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Last week at the Sydney Motorcycle Show this stunning Samurai caused quite a commotion when it was unveiled to the public. At first glance you might think it’s been built by Zero Engineering; the creators of this Samurai style bobber, but when you take a closer look you’ll see there’s one obvious difference – we’ll get to that in a moment. The bike was built by Destino Custom Garage who are a Sydney shop that specialise in custom builds on metric cruisers. Their goal was not to replicate the Zero style Samurai, but to build their own on a completely different platform. The Zero Engineering bikes have always been focused on American engines due to Shinya’s love of the American culture and all things old. “Because we specialise in Japanese motorcycles, we thought that it is only fitting that our Samurai is powered by a Japanese engine” said Jimmi from Destino.
Destino tried a number of different configurations for this bike, but in the end they chose the powerful 1100cc V-twin Yamaha engine. “They sound amazing and have plenty of ‘useable’ power” says Jimmi. “We think that the V-Twin is perfectly suited to our samurai design. Due to Australian registration laws, we could not do a ground up build, we had to start with a donor bike. We chose a brand new xvs1100, almost every single component on the bike was changed or modified to acheive our look”.
Genuine antiqued brass Tsuba – samurai sword hilt
“A true Japanese warrior has a strong & powerful centre of balance” says Nikki from Destino. “Slung low & mean… ready to pounce. We wanted to capture that in the bikes stance.” The front forks have been raked to achieve that look and the riding position is strong yet sleek. The bike might look like a hard tail but there is an internal mono shock suspension for added comfort. Another interesting feature that is a salute to its Japanese heritage is the fuel tank has been emblazoned with a genuine antique brass Tsuba (samurai sword hilt). Some other features include twin front discs and custom made pipes that look like they mean business.
We’ve been told that Destino are only making 4 of these Samurai bikes each year and will be selling them to clients on an invite only basis. Which means they think you have to be worthy of their bike before you can even get your wallet out. Each motorcycle will be custom built to suit its owners specifications – which will ensure each Samurai is a one off unique piece as it rolls out the garage door. The price we were quoted was around A$35,000 but will vary depending on the components you choose. What do you think, are you worthy of one?
To see more of this Samurai, check out the video. Or to express your interest or ask a question hit this.
A cool yet understated take on the humble brake light
Jimmi & NIkki stand behind their 9 month obession
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A new study by researchers working at the University of Toronto and Ryerson University investigated the nutritional benefits of novel beverages (vitamin waters, energy drinks, and novel juices) sold in Canadian supermarkets by assessing their micronutrient compositions. The findings were published today in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.
According to the study novel beverages sold in Canadian supermarkets revealed extensive nutrient enrichment. On-package marketing highlighted nutritional attributes such as immune support and antioxidant properties, and some made claims related to specific nutrients. In addition, nutrients were often juxtaposed with messages related to performance and emotional well-being, benefits that go beyond conventional nutritional science.
The study found extensive micronutrient additions at levels often well in excess of nutrient requirements. The most commonly found nutrients were vitamins B6, B12, C and niacin. With the exception of vitamin of C, young Canadian adults -- the likely target group for these products -- are already consuming enough of these nutrients to meet their needs.
Naomi Dachner, a researcher in Nutritional Science as the University of Toronto said, "While our findings suggest that consumers stand to reap little or no benefit from the nutrient additions in novel beverages, most products were being marketed as if they provided a unique benefit to the consumer through the nutrient additions."
After novel beverages began being regulated as foods instead of Natural Health Products, their labels changed to meet food labeling requirements, but there was relatively little change in their nutrient composition or marketing.
Dachner explained, "Most of the nutrients permitted for addition are allowable at levels well above nutrient requirements, and, the new guidance is not designed to steer manufacturers towards the addition of nutrients that would address existing nutrient inadequacies in the population."
"Novel beverages are now required to display Nutrition Facts tables which may facilitate comparisons between products, but this information will not enable consumers to differentiate potentially beneficial nutrient additions from others."
The study raises questions about what measures need to be taken to ensure that consumers of novel beverages are not misled or exposed to unnecessarily high nutrient loads with no potential benefit.
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I love being a mom, and I want all of my friends and family—and all of their friends and family—to share in my joy. That is why I crowdfund all of my son’s financial needs, from diapers and food to baby gymnastics and baby tutoring. After all, in this digital age, we’re just one big, interconnected family, and we should take care of each other. But we should especially take care of Monroe because he is my son, and I therefore care more about him than other people’s sons. Also his daddy and I prefer to stay home and think about names of novels that we probably won’t write. It’s more our speed.
Is using Kickstarter to fund our son’s upbringing too complicated? No way. Here’s how we do it: Just the other day, little Monroe threw his pacifier in the toilet, and I wouldn’t give it back to him. “Too many germs,” I kept saying, but he’s a willful little guy when it comes to that binky. So instead of going to the store and buying a new one, I simply added it to our “reach goal” for our Kickstarter. Presto! We got enough to buy a new pacifier and a new set of headphones for Mommy. See, this is what happens when you support people in need.
Raising Monroe via Kickstarter was difficult at first. People didn’t understand what we were doing, and they had lots of questions and comments and opinions, but we were patient. I knew they’d come around once they fell in love with Monroe, just like we did. I also posted a video of Monroe crying for food, and that’s when contributions really started pouring in. Now, with our monthly campaigns, people include us in their regular bills. We’re part of their extended family. See? If we’d had “traditional” jobs like our other friends, we never would have the time to nurture our extended family!
Raising Monroe the Kickstarter way does take up a lot of my time. I post daily pictures of him on our blog, and we meet with our more generous donors on a regular basis, like Monroe’s grandfather, for example. As a reward for their contributions, Godmother-Level donors have the opportunity change Monroe’s actual diapers, and Mom-Level contributors will one day have the privilege of witnessing him potty train. In this way, Monroe has many different mothers, because it truly does take a village to raise a child!
Frankly, I wish my parents could have raised me with Kickstarter. I probably would have lived out the rest of my childless days Kickstarting all kinds of interesting projects, like my jewelry designs, or a documentary about my own childhood. But when I got pregnant, I knew I had to give myself over to motherhood. Monroe’s father, Raymond, completely supports me. He’s also working on a book about the Kickstarter way of life. He’s seen what a difference crowdfunding has made for our family.
For instance, when I was designing jewelry I often found that I was too tired to play with Monroe at the end of the day, but now we play for hours until he gets tired of his toys and books. His young, active mind really does need constant entertainment, which is why this month we’re asking for an iPad Air, loaded with all the best educational toddler apps. Monroe is very musical and his fingers are agile. We could have a little prodigy on our hands. Patrons will of course get a digital download of his first album!
Regardless of what people will tell you, having other people pay for stuff isn’t just the “easy way out.” It’s just better parenting.
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A former Canadian soldier, who survived a vicious axe attack in Afghanistan nine years ago, has taken his first public steps using an exoskeleton customized by Simon Fraser University researchers.
Capt. Trevor Greene was attacked by an axe-wielding teenager while meeting with elders in an Afghan village in 2006. The blow split his skull open and left the six foot four soldier unable to walk or talk.
But with the help of brain scientists from SFU, he's made remarkable progress. On Thursday, he used his exoskeleton to walk across the stage at their Surrey campus and appeal for a new state of the art facility for veterans.
"It's amazing, I call it the Iron Man Suit," said Greene. "You watch movies like Iron Man and it's just Hollywood, but this is real."
"My hope is that it'll spark my muscle memory from the millions of footsteps that I took up till now."
Independent movement 'fabulous'
Although exoskeletons have been used for patients with spinal injuries, Greene's doctors say he's the first brain-injured person to walk using the device.
"It's like when you move a doll's arms and legs...That's what it feels like on my legs," said Greene. "To be doing that independent movement, even under power, is fabulous, because it's been nine years since I walked properly."
With the help of scientists and researchers from Simon Fraser University, Capt. Trevor Greene has made remarkable progress. (CBC)
Dr. Carolyn Sparrey, a professor in SFU's School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, says Greene is the best possible subject she could have.
"He is going to push himself and work as hard as he possibly can," said Sparrey. "What we're hoping is that it does start to drive some of the connections back from his legs, back to his brain and back again.
"So we get that neuroplasticity, that change in the brain structure, that helps him recover the function."
Greene's ambition is to recover enough function to make it to Everest Base Camp. He even has a tattoo of the Himalayas on his arm.
Bringing veterans and scientists together
The Royal Canadian Legion raised $120,000 to pay for Greene's motorized exoskeleton, custom-made by Israel-based company ReWalk.
Carolyn Sparrey, a professor in SFU's School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, used her experience in biomechanics to customize Greene's exoskeleton. (CBC)
In turn, his remarkable rehabilitation has inspired the RCL in Surrey to start a recovery of its own; they're hoping to transform their aging branch into a new, state-of-the-art facility.
Marc Tremblay, B.C. President, says he hopes the local politicians and business leaders who witnessed Greene walk will contribute to the new complex, which would bring veterans, doctors and scientists together.
"We do have veterans right across the country that need access to the care that they deserve for their service," said Tremblay.
Greene sees himself as lucky, despite his devastating injury.
"The right people have shown up at the right time and I think that other guys haven't been as fortunate."
That's why he's happy to help.
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After Legislative Coup, North Carolina Can No Longer Be Considered a Democracy, Report Says
A new report finds that North Carolina’s democratic institutions are so flawed that the state should no longer be considered a functioning democracy.
The report, by the Electoral Integrity Project, or EIP, “points to extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression of communities of color and the recent stripping of power of incoming Democratic Governor Roy Cooper by Republicans,” reports Democracy Now! EIP gave the state a score of 58 out of 100 points—similar to those of Cuba, Sierra Leone and Indonesia.
For more about the study, Democracy Now! spoke with Andrew Reynolds, professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the founders of the Electoral Integrity Project.
Reynolds said:
If you look at North Carolina’s electoral process and you look at some of the more recent activities of the Legislature in suppressing access to the polls, taking some executive power back to the Legislature after the Republicans lost the governorship in the last elections, and also the systematic way in which redistricting in Carolina has removed competition from the electoral process, so incumbent state legislators now are beholden to their party leaders, the more extreme wings of their party membership, and not the voters themselves—when you add all these issues and elements together, we see North Carolina as an atrophying democracy, a semi-democracy, a pseudo-democracy, a place where democracy is on the decline, the vibrancy of institutions are getting weaker, and the population is more exasperated and alienated from the political process, because they feel it no longer reflects their will or their opinions about issues on a day-to-day basis.
Reynolds previously detailed why “North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy”by EIP in an op-ed published at The News & Observer:
First, legislative power does not depend on the votes of the people. One party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power. The GOP has a huge legislative majority giving it absolute veto-proof control with that tiny advantage in the popular vote. The other party wins just a handful of votes less and 0 percent of the legislative power. This is above and beyond the way in which state legislators are detached from democratic accountability as a result of the rigged district boundaries. They are beholden to their party bosses, not the voters. Seventy-six of the 170 (45 percent) incumbent state legislators were not even opposed by the other party in the general election. Second, democracies do not limit their citizens’ rights on the basis of their born identities. However, this is exactly what the North Carolina legislature did through House Bill 2 (there are an estimated 38,000 transgender Tar Heels), targeted attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote and pernicious laws to constrain the ability of women to act as autonomous citizens. Third, government in North Carolina has become arbitrary and detached from popular will. When, in response to losing the governorship, one party uses its legislative dominance to take away significant executive power, it is a direct attack upon the separation of powers that defines American democracy. When a wounded legislative leadership, and a lame-duck executive, force through draconian changes with no time for robust review and debate it leaves Carolina no better than the authoritarian regimes we look down upon.
—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly
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Description: Several vulnerabilities were reported in Fortinet FortiManager. A remote user can conduct cross-site scripting attacks.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) does not properly filter HTML code from user-supplied input before displaying the input. A remote user can cause arbitrary scripting code to be executed by the target user's browser. The code will originate from the site running the Fortinet FortiManager software and will run in the security context of that site. As a result, the code will be able to access the target user's cookies (including authentication cookies), if any, associated with the site, access data recently submitted by the target user via web form to the site, or take actions on the site acting as the target user.
The SOMVpnSSLPortalDialog and FGDMngUpdHistory functions are affected [CVE-2015-8037]. Version 5.2.2 and prior versions are affected.
The sharedjobmanager and SOMServiceObjDialog functions are affected [CVE-2015-8038]. Version 5.2.3 and prior versions are affected.
The vendor was notified on August 4, 2015.
The original advisory is available at:
http://hyp3rlinx.altervista.org/advisories/AS-FORTIMANAGER-XSS-0924.txt
John Page of hyp3rlinx reported these vulnerabilities.
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Versyp set to begin her 12th season with the Boilermakers
Buy Photo Head coach Sharon Versyp with instructions as the Boilermakers face Iowa Sunday, February 19, 2017, at Mackey Arena. Purdue pulled away from Iowa in the second half to win 72-52. (Photo: John Terhune/Journal & Courier)Buy Photo Story Highlights Versyp revealed she had an early form of breast cancer in March
Has a 237-133 record at Purdue. Won 354 games in 17 seasons as a college head coach
Purdue was 23-13 last season
The Boilermakers open the regular season Nov. 10 at Central Michigan
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Two words.
That’s all Sharon Versyp needed to hear.
“Cancer free,” the veteran coach of the Purdue women’s basketball program said.
That was April 24.
More than two months later, Versyp is back in her office and overseeing her daily duties. She actually returned to work May 30. She’s been pushing forward in recruiting, conducting summer camps and preparing the Boilermakers during individual and team workouts for the upcoming season.
“When you get that news, you feel great, no matter what,” Versyp said.
She’s not 100 percent yet but working toward that number. A check-up at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in August is another step in the process.
She’s strong enough to hit the road recruiting this month, the summer’s busiest time for college coaches. Traveling from city to city, sitting in gymnasiums watching prospects.
“I have no limitations,” Versyp said. “They told me to go back to my normal things but listen to your body.”
She did earlier this year.
In March, Versyp was diagnosed with an early form of breast cancer. The early diagnosis was the key. It was treatable. Versyp put together a plan to deal with her situation while coaching Purdue through the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
She held off telling her team until after the Big Ten tournament, where the Boilermakers won three games before losing to Maryland in the championship. Purdue advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament, losing at Notre Dame in overtime.
The timing of her diagnosis and the end of the season gave Versyp a moment to take stock. She has watched others close to her deal with different forms of cancer.
Versyp probably won’t change as a person or a coach, but her outlook has been altered.
“When it happens to you, absolutely, it’s going to have an impact,” she said. “I’ve changed as I’ve matured and gone through different things. When it happens to you, you sit back and understand what’s important and hopefully, I’ll live with it every day and it will always shape my life.”
The little things don’t matter now, Versyp said, but that’s easy for a coach to say in the summer. She plans to stick to those words, even when the Boilermakers are in the middle of the 2017-18 season.
“You always say that but when you face the circumstances that I’ve gone though, you can’t sweat the small stuff,” she said. “Life is too short. It’s not the end all if things aren’t going great.”
Just being back around her program has helped Versyp in the recovery process. She’s the one usually bringing the energy to her players. Now, the opposite is happening.
“They’ve been wonderful,” she said. “Just being around the young people and their energy, being excited and seeing their faces, just the reaction to me, that’s been amazing. I think I’ll be able to feed off that for a long, long time.”
Reach Journal and Courier Purdue football and women's basketball reporter Mike Carmin at [email protected]
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Chevron Corp sought to open an investigation on Tuesday into New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, claiming he pressured the oil company to settle environmental litigation in Ecuador in exchange for campaign contributions from supporters of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs.
A Chevron tanker truck unloads gasoline into underground storage tanks in Burbank, Calfiornia June 18, 2008. REUTERS/Fred Prouser
Chevron said it filed a complaint before the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics, seeking a probe of DiNapoli and current and past members of his staff.
In a statement, Chevron said the plaintiffs’ supporters have contributed more than $60,000 to DiNapoli’s campaign, as well as “other political benefits.”
The complaint alleges that Steven Donziger, the plaintiffs’ U.S. legal adviser, and his associates wooed DiNapoli into applying pressure on Chevron through campaign donations and an offer to meet with the rock musician Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler.
The company said DiNapoli and Donziger and his associates engaged in “an apparent quid pro quo exchange.”
DiNapoli oversees the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which owns more than $800 million of Chevron stock, the company said, citing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
“This is a baseless attempt by big oil to intimidate me,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “The allegations are without merit.”
A spokeswoman for DiNapoli, Jennifer Freeman, said the comptroller has never met Sting.
“Having failed at derailing the lawsuit, (Chevron) now seeks to discredit anyone associated with it,” a spokeswoman for Donziger, Karen Hinton, said in an email.
The specific actions Chevron objected to by DiNapoli include sponsoring shareholder resolutions “and making public statements against Chevron that were explicitly intended to pressure the company to settle” the lawsuit.
In a statement, DiNapoli said his call on Chevron to settle the Ecuador litigation “is about protecting shareholder value and fulfilling my fiduciary responsibility to the New York State Common Retirement Fund.”
Chevron has been locked in an almost two-decade conflict with residents of Ecuador’s Lago Agrio region over claims that Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001, contaminated the area from 1964 to 1992. The plaintiffs from the villages in the oil-rich Amazon won an $18.2 billion judgment from an Ecuadorean court against Chevron. The company claims the judgment was fraudulent and unenforceable.
Graham Erion, an attorney representing the Ecuadorians, said in a statement that DiNapoli “has every right to question Chevron’s actions... Turning on its own shareholders shows how desperate Chevron has become. Chevron needs to listen to its investors instead of attacking them and own up to its responsibilities in Ecuador.”
Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, has not settled the litigation in Ecuador.
Because Chevron has few assets in Ecuador that can be taken as compensation, the plaintiffs are trying to get the ruling enforced in other countries.
Earlier this year, DiNapoli sponsored a shareholder resolution that would have required Chevron to appoint an independent director with environmental expertise. At the time, he and 39 other Chevron investors also called on the company to settle the protracted legal battle. DiNapoli made a similar appeal last year and in previous years.
A U.S. trial has been set for next fall in the Chevron lawsuit that accuses Ecuadorean residents, their lawyers and advisers of fraud in obtaining the pollution award.
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Despite a persistent downpour of rain some 30,000 people marched through New York on Sunday in the annual Celebrate Israel Parade.
Hosted by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the parade, which featured floats with dancers, bands, and performers, made its way through Manhattan from 52nd Street to 74th Street.
Among those who took part were New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, a delegation of Israeli MKs and city mayors, Israeli Consul General to New York Ido Aharoni, and Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon.
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“The residents of New York believe in Israel and we have a deep love for the people of Israel,” said New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who also marched in the event. “As long as I am mayor, we will always stand by Israel.”
Some of the cast from the Broadway show “Fiddler on the Roof” joined the marchers and sang songs from the hit musical about Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
The night before the parade, the city’s iconic Empire State Building was lit up in blue and white to mark the occasion.
Together w/ the @UJAfedNY, we’re glowing in white & blue to honor tomorrow’s @CelebrateIsrael Parade down Fifth Ave. pic.twitter.com/VWkwUCCoEY — Empire State Bldg (@EmpireStateBldg) June 4, 2016
“It warms the heart to see tens of thousands of Americans going out into the streets of New York to show their unrestricted love for Israel,” Danon said. “We have true friends in the USA, the alliance between the peoples is stronger than ever and is based on a deep commitment to shared values.”
According to its official website, the Celebrate Israel Parade began in 1965 as an unplanned show of support for Israel. Since then an event has been held annually with tens of thousands participating in recent years.
Earlier on Sunday Cuomo ordered agencies under his control to halt any business dealings with companies and organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel.
Cuomo issued an executive order demanding that a list of businesses that back BDS directly or indirectly be drawn up.
The request was to be presented to the commissioner of the Office of General Services, who will have six months to compile the record “from credible information available to the public.”
In Israel and among many in Jewish communities abroad, the movement is seen as a nuisance, at best, and a threat to Israel’s image and economic activity at worst.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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There’s an interesting new survival-style space-sim called Detached, where players will have to battle through the harsh realities of space in order to make it out of the situation alive, all while dealing with disorientation, zero gravity and a host of other issues.
Last year indie developer Anshar Studios was working on bringing the game to the general public, moving it through the Early Access phase while they refined the controls and added more gameplay.
The objective of the single-player portion of the game is to deal with the hazards of attempting to survive through a 360 degree free-space environment where you’ll need to watch your oxygen, get to certain checkpoints within a certain amount of time, and watch out for all sorts of other challenges along the way. You can see what Detached looks like in the trailer below.
According to the user review scores on Steam, the VR-based title launched in May and has been steadily building up a strong collection of user reviews from gamers who enjoy the free-moving space sim.
Anshar Studios have attempted to work hard to bring a more realistic and cinematic element to the VR space with Detached, and you can see how that plays out in real-time with a room-space demonstration of the gameplay with the video below from YouTuber TheDevilDogGamer.
The game requires some precision movements and interactivity where it’s important to be able to identify and utilize aspects of the environment and physics-based properties in order to progress.
As you can see in the video above, the orientation can really mess with your sense of equilibrium, but a lot of gamers seem to enjoy it nonetheless.
Skrrt explained in his review…
“Definitely Detached is not intended for people who have trouble with nausea. I feel good playing the game but I understand why some people can not cope. Do one barrel rolls – feel the softness in your legs. Unreal 4 does a great job with graphics. I’ll try multiplayer mode today.”
Nana reiterated those claims, something that 74 other people agreed with her about by saying that it was a great experience in VR…
“As with most of recent VR games I was afraid of motion sickness, but it turned out that my fears were unjustified. Great experience for every sci-fi head out there”
Only 14 of the reviews are negative, mostly with some people complaining about the controls and the nausea-inducing factors. Some older reviews complained about the game’s lack of intuitive controls for making use of the Vive’s motion controllers, but Anshar Studios managed to include the motion controls in later updates as the game graduated from Early Access.
The game is priced at $24.99 at the moment over on the Steam store. It looks like one of the few VR games that people are actually fairly positive about.
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Mack Brown announced that he was stepping down as head football coach at the University of Texas on Dec. 15, 2013. (Photo11: Jack Plunkett, AP)
Mack Brown mapped out his career plan at a young age: He wanted to be a football coach first – and he was, from 1973 through last season – before either moving upstairs, as an athletic director, or into television, as a college football analyst.
TEXAS: Charlie Strong ushers in toughness
Seven months after the final game of his coaching career, one highlighted by the 2005 national championship, Brown will join ESPN in August as a college football analyst, providing studio work across the network's football-themed platforms and, on Saturdays, starring as one-third of ABC's College Football Countdown program.
Countdown, which airs as the lead-in to both ABC's afternoon and prime-time kickoffs, will team Brown and former Florida State quarterback Danny Kanell with host John Saunders.
"I'll be able to share my excitement this year in a little different way than the last 42 years," Brown told USA TODAY Sports.
Brown began casual conversations with ESPN about his post-coaching plans three years ago, after the network began a deep relationship with the University of Texas following the debut of the Longhorn Network.
"We've kind of been talking about it over the three years," Brown said. "It wasn't a regular conversation, but it's something (ESPN President John Skipper) said: If and when you quit, we'd love to talk to you. He made that call, and I'm really excited about it."
Brown will make his first appearance on Aug. 10, when he joins Kanell and studio host Rece Davis in reporting from Ohio State, ESPN senior coordinating producer Bill Graff said. Come the start of the regular season, a second coach will join Brown in making his television debut: Butch Davis, most recently of North Carolina, will appear on ESPN2's day-long studio coverage.
Brown's 16-year tenure at Texas ended with an eight-win 2013 season, one that saw the Longhorns fall short of preseason expectations in a top-heavy Big 12 Conference. In all, however, Brown went 158-48 at Texas with a pair of conference titles, winning the national championship in 2005 and losing to Alabama in the 2010 BCS National Championship Game.
"To me, this is a way that I can continue to stay close to the game," Brown said. "I can share my passion with the fans about what the coaches think, what he's thinking. What I think what I can do is I can say I wouldn't have done that, but here's the reason I wouldn't have done and here's why I think he did it. You can evaluate or analyze the situation without just killing the guy."
MACK BROWN'S CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
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Hello world its me red, yall have been askin for years for me to get you guys the songs on itunes, get you the album, and most of all ive read countless comments on all of you guys saying you want me to succeed. here it is, i teamed up with Cody Folkes and hes running the business side of things and has done a lot for me to make sure im well. we want to stay independent and have full writes over the music so with that being said we are going to be using the money to work with the producers we feel fits the music best, recording, food so i can eat, get me off the street so i can be warm and not sleeping in a box downtown. whatever you can donate thats fine i appreciate every dollar you give. you guys been supporting me so its time i give you what you have been waiting for. All my classics will be on there as well as new music you guys havent heard before. thank u and have a good day
Help spread the word! Share Tweet 3.1k total shares total shares
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Hundreds of Denver-area high school students walked out their classrooms in a mass protest against what they call an attempt to censor their history curriculum by refocusing it on topics that promote citizenship, patriotism and obedience.
Students at six Denver-area highs schools walked out their classrooms en masse, protesting a plan by the conservative-majority Jefferson County school board to push for curriculum changes to Advanced Placement history courses to promote patriotism and deference to authority. The proposed changes would include the removal of topics that could ‘encourage’ civil disobedience from textbooks and materials.
The protest was organized through social media, encouraging students to stand outside the Jefferson County School Administrative Building with placards which read “People didn’t die so we erase them,”“Educate free thinkers,”“There is nothing more patriotic than protest,” and “History is History.”
The student protest comes after teachers at two schools caused a shutdown the week before when they staged a sick-out over the curriculum changes, which the school board says provides a balanced view of American history.
“I understand that they want to take out our very important history of slavery and dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it portrays the US in a negative light," a high school senior, Casey McAndrew, told CNN.
The proposal calls for establishing a committee that would regularly review texts and course plans, starting with Advanced Placement history to make sure materials“promote citizenship, patriotism, essentials and benefits of the free market system, respect for authority and respect for individual rights,”and don’t“encourage or condone civil disorder, social strike or disregard of the law.”
READ MORE: 'History is a human right': UK govt. Wikipedia edits obscure high profile killings
“The nation's foundation was built on civil protests,” Tyrone G. Parks, a senior student told the Associated Press. "And everything that we've done is what allowed us to be at this point today. And if you take that from us, you take away everything that America was built of."
READ MORE: Journalism groups blast Obama admin for ‘politically driven suppression of news’
Those students participating in the protest will not be punished but will receive unexcused absences unless their parents request permissions for missed classes, according to school district spokeswoman Lynn Setzer said.
Meanwhile, Jefferson County Superintendent Dan McMinimee tried to calm the tensions saying that no changes in the curriculum have been finalized and renewing his offer to continue discussions on the issue.
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Tukaram Omble, hadn't made headlines in his long police career, but with his bravery on the night on 26 November 2008 he ensured the arrest of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the sole gunman involved in the terror strikes to be caught alive.
Assistant Sub-Inspector Omble was a quiet dedicated man, something even his colleagues attested to.
Constable Sanjay Chaudhary, Omble’s colleague at DB Marg police station, told Mumbai Mirror in 2008, "He believed that if he reached on time, the policeman relieved by him would also be punctual. But if his reliever didn’t turn up for some reason, he would stay back for extra duty and still manage to come on time the next day."
Omble was on the night shift at a police station off Chowpatty in south Mumbai, when a message was received about two gunmen speeding towards Malabar hill after hijacking a vehicle near Marine Drive. The message came after reports of shooting at the Chhatrapati Shivaji rail terminus and hotels like Oberoi and Taj.
Omble along with his colleagues took up positions near Girgaum Chowpatty to stop the Skoda car. Omble was armed with a baton and a radio.
The car approached at a high speed, but stopped 50 feet from the barricade. Suddenly, the beam lights went on, and the car swerved towards the barricades.
Omble was the first to rush out from behind the barricades and attempted to grab Kasab who had jumped out of the vehicle.
A DNA report described his bravery in graphic detail:
With the terrorists momentarily distracted, Omble sprang toward one of them, Amir Kasab, and gripped the barrel of the AK47 rifle with both hands. With the barrel pointing towards Omble, Amir pulled the trigger. A spray of bullets entered his stomach and intestine. Omble collapsed, but held on to the gun till he breathed his last, stopping Amir from shooting anyone else.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital but was declared dead by doctors there.
However, thanks to Omble's bravery, Kasab was caught alive and confessed to his crime revealing the masterminds who had plotted the attacks from across the border. It also resulted in Pakistan initiating a trial against accused like Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed.
Omble was awarded the nation's highest peace-time gallantry award, the Ashok Chakra.
For his family, the news of the hanging of Kasab was a form of closure.
"We were waiting for this day. I am glad that today the President and the Home minister took the right decision. A terrorist like Kasab should have been hanged in public," Tukaram Omble's brother Eknath Omble told reporters.
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This is breaking news by David Shuster:
Sources: @HillaryClinton lawyer D. Kendall has reminded @FBI Clinton is under NO legal obligation to give interview. #clintonemails — David Shuster (@DavidShuster) May 31, 2016
If true (and Shuster is a reliable, well respected journalist, so I assume his source is a good one, probably someone in the DOJ or FBI) then the sheer audacity of this action, to tell the FBI, that no, I am Hillary Clinton, and I am too big to talk to the FBI even if you are investigating me, is astonishing. It also is, as they say. very bad optics.
Hopefully the mainstream media, including CNN picks this up. I'd love to hear the justification for why a private citizen, no matter how important she thinks she is, is above the law. In effect, she is exposing herself as a liar of the highest order. The FBI will now have to obtain a subpoena to force her to talk to them. And all after she promised this:
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The son of a Kenyan government official was one of the masked gunmen who killed nearly 150 at a university last week, the interior ministry said on Sunday, as churches hired armed guards to protect their Easter congregations.
Pope Francis decried Thursday‘s attack in his Easter Sunday service, praying for those killed by Islamist gunmen who hunted down Christians while sparing Muslims.
At one church in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa, worshippers were evacuated and a bomb disposal unit deployed due to a suspicious vehicle parked outside the church.
Interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said Abdirahim Abdullahi, son of a government official in the northern Mandera county bordering Somalia, was one of four gunmen who stormed the college campus in northeastern town of Garissa.
“The father had reported to security agents that his son had disappeared from home... and was helping the police try to trace his son by the time the Garissa terror attack happened,“ Mr Njoka told Reuters.
Deeply embedded
President Uhuru Kenyatta on Saturday said the planners and financiers of Islamist attacks were “deeply embedded“ within Kenyan communities and urged Muslims to do more to fight radicalisation.
A Garissa-based official said the government was aware Abdullahi, a former University of Nairobi law student, had joined the militant group al-Shabaab after graduating in 2013.
“He was a very brilliant student. But then he got these crazy ideas,“ said the official.
Al-Shabaab group said the assault on Garissa, some 200km from the Somali border, was revenge for Kenya sending troops into Somalia to fight alongside African Union peacekeepers against the al-Qaeda-aligned group.
The militants have threatened to turn Kenyan cities “red with blood“ and police have stepped up security at shopping malls and public buildings in the capital Nairobi, and the eastern coastal region which has been prone to al Shabaab attacks.
The Garissa assault has further strained the historically cordial relations between Kenya‘s Christian and Muslim communities, which have deteriorated due to frequent Islamist attacks on Christian priests and churches.
Church concerns
Kenyan priests said they feared churches could be targeted on Easter Sunday, the main liturgical feast in the Christian calendar.
“We are very concerned about the security of our churches and worshippers, especially this Easter period, and also because it is clear that these attackers are targeting Christians,“ Willybard Lagho, a Mombasa-based Catholic priest and chairman of the Coast Interfaith Council of Clerics (CICC), said.
He said churches in Mombasa were hiring armed police and private security guards for mass on Easter Sunday. Christians make up 83 percent of Kenya‘s 44 million population.
In Nairobi‘s Holy Family Basilica cathedral, two uniformed police officers armed with AK-47 rifles manned the entrance gate. One officer said more plain clothes officers were inside.
Three private security guards frisked churchgoers with hand-held metal detectors, while a fourth guard used a mirror to check for explosives underneath cars.
“Everyone is anxious and you never know what will happen next, but we believe the biggest protector is God and we are praying,“ said Samuel Wanje (27), a youth member at the church.
In Garissa, where masked gunmen in 2012 killed more than a dozen people in simultaneous gun and grenade raids on two churches, six soldiers guarded the town‘s main Christian church and about 100 worshippers ahead of Sunday mass.
Kenyatta is under pressure to halt Islamist attacks that have ravaged Kenya‘s tourist industry. A dusk-to-dawn curfew is in force along Kenya‘s 700km border with Somalia and helicopters monitor its palm-fringed coast, popular with Western tourists and the scene of Islamist attacks in the past.
Coastal Region police chief Robert Kitur told Reuters extra uniformed and plain-clothes police officers had been deployed.
Late on Saturday, 613 students and 50 staff from Garissa University College arrived in Nairobi to an emotional welcome by parents and relatives. Parents of missing students attempted to identify bodies at the city‘s mortuary.
Garissa was the most deadly attack on Kenyan soil since al Qaeda in 1998 bombed the US embassy in Nairobi, killing more than 200 people and wounding thousands of others.
Reuters
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Rainbow Tales #1 Starring Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash
The Comic that started it all...Yes yes, the very first Rainbow tales will always hold a special place in my heart. Although I took no part in creating it, i can always respect the comic that started the project that I am currently running. The entirety of this version was coached by the original host narflarg. So in a way, this is how he envisioned it originally kinda. Also fun fact, if you go back you will see that the first was posted on April 2nd. Well that is because it was deleted and reposted onceAlthough he thinks its cheesey, i requested he say some things. These are his own typed words: "Holy crap that comic looks a hundred times better than my shit." Profound words of a wise man. Im sure hes also excited to see how far we've come. You older followers may have chatted with him and though he doesn't do ponies anymore, he says you 100 or so followers were fun while it lasted.Now onto my own thanks, thanks. Yeah... Not much public speaking skillz like my friend. I dont think i will do a remake of my first comic, because it isnt as big, wasnt that good of a joke and isnt horrible compared to my current works. (No offense) But yeah, Happy Birthday Rainbow tales! On April Fools Day too! What a day.
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The drill of the week from Playspedia is all about Timing Horizontal Cuts. I find this drill especially useful since running the horizontal correctly is all about cutting to space and this drill will help your players understand where the space exists and how to move there.
Set up in 3 lines. 4 sets up for an In-Cut. 2 and 5 watch and prepare to set up their cuts. As 4 cuts in, 2 starts to set up for an In-Cut, 5 can slowly set up but mostly watches. Pass goes up to 4, 2 gets fully set up for a continuation cut In, 5 shifts downfield, ready to make a continuation cut for 2. 2 now cuts In, 4 passes to 2. 5 prepares for a deep strike cut out. 5 reads off of 2 and either cuts deep, or cuts deep and then back In. 2 passes to 5. ** It’s up to these two players to read off one another to decide whether it will be a huck deep or an cut under. ** To reset the drill, 1 goes to the first cutting line, 4 goes to the second cutting line, 2 goes to the third, and 5 runs the disc down the sideline, and eventually returns to join the throwers.
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Journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson once observed, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” To most of us there is nothing weirder than quantum physics, and now, it seems, Google Inc. (GOOG) is turning pro.
The search engine company said on Tuesday that it will begin work on designing and building new quantum information processors based on superconducting electronics. The company’s goal is to expand artificial intelligence technologies. The work will be led by University of California -- Santa Barbara physicist John Martinis, who has worked on quantum computing since 2002.
The physics of quantum computing is, as the scientists might say, straightforward. The problem is reliability. Because a quantum bit of data -- called a qubit -- exists in all of its theoretical states at the same time, it possesses awesome potential power. However that very power makes the quantum device very unreliable, compared with computer hardware as we now know it.
ALSO READ: America's Fastest Growing Jobs
What Martinis and his group have shown is that a five-qubit array can be made reliable, and now the work will be directed at reducing the error rate to less than one in 1,000 across the processor’s quantum gates. One of the team’s researchers said earlier this year, “The intrinsic physics of control and coupling won’t have to change but the engineering around it is going to be a big challenge.”
Martinis will be an employee of both UCSB and Google at a new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at the university. Google paid some $400 million in January for British artificial intelligence firm Deepmind, a firm specializing in algorithms and machine-based learning protocols for e-commerce software, simulations and games, according to ZDNet.
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RENEWABLE energy costs are likely to be far cheaper than forecast by the government's energy white paper, new research has found, offering new options for the nation's future energy mix.
Bloomberg analysis suggests the official figures issued last week overstate the cost of solar power threefold and windpower by 50 per cent.
But at the same time the paper warns that the government has underestimated the price tag for geothermal energy.
Read Next
The energy white paper forecasts that as much as 46 per cent of electricity will come from renewable sources by the middle of the century.
Up to 15 per cent is expected to come from wind, 23 per cent from geothermal and 3 per cent from solar.
The Bloomberg research suggests the government's capital costs calculations for renewables are wrong, creating distorted predictions on future energy sources.
"White paper modelling overestimates the current and future costs of most renewable technologies," Bloomberg analyst Kobad Bhavnagri said.
"Our analysis of the technology experience curves suggests that costs are likely to decrease much faster than the white paper modelling assumes."
The Bloomberg research suggests that because of consistently falling prices for solar generation - which have dropped 34 per cent since 2009 - forecasts that use outdated starting points will be inaccurate.
"Overestimating current and future capital costs is likely to have produce an unrealistically conservative cost of energy," Mr Bhavnagri finds.
His research also suggests that the government modelling may not have taken into account the effects of increasing wind turbine efficiency.
"Our expectation is that wind will be one of the least-cost generation options from 2030-50 and that wind energy's share of generation will be higher than the white paper projections," the paper says.
The analysis is less optimistic about the place of geothermal energy.
"Having been beset by a string of technical challenges, the cost of geothermal is currently several times higher in Australia than overseas and significantly more than the industry had predicted," the paper warns.
Greens deputy leader Christine Milne warned against inflated estimates for costs of wind and solar.
"Because renewables have no fuel cost and the technologies are improving all the time, their costs are coming down rapidly while the cost of fossil fuels can only ever keep rising," she told The Australian.
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FOR THE first time in its over 100-year-old history, the Indian Science Congress (ISC), an event that is on the Prime Minister’s calendar in the month of January, has been postponed.
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Anticipating protests from students of Osmania University, where the 105th edition of the event was to be held from January 3-7, the university expressed its inability to host due to “disturbances on its campus and other reasons”.
The ISC’s postponement was conveyed in a communique from the Ministry of Science and Technology, based on information received from Dr Achyut Samanta, General President of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). The Science Congress is the largest annual congregation of Indian scientists.
It is learnt that security officials anticipated protests from students of Osmania University against Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of Dalits and minorities, and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao over lack of government recruitment in the newly formed state.
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“Only last night (Tuesday night) the vice-chancellor of Osmania University informed us that it would not be possible to host the Science Congress on the scheduled dates because of disturbances on the campus… One student has committed suicide and there are some other reasons as well… The news has come as a shock for us. It has never happened earlier,” Prof Gangadhar, general secretary of ISCA, told The Indian Express.
Tempers are running high among students in Osmania University, where a 21-year-old MSc (Physics) student Eramina Murali committed suicide on December 3. Murali wrote in his suicide note that he was unable to cope with academic stress, but students claimed it was a result of the anger and discontent over lack of government jobs after the creation of Telangana.
As the situation continues to be tense in the university, sources said the Chief Minister was informed by security officials that there may be protests during the Science Congress, and it may be disrupted. This was also conveyed to the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.
However, when contacted by The Indian Express, the university’s Vice-Chancellor Prof S Ramachandran said he was unaware of the postponement. “Nothing is confirmed yet. Maybe by Thursday we will be able to give a statement,’” he said. He declined to comment when asked if alternative venues were being considered.
ISCA’s Gangadhar said that an “emergency meeting” of the executive council had been called for December 27 to discuss the next course of action. “The university has informed us at such a last moment… Just a few days ago, our team had gone to the university to see the arrangements being made, and everything seemed well on track. But we will now have to find a way,” he said.
On Tuesday, Hyderabad Police Commissioner V V Srinivasa Rao visited the campus to inspect the ‘A’ and ‘C’ grounds where the Science Congress was supposed to be held.
“After the inspection, he was informed about a meeting of Dalit, Backward Caste, Minority and Left students’ organisations in which they resolved to protest the presence of Modi and KCR on the campus. Accordingly, a report was sent to the state and central governments stating that trouble was expected in the campus during the congress,’’ a top official said.
Gangadhar said it was possible to organise the event at another venue anytime before March 31 next year. “These decisions will have to be taken by the executive committee,” he said. The host and venue of the Science Congress are usually decided one year in advance.
Sources said university officials were looking at the Hyderabad International Trade Expositions (HITEX), where the Global Entrepreneurship Summit was held recently, as an alternative location. No decision has been made yet, they said.
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“The Osmania University, which was established in 1917, is celebrating the centenary year and if the prestigious Science Congress is held outside the campus it would be not only an insult but also draw a tremendous amount of criticism. So nothing is decided yet. In spite of stiff competition from other universities, it was decided to hold the event this year at Osmania. We cannot shift the venue,’’ an official said.
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RIP Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Last week the New York Times ran a column by a Towson University professor who believes Gen Y has lost the ability to love. Andrew Reiner begins by quoting a study that seems to contradict his thesis: A majority of millennials, 61 percent, intend to marry someday. “Yet for all of their future designs,” Reiner frets, “many of them may not get there. Their romance operandi—hooking up and hanging out—flouts the golden rule of what makes marriages and love work: emotional vulnerability.”
What evidence does he present that millennial relationships entail less vulnerability than the older models? Ha, evidence. Please. What we have are unsubstantiated phrases: a “blithe attitude about marriage, perhaps even about love”; “a generation that’s terrified of and clueless about the A B C’s of romantic intimacy,” the “most elemental skills” of which “are going the way of cursive handwriting.” Reiner makes the obligatory nods to social media—Facebook “trivializes the complexity of romantic relationships,” he says—and to drinking and to hookup culture. Oh, and he notes that self-esteem levels are on the rise, which somehow correlates to emotional immaturity, which means romance is doomed because only perfectly emotionally mature people fall in love.
Behold the anomic millennial, alienated from her feelings, captivated and benumbed by illusions on screens, blah blah narcissism, blah hookup culture blah. As proof of his social media claim, Reiner cites a study finding that “individuals who use Facebook excessively are far more likely to experience Facebook-related conflict with their romantic partners, which then may cause negative relationship outcomes.” (I’m not a scientist, but I’d bet doing anything “excessively”—even doting on your SO—is likely to detract from your relationship. Plus, couples that go skeet shooting a lot are probably more likely to experience skeet shooting–related conflicts, and so on.) And the self-esteem and narcissism research Reiner quotes is far from definitive: Studies he doesn’t cite have found that millennials show more civic-mindedness and selflessness than their parents did. As for hookup culture, the entire narrative may be a myth, and media coverage of said myth may leave college students feeling left out of some condom-strewn fairytale. But otherwise, NYT, persuasive case!
Reiner insists that nonexistent hookup culture encourages Gen Y kids to dodge vulnerability and, in the words of one expert, “to drain themselves of feeling.” We “desensitize ourselves to love when we stifle the bonding feelings that spring forth from oxytocin,” he writes (blah blah oxytocin blah). “This ‘love’ hormone is released during orgasm, but it also floods the body and brain after hugging or affectionate touching.” I must have missed the seminar where millennials were collectively taught to turn off the oxytocin spigot. (Maybe Thought Catalog ran a how-to?) But anecdotally, none of my friends in relationships long-term or casual seem particularly estranged from their emotions, starved for intimacy, or withholding of themselves—at least, no more than anyone else is.
The subtext of Reiner’s piece, though, is more complicated than contemporary relationships stink. It’s a comparison of then and now, an elegy for the supposed age of human feeling that flourished before Facebook killed romance. And that is where it grates the most. Because when Reiner talks about kids needing to rediscover “emotional vulnerability,” he is really referring to women. College guys have always played the field, sloughed off attachment, spread their seed; what’s changed in the past 50 years or so is that women have begun to treat relationships with the same casualness as their male peers. So what is the solution to the (possibly imaginary) epidemic of affective irresponsibility? Should we retreat from our moment of declining domestic violence rates and female breadwinners? Should we aspire to the open, painful vulnerability of the prefeminism years, where women couldn’t afford to take their dating lives lightly, because their entire futures hung in the balance? Maybe, as Reiner suggests, we should offer college courses on love, wherein a wise professor trains the youth in the secrets of intimacy. Because if anything can get kids’ hearts beating again, it is clueless adults waxing nostalgic about the good old days.
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Photo-illustration: IEEE Spectrum; photos: Willow Garage and University of Washington
Anyone who’s worked with a mobile manipulator will be bitterly familiar with grasping failures: you ask your robot to pick something up, and for whatever reason, it refuses to do it. Often, the whatever reason is because the robot can’t figure out how to properly position its gripper relative to the object, because the object is in a weird place that would lead to a gripper collision, like up against the side of a shelf.
A few years ago at IROS, Zhe Xu and Maya Cakmak at the University of Washington in Seattle presented a paper about how equipping mobile manipulators (like the PR2) with simple 3D printed tools can help them be much more effective at gripping (and consequently using) objects. Last month at ICRA, Cakmak presented another paper (with lead author Sarah Elliott) on a new kind of tool specifically designed to make it possible for robots to reorient and grasp objects that would otherwise not be graspable. The tool is “a rectangular prism” with a handle and “a textured silicon area with a high friction constant.” In other words, it’s a robot-friendly grippy poking stick.
We’ve seen similar work before where the robot uses its gripper to nudge objects in a confined or cluttered environment to make them easier to grasp, but while a gripper may be convenient for doing that, it’s not necessarily the best tool for the job. UW designed their grippy poking stick “to be ideal for pushing objects through point and surface contacts within confined spaces. At the same time, the high friction end-effector of the tool allows for pulling objects without requiring an articulated form that reaches behind the object.” That last thing, being able to use the end of the tool to pull objects toward you, enables a much wider array of actions.
Image: UW Point cloud of scene as seen by the robot, with localized shelf (left) and detected object and tool (right).
The grippy poking stick is mounted at an easily accessible point on the PR2’s shoulder, and the robot can grab it with a pre-specified motion whenever it needs to. PR2’s built-in grasping software is clever enough to tell whether or not it’ll be able to successfully grasp something, so the tricky bit is to get the robot to be able to say, “Okay, I can’t grasp this, but if I take my tool and poke at it in this way, the object will become graspable.” Rather than try to program that sort of thing in by hand, which sounds tedious and boring, the UW researchers instead got the robot to create its own predictive model of how tool actions will affect objects from learned experience.
As you might expect, it’s not trivial for a robot to model how objects will behave when poked and prodded, because their behavior depends on their physical properties, the physical properties of the surface that they’re on, and exactly where and how force is applied to them. Fortunately, the planning approach that UW developed allows the robot to use its tool on an object, and then plan a second action if necessary to bring the object closer to a graspable state. It can do this over and over again, although generally, it just takes one or two to make things work, and overall, the PR2 was able to demonstrate a successful rate of grasping. The researchers mention that besides just manipulating objects that are grasp targets, this tool and technique could also be applied to other objects around the target object: if the thing you want to grasp is buried on a shelf amidst a bunch of other stuff, your robot could nudge all of that clutter away to give itself room for a clean grasp.
Building and programming a home robot capable of manipulation is hard enough as it is, so a realistic interim approach might be to equip such robots with a cheap but effective belt of tools (including grippy poking sticks) that they can whip out as necessary. Or better yet, network the robot in with a 3D printer, allowing them to create what they need by themselves on demand, either choosing from a selection of handy pre-existing tools or (maybe, eventually) designing their own to be able to do exactly what they need.
“Making Objects Graspable in Confined Environments through Push and Pull Manipulation with a Tool,” by Sarah Elliott, Michelle Valente and Maya Cakmak from the University of Washington, was presented last month at ICRA 2016 in Stockholm.
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HARRIS COUNTY, Texas – Deputies say a man was arrested in the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend in northwest Harris County overnight.
According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, it happened at 11:30 p.m. Monday at a residence located in the 9500 block of Dalmally near Bonnie Sean.
Deputies said that the ex-boyfriend of Kristine Jennings, who lives at the residence, came over when the new boyfriend was there.
Austin Huff, the ex-boyfriend, tried to convince Jennings in returning to Austin with him, deputies said. Jennings refused to leave with Huff.
She and the victim went to enter the residence after telling Huff to leave.
Deputies said Huff attempted to follow them inside the residence, but the victim attempted to push Huff out of the residence.
Huff pulled out a gun and shot the new boyfriend in the chest, deputies said.
Deputies said he died there at the scene. Huff was later found at his parents' house and taken into custody.
The identity of the victim has not been released.
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Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) says he gave Mitt Romney’s campaign a “bunch” of tax returns during the vice presidential vetting process, but claimed he didn’t remember exactly how many years were covered by the disclosure.
Romney senior adviser Beth Meyers on Saturday said that potential vice presidential candidates had provided “several” years of tax returns, which is presumably more than the two years of returns that the presumptive Republican nominee has provided to the public.
On Sunday, ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked Pawlenty, one of Romney’s top candidates for running mate, how many returns he submitted during the vetting process.
“Well, I don’t know the exact number, George,” Pawlenty insisted. “It was several years, I believe.”
“So, more than two?” Stephanopoulos pressed.
“Well, we don’t get into the details of the vetting process,” Pawlenty replied. “But I gave him a bunch of tax returns. I don’t remember the exact number of years.”
In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek last week, Romney said he would not be releasing more than two years of tax returns because “I am not a business.”
Executive editor Josh Tyrangiel asked Romney why the American people shouldn’t be entitled to the same information from a presidential candidate that he would have required as the CEO of Bain Capital before investing in a company.
“If you’re an investor and you’re looking at a company, and that company says that its great strength is wise management and fiscal know-how, wouldn’t you want to see the previous, say, five years’ worth of its financials?” Tyrangiel wondered.
“I’m not a business,” Romney insisted. “We have a process in this country, which was established by law, which provides for the transparency which candidates are required to meet. I have met with that requirement with full financial disclosure of all my investments, but in addition have provided and will provide a full two years of tax returns.”
Merriam-Webster defines “several” as “more than two but fewer than many,” while a “bunch” is defined as “a considerable amount.”
Watch this video from ABC’s This Week, broadcast Aug. 12, 2012.
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World’s fastest street legal car smashes speed record at 250mph…. but it’s a Vauxhall Vectra that cost £60
The British maker of the world’s fastest street legal car has smashed a world speed record covering a quarter of a mile in just over six seconds.
Andy Frost’s vehicle can clock an incredible 250mph and will take the driver from 0-60 in under ONE second.
He bought the red Vauxhall Victor for just £60 in 1980 and has gone on to transform it into the world’s speediest street legal car - complete with MOT to prove it.
Andy Frost with his pride and joy, a suped up Vauxhall Victor, bought in 1980 for just £60
On Saturday Frost took the current record from an American completing a quarter of a mile in 6.59 seconds at a speed of 220mph at the finish line.
Frost, from Wolverhampton, said: 'It has been an on going 29-year project, but it is never going to be complete - I’m always trying to improve it.
'I’ve spent almost £4,000 a year on this car since I bought it second hand. I have slowly improved it bit by bit in my spare time.
'It is a bit like Triggers broom in Only Fools and Horses - I’ve changed so many parts that it has has evolved into a super car from just a bog standard Vauxhall with nothing done to it.
On Saturday it became the world's speediest street legal car, completing a quarter of a mile in 6.59 seconds at a speed of 220mph at the finish line
'It is hardly recognisable from the the car I first bought. I have sacrificed having a holiday each year to spend the money on the car instead.
'I don’t ever go to the pub or spend money on other trivial things like that - I just plough it all back into improving the car.
'It has been a life long dream to be able to say I own the world’s fastest street legal car. it makes all the hard work worthwhile, but I won’t stop tinkering with it even now.'
The car's engine is a powerful V8 engine combined with two turbos lifted from a large digger to help it reach its top speed
The 50-year-old, who runs Penn Autos in Wolverhampton, has devoted over 1,600 hours to painstakingly crafting the sports car in his garage.
It weighs a hefty 1,200kg due to the modifications, and is estimated to have cost Andy over £100,000 in total.
When on the drag strip it can zoom from 0-220mph in 6.5 seconds, and comes complete with a parachute to help slow it down.
Under the bonnet a powerful V8 engine combined with two turbos lifted from a large digger give it enough boost to reach its top speed in a matter of seconds.
Andy Frost has spent more than 20 years and £100,000 to make his car a record-breaker
Despite the car being geared to racing, he still uses the car as a run around every so often.
'It is just like a normal car when you drive it on the roads - it handles easily around the corners and isn’t tricky to drive like many people think.But on the track it goes like a rocket.
'I used to take my three lads to school in it. They loved it obviously as they were the envy of all their friends. Everyone would stop and stare as we roared up in it.
The car comes with its own tongue-in-cheek speed guide
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Comment Andy Warfield, Coho Data's cofounder and CTO, thinks Pure Storage's FlashBlade design is misconceived.
Warfield says Coho's engineering team went down a very similar route, found it to be wrong, and refocussed elsewhere.
What happened was that, in 2013, the team thought it a good idea to build the densest network-integrated hardware platform that it could to run the software Coho was developing. They were building around PCIe flash and saw that it needed more compute and connectivity than SSDs, and the compute should be separate from the flash because falling flash prices meant you should buy it separately from your compute hardware.
In fact compute, network and storage all needed to scale well, and Coho looked to pack all three into a single hardware chassis.
Their idea was to use an Intel Seacliff Trail 10Gbit, top-of-rack switch as a blade server backplane. Half the ports would interconnect storage blades in the proposed SwitchStore system, with the other half being used for external access devices and exposed as an Ethernet switch.
The storage blades (FlashBlade precursors of this had come to fruition) would be PCIe flash cards hooked up to a server card, and then to the Seacliff Trail backplane.
But the Coho engineers decided this elegant idea was in fact a design cul de sac, because for one thing, you simply should not bet against commodity hardware as, compared to proprietary designs, it has shorter cycle times, lower costs, and smaller challenges in getting validation and QA right.
Commodity hardware benefits enormously from the sheer volume of its deployment. Warfield says: "The idea of being stuck with the delivery lifecycle of proprietary hardware scared the crap out of us."
With software-driven products, you can focus on innovation there and take advantage of fast-developing compute, storage and networking commodity hardware as they occur.
A second point counting against the SwitchStore concept was that it can feed to so many servers that network access to it could be a choke point, involving much cross-rack storage traffic.
It's better, Warfield argues, to provide top-of-rack storage and keep the bulk of storage networking traffic inside a rack. He sees FlashBlade as being so powerful in storage terms that it could seriously affect a data center's core network performance with the amount of inter-rack traffic it generates.
He thinks the scale-out storage concept should include the flexibility to adapt to emerging hardware, to buy hardware as it's needed, and to maximize hardware's efficiency in your data center. These things run counter to the complexity of traditional enterprise storage systems, and Pure's FlashBlade is not really a scale-out array in his view.
It's "an expensive, proprietary, blade chassis-based array," while also being "a really interesting, impressively complicated, proprietary piece of enterprise storage hardware."
You can read his argument in more detail on Andy Warfield's blog. ®
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THE parliament of Iceland has rejected a proposal to offer US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden Icelandic citizenship.
The 63-seat parliament voted against the proposal, which had been made by six members of the opposition, including Birgitta Jonsdottir of the Pirate Party and Ogmundur Jonasson, a former interior minister and member of the Left-Green Movement.
In an entry on her blog, Jonsdottir posted a message attributed to Snowden in which he said he had "been left de facto stateless."
Iceland's centre-right government had already said that Snowden would not be given special treatment, noting that an asylum application would have to be made on Icelandic soil.
Earlier this week, the Interior Ministry said a fax with an application for asylum that had been sent to Iceland's embassy in Moscow could not be considered as it was not possible to verify if it had been sent by Snowden. Similar applications have been sent to 20 other countries.
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The latest crack in Obamacare opened last week when Politico reported that leaders in Congress were negotiating how to exempt themselves and thousands of their staffers from a major provision of the new law.
Politico said leaders held "high-level, confidential talks" about releasing the folks on Capitol Hill from a requirement that they buy their federal health coverage next year from the insurance exchanges that millions of Americans will use ... and that Congress created.
The members and staffers enjoy highly subsidized health care through the federal job benefits program. When Obamacare fully kicks in on Jan. 1, though, they will have to buy their coverage through those new marketplaces known as exchanges. They will join millions of Americans who will likely buy health coverage through the state-based exchanges.
Trouble for them is, they may not keep the generous premium subsidies they now enjoy. Instead, they'll likely be eligible for the same income-based subsidy that everyone else will get in the exchanges. The lower your income, the higher your subsidy. Lawmakers and senior staffers who earn large salaries — more than $94,200 for a family of four — won't qualify for any subsidy. Some could have to pay thousands of dollars more than they do now.
Ah, the consequences of Obamacare hit home. All those congressmen who parroted the president and said "relax, you can keep your current health coverage" won't get to keep their current health coverage.
Unless they give themselves an out.
Like millions of Americans, they're suffering a bad case of Obamascare: Fear that they'll pay more and lose the high quality of health care they enjoy today.
Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a key architect of the law, recently peppered Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius with questions about how the law will work come 2014.
"I just see a huge train wreck coming down," he said. "What can you do to help all these people around the country wondering, what in the world do I do?"
President Barack Obama on Tuesday sought to tamp down those fears, conceding "there will still be, you know, glitches and bumps."
Glitches or a train wreck? Bet on the wreck. We're hurtling toward this massive restructuring of the health care insurance market, and no one has confidence about what will happen. There will be massive consequences, intended and unintended.
Estimates of Obamacare's price tag keep rocketing. Insurance premiums are jumping across the country, as insurers prepare to cover millions more people, many of whom have complicated health problems.
That oft-repeated promise that you'll be able to keep your existing coverage? Sure, as long as your employer doesn't decide to dump that coverage and pay the federal penalties. Many businesses seem to be leaning toward doing just that. Some are holding down work hours so they won't have to provide health coverage. Others simply aren't hiring.
No wonder the members of Congress are trying to dodge the impact of Obamacare.
The government's Office of Personnel Management, which administers federal employee benefits, is expected to rule on whether lawmakers and their staff would be eligible for federal exchange subsidies or somehow can keep their current federal health benefits.
If they get such a break, Democrats will have to explain to outraged voters why the new health care system they billed as a godsend for Americans is ... not good enough for Congress.
We're all on the same train. Hold tight.
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The two men never spoke again. The French pulled out in a huff, taking everything they could carry and destroying some of what they could not. The fledgling nation was desperately in need of aid, and the Soviet bloc was quick to offer it.
After a few years, however, Mr. Toure became disenchanted with both the level and the effectiveness of the Soviet effort. Relations cooled, though the Soviet mission to Guinea remains the largest foreign presence in the country, and many of the colonels and captains heading the new regime attended Russian universities.
An Attempt at Socialism
During his years in power, Mr. Toure attempted - in fits and starts and with little success - to build a socialist Guinea, with centralized planning, nationalized industries and collectivized agriculture.
During those same years, however, he also courted the good will and the assistance of Western governments. And 95 percent of the country's hard currency earnings were derived from American and French ventures in bauxite mining and aluminum production. (The revenue from a Soviet- run bauxite mine has largely been used to pay off the account for Soviet arms supplies.)
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By the time Mr. Toure died in an American hospital late last month while having heart surgery, there were many who, remembering his comment to General de Gaulle, questioned whether Guinea had been living in liberty. Its poverty, however, was beyond dispute. Guinea's external public debt is estimated at $1.5 billion and per capita income is under $300 a year.
Country's Potential Cited
Nevertheless, as Ambassador James D. Rosenthal of the United States said, ''This country really has potential.'' Within its borders are about a third of the world's high- grade bauxite, as well as vast untapped reserves of gold, diamonds, iron ore and magnesium.
Most of western Africa's great rivers find their source in Guinea's mountains, and the drought that has afflicted so much of the African landscape has touched very little of Guinea's fertile farm and pasture lands. The Atlantic waters off the Guinean coast teem with marine life.
But economists and business people here caution that developing that potential will not be easy. For one thing, a quarter of a century of economic stagnation has left its mark. The entire country has only 652 miles of paved roads, for example, and only small amounts of investment capital and skilled personnel.
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And the country's new military leaders, who took over before the ruling Politburo could appoint a successor to Mr. Toure, evidently have a lot to learn about the economic philosophy they say they want to adopt. Following the coup, representatives of the ruling military committee showed up at several Western embassies asking for books on Western economic and political systems.
Currency Overhaul Suggested
The Government still has much to do to make the economic environment more habitable for foreign businesses and local entrepreneurs. Western economists recommend that price controls, particularly on agricultural produce, be allowed to rise to market levels, and that Guinea's nonconvertible and extravagantly overvalued currency be overhauled.
But it is not yet clear what economic measures may be taken.
And one American businessman here noted that coups - no matter what the justifications or intentions of those who stage them - tend to discourage foreign investment. ''Though I'll tell you one thing,'' he added. ''I'm glad investors won't have to see the words 'Peoples Revolutionary Republic of Guinea' on my official documents anymore.''
The new regime has shortened the country's name to the Republic of Guinea.
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Last night, the United States attacked Syria, launching 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base in a move that marked a dramatic reverse in Trump Administration policy toward Syria. What that policy actually is, however, is totally unclear.
Reporters unsurprisingly had a lot of questions, and the White House, also unsurprisingly, had no answers, dodging all questions about the goals of the new US intervention in Syria, and what the overall strategy or even next steps either militarily or diplomatically is.
All the White House would say is that the US attacks were “very decisive,” even if they aren’t all that clear what decision they even made. Beyond that, administration officials were talking up the idea that the US might launch more attacks in the near future.
Some officials were trying to downplay last night’s attacks as a one-off deal. Yet with no clear story on what the point of those strikes was, except for being “decisive,” there’s really no way of knowing when the next impulse to launch an attack will strike the leadership.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz
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Less than a year after pulling off the largest comeback win in school history, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights erased a 25-point third-quarter deficit to take down the Indiana Hoosiers at Memorial Stadium 55–52.
Rutgers tied the record for the largest comeback in school history that was set last November when it rallied from 25 points down to top the Maryland Terrapins.
Kyle Federico connected on a 26-yard field goal as time expired on Saturday to break a 52–52 tie and improve the Scarlet Knights to 3–3 on the year, capping a run of 28 unanswered points. The comeback began with 2:06 remaining in the third with a 43-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Chris Laviano to Leonte Carroo.
Laviano finished 28 of 42 for 386 yards and three touchdowns, which all went to Carroo. The senior finished with seven catches for 157 yards.
A 26-yard fumble recovery by Kemoko Turray, three-yard run by Robert Martin, and a 40-yard rushing touchdown from Paul James helped bring the Scarlet Knights level with the Hoosiers before Federico knocked through the game-winning kick.
The Hoosiers dropped to 4–3 with the loss and 0–3 in conference play, while Rutgers picked up its first win in three tries against in-house opponents.
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Fun and games definitely work for ABC.
The network announced today that it picked up The $100,000 Pyramid for a third season and Celebrity Family Feud for a fourth year.
Pyramid is hosted by Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan and has consistently won its 10 p.m. time slot on Sundays this summer. “Returning for season three definitely goes under the category ‘Things that are Awesome,’” said Strahan in a statement. “It has been such an honor continuing the legacy of the legendary Dick Clark as host of Pyramid. Looking forward to another season of giving away ABC’s money.”
ABC
Celebrity Family Feud is hosted by Steve Harvey and has ranked as the most-popular show at 8 p.m. Sundays this summer.
ABC also picked up another year of Match Game hosted by Alec Baldwin.
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You may not have realised but today is International Men’s Day.
No, I’m not kidding. If you are inclined to seek out means to mark the event, no doubt you will find a contingent of petty males somewhere who are having a manly get-together to celebrate their Y chromosomes.
They might raise frothy flagons of ale and compliment each other on their fine beards.
But, as everyone else on the planet realises, commemorative days are established to champion the underdog or promote the rights of a forgotten cause.
(Image: The People)
In that regard, International Men’s Day (IMD) is as relevant as an International Billionaire’s Day would be. Neither group need our help.
Last year, two-fifths of all tweets about IMD were posted around March 8, which just happened to be International Women’s Day.
Imagine all those disgruntled male sorts bashing out angry posts about the brutally unfair promotion of women’s rights. Poor little diddums, craving attention.
It should calm their fury to know that they still have better pay, better jobs and better employment prospects and are probably less likely to be groped at work.
They don’t become second-class employees after having children, don’t find themselves trapped in low-paid, part-time jobs and don’t bear the worst of welfare cuts.
On a wider world stage, it’s not men who are sold into marriage, flogged for being raped, forced to cover up or threatened by honour killings.
So IMD is just like any other day of the year to most guys – a day when they’re generally faring much better than women.
They should content themselves with Movember, a perfectly acceptable whole month dedicated to raising awareness of male health issues while celebrating their ability to grow facial hair. (We women go through agonies to get rid of ours. Would like to see a man wax his ’tache.)
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m married to a man, I’ve got two sons and I’m surrounded by male friends and family members who are wonderful, principled human beings who deserve nothing but respect.
(Image: Getty)
And I don’t think men have it easy either, that life is one great big carefree round of golf for them. Of course it’s not.
I have felt a little creeping sympathy for the decent, honourable majority of males who must feel a little brow-beaten and under scrutiny right now.
Let’s face it, men have had a particularly bad press over recent months.
There’s been the Weinstein scandal spreading like a contaminant through Hollywood and beyond, quickly followed by the Pestminster revelations, taking in the BBC, accusations, admissions and resignations all around as women finally speak out about a culture where they have been routinely groped or abused.
Men have been urged to examine their own behaviour and think about how they may have over-stepped a mark, even those who never have, and never would, make inappropriate advances to females.
It can’t make blokes feel good. But it’s not like they’re oppressed, is it? It’s not like they’re fighting for equal representation in the boardroom, just advised not to sexually harass the women who are already there.
And we had to laugh when Jo Swinson, Lib Dem MP for East Dunbartonshire, told last week’s parliamentary debate on IMD that hapless, bumbling stereotypes like Homer Simpson have helped undermine men’s roles as fathers.
No offence, guys, but if you have to resort to blaming Homer, you probably weren’t up to much in the first place and you’re spending too much time watching TV.
The worst thing about IMD is that it trivialises International Women’s Day and the very real and very serious inequalities, injustices and abuses it highlights.
So let’s not debate it in parliament, where only 32 per cent of MPs are female. When it’s a 50-50 split, we might think again.
Until then, men should be grateful for the 365 days of predominance they enjoy every year.
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If you want to be an Internet superstar, you’ll need a cat. Use your smart phone to make videos of your cat. Tweet regularly about your cat. Maybe even create a Facebook page for your cat.
What is it about cats and the internet? Nyan Cat? Nora the Piano Cat?
Perry Stein took a stab at this subject in The New Republic earlier this year. “Most of us would simply plead that we happen to think of cats, and their various digital reproductions, as ‘cute,’” Stein wrote, “but the sheer magnitude of their popularity suggests that there’s something more than a purely subjective phenomenon at work.”
Stein turned to natural and social scientists. Among the answers he discovered:
Cats have big eyes, small noses, and a head shape that resembles human babies’. It is an evolutionary thing: cats trigger our instinctual desire to nurture our young.
“For cat owners, the dog park is the internet.” Where else can you take your feline obsession and bond with other humans that are fixated on cats?
These answers entertain, but hardly convince. For an alternative, I turned to the Jungian/Archetypal psychology.
Following in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic movement, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung used ancient mythology to find meaningful explanations for modern experiences. In the case of cats, this seems like a promising strategy.
Although historians and archeologists call them icons, artifacts, and talismans, it may be that the first cat memes appeared in ancient Egypt.
Bastet was the Egyptian cat-headed goddess. She was associated with lunar energies: childbirth, fertility, and the feminine. In Greek mythology, the goddess Artemis is said to have turned herself into a cat in order to take refuge in the moon. And the Norse goddess of fertility, Freyja, had a carriage that was pulled by two cats. In the middle ages, cats became associated with the devil.
The Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz, in her book, The Cat: A Tale of Feminine Redemption, points to the independence of cats. Unlike dogs, who look at us with codependent and sentimental puppy eyes, cats appear to flaunt their autonomy: they ask for attention with a kind of aloofness that tells us that they desire human companionship, but they don’t need it. Thus, Von Franz explains, the persecution of witches was also a persecution of women’s psychological independence. “The projection fell especially onto the black cat,” she writes, “which is still said to bring bad luck when it crosses one’s path.”
On the Internet, the symbolic cat seems to have lost her negative associations. Now, she appears in ironic memes:
Serious Cat:
Grumpy Cat:
Standing Cat:
Cat memes can be understood as modern icons that celebrate and worship the symbolic cat. They seem to emphasize how cats are like humans. But the unconscious message might be more profound. They might be about the way humans are like cats.
Perhaps we’re collectively celebrating the independence with which our Internet devices allow us to connect to others. The web allows us to be like felines, connecting on our own terms and at our own leisure.
What’s more, the Internet seems to have played a part in eroding a collective fear of women’s independence. Witness the success of communities like dailyworth.com and the increased acceptance of women entrepreneurs.
Perry Stein may be right. The popularity of cats on the Internet may be more than just entertainment and cuteness. It may even be about more than evolutionary biology and social science.
Cat memes might represent a shift in our collective mythology and an increased psychological tolerance.
Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum Euphoric Bliss and co-editor of Occupy Psyche: Jungian and Archetypal Perspectives on a Movement. For information on his upcoming books and events click here.
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Jammu & Kashmir: Wreath laying ceremony of four CRPF jawans in Budgam. They lost their lives in action in the ongoi… https://t.co/aSFZgjFvNZ — ANI (@ANI) 1514715000000
SRINAGAR: Five jawans and two terrorists were killed in a firefight after heavily armed Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists stormed a security camp at Lethpora in Awantipora in Pulwama district, 30 km from Srinagar, in the early hours of Sunday. While four jawans died of gunshot wounds, the fifth soldier at the camp was declared dead of cardiac arrest.A third terrorist, holed up in a building and firing until late Sunday evening at the forces, managed to slip past the security dragnet, whilst a fourth is still believed to be hiding in the area. The dead as well as the surviving terrorists are Kashmiris.According to a senior CRPF officer, no terrorist has escaped. The operation has resumed on Monday. The number of terrorists who had entered the premises can be ascertained after the operation is over, the officer added.Pakistan-based terror outfit, Jaish-e-Mohammed, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group recently suffered a massive setback when, four days ago, Noor Mohammad Tantray alias Noor Trali, a top terrorist, was killed by the security forces in the same district.Sources said the Jaish attack was intended to avenge Trali’s killing. In November, three terrorists of the group were killed — among them was Talha Rasheed, the nephew of Jaish chief, Maulana Masood Azhar.“There was an input from the last two-three days. The militants were trying (to attack). They probably could not get a place and time earlier. So, they struck late last night,” J&K director general of police (DGP) S P Vaid told reporters on Sunday.All the terrorists were armed with automatic weapons and grenades. They stormed the camp around 2am on Sunday hurling grenades and firing before breaching the perimeter fence of the training centre of the 185 Battalion of the CRPF in Pulwama.While one jawan, Saifuddin Ganai of Nowgam Chadoora in Budgam district, was killed on spot, three jawans succumbed to their injuries in the military hospital here, a CRPF spokesman said.Inspector General of CRPF Ravideep Sahi said heavily armed Pakistani fidayeen (suicide squad) entered the camp in the dead of the night, which might have surprised the personnel and threw grenades and fired at them.“This was a deadly fidayeen attack by the Pakistani terrorists on the last day of 2017. Five of our boys laid down their lives to repulse the attack on the camp on the Srinagar-Jammu highway,” IG Sahi said.Downplaying the Kashmiri identity of terrorists, DGP S P Vaid said the overall trend of local boys joining militancy had gone down. He said stone pelting cases registered in 2016 and 2017 against at least 5,500 youth were under review after the government announced amnesty to 4,300 youth.Vaid also said 75 youth were stopped from joining militancy while seven youth had quit their ranks and returned to their families.A Jaish statement to local media said: “The blood of martyrs is yielding results... Talha Rasheed, Mohammad Bhai, commander Noor Mohammad Tantray and all other martyrs of Kashmir are not heirless...” The statement threatened more attacks on security forces.The slain terrorists, identified as Kashmiris, were Manzoor Ahmad Baba, son of Ali Mohammad Baba of Drubgam Pulwama; and, Fardeen Ahmad Khanday, son of Ghulam Mohammad Khanday, of Nazeen Pora Tral.
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Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the virus company has spoken at a conference in Australia and expressed his opinion about malware, and has some praise for Microsoft for both Windows and Windows Phone.
“All systems are vulnerable to modern threats,” he said, revealing that about 5% of PCs are infected with malware, but he noted “Windows is a much better operating system than the rest (iOS, OS X and Android) and Microsoft is tightening it up much more in the next version.”
He added that Mac (OS X) and iOS was a huge target. “Windows engineers are easy to find, Mac not so. That only makes iOS and OS X attacks more costly. Criminals are obsessed with iOS and there are many, many vulnerabilities,” he said.
On Mobile he noted “the most dangerous scenario is with iPhones. It is less probable because it is very difficult to develop malware for iPhones, because the operating system is closed to outside programmers. But every system has a vulnerability. If it happens—in the worst-case scenario, if millions of the devices are infected—there is no antivirus, because antivirus companies do not have any rights to develop true end-point security for Apple.
Android was equally dangerous, he continued, with “more and more – millions of brutal attacks – not safe” while Windows Phone was “so far very clean.”
He stated that Mobile was the new attack vector with stats showing 97% of users did mobile banking or some other activity that revealed passwords.
With the unification of Windows desktop and mobile we hope than Windows 10 will see both become even safer platforms. Read the full article at ITWire here.
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Topics discussed: Encapsulation by separating methods into new files.
Source Code Available Here
Program encapsulation
The concept of program encapsulation is simple: break things down into their component parts so when something breaks, it’s easy to track, and easier to fix. The more ‘parts’ you break your program into (via methods) the easier this becomes. But as you increase the number of methods, the length of a single file becomes unmanageable and huge. Somewhere around 100-400 lines, a file becomes “hard” to read, so keeping it below that level is optimal (in my opinion) if at all possible.
Adding in additional files
In netbeans we will select a new file, and then simply add a new java class file to an existing project. The only thing that really changes in terms of code is that when we call a method from another file, we need to include the class name in the call to that method. Something like this:
//main.java //Normal header here int x=0; x= HandleX.addfive(x); //HandleX.java public class{ public static int addfive(int x){ return (x+5); }//End method }// End class
In the example above you’ll notice that the method is called by it’s filename first when we are in another file. This happens because we need to tell the compiler where to find the method that we’re trying to use.
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TLAXCALA
A través de un video captado por las cámaras de seguridad donde laboraba Jazmín Contreras López, fueron identificados los dos presuntos asesinos de la joven de 19 años en Tlaxcala.
Óscar “N” y Miguel “N”, ambos de 24 años, eran compañeros de trabajo de la víctima, y según lo informó la Procuraduría de Justicia del Estado, planearon su crimen desde una semana antes para no pagarle una tanda de 14 mil pesos.
Principalmente con un video que obtuvimos de la tienda donde se ve claramente cómo la agreden, cómo pretenden ponerle un trapo en la boca que seguramente fue completo de cloroformo que fue lo que utilizaron de acuerdo con la propia declaración de ellos y que esto fue lo que provocó que con eso le dieran muerte a ella”, precisó Tito Cervantes, procurador de Tlaxcala.
Jazmín Contreras López, originaria de Mazatecochoco, fue reportada como desaparecida el pasado 16 de octubre y localizada el día 20 de este mes en una barranca del Parque Nacional de la Malinche.
Era jefa en una fábrica de telas de los dos acusados por el homicidio y familiar de uno de ellos. Había aceptado entrar a una tanda de 14 mil pesos, la cual no le fue entregada a tiempo por los sujetos, quienes decidieron asesinarla.
Los dos presuntos homicidas se encuentran el Cereso, ya que el delito de homicidio requiere de prisión preventiva oficiosa hasta que el juez determine su situación legal.
ADVERTENCIA: IMÁGENES FUERTES
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Richard Nino posts his message as supporters of the legalization movement for marijuana participate in the 2nd Global Marijuana March in San Antonio on May 7, 2016.
Richard Nino posts his message as supporters of the legalization movement for marijuana participate in the 2nd Global Marijuana March in San Antonio on May 7, 2016.
Some 100 people marched in San Antonio’s second annual “marijuana march” to build support for grass-roots efforts to ease Texas marijuana laws and decriminalize pot use.
The event was hosted by the local chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
Jesus Ramirez marched with a sign emblazoned with a cannabis plant and the words "Don't Fight. Make It Right. Legalize."
“I’m here because I think we need more compassion for people who are suffering,” said Ramirez, 44, a former glazier who also uses cannabis to reduce pain from a neck injury that forced him to retire five years ago. “Marijuana helps people cope. Why would anyone be against that?”
During the three-mile march that began at Brackenridge Park and ended at Pink’s Patio, Ramirez joined the crowd in chanting slogans, among them “The problem is the law, not the plant!” and “Free the weed for those in need!”
A new Texas law went into effect in January that allows people with intractable epilepsy to use cannabis oil for relief from seizures. Under the narrowly defined “compassionate use program,” the state will start licensing dispensaries by June next year.
Dean Becker, a Houston radio show host for the Drug Truth Network and author of “To End the War on Drugs: A Guide for Politicians, the Press and Public,” urged lawmakers to pass reforms to show mercy for those suffering in silence.
“So many people find relief from their pain with marijuana when nothing else works,” he said. “We should find ways to make it easier for them instead of making their lives even harder.”
For more visit expressnews.com.
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Twitter: @MartinKuz
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Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-19 06:25:13|Editor: Song Lifang
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Wu Haitao (front C), the charge d'affaires of the Chinese mission to the United Nations, addresses a Security Council open debate on the situation in the Middle East at the UN headquarters in New York, Oct. 18, 2017. China on Wednesday asked for more efforts to tackle the Palestine issue, saying the international community should have a sense of urgency to push for a political settlement. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday asked for more efforts to tackle the Palestine issue, saying the international community should have a sense of urgency to push for a political settlement.
The Palestine issue is the crux of the Middle East crisis and a root cause of many problems in the region, Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires of the Chinese mission to the United Nations, told an open debate of the Security Council.
Palestine and Israel are neighbors that share a fate. Accelerating the political settlement of the Palestine issue through dialogue and consultation is in the fundamental interests of both Palestinians and Israelis and conducive to durable peace and stability in the region, he said.
He warned that the Palestine-Israel situation is fragile, the conflicts centering on settlements are acute and the humanitarian situation in Gaza is grave. At the same time, the Palestinian people's demand and aspirations for correcting the historical wrongs and resuming the exercise of their unalienable national rights are strong.
He asked for efforts to push for political settlement on the basis of the two-states solution, which he said best fits the realities in the region, has won broadest international recognition, and is demanded by UN General Assembly resolutions.
Parties concerned should push for the resumption of peace talks on the basis of relevant Security Council resolutions, the "land-for-peace" principle and the Arab Peace Initiative in a bid for a comprehensive, fair and durable solution, he said.
Wu asked to remove negative factors that would impede such an endeavor and called for sincerity for peace and the building of mutual trust. It is imperative to stop all settlement activities in occupied territories, to cease the closure of Gaza, to enhance measures that would improve the livelihood of the Palestinian people and to prevent violence against civilians, he said.
He asked the international community to coordinate efforts and boost synergy for peace. Recently, the international community has increased attention to the Palestine issue and made various efforts to push for the resumption of peace talks. China supports all efforts toward peace between Palestine and Israel, he said.
The recent progress in intra-Palestine reconciliation is conducive to unity within Palestine, to the resumption of peace talks with Israel and to the attainment of Palestinian statehood and peaceful co-existence with Israel, said Wu. China commends Egypt's diplomatic efforts to broker the deal between Fatah and Hamas, he said, adding that the international community should build on the progress and promote peace.
China is a staunch supporter of Palestinians' legitimate course and an active mediator for peace between Palestine and Israel, he said. China firmly supports the two-states solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state with full sovereignty and independence on the basis of the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, he said.
China will follow as general guide President Xi Jinping's four-point proposal on the settlement of the Palestine issue and will work with various parties toward a political settlement, he added.
On the Iran nuclear issue, Wu said the 2015 agreement between Iran and six world powers helped defuse a crisis and consolidate the international non-proliferation regime. The agreement was an important achievement in terms of international security governance and multilateralism and also a good example for addressing hot spot issues through political and diplomatic means, he stressed.
China hopes the parties concerned will cherish and safeguard the agreement as a historic achievement, honor their respective obligations and ensure the comprehensive implementation of the agreement and properly settle their differences through dialogue and consultation in a concerted effort to peace and stability in the Middle East, said the Chinese envoy.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Belgians who drive a bit over the speed limit, forget to buckle their seat belts or park illegally can breathe easier this week as police turn a blind eye in protest against plans to raise their retirement age.
The country’s police are up in arms over plans by the incoming government to raise their pension age to 62 from 58 as part of its efforts to cut the federal budget. Some 40,000 officers demonstrated against it in Brussels two weeks ago.
They began the next step in their protest on Tuesday by going easy on minor infractions for the next week.
“Clearly this wouldn’t cover major offences, such as reckless or drunken driving,” said Vincent Houssin, deputy chairman of the 18,000-member VSOA police union.
Police unions say the officers will continue to uphold traffic safety, but for a week at least the state budget will not get the benefit of their work.
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If you tuned in for the duration of the WVU/Texas game on January 9th, 2013, you deserve this win. You deserve it much more than any of the teams that actually played in the game due to the fact that I firmly believe it could be in the Top Ten of worst college basketball games ever televised. WVU, at one point, was 0-14 from beyond the arc including having a mere 29 points in 30 minutes of game play. That being said, the Mountaineers went 19-62 (30.6%) from the field before a weird barrage of 21 points in the last four minutes sparked by.... a three from Kevin Noreen.
This three started a 10-0 run from the Mountaineers tying the game and forcing a Texas timeout with 86 seconds left. Any recording of basketball that came before the Noreen three should be immediately burned, shot, drown, and burned again. Both teams were awful. AWFUL. The hell with it. I'll move on.
After the Texas timeout, WVU ends up blocking a dribble drive layup that leads to a Harris three from the corner with twenty ticks left. The Longhorns set up a play and end up hitting a huge three to tie it up at 50 with three seconds left. Gary Browne goes the length of the court with no shot. This horrible, horrible game gets five more minutes.
AMERICA DEMANDS FIVE MORE MINUTES OF THIS — Patrick Southern (@patricksouthern) January 10, 2013
Overtime starts and WVU ends up leading 54-52 after a Murray layup and two Gary Browne free throws with three minutes left. This is where the sorcery begins. WVU waits until the end of the shot clock to throw up a jumper... missed... offensive rebound. 2:30 left, the Mountaineers let the shot clock run down.... miss.... offensive rebound. AGAIN, MISSED JUMPER, OFFENSIVE REBOUND. The Mountaineers, inadvertently, took a full two minutes off the clock while up by two to make it a one possession game with the lead and the ball. After this, the Longhorns make the defensive stand, but never get those crucial two points.
DO NOT BE MISLEAD. Yes, you can say that WVU took the opportunity that was there at the end of the game. Yes, you can say that they didn't give up and had heart. Yes, you can say that, once it became a game, they kept composure. None of that matters if Texas had a competent enough night to already be up by 30 before the sorcery. This is a much needed win and I'll take it, but this is one that is more telling of a tale about the Longhorns rather than the Mountaineers.
All that being said. Who cares?
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CTVNews.ca Staff
A former SNC-Lavalin executive who was appointed to Montreal’s port authority was allowed to remain on the public payroll for months, despite known links to an illegal fundraising scheme, CTV News has learned.
Former SNC-Lavalin vice-president Normand Morin was named by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the port authority in 2006. The post paid about $25,000 a year.
It’s a job Morin held despite his alleged involvement in illegal political financing, and despite the fact that his tenure expired in September.
For more than 18 months, the Harper government knew of the allegations against Morin.
“He is still on the board. He is at the tail end of the mandate. We don’t know yet when it will be up,” said Port of Montreal spokesperson Sophie Roux.
The Prime Minister’s Office took action on Thursday night, telling CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife that Morin has now been removed from his position.
“This individual was advised in October that he would not be re-appointed,” PMO spokesperson Stephen Lecce said. “As of today, this individual is no longer a member of the board.”
Morin name first came up at the Charbonneau Commission, a public inquiry into widespread corruption allegations within Quebec’s construction industry.
SNC-Lavalin vice-president Pierre Cadotte told the corruption inquiry the company illegally contributed more than $1 million in donations to Quebec’s political parties between 1998 and 2010.
Morin and two other top executives were involved in the slush fund, Codette alleged.
Cadotte refused to say if it was in exchange for specific contracts.
According to unsealed police affidavits released earlier this month, Morin confirmed to police his unofficial job was to monitor and arrange political financing.
“He admitted to the police that he was making illegal fundraising for the Liberal Party of Quebec,” said NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice.
Prior to the PMO’s statement to CTV News, opposition MPs had been questioning why Morin wasn’t stepping down.
“Why is this individual still on the Montreal Port Authority,” said Liberal MP David McGuinty. “Why hasn’t action been taken already.”
With a report by CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife
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Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines will offer the Beats Music streaming service to passengers at no charge, the company said Monday.
At a Monday event aboard a Boeing 737 with Beats artwork on the plane's body, Southwest announced that it will provide free Beats Music access on aircraft that are Wi-Fi enabled. Passengers will tap into the Southwest entertainment portal and pick playlists from the service.
Apple acquired Beats earlier this year for $3.2 billion. Beats' products are headlined by the company's popular headphones, but also include its Beats Music streaming service. It's widely believed that Apple saw significant value in Beats Music specifically.
To highlight its deal with Apple, Southwest's official Beats Music Boeing 737 is departing from Dallas Love Field and landing at Chicago-Midway on Monday. Pop band Cobra Starship is playing live on the flight.
Through the Southwest portal, Beats Music will work with iOS and Android OS devices, as well as most browsers.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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An organisation called Border Communities Against Brexit staged demonstrations at six border locations this afternoon, highlighting the UK's plans to the leave the European Union.
Participants handed out leaflets saying the 'hard Brexit' policy of British Prime Minister Theresa May would mean severe restrictions on those who live in the border region.
They claimed Brexit would mean the introduction of customs check points and would have far-reaching, negative economic consequences.
They said their aim is to force the British and Irish governments to respect the will of the majority of the Northern Ireland electorate who voted to remain in the EU.
One of the largest demonstrations was held at Carrickarnon, between Newry and Dundalk, where the organisers put in place a mock customs building and a lengthy tailback of traffic was created by the crowds.
"We want to stop the reimposition of those border posts," said Border Communities Against Brexit spokesman Declan Fearon.
Mr Fearon runs a furniture business near Jonesboro in South Armagh. His family are well-known in the area.
His niece, Megan, is a Sinn Féin junior minister in the Stormont Assembly.
The protest had the appearances of a campaign driven by nationalists. In their literature the references were to 'The North', rather than Northern Ireland.
Politicians from several parties attended the meeting. The speakers included representatives of businesses from both sides of the border.
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Photo at top of post by Jeff Dai in Tibet. Read more about this image.
One of you wrote:
Are there any stars outside our own galaxy that we can see with just the eye?
The answer is no – unless you count seeing the combined light of many billions of stars. From the Northern Hemisphere, the only galaxy outside our Milky Way that’s easily visible to the eye is the great galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, also known as M31. More about the Andromeda galaxy at the bottom of this post.
From the Southern Hemisphere, it’s possible to see two dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
So what are we seeing when we look up? The image at the top of this post shows a hazy band in the sky. This is the edgewise view into our own Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light-years in a diameter, but it’s relatively flat, only about 10,000 light-years thick. So – if we’re looking in a dark sky – when we look toward the galactic disk, we see the starry band of the Milky Way.
And when we look up or down – away from the flat disk of the galaxy – we’re also seeing Milky Way stars. All of the stars we see with the eye alone belong to our Milky Way galaxy.
EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store
It is possible to see the Andromeda galaxy with the eye alone, from Earth’s Northern Hemisphere. This galaxy appears as a hazy patch in our night sky, about as wide in diameter as a full moon. And, indeed, this haze represents the light of the Andromeda galaxy’s billions of stars. But we still can’t see individual stars within this galaxy – not with the eye alone. Even with amateur telescopes, the patch of light that we see as the Andromeda galaxy looks, at best, like haze.
A few years ago, astronomers released a new sharpest-ever view of the Andromeda galaxy.
And you can see the galaxy for yourself. At mid-northern latitudes in late November, the Andromeda galaxy is visible from nightfall till about 4 a.m. Here are a couple of ways to find the galaxy:
Use Great Square of Pegasus to find Andromeda galaxy
Or …
Use constellation Cassiopeia to find Andromeda galaxy
Be sure to look for it in a dark sky, far from city lights. Good luck!
Bottom line: On a dark night, there are so many stars. Are any of the stars we see with the eye alone located beyond our home galaxy? The answer is no. All the stars we see with the eye alone belong to our Milky Way. But there is one distant galaxy you can see from Earth.
Astronomy events, star parties, festivals, workshops for September-December, 2016
Almost gone! EarthSky lunar calendars make great gifts. Order now.
Donate: Your support means the world to us
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Time is running out to say goodbye to the elephants at the Calgary Zoo.
Kamala, Swarna and Maharani, are leaving for Washington D.C.’s Smithsonian Zoo around the end of the month and while handlers from both zoos are getting ready to make the move a smooth one, fans and friends are welcome to say goodbye.
The Zoo’s Larissa Marks said there are special events planned both this week and next, with ticketed events selling out.
“We’re guaranteeing up to that point that the elephants will be here, we don’t release the actual date that they will be leaving, because there are lots of factors that go into the animal transportation and things that can shift on them, so that weekend, the 12th and 13th is our big farewell,” she said.
She said, although staff are sad to see the trio go, there’s plenty of work to keep them distracted.
“The building is going to go through a quick transformation, rhinos are going to be coming in the summer and they will occupy the space,” she said. “We’re also building a new exhibit on the other side of the indoor space where komodo dragons will also coming in this summer.”
The Washington facility will give the trio more space and suitable climate.
For more information on the special events, click here.
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Syrian President Bashar Assad accused Israel of supporting “terrorists” fighting against the Syrian regime as part of an ongoing war between the two countries.
In an interview with a Croatian newspaper published in English Thursday by Syria’s official news agency SANA, Assad said that while the Israeli and Syrian armies may not be fighting each other directly, what he called Israel’s support for groups battling his regime amounts to a war between them.
“Concern about a war is unrealistic, because the reality is that we are living this war. But as for calling it a Syrian-Israeli war, you can assume in any case that these terrorists are fighting for Israel,” he said.
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“It is a war that has taken a new form and uses new instruments,” he said. “Even if they are not a regular Israeli army, they are still fighting for Israel,” he added.
Assad and other Syrian officials have repeatedly accused Israel of working in tandem with rebel groups, pointing to reported strikes on regime targets. Israel has largely stayed out of the Syrian war, though it says it has carried out air strikes to stop weapons transfers to Hezbollah and has hit regime positions in response to mortars and small-arms fire that stray over the border, no matter the source.
Nonetheless, Assad said Israel is working in tandem with the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others, as they “all share the same objective” of the defeat of the Syrian dictator.
“Practically, our victory over the terrorists is a victory over all those states put together. That’s why Israel is doing its best to support these terrorists in every place the Syrian Army advances,” he said.
Last month, Assad also claimed that Israel was supporting “terrorists” fighting against the Syrian regime, “whether logistically, or through direct raids on our army.”
Although Israel has remained largely mum over whether it provides support for rebel groups in Syria, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon said in 2015 that the Jewish state has provided humanitarian aid to fighters helping to advance its goals.
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has sought to refrain from getting directly involved in the conflict, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted in April 2016 for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah, which fought a 2006 war with Israel and is now battling alongside the Damascus regime.
Last month, Syria fired surface-to-air missiles at Israeli fighter jets returning to Israel after carrying out an airstrike on a weapons convoy destined for Hezbollah.
One missile was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defense battery, military officials said, in the first reported use of the advanced system.
It was the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.
In the interview published Thursday, Assad did not address the chemical weapons attack on the rebel held village of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria on Tuesday, in which at least 72 people were killed, among them 20 children.
The US and EU have blamed Assad as being responsible for the attack, as has Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, although Syria’s army has denied it used chemical weapons, as has its patron Russia, saying it “has never used them, anytime, anywhere, and will not do so in the future.”
Assad also said that while he does not predict a victory for his regime and his Russian and Iranian backers this year, he believes that momentum is on their side.
“Of course, things are moving in a better direction, as I said, not in the interest of the terrorists but in the interest of the Syrian people, but war is unpredictable,” he said.
“We have a great hope which is becoming greater; and this hope is built on confidence, for without confidence there wouldn’t be any hope.”
He also said that he sees the conflict as one he must win.
“We do not have any other option except victory. If we do not win this war, it means that Syria will be deleted from the map. We have no choice in facing this war, and that’s why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined.”
Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.
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(Newser) – At yesterday's Berlin Marathon, Kenya's Wilson Kipsang broke a world record—but he didn't break the tape. That honor went to a guy who jumped in from the crowd in running gear; he was wearing a number as well as a T-shirt advertising an escort service, the Local reports. Race officials pursued him in the finish area, which was blocked off for the first time amid concerns following the Boston Marathon.
The unnamed man was passed to police, who charged him with trespassing. He's also barred from any future events planned by the same organization. Kipsang, meanwhile, managed to run the race in 2 hours, 3 minutes, and 23 seconds, the new world record. The previous record was held by Kenyan Patrick Makau; it took him 15 seconds longer to pound out 26.2 miles, which he also did in Berlin, in 2011, reports the New York Times. Kipsang walked away with $54,000 for his troubles, plus a $68,000 bonus for setting the record. Kenya's Florence Kiplagat won the women’s race in 2:21:13. (Read more Berlin stories.)
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The broad debate over President Trump’s fitness for the difficult and demanding office he holds has recently been reframed in a more pointed and urgent way: Does he understand, and can he responsibly manage, the most destructive nuclear arsenal on earth?
The question arises for several reasons. He has threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea. He has reportedly pressed for a massive buildup in the American nuclear arsenal, which already contains too many — 4,000 — warheads. And soon he will decide whether to sustain or set a course to possibly unravel the immensely important Iran nuclear deal.
Doubts about his competency were reinforced this week by Senator Bob Corker, who charged that Mr. Trump was treating his office like “a reality show” with reckless threats that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.” Mr. Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, says he is relying on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, to help “separate our country from chaos.” That is a searing indictment, and Mr. Corker is no garden-variety legislator; as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he is a respected, and largely responsible, voice on national security issues.
Further, NBC News now reports that Mr. Tillerson judged Mr. Trump a “moron” after a July 20 meeting in which Mr. Trump, apparently distressed that the arsenal has declined since the Cold War, said he wanted a nearly tenfold increase in weapons.
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Today I'd like to introduce you a Perl module I really like and use a lot in my code. It's called Perl6::Junction and you can get it from CPAN.
Please have a look what it can do for you.
Perl6::Junction comes in when you're working on Arrays. For example, if you'd like to search your array if it contains a defined element, usually your code will look like this:
my @animal = ('squirrel', 'cat', 'catfish', 'sausage-dog', 'guinea pig', 'pig'); # using a foreach loop to walk trough all array elements
#
foreach my $animal ( @animal ) { if ( $animal eq 'guinea pig' ) { # found my lovely guinea pig in this group of animals!
last;
}
} # you could also go and use grep to search your array
#
if ( grep(/^guinea pig$/, @animal) ) { # found it!
}
But especially grep is not easy to use for beginners and one could make many mistakes when using it.
For example, just calling grep like grep('cat', @animal) will match every string in the array because it excepts a BLOCK or regular expression and not a string as first argument and interprets the string as 'TRUE' which matches everything.
Doing a grep(/cat/, @animal) will match every array element that contains the string 'cat'. It would match 'cat' and 'catfish' in this example.
Most of the time, this is not really what you want.
When using Perl6::Junction it becomes as easy as this:
use Perl6::Junction qw( all any none one ); my @animal = ('squirrel', 'cat', 'catfish', 'sausage-dog', 'guinea pig', 'pig'); if ( any(@animal) eq 'guinea pig' ) { # one or more guinea pig's in the list of animals!
} if ( one(@ainmal) eq 'guinea pig' ) { # exactly one guinea pig in the list
} my @herd = ('sheep', 'sheep', 'wolf', 'sheep', 'sheep'); unless ( all(@herd) eq 'sheep' ) { # watch out!
}
Pretty nice, right? :)
If I caught your interest, please have a look at more examples in the modules documentation at CPAN.
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cPanel TSR-2017-0001 Announcement
cPanel has released new builds for all public update tiers. These updates provide targeted changes to address security concerns with the cPanel & WHM product. These builds are currently available to all customers via the standard update system.
cPanel has rated these updates as having CVSSv2 scores ranging from 2.1 to 6.8.
Information on cPanel’s security ratings is available at https://go.cpanel.net/securitylevels.
If your deployed cPanel & WHM servers are configured to automatically update when new releases are available, then no action is required. Your systems will update automatically. If you have disabled automatic updates, then we strongly encourage you to update your cPanel & WHM installations at your earliest convenience.
RELEASES
The following cPanel & WHM versions address all known vulnerabilities:
62.0.4 & Greater
60.0.35 & Greater
58.0.43 & Greater
56.0.43 & Greater
54.0.36 & Greater
The latest public releases of cPanel & WHM for all update tiers are available at http://httpupdate.cpanel.net.
SECURITY ISSUE INFORMATION
The cPanel security team and independent security researchers identified the resolved security issues. There is no reason to believe that these vulnerabilities have been made known to the public. As such, cPanel will only release limited information about the vulnerabilities at this time.
Once sufficient time has passed, allowing cPanel & WHM systems to automatically update to the new versions, cPanel will release additional information about the nature of the security issues. This Targeted Security Release addresses 17 vulnerabilities in cPanel & WHM software versions 11.62, 11.60, 11.58, 11.56, and 11.54.
Additional information is scheduled for release on January 17, 2017.
For information on cPanel & WHM Versions and the Release Process, read our documentation at:
https://go.cpanel.net/versionformat
For the PGP-Signed version of this announcement please see: https://news.cpanel.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/TSR-2017-0001.announcement.signed.txt
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The former Philadelphia police officer who punched a woman in an incident that was caught on video is getting his job back.
Lieutenant Jonathan Josey will be reinstated to his post on the police force and will get all the pay he is entitled to from between now and when he was fired last September.
A now-infamous video that went viral is what sparked it all. The video allegedly shows Josey slugging a woman who he thought had sprayed beer on police officers after the Puerto Rican Day Parade.
Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey reviewed that cell phone video and fired Josey a short time later.
Josey was later acquitted in court of assault charges, and the Fraternal Order of Police appealed his dismissal to an arbitrator.
A hearing was held in June, and that arbitrator has now issued an 18-page decision in Josey's favor.
The arbitrator says a frame-by-frame review of the video supports Josey's claims.
He testified that Aida Guzman refused his order to drop a bottle of beer she was holding. He says he was trying to swat the bottle out of her hand when her left foot went out from under her as she stepped on a can. Guzman fell to the street, and the arbitrator ruled that's what caused her bloody lip, not a punch in the face.
"No that's a lie," Guzman said through an interpreter Monday. "I didn't fall on my face, that's a pure lie! I feel offended like they punched me in the face again."
Guzman and her attorney spoke to reporters outside her home in Chester, Pa. She said she is disappointed with the arbitrator's finding, and her attorney, Enrique Latoison, says it sends a terrible message to everyone else.
"This gives them free reign to continue to do what they're doing," Latoison said. "Because even when you're caught on video, you can still find a way to get away with that, and you still send a very, very scary message to all the citizens out there."
For his part, Police Commissioner Ramsey said he is disappointed with the ruling, but says he has to accept it and return Lt. Josey to the police force.
"I have no regrets about the action I took at the time this took place," said Ramsey. "The decision has been rendered, and I'll abide by it."
Philadelphia City Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez says the ruling sends a bad message.
"God forbid there's another incident," she said. "How is the community going to respond? And it really puts the officers in jeopardy, because we're trying to create these bridges, and this has been a huge setback."
Lt. Josey was unavailable for comment Monday.
His attorney, Fortunato Perri, says he worked a lifetime to get where he was, and it was all destroyed in just 3 seconds.
"We've now had 2 separate fact finders review the facts and circumstances of this case and have come to the same conclusion that Jon didn't do anything wrong that day other than do his job," said Perri.
He says Josey is now looking forward to resuming his career.
Josey could be back at work as early as Tuesday. Commissioner Ramsey says it has not been decided where he will be placed. That has yet to be worked out.
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There is impressive evidence that Apple is moving into solar power in a big way, not just in the projected 4.4 million square feet of office and manufacturing space slated for solar, but in the next generation iPhones and iPod Touch. In an impressive, well-researched post on the Seeking Alpha investor blog, Matt Margolis puts together the diverse pieces of the puzzle and comes to the convincing conclusion that more than just growing sapphire will be going on at Apple's new 1.3 million square foot plant in Mesa, AZ. Specifically, he argues that the combination of patents, job postings and equipment orders all point to Apple developing the ability within the coming year to etch very precise channels in the underside of the protective sapphire veneers it will be adhering to the new iPhone and iPod Touch screens into which it will deposit compounds to create highly efficient solar cells to help charge the devices.
Beyond this company-wide commitment to solar power, this strategy adds even more importance to Apple's embrace of sapphire as a primary material for its products. GT Advanced Technologies, the company that Apple has contracted with to provide the sapphire materials for these efforts, has recently been able to drive the cost for an iPhone screen's worth of sapphire cover material from an exorbitant $13-18 down to $3-5, which is closing in on the $3 that its current Gorilla Glass covering is costing Apple. But, as Margolis points out, "The reason why sapphire screens are so important to Apple and their innovation is because they need sapphire to protect all of their 'cool stuff' under the hood of their devices."
Part of that "cool stuff," as I described in this morning's mobile payments post, will be the ability to uncouple the Touch ID sensor from the home button and potentially make the whole screen (or some portion of it) a fingerprint sensor. This technology, I argue, will have profound implications for the iWatch if it can incorporate Touch ID and become a cross platform pice of the mobile payment puzzle.
The really remarkable thing that Margolis has uncovered is how the protective surface of Apple devices could also help to charge them. This could help drive its signature "lighter and thinner" design process by enabling these devices to shed some battery weight and bulk because the built-in solar panels will keep the charge level topped off.
Here is Margolis' fact checklist that he used to vet his conjecture:
Apple filed solar patents that will allow them to power their electronic devices directly through solar cells.
Apple posted and filled a Thin Films Engineer position with solar experience.
Apple signed a $578m contract with GT Advanced Technologies to provide sapphire materials (sapphire cover screens)
Apple announced they would be spending $10.5B in capital during fiscal year 2014 including cutting edge lasers.
Apple recently posted a Manufacturing Design Engineer position that includes "scribing" and "PVD coating" which relate to thin films (solar cells) and lasers.
Over 100 iPhones have been assembled with sapphire covered displays.
What is potentially exciting here is not only that Apple still has plenty of innovation under the hood and is executing on it at a level possible by few companies on earth. It is also that by throwing their efforts into the commercialization of solar energy on small scale and large it will serve to move the entire industry forward. Calculators have been solar powered for decades, why not smartphones, or, for that matter, toasters?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
To keep up with Quantum of Content, please subscribe to my updates on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and App.net or add me on Google+.
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People are wondering what’s up with the socks worn by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s at today’s Pride parade in Toronto:
Guys. What is the meaning of Trudeau's Pride crescent/moon rainbow socks?! pic.twitter.com/0xvkGJIIh1 — James West (@jameswest2010) June 26, 2017
According to reports, they’re “Ramadan-themed”:
Only in Canada: PM Justin Trudeau wearing Eid Mubarak socks, high fiving a little Wonder Woman, while at the Pride parade #Toronto https://t.co/hKb4kN5JSF — Muhammad Lila (@MuhammadLila) June 25, 2017
my kink is justin trudeau high-fiving baby wonder woman in rainbow ramadan socks during a pride parade pic.twitter.com/ptbZlIqU6J — keely flaherty (@flahertykeely) June 25, 2017
today in trudeau sock watch: justin wearing a pair of ramadan themed socks for toronto pride pic.twitter.com/5Pc3O0TalW — juan (@juanbuis) June 25, 2017
Now, if only actual Muslims around the world can wear rainbow socks, then maybe we’ll get somewhere.
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Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
While Persona 4 takes place in a town called “Inaba,” Persona 5 takes place in Tokyo.
This article was originally published on September 27, 2016. It has since been updated with more comparisons.
The major Tokyo locations, such as Shibuya Station, match up well enough, but it’s interesting to see what inspired where the Protagonist lives.
The model is Tokyo’s Sangenjaya (三軒茶屋), which is west of Shibuya. (In the game, you walk to Shibuya Station to take the train.) The inspiration is not subtle, because the P5 location is called “Yongenjaya” (四軒茶屋), with “yon” referring to “four” and the “san” in Sangenjaya referring to three.
The locations in Persona 5 aren’t necessarily an exact copy, but the in-game locations are pretty faithful.
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For example, compare how Tokyo’s Sangenjaya Station and Persona 5's Yongenjaya Station stack up.
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The in-game and real-world cafes.
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Which is near a laundromat. The below comparisons are via Hachima:
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Via Source Gaming, comparisons of in-game and real-world bars:
More comparisons:
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Both locations have batting centers.
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Movie theaters.
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And similar-looking supermarkets with similar names.
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If you’ve walked around Sangenjaya, it’s cool to see how the game does a nice job of not only recreating locations but also the vibe.
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For even more comparisons, do check out Source Gaming’s recent post.
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A massive Truck bomb shook the center of Kabul, killing at least 80 and injuring up to 400 civilians on Wednesday. Attacks against civilians have been on the rise in recent years, causing more than 11,400 deaths and injuries in 2016, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
You will find more statistics at Statista
As Statista's Dyfed Loesche notes, the figure has almost doubled compared to 2009.
“This appalling conflict destroys lives and tears communities apart in every corner of Afghanistan. Real protection of civilians requires commitment and demonstrated concrete actions to protect civilians from harm and for parties to the conflict to ensure accountability for indiscriminate and deliberate acts of civilian harm.” -Tadamichi Yamamoto, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Kabul, February 2017. “Children have been killed, blinded, crippled – or inadvertently caused the death of their friends – while playing with unexploded ordnance that is negligently left behind by parties to the conflict. Women continue to be brutally punished in parallel so-called ‘justice’ processes while religious minorities are targeted as they pray in their mosques. The consequences of each act of violence ripple through families and entire communities that are left broken, unable to sustain themselves and largely failing to obtain any semblance of justice or reparation. After nearly 40 years of constantly evolving armed conflict in Afghanistan, a Daesh franchise has now surfaced as an additional, deadly component. It is about time the various parties to the conflict ceased the relentless commission of war crimes and thought about the harm they are doing to their mothers, fathers, children and future generations by continuing to fuel this senseless, never-ending conflict.” -Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, February 2017.
Especially in conflicts like in Afghanistan, where the warring factions do not all wear uniforms, most notably the Taliban, it can be hard to make a clear distinction between civilians and non-civilian combatants.
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State Farm Insurance is suing a drunken driver's employer -- Deschutes Brewery -- for $230,000 for allegedly allowing the man to drink as much free beer as he liked the evening that he crashed into a Toyota 4-Runner with four people inside.
The lawsuit claims that Deschutes Brewery allowed Joseph Umphery unlimited access to beer in a keg room at the back of its bottling plant and at its brew pub in Bend. Umphery's supervisor told him that the company permitted employees to drink one beer each at the end of their shifts in the keg room, according to the suit, but no one monitored how much employees took.
The suit claims that employees often ended up intoxicated as they drank throughout their shifts, and that Umphery's supervisor encouraged him to drink even though he was an alcoholic who had been sober for nine months.
Gary Fish, president of Deschutes Brewery, said his company did an investigation and found the facts leading up to the crash to be "significantly different" than portrayed by State Farm. He said Umphery was an employee for six to eight weeks.
Fish disagreed that Deschutes fostered a culture of irresponsible drinking.
"The full story is not being told in that complaint," Fish said. "... I believe Deschutes Brewery has always behaved in a responsible manner."
In addition to the brew pub in downtown Bend, the company also has a pub in Portland's Pearl District.
According to the suit, on Feb. 22, 2008, Umphery drank 10 to 13 beers at the keg room and brew pub, then five to seven more beers at a strip club called "The Fan" in Redmond even though he was visibly drunk, the lawsuit alleges. A bouncer told him to leave for arguing with another customer, then helped him to his 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass, according to the suit.
As he drove home along U.S. 20, Umphery slammed into the rear-end of a 2003 Toyota 4-Runner, driven by Brian Vajda. Vajda and three passengers were injured when the SUV rolled several times, crashed through a "guard fence," and hit a pine tree, according to the suit. All were taken to the hospital, including one of the passengers who was pulled from the SUV after rescuers cut through the roof.
Umphery had a blood alcohol level of 0.29, according to the suit. The 27-year-old was convicted of driving under the influence of intoxicants, second-degree assault, reckless driving, giving false information to police and recklessly endangering others. He was sentenced to nearly six years in prison in Deschutes County Circuit Court and ordered to pay about $384,000 in restitution.
The suit was filed by Portland attorney Eric Virshbo in Multnomah County Circuit Court late Friday.
It states that Umphery didn't have auto insurance, and State Farm paid out $230,000 for the injuries to the SUV's passengers and damage to the SUV. The insurance company is suing Deschutes Brewery as well as the strip club for the money.
-- Aimee Green
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We asked our community of Stonehearth veterans and near-veterans to provide some advice to new players. Here is Part Three. (You should also check out Parts One and Two.)
Generally, settling near a small patch of berries (6 or so plants) is good enough to last you till 9 or so hearthlings.
Set your hearthling with the highest speed to be your initial trapper as it will net you more resources.
Don’t rush; masons and blacksmith can wait, the worse thing you can do is over-promote your hearthlings and be left with 1-2 workers for the base city foundation.
Make a carpenter early, mostly for making beds, tables, and chairs (less food consumption and higher morale) and for a farmer’s hoe and maybe a wooden sword.
Create 3 10×10 plots of soil with carrots, turnips and pumpkins to begin, this will get you a good base food supply alongside your trapper (can swap out turnips for corn, preferably after 1 harvest).
If you don’t wanna have to deal with footmen… then don’t, just set up walls to keep invaders out, or settle in a valley and don’t build ladders up till you’re prepared. Wandering goblin parties can totally ruin a fun time if you’re not prepared.
Build extra tables to sell for gold to buy upgraded worker’s clothing early on as it will increase their speed.
DON’T SETTLE ON MOUNTAIN PEAKS, OR MOUNTAINS EVEN
There is hardly any valid reason to ever settle on a mountain peak, unless you want to build a system of ladders for farmers/trappers to transport food up and down the mountain (since you can’t create farms/trapping areas on rock). Unless you know what you’re doing, your hearthlings will starve and your hearthlings will die
— Aviex
I also always use 10×10 farm plots. One of each food type and two of silkweed. Two farmers handle it well.
— SaintInix
When your footmen are refusing to fight something, turn on defense mode for a little extra punch of courage to fight. Your hearthlings will come help too, yes, but your footmen just might stop running around like girly men and fight like barbarians.
— Maevyn
Keep your civilians in a party with the blue flag in your town, this can save wayward villagers as toggling town defense will recall your civilians to your town, also good to use if you want to stop a villager from going to gather that distant object as the sun sets.
— Mogarl
As I was not party (hah!) to the original design of the party system, I feel it would be fair to submit this experience-earned knowledge: With the current party system, I put all my footmen in one party (attack), and all my other people in another party (defend). I assign the defend party a blue-flag location in a defensible place (a cave, the inside of a house, etc) so that when invaders are sighted and I hit R/Town Defense, they all go to that location from wherever they are in the map. hearthlings prioritize party commands over everything else, so I can be sure they won’t be caught alone and vulnerable wherever they are. If monsters DO get to them, then hopefully they can gang up on them. Then, I gauge the direction of the threat, and put the attack party’s red flag down somewhere between the defend party and the advancing threat. This means that wherever my footmen are, and whoever they happen to be fighting, they run to the red banner and regroup. This means the threat hits the footmen before the workers, and it also prevents my footmen from being picked off one-by-one. Since a high body stat means high speed, usually, the footmen can get there before the enemies do. If the fighting gets really bad, I turn off town defense mode, so that people can run away and maybe regain health before hitting town defense again to pull them back into formation.
Finally, I have to remember to add/remove people between the parties when I get/promote new citizens.
— sdee (Team Radiant)
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WiretapWednesday ep 106/ TopTenTuesday ep 13/
Socret Societies Podcaste ep 4
Freemasonry
The Top Ten Misconcepts People Have about The Freemasons
1 “I have to be invited to join”
2 “all freemasons are rich” or similarly “all rich people are freemasons/”It’s really expensive to join the Freemasons.”
3. “Freemasons are anti-Christian”
4. “Freemasons are Anti-Muslim”
5. “Freemasons are Muslim”
6. “Freemasons are Antisemtitic”
7. “Freemasons are Jews”
8. “They are racially segregated”
9. “It’s a religion”
10. “It’s the Illuminati… And they killed Paul Walker” (central leadership concepts and conspiracies)
Masonic Roundtable:
Reddit Format: [News/Talk] [The Podcaste](https://thepodcaste.com): **#WiretapWednesday: #TopTenTuesday ep 13/The Secret Societies Podcaste no. 4: FREEMASONRY**
– ep 106 SFW [Show notes](http://wp.me/p5xPCo-MZ) [Audio + Show notes](http://wp.me/p5xPCo-MZ) Gun is joined by Jon Ruark of [The Masonic Roundtable](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvUkl9eiDLPtd6SWom413mQ) and they discussed the Top Ten Misconceptions about Freemasons. [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-thepodcaste/id1041861843?mt=2) | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9_-j_pfDcatuTh8cWCl2A) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thepodcaste) | [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/thepodcaste/) | [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thepodcaste/) | [Vine](https://vine.co/thepodcaste) | [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/The_Podcaste/) | [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThePodcaste)
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Presidential candidates receive a steady stream of unsolicited advice, praise and criticism on Twitter. A TIME analysis of nearly six months of tweets directed at one candidate or another has found that what people have to say to the candidates rarely aligns with what the candidates want to discuss. The following charts show the top 10 words and phrases that are most unique to each candidate.
Methodology
This study examined all tweets that began with one candidate’s Twitter handle, meaning it is considered to be directed specifically to that candidate. Only candidates who received at least 5,000 messages were considered. Donald Trump was not an announced candidate at the time this study began.
To determine phrases that were unique to candidates, we used a common methodology known as “term frequency-inverse document frequency” that measures how much more likely a term is to show up in messages to one candidate versus all the candidates.
Contact us at [email protected].
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Famadihana is a funerary tradition of the Malagasy people in Madagascar. During this ceremony, known as the turning of the bones, people bring forth the bodies of their ancestors from the family crypts, rewrap the corpses in fresh cloth and rewrite their names on the cloth so they will always be remembered. Then they dance to live music while carrying the corpses over their heads and go around the tomb before returning the corpses to the family tomb.[1]
Famadihana appears to be a custom of somewhat recent origin, perhaps only since the 17th century in its present form, although it may be an adaptation of premodern double funeral customs from Southeast Asia. The custom is based upon a belief that the spirits of the dead finally join the world of the ancestors after the body's complete decomposition and appropriate ceremonies, which may take many years. In Madagascar this became a regular ritual usually once every seven years, and the custom brings together extended families in celebrations of kinship, sometimes even those with troubled relations.
The practice of Famadihana is on the decline due to the expense of silk shrouds and belief by some Malagasy that the practice is outdated. Early missionaries discouraged the practice and Evangelical Christian Malagasy have abandoned the practice in increasing numbers. The Catholic Church, however, no longer objects to the practice because it regards Famadihana as purely cultural rather than religious. As one Malagasy man explained to the BBC, "It's important because it's our way of respecting the dead. It is also a chance for the whole family, from across the country, to come together."[1][2]
References [ edit ]
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File photo: Vernon Philander did not contest the charge of ball tampering © AFP
Vernon Philander has become the second South African in the last nine months to be charged and fined for ball-tampering after an incident during the ongoing Galle Test. Philander was fined 75% of his match fee for breaching clause 42.1 of the ICC's match playing conditions as footage viewed by the umpires after the close of play showed him "scratching the ball with his fingers and thumb". Philander did not contest the charge so no hearing was necessary.
Philander's actions, which "took place in the afternoon" according to an ICC release, were not aired live but picked up when on-field umpires Billy Bowden and Richard Kettleborough as well as third umpire Nigel Llong, fourth umpire Ruchira Palliyaguruge and match referee Jeff Crowe reviewed visuals of the day's play.
The charge was not disputed by Philander and he accepted his punishment. It will not go unnoticed that South Africa's pace spearhead Dale Steyn achieved substantial reverse-swing in a spell after tea. Steyn sliced through Sri Lanka with three wickets in five overs in the third session.
South Africa were involved in a similar incident against Pakistan in the UAE last October when they were penalised five runs. On that occasion, television coverage showed Faf du Plessis rubbing the ball close to the zipper of his trouser pocket. The ball was changed on-field and South Africa penalised before du Plessis pleaded guilty to a charge of ball-tampering. He was fined 50% of his match fee.
In that match, South Africa's team manager Mohammed Moosajee explained that du Plessis did not challenge the charge against him because "a full hearing could lead to more severe punitive measure", and explained that du Plessis was only trying to "dry the ball".
Penalties for offences relating to changing the condition of the ball range from a fine of 50% to 100% of a player's match fee to suspensions of one Test, two ODIs or two T20s. At the time of the ICC's release, late on Friday evening, CSA had not made any statement.
Firdose Moonda is ESPNcricinfo's South Africa correspondent
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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During the auctions before IPL-2017, when RPS paid an exorbitant Rs. 14.5 Crores to buy Ben Stokes, cynicisms were rife. There was a clear concern that it is yet another impulsive purchase by a franchise.
No doubt that Stokes is immensely talented, but then Rs. 14.5 Crores is no small sum. At the top of it in T-20, people remembered him more for those four sixes, he conceded on his bowling in the last over of T-20 World Cup final last year.
There are reasons behind this scepticism. Franchises are habitual thoughtless buyers. Remember how huge money was thrown to snap Stokes’s fellow countrymen Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Peterson in 2009 IPL. Both however were complete flop and could not even prove 1/10th of the money spent. Pawan Negi was bought for a huge sum of Rs. 8.5 Crores last year by DD but he failed miserably.
ALSO READ: One dead, three injured in University of Texas stabbings
Just when people thought that Stokes would be next in this class, he played a monumental knock against GL on 1st May and with one match he brought the whole value on table of his franchise for the money he received. His 103 of 63 balls knock can be tipped as the greatest ever IPL knock while chasing. Scoring 103 out of team total on 167 explains that how gigantic the knock was.
It was a delightful chase to watch. Stokes along with Dhoni controlled & built the innings, very competently. After Dhoni departed, Stokes took complete control of the innings and finally sealed the match.
The match against GL was match of immense importance. It virtually pushed RPS to the playoff and GL to the ouster (sort of quarter final match).
Stokes peaking at the right time is a great sigh of relief for RPS. Out of touch Dhoni has already got his winning mojo with bat back. He is traffic behind the stumps as usual.
With Ben Stokes in form, RPS got that missing link in the lower-middle of their batting order, which can be something of huge significance as tournament is entering in to decisive phase.
With Dhoni and Stokes in form, and Manoj Tiwari among the runs as well over the past few matches, RPS act of redemption continues after ordinary start in IPL 2017.
The only sour point remains is Ajinkya Rahane at the top of the order. If Rahane also joins the party then RPS can very well be a side to beat.
Notwithstanding what happen to the RPS, this is Ben Stokes’s movement. He has arrived at top of T-20 with a big thud. Let’s all hail him for the moment.
(The author is NewsMobile iJourno)
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Last Monday a Border Police unit swept into a high school in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al-Amud and arrested the vice principal, Salah Muhazian, in front of a classroom filled with students. He was walked by the officers through the school corridors to a waiting jeep outside and brought to Jerusalem police headquarters for questioning.
During his interrogation officers told Muhazian that a student of his who had been arrested a few days earlier for throwing stones told them Muhazian had hidden him and other stone-throwers in his office. Muhazian was released after the interview.
Police detaining a Silwan teen on suspicion of throwing stones last year. Reuters
"I don't know what they wanted from me," he said this week, added that he thought the Border Police might have come to the school with the aim of scaring the students. "They wanted to deter them from making trouble," Muhazian said.
"This is about the fourth time they've done it over the past year," he said. "They come into the school, search classrooms and bathrooms for suspects."
Palestinians in East Jerusalem complain of increasing Border Police harassment of their children. Officers regularly entering schools to carry out arrests and improvised line-ups, they say, as well as picking up children during patrols in Arab quarters of the city.
Parents say children are also harassed outside the school itself. Abed Shaludi related that his wife phoned him one day last week at work and told him their 12-year-old son, Omar, had been picked up by a Border Police patrol.
"She said the boy came home very upset, he told her two patrol jeeps picked him up with his friends on their way home."
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The boys told Haaretz that the jeep pulled over, the rear doors opened and officers tried to snatch them while the jeep moved slowly.
"Only when the kids begged were they released," said Mohammed Abu Hasan, whose son was in the group. "We've been suffering from these actions for quite a while."
The Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, a Christian nongovernmental organization, recently dispatched volunteers to to accompany children to and from school in response to requests from parents in East Jerusalem.
According to Fares Khoulas, chairman of the Ras al-Amud parents committee, a few days before Muhazian's arrest Border Police officers entered the school in an effort to identify suspects after stones were thrown at them nearby. Khoulas said the officers barged into the principal's office and told the principal, Salah Ahwar, they had followed one of the culprits inside.
"Ahwar asked them on what basis they identified him, and they replied that it was according to his footprints," Khoulas said. "They demanded to go through each classroom and check each student's shoes." Ahwar consented.
"The kids stood up, frightened, put their books down and each reached out a foot for the soldier to look at," Khoulas said. The suspect was apparently never found.
The Border Police said in a statement: "All the reported incidents were preceded by stone-throwing. The offenders exploited their proximity to educational institutions to find refuge in them."
In response to allegations by the school that the Education Ministry did not get involved, the ministry said in a statement: "The police searches were coordinated with the schools' principals and the officers were not in uniform."
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Chinese tech site EXP Review believes that the upcoming Intel Devil's Canyon chips could surpass 5GHz using just air cooling techniques. An Intel PDF has been unearthed which is thought to detail the Core i7-4790K and Core i5-4690K chips and they represent much more of an uplift in clock speeds compared to the Haswell refresh we have seen previously.
You can see the slide below detailing the two first Devil's Canyon chips (it's only just readable so click it to enlarge to full size). Highlights of the spec are as follows:
Core i7-4790K: Base freq 4.0GHz, Turbo Boost freq 4.4GHz, 4 cores/8 threads, 8MB cache, TDP of 88W
Core i5-4690K: Base freq 3.5GHz, Turbo Boost freq 3.9GHz, 4 cores/4 threads, 6MB cache, TDP of 88W
Both chips also support 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4600 with a dynamic frequency of 1250MHz. You may also notice that the TDPs, both at 88W, are a smidgeon higher than the Haswell i7-4770K and i5-4670K chips.
As mentioned in the headline, the i7 Devil's Canyon chip represents the first time Intel has marketed a chip with such a high off-the-shelf clock speed. With its boost frequency of 4.4GHz EXP Review expects this chip to bring the "air-cooled 5GHz era back".
Better cooling should be realised thanks to the officially revealed intention of providing an improved thermal interface material (TIM) and updated packaging for the Devil's Canyon chips. These tweaks should help transfer the heat from the processor cores much more efficiently than other contemporary Intel processors, helping your CPU cooler to do its job more effectively.
The above two Devil's Canyon chips, as well as an unlocked 20th anniversary commemorative edition Pentium (G3258), are expected to show up in time for Computex in June.
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Notre Dame’s defensive class has a new headliner.
On Monday night, four-star safety Derrik Allen of Marietta, Ga., committed to Notre Dame over offers from Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Clemson, Florida State and Ohio State, among others. The 6-foot-2, 206-pound Allen visited Notre Dame during the off-season and marks the second four-star defensive back to go Irish today, following Kalon Gervin of Cass Tech in Detroit.
Gervin at least visited over the weekend for Junior Day.
The timing on Allen’s commitment was more of a surprise.
“It’s been a long journey coming from a freshman to now,” Allen posted on Twitter. “I’d first like to thank God for giving me the ability to perform at the level I do. I would also like to thank my coaches and parents for nurturing me into the young man and athlete I am today and also pushing me to be a Student/Great person first and then a star athlete. Thank you for all the coaches that have recruited me and or even just coached me and helped me get better.
“After this long journey my family and I have decided that for the next four years I will be attending the University of Notre Dame. Go Irish.”
Allen is the eighth verbal commitment in Notre Dame’s class, which now ranks No. 2 on Scout.com in the early team rankings.
Allen is the highest-rated defensive prospect in Notre Dame’s class at No. 129 overall.
ðŸ™ðŸ™COMMITTED ‼ï¸â€¼ï¸â€¼ï¸â€¼ï¸â˜˜ï¸ pic.twitter.com/15cX4wJnIE
— Derrik Allen (@DsmoothAllen) February 14, 2017
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Fooch's Update: The ad will actually stop when the ball is snapped, so it will still appear before the snap.
Apparently the Internet might have a little power after all. Toyota has announced they will end their televised on-field advertising at 49ers games, which consisted primarily of a huge Toyota brand on the field when a team entered the red zone.
Toyota is a sponsor of 49ers games, and part of the activation included the red zone ad up above. It showed up and caught most of us off guard. It was loud and obtrusive, and even though it came off once the play got going, it hung around just long enough to be a distraction.
Thankfully, Toyota was not so stubborn as to ignore how much people hated the branding. A spokesperson for Toyota had the following statement:
"We're football fans too. We've heard fan feedback and it's not our intention to distract from the joy of the game. Toyota will continue to be a strong supporter of the 49ers as part of our multi-year partnership and we're working to ensure that future brand mentions won't distract from game play. During the remainder of the 49ers' pre-season games, fans and viewers should no longer see the Toyota Red Zone once the ball is snapped."
I get why Toyota tried this out. They have a captive audience, and it is an easy branding option. That being said, while some may say any PR is good PR, I'm not sure this marketing campaign was going to help them in a positive way. And so, we move on!
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You have a perfect husband to look after you and love you, hence, to revert back you need to look for some amazing gift on any special occasion for your husband. Be it an anniversary or birthday or even Christmas a perfect gift must be ready for your husband. Offering gift is not a give and takes policy but it is more of showing how much he is important and special to you. Simply to find a nice gift, skip the malls and the crowds, sit with a glass of wine and browse on the internet.
It is easy to find what you desire to pursue your man as a gift. Although, some still get confused about what to give and what to skip. Here, few creative ideas can be used as gifts for husband, will make it easier for you to choose the one that you have in mind and customize it according to your taste.
Gift a headphone of leading brand
Gifting a headphone is usually a great gift for men. Most of them are a gadget freak and love listening to loud music while traveling to an office or coming down. It will serve the need of listening to a great music through a great headphone.
Gift a camera
Most of the men have a photography craze. If your husband is by default a photographer who loves clicking pictures of his beautiful wide, you can simply gift a camera to him for pampering yourself and your husband as well.
Gift a watch
An uncompromising sports watch is a great gift for the men. It is very much demanded by the athletes and outdoor adventurers. These days, watches calculate the smartphone notification and emails receiving feature which is very helpful for any business person. Gifting such a trendy watch with high features and unique outlook will definitely make him happy.
Gift a BBQ Branding Iron
It is a very innovative collection which can be easily gifted to your husband, there is a myth that kitchen items cannot be gifted to men, but many men loves cooking. Try out this one it is unique as a gift and useful.
Gift a classic leather jacket
Even if your husband of not a motor rider, still he will look great in a Leather jacket, men generally look handsome and classy in such a sober and sophisticated outlook.
You can also buy online cakes and flowers along with a valuable gift item to offer to your husband on a special day.
More notes
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By
94 percent and 163 percent. Two numbers that pretty much tell the story of fraud online in 2015.
94 percent is the extent to which fraud as a percentage of revenue for online merchants has increased year over year (2014 to 2015). Fraud attempts on Digital Goods alone increased by 2.5 times from the 1st quarter of 2015 to 3rd quarter of 2015.
163 percent is the increase in the rate of fraud attacks. Fraud is big business, and fraudsters are increasingly sophisticated business professionals. And it seems that they are using more tools – more often – to try to score big – at the merchant’s expense, of course.
But there is good news, as hard as that may be to believe. Fraud prevention starts with understanding where fraud is coming from, what tools fraudsters are using, and where they are targeting – which is, itself, a moving target.
The Global Fraud Attack Index™, a PYMNTS/Forter collaboration, was conceived to help track, analyze and report on the important trends happening in the world of fraud as it relates to payments and commerce. Every quarter we will monitor how fraud attempts, reflected as a percent of U.S. sales transactions, on U.S. merchant websites are trending. Up? Down? Stable? Time to panic? Hopefully not.
We’ll report this in several different ways. We’ve got an Index metric which measures how the rate of fraud attempts on U.S. online merchants and how that changes over time. We also explore different aspects of fraud, such as how merchant segments are affected by fraud trends and whether U.S. fraudsters tend to use Local Manipulation more than European fraudsters – and how that is trending. And then there’s what can be done to help stop or slow down fraud trends – and how that is working (or not).
We think that this is the only 360-degree perspective on the topic that there is in the space. We hope you find the Index to be interesting and enlightening.
About the Index
The Global Fraud Attack Index™, a PYMNTS/Forter collaboration, measures how the rate of fraud attempts on U.S. merchant websites change over time and examines the types, sources and geography of fraud attacks. The report also quantifies the potential cost to merchants, left unchecked, of these attempts based on attack amounts and how these amounts are trending over time.
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Three foreign tourists were injured by gunshots in Chiang Mai after a drunk university student opened fire at a restaurant because a waitress rejected him, police said.
Don Praweenmeth (www.cm108.com photo)
Chiang Mai police on Saturday arrested Don Praweenmeth, a 27-year-old sixth year medical student at a university in Bangkok.
Police said Mr Don confessed that he fired five shots from a 9mm handgun in a busy restaurant on Nimmanahaemin Road at about midnight.
The suspect said he was flirting with the waitress at the restaurant but she rejected him, and her boyfriend, who is a foreigner, later assaulted him.
Mr Don said he then brought out the gun from his car and fired it in the restaurant. He fled after the shooting but was later arrested at a house in the morning.
Police said the three injured foreign tourists were named as Nicholas Brown from Canada, Tae-yung Lee from Korea, and half Thai-Scot Morris Chaiyawat. They were taken to nearby hospitals.
Police charged Mr Don with attempted murder, carrying a firearm without a permit and possession of a firearm in a public area.
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Newegg Chooses Litecoin as a Faster Alternative to Bitcoin Payments
The blows against Bitcoin just keep coming. This time, major electronics retailer Newegg said it has started looking into Litecoin as its second method of cryptocurrency payments — having accepted bitcoin since 2014.
Also read: Bitcoin Price Inches Closer to $2000 in Unstoppable Market Rally
Newegg Goes Litecoin
Newegg revealed on Friday morning that it had started researching Litecoin. Twitter user Aaron Diaz Chavez tweeted to the company, asking when they would accept the altcoin.
Newegg later responded, telling Chaves that they had started looking into Litecoin:
If Newegg accepts Litecoin, it would represent a significant shift in the way mainstream companies view cryptocurrency. Currently, mainstream businesses generally only accept bitcoin due to its value and popularity. While these businesses acknowledge the benefits of certain altcoins, they usually state that they do not have plans to accept them.
However, with the Bitcoin blocksize issue becoming more serious, Newegg may soon confirm what many Bitcoiners have warned about: the fact that a congested network would result in individuals and businesses turning to other cryptocurrencies for relief.
Until recently, Ethereum was the main cryptocurrency referenced as a viable alternative to Bitcoin. Because of its efficient development team and its range of native uses beyond currency, people suggested that Ethereum could revolutionize all aspects of economy.
Now, it seems like Litecoin has emerged as a real contender.
Should Litecoin Thank SegWit?
Litecoin — created by Bitcoin enthusiast Charlie Lee — gained renewed interest after its creator announced that he and his development team would support integrating SegWit into the altcoin.
In a blog post, Lee said that he wanted to activate SegWit on his altcoin in hopes that his project could serve as an example to the Bitcoin community. If Litecoin can successfully activate SegWit and benefit from it, he said, Bitcoin could definitely do the same.
The altcoin began its activation of SegWit a few weeks ago. At press time, the upgrade has been fully implemented. In fact, developers have begun work on a Litecoin version of the Lightning Network, one of many solutions made possible by the upgrade.
SegWit: Created for Bitcoin, but Other Currencies Use it to Gain a Competitive Edge
Bitcoin’s Core developers created the SegWit upgrade as a way to solve the blockchain’s transaction malleability problem — an issue that has persisted since the technology’s creation.
Along with the malleability fix, the upgrade includes several other new features, most notably scalability solutions that do not require a hard fork.
However, Bitcoin has not accepted SegWit because of dissenters actively blocking its activation. Due to the intense political, economic, and technical debates surrounding the upgrade in the Bitcoin world, the world’s miners have failed to form consensus on the upgrade.
Instead, they remain torn between SegWit and a series of hardfork proposals brought forth by developers and influencers that believe on-chan scaling is a must for Bitcoin’s survival.
Currently, those opposed to Core’s upgrade support Bitcoin Unlimited as the de facto alternative.
While both sides of the Bitcoin scalability debate have legitimate arguments, their seemingly irreconcilable disagreement have deadlocked the world’s largest cryptocurrency. As a result, transaction times have slowed, and miner fees have skyrocketed — especially with the increased transaction volume brought about by the bitcoin price rally.
And, in the background, altcoins like Litecoin have gained more prominence and support by adopting SegWit. This trend will likely continue until the Bitcoin community reaches a compromise, regardless of whether the result involves on or off-chain scaling.
What does the growing mainstream interest in Litecoin mean for Bitcoin? Share your thoughts down below.
Images via Reddit user “Liquid00,” Aaron Diaz Chavez
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Customers of the Dick Smith store in Wellington's Featherston Street reacted in January to the news that the Australian company had gone into liquidation.
Dick Smith customers left without the Fitbits they are owed will be able to get them from competing chain Harvey Norman.
A stream of Dick Smith customers were left holding nothing but receipts after ordering and paying for Fitbits from the embattled electronics store.
Wellington man Davide Conti said he was "extremely annoyed" he had not received his Fitbit after ordering and paying for it.
ROBERT KITCHIN/FAIRFAX NZ Dick Smith customers who were left waiting on their Fitbits can now collect their exercise tech.
When he visited the Lyall Bay Dick Smith store, weeks after ordering the product, the store was out of stock and staff were unable to tell Conti when he would receive his Fitbit.
READ MORE:
* Fitbit investigating after Dick Smith fails to front up with tech
* Dick Smith customers who paid for Fitbits still left only with receipts
* Q&A: What Dick Smith customers need to know
* Dick Smith customers will not get refund on gift cards and deposits: receiver
BLOOMBERG Thanks to the plan put in place by Harvey Norman and Fitbit, customers will now be able to get their hands on their promised fitness bracelets.
On Saturday, Conti said considering Dick Smith's situation he believed he would never get his Fitbit or his money back.
Meanwhile, Aucklander Ryan Nickelchok had a similar experience, after spending $424 on Fitbits at Dick Smith and coming up empty-handed.
The Australian-owned chain announced it was in administration and receivership early in the New Year, leaving a host of customers in the precarious position of an unsecured creditor.
Now Fitbit and Harvey Norman have found a way for customers to get their hands on the high-tech sports bracelets they're owed.
Customers who ordered a Fitbit prior to January 4 and had not received their product were able to get a Fitbit from any Harvey Norman store from Saturday, Fitbit and Harvey Norman said.
Those wanting to take up this offer would have to produce an original Dick Smith purchase order that shows a deposit or full payment for the Fitbit.
Fitbit and Harvey Norman said if the customer paid a deposit they are able to pay the balance to Harvey Norman before receiving the product, and if they paid in full there would be no extra costs.
Customers have until February 29 to take advantage of the offer.
Harvey Norman said it would not refund any Dick Smith purchases but it would replace faulty goods.
Any warranty claims could be made through the Fitbit website or via Harvey Norman.
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Power Pivot and Power View 2013 Now Included with Excel 2013 Standalone Box Edition
August 16, 2013 at 8:00 pm Bill Jelen
Big breaking news today from Microsoft. You can finally buy Power Pivot 2013 in a box.
Starting today, if you purchase the full boxed edition of Excel 2013 (currently $98 at Amazon.com), the download will include Excel 2013, plus Power Pivot 2013 and Power View 2013. It will presumably include the rest of the Power BI stack once those get released. If you previously purchased the Excel 2013 boxed edition, at the next update of Office, you will get the full version.
Why is this big news? Since February 2013, there was no way to buy a boxed edition from a retailer that included Power Pivot. Everything you could buy at Amazon did not include Power Pivot. You either had to license Office 365 Pro Plus at $12 a month, or go through Volume Licensing (E3 or E4) package to get Power Pivot. This was incredibly frustrating, since Power Pivot is so powerful, particularly for people without big I.T. departments.
Note that as of today, none of the boxed editions of Office 2013 include Power Pivot. It is only the boxed edition of Excel. This is roughly symmetrical with Excel 2003, when the boxed edition of Excel 2003 included some high-end features that were not in Office 2003 Standard.
To purchase from Amazon.com, follow this link.
Update Aug 20, 2013: Microsoft confirmed that the $79 non-commercial version of Excel *does* include Power Pivot. This SKU is for home use.
For confirmation of this story, see this Microsoft blog post which was edited today to include Excel 2013 Stand-alone.
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Entry filed under: 2013, PowerPivot2013.
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There was a time when the hemp plant was one of the United States’ most important crops.
Grown by family farmers and former presidents, marijuana’s non-psychoactive cousin has myriad uses, from textiles to fossil fuel alternatives to superfoods. It grows almost anywhere, providing a sustainable, hardy crop that, unlike many, leaves the soil in as good or better condition than when it was planted.
That industrial hemp is considered by the DEA to be a Schedule I substance, meaning that it’s tightly regulated by the federal government, is a source of frustration for many farmers, activists, and, in growing numbers, a shockingly bipartisan coalition of politicians who want to restore a cash crop to impoverished green belts. Considering the United States is the world’s largest consumer of hemp products, to the tune of around $573 million in 2015, it does seem insane that farmers in many states simply cannot grow it. Of the 28 states that can produce it, under the 2014 Farm Bill, it’s often only in a limited fashion, and the selling can be even trickier.
Despite all this, and the fact that it ultimately offers far more societal benefits than its THC-laden relative, hemp often finds itself taking a backseat in the media and activists to medical and legal marijuana’s state-by-state advance. One enterprising group of farmers in Appalachia, made up of veterans hoping to eke out a better living for their families, has turned to hemp, and it’s making a stand in a wholly unique—and patriotic—way. Filmmaker Dan Malloy spent some time with them, ultimately creating a mini-documentary.
“I have no connection with the actual hemp plant and its many uses,” Malloy told The Daily Beast. “My motivation to make this film is the belief that this country is in desperate need of more small farms. I believe it is small farmers that are the true medium between nature and the civilized world. The way I see it, small and medium scale farmers should be looked at like the last old growth redwoods, but instead of creating parks and preserves, every last regulation in America should be built to preserve small family farms through economic viability. The viability of a healthy small-scale farm is a reflection of the diversity and independence of our people.”
Watch his film, Harvesting Liberty, above, and click here to see the petition asking Congress to support the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, to be delivered on July 4, 2016.
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Bolivian President Evo Morales will file a lawsuit against the US government for crimes against humanity. He has decried the US for its intimidation tactics and fear-mongering after the Venezuelan presidential jet was blocked from entering US airspace.
“I would like to announce that we are preparing a lawsuit against Barack Obama to condemn him for crimes against humanity,” said President Morales at a press conference in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. He branded the US president as a “criminal” who violates international law.
In solidarity with Venezuela, Bolivia will begin preparing a lawsuit against the US head of state to be taken to the international court. Furthermore, Morales has called an emergency meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss what has been condemned by Venezuela as “an act of intimidation by North American imperialism.”
The Bolivian president has suggested that the members of CELAC withdraw their ambassadors from the US to send a message to the Obama Administration. As an additional measure he will call on the member nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas to boycott the next meeting of the UN. Members of the Alliance include Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Saint Lucia.
“The US cannot be allowed to continue with its policy of intimidation and blockading presidential flights,” stressed Morales.
The Venezuelan government announced on Thursday that President Nicolas Maduro’s plane had been denied entry into Puerto Rican (US) airspace.
“We have received the information from American officials that we have been denied travel over its airspace,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said, speaking to reporters during an official meeting with his South African counterpart. Jaua decried the move “as yet another act of aggression on the part of North American imperialism against the government of the Bolivarian Republic.”
President Maduro was due to arrive in Beijing this weekend for bilateral talks with the Chinese government. Jaua was adamant that the Venezuelan leader would reach his destination, regardless of any perceived interference.
The US government has not yet made any statement regarding the closing of its airspace to the Venezuelan presidential plane. Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the US.
Relations on the rocks
Washington’s relations with Latin America have deteriorated since the beginning of the year following the aerial blockade that forced Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane to land in Austria in July. Several EU countries closed their airspace to the presidential jet because of suspicions that former CIA employee Edward Snowden - wanted in the US on espionage charges - was on board. Bolivia alleged that the US was behind the aerial blockade.
In response to the incident, Latin American leaders joined together in condemnation of what they described as “neo-colonial intimidation.”
Later in the year, the revelations on the US’ global spy network released by Edward Snowden did little to improve relations. Leaked wires revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored the private communications of both the Brazilian and Mexican presidents.
The Brazilian government denounced the NSA surveillance as “impermissible and unacceptable,” and a violation of Brazilian sovereignty. As a result of US spying Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has postponed a state visit to Washington in October.
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Individual differences in face recognition are often contrasted with differences in object recognition using a single object category. Likewise, individual differences in perceptual expertise for a given object domain have typically been measured relative to only a single category baseline. In Experiment 1, we present a new test of object recognition, the Vanderbilt Expertise Test (VET), which is comparable in methods to the Cambridge Face Memory Task (CFMT) but uses eight different object categories. Principal component analysis reveals that the underlying structure of the VET can be largely explained by two independent factors, which demonstrate good reliability and capture interesting sex differences inherent in the VET structure. In Experiment 2, we show how the VET can be used to separate domain-specific from domain-general contributions to a standard measure of perceptual expertise. While domain-specific contributions are found for car matching for both men and women and for plane matching in men, women in this sample appear to use more domain-general strategies to match planes. In Experiment 3, we use the VET to demonstrate that holistic processing of faces predicts face recognition independently of general object recognition ability, which has a sex-specific contribution to face recognition. Overall, the results suggest that the VET is a reliable and valid measure of object recognition abilities and can measure both domain-general skills and domain-specific expertise, which were both found to depend on the sex of observers.
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The Samsung Galaxy S IV is being announced later this week at a special event, but we’ve already seen plenty of leaks regarding the flagship phone’s hardware, but now there’s a new one (via SammyHub) that claims to depict the phone in the flesh, giving us an idea of what it could look like. If these leaks are accurate, the GSIV changes little from the previous generation and Galaxy Note II designs.
Posted to a Chinese forum, it’s still very possible that these are images of another yet-to-be released Samsung device, or simply elaborate fakes, but if that’s what they are, then they’re very well done. The images show a Samsung-branded phone with a 5-inch display, a metal-look band surrounding the phone, and what looks like slightly textured front and back surfaces. The rear is a glossy white, the slab has rounded rectangular edges, and the screen looks to extend closer to the bezel than in any previous Samsung handset, meaning it could manage not to have grown that much in terms of physical size despite the larger display.
The leak fits with reports that the Galaxy S IV will retain its plastic outer case, and agrees with other recent rumors about software and internal specs, since it’s shown to be running Android 4.2.1, has a 1080p displays, runs 2GB of RAM and offers a 13-megapixel camera. The CPU numbering also suggests that it has a Samsung Exynos Octa chip on board as previously reported.
Samsung has been known to epically troll its fans, as it did last year with a disguised version of the Galaxy S III which was covered in an outer case that hid its true design. We could be seeing that sort of thing again, but this leak looks much more convincingly like a shipping device, not encased in any disguise. Regardless of whether it’s the real thing or not, we’ll find out for sure what Samsung’s latest flagship looks like on Thursday.
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A FOIA request to the National Archives from early 2015 has finally yielded the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s file on historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams. In addition to the FBI monitoring Williams during his tenure at Howard University, the file contains reports from Naval Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, who closely monitored his shift from academia into politics, including a request by Naval Intelligence that the FBI gather embarrassing personal details from William’s ex-wife in an attempt to hurt his chances during an election.
In 1941, three years before the publication of his influential book Capitalism and Slavery, the FBI chose not to pursue a full investigation of Williams for involvement in a number of campus organizations, despite the claims of a confidential informant that those groups were anti-American in nature.
Williams’ political views apparently did not become a concern to the U.S. government until after his return to Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. With his scholarship on slavery and the treatment of African-descended people in the Caribbean as a basis, Naval Intelligence on the island began reporting what they saw as an emerging “anti-white complex” which included both a reluctance to speak with white people in social gatherings, as well as a rejection of U.S. politics and economic interests in the Caribbean.
More reports showed an increased preoccupation on the part of Naval Intelligence in Williams’ social anxiety.
Also trouble to Naval Intelligence was his close friendship and proximity to leftist scholar C.L.R. James.
As Williams gained political notoriety, by 1959, Naval Intelligence feared for the status of the U.S.’s naval base in the area should Williams win an upcoming election. For this reason, the FBI documents a request from the Navy that Bureau agents contact his ex-wife “in order to obtain information dealing with his personal life which could be fed to the opposition party in Trinidad for use against Williams.”
Either the Bureau didn’t follow through on the request, or they were unsuccessful - Williams remained prime minister until his death in 1981. Read the full file embedded below, or on the request page.
Image via Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons and licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0.
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The Los Angeles County District Attorney will not press charges against Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Eric Wright for his recent arrest on suspicion of DUI, his attorney said in a statement Friday.
Jeremy I. Lessem issued the statement, which NFL.com's Albert Breer obtained.
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"On July 1, my client Eric Wright was involved in a car accident in Los Angeles and was arrested for suspicion of DUI," the statement reads. "Today, I am pleased to announce that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has reviewed the facts and decided not to file any charges. Therefore, no charges at all will be filed against Eric. Eric is glad this is behind him and is eager to begin training camp at the end of the month."
Wright was arrested on suspicion of DUI when he rear-ended a vehicle, causing injury to the other driver. Wright admitted he had been drinking but refused to submit to a breathalyzer or field-sobriety test. He was taken to jail and later released on $10,000 bond.
Wright had been scheduled to appear in court July 23.
Wright is entering his first season with the Buccaneers. He signed a five-year, $38 million deal as a free agent this offseason.
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Scientists have bad news for West Coasters in the grips of the worst drought in decades: The worst is yet to come.
The record-shattering drought currently gripping California is a light crudité compared to the "mega-drought" that's expected to envelop the Southwest and Great Plains over the next 35 years, NASA revealed Thursday. The full study, ominously named "Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," was published in Science Advances.
Benjamin Cook et. al in Science Advances A graph predicting the average dryness of soil in the Great Plains and American Southwest over the next half-century.
The study, compiled by scientists from the space agency, Cornell University and Columbia University, predicts an 80% chance that the Great Plains and the American Southwest will endure a major weather shift beginning in 2050, which could spark massive wildfires and water shortages if the current pace of climate change continues.
Most alarming: The forecasted drought accompanying the weather shift could be of a severity not seen within the past 1,000 years.
"We really need to start thinking in longer-term horizons about how we're going to manage it," said study coauthor Toby R. Ault, per the Washington Post. "This is a slow-moving natural hazard that humans are used to dealing with and used to managing."
A mega-drought, which is a drought that lasts for several decades instead of the usual three years, causes ecological and agricultural damage on a planetary scale. "I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be," Ault said at a press conference, according to Business Insider. "I look at these future mega-droughts like a slow-moving natural disaster. We have to put mega-droughts into the same category as other natural disasters that can be dealt with through risk management."
How did they figure this out? Scientists studied past droughts using tree rings to determine how much rain fell hundreds (and thousands) of years ago. They then ran that data through 17 computer models of potential future temperatures across North America, which then predicted this bleak outlook.
"Natural droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl and the current drought in the Southwest have historically lasted maybe a decade or a little less," said Ben Cook, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, according to Business Insider. "What these results are saying is we're going to get a drought similar to those events, but it is probably going to last at least 30 to 35 years."
This could change. The predictions are dire, but not exact. Weather patterns could change directions, global warming could be mitigated and even just one El Niño out West could disrupt a season of drought in the entire region. Still, a drought of some sort is certain.
"We are the first to do this kind of quantitative comparison between the projections and the distant past, and the story is a bit bleak," said Jason Smerdon, another of the study's authors and a climate scientist from Columbia University, according to Business Insider. "Even when selecting for the worst mega-drought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden."
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TORONTO — The TTC is set to switch its subway system from two-person operation to a single operator by Thanksgiving weekend.
Two-operator trains have been the norm since Toronto’s subway system first opened in 1954, but TTC CEO Andy Byford said it’s no longer necessary with changing technology.
“It’s the obvious thing to do as we progressively modernize the TTC and its work practices,” Byford told Global News.
The Toronto Rocket trains introduced in 2014 are designed to operate with just one person positioned at the front of the train. The TTC also added CCTV cameras to these trains, allowing the operator to see the train doors when leaving the platform.
READ MORE: TTC ‘put the pressure on Bombardier’ on new streetcar delivery
Byford said the TTC has already run all the necessary safety tests and spoken to the Ministry of Labour.
Trains on Line 4 Sheppard will be the first to adopt the new automatic train control system this October, followed by Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina.
Byford called these two lines “inherently safe,” thanks to their straight platforms and short chains of just four cars per set.
READ MORE: TTC defends driver surplus costing agency $1M this year
The switch is expected to save the TTC $18 million every year, with more savings expected when the new system eventually rolls out on Line 2 Bloor-Danforth. Even so, the TTC still faces a $172 million shortfall.
Byford said no operators will lose their jobs because of this change. Rather, the TTC will accommodate them through attrition as subway service expands and workers retire.
“Let’s remember this is not new to Toronto. We’ve had one-person operation on the Scarborough Rapid Transit system now since its inception back in 1985,” said Byford.
Single-operator systems are also standard practice in other parts of the world, including London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong and Singapore.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Saturday passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill that lifts the threat of a government shutdown as Congress attempts to wrap up a two-year legislative session marked by bitter partisanship and few major accomplishments.
The Senate’s 56-40 vote sends the measure to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into law before federal spending authority expires at midnight on Wednesday.
Passage of the 1,603-page bill was a long, tough struggle in the Senate and the House of Representatives marked by bitter disputes over changes to banking regulations and Obama’s recent executive order on immigration.
Liberal Democrats, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, objected to a weakening of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, while conservative Republicans, led by Tea Party firebrand Ted Cruz, tried to sink it for failing to stop Obama’s order.
Cruz’s tactics to delay the bill created an opening for Democrats in a rare Saturday session to push through dozens of Obama’s nominations opposed by Republicans, from judges to energy regulators. His party colleagues were angered.
“I think most Republicans feel like that Christmas came early for Democrats,” said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. “At the end of the day, they got nominees we previously successfully blocked and we got nothing.”
The legislation funds most government agencies through September 2015. The Department of Homeland Security will be treated differently, getting a funding extension only through Feb. 27, by which time Republicans will control both chambers of Congress.
Republicans insisted on the shorter leash for DHS so that they can try to deny the agency any funds for implementing Obama’s recent order easing deportations for millions of undocumented immigrants.
The Senate vote closed the latest chapter in a four-year-long battle between Democrats and Republicans over U.S. fiscal policy during an era of large budget deficits.
These battles are expected to resume next year but with a twist: Republicans, having won big gains in the Nov. 4 congressional elections, take control of the Senate from Democrats with a 54-46 majority and will enjoy a larger majority in the House.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (2nd R) smiles as he departs the Senate floor after it passed at $1.1 trillion spending bill following a long series of votes, many on procedural matters or to confirm members of the Obama administration, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington December 13, 2014. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Nonetheless, Republicans will still need cooperation from Democrats in the Senate, where 60 out of 100 votes are needed to advance most major bills.
TEXAN STRIKES AGAIN
Cruz, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, had delayed the spending bill over demands for an up-or-down vote denying funds for Obama’s immigration plans.
It was reminiscent of his role as the ringleader of the October 2013 government shutdown that lasted 16 days, when he insisted on gutting Obama’s healthcare law.
As in 2013, this latest budget fight ended with Cruz failing to score a victory and Democrats bashing Republicans for again raising the specter of a government shutdown.
A revolt by Warren and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Obama ally, over a provision to ease Wall Street banking regulations fed tensions on Capitol Hill all week.
The House vote was delayed for seven hours on Thursday after Democrats balked at the provision to kill new restrictions on derivatives trading by large banks, weakening Dodd-Frank, one of Obama’s early legislative achievements passed in response to the 2008 financial crisis, triggered partly by complex mortgage derivatives.
Banks argue the regulations would have been ineffective and costly.
The provision was partly responsible for 21 “no” votes from Senate Democrats, which outnumbered 18 Republicans and one independent opposing it.
The spending bill provides for a slight increase in Pentagon war funding, which would total $64 billion for this fiscal year. Some of the money is for combating Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Slideshow (5 Images)
Other high-priority items include nearly $5.5 billion to help contain the Ebola virus, including Defense Department efforts in West Africa.
Internal Revenue Service spending would be cut and Republicans also inserted initiatives ranging from prohibiting funding for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate lead content in ammunition and fishing tackle, to stopping the transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees into the United States.
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Image copyright PA Image caption Some of the accusations date back to 2010 - before Mark Garnier was a minister
MP Mark Garnier has been cleared of breaking the ministerial code after a Cabinet Office investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.
International trade minister Mark Garnier was also said to have used derogatory language to his secretary and asked her to buy sex toys in 2010.
The investigation concluded there was "no evidence" to suggest he had broken the rules.
Theresa May said "a line should be drawn under the issue".
The Conservative MP said he did not intend to comment on the outcome of the inquiry.
The allegations regarding his secretary, Caroline Edmondson, from before he was appointed a minister in 2016, came to light in October.
Ms Edmondson, who now works for another MP, told The Mail on Sunday he had given her money to buy two vibrators at a Soho sex shop and called her "sugar tits."
Mr Garnier told the paper: "I'm not going to deny it, because I'm not going to be dishonest. I'm going to have to take it on the chin."
The Cabinet Office investigation said there was "no dispute about the facts of the incident", but there was "a significant difference of interpretation between the parties", leaving a member of staff "distressed".
A No 10 spokesman said: "It was not his intention to cause distress, and Mr Garnier has apologised unreservedly to the individual.
"On that basis, the prime minister considers that a line should be drawn under the issue."
Seats at cabinet table
The announcement comes a day after Mrs May sacked her First Secretary of State, Damian Green, for breaching the ministerial code.
He was asked by the PM to quit after making "inaccurate and misleading" statements over what he knew about claims pornography was found on his office computer in 2008.
Mr Green also apologised for making writer Kate Maltby feel uncomfortable in 2015.
It made him the third cabinet minister to leave the table in recent weeks, following the resignations of Sir Michael Fallon and Priti Patel.
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HOBOKEN, N.J. (CBSNewYork) — Could medical marijuana be the answer to women suffering from monthly menstrual cramps?
One New Jersey assemblyman says yes.
Assemblyman Tim Eustace, D-Paramus, wants to add menstrual cramps to the list of ailments approved for medical marijuana, CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported.
“Rather than giving opiods or painkillers, which is the usual treatment, this would be a less harmful, less addictive drug,” Eustace said.
Gov. Chris Christie has long opposed the use of medical marijuana, and right now in the state a doctor must prove a patient has a “debilitating medical condition” with “chronic pain” such as multiple sclerosis, cancer or terminal illness.
Eustace said it’s time women are allowed some relief.
“There are some patients that nothing works for the pain of menstrual cycles, so as I say, another tool in the tool kit.”
Actress and New Jersey resident Whoopi Goldberg, a longtime advocate, has even come up with her own line of medical marijuana products just for women.
But Dr. Jennifer Wu, an OB/GYN at Lenox Hill Hospital, says not so fast.
“Most doctors would try a traditional approach, such as painkillers like Advil, or they’ll try birth control pills,” she said. “Usually, medical marijuana isn’t our first line of treatment for menstrual cramps.”
Some women in New Jersey, though, are open to the idea.
“If it offers relief without impeding performance, I would say yes,” said one woman.
“I think I might try some if it would help with it,” added another woman.
“I probably wouldn’t,” said another.
Eustace is working on getting the bill posted to a committee agenda and is looking for a Senate sponsor. He hopes to have a hearing before the Assembly breaks this June.
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Fisher by-election: Race to replace Bob Such too close to call as counting continues
Updated
The result of the Fisher by-election in South Australia remains too close to call.
The Liberal Party had been expected to win the seat, but Labor has polled strongly and leads on a two-party preferred basis.
It could be days until the result is known with about 7,000 postal votes to be counted on Tuesday.
About 24 per cent of people cast postal and pre-poll votes, which are likely to determine the result.
The Liberals need more than half of the postal and pre-poll votes to win the seat.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said it was going to be an anxious wait until postal and pre-poll votes were counted.
"This was always going to be a complicated by-election," Mr Marshall said.
"Our early polling showed that it was marginal, it was complicated and it just goes to show [that] nothing is for certain in politics."
Voters unhappy with Coalition Government: Weatherill
Premier Jay Weatherill claimed the early results were a message to the Federal Government that voters were unhappy.
Mr Weatherill suggested concern over the future of submarines in South Australia was a factor.
"This was an issue that was very much on the minds of the voters of Fisher," Mr Weatherill said.
"It was something that was regularly mentioned to us when we door-knocked and spoke to people on the phone.
"I think both the Victorian result and now this Fisher by-election result sends the clearest possible message to the Federal Liberal Government that they should keep their promise to build submarines here in Australia."
Mr Woodyatt was endorsed by Lyn Such, the wife of the late Bob Such who had held the seat since 1989.
He said he was relatively happy with the result.
"We would like to have been a one or two per cent difference at this stage," Mr Woodyatt said.
"There was a stage where we were sitting before when Reynella got announced when it was 22 to 23.
"That was strong, that was a winning position, so we've retracted a bit from that and will come down to a close count of the remaining votes."
Adelaide University political commentator, Dr Clem McIntyre, said there would be recriminations within the Liberal party, even if it wins the Fisher by-election.
Dr McIntyre said dissatisfaction with federal Coalition policies played a part in the way people voted.
He said even if the Liberal candidate Heidi Harris won, it was a bad result for the Liberal party.
"They've had a huge fright here, even if they just snatch victory on the flow of preferences," Dr McIntyre said.
"I think there's some real concerns for the Liberals about why they've not been able to convince people in a seat like Fisher, which we think of as a traditional Liberal seat, that they pose an alternative government."
Complaints about how-to-vote cards
Earlier in the day Mr Woodyatt complained to the Electoral Commission about how-to-vote cards by Rob De Jonge.
"This election could come down to a few hundred votes and Rob De Jonge had put a card out that had put those votes through to the Liberal Party and that was not what he declared to the electoral commissioner," he said.
Mr De Jonge's how-to-vote cards were not the same as he gave to the Commission.
"I'm allowed to change my mind surely in the middle of an election, sometimes things happen," he said.
Dr Bob Such, a former Liberal minister before becoming an independent, held the seat until he died in October from a brain tumour.
He first won the seat of Fisher in Adelaide's south in 1989 and become an independent in 2000.
Other candidates contesting the seat are Greens candidate Malwina Wyra, Independent Australian Democrats' Jeannie Walker, Stop Population Growth's Bob Couch and independents Dan Woodyatt, Dan Golding and Rob de Jonge.
Topics: elections, government-and-politics, adelaide-5000, sa, australia
First posted
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Now it’s Nevada getting into the act. One week after a trio of projects in California became the first large-scale solar installations approved for construction on U.S. public lands, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yes to plans for a 50 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic plant in the Ivanpah Valley about 40 miles south of Las Vegas.
If the location for the Silver State North Project sounds familiar, that’s because it’s in the general area that’s getting the 370 MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, on the California side of the state line. BrightSource Energy is building the California project, while First Solar is doing Silver State.
This is the first solar-power project to be permitted on the Bureau of Land Managment site, but First Solar has big plans: It envisions constructing 350 MW more of generating capacity there, the Interior Department said. However, the Department noted those projects “will require additional supplemental environmental review and analysis.”
No timeline for the 618-acre Silver State project was detailed, but the Interior Department said that when it’s completed, the plant would generate enough power to supply around 15,000 homes.
Like what you are reading? Follow us on RSS, Twitter and Facebook to learn more and join the green technology discussion. Have a story idea or correction for this story you are reading? Drop us a line through our contact form.
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Don't get caught up in business titles.
“Build it and they will come” is a myth.
Be pragmatic.
Allocate financial cushions.
Delegate wisely.
Hold your cards closer.
Keep it simple.
Replicate better, not imitate cheaper.
Build now, improve as you go.
Don't waste time on competition.
Here are ten start-up tips to fail less, learn more, and preserve your sanity.Every start-up thinks of becoming a corporation (or selling out for billions to one). But adopting a corporate type of approach in managing a small business is not suitable. You need to build a customer base, not just take part in committee meetings.The truth is, nobody cares about your product more than you do. You need to acquire a customer base to become profitable.Saying everybody is special is the same as saying nobody is. Focus on one product or execute one idea. Abandon features that won't make profit. Acknowledge that there are circumstances beyond your control but don't give up easily.In the early stage when you're high from determination and the freedom from your soul-sucking day job, it's easy to have a tunnel vision on profit. Entrepreneurs often fail to realise that it will take more than a year (or more) to break even. Make sure that you have enough working capital, maintain a cash flow, and have buffers for potential financial losses.Offshore staff leasing is a practical way to hire employees. But if you treat your remote workers as temps, they're not going to last long. Recruitment and training are time-consuming. Offshore outsourcing is cost-efficient but you will still get what you pay for.Doling out equity and stock options sounds like a good idea to get experts onboard. But many people who join start-ups either have ambitions of their own or have one foot out the door in case it bankrupts to oblivion. Wait for 2-5 years before giving any stake of ownership to make sure that they're really invested in your business.Features can give you a leg-up from competition but it can easily complicate everything. Keep your product simple and straightforward. It'll be easier to make, sell, and distribute.One of the most often used business tactics is to replicate a product or concept. Not a bad move, unless you peddle it for cheap in hopes of scoring easy cash. You need bigger profits to cover all the expenses you made to sustain a business.The practical way is to make something better of what's been done before. Google improved online search through PageRank, Facebook made a more addictive social network through the “wall”, and Apple changed the portable music market with iTunes.Unless you manage to borrow a crystal ball from the powers that be, you won't be able to create a perfect product on the get-go. You'll never know what clicks until it’s out in the market. Build an adequate product, execute a brilliant marketing strategy, and use customer feedback to improve features.It's natural to look at your competition. But if you keep chasing them or worse, copy whatever cool thing they're doing, you're just doing them a favour. It distracts you from improving your own product.
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The Snack World is Level-5’s new cross-media project, that follows on the tracks of the extremely successful Yo-kai Watch. It was originally announced a couple of years ago, at the Level-5 Vision 2015 conference, but one of the two biggest parts of the projects is finally about to kick off: the anime series (the second one being the game).
Today, Level-5 announced that The Snack World anime series would debut on April 13th on TV Tokyo, and would air every Thursday at 7.25PM. BS Japan will air the anime series every Saturday at 6.30AM. Produced by OLM Digital (the digital arm of the animation company producing the Pokémon and Yo-kai Watch anime series, among others), the Snack World anime series is entirely made in 3DCG.
Here’s the main visual for the anime series:
Unfortunately, that’s all we know about the anime series for now, and we will have to wait for more details (such as the final cast) and a new trailer.
It’s certainly interesting to see that Level-5’s strategy with The Snack World is different than for Yo-kai Watch. For that one, the anime series debuted about 6 months after the first game was released, but with The Snack World, the Nintendo 3DS game will be released several months after it (though the mobile game was originally supposed to come out during the same month, before it was delayed).
Quick reminder: The Snack World is Level-5’s latest cross-media project, and is getting the following:
a Nintendo 3DS (+iOS/Android) game by Level-5, releasing in July (December for the mobile game);
a manga in CoroCoro magazine (already running)
a full CG TV anime on TV Tokyo, to debut on April 13th;
NFC toys by Takara Tomy;
a movie distributed by TOHO.
For more details about The Snack World, make sure to check out previous posts about it!
Source: Famitsu
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My Xbox One
Step-by-step instructions with callouts to colorful Xbox One images that show you exactly what to do
Help when you run into problems with Xbox One, Kinect™, Xbox Live®, or SmartGlass
Tips and Notes to help you get the most from your Xbox One system
Full-color, step-by-step tasks show how to have maximum fun with your new Xbox One! Learn how to
• Set up Xbox One, Kinect, and Xbox Live quickly–and start having fun now!
• Personalize settings, gamertags, avatars, gamerpics… your whole Xbox One experience
• Start your party, add chat, use built-in Skype, even make group video calls
• Capture video of your best gameplay moments with Game DVR
• Watch great video from practically anywhere: cable or satellite, DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and more
• Play or stream all the music you love
• Web surf with Xbox One’s supercharged version of Internet Explorer
• Use SmartGlass to transform your iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows 8 device into a second Xbox screen or remote control
CATEGORY: Consumer Electronics
COVERS: Xbox One
USER LEVEL: Beginning-Intermediate
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Here is another in our a series of articles, offering tips and tricks for both beginners and experienced users, courtesy of How to Windows Phone.
Windows phone also provides personalized suggestions on apps, deals, restaurants, shopping etc. It uses the data collected from search and Facebook if have enabled the option to. Always remember that windows phone never posts anything in your wall or your friend’s while using this feature.
To activate:
Navigate to settings.
Swipe right to applications.
Tap on “Search”.
Turn on the suggestions.
Connect to Facebook in the same page and you are done.
Now lets see where do you get the suggestions.
Local Deals, Movies, Restaurants etc (This feature is not available for all the regions)
Press the search button.
Swipe right or left on the bing screen and you will see the movies and local deals. (These are not personalized).
Navigate back to search screen.
Press scout.
Swipe left or right to see restaurants, popular places.
There will be a tab named “for you” where you will find the local things based on your and your friends’ Facebook posts.
Apps and Games
Navigate to store.
Tap on apps.
Swipe right to see the tiled categories and at the bottom you will find a tile “Picks for you”.
Tap the tile to get the suggestions for you.
Similarly in the store you can tap games to see the game picks for you.
Do remember that this suggestion works on Artificial intelligence so the more you talk about the games, apps, food etc in Facebook or Bing, the better will be your results.
See many more tips at of How to Windows Phone.
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Folk wisdom usually has it that "seeing is believing," but new research suggests that "believing is seeing," too – at least when it comes to perceiving other people's emotions.
An international team of psychologists from the United States, New Zealand and France has found that the way we initially think about the emotions of others biases our subsequent perception (and memory) of their facial expressions. So once we interpret an ambiguous or neutral look as angry or happy, we later remember and actually see it as such.
The study, published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science, "addresses the age-old question: 'Do we see reality as it is, or is what we see influenced by our preconceptions?'" said coauthor Piotr Winkielman, professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego. "Our findings indicate that what we think has a noticeable effect on our perceptions."
"We imagine our emotional expressions as unambiguous ways of communicating how we're feeling," said coauthor Jamin Halberstadt, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, "but in real social interactions, facial expressions are blends of multiple emotions – they are open to interpretation. This means that two people can have different recollections about the same emotional episode, yet both be correct about what they 'saw.' So when my wife remembers my smirk as cynicism, she is right: her explanation of the expression at the time biased her perception of it. But it is also true that, had she explained my expression as empathy, I wouldn't be sleeping on the couch."
"It's a paradox," Halberstadt added. "The more we seek meaning in other emotions, the less accurate we are in remembering them."
The researchers point out that implications of the results go beyond everyday interpersonal misunderstandings – especially for those who have persistent or dysfunctional ways of understanding emotions, such as socially anxious or traumatized individuals. For example, the socially anxious have negative interpretations of others' reactions that may permanently color their perceptions of feelings and intentions, perpetuating their erroneous beliefs even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Other applications of the findings include eyewitness memory: A witness to a violent crime, for example, may attribute malice to a perpetrator – an impression which, according to the researchers, will influence memory for the perpetrator's face and emotional expression.
The researchers showed experimental participants still photographs of faces computer-morphed to express ambiguous emotion and instructed them to think of these faces as either angry or happy. Participants then watched movies of the faces slowly changing expression, from angry to happy, and were asked to find the photograph they had originally seen. People's initial interpretations influenced their memories: Faces initially interpreted as angry were remembered as expressing more anger than faces initially interpreted as happy.
Even more interesting, the ambiguous faces were also perceived and reacted to differently. By measuring subtle electrical signals coming from the muscles that control facial expressions, the researchers discovered that the participants imitated – on their own faces – the previously interpreted emotion when viewing the ambiguous faces again. In other words, when viewing a facial expression they had once thought about as angry, people expressed more anger themselves than did people viewing the same face if they had initially interpreted it as happy.
Because it is largely automatic, the researchers write, such facial mimicry reflects how the ambiguous face is perceived, revealing that participants were literally seeing different expressions.
"The novel finding here," said Winkielman, of UC San Diego, "is that our body is the interface: The place where thoughts and perceptions meet. It supports a growing area of research on 'embodied cognition' and 'embodied emotion.' Our corporeal self is intimately intertwined with how – and what – we think and feel."
Also coauthors on the study are Paula Niedenthal and Nathalie Dalle, both at the Universite Blaise Pascall, Clermont-Ferrand, France.
The research was supported by a National Science Foundation grant to Winkielman and Niedenthal and a University of Otago Research Grant to Halberstadt.
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A telephone on every table? Here’s a bizarre gimmick from a 90s Dublin bar.
Back in 1990 on there was a bar by the name of ‘Caspers’ located at 6 Wicklow street. It was a cocktail bar that also served food, both reasonably rare at the time. It was located next to what is now Marys bar and the unit itself is used for retail (formerly Tower Records). It was taken over by a trio of Englishmen who had a portfolio of bars and restaurants in London, and they had big ideas for their new Dublin venture.
In ‘The Pelican guide to Dublin pubs 1990’ is a story about an interesting gimmick used by Caspers bar. Every table in the bar had a telephone with which you could communicate with any guest in the bar. You could call up the bartender and advise him best on how to make your cocktail, or call someone you like the look of a few tables down and have a bit of a flirt.
The author of the Pelican guide writes:
“The addition of a telephone at each table has drawn a very favourable public response and has greatly aided the cause of romance. Many’s the timid and bashful Irish bachelor, fearful of rejection and afraid to test the waters, has made his first female contact in this way. If she doesn’t slam down the telephone in the first thirty seconds, you’re in business!”
So, a bit like tinder but with a rotary phone, or ordering your food through an ipad on the table.
The author seems to think that it was well liked by the public, but we wonder just how long it lasted. People complain these days about people being on the phone in the pub and not talking to their friends, and here we have an example of a bar where the chief draw of the place was for people to use phones!
The author seems very insistent that it’s not just a gimmick, but we have to disagree on that one.
“But don’t be fooled by thinking that these nuances are solely the products of aggressive American marketing gimmickry.”
Not American, English!
With every trick under the sun being used by pubs and bars these days to make their venue that bit more exciting, I wonder will someone revive this idea and place an old fashioned phone on every table?
If you have any memories or photos of Caspers, please share them in the comments section or email us at [email protected]
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Here we go:
Spartan Brothers — Michigan State Wrestling
I just had lunch with an old teammate and friend, Joel — who works for Stryker Medical and is in the Bay Area for work. He departed my van and got an Uber — it’s always fun when getting picked up or dropped off to the van — living in a vehicle is a foreign concept to most, but I love it.
I’m excited to write my article with a phone. I have the Google Pixel which has been an exceptional option — the technology exceeds my current uses. I theorize I’ll write more, better content if I start the process from my phone.
I live in a van and uphold a pretty unorthodox lifestyle — hence the “Modern Day Mavericks” branding. The definition of a Maverick is someone who lives an unorthodox or independent-minded life.
“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” — Jack London
The life of a Maverick
Would you consider sleeping in different locations every night, pissing in a gallon jug, and using your van window as a mirror to shave your mustache anything but Independent-minded?
I didn’t think so…
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The Berlin town hall meeting on Thursday evening to discuss plans for the refugee facility was met with skepticism and a barrage of questions from citizens as city officials pushed the plan to house 7,000 refugees.
The former Tempelhof Airport, built up in grandiose style by the Nazis, is famous for being the site of the Berlin Airlift between 1948 and 1949, when West Berlin had been cut off from the rest of Germany by Soviet troops.
It has been out of service since 2008 and the grounds around the airport - Tempelhofer Feld - have become a beloved recreational park and events site.
Plans were announced in September to start moving refugees into emergency shelters at the airport.
They called for a heated inflatable dome to be erected and portable toilets used during the Lollapalooza Berlin music festival to be left in place.
The city wants to further expand accommodation on the airport grounds, but that runs contrary to a referendum passed in 2014 to protect Tempelhofer Feld from the city's plans for a large-scale property development.
Concerns about overturning the popular vote were front and centre at Thursday night's town hall meeting, where 1,000 Berliners attended, according to Berliner Morgenpost.
"Interest is huge - all seats are full - maybe 1,400 in attendance."
The city has argued that the facilities would be temporary for up to three years.
But those who rallied the public behind the 2014 referendum argued that allowing development now could pave the way for larger construction projects later.
Others expressed opposition to officials overturning an initiative that was put forth by the people, according to Der Tagesspiegel.
The size and conditions of the planned accommodations was also called into question, with some saying that so many people in such a tight space would be like a "ghetto", Berliner Morgenpost reported.
A banner reading "integration instead of ghettos" at the Thursday town hall.
Currently 2,500 people reside in emergency shelters inside the airport's former hangars, with another 480 places available for use in extreme situations.
Shuttle bus services have to transport refugees living there to nearby public pool facilities to take a shower as on-site water supplies are insufficient.
SEE ALSO: Iconic Berlin airport becoming refugee home
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The FBI interviewed former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn during the first days of President Donald Trump’s administration about Flynn’s conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, according to a report by the New York Times.
Current and former officials told the New York Times that FBI agents interviewed Flynn about his calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before former acting Attorney General Sally Yates brought the matter to the attention of the White House counsel.
Flynn resigned late Monday, days after reports revealed that he discussed sanctions with Kislyak in a phone call before Trump took office. This contradicted members of Trump’s administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, who previously denied that Flynn and Kislyak spoke about sanctions.
At his daily briefing Tuesday afternoon, Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer blamed the Justice Department for not notifying the White House sooner of discrepancies in Flynn’s account of the calls.
“Where was the Department of Justice in this?” Spicer asked. “They didn’t notify the White House counsel’s office until Jan. 26th.”
Per the New York Times’ report, Yates notified the White House “shortly after the F.B.I. interview.”
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that FBI Director James Comey was behind the delay.
Comey said he did not want to notify Trump about Flynn’s misrepresentations because it would complicate the agency’s investigation, according to the Washington Post, but dropped his objections after Spicer addressed questions about Flynn’s calls with Kislyak in his first daily briefing from the White House.
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When the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 rolls around in January next year, we all expect a bevy of new hardware and software announcements. One company we know for sure that will be showing off something interesting is Samsung, which has promised to give us our first look at its new 850 Pro solid state drive (SSD), with a capacity as large as four terabytes.
Announced by way of press materials that boasted of the numerous (35 in total) CES Innovation Awards the company has won this year, the 850 Pro will act as a professional counterpart to the previous release of the 850 EVO, which debuted back in July. While it will be broadly similar to the previous release, as Tom’s points out, it should have improved endurance and better long-term performance.
Of course the fact that it’s 4TB in size means whoever picks one up is unlikely to run out of space any time soon, either.
Related: WD Blue 1TB SSD review
Samsung also claims that the 850 Pro 4TB SSD is the world’s first 2-bit MLC, 4TB “consumer drive,” even though it is designed with enterprise and professional users in mind. It also has the benefits of slightly reducing power draw when compared to traditional hard drives, though that’s not a metric that will come into play for anyone using just one or two drives.
Other solid state drives said to be picking up Innovation Awards at the upcoming CES show, are Samsung’s 960 PRO SSD, as well as its PM971 512GB, BGA NVMe SSD. The former has a smaller capacity, at 2TB, but is the highest capacity M.2 form factor SSD that Samsung has ever released. It offers ultra high-end performance in an extremely compact package.
The PM971 might have a smaller capacity, but it takes up even less physical space. Smaller than a postage stamp, the PM971 offers performance in excess of three times the speed of your average 2.5-inch SATA III SSD, in a much reduced footprint.
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The trustworthiness of a web page might help it rise up Google's rankings if the search giant starts to measure quality by facts, not just links. THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free "news" stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.
Google's search engine currently uses the number of incoming links to a web page as a proxy for quality, determining where it appears in search results. So pages that many other sites link to are ranked higher. This system has brought us the search engine as we know it today, but the downside is that websites full of misinformation can rise up the rankings, if enough people link to them.
A Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a page. "A source that has few false facts is considered to be trustworthy," says the team (arxiv.org/abs/1502.03519v1). The score they compute for each page is its Knowledge-Based Trust score.
The software works by tapping into the Knowledge Vault, the vast store of facts that Google has pulled off the internet. Facts the web unanimously agrees on are considered a reasonable proxy for truth. Web pages that contain contradictory information are bumped down the rankings.
Google appears interested in presenting an opportunity to competitors:Considering what we've learned about a) the lies committed by corrupt scientific researchers, b) the inferiority and corruption of the U.S. educational system, and c) the proclivity for complete fiction on the part of the U.S. news media, it's not difficult to predict that this will be a complete debacle if Google is foolish enough to implement it. If I were a competitor to Google search, I would be on my knees praying that they would follow through on this concept in the most extreme manner possible.You know this is most likely an SJW-driven affair, because only SJWs would be dumb enough to risk a corporation's entire business model in the interests of their ideology. If this is simply a genuine attempt to improve their offerings, Google will introduce it as an option for those interested in it and it will either succeed or fail on the merits of the implementation. If it is an SJW attempt to drive the narrative, it will be imposed as a replacement for the link-based system and people will rapidly turn to competitors who don't seek to impose their reality on the masses.I tend to doubt that the ABCNNBCBS cabal will be buried deep within the "truth-based" links due to their near-complete disassociation with observable reality. But you never know. Perhaps this is Google's stealth means of taking on the mainstream media indirectly.
Labels: media, technology
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Using data from Chandra, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, scientists have created new three-dimensional (3D) viewer that will allow users to see the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant like never before.
One of the most famous objects in the sky – the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant – will be on display like never before, thanks to NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and a new project from the Smithsonian Institution. A new three-dimensional (3D) viewer, being unveiled this week, will allow users to interact with many one-of-a-kind objects from the Smithsonian as part of a large-scale effort to digitize many of the Institutions objects and artifacts.
Scientists have combined data from Chandra, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities to construct a unique 3D model of the 300-year old remains of a stellar explosion that blew a massive star apart, sending the stellar debris rushing into space at millions of miles per hour. The collaboration with this new Smithsonian 3D project will allow the astronomical data collected on Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, to be featured and highlighted in an open-access program — a major innovation in digital technologies with public, education, and research-based impacts.
To coincide with Cas A being featured in this new 3D effort, a specially-processed version of Chandra’s data of this supernova remnant is also being released. This new image shows with better clarity the appearance of Cas A in different energy bands, which will aid astronomers in their efforts to reconstruct details of the supernova process such as the size of the star, its chemical makeup, and the explosion mechanism. The color scheme used in this image is the following: low-energy X-rays are red, medium-energy ones are green, and the highest-energy X-rays detected by Chandra are colored blue.
This visualization shows a fly-through of Cas A based on the 3-D representation constructed from Chandra and Spitzer data. It begins with an artists rendition of the neutron star previously detected by Chandra. Next, new features unseen in traditional 2-D data sets are visible, including details of how the parent star exploded. The green region is mostly iron observed in X-rays; the yellow region is mostly argon and silicon seen in X-rays, optical and infared; the red region is cooler debris seen in the infared and the blue region is the outer blast wave, most prominent in X-rays. (Credit: Visualization: NASA/CXC/D.Berry; Model: NASA/CXC/MIT/T.Delaney et al.)
Cas A is the only astronomical object to be featured in the new Smithsonian 3D project. This and other objects in the collection – including the Wright brothers plane, a 1,600-year-old stone Buddha, a gunboat from the Revolutionary War, and fossil whales from Chile — were being showcased in the Smithsonian X 3D event, taking place on November 13th and 14th at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. In addition to new state-of-the-art 3D viewer, the public will be able to explore these objects through original videos, online tours, and other supporting materials.
Cas A is the only supernova remnant to date to be modeled in 3D. In order to create this visualization, unique software that links the fields of astrophysics and medical imaging (known as “astronomical medicine”) was used. Since its initial release in 2009, the 3D model has proven a rich resource for scientists as well as an effective tool for communicating science to the public. Providing this newly formatted data in an open source framework with finely-tuned contextual materials will greatly broaden awareness and participation for general public, teacher, student and researcher audiences.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science and flight operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts.
See more at Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Image: NASA/CXC/SAO
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