements, have turned our prisons into nursing homes, and taxpayers are footing the bill,” said Inimai Chettiar, ACLU advocacy and policy counsel. “Lawmakers need to implement reforms that lead to the release of those elderly prisoners who no longer pose a safety threat sufficient to justify their continued incarceration and reform our sentencing policies to prevent this epidemic at the outset.” The ACLU’s report, “At America’s Expense: The Mass Incarceration of the Elderly,” finds that by 2030, there will be more than 400,000 elderly prisoners behind bars, a 4,400 percent increase from 1981 when only 8,853 state and federal prisoners were elderly. This despite universal agreement among criminologists that the propensity to commit crime plummets with age. In 2009, just over two percent of individuals between the ages of 50 and 54 were arrested, and virtually no people 65 or older were arrested. As a national average, just five to 10 percent of aging prisoners return to prison for any new crime, according to the report. In Oklahoma there are 4,262 state and federal prisoners age 50 and over, constituting 16.7% of the total prison population. While the total prison population in Oklahoma grew at a rate of 18.85% from 1997-2006, the percent increase for prisoners age 50 and over great at an alarming rate of 85.4%. “We are currently witnessing unsustainable growth in the aging prison population in Oklahoma,” said Ryan Kiesel, Executive Director of the ACLU of Oklahoma. “We encourage policy makers to take a close look at this situation and adopt reasonable policies that ensure our limited resources are invested so as to achieve the twin goals of fiscal responsibility and public safety.” The United States currently imprisons 246,600 Americans 50 and older, a generally low-risk population that costs much more to keep locked up than younger prisoners, according to the report. It costs $34,135 per year to house an average prisoner, but $68,270 per year to house a prisoner 50 and older. And according to a fiscal analysis conducted by the ACLU’s in-house economist William Bunting as part of the report, states would save on average $66,294 per year by releasing an elderly prisoner who no longer poses a public safety threat – even when factoring in any government expenditures on released aging prisoners like healthcare or housing costs. “Simply put, it is an unwise use of taxpayer dollars to spend enormous amounts of money locking up elderly prisoners who no longer need to be behind bars,” said Bunting. The ACLU’s report calls on states to grant elderly prisoners access to a parole hearing, during which parole boards can use risk assessment tools to accurately evaluate whether a prisoner continues to pose a public safety threat or whether he or she can be safely released. Last year the state legislature in Louisiana, which incarcerates more people per capita than any other state, passed such a law, easing taxpayer burden and allowing prisoners to return to their families to care for them while at the same time maintaining public safety. “The nation’s graying prisoner population has become a national epidemic that needs to be addressed immediately,” said Chettiar. “The United States cannot afford to continue to lock people up for no reason.” A copy of the ACLU’s report is available online at www.aclu.org/elderlyprisoners

Wii U, 3DS and PC puzzler Scribblenauts Unlimited is out this week in the US. But it's not out this week in Europe - or even this year - and developer 5th Cell is not allowed to say why. Scribblenauts Unlimited is a Wii U launch title in the US and was originally expected to be in the UK too. That is no longer the case. "It's due to stuff I can't talk about until 2013," 5th Cell boss Jeremiah Slaczka wrote on NeoGAF. The North American version includes support for other languages, suggesting that localisation is not the issue. "Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts were released NA and EU the same day," Slaczka added. "Trust me. I want your money. It's due to things outside of development." Scribblenauts Unlimited publisher Warner Bros. Interactive told Eurogamer sister site Rock, Paper, Shotgun that "details about the European distribution of Scribblenauts Unlimited are coming soon". Eurogamer has subsequently contacted Warner Bros. for more information. We'll update when we hear back.

No, I didn’t just get in a muddle about what year we’re in. But the collapse of Lords Reform has brought us, inevitably, to this point. Labour will win the next election with an overall majority. Three years may be long enough for anything to happen. But consider this: it is hard to see the Conservative vote in 2015 being an increase on their 2010 showing. Since 2010 we’ve had the Euro crisis, George Osborne’s U-turn fest, a healthy reminder of the symbiotic relationship between the Murdoch empire and the Tory party and the longest recession in more than 50 years. Even the IMF is losing patience. Hard to see the Tories storming to victory. Also, governments in power hardly ever increase their share of the vote. As Andrew Rawnsley has noted: “[f]or Mr Cameron to better his last general election result in the contest of 2015, he must do something that no Conservative prime minister has achieved for nearly six decades.” No matter, we can make a coalition with Labour. Er, not really. Even after the proposed boundary changes, Labour still has an in-built electoral advantage. This is a function of the way Labour’s vote is spread around the country and the lower turnout in their safe constituencies. The UK Polling Report website explains this issue in detail. So, if boundary reform is out the window (as a trade for the House of Lords debacle), Labour has won in 2015. If Labour fights an election on the existing boundaries and gets 37% of the vote (the Tories’ ‘winning’ score in 2010), it can expect a 60-seat majority (it will get much more if, as expected, the Liberal Democrat vote collapses). If Labour maintains its current poll lead it gets a hundred-seat majority (all of these projections from the UK Polling report swingometer). Getting a hung parliament in 2010 required a perfect storm: a very unpopular Labour party, a relatively untrusted Tory party and a healthy, if mostly wasted, Liberal Democrat vote in the middle. With Labour able to secure a comfortable parliamentary majority on less than 40% of the vote, we can expect neither offers of coalition nor electoral reform. The classic conservative mistake is to fear change more than the threat that forces that change. Killing off Lords reform just killed off the Tories’ re-election chances.

"BELIEVE IN THE DREAM | CHANGE IS COMING" Help spread the word! From the people who do (whether on Tumblr, Instagram or Facebook) I’ll randomly pick someone (could be more - depending on schedule) and do a commissioned art piece for them for free (of a character of their choosing), which you can either pick up @ STGCC (booth D35 & C36) or have it shipped over to you (if you’re overseas) ( You can participate in this on Tumblr, Facebook & Instagram - just share and tag me in it! - Links here: My Tumblr| Facebook | Instagram ) I’ve been working on something huge the past few months, in preparation forSTGCC 2014 (Singapore Toys, Games & Comics Convention), which will be held on the 6-7 of September @ the Sands Expo & Convention Center, Marina Bay Sands (Hall B & C, Level 1) It’s a Print-book called "Bubble Pop!", and more news will follow in the coming weeks leading to September! It’s a huge labor of love from me, and I’m really excited about it! (So please watch out for that) This year is special for me, because it has been a hard road as of late, but I want to let the world know that dreams are still worth holding on to, no matter how tough it gets! So if you believe in this, in my art, and in my dream, do spread the word! Thanks for all the support, and also thanks in advance! Cheers, Shawn

Chapter 1: Some Facts of Life “We can comprehend this world only by contesting it as a whole... The root of the prevailing lack of imagination cannot be grasped unless one is able to imagine what is lacking, that is, what is missing, hidden, forbidden, and yet possible, in modern life.” — Situationist International Utopia or bust Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could be and what actually exists. It’s hardly necessary to go into all the problems in the world today — most of them are widely known, and to dwell on them usually does little more than dull us to their reality. But even if we are “stoic enough to endure the misfortunes of others,” the present social deterioration ultimately impinges on us all. Those who don’t face direct physical repression still have to face the mental repressions imposed by an increasingly mean, stressful, ignorant and ugly world. Those who escape economic poverty cannot escape the general impoverishment of life. And even life at this pitiful level cannot continue for long. The ravaging of the planet by the global development of capitalism has brought us to the point where humanity may become extinct within a few decades. Yet this same development has made it possible to abolish the system of hierarchy and exploitation that was previously based on material scarcity and to inaugurate a new, genuinely liberated form of society. Plunging from one disaster to another on its way to mass insanity and ecological apocalypse, this system has developed a momentum that is out of control, even by its supposed masters. As we approach a world in which we won’t be able to leave our fortified ghettoes without armed guards, or even go outdoors without applying sunscreen lest we get skin cancer, it’s hard to take seriously those who advise us to beg for a few reforms. What is needed, I believe, is a worldwide participatory-democracy revolution that would abolish both capitalism and the state. This is admittedly a big order, but I’m afraid that nothing less can get to the root of our problems. It may seem absurd to talk about revolution; but all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which is even more absurd. Stalinist “communism” and reformist “socialism” are merely variants of capitalism Before going into what this revolution would involve and responding to some typical objections, it should be stressed that it has nothing to do with the repugnant stereotypes that are usually evoked by the word (terrorism, revenge, political coups, manipulative leaders preaching self-sacrifice, zombie followers chanting politically correct slogans). In particular, it should not be confused with the two principal failures of modern social change, Stalinist “communism” and reformist “socialism.” After decades in power, first in Russia and later in many other countries, it has become obvious that Stalinism is the total opposite of a liberated society. The origin of this grotesque phenomenon is less obvious. Trotskyists and others have tried to distinguish Stalinism from the earlier Bolshevism of Lenin and Trotsky. There are differences, but they are more of degree than of kind. Lenin’s The State and Revolution, for example, presents a more coherent critique of the state than can be found in most anarchist writings; the problem is that the radical aspects of Lenin’s thought merely ended up camouflaging the Bolsheviks’ actual authoritarian practice. Placing itself above the masses it claimed to represent, and with a corresponding internal hierarchy between party militants and their leaders, the Bolshevik Party was already well on its way toward creating the conditions for the development of Stalinism while Lenin and Trotsky were still firmly in control. But we have to be clear about what failed if we are ever going to do any better. If socialism means people’s full participation in the social decisions that affect their own lives, it has existed neither in the Stalinist regimes of the East nor in the welfare states of the West. The recent collapse of Stalinism is neither a vindication of capitalism nor proof of the failure of “Marxist communism.” Anyone who has ever bothered to read Marx (most of his glib critics obviously have not) is aware that Leninism represents a severe distortion of Marx’s thought and that Stalinism is a total parody of it. Nor does government ownership have anything to do with communism in its authentic sense of common, communal ownership; it is merely a different type of capitalism in which state-bureaucratic ownership replaces (or merges with) private-corporate ownership. The long spectacle of opposition between these two varieties of capitalism hid their mutual reinforcement. Serious conflicts were confined to proxy battles in the Third World (Vietnam, Angola, Afghanistan, etc.). Neither side ever made any real attempt to overthrow the enemy in its own heartland. (The French Communist Party sabotaged the May 1968 revolt; the Western powers, which intervened massively in countries where they were not wanted, refused to send so much as the few antitank weapons desperately needed by the 1956 Hungarian insurgents.) Guy Debord noted in 1967 that Stalinist state-capitalism had already revealed itself as merely a “poor cousin” of classical Western capitalism, and that its decline was beginning to deprive Western rulers of the pseudo-opposition that reinforced them by seeming to represent the sole alternative to their system. “The bourgeoisie is in the process of losing the adversary that objectively supported it by providing an illusory unification of all opposition to the existing order” (The Society of the Spectacle, §§110–111). Although Western leaders pretended to welcome the recent Stalinist collapse as a natural victory for their own system, none of them had seen it coming and they now obviously have no idea what to do about all the problems it poses except to cash in on the situation before it totally falls apart. The monopolistic multinational corporations that proclaim “free enterprise” as a panacea are quite aware that free-market capitalism would long ago have exploded from its own contradictions had it not been saved despite itself by a few New Deal-style pseudosocialist reforms. Those reforms (public services, social insurance, the eight-hour day, etc.) may have ameliorated some of the more glaring defects of the system, but in no way have they led beyond it. In recent years they have not even kept up with its accelerating crises. The most significant improvements were in any case won only by long and often violent popular struggles that eventually forced the hands of the bureaucrats: the leftist parties and labor unions that pretended to lead those struggles have functioned primarily as safety valves, coopting radical tendencies and greasing the wheels of the social machine. As the situationists have shown, the bureaucratization of radical movements, which has degraded people into followers constantly “betrayed” by their leaders, is linked to the increasing spectacularization of modern capitalist society, which has degraded people into spectators of a world over which they have no control — a development that has become increasingly glaring, though it is usually only superficially understood. Taken together, all these considerations point to the conclusion that a liberated society can be created only by the active participation of the people as a whole, not by hierarchical organizations supposedly acting on their behalf. The point is not to choose more honest or “responsive” leaders, but to avoid granting independent power to any leaders whatsoever. Individuals or groups may initiate radical actions, but a substantial and rapidly expanding portion of the population must take part if a movement is to lead to a new society and not simply to a coup installing new rulers. Representative democracy versus delegate democracy I won’t repeat all the classic socialist and anarchist critiques of capitalism and the state; they are already widely known, or at least widely accessible. But in order to cut through some of the confusions of traditional political rhetoric, it may be helpful to summarize the basic types of social organization. For the sake of clarity, I will start out by examining the “political” and “economic” aspects separately, though they are obviously interlinked. It is as futile to try to equalize people’s economic conditions through a state bureaucracy as it is to try to democratize society while the power of money enables the wealthy few to control the institutions that determine people’s awareness of social realities. Since the system functions as a whole it can be fundamentally changed only as a whole. To begin with the political aspect, roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”: Unrestricted freedom Direct democracy consensus majority rule Delegate democracy Representative democracy Overt minority dictatorship The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a façade of token democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). I’ll discuss the two types of (2) later on. But the crucial distinction is between (3) and (4). In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues — apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in “democratic” regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don’t even know who they are. In delegate democracy, delegates are elected for specific purposes with very specific limitations. They may be strictly mandated (ordered to vote in a certain way on a certain issue) or the mandate may be left open (delegates being free to vote as they think best) with the people who have elected them reserving the right to confirm or reject any decision thus taken. Delegates are generally elected for very short periods and are subject to recall at any time. In the context of radical struggles, delegate assemblies have usually been termed “councils.” The council form was invented by striking workers during the 1905 Russian revolution (soviet is the Russian word for council). When soviets reappeared in 1917, they were successively supported, manipulated, dominated and coopted by the Bolsheviks, who soon succeeded in transforming them into parodies of themselves: rubber stamps of the “Soviet State” (the last surviving independent soviet, that of the Kronstadt sailors, was crushed in 1921). Councils have nevertheless continued to reappear spontaneously at the most radical moments in subsequent history, in Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary and elsewhere, because they represent the obvious solution to the need for a practical form of nonhierarchical popular self-organization. And they continue to be opposed by all hierarchical organizations, because they threaten the rule of specialized elites by pointing to the possibility of a society of generalized self-management: not self-management of a few details of the present setup, but self-management extended to all regions of the globe and all aspects of life. But as noted above, the question of democratic forms cannot be separated from their economic context. Irrationalities of capitalism Economic organization can be looked at from the angle of work: Totally voluntary Cooperative (collective self-management) Forced and exploitive overt (slave labor) disguised (wage labor) And from the angle of distribution: True communism (totally free accessibility) True socialism (collective ownership and regulation) Capitalism (private and/or state ownership) Though it’s possible for goods or services produced by wage labor to be given away, or for those produced by volunteer or cooperative labor to be turned into commodities for sale, for the most part these levels of work and distribution tend to correspond with each other. The present society is predominately (3): the forced production and consumption of commodities. A liberated society would eliminate (3) and as far as possible reduce (2) in favor of (1). Capitalism is based on commodity production (production of goods for profit) and wage labor (labor power itself bought and sold as a commodity). As Marx pointed out, there is less difference between the slave and the “free” worker than appears. Slaves, though they seem to be paid nothing, are provided with the means of their survival and reproduction, for which workers (who become temporary slaves during their hours of labor) are compelled to pay most of their wages. The fact that some jobs are less unpleasant than others, and that individual workers have the nominal right to switch jobs, start their own business, buy stocks or win a lottery, disguises the fact that the vast majority of people are collectively enslaved. How did we get in this absurd position? If we go back far enough, we find that at some point people were forcibly dispossessed: driven off the land and otherwise deprived of the means for producing the goods necessary for life. (The famous chapters on “primitive accumulation” in Capital vividly describe this process in England.) As long as people accept this dispossession as legitimate, they are forced into unequal bargains with the “owners” (those who have robbed them, or who have subsequently obtained titles of “ownership” from the original robbers) in which they exchange their labor for a fraction of what it actually produces, the surplus being retained by the owners. This surplus (capital) can then be reinvested in order to generate continually greater surpluses in the same way. As for distribution, a public water fountain is a simple example of true communism (unlimited accessibility). A public library is an example of true socialism (free but regulated accessibility). In a rational society, accessibility would depend on abundance. During a drought, water might have to be rationed. Conversely, once libraries are put entirely online they could become totally communistic: anyone could have free instant access to any number of texts with no more need to bother with checking out and returning, security against theft, etc. But this rational relation is impeded by the persistence of separate economic interests. To take the latter example, it will soon be technically possible to create a global “library” in which every book ever written, every film ever made and every musical performance ever recorded could be put online, potentially enabling anyone to freely tap in and obtain a copy (no more need for stores, sales, advertising, packaging, shipping, etc.). But since this would also eliminate the profits from present-day publishing, recording and film businesses, far more energy is spent concocting complicated methods to prevent or charge for copying (while others devote corresponding energy devising ways to get around such methods) than on developing a technology that could potentially benefit everyone. One of Marx’s merits was to have cut through the hollowness of political discourses based on abstract philosophical or ethical principles (“human nature” is such and such, all people have a “natural right” to this or that) by showing how social possibilities and social awareness are to a great degree limited and shaped by material conditions. Freedom in the abstract means little if almost everybody has to work all the time simply to assure their survival. It’s unrealistic to expect people to be generous and cooperative when there is barely enough to go around (leaving aside the drastically different conditions under which “primitive communism” flourished). But a sufficiently large surplus opens up wider possibilities. The hope of Marx and other revolutionaries of his time was based on the fact that the technological potentials developed by the Industrial Revolution had finally provided an adequate material basis for a classless society. It was no longer a matter of declaring that things “should” be different, but of pointing out that they could be different; that class domination was not only unjust, it was now unnecessary. Was it ever really necessary? Was Marx right in seeing the development of capitalism and the state as inevitable stages, or might a liberated society have been possible without this painful detour? Fortunately, we no longer have to worry about this question. Whatever possibilities there may or may not have been in the past, present material conditions are more than sufficient to sustain a global classless society. The most serious drawback of capitalism is not its quantitative unfairness — the mere fact that wealth is unequally distributed, that workers are not paid the full “value” of their labor. The problem is that this margin of exploitation (even if relatively small) makes possible the private accumulation of capital, which eventually reorients everything to its own ends, dominating and warping all aspects of life. The more alienation the system produces, the more social energy must be diverted just to keep it going — more advertising to sell superfluous commodities, more ideologies to keep people bamboozled, more spectacles to keep them pacified, more police and more prisons to repress crime and rebellion, more arms to compete with rival states — all of which produces more frustrations and antagonisms, which must be repressed by more spectacles, more prisons, etc. As this vicious circle continues, real human needs are fulfilled only incidentally, if at all, while virtually all labor is channeled into absurd, redundant or destructive projects that serve no purpose except to maintain the system. If this system were abolished and modern technological potentials were appropriately transformed and redirected, the labor necessary to meet real human needs would be reduced to such a trivial level that it could easily be taken care of voluntarily and cooperatively, without requiring economic incentives or state enforcement. It’s not too hard to grasp the idea of superseding overt hierarchical power. Self-management can be seen as the fulfillment of the freedom and democracy that are the official values of Western societies. Despite people’s submissive conditioning, everyone has had moments when they rejected domination and began speaking or acting for themselves. It’s much harder to grasp the idea of superseding the economic system. The domination of capital is more subtle and self-regulating. Questions of work, production, goods, services, exchange and coordination in the modern world seem so complicated that most people take for granted the necessity of money as a universal mediation, finding it difficult to imagine any change beyond apportioning money in some more equitable way. For this reason I will postpone more extensive discussion of the economic aspects till later in this text, when it will be possible to go into more detail. Some exemplary modern revolts Is such a revolution likely? The odds are probably against it. The main problem is that there is not much time. In previous eras it was possible to imagine that, despite all humanity’s follies and disasters, we would somehow muddle through and perhaps eventually learn from past mistakes. But now that social policies and technological developments have irrevocable global ecological ramifications, blundering trial and error is not enough. We have only a few decades to turn things around. And as time passes, the task becomes more difficult: the fact that basic social problems are scarcely even faced, much less resolved, encourages increasingly desperate and delirious tendencies toward war, fascism, ethnic antagonism, religious fanaticism and other forms of mass irrationality, deflecting those who might potentially work toward a new society into merely defensive and ultimately futile holding actions. But most revolutions have been preceded by periods when everyone scoffed at the idea that things could ever change. Despite the many discouraging trends in the world, there are also some encouraging signs, not least of which is the widespread disillusionment with previous false alternatives. Many popular revolts in this century have already moved spontaneously in the right direction. I am not referring to the “successful” revolutions, which are without exception frauds, but to less known, more radical efforts. Some of the most notable examples are Russia 1905, Germany 1918–19, Italy 1920, Asturias 1934, Spain 1936–37, Hungary 1956, France 1968, Czechoslovakia 1968, Portugal 1974–75 and Poland 1980–81; many other movements, from the Mexican revolution of 1910 to the recent anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, have also contained exemplary moments of popular experimentation before they were brought under bureaucratic control. No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has not carefully examined these movements. To ignore them because of their “failure” is missing the point. Modern revolution is all or nothing: individual revolts are bound to fail until an international chain reaction is triggered that spreads faster than repression can close in. It’s hardly surprising that these revolts did not go farther; what is inspiring is that they went as far as they did. A new revolutionary movement will undoubtedly take new and unpredictable forms; but these earlier efforts remain full of examples of what can be done, as well as of what must be avoided. Some common objections It’s often said that a stateless society might work if everyone were angels, but due to the perversity of human nature some hierarchy is necessary to keep people in line. It would be truer to say that if everyone were angels the present system might work tolerably well (bureaucrats would function honestly, capitalists would refrain from socially harmful ventures even if they were profitable). It is precisely because people are not angels that it’s necessary to eliminate the setup that enables some of them to become very efficient devils. Lock a hundred people in a small room with only one air hole and they will claw each other to death to get to it. Let them out and they may manifest a rather different nature. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s depraved sinner. He is violent when oppressed, gentle when free.” Others contend that, whatever the ultimate causes may be, people are now so screwed up that they need to be psychologically or spiritually healed before they can even conceive of creating a liberated society. In his later years Wilhelm Reich came to feel that an “emotional plague” was so firmly embedded in the population that it would take generations of healthily raised children before people would become capable of a libertarian social transformation; and that meanwhile one should avoid confronting the system head-on since this would stir up a hornet’s nest of ignorant popular reaction. Irrational popular tendencies do sometimes call for discretion. But powerful though they may be, they are not irresistible forces. They contain their own contradictions. Clinging to some absolute authority is not necessarily a sign of faith in authority; it may be a desperate attempt to overcome one’s increasing doubts (the convulsive tightening of a slipping grip). People who join gangs or reactionary groups, or who get caught up in religious cults or patriotic hysteria, are also seeking a sense of liberation, connection, purpose, participation, empowerment. As Reich himself showed, fascism gives a particularly vigorous and dramatic expression to these basic aspirations, which is why it often has a deeper appeal than the vacillations, compromises and hypocrisies of liberalism and leftism. In the long run the only way to defeat reaction is to present more forthright expressions of these aspirations, and more authentic opportunities to fulfill them. When basic issues are forced into the open, irrationalities that flourished under the cover of psychological repression tend to be weakened, like disease germs exposed to sunlight and fresh air. In any case, even if we don’t prevail, there is at least some satisfaction in fighting for what we really believe, rather than being defeated in a posture of hesitancy and hypocrisy. There are limits on how far one can liberate oneself (or raise liberated children) within a sick society. But if Reich was right to note that psychologically repressed people are less capable of envisioning social liberation, he failed to realize how much the process of social revolt can be psychologically liberating. (French psychiatrists are said to have complained about a significant drop in the number of their customers in the aftermath of May 1968!) The notion of total democracy raises the specter of a “tyranny of the majority.” Majorities can be ignorant and bigoted, there’s no getting around it. The only real solution is to confront and attempt to overcome that ignorance and bigotry. Keeping the masses in the dark (relying on liberal judges to protect civil liberties or liberal legislators to sneak through progressive reforms) only leads to popular backlashes when sensitive issues eventually do come to the surface. Examined more closely, however, most instances of majority oppression of minorities turn out to be due not to majority rule, but to disguised minority rule in which the ruling elite plays on whatever racial or cultural antagonisms there may be in order to turn the exploited masses’ frustrations against each other. When people get real power over their own lives they will have more interesting things to do than to persecute minorities. So many potential abuses or disasters are evoked at any suggestion of a nonhierarchical society that it would be impossible to answer them all. People who resignedly accept a system that condemns millions of their fellow human beings to death every year in wars and famines, and millions of others to prison and torture, suddenly let their imagination and their indignation run wild at the thought that in a self-managed society there might be some abuses, some violence or coercion or injustice, or even merely some temporary inconvenience. They forget that it is not up to a new social system to solve all our problems; it merely has to deal with them better than the present system does — not a very big order. If history followed the complacent opinions of official commentators, there would never have been any revolutions. In any given situation there are always plenty of ideologists ready to declare that no radical change is possible. If the economy is functioning well, they will claim that revolution depends on economic crises; if there is an economic crisis, others will just as confidently declare that revolution is impossible because people are too busy worrying about making ends meet. The former types, surprised by the May 1968 revolt, tried to retrospectively uncover the invisible crisis that their ideology insists must have been there. The latter contend that the situationist perspective has been refuted by the worsened economic conditions since that time. Actually, the situationists simply noted that the widespread achievement of capitalist abundance had demonstrated that guaranteed survival was no substitute for real life. The periodic ups and downs of the economy have no bearing on that conclusion. The fact that a few people at the top have recently managed to siphon off a yet larger portion of the social wealth, driving increasing numbers of people into the streets and terrorizing the rest of the population lest they succumb to the same fate, makes the feasibility of a postscarcity society less evident; but the material prerequisites are still present. The economic crises held up as evidence that we need to “lower our expectations” are actually caused by over-production and lack of work. The ultimate absurdity of the present system is that unemployment is seen as a problem, with potentially labor-saving technologies being directed toward creating new jobs to replace the old ones they render unnecessary. The problem is not that so many people don’t have jobs, but that so many people still do. We need to raise our expectations, not lower them. Increasing dominance of the spectacle Far more serious than this spectacle of our supposed powerlessness in the face of the economy is the greatly increased power of the spectacle itself, which in recent years has developed to the point of repressing virtually any awareness of pre-spectacle history or anti-spectacle possibilities. Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988) goes into this new development in detail: In all that has happened over the last twenty years, the most important change lies in the very continuity of the spectacle. What is significant is not the refinements of the spectacle’s media instrumentation, which had already attained a highly advanced stage of development; it is quite simply that spectacular domination has succeeded in raising an entire generation molded to its laws... Spectacular domination’s first priority was to eradicate historical knowledge in general, beginning with virtually all information and rational commentary on the most recent past... The spectacle makes sure that people are unaware of what is happening, or at least that they quickly forget whatever they may have become aware of. The more important something is, the more it is hidden. Nothing in the last twenty years has been so thoroughly shrouded with official lies as May 1968... The flow of images carries everything before it, and it is always someone else who controls this simplified digest of the perceptible world, who decides where the flow will lead, who programs the rhythm of what is shown into an endless series of arbitrary surprises that leaves no time for reflection ... isolating whatever is presented from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequences... It is thus hardly surprising that children are now starting their education with an enthusiastic introduction to the Absolute Knowledge of computer language while becoming increasingly incapable of reading. Because reading requires making judgments at every line; and since conversation is almost dead (as will soon be most of those who knew how to converse) reading is the only remaining gateway to the vast realms of pre-spectacle human experience. In the present text I have tried to recapitulate some basic points that have been buried under this intensive spectacular repression. If these matters seem banal to some or obscure to others, they may at least serve to recall what once was possible, in those primitive times a few decades ago when people had the quaint, old-fashioned notion that they could understand and affect their own history. While there is no question that things have changed considerably since the sixties (mostly for the worse), our situation may not be quite as hopeless as it seems to those who swallow whatever the spectacle feeds them. Sometimes it only takes a little jolt to break through the stupor. Even if we have no guarantee of ultimate victory, such breakthroughs are already a pleasure. Is there any greater game around? Chapter 2: Foreplay “An individual cannot know what he really is until he has realized himself through action... The interest the individual finds in something is already the answer to the question of whether he should act and what should be done.” — Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit Personal breakthroughs Later on I will try to answer some more of the perennial objections. But as long as the objectors remain passive, all the arguments in the world will never faze them, and they will continue to sing the old refrain: “It’s a nice idea, but it’s not realistic, it goes against human nature, it’s always been this way...” Those who don’t realize their own potential are unlikely to recognize the potential of others. To paraphrase that very sensible old prayer, we need the initiative to solve the problems we can, the patience to endure the ones we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference. But we also need to bear in mind that some problems that can’t be solved by isolated individuals can be solved collectively. Discovering that others share the same problem is often the beginning of a solution. Some problems can, of course, be solved individually, through a variety of methods ranging from elaborate therapies or spiritual practices to simple commonsense decisions to correct some mistake, break some harmful habit, try something new, etc. But my concern here is not with purely personal makeshifts, worthwhile though they may be within their limits, but with moments where people move “outward” in deliberately subversive ventures. There are more possibilities than appear at first sight. Once you refuse to be intimidated, some of them are quite simple. You can begin anywhere. And you have to begin somewhere — do you think you can learn to swim if you never go in the water? Sometimes a little action is needed to cut through excessive verbiage and reestablish a concrete perspective. It needn’t be anything momentous; if nothing else comes to mind, some rather arbitrary venture may suffice — just enough to shake things up a bit and wake yourself up. At other times it’s necessary to stop, to break the chain of compulsive actions and reactions. To clear the air, to create a little space free from the cacophony of the spectacle. Just about everyone does this to some degree, out of instinctive psychological self-defense, whether by practicing some form of meditation, or by periodically engaging in some activity that effectively serves the same purpose (working in one’s garden, taking a walk, going fishing), or simply by pausing to take a deep breath amid their daily round, coming back for a moment to the “quiet center.” Without such a space it is difficult to get a sane perspective on the world, or even simply to keep one’s own sanity. One of the methods I have found most useful is to put things in writing. The advantage is partly psychological (some problems lose their power over us by being set out where we can see them more objectively), partly a matter of organizing our thoughts so as to see the different factors and choices more clearly. We often maintain inconsistent notions without becoming aware of their contradictions until we try putting them down on paper. I have sometimes been criticized for exaggerating the importance of writing. Many matters can, of course, be dealt with more directly. But even nonverbal actions require thinking about, talking about, and usually writing about, if they are to be effectively carried out, communicated, debated, corrected. (In any case, I don’t claim to cover everything; I am merely discussing certain points about which I feel I have something to say. If you think I have failed to address some important topic, why don’t you do it yourself?) Critical interventions Writing enables you to work out your ideas at your own pace, without worrying about oratorical skills or stage fright. You can make a point once and for all instead of having to constantly repeat yourself. If discretion is necessary, a text can be issued anonymously. People can read it at their own pace, stop and think about it, go back and check specific points, reproduce it, adapt it, refer others to it. Talking may generate quicker and more detailed feedback, but it can also disperse your energy, prevent you from focusing and implementing your ideas. Those in the same rut as you may resist your efforts to escape because your success would challenge their own passivity. Sometimes you can best provoke such people by simply leaving them behind and pursuing your own course. (“Hey, wait for me!”) Or by shifting the dialogue to a different level. A letter forces both writer and addressee to work out their ideas more clearly. Copies to others concerned may enliven the discussion. An open letter draws in even more people. If you succeed in creating a chain reaction in which more and more people read your text because they see others reading it and heatedly discussing it, it will no longer be possible for anyone to pretend to be unaware of the issues you have raised. Suppose, for example, that you criticize a group for being hierarchical, for allowing a leader to have power over members (or followers or fans). A private talk with one of the members might merely meet with a series of contradictory defensive reactions with which it is fruitless to argue. (“No, he’s not really our leader... And even if he is, he’s not authoritarian... And besides, what right do you have to criticize?”) But a public critique forces such contradictions into the open and puts people in a crossfire. While one member denies that the group is hierarchical, a second may admit that it is and attempt to justify this by attributing superior insight to the leader. This may cause a third member to start thinking. At first, annoyed that you have disturbed their cozy little scene, the group is likely to close ranks around the leader and denounce you for your “negativity” or “elitist arrogance.” But if your intervention has been acute enough, it may continue to sink in and have a delayed impact. The leader now has to watch his step since everyone is more sensitive to anything that might seem to confirm your critique. In order to demonstrate how unjustified you are, the members may insist on greater democratization. Even if the particular group proves impervious to change, its example may serve as an object lesson for a wider public. Outsiders who might otherwise have made similar mistakes can more easily see the pertinence of your critique because they have less emotional investment. It’s usually more effective to criticize institutions and ideologies than to attack individuals who merely happen to be caught up in them — not only because the machine is more crucial than its replaceable parts, but because this approach makes it easier for individuals to save face while dissociating themselves from the machine. But however tactful you may be, there’s no getting around the fact that virtually any significant critique will provoke irrational defensive reactions, ranging from personal attacks on you to invocations of one or another of the many fashionable ideologies that seem to demonstrate the impossibility of any rational consideration of social problems. Reason is denounced as cold and abstract by demagogues who find it easier to play on people’s feelings; theory is scorned in the name of practice... Theory versus ideology To theorize is simply to try to understand what we are doing. We are all theorists whenever we honestly discuss what has happened, distinguish between the significant and the irrelevant, see through fallacious explanations, recognize what worked and what didn’t, consider how something might be done better next time. Radical theorizing is simply talking or writing to more people about more general issues in more abstract (i.e. more widely applicable) terms. Even those who claim to reject theory theorize — they merely do so more unconsciously and capriciously, and thus more inaccurately. Theory without particulars is empty, but particulars without theory are blind. Practice tests theory, but theory also inspires new practice. Radical theory has nothing to respect and nothing to lose. It criticizes itself along with everything else. It is not a doctrine to be accepted on faith, but a tentative generalization that people must constantly test and correct for themselves, a practical simplification indispensable for dealing with the complexities of reality. But hopefully not an oversimplification. Any theory can turn into an ideology, become rigidified into a dogma, be twisted to hierarchical ends. A sophisticated ideology may be relatively accurate in certain respects; what differentiates it from theory is that it lacks a dynamic relation to practice. Theory is when you have ideas; ideology is when ideas have you. “Seek simplicity, and distrust it.” Avoiding false choices and elucidating real ones We have to face the fact that there are no foolproof gimmicks, that no radical tactic is invariably appropriate. Something that is collectively possible during a revolt may not be a sensible option for an isolated individual. In certain urgent situations it may be necessary to urge people to take some specific action; but in most cases it is best simply to elucidate relevant factors that people should take into account when making their own decisions. (If I occasionally presume to offer direct advice here, this is for convenience of expression. “Do this” should be understood as “In some circumstances it may be a good idea to do this.”) A social analysis need not be long or detailed. Simply “dividing one into two” (pointing out contradictory tendencies within a given phenomenon or group or ideology) or “combining two into one” (revealing a commonality between two apparently distinct entities) may be useful, especially if communicated to those most directly involved. More than enough information is already available on most issues; what is needed is to cut through the glut in order to reveal the essential. Once this is done, other people, including knowledgeable insiders, will be spurred to more thorough investigations if these are necessary. When confronted with a given topic, the first thing is to determine whether it is indeed a single topic. It’s impossible to have any meaningful discussion of “Marxism” or “violence” or “technology” without distinguishing the diverse senses that are lumped under such labels. On the other hand, it can also be useful to take some broad, abstract category and show its predominant tendencies, even though such a pure type does not actually exist. The situationists’ Student Poverty pamphlet, for example, scathingly enumerates all sorts of stupidities and pretensions of “the student.” Obviously not every student is guilty of all these faults, but the stereotype serves as a focus around which to organize a systematic critique of general tendencies. By stressing qualities most students have in common, the pamphlet also implicitly challenges those who claim to be exceptions to prove it. The same applies to the critique of “the pro-situ” in Debord and Sanguinetti’s The Real Split in the International — a challenging rebuff of followers perhaps unique in the history of radical movements. “Everyone is asked their opinion about every detail in order to prevent them from forming one about the totality” (Vaneigem). Many issues are such emotionally loaded tar-babies that anyone who reacts to them becomes entangled in false choices. The fact that two sides are in conflict, for example, does not mean that you must support one or the other. If you cannot do anything about a particular problem, it is best to clearly acknowledge this fact and move on to something that does present practical possibilities. If you do decide to choose a lesser evil, admit it; don’t add to the confusion by whitewashing your choice or demonizing the enemy. If anything, it’s better to do the opposite: to play devil’s advocate and neutralize compulsive polemical delirium by calmly examining the strong points of the opposing position and the weaknesses in your own. “A very popular error: having the courage of one’s convictions; the point is to have the courage for an attack on one’s convictions!” (Nietzsche). Combine modesty with audacity. Remember that if you happen to accomplish anything it is on the foundation of the efforts of countless others, many of whom have faced horrors that would make you or me crumple into submission. But don’t forget that what you say can make a difference: within a world of pacified spectators even a little autonomous expression will stand out. Since there are no longer any material obstacles to inaugurating a classless society, the problem has been essentially reduced to a question of consciousness: the only thing that really stands in the way is people’s unawareness of their own collective power. (Physical repression is effective against radical minorities only so long as social conditioning keeps the rest of the population docile.) Hence a large element of radical practice is negative: attacking the various forms of false consciousness that prevent people from realizing their positive potentialities. The insurrectionary style Both Marx and the situationists have often been ignorantly denounced for such negativity, because they concentrated primarily on critical clarification and deliberately avoided promoting any positive ideology to which people could passively cling. Because Marx pointed out how capitalism reduces our lives to an economic rat-race, “idealistic” apologists for this state of affairs accuse him of “reducing life to materialistic concerns” — as if the whole point of Marx’s work was not to help us get beyond our economic slavery so that our more creative potentials can flower. “To call on people to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions... Criticism plucks the imaginary flowers from the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he will throw off the chain and pluck the living flower” (“Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”). Accurately expressing a key issue often has a surprisingly powerful effect. Bringing things out into the open forces people to stop hedging their bets and take a position. Like the dexterous butcher in the Taoist fable whose knife never needed sharpening because he always cut between the joints, the most effective radical polarization comes not from strident protest, but from simply revealing the divisions that already exist, elucidating the different tendencies, contradictions, choices. Much of the situationists’ impact stemmed from the fact that they articulated things that most people had already experienced but were unable or afraid to express until someone else broke the ice. (“Our ideas are in everybody’s mind.”) If some situationist texts nevertheless seem difficult at first, this is because their dialectical structure goes against the grain of our conditioning. When this conditioning is broken they don’t seem so obscure (they were the source of some of the most popular May 1968 graffiti). Many academic spectators have floundered around trying unsuccessfully to resolve the various “contradictory” descriptions of the spectacle in The Society of the Spectacle into some single, “scientifically consistent” definition; but anyone engaged in contesting this society will find Debord’s examination of it from different angles eminently clear and useful, and come to appreciate the fact that he never wastes a word in academic inanities or pointless expressions of outrage. The dialectical method that runs from Hegel and Marx to the situationists is not a magic formula for churning out correct predictions, it is a tool for grappling with the dynamic processes of social change. It reminds us that social concepts are not eternal; that they contain their own contradictions, interacting with and transforming each other, even into their opposites; that what is true or progressive in one context may become false or regressive in another. A dialectical text may require careful study, but each new reading brings new discoveries. Even if it influences only a few people directly, it tends to influence them so profoundly that many of them end up influencing others in the same way, leading to a qualitative chain reaction. The nondialectical language of leftist propaganda is easier to understand, but its effect is usually superficial and ephemeral; offering no challenge, it soon ends up boring even the stupefied spectators for whom it is designed. As Debord put it in his last film, those who find what he says too difficult would do better to blame their own ignorance and passivity, and the schools and society that have made them that way, than to complain about his obscurity. Those who don’t have enough initiative to reread crucial texts or to do a little exploration or a little experimentation for themselves are unlikely to accomplish anything if they are spoonfed by someone else. Radical film Debord is in fact virtually the only person who has made a truly dialectical and antispectacular use of film [see Guy Debord’s Films]. Although would-be radical filmmakers often give lip service to Brechtian “distanciation” — the notion of encouraging spectators to think and act for themselves rather than sucking them into passive identification with hero or plot — most radical films still play to the audience as if it were made up of morons. The dimwitted protagonist gradually “discovers oppression” and becomes “radicalized” to the point where he is ready to become a fervent supporter of “progressive” politicians or a loyal militant in some bureaucratic leftist group. Distanciation is limited to a few token gimmicks that allow the spectator to think: “Ah, a Brechtian touch! What a clever fellow that filmmaker is! And how clever am I to recognize such subtleties!” The radical message is usually so banal that it is obvious to virtually anyone who would ever go to see such a film in the first place; but the spectator gets the gratifying impression that other people might be brought up to his level of awareness if only they could be got to see it. If the spectator has any uneasiness about the quality of what he is consuming, it is assuaged by the critics, whose main function is to read profound radical meanings into practically any film. As with the Emperor’s New Clothes, no one is likely to admit that he wasn’t aware of these supposed meanings until informed of them, for fear that this would reveal him as less sophisticated than the rest of the audience. Certain films may help expose some deplorable condition or convey some sense of the feel of a radical situation. But there is little point in presenting images of a struggle if both the images and the struggle are not criticized. Spectators sometimes complain that a film portrays some social category (e.g. women) inaccurately. This may be true insofar as the film reproduces certain false stereotypes; but the usually implied alternative — that the filmmaker “should have presented images of women struggling against oppression” — would in most cases be equally false to reality. Women (like men or any other oppressed group) have in fact usually been passive and submissive — that’s precisely the problem we have to face. Catering to people’s self-satisfaction by presenting spectacles of triumphant radical heroism only reinforces this bondage. Oppressionism versus playfulness To rely on oppressive conditions to radicalize people is unwise; to intentionally worsen them in order to accelerate this process is unacceptable. The repression of certain radical projects may incidentally expose the absurdity of the ruling order; but such projects should be worthwhile for their own sake — they lose their credibility if they are merely pretexts designed to provoke repression. Even in the most “privileged” milieus there are usually more than enough problems without needing to add to them. The point is to reveal the contrast between present conditions and present possibilities; to give people enough taste of real life that they’ll want more. Leftists often imply that a lot of simplification, exaggeration and repetition is necessary in order to counteract all the ruling propaganda in the other direction. This is like saying that a boxer who has been made groggy by a right hook will be restored to lucidity by a left hook. People’s consciousness is not “raised” by burying them under an avalanche of horror stories, or even under an avalanche of information. Information that is not critically assimilated and used is soon forgotten. Mental as well as physical health requires some balance between what we take in and what we do with it. It may sometimes be necessary to force complacent people to face some outrage they are unaware of, but even in such cases harping on the same thing ad nauseam usually accomplishes nothing more than driving them to escape to less boring and depressing spectacles. One of the main things that keeps us from understanding our situation is the spectacle of other people’s apparent happiness, which makes us see our own unhappiness as a shameful sign of failure. But an omnipresent spectacle of misery also keeps us from seeing our positive potentials. The constant broadcasting of delirious ideas and nauseating atrocities paralyzes us, turns us into paranoids and compulsive cynics. Strident leftist propaganda, fixating on the insidiousness and loathsomeness of “oppressors,” often feeds this delirium, appealing to the most morbid and mean-spirited side of people. If we get caught up in brooding on evils, if we let the sickness and ugliness of this society pervade even our rebellion against it, we forget what we are fighting for and end up losing the very capacity to love, to create, to enjoy. The best “radical art” cuts both ways. If it attacks the alienation of modern life, it simultaneously reminds us of the poetic potentialities hidden within it. Rather than reinforcing our tendency to wallow in self-pity, it encourages our resilience, enables us to laugh at our own troubles as well as at the asininities of the forces of “order.” Some of the old IWW songs and comic strips are good examples, even if the IWW ideology is by now a bit musty. Or the ironic, bittersweet songs of Brecht and Weill. The hilarity of The Good Soldier Svejk is probably a more effective antidote to war than the moral outrage of the typical antiwar tract. Nothing undermines authority like holding it up to ridicule. The most effective argument against a repressive regime is not that it is evil, but that it is silly. The protagonists of Albert Cossery’s novel La violence et la dérision, living under a Middle-Eastern dictatorship, plaster the walls of the capital with an official-looking poster that praises the dictator to such a preposterous degree that he becomes a laughingstock and is forced to resign out of embarrassment. Cosséry’s pranksters are apolitical and their success is perhaps too good to be true, but somewhat similar parodies have been used with more radical aims (e.g. the Li I-Che coup mentioned on page 304 [A Radical Group in Hong Kong]). At demonstrations in Italy in the 1970s the Metropolitan Indians (inspired perhaps by the opening chapter of Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno: “Less Bread! More Taxes!”) carried banners and chanted slogans such as “Power to the Bosses!” and “More work! Less pay!” Everyone recognized the irony, but it was harder to dismiss with the usual pigeonholing. Humor is a healthy antidote to all types of orthodoxy, left as well as right. It’s highly contagious and it reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously. But it can easily become a mere safety valve, channeling dissatisfaction into glib, passive cynicism. Spectacle society thrives on delirious reactions against its most delirious aspects. Satirists often have a dependent, love-hate relation with their targets; parodies become indistinguishable from what they are parodying, giving the impression that everything is equally bizarre, meaningless and hopeless. In a society based on artificially maintained confusion, the first task is not to add to it. Chaotic disruptions usually generate nothing but annoyance or panic, provoking people to support whatever measures the government takes to restore order. A radical intervention may at first seem strange and incomprehensible; but if it has been worked out with sufficient lucidity, people will soon understand it well enough. The Strasbourg scandal Imagine being at Strasbourg University at the opening of the school year in fall 1966, among the students, faculty and distinguished guests filing into an auditorium to hear a commencement address. You find a little pamphlet placed on each seat. A program? No, something about “the poverty of student life.” You idly open it up and start to read: “It is pretty safe to say that the student is the most universally despised creature in France, apart from the policeman and the priest...” You look around and see that everyone else is also reading it, reactions ranging from puzzlement or amusement to shock and outrage. Who is responsible for this? The title page reveals that it is published by the Strasbourg Student Union, but it also refers to “the Situationist International,” whatever that might be... What made the Strasbourg scandal different from some college prank, or from the confused and confusing capers of groups like the Yippies, was that its scandalous form conveyed an equally scandalous content. At a moment when students were being proclaimed as the most radical sector of society, this text was the only one that put things into perspective. But the particular poverties of students just happened to be the point of departure; equally scathing texts could and should be written on the poverty of every other segment of society (preferably by those who know them from inside). Some have in fact been attempted, but none have approached the lucidity and coherence of the situationist pamphlet, so concise yet so comprehensive, so provocative yet so accurate, moving so methodically from a specific situation through increasingly general ramifications that the final chapter presents the most pithy existing summary of the modern revolutionary project. (See SI Anthology, pp. 204–212, 319–337 [On the Poverty of Student Life and Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal].) The situationists never claimed to have single-handedly provoked May 1968 — as they said, they predicted the content of the revolt, not the date or location. But without the Strasbourg scandal and the subsequent agitation by the SI-influenced Enragés group (of which the more well known March 22nd Movement was only a belated and confused imitation) the revolt might never have happened. There was no economic or governmental crisis, no war or racial antagonism destabilizing the country, nor any other particular issue that might have fostered such a revolt. There were more radical worker struggles going on in Italy and England, more militant student struggles in Germany and Japan, more widespread countercultural movements in the United States and the Netherlands. But only in France was there a perspective that tied them all together. Carefully calculated interventions like the Strasbourg scandal must be distinguished not only from confusionistic disruptions, but also from merely spectacular exposés. As long as social critics confine themselves to contesting this or that detail, the spectacle-spectator relation continually reconstitutes itself: if such critics succeed in discrediting existing political leaders, they themselves often become new stars (Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, etc.) whom slightly more aware spectators admiringly rely on for a continuing flow of shocking information that they rarely do anything about. The milder exposés get the audience to root for this or that faction in intragovernmental power struggles; the more sensational ones feed people’s morbid curiosity, sucking them into consuming more articles, news programs and docudramas, and into interminable debates about various conspiracy theories. Most such theories are obviously nothing but delirious reflections of the lack of critical historical sense produced by the modern spectacle, desperate attempts to find some coherent meaning in an increasingly incoherent and absurd society. In any case, as long as things remain on the spectacular terrain it hardly matters whether any of these theories are true: those who keep watching to see what comes next never affect what comes next. Certain revelations are more interesting because they not only open up significant issues to public debate, but do so in a manner that draws lots of people into the game. A charming example is the 1963 “Spies for Peace” scandal in England, in which a few unknown persons publicized the location of a secret bomb shelter reserved for members of the government. The more vehemently the government threatened to prosecute anyone who reproduced this “state secret” information which was no longer secret from anyone, the more creatively and playfully it was disseminated by thousands of groups and individuals (who also proceeded to discover and invade several other secret shelters). Not only did the asininity of the government and the insanity of the nuclear war spectacle became evident to everyone, the spontaneous human chain reaction provided a taste of a quite different social potential. The poverty of electoral politics “Since 1814 no Liberal government had come in except by violence. Cánovas was too intelligent not to see the inconvenience and the danger of that. He therefore arranged that Conservative governments should be succeeded regularly by Liberal governments. The plan he followed was, whenever an economic crisis or a serious strike came along, to resign and let the Liberals deal with it. This explains why most of the repressive legislation passed during the rest of the century was passed by them.” — Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth The best argument in favor of radical electoral politics was made by Eugene Debs, the American socialist leader who in 1920 received nearly a million votes for president while in prison for opposing World War I: “If the people don’t know enough to know who to vote for, they’re not going to know who to shoot at.” On the other hand, the workers during the 1918–19 German revolution were confused about who to shoot at precisely by the presence of “socialist” leaders in the government who were working overtime to repress the revolution. In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil. Even in the rare case when a “radical” politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few “progressive” measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come. As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them!” Referendums on particular issues are less susceptible to the precariousness of personalities; but the results are often no better since the issues tend to be posed very simplistically, and any measure that threatens powerful interests can usually be defeated by the influence of money and mass media. Local elections sometimes offer people a more realistic chance to affect policies and keep tabs on elected officials. But even the most enlightened communities cannot insulate themselves from the deterioration of the rest of the world. If a city manages to preserve desirable cultural or environmental features, these very advantages put it under increasing economic pressure. The fact that human values have been given precedence over property values ultimately causes enormous increases in the latter (more people will want to invest or move there). Sooner or later this property-value increase overpowers the human values: local policies are overruled by high courts or by state or national governments, outside money is poured into municipal elections, city officials are bribed, residential neighborhoods are demolished to make room for highrises and freeways, rents skyrocket, the poorer classes are forced out (including the diverse ethnic groups and artistic bohemians who contributed to the city’s original liveliness and appeal), and all that remains of the earlier community are a few isolated sites of “historical interest” for tourist consumption. Reforms and alternative institutions Still, “acting locally” may be a good place to start. People who feel that the global situation is hopeless or incomprehensible may nevertheless see a chance to affect some specific local matter. Block clubs, co-ops, switchboards, study groups, alternative schools, free health clinics, community theaters, neighborhood newspapers, public-access radio and television stations and many other kinds of alternative institutions are worthwhile for their own sake, and if they are sufficiently participatory they may lead to broader movements. Even if they don’t last very long, they provide a temporary terrain for radical experimentation. But always within limits. Capitalism was able to develop gradually within feudal society, so that by the time the capitalist revolution cast off the last vestiges of feudalism, most of the mechanisms of the new bourgeois order were already firmly in place. An anticapitalist revolution, in contrast, cannot really build its new society “within the shell of the old.” Capitalism is far more flexible and all-pervading than was feudalism, and tends to coopt any oppositional organization. Nineteenth-century radical theorists could still see enough surviving remnants of traditional communal forms to suppose that, once the overarching exploitive structure was eliminated, they might be revived and expanded to form the foundation of a new society. But the global penetration of spectacular capitalism in the present century has destroyed virtually all forms of popular control and direct human interaction. Even the more modern efforts of the sixties counterculture have long been integrated into the system. Co-ops, crafts, organic farming and other marginal enterprises may produce better quality goods under better working conditions, but those goods still have to function as commodities on the market. The few successful ventures tend to evolve into ordinary businesses, with the founding members gradually assuming an ownership or managerial role over the newer workers and dealing with all sorts of routine commercial and bureaucratic matters that have nothing to do with “preparing the ground for a new society.” The longer an alternative institution lasts, the more it tends to lose its volunteer, experimental, nothing-to-lose character. Permanent paid staffs develop a vested interest in the status quo and avoid rocking the boat for fear of offending supporters or losing their government or foundation funding. Alternative institutions also tend to demand too much of the limited free time people have, bogging them down, robbing them of the energy and imagination to confront more general issues. After a brief period of participation most people get burned out, leaving the work to the dutiful types or to leftists trying to make an ideological point. It may sound nice to hear about people forming block clubs, etc., but unless a real local emergency comes up you may not want to attend interminable meetings to listen to your neighbors’ complaints, or otherwise commit yourself to matters you don’t really care about. In the name of realism, reformists limit themselves to pursuing “winnable” objectives, yet even when they win some little adjustment in the system it is usually offset by some other development at another level. This doesn’t mean that reforms are irrelevant, merely that they are insufficient. We have to keep resisting particular evils, but we also have to recognize that the system will keep generating new ones until we put an end to it. To suppose that a series of reforms will eventually add up to a qualitative change is like thinking we can get across a ten-foot chasm by a series of one-foot hops. People tend to assume that because revolution involves much greater change than reforms, it must be more difficult to bring about. In the long run it may actually be easier, because in one stroke it cuts through so many petty complications and arouses a much greater enthusiasm. At a certain point it becomes more practical to start fresh than to keep trying to replaster a rotten structure. Meanwhile, until a revolutionary situation enables us to be truly constructive, the best we can do is be creatively negative — concentrating on critical clarification, leaving people to pursue whatever positive projects may appeal to them but without the illusion that a new society is being “built” by the gradual accumulation of such projects. Purely negative projects (e.g. abolition of laws against drug use, consensual sex and other victimless crimes) have the advantage of simplicity, immediately benefiting virtually everyone (except for that symbiotic duo, organized crime and the crime-control industry) while requiring little if any followup work once they are successful. On the other hand, they provide little opportunity for creative participation. The best projects are those that are worthwhile for their own sake while simultaneously containing an implicit challenge to some fundamental aspect of the system; projects that enable people to participate in significant issues according to their own degree of interest, while tending to open the way to more radical possibilities. Less interesting, but still worthwhile, are demands for improved conditions or more equal rights. Even if such projects are not in themselves very participatory, they may remove impediments to participation. Least desirable are mere zero-sum struggles, where one group’s gain is another’s loss. Even in the latter case the point is not to tell people what they should do, but to get them to realize what they are doing. If they are promoting some issue in order to recruit people, it is appropriate to expose their manipulative motives. If they believe they are contributing to radical change, it may be useful to show them how their activity is actually reinforcing the system in some way. But if they are really interested in their project for its own sake, let them go for it. Even if we disagree with their priorities (fundraising for the opera, say, while the streets are filled with homeless people) we should be wary of any strategy that merely appeals to people’s guilt, not only because such appeals generally have a negligible effect but because such moralism represses healthy positive aspirations. To refrain from contesting “quality of life” issues because the system continues to present us with survival emergencies is to submit to a blackmail that no longer has any justification. “Bread and roses” are no longer mutually exclusive. “Quality of life” projects are in fact often more inspiring than routine political and economic demands because they awaken people to richer perspectives. Paul Goodman’s books are full of imaginative and often amusing examples. If his proposals are “reformist,” they are so in a lively, provocative way that provides a refreshing contrast to the cringing defensive posture of most present-day reformists, who confine themselves to reacting to the reactionaries’ agenda. (“We agree that it is essential to create jobs, fight crime, keep our country strong; but moderate methods will accomplish this better than the conservatives’ extremist proposals.”) Other things being equal, it makes sense to concentrate one’s energy on issues that are not already receiving public attention; and to prefer projects that can be done cleanly and directly, as opposed to those that require compromises, such as working through government agencies. Even if such compromises don’t seem too serious, they set a bad precedent. Reliance on the state almost always backfires (commissions designed to root out bureaucratic corruption themselves develop into new corrupt bureaucracies; laws designed to thwart armed reactionary groups end up being used primarily to harass unarmed radicals). The system is able to kill two birds with one stone by maneuvering its opponents into offering “constructive solutions” to its own crises. It in fact needs a certain amount of opposition to warn it of problems, to force it to rationalize itself, to enable it to test its instruments of control, and to provide excuses to impose new forms of control. Emergency measures imperceptibly become standard procedures as regulations that might ordinarily be resisted are introduced during situations of panic. The slow, steady rape of the human personality by all the institutions of alienated society, from school and factory to advertising and urbanism, is made to seem normal as the spectacle focuses obsessively on sensational individual crimes, manipulating people into law-and-order hysteria. Political correctness, or equal opportunity alienation Above all, the system thrives when it can deflect social contestation into squabbles over privileged positions within it. This is a particularly thorny area. All social inequalities need to be challenged, not only because they are unfair, but because as long as they remain they can be used to divide people. But attaining equal wage slavery or equal opportunity to become a bureaucrat or a capitalist hardly amounts to any victory over bureaucratic capitalism. It is both natural and necessary that people defend their own interests; but if they try do so by identifying too exclusively with some particular social group they tend to lose sight of the larger picture. As increasingly fragmented categories scramble over the crumbs allotted to them, they get caught up in petty mutual-blame games and the notion of abolishing the whole hierarchical structure is forgotten. People who are normally quick to denounce the slightest hint of derogatory stereotyping get carried away into lumping all men or all whites as “oppressors,” then wonder why they run up against such powerful backlashes among the vast majority of the latter, who are quite aware that they have little real power over their own lives, much less over anyone else’s. Aside from the reactionary demagogues (who are pleasantly surprised to find “progressives” providing them with such easy targets for ridicule) the only people who actually benefit from these internecine squabbles are a few careerists struggling for bureaucratic posts, government grants, academic tenure, publishing contracts, commercial clienteles or political constituencies at a time when there is increasingly limited space at the trough. Sniffing out “political incorrectness” enables them to bash rivals and critics and reinforce their own positions as recognized specialists or spokespeople of their particular fragment. The various oppressed groups that are foolish enough to accept such spokespeople get nothing but the bittersweet thrill of self-righteous resentment and a ludicrous official terminology reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak. There is a crucial, though sometimes subtle, distinction between fighting social evils and feeding on them. People are not empowered by being encouraged to wallow in their own victimhood. Individual autonomy is not developed by taking refuge in some group identity. Equal intelligence is not demonstrated by dismissing logical reasoning as a “typical white male tactic.” Radical dialogue is not fostered by harassing people who don’t conform to some political orthodoxy, much less by striving to get such orthodoxy legally enforced. Nor is history made by rewriting it. We do need to free ourselves from uncritical respect for the past and to become aware of the ways it has been distorted. But we have to recognize that despite our disapproval of past prejudices and injustices, it is unlikely that we would have done any better had we ourselves lived under the same conditions. Applying present-day standards retroactively (smugly correcting earlier authors every time they use the formerly conventional masculine forms, or trying to censor Huckleberry Finn because Huck doesn’t refer to Jim as a “person of color”) only reinforces the historical ignorance that the modern spectacle has been so successful in fostering. Drawbacks of moralism and simplistic extremism A lot of this nonsense stems from the false assumption that being radical implies living up to some moral “principle” — as if no one could work for peace without being a total pacifist, or advocate the abolition of capitalism without giving away all their money. Most people have too much common sense to actually follow such simplistic ideals, but they often feel vaguely guilty that they don’t. This guilt paralyzes them and makes them more susceptible to blackmail by leftist manipulators (who tell us that if we don’t have the courage to martyrize ourselves, we must uncritically support those who do). Or they try to repress their guilt by disparaging others who seem even more compromised: a manual laborer may take pride in not selling out mentally like a professor; who perhaps feels superior to an ad designer; who may in turn look down on someone who works in the arms industry... Turning social problems into personal moral issues deflects attention from their potential solution. Trying to change social conditions by charity is like trying to raise the sea level by dumping buckets of water in the ocean. Even if some good is accomplished by altruistic actions, to rely on them as a general strategy is futile because they will always be the exception. Most people naturally look out first for themselves and for those closest to them. One of the merits of the situationists was to have cut through the traditional leftist appeal to guilt and self-sacrifice by stressing that the primary reason to make a revolution is for ourselves. “Going to the people” in order to “serve” or “organize” or “radicalize” them usually leads to manipulation and often meets with apathy or hostility. The example of others’ independent actions is a far stronger and healthier means of inspiration. Once people begin to act on their own they are in a better position to exchange experiences, to collaborate on equal terms and, if necessary, to ask for specific assistance. And when they win their own freedom it’s much harder to take it back from them. One of the May 1968 graffitists wrote: “I’m not a servant of the people (much less of their self-appointed leaders) — let the people serve themselves.” Another put it even more succinctly: “Don’t liberate me — I’ll take care of that.” A total critique means that everything is called into question, not that everything must be totally opposed. Radicals often forget this and get caught up in outbidding each other with increasingly extremist assertions, implying that any compromise amounts to selling out or even that any enjoyment amounts to complicity with the system. Actually, being “for” or “against” some political position is just as easy, and usually just as meaningless, as being for or against some sports team. Those who proudly proclaim their “total opposition” to all compromise, all authority, all organization, all theory, all technology, etc., usually turn out to have no revolutionary perspective whatsoever — no practical conception of how the present system might be overthrown or how a postrevolutionary society might work. Some even attempt to justify this lack by declaring that a mere revolution could never be radical enough to satisfy their eternal ontological rebelliousness. Such all-or-nothing bombast may temporarily impress a few spectators, but its ultimate effect is simply to make people blasé. Sooner or later the contradictions and hypocrisies lead to disillusionment and resignation. Projecting their own disappointed delusions onto the world, the former extremists conclude that all radical change is hopeless and repress the whole experience; or perhaps even flip to some equally silly reactionary position. If every radical had to be a Durruti we might as well forget it and devote ourselves to more realizable concerns. But being radical does not mean being the most extreme. In its original sense it simply means going to the root. The reason it is necessary to strive for the abolition of capitalism and the state is not because this is the most extreme goal imaginable, but because it has unfortunately become evident that nothing less will do. We need to find out what is both necessary and sufficient; to seek projects that we are actually capable of doing and realistically likely to do. Anything beyond this is just hot air. Many of the oldest and still most effective radical tactics — debates, critiques, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, workers councils — caught on precisely because they are at once simple, relatively safe, widely applicable, and open-ended enough to lead to broader possibilities. Simplistic extremism naturally seeks the most extremist foil for itself. If all problems can be attributed to a sinister clique of “total fascists,” everything else will seem comfortingly progressive by comparison. Meanwhile the actual forms of modern domination, which are usually more subtle, proceed unnoticed and unopposed. Fixating on reactionaries only reinforces them, makes them seem more powerful and more fascinating. “It matters little if our opponents mock us or insult us, if they represent us as clowns or criminals; the essential thing is that they talk of us, preoccupy themselves with us” (Hitler). Reich pointed out that “by drilling people to hate the police one only strengthens police authority and invests it with mystic power in the eyes of the poor and the helpless. The strong are hated but also feared and envied and followed. This fear and envy felt by the ‘have-nots’ accounts for a portion of the political reactionaries’ power. One of the main objectives of the rational struggle for freedom is to disarm reactionaries by exposing the illusionary character of their power” (People in Trouble). The main problem with compromising is not so much moral as practical: it’s difficult to attack something when we ourselves are implicated in it. We hedge our critiques lest others criticize us in turn. It becomes harder to think big, to act boldly. As has often been noted, many of the German people acquiesced to Nazi oppression because it began fairly gradually and was at first directed mainly at unpopular minorities (Jews, Gypsies, Communists, homosexuals); by the time it began affecting the general population, they had become incapable of doing anything about it. In hindsight it’s easy to condemn those who capitulated to fascism or Stalinism, but it’s unlikely that most of us would have done any better had we been in the same position. In our daydreams, picturing ourself as a dramatic personage faced with a clear-cut choice in front of an appreciative audience, we imagine that we would have no trouble making the right decision. But the situations we actually face are usually more complex and obscure. It’s not always easy to know where to draw the line. The point is to draw it somewhere, stop worrying about guilt and blame and self-justification, and take the offensive. Advantages of boldness This spirit is well exemplified by those Italian workers who have gone on strike without making any demands whatsoever. Such strikes are not only more interesting than the usual bureaucratic union negotiations, they may even be more effective: the bosses, uncertain of how far they have to go, frequently end up offering much more than the strikers would have dared to demand. The latter can then decide on their next move without having committed themselves to anything in return. A defensive reaction against this or that social symptom at best wins some temporary concession on the specific issue. Aggressive agitation that refuses to limit itself exerts far more pressure. Faced with widespread, unpredictable movements like the sixties counterculture or the May 1968 revolt — movements calling everything in question, generating autonomous contestations on many fronts, threatening to spread throughout the whole society and too vast to be controlled by cooptable leaders — rulers hasten to clean up their image, pass reforms, raise wages, release prisoners, declare amnesties, initiate peace talks — anything in the hope of preempting the movement and reestablishing their control. (The sheer unmanageability of the American counterculture, which was spreading deeply into the army itself, probably played as great a role as the explicit antiwar movement in forcing the end of the Vietnam war.) The side that takes the initiative defines the terms of the struggle. As long as it keeps innovating, it also retains the element of surprise. “Boldness is virtually a creative power... Whenever boldness meets hesitation it already has a significant advantage because the very state of hesitation implies a loss of equilibrium. It is only when it encounters cautious foresight that it is at a disadvantage” (Clausewitz, On War). But cautious foresight is quite rare among those who run this society. Most of the system’s processes of commodification, spectacularization and hierarchization are blind and automatic: merchants, media and leaders merely follow their natural tendencies to make money or grab audiences or recruit followers. Spectacle society is often the victim of its own falsifications. As each level of bureaucracy tries to cover for itself with padded statistics, as each “information source” outbids the others with more sensational stories, and as competing states, governmental departments and private companies each launch their own independent disinformation operations (see chapters 16 and 30 of Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle), even the exceptional ruler who may have some lucidity has a hard time finding out what is really happening. As Debord observes elsewhere in the same book, a state that ends up repressing its own historical knowledge can no longer conduct itself strategically. Advantages and limits of nonviolence “The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass Anyone with any knowledge of history is aware that societies do not change without stubborn and often savage resistance by those in power. If our ancestors had not resorted to violent revolt, most of those who now self-righteously deplore it would still be serfs or slaves. The routine functioning of this society is far more violent than any reaction against it could ever be. Imagine the outrage that would greet a radical movement that executed 20,000 opponents; that’s a conservative estimate of the number of children that the present system allows to starve to death each day. Vacillations and compromises allow this ongoing violence to drag on indefinitely, ultimately causing a thousand times more suffering than a single decisive revolution. Fortunately a modern, genuinely majority revolution would have relatively little need for violence except to neutralize those elements of the ruling minority who try to violently maintain their own power. Violence is not only undesirable in itself, it generates panic (and thus manipulability) and promotes militaristic (and thus hierarchical) organization. Nonviolence entails more open and democratic organization; it tends to foster composure and compassion and to break the miserable cycle of hatred and revenge. But we have to avoid making a fetish out of it. The common retort, “How can you work for peace with violent methods?” is no more logical than it would be to tell a drowning man that if he wants to get to dry land he must avoid touching water. Striving to resolve “misunderstandings” through dialogue, pacifists forget that some problems are based on objective conflicts of interest. They tend to underestimate the malice of enemies while exaggerating their own guilt, berating themselves even for their “violent feelings.” The seemingly personal practice of “bearing witness” actually reduces the activist to a passive object, “another person for peace” who (like a soldier) puts her body on the line while abdicating personal investigation or experimentation. Those who want to undermine the notion of war as exciting and heroic must get beyond such a cringing, beggarly notion of peace. Defining their objective as survival, peace activists have had little to say to those who are fascinated by global annihilation precisely because they are sick of an everyday life reduced to mere survival, who see war not as a threat but as a welcome deliverance from a life of boredom and constant petty anxiety. Sensing that their purism would not hold up under the test of reality, pacifists usually remain deliberately ignorant about past and present social struggles. Though often capable of intensive study and stoic self-discipline in their personal spiritual practices, they seem to feel that a Reader’s Digest level of historical and strategical knowledge will suffice for their ventures into “social engagement.” Like someone hoping to eliminate injurious falls by abolishing the law of gravity, they find it simpler to envision a never-ending moral struggle against “greed,” “hatred,” “ignorance,” “bigotry,” than to challenge the specific social structures that actually reinforce such qualities. If pressed, they sometimes complain that radical contestation is a very stressful terrain. It is indeed, but this is a strange objection to hear from those whose spiritual practices claim to enable people to confront problems with detachment and equanimity. There’s a wonderful moment in Uncle Tom’s Cabin: As a Quaker family is helping some slaves escape to Canada, a Southern slave catcher appears. One of the Quakers points a shotgun at him and says, “Friend, thee isn’t wanted here.” I think that’s just the right tone: not caught up in hatred, or even contempt, but ready to do what is necessary in a given situation. Reactions against oppressors are understandable, but those who get too caught up in them risk becoming mentally as well as materially enslaved, chained to their masters by “bonds of hate.” Hatred of bosses is partly a projection of people’s self-hatred for all the humiliations and compromises they have accepted, stemming from their secret awareness that bosses ultimately exist only because the bossed put up with them. Even if there is some tendency for the scum to rise to the top, most people in positions of power don’t act much differently than would anyone else who happened to find themselves in the same position, with the same new interests, temptations and fears. Vigorous retaliation may teach enemy forces to respect you, but it also tends to perpetuate antagonisms. Forgiveness sometimes wins over enemies, but in other cases it simply gives them a chance to recover and strike again. It’s not always easy to determine which policy is best in which circumstances. People who have suffered under particularly vicious regimes naturally want to see the perpetrators punished; but too much revenge sends a message to other present and future oppressors that they may as well fight to the death since they have nothing to lose. But most people, even those who have been most blamably complicitous with the system, will tend to go whichever way the wind blows. The best defense against counterrevolution is not to be preoccupied with sniffing out people’s past offenses or potential future betrayals, but to deepen the insurgence to the point that everyone is drawn in. Chapter 3: Climaxes “As soon as the relations of exploitation and the violence that underlies them are no longer concealed by the mystical veil, there is a breakthrough, a moment of clarity, the struggle against alienation is suddenly revealed as a ruthless hand-to-hand fight with naked power, power exposed in its brute force and its weakness, a vulnerable giant ... sublime moment when the complexity of the world becomes tangible, transparent, within everyone’s grasp.” — Raoul Vaneigem, Basic Banalities (SI Anthology, p. 93 [Revised Edition p. 121]) Causes of social breakthroughs It’s hard to generalize about the immediate causes of radical breakthroughs. There have always been plenty of good reasons to revolt, and sooner or later instabilities will arise where something has to give. But why at one moment and not another? Revolts have often occurred during periods of social improvement, while worse conditions have been endured with resignation. If some have been provoked by sheer desperation, others have been touched off by relatively trivial incidents. Grievances that have been patiently accepted as long as they seemed inevitable may suddenly seem intolerable once it appears possible to remove them. The meanness of some repressive measure or the asininity of some bureaucratic blunder may bring home the absurdity of the system more clearly than a steady accumulation of oppressions. The system’s power is based on people’s belief in their powerlessness to oppose it. Normally this belief is well founded (transgress the rules and you are punished). But when for one reason or another enough people begin to ignore the rules that they can do so with impunity, the whole illusion collapses. What was thought to be natural and inevitable is seen to be arbitrary and absurd. “When no one obeys, no one commands.” The problem is how to reach this point. If only a few disobey, they can easily be isolated and repressed. People often fantasize about wonderful things that might be achieved “if only everyone would agree to do such and such all at once.” Unfortunately, social movements don’t usually work that way. One person with a six-gun can hold off a hundred unarmed people because each one knows that the first six to attack will be killed. Of course some people may be so infuriated that they attack regardless of risk; and their apparent determination may even save them by convincing those in power that it’s wiser to give in peacefully than to be overwhelmed after arousing even more hatred against themselves. But it is obviously preferable not to depend on acts of desperation, but to seek forms of struggle that minimize risk until a movement has spread so far that repression is no longer feasible. People living under particularly repressive regimes naturally begin by taking advantage of whatever rallying points already exist. In 1978 the Iranian mosques were the only place people could get away with criticizing the Shah’s regime. Then the huge demonstrations called by Khomeini at 40-day intervals began providing the safety of numbers. Khomeini thus became recognized as a general symbol of opposition, even by those who were not his followers. But tolerating any leader, even as a mere figurehead, is at best a temporary measure that should be abandoned as soon as more independent action becomes possible — as did those Iranian oil workers who by fall 1978 felt they had enough leverage to strike on days different from those called for by Khomeini. The Catholic Church in Stalinist Poland played a similarly ambiguous role: the state used the Church to help control the people, but the people also used the Church to help them get around the state. Fanatical orthodoxy is sometimes the first step toward more radical self-expression. Islamic fundamentalists may be extremely reactionary, but by getting used to taking events in their own hands they complicate any return to “order” and may even, if disillusioned, become genuinely radical — as happened with some of the similarly fanatical Red Guards during the Chinese “Cultural Revolution,” when what was originally a mere ploy by Mao to lever out some of his bureaucratic rivals eventually led to uncontrolled insurgency by millions of young people who took his antibureaucratic rhetoric seriously. Postwar upheavals If someone proclaimed: “I am the greatest, strongest, noblest, cleverest, and most peace-loving person in the world,” he would be considered obnoxious, if not insane. But if he says precisely the same things about his country he is looked upon as an admirably patriotic citizen. Patriotism is extremely seductive because it enables even the most miserable individual to indulge in a vicarious collective narcissism. The natural nostalgic fondness for one’s home and surroundings is transformed into a mindless cult of the state. People’s fears and resentments are projected onto foreigners while their frustrated aspirations for authentic community are mystically projected onto their own nation, which is seen as somehow essentially wonderful despite all its defects. (“Yes, America has its problems; but what we are fighting for is the real America, what America really stands for.”) This mystical herd-consciousness becomes almost irresistible during war, smothering virtually all radical tendencies. Yet patriotism has sometimes played a role in triggering radical struggles (e.g. Hungary 1956). And even w

When Mark Bittman published Jim Lahey's original no-knead bread recipe in the New York Times back in 2007, it was the method of mixing the dough that got all the attention, and with good reason: The concept of letting enzymes, yeast, and time do all the work of developing gluten, in lieu of kneading, revolutionized the way home and restaurant cooks alike could make bread and pizza dough.* Yet there was another idea in that piece that deserved no less attention for the ingenious way in which it improved home-baked loaves: baking the bread in a Dutch oven. * Check out my version of the recipe for some more information on the science of no-knead bread. It's a step that creates a thick, crisp, crackly crust that's better than any you could hope to achieve without a professional bread oven. But the technique has one problem: Dropping moist raw dough into a screaming-hot, 500°F Dutch oven is awkward and dangerous. When the folks at Fourneau Bread Oven told me they had the answer and sent me a unit to test out, I was surprised at how low-tech their solution was. It's a simple tool made of three hunks of cast iron, but it neatly solves the problem, making it essential gear for any home baker who's serious about baking a better crust. They've already raised over $165,000 through their Kickstarter campaign, so clearly I'm not the only one who finds the concept impressive. How does it work? First, let's do a quick recap on the science of bread baking. Up until that article was published, most people had been doing what I'd done: baking their bread on a preheated baking stone and splashing it with a bit of water in a desperate (and relatively futile) attempt to mimic the steamy oven environment of the best bakeries. See, bread forms the crispest, crackliest, most blistered crust when it's baked at very high heat in a very moist environment. The high heat produces oven spring—the rapid expansion of air bubbles and water vapor inside the dough that creates its airy, open structure. Steam not only enhances this process (moist air transfers heat energy more effectively than dry air), but also slows down the rate at which the crust dehydrates, giving your loaf more time to create a thick, gelatinized layer of starch on its exterior, which in turn develops into a thicker, crisper crust. It's very similar to the way in which a parboiled potato will subsequently develop a thicker, crisp crust when you roast or fry it. Like a baking stone, a heavy cast iron Dutch oven stores plenty of heat energy, which it delivers to the bread as it bakes. Unlike with a baking stone, this energy radiates from all sides, not just from underneath. More importantly, the small volume of a sealed Dutch oven concentrates the water vapor evaporating off the dough, creating the steamy environment we're after. Preheat the Dutch oven in your regular oven, pull it out, drop in your wet dough (while hoping it doesn't get horribly misshapen in the process), slam the lid shut, and bake. The Fourneau oven does the exact same thing without the awkward drop-and-slam step. It has a heavy cast iron base with a cast iron dome that sits above it. Instead of lifting that dome to put your bread inside, you pull out a metal door, which allows you to slide your dough into the chamber using the provided wooden peel. Put the door back in place, and you've got yourself a mini bread oven. I baked a few loaves of bread, using a single batch of dough divided into a dozen individual loaves, to test out how effective the oven is compared to a regular baking stone and the Dutch oven method. Compared to a stone, the differences are immediate and obvious: a much crisper, thicker crust, with bigger blisters, that stays crisp long after the bread has cooled. Compared to the Dutch oven, it's a toss-up. Some loaves seemed crisper out of the Dutch oven; others were better out of the Fourneau. Similar performance with greater ease of use is a good trade-up in my book. The Fourneau also makes it easy to bake consecutive loaves, since it doesn't totally cover an average-size baking stone or steel. Just preheat the Fourneau on top of the stone or steel in your oven, launch the first loaf into it, and let it bake for around 20 minutes to set the crust. Then use the wooden peel to transfer it to another part of the stone, freeing up the Fourneau to start your next loaf. Of course, there are a few disadvantages. First, the Fourneau is a uni-tasker. A Dutch oven is still gonna make great stews, soups, and braises while it's not baking your bread. The Fourneau will sit in your closet, waiting to be called into action. You'll have to really love baking bread (or have an excess of kitchen storage space) to get the most out of it. Second, unless you have lots of experience launching dough off a paddle, there's gonna be a learning curve before you can do it successfully. Expect a few misshapen loaves early on. Third, there's the price. At $225 (that price includes the wooden peel), it ain't cheap—though, to be fair, a Dutch oven isn't cheap, either. Finally, there's the shape, which limits the bread you can make to long, narrow loaves that are a maximum of around six inches wide, four inches high, and 10 inches long (sorry, no baguettes or oversize boules). Still, that restriction is a small price to pay for better, easier crusts. If you're the type of serious home bread baker who's been waiting for a product like this, you already know who you are. I don't need to convince you of its convenience. I'm happy to report that the product is well made and well designed, and it functions exactly as advertised. I've even seen people online using the oven on top of their grill and in their fire pits, with burning embers to keep it fueled. Campfire no-knead bread sounds like a pretty delicious prospect to me. You can bet I'll be trying it as soon as camping season rolls around again. You can order the Fourneau oven through their site. Place your order by the end of the day today (December 16, 2015), and it should arrive in time for Christmas if you've got a bread baker in your life who's been especially nice this year. You'll be rewarded with more delicious bread next year, I promise. This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.

We may earn money from the products/companies mentioned in this post. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Pizza Bowl An easy, 5 minute lunch full of all the flavors of pizza and none of the carbs! No special ingredients required! This Pizza Bowl is so easy to make! This post contains affiliate links which provide me with a small commission when you make a purchase through those links. The profits go to the support of my family and this blog. Thank you! I don’t know about you, but planning ahead is half the battle for me. I know that when I plan ahead what I am going to eat I do a much better job of staying on plan. However, I do not always do that, even though I know I should! (Just being honest!) About two weeks ago I decided it would be a good idea to keep cooked hamburger in my refrigerator for quick and easy lunches. That, I must say, was a marvelous idea! I have used it several times for taco meat, cheeseburger salad, and for this amazing recipe I am sharing today – this delicious Pizza Bowl! It only takes about 10 minutes to fry up a couple pounds of hamburger (or venison in my case), and it is so handy to have in the fridge, just waiting for your culinary imaginations! This easy recipe is a great example! Most people love pizza, and I am no exception. My absolute favorite low-carb pizza crust recipe is the Perfect Pizza Crust (page 211 in the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook ). I love that recipe, but I don’t always want to take the time to make it (lazy or Drive Through Sue – you decide). That is where the idea for this recipe comes in – an easy microwaveable pizza bowl that gives you all the flavor in just a couple of minutes (providing you have the burger already cooked). I may or may not have had this three times this past week! I used hamburger, but this would be really amazing with cooked Italian sausage! Be sure to sign up with your email address so you can receive all my new recipes delivered right to your inbox! (Look for the sign-up box at the top of this post.) Also, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter! Print Recipe Pizza in a Bowl {Low Carb, THM-S} All the flavors of pizza, but no crust, and considerably less carbs! Calories: 426 kcal Ingredients 1/2 Cup Cooked Hamburger can use Venison as well 1/2 Cup Shredded Mozzarella Cheese 1/4 - 1/2 Cup Sugar Free Pizza Sauce 8-10 Slices Pepperoni Garlic Salt Dried Oregano Instructions In a microwaveable cereal bowl, layer half the hamburger, half the pepperoni, half the pizza sauce, and half the cheese. Sprinkle garlic salt and oregano to taste. Layer remaining ingredients. Sprinkle garlic salt and oregano again. Microwave for 2 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly. Notes I like to use Great Value Pizza Sauce - it has no sugar and only 3 net carbs for 1/4 cup. Nutrition Serving: 1 Recipe | Calories: 426 kcal | Carbohydrates: 9 g | Fat: 31 g | Fiber: 2 g If you like this recipe, you may enjoy my Pizza Muffin in a Mug recipe or my Pizza Meatball Casserole!

Politics How a Utah county silenced Native American voters — and how Navajos are fighting back A series of lawsuits could help counteract decades of racist practices. Jonathan Thompson To understand why Wilfred Jones wanted an ambulance, you have to understand where he lives. San Juan County, in southeastern Utah, is nearly as big as New Jersey but is home to fewer than 15,000 people. The lower third is part of the Navajo Nation and is almost entirely Ute and Navajo. The upper two-thirds are white and predominantly Mormon. Jones, a 61-year-old grandfather with jet-black hair and a diamond stud in each ear, lives in the lower third, five miles south of the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Montezuma Creek. It’s rough, rocky country, where bullet holes riddle the road signs and lonely pumpjacks ply oil from the earth. The nearest services are in Blanding, some 40 miles north. Sixteen years ago, when Jones joined the board of the Utah Navajo Health System, he realized his neighbors were dying because the closest ambulances — the county’s, in Blanding, and the tribe’s, in Kayenta, Arizona — were an hour away “on a good day.” So Jones asked the county commission if one of San Juan’s ambulances could be housed in a garage in Montezuma Creek. From there, it would take half the time to rush an elder suffering a heart attack to medical care. But the county wasn’t interested. Over the next decade, Jones says, he and other health advocates repeatedly tried to get the commission to improve ambulance service on the reservation. But while the sole Navajo commissioner was supportive, the two white commissioners were usually not. (Former Navajo Commissioner Mark Maryboy and others corroborate Jones’ account, though no official votes appear in county records.) Eventually, Jones gave up: The Utah Navajo Health System trained its own EMS volunteers, built a garage and bought ambulances with tribal and federal funds. It stung, but wasn’t surprising. Though Native Americans on the reservation don’t pay property taxes, they indirectly contribute millions of dollars in oil revenue and federal funds to the county each year, which is supposed to be returned in services like education and health care. But many Navajo requests — from building schools to implementing bicultural education to improving roads — have been denied by Anglo residents, who have always held a majority in elected offices despite comprising less than half of the county’s population. Now, Native Americans could gain control of county government for the first time. Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled that San Juan County violated both the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution by relying on race to draw the boundaries of its voting districts. By engaging in “racial gerrymandering,” San Juan County systematically diluted the strength of the Native vote, keeping Natives out of power and skewing the makeup of the county commission and the school board. The system, perpetuated for decades, “offends basic democratic principles,” Shelby wrote. Sources: San Juan County and Salt Lake Tribune In 1957, Utah became one of the last states in the nation to grant Native Americans the right to vote, doing so only after being forced by a federal judge. Still, it took another three decades for the first Native Americans to be elected in San Juan County. It wasn’t for lack of trying — county clerks kept Native candidates off the ballot, refused to register Native voters, and held written elections in English, disenfranchising those who were illiterate or didn’t speak the language. In the mid-1980s, the U.S. Department of Justice sued San Juan County for violating the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters by banning discriminatory voting practices. The county admitted fault, and agreed to implement bilingual voting and create three voting districts, one for each county commissioner seat. San Juan County was subsequently divided into three chunks. Districts 1 and 2 were in Anglo territory. District 3, on Navajo land, became known as the Indian District. In 1986, it elected Mark Maryboy as the county’s first-ever Navajo commissioner. But though no one noticed at the time, the way the county drew its lines still violated the Voting Rights Act, because it packed minority voters into a single district while spreading the white vote over multiple districts. That meant Native voters could only elect one representative of their choice while white voters got two, even as the Native population surpassed the white population, 52 to 46 percent. Sure enough, Navajos remained in the minority on every governing board. Maryboy was frequently outvoted. So were Navajos on the school board; three out of five of its voting districts are also on Anglo-dominated land. Current County Commissioner Bruce Adams, who was elected in 2004, says allegations he and other elected officials ignored Native Americans’ needs are “100 percent false.” Yet as recently as 1995, the county denied that it was responsible for educating Navajo children; it built a high school in the town of Navajo Mountain only after yet another judge ordered it to do so. A U.S. Department of Justice official who later reviewed disparities in course offerings between the county’s white and Native schools said in 1997 that he “hadn’t seen anything so bad since the ’60s in the South.” Court-ordered injunctions to provide Navajo language and cultural education were abandoned. And as of 2011, Indian students, who comprised 48 percent of the county’s student population, received 80 percent of all disciplinary actions. Donna Deyhle, a professor of educational anthropology at the University of Utah, says that together these injustices lead to lower test scores, higher dropout rates and fewer college degrees, which in turn results in lower civic participation. The inequality doesn’t stop at the classroom. Requests to bring running water or electricity to the Navajo community of Westwater were denied in 2007, because, one county commissioner argued, residents were too poor to pay for utilities anyway. Tribal members have never been appointed to judicial offices, and aren’t represented on cultural or historical boards. And many residents still erroneously believe that because Native Americans don’t pay property taxes, the county isn’t obligated to provide for them. According to court documents, Bruce Adams supporters boasted in a 2012 campaign ad that he “has been very successful in preventing the expenditure of San Juan County tax money on reservation projects for which the county has no responsibility.” Jon Kovash Like most Navajos and Utes living in San Juan County, Wilfred Jones was unaware of the degree to which this was happening. He’d experienced racism in his own life — from police officers who threw his father’s sacred medicine pouch onto the highway, and from white kids who taunted his son and his grandson with racial slurs when they faced off at sporting events — but he wouldn’t have called it “institutionalized.” “We thought it was normal procedure,” Jones says, of voting in the county. “We went with the flow.” Until, that is, Jones met Leonard Gorman. Gorman, who’s also Navajo, with a trim goatee and rectangular glasses, is executive director of the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission. In 2011, Gorman began visiting oft-ignored corners of Navajo Nation to learn about residents’ concerns. The stories he heard from Jones and others near Montezuma Creek seemed at first like another example of the disparities faced by Native Americans everywhere. But the more Gorman learned, the more he realized that this wasn’t just a lingering effect of generations of discrimination — it was discrimination in action. “The struggles, the racism we all read about in history books … I’d like to believe that the overtness of what happened then isn’t happening today,” he says. “But in some places, it is.” The most far-reaching example is also the least visible — which is perhaps why it escaped notice for so long. Under both the Voting Rights Act and Utah state law, counties must redraw voting districts at least every 10 years to ensure that the population is spread evenly across districts. But San Juan County hadn’t redrawn its voting districts since 1986. Gorman offered multiple times to help the county redraw its boundaries so that Tribal voters were more evenly distributed over two districts, rather than packed into one, but was turned away. County officials said they believed the Indian District wasn’t just legal — it was required. When he heard this, Jones was outraged. If there had been two Navajos on the county commission, his pleas to get an ambulance might have been answered, and people could have suffered less. “That was what finally gave me backbone,” he says. So in 2012, Gorman sued twice — once to redraw the county commission districts and once for the school board’s. Jones was a plaintiff in both suits. In December 2015 and February 2016, Judge Shelby ruled unequivocally in the Navajos’ favor. He ordered the county to remap both its school board and county commission voting districts. Commissioner Adams says the county is complying. And while there’s no guarantee that having the Native American population spread over two voting districts will lead to two Navajo commissioners, it’s likely that, given a fair opportunity, a Navajo majority will elect Navajo candidates. If that happens, Native Americans could control the financial, law enforcement, education and transportation needs of one of the nation’s largest counties for the first time. But given the county’s history, many Navajo remain skeptical that the new maps will adhere to the law. “We still have a long way to go,” says former Commissioner Maryboy. “But those recent court decisions look very positive for us. I think it’s inevitable that county officials are going to have to accept the fact that we’re part of the government.” Correspondent Krista Langlois lives in Durango, Colorado. Follow @cestmoiLanglois Get our Tribal Affairs newsletter ↓

Enchiladas, Beans & Rice: Where To Find Retro Tex-Mex Combo Platters In Houston—Updated Anyone who has seen Ratatouille knows the famous scene when the movie’s namesake dish mentally transports a restaurant critic back to his childhood. Tex-Mex has the same effect on many longtime Houstonians. Truthfully, there are a lot of things to not like about the mess that we call “the combination dinner.” There’s too much salt, grease and no vegetables to speak of amid a wealth of artery-clogging cheese and meat. If an alien was dropped into Texas and served up a big ol’ mess of Tex-Mex, he might ask, “What the heck is this on my plate?” But for those of us who grew up here, Tex-Mex seems very right and we love it. As a kid, my family ate at an El Patio on Telephone at Park Place at least twice a week. Traditional combo plates include frijoles refritos (refried beans), arroz a la Mexicana (Mexican rice) and “gravy” made with flour, oil and chili powder to cover the enchiladas and tamales. Tortillas for enchiladas are dipped in hot oil to soften and then stacked until ready to use. The rice is slightly red from tomatoes, seasoned with cumin and—hopefully—light and fluffy. The beans—usually made from pinto beans cooked until very soft—may be watery or slightly thick. Very lucky diners will get to enjoy a fried taco shell that’s puffy, crispy and inflated like a balloon. (Los Tios and Fiesta Loma Linda are the only places that I know of that still do these). Updated, 7/24/2017: By reader request, here’s a map of all 12 old-school Tex-Mex restaurants recommended in this article. Here’s a list of 12 places that, if one could time-travel back to 1960s Houston, feature the combination plates that would have been served. In our city, Tex-Mex is a hotly debated topic and everyone has a favorite. If you don’t see yours, please feel free to add suggestions in the comments section! El Real Tex-Mex #7, 1201 Westheimer: Many of the recipes at El Real came from Robb Walsh’s The Tex-Mex Cookbook, which reflects his lifelong love affair with the history of and recipes of classic Tex-Mex. The flour and corn tortillas here are excellent. Be sure to go upstairs and check out the Jay Francis Collection of Tex-Mex memorabilia. Casa Vieja Mexican Grill, 2836 Fulton: Casa Vieja is a newer restaurant in the old Doneraki Mexican Restaurant location on Fulton. However, the food coming out of the kitchen is classic Tex-Mex. Los Tios Mexican Restaurant, 4840 Beechnut: Los Tios is a Houston institution and one of only two places that still make the puffy and crispy taco that was once very typical of Houston Tex-Mex. This location on Beechnut is a favorite. Don Teo’s, 2026 West 34th: The story of Don Teo’s is pretty interesting. This location was originally a Monterey House franchised to Don Covington. Now in his 80s, he still comes by for Tex-Mex every week. The Martinez family that own it now, Don Teo and his son, Teo Jr. all worked for decades for the Monterey House chain. Junior began as a kid and worked his way through the various stations of the restaurant. He is an absolute delight to chat with, so be sure to say “hi” when you visit. El Paraiso, 2320 Crocker Street: El Paraiso, located at Fairview in Montrose, offers housemade moles and a few northern Mexico regional dishes as well as classic Tex-Mex. Don Carlos: 416 76th Street:Don Carlos has a long history of serving Tex-Mex in the east side of town in what is becoming known as EaDo. (I call it “Cannaviburg,” short for the neighborhood of great dining options at Canal Street, Navigation and Harrisburg.) Mi Sombrero, 3401 North Shepherd: Mi Sombrero offers classic Tex-Mex dishes and, like Don Teo, serves the Garden Oaks and Shepherd/Ella area of Houston. Fiesta Loma Linda, 2111 Telephone: This one is a favorite because of the classic, well-made, Houston-style puffy tacos served to this day. Originally a diner, the owners’ friendship with the owners of the now long-gone Loma Linda Restaurant means they follow the original Loma Linda recipes. When the check comes, diners are treated to one of the housemade Mexican-style pralines. Lopez Mexican Restaurant, 11606 Wilcrest: This is another historically significant Tex-Mex institution that serves the Stafford area. They haven’t changed the recipe in 40 years, and don’t need to. These are classic renditions topped with chili gravy and melted yellow cheese. Monterey House, 1109 S 11th Street, Beaumont: This is a Tex-Mex mecca for lovers of classic renditions of the cuisine. The franchisee bought the rights to the recipes of the original Monterey House chain popular in the 1960s and uses them to this day. This is a must-stop for anyone travelling east on Highway 10 through Beaumont. Larry’s, 116 E Highway 90A, Richmond: Larry Guerrero worked for Felix Tijerina of the legendary Felix Mexican Restaurant back in the day. When Guerrero expressed interest in creating his own Mexican restaurant, Tijerina provided assistance. Ninfa Laurenzo also offered help in exchange for his buying his masa products from their family tortilleria off of Navigation. Be sure to pick up a Larry’s t-shirt when you visit. It is one of the coolest looking t-shirts in Texas. La Hacienda, 14759 Memorial: If you grew up in the Memorial area, your family probably went to “La-Ha” at least once a week. In that area of town, it is a Tex-Mex institution. Jay Francis is a Houston native, having grown up on the east side of town. An engineer by profession (now retired), his interest in food science and cooking began in his college years and continued throughout his adult life. With friends and family in Mexico, he considers Mexican cuisine to be the one that he is most comfortable with, but he is also knowledgeable about North African, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Cuisine. A highpoint of his adult life was to be able to research and recipe test for three of Robb Walsh’s cookbooks: The Tex-Mex Cookbook, Legends of Texas Barbecue, and The Chili Cookbook. He has traveled extensively in Mexico for over 50 years and is available for guided tours. In addition, he teaches hands on cooking classes in his home. Jay also offers ethnic market tours of Houston. Jay moderates the Houston Chowhounds Facebook group, as well as publishes The Fried Chicken Blog and Houston Food Explorers web sites.

Unruly scenes marred the election of the North Delhi mayor Preeti Aggarwal and deputy mayor Vijay Kumar Bhagat in the headquarters of the meeting hall of the Civic Centre on Thursday. Slogans of Bharat Mata ki Jai, Har Har Modi, and Jai Shri Ram reverberated in the hall. Congress and AAP councillors took strong exception to this, calling it a "violation of protocol." Opposition members also raised objections on the entry of BJP supporters and 'unauthorised' members in the meeting hall. "How can the authorities allow hoards of supporters up on the stage chanting slogans even as the session was going on? This is a complete violation of the decorum of the House," said Leader of Opposition Rakesh Kumar from AAP. Kumar, along with Congress councillors, called it a "failure" of the authorities and alleged that there was gross "mismanagement" on their part. The protest comes in the aftermath in the BJP's sweeping victory in the recently held civic polls. The BJP had won 181 of the 270 municipal wards with AAP and the Congress trailing behind at 48 and 30 seats, respectively. Speaking after the election, Preeti Aggarwal, 43, who is the BJP councillor from Rohini, said that her focus will be on the 3S —Swachhta, Swastha and Shiksha. "My priority as the mayor will be to take everyone along to work on making PM Modi's Swachh Bharat a reality. We need to develop Delhi on the lines of Smart City," said Aggarwal. However, the Congress councillor from Malka Ganj, Guddi Devi, who played a part in the disruption of proceedings alleged that the new mayor, "is not aware of the rules of the House." Devi also alleged that no room was allotted in the headquarters for Congress councillors.

A building has "collapsed" into a busy London underground station as part of the biggest disaster training exercise ever seen in Europe. Exercise Unified Response , coordinated by the London Fire Brigade, simulated a tower block collapsing into Waterloo station to prepare specialist emergency crews for a large-scale operation with mass casualties. An actor has make-up applied for the Unified Response training exercise at Littlebrook Power Station Photo: PA The four-day exercise, which started on Monday, is designed to test the contingency planning of more than 70 organisations, from mortuaries to the Government’s Cobra committee, local councils and search and rescue teams. "When disaster strikes families need to be confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to identify their loved ones in a dignified and respectful way." "When disaster strikes families need to be confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to identify their loved ones in a dignified and respectful way." Chief Constable Debbie Simpson It is being staged at a disused power station near the Dartford Crossing as well as at four separate venues in central and south east London. The drill, which is costing £770,000 and is funded by the European Union, involves eight real tube carriages, tons of rubble and more than 2,000 volunteers playing casualties, bystanders and worried relatives. One carriage is buried so deep in the rubble that emergency crews will not immediately see it. The request for assistance to the Emergency Response Coordination Centre will be made through the UK's official channels, including the Cabinet Office. As workers first arrive on the scene, they will be confronted with tube ticket barriers smeared with blood. Casualties, whose injuries have been realistically created by local make up artists, will be suffering from a range of head injuries, lacerations, glass wounds, broken legs and amputations. Disaster victim identification (DVI) teams from all UK police regions are working alongside other forensic specialists. More than 250 personnel are working at the scene and in a specially constructed temporary mortuary. The emergency services training exercise is taking place at Littlebrook Power Station in Dartford Photo: PA It is the biggest multi-agency training exercise in London Fire Brigade's history. Ron Dobson, London Fire Brigade’s commissioner, has described tube tunnels as “the worst place possible” for rescues, with moving trains and live wires adding to the danger. He told the Evening Standard: “We needed to create a realistic scenario, there’s hundreds of thousands of tons of rubble. Great work by the make up teams for #UnifiedResponse pic.twitter.com/plbogyNxJq — John Pannell (@johnpannell) February 29, 2016 “The idea is there’s been the collapse of a high-rise building above Waterloo station that’s gone down into the station itself (and) caused some collapse in the tunnels, there are some Underground trains caught up in it and people trapped. "There’s lot of other hazards down there we need to be careful of. In something like 7/7 you have to take them from the tube train, along the lines and out the platforms. In recent years, specially trained teams from around the UK have been deployed to assist in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014 and the Shoreham air crash in August last year. One carriage is buried so deep in the rubble that emergency crews will not immediately see it Photo: PA “One of the things we were criticised for on 7/7 was confusion between emergency services. It took us too long to agree there wasn’t a chemical involved. That wouldn’t happen in future.” Chief Constable Debbie Simpson, of the National Police Chiefs, said: "Victim identification is never a pleasant subject to discuss but it is unfortunately a reality. When disaster strikes families need to be confident that the authorities are doing everything they can to identify their loved ones in a dignified and respectful way, whilst supporting any criminal investigation. • Behind the scenes on a disaster-training simulation "Importantly this process cannot be hurried. As frustrating as this can sometimes be, especially in a world of fast paced mainstream and social media, we have to be meticulous in our approach to ensure we achieve reliable scientific identification. More than 250 personnel are working at the scene Photo: PA "It's not often we get to test working practices on such a scale and it's really positive to see so many of our European colleagues involved. Effective evaluation and debriefing will help highlight good practice and any areas for development."

Share. Plug and play. Plug and play. A sneaker designer has unveiled the JRDN 4 X PS4, a pair of customised Air Jordan sneakers with design influences from Sony's PlayStation 4. The all-black sneakers feature PS4 branding in place of Nike's usual basketball player logo. A HDMI port is embedded into the heel of each shoe, though sadly, the ports don't really do anything but look vaguely cool. The shoes will come with a HDMI cable that can plug into the ports, acting as a sort of "carry cord" for your shoes when you want to show them off without actually putting them on your feet. Designer Jonny Barry of Freaker Sneaks, who describes himself as "brand loyal to Sony's products" in an interview with DualShockers, says that he was inspired to make PS4 shoes after buying the console on release day. "I will be making a limited edition run of 10 of these and they will come with the HDMI cable and custom box," Barry says. "Price is unconfirmed as of yet, but will probably be around $950 USD for the total package." If you have a spare grand lying around that you really don't know what to do with, you can email Jonny Barry or contact him through the Freaker Sneaks Instagram account to register your interest in procuring a pair. Would you plug your feet into a pair of these? Let us know in the comments. Katie Williams is a freelance writer and games journalist. She tweets at @desensitisation and hopes that one day, a bird will tweet back.

by shiftyjelly People often ask, “What’s it like to be an independent developer?”, “You guys are millionaires right?”, “Your job sounds awesome, tell me more!”. So let’s talk about what it’s like to be an independent developer. First things first, no we’re not millionaires, few indie devs are. Philip drives a Magna (the Australian equivalent of a Yugo/Lada), I drive a lease car, Matt doesn’t have a car. None of us own houses, though 2 of us have mortgages. I’d like to address some common mis-conceptions and answer some questions. Like a true politician I’ve seeded the question list myself, and I’ll be answering. For once though we’ll leave the comments open, so feel free to ask any questions you may have. So you guys are rolling in money right? No. In fact we’ve been losing money for the last 6 months. By losing money, I mean literally every month the amount of money in our bank account has been going down. Before we got featured by Google on the Android market place, we were about a month away from having no money whatsoever. I’ve talked to many indie developers in Australia, and they are universally in the same boat. Some have taken on client work to try and fill the gap, others are working from home trying to minimise every expense they have. And I’m talking about the successful ones, the companies with great apps that have done well. So it’s tough being independent? Yes. You put an enormous amount of effort (and yourself) into every product you make. Sometimes you find people deriding it, or dismissing it after spending 13.2 seconds using it. People tell you not to take that personally. Good luck with that. When you invest 6 months of your life, day and night, creating a product there’s no way in hell you can’t take other people’s comments personally. Reading App Store reviews can be as much fun as slapping yourself in the face with an ice cold trout on days where you manage to ship a bug with your product. Your decisions are often constrained by practical matters like ‘what do I need to do today, to feed my family in 2 months time?’ and silly things like keeping your company in business. You have to deal with IAS, BAS, Superannuation Insurance and tax up the wazoo. You invent words like wazoo just to stay sane. Then you see an app like ‘101 sex positions’ or ‘301 Fart Noises’ reach the lofty heights of App Store Success. They spent a week on a gimmick and made bank, you spent 6 months building an app of utility and are struggling. Let’s not even get into the long debates you get into with people about whether they should buy your $1.99 app. People will spend hours researching a $2 purchase, browsing reviews, emailing the developer, checking online forums. Then they will go to a coffee shop they’ve never been before and buy a $4 coffee. From the developer they expect unlimited support, unlimited free updates. From the coffee shop they expect nothing except mediocre coffee. Finally it’s not a level playing field either. There are companies with millions of dollars behind them making apps, whole teams of people. At the other end of the spectrum there are young, keen enthusiasts working out of their parents basements. The former might crush you with the sheer size of their teams, and the level of features and integration they provide. The latter may kill you because they don’t care much for, or need to make money and can undercut you at every turn. But there’s good bits too right? Yes, of course. You get to do what you love, and nobody is your boss. You get to create great products that people love using. You get emails from people telling you how your apps have changed their lives, touched them (in strictly non-sexual) and awesome ways. The good really does outweigh the bad, no question at all. I wouldn’t trade this job for any other in the world, except maybe the one Richard Branson has…the idea of your own private islands does have a certain appeal… Piracy? It’s a problem, always has been in the software industry. As a kid I pirated all my software, because I felt like these were giant, faceless corporations that didn’t need my money, and I had no money to give them anyway. I pirated operating systems, I pirated apps, I pirated games. Then one day I got a job, and learnt just how hard it is to make good software, and a switch went off in my head. Now I pay for every piece of software I have, sometimes I buy apps I don’t even need, just because I appreciate the level of crafts(wo)manship and care that went into them. If it’s too expensive and I can’t afford it, I just don’t use it. The real problem is that when you’re a company of 2.5 people, piracy really hurts. Every lost sale makes it harder to stay around and keep making (what are hopefully) great apps. You can argue all day about how these people wouldn’t have bought your app anyway, and piracy is good because more people get to try your apps, but that doesn’t change the fact that piracy costs us money. We spend money on server infrastructure that is used by paying customers and pirates alike. We answer emails and support from pirates (we know who you are by the way). You can’t stop piracy, people that want to steal your app badly will find a way. You can minimise it, but our feeling is every minute you spend fighting piracy you’ve wasted. It’s better served devoted to your paying customers. Up until now all we’ve done to our software is put in server & client code so we know who the pirates are, and who the paying customers are. We don’t do anything with that information, it’s just food for thought. Speaking of food, I’ll leave you with this thought: every time you pirate a piece of software from an independent developer, we get closer to that developer never making another app, or updating their app, because they’ve gone off and got another job. It’s like breaking into your favourite corner store, do it enough times, and they’ll close their doors forever. Shouldn’t all software be free? How can you live with yourself for charging for it? No. Very few bits of software ever written were not funded by someone. People have to eat, they have to sleep somewhere and feed their families. Take Android for example: it’s free, and open-source, yet every Google engineer working on it is paid, likely far higher than you are. They are able to not charge you, because they make all their money in search & advertising. Notice that they don’t open-source any of their search code, for good reason: that’s their core business, Android isn’t. To me truly free, open-source software is a religious myth, in much the same way that [pick a religion you don’t agree with] is. It comes with it’s own proselytes, zealots and ideologies, but it’s ultimately a lie. Further to the above, what’s so offensive about charging for software? When was the last time you walked into a shop, saw a great product you really needed, and just stole it? When was the last time you debated with a shop-keeper about how this product you wanted should really be free? Software costs money to make, real money. Charging for it is how that money is recovered. Don’t let all the VC funded startups that give out everything for free fool you, paid software is often how you get great software. Since great people are able to make great things, without having to worry about how they are going to feed and clothe themselves. Developers seem greedy to me, especially the ones that charge for separate iPad apps or charge for upgrades! Independent developers are rarely, very rarely driven by greed. We made Pocket Weather AU and Pocket Weather AU HD two separate apps because we wanted to start again, and because it was just far easier to do that with two apps. I respect developers who charge for major updates, even though we’ve yet to do that. Normally we’re talking about sums of money under $5. If it means they can fund themselves to keep giving me great features, then I’m all for it. So would you recommend the life of an independent developer to others? If you have the right personality, then sure, being an independent developer is a huge blast. Don’t come expecting millions of dollars to fall into your lap though, it’s damn hard work. Chances are you’ll make less than you would working for a giant, faceless corporation…but you’ll enjoy life so much more 🙂

Crowdsourced e-commerce company Threadless has existed on the web seemingly forever, connecting T-shirt and hoodie wearers with interesting designs submitted by members of its community. Now it’s taking its shop and its design voting platform mobile with an iOS app, enabling customers to let it know which designs they like the best and to instantly buy those that are already available. The idea behind Threadless’ business is pretty straightforward: Users of the site submit their designs, potential customers vote on them, and the best end up going into production to be sold online. Over the years the company has had more than 300,000 designs submitted, of which it’s printed about 3,000, according to founder Jake Nickell. And for some of its most popular designs, the company has expanded from printing designs on other goods, including coffee mugs, bags, iPhone covers, and other accessories. But it was all web-only. And while it’s got a pretty responsive mobile web site, there’s nothing quite like having a native app to browse and shop new designs. The launch of the iPhone app, which was built by Prolific Interactive, marks the company’s first big step into mobile, and it’s a pretty sleek example of what an e-commerce shop can look like on a smartphone. The shop has a grid of available products and designs, which can be zoomed in on to get more information and see more photos of the product in question. Users can then pick a size and add to the cart direct from the product screen, or look at other products with the same design. But the shop is only part of the app — it also has an area where customers can let Threadless know which designs they would actually like to buy in the future. In the Vote section, users can give a thumbs-up to hopefully get a product printed, leave comments for the designer, and to share the design out to other social networks. When a user votes on a product, the app also lets users know when the designer submits other designs they might like and should vote on. For Threadless, the new iOS app is just the first new mobile product it has in the works, according to Nickell. It also has an app called Type Tees that it’s looking to release soon, which would enable customers to produce their own custom designed, on-demand t-shirts. The Type Tees app follows a similar concept that Threadless had tried a few years ago, in which users could pick a saying, pick a font, and then submit them for possible printing. The idea worked for a while, Nickell told me, until the company ended up being overwhelmed with text-based designs. Type Tees will let Threadless users create their own custom-printed shirts with funny sayings, as long as they’re willing to pay a small premium over its existing prices. Threadless continues to experiment with new business models, recently making investments in crowdsourced design companies like Open Me and Tattoodo. But adding new products to complement its existing business should help it grow over time.

Everybody has favorite things they love—or love to hate—in coffee. And as the so-called third-wave, specialty, progressively lighter-roasting trend has swelled, there's one part of the coffee-growing world that continues to suffer in the opinion of many finer roasters: Sumatra. Why such maligning of an Arabica-producing coffee region with a nearly year-round harvest? The answer has both to do with flavor and with our misunderstanding of where flavor comes from. Coffee loves to borrow its vocabulary from the wine world. But the terroir—the growing region and climatic conditions' affect on flavor—is only part of why a coffee tastes the way it does. That point is stressed by one of the most well-spoken on the subject, Thompson Owen of Sweet Maria's, a home-roasting bean supplier. Why is Sumatran coffee so contentious? Coffees in Sumatra are traditionally processed using a method called Giling Basah, or wet-hulling, which results in a coffee that leaves the farm with a much higher moisture content than other methods used more popularly worldwide. What's the effect of this process on flavor? To generalize, coffee processed this way tend to be described as herbaceous, spicy, wild, mushroomy, funky, earthy, and other things that may or may not sound good to you. Coffees like this tend to have less brightness and acidity—many drinkers of Sumatran coffees enjoy what they feel are smoother, fuller-bodied results. Often these coffees are roasted darker to enhance their herbaceous flavors with roast-induced sweetness or a sense of richness. While many have come to love what they see as the weirdness and complexity of Sumatran coffees, others will reject them out of hand. There aren't a lot of people who fall smack in the middle. It seems it's not as simple as coffee from a certain place necessarily tasting a certain way. "Processing matters in really fundamental ways," says Owen, who cautions that it's easy to oversimplify our understanding of a coffee by where it was grown, rather than how it was processed. A coffee bean grown in Sumatra and processed through wet-hulling will taste remarkably different than the same kind of bean grown in Sumatra and put through the entirely different process of having the fruit stripped from the bean and the bean dried on a patio over enough time to reduce its moisture content (assuming you can keep the beans dry on the patio in the first place, which is a tall order in that part of the world.) But it's also easy to oversimplify the effect of process. Natural process coffees, which Ethiopia has become particularly famous for by popularizing intense blueberry and fruity flavors in some coffees, can still taste different country to country, bean to bean. "This is a really great example of the reality of coffee," Owen says. Many coffee drinkers have been taught that coffee from Sumatra comes only one way, wild and funky and herbaceous, and they'll either take or leave that notion out of hand. Though many specialty roasters will carry a Sumatran or neighboring Sulawesi coffee on their list from time to time, they can be more challenging to sell, and taste, than more popularly understood—and livelier, sweeter—coffees currently sold from regions like East Africa or Central America. "I'd say we're seeing more sympathy for a few Indonesian coffees from folks in 'fancy' coffee only because we're starting to see some coffees that more closely resemble the more popular flavor profiles from better known, more mainstream regions," said coffee roaster Jared Linzmeier of Amherst, Wisconsin's Ruby Coffee Roasters, which offers a coffee from nearby Sulawesi. "Our Sulawesi Toarco coffee is very sweet and clean and is wash-processed," said Linzmeier. "It is soft and syrupy in the cup and I think folks are okay with the idea that some of the potentially savory qualities have more to do with the cultivar than processing. That is a key point to me. I like the idea that processing facilitates rather than modifies a coffee's potential expression. I'm okay with some strange flavors in the cup if I feel it represents a clear, clean representation of that coffee's potential." If it seems like it's a bit blurry to draw lines between the bean, the ground it is planted in, and the way we prepare it before it gets to the roastery (nevermind once it's in the roaster's hands), you're right. And whether our assumptions are inaccurate, good or bad, they do help market coffee. Sweet Maria's Owen frames it this way: "When you have a coffee table and there's 10 coffees [and one] weird one—it's either going to be whipped and lashed, or people are going to be like, 'this is the greatest thing ever!' In the marketplace, it's hard to consider it alongside everything else." Linzmier adds that harvest timing can be a factor in swaying people towards Indonesia: "Another reason people, myself included, are getting more excited about Indonesia is time of year. These coffees are arriving when many Centrals are significantly faded [in flavor], so people are looking to round out their menus with something dynamic." While there is increasing experimentation and diversity among processing methods in Sumatra, the cultural predominance and economic advantages of wet-hulling continue to associate the region with particular flavors. Whether you like them or not, or consider them the coffee beans' "true" flavor, doesn't particularly matter. "You describe the attributes of the coffee," said Owen. "And if people want low acidity, that's totally legitimate. I don't think there needs to be a judgment of the goodness of the coffee, and I don't think it has to be 'this attribute is better than that attribute.' There's not one template for coffee." Have you tried Sumatran coffees from your local roaster? Found any you particularly love (or hate)? This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.

The Miami HEAT defeated the Detroit Pistons 91-68 Friday afternoon at the Orlando Summer League. Josh Richardson led the way for the HEAT with 18 points. Photo Credit: Fernando Medina (MiamiHeat.com) After a standout summer league, Josh Richardson’s future is still in doubt. The Miami Heat don’t doubt his talent, though. After taking Richardson in the second round of the NBA Draft, Pat Riley noted that he had a first round grade on the Tennessee guard. Richardson, an earnest and capable wing defender, joins the current logjam in Miami’s backcourt–which means the Heat will have to make some moves just to keep their second round pick on the roster. Richardson was one of Miami’s most impressive players during Summer League, finishing with an average of 11.8 points, 2.8 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.7 steals in 26.1 minutes per game. The problem is that he’s yet to sign with the Heat, who have 17 others under contract. Three players–Henry Walker, James Ennis and Tyler Johnson–have unguaranteed deals. Meaning the Heat could waive them without facing much cap-related consequence between now and August 1, when those deals become partially guaranteed. Tick tock. Walker is most likely the first one out the door. Last season’s late addition hasn’t played in Summer League, and he wasn’t all that impressive last year when he was playing. Ennis, meanwhile, has failed to show any progress this summer, and Johnson was playing well until he suffered a broken jaw, which further clouds his status on the team. The Heat already have to part ways with two players just to get to the league maximum, 15 man roster. It would be one more if they wanted to keep Richardson around. It would be easy enough to cut Walker and Ennis–who have seemingly plateaued–and choose Richardson’s potential over Johnson. However, muddying up the waters is Miami’s desire to trade Mario Chalmers and/or Shabazz Napier. The Heat are aggressively pursuing a trade partner to unload one of their backup point guards. Miami could save more than $4 million by trading Chalmers, or sell as high as possible on Napier. Chances are that Richardson won’t know his fate until Chalmers and Napier know theirs. By all accounts and indications, the Heat want to keep Richardson around. After all, they are selling his jersey in team stores and tested him with increased responsibility in Las Vegas–including handling the ball and shooting more. According to the Miami Herald, they will make him an offer to retain his rights. It’s just unclear if Richardson will be playing in the NBA or oversees. If he’s playing elsewhere, the Heat would be able to keep a roster spot for Ennis or Johnson. There are a lot of questions regarding the last few spots on the Heat’s roster but, the most likely scenario seems to be trading Chalmers, cutting Walker and deciding between Ennis, Johnson and Richardson for the 15th spot on the roster.

The Americans Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday quickly pulled support from a congressional bill to reform the National Security Agency. The group said the bill, which also reauthorizes portions of the Patriot Act until 2019, does not go far enough and only makes incremental changes. ADVERTISEMENT “Congress should let Section 215 sunset as it’s scheduled to, and then it should turn to reforming the other surveillance authorities that have been used to justify bulk collection,” said Jameel Jaffer, the group’s deputy legal director. The civil liberties group has become increasingly bullish on surveillance reform. Its executive director last week penned an op-ed arguing that letting the provisions expire would be a first step “to ensure that this unlawful and ineffective surveillance finally ends.” The bill, which will be marked up in the House Thursday, would reauthorize several expiring provisions of the Patriot Act, including one that provides the legal underpinning for the NSA's phone record collection program. The bill would end the current bulk collection program and require the government to obtain records from private phone companies using a court order. The ACLU also specifically cited concern with a provision that would increase the maximum prison sentence to 20 years for people providing material support or resources to terror organizations. The group called the provision “a significant step backwards.” The group clarified that it is not actively opposing the bill but it will not support it either. Other advocacy groups were divided on the issue. Left-leaning groups like Credo and Demand Progress were direct about their opposition. In a statement Credo and Demand Progress urged “Congress to oppose this legislation.” The statement continued: “A vote for a bill that does not end mass surveillance is a vote in support of mass surveillance. The way to end mass surveillance is to end mass surveillance. Everything else is window dressing.” The group Access welcomed the introduction of the bill but said it is still “determining whether to support this bill.” The Computer and Communications Industry Association said it “looks forward to working with Congress to further strengthen and pass this legislation." “While the bill is neither a perfect nor complete reform of all the NSA’s mass surveillance authorities, it significantly narrows the ability of the NSA to collect call records and offers greater transparency, which is essential for citizens in a free society,” the group’s president Ed Black said. - Updated at 3:30 p.m.

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Well, I started a post on Kiribati, but when it was half written I found Andi Cockroft had beaten me to it with his post. His analysis was fine, but I had a different take on the events. President Tong of Kiribati says the good folk of the atolls are again looking for some place to move their people if they have to. However, this time, it’s different. This time, they’re not blaming it on sea level rise. This time, they’re not talking about suing the industrialized nations. And this time, they’re making their own plans, they’re not waiting for the world to act. The headline in USA Today says: Pacific nation may move entire population to Fiji Figure 1. The island nation of Kiribati, which is comprised of the Gilbert and Phoenix groups and the Line Islands. I call it the world’s biggest tiny country. The Kiribati EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) is the eighth largest in the world … and it is 99.99% ocean. Let me comment that if I had a chance to pull up stakes in Kiribati and move to Fiji, I’d do it in a second. Fiji is high volcanic islands, with rich soil and lots of it. And Kiribati, on the other hand, is tiny coral atolls with … well … nothing. Life on the atolls is tough, tough, tough. The highest point on any of the atolls of Kiribati is about 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level, and there is no real soil, only lime coral sand. It is a testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of humans that anyone lives on the atolls at all. The people from Kiribati are great folks, consummate seamen, and very interesting people in general. The ones I’ve known have been great folks. Don’t cross the women, though, bad mistake, the women will clean your clock if you cross them, that’s one of the reasons I like them so much. But the fact that life is tough in Kiribati is not the reason that they’re talking about moving. And indeed, although the report mentions climate change, the President of Kiribati actually didn’t blame rising sea levels. The article goes on to say: Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji. Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could be insurance for Kiribati’s entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave. “We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it,” Tong said. “It wouldn’t be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won’t be a matter of choice. It’s basically going to be a matter of survival.” Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international date line, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few feet above sea level. Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island’s underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly. Now, before getting into the story, a few facts. First. name of the nation is pronounced “Kih-rih-bas”, with the accent on the first syllable. Why the strange spelling? Turns out that’s how you spell “Gilberts”, the old name of the islands, in the local language. There’s no “s” in the language, so they use “ti” for the “s” sound, based on how “ti” is pronounced in “motion”. Also, as in many Pacific missionary-derived orthographies of the local language, there are no diphthongs consonant pairs in the Kiribati language. So the “lb” in “Gilberts” becomes “rib” because … you guessed it, no “l” in the language, so they use “r” instead. So in Figure 1, you see that “Christmas” in the local language is spelled “Kiritimati”. Also, the people are called “i-Kiribati”, with the “i” pronounce like “ee”. Returning to the idea of the i-Kiribati moving to Fiji, curiously, that would not be the first historical intersection between the people of Kiribati and the people of Fiji. In the early days of WWII, it became obvious that the Japanese would invade one of the Gilbert Islands called “Ocean Island” or Banabas. The Gilberts were British at the time, as was Fiji, so the Brits decided to act. Basically, the British took all of the inhabitants of Banabas Island, and moved them lock, stock, and fishing lines to the island of Rabi in Fiji. Rabi is a beautiful island, and it is ruled domestically not by the Fijians, but by the Rabi Island Council. It’s like a little bit of Kiribati in Fiji, almost everyone on the island is i-Kiribati. So this would not be the first group of i-Kirbati to resettle in Fiji. Nor would it be the first move by i-Kiribati away from the Gilberts group. The Phoenix group of islands were settled in the late 1930s by people from the Gilberts group. This occurred as a direct result of what would become a recurring problem—when atoll populations intersect with modern medicine, overpopulation is not far off. As a result, the obliging British, who likely felt some responsibility, gave the Phoenix group to be settled by the i-Kiribati. They settled the islands between 1938 and 1940. But the water was bad and scarce. Communications were hard, as was transportation, and the war made it worse. In 1952, after a series of dry years, the experiment was declared a failure. However, of course, by then there was no room for the Phoenix folks back in the Gilberts. Besides, by then there were newly overcrowded islands in the Gilberts too, people keep having kids. So … the Brits were looking for people to work on the plantations in the Solomon islands. In the early 1950s, they gave Wagina Island and land on Gizo Island in the Solomons to anyone willing to sign up for the Solomon Islands Settlement Scheme. Many of the folks who emigrated were from the Phoenix Islands, where poor water sources and a drought had combined to make the islands uninhabitable. Compared to that, the Solomons were a paradise. Except for the malaria, of course. Drought has long been the bane of Kiribati. When your only water comes from a small lens of fresh water renewed only by rain, it is a matter of life and death. There is a fascinating report by some National Academy of Science folks, published in 1957, of their researches in Kiribati in the early ’50s. It was very clear, even back then, that droughts were a huge issue. Among many other interesting things they say are: As for the rainfall, the attached graphs will show how it varies between the groups in the North, Central and South Islands (Fig. 4). One of the most important ecological factors in the Gilbert Islands is drought. These islands are periodically affected by it. There was a two-year drought in 1917-1919, a three-year drought in 1937-1939, and another which lasted a year and a half in 1949-1951. These periods of drought particularly affect the south islands. Comparative statistics in Figure 4 show the’ monthly rainfall of one island of each group over a period of 4 years, comparing periods or normal rainfall with periods of drought which occurred from August, 1949 to December, 1950. And here is their Figure 4: Figure 2. Monthly rainfall on three different atolls of Kiribati. Click image for a larger version. Tarawa, the middle row, is the capital of Kiribati. Like the other islands, it depended entirely on rainfall for drinking water. Look at what happened in 1950 to the rainfall in Tarawa … yes, that would definitely cause problems. You can see why the British were wanting to move people in the early 1950s, they’d been dying of thirst on some of the atolls. Plus the population on the atolls was already very high. The NAS report says: It would seem that the Gilbert Islands, where the soil is so poor, and which suffer from recurrent severe droughts, should have a small population. We observe, on the contrary, a very high demographic density. The population of the sixteen islands of the Group amounted at the time of the 1947 census to 27,824, or an average density of 243.9 per square mile. This figure is just given as an average and does not claim to have any great demonstrative value as, in fact, the density varies considerably as between one island and another. Thus Tamana has 441.5 per square mile while Aranuka has only 61.3. But of course, moving folks from the Gilberts to the Solomon Islands didn’t solve the population problem either. To understand why it made no difference, here’s a historical look at the population of Kiribati Figure 3. Kiribati population change over time. I picked the photo because for me it exemplified the irrepressible spirit of the i-Kiribati people. Population information is from the FAO and the NAS report cited above. Remember that in 1947, people were already commenting on the high population density … and now the density is three times as great. So you can understand why the President is looking for more land. Here’s another bit of information. The article says that they want to buy a 6,000 acre parcel in Fiji. In Texas, that would only be a small ranch. But that land in Fiji is nearly 10% of the total area of Kiribati, and nearly 15% of the inhabited area of Kiribati. So I understand why they want to buy it. You can see the danger. The population is skyrocketing. And unlike just about every country on the planet, there is absolutely no sign of any slowdown in the Kiribati population growth rate. But the rain … the rain is unchanged. It’s still years of wet and then years of dry, just like always … but when you have three times the people, the dry years become unsustainable. President Tong correctly notes “increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island’s underground fresh water”. He does not note the obvious reason that the well water is becoming brackish—there are three times the people drinking from each and every well, while the rainwater recharging the wells hasn’t changed. As a result, I fear there is no obvious solution. Buying land in Fiji in 2012, while it is a good stopgap measure, will do no more to solve the underlying problem than did exporting people to the Solomon Islands in 1954. There is only one solution to their problem, and it has nothing to do with CO2, or the climate, or the industrialized nations, or the sea level. The people of Kiribati have to, must, reduce their birth rate. I understand that there are issues of religion and social pressure and the like, but look at the blue line in Figure 2. Kiribati is already busting at the seams with people, and the rate of population growth is not decreasing … they will be lucky to come out of this without huge social, economic, and political problems. So I wish President Tong the best of luck in his efforts to reduce some of those problems. And if anyone can pull it off, it would be the i-Kiribati. Let me close by quoting the 1950s NAS report again: Another aspect of their nature is their total confidence in others, both in moral and material dealings. We also appreciated their independent spirit and their frankness, which is often disarming. Their answers, whether positive or negative, are always direct. But the Gilbertese’ forthrightness does not preclude a form of respect devoid of obsequiousness. His often unexpected reactions are never arrogant, and are a corollary of his independent, individualistic nature, as are his teasing spirit and fanciful mind. Both are expressed in choreographic attitudes, in which mimicry always has a deserved success. Finally, these people have a highly-developed artistic sense, and it would be difficult to find anything to equal some of their extraordinarily beautiful choral singing, It is really in their dances and choral singing only that the Gilbertese express the whole genius of their race, and can give rein to an exuberance which, because of a surprising modesty, is no longer manifested in the ordinary course of their everyday life. The Gilbertese are an intelligent people. Many show real pride in having risen above the general level, but it did not seem to us that this was ever expressed in a contemptuous or even haughty way. Those working with Europeans are generally avid to learn and to understand everything and are full of gratitude for whoever may have increased their knowledge, even about their own territory. Yeah, that’s the i-Kiribati I know. Interesting, good-natured, hardworking folks. I wish them only the best. w. PS—Population density in Kiribati is currently about 750 people per square mile. If they were all moved to the land in Fiji as the headline claims, the population density there would be about 11,000 per square mile … by comparison, Bangladesh has a density of about 2,500 per square mile. So whether they buy the land or not, they won’t be able to move everyone there. Advertisements Share this: Print Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit

Zeronet Wants to Replace the Dark Web by Marrying Bitcoin to Bittorrent Over Tor A little over two years ago a Hungarian named Tamas Kocsis put together a completely decentralized internet alternative called Zeronet. Using the underlying cryptography behind Bitcoin, every Zeronet ‘website’ address is a Bitcoin public key, so any visitors can send bitcoin directly to the site owner, even if they have not set up a wallet yet. Bitcoin.com talked to Kocsis about his project and its current status. Also Read: A Decentralized Money Needs A Distributed Web for Maximum Freedom The Birth of A Private, Decentralized Internet When the project launched in January 2015, the one-man effort had limited functionality with a blogging system and a chatroom board. However, it could soon use the Tor network for privacy, and the ability was there from the start for anyone to make other kinds of websites inside Zeronet, including social sites with dynamically-updating content. Today, many useful Zeronet websites called ‘zites’ have been designed to mimic popular websites and apps like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Popcorntime. The utility of the whole system is now far higher with additions like zite search, a private email client, a file manager, and the Zeronet-wide newsfeed that keeps track of your conversations across all zites. Using Bitcoin to Solve Big Problems The way Zeronet hosts these private zites in a decentralized manner is simple but effective. Each is treated as a Bittorrent shared file, named by its Bitcoin public key. A user visiting a zite would instantly download it from nearby peer and start seeding for other users to visit. Unlike their Bittorrent counterparts, however, Zeronet files can be updated by anyone visiting the zite, so they can make comments on blog posts or upvote other people’s comments. The end result is a slightly slower internet through a Zeronet browser window that never goes to any domain on the internet; all files are served locally from the folder they were downloaded to. To ensure that each file really came from the site owner intact, and is not edited by someone else on another peer, Kocsis turned to Bitcoin. He explained to Bitcoin.com: Zeronet uses the exact same cryptography and mathematical calculations as the Bitcoin network to verify if the wallet owner started the transaction or not. Network Usage and Growth The network of zites is steadily growing, and Kocsis sees most new, active users arrive “from countries where the Internet censorship affects their daily life. Like Russia and China”. The developer noted that there is “also significant interest for Europe and North America”, but he believes that the latter users are more interested in the technology itself, unlike the others that need Zeronet for its decentralization offering freedom of speech. Government crackdown is unlikely to have much effect on Zeronet, according to the network’s creator. Not only is the whole system fully Tor enabled, the nature of the network is, much like with Bitcoin addresses, for every zite to survive until every copy of it on every peer has been deleted. “Even if someone starts attacking these computers”, Kocsis mentioned, “then he or she only delay the updates, so I think it will not be so spectacular that make it worth doing it”. When opening up the Zeronet browser, which automatically connects through Tor if available, all users go to the ‘Hello’ page, which is a launch pad to all other zites and displays the feed of all your interactions on Zeronet. The number of users on the system connected is also shown on that page, and this is the only user statistic Kocsis has, he told Bitcoin.com. “There are currently around 1019 user serving the homepage of Zeronet (1HeLLo4uzjaLetFx6NH3PMwFP3qbRbTf3D) 560 of them are using the Tor network”. Five of the zites available from the page were also made by Kocsis and other developers for Zeronet, including the official Zeronet Blog, the private mail system, a reddit-like forum, a simple chatroom, and Zerome, which is a social network somewhere in between a Facebook wall and Twitter feed. Most zites are spartan versions of their old-net counterparts, with fewer pictures and less colors overall in order to keep file sizes small. Inside Zeronet, finding other users’ content can be done through the zite search or by browsing directories, like the largest one called 0list. One of the first zites most people run across is Zeroplay, which uses Webtorrent to display Bittorrent movies (mostly pirated) right in the browser window, like the controversial Popcorntime app. TV shows and music versions exist as well. Upcoming Plans and Additions Future plans for expansion include several speed-boosting solutions such as an “archiving solution for bigger sites”, and large-file support that “will allow direct audio and video file sharing” between peers, instead of through Bittorrent. A Bitmessage integration has also been crowdfunded by the Zeronet community. Kocsis is currently looking for someone familiar with the project to help out. “There is a 1BTC bounty on this task”, he said. Once included into Zeronet, the integration “would allow the Zeronet sites to send and receive messages using the BitMessage protocol”, he added. “For example, placing orders in webshops, reporting users to moderator and similar use cases”. Darknet Marketplace 2.0 It’s already possible to build an ecommerce zite selling goods and services for bitcoin, although it would be a challenge to create it in that environment, well out of reach for non-developers. However, Openbazaar (OB) integration will be easily accomplished once Openbazaar 2.0 launches with its full Tor integration, and there is no reason an OB marketplace cannot be useful to Zeronet zites today due to their Hidden Listings feature. Marking an item as ‘hidden’ inside Openbazaar stores allows “vendors to create private listings that are only visible to people they give the listing address”, Openbazaar’s blog explains. Posting hidden listing links inside Zeronet would effectively create the full Dark Web experience in the newer network, with hidden sites and marketplaces like the Silk Road running as private Openbazaar stores. When asked if there is any advantage for users to do this instead of directly through a Tor browser, Kocsis said that Zeronet would give these admins and users of these marketplaces “higher anonymity, because every peer is equal on ZeroNet, so it’s very hard to find out who is only a visitor and who is the site owner”. Would you like to see the Dark Web moved to Zeronet? Let us know in the comments section below. Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Openbazaar and Zeronet Bitcoin.com is a unique online destination in the bitcoin universe. Buying bitcoin? Do it here . Want to speak your mind to other bitcoin users? Our forum is always open and censorship-free. Like to gamble? We even have a casino

Play 03:05 Play 03:05 Ugra: Seems neutral ground has been found Sri Lanka is fast emerging as the likeliest venue to host a shortened bilateral series between Pakistan and India. Sri Lanka Cricket has been sounded out by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), and appear very keen to host the series. Things have moved fast since BCCI president Shashank Manohar and PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan met at the ICC headquarters in Dubai on Sunday afternoon to break the deadlock over where the series should be held. The BCCI has made no comment as yet on the meeting, and Manohar left Dubai this morning to return to India. Shaharyar left too, and was meant to meet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore on Monday, to brief him on the discussions in Dubai. But the meeting could not take place as Sharif was busy. "I could not meet him as he was very occupied with various things, so I will communicate to him in writing all that transpired at the meeting," Khan said. He also pointed out that he would not be travelling back to Dubai on November 25, as originally planned, to meet ECB president Giles Clarke, who is acting as a mediator between PCB and BCCI.* Shaharyar and Najam Sethi, PCB's head of executive committee, had come out of the Dubai meeting sounding optimistic, but they did not divulge any details. Those were supposed to be provided by Clarke at a media briefing today in Dubai but it is understood that will not happen. The ICC also confirmed there was no media conference scheduled. The biggest hurdle to the series was the venue: the BCCI had made it clear that it would not play Pakistan anywhere else but in India. Rejecting that offer, the PCB responded by saying the memorandum of understanding signed by both countries in 2014 clearly stated India would travel to the UAE. Then, last Friday, Shaharyar added that the final decision would be taken by the Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The UAE has not been dropped as a venue, officially speaking, but Manohar's opposition to play there remained. So holding the series in neutral ground like Sri Lanka was one of the proposals the PCB placed at the Dubai meeting. Also with South Africa's tour of India finishing on December 7 and India travelling to Australia for a limited-overs series from January 12, both boards decided to modify the original schedule. The best possible option was playing three ODIs and two T20Is. In the ICC FTP Pakistan are listed to host India for a full tour comprising two Tests, five ODIs and two T20Is. According to an official privy to the details of the meeting, a final decision on the series would be made by November 27. He added that dates and stadiums haven't been chalked out yet but indicated the matches would be played towards the latter part of December to avoid washouts. A Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) official said Khettarama and Pallekele were the likeliest venues to host the tour. It has rained almost daily in both Colombo and Kandy this month, but the weather is expected to clear towards the end of December. The northeast monsoon typically tapers off quicker in these cities than in Hambantota or Dambulla. There is a potential clash since Khettarama is scheduled to host domestic T20 matches on December 23rd and 30th, but those games may be moved elsewhere. Pallekele's schedule is wide open in the window for the Pakistan-India series. Since Pakistan would play the host, the series would be broadcast by Ten Sports. No official from Ten was available for comment. Although no definite plans have been made yet, the Sri Lankan official said SLC would expect significant compensation for the use of their stadiums. With inputs from Umar Farooq * 12.30GMT, November 23: This article was updated. Nagraj Gollapudi is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. Andrew Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @andrewffernando © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.

Former Obama campaign bundler and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified in front of the House Homeland Security yesterday and was peppered with questions from lawmakers about the terrorism threat presented by a lack of border enforcement and security. As usual, Johnson gave unconcerned, non-detailed answers. First off, what you didn't see in the clip above was Johnson's attempt yesterday to shill for illegal immigration reform as Americans raise more concerns about a lack of border security. During an answer to another lawmaker about how to prevent terrorists from going undetected inside the United States, Johnson made the absurd argument that a "legal process" for citizenship would prevent terror infiltration and encourage terrorists to come forward and turn themselves in. That suggestion is not only unhelpful but politically motivated garbage. Second, if Johnson got out of his cushy D.C. office once in awhile to actually talk to Border Patrol agents on the ground, he would know that radical Islamists crossing the southern border into the United States from Mexico is nothing new. Unfortunately, a lack of enforcement from Homeland Security to stop those crossings isn't new either. What is new in this scenario is a threat from ISIS and intelligence agencies have picked up chatter in the past few weeks showing the terror army is looking at the southern border as a possible way to gain access to the United States. Homeland Security officials have also confirmed this possibility in testimony to Congress. Meanwhile, little has been done at the State Department to revoke passports of Americans knowingly fighting with ISIS in Syria or Iraq. H/T Ed Morrissey

The amount of money B.C. is spending to prevent fentanyl overdoses seems to depend on which day the question is asked. On Tuesday, it was more than $10 million. On Wednesday it was $15 million. By Thursday, B.C. Premier Christy Clark had nearly tripled that number. "We have put at least $43 million into it and that doesn't count all the hospital resources." said Clark. Clark responded to questions at a news conference about a CBC report on how little money B.C. had originally budgeted when the public health emergency was declared in April. The story pointed out the government had allocated 10 times more funds to the fight swine flu than it had the fentanyl crisis. But Clark said the original $15 million figure was based on "very flawed" research. Except that research came from her own officials in the Ministry of Health. Clark calls CBC's research on fentanyl emergency funding "very flawed," even though the info came from her government. 0:47 Documents obtained through an access to information request show that $5.77 million dollars was set aside for the task force Clark appointed last summer, the same month her government boasted about having a $730 million surplus. A request to the Ministry of Heath was made Monday, asking how much more had been invested in the fentanyl overdose crisis since the public health emergency was announced. On Tuesday, the ministry's manager of media relations and issues management said $5 million was being spent on a substance use centre and $5 million was going to the task force. Confusing communications But the statement was not clear on whether that was the same money that had been originally announced. "Health authorities have informed the ministry that it anticipates spending $5.77 million to support the work around the public health emergency this year. Some, but not all, of this, would come from the $5 million in strategies identified by the Joint Task force," the statement said. On Wednesday, the ministry sent a revised statement, after the story was published. "To date, we have invested over $15 million to prevent and respond to overdoses in British Columbia." The premier told reporters on Thursday the CBC "got it so badly wrong" for not including hospital and policing costs. Province claims $43 million being spent Then on Friday, the Ministry of Health provided a detailed breakdown of $43-million says is being spent on the fentanyl crisis by all government departments. The list includes $14 million for new addiction spaces that were planned long before the public health emergency was declared. "It's in the public interest to let people know there are people out there who think the government could be doing more in this public health emergency," said Ross Howard, former ethics instructor at Langara College's School of Journalism. He says governments are increasingly fighting the release of public information, especially with an election looming. CBC Reporter Natalie Clancy asks Christy Clark, "What do you say to parents who say you aren't doing enough?: in September 2016 (CBC) Even the province's top public health official told CBC News his task force had "a constrained budget" last August. "We are seeing resources going into this. They tend to be at the moment … a diversion from other areas seen as less important," said Dr. Perry Kendall on Aug. 23. 2016, just four months after he declared a public health emergency. The provincial government doesn't normally keep a running tally of costs, and the final amount won't be known until public accounts are released next July. The fentanyl crisis has Health Ministry staff working around the clock, and they say they have been inundated with media requests. Clark also told reporters the fentanyl crisis is a national crisis. "If we don't nip it in the bud, I don't think we'll ever get a hold of it," said Clark. Ironically, the opposition has repeatedly accused Clark of missing opportunities to do just that, especially given the provincial surplus has ballooned to $2.24 billion. Many families are now hoping she will pour millions more into addiction treatment and prevention of overdoses that are expected to claim the lives of nearly 800 people by year's end. CBC News Investigates If you have information on this or any other story we should investigate, email us: Investigate@cbc.ca Follow @NatalieClancy on TWITTER.

West MacDonnell National Park, Emily and Jessie Gaps, Ewaninga rock area changed to Aboriginal names Posted Three of Central Australia's nature parks are being re-branded to reflect their traditional Aboriginal names. West MacDonnell National Park, Emily and Jessie Gaps Nature Park and the Ewaninga Rock Carvings Conservation Reserve will now be known by a mixture of their traditional Aboriginal names and the current names. For the next 10 to 20 years the parks will be respectively known as Tjoritja/ West MacDonnell National Park, Yeperenye/Emily and Jessie Gaps Nature Park and Napwerte/Ewaninga Rock Carvings Conservation Reserve. Eventually it is expected they will be known only by their Aboriginal names. "The names have been changed to reflect each park or reserve's deep and long-standing Aboriginal cultural associations," Northern Territory's Parks and Wildlife Minister Bess Price said. "It will take time for people to adjust to the new names, but Uluru and Nitmiluk are good examples where the Aboriginal place names have become commonly accepted and adopted around the world," she said in a statement. Tjoritja has no specific meaning, but is how the MacDonnell Ranges have been known for a long time by the Western and Central Arrente people. Yeperenye is the name for one of the three caterpillars traditional owners of the East MacDonnell Ranges associated with important cultural sites and rock art. Napwerte is the name for a rocky outcrop in the rock carvings conservation reserve, but as the entire name is a sacred men's site any association with the name remains secret, the Government's statement said. Central Land Council chairman Francis Kelly welcomed the move, but said he thought the European and Aboriginal names should always be part of the official titles of the parks. "I think it is best to have both names there to be recognised," Mr Francis said. "People from all over are coming in and recognise the two worlds, sharing things," he said. Mr Kelly said including the traditional names helped maintain the culture and keep song lines alive. He said the site that has been known as the Ewaninga Rock Carvings Conservation Reserve already had an Aboriginal name in its title, which was the name for a leader in the community, and he was unsure why traditional owners wanted that name changed. Topics: aboriginal, aboriginal-language, government-and-politics, alice-springs-0870

The New York Times published a roughly three-minute video on Wednesday showcasing some of the obscenities hurled in the massive crowds in and around Donald Trump's rallies. Titled "Unfiltered: Voices from Trump's Crowds," the video showcased people disparaging Muslims, immigrants, President Barack Obama, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with extremely vulgar language. Watch the video: Here's a sampling from the video of things shouted by Trump-rally attendees and pro-Trump supporters outside the events: "F--- those dirty beaners." "F--- political correctness." "F--- Islam." "Muslims is not a religion, partner," a man said to a protester who said that the US Constitution protects religious freedom. "It's an ideology. You don't come and talk about America when you're supporting Muslims." "Sieg heil," the Nazi salute. "F--- that n-----," a man shouted when Trump was taking aim at Obama. "Get out of here you f--," a man told a protester. Comments aimed at the Democratic nominee: "Hillary is a whore." "Hillary Clinton needs to get her a-- spanked." "B----." "F--- you, Hillary." "Hang the b----!" "Kill her!"

An Interview with the Hilarious Eugene Mirman If you’ve watched any comedy in the last decade, chances are you’re familiar with Eugene Mirman. He’s been absolutely hilarious on” Delocated,” “Archer,” “Flight of the Conchords,” and, of course, as Gene on “Bob’s Burgers”…just to name a few. His last stand-up special, “An Evening of Comedy in a Fake Underground Laboratory,” is also available right now for only $5. He sat down with us recently to talk about some of the most memorable moments he’s had while doing stand-up. Be sure to check him out live at a venue near you. MANDATORY: You had mentioned before that you had a few bizarre fan encounters. Can you tell us about one of them? EUGENE MIRMAN: I never had anything like someone mailing me a pig’s head, but several where people have known way too much information about me. Most of the time fans are really sweet and have emailed me really nice things. One time I was doing a comedy festival in Boston and one of the things we did was we built an eye contact booth, which I would sit inside of and basically all you could see was my eyes. It was a weird thing because most people don’t really build a booth specifically for eye contact. It was in the front of the venue and when people were coming in, they would see that it was me sitting in there and laugh then walk away. However, there was one girl who came up to me and said “I want you to know that my dad had cancer and when he was really sick, he watched your special and it cheered him up.” As she walked away I thought “Oh my god, that’s really powerful” but then she immediately ran back and said, “Oh but he’s fine now, he didn’t die!” and then ran away. It was really funny because she realized she had made it sound like my special was the last thing her dad watched before he died and had to clarify it with “Oh no he’s great now, he’s fine, but you still cheered him up.” It was a very odd but very sweet encounter. I’d say there have been more things like that where people are positive than anything horribly negative. MANDATORY: It would be terrible if the same girl showed up two years later to let you know that her dad is now actually dead. EUGENE MIRMAN: But she adds on that he still really liked the special. Just to be clear, he really enjoyed your work. MANDATORY: What about hecklers? Have you had any that really stood out to you? EUGENE MIRMAN: Well the real problem is that most hecklers are just extremely drunk people talking really loudly and they get so loud it’s hard for you to focus on what you’re saying. It would be very hard if, right now, there were a bunch of drunk people yelling at us during our conversation. It takes people out of the show and it can ruin an event that people paid money for, that’s the real problem. That being said, it can be funny. One time I had a guy at a show in Atlanta and he was so drunk that he kept passing out and it basically looked like he was drunkenly telling his own dick a story. It was really funny because he was just collapsing into his lap. He eventually had to be thrown out though, because he just wouldn’t stop. He just had to tell this really great story to his dick. I mean it’s certainly funny the moment he gets thrown out when everyone starts clapping, but he had been doing it for 15-20 minutes just ruining the night for everyone around him. It’s fun for some people, I guess, because it’s not planned. Like in England, it’s a much more interactive culture of stand-up so some comics ask them for things or suggestions and everyone jokes around. That’s very different from a person who just wants attention and thinks that they’re funny. One of the weirdest moments was when I was performing in Miami and this lady kept yelling at me while I was on stage. After I was done she came up to me and said, “I really liked your stuff, it’s just that I wanted the band that was performing after you to play earlier.” I was like “That isn’t really how it works.” She explained this really ridiculous philosophy that was essential Ayn Rand except she had definitely never read Ayn Rand. She basically said “No, I believe everyone should be shitty to each other as long as it’s funny.” or something to that effect. Probably not quite that advance. MANDATORY: Finally, for those that haven’t heard your album, An Evening of Comedy in a Fake Underground Laboratory, what can you tell them about it? EUGENE MIRMAN: They can expect to hear some stand-up comedy and they can expect to be surprised, because comedy is a surprise. I don’t know, there are some goofy things on it too. Also I have a comedy festival in Brooklyn, September 26-29th, and there’s still a few tickets left so if you’re going to be in the area, come check it out.

Over 100,000 cans of water will soon be arriving in Texas for victims of Hurricane Harvey. The much-needed water is being donated by Anheuser-Busch, which periodically halts beer production at its Cartersville, Georgia factory to produce canned drinking water for emergencies. The water should arrive in Arlington, Texas on Tuesday. About 50,000 cans have already arrived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in anticipation of the heavy rainfall the area may receive as the tropical storm moves east. In the Houston area, the storm has already dropped more than 2 feet of rain and caused widespread and life-threatening flooding. Related: Houston Texans owner pledges $1 million for storm relief The donation is being made in response to the American Red Cross' call for emergency drinking water. Anheuser-Busch Vice President of Community Affairs Bill Bradley said the decision to halt beer production at the Georgia brewery allows them to help communities in times of crisis. The company has been able to help during other emergencies, such as Hurricane Matthew, the water crisis in Flint, Michigan and wildfires in the west. "Putting our production and logistics strengths to work by providing safe, clean drinking water is the best way we can help in these situations," Bradley said.

Story highlights David Frum: Stephen Harper shows path U.S. conservatives should follow He says Canadian prime minister avoids "Braveheart" speeches, bold policy shifts Canada has emerged strongly from world economic crisis, Frum writes Frum: By contrast, U.S. conservatives have appalled and frightened Americans Well they might. Harper has achieved more from a weaker position than any conservative leader of recent times. A decade ago, Canada's Conservatives were split between two antagonistic parties. Harper won the leadership of one of those parties, then negotiated a merger, with himself as leader of the united right. He then had to fight a rapid series of elections: In 2004 he reduced the once-dominant Liberals to minority status. In 2006, he won just barely enough seats to form a minority government himself. He won a stronger minority in 2008, but only in 2011 did he at last gain the secure majority he'd sought for a decade. Under desperately precarious political circumstances -- and in the face of the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s -- Harper achieved remarkable things. Almost 1 million more Canadians are working today than before the financial crisis -- the best employment record in the Group of 7. David Frum Incomes have recovered and surpassed pre-recession peaks. Canada's national debt burden is lower than that of any other major economy -- and less than half that of the United States . Corporate tax rates are lower in Canada than in the United States, and on the present trajectory the same may soon be true of personal income taxes as well. How did Harper and his Conservatives do it? Not the way that American conservatives are trying to do it. American conservatives have followed a radical path to repeated defeat. Canadian conservatives have followed an incremental path to accumulating success. Americans then might benefit as much as Canadians from reading "The Longer I'm Prime Minister," a lively new book about the secrets of Harper's survival and success, written by one of Canada's leading political columnists, Paul Wells of Maclean's magazine. The title plays off a joke Harper frequently tells on himself: "The longer I'm prime minister" -- pause for dramatic effect -- "the longer I'm prime minister." It's a joke based on a grim political reality: Twenty-one men and one woman have served as prime minister of Canada. Six of them have lasted less than a year. Three more lasted less than three years. On the other hand, five prime ministers served more than 10 years. If the 54-year-old Harper completes his current term, he will have served for nine years. One more win after that, and he will have joined the champions. "My models aren't Conservative prime ministers," Wells quotes Harper. "My models are successful prime ministers." Wells is not especially sympathetic to Harper's politics or purposes. But he has invested the close attention necessary to understand them. As Wells explains, Harper's first priority is to last. As Harper himself said in a 2004 speech that outlined his political program before a friendly audience, incremental gains are "inevitably" the only real ones. Revolutionary projects almost always fail. "The surest rebuttal Harper can offer to a half-century of Liberal hegemony," Wells points out, "is not to race around doing things the next Liberal could undo." The better rebuttal, instead, is to build a counter-hegemony of one's own. What could be more foolish than futile provocative actions that serve only to consolidate the other guy's advantages? American conservatives enamored of their bold programs may disdain Harper's caution. Think again. "Because he is temperamentally the most conservative Canadian prime minister of his lifetime, he will not ever run out of ideas for conservative things to do. So on any day he has a choice, he can do the big conservative thing that would be the end of his career, or he can do some of the small conservative things that won't. He is amazed that earlier leaders had a hard time choosing." As Wells points out, however, a politician can accomplish a lot by the simple act of refraining from committing career suicide. "How many decisions does a prime minister make in a day? Sixty? A hundred? Almost none go reported. He doesn't even have to keep most of them secret: the rush of events ensures they won't be noticed and assayed by the (press) gallery. As the 2011 election approached, Harper was approaching two thousand days in office. Imagine how different the outcome would have been if a different prime minister, with different assumptions, prejudices, and instincts had made those thousands of decisions." Many U.S. Republicans argue that elections are won by boldly standing on principle. Sen. Ted Cruz articulated just that idea in his speech Friday to Iowa's Ronald Reagan Dinner. He lauded the House Republicans who nearly pushed the nation into bankruptcy as "a profile in courage who stood strong and listened to the American people." In fact, of course, those House Republicans appalled and frightened the American people -- and badly damaged themselves in the process. After the worst miscalculation of his own career -- a failed maneuver that nearly brought down his government in 2008 -- Harper explained the lesson he'd learned: Never surprise the voters. Do not outpace the consent they have granted. Lead from the front -- but never from very far in front. As for those bold "Braveheart" speeches so cherished by conservatives these days ... they are to be avoided at all costs. Wells observes the Harper speechmaking operation close up: "He works at removing memorable turns of phrase and identifiable ideas from his speeches. He puts great effort into flattening his prose." Why? "All that stuff that sounds good in speeches -- 'We must,' 'I will never,' 'Mark my words' -- all that becomes a line in the sand. It gets held against you later. So that stuff's coming out." I know Harper a little, and I can attest: It requires immense self-control to keep this relentlessly interesting intellect sounding dull. But politics is not a business for the self-indulgent. "Observers looking for something to dislike get less fodder than they would if he were a loudmouth." As I write, the Harper government is facing a moment of controversy. Harper appointees to the unelected upper chamber of the Canadian Parliament are accused of cheating on their expenses, and the opposition parties are making a familiar uproar over the familiar questions of what did the prime minister know and when did he know it. It's all very exciting, and likely all very fleeting. What is lasting is governance. American conservatives should rediscover it -- and Wells' entertaining and insightful study of North America's most governance-minded conservative offers an excellent place to start.

I like to have a pretty obvious indication of the success of failure of any commands I might have run. To accomplish this I add several color coding shortcuts to my .bash_profile : RED='\033[0;31m' GREEN='\033[0;32m' BLUE='\033[0;34m' NOFORMAT='\033[m' #return code visualization RVAL='$(RET=$?; if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then echo -ne "$GREEN"; else echo -ne "$RED"; fi; echo -ne "$RET")' Using those I can make a relatively simple $PS1 that I add to the end of my .bash_profile : # prompt export PS1="$BLUE\t $NOFORMAT\h $BLUE\w $RVAL\r \\\$ " That gives me a prompt that looks like this for root after a successful command: 11:57:24 MyBox /etc 0 # ▋ or like this for a normal user after a failed command ( CTRL-C in this case): 11:57:27 MyBox ~/git 0 $ ▋

Update: 11:15 am Allen Wayne Densen Morgan, a 29-year-old veteran from Munford, Ala. entered a guilty plea in federal court Thursday for attempting to hire what he thought were Ku Klux Klansmen to murder his neighbor. According to court documents, Morgan told an undercover FBI agent he wanted to see his neighbor “hung from a tree like he is an animal” and “his dick cut off” over accusations that the man, a convicted sex offender, had raped his wife. An affidavit given by FBI Special Agent Cornelius Harris Jr. in support of a criminal complaint filed Aug. 26 explains that Morgan believed his neighbor, Clifford Maurice Mosley, raped his wife earlier that month. Records show that Mosley, who is African American, was arrested in 2008 for sexual abuse, a fact Morgan was aware of. Harris wrote that Morgan told an undercover FBI agent he responded to the alleged rape by attempting to “force a confrontation” with Mosley on Aug. 22 by firing “multiple rounds of ammunition” at Mosley on the street outside their homes. “Mosley fled on foot as Morgan fired several shots in the ground beside him in an effort to intimidate him,” explained Harris. “Morgan assessed that Mosley must be guilty of the rape of his wife because Mosley never tried to defend himself by standing his ground or offering to reason with Morgan.” Shortly after this incident, Harris said an undercover FBI agent who identified himself as a Klansman called Morgan in order to “verify his desire to murder” Mosley. According to the complaint, during that conversation, Morgan described the shooting incident and said he would meet with the agent on Aug. 25 to arrange payment. The undercover agent claimed he was “en route to Tennessee to pick up a partner to take care of this matter for Morgan.” “Morgan advised that he and his family are supportive of the plan to murder Clifford Maurice Mosley,” Harris wrote, adding that Morgan said his father-in-law and mother-in-law wanted “to dynamite the entire block.” Harris also quoted Morgan as having provided detailed instructions about how exactly he wanted Mosley to be killed by the Klan. “I want this man hung from a tree like he is an animal. I want his dick cut off and I want him cut,” Morgan said, according to the complaint. “You’re a hunting man right? … I want him hung from a tree and gutted and left him hung in that tree. … That’s how I want him to die. Die a slow and painful death.” As promised, Morgan met with the agent posing as a Klansman on Aug. 25 at a local motel. Harris said he told the two undercover agents “he would pay them money to commit the murder,” but also informed them “he had no money.” “He then offered as payment … a watch and a necklace from his person,” wrote Harris. “Additionally, Morgan offered to tender as additional payment, a firearm located at his residence as payment.” The criminal complaint said that at “the conclusion of the meeting” in the motel, Morgan was arrested and confessed that he “intended” to hire hitmen to kill Mosley. According to a statement from the Department of Justice Morgan was subsequently charged with “one count of using and causing someone else to use interstate facilities and travel — a telephone and a motor vehicle — with the intent to commit a murder-for hire” in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Based on a Facebook page that appears to belong to Morgan, he may have attempted to sell a Playstation and some video games to raise money in the days before his meeting with the supposed hitman. The Facebook page matches Morgan’s name and identifies him as an Iraq War veteran who lives in Munford. In a pair of updates posted on Aug. 22, the same day Morgan allegedly first spoke with the agent posing as the Klan contract killer, the Facebook used identified as Allen Morgan discussed his efforts to sell the video games. “PlayStation 3 plus ³ games for sale super cheap, inbox me series [sic] inquiries only,” Morgan wrote. “Lowest j can go and I’m losing money, PS3 plus 3 games for $160.” On Facebook, Morgan listed one item under “interests:” “United Klans of America Inc.” Following his guilty plea Morgan is due to be sentenced on February 27, 2014. Read the full criminal complaint below. Criminal Complaint: United States of America v. Allen Wayne Densen Morgan Photo: Facebook

So yesterday I got told I was removed from BEASTS. Actually came as quite a shock, as we were playing well and was all getting along up until then… 3 of the team went to epicLAN with a mix and won it, whilst they were there they decided that they wanted to pick up surreal. (even though I got told that wasn’t the reason) But I was told they was speaking about it at the LAN and then neilzinho made a phone call to neil_M and said we’re going to do it. Lost all the respect I had to those players now and was really quite surprised that neilzinho allowed it to happen, known them all for about 5 years and at the first opportunity they decide to make a change even though it wasn’t needed. Especially neil_M who I thought had my back in the team as had to convince the guys to get him in, just goes to how shit the scene is really. Funny thing is that I thought I was playing at a good level and was performing as one of the best in the team, but oh well. Just proves that UK CS won’t be improving much anytime soon with the attitudes the players have. Not sure what I will be doing in terms of competitive cs anymore, think the UK cs dream is dead only hope will be an EU team which is unlikely.

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month, the PMM bloggers will write about their views on one of them. Links to all posts can be found at www.polymeansmany.com. This month, our topic is “FOMO and loneliness”. FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out, and as an acronym is often thrown around when talking about social media and the worries it can exacerbate – after all, if you weren’t invited to that party, it can be hard hearing friends mention how much fun it was, but it’s far worse if they spend the next week tagging each other in party photos on facebook and exchanging jokes on twitter about what they got up to in your absence. In terms of polyamory, it’s probably more specifically relevant to feeling like you’re missing out on something that a partner is doing with another partner, and not you. Rather than the big stuff (‘my partner and his other partner are buying a house together and I wish I was too’) let’s look at the everyday kind of FOMO. As far as I’m concerned, it’s crucial that all couples get a chance to present themselves as a couple, in social situations, in your ‘community’ etc. It’s really important – though especially so for non-primary relationships – to give them that level of social visibility, recognition and acknowledgement, When you’re poly, this means that there will not only be times when your partner and their other partner are off doing something without you, but there will even be times when they are presenting as a couple in front of your friends and acquaintances (hardly uncommon if you’re a non-primary partner, perhaps more unusual if you’re a primary partner – both have their own difficulties). I don’t mean to imply any dishonesty or shutting out occurs – quite the opposite; like so many things, this is very easy when handled with honesty and good intentions on all sides. Two examples: one, The Rake and his girlfriend went to an event a couple of weeks ago while I was spending the weekend with my girlfriend Poppy. I’d heard about the event before, and it sounded like a fun night, a great excuse for dressing up, and a good crowd. I was a touch envious of the fun it sounded like they were going to have, but mostly excited to hear about how their evening went, and pleased for them that they’d managed to find this chunk of time to spend together. As it turned out, I was too engrossed in my own plans to give them a second thought that night, but was glad to hear the next day when the three of us lounged around at home together about the night they’d had and friends they’d run into. Two, there’s a party coming up which will be the Rake’s opportunity to introduce his girlfriend to many of his (our) friends who haven’t met her before, so they’ll be going ‘as a couple’ – which works out perfectly, as not only will I have a lot of friends to catch up with, I’ll also have other duties to be getting on with to help run the night. If you’re not poly, you might be wondering how this works – do you ignore each other? Do you pretend you’re not together? No, nothing so odd. As far as I’m concerned, it just means that their primary connection for the evening will be each other – when this has happened before it means their focus for the evening is each other, they’ll meet people together, introduce each other to friends, hang out together etc; basically everything you do at a party as a couple! I hang out with them too (his girlfriend is great fun) but in these situations I defer to the fact that their evening is together and am careful to give them space to present themselves without me. They get to welcome me into their space, rather than the Rake and I welcoming other partners into our space. I’m intentionally taking on a pretend-secondary role for the evening, in some ways. The Rake has given exactly the same graceful distance for me in the past with other significant partners – it feels like a very easy give and take. Both of those examples, though, I could – if I wanted, or if I was feeling especially low – conjure into something miserable. Into ‘why don’t you want me around’ or ‘is she more important than me’ or ‘are you ashamed of me’. But it would take real effort to see something that’s so far from my lived experience. Instead, if the Rake is off doing something without me, it doesn’t really even matter whether it’s with another partner or not. Maybe I have plans of my own, or maybe I get to seize the chance for a precious evening in alone (I can’t tell you how much I love getting the place to myself for a night, and spending time alone with my own projects or reading) – either way, I really value whatever I’m doing with that time, and look forward to sharing stories of our evenings. But if I was really jealous of a night out that didn’t include me, so much so that I wanted to be included, then I’d try and work out what was missing from my life. Is it that I feel like I don’t get to go to enough parties? Do I feel like a certain set of friends doesn’t recognise my importance in a partner’s life, and want more visibility? Have I secretly always wanted to go to the opera myself but never had the courage to suggest it as a date activity? Do I wish I got lazy weekend time with that partner, and rarely get the opportunity? Just like with the poly discussions about jealousy, with this sort of FOMO there’s generally something underlying that instant emotional flash of “NO!”. Rather than responding to the instant emotional reaction, it’s far more valuable to dig further and find out what the problem really is. If you can find the root of it in yourself, you’ll be able to ask clearly for what you need, and that often means you can solve the problem with far more positivity and joy – by adding more awesome to your own life, rather than trying to subtract it from your partner’s. Advertisements

Crew technical director Brian Bliss has returned from a trip to Argentina with more information but not much positive progress toward signing a designated player. Bliss, who returned yesterday afternoon, said he went to Argentina with one top player in mind and that the Crew, the player and his club still have work to do if an agreement is to be worked out. Crew technical director Brian Bliss has returned from a trip to Argentina with more information but not much positive progress toward signing a designated player. Bliss, who returned yesterday afternoon, said he went to Argentina with one top player in mind and that the Crew, the player and his club still have work to do if an agreement is to be worked out. �It went as expected but also somewhat disappointing,� Bliss said. �You never get down there thinking you�re going to close the deal completely but I think we ended up probably a little further apart than we wanted to be coming home. We�re trying to find ways to try to make it work on behalf of everybody involved: the club, the Crew and the player.� While in Argentina, Bliss said he also scouted a pair of other players the Crew is considering but only engaged in serious talks with its top candidate for the designated player spot. After months of email and phone messages, the face-to-face encounters were revealing, he said. �It was definitely helpful, there�s no doubt,� he said. �There�s email and phones and third parties telling you, �This is what they said� and there�s something to be said for that but yeah, you can�t always believe it and you can�t always judge what the meaning of it was in an email.� Bliss said the Crew management will now discuss what it can do to make the deal work from its end within the next 48 hours and present that to the club and player. The expectation is that by next week, the Crew will know if a deal remains a possibility in this case. �We�re going to present that later on today or tomorrow and wait for them to say what they�re willing to do on their end to bridge the gap and see if the combination of those two things can make it work and if it doesn�t then you have to move on,� Bliss said. �We can�t be going back and forth.� If it does not work out with this player, Bliss did not rule out signing a different designated player this summer. �Why not?� he said. �What�s to say by Wednesday next week we know it�s not happening, that�s June 5. It still gives you until July 27th to find something. Some of these deals take 12 months to pull off but sometimes it can happen in 30 days. You never close the door on that. �At the end of the day, it was definitely worth going down there, no doubt. Are we any closer to the deal? Maybe a little bit closer, but at least I got a better feel for if we do a couple of things and they do a couple of things I�ve got a better feel for if it could happen.� In other news, Bliss said international signee Jairo Arrieta will join the club within the next four days. He is eligible to begin training with the Crew immediately but will not be available for selection until June 27. ajardy@dispatch.com @AdamJardy

A former soccer coach is acquitted in a murder trial. The prosecutor in the case holds a news conference after the verdict. Three journalists covering the trial are excluded. The dateline for this story isn’t somewhere overseas. It’s unfortunately in our own backyard, in upstate New York. Last week, St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain barred The Watertown Daily Times reporter William Eckert and photographer Jason Hunter from a news conference after a not guilty verdict in the murder trial of Oral “Nick” Hillary. Hillary was accused of stalking, strangling and killing 12-year-old Garrett Phillips. The trial has garnered media attention outside of New York, highlighted on national TV programs. According to The Watertown Daily Times, Rain excluded Eckert because she said he “‘is a dishonest reporter and I won’t have a dishonest reporter reporting to the community dishonestly.'” (Another journalist, Brit Hanson, was also blocked from the news conference but it has been reported that Rain said that happened in error.) Click here to read Eckert explain how the events unfolded. This is unacceptable and threatens the right of a free press. If government officials use their power to decide which journalists are granted access to public information, involving the public, on public property, it threatens our rights and freedom to speak freely, gather information freely and publish freely. This goes beyond granting someone an exclusive or first interview. This was a news conference where only a few people were excluded and they were excluded because of a government leader’s opinion of them and their work. The government does not get to decide who reports on and covers them. The public should be outraged that a public official is trying to block their right to public information by blocking access to those that may ask critical questions or hold officials accountable. Excluding certain members of the press from interviews and news conferences interferes with the public’s right to know. I join and support the New York State Associated Press Association, a group of New York newspaper and broadcast journalists, in condemning Rain’s actions. “…It is inappropriate for you to attempt to control information by giving personal invitations to only certain reporters based on your preference for favorable coverage, or to bar reporters whose coverage you dislike,” the association president Tracy Ormsbee said in the letter. Click here to read the full letter. A response from Rain was not immediately received but will be added if it is. The Watertown Daily Times is protesting and demanding an apology from Rain. Related Tags: Garrett Phillips, Jason Hunter, Lynn Walsh, New York, Oral Nick Hillary, St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain, Watertown Daily Times, Watertown New York, William Eckert Defending the First Amendment and promoting open government are more crucial now than ever. Join SPJ's fight for the public’s right to know — either as an SPJ Supporter or a professional, student or retired journalist.

Protest against VSNL's banning of ShellSock The Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited's move to block the use of 'ShellSock' software has invited criticism from the software's creators and Internet users across the country. The free software, which enables users of the text-only 'shell' and 'student' type accounts to access graphics (normally associated with the thrice-as-expensive TCP/IP type accounts), has been a boon to thousands of Net users who could not afford TCP/IP accounts. T O D A Y • Eliot's digital wisdom • ShellSock ban protest • CAD centre set up • Employee database • Calsoft-IMSI talks VSNL, which is currently the country's sole commercial Internet service provider, charges Rs 15,0000 per annum for TCP/IP accounts (as against the Rs 5,000 for shell accounts and Rs 500 for student accounts). The government-run company has reportedly begun blocking access to users of 'ShellSock' starting on October 1. The reason provided by the firm - the use of ShellSock was not only reducing its revenues, but also lowering the quality of service offered to other 'paying' customers. The Kerala Internet Forum, the Kochi-based organisation of Net users, is leading the campaign to create "awareness" against VSNL's action. The forum is currently conducting an electronic signature campaign over the Internet. The forum has placed the resolution drawn up at its 'emergency meeting' of October 4 on the Net and has invited all "interested persons" to register their support with it. "We protest against further restriction of the shell account by VSNL for extraneous reasons. By this action, the chairman of VSNL has rendered himself ineligible to be the arbitrator under Clause 19 of the contract as the decision to further restriction is taken at his level and it is against the nation's interests," the KIF resolution says. However, a KIF representative said the organisation "was not too optimistic" about a favourable outcome. "There is very little that we can actually do. We can only raise awareness and get people to talk to VSNL. We are hoping that better sense will prevail," he said. Xtend Technologies, the creators of the software, have adopted a more strident approach. 'VSNL attempts to kill off ShellSock!' screams the company's makeshift Internet home page. "In an unprecedented move, VSNL, the monopoly ISP in India has unilaterally proceeded with its India-wide attempt to cripple ShellSock - a perfectly legal and ingenious software used by over 25,000 shell users," the company's note says. According to Xtend Tech's note, the use of ShellSock is "perfectly legal" as the software is "at heart a communication software that runs only on the user system" and does not have anything to do with the ISP. "ShellSock uses normal and documented shell commands that a user can actually type in to retrieve a HTML or Graphics file. Therefore, ShellSock does not use any loopholes in the shell account. All the commands that ShellSock uses are fully documented either in the UNIX manual or in the user manuals of the respective software," the note adds. The note also claims that the use of ShellSock does not constitute "hacking" into VSNL's TCP/IP network. According to Xtend Tech, none of the 19 clauses in the shell account contract (required by VSNL) specify that users can access only textual material. "Therefore, implicitly you have been given the right to access graphics," it claims. "After all, the contract is for a specific number of hours you spend online and not for the amount of data transferred," its note says. Xtend Tech further claims that it was always possible for users to download graphics and view it using an "image viewer" software. According to the company, ShellSock (which was launched a few months back) only automates the graphics download process and passes it onto a Web-browser software like the Netscape Navigator or Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "VSNL cannot object to a facility that was in place ever since their service was started, when all we have done was to give the shell user some automation... programs to help them along. VSNL objecting to the usage of ShellSock is actually objecting to the shell user automating his tasks," it says. Formed less than a year ago, the Cochin-based Xtend Technologies is run by computer experts and Internet consultants Kurian Thomas and K Jayakrishnan. However, VSNL is not without its share of supporters. According to a representative of the Internet Users' Club of India, it was only a "matter of time" before VSNL acted against the use of ShellSock. "VSNL, in fact, sent an email to all its users advising against the use of the software. The company had started to find out that more and more student users are starting to use it, leading to quite a serious loss of revenues. This latest action is unfortunate, but probably inevitable," he says.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Julia Cakes — lovely little vanilla tea cakes made moist with sour cream and baked in muffin tins or in small bread pans. Serve slices of the cake on a bed of our chilled Mango Custard or use our old-fashioned buttermilk frosting recipe to frost them vintage style. These little cuties will remind you of sunshine and all things yummy. But don’t forget the tea (or champagne)! 🙂 Food Writers’ Camp! Just stoked to be able to break away for the week-end to hang with food writers in a beautiful mountain setting. Just getting out of the city was a transformation! What a fun getaway at Camp Blogaway (haha!). The classes were awesome! The sponsors were amazing. I learned skills in: photography, recipe writing, food styling, food prep and, of course, I learned to taste specialty foods and wine. heh heh~~! The sponsors were incredible and included: Cutco Cutlery, Melissa’s Farm Fresh Produce, North Denver Sausage, Wente Vineyards, KerryGold, The National Honey Board and The National Mango Board , Gourmet Garden , Idaho Potato Commission and Paper Chef — just to name a few. It was so fun to be up in the mountains for early morning nature walks and nighttime fireplace cozy-up chats! Here I am (on the left) being trained by the National Mango Board on how to cut and slice a pile of incredible mangoes. So easy when someone shows you how! Here’s the handsome knife I was using from Cutco Cutlery (it stays sharp forever cause they sharpen it for free for the life of the knife). Disclosure: Cutco gave all the food writers a knife to take home (wow!) but I had a set at home so I was a “believer” before the gracious gift. 🙂 They’re awesome kitchen tools! The National Mango Board set up taste testing samples for us to try with sweet and savory methods of preparing mangoes at unripe, ripe and very ripe stages. I thought the testing tray was loverly… And the Mango folks sent every food writer from camp a box of fresh mangoes! whoo hoo! Aren’t they pretty on my doorstep? I gave one to the UPS guy when he came running back to my porch to find out why I was hollering…It was a joyful whoop-dee-do holler. 🙂 Now its time for Cake! We’ve been on the hunt for the perfect moist homemade cake to pair with mango custard and I think we’ve found it in a charming vintage cook book (condensed American version of 1936) from Sweden called “The Princesses Cook Book” by Jenny Akerstrom (you can see it gets good use). The author had a famous school of domestic science for girls in Stockholm and was the author of many popular cooking books in the 30’s. 🙂 And we landed on this cute recipe for “Julia’s Cup Cakes”! That’s not Julia Child but more likely Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands — which would be Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina (1909–2004), the only child of Queen Wilhelmina. But I’m not sure about this — so let me know if you have a better guess about the namesake for our little cakes. 🙂 It’s a simple recipe made moist with sour cream. We had to increase the quantities of ingredients and we added fine quality vanilla extract but mostly we left the recipe pristine during the 3 tests we baked for this post. 🙂 Size DOES matter! Bake these cakes super mini, medium or kinda small in a mini muffin tin, a regular sized muffin tin or small bread pans. You could also whip up one of these babies in Bake And Give Wooden Bakers from our sponsor King Arthur Flour. I think they’re SO cute (course you could fill them higher (batter half full is a good choice for a less dainty cake slice). 🙂 Tools Needed: Butter or cooking spray or paper liners 12 or 24-cup Muffin tin or 11″ x 2.5 x 5.2 inch bread pan or two 7″ x 2-1/2 pans Small cup or bowl (for warming eggs to room temp) 2 large mixing bowls (for dry ingredients & batter) Whisk Spatula Electric mixer Measuring cups and spoons Ingredients: 2 large eggs 1/3 cut butter, unsalted 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar 2/3 cup sour cream 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 Tablespoon baking powder 1/8 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, fine quality Okay, get out your vintage tea cups and let’s have a tea cakes baking party! Julia Cakes Directions: Set your oven rack to center position and pre-heat oven to 350. If you’re using muffin tins, smear them with butter or line them with paper. Disclosure: We tested these awesome parchment cups for Paper Chef — and they worked wonderfully! They left no “wax” on the cake and they pull away nicely after baking. We’re also testing Bake and Give WOOD baking pans for King Arthur Flour. They’re too cute for words! Measuring in at 7″ x 2-1/2 inches tall, they come lined with paper and they bake in the oven and then they become darling instant cake gifts from the kitchen. haha! No more lost bread pans never returned to sender. 😀 Egg warmer tip-o-the-day! Warm em up before before beating them up and your cake will rise higher and maybe even become a fluffier wonderland. Just place your cold eggs in a cup or bowl of warm water while you prep for your kitchen project. Give em 5 minutes to take the chill off instead of waiting around all day (or at least 20 minutes) with eggs on the counter coming to room temp. 😀 Melt in the microwave (but not hot) and set aside: 1/3 cup unsalted butter In an electric blender, beat until creamy (about 3 minutes on high-speed): 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar prepared room temperature eggs Tip: The creamed butter-sugar mixture should be creamy and lightened to a pale color. Bring to room temperature in the microwave for a few seconds (just take off the chill): 2/3 cup sour cream Beat into the creamed butter-sugar mixture on medium-speed for about 1 minute: the room temperature sour cream Now let’s gather up our dry goods. 😀 Place the following dry ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl: 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 Tablespoon baking powder 1/8 teaspoon salt Whisk together the dry ingredients until fully incorporated (too lazy to sift). 🙂 Add the dry ingredients to the batter and beat on low-speed until just blended no more than 1 minute in the mixer at this stage if possible. Pour the melted room temperature butter on the top of the batter and, using a spatula, fold the butter thorough into the batter. Using a spatula, fold into the batter: 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, fine quality I used an ice cream scooper for the batter to fill the muffin tins half full. The batter is somewhat thick so smooth out the top of the batter. Pop them in the oven at 350 for between 10 minutes for mini cakes up to 20 minutes for muffin-sized cakes. If you’re baking a tea cake in a small bread pan, pop the in the oven at 350 for about 30 to 35 minutes until lightly golden brown on top, with a toothpick coming out clean. The cake has the consistency of a light pound cake. Our testers rated it A+ as a tea cake without frosting but we want to ratchet that up a tad. *****Now on to the mango custard sauce!***** From the White House Cook Book “Cream For Fruit” recipe! (1887), printed 1899, modified a wicked bit to thicken it slightly and then adding in one pureed fresh mango for some pizazz! Here’s how we tested the very last bites of Julia Cakes with Mango Custard… 🙂 Tools for Mango Custard: 1 Small sauce pot Fork or Whisk Food Processor or blender (we used a mini food processor) Soup-sized bowl Measuring Cups & Spoons Ingredients for Mango Custard Sauce: 2 teaspoons unsalted butter (or…”a piece of butter the size of a nutmeg”) 🙂 2 egg whites (from large eggs, no yolks) 1 cup milk (we used 2%) 2 teaspoons corn starch 1 Tablespoon sugar We’ll start with room temperature butter. Set out on the counter or nukerize for a few seconds in the microwave: 2 teaspoons unsalted butter Separate whites and yolks and set out to come to room temperature: 2 egg whites (using large-sized eggs) In a small sauce pot on low to medium-low heat, combine and stir well to dissolve any trace of lumps: 1 cup milk (we used 2%) 2 teaspoons cornstarch 1 Tablespoon sugar prepared room temperature butter Add slowly to the mixture while stirring briskly: the 2 egg whites Cook over low heat, stirring to prevent lumping, about 5 minutes. Tip: According to the original recipe, you should not let this concoction boil. So let’s follow that rule to make a perfect creamy sauce. Remove the sauce when it begins to thicken to the consistency of a light pudding. Stirring Tip: As it cools on the counter, you MUST stir it from time to time to prevent lumping. (At the worst, you can strain out any lumps but if you keep it stirred during the cooling process, you should be fine.) Cut off the sides and scoop out the fruit of: 1 large fresh mango If you want to dice it first, watch this video on how to slice and dice a gorgeous hunk of tropical fruit. Puree the mango fruit in a mini blender or mash to a fine puree. In a soup-sized bowl, combine the white custard and the mango puree and refrigerate. Now you have a lovely custard sauce. If the sauce consistency changes over time, you can just whip it into shape by stirring it vigorously with a fork. If you want it thinner, add a touch of cream. If you want it thicker, chill it a little longer Now find an old flowered dessert plate, spoon a circle of mango custard sauce over the center and set your darling slice of cake right on top of the custard. Yo! Goodness gracious, its tea time now! You can also frost the cupcakes style cake with an amazing cooked custard frosting called heirloom frosting. You can add fruit to this frosting custard, like pureed banana or strawberry jam or peach jam. I hope you’ll let me know what you think of this recipe (or any of our vintage cake recipes) and let me know what’s on your wish list for an upcoming vintage cake recipe. It’s so fun to hear from you! And don’t forget to send in tea party photos (my favorite!)… Hope you’re following us on Facebook, Pinterest! 😀 Happy vintage baking! Leslie You may also enjoy these related articles: Advertisements

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade four decades ago, it theoretically gave all women across the country equal access to safe, legal abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. In some states, though, that guarantee has been whittled down from a constitutional right to a mere concept. But unless a woman tried to seek an abortion in two states with dramatically different regulations, it's unlikely she would know this. Her path to an abortion, depending on the fate of geography, could be straightforward or riddled with obstacles. A low-income woman can get coverage for an abortion through Medicaid in one state but be denied in another state, unless her life is endangered or she's the victim of rape or incest. In states where there are a handful of abortion providers, sometimes by legislative design, she may have to travel hundreds of miles and pay for hotel and childcare costs. Or she may live in a state with dozens of providers who are easily accessible. She may be forced to undergo mandatory counseling filled with biased and misleading information about the medical and psychological risks of abortion. Or she may simply give her voluntary consent after reviewing the procedure with her physician. In the past few years, however, the barriers she faces have proliferated and become harder to overcome. They include stringent building regulations that effectively shuttered clinics, and bans on abortion in the first trimester or prior to viability — a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. Many of these laws, new and old, take women seeking an abortion for careless stewards of their own lives. Their logic assumes a woman is incapable of making difficult decisions without the state whispering in her ear at every turn. States have adopted hundreds of new abortion restrictions in the past five years, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research and advocacy organization. Image: Guttmacher Institute In March, the Supreme Court will hear the most significant challenge to abortion restrictions in years. The nine justices will decide whether a certain set of these laws, passed in Texas in 2013, pose an "undue burden" to women who seek an abortion. Their decision could protect and restore abortion access for all Americans or unravel the precedent set 40 years ago by Roe v. Wade. In the meantime, if you want to know what it's like to access abortion in America today in different states, try your luck with the below flowchart. Image: Vicky Leta / Mashable Additional reporting by Chelsea Frisbie.

A new type of electronic paper display has leaped several bounds ahead of its e-ink brethren. In a paper published in Applied Physics Letters, the company Gamma Dynamics describes a new type of "e-paper" that can update the display at a video-level refresh rate and sustain a significantly brighter image than most e-ink displays—all without using any power. E-ink displays have been commonplace in e-readers, like the Kindle, for a few years now. They have some drawbacks—a painfully slow refresh rate, for instance—that some manufacturers are looking to solve. Gamma Dynamics has created a new setup that displays static images without using power, just like e-ink. Their "e-paper" screen design sandwiches a network of flat electrodes between a layer of oil on top and pigment underneath. Under an applied voltage, the pigment will flow up to the top surface, and the oil below, creating a pigmented area where there wasn't one before. Likewise, a different voltage will send the oil flowing to the top and make the pigment recede, turning it blank again. The electrodes in the screen are reflective, so the areas not obscured by pigment are bright, almost like an LCD. The e-paper screen can reflect up to 75 percent of ambient light (e-ink reflects 40 percent, and electrowetting displays up to 30). This way, the brightness is automatically cranked up in brighter areas without using any power other than what is needed for refreshing the image. The e-paper is able to refresh its whole image at a rate of 20 milliseconds, or 50Hz. Their current design only works well in grayscale, but the company has had limited success experimenting with color inks using the same setup. Applied Physics Letters, 2010. DOI:10.1063/1.3494552 (About DOIs).

The "20 Worst Sports Franchises of All Time," as selected by GQ, are: 1. Every Cleveland Sports Franchise 11. Phoenix Coyotes 2. Detroit Lions 12. New York Mets 3. Chicago Cubs 13. Washington Federals 4. Los Angeles Clippers 14. Philadelphia Phillies 5. Charlotte Bobcats 15. Toronto Raptors 6. New York Jets 16. Toronto Maple Leafs 7. Kansas City Royals 17. Buffalo Bills 8. Providence Steam Rollers 18. Pittsburgh Pirates 9. Indianapolis Racers 19. Arizona Cardinals 10. Detroit Wheels 20. St. Louis Blues Read the full article and find out why each franchise made the list at www.GQ.com. About GQ GQ is the leading men's general-interest magazine, with a monthly readership of 7 million readers. It is available in print, online at GQ.com, and as an app at iTunes.com. The magazine is published by Conde Nast, a division of Advance Publications. Conde Nast operates in twenty-five countries and is the world leader in exceptional content creation. SOURCE GQ

With a billion websites present online, landing on your page, requires nothing short of hard work. You have to ensure your site’s configuration is advanced for ease of use and client experience. You can spend years concentrating on the ins and outs of ease of use and UX, but we will work on creating accompanying rundown of accommodating rules to apply to your next web plan venture. Seven Website Design Guidelines for an Exceptional User Experience: Simplicity While concentrating on the sleek design to develop a website which has a look and feel, most visitors aren’t coming to your site to check out the design. They are here to complete an action or to find out some information regarding the product and services provided by the company. Adding design elements which have no functional purpose to your website will only make it harder for visitors to accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish. From an experience and UX design perspective, simplicity is your friend, and you can employ certain strategies to create simplicity in a variety of different ways. Here are some examples: • Colors: Do not use too many colors in the website, certain sources recommends using a maximum of five different colors in your website’s design. • Typefaces: Choose a simple, easy-to-read typeface and font for your content. • Graphics: Use graphics and media to inform your customers, not to fill up white space on your website. • Whitespace: Include plenty of white spaces to improve readability. Visual Hierarchy Tied to the idea of simplicity, this involves the arrangement and organization of elements so that visitors naturally gravitate to the main element first. Structure elements of your website should be ordered logically, according to their function and importance – which is known as “visual hierarchy”. Establish a visual hierarchy by positioning important elements near the top of the page. Important elements should feature bold colors or fonts in order to stand out against the rest of the page. When it comes to usability and UX, it is important that you make the call to action to complete an action seem as enjoyable and natural as possible. By adjusting the position, color or size of certain elements, you can structure your site in such a way that visitors will be drawn to those elements first. In the case of Spotify, we have the “Get Spotify Free” call-to-action sits atop the visual hierarchy. It is located at the left side of the page as most people scan website from left to right, and its the only element above the fold that uses that dark purple color, which naturally draws your attention. Navigability Intuitive navigation on your site is crucial for ensuring visitors can find what they’re looking for. Ideally, a visitor should be able to arrive on your site and not have to think extensively about where they should click next, they should be able to move from point A to point B without thinking too much. Here are a few tips for optimizing your site’s navigation: • Keep the structure of your primary navigation simple and near the top of your page • Include navigation in the footer of your site • Use breadcrumbs on every page so people are aware of their navigation trail • Include a search bar at the top so your users can search using keywords • Don’t offer to many navigation options on a page • Make sure that your navigation is not more than 3 levels deep • Include links within your page copy, and make it clear where those links lead to. Ensure your website’s navigation is consistent across all pages. The location of your navigation links and the labels for each link should remain the same throughout your website. Consistency Along with all your links being similar throughout every webpage, your look and feel of the website should be consistent through all platforms. Backgrounds, color schemes, typefaces and even the tone of your writing are all areas where being consistent can have a positive impact on usability and UX. You should create separate layout for different types of pages on yours site (e.g. a layout for landing pages, a layout for informational pages, etc.), and by using those layouts consistently, you’ll make it easier for visitors to understand what type of information they’re likely to find on a given page. Accessibility The number of mobile users is overtaking desktop users at an ever-increasing rate. As such, it’s important to enhance your website for both desktop and mobile experience. By implementing responsive design, your website will work smoothly on almost any device including, smartphones, tablets, desktops, netbooks and ebooks. Tablet internet consumption grew 30% between 2013 and 2015. Smartphone internet consumption meanwhile grew 78% during the same time period. In order to provide a truly great user experience, your site needs to be compatible with the different devices that your visitors are using. This means at a high level, investing in a website structure that is highly flexible- like responsive design. With a responsive site, content is automatically resized and reshuffled to fit the dimensions of whichever device a visitor happens to be using. At a lower level, improving accessibility can be as simple as adding alt-text to all your images. It’s more important that your website provides a great experience across different platforms as opposed to having to it look identical across those platforms. That can mean adhering to platform-specific design conventions instead of trying to squeeze in unique elements that users of that platform might not be familiar with. Conventionality Most webpages follow a basic design formula which online visitors have come to expect. The logo is usually located at the top of the page, followed by major navigation links, then important content. Contact information can be found in the footer. To put these with more explaination: • Having the main navigation be at the top of a page • Having a logo at the top left of a page • Having that logo be clickable so is always brings a visitor back to the homepage • Having links change color/ appearance when you hover over them While it may seem tempting to throw all such design conventions out the window for the sake of being completely original or unique, this would be a mistake. It would be similar to putting a car’s steering wheel in the backseat. In order to provide the best experience possible for your site’s visitors, take advantage of the fact that you already know what types of web experiences they’re familiar with. This would make your site easier for visitors to navigate. When a user visits your website, they will decide to stay or leave within several seconds. Improve your conversion rate by delivering an exceptional user experience, and implement your ideas into your own user interface. Credibility Using web design conventions – design elements and strategies that visitors are already familiar with, can help give your site more credibility. If you’re striving to build a site that provides the best user experience, credibility can go a long way. The best way to build credibility of your website is to provide clear and honest information about your product/service you’re selling on the site. Don’t make visitors have to dig through dozens of pages to find out what it is you actually do. Be up front about it, and dedicate some real estate to explaining the value behind what you do. Have a pricing page. While it can be tempting to force people to contact you in order for them to learn more about pricing, having prices listed clearly on your site can definitely make your business seem more trustworthy and legitimate.

The article was written by Motek Moyen Research Seeking Alpha’s #1 Writer on Long Ideas and #2 in Technology – Senior Analyst at I Know First. Nvidia Stock Outlook Summary: I agree that Nvidia’s stock enjoys very high valuation. However, this company has what it takes to fulfill the high expectations of investors. Nvidia still has a lead over AMD in graphics processor sales. Nvidia still has a lead over Intel when it comes to Artificial Intelligence processors. I expect Nvidia to report better than predicted EPS and revenue when it reports Thursday next week. The second-quarter period did not see AMD release a high-end GPU product. NVDA bulls will probably do some profit-taking post-earnings. However, it will not surprise me if NVDA posts another 52-week high within the next few weeks. I Know First has positive, near, intermediate and long-term algorithmic forecasts for Nvidia. I agree that the market has boosted Nvidia (NVDA) to notably high valuation if compared to its sector/industry peers. However, the unique position of Nvidia of being the dominant player in the duopoly over GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) gives it almost-unlimited source of growth momentum. Jon Peddie Research already reported earlier this year that Nvidia still has over 70% of the global market for discrete GPUs. The entry-level and mid-range Polaris Radeon GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) chipped away at Nvidia’s market share last year. However, Nvidia took some back in Q1 this year. (Source: Jon Peddie Research) There’s still no Q2 2017 report from Jon Peddie. However, I believe Nvidia most likely retained the same 72% or higher share in discrete GPUs. AMD did not really a high-end Radeon GPU during the Q2 period. I also checked Amazon’s best-seller list and Nvidia GPUs still ruled. The discrete GPU business is not solely dictated by OEMs, it is the consumer, enthusiast, the PC builder who also determines which discrete GPUs are going to be top-grossing. Nvidia’s stock is unlikely to dive and linger below $160 anytime soon. The reality is Nvidia GeForce-branded video cards are the top 10 best-selling graphic cards at Amazon. As long as Nvidia is a making killing on gaming, the bull thesis for its stock remains indomitable. (Source: Amazon) Tech Radar also released its August 3 review of the top video cards available right now and Nvidia’s more expensive GPUs still dominate the list. It goes to show that gamers are willing to pay premium to own the better performing video cards of Nvidia. The April-June quarter of Nvidia this year is likely going to deliver better Gaming-related sales than Q1’s $1.027 billion. (Source: Nvidia) Further, the global shortage of Nvidia’s GTX 1070 is also due to it being the best GPU for mining Ethereum. Nvidia’s GPU business has a nice steady income from catering to people who farm crypto-currencies like Ethereum. The decision to release crypto-currency mining-specific Nvidia cards will hopefully ease the supply for gaming-specific GeForce GPUs like the GTX 1070. (Source: HotHardware) Nvidia Still Rules The Market For Artificial Intelligence Processors I know AMD has an upcoming processor for deep learning parallel computing tasks. I also know Intel has some AI-related processors (Xeons and Altera FPGAs). However, Nvidia is the only company right now that actually has realistic revenue/income from supplying GPUs to data center and cloud computing service provides. As per the chart from Nvidia’s 10-Q filing, its Datacenter and Automotive business segments now generate combined quarterly revenue of $549 million. I believe Intel has a long way to go before it can achieve the quarterly revenue of Nvidia’s AI-related chip supply business. As far as I know, Intel has yet to announce any major deep learning design win for Altera’s FPGA processors. Nvidia’s GPUs still generate the most amount of revenue when it comes to AI-related processor sales. It will also take several years before AMD can persuade data centers to trust its upcoming Radeon Instinct MI25. Sad but true, the Instinct MI25 deep learning GPU from AMD is very powerful. However, benchmark scores are just a small part of what made Nvidia GPUs the de facto, industry standard processors for deep learning compute tasks. Nvidia and its partners have invested heavily on software and the cloud infrastructure. I do not think AMD has the nextra $2 or $3 billion cash to spend building up the same software/infrastructure around its own deep learning GPU. Mega-cap companies like Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Facebook (FB), IBM (IBM), and Procter & Gamble (PG) became buyers of Nvidia’s very expensive Deep Learning Tesla processors because Nvidia touts a complete ecosystem for it. (Source: Nvidia) Nvidia’s big lead in deep learning computers will only grow larger because it is now shipping its Volta GPU for the data center market. The first Volta-based deep learning processor, the Tesla V100 is a 12nm chip with 21.1 billion transistors. This is notably better than the older Pascal-based Tesla P100 which only has 15.3 billion transistors. My Fearless Forecast I rate NVDA as a buy. This momentum-driven stock is likely to post another 52-week high (current is $170.07) after its earnings report on August 10. It may dip a little due to profit taking, but it could breach $175 within the next 90 days. I Know First has bullish 1-month and 3-month algorithmic market trend forecasts for Nvidia’s stock. The high 0.55 predictability score for the 3-month forecast period convinced me that NVDA has a great chance to post another 52-week high within the next 90 days. I also checked the technical indicators and moving averages trends. NVDA remains a buy. (Source: investing.com) Past I Know First Forecast Success with NVDA Exactly three months ago, I Know First made an accurate prediction on NVDA. On this bullish article published on May 7th, 2017. In the article, it explains that Intel’s denial to license AMD graphic chips were going to be great news for NVDA. During the three month time period, NVDA shares increased by 62.70% in line with the I Know First algorithm’s forecast. See chart below. (Source: Yahoo! Finance: NVDA) This bullish forecast for NVDA was sent to I Know First subscribers on May 7th, 2017. To subscribe today click here. I Know First Algorithm Heatmap Explanation The sign of the signal tells in which direction the asset price is expected to go (positive = to go up = Long, negative = to drop = Short position), the signal strength is related to the magnitude of the expected return and is used for ranking purposes of the investment opportunities. Predictability is the actual fitness function being optimized every day, and can be simplified explained as the correlation based quality measure of the signal. This is a unique indicator of the I Know First algorithm. This allows users to separate and focus on the most predictable assets according to the algorithm. Ranging between -1 and 1, one should focus on predictability levels significantly above 0 in order to fill confident about/trust the signal.

An international conservation group says Alberta should get rid of bounties on wolves. Several municipalities and some private hunting groups pay the bounty, but the International Union for the Conservation of Nature says it's not an effective way to control the population. Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association agrees, arguing the Alberta government has to find a better method. "It should be leading the scientific management of wolves, not a bunch of private hunting groups or local municipalities that may be well-meaning but are not actually addressing the problem in a modern way." Campbell says Alberta Fish and Wildlife's own scientists have also said bounties are not effective and the province needs a more scientific method to deal with problem wolves. Lu Carbyn, a retired wolf biologist and a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, agrees the bounty system used in Alberta is flawed. “It’s an archaic and old-fashioned way of managing wildlife,” he said. “It’s a blanket approach, it’s open for abuse. There’s no way that you can control how the animals were killed, where they come from. You can be bringing in wolf carcasses from, you know, Saskatchewan and you can present them here for sale as bounties.” Carbyn says Alberta should instead use predator control officers to specifically target wolves that are preying on livestock. Officials in Idaho and Wyoming have had good success going after problem wolves using aerial hunting, he said. One reason wolves are thriving in Alberta is that the deer and elk populations are also doing well, according to Carbyn.

What is The Fitzroy? The Fitzroy is an independent, live action, feature film; a black comedy set in a post-apocalyptic 1950’s Margate. The world is covered in a poisonous gas and the Fitzroy Hotel (a beached submarine) is the last place for a traditional holiday. The hotel is sent into chaos when one of the guests murders the hotel’s owner. It is left to Bernard, The Fitzroy’s hapless bellboy, to keep the hotel from falling apart as he struggles to hide the murders from the other guests and the ever-suspicious authorities. Sci-Fi, post-apocalyptic, comedy, period setting… all in one film? Are you crazy? So what are you doing here? We are trying to raise enough money to make The Fitzroy. To do this we need to raise £60,000. So you are crazy! No, not at all. Well maybe a little. But we are all experienced, having worked in media for a long time, on commercials, music videos and short films. The film has been planned to the nth degree and we already have many of the key elements secured; location, heads of departments, music etc. Who are you? We are: Andrew Harmer (writer/director) and producing team James Heath and Liam Garvo (Dresden Pictures). There are some links at the bottom of the page to some of our previous work. James Heath, Andrew Harmer and Liam Garvo Is it going to be good? We hope so. Film is our passion, and we’re working our hardest to make sure The Fitzroy is as good as it can be. Blood, sweat and tears. In fact, those are our nicknames. Okay, fair enough. Where can I learn more about the project? Please visit our website. There you can find a wealth of information, or for an ongoing look behind the scenes, check out our blog - its free, frank and... er... fabulous!? Or just ask us anything you want to know. The Rewards If I donate, what’s in it for me? The feel-good factor of making dreams come true and supporting independent film. Also one of the awesome incentives to the right! But here's a bit more info on a few of them. Animated Title Character: The films titles will be an animated cartoon and will explain how the world of The Fitzroy came to be. Designed by Marko Anstice (he did the illustrations on our website), the titles will be populated by a cast of characters... and you can be one of them! Simply send us a couple of photos of yourself (or a loved one, this would make a great gift) and we will turn you into a toon. You'll feature in the title sequence to the film and we'll send you a one-off illustrated print of your mini-me to frame and hang. UPDATE: The animated character now includes 2x tickets to the premier AND the 'Funding Producer' reward, with a credit on IMDB. Beach Survival Kit: Ever tried having a holiday in a post-apocalyptic world? It's not easy. Luckily the government have issued these 'Beach Survival Kits'. Each one is handmade by the director and personalised. If you are going on holiday, remember - stay safe! Poster: An exclusive series of posters just for Kickstarter. These will be strictly limited to the number of backers who request this reward. Heck if we want one we have to put the money in too! There will be five to choose from, all signed and numbered by the artist. We’ll email you at the end of the campaign and clarify which one you would like. Grab a piece of cinema history - they will be incredibly rare! Poster A: 'Radiation Blues' by Marko Anstice (A1 size) Poster B: ‘Margate’ by Gary Haslam (A2 size) Poster C: 'Face Certain Death' by Oliver Polanski (A1 size) Poster D: 'Rover Knows' by Rowan Corlett (A1 size) Poster E: 'The Fitzroy' by Jack Candy-Kemp (A1 size) UPDATE: We've tweaked the pricing structure to make it more fair as we presume you won't want multiple downloads of the film and soundtrack! One poster = £45 Two posters = £80 Three posters = £110 Four poster = £135 or you can be the envy of your neighbours and get the whole set for £150! International P&P is £5 if you buy one or all five. *NB We can’t change the ‘reward’ box on the right of the page so please ignore where it says ‘simply double or triple’. The above are the correct prices! The Soundtrack: The Fitzroy is going to rock! Unlike most films, we are taking a slightly different approach. We have teamed up with the awesome Green Rock River Band, who will not only be composing an original score, but starring in the film as ‘the band’ - a ragtag touring band holed up in one of The Fitzroy's rooms. Their music will literally echo through the submarine. Described as ‘doom folk’, The Green Rock River Band is definitely going to bring a unique sound to The Fitzroy. NEW REWARD! Have GRRB play at your party. Green Rock River Band will play at your next party, wedding, office shindig, Bar-Mitzvah, country fair, funeral… well maybe not the last one. They’ll come play for you – which is a hell of a deal! Travel covered anywhere inside the M25, outside of that you will have to add transportation costs in. To give you a taste, here is what went down when they played at our Fitzroy shindig. Dates are flexible but give us a shout to see if they can do the night you want. Oh and you also get the 'Funding Producer' reward! NEW REWARD! The Call Action / Call Wrap reward. Ever wanted to feel the power of an egomaniac? Well now you can. Come down to set, a real Russian submarine! Be treated like a king, call action on the very first shot of The Fitzroy and have your day filmed so you can share your experience with your friends and family (if you want). You also get your very own personalised directors chair signed by the entire cast. AND the ‘Premier Tickets’ package with Funding Producers credit on IMDB. What more could you want? You have to get yourself to the shoot, this will be around in April but we will give you as much warning to the exact date as possible. What if I want more than one reward? Awesome! Simply add the totals together (plus p&p) and we will email you at the end of the campaign to clarify which rewards you require. What if I don’t want the incentive, I just want to support? You are wonderful! Not a problem. Once you hit ‘Back this Project’ there is a button you can select if you don’t want a reward. Other Important Questions What happens if you don’t reach your target? Kickstarter is an all or nothing model! If we don’t reach our target no-one gets charged and we don’t make the film. That’s why we need you… and your family and friends! So please, even if you can’t donate, help us by spreading the word on Twitter, Facebook or word of mouth. Can you exceed the goal? YES! This would truly be amazing. Exceeding our goal would allow us to make a better movie. Kickstarter allows projects to go over their targets. If we do go over our target, every penny will still go into making the project as good as possible. Is my pledge amount publicly displayed? Nope. Only you and the project creator will be able to see your pledge amount. Can I increase my pledge once it’s been made? YES! Once you donate to our campaign, you may want to change your reward to a different one, or increase your pledge amount. To do so, go to Kickstarter and sign in. If you go to our campaign page, the green “Back This Project” button has been replaced with a blue “Manage Your Donation” button. Click it and you can enter a new amount, or choose a new incentive. Can I gift a Reward? YES! Definitely. In fact we tried hard to create rewards that would make brilliant gifts. Christmas is coming up! Donate through all the normal processes of making a donation in your name. For billing purposes, this action must be in your name. After our deadline, we will send you a message. We will request things like your address from you at that time. Please reply with all the recipient’s information and let us know it’s a gift and we'll send you a gift certificate much like this one... A few more shots of the 'Black Widow' submarine we would love to shoot on. What is the money going to be used for? It's not just development money? No not at all. If we raise our target we can shoot and deliver the completed film (with a little held over to enter the film into festivals). You’re not going take all the money and fly away to Hawaii are you? Every penny (minus the fees for Kickstarter’s involvement) will go directly into The Fitzroy’s budget - i.e. your money goes directly to the funding of this film. And trust me, we are making every penny stretch as far as we can. And no, we won’t skip off to Hawaii: 1) All we have ever wanted to do is make films and 2) We burn very easily. I'm not in the UK. Can I still pledge? Yes. You can pledge from anywhere in the world. All you need is a debit or credit card. It’s dead easy. How do we contact you? Through hello@thefitzroy.com or in the Kickstarter comments, or via our Twitter and Facebook pages. If you have any questions or suggestions for rewards that you would like, please just leave us a comment. Links

The official Twitter account for the Mr. Osomatsu anime announced on Tuesday that the series will run for two consecutive seasons. The second half will begin in January. The series premiered on October 5. Crunchyroll is streaming the series as it airs in Japan. In a press conference on October 29, Yūichi Takahashi of TV Tokyo apologized for the series' third episode. The episode contained a parody of the Anpanman children's anime character. The first and second episodes of the show also contained parodies of many other series, such as Attack on Titan , Boys Over Flowers , and Sailor Moon . The first episode is scheduled to be removed from various streaming sites on November 12, and will be reanimated for the home video release. Japan does not have a parody exception or provision in its copyright law. Therefore, making parodies of copyrighted works may illegally violate a copyright owners' "right to maintain integrity," if performed without the copyright holder's prior consent. Fujio Akatsuka's original Osomatsu-kun manga and "high tension comedy" TV anime centered on the Matsuno household, which has six naughty and mischievous sons (who are sextuplets). All of the sextuplets, including the eldest Osomatsu, are all in love with the same girl, Totoko. The original series followed the family when the sons were 10 years old. The first 56-episode series aired in Japan in 1966-1967. Akira Shigino (Time Bokan: Royal Revival, Marude Dameo, Crayon Shin-chan: Otakebe! Kasukabe Yasei Ōkoku) directed the series, and Mainichi Broadcasting, Studio Zero, and Children's Corner produced the series. Studio Pierrot animated the second 86-episode series, which aired from 1988-1989. Shigino served as chief director. The staff are creating the new anime to commemorate what would have been Akatsuka's 80th birthday (Akatsuka passed away in 2008 at age 72). Akatsuka launched the Osomatsu-kun manga in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday magazine in 1962, and the manga ran in the magazine until 1969. The manga then ran in Weekly Shonen King from 1972-1973, and then in Comic BonBon from 1987-1990. The compiled manga volumes have more than 10 million copies in print. [Via Hachima Kikō]

EA Admits That Gobbling Up Talented Studios Then Ruining Them Isn't Working Out So Well from the now-witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station dept "I think our history with acquisitions is somewhat marginal in performance," Jorgensen said when asked if EA has identified any acquisition targets in the industry. "We have some that are spectacular, and some that didn't do so well. It's a headcount business, right? You're buying headcount, and that's always difficult to manage in acquisitions. It doesn't mean we won't do them, but I think where we've been most successful is in smaller acquisitions that we've integrated very quickly." EA, a company right up there with Comcast in terms of consumer disdain, has a long and proud history of gobbling up talented developers, then either obliterating them outright, or homogenizing them until the products are the very pinnacle of bland. Studios like Bullfrog, Westwood Studios, and Origin were all near legendary game developers when acquired, but are now little more than fond memories after ham-fisted attempts to cash in on the catalogs (Ultima IX, anyone?). Other studios like Maxis were similarly legendary, but now struggle to put out rushed, highly-flawed simulacrum under the EA banner.After twenty years of such stumbling, scorched-earth acquisitions, EA's bloated belly appears to be full, and the company has finally decided that perhaps it should focus on developing content with the acquired talent army it already has. Company CFO Blake Jorgensen would even go so far as to admit EA's history with such acquisitions is "marginal" at best:In other words, EA finally has all the talent it needs to keep rolling out barely-interesting Madden after Madden updates (shielded from competition via their exclusive NFL arrangement ) and a decade of new, semi-interesting Star Wars games courtesy of its deal with Disney. If EA's stock is any indication, investors think EA has learned a thing or two about making friends with consumers, and the company claims it's working hard to change its customer reputation in the market (EA gave away several free games as a promotional effort over the weekend). Though dysfunction may just be grafted to EA's genetic code, 2015 might be the year that Ubisoft steals EA's consumer annoyance crown Filed Under: acquisitions, studios, video games Companies: ea

Accessible Styled Form Elements Posted on 26th July, 2017 Since the inception of CSS , there's been one area of styling that has been a constant issue; forms. Simple elements, like <input type="text"> and <textarea> and buttons, have generally been ok, as borders, colours and fonts could all be set with standard styles that behaved as expected. Beyond that though, other elements were impossible to style consistently without either compromising on the design, or attempting to recreate the native elements with a lot of custom Javascript. Neither are great as they leave you with a form that either doens't look good, or doesn't work well in terms of accessibility. Usually, the approach was just to make sure that everything looked nice, and accessibility was an afterthought. I've even worked at places where I was told to focus on the design aspect first and foremost, and that accessibility wasn't a major issue because most visitors could see perfectly fine , depsite me trying to persuade them otherwise. Just over a year ago though, browsers started implementing pseudo form elements (all their own non-standard prefixes, of course!) which allowed for CSS to more specifically target parts of a complex form element. Finally, elements could be styled to a far greater degree, and without the need for lots of custom HTML tags around every element (a sure sign of divitis!) and without lots of custom Javascript capturing various events to emulate standard form element behaviour. I put this together to help as a guide to making accessible form elements that are nicer to look at than the standard stuff, and aside from some minor Javascript on the file upload and colour picker elements, everything is achieved with pure CSS, and basic HTML. An aside of this was to ensure that complex HTML setup wasn't required, as sometimes we really don't get the chance to change the underlying HTML source because it's either from a 3rd party or is part of a larger shared project of its own. The Elements I've tried to keep the CSS standalone for each element here, but there's no reason why you can't combine styles into a set of shared classes for elements that have commonalities, or even chuck the whole thing into a SASS component file. Select Lists Modern browsers now support the appearance CSS property (or a variation of) that allows the arrow, background, etc, of a select list to be unset completely: <label>Simple Select <select class="simple_select"> <option value="1">something here</option> <option value="2">another thing with a long name</option> <option value="3">final thing</option> </select> </label> .simple_select { -moz-appearance: none; -webkit-appearance: none; appearance: none; background-color: #fff; background-image: url('down.png'); background-position: right center; background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 2px solid #ccc; border-radius: 10px; font-size: 16px; padding: 5px 25px 5px 5px; } .simple_select::-ms-expand { display: none; } .simple_select:focus { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; outline: none; } The end result looks like this: Simple Select something here another thing with a long name final thing The key part here is the appearance property, along with the browser prefixed versions and Microsofts ::-ms-expand pseudo element selector. This allows you to change the default appearance of items. This is for IE 10 and up (including Edge). IE9 doesn't support it, but you can use conditional comments on that platform to reset any other styles which may rely on the arrow being hidden. It's important to note the focus styles here, as they are an accessibility must-have. Normally, a browser would add an outline which is typically blue (but may vary depending on the browser, OS , and desktop theme in use), but you don't get a lot of say about how that looks, and Chrome has a wonderful bug of drawing outlines with square corners, even if the element has rounded corners. Another thing worth noting is the extra padding on the right for the select list, which is to prevent the option text from overlapping the background arrow image. One thing I would have liked to do is to change the background image depending on the status of the selects menu being shown/hidden. Unfortunately, I found no way of doing this, and using the focus style to achieve this is not recommended, as a select having focus doesn't necessarily mean its corresponding drop-down is visible. Text Inputs Styles here are pretty much as you're used to, with the same focus styles mentioned above. <label>Your name <input type="text" class="simple_input" placeholder="Joe Bloggs"/> </label> <label>Your password <input type="password" class="simple_input"/> </label> Again, focus styles are important, and they should be differentiate the form element enough that it's obvious where the browsers focus is. Accessibility is not just about making your website available to blind users, there are many people who aren't blind but are not able to use a mouse. They can still see the page and changes on it, but their method of navigation might not use a pointer device. One interesting addition in the CSS here is for changing the character (slightly) used for password fields. Currently only Webkit-based browsers support this, but more may follow in the future: .simple_input { background-color: #fff; border: 2px solid #ccc; border-radius: 10px; font-size: 16px; padding: 5px 25px 5px 5px; } .simple_input:focus { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; outline: none; } .simple_input[type=password] { -webkit-text-security: square; } The final result looks like this: Your name Your password Checkboxes Inside Label Up until now, all of the styles have just been attached to the form element in question. Checkboxes are a little bit more tricky, however, as browsers don't allow pseudo :before and :after elements to be attached directly to the <input> element. The most typical way around this is by attaching the pseudo element to the label. I've included two ways of doing this, one with the label around the element, and another with it separate but linked via the id attribute. <label class="nested_checkbox">Tick for something good <input type="checkbox"/> <span></span> </label> The major immediate downside of this approach is that an extra element is required. This is unavoidable, as there is nothing to attach to here other than the label, which is a parent element to the checkbox, and thus can't be targeted with CSS (yet). .nested_checkbox input[type=checkbox] { clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; } .nested_checkbox input[type=checkbox]+span { border: 2px solid #ccc; display: inline-block; height: 15px; position: relative; width: 15px; } .nested_checkbox input[type=checkbox]:checked+span::after { bottom: 0; color: #f00; content: "✓"; font-size: 22px; left: .1em; line-height: 22px; position: absolute; } .nested_checkbox input[type=checkbox]:focus+span { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; } The technique here is simple, the checkbox itself is hidden in a way that still allows it to be focused, so it retains accessibility, but visually the <span> does all the work. If you do go down the route of using characters as your visual tick of check as I have here, you will need to take care that your CSS is saved as a UTF document, and either served with UTF headers or using an @charset rule at the top of the CSS. Tick for something good Checkboxes As Sibling Of Label This might seem more familiar, as I've noticed a trend of keeping form elements outside of their corresponding labels, so it might be what you're already doing. The only downside is that this makes dynamic checkboxes more difficult to implement (as they all need unique id values), e.g. where you have x rows of a table and a checkbox for each that triggers some kind of action when the form is submitted. <input type="checkbox" id="custom_checkbox" class="detached_simple_checkbox"/> <label for="custom_checkbox">Tick for something else</label> The CSS is much the same as the previous example, just with an extra pseudo element to draw the box (previously that was just a styled <span> but the label here has content. .detached_simple_checkbox { clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; } .detached_simple_checkbox+label { padding-left: 1.6em; position: relative; } .detached_simple_checkbox+label:before { border: 2px solid #ccc; bottom: 0; content: ""; display: inline-block; height: 15px; left: .1em; width: 15px; position: absolute; } .detached_simple_checkbox:checked+label:after { bottom: .1em; color: #f00; content: "✓"; font-size: 22px; left: .3em; line-height: 22px; position: absolute; } .detached_simple_checkbox:focus+label:before { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; } The end result is this: Tick for something else Which looks exactly like the previous example, just achieved in a different way. File Uploads This is something that is very tricky, and still not possible to style nicely without using Javascript for some minor functionality. The label wrapping the element here allows the span that's acting as a visual button to trigger the file browse dialogue, but the same could be achieved by moving the input element before the label and using sibling selectors in CSS. I've also added a data-file attribute here, which is important later for showing the selected file. <label>Simple custom file upload <input type="file" class="simple_file_upload"/> <span data-file="">Choose file...</span> </label> First, the input element itself is hidden in the standard accessible way, and the <span> is styled to appear like a button: .simple_file_upload { clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; } .simple_file_upload+span { background-color: #a8d6f1; border: 2px solid #0070b0; border-radius: 10px; display: block; font-size: 16px; margin-top: .5em; padding: 5px; position: relative; width: 150px; } Next, is a pseudo element which will show the value of our data-file attribute. If you're looking to develop for very old browsers that don't support this syntax, then you could use a second <span> instead and have the Javascript directly edit it's contents, but the method here means you're using as few HTML tags as possible. .simple_file_upload+span:after { bottom: 5px; content: attr(data-file); display: block; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; left: 170px; margin-top: .6em; position: absolute; width: 300px; } Finally, there are the focus styles. Due to a bug in Firefox, the file input itself doesn't receive focus; instead it's a pseudo element which does, but one that can't be targeted with CSS. Because of this, some Javascript can be added to handle the focus events and toggle a class on the input element. .simple_file_upload:focus+span, .simple_file_upload.focus+span { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; } The Javascript to accompany all of this is split into two parts, one to handle changing the filename selected in the spans data-file attribute, and one to handle the focus/blur events: document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var simple_file_upload = document.getElementsByClassName('simple_file_upload')[0]; simple_file_upload.addEventListener('change', function(){ this.nextElementSibling.setAttribute('data-file', this.value); }); // fix for Fx as focus goes to the button part of the input which is classes as a sort of pseudo element simple_file_upload.addEventListener('focus', function(){ simple_file_upload.classList.add('focus'); }); simple_file_upload.addEventListener('blur', function(){ simple_file_upload.classList.remove('focus'); }); }); The end result is something like this: Simple custom file upload Choose file... Colour Pickers Not a particularly popular form element, but as they exist and have decent browser support, I thought I'd have a go at seeing how well they could be styled in an accessible way. As I wanted to be able to have my own colourised box with rounded corners, I'm going with the extra <span> tag to show this colour, as it allows for full control over the styling. I've set a specific colour here because Chrome has a bug where the lightness level for the colour is set to 0 by default, which can make it appear to users that the colour picker isn't working correctly, so this aids accessibility. <label>Choose colour: <input type="color" class="simple_colour" value="#ff0000"/> <span></span> </label> The CSS is very similar to standard text fields, with the addition of some styling to the extra <span> tag. If you're setting the input itself to have a different starting value than the default (which is black) then you should update the value in the CSS to match. If this isn't possible (e.g. the CSS is in an external stylesheet file) then you could use a line in Javascript code to update it once the document loads, as the styled element already has Javascript for setting the colour of the span. .simple_colour { clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); height: 1px; overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; } .simple_colour+span { display: block; width: 30px; height: 30px; background-color: #f00; border: 2px solid #ccc; border-radius: 10px; } .simple_colour:focus+span { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #0070b0; } The Javascript code listens to the input event, which fires any time the colour value is changed, which is not necessarily when the focus leaves the field. In-fact, this fires many times as you change the colour while the picker dialogue is open. document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function(){ var simple_colour = document.getElementsByClassName('simple_colour')[0]; simple_colour.addEventListener('input', function(){ this.nextElementSibling.style.backgroundColor = this.value; }); }); Choose colour: Sliders/Range Elements Range elements are quite a new addition to the HTML spec and give you a way of picking a numerical value using a nice visual mechanism. With the addition of the element came a lot of (browser-specific, of course) pseudo elements that you can style to completely change the appearance of the slider. First, is our old friend appearance , which allows us to override the default styles for the element, and we can set a focus style for the whole thing as well. The background transparency fixes a minor bug found in some versions of browsers when the track (the bar in which the slider moves) is thinner than the slider thumb (the part that moves). Note that there is no CSS here to remove the border. That won't be necessary, and will cause problems with accessibility if the browser your visitors are using doesn't support <input type="range"/> , because the default behaviour for unrecognised inputs is to behave as a text input, and without a border, it's hard to see where the field is unless you're focus is on it. .simple_slider { -moz-appearance: none; -webkit-appearance: none; appearance: none; background: transparent; width: 200px; } .simple_slider:focus { box-shadow: 0 0 6px 0 #b00070; outline: none; } After this, the CSS gets a little messy, as it seems that Chrome and Firefox have issues if their range pseudo selectors are mixed with any other selector. So for example, this works: .simple_slider::-webkit-slider-runnable-track {...} But this does not work: .simple_slider::-webkit-slider-runnable-track, .simple_slider::-moz-range-track {...} Each range element has two (or four in the case of IE/Edge, because of course it has to be different!) sub-elements: the track, and the slider thumb. These can be styled individually of each other like. So, to style the track for the main browsers using all prefixes: .simple_slider::-webkit-slider-runnable-track { background-color: #a8d6f1; height: 6px; } .simple_slider::-moz-range-track { background-color: #a8d6f1; height: 6px; } .simple_slider::-ms-track { height: 6px; width: 100%; } IE/Edge is the only browser that ignores any background colour you set here, as it has a further two sub-elements which are the track parts to the left and right of the slider, and each has to be coloured separately. It also needs a width set to 100% to use the full element width, where the other browsers default to this. If you're using SASS, you can achieve the above with a mixin or function, so that you don't have large chunks of CSS which are essentially copies of each other. To style the extra pseudo elements for IE/Edge, you'll need the following added: .simple_slider::-ms-fill-lower { background: #a8d6f1; } .simple_slider::-ms-fill-upper { background: #a8d6f1; } With these alone, you should have a solid bar of colour, so now you'll need to set up the styles for the slider. In this, at least, all the browsers I tested seem to be (mostly) consistent in their presentation. .simple_slider::-webkit-slider-runnable-track { background-color: #a8d6f1; height: 6px; } .simple_slider::-webkit-slider-thumb { -webkit-appearance: none; appearance: none; background-color: #0070b0; border: 0; border-radius: 50%; cursor: pointer; /* margin top should be roughly (h / 5 * 2) * -1 , where h is height of thumb */ margin-top: -8px; height: 20px; width: 20px; } .simple_slider::-moz-range-thumb { -moz-appearance: none; appearance: none; background-color: #0070b0; border: 0; border-radius: 50%; cursor: pointer; height: 20px; width: 20px; } .simple_slider::-ms-thumb { background-color: #0070b0; cursor: pointer; height: 20px; margin-top: 0; width: 20px; } Chrome has an odd bug where the vertical position of the slider is wrong if the sliders height is larger than the tracks height. This is easily fixed with a negative vertical margin, which is roughly (h / 5 * 2) * -1 , where h is height of slider thumb. Edge has an even stranger bug, where it actually picks up some of the Webkit values for this and applies the negative margin offset to it's own slider! To fix this, I added a specific reset of the margin-top to 0 The end result is this: Volume: Conclusion The form elements examples here work in all the standard browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera. Hopefully this article shows that you don't need to sacrifice accessibility for the design, or vice-versa. One thing to remember though, is that the built in form elements will always have better accessibility support than anything you can reproduce using Javascript. Even if you think you've covered every possible angle, there will be someone else who comes along with issues that you never foresaw. It's best to leave the accessibility implementation to browser vendors, rather than attempt to reinvent the wheel for every website you work on. Designing and developing with accessibility in mind should take an enhancement approach, not a create-from-scratch approach, and if you remember that, you should be able to produce great looking stuff that works for just about everyone, all with little effort.

Protected by the largest military in all of human history, the economic empire of the United States has grown into the most advanced capitalist system that ever existed. In spite of a relatively high standard of living & unprecedented wealth, the US has also managed to develop the world’s highest rates of mental illness. In 2009, the World Mental Health survey found the US at the bottom of world mental health chart with 47.4% — almost half of the population– displaying symptoms of a mental disorder. According to the massive WMH survey, nearly 1 in 3 US citizens struggle with anxiety disorders and a bit more than 1 in 5 suffer from depression, bi-polar, or other mood disorders. Melancholy & the Marginalized In the Gardens of the US Empire Although psychological well-being is a pretty complicated thing to measure ( especially on such large scales ), research on depression in the US clearly shows that looking for areas of high poverty will show you areas with high rates of depression. Being poor is, of course, an excellent reason to feel sad but, if poverty caused widespread depression, we would find the highest rates of depression in the poorest places. And that is not what we find. The prevalence of mental illness in Mexico, a country with a per-person income 1/3rd of that in the USA, was just 26% according to the same WHM study — and symptoms of poor mental health affect only 12% of Nigerians, who earn a mere 1/10th of what people in the US do! Poverty is a part of it — but it’s obviously not the whole story… The Links Between Income Inequality, Marginalization, & Mental Health Other studies show a strong correlation between high income-inequality & rates of mental illness — particularly the depressive disorders. This is true at an international level, as well as the level of individual counties & US states. Symptoms of mental health disorders are reported at higher rates in densely populated urban environments, black & brown communities, & among women in general ( regardless of race ), all of which are historically among the most-exploited in capitalist modes of production. Explaining why we observe such counter-intuitively high numbers of people in poor mental health at the very center of the wealthiest society in history does not take a particularly imaginative leap from here. And — since this is an opinion article & not a scholarly tome to submit to the sociological canon — it is well within my rights as a writer of very limited notoriety to make that leap… The Result of Capitalism & Liberalism Should Depress You Late-stage capitalist societies — like ours in the United States — clearly produce the ideal environment for mass psychological — or, if I may use a less-popular word — spiritual crisis. This analysis is not new — Marx himself predicted capitalism would result in these kinds of crises. This is called alienation. He believed our species-essence was not just to obtain food, water, shelter, & sex but also to produce or co-create the world around them. And the free choice to make their world by their own labor fulfilled the human being’s species-essence. Since, under capitalism, the value of a person’s labor is extracted by whoever owns the tools & materials used to create our environments, he predicted we would become increasingly alienated from our lives & dissociated from the society around us. We would feel disconnected from the things we do because we did not choose to do them. Real mental health disorders do exist, of course. But — as someone who was diagnosed with a number of them at a young age — I wonder if many of our so-called dysfunctions, both my own & those of others around me, are really just the appropriate & completely sane reaction to a set of insane circumstances. After all — why would I not feel a deep sense of tragedy when confronted by the fact that my country is dragging our ecosystem into a chasm of irreversible climate change? And should people not be kept up at night by anxiety or vague, urgent, instincts that something is deeply wrong with how all of us are expected to get up, clock in at work, come home, watch TV, drink, consume, & repeat? And are feelings of sadness, guilt, or anxiety inappropriate when tens of thousands of our human family members are killed by weapons manufactured just down the road from our homes? Is a person truly “sick” because they become convinced this is not at all how it is supposed to be or that their reality is being shaped by irrational forces beyond their knowledge & control? These are important questions to consider — because maybe they’re right. Maybe, like Alice finding herself suddenly in Wonderland, it really is the world — not them — that has gone insane. In solidarity, John Laurits

Over the years we’ve done our fair share of tequila shots, but one of the most memorable was at the Casita Bar in London. While we’ve had sangrita (“little blood”), made from pomegranate, red chili, fresh orange juice and fresh tomatoes, to accompany our tequila, it was nothing compared the Verdita (“little green”) that we experienced at Casita. Casita’s main barman, Will Foster, brought the verdita back from Mexico. ” The tradition comes from the south of Mexico and was created on their flag day. One would take a shot of the verdita, followed by the tequila, and finishing with the sangrita, representing the colours of the Mexican flag,” explains Will. The recipe is fairly simple (and the spiciness can be adjusted based on how many peppers you use): Verdita 1 bunch of cilantro (a bunch is basically a handful) 1/2 bunch of mint 3 green jalapenos (this can be scaled back if it’s too spicy) 1 can of pasteurised pineapple juice (Dole’s 46 oz can works perfectly) Blend the mix, and then strain it and chill well before serving. Unlike the sangrita, which is meant to be sipped alongside tequila, the Verdita is meant to be shot immediately before you drink a shot of tequila. The experience is so tasty and refreshing, once you try it, you may retire your lime and salt accompaniment all together in favor of the Verdita! While not everyone can make it out to Casita to try Will’s amazing Verdita, we encourage you to give it a go at home. It’s a fairly easy recipe and the result is simply delicious.

This is a bull elephant firmly establishing why it is he, and not the lion, who is king of beasts. The elephant's penis is not only massive but prehensile. As we watched in baffled amusement (and the faintest tinge of inadequacy), he used his penis to prop himself up (as in the photo), swat flies from his side and scratch himself on his stomach. David Attenborough never showed us that... There's good reason for elephants to have prehensile penises. It's hard enough for a six-tonne animal to get into the right position for sex, let alone having to do the rhythmic thrusting that's required. So he let's his penis do all the work for him. You'll also note the dark stain behind his eye - that's a leak from his temporal gland. It means that this male was entering musth, the period when their testosterone shoots through the roof and they get incredibly horny and aggressive. We tried to drive round this male and he basically charged us. Tramply doom was averted by our driver who slammed his palm against the car door as hard as he could. The elephant stopped and huffed and puffed. We did our best to not soil ourselves. This picture gives you an idea of how close he was. After a seemingly infinite standstill, he moved aside, extended his enormous penis and had a wee. It's amazing how terror can convert into comedy so quickly...

McGinn, 21, netted a pair of goals during Charlotte’s two road victories last weekend against Iowa. The Fergus, Ont., native has totaled 17 goals and 12 assists (29 points) in 79 games for the Checkers since turning professional. He totaled 172 points (93g, 79a) in 227 career Ontario Hockey League (OHL) games for Guelph between 2010 and 2014, helping the Storm reach the Memorial Cup championship game in 2014. Carolina’s second-round selection (47th overall) in the 2012 NHL Draft, McGinn (6’0”, 185 lbs.) is the younger brother of Buffalo Sabres forward Jamie McGinn and Syracuse Crunch (AHL) forward Tye McGinn. Pesce, 20, earned a pair of assists during Charlotte’s opening weekend sweep of Iowa. The Tarrytown, NY, native is in his first full professional season after completing a three-year career at the University of New Hampshire with 43 points (11g, 32a) in 110 games. Pesce (6’3”, 200 lbs.) was selected by the Hurricanes in the third round (66th overall) of the 2013 NHL Draft, and made his professional debut with Charlotte in April, notching one assist in four games.

Image: Cherezoff/Shutterstock Samsung, the most popular smartphone maker in the world, left millions of customers vulnerable to hackers after it let expire a domain that was used to control a stock app installed on older devices, security researchers say. If you own an older Samsung smartphone, chances are you have a stock app designed to recommend other popular apps named S Suggest installed on it. The company says it discontinued S Suggest in 2014, and it recently let one of the domains used to control the app—ssuggest.com—expire, according to a security researcher who took over the domain. By letting the domain expire, Samsung effectively gave anyone willing to register it a foothold inside millions of smartphones, and the power to push malicious apps on them, according to João Gouveia, the chief technology officer at Anubis Labs. Gouveia says he took over the domain Monday. In a call with Motherboard after this story was first published, Samsung disputed the researchers' claims. The company said that although the domain was taken over, control of the domain "does not allow you to install malicious apps, it does not allow you to take control of users' phones." Read more: Samsung's Android Replacement Is a Hacker's Dream Gouveia said that in just 24 hours, he saw 620 million "check ins," or connections, from around 2.1 million unique devices. S Suggests has a bunch of permissions, including rebooting the phone remotely and installing apps or packages. "Someone with bad intentions could have grabbed that domain and to nasty things to the phones," Gouveia told Motherboard. The permissions that S Suggests has. (Image: João Gouveia) If a hacker, instead of Gouveia, had taken over the domain, they could've pushed backdoored or malicious apps directly to millions of Samsung cellphones, according to Ben Actis, an independent security researcher who has studied Android. "They fucked up," Actis told Motherboard, referring to Samsung. "The app can definitely install other apps." Given that Samsung lost control of the domain, he added, "someone malicious could install whatever they wanted." Since the domain is now under the control of Gouveia, Samsung customers with S Suggest on their phones have nothing to worry about (although their phones are likely running old and vulnerable versions of Android). Also, Gouveia told Motherboard that he's willing to give the domain back. "Hopefully they won't lose it again ;)," he said. But this could've been much, much worse. And it's unclear why Samsung even ran the risk of hackers running their discontinued services that are still working for millions of users. For the company, this is yet another security embarrassment just a few weeks after a researcher revealed that Samsung's new mobile operating system, which is called Tizen, was so full of bugs that he defined it "the worst code I've ever seen." This story has been updated to include comment from Samsung, which disputes the security researchers' claims, and to clarify a quote from Ben Actis. The headline has been updated to attribute the claims to the researchers. Also, an earlier version of this story stated that Samsung was the second most popular smartphone maker in the world, while it is actually the first, according to market share data. Get six of our favorite Motherboard stories every day by signing up for our newsletter.

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) - Breaking Bad - Season 5, Episode 5 Photo: Ursula Coyote/AMC “We’re not gonna please everyone, we’re not gonna please everyone … This is what I keep telling myself so I can sleep at night,” Vince Gilligan laughed last month, even though he wasn’t exactly joking. When he spoke to Vulture, he was putting the finishing touches on the story for the third to last episode, getting very close to tackling the series finale (the show’s last stretch of eight episodes airs on AMC later this year). The writers room had gotten “a little schizophrenic,” said Gilligan: They’ve been taking twice as long as normal, or about three and a half weeks, to break each of these concluding episodes, and rather than building from the ground up, they’ve had to do a little reverse-engineering to arrive where they must by the end. All of which is to say, he’s more frazzled than usual, anxiously working to tie things up beautifully. “It’s going to be polarizing no matter how you slice it,” Gilligan said, “but you don’t want 10 percent to say it was great and 90 percent to say it sucked ass. You want those numbers to be reversed.” Without giving anything away (would anyone really want that?), he took some time to download ten things on his mind as he heads into the homestretch. 1. The evolution of Walt’s fate. The metamorphosis of the sweet but sickly chemistry teacher into totally corrupted drug kingpin has made Walter White one of the most dynamic characters on TV, and just as he’s changed through the seasons, so too has Gilligan’s idea of how his saga would end. “I had this strange confidence in the beginning that I had an idea [for the ending] that was sound,” he said of Walt’s fate. “But I look back at the life of the series and realize I cycled through so many possible endings, it would be disingenuous to say I had always had it figured out. It has evolved in the last five years and probably has some evolving left to do.” He’s planted flags along the way to help steer the direction but still reserves the right to change course, even with two episodes left to go. “I read interviews with showrunners all the time who say, ‘I know exactly where this thing is headed.’ I always find that very interesting, and I don’t doubt them for a minute. It’s just I can’t see my way clear to do that because the characters in Breaking Bad are in a state of constant change by design,” he said. “When a character will be a different person five or six or ten or sixteen episodes from now, it’s hard to predict the future.” 2. How Casablanca got it exactly right. In terms of nailing the end, Gilligan says he and the writers don’t talk about TV — they talk movies. And for him, Casablanca remains “pretty perfect.” “No one gets everything they wanted. The guy doesn’t get the girl, but he has the satisfaction of knowing she wants him. And he doesn’t get her because he has to save the free world. What better ending is there than that?” Gilligan said. “I’m not saying we’re going to approach that or reach in that direction. Our story doesn’t line up [with Casablanca]. But we’re looking for that kind of satisfaction.” 3. His time on The X Files. Gilligan was still on the staff of The X Files when the sci-fi series reached its highly anticipated finale, but as a self-described “monster-of-the-week” guy, he says he never had to worry about making sure the conspiracies were synching. (He wrote the show’s penultimate episode “Sunshine Days,” set in The Brady Bunch house, and it had nothing to do with any of the overarching story lines.) “I sort of watched from afar as Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz broke these mythology episodes, and they always made my head hurt like, Man, how do you link this and that? Then, of course, I wind up on this insanely hyperserialized show. I should have paid more attention back then.” 4. Going back to the pilot. Ah, yes, Walt in his skivvies. The writers have spent a lot of time going back over that first episode, which began with Walt’s 50th-birthday party and the discovery that he had cancer, and ended with his partnership with small-time dealer Jesse Pinkman, concocting the sweetest meth and killing a pair of dealers after his recipe. “Are there echoes of the beginning that we should have in the end? There’s a certain kind of circularity that might be pleasing,” Gilligan said. “We think a lot about that, in fact.” 5. Henry Mancini. Gilligan recently read an old interview with the composer in which he was asked about the type of music he liked. Mancini said he liked best the ones that built in a feeling of inevitability. “He said something like, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘I think the best music compositions are the ones that surprise you in moments, but in others, you feel like you know where you’re going, and there’s this feeling of satisfaction that derives from that inevitability. In a sense, inevitability, realized,’” Gilligan said. “That really stuck with me because that’s what I think we do on this show. We try to have a surprise around every corner but inevitability as well. The opposite of surprise. It’s something that I feel should and will be an important component to the end of the series. To me, that is an interesting thing and a thing to be embraced, that feeling of ‘I think I know where this is going.’” 6. Bringing Walt to justice — or not. “Of course he needs to go, and Jesse needs to pull the trigger!” “No, the cancer will return, and he’ll die alone.” “No. He’ll outsmart everyone again and go on the run.” This is the endless debate fans imagine the writers having as they attempt to answer Breaking Bad’s Most Important Question: Will Walt get away with it? Yet, Gilligan says that back-and-forth isn’t happening. “Not at all, really,” he said. “I’m very cornball in my own view of the world. It just makes sense to me that bad people should get punished and good people should be rewarded. I know it doesn’t work like that in real life, but there’s always that yearning.” But that desire for comeuppance doesn’t apply to the made-up world he’s created, even though justice may in fact be inevitable. “Oddly enough, I don’t feel any real pressure to pay off the characters, morally speaking.” 7. One final shout-out to The Godfather. One of Gilligan’s favorite ways to describe Walt’s descent is to say that he’s gone from Mr. Chips to Scarface, but there’s been far more Godfather along the way. In the mid-season finale, Walter closed the garage door in Jesse’s face, much in the same way Michael shut Kay out of his office, and his meticulously timed murder of Mike’s remaining guys echoed the Godfather’s baptism montage in which Michael eliminated his enemies. “We crib from them shamelessly,” Gilligan told me. “We’re always asking ourselves, How does this relate to The Godfather? In the finale, we may give even a more overt tip of the hat.” 8. Giving every character their due. Not counting baby Holly, the show has nine major characters left, including Walt’s new recruits Lydia and Todd. Gilligan says that that occasionally feels like “one or two too many.” “Sometimes it’s hard to give them all their due and make them all wrap up beautifully. That’s another big fear I have,” he said. One outcome that’s probably safe to assume? Saul will survive. “I like to think of Saul as a cockroach in the best possible way,” Gilligan said. “This is a guy who’s going to survive while the rest of us have been nuked into annihilation. He’ll be the worst-dressed cockroach in the world.” 9. Hank’s triumph. It took 54 episodes, but in September’s midseason finale, Hank finally locked in that his brother-in-law was Heisenberg. Hank wasn’t conceived as the man to bring Walt down; Gilligan initially said he needed a boisterous alpha-male foil for the meek meth cook. But Hank revealed himself to be if not smarter than Walt, then more doggedly persistent. And who knows if he’ll really get to take down Heinsenberg, but the playing field has been leveled. “We discovered Hank is very, very good at his job,” Gilligan said. “You know, I love the TV show Columbo. Hank is like a postmodern shout-out to Columbo.” 10. Finality. There will be no Breaking Bad movie. Episode 62 is it, folks. How many ways can Gilligan say it? “Rightly or wrongly, there will be a conclusive ending,” he told me. “Our story from the beginning has been designed to be close-ended. It’s very much designed to have a beginning, middle, and end and then to exist no more.”

Mohamad Bazzi (@BazziNYU), a Lebanese-American journalist, is the former Middle East bureau chief for Newsday. He is currently teaching journalism at New York University, and writing a book on the proxy wars between Saudi Arabia and Iran. In early July, as his negotiators were working around the clock in Vienna to reach an agreement with world powers on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was back in Tehran recalling an event that happened nearly 1,400 years ago. In a speech, Rouhani invoked the historic compromise made in the year 661 by his namesake, Imam Hassan, Shiism’s second imam, to step down and prevent a new war between the then-emerging Sunni and Shiite sects. “Imam Hassan made an important decision during difficult circumstances that could have destroyed the Muslim community," Rouhani said, "and led to a long period of bloodshed.” Rouhani wasn’t alone in citing Imam Hassan's legacy. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei —who has final say in all political and national security matters—also began to invoke the imam in setting the stage for Tuesday’s compromise, calling it a policy of “heroic flexibility.” By repeating this term several times, Khamenei reached back into Shiite history to offer theological rationales for the prospect of a rapprochement with Iran’s Western adversaries. Story Continued Below It is striking that, throughout the past 12 years of on-and-off negotiations with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program, Iranian leaders have used references to Imam Hassan and his younger brother Imam Hussein—and the two historical models for settling conflicts that these figures represent—to signal their intentions, both hardline and soft, and provide theological justifications for their actions. Hassan’s path emphasizes compromise (or, to its hardline critics, accommodation), while Hussein chose rebellion and martyrdom. These two trends defined Shiite history—and they are an important part of the religious and ideological debates within the Iranian regime. Iranian leaders struggled with the two models, and how they should apply to the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, since Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, instigating the devastating, eight year Iran-Iraq war. Back then it was the hawkish imam who was cited. By the mid-1980s, after five years of war and international isolation, the Iranian economy was reeling. In 1979, the first year after the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s oil revenue was about $23 billion; by 1986, it had dropped to a record low of $6.2 billion. The revolution’s hardline leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was under pressure by some of his advisers to accept a United Nations-brokered ceasefire, partly to avert an economic disaster. For several years, Khomeini refused to budge, choosing the example of Hussein. In 1986, he dismissed Hassan’s compromise, saying: “Peace was imposed on Imam Hassan, but we should not accept the same agreement.” But as the economic crisis became more dire, some of Khomeini’s advisers reframed the argument, noting that the choice was between preserving the Islamic Republic or prolonging the revolution: the Iran-Iraq conflict was threatening the viability of the Iranian system. As hardliners and moderates around Khomeini debated the paths of Hassan and Hussein, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was then speaker of the Iranian Parliament (and later became president), championed a compromise based on the models of both imams: a series of military victories that would be followed by a political settlement. Rafsanjani and his allies, who at the time included Rouhani, promoted the idea that while the path of martyrdom set by Hussein required courage, so did the model of peace chosen by Hassan. In the end, after eight years of mobilizing Iranians with religious fervor and intense nationalist rhetoric, Khomeini accepted the ceasefire, saying he had been forced “to drink from a poisoned chalice.” Today—after Iran, the United States and five other world powers reached an agreement to limit Tehran’s nuclear program for more than a decade in return for lifting international sanctions—Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Khamenei, can claim to have emulated Imam Hassan’s path of compromise. He’s chosen pragmatic politics over revolutionary ideals as his legacy. *** So who was Imam Hassan, the cleric whose spirit appears to infuse the new rapprochement between Iran and the West? The origins of the Shiite-Sunni conflict go back to the period after the Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632. A schism arose over who would succeed him as caliph, the political and military leader of Islam. One faction argued that the prophet’s heir should be chosen from among his closest companions. The other faction insisted that succession must preserve the prophet’s bloodline, and since Muhammad did not have any surviving sons when he died, his rightful heir was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali. The Shi’at, or Partisans, of Ali emerged out of this movement. The struggle over the caliphate led to the first fitna, or civil war, between Muslims—a term (also meaning sedition) that is still invoked today to warn of sectarian divisions. The prophet’s followers convened a shura, or consultation, to choose his successor. They passed over Ali and chose one of Muhammad’s companions instead. Ali was passed over twice more, until finally becoming the fourth caliph of Islam in 656. He was assassinated five years later, in the ongoing struggle over who would rule the faithful. The mantle of leadership of the Shiite community then passed to Ali’s eldest son, Hassan. His supporters urged him to lay claim to the caliphate established by a rival leader, Muawiyah, whom Shiites regarded as a usurper.

I recently witnessed my father purchase a BMW convertible from a sexy little automobile barista for a cool $55 grand. Before this transaction he touched the gray out of his hair and picked up a mistress. A clichéd mid-life crisis. Mom hit menopause about three weeks ago, and his job is about to go half way to nowhere. I don't really blame him. It seems sort of walking Id, but in the right way. But his crisis sheds light on my own. I recently accepted a sweetish position at a prestigious consulting firm, where I tell a bunch of government employees what to do despite lacking the slightest bit of experience. I gained this distinction because of a degree from a well-to-do university that US News and World today digs as "a serene, tree-lined 140-acre campus next to the eclectic north end" of a morally bankrupt city of sin. AIDS-ridden and shit. Seriously. I am told that I am lucky. I’ve got dental and a job with benefits and a very decent salary, so good for me. But I don't see the endgame. Qui bono, right? Let me let you in to what it took to get me into this twentysomething, reality check that closely resembles receiving a swift testicle kick. I had to get my love to dump me. That proved fairly easy. I just had to loosely lose my respect for her and her path. Think less and less of her. Question her commitment to me. Ask her to hit the gym. Venture into the liberal sodomy sex stuff when I got bored with the standard, missionary, lights-off sex. I gave up my idealistic venture of writing and romantic dreams of novelistic grandeur; difference-making through the words; fame, fortune; selling my pair of man bits for a depressing wardrobe of one navy, one black, one gray, and a couple of stylish pin-striped suits. This tenuous trade-off unquestionably led to a SUV, new IBM laptop computer, and an inescapable series of PowerPoint training sessions. I delved head-deep into a cocaine routine that seems quite controllable and yuppie. A steady chewing tobacco regiment that spares my lungs and allows me to keep up with yoga and sends my pancreas spinning, aching from a possible uncontrollable cellular growth. But I can run five miles, get new ass, and maintain a slightly higher-than-average sex appeal. The salary doesn't hurt that either. It amazes me how much women love dental insurance. I gave up listening to new music and reading Hemingway for an iTunes playlist of Pearl Jam's "Nothingman" and the entire Nevermind album. Ray Charles and Warren Zevon make appearances. So do the Counting Crows, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Jason Mraz—weird. I fantasize about banging my roommate's girlfriend. They don't fuck or have the sex. They make love and wash each other's dishes after dinners, but she has great tits. Magically perfect, but I've never seen them. I wonder if the topless car will save my father. I wonder if the Skoal will save me. I won't get back together with that girl that I loved, and that's okay for now, but the fact that the emotional mercy lay never came to fruition still bothers me. This seems to be a violent reaction to the uncontrollable force that defines change. I think a hollow feeling lives in my father's gut. A knowledge that the finite number of days he has to drive fast and fuck dirty are fewer than they are many. Just as The Man traded my number of drunken evenings and delusions of invincibility for conference calls and the growing reality of responsibility, I reach back and try to hold on to what I know, even though it doesn't even feel good or right. This is what I've learned thus far: 1. I won't steal your girlfriend from you, but I will clean up your mess when she cries on my arm, so don't get mad about it. 2. When I clean that shit up, do me a favor make sure that she shaves. I hate the pubis when I head to the Southland. 3. But I guess the larger question bears asking: Why, if I see this inevitable demise for all of us in our early 20s, can't you? Leaving me to clean up your problems, and you mad as hell? I'm a little under-the-weather and challenge Oprah to commission me for the Book Club. I'd rock that shit.

On his radio show yesterday, Mark Levin rightfully blasted the media for spinning the Iowa caucuses. They are, he explained, pretending that Marco Rubio was the winner of the night because he got a larger share of the vote than projected. He did. But that does not make him a winner, Levin said: Rubio finished third... which is exactly where the polls had him. Yes, he received more voters, but he placed as expected. As Levin pointed out yesterday, the real winner of the Iowa caucuses was Ted Cruz. Not only did he perform better than anticipated by finishing first rather than second, and not only did he get 4% more than projected in the RCP average, he also took on the ethanol lobby, the MSM, and the establishment... and he walked away with more voters than any Republican candidate in Iowa's history. That's the real story here, not that the establishment favorite -- who was supported by establishment politicians, whose Super PACs relentlessly went after Cruz, who was pushed continuously by the media -- ended up finishing third, but with a higher percentage than expected.

Square Enix is known to drop a few surprises now and then, but I can honestly say no one saw this one coming. The company just announced at the Gamescom convention that they will be releasing Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition for iOS, Android, and Windows 10 this fall. The game will follow the story of the original game and will be released in 10 chapters, with the first being free to try. It remains to be seen how much will be changed in the process, but the most obvious difference so far is in the game’s art design. You know what? I’ll let the trailer speak for me here. Well… that’s… that’s certainly a thing, isn’t it? Square is apparently hoping that the new art style and the user-friendly new touch controls will give the game more appeal for casual players. All of the characters from the adult-pants version are supposedly included, and all the thrills, spills, and chills of the narrative will also be packed in. Hm. I mean, I know some people that liked Final Fantasy XV, but I’m not sure it was for the story. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. As mentioned, the game will be available this fall worldwide, which puts it anywhere from late September to mid-December. All 10 chapters will be immediately available at launch, with the first being free to try and the others being paid IAPs. The last time Square used this kind of model for a mobile game was with Final Fantasy Dimensions, and I suppose that turned out okay-ish. Anyway, we’ll have more for you on Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition when we get more details. For now, look forward to dozens of hours of fun staring at that… interesting interpretation of Gladiolus.

Wild Rose Restaurant The Wild Rose Restaurant is a charming space with mountain views. Homemade wood-fired bread and pizza meet seasonal salads and classic grilled plates from a world-influenced menu. Seafood creations come from the nearby Maine coast, guaranteeing the freshest, most delicious seafood in all of New Hampshire. Our famous Baked Lobster dish is a favorite special item with our summer guests, check out the recipe here! After dinner, save room for a crème bruleè, chocolate bomb or one of our other indulgent desserts. In addition to the valley's finest cuisine, our staff presents you with friendly, personal service. There's a reason why North Conway's residents come to our restaurant. There's no better place for dining in North Conway. Enjoy the tastiest restaurant in North Conway, NH without leaving the Manor. Once our patio, now an ideal dining spot, our restaurant welcomes you to dine and chat. Wide windows bask the dining room in natural sunlight, while also granting you wide valley views. The Wild Rose Restaurant will treat you to delicious flavors, from signature sourdough pizzas invented by the Manor's culinary team to a classic, hearty breakfast. There’s a reason we are regarded as one of the best restaurants in New Hampshire. We are committed to upholding culinary excellence, and work hard to ensure each guest has a delightful experience dining at the Wild Rose restaurant. When you book direct, you'll receive complimentary dinner and breakfast at our North Conway restaurant. A deal with this value simply doesn't exist anywhere else in the valley. Enjoy food that even the locals relish when you stay at Stonehurst Manor. View Our Menus Be sure to click "More Menus" on the left side of the page to view ALL Manor menus including Holiday Menus. Click links below to view menu PDFs. Breakfast is served daily from 7:30 – 10 am Library Martini Lounge opens daily at 4:30 pm Dinner is served nightly from 5:30 - 9:30 pm HOLIDAY MENU Valentine's Day - Choose our three-course holiday dinner or you may order from our regular dinner menu served from 5:30 - 9:30 pm. Wild Rose Restaurant Pasta Drying Rack Restaurant Prime Rib Plate Restaurant Plate Pizza Beer Restaurant Wild Rose Seafood Restaurant Sourdough Bread

Two Texas high-school football players stood with athletes across the country against police brutality and discrimination by protesting during the national anthem. Immediately after, they were told to hand in their uniforms. Sophomore Cedric Ingram-Lewis and his cousin Larry McCullough were kicked off their team at Victory & Praise Christian Academy, the Houston Chronicle reported. The pair didn't play in the Friday night game for their private church-affiliated football program in the Houston suburb Crosby. Ingram-Lewis raised his fist during the anthem while McCullough took a knee. Coach Ronnie Mitchem kicked them off the team when the anthem ended. Local high school football players kicked off team after protest during anthem (by @chroncoleman) https://t.co/mATIDFymj3 via @houstonchron — Matt Young (@Chron_MattYoung) September 30, 2017 "He told us that disrespect will not be tolerated," Lewis told the Houston Chronicle. "He told us to take off our uniform and leave it there." The coach told the Chronicle that he wanted players to participate in protests by kneeling after a touchdown or distributing pamphlets about the issues they're calling attention to—not by taking a knee during the anthem, like players across the country. "That was my point of view," Mitchem told the Chronicle. "Like I said, I'm a former Marine. That just doesn't fly and they knew that. I don't have any problem with those young men. We've had a good relationship. They chose to do that and they had to pay for the consequences." NFL protests against police brutality started over a year ago with Colin Kaepernick, but escalated last week when President Donald Trump ranted against the mostly black athletes protesting. Trump said that NFL owners should fire athletes who protested and called players who knelt during the anthem a "son of a bitch." "I'm definitely going to have a conversation because I don't like the way that that was handled," Lewis's mother, Rhonda Brady, told the Chronicle. "But I don't want them back on the team. A man with integrity and morals and ethics and who truly lives by that wouldn't have done anything like that."

The Medical Council of India (MCI) has been repeatedly criticized for providing opaque accreditation to aspiring medical colleges in India. Many of its members have been accused of taking bribes in order to fast-track accreditation. Bribes reduce the legitimacy of all accredited colleges and thereby compromise medical college quality overall in the country. Considering India’s dearth of medical professionals, quality medical colleges are needed to fill the growing healthcare shortages. Experts at NITI Aayog have proposed replacing the compromised MCI with a new National Medical Commission (NMC), outlined in a draft Bill known as the National Medical Commission Bill of 2016. In a new research paper, we look into this proposed Bill and suggest recommendations that would raise the integrity and overall quality of accreditation of medical education in India. According to the World Directory of Medical Schools, in 2016, India, with 343 medical colleges, had the largest number of operational allopathic medical schools in the world. Brazil, was a distant second, with 193 medical colleges, and China, with a population comparable to India’s, had less than half the number. Our analysis indicates that within the next three years, 76 new medical colleges will gain the “recognized" status from the MCI. It is imperative that India ensures that all these medical colleges meet a basic minimum quality standard. Structural differences between the proposed NMC and MCI are enormous. The NMC would split the selection, advising, and actual accreditation process into three separate boards. By dividing power, the hope is to create a system of checks and balances. However, as per the current Bill, all members of the accreditation board are supposed to be ex-officio members of the advisory board. This defies the logic of good governance. Instead of creating different boards to watch and observe each other, the NMC would instead create a pair of Siamese twins—two different heads, but for the most part, a single potentially corrupt body. For this reason, we recommend removing all members of the accreditation board from the advisory board. The accreditation board is not given direct jurisdiction over the accreditation process. Rather, it is given authority over four sub-boards that look into the four core areas of accreditation: undergraduate, postgraduate (PG), registrar of medical professionals, and compliance. The compliance wing is supposed to hire a third party to check that colleges meet standards set by the other sub-boards. We believe that the monopolistic nature of this service will produce unnecessary bureaucracy, stifle smooth accreditation and possibly raise the spectre of the old MCI all over again. In its stead, we recommend the creation of four regional medical councils. Creating these regional options will lead to competition and an increase in the quality of accreditation services overall. There already exist state medical councils which can be combined for the purpose. There is a great deal of variation in the quality of state medical councils across states. Competition for the accreditation business could ignite life into these bodies. The World Health Organization has put out several drafts on standards for basic medical education, postgraduate medical education (PME), and continuing professional development. We believe the NMC would greatly benefit from being tied to these best practices. Countries like China and Thailand have already done so to the benefit of their medical education establishment. Although the standards set by the PME call for schools to balance teaching and research, the Bill needs to incentivize research. The dean of Ganga Ram Institute of Medical Education and Research found that the faculty at over 57% of medical colleges in India have published no peer-reviewed articles. Research is fundamental to PG medical education. The PG sub-board should only accredit schools that establish a research-based hierarchy for its faculty and assess students on their research. The current MCI rules and guidelines prohibit qualified MBBS doctors without a PG degree from performing procedures such as ultrasound and interpreting chest X-rays. The NMC should revisit these rigid regulations to raise the effective availability of qualified doctors in India. The other factor contributing to the shortage of medical doctors is the emigration of physicians. India is the largest source of physicians in the US and the UK, and the second and third largest in Australia and Canada. This brain drain is especially expensive because many of them are trained in colleges subsidized by the government. It is within the purview of the NMC Bill to recommend a policy to limit emigration of newly graduated doctors. Thailand successfully adopted such a measure in 1972. Their policy mandates three years of government work for all post-graduates. The first year is spent in provincial hospitals, while the second and third years are spent in rural or community hospitals. Statistical evidence indicates that this policy limited brain drain, and reduced medical professional density disparity between rural and urban areas. Closer home, Kerala implemented compulsory rural service for all MBBS and PG doctors studying in government medical colleges as a part of Arogyakeralam, its version of the National Rural Health Mission. Shamika Ravi is a senior fellow at Brookings India. This is the first in a four-part series on reforms in the healthcare sector. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

Did You Know That Professional Writing Is Dying And Only Taxing The Public To Pay Writers Can Save It from the it's-not-really-'support'-when-you-demand-it dept By his own account, Morrison is also being driven out of business by the ominously feudal economics of 21st-century literature, "pushed into the position where I have to join the digital masses," he says, the cash advances he once received from publishers slashed so deep he is virtually working for free. And not only them: From the heights of the literary pantheon to the lowest trenches of hackery, where contributors to digital "content farms" are paid as little as 10 cents for every 1,000 times readers click on their submissions, writers of every stature are experiencing the same pressure. Authors are losing income as sales shift to heavily discounted, royalty-poor and easily pirated ebooks. Journalists are suffering pay cuts and job losses as advertising revenue withers. Floods of amateurs willing to work for nothing are chasing freelance writers out of the trade. And all are scrambling to salvage their livelihoods as the revolutionary doctrine of "free culture" obliterates old definitions of copyright. The economic trajectory of writing today is "a classic race to the bottom," according to Morrison, who has become a leading voice of the growing counter-revolution – writers fighting fiercely to preserve the traditional ways. "It looks like a lot of fun for the consumer. You get all this stuff for very, very cheap," he says. But the result will be the destruction of vital institutions that have supported "the highest achievements in culture in the past 60 years." Many will cheer, Morrison admits, including the more than one million new authors who have outflanked traditional gatekeepers by “publishing” their work in Amazon’s online Kindle store. “All these people I’m sure are very happy to hear they’re demolishing the publishing business by creating a multiplicity of cheap choices for the reader,” Morrison says. “I beg to differ.” The only solution ultimately is a political one. As we grow increasingly disillusioned with quick-fix consumerism, we may want to consider an option which exists in many non-digital industries: quite simply, demanding that writers get paid a living wage for their work. Do we respect the art and craft of writing enough to make such demands? If we do not, we will have returned to the garret, only this time, the writer will not be alone in his or her cold little room, and will be writing to and for a computer screen, trying to get hits on their site that will draw the attention of the new culture lords – the service providers and the advertisers. Another day, another article written on behalf of the disrupted, bemoaning the way things are, romanticizing the way things were and recoiling in horror from the touch of the "masses." This one's a particular treat, though, seeing as it's written by Ewan Morrison, the author whose ACTA "expertise" resulted in the " Most Clueless Column Ever ." This article's headline is just as shocking: " There will be no more professional writers in the future ." Morrison, sees the direness of his particular situation and has boldly taken it upon himself to speak for the entirety of professional writers, rather than just writers in his particular situation. This is never a good idea.Morrison fails to specify how many dollars separate "virtually" from "actually," but one is left to imagine that the number is distressingly low. If you're looking to sell books, there are many ways to sell books. If you're looking forto sell books and that's no longer breaking even, then the problem isn't the rest of the world. The problem is the method that no longer works.And this phrase: "...where I have to join the digital masses." Heaven forfend! How awful. Just the sheer thought of having to mix with general population... [Pause briefly to prevent eyes from rolling completely out of their sockets.] Get over yourself.Now, in articles bemoaning the current state of art, media, content, whatever, it's only a matter of time before the ebook-bashing starts. In this case, we only have to wait until the fourth paragraph.Ebooks: "heavily discounted, royalty-poor and easily pirated." Weird. That doesn't sound like ebooks to me. The ebooks I'm familiar with have better royalty rates at lower price points and any "discounting" is done by the author, usually to increase sales (and royalties) rather than as some sort fiscally self-destructive "cry for help"."Easily pirated?" Name another form of digital media that isn't. If you know you're going to be competing with free , it kind of makes sense tocharge trade paperback prices for something that fits on a micro-SD card with room to spare.Well, let me know how that fight turns out, Morrison. "Preserving traditional ways" certainly sounds like just the sort of technobabble needed to turn a generation raised on free social media, free cloud services, free news, free-to-play online games and free music into paying customers. If I were a betting man, I'd be putting my money on the "destruction of vital institutions." Of course, this "destruction" seems a lot less harrowing when you get a more objective definition of the word "vital."Of course you beg to differ, Morrison. This is competition. This is no longer a one-way funnel from publishers to book stores with gatekeepers on either end. This is a tsunami of change, covering how media is consumed, distributed and created. I wouldn't expect you to be thrilled, but I'd at least expect you to realize that you can't drag the past into the future. It's impossible. You can make angry statements and point fingers and fiercely guard what's left of your chosen field, or you can direct some of that energy towards moving forward and making the most of the new tools and services available.But Morrison's not interested in that. In a companion piece for the Guardian, Morrison paints an even bleaker picture . Citing the explosive growth of ebooks and the long tail phenomenon, he reaches the conclusion that the death of the professional author is a foregone conclusion. All that's left is to wait for the body to cool. Between piracy and ultra-low prices, there's no hope for the creative world (writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, etc.). He gives it about a "generation" before being an artist of any type will be unsustainable.But... he has a solution (or rather, the "only" solution):Really? This is a "solution?"He offers no further details, leaving this "political" solution open to interpretation. Does Morrison mean that artists should be supported by some sort of monthly stipend? Just fill out a form listing your occupation as "writer" or whatever and mail it in to the Department of Social Services or other relevant governing body and wait for your "artfare" check to show up once a month?Or is he suggesting some sort of bailout for publishing houses, record labels and any other part of the creative industry that's currently struggling? If so, good luck. Here in America, at least, most of the general public was against bailing out domestic manufacturers of automobiles, a physical product that's much more useful than a song, a book or a photograph. It's not impossible to get this sort of thing done if you're connected to the right politicians, but it's not going to make a large portion of your potential audience very happy.A bailout situation also lends itself to recurring transfusions of public money because, in most cases, it's just a stay of execution. The public didn't care whether or not GM had the opportunity to crank out another vehicle because they had plenty of other options. Don't delude yourself into thinking the same doesn't apply here. All those "millions" willing to do your job on the cheap will plug any holes you leave behind, Ewan.It's one thing to thing to try and push anti-piracy legislation through and hope that this will somehow increase sales. It's quite another to require the public to make up the difference via taxation. We already have enough discussions about using tax dollars (via the NEA) to fund art that some find offensive. Imagine doing this on a massive scale like the one Morrison suggests. Discussions would go far beyond shoving crufixes into jars of urine and cover just about every iteration in the creative industry.If you think that public money will flow uncontested, then you obviously don't know a thing about politicians. The minute the wind starts blowing unfavorably, you'll all be stuck writing safe, boring beach novels or risk having your funding yanked.Whatever Morrison's actual plan is, it's still going to boil down to the same thing: artifically propping up the remnants of an industry at the public's expense. This may get applause when preaching to the converted, but the people you really need on your side -- the consumers? All they'll see is someone yelling about how the world owes them a living. Filed Under: ewan morrison, living wage, predictions, publishing, taxation, writing

Be on the lookout for these 15 fugitives from Harris and Montgomery counties Santiago Gonzalez, 32, is wanted in Harris County on a charge of capital murder. Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office Santiago Gonzalez, 32, is wanted in Harris County on a charge of capital murder. Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Be on the lookout for these 15 fugitives from Harris and Montgomery counties 1 / 30 Back to Gallery Harris County authorities are looking for five fugitives, including four men and one woman. One of the men, Santiago Gonzalez, 32, is wanted on a charge of capital murder for his alleged involvement in a fatal shooting at a game room. At about 7:30 a.m. Aug. 5, 2012, Gonzalez was with two other men at a game room in the 7300 block of Interstate 10 in East Harris County. A witness told sheriff's deputies that she saw Gonzalez shoot a security guard in the head in the course of stealing money from the game room. He has not been arrested, according to law enforcement records. Other Harris County fugitives of the week include Ines Rocha, 28, who is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and Julio Davila, 32, who is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child. Also on Harris County's list are J.C. Pratt, 42, wanted on a charge of robbery and threats, and Mark Martin, 20, charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Anyone with information on the Harris County defendants is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477) or submit a tip though iWatchHarrisCounty. Montgomery County is seeking 10 fugitives, some of whom have been featured in earlier weeks. Shane Michael Dunn, 39, is charged with injury to a disabled individual; Robert Marion Russell, 25, is charged with possession of a controlled substance; and Buffy Marie Jacobs, 42, is charged with forgery from an elderly individual. Montgomery County is also looking for Dawn Slach-Campbell, 35, wanted on a charge of theft; Danielle Latrey Taylor, 30, is charged with murder; Eliud Xavier Garza, 22, is charged with injury to a disabled individual; and Amanda Destiny Milo, 18, is charged with burglary of a residence. Other Montgomery County fugitives are Michael Perry, 48, is wanted on a charge of possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance; Judy Ann Harrison, 40, is charged with possession of a controlled substance; and Shakola Antoinette White, 25, is charged with theft, with two or more previous convictions.

Despite a trio of parliamentary committees (ISC, STC and a joint select committee) criticizing the UK government’s draft surveillance legislation — and some committee members even calling for a complete rethink — the government is rushing ahead anyway. Today it has introduced a tweaked version of the IP bill to parliament, and reiterated that new legislation “needs to be in force” by 31 December this year. The Investigatory Powers Bill (IP bill) has been trailed as a necessary piece of legislation to plug so-called “capability gaps” for security and law enforcement agencies, and also as an overdue update to the legal framework around the use of such powers. While never explicitly mentioned by government, the 2013 disclosures by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden underlie the controversial attempt to put mass surveillance techniques that had been used for years by domestic security agencies (not always legally) on a secure legal footing. The Home Office has published the full text of the amended bill today, along with a clutch of documents relating to the proposed legislation, including codes of practice for the various powers. The move comes less than a month after the bill was savaged by the Intelligence and Security committee for having inconsistent and inadequate privacy protections, yet overly broad intrusive powers. You could say Home Secretary, Theresa May, is not for turning… The Home Office claims the revised bill and the “further explanatory material” it has published responds to “the vast majority of the recommendations” made by the trio of critical committees. Critics of the bill are saying the opposite — that the amended version of the bill does little to address fundamental concerns with the draft bill. And indeed, even further tightens the security screw in some instances — such as by extending police access to UK citizen’s web browsing records for specific crimes, as the Guardian has noted. Police will also be able to deploy hacking in cases involving a “threat to life” or missing persons. And police use of these powers does not require the so-called “double-lock” ministerial authorisation that other intercept warrants do require. In terms of the changes it has made in response to committee feedback, the government is saying it has “refined technical definitions” and published additional material such as the codes of conduct in the interests of increasing clarity about how powers in the bill will be used and why they are need. It also claims to have enhanced privacy safeguards — noting specifically that it has added additional protections for journalists and lawyers. On the web browsing records element of the legislation, it says it will “continue to work closely with industry to develop implementation plans for retaining internet connection records in response to recommendations from the Joint Committee and the Science and Technology Committee”. Internet connection records (or ISCs) refers to the requirement in the legislation that ISPs retain details on the websites accessed by users for the past 12 months. Industry concerns about the cost of implementing such a massive data capture system are clearly not going away. And the government’s early cost estimate for implementing ISCs (£247 million) looks unlikely to stand still. Introducing the revised bill in parliament today, May claimed recommendations from the committees had “provided the basis for the legislation being brought forward today”. Amendments to the draft legislation she specifically flagged up include a shorter period of time before urgent warrants that have been authorized solely by the Home Secretary must be retroactively reviewed by a judicial commissioner; the adding in of “statutory safeguards” to prevent domestic security agencies asking overseas partners to intercept comms where they do not have a warrant; and a degree of clarification on the bill’s encryption fudge — “to put beyond doubt that companies can only be asked to remove encryption that they themselves have applied (or has been applied on their behalf by a third party), and that they will not be asked to remove encryption where it is not practicable for them to do so”. However she also noted the government has rejected calls to eject bulk equipment interference warrants (aka mass hacking as a sanctioned state agencies investigatory technique) from the bill. “This is a key operational requirement for GCHQ,” she told parliament. “We have published a public case for the use of bulk powers which sets out why this power remains necessary.” The now published operational case for bulk EQ, as it’s known, and also bulk interception (aka mass surveillance) states that these are “foreign-focused powers” — allowing the security and intelligence agencies to “gather overseas-related communications of terrorists, serious criminals and state based threats in parts of the world where the UK may have a limited or no physical presence”. “Warrants for these powers must not be sought with the intention of acquiring the communications or private data of people in the UK,” it adds. (The key phrase there is of course ‘with the intention of’ — as is the case when you use a very large scoop to harvest anything in bulk you are not able to be discriminating, and so UK citizens’ data is going to end up being lifted in this dragnet… ) Another recommendation the government has rejected is the justification of “economic well-being”, linked to national security, as a purpose for which some of the powers set out in the bill can be used. “That is in line with the statutory purposes of the intelligence agencies and relevant European Directives,” said May. Now that the full text of the bill plus detailed documents pertaining to the proposed legislation are in the public domain there’s a crowdsourced scrutiny effort in train, with people tweeting out a series of observations that would appear to contradict government claims… https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/704678820763324417 Draft #IPBill said no enforcement against overseas companies for full range of powers – #IPBill contradicts that. pic.twitter.com/eFmmlVbv0L — Nick Pickles (@nickpickles) March 1, 2016 https://twitter.com/josephfcox/status/704675268695367680 https://twitter.com/e3i5/status/704674045531430912 People who would be allowed to hack your computer under the #IPBill pic.twitter.com/SY8xXYWzBR — sheriff of wokengham (@greatbiglizard) March 1, 2016 New Draft #IPBill's encryption clause—most contested by Apple—remains unchanged. 189(4)(c) is now simply 217(4)(c) pic.twitter.com/wxFspSvw9o — Thomas Rid (@RidT) March 1, 2016 Civil liberties organizations have also slammed the amended bill as lacking meaningful improvements, and called out the government for trying to rush the legislation through parliament. Eric King, Director of the Don’t Spy on Us pro-privacy and digital rights coalition, said in a statement: “Rather than a full redraft, we’ve been given cosmetic tweaks to a heavily criticised, deeply intrusive bill. “Reshuffling safeguards, without meaningfully improving protections, authorisations or oversight does nothing to address widespread concerns about mass surveillance. The unsettling absence of a robust, technical detailed, evaluation of those bulk powers means the case still hasn’t been made, and Parliament won’t have the information it needs to do it’s job.” “There simply isn’t time for proper scrutiny of all these powers in the timeframe proposed. More than 100 experts called on the Home Office to put on the brakes. The government must think again,” he added. Earlier today a group of MPs, academics, lawyers, digital rights campaigns and others also co-signed an open letter in the Telegraph calling on the government not to rush surveillance powers through parliament — and suggesting instead the government could split data retention powers into a separate bill to be dealt with this year, allowing “a comprehensive Investigatory Powers Act to follow next year after adequate consultation”. The Shadow Home Secretary, Labour’s Andy Burnham, has also said the party could withdraw its support for the IP bill unless the government allows for a longer period of scrutiny. “It needed to be considerably revised after three expert reports just a matter of weeks ago,” Burnham told The Independent on Sunday at the end of last month. “For Labour’s support, ministers must show they have listened to our calls for greater transparency, stronger safeguards and protection of people’s privacy. It is crucial that this Bill is not rushed and necessary time is given to consider these complex issues.” The UK’s third political party, the Liberal Democrats, has also warned they will not support a fast-tracked bill.