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Eat & Stay Mullichain Café Café Mullichain Café “Great coffee, fantastic atmosphere and chat to beat the band” are the promises at Martin and Emer O’Brien's café in this fine restored grain house - all this and a good riverside walk in a beautiful and tranquil setting. What more could anyone ask for? “Great coffee, fantastic atmosphere and chat to beat the band” are the promise at the café in this fine restored grain house at the pretty and historic riverside village of St Mullins, where owners Martin and Emer O’Brien also offer “fresh scones with the morning coffee and a read of the paper, smoked salmon and a glass wine for the lunch” All this and a good riverside walk in a beautiful and tranquil setting. What more could anyone ask for? Well, a cosy cottage perhaps. Luckily Martin and Emer also have some self-catering available in the restored courtyard – complete with scones and a bottle of wine awaiting guests on arrival. Upstairs, in the Loft, you’ll find paintings by local artists and books on mythology and Irish history. St Mullins is an important archaeological site, dating back to a monastery built by St Molig in the 7th century and both the holy well and graveyard are still in use. And the old grain store itself is living history; having formerly been used by the Grand Canal Company and then Odlums millers, it is great to see it in everyday use once more. Might also like Campile, Co. Wexford Café / Country House Mark and Emma Hewlett’s peaceful and relaxing late Georgian country house is set in seven acres of Heritage Gardens, including formal walled gardens. The house is elegantly and comfortably furnished, with a drawing room overlooking the Italian Loggia, an honesty ... Leighlinbridge, Co. Carlow Bar / Hotel / Restaurant The Lord Bagenal is beautifully situated on the River Barrow, with a fine harbour and marina right beside the inn and a pleasant riverside walk nearby. Although now a large hotel rather than the pub that is fondly remembered by many regular patrons, proprietor James Keh ... Waterford, Co. Waterford Hotel / Restaurant One of the country’s oldest hotels, this much-loved quayside establishment in the centre of Waterford has many historical connections - with Bianconi, for example, who established Ireland’s earliest transport system, and also Charles Stuart Parnell, who made ... Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny Hotel / Restaurant Formerly the Hibernian Bank, this handsome Georgian building has been restored to its former glory to become The Kilkenny Hibernian Hotel. The nine older rooms at the front are particularly spacious and furnished to a very high standard in keeping with the character of ... Duncannon, Co. Wexford Restaurant with Rooms Overlooking the picturesque fishing village of Duncannon, Aldridge Lodge is a modern stone-fronted dormer house with lovely views of the beach and mountains. It was our Newcomer of the Year in 2006 and, since then, Euro-Toques chef Billy Whitty and his partner Joanne Har ... Tullow, Co. Carlow Hotel / Restaurant In a lovely area of green and gently rolling hills and river valleys, the immaculate exterior of this modern hotel attached to the Christy O'Connor-designed championship course creates a good impression on arrival, a feeling quickly reinforced by friendly, helpful staff ... IRELAND GUIDE IPHONE APP V2.0 Quickly and easily find all the very best places to eat, drink & stay across the island of Ireland with the cool new Georgina Campbell's Ireland Guide iPhone Application (v 2.0 now available FREE with optional subscription elements that have a 30 day no-obligation free trial). BlackBerry App Blackberry mobile phone owners can quickly and easily find all the very best places to eat, drink & stay across the island of Ireland with the cool new Georgina Campbell's Ireland Guide Blackberry Application - have access to the most highly respected, trusted & critically acclaimed independent guide to Irish hospitality whenever you want, wherever you are! Samsung App Quickly and easily find all the very best places to eat, drink & stay across the island of Ireland with the cool new Georgina Campbell's Ireland Guide Samsung Bada Application - have access to the most highly respected, trusted & critically acclaimed independent guide to Irish hospitality whenever you want, wherever you are!

Monday, May 11, 2015 Genomics journal is about to embarrass itself with a special issue on junk DNA The journal Genomics is a journal devoted to the study of genomes. It describes itself like this ... Genomics is a forum for describing the development of genome-scale technologies and their application to all areas of biological investigation. As a journal that has evolved with the field that carries its name, Genomics focuses on the development and application of cutting-edge methods, addressing fundamental questions with potential interest to a wide audience. Our aim is to publish the highest quality research and to provide authors with rapid, fair and accurate review and publication of manuscripts falling within our scope. They claim that all submissiosn are subjected to rigorous peer review and only 25-30% of submissions are accepted for publication. The composition of genomes is important so it's no surprise that the journal is interested in publishing articles that address the junk DNA debate. In fact, it is so interested that it is going to devote a special issue to the subject for publication in February 2016. Prof James Shapiro Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Chicago jsha@uchicago.edu The field of genome evolution and population genetics has for the past half of a century assumed that genomic DNA can be divided into functional and non-functional (“junk”) regions. Experimental molecular science has found little evidence for this assumption. A majority of the noncoding parts of the human genome are transcribed, and numerous experimental researchers have now recognized an important functional role in the so called junk DNA regions, such as syn sites, lncRNA, psudogene transcripts, antisense transcripts, microRNA, and mobile elements. In fact, evidence for functional constraints on noncoding genome regions has long been recognized. New theoretical frameworks based on less arbitrary foundations have also appeared in recent years that can coherently account for the reality of far more functional DNAs, as well as all other major known facts of evolution and population genetics. Nonetheless, there still remains a large gap in opinions between bench scientists in experimental biology and those on the theory side in bioinformatics and population genetics. This special issue will aim to close that gap and provide a view of evidence from a perspective that all genome regions have (or can easily acquire) functionality. The special issue on the functionality of genome will focus on the following tentative topics: Theoretical foundation for all genome regions to be functional. It will cover both the theory and all major features of genome evolution. Functionalities associated with genome spatial organization in the nucleus Isocores and compositional constraints on genomes Genetic basis of complex traits and diseases focusing on the collective effects of normal genetic variations Cancer genomics Roles of repetitive DNA elements in major evolutionary transitions Correlations of genome composition and organismal complexity Epigenetics Evo Devo and extended synthesis Important dates: First submission date: July 1, 2015 Deadline for paper submissions: October 1, 2015 Deadline for final revised version: December 1, 2015 Expected publication: February 2016 Some of you will recognize the names of the guest editors. Jim Shapiro is one of the poster boys of Intelligent Design Creationism because he attacks evolutionary theory. He's one of the founders of the "The Third Way." Those guest editors will publish papers that "... provide a view of evidence from a perspective that all genome regions have (or can easily acquire) functionality." In other words, skeptics need not apply. The controversy is over the amount of junk DNA in genomes. There are two sides in this controversy. Many scientists think there is abundant and convincing evidence that most of our genome is junk. Other scientists think that most of our genome is functional. It looks like Genomics is only interested in hearing from the second group of scientists. That's why they appointed guest editors with an obvious bias. Those guest editors also happen to be skating very close to the edge of kookdom. John beats me to it. James Shapiro and Shi Huang are not skating close to the edge of kookdom. They're kooks, and this "special edition" has to exclude contrary evidence and pass off kooky speculations as "evidence" because these particular kooks have zero tolerance for criticism of their psychotic ravings. I had never heard of this journal before, which is surprising given that I am a genomicist. I looked it up, and its impact factor is 2.9. By comparison, the two major genomics journals (Genome Research and Genome Biology) have impact factors over 10. If nothing else, one can take solace that the papers in the issue are unlikely to be read or cited much. Elsevier is notorious for publishing many dubious or outright pseudoscientific journals. The titles speak for themselves: Journal of Homeopathy, EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, Chaos, Fractals, and Solitons, etc. I fail to see it as a problem for evolutionary theory. The " Third Way Scientists" still believe in evolution and none of them to my knowledge claim to believe in the first way. Where is the problem if any? Yeah, something along the lines of a certain BYU physics professor named Steven E. Jones who claimed that the 911 WTC was a Vatican/Zionist/Islamist/al Queda/Mossad/CIA inside job accomplished with demolition bombs. I understand he too was able to publish his peer-reviewed ravings in a not dissimilar "special educational" journal. Jibbers Crabst, you're going to publish a special issue on Junk DNA and the two editors you pick are Shi Huang and James Shapiro? It's like publishing a special issue on all the evidence proving Obama is a Muslim with guest editors Ted Cruz and the gun nut that lives at the end of the road. And Huang and Shapiro get to reject those who present evidence that Junk DNA exists? Yes, science in the past has always progressed by excluding evidence against a hypothesis. Look at all the great success stories where that worked so well before, like Inquisition v. Galileo, or Lysenko v. Darwin. Smashing strategy that. To be fair, I first show you my single best piece of evidence for the no junk side. It is the genetic equidistance result first found by Margoliash in 1963, which also happens to be the most remarkable result in molecular evolution since it directly triggered the now defunct concept of a universal molecular clock which in turn directly inspired Kimura to invent the Neutral theory (on Junk DNA theory). Kimura's (1968) primary argument was genetic load, even if he gave a lot of weight to the molecular clock argument after. The molecular clock is not even strictly a requirement of neutral theory - read what Nei has to say about that, for example. Plus King and Jukes (1969) laid out an intense array of biochemical evidence for the neutral theory that stands independently from the popgen arguments. Yes, this molecular equidistance stuff is very Michael Denton. There are a lot of old entries at TalkOrigins about Denton's misunderstandings of basic genetics. It's rather out of date, even among crackpots, so I haven't debated "molecular equidistance" in years. I have never once seen "molecular equidistance" presented as evidence for junk DNA nor for neutral theory. The neutrality of most mutations is an observational fact, at least in microbes and flies. Creationists say they don't disagree with observational science, they just disagree with origin science. That was never true; they always wind up trashing what they call observational science. I don't know if Shi Huang is a creationist, but he has a major problem with observational science. Still I'd like to ask him two questions. 1. The average human baby has ~130 novel mutations that its parents did not have. Do you think all of those 130 new imitations are NOT neutral? If they're all not neutral, do you think all 130 mutations are what, catastrophic? Intelligent Design creationists like William Dembski, Phillip Johnson etc. say all mutations are catastrophic. Do you think IDers are full of BS on that? Or do you agree with the IDers' "130 new catastrophes per baby born" hypothesis? 2. The African lungfish has 50x more DNA than we do and, while its mutation rate per generation may be lower, it still must have dozens of times more mutations than humans per baby fish. Do you think the African lungfish has dozens of times more catastrophes per baby than humans do? Or dozens of times more adaptive mutations per baby fish? If the latter, they're on their way to becoming a super race. Question 2 can be repeated for many other species with huge genomes. If Shi Huang is an opponent of Junk DNA, I expect him not to answer. They never do. I don't think gnomon's problem bears any resemblance to Denton's. His essential contention, as I understand it, is that most pairwise comparisons of protein sequences are saturated, i.e. randomized by multiple hits. And that differences in protein-sequence distances among species arise because more "complex" organisms have reduced numbers of residues free to vary. Thus humans are closer to chimps than orangutans not because a longer time has elapsed since their common ancestor but because chimps and humans are more complex than orangutans and have more invariant residues, thus reducing the maximum possible sequence difference at saturation. Which is crazy, but a different crazy from what you think. Ugh, more stupid Panglossian idealism! So cytochtome C oxidase and dozens of metabolic enzymes have far more constraints in humans and chimps than in... an orangutan? There goes ALL of molecular biology. Mol. biologists have mutated many proteins to death. We know how tolerant they are to mutation. Huang then has to throw out all the experimental observations ever made in molecular biology. For molecular biologists it's like: woke up, drank coffee, made a mutant, assayed its function. We know how tolerant proteins are to mutation and that's just talking about CODING regions! Then there's the megabase deletion mouse. This Panglossian idealism gets more and more bizarre the more you think about it. What about other species that are similar to each other? Is the Japanese tanuki genetically similar to the Chinese tanuki because tanukis are so complex, so they have a lot of evolutionary constraints and HAVE to be similar? Endless problems can be totted up. Within certain genera of frogs, one species has less DNA than humans and another species has far more, and the difference between the genome sizes within the genus is larger than the human genome. Doesn't Huang's hypothesis mean that huge variations in genomes is proof of ultra-simplicity? If you think frogs are super-ultra-simple, well then what about mammoths? What Huang is doing, if John's description is accurate, is called "the displacement problem." You say that your hypothesis is the only answer to a question... but in fact your hypothesis just *displaces* the question to another realm where it is inaccessible and cannot be investigated. Why do living things do what they do? "Their 'vital force' causes it." Why does water act the way it does? "Its' 'aquosity' causes it." Why are humans so similar to chimps? "Functional constraints cause it " Panglossian $%&*ing crackpots. Panglossian? I believe Molière rather than Voltaire owns the copyright. In Le malade imaginaire an MD candidate explains -- in awful Latin, during his doctoral examination -- that the cause of the sleep-inducing effect of opium lies in its "vertus dormitiva" (dormitive virtue), and that the laxative action of senna and rhubarb is accounted for by their "vertus purgativa". Needless to say, the examination committee are happy with the answers. Diogenes: It's a bit more complicated than that. First, I'm unclear on what he thinks about genome size. He talks almost entirely about protein sequence distances. Second, not all sequences are saturated in all pairwise comparisons. So some low distances actually do result from close relationship. Just not the ones that for various reasons he doesn't like. Feel free to read some of his papers. It's hard to understand because of the poor writing, but you can struggle through it and occasionally figure out what he's trying to say. As a student of pseudoscience, you might find it interesting. I really had problems understanding his arguments while skimming his papers. It looked on the surface like pure gibberish. I did not get why he played the "complexity gambit", now it makes sense in making no sense. I think, when I have nothing better to do I will indeed use his papers to test my bullshit-detection-capabilities. P.S.Funny that somewhere in an earlier thread Peter Borger claimed to understand Gnomons "argumentation" and rated it brilliant. Your questions are irrational. You ask why? Well, for obvious starters, you mistake neutral theory with junk DNA, selectively neutral with random, and random with uniform. Just to name a few obvious problems with your requests. Your problems are much deeper than that, but if you pay close attention, you might start unweaving the mess you're entangled into. Learn a bit better. Actually work hard at understanding and maybe you'll grow out of your own misunderstandings and misguided efforts. Larry:Thank you for answering my request. A few preludes before I get to the main act. First, I asked only one and you give me five. Why don’t you just pick one so that I could use more words on? Not that I have trouble with any one of the five, but if you have to rely on all five to make your case, you are weak because none of them alone stands a chance. A scientific law should explain all things equally well within its relevant domain. Second, to use the famous outburst of my favorite tennis legend John McEnroe, “you cannot be serious!!” You call these five things evidence??? We all know evolutionary biology is very soft but you could be accused of making it a non-science!! If a theory doesn’t predict a phenomenon and exclude all other possibilities, it cannot claim credit for the phenomenon or claim it as the theory’s evidence. If your theory let you predict precisely the weather conditions of all of the next 7 days, and can do that repeatedly for any week of the year, then you can rightly claim what is actually observed as evidence of your theory. If your theory predicts that both rain and no rain are possible, then you don’t have a theory. Here, the neutral theory doesn’t predict any of the 5 things. Kimura, Nei, Ayala, Felsenstein, etc, none of them did, at least to my knowledge. Finally, let’s us be clear that the Neutral theory does predict precisely a few things, some of which when examined for short term popgen or microevo events have been positively verified, e.g., drosophila diversifications in the last few million years in the Hawaii islands. (BTW, my MGD theory fully absorbs ALL of the proven virtues of the Neutral theory for the linear phase of the diversification in a gene sequence.) Here are two things predicted by the neutral theory according not to me by leading experts of the theory. 1. the substitution rate predicted by the neutral theory is measured in generations. 2. the theory predicts that the clock will be a Poisson process, with equal mean and variance of mutation rate (1, 2). So there is some truth to the statement by Kimura and Ohta: “Probably the strongest evidence for the theory is the remarkable uniformity for each protein molecule in the rate of mutant substitutions in the course of evolution.” (3). What they did correctly here is to use the test results of their theory’s prediction as their theory’s evidence. But it is nonetheless a far stretch, because 1. The actually observed substitution rate is measured in years but not in generations as predicted; 2. Experimental data have shown that the variance is typically larger than the mean, rather than equal mean and variance as predicted (1, 2). But regardless, a universal molecular clock (approximate or not) is simply a fairytale as verified by bench biology and so in turn is the neutral theory. Here our verdict on the neutral theory (when applied beyond its verified limited domain of relevance) is in strict compliance with standard rules in science: if the prediction of a theory is not met by test results (assuming the test is properly done), the theory is falsified, nothing more and nothing less. Lastly, I came across the equidistance result on my own when examining my favorite gene RIZ1. To give equidistance credit to Denton is unjust. It is Margolish’s work in 1963. Denton has no clues as what it means except that he is right to point out that it is one of the few most astonishing facts of modern science and is a challenge to modern evolution theory. To use the equidistance result to mock any scientist who tries to seek its explanation is to have no real interest in what the reality is. A few of the ID people know of my work such as Cornelius Hunter as I have left a few comments on his blog. (and Denton too who recently wrote a congratulating note to me on my MGD interpretation of the equidistance, and so he is not your typical ID guys) The fact that the ID camp has yet to make a fuss of the MGD theory makes me wonder that the ID movement may not be motivated by a search for a law to explain the past life history in a contradiction free manner. But unfortunately, some extreme enthusiasts on the other side seem to be motivated by protecting Darwinism based-atheism at all cost. I am sort of in a no man’s land in the middle but hopefully things will change perhaps even very fast. Now let’s get to your five things just for the fun of it. 1. Genetic load. If there is no negative selection for random errors, yes, those new mutations would destroy a lot of the functional sequences. But our recent papers show a new way for negative selection. Random errors collectively over a MGD threshold can cause diseases and cancer. By inference, may even cause very early spontaneous abortions that people may not even notice. A mutation may be neutral when the total aggregate of all mutations is far below the threshold. This is just like computers eventually crash due to long term use and the accumulation of all kinds of small random hits to its parts.(4,5,6)2. C-value paradox. No, neutral theory is not the only reasonable explanation (speculation to be more precise). Houses can be small or large and so the number of parts involved can also vary from small to large. If you grant some genome sequences can function as structural elements in addition to information carriers, then the paradox actually makes sense. Also, genome as whole is a building part, and this part can vary in size is just like any parts should have an allowable stdev. Along this line, it fully explains why complex mammals have much less variation in genome size relative to lower species such as fish or plants, according to the first axiom of biology. 3. Modern evolutionary theory. Well, here we go again, the genetic equidistance result. It falsifies both Darwinism and the Neutral theory, since it is the exact opposite of what is being predicted by these theories. 4. Pseudogenes and broken genes are junk. It is no longer even exciting any more to hear a story that these junks have functions. Sure, not all such junks have been shown to be functional but neither are most proteins. And no one doubts all proteins have functions.5. Most of the genome is not conserved. To use conservation as an index of function is only measuring one of two kinds of sequences, the essential ones for a species physiology that have little to do with adaption to the outside environments. To maintain the long term integrity of the system, such sequences cannot change. For living fossils to be possible, these sequences should be highly stable. On the other hand, sequences involved in adaption to environments must be fast changing because environmental changes are usually fast. Flu viruses escape neutralizing antibodies every few years, and the fast changing sites in these viruses are absolutely critical for their survival but not essential for their physiology. And the essential sites for physiology of the virus do not change much for say 100 year period. I am sorry if this reply is too long but, Larry, it may be all your fault as you give me 5 things for me to respond to. Cheers,Shi Huang From Larry, five things you need to know:1. Genetic LoadEvery newborn human baby has about 100 mutations not found in either parent. If most of our genome contained functional sequence information, then this would be an intolerable genetic load. Only a small percentage of our genome can contain important sequence information suggesting strongly that most of our genome is junk.2. C-Value ParadoxA comparison of genomes from closely related species shows that genome size can vary by a factor of ten or more. The only reasonable explanation is that most of the DNA in the larger genomes is junk.3. Modern Evolutionary TheoryNothing in biology makes sense except in the light of population genetics. The modern understanding of evolution is perfectly consistent with the presence of large amounts of junk DNA in a genome.4. Pseudogenes and broken genes are junkMore than half of our genomes consists of pseudogenes, including broken transposons and bits and pieces of transposons. A few may have secondarily acquired a function but, to a first approximation, broken genes are junk.5. Most of the genome is not conservedMost of the DNA sequences in large genomes is not conserved. These sequences diverge at a rate consistent with fixation of neutral alleles by random genetic drift. This strongly suggests that it does not have a function although one can't rule out some unknown function that doesn't depend on sequence. Second, to use the famous outburst of my favorite tennis legend John McEnroe, “you cannot be serious!!” You call these five things evidence??? We all know evolutionary biology is very soft but you could be accused of making it a non-science!! Gnomon writes a lot but it all boils down to this bit of text:"some extreme enthusiasts on the other side seem to be motivated by protecting Darwinism based-atheism at all cost." In Russia these days you're called a neo-fascist if you dare to say you're an atheist.In Turkey (and most muslim states) religious fanatics threaten and are known to assault teachers who teach evolution. This has gone to such extremes nobody dares to teach evolution any more.In the US (and many xtian countries) religious fanatics believe you sprout horns and walk on goats hooves if you dare to say you don't believe in literal genesis. And gnomon expects people to take him serious when he writes "some extreme enthusiasts on the other side seem to be motivated by protecting Darwinism based-atheism at all cost." Ye right. Gnomon is another one of those people, like peer terborg, who have a pet hypothesis with which they want to overthrow Darwin's theory. But under scientific scrutiny, their pet hypothesis fails epically. 37 years since publicationCited 7 times according Google Scholar (self-cite 0) Zero self-cite most often means that the author himself could not even manage to do any follow up work. But nonetheless, Felsenstein thought that this macro-evolutionary model paper of his is one of his most important work. He went on so far as to say that if any of his work will still be read by someone 50 years from now, it will be this paper. see the Felsenstein interview here starting at 1:05:50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wO39cm0a2M Joe Felsenstein, That is inspiring to me or to any scientist for that matter with a taste for creative theory work. Thank you for sharing that thought. In comparison, it seems that my macro-evolutionary theory paper is doing not too shabby after all. Wait, you consider self-cites to be more important than other people taking up your ideas, and you consider self-cites outnumbering cites by others to be good? In my area there are quite a few people who constantly go "as [their own name] (year) demonstrated, what I believe is obviously correct", but I never thought it demonstrated more than that they couldn't find many other people to cite who agreed with them. Also, what is Nature Precedings? The name would imply a journal that existed before Nature... Here are two things predicted by the neutral theory according not to me by leading experts of the theory. 1. the substitution rate predicted by the neutral theory is measured in generations. 2. the theory predicts that the clock will be a Poisson process, with equal mean and variance of mutation rate (1, 2). 1) You can measure substitution rates with any unit of time you want. You can use generations, but you can just as well use years.2) You mess this up somewhat. Subsitiution is a poison process, i.e. the time between substitutions is exponentially distributed with a parameter lambda, and the mean of this exponential distribution is 1/lambda while the SD is 1/lambda. This assumes a constant substitution rate. If the substitution rate is not fixed, but for instance follows a log-normal distribution, then the SD of the distribution of times between substitutions will be larger than the mean. Your reference (2) mentions BEAST, which does implement this idea. So do the alternatives used these days (dpp-DIV, fdpp-DIV, multidivtime, MCMCtree). Alex, Nature precedingsIn particular this bit is interesting:"It was a place for researchers to share documents, including presentations, posters, white papers, technical papers, supplementary findings, and non-peer-reviewed manuscripts". OK. So Shi Huang took five swings and five misses, he considered Larry's 5 bits of evidence for junk DNA and Gnomon could not refute ANY of the five. He did make some factually false assertions, e.g. when we say there's too much variation in genomes for it to be all functional, we're only considering 1 of 2 kinds of sequences, says he. Total BS argument, an attempt to evade by excluding observed variations because they vary. "Well there's two kinds of evidence, the vast amount that proves me wrong and the tiny bit that doesn't. Your mistake was in considering evidence of the first type." Ya got us, Einstein! Shi Huang does best at issuing constant ad hominem fallacies, appeals to motive, and appeals to authority. All fallacies, but the comical one is where he tries to denigrate Joe Felsenstein by insinuating Joe has a low citation rate. Joe Felsenstein, one of the 50 top-cited scientists of all time, is dismissed by appealing to the superior authority of one who publishes in Science China Life Sciences. Here's my favorite Shi Huang appeal to motive: "some extreme enthusiasts on the other side seem to be motivated by protecting Darwinism based-atheism at all cost." Pure appeal to motive because his evidence is shit. Above, Shi was accusing us of defending neutral theory; here he accuses of defending Darwinism. What an idiot! He doesn't know they're different. He probably thinks the junk DNA hypothesis was based on Darwinism, like Casey $%&*ing Luskin! Can someone please explain to him how neutral theory and Darwinism are NOT the same? I wish he would pick one ad hominem and stick to it. Documents on Nature Precedings have not been peer-reviewed and, as such, should not be considered "published" works. ... Since documents on Nature Precedings are not peer-reviewed, they should not be represented in citations or elsewhere as being peer-reviewed. It is a violation of our terms of service to represent non-peer-reviewed documents on Nature Precedings as peer-reviewed for personal gain. Shi Huang, you got some 'splainin to do! It seems you violated the terms of service of Nature Preceding by falesly presenting your "paper" as "published", when Nature Precedings themselves say it wasn't! Here again is what Shi Huang wrote: "In comparison [to Joe Felsenstein, one of the 50 top-cited scientists in the world-- Diog], it seems that my macro-evolutionary theory paper is doing not too shabby after all. "Funny that somewhere in an earlier thread Peter Borger claimed to understand Gnomons "argumentation" and rated it brilliant." Of course. Borger is a proud contributor to Creation Minitries International's fantastic book and DVD "Evolution's Achilles Heels". I'm betting he went on at length about how mutations are so random that they are non-random, and how his "work" on one exon of one zinc finger gene outweighs whole-genome comparisons. He is just that full of himself and his religion. If bias is a factor affecting researchers work then this can be a option for complaint by anyone unhappy with results of the work. So creationism can say bias is going and affecting research into origins./ As a option. Its the conclusions that are determining peoples confidence, and aggressive rejection of confidence, in science research these days and not a common rulebook.Creationists face this a lot.If we question evolutionists they say we are questioning scientists and science and very bad.Then the moment there is a contention amongst them its okay to question and thjat very aggressively.Hmmm.We need rules of criticism. Just out of curiosity: Are 18 of the 1014 amino acids formimg the triple helical part of Type I alpha 2 collagen chains which consist of repeats of the sequnece GXY even suitable for phylogenetic comparisons like those alignments gnomon did to disprove the molecular clock hypothesis? Steve, what is your evidence that Shi Huang has made a scientific argument? You claim he has made a scientific argument, but you present no evidence he did so. Please *prove* that Shi Huang made a scientific argument. I don't think you really understood what Shi Huang wrote, because no one does. So you're bluffing by pretending you understand the science. I call BS. Since you claim to understand Shi Huang's argument against neutral theory, or junk DNA, why don't YOU explain it coherently? Shi Huang certainly can't explain anything coherently, rationally or scientifically. So YOU prove he made a coherent point by putting it in your own words. The only part of Huang's argument I understood is his claim that neutral theory requires a *universal, constant* molecular clock, and there is no *universal, constant* molecular clock. At least I understand that claim enough to explain why it's wrong: neutral theory never required a *universal, constant* molecular clock. It only required neutral mutations to dominate selected mutations, so I dismiss Shi Huang's otherwise incoherent blather. But prove me wrong. Prove that Shi Huang made a scientific argument by putting it in your own words. I don't think you really understood what Shi Huang wrote, because no one does. I think that, by great effort, I may have come to understand some of it, at least more than you do. Yes, it's nonsense. There is some that's new and some that's true, but the new parts aren't true and the true parts aren't new. The true part is that the protein clock, such as it is, can't be due to neutral evolution. (Even though most substitutions that occur are neutral, most mutations are not.) It only required neutral mutations to dominate selected mutations Not even that. Neutral theory says little about what proportion of mutations are neutral. That would be the genetic load argument. Neutral theory just says that, of those portions of the genome evolving neutrally, fixation rate equals mutation rate. Sorry, Larry you're wrong here. There's a difference between the percentage of novel mutations that are neutral and the percentage of substitutions that are neutral. Neutral theory holds that most substitutions are neutral, while you claim that most mutations are neutral and that's not quite right. The majority of novel mutations is detrimental, but the majority of substitutions is neutral. Hence King and Jukes talking about "[m]ost evolutionary change", rather than "most novel mutations". But yes, the equality of substitution and mutation rates was a result that had been known for quite some time, and when Kimura introduced the diffusion approximation it was one of the classic results he recovered, which shows that it was a viable approximation when Ns~0, which is not true for the 2s approximation (which given decent values for s and N you can also recover from the diffusion model). I'd also add that the amount of polymorphism expected under neutrality differs from that under alternative hypotheses, because given significant selection the variation disappears faster then under neutrality. That's an important observation in line with neutral theory, which is hard to explain otherwise. Substitution rate here is the rate at which novel mutations arise and subsequently get fixed. So you calculate it as µ*N*p, where µ is the rate at which the mutation occurs, N the number of haploid copies of the locus in the population and p the probability of fixation. For a neutral allele p=1/N and therefore you obtain µ.It doesn't matter whether the mutation in question is an indel or a base change (though µ differs on the type of mutation). The majority of novel mutations is detrimental, but the majority of substitutions is neutral. Most novel mutations are neutral (excepting possibly indels) in both protein coding and non-coding regions. In protein-coding regions the fraction of deleterious mutations is higher than in non-coding regions, but in both, neutral mutations are the rule, not the exception. Nielsen & Yang (2003) found best fit distributions of S=2Ns using phylogenetic approaches that had a lot of weight in the range between -2.5 and -.5. That would mean that most novel mutations are detrimental. Now, this is precisely what Kimuras model of effectively neutral mutations predicts. I would not expect mutations in regions of junk to always be neutral. We know that there are responses to TEs in the form of RNAs that stop the TEs from inserting additional copies for instance. This also means that a variant TE that doesn't interact with the RNA would be an issue. In the same way, reactivating ERVs might be bad. Or even just a pseudogene that doesn't get translated being translated again having an energetic cost.Junk is defined by not having a function. That doesn't mean that there are no mutations in junk regions that could transform them to "actively bad" status.Now, the N&Y paper only did this for viruses and mtDNA, which have somewhat more streamlined genomes than eukaryotes. But it's worth noting that even that is in line with neutral theory. Simon, you're citing a paper on protein-coding DNA. If that's all you're talking about, I agree, and I don't know where Diogenes is getting his claim from. Certainly it's possible to have a deleterious mutation in junk DNA. But most of them? That's quite a stretch. "I would not expect mutations in regions of junk to always be neutral" is quite a long way away from "The majority of novel mutations is detrimental". Are you backpedaling? Sorry, Larry you're wrong here. There's a difference between the percentage of novel mutations that are neutral and the percentage of substitutions that are neutral I'm pretty sure Simon meant fixation when he said substitution. The rest of us think of substitutions as mutations where one base pair is replaced by another. Let's just consider the functional part of the genome. In some species that's mostly coding region but in more complex species, like humans, the majority is noncoding (but still functional). If 8% of the genome is conserved then that's 2% as exons and 6% as something else such as genes for functional RNAs, regulatory sites, origins, parts of introns, centromeres, telomeres etc. Does anyone know what percentage of mutations in that 6% of functional regions is neutral? I suspect it's a significant percentage and maybe more that 50%. With respect to coding regions, that depends on the gene. About 25% of all mutations in coding regions are synonymous and almost all of them are going to be neutral. (There are exceptions.) So, at least 25% of mutations are neutral in coding regions. In some genes the number of amino acid substitutions in different species is enormous suggesting that many of the mutations causing amino acid substitutions are neutral. In other protein-coding genes as much as 30% of the residues in the amino acid sequence are conserved in all species. I suspect that even in those genes a significant number of mutations that change codons are neutral. When you take all of the possible mutations in the functional part of the humans genome it's possible that King, Jukes, and Kimura were right and Simon was wrong. Most mutations are neutral. :-) AFAIK no one has tried to do a phylogeny based estimation of selection coefficients for whole genomes. There's a more recent study doing coding regions on mitogenomes (Tamuri et al 2012. ~30% of all mutations and ~10% of non-synonymous mutations neutral, but >90% of all and >70% of non-synonymous substitutions neutral). I'd actually like to do this, but so far the reception by potential collaborators has been lukewarm (I'm pretty sure we do have the raw data to produce solid numbers, it's just a bit out of my comfort zone to do by myself. I'm still a paleo guy with a toe dangling in genomics). I might well be wrong, because as noted, the estimates that exist are mainly dealing with functional regions. I would like to point out, that I did not flat out state that you were wrong about that, but that you defined neutral theory incorrectly. Neutral theory is about those mutations that do eventually get fixed. If most mutations are neutral then that is consistent with neutral theory, but it is a stronger claim (i.e. there are scenarios where only a minority of mutations are neutral, yet neutral theory is valid). I would also like to submit that I'm not the only person to use substitution rate in this way:http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v14/n12/box/nrg3564_BX1.html I haven't seen Larry's meaning of "substitution"; I don't know why it would exist, as it's just a synonym for "mutation". (It's an odd mutation that doesn't change the base.) On the other hand, when I see the word used, it's generally in Simon's meaning. Though sometimes it's used to mean "non-synonymous mutation". Anyone who claims that most mutations in protein-coding DNA are neutral will have to explain why 1st and (especially) 2nd position substitutions (fixations) are so rare compared to 3rd position ones. Pretty funny watching ID creationists fall all over themselves to get behind papers on how *easy* it is to obtain functionality in the genome. Thus evolution must be successful a high percentage of the time, meaning no outside design is needed...oh, wait. Been done (junk removal). And the animals to which it was done got along perfectly well without it. That won't wash forever, though. If every deleterious mutation occurred in a critical system, over time the population would never be able to support the mutational load, and would go extinct. The fact that millions of species have survived over many generations in spite of mutational load is one good reason we know there *is* junk. Unknown, by what mechanism would "we' remove junk? Do you think mutations that randomly *delete* 10,000 or a million bps are often neutral or beneficial? Do you think we (humans or primates, or who's "we"?) should evolve a mechanism that deletes randomly selected stretches of 10,000 or a million bps at once, because a million generations later, such a mechanism might yield an increase in the efficiency of cellular replication by 0.2%? How would that work in primates? Ya think? Laurence A. Moran Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website. Sandwalk The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image. Disclaimer Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me. Subscribe to Sandwalk Quotations The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation... Quotations The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982) I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339 The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977) Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980) Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335 The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84 Quotations My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace. Jerry Coyne Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back. Sydney Brenner TIBS Dec. 2000 It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations Douglas Futuyma One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist. Francis Crick There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried. Sydney Brenner An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist Richard Dawkins Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology. Jacques Monod The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Sexy, but Scratchy! While I am disappointed that this scratchy robe is not the comfortable-but-sexy set I was looking for, I still love that it looks sexy paired with another piece of lingerie underneath, and will continue to wear it that way. Okay, so as a mom and a wife I love to look sexy, but there are times I wish I could just have both- sexy and comfortable. I want something that I can wear to bed, look sexy in while we play, and then fall asleep in afterwards and sleep in all night long. When I saw this robe on Eden, it looked like the perfect solution. With the satiny looking sleeves and the loose fitting appearance, it really looked like something for me, so I decided to give it a shot! CONTENTS The package arrived in a plain brown box, as usual from Eden. Upon opening, I found the robe wrapped in plastic wrap and armed with a coat hanger. This set includes a black robe with beautiful back lacing, a simple black G-String thong, and a cute matching coat hanger. Upon first opening, the robe material felt great! Soft and silky in my hands, and the lacing on the back really stood out to me as very pretty. MATERIALS/DESIGN This gorgeous robe set by DreamGirl comes with a robe and a thong, both in black. The robe is made out of 75% polyester and 25% nylon. It has beautiful lacing all across the back, and what I couldn't tell from the stock picture, it also comes towards the front, and a little under the arms. It closes in the front with a tie. The sleeves are very flowing and comfortable, and hit right under the elbow. Close- up of the lacing: The thong is the simplest thong you can get; very basic and made out of 100% polyester... not too much to say about this plain thong, except the quality of the material and make seems to be good. SIZING/FIT I am currently in-between sizes on most things, so I chose to order the smaller size, because I want to be able to wear this one for a long time. Thinking that this was just a robe and robes are typically a little billowy, I ordered down. If you are on the border, or want a longer or looser fitting robe, I would order up. Being only 5'2, this is VERY short on me, the bottom of the robe hitting right under my butt, and riding up while I walk or move around to show more than I would have liked to show. I just can't imagine a taller person fitting in this correctly unless at least ordering one size up. If you have a few more inches on me, I would definitely order a size up, unless you want the bottom of the robe to expose half your butt. Due to the length of the robe, mixed in with where the ties on the robe sit, it accentuated my hips and love handles in a way that I just cannot appreciate while wearing it tied up. When first putting the robe on, it felt great! The long, loose, silky sleeves felt soft and luxurious on my skin, and it was very easy to tie up. Unfortunately, after wearing for only about 10 minutes and moving a bit, the lace in the back started to get very irritating. It is VERY scratchy, and not only is it only on the back-piece; it also comes around towards the front, and under the arms. The soft and silkiness of the sleeves mixed in with the harsh scratchiness of the back piece is just not a good combo at all! Beautiful, but oh so irritating and scratchy! Definitely not the idea I was going for! The thong fit perfect, the sides didn't dig in at all, and there was a good amount of coverage in front. Experience After my initial trying on process alone in the bedroom, I was disappointed that this was not the sexy AND comfortable robe I was looking for. I didn't really like how it looked tied very much, and the back definitely made it not comfortable enough to sleep in or have my morning coffee in. So, I ditched the idea of comfortable and decided to aim for sexy instead. I really wanted to find a way to love this robe, having loved the lacing so much, and found a way I did! I found that this piece looks really great over a white corset or form fitting piece of lingerie underneath. Tied, it adds a really nice touch of mystery and sexiness, and untied, it really adds a nice touch with the contrasting black and white and the pretty black lacing in the back. I just love the edge of mystery it gives to the piece underneath. Alone, the lingerie underneath leaves little to the imagination, but paired with the robe over it, it adds some mystery, not to mention beautiful lacing to the mix. When looking for a new piece to add to our collection, my husband felt "eh" about my choice to pick this robe. He seemed to have written it off as a comfy piece that I will sleep in that won't be anything special. I felt the same way after my initial trying on, but after pairing it with something else, we both agreed that it was great for playtime! He loved the look of it covering another piece, and he even liked the simple thong. I typically wear thicker laced thongs, so the look of the G-String thong really turned him on, too! We now both agree to add this to one of "the regulars" for our nighttime playtimes. This product was provided free of charge to the reviewer. This review is in compliance with the FTC guidelines. Thanks! I think if it were like at least 3-4 inches longer and a different material in the back on the lacing it would be perfect! lol 03/13/2012 Ms. N The back is gorgeous. I tend to find DG products to be a bit small in my usual size large, so I have to get an XL if it is available. For this one, I guess I would have to go 1X/2X, but if it is scratchy, I think I will pass. Thanks for the great review. 03/13/2012 Rossie Thank you for the review. I'm always wary of lacy garments, they're scratchy 98% of the time. 03/13/2012 married with children great review, thanks for sharing. 03/13/2012 JessCee I have the same problem with my DG robe being scratchy! It's horrible!!! 03/13/2012 mpfm I love the back of this. Too bad it is scratchy. Thanks for the review. 03/14/2012 LoveTies Ms. N: thanks for the tip, I will keep that in mind next time I order something from DG. It's hard to know what size to get when they are all so different usually! Rossie: I know, I am so bummed! I really wanted this one to be different! married with children: you're welcome JessCee: It sucks, huh! It would be so great without that annoying scratching!! mpfm: you're welcome! 03/14/2012 Kitka Sorry this was disappointing but wow, what a great review! Thanks for including all the pictures. This robe does look pretty fabulous over the white ensemble you've got on 04/11/2012 Pink Lily Thanks for the great review! The pictures were a wonderful touch! I agree with you, the white corset underneath makes a great look. 12/21/2012 tami this is a beautiful robe...love the lace...I would try it if it came in my size...thanks for the review

Sexual Violence involves a range of acts including attempted or completed forced or alcohol/drug facilitated penetration (i.e., rape), being made to penetrate someone else, verbal (non-physical) pressure that results in unwanted penetration (i.e., sexual coercion), unwanted sexual contact (e.g., fondling), and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences (e.g., verbal harassment, voyeurism). The consequences of sexual violence burden victims with physical and psychological injuries that can last throughout the lifespan—a burden that also results in significant economic and societal costs. Sexual assault is preventable, not inevitable. Evidence supports comprehensive approaches with interventions at multiple levels (individual, relationship, community) are critical to having a population level impact on sexual violence. Preventing Sexual Violence CDC recently released STOP SV: A Technical Package to Prevent Sexual Violence to help states and communities prioritize efforts to prevent sexual violence. A technical package is a collection of strategies that represent the best available evidence to prevent or reduce public health problems like violence. The technical package highlights 5 main strategies to prevent sexual violence: S – Promote social norms that protect against violence T – Teach skills to prevent sexual violence O – Provide opportunities to empower and support girls and women P – Create protective environments SV – Support victims/survivors to lessen harms This technical package is intended as a resource to guide prevention decision-making in communities and states and help focus their efforts on not only lessening the immediate and long-term harms of sexual violence, but also on preventing sexual violence from happening in the first place.

As a minority, you tend to look everywhere to see yourself represented. Whether it be in movies, books, TV shows, music, or life, there’s something comforting in knowing that you can see parts of yourself in others. It does get discouraging though, when all the people you look at are dying or unhappy. This is the struggle that queer girls and women face every time that we try to find a character that we can see ourselves in. Finding LGBTQ+ characters in today’s media is hard enough–in their most recent report on TV, GLAAD has reported that LGBTQ+ characters make up only 4.8% of the characters on broadcast TV–but finding ones that stay alive is becoming close to impossible. Killing queer women has become so common that it has its own trope: Bury Your Gays. The trope Bury Your Gays goes back centuries, and is unfortunately still in full use today. TV Tropes (tvtropes.org) describes the trope as one where “gay characters just aren’t allowed happy endings.” While it makes sense that in older works this might have been more prevalent–especially with lesbian pulp fiction where one author was told that the gay characters were not allowed happy endings–it seems like there is no need for it in 2016. Yet, turn on a TV and you will see lesbians dying left and right. When we look at our favorite queer women characters, they’re either getting shot by a stray bullet (Lexa, The 100), getting killed by guards (Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black) or dying in car explosions (Nora and Mary Louise, The Vampire Diaries). And these deaths are just within the last year. It’s obvious that some queer characters will die, but the rate at which writers have been killing them off compared to straight characters is appalling. From the 1970s until now, there have been 162 deaths of queer female characters on TV, out of around 380 queer female characters altogether. That’s approximately 42%. Many say that these characters were killed off for so-calledshock value, but the thing is, it’s not so shocking anymore. It’s normal. It’s common practice. A shocking thing would be to have a queer female character be alive, happy, and in a healthy relationship, but that doesn’t seem to be happening in TV at all. According to an article in Autostraddle, which studied queer women in fiction, 35% of shows have dead lesbian/bi female characters, and 84% of shows don’t give lesbian/bi female characters happy endings. We constantly see ourselves dying, being written off, or being heartbroken. While TV networks might pat themselves on the back for being progressive enough to include queer characters, all that progressiveness goes out the window when the writers and showrunners decide that they’ve had enough. It’s not progressive to show a lesbian character, hype her, bring in a huge LGBTQ+ audience, and then simply kill her off. It’s not progressive when we are only included to be killed. Some might say that at least we’re getting representation, but this representation does not befit us. It is time wewere given hope. When first accepting that they are queer, a lot of queer youth will look to anything to see themselves represented, and it’s disheartening to know that queer youth will see their representations die. We see too much of white, cisgender, and straight characters on TV, when what we need to see are characters of color, transgender and nonbinary characters, and queer characters. It just might help those struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. As Larry Wilmore said on the Nightly Show after the Orlando shooting, “unlike other minority groups in America, LGBT people aren’t born into a home or a family that shares their minority experience.” A majority of LGBTQ+ people can’t simply turn to their family for support, so they turn to fictional characters, but it’s a real kick in the face when we see all of these characters become neglected. The message that TV show runners are giving queer women who are desperate to see themselves represented is that we can be gay in the sense of being queer but we cannot be gay in the sense of being happy. Diana Holiner is 20 years old and is part of the Dynamy Internship Year program. She is originally from Dover, Massachusetts and is now living in Worcester. She interns at Worcester Magazine and the Worcester Journal. In her free time she enjoys reading, writing, singing, and eating ice cream.

MORGANTOWN--For a guy whom some believe either is mad about his playing time or wants to go elsewhere, Noel Devine is certainly putting on a good front. The 2006 YouTube blur came to West Virginia in July amid projections of All-American fortune and a role in the fastest ground game on cleats. He has held up his end to the bargain. As BCS-6th-ranked West Virginia's season rolls merrily along to an unprecedented fifth straight January bowl--provided it keeps its end of the bargain in these last three regular season games--Devine has been a bonanza--albeit a quiet one. He has returned more kickoffs (13) for more yardage (289) on a 8-1 team that already had two excellent return men (Darius Reynaud and Vaughn Rivers). His long has been 41. He says now he hopes to break one before this season ends. Everyone, including head coach Rich Rodriguez, wants him to touch the ball more. Devine currently is third on a team that averages almost 290 rushing yards per game in rushing. He happens to have a returning All-American and a Heisman Trophy candidate who have received 288 of the Mountaineers' total 435 carries. Yet his numbers--46 touches from the line of scrimmage for 410 yards and 3 TDs--are provocative. This amounts to almost 9 yards every time he gets his hands on the ball; not counting his returns.

The weekend violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, has left the alt-right with a serious branding problem, and not everyone aligned with the movement seems eager to take on the baggage of being associated with the frenzy of unabashed bigotry that took place at Saturday’s “Unite the Right” rally. Out of the fray came images of brawling neo-Nazis, marching Klansmen in full regalia and torch-bearing white men chanting anti-Semitic and fascist slogans, all capped by an alleged terrorist attack on counterprotesters that left one woman dead and at least 19 more injured. The event was the work of Richard Spencer, the self-proclaimed father of the alt-right, who is widely credited with coining the phrase. His version of the “alternative right” is based around white nationalism and white supremacy, and openly touts anti-Semitism, anti-feminism, homophobia and the belief that the U.S. should be established as a white ethno-state. Spencer summoned the various far-right factions to Charlottesville, calling for a show of strength and unity against the city’s slated removal of a Confederate General Robert E. Lee statue. While the groups may have differed somewhat in tone and style, they gathered around shared values openly grounded in white nationalism and white supremacy. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump defended the rally, saying that some of the attendees were “very fine people.” But as Trump continues to face backlash over his refusal to unequivocally denounce the ideology of hatred and supremacy that the alt-right organized around, some prominent figures associated with the movement have quickly scrambled to distance themselves from the label entirely. This week, prominent pro-Trump bloggers retweeted a Facebook post by Paul Joseph Watson, editor-at-large of the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, in an effort to draw a distinction between their views and the ones on display in Charlottesville. Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich are perhaps best known for pushing anti-Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories, including PizzaGate, among the alt-right. After Charlottesville, the two bloggers have been quick to distance themselves from the alt-right instead throwing their support behind Watson, who has regularly criticized Spencer as a firebrand who’s undeservingly been given a platform as a supposed leader of the far-right. The New Right pic.twitter.com/BJIv0Js8fL — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 15, 2017 In other tweets, Posobiec called the alt-right a “cancer” while referring to Spencer, the movement’s self-proclaimed leader, as “scum.” Posobiec identifies instead as “New Right,” he said. Which apparently means he likes to “wear MAGA hats, create memes & have fun.” On Tuesday, Watson said he, Posobiec and Cernovich, all of whom have also been referred to as members of the so-called “alt-lite,” no longer wanted to be lumped into the alt-right. How many times do myself, @JackPosobiec & @Cernovich have to be attacked by the alt-right before the media stops calling us alt-right? — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 15, 2017 Although Posobiec appears intent on dissociating himself from Spencer and the alt-right, he hasn’t always been such an outspoken critic. Spencer tweeted out an image of the two together in June. Here's a photo of @JackPosobiec and me in Cleveland, at a bar during the RNC. pic.twitter.com/PbVv0fkag7 — Richard ☝🏻Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) June 18, 2017 In a message to HuffPost, Posobiec maintained that he’d “never taken a photo” with Spencer, whom he called a “scumbag Nazi.” He said the image was “probably photoshop.” Asked if there was a place for white nationalism in the “New Right,” Watson said he had “zero interest in any movement based around identity politics or race.” Cernovich did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Charlottesville is the latest flashpoint in a larger war over the definition of the alt-right movement and its identity. During the 2016 campaign, the alt-right achieved more mainstream acceptance when Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon, formerly the chairman of Breitbart Media, proudly professed to Mother Jones that he viewed his former website as the homepage for the “alt-right.” At the time, the movement had already begun to take on a more nebulous identity, sweeping up a broad range of anti-establishment conservatives, tech-savvy libertarians, racial provocateurs, anti-politically correct internet trolls and pro-Trump meme-lords, slipping effortlessly between themes of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, toxic masculinity and offensive hyperbole. As the movement grew, prominent bloggers like Cernovich and Posobiec emerged seemingly out of the internet ether, attracting hundreds of thousands of followers to promote a media narrative to counter the so-called “Clinton News Network” ― a name used to refer to CNN by its detractors. While they were happy to capitalize on the newfound attention given to a relatively unknown movement with ties to the Trump campaign, they’ve since slid in and out of the alt-right in an apparent effort to keep its darker, more overtly racist undertones at arm’s length. “I believe in strong borders, including keeping out Islamic terrorists. If people think that’s inherently racist, fine—but I’m an American nationalist, not a white nationalist,” Cernovich told The New Yorker last year. The rifts within the alt-right intensified after the election, with some members perhaps growing wary of their inability to have it both ways. Spencer and other white nationalists drew nationwide condemnation in November, when they were filmed “hailing” Trump’s victory with a Nazi salute. The tone against Spencer has grown harsher in recent months ― at least publicly. “[Spencer] fancies himself an outlaw intellectual when he’s a soft-faced fame whore who’d be performing in off-Broadway shows if he had the musical talent,” Cernovich told The New Yorker in July. While Spencer’s Nazi gesture may have been the beginning of the end for the alt-right as a viable political movement, some far-right bloggers now say that Charlottesville will make it impossible to identify as alt-right without being seen as an open racist. “As a ‘brand,’ the alt-right was irreparably damaged by HeilGate, but now it is dead and Spencer killed it, deliberately killed it, with malice of forethought,” wrote Katie McHugh, a blogger for the fringe conservative site GotNews who was fired from Breitbart earlier this year over a series of anti-Muslim tweets. The alt-right brand may now be dead in some people’s minds, but the views behind it clearly are not. Posobiec has tweeted about “white genocide,” a white nationalist conspiracy theory and recruitment tool that claims governments are trying to cull white people into extinction through policies of mass immigration, integration, racial diversity and abortion. Cernovich has also declared that “white genocide is real.” Posobiec, Cernovich and Watson regularly tweet about the Black Lives Matter movement, which they accuse of inciting hatred against whites and of not giving sufficient attention to black-on black-crime. And all three appear to share Trump’s belief that Middle Eastern refugees, and Muslims generally, are incompatible with Western culture and an existential threat to the U.S. Kevin Lamarque / Reuters White House strategist Steve Bannon, formerly the chairman of Breitbart Media, has helped bring the alt-right movement into mainstream. Whether or not there’s a substantive difference between the “new” and “alt” right, the movement’s fracturing was somewhat foreseeable, said Brian Levin, director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. Loosely defined hate groups are not well-oiled machines, and high levels of disorganization often lead to fissures when they begin to garner national attention or support, he said. “It’s a lot easier to be a bigot in the abstract than to actually try to organize around hatred and anger, because not everyone wants to sign up to the same level or the same operation efforts,” Levin said. “The saying about herding cats also applies to white nationalists.” White nationalists, like other hate movements, also thrive on the image of being insurgents defending against a broken system. When they go on the offensive ― and especially when they succeed ― the foundation can begin to falter. “Part of the alt-right’s problem is they achieved their initial goals to promote white nationalism into the mainstream and dismantle the traditional barriers and structures that existed in the Republican Party, but now they’re ascendent,” said Levin. “It’s very difficult to organize a group that is anti-establishment once they become partially establishment.” Whichever version of the right these figures claim to identify with, it’s clear that they still have a friend in Trump. On Monday, still facing criticism for his soft, “many sides” response to the violence in Charlottesville, Trump retweeted a racially coded critique from Posobiec asking why the national media had dedicated so much coverage to the “Unite the Right” rally, but hadn’t expressed “outrage” over violence in Chicago. A day later, Trump held a contentious press conference, in which he parroted the far-right argument that anti-fascist and anti-racist protesters were equal aggressors in Charlottesville, and therefore equally as worthy of condemnation as their white supremacist counterparts. “What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, ‘alt-right’? Do they have any semblance of guilt?” asked Trump. “I think they do.” Trump also defended Bannon amid rumors that his job is in peril, saying that he was “not racist” and “a good man.” White nationalists like Spencer and members of the so-called “New Right,” now supposedly in divergent camps, agreed that Trump had totally nailed it. Sign up for the HuffPost Must Reads newsletter. Each Sunday, we will bring you the best original reporting, long form writing and breaking news from The Huffington Post and around the web, plus behind-the-scenes looks at how it’s all made. Click here to sign up!

Still unemployed — an unfortunate sign of times, it appears This particular column isn’t really about the joys of being an older father with a younger child. It’s still closely linked to that theme, but it’s more about the serious implications that can occur and cast a shadow over that relationship. One day last summer, I was on my way to a job interview in downtown Philadelphia, feeling rather pleased with myself. I’d defied the odds normally faced by an unemployed liberal arts professional in his mid 50s. I was only a few months out of work, still stretching my severance pay and collecting unemployment, and here I was with another dynamite interview with a high-octane company. This wasn’t so hard, I thought to myself. I didn’t grasp the hardships faced by people in my position, and the grim statistics of finding a new job in the same profession. I was getting interviews, which meant I was already out-performing the bulk of my peers. That day, I coughed up $28 for parking (not to mention the cost of driving into Philadelphia). I reconciled the expenses to a running log I’d kept cataloguing the efforts and costs of my job search. Handy for income tax time, I figured. I can’t tell you where I went to interview that day. It wasn’t the only time I’d end up in downtown Philly for a promising appointment. We’d even come up with a homefront strategy for handling the daily trip — driving to a nearby train station and commuting to Center City like so many other people. There is one thing that has stood out in my memory, starting as an insignificant bit of oddness, but growing in my memory as each day passed. Standing on a corner in the middle of Philly’s professional district one day was a man in spiffy suit, with two white signs, each about 2 feet by 3 feet, leaning up against the Walk/Don’t Walk light pole. The signs were oversized JOB NEEDED notices. Bland office drones hustled by with their heads down, many of them drawing hard on cigarettes forbidden not only inside their building, but now outside the doors as well. It was a moving smoking court. I was intrigued and stopped to chat with the man. He’d been out of work for two years, and run out of options (and optimism). This was his next best idea — hitting the streets, literally. Turns out he had a regular rotation of locations. His tactic had initiated a few conversations, but nothing that led to employment. I couldn’t imagine myself ever being in those shoes, and congratulated myself on the success I’d soon find on the job market. Fast forward to today. I now understand that man’s frustration and desperation. I understand the thinking that led him to these tactics. “Did you get a job?” my daughter optimistically asks when I’d come home from what I thought was a good interview. “Did you get a job?” It occurred to me this week that she is moving into the time when her memories stick with her. Right now, she has no memory of her father working, save a few short-term placements. I understand what can lead someone to extreme measures. This week, I began pounding the pavement — walking into businesses and asking to apply for non-existent jobs. It’s an incredibly humbling experience. Kind of like standing on a street corner with signs. Well so it goes again our government has screwed the American people only thinking of themselves as usual FORGETTING THEY WORK FOR THE PEOPLE and our wonderful president OBAMA WHO I VOTED FOR HAS THE POWERFUL TIME MAKE THIS HAPPEN WITH OR WITH OUT BOEHNER Tis life… my folks went through several periods of unemployment and I have too. My mom never kept anything from us. She’d tell us she didn’t have a job or didn’t have money for food, gifts or outings. We heard it and kept on being kids. There was no welfare, AFDC or other assistance either as she didnt believe in that. We often had beans and cornbread for lunch and dinner and didn’t starve. We kept right on living. . . It does make you sad but … each day is a new one and a new beginning. Your child picks up the vibe you put out. If your demeanor is one of fear and dread, often it will be the child’s as well. Stay strong. Project an attitude of determination and grit… that attitude will help both you and your family. I shake my head in disbelief, that this government…my government, has left us, failed to help its unemployed.SO many like me employed for 20 something years. A nation that has no problem giving to others….just not their own I to was laid of from my job a year ago I’m looking daily for employment so far nothing I now have three different job counselor helping me to look for work I attended technical school but everyone wants 1 to 3 years experience which I don’t have I can’t get experience if no one hires me so what’s the use in getting training the hospital want you to volunteer but how can I when I got bills to pay food to buy I need to keep on looking for work Well… then… all the people waiting on the UEC to be approved and get there bills in order will now file bankruptcy…thanks Congress…. u can still change this and make it right there are a lot of people that trusted u and now will vote u out

Sacramento police: Former Exeter cop is Visalia Ransacker A man believed to be the notorious Visalia Ransacker — also known as the East Area Rapist, Golden State Killer or the Original Night Stalker — has been arrested after allegedly killing 12 people and raping another 45 victims between 1975 to 1986. The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday. Detectives say the man served as an Exeter police officer before leaving the Tulare County area. Law enforcement identified the suspect as 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo. DeAngelo was recently booked in Sacramento on two counts of homicide stemming from a Ventura County death case. But his crimes span across the state and may have started in Tulare County. RELATED: Golden State Killer suspect arrested in 1980 Ventura cold case; DNA key DeAngelo's crime spree began in 1975, while employed as a police officer with the Exeter Police Department, said Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones. Exeter Police Chief John Hall has been trying to link DeAngelo to Exeter since news broke, but police officer records from the 70s don't exist, he said. The Exeter Sun newspaper, however, profiled DeAngelo in 1973. They said the officer started with the force in May of that year. DeAngelo is a native New Yorker but attended high school in Folsom before joining the Navy, according to the Foothills Sun-Gazette, which pulled the 1973 Sun article. The suspected killer served nearly two years in Vietnam before leaving the service and joining the Exeter Police Department, the newspaper reported. MORE: Who is Joseph James DeAngelo, the accused Golden State Killer? Although there is no DNA linking DeAngleo to roughly 100 burglaries and a murder in Visalia, he is believed to be the Visalia Ransacker. Visalia detectives will continue to try and link DeAngleo to the Visalia cases using DNA and witness statements collected at the time. Visalia Chief Jason Salazar is optimistic the arrest will bring comfort to those still seeking closure. "There has long been a belief that the Golden State Killer and Visalia Ransacker are one in the same and we are working with those investigators in hopes of bringing resolution to a case that has long been of interest here in Visalia," Salazar said. Visalia detectives haven't closed the case, though. “There is still a lot of work to do on this case on our part, by no means have we concluded this investigation,” Salazar said. “Although, the news out of Sacramento today and the arrest of Mr. DeAngelo certainly provides a great new lead for us to continue to work with.” DeAngelo’s name never came up during the department’s investigation, Salazar said. FBI and California officials last year renewed their search for the suspect dubbed the East Area Rapist and announced a $50,000 reward for his arrest and conviction. He’s linked to more than 175 crimes in all between 1975 and 1986. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, formed the task force that included district attorney's offices and law enforcement in 10 counties, as well as federal agents. "We knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack," Schubert said. "We found the needle and it was right here in Sacramento." Research and DNA from more than 80 rapes and 13 killings helped link the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker cases. DeAngelo was arrested at his Citrus Heights home on Tuesday. Jones said law enforcement had been tracking the man for several days, learning his habits. "He was very surprised," Jones said. A man by many names A further look into the modus operandi of those crimes led detectives to the Visalia Ransacker, who has been credited with more than 85 burglaries in Visalia and the Sept. 11, 1975, slaying of College of the Sequoias journalism professor Claude Snelling. Snelling’s family was contacted following DeAngelo's arrest, Salazar said. “Obviously they were pleased to hear the development,” he added. Russ Whitmeyer, a private detective, noticed that all of the crimes up and down the state shared several identifying characteristics. Whitmeyer investigated the cases for more than 10 years. The investigator said the notorious killer and rapist started in Tulare County. These characteristics include: In all cases, the perpetrator was described as having medium-length brown hair, standing about 5 feet, 10 inches, weighing about 180 pounds and wearing a size 9 shoe. In at least four counties, the criminal rode a stolen bicycle. He liked to steal jewelry, guns, piggy banks and Blue Chip stamp books. He often wore a ski mask. He used a special diamond knot to tie his victims. That could indicate a military background. Visalia police also indicate that the Visalia Ransacker would place dishes and objects in doorways so he could hear if someone was coming (a characteristic shared by the Original Night Stalker and East Area Rapist). Police say the criminal left Tulare County in late 1976 and continued his crime spree. He is believed to have burglarized dozens of homes in Sacramento County, beginning in 1976, along with raping 50 women and killing a young couple. RELATED: Golden State Killer: Ex-cop Joseph James DeAngelo arrested as suspect in serial murder-rapes There's a remote possibility that Terri Lynn Ray, the 15-year-old Anderson High School student from Redding found stabbed to death in a creek near her mother's south Redding home in 1976, may have been the second victim claimed by the Visalia Ransacker. Investigators in Redding, however, have said there's no evidence of that, although they've reached out to prosecutors in the wake of D'Angelo's arrest. Early in 1978, he began raping women in Contra Costa County and continued his crime spree through 1979, when he began killing and raping in Santa Barbara County. He moved back and forth between Goleta, Ventura County and Orange County between 1979 and 1986 when his crimes stopped. "[Deangleo] has been called a lot of things," said Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackaucaks. "Today, it's our pleasure to call him a defendant." Charges are expected to be filed against DeAngelo by numerous district attorneys across the state. Visalia Nearly 100 burglaries in the city caught the attention of police in 1975, who conducted several efforts in an attempt to apprehend the thief. It wasn't until the thief turned murderous that authorities knew the problem was getting out of hand. The death of Snelling in 1975 led to a ballistics test that confirmed the gun used was the same as a firearm stolen by the Visalia Ransacker during a previous burglary. Beth Snelling was there when her father was killed and has talked to police repeatedly, but the identity of the killer remained a mystery. MORE: Sacramento District Attorney holds Golden State Killer press conference The statute of limitations has expired on the rapes and burglaries, but under the law, the killer can still be charged with Snelling's homicide. A few months after Snelling's death, an effort to catch the suspect led to Visalia Officer Bill McGowen being shot at. The bullet shattered the lens of McGowen's flashlight and injured the officer. Until McGowen's death a couple of years ago, he had carried the investigation, often working out of his garage after retirement. He left the files to Whitmeyer. The department has worked with the Golden State Killer task force for years to help identify the suspect behind the seemingly-related crimes, Salazar said. “As I stand here today, I’m confident the Visalia Ransacker has been captured,” he said. AP contributed to this report

The United Nations Development Program's (UNDP) first ever Afghanistan Human Development Report found that while the country has made progress since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan could easily fall back into chaos. According to the UNDP, the basic human needs of the Afghan people, including access to jobs, health, education, dignity, income, and opportunities for participation must be met or else the country will once again collapse into an “insecure state, a threat to its own people as well as to the international community.” According to the UNDP, “years of discrimination and poverty have relegated Afghan women to some of the worst social indicators in the world,” citing poverty, violence, inadequate health care, exclusion from public life, rape, illiteracy and forced marriage. The Gender Development Index places Afghanistan above only two countries: Niger and Burkina Faso. The report also found that reconstruction projects sponsored by the US military, known as Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), are inadequate and dangerous, citing that they blur the lines between civilians and soldiers, making aid workers targets for militants, reports the Associated Press. Afghanistan ranked 173 out of 178 countries in the United Nations 2004 Human Development Index. The average life expectancy for Afghans is only 44.5 years, 20 years lower than the life expectancy for people in neighboring countries. In addition, recent reports from on the ground reflect that Afghanistan’s severe winter has claimed the lives of hundreds of people in villages in the country. The snow and lack of roads makes many areas inaccessible to assistance. Even in Kabul, where there is little electricity to provide heat and there is much homelessness, people are dying from the cold and from starvation.

560 F.Supp. 275 (1983) Willard H. FORD, et al., Plaintiffs, v. GREEN GIANT COMPANY, a foreign corporation, Defendant. No. C81-369V. United States District Court, W.D. Washington. February 28, 1983. *276 Michael J. Fox, of Houghton, Cluck, Coughlin & Riley, Seattle, Wash., for plaintiffs. Clemens H. Barnes, of Graham & Dunn, Seattle, Wash., for defendant. ORDER VOORHEES, District Judge. Having considered the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, defendant's motion for summary judgment and plaintiffs' motion to compel discovery, together with the affidavits and memoranda submitted by counsel, the Court now finds and rules as follows: 1. This is an action brought by former seasonal agricultural workers of the defendant Green Giant Company, and the class members defined below, seeking damages and injunctive relief against the defendant for an alleged conspiracy to interfere with the plaintiffs' organizational rights guaranteed by R.C.W. 49.32.020, in violation of federal civil rights law. 42 U.S.C. Section 1985(3). 2. This Court certified on January 25, 1982 as the plaintiff class: all Washington agricultural employees of defendant or persons who have sought, are seeking, or will seek Washington agricultural employment from defendant and have or will have, done any of the following: (a) authorized the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO (UFW) to represent them as their collective bargaining agent; (b) met with UFW organizers or representatives; (c) expressed support or sympathy for the UFW or discussed the UFW with other workers; or (d) engaged in any activities in exercise of their right of freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing to negotiate the terms and conditions of their employment. 3. Section 1985(3) under which plaintiffs seek relief provides in pertinent part: If two or more persons ... conspire ... for the purpose of depriving ... any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws ... the party injured or deprived may have an action for the recovery of damages occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators. 42 U.S.C. Section 1985(3). 4. The seminal case construing the cause of action under this provision is Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971). In that case the Supreme Court held that in order to state a claim under Section 1985(3) the complaining party must allege that: defendants did (1) conspire ... (2) for the purposes of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws. It must then assert that one or more of the conspirators (3) did, or caused to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of [the] conspiracy whereby another was (4a) injured in his person or property or (4b) deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States. 403 U.S. at 102-03, 91 S.Ct. at 1798. The Court in addition held that intent to deprive any person of equal protection or equal privileges and immunities required that there be "some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus behind the conspirators' actions." 403 U.S. at 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798. 5. In their original complaint plaintiffs asserted that, because of plaintiffs' membership in the United Farm Workers of America, the defendant conspired with others to interfere with, restrain, and coerce plaintiffs in the right guaranteed to them by R.C.W. 49.32.020 to organize and choose representatives for purposes of collective bargaining. In their second amended complaint, however, plaintiffs assert two claims *277 under Section 1985(3): the first seeking relief for the alleged conspiracy to deny plaintiffs and members of the class equal protection of the laws or equal privileges and immunities under the laws "because of their status as applicants for union membership or as union supporters"; the second seeking relief for the alleged conspiracy to deny plaintiffs and members of the class equal protection of the laws or equal privileges and immunities under the laws "because of their status as residents of Massachusetts or residents of states other than Washington, Oregon or Idaho." 6. The Court ruled in its order of December 2, 1981, that the plaintiffs had in their original complaint stated a claim upon which relief could be granted under 42 U.S.C. Section 1985(3). The Court's decision was premised, however, upon the allegation that the plaintiffs and class members were members of the United Farm Workers of America. Noting that the Ninth Circuit had yet to decide the question as to whether a class of union members could state a cause of action under Section 1985(3), the Court nonetheless ruled that the pleadings were sufficient to state a claim. 7. It now appears that no named plaintiff and no member of the class was ever a member of the United Farm Workers. Thus, plaintiffs now seek relief not as union members but as (1) union applicants or supporters; or (2) as residents of Massachusetts or non-residents of Washington, Oregon, or Idaho. The Court must determine whether either classification constitutes a protected class for the assertion of a claim for relief under 42 U.S.C. Section 1985(3). 8. In Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971), the Supreme Court held that Section 1985(3) applied to an alleged private conspiracy to deprive the black plaintiffs of their civil rights. Concerned, however, that the statute might be construed to have application to all tortious, conspiratorial interferences with the rights of others, the Court expressly limited Section 1985(3) to those instances in which the conspirators' actions were motivated by "some racial, or perhaps otherwise class-based invidiously discriminatory animus." 403 U.S. at 102, 91 S.Ct. at 1798. The Court declined to decide whether a conspiracy motivated by invidiously discriminatory animus other than racial bias would be actionable under the statute. 403 U.S. at 102 n. 9, 91 S.Ct. at 1798 n. 9. Following Griffin, no circuit has limited the statute exclusively to racial situations. The courts have not been in agreement, however, as to which conspiracies, motivated by a discriminatory animus other than racial, fall within Section 1985(3). Canlis v. San Joaquin Sheriff's Comitatus, 641 F.2d 711, 719 (9th Cir.1981). 9. The Ninth Circuit has applied the statute in a case in which female plaintiffs alleged a conspiracy to deprive a class of women purchasers of their equal rights. Life Insurance Co. of North America v. Reichardt, 591 F.2d 499 (9th Cir.1979). Although the statute has been expanded beyond its historical purpose of protecting helpless Southern blacks from the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, the boundary is not unlimited. Canlis v. San Joaquin Sheriff's Comitatus, 641 F.2d at 719-20. Thus, in DeSantis v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., Inc., 608 F.2d 327 (9th Cir.1979), the Ninth Circuit refused to find that a class of homosexuals constituted a protected class within the meaning of the statute. The Court rejected the claim on the ground that neither Congress nor the federal courts had at any time determined that the rights of homosexuals required special protection. 608 F.2d at 333. 10. The determination of whether a class composed of union applicants or supporters or a class composed of Massachusetts residents or non-residents of Washington, Oregon, or Idaho, constitutes a protected class under Section 1985(3) is controlled by the Ninth Circuit's requirement that the class must be one warranting special protection by virtue of Congressional action or federal court decision. No showing has been made that Congress or the federal courts have recognized a need to protect the civil rights of residents of particular states. With respect to applicants to *278 or supporters of the United Farm Workers, the Court notes that agricultural workers are expressly excluded from the National Labor Relations Act. 29 U.S.C. Section 152(3). Other federal labor laws are inapplicable either because nonunion workers are excluded from the acts or because agricultural workers are not within the scope of the acts. See, e.g. the Labor-Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Section 141 et seq., which amends the NLRA and by definition excludes agricultural workers; the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, 29 U.S.C. Section 401 et seq., which seeks to protect the purposes of the LMRA, and applies to organized labor unions, not organizing workers. The sole statutory provision cited to this Court which protects agricultural workers is subsection 2045(b)(7) of the Farm Labor Contractor Registration Act. 7 U.S.C. Section 2045(b)(7). This statute's stated purpose is to protect migrant agricultural laborers as well as producers and the public from the exploitative practices of farm labor contractors. 7 U.S.C. Section 2041. The Court finds that Subsection 2045(b)(7) does not manifest a congressional intent to accord special federal protection to plaintiffs' civil rights. 11. The plaintiffs described in the second amended complaint may well constitute distinct, identifiable classes, but absent an indication that either class is protected by an Act of Congress or court decision, this Court is compelled to find the protections of Section 1985(3) inapplicable. DeSantis v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., Inc., 608 F.2d 327, 334 (9th Cir.1979). Those classes most appropriately claiming the protection of Section 1985(3) are those allegedly suffering from an invidiously discriminatory animus akin to racial, sexual or religious bias, or a bias based upon national origin or political preference. See, e.g. Canlis v. San Joaquin Sheriff's Posse Comitatus, 641 F.2d 711, 719-20 n. 15 (9th Cir.1981) (cases cited); DeSantis v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., Inc., 608 F.2d 327, 334 n. 1 (9th Cir. 1979) (Sneed, J., concurring and dissenting, cases cited). Defendant's motion for partial summary judgment must therefore be granted. 12. Plaintiffs have moved for partial summary judgment as to the class claim under R.C.W. 49.32.020. The Court finds that there is a genuine issue of material fact as to defendant's motivation relative to its 1978 hiring conduct. Summary judgment at this time would therefore be improper. Plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment must in consequence be denied. 13. Plaintiffs have moved this Court to compel the defendant to provide more complete answers to Plaintiffs' Interrogatories Nos. 25, 26, and 27 which concern defendant's affirmative defenses of laches and estoppel. The Court finds that the defendant's responses are wholly inadequate and that more complete answers are necessary. Plaintiffs' motion to compel more complete answers to interrogatories must therefore be granted. 14. Plaintiffs have also sought to depose any or all of the following witnesses: Duane Dunlap, Fred Langoria, Don Norris, Bill Bauer, John Oyen and Dick Wegener. The plaintiffs assert that these witnesses were present at a meeting held on February 28, 1979 at which defendant's challenged hiring actions were discussed and formulated. Plaintiffs assert that they were not apprised of the subject matter of this meeting until August, 1982. The defendant contends that plaintiffs with due diligence could have ascertained the subject matter of the meeting well in advance of the August, 1982 date. The Court finds that plaintiffs should be granted leave to take the depositions they seek to take. Accordingly, plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment is DENIED; defendant's motion for partial summary judgment is GRANTED. The plaintiffs' motion to compel discovery is GRANTED as to Plaintiffs' Interrogatories 25, 26, and 27. Plaintiffs are accorded leave to depose Messrs. Dunlap, Langoria, Norris, Bauer, Oyen and Wegener, but only as to the February 28, 1979 meeting. The Clerk of this Court is instructed to send uncertified copies of this order to all counsel of record.

Interview: Andrew DiMatteo, Editor of Codex Obscurum zine Since the introduction of Codex Obscurum, a new printed zine of the style common from 1980s-2000s, interest has risen in this ancient but effective form of metal journalism. After the punks (and really, convergence of technological ripeness) introduced D.I.Y. record labels, fanzines and shows, the 1980s brought us some of the first fanzines which were generally xeroxed paste-ups of hand-drawn illustrations and typed text. What made them great was the content: new bands no one had heard of, described in detail, and interviews with the bands people wanted to know more about. They were news and quality control in one. With the dawn of the internet age, zines seemed destined for an early death. But as publishing information got easier, the quality of the information decreased because people were posting just about anything and the audience treated it all as having that standard. In the current day and age, a zine suggests an edited, deliberate and thoughtful publication, and it has more cachet than a blog or Facebook post. We were fortunate locate Codex Obscurum editor Andrew Bastard and get in a few questions about the latest old school zine to hit metal: What did you like about classic xeroxed zines, and what advantages do you think they have over glossy magazines? I’m not going to sit here and say I don’t like glossy magazines; I had a subcription to Metal Maniacs from approximately 1995-2001. I still have boxes of them somewhere and love to flip through them on the shitter. I also have a bunch of old xerox zines in a three-ring binder that I still read to this day. There is some magic behind a xerox zine though that glossy color zines just lack…the fact that you know someone sat there and put the zine together by hand, a true labor of love. Has the internet changed how music is sold, listened to and discovered? How does this affect classic-style zines like Codex Obscurum? Absolutely. Music almost isn’t sold any more aside from vinyl collectors and hardcore music owners. I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD online; I’ll buy from distros at shows/fests here and there but for the most part, I’m in the business of discovering older demo bands that you can’t purchase anymore so I download 80-90% of what I listen to these days. A lot of those blog sites are down these days too so even that has become difficult. On the flip side, the internet has made listening to new music so easy. Full albums are up on YouTube, along with sites like Bandcamp and Spotify. The net’s been an awesome resource for new bands to get heard. What inspired you to take on this somewhat anachronistic format, and what advantages do you think it offers over other formats? I’ve wanted to do this for years ever since I first started working at a Kinkos while in college; I had the resources to do it cheap; I just needed the time to make it actually happen and I guess I finally found that time. I’ve always loved the old style of doing shit, being it releasing demos on cassette, tape trading, zines etc. so this was only natural. This is my way of contributing to the scene while at the same time keeping the old school fires burning. It’s so easy to tell which n00bs are in this scene to stay and which ones are in a “phase” and will be gone soon: the fakes don’t care about the zine; the true lifers love it and are ordering it via snail mail from all corners of the globe. What zines influenced you back in the day? Did you also read glossy magazines? Did the two complement each other? I’m only 30 so I missed out on a lot of the classics that I later obtained through trades, eBay, etc. I always had Metal Maniacs around the house but I also loved to read S.O.D., Unrestrained, etc. and some of the shithead, xerox style zines that inspired Codex Obscurum are Slayer (duh!), Pagan Pages, The Grimoire, Mutilating Process, Worm Gear, Metal Forces, etc. I dont know they they complemented, per se; I just liked reading about bands that I liked and discovering new bands through writers that I shared similar interests with. I gotta give a shout-out to Nathan T. Birk, particularly his Apocalyptic Raids column. He knew how to keep it old school even in the newer glossy mags. 90% of the bands he wrote about that I had never heard of, I’d find myself enjoying not to mention he just had a great writing style. We’ve gone — over the span of only a dozen years — from a time in which information scarcity was a big deal for underground metal, to a time in which information overload (and a thousand times more bands). How do you think this has affected the underground? I don’t even know how to answer this; I will say I hate the popularity of metal these days. It’s the biggest trend going and we’re flooded with mediocre bands copycatting Anthrax with flip brim PBR hats on and cut off blue denim shorts and Vans sneakers that think they are doing the scene a favor when in reality they are just wearing on those of us that have been involved our entire lives. It’s really frustrating but all you can do is bask in the fact that this is, indeed a trend for them and they’ll give up and move on to something else soon enough and this metal pop diva faux show will all end. How will people get ahold of this zine? Rumor is it that you’re charging very little over postage costs — do you hope to make money on this? What will keep you going forward, pay your writers, etc.? On the Codex Obscurum Facebook page you’ll find a Big Cartel link to order online. I also accept snail mail cash or money orders; all that info is also in the “about” section of the FB page. $2 an issue covers what it costs for me to print these things, and shipping costs are as low as I can get them. I’m not looking to make a dime on these although I think I will make a little money on the side in the end which will probably go towards stickers or t-shirts or something. None of the contributors get paid; we’re all doing this out of our love of the old school art. Why do you think metal is important? Metal is the only form of music, in my opinion, that truly shapes the lives of its fans. You don’t see any other music genre that has such heart felt, loyal followers that leave and breathe and bleed for it like you see in the metal community. I guess that’s what makes it “important” to me: you don’t just listen to metal, you are metal. And metal is you. What function did print zines serve in the original underground? Do they serve the same function now? Back in the day (BITD) print zines served a much more legitimate function than they do now. Before we had the internet, zines were how you found new bands and how you learned about said bands and the doctrines that these bands prescribed. BITD you had word of mouth, tape trading, snail mail letters and shows; those were your only means of discovering new bands and learning what those bands were all about. Nowadays you’ve got the net which makes it so much easier but not nearly as much fun. A zine in this day in age is honestly kind of pointless. I could just take all of the info that I put into Codex Obscurum and post in on my facebook wall, or on a blog or whatever and the readers would get the exact same information, faster and far more conveniently but it all harkens back to keeping the flames of old burning and like I said before, it’s fun. I love physically holding a zine in my hands, and being able to fold it up and throw it in my back pocket and whip it out whenever I’ve got some down time and read a piece or two and then put it away. That’s why record collecting is so big these days and the advent of these die hard releases where you get all these extra goodies: people like to hold and possess the things they love and always have it on hand somewhere to go back to and reference whenever they like. Can you tell us about yourself, and your past. What other projects have you had? How did you know/meet your staff? Who are they? This could take forever but I’ll keep is short and sweet and try not to self promote too much .. I currently play in two bands, the first band basically rips off Motorhead, Discharge, Venom and Celtic Frost; we call that band PanzerBastard. The other band is an old school, shithead black/death metal band called Deathgod Messiah…paint, spikes, bullets and Satan. Total South American ‘fago blasphemy…prior to these two, I played in Horn of Valere, an epic, melodic fantasy based black metal band out of Providence, RI. I currently live in Boston, MA (Jamaica Plain, represent!). I also have a solo project that I haven’t touched in years called Shayol Ghul, also fantasy based. I’m a huge fantasy sci-fi nerd and I mean that in the truest sense, not just one of these Game of Throne over-nighters (was reading that series in detention in high school in 1996). Look at my book shelf and you’ll see what I mean… My ‘staff’ are just a bunch of local metalheads that for the most part, I’ve known for years just from being around the scene and going to shows etc. most are involved in their own bands; eventually I’ll probably run a feature in the zine showcasing the contributing members personal bands. Would you give us a little run-down on issue #1 — what’s in it, how many pages, what type of content, etc.? The first issue of Codex Obscurum is thirty 8.5″ x 11″ pages, double sided and folded in half, that ends up being 60 readable pages packed with text and pictures. The content is primarily band interviews and reviews but there are a few small personal bits in there; rants on this and that and a big written piece remembering Rozz Williams (Christian Death) because the zine came out the day of his suicide (April 1st). This issue has interviews with Hellbastard, Varg Vikernes, Steve Zing (Danzig/Samhain), Vasaeleth, Guttural Secrete, Skepticism, High Spirits and a few more. Any plans yet for issue #2? Is Codex Obscurum going to be a “regular thing”? Issue #2 is already underway. We had so much material for issue #1 that it didn’t all fit so we’ve already got a headstart on #2. It should be out in June, maybe July. I’m shooting for a new issue every 2-3 months. I’m going to keep doing it for as long as I can and for as long as my ‘staff’ remain enthusiastic about doing it! and of course for as long as the readers continue to read the damn thing — no readers = no zine so please support us! Thank you. 5 comments It costs $4 to ship a 60-page 5×8 booklet? And $1 for paypal fees? Zines in the day were usually $5 delivered, some less, so I guess this isn’t out of line. Still in the days where most of this stuff is available online, you’d think prices would fall to be market competitive. Do they have a Kindle edition? Everything is online nowadays. Metalion’s book is all one needs. What we need is more metal related reading material that examines the concepts in the Thorns album (singularity theory meets typical metal nonsense) for example. Otherwise it’s always the same “Viking myth this, Satan that” or “this happened in the early 90s” etc. With science and all that shit bands should be talking about some REAL evil but, everything is garbage now anyways. These zines are obsolete, but that’s the stagnant underground. Keeps recycling itself at a lower level, as the Necrovore bassist said. I guess that’s what happens when you let Ulver release crappy electronica albums that his FANS treat as avant-garde works of transcendent musical master works.

Just one day after news broke that Fox is canceling "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," Terry Crews is staying positive, pointing out to CBS News that the show lasted for more than 100 episodes. The actor, who plays Sgt. Terry Jeffords, said, "I'm super proud of all we've done and if by some incarnation we can come back in some kind of way -- another network or something -- I'm jumping at the chance, but as it stands right now, we are gone, and I'm not mad." Crews says he's grateful for the run the show's had and says it's been "a privilege" to play a feminist, self-aware cop who loves his family. Crews tells CBS News he has a lot in common with his character, including their approach toward masculinity. "As a man, you have to be invincible, which is impossible, and that's the thing that really, really resonates with a lot of people -- Terry Jeffords is not ashamed to say what he's scared of, and he doesn't even have to hide it through bravado," Crews says. "Terry's just like, 'I'm very, very scared right now and that's OK. We can talk about it and deal with it.' I see a lot of me in that, especially since I came out and went through all my therapy. I've been so transparent and able to do the same thing and just say what could hurt me and how I've been hurt." Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox Crews, who wrote a book called "Manhood" in 2014, was one of the few men in Hollywood to tell his story as part of the #MeToo movement. He and Tarana Burke, the founder of #MeToo, are being honored on Tuesday by Safe Horizon, an organization that works with victims of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking. He says he got "choked up" meeting Burke at the Oscars. "Fear begets fear, but courage begets courage," says Crews. "Her courage spread like a wildfire. Her stand against this activity, this kind of violence, this kind of manipulation was so strong that it's still reverberating right now. It's this fearlessness the changes the world and to be honored at the same event with her -- it's one of the greatest honors of my life." He says Burke is like a sister to him and adds, "Those who've been victimized -- we're kind of our own little family. … We're not going to be quiet. We're not going to be silent." Last year, Crews made headlines when he said that in February 2016, Adam Venit, the former longtime head of William Morris Endeavor's motion picture group, groped his genitals at a Hollywood event. Though he didn't make his accusations public at first, Crews says he felt like he had to come forward when people started maligning women who spoke up in the #MeToo movement. "People were calling the women opportunists, gold-diggers, 'They just want a payday' or 'Why are they coming forward now?'" he explains. "And I'm going, 'Anybody who's behind enemy lines needs to get to a safe spot.' I couldn't stand it. I had to lend my voice, because it happened to me, and people were saying, 'These women are crazy,' and I said I gotta lend my voice to this." Crews says that when the incident happened, he felt he was in a particularly vulnerable position as a black man up against one of Hollywood's most powerful players. "Look at who I am," he told CBS News. "I am 240 pounds, about 3 to 4 percent body fat. If I would have hit him, imagine, in the mouth or the eye and he had any sort of injury -- I told the president of William Morris Endeavor, 'If I had hurt him, would you give me any mercy?' And you know what he said? 'Nope. No.' When you look at black men in society, the only way you get recognized as being victimized is when you're dead. Anything before death is, 'You should walk it off.' Or if a guy shot you, 'What were you doing that you got shot? Why were you there, that someone shot you in the back?'" Crews says people often ask him why he did not hit Venit. "This guy said, 'Terry Crews' career isn't even all that, for him to get felt on and not fight back,'" recalls Crews. "But I thought, 'But my family is all that. My wife and kids are all that. I don't want my daughters seeing me in jail.' … I'm a 48-year-old big, giant, grown man and he's [a partner] at William Morris Endeavor and [if] I knock him out, am I getting mercy? I know how this story goes. 'This is America,' as Donald Glover says." Crews says when he complained to WME, Venit called him with a brief apology and nothing came of the complaint until after he aired his grievances in public. "You're an agent," Crews says of WME. "Your whole purpose is to protect us. If you abuse us, who do we go to now?" Since Crews went public with his accusations, WME suspended Venit for a month last year and stripped him of his department head title. In March, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office announced that they were not pursuing charges against Venit, saying,"Given that the suspect did not make contact with the victim's skin when he grabbed the victim's genitals and there is no restraint involved, a felony filing is declined." Afterward, the Los Angeles City Attorney declined to pursue misdemeanor charges because the case exceeded the statute of limitations, reports Variety. Crews responds, "You can just grab people through their clothing in front of everyone? And the thing is, what he did is considered a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations had run out, but if I had reacted violently -- that would be a felony. It's a trap, and all I could think about was all the young black men in jail right now who were probably reacting to things that were done to them." Crews is pursuing a civil case against Venit. Crews says that ironically, Russell Simmons, who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault and rape, was one of the people who asked him to drop his case against Venit and WME. He also says people at WME told him that what happened was no big deal and to "let it go." "I was like, this is what women go through all the time," he says. "This is the gaslight." The actor says Safe Horizon provides services to victims who may not have the same strong support network he had. Crews says the key to healing is to overcome the feeling of shame. "I tell people all the time, get rid of the shame," he says. "Don't hold it, because it's not yours. It's never yours." The actor says he also wants people in the black community to change their attitudes about masculinity. "Black men, you are seen as invincible. … There's this thing that doesn't exist -- somehow bullets are supposed to ricochet off your chest," says Crews. "As a black man, I look in my own culture and we're telling each other stories that -- why do we believe them? The fact that getting therapy is seen as weak." Crews is concerned that this mindset stops victims from sharing their stories about assault or molestation, and points to R. Kelly's long career as proof that there was a "complicit system" surrounding the singer, who has been accused of sexual abuse by several women. But Crews is hopeful for the future where male victims will feel empowered to speak out. "They're coming. But they're scared, you know, and I understand." He also has a message for perpetrators of sexual abuse and those who've protected them. "Healing can't happen until there's concession," he says. "Until somebody says, 'We messed up. We're sorry and we ought to make up for it,' and then everything can move forward."

Q: sciklearn Linear Regression (Final Prediciton always 0) I'm trying to do simple linear regression using this small Dataset (Screenshot). The dataset is records divided into small time blocks of 4 years each (Except for the 2nd to the last time block of 2016-2018). What I'm trying to do is try to predict the output of records for the timeblock of 2019-2022. To do this, I placed a 2019-2022 time block with all its rows containing the value of 0 (Since there's nothing made during that time since it's the future). I did that to accommodate the syntax of sklearn's train_test_split and went with this code: import pandas as pd import numpy as np from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression df = pd.read_csv("TCO.csv") df = df[['2000-2003', '2004-2007', '2008-2011','2012-2015','2016-2018','2019-2022']] linreg = LinearRegression() X1_train, X1_test, y1_train, y1_test = train_test_split(df[['2000-2003','2004-2007','2008-2011', '2012-2015','2016-2018']],df['2019-2022'],test_size=0.4,random_state = 42) linreg.fit(X1_train, y1_train) linreg.intercept_ list( zip( ['2000-2003','2004-2007','2008-2011','2012-2015','2016-2018'],list(linreg.coef_))) y1_pred = linreg.predict(X1_test) print(y1_pred) test_pred_df = pd.DataFrame({'actual': y1_test, 'predicted': np.round(y1_pred, 2), 'residuals': y1_test - y1_pred}) print(test_pred_df[0:10].to_string()) For some reason, the algorithm would always return a 0 as the final prediction for all rows with 0 residuals (This is due to the timeblock of 2019-2022 having all rows of zero.) I think I did something wrong but I can't tell what it is. (I'm a beginner in this topic.) Can someone point out what went wrong and how to fix it? Edit: I added a copy-able version of the data: df = pd.DataFrame( {'Country:':['Brunei','Cambodia','Indonesia','Laos', 'Malaysia','Myanmar','Philippines','Singaore', 'Thailand','Vietnam'], '2000-2003': [0,0,14,1,6,0,25,8,26,8], '2004-2007': [0,3,15,6,21,0,37,11,44,36], '2008-2011': [0,5,31,9,75,0,58,27,96,61], '2012-2015': [5,11,129,35,238,3,99,65,170,96], '2016-2018': [6,22,136,17,211,10,66,89,119,88]}) A: Based on your data, I think this is what you ask for [Edit: see updated version below]: import pandas as pd from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression df = pd.DataFrame( {'Country:':['Brunei','Cambodia','Indonesia','Laos', 'Malaysia','Myanmar','Philippines','Singaore', 'Thailand','Vietnam'], '2000-2003': [0,0,14,1,6,0,25,8,26,8], '2004-2007': [0,3,15,6,21,0,37,11,44,36], '2008-2011': [0,5,31,9,75,0,58,27,96,61], '2012-2015': [5,11,129,35,238,3,99,65,170,96], '2016-2018': [6,22,136,17,211,10,66,89,119,88]}) # create a transposed version with country in header df_T = df.T df_T.columns = df_T.iloc[-1] df_T = df_T.drop("Country:") # create a new columns for target df["2019-2022"] = np.NaN # now fit a model per country and add the prediction for country in df_T: y = df_T[country].values X = np.arange(0,len(y)) m = LinearRegression() m.fit(X.reshape(-1, 1), y) df.loc[df["Country:"] == country, "2019-2022"] = m.predict(5)[0] This prints: Country: 2000-2003 2004-2007 2008-2011 2012-2015 2016-2018 2019-2022 Brunei 0 0 0 5 6 7.3 Cambodia 0 3 5 11 22 23.8 Indonesia 14 15 31 129 136 172.4 Laos 1 6 9 35 17 31.9 Malaysia 6 21 75 238 211 298.3 Myanmar 0 0 0 3 10 9.5 Philippines 25 37 58 99 66 100.2 Singaore 8 11 27 65 89 104.8 Thailand 26 44 96 170 119 184.6 Vietnam 8 36 61 96 88 123.8 Forget about my comment with shift(). I thought about it, but it makes not sense for this small amount of data, I think. But considering time series methods and treating each country's series as a time series may still be worth for you. Edit: Excuse me. The above code is unnessary complicated, but was just result of me going through it step by step. Of course it can simply be done row by row like tihs: import pandas as pd from sklearn.linear_model import LinearRegression df = pd.DataFrame( {'Country:':['Brunei','Cambodia','Indonesia','Laos', 'Malaysia','Myanmar','Philippines','Singaore', 'Thailand','Vietnam'], '2000-2003': [0,0,14,1,6,0,25,8,26,8], '2004-2007': [0,3,15,6,21,0,37,11,44,36], '2008-2011': [0,5,31,9,75,0,58,27,96,61], '2012-2015': [5,11,129,35,238,3,99,65,170,96], '2016-2018': [6,22,136,17,211,10,66,89,119,88]}) # create a new columns for target df["2019-2022"] = np.NaN for idx, row in df.iterrows(): y = row.drop(["Country:", "2019-2022"]).values X = np.arange(0,len(y)) m = LinearRegression() m.fit(X.reshape(-1, 1), y) df.loc[idx, "2019-2022"] = m.predict(len(y)+1)[0] 1500 rows should be no problem.

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Ask yourself why, ifyou're unsatisfied in that season and make the decisions to transition yourself that you are reaching for.

Revealing the identity of the father raped poznavatelnoe from Bashkiria Father raped by colleagues poznavatelnoe was the Deputy head of the Department of Regardie in the Republic of Bashkortostan. On Thursday, November 1, reports “Says Moscow” referring to the informed source. The injured girl recently got a job in the police, she just this year graduated from the law Institute of MIA of Russia. According to the Bashkir media, poznavatelnoe was beaten, she is diagnosed with injuries in the form of multiple lacerations. On the detention of police officers suspected of rape, it became known on October 31. As reported in the Investigation Committee, among the detainees — two of the chief of regional Department of the Ministry of internal Affairs and the head of the regional migration service. As told “Lente.ru” a source in law enforcement bodies, in the night of Tuesday, October 30, in the building Department at the Ufa district, Ufa, street of October revolution, three senior officers arranged a feast. Later that evening they called into the office of a subordinate, Lieutenant of justice, the investigator of the police Department, supposedly in need of service, and the woman had to walk from another building. But in the office all three of them first tried to drink, and then together raped.

Sexism, Impracticality, and the Hopeful Future of Costuming Fundamentally superhero costumes are vital for the industry because they establish iconography and create the brand. They are used not only to create a recognisable identity for a character, but also often function as a disguise to shield an everyday persona. Costumes also serve the purpose of showcasing character development. For example, the costume is revealed to signal when a character has finally reached the point of either accepting their role as a superhero, or are able to use their powers fully. Finally, the costume is also often considered the defining trait of the superhero; that personality, appearance and even powers may alter with iterations, but the costume tends to remain a stable aspect. The costume, that becomes almost a uniform, cannot be separated from that particular superhero as it has become their identity beyond any other factor. Some have even argued that the costume is so encoded as part of the persona of the hero that not only is his/her identity no longer complete without it, but if another dons the outfit that superhero persona can be usurped. While I may not fully agree with this sentiment with the series of reboots and adaptions the comic book industry is undergoing, I do understand why the very discussion, let alone implementation, of changing a superhero’s costume can become difficult for many people. However, I believe, and argue here, that tradition is not enough to justify the continuation of sexist and impractical choices when change could only lead to better art, better story, and a greater engagement by a wider audience. Hypersexualisation and attracting the male gaze The first issue often raised in relation the inherent sexism of female costuming is often connected more to the representations in television and film, and relates to the cinematic treatment of the introduction to the female character. She may be strong, literally powerful, acted by an empowered actress and even beating the Bechdel test. Yet, the first introduction to her is the camera panning up and down her body, with the slow chest-height-linger that manages to capture all the tight fitting and revealing components of the costume. This is considered catering to the male (heterosexual) gaze, a term coined in 1973 by Laura Mulvey, and is credited to the male filmmaker and the particular target audience of most film genres. Part of what has become an issue, other than the desire by most women not to be treated as a sexualised object, is the rise of female audience members for both comics and visual representations of superheros. Thus, when a character is built primarily on the basis of appearance and sex appeal there is little for a modern female audience to emphasise and connect with. At the heart of this issue has become women’s (and many men’s) desire to see characters represented in a rounded manner, which see character development and a multifaceted, relatable human character. Furthermore, research is finding that the influence of superheroes for women is not always a positive one. Even though women play a variety of roles in the superhero genre, from helpless to powerful, they all tend to be hypersexualised with perfect, voluptuous figures and sexy, revealing attire. All factors that can impact beliefs on gender roles, body esteem and self-objectification. Even when female superheroes are featured, which let’s face it is not as common as male superheroes, and attempt to elevate egalitarian gender beliefs this is too often undermined by the sexualised nature of their costuming. A study conducted by Hillary Pennell and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz found that when showing a montage from Spider-Man women viewers reported less egalitarian gender beliefs. But worse, when viewing a female superhero montage were not empowered, and although it did not lower their egalitarian views, it did not increase them either. As such Pennell and Behm-Morawitz present that the sexualisation of the female superheroes serves to reinforce rather than challenge stereotypical gender beliefs, which overshadows any benefit derived from having a strong, capable female character. It is also worth commenting on the sexualisation of superheros in both genders. The franchise of Batman is perhaps the best example of this. The costuming of Batgirl and Catwomen are always overtly sexualised, including breast-cup armour with nipples for Alicia Silverstone’s outfit. However, in the film in which that costume appeared, Batman & Robin, both Batman and Robin also wore costumes with nipples. Furthermore throughout that franchise the size of the groin cup for the males has continuously increased, as if to help imply that “yes this Batman is the most manly, just look down!” This is just as concerning a sexist issue. Why is it that for a man to be a superhero it must be about physical musculature and for a woman it must be sexual appeal? How have we still not progressed beyond such base stereotypes? There is also often justifications that are offered in defence of particular costuming choices. For instance Power Girl is not showing her breasts, but a lack of an emblem. Or that Starfire comes from a culture without nudity taboos. However, there are ways to represent these important background threads than through sexualising the character. Starfire is a great example, for a culture with no nudity taboos why would tight fitted clothing be appealing? Why not loose fitting clothing? It makes sense she would want to wear less clothing, but why would a series of uncomfortable straps be the choice? It is also necessary to ask what would fighters from her culture wear, and why then does she not appear as they do? Then we have Wonder Girl on a Teen Titans’ cover that has furthered the debate. It can be suggested that by placing a teenage superhero falling out of a tube top on a cover it delivers a particular message, which is this book is not for women, it is a comic where women are to be gawked at. Focusing in on the Teen Titans #1 cover from 2014 is an interesting case study to explore and one that writer Janelle Asselin dissects in detail. The first point she raises is perhaps the most disturbing, which is that any cover, let alone a first issue cover, is something that can take up to a year with input from sales, marketing and editing, and yet this is the cover they selected. It is a prime example, Asselin argues, of when comic book corporations make basic mistakes in relation to appealing to new target audiences. A good cover should allude to the story, draw in the reader, and offer a clear first impression to capture the scope and message of the book. Which is why the overly sexualised image of Wonder Girl is so dramatic, as opposed to other sexualised female heroes, in relation to the message of this cover. Teen Titans actually has more than half of its self-professed fans being female, aged in the late teens to early adult category, this is the target audience being deliberately overlooked. Keeping in mind that the visual representation on the cover is not the Wonder Girl present in earlier comics or in the animated television show. More disturbingly is it is a franchise known for having launched Teen Titans Go! that has an even younger audience. Yet this cover is clearly aimed at the typical DC demographic of males 18-39. As Asselin points out, even basic market research should have told DC that this is not the appropriate, or appealing, cover for the target audience of that title. Although Asselin simply pointed out what anyone with a vague understanding of Teen Titans, comics and basic commerce could have figured out, the splash back on her and other women in the comic industry was huge and negative. With death threats, insults and an outpouring of misogyny that had the CBR forum shut down, the article only highlighted that underlying a reasonable discussion (exactly what I am engaging in here) on female representation is more than necessary, it is vital, because it should never have escalated to the level of death threats! If the result of a reasoned discussion is an explosion of abuse and absurdity, then this is a good gauge that change is needed as those should not be the dominant voices in what is rapidly becoming a mainstream cultural artefact. The best arguments coming out in defence of changes to female costumes is the acknowledgement that the medium was originally designed for anyone, and there is now occurring a shift to returning to a broader appeal of more than one narrow demographic. I think B Clay Moore said it best, that if you decide you don’t want to read a comic book because it offers dignity as a consideration for female characters then “I doubt anyone will mourn your absence.” Part of why there appears to be more anger leveled against the costuming of female superheroes in film and television is the larger audience. But mostly it is because of the expectation by viewers that the new adaption will take advantage of the opportunity to change representations. This does not mean that it is of course easy to handle an adaption, after all the filmmakers are taking often iconic, long-standing representations and changing them for a new genre. However, disappointingly what has tended to occur with female character costuming in film is that the only improvement that occurs is when a comic version actually cannot physically be reproduced in real life and make it through the rating systems. One counter-argument commonly made relates to the issue of what is conventionally called slut-shaming. The idea that by criticising the expressive costuming of characters that this correlates to a criticism of women who dress in tight-fitting or revealing clothing in real life. The choice to do this and label it as empowering is another debate altogether. Regardless, this argument lacks validity when we are discussing superheros that do not have an equivalent in the real world. Their clothing is a costume. Even more than this, is my next argument point, it is not only costuming as a disguise, but it is costume for combat, and any comparison to how real women involved in real-world combat further iterates that the debate is not about clothing, but a costume. Impractical combat wear One of the key complaints leveled against impractical combat wear is that it actually draws a viewer out of the world. It means a character has become a caricature and unless the film has also morphed into a spoof then this ruins the verisimilitude of the entire experience. It is difficult, especially for a modern audience, not to ask: how can she run in 6-inch heels? How, when she swung her arm, did her breasts not fall out of that cut out? When she stepped why did the high-cut swimmers not ride up her butt? How did she bend in the skin tight leather that anyone knows has no flex? How did that zip, placed just on her bust line not come down? Pretty much all of these questions relate to movement. If they were simply pin-up girls, then there is no debate, their role is to look sexually appealing. Fine, there is a legitimate market for that. However, a female superhero needs to fight, which means obviously she needs to move. At times arguments can be made for less clothing than more in combat, in fact there is a great history of combat being conducted in less clothing to ensure that a combatant cannot use that to gain advantage. However, this is also undermined by the presence of heroes such as Jessica Jones, who is able to fight in jeans and a t-shirt, which in many ways provides better protection and movement than a leotard. I’m sure receiving a wedgy mid-battle is not conductive to one’s concentration. Jones’ lack of armour actual presents an interesting persona to the viewer, as it offers a perception of a character appearing both flawed and heroic simultaneously. It also suggests that a character can be complex even without living a double life. This actually taps in to a larger cultural idea that for many women the clothing they wear every day is already a form of armour – a protective façade that keeps them from being vulnerable. Another converse discussion has been the costuming of Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. She appears in tiny shorts, fish nets and stiletto boots, all the markings of a pin-up costume. Yet, she is also an abused woman suffering Stockholm syndrome with significant psychological issues, making her actual costuming a supportive criticism of why such sexualised costuming is a negative. A positive version of the less is better argument has been around Wonder Woman, whose costuming is modelled from traditional Greek and ancient Roman armour, which did allow for less coverage, partly due to climate, but also to allow a greater range of movement. A fact that is demonstrated well by the way Wonder Woman and the Amazons fight. However, this became less inspiring when the costuming moved from the Amazons’ authentic apparel in Wonder Women, interestingly designed by a woman Lindy Hemming, to the return to sexist impracticality in Justice League when male designer Michael Wilkinson took the reins. Another interesting component of many of the new costume designs on television is the removal of the spandex body suit and the replacement of the more modular suits with straps and clasps. This actually suggests more effectively that the items being worn are a form of armour, that they serve a purpose and as such are actually put on and taken off like real world armour. Another set of lauded changes have been in that of Batgirl and Spider Woman, both of which have ditched the spandex and gotten practical. What they are offering is not only more practical, but also more accessible to fans. A textural look in comics is actually quite aesthetically interesting, but also easier to translate into the real world. For instance, I would argue part of the popularity of television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jessica Jones is that a viewer can easily dress like their hero and engage in day-to-day life. What could be more empowering than as a woman being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say: “today I am a superhero.” Looking to the future DC has perhaps had a worse run of this than other brands simply because of the controversy always expected as part of re-branding. The best example of positive forward change was in the introduction of the new costuming of Power Girl. However, rather than being met with applause this was largely decried as “ruining” comics. Unsurprisingly, as discussed before, the fan base is over 90% males in the 18-40 bracket, and they were the ones complaining about the change. However, it is only the costume with the lack of the “boob window” that they are complaining about. The characterisation, and the character’s own stance has not changed. Power Girl is actually one of DC’s most independent and empowered women, with scenes present even in early issues, who actively demanded respect and equality from her male counterparts. Yet, that is not how she is largely considered or perceived by her readership, instead the focus returned always to her physical sexuality and costuming, which continuously undermining her power. Similar to other superheroes, Power Girl experienced a range of different costuming, but always was returned to the most sexualised form eventually. What future then does the costuming of female superheros have? Many would argue that the representations in Wonder Woman were the best: providing a costume with historical authenticity, practicality, ability of movement, and retained the original iconography important to a superhero’s costume. A key factor in this is the use of one important question: what is essential to the character? When too often the question seems to be: is this sexy enough? Another great example of where the traditional costumes is being challenged is in the changes undertaken to both Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel. Firstly, in Ms. Marvel when Kamala Khan first states to Captain Marvel that she wants to be her, but “[e]xcept I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.” However, when she turns into that version she can’t walk in the heels and the outfit delivers “epic wedgies.” Khan then moves to her chosen costume, which is basically a short dress over tights, finding it infinitely more practical and also better representational of what teenager girls would choose to wear. It does not undermine her femininity, a complaint often leveled against women dressing in a less sexualised manner, and it is also “cool” in a contemporary manner that will appeal to a reader. The transition of Carol Danvers from the overly sexualised swimsuit of Ms. Marvel into the combat ready Captain Marvel is one of the best representations of female costume adaptions. Also new creation of Batgirl thanks to the new creative team, resulted in a mass of fan-art and enthusiasm. The costume spoke of the character, her style and place in life that made her less a cast-off of Batman, and rather a young woman with her own identity. A great costume is meant to inspire stories beyond the story already being told. It helps the audience know what type of story to expect, and I think we are all a little tired of the expectation being sexual appeal only. The new move seems to be making costumes that are character-first designs rather than a female-first designs, which at its heart is what we are all wanting to see. What do you think? .