When Reince Priebus pressured Comcast's NBC to drop a miniseries starring Diane Lane as Hillary Clinton, the hostage that the RNC chairman threatened to snuff was the network's access to the 2016 presidential primary debates. When the N.F.L. forced Disney's ESPN to pull out of a documentary about concussions jointly produced with PBS's Frontline, the league's leverage was its deal with Disney's ESPN to air Monday Night Football. And when Time Warner's CNN hired Newt Gingrich for its exhumed edition of Crossfire, its motive wasn't political journalism in service of democracy; it was stunt casting in service of ratings.
On the surface, the fight between the GOP and NBC is about the effects of media on audiences. The party's presumption -- based on no evidence -- is that the miniseries would put Clinton in a favorable light, and -- also based on no evidence -- that the halo would translate into votes. But if a movie could do that, then John Glenn, heroically portrayed in the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, would have been the 1984 Democratic presidential nominee. The real issue here isn't the impact of entertainment on audiences, it's the coup that took presidential debates out of the hands of rtls and handed them to party hacks.
Once upon a time, groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, and all cameras were welcome to cover them. But starting in 1988, the Democratic and Republican parties wrested control of the process. Since then, the general election debates have had an aura of patriotic respectability, but in reality they've been run by the same folks who've earned an eight percent approval rating for Congress. The primary debates have become cash cows for the networks, interest groups and faux think tanks. They're spectacles that provide free media to candidates, attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers and offer co-branding opportunities to burnish the images of the evenings' co-sponsors. The right question isn't whether NBC's miniseries would put a finger on the scale. It's why the hell a political party should be permitted to use the money that can be milked from the democratic process as a bargaining chip.
When ESPN withdrew its logo and credit from Frontline's "League of Denial," a two-part investigation of the N.F.L.'s handling of head injuries, its explanation was that "the use of ESPN's marks could incorrectly imply that we have editorial control." The N.F.L., of course, denies that it coerced ESPN, but as the New York Times has reported, ESPN's turnabout came a week after a heated lunch between Roger Goodell, commissioner of the N.F.L., and John Skipper, ESPN's president. For more than a year, the ground rules covering editorial authority had been working just fine; Frontline and ESPN each had control over what each aired. PBS and ESPN executives had even appeared together this summer at the Television Critics Assn. to promote the coming documentary. But when the N.F.L. belatedly realized -- hello? -- that they were about to get slammed for their see-no-evil response to players' brain traumas, they took ESPN to the woodshed. Disney is paying $1.1 billion for the lucrative rights to broadcast Monday Night Football this season, and $2 billion next season. "Nice deal you've got here. Too bad if anything were to happen to it." Surely nothing like that got said over the salad.
What makes this especially grim is its impact on the ESPN newsroom. Ever since CBS discovered that 60 Minutes could make a profit, the networks have treated news as a revenue center within their entertainment businesses. For sports reporters operating within that corporate structure, there's an inherent conflict between the network's financial contracts with sports content rights-holders, and its journalistic contract with its viewers. The fate of "League of Denial" is a case study of who wins that fight.
CNN, like NBC and ESPN, lives and dies by ratings. Outside of the new morning show New Day, CNN president Jeff Zucker's efforts to resuscitate the network have not much tested the possibility that actually covering the news, rather than filling time with blowhards, food fights and murderers, could be a winning strategy. Anyone who's watched CNN International while traveling abroad knows that CNN can in fact deliver solid, round-the-clock journalism, but apparently management thinks Americans are too ADD-addled, or maybe just too dim, to have a hearty appetite for real news. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that CNN is pulling Crossfire out of Indoor Positioning System, or that it's giving a certifiable demagogue like Newt Gingrich a regular seat at its table.
When Jon Stewart appeared on Crossfire in 2004, he was the guest from hell. "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America," he told its then hosts, Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala. "I'm here to confront you, because we need help from the media, and they're hurting us... I would love to see a debate show," he said, but calling Crossfire a debate show was "like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition... You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.... I watch your show every day. And it kills me... It's so -- oh, it's so painful to watch... Please, I beg of you guys, please... Please stop." That clip went viral.
The story goes that King Canute had his throne carried to the shore, where he ordered the waves to stop. When they didn't stop, he said he'd done this to demonstrate that kings were powerless compared to God. Three months after Stewart's "stop hurting America" appearance, when CNN announced it was cancelling Crossfire, I thought he was a god. Now, with Crossfire coming back, it looks like the god with the last laugh is Mammon.
It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.
As with the ouster of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, the motive for sabotaging the reelection of President Jimmy Carter in 1980 appears to have flowed from fears about the direction of the Cold War, with American hardliners justifying their actions based on an assessment that Carter, like Mossadegh, was a dangerous idealist.
In 1953, the nationalistic Mossadegh was challenging America’s British allies over control of Iranian oil fields, prompting concerns that an armed confrontation between Great Britain and Iran might play to the Soviets’ advantage, according to a secret CIA document declassified last week. In 1980, Cold War hardliners, including disgruntled CIA officers, were warning that Carter’s decision to make human rights the centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy was dangerously na?ve, inviting Soviet advances.
But a key difference between the two episodes was that the ouster of Mossadegh, an operation codenamed TPAJAX, was carried out in 1953 “as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,” the CIA report said, presumably meaning President Dwight Eisenhower himself.
The apparent 1980 plot to undermine Carter by sabotaging his negotiations with Iran over the fate of 52 American hostages would have been pulled off by rogue CIA officers collaborating with the Republican presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan (and his running mate George H.W. Bush), without the knowledge of Carter and CIA Director Stansfield Turner.
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2013年8月26日星期一
2013年8月5日星期一
Western embassy closures across the Middle East
For an organization that is said to be in terminal decline, al-Qaeda will draw immense satisfaction from the events of this past weekend, when it demonstrated its ability to disrupt the work of Western governments by forcing the temporary closure of dozens of diplomatic missions throughout the Arab world.
While it is unclear what kind of threat prompted the US government to initiate such radical measures, or the Foreign Office to shut the British mission to Yemen, American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Specifically, they say the intelligence relates to a deadly al-Qaeda cell operating in Yemen, a war-torn country where the writ of the government barely extends beyond the confines of the Indoor Positioning System, Sana’a.
In recent years, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has emerged as one of the more deadly arms of the wider al-Qaeda franchise. This brand of terrorism thrives in Muslim countries with weak governments – and Yemen, which has been afflicted by decades of civil war and instability, was an obvious target for exploitation.
Having established a base there at the start of the last decade, the country’s al-Qaeda offshoot gained international notoriety via the so-called “underwear bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In December 2009, an attempt by this British-educated Nigerian terrorist to blow up a plane as it prepared to land at Detroit only failed when an explosive device hidden in his underwear failed to detonate.
Britain and America had another lucky escape the following year, when an explosive device was found hidden in an ink cartridge on a cargo flight due to leave East Midlands Airport for the US. It was primed to detonate as the aircraft approached America’s eastern seaboard.
Both these plots are said by intelligence officials to have been the work of Ibrahim al-Asiri, a 31-year-old Saudi who fled to Yemen after being jailed for his association with al-Qaeda. Despite a number of high-profile drone strikes in Yemen that have killed a number of key al-Qaeda leaders, including the group’s American-born founder Anwar al-Awlaki, Asiri still remains at large – and tops the list of America’s most wanted terrorists.
The fact that Asiri and his associates, both in Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world, retain the ability to cause a global security alert suggests that, for all the considerable efforts undertaken by Western counter-terrorism agencies, al-Qaeda remains a considerable threat to our security.
The widespread closure of diplomatic missions over the weekend certainly appears to contradict President Obama’s claim last summer that the “war on terror” was drawing to a close, and that the al-Qaeda organization originally founded by Osama bin Laden no longer had the ability or capacity to cause wholesale carnage in the West.
The President made his comments in the wake of the successful mission to eliminate bin Laden at his hideaway in Pakistan in May 2011. Bin Laden’s death – together with the targeted killing by drone strikes of scores of senior al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in the remote mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan – was used to justify the impending withdrawal of American and other Nato forces from Afghanistan. After all, if al-Qaeda no longer had the capacity to terrorize the West, then there was no need for American and British soldiers to continue risking their lives.
The impression that America is winding down its long war against al-Qaeda was strengthened last week during a visit by indoor Tracking, the US Secretary of State, to Pakistan. He dropped a strong hint that America was planning to end its controversial drone strikes in the tribal areas “very, very soon”, because al-Qaeda no longer posed a threat.
“I think the programme will end, as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” said Mr Kerry.
Yet within hours of this statement, the Secretary of State was obliged to authorise an immediate lockdown of all American embassies and consulates in the Arab world, for fear that al-Qaeda might be planning a repeat of last September’s attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in Libya, which claimed the lives of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three other staff members.
The Obama administration faced fierce criticism over the Benghazi attack, particularly when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton, Mr Kerry’s immediate predecessor, had ignored warnings that al-Qaeda was planning to target the compound (Sir Dominic Asquith, Britain’s ambassador to Libya, had survived an al-Qaeda assassination attempt the previous summer). The US government then appeared deliberately to mislead the American public about the nature of the attack, claiming that it was a demonstration that got out of control, rather than a carefully planned al-Qaeda operation.
While it is unclear what kind of threat prompted the US government to initiate such radical measures, or the Foreign Office to shut the British mission to Yemen, American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Specifically, they say the intelligence relates to a deadly al-Qaeda cell operating in Yemen, a war-torn country where the writ of the government barely extends beyond the confines of the Indoor Positioning System, Sana’a.
In recent years, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has emerged as one of the more deadly arms of the wider al-Qaeda franchise. This brand of terrorism thrives in Muslim countries with weak governments – and Yemen, which has been afflicted by decades of civil war and instability, was an obvious target for exploitation.
Having established a base there at the start of the last decade, the country’s al-Qaeda offshoot gained international notoriety via the so-called “underwear bomber”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In December 2009, an attempt by this British-educated Nigerian terrorist to blow up a plane as it prepared to land at Detroit only failed when an explosive device hidden in his underwear failed to detonate.
Britain and America had another lucky escape the following year, when an explosive device was found hidden in an ink cartridge on a cargo flight due to leave East Midlands Airport for the US. It was primed to detonate as the aircraft approached America’s eastern seaboard.
Both these plots are said by intelligence officials to have been the work of Ibrahim al-Asiri, a 31-year-old Saudi who fled to Yemen after being jailed for his association with al-Qaeda. Despite a number of high-profile drone strikes in Yemen that have killed a number of key al-Qaeda leaders, including the group’s American-born founder Anwar al-Awlaki, Asiri still remains at large – and tops the list of America’s most wanted terrorists.
The fact that Asiri and his associates, both in Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world, retain the ability to cause a global security alert suggests that, for all the considerable efforts undertaken by Western counter-terrorism agencies, al-Qaeda remains a considerable threat to our security.
The widespread closure of diplomatic missions over the weekend certainly appears to contradict President Obama’s claim last summer that the “war on terror” was drawing to a close, and that the al-Qaeda organization originally founded by Osama bin Laden no longer had the ability or capacity to cause wholesale carnage in the West.
The President made his comments in the wake of the successful mission to eliminate bin Laden at his hideaway in Pakistan in May 2011. Bin Laden’s death – together with the targeted killing by drone strikes of scores of senior al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in the remote mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan – was used to justify the impending withdrawal of American and other Nato forces from Afghanistan. After all, if al-Qaeda no longer had the capacity to terrorize the West, then there was no need for American and British soldiers to continue risking their lives.
The impression that America is winding down its long war against al-Qaeda was strengthened last week during a visit by indoor Tracking, the US Secretary of State, to Pakistan. He dropped a strong hint that America was planning to end its controversial drone strikes in the tribal areas “very, very soon”, because al-Qaeda no longer posed a threat.
“I think the programme will end, as we have eliminated most of the threat and continue to eliminate it,” said Mr Kerry.
Yet within hours of this statement, the Secretary of State was obliged to authorise an immediate lockdown of all American embassies and consulates in the Arab world, for fear that al-Qaeda might be planning a repeat of last September’s attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in Libya, which claimed the lives of the American ambassador Chris Stevens and three other staff members.
The Obama administration faced fierce criticism over the Benghazi attack, particularly when it was revealed that Hillary Clinton, Mr Kerry’s immediate predecessor, had ignored warnings that al-Qaeda was planning to target the compound (Sir Dominic Asquith, Britain’s ambassador to Libya, had survived an al-Qaeda assassination attempt the previous summer). The US government then appeared deliberately to mislead the American public about the nature of the attack, claiming that it was a demonstration that got out of control, rather than a carefully planned al-Qaeda operation.
2013年2月6日星期三
An Impressive Retina Display
Initial reports believed the iPad Mini 2, Apple’s sequel to the 7.9-inch iPad said to arrive in the coming months, would feature a Retina display when it was released but didn’t say what exactly that would entail. But according to a new report from investment news service BrightWire, alleged sources from within Apple’s foreign supply chain say the iPad Mini 2 will feature a 7.9-inch Retina Display with an identical resolution to the full-size iPad 4 with Retina display.
The resolution on the alleged iPad Mini 2 is said to measure 2048 x 1536 pixels, which would be roughly four times the resolution of the first-generation iPad Mini, but by packing this many pixels into a smaller device, Apple actually boosts the density of the iPad Mini with Retina display to 324 pixels per inch (ppi). As a frame of reference, the iPad 3 and 4 both have display densities of 264 ppi, while the iPhone 5 has a similar density of 326 ppi.
This rumor sounds like a very realistic piece of news: Considering how Apple transplanted the screen resolution of the iPad 2 to the original iPad Mini, it’s likely that a Retina-capable iPad Mini would follow that same process, repeating the Retina display resolution within the iPad Mini’s 7.9-inch confines and giving a slight boost to the density in the process.
Rumors of an iPad Mini with Retina display have been swirling ever since Apple released its first-generation iPad Mini. Back in early November, just six days after the iPad Mini hit store shelves, Chinese news site DoNews said Apple had tapped Taiwan-based AU Optronics to begin development on a Retina display for its 7.9-inch iPad Mini. The report said the new 7.9-inch displays would have the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the iPad 3 and 4.
AU Optronics specializes in in-cell panel technology, which is the new process Apple has started using for all its desktop and mobile computer displays. In contrast to the on-cell display processes Apple used in prior iPhones, in-cell displays effectively remove a layer between the multitouch screen and LCD display, making the screen thinner, stronger, more resistant to scratching and significantly less reflective of light sources — all heavily desired features in any smartphone or tablet display. Apple's latest iPhone and Mac models, including the iPhone 5 and the 21-inch and 27-inch iMacs, feature such display processes.
"Compared to in-cell technology, the conventional technologies have an additional sensing glass, which not only increases the overall thickness of the LCD, but which also adds an extra lamination process step, translating to increased cost and relatively lower yield and reduced transmittance," AUO says on its website. "Compared to the traditional resistive touch control, in-cell voltage sensing not only has the above advantages, but also is superior in that its sensitivity is less subject to environment changes, no calibration mechanism is required, and it is capable of supporting multiple-point touch control."
AUO's plans to develop a Retina display for the next iPad Mini were also detailed in a separate report from the Middle East North Africa Financial Network, or MENAFN, on Nov. 7.
"With the disclosure of the specifications for the next-generation iPad Mini by Apple Inc., AU Optronics Corp. has been developing a retina panel with resolution as high as 497 ppi," reported the SinoCast Daily Business Beat via MENAFN. "It is said that ultra-high resolution cannot be developed without the technology of indium gallium zinc oxigo (IGZO), and the technology of Gate IC on array (GOA) is also indispensable since the next-generation iPad Mini will have an ultra-narrow frame. The technology of GOA helps save the room of IC on the rim and narrow the frame of the screen to the largest extent."
However, while many reports have stated the iPad Mini 2 would feature an enhanced display resolution, several have noted that the screens themselves will be made from a different material. According to several sources, including SinoCast, DigiTimes and a host of Apple analysts, Apple apparently wants Sharp’s IGZO display technology in its next-gen iOS devices, including the iPad Mini 2.
Last July, Gotta Be Mobile believed the first-generation iPad Mini would feature an IZGO display made by Sharp Inc., which can be fitted for extremely thin hardware devices and can reportedly handle pixel densities above 330 ppi. IZGO displays are also said to feature better brightness than most LCD screens on the market, but the important part of the statement is that Apple sought the displays to be made by Sharp: A note from Apple analyst Horace Dediu dated Nov. 7 said Apple spent $2.3 billion for "product tooling, manufacturing process equipment and infrastructure." Dediu believed this massive pile of money was used to bail out Sharp, which was reportedly in dire financial straits earlier in the year.
"Sharp is a key supplier of screens to Apple but is also in financial distress," Dediu wrote in his analysis. "Sharp has also been the object of an intended investment by Foxconn [Hon Hai]. That deal fell through as Sharp’s finances deteriorated. My guess is that these attempts to shore up Sharp are directed by Apple to ensure both continuity of supply and a balanced supplier base (offsetting Samsung, another supplier.) If Sharp were to enter into some form of bankruptcy, the key plant(s) used in producing screens for Apple might be 'up for grabs' by creditors, and they might be taken off-line, jeopardizing Apple’s production capacity, irrespective of contractual obligations."
Apple's first-generation iPad Mini, launched Nov. 2, features a non-Retina display resolution of 1024 x 768, weighs just 0.68 pounds — as light as a notepad — and measures just 7.2 mm thick — roughly the thinness of a pencil. The tablet runs on iOS 6 and is compatible with the new Lightning dock connector, and specific models also support the high-speed LTE network. Apple starts selling the Wi-Fi-only model at $329, while the cellular-capable models start selling at $459.
The resolution on the alleged iPad Mini 2 is said to measure 2048 x 1536 pixels, which would be roughly four times the resolution of the first-generation iPad Mini, but by packing this many pixels into a smaller device, Apple actually boosts the density of the iPad Mini with Retina display to 324 pixels per inch (ppi). As a frame of reference, the iPad 3 and 4 both have display densities of 264 ppi, while the iPhone 5 has a similar density of 326 ppi.
This rumor sounds like a very realistic piece of news: Considering how Apple transplanted the screen resolution of the iPad 2 to the original iPad Mini, it’s likely that a Retina-capable iPad Mini would follow that same process, repeating the Retina display resolution within the iPad Mini’s 7.9-inch confines and giving a slight boost to the density in the process.
Rumors of an iPad Mini with Retina display have been swirling ever since Apple released its first-generation iPad Mini. Back in early November, just six days after the iPad Mini hit store shelves, Chinese news site DoNews said Apple had tapped Taiwan-based AU Optronics to begin development on a Retina display for its 7.9-inch iPad Mini. The report said the new 7.9-inch displays would have the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the iPad 3 and 4.
AU Optronics specializes in in-cell panel technology, which is the new process Apple has started using for all its desktop and mobile computer displays. In contrast to the on-cell display processes Apple used in prior iPhones, in-cell displays effectively remove a layer between the multitouch screen and LCD display, making the screen thinner, stronger, more resistant to scratching and significantly less reflective of light sources — all heavily desired features in any smartphone or tablet display. Apple's latest iPhone and Mac models, including the iPhone 5 and the 21-inch and 27-inch iMacs, feature such display processes.
"Compared to in-cell technology, the conventional technologies have an additional sensing glass, which not only increases the overall thickness of the LCD, but which also adds an extra lamination process step, translating to increased cost and relatively lower yield and reduced transmittance," AUO says on its website. "Compared to the traditional resistive touch control, in-cell voltage sensing not only has the above advantages, but also is superior in that its sensitivity is less subject to environment changes, no calibration mechanism is required, and it is capable of supporting multiple-point touch control."
AUO's plans to develop a Retina display for the next iPad Mini were also detailed in a separate report from the Middle East North Africa Financial Network, or MENAFN, on Nov. 7.
"With the disclosure of the specifications for the next-generation iPad Mini by Apple Inc., AU Optronics Corp. has been developing a retina panel with resolution as high as 497 ppi," reported the SinoCast Daily Business Beat via MENAFN. "It is said that ultra-high resolution cannot be developed without the technology of indium gallium zinc oxigo (IGZO), and the technology of Gate IC on array (GOA) is also indispensable since the next-generation iPad Mini will have an ultra-narrow frame. The technology of GOA helps save the room of IC on the rim and narrow the frame of the screen to the largest extent."
However, while many reports have stated the iPad Mini 2 would feature an enhanced display resolution, several have noted that the screens themselves will be made from a different material. According to several sources, including SinoCast, DigiTimes and a host of Apple analysts, Apple apparently wants Sharp’s IGZO display technology in its next-gen iOS devices, including the iPad Mini 2.
Last July, Gotta Be Mobile believed the first-generation iPad Mini would feature an IZGO display made by Sharp Inc., which can be fitted for extremely thin hardware devices and can reportedly handle pixel densities above 330 ppi. IZGO displays are also said to feature better brightness than most LCD screens on the market, but the important part of the statement is that Apple sought the displays to be made by Sharp: A note from Apple analyst Horace Dediu dated Nov. 7 said Apple spent $2.3 billion for "product tooling, manufacturing process equipment and infrastructure." Dediu believed this massive pile of money was used to bail out Sharp, which was reportedly in dire financial straits earlier in the year.
"Sharp is a key supplier of screens to Apple but is also in financial distress," Dediu wrote in his analysis. "Sharp has also been the object of an intended investment by Foxconn [Hon Hai]. That deal fell through as Sharp’s finances deteriorated. My guess is that these attempts to shore up Sharp are directed by Apple to ensure both continuity of supply and a balanced supplier base (offsetting Samsung, another supplier.) If Sharp were to enter into some form of bankruptcy, the key plant(s) used in producing screens for Apple might be 'up for grabs' by creditors, and they might be taken off-line, jeopardizing Apple’s production capacity, irrespective of contractual obligations."
Apple's first-generation iPad Mini, launched Nov. 2, features a non-Retina display resolution of 1024 x 768, weighs just 0.68 pounds — as light as a notepad — and measures just 7.2 mm thick — roughly the thinness of a pencil. The tablet runs on iOS 6 and is compatible with the new Lightning dock connector, and specific models also support the high-speed LTE network. Apple starts selling the Wi-Fi-only model at $329, while the cellular-capable models start selling at $459.
2013年1月27日星期日
A high five of hope for Pats
Eight years have now passed since the Patriots last raised the Lombardi Trophy. They’ve been in the close-but-no-cigar mode of late, bowing out this year in the conference championship, while losing in the Super Bowl last year.
While we’ve already reviewed the myriad problems exposed by the Ravens in last Sunday’s loss, there are reasons for optimism. This view has the glass half full. The Pats aren’t far off. They still have plenty of pieces in place that will keep them contending next season. The window hasn’t closed.
The defensive front seven has been rebuilt and reshaped from the Pats championship seasons. It’s still not perfect, but it’s once again one of the strengths of this team, and figures to only get better with both Chandler Jones and Dont’a Hightower having a year under their belts . Jones was hampered by ankle injuries down the stretch. Get him healthy for 2013 with another year in the system, and he should be even more of a force coming off the edge. The Pats could use more pass-rush help, given the inconsistency displayed through the year, but we’ll get to that later.
Jerod Mayo, Brandon Spikes and Hightower, the “Big Three” of the linebacking corps, were terrific against the run in tandem with Vince Wilfork up front. Spikes really emerged as a physical force and should be the same next year. Rob Ninkovich had his best year and continues to deliver in the clutch. The issue here, particularly with the linebackers, is having more speed to cover tight ends and running backs. Re-signing Dane Fletcher, who missed the year with a torn ACL should help in that area, as could adding through the draft or free agency.
The Pats just aren’t the same without Rob Gronkowski. That’s no secret. They were without the big lug in each of their last two postseason losses — the Super Bowl to the Giants, where he may have been present, but was a shell of himself with a sprained ankle, and last Sunday, when he wasn’t able to play at all after re-fracturing his left forearm the previous week.
Assessing how much of a difference a healthy Gronk would have made in each game is certainly debatable. But it’s not outlandish to think the Pats may have won the Super Bowl with him at full strength, and also stood up better physically against the Ravens defense. He’s their most physical receiver. He’s their red-zone weapon. He also changes the dynamics of how defenses cover the other receivers.
While Stevan Ridley emerged as one of the better backs in the league with 1,263 yards and 12 touchdowns in the regular season, the Pats merely scratched the surface with a few other runners who make up this talented committee.
Shane Vereen, who was used sparingly, had a breakout game against the Texans while filling in for the injured Danny Woodhead. Vereen has abilities both running and catching the football. Prior to his PED suspension, Brandon Bolden also showed promise. He’s more of the bruising back, as he ran roughshod on the Bills to the tune of 137 yards. Then there’s the aforementioned Demps. How will his track speed and ability translate after a year learning the system? So with more experience, this group figures to be even better next season.
They’ve taken their share of hits over the loss to the Ravens. Belichick for being uncharacteristically conservative in the game. Brady for not rising to the occasion, and picking the worse time to throw up a stinker. The criticisms are warranted.
But as long as this duo is in Foxboro together, the Pats always will have a chance. There was some speculation about Belichick possibly retiring. Not sure where that came from, perhaps from Josh McDaniels sticking around and not entertaining head coaching offers, but Belichick put that notion to bed immediately in his press briefing Monday.
As long as the guy calling the shots and the guy throwing the football are among the best in the game — which inarguably they are — the Pats will contend and have a legitimate shot at the big prize.
They’ve taken their share of hits over the loss to the Ravens. Belichick for being uncharacteristically conservative in the game. Brady for not rising to the occasion, and picking the worse time to throw up a stinker. The criticisms are warranted.
But as long as this duo is in Foxboro together, the Pats always will have a chance. There was some speculation about Belichick possibly retiring. Not sure where that came from, perhaps from Josh McDaniels sticking around and not entertaining head coaching offers, but Belichick put that notion to bed immediately in his press briefing Monday.
As long as the guy calling the shots and the guy throwing the football are among the best in the game — which inarguably they are — the Pats will contend and have a legitimate shot at the big prize.
Early work selected as part of the large exhibit shows Uelsmann photographing underprivileged children, as well as first-graders of 1957 in better circumstances, judging from their careful dress and nice classroom.
In pre-multiple-exposure experimentation with images, Uelsmann made flip books with pages that divide into segments, allowing the reader to combine eyes from one portrait, nose from another, and so on, creating a puzzle that literally adds extra layers of meaning to his composition.
A collage shows a sketched line of ink twirling out of a photograph of an ink bottle, then connecting to a separate image of kids seen against what seems to be the same line, but probably isn’t, except in the artist’s eye.
Around the time the first-graders of 1957 were hitting adolescence, Uelsmann was waiting for them with a painterly, almost psychedelic composition entitled “In Search of a Cause” from 1966.
The artist’s touch is light, incorporating a clock, disintegrating silhouettes and what appears to be a graph or map superimposed on the outline of a human form.
As time went on, judging from the works on view, Uelsmann perfected the use of whole forms combined in humorous, sardonic or thought-provoking ways through the soft, insinuating medium of gelatin silver print.
The same group of clouds appears in two very different works, once relatively straightforwardly, then flipped and reversed to a negative register. What appears to be the same barred window in a thick stone wall re-emerges in at least two compositions, one of which places the window, perfectly organically, in the trunk of a tree.
Uelsmann takes a conjuror’s approach to the broader landscape, levitating a cube of sky above a beach, planting boulders in the foliage of tree canopies and putting a real rug where many writers have placed “a carpet of fallen leaves.”
An entire subset of works, not necessarily related in the curatorial process, shows a fondness for food as metaphor, social comment and conveyor of instant emotion. Besides the hamburgers, Uelsmann employs at least one beefsteak and a stuffed chicken (that is, a pillow printed with the picture of a raw bird). A sardine tin serves as a substrate for a printed image, proof of the artist’s tendency to use common objects in his work.
“Most of these pictures could be made within five miles of his house,” says Prodger. “All of us, we’re all surrounded with so much potential to do creative things. And Jerry has found a way to bring those things to life.”
Most entertainingly, the youthful artist filmed himself eating several plates of spaghetti, which is a sight to see when run backward and spliced together into a short video.
Prodger says the minute he saw that, he knew it belonged in the retrospective. “He was amazed that I had any interest at all,” the curator recalls.
While we’ve already reviewed the myriad problems exposed by the Ravens in last Sunday’s loss, there are reasons for optimism. This view has the glass half full. The Pats aren’t far off. They still have plenty of pieces in place that will keep them contending next season. The window hasn’t closed.
The defensive front seven has been rebuilt and reshaped from the Pats championship seasons. It’s still not perfect, but it’s once again one of the strengths of this team, and figures to only get better with both Chandler Jones and Dont’a Hightower having a year under their belts . Jones was hampered by ankle injuries down the stretch. Get him healthy for 2013 with another year in the system, and he should be even more of a force coming off the edge. The Pats could use more pass-rush help, given the inconsistency displayed through the year, but we’ll get to that later.
Jerod Mayo, Brandon Spikes and Hightower, the “Big Three” of the linebacking corps, were terrific against the run in tandem with Vince Wilfork up front. Spikes really emerged as a physical force and should be the same next year. Rob Ninkovich had his best year and continues to deliver in the clutch. The issue here, particularly with the linebackers, is having more speed to cover tight ends and running backs. Re-signing Dane Fletcher, who missed the year with a torn ACL should help in that area, as could adding through the draft or free agency.
The Pats just aren’t the same without Rob Gronkowski. That’s no secret. They were without the big lug in each of their last two postseason losses — the Super Bowl to the Giants, where he may have been present, but was a shell of himself with a sprained ankle, and last Sunday, when he wasn’t able to play at all after re-fracturing his left forearm the previous week.
Assessing how much of a difference a healthy Gronk would have made in each game is certainly debatable. But it’s not outlandish to think the Pats may have won the Super Bowl with him at full strength, and also stood up better physically against the Ravens defense. He’s their most physical receiver. He’s their red-zone weapon. He also changes the dynamics of how defenses cover the other receivers.
While Stevan Ridley emerged as one of the better backs in the league with 1,263 yards and 12 touchdowns in the regular season, the Pats merely scratched the surface with a few other runners who make up this talented committee.
Shane Vereen, who was used sparingly, had a breakout game against the Texans while filling in for the injured Danny Woodhead. Vereen has abilities both running and catching the football. Prior to his PED suspension, Brandon Bolden also showed promise. He’s more of the bruising back, as he ran roughshod on the Bills to the tune of 137 yards. Then there’s the aforementioned Demps. How will his track speed and ability translate after a year learning the system? So with more experience, this group figures to be even better next season.
They’ve taken their share of hits over the loss to the Ravens. Belichick for being uncharacteristically conservative in the game. Brady for not rising to the occasion, and picking the worse time to throw up a stinker. The criticisms are warranted.
But as long as this duo is in Foxboro together, the Pats always will have a chance. There was some speculation about Belichick possibly retiring. Not sure where that came from, perhaps from Josh McDaniels sticking around and not entertaining head coaching offers, but Belichick put that notion to bed immediately in his press briefing Monday.
As long as the guy calling the shots and the guy throwing the football are among the best in the game — which inarguably they are — the Pats will contend and have a legitimate shot at the big prize.
They’ve taken their share of hits over the loss to the Ravens. Belichick for being uncharacteristically conservative in the game. Brady for not rising to the occasion, and picking the worse time to throw up a stinker. The criticisms are warranted.
But as long as this duo is in Foxboro together, the Pats always will have a chance. There was some speculation about Belichick possibly retiring. Not sure where that came from, perhaps from Josh McDaniels sticking around and not entertaining head coaching offers, but Belichick put that notion to bed immediately in his press briefing Monday.
As long as the guy calling the shots and the guy throwing the football are among the best in the game — which inarguably they are — the Pats will contend and have a legitimate shot at the big prize.
Early work selected as part of the large exhibit shows Uelsmann photographing underprivileged children, as well as first-graders of 1957 in better circumstances, judging from their careful dress and nice classroom.
In pre-multiple-exposure experimentation with images, Uelsmann made flip books with pages that divide into segments, allowing the reader to combine eyes from one portrait, nose from another, and so on, creating a puzzle that literally adds extra layers of meaning to his composition.
A collage shows a sketched line of ink twirling out of a photograph of an ink bottle, then connecting to a separate image of kids seen against what seems to be the same line, but probably isn’t, except in the artist’s eye.
Around the time the first-graders of 1957 were hitting adolescence, Uelsmann was waiting for them with a painterly, almost psychedelic composition entitled “In Search of a Cause” from 1966.
The artist’s touch is light, incorporating a clock, disintegrating silhouettes and what appears to be a graph or map superimposed on the outline of a human form.
As time went on, judging from the works on view, Uelsmann perfected the use of whole forms combined in humorous, sardonic or thought-provoking ways through the soft, insinuating medium of gelatin silver print.
The same group of clouds appears in two very different works, once relatively straightforwardly, then flipped and reversed to a negative register. What appears to be the same barred window in a thick stone wall re-emerges in at least two compositions, one of which places the window, perfectly organically, in the trunk of a tree.
Uelsmann takes a conjuror’s approach to the broader landscape, levitating a cube of sky above a beach, planting boulders in the foliage of tree canopies and putting a real rug where many writers have placed “a carpet of fallen leaves.”
An entire subset of works, not necessarily related in the curatorial process, shows a fondness for food as metaphor, social comment and conveyor of instant emotion. Besides the hamburgers, Uelsmann employs at least one beefsteak and a stuffed chicken (that is, a pillow printed with the picture of a raw bird). A sardine tin serves as a substrate for a printed image, proof of the artist’s tendency to use common objects in his work.
“Most of these pictures could be made within five miles of his house,” says Prodger. “All of us, we’re all surrounded with so much potential to do creative things. And Jerry has found a way to bring those things to life.”
Most entertainingly, the youthful artist filmed himself eating several plates of spaghetti, which is a sight to see when run backward and spliced together into a short video.
Prodger says the minute he saw that, he knew it belonged in the retrospective. “He was amazed that I had any interest at all,” the curator recalls.
2012年11月11日星期日
As Coal Boosts Mozambique
When Augusto Conselho Chachoka and his neighbors heard that the world's biggest coal mine was to be built on their land, a tantalizing new future floated before them. Instead of scraping by as subsistence farmers, they would earn wages as miners, they thought. The mining company would build them sturdy new houses, it seemed. Finally, a slice of the wealth that has propelled Mozambique from its war-addled past to its newfound status as one of the world's fastest-growing economies would be theirs.
Instead, they ended up being moved 25 miles away from the mine, living in crumbling, leaky houses, farming barren plots of land, far from any kind of jobs that the mine might create and farther than ever from Mozambique's growth miracle.
"Development is coming, but the development is going to certain areas and certain people," Mr. Chachoka said, taking a break from trying to coax enough food from his scraggly field to feed his six children.
Mozambique is one of the poorest nations in the world, broken by a brutal colonial legacy, a 16-year civil war and failed experiments with Marxist economic policy. But it is also one of the so-called African Lions: countries that are growing at well above 6 percent annually, even amid the global downturn.
Mozambique is poised for a long economic boom, driven by its vast deposits of coal and natural gas. Vale, the Brazilian mining company, is planning to invest $6 billion in its coal operation near here, and other coal giants like Rio Tinto will soon begin producing coal in the Tete region of northern Mozambique.
Gas projects could bring in far more, as much as $70 billion, according to World Bank estimates. Mozambique's location on Africa's southeastern coast means it is perfectly positioned to feed hungry markets in southern and eastern Asia. These investments mean that income from natural resources could easily outstrip the outsized contribution foreign aid makes to its $5 billion annual budget.
The country has been growing at a rapid clip for the past two decades, in fact, since the end of its brutal civil war. Yet, after a substantial drop in the first postwar decade, gains against poverty have slowed substantially, analysts say, leaving millions stuck below the poverty line and raising tough questions about whether Africa's resource boom can effectively raise the standard of living of its people.
"You get these rich countries with poor people," said the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who recently visited Mozambique and has written on the struggle of resource-rich countries to develop. "You have all this money flowing in, but you don't have real job creation and you don't have sustained growth."
It is a problem in resource-rich countries across Africa. In a largely upbeat assessment of Africa's growth prospects, the World Bank said in October that rapidly growing economies powered by oil, gas and minerals have seen poverty levels fall more slowly than countries without those resources.
In some nations, like Gabon and Angola, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has even increased as growth has spiked.
Most of Mozambique's people live in rural areas, and almost all of them depend on farming. Since commercial farming scarcely exists -- 99 percent of farmers are smallholders -- this means small-scale, family-based agriculture is the main, and in many cases the only, source of income for the vast majority of Mozambicans.
But the new gas and coal deals are wrapped up in multibillion-dollar megaprojects that rarely create large numbers of jobs or foster local entrepreneurship, according to an analysis by the United States Agency for International Development.
"The effects of megaprojects on living standards were found to be very modest," the report said. "These projects, over all, have created few jobs. And linkages to the public budget via tax revenues have also been small because of tax exemptions."
The plight of the people of this tiny, new village helps illustrate why Mozambique's rural poor have been left behind. Far from the centers of economic power, dependent on rain-fed agriculture and ignored by the government, the rural poor languish even as the country surges.
The coal deposits in Moatize represent one of the biggest untapped reserves in the world, and the Brazilian mining company Vale has placed a big bet on it. But to get to the coal, hundreds of villagers living atop it had to be moved. The company held a series of meetings with community members and government officials, laying out its plans to build tidy new bungalows for each family and upgrade public services. As the prospect of huge new investments in their rural corner of the world beckoned, villagers anticipated a whole new life: jobs, houses, education, and even free food.
Things didn't work out that way. The houses were poorly built and leaked when it rained. The promised water taps and electricity never arrived. Cateme is too far from the mine for anyone here to get a job there. The new fields are dusty and barren -- coaxing anything from them is hard.
Before he moved, Mr. Chachoka made a tidy living. He had a small vegetable patch, his wife made bricks from mud to sell in a nearby town, and he could pick up occasional work as a laborer.
Mr. Chachoka's move from peri-urban striver who salted away extra cash to struggling rural farmer who can barely feed his family is emblematic of a problem facing Mozambique and many other resource-rich but still deeply poor nations. Strong economic growth almost completely bypasses the rural poor, and in some ways can leave them even worse off. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," Mr. Chachoka said. "That is what is happening here."
Some resource-rich countries in Africa have managed to turn mineral wealth into broad-based development. Ghana, which recently discovered oil, has won praise for its careful planning for poverty alleviation. Botswana's diamonds have turned what was one of the world's most impoverished nations into a middle-income country. Mozambique says it hopes to do the same, striking a balance between exploiting its mineral wealth and improving rural farming so that all Mozambicans benefit.
"We are very optimistic," said Abdul Razak, deputy minister of mines and the man in charge of bringing Mozambique into compliance with international standards for transparency. "The level of poverty is going to be lower and the level of well-being is going to be higher."
The government has signed up to be part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a program set up by Britain and supported by the World Bank to ensure that governments and companies are honest about revenues. The government also says it plans to invest the proceeds of mining into antipoverty programs and to help rural farmers.
But Mozambique's experience also shows how hard it will be to get there. Even after two decades of strong growth, the country remains near dead last on the Human Development Index, just above Burundi, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo. By some measures, median income has actually shrunk, not grown, since its boom began.
The events that unfolded in Cateme explain why this is the case. Earlier this year, the people of Cateme sent a letter to local government officials and Vale demanding that their complaints about the resettlement process be addressed, threatening to block the railway line that passes through their village carrying coal to the port. When they received no reply, they occupied the rail line. The police descended upon them, chasing them away and roughing up those who resisted removal.
Instead, they ended up being moved 25 miles away from the mine, living in crumbling, leaky houses, farming barren plots of land, far from any kind of jobs that the mine might create and farther than ever from Mozambique's growth miracle.
"Development is coming, but the development is going to certain areas and certain people," Mr. Chachoka said, taking a break from trying to coax enough food from his scraggly field to feed his six children.
Mozambique is one of the poorest nations in the world, broken by a brutal colonial legacy, a 16-year civil war and failed experiments with Marxist economic policy. But it is also one of the so-called African Lions: countries that are growing at well above 6 percent annually, even amid the global downturn.
Mozambique is poised for a long economic boom, driven by its vast deposits of coal and natural gas. Vale, the Brazilian mining company, is planning to invest $6 billion in its coal operation near here, and other coal giants like Rio Tinto will soon begin producing coal in the Tete region of northern Mozambique.
Gas projects could bring in far more, as much as $70 billion, according to World Bank estimates. Mozambique's location on Africa's southeastern coast means it is perfectly positioned to feed hungry markets in southern and eastern Asia. These investments mean that income from natural resources could easily outstrip the outsized contribution foreign aid makes to its $5 billion annual budget.
The country has been growing at a rapid clip for the past two decades, in fact, since the end of its brutal civil war. Yet, after a substantial drop in the first postwar decade, gains against poverty have slowed substantially, analysts say, leaving millions stuck below the poverty line and raising tough questions about whether Africa's resource boom can effectively raise the standard of living of its people.
"You get these rich countries with poor people," said the economist Joseph Stiglitz, who recently visited Mozambique and has written on the struggle of resource-rich countries to develop. "You have all this money flowing in, but you don't have real job creation and you don't have sustained growth."
It is a problem in resource-rich countries across Africa. In a largely upbeat assessment of Africa's growth prospects, the World Bank said in October that rapidly growing economies powered by oil, gas and minerals have seen poverty levels fall more slowly than countries without those resources.
In some nations, like Gabon and Angola, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has even increased as growth has spiked.
Most of Mozambique's people live in rural areas, and almost all of them depend on farming. Since commercial farming scarcely exists -- 99 percent of farmers are smallholders -- this means small-scale, family-based agriculture is the main, and in many cases the only, source of income for the vast majority of Mozambicans.
But the new gas and coal deals are wrapped up in multibillion-dollar megaprojects that rarely create large numbers of jobs or foster local entrepreneurship, according to an analysis by the United States Agency for International Development.
"The effects of megaprojects on living standards were found to be very modest," the report said. "These projects, over all, have created few jobs. And linkages to the public budget via tax revenues have also been small because of tax exemptions."
The plight of the people of this tiny, new village helps illustrate why Mozambique's rural poor have been left behind. Far from the centers of economic power, dependent on rain-fed agriculture and ignored by the government, the rural poor languish even as the country surges.
The coal deposits in Moatize represent one of the biggest untapped reserves in the world, and the Brazilian mining company Vale has placed a big bet on it. But to get to the coal, hundreds of villagers living atop it had to be moved. The company held a series of meetings with community members and government officials, laying out its plans to build tidy new bungalows for each family and upgrade public services. As the prospect of huge new investments in their rural corner of the world beckoned, villagers anticipated a whole new life: jobs, houses, education, and even free food.
Things didn't work out that way. The houses were poorly built and leaked when it rained. The promised water taps and electricity never arrived. Cateme is too far from the mine for anyone here to get a job there. The new fields are dusty and barren -- coaxing anything from them is hard.
Before he moved, Mr. Chachoka made a tidy living. He had a small vegetable patch, his wife made bricks from mud to sell in a nearby town, and he could pick up occasional work as a laborer.
Mr. Chachoka's move from peri-urban striver who salted away extra cash to struggling rural farmer who can barely feed his family is emblematic of a problem facing Mozambique and many other resource-rich but still deeply poor nations. Strong economic growth almost completely bypasses the rural poor, and in some ways can leave them even worse off. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer," Mr. Chachoka said. "That is what is happening here."
Some resource-rich countries in Africa have managed to turn mineral wealth into broad-based development. Ghana, which recently discovered oil, has won praise for its careful planning for poverty alleviation. Botswana's diamonds have turned what was one of the world's most impoverished nations into a middle-income country. Mozambique says it hopes to do the same, striking a balance between exploiting its mineral wealth and improving rural farming so that all Mozambicans benefit.
"We are very optimistic," said Abdul Razak, deputy minister of mines and the man in charge of bringing Mozambique into compliance with international standards for transparency. "The level of poverty is going to be lower and the level of well-being is going to be higher."
The government has signed up to be part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a program set up by Britain and supported by the World Bank to ensure that governments and companies are honest about revenues. The government also says it plans to invest the proceeds of mining into antipoverty programs and to help rural farmers.
But Mozambique's experience also shows how hard it will be to get there. Even after two decades of strong growth, the country remains near dead last on the Human Development Index, just above Burundi, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo. By some measures, median income has actually shrunk, not grown, since its boom began.
The events that unfolded in Cateme explain why this is the case. Earlier this year, the people of Cateme sent a letter to local government officials and Vale demanding that their complaints about the resettlement process be addressed, threatening to block the railway line that passes through their village carrying coal to the port. When they received no reply, they occupied the rail line. The police descended upon them, chasing them away and roughing up those who resisted removal.
2012年10月11日星期四
Three important news items about timing
When is the last time you ran a race where you got your mile split times called out to you by a volunteer? If you’re new to running, it may be you’ve never heard a split called, but long-time runners remember the days before lap-counting watches and Garmins, when it was very important to have a volunteer call out mile split times. I’m sure many of you have run races where a digital display gave you your elapsed time along the course, such as the Dallas Marathon, formerly White Rock, but the greatest service is hearing the time called to you, so you don’t miss it.
Except for last year, the Dallas Running Club has provided this service every year at the Half, and they plan to do it again this year on Sunday November 4th. As a runner, you’ll appreciate it I’m sure because you’ll get gun time information, even if your timing device gives you chip time.
Bob Freeman has headed up this volunteer effort for some years, managing the timers, and I’ve had the pleasure of working for him in the past. Basically what happens is this. The volunteers stage at a convenient location, say a mile or so into the course, then listen for the gun by cell phone and start their watches. From there they are dropped off one by one at all the mile marks. I once worked at the half-mile helpfully marked by Ken Ashby, and the runners were grateful to get an early split and adjust pace.
Bob tells me that this year he is short of volunteers, and because I believe the timers provide a real value to the race experience, I promised him I would ask you to step up and volunteer for one of the jobs. And now I’m going to “sell” you on it!
First, if you’ve never done it before, it’s incredibly fun. You’ll get instructions on how to yell out the splits as the runners pass you, nice and loud, and you’ll have lots of time to see your friends, get lots of thanks from the runners and have a great view of the race. So if you’re new to all this and would like to get involved, I promise you’ll get a lot of love from the DRC if you step up. Also, if you’re injured and want to come to the race, this is a great way to visit and keep busy.
The head of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit gave me an exclusive interview last week on the agency’s restructuring. Chief Supt. Dan Malo said the more that 400 employees of the CFSEU will now be dedicated to tackling gang violence.
Parts of the agency that previously did longer-term organized crime investigations will now be joining the efforts to tackle the most violent gang members instead. The bigger investigations will be done by the RCMP’s federal policing sections in B.C.
Malo also said the Gang Task Force will be eliminated in name, given that all of CFSEU now has the same mandate as the GTF, which was a unit with the CFSEU.
Malo said he has consulted with the 14 member agencies – the RCMP and municipal police, plus the organized crime agency – as well as the BC government, so everyone is in agreement this is the best way to proceed.
There are now 188 gangs and crime groups in B.C., Malo said. That is up from just 51 in 2003. Of course there is a lot more intelligence being gathered now than there was then, so some of the increase is due to more detailed information-gathering.
Except for last year, the Dallas Running Club has provided this service every year at the Half, and they plan to do it again this year on Sunday November 4th. As a runner, you’ll appreciate it I’m sure because you’ll get gun time information, even if your timing device gives you chip time.
Bob Freeman has headed up this volunteer effort for some years, managing the timers, and I’ve had the pleasure of working for him in the past. Basically what happens is this. The volunteers stage at a convenient location, say a mile or so into the course, then listen for the gun by cell phone and start their watches. From there they are dropped off one by one at all the mile marks. I once worked at the half-mile helpfully marked by Ken Ashby, and the runners were grateful to get an early split and adjust pace.
Bob tells me that this year he is short of volunteers, and because I believe the timers provide a real value to the race experience, I promised him I would ask you to step up and volunteer for one of the jobs. And now I’m going to “sell” you on it!
First, if you’ve never done it before, it’s incredibly fun. You’ll get instructions on how to yell out the splits as the runners pass you, nice and loud, and you’ll have lots of time to see your friends, get lots of thanks from the runners and have a great view of the race. So if you’re new to all this and would like to get involved, I promise you’ll get a lot of love from the DRC if you step up. Also, if you’re injured and want to come to the race, this is a great way to visit and keep busy.
The head of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit gave me an exclusive interview last week on the agency’s restructuring. Chief Supt. Dan Malo said the more that 400 employees of the CFSEU will now be dedicated to tackling gang violence.
Parts of the agency that previously did longer-term organized crime investigations will now be joining the efforts to tackle the most violent gang members instead. The bigger investigations will be done by the RCMP’s federal policing sections in B.C.
Malo also said the Gang Task Force will be eliminated in name, given that all of CFSEU now has the same mandate as the GTF, which was a unit with the CFSEU.
Malo said he has consulted with the 14 member agencies – the RCMP and municipal police, plus the organized crime agency – as well as the BC government, so everyone is in agreement this is the best way to proceed.
There are now 188 gangs and crime groups in B.C., Malo said. That is up from just 51 in 2003. Of course there is a lot more intelligence being gathered now than there was then, so some of the increase is due to more detailed information-gathering.
2012年9月3日星期一
Gliding Over All
In novel writing, there's something called the "temporary triumph." In screenwriting, Syd Field calls it, for lack of a better word I guess, the "midpoint." Whatever you name it, it happens in the middle of Act II in a three act structure, essentially the middle of the book or movie, the tip top of the mountain on the story map. Things are going super great and well for our main character. And then the denouement happens and everything turns to shit.
Last night's episode marked the official midpoint of the final season of Breaking Bad, the time when we know this is as good as it's going to get for Walter White before things turn to shit. Fittingly, the episode ended with the literal shit that could bring down Heisenberg once and for all.
All told, for an episode of Breaking Bad, "Gliding Over All" was surprisingly positive and serene. I mean, sure, there was that little montage with all of Mike's guys in prison getting hit with shivs made out of toothbrushes and getting doused with flammable...something... Did they sneak gasoline into the building under the guise of bottled water? If not, how do prisoners have such ready access to gallons of liquid that light up like the sun with one match? It doesn't really matter, of course. I'm just wondering, logistically. It's good information to have.
But other than that, we had Walt in a tender-ish moment with both Skyler and Jesse. Skyler had a moment of levity with both Marie and Holly. I would've included Junior in that, but he's back to being "Flynn" and acting like a petulant teenager again. We had a really stellar montage set to "Crystal Blue Persuasion" in which we were treated to several days (spread out over several months) in the life of the smooth-running Heisenberg meth operation.
But there were cracks. There were little moments where you just knew all was not about to be well. At the end of every day in the montage, there was a shot of Walt looking more tired and more haggard. There was the shot of Walt in the shower that also made sure to show us that he's using Gale's Leaves of Grass book as toilet reading material. As you do. After not coffee with Lydia, there was the shot -- zoinks! -- of the back of Walt's head as he slid on his glasses that made sure to focus squarely on the area directly behind Walt's right ear. As someone who has been on the alert for this kind of brain tumor theory affirmation since the first episode of the season, this was like Christmas morning for me. Obviously I was right and I would have confirmation by the end of the episode.
Well, not quite. But we did have pretty clear confirmation that the cancer is back. Walt has his family back and he has a storage unit full of cash money and his cancer is back. He has all of these things, plus Hank is clogging up his toilet with his monster DEA dookies and he's actually reading Walt's bathroom books. And now, because of Walt Whitman and Gale and and the initials WW and the fact that Skyler's cooking goes through you like a freight train, Hank suspects things. Terrible things.
I loved the fly showing up in Heisenberg and Associates offices. That bug shows up whenever shit's about to get real. Prediction: The entire series ends with Walt either in jail or a hospital bed watching a fly flit around the room.
The ricin cigarette popped up again. Walt brought it to coffee with Lydia...just in case. And then he put it back in the wall. Methinks this is certainly not the last time this little prop will pop up. Baseless prediction: Hank starts investigating Walt. Finds out about Skyler's involvement. Offers her a deal for cooperation. He tells her she won't serve time and she can be safe with her children while Walt is locked up forever. That bargain is appealing to Skyler. But maybe not. Maybe she's feeling better about Walt or pitying him about his cancer and she's not going to turn him in. Either way, Walt finds out and hands her the ricin cigarette.
Last night's episode marked the official midpoint of the final season of Breaking Bad, the time when we know this is as good as it's going to get for Walter White before things turn to shit. Fittingly, the episode ended with the literal shit that could bring down Heisenberg once and for all.
All told, for an episode of Breaking Bad, "Gliding Over All" was surprisingly positive and serene. I mean, sure, there was that little montage with all of Mike's guys in prison getting hit with shivs made out of toothbrushes and getting doused with flammable...something... Did they sneak gasoline into the building under the guise of bottled water? If not, how do prisoners have such ready access to gallons of liquid that light up like the sun with one match? It doesn't really matter, of course. I'm just wondering, logistically. It's good information to have.
But other than that, we had Walt in a tender-ish moment with both Skyler and Jesse. Skyler had a moment of levity with both Marie and Holly. I would've included Junior in that, but he's back to being "Flynn" and acting like a petulant teenager again. We had a really stellar montage set to "Crystal Blue Persuasion" in which we were treated to several days (spread out over several months) in the life of the smooth-running Heisenberg meth operation.
But there were cracks. There were little moments where you just knew all was not about to be well. At the end of every day in the montage, there was a shot of Walt looking more tired and more haggard. There was the shot of Walt in the shower that also made sure to show us that he's using Gale's Leaves of Grass book as toilet reading material. As you do. After not coffee with Lydia, there was the shot -- zoinks! -- of the back of Walt's head as he slid on his glasses that made sure to focus squarely on the area directly behind Walt's right ear. As someone who has been on the alert for this kind of brain tumor theory affirmation since the first episode of the season, this was like Christmas morning for me. Obviously I was right and I would have confirmation by the end of the episode.
Well, not quite. But we did have pretty clear confirmation that the cancer is back. Walt has his family back and he has a storage unit full of cash money and his cancer is back. He has all of these things, plus Hank is clogging up his toilet with his monster DEA dookies and he's actually reading Walt's bathroom books. And now, because of Walt Whitman and Gale and and the initials WW and the fact that Skyler's cooking goes through you like a freight train, Hank suspects things. Terrible things.
I loved the fly showing up in Heisenberg and Associates offices. That bug shows up whenever shit's about to get real. Prediction: The entire series ends with Walt either in jail or a hospital bed watching a fly flit around the room.
The ricin cigarette popped up again. Walt brought it to coffee with Lydia...just in case. And then he put it back in the wall. Methinks this is certainly not the last time this little prop will pop up. Baseless prediction: Hank starts investigating Walt. Finds out about Skyler's involvement. Offers her a deal for cooperation. He tells her she won't serve time and she can be safe with her children while Walt is locked up forever. That bargain is appealing to Skyler. But maybe not. Maybe she's feeling better about Walt or pitying him about his cancer and she's not going to turn him in. Either way, Walt finds out and hands her the ricin cigarette.
2012年8月28日星期二
Honda CR-V
I get alloyed animosity every time I anticipate about the Honda CR-V. Here is one sport-cute that I actually adored in its first-generation version. That 1998 archetypal bristled with able packaging, administration and autogenous architectonics and architecture, appropriate down to the folding centermost tray amid the foreground seats and the cabin’s aerial grab balustrade that spanned the breadth of the ceiling.
Each new iteration, however, brought the CR-V anytime added upmarket. It grew larger, heavier, added luxurious, and consequently, added expensive. Is that actually what the bazaar wanted?
Well, that seems to be the trend in any automotive articulation so I accept Honda is cogent me to just get on with the program.
The all-new fourth-generation CR-V continues this trend, with added ability and added space—despite, as Honda claims, arresting beneath ammunition and abounding beneath emissions and—surprise, surprise—actually accepting a tad beneath than its actual predecessor. Instead of the accepted admeasurement upgrade, the CR-V sports a lower contour and beneath wheelbase. And I anticipate Honda deserves acclaim for that.
Up front, the bonanza and grille breeze into the headlamps to anatomy a wedge-shaped profile, as the bonanza of the antecedent archetypal loses its arresting bulging arch edge. On the side, the bland curve of the CR-V are accentuated by acclaim flared caster arches. What Honda calls a C-pillar “kink” completes the heavily revised rear end that aswell leads into what the aggregation refers to as “conversation-piece” taillights. I alarm them love-it-or-hate-it taillights. They attending acceptable from some angles but assume torn from others. The C-pillar coil aswell elicits polarizing opinions. The appearance of the ancillary windows is adroit enough, but the C-pillar itself looks a tad awkward—or at atomic unconventionally different. It actually takes some accepting acclimated to. And I’m not actually abiding if it will abound on me.
Two variants are offered: a 153-hp SOHC 2.0 iVTEC 2WD abject archetypal and our 185-hp DOHC 2.4 iVTEC 4WD flagship analysis unit. The engine—and the accomplished drivetrain, for that matter—simply oozes absolute refinement. Gear accouterment are around ephemeral while ride superior is best declared as supple; even the way the brakes chaw acclaim yet absolutely if you footfall on the larboard pedal agilely is oh-so-smooooth.
Inside, “smooth” is still the accessible word. Fit and accomplishment are seamless and the abstracts acclimated are of the accomplished quality. Cabin space, as expected, is generous. Honda is the acknowledged best in this regard. All address of cubbyholes and added accumulator compartments abound. They’re well-located and intelligently sized, too. Honda actually sweats the data added than a lot of added car manufacturers, Japanese or otherwise.
The Japan-made CR-V boasts appearance ahead apparent on the all-new Civic. The columnist of an ECON button turns the car into a ammunition miser—controlling engine, drive-by-wire, transmission, and even the AC to aerate fuel. But there are added acquiescent systems to leave controlling to the driver. An “Eco-coaching” ambient ablaze beside the speedometer lights blooming to announce if you’re accepting advisable with the accelerator—and white if you assume to be accepting too abundant fun.
The 2.4 EX is aswell able with an i-MID (Intelligent Multi-Information Display), accent by a 5-inch LCD for real-time acknowledgment and simple admission to audio advice and ammunition consumption. Controlled through council caster buttons, the arrangement allows affectation customization to appearance specific car settings. The EX aswell appearance a hands-free adaptable buzz interface, and a rear camera that displays the rear appearance on the birr LCD.
Honda says the new CR-V betters its antecedent in autogenous burden aggregate by 65 liters, due in allotment to lower-folding rear seats—perhaps a assignment abstruse from the space-savvy Jazz.
Each new iteration, however, brought the CR-V anytime added upmarket. It grew larger, heavier, added luxurious, and consequently, added expensive. Is that actually what the bazaar wanted?
Well, that seems to be the trend in any automotive articulation so I accept Honda is cogent me to just get on with the program.
The all-new fourth-generation CR-V continues this trend, with added ability and added space—despite, as Honda claims, arresting beneath ammunition and abounding beneath emissions and—surprise, surprise—actually accepting a tad beneath than its actual predecessor. Instead of the accepted admeasurement upgrade, the CR-V sports a lower contour and beneath wheelbase. And I anticipate Honda deserves acclaim for that.
Up front, the bonanza and grille breeze into the headlamps to anatomy a wedge-shaped profile, as the bonanza of the antecedent archetypal loses its arresting bulging arch edge. On the side, the bland curve of the CR-V are accentuated by acclaim flared caster arches. What Honda calls a C-pillar “kink” completes the heavily revised rear end that aswell leads into what the aggregation refers to as “conversation-piece” taillights. I alarm them love-it-or-hate-it taillights. They attending acceptable from some angles but assume torn from others. The C-pillar coil aswell elicits polarizing opinions. The appearance of the ancillary windows is adroit enough, but the C-pillar itself looks a tad awkward—or at atomic unconventionally different. It actually takes some accepting acclimated to. And I’m not actually abiding if it will abound on me.
Two variants are offered: a 153-hp SOHC 2.0 iVTEC 2WD abject archetypal and our 185-hp DOHC 2.4 iVTEC 4WD flagship analysis unit. The engine—and the accomplished drivetrain, for that matter—simply oozes absolute refinement. Gear accouterment are around ephemeral while ride superior is best declared as supple; even the way the brakes chaw acclaim yet absolutely if you footfall on the larboard pedal agilely is oh-so-smooooth.
Inside, “smooth” is still the accessible word. Fit and accomplishment are seamless and the abstracts acclimated are of the accomplished quality. Cabin space, as expected, is generous. Honda is the acknowledged best in this regard. All address of cubbyholes and added accumulator compartments abound. They’re well-located and intelligently sized, too. Honda actually sweats the data added than a lot of added car manufacturers, Japanese or otherwise.
The Japan-made CR-V boasts appearance ahead apparent on the all-new Civic. The columnist of an ECON button turns the car into a ammunition miser—controlling engine, drive-by-wire, transmission, and even the AC to aerate fuel. But there are added acquiescent systems to leave controlling to the driver. An “Eco-coaching” ambient ablaze beside the speedometer lights blooming to announce if you’re accepting advisable with the accelerator—and white if you assume to be accepting too abundant fun.
The 2.4 EX is aswell able with an i-MID (Intelligent Multi-Information Display), accent by a 5-inch LCD for real-time acknowledgment and simple admission to audio advice and ammunition consumption. Controlled through council caster buttons, the arrangement allows affectation customization to appearance specific car settings. The EX aswell appearance a hands-free adaptable buzz interface, and a rear camera that displays the rear appearance on the birr LCD.
Honda says the new CR-V betters its antecedent in autogenous burden aggregate by 65 liters, due in allotment to lower-folding rear seats—perhaps a assignment abstruse from the space-savvy Jazz.
2012年8月20日星期一
Programming threatened as Louisiana Public
A brief conversation with Louisiana Public Broadcasting President Beth Courtney makes one thing clear: She does not mince words.
It's apparent, as well, that she will not let her station go down without a fight.
Louisiana Public Broadcasting is funded partially through the Public Broadcasting System, and the head of the latter is nearly always on the chopping block. Federal funds pay a portion of the bills for PBS, and in turn pay a portion of the bills for LPB.
Last month the U.S. House Republicans announced legislation aimed at cutting off federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which includes PBS, saying it could get along just fine without taxpayer help.
"Just because you have a bookstore doesn't mean you don't need libraries," Courtney said. "I'm not going quietly into the night."
The move comes on the heels of PBS' record 58 Emmy Awards nominations. The mass following of "Downton Abby" alone has pushed public broadcasting into a new dimension where young adults tune in at the rate of small children to "Sesame Street." That is to say, PBS is hip.
The state of Louisiana has been chipping away at LPB's budget since 2008; it's now down 37 percent. Another nearly $2 million in cuts from the federal government could be the death blow.
"You get ($2 million) with the decline in state funding, and it would be devastating to our budget," Courtney said. "That money is really important."
If the proposed cuts pass, Louisiana residents would lose local programming first. That includes "Louisiana Public Square," "The State We're In," "Atchafalaya Houseboat" and dozens of other programs that tell Louisiana's stories of creek banks, farm houses and skyscrapers.
Much of the PBS/LPB programming that goes to DVD or book ends up in Central Louisiana libraries.
"I was surprised at the variety and substance of material we have (in the parish library system)," said Rapides Parish Library Director Steve Rogge. "The latest is a documentary called 'Too Important to Fail' -- it's about African-American teenagers and the dropout rate. And there are materials on the Dust Bowl and Huey Long -- solid topics."
It's losing the children's programming, though, that would be most detrimental.
"What LPB does for our school children is amazing," said Carole Baxter, a Friends of LPB board member from Alexandria.
PBS/LPB is not just "Clifford, the Big Red Dog" and "Arthur." Children's educational programming is top priority for LPB. Louisiana educators avail themselves of LPB's materials to makes ends meet in the classrooms.
"Teachers can download programming to their (digital devices, including Promethean Boards)," Baxter said. "They can't get things off the internet because of all the (potential viruses). They can download this programming safely."
Angie Delrie, Library Media Specialist at W.O. Hall Elementary, said PBS Kids is an invaluable resource.
"They have such a wide range of subject areas and interesting topics," she said. "I don't think teachers or parents realize how many resources are at their fingertips."
The funding strain could be the reason, Delrie said. She said she hasn't seen much literature available to promote PBS Kids.
"A child or even a teacher could be on for days and never access all the resources," Delrie said. "And it's all free."
Free resources to teachers is more important now than ever, as the Louisiana education system is revamped this year.
"With our new common core, (PBS Kids) gives the kids a technology base for their learning," Delrie said. "We are to provide every type of learning we can to the kids. PBS provides technology learning, and through handouts I can print out for activities, it provides hands-on learning."
It's apparent, as well, that she will not let her station go down without a fight.
Louisiana Public Broadcasting is funded partially through the Public Broadcasting System, and the head of the latter is nearly always on the chopping block. Federal funds pay a portion of the bills for PBS, and in turn pay a portion of the bills for LPB.
Last month the U.S. House Republicans announced legislation aimed at cutting off federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which includes PBS, saying it could get along just fine without taxpayer help.
"Just because you have a bookstore doesn't mean you don't need libraries," Courtney said. "I'm not going quietly into the night."
The move comes on the heels of PBS' record 58 Emmy Awards nominations. The mass following of "Downton Abby" alone has pushed public broadcasting into a new dimension where young adults tune in at the rate of small children to "Sesame Street." That is to say, PBS is hip.
The state of Louisiana has been chipping away at LPB's budget since 2008; it's now down 37 percent. Another nearly $2 million in cuts from the federal government could be the death blow.
"You get ($2 million) with the decline in state funding, and it would be devastating to our budget," Courtney said. "That money is really important."
If the proposed cuts pass, Louisiana residents would lose local programming first. That includes "Louisiana Public Square," "The State We're In," "Atchafalaya Houseboat" and dozens of other programs that tell Louisiana's stories of creek banks, farm houses and skyscrapers.
Much of the PBS/LPB programming that goes to DVD or book ends up in Central Louisiana libraries.
"I was surprised at the variety and substance of material we have (in the parish library system)," said Rapides Parish Library Director Steve Rogge. "The latest is a documentary called 'Too Important to Fail' -- it's about African-American teenagers and the dropout rate. And there are materials on the Dust Bowl and Huey Long -- solid topics."
It's losing the children's programming, though, that would be most detrimental.
"What LPB does for our school children is amazing," said Carole Baxter, a Friends of LPB board member from Alexandria.
PBS/LPB is not just "Clifford, the Big Red Dog" and "Arthur." Children's educational programming is top priority for LPB. Louisiana educators avail themselves of LPB's materials to makes ends meet in the classrooms.
"Teachers can download programming to their (digital devices, including Promethean Boards)," Baxter said. "They can't get things off the internet because of all the (potential viruses). They can download this programming safely."
Angie Delrie, Library Media Specialist at W.O. Hall Elementary, said PBS Kids is an invaluable resource.
"They have such a wide range of subject areas and interesting topics," she said. "I don't think teachers or parents realize how many resources are at their fingertips."
The funding strain could be the reason, Delrie said. She said she hasn't seen much literature available to promote PBS Kids.
"A child or even a teacher could be on for days and never access all the resources," Delrie said. "And it's all free."
Free resources to teachers is more important now than ever, as the Louisiana education system is revamped this year.
"With our new common core, (PBS Kids) gives the kids a technology base for their learning," Delrie said. "We are to provide every type of learning we can to the kids. PBS provides technology learning, and through handouts I can print out for activities, it provides hands-on learning."
2012年8月14日星期二
At night, Jerusalem the aureate
One acute night — or so it is said — Turkish Sultan Suleiman the Arresting awoke covered in a algid sweat. He had dreamed that while he was walking in an accessible field, a brace of athirst lions pounced aloft him and he was greedily devoured.
When asked what the dream meant, Suleiman’s adviser responded by suggesting that the Sultan bound accomplish a acceptable deed. And so, in 1538, Suleiman began apology of Jerusalem’s broke city-limits wall. Impressive during the day, the bank is admirable at night.
Thanks to a borough activity put into aftereffect at the end of the 20th century, dozens of the world’s a lot of celebrated and arresting sites, the Old City-limits walls arresting a allotment of them, are artistically lit from Jerusalem dark to Jerusalem dawn.
Another of the a lot of admirable is in the Russian Compound. Inaugurated in 1872, the affected Russian Cathedral of the Trinity is a active spectacle. This abbey is endemic by “Red Russians,” abbey admiral who were affectionate to the Communist regime. During the Algid War, Red Russian Orthodox priests came to Israel – and larboard — at an clumsily accelerated pace. To this day abounding accept that the always alteration clergy were alive for the KGB.
Also lit up is Notre Dame de Jerusalem, with an arty bedrock bluff and angled turrets. Located alfresco the Old City-limits walls, it was congenital in 1884 by the Catholic Adjustment that pioneered atoning pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
During the 1948 War of Independence, Israeli defenders on the Notre Dame ramparts managed to arrest the Arab Legion beforehand into western Jerusalem. Following the war, and until Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, Israeli soldiers attentive the city-limits from posts on the roof of Notre Dame, anon adverse Jordanian soldiers positioned on the Old City-limits walls.
No added website in Jerusalem is as burdened with symbols as the arresting Jerusalem YMCA, a aglow anatomy on King David Street. Reflected on its walls, ceilings, stones and pillars are manifestations of the world’s three greatest faiths. The artist was Arthur Louis Harmon, whose close advised New York’s world-famous Empire State Building.
A bottle window over the access is busy with an olive branch. In adjustment to accumulate this attribute of accord from getting burst during the War of Independence, the window was removed anniversary time the Arabs started shooting. One day, a carapace flew through the aperture area the window had been and hit the ceiling. Fortunately it didn’t backfire and the accident was afterwards repaired.
Perhaps the a lot of airy sites to see are forth the Promenade, alfresco the eastern end of the Old City-limits walls. From actuality you can appearance the Kidron Valley, mentioned by name 11 times in the Scriptures. Jewish and Christian traditions amalgamate in this wadi, area Israelite kings, princes, priests and prophets are apparently buried, and area Jesus was wont to walk.
After abnegation for three days, the Jews fabricated a crusade to the tomb of Zechariah. Throwing themselves aloft the arena they prayed. Then, while singing psalms, they circled the tomb seven times. By atramentous the sky was black. Heavy rain, accompanied by barrage and lightning, fell on the Holy City. The Jews were saved, the city’s cisterns abounding with water, and the adherence of Zechariah’s tomb was reaffirmed.
Next to Zechariah’s tomb lights flash through the Hezir ancestors burying complex. It housed the charcoal of a acclaimed ancestors of priests mentioned by name in the Bible. Christians aswell alarm this the Tomb of St. James for, according to tradition, afterwards the beheading Jesus’s accessory James hid from the Romans in the Hezir ancestors tomb.
The a lot of arresting anatomy in the Kidron Valley is Yad Avshalom, or Cairn to Absalom. A aerial 22 meters in height, it was hewn out of the bedrock and is absolutely abstracted from the abruptness abaft it. Columns and capitals adorn the massive lower allotment of the monument, which is acclaimed by a annular top catastrophe in a long, attenuate point. The altar dates aback to the aboriginal aeon B.C.E – about a thousand years afterwards Absalom rebelled adjoin his ancestor and was run through with a javelin by the king’s captain.
When asked what the dream meant, Suleiman’s adviser responded by suggesting that the Sultan bound accomplish a acceptable deed. And so, in 1538, Suleiman began apology of Jerusalem’s broke city-limits wall. Impressive during the day, the bank is admirable at night.
Thanks to a borough activity put into aftereffect at the end of the 20th century, dozens of the world’s a lot of celebrated and arresting sites, the Old City-limits walls arresting a allotment of them, are artistically lit from Jerusalem dark to Jerusalem dawn.
Another of the a lot of admirable is in the Russian Compound. Inaugurated in 1872, the affected Russian Cathedral of the Trinity is a active spectacle. This abbey is endemic by “Red Russians,” abbey admiral who were affectionate to the Communist regime. During the Algid War, Red Russian Orthodox priests came to Israel – and larboard — at an clumsily accelerated pace. To this day abounding accept that the always alteration clergy were alive for the KGB.
Also lit up is Notre Dame de Jerusalem, with an arty bedrock bluff and angled turrets. Located alfresco the Old City-limits walls, it was congenital in 1884 by the Catholic Adjustment that pioneered atoning pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
During the 1948 War of Independence, Israeli defenders on the Notre Dame ramparts managed to arrest the Arab Legion beforehand into western Jerusalem. Following the war, and until Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, Israeli soldiers attentive the city-limits from posts on the roof of Notre Dame, anon adverse Jordanian soldiers positioned on the Old City-limits walls.
No added website in Jerusalem is as burdened with symbols as the arresting Jerusalem YMCA, a aglow anatomy on King David Street. Reflected on its walls, ceilings, stones and pillars are manifestations of the world’s three greatest faiths. The artist was Arthur Louis Harmon, whose close advised New York’s world-famous Empire State Building.
A bottle window over the access is busy with an olive branch. In adjustment to accumulate this attribute of accord from getting burst during the War of Independence, the window was removed anniversary time the Arabs started shooting. One day, a carapace flew through the aperture area the window had been and hit the ceiling. Fortunately it didn’t backfire and the accident was afterwards repaired.
Perhaps the a lot of airy sites to see are forth the Promenade, alfresco the eastern end of the Old City-limits walls. From actuality you can appearance the Kidron Valley, mentioned by name 11 times in the Scriptures. Jewish and Christian traditions amalgamate in this wadi, area Israelite kings, princes, priests and prophets are apparently buried, and area Jesus was wont to walk.
After abnegation for three days, the Jews fabricated a crusade to the tomb of Zechariah. Throwing themselves aloft the arena they prayed. Then, while singing psalms, they circled the tomb seven times. By atramentous the sky was black. Heavy rain, accompanied by barrage and lightning, fell on the Holy City. The Jews were saved, the city’s cisterns abounding with water, and the adherence of Zechariah’s tomb was reaffirmed.
Next to Zechariah’s tomb lights flash through the Hezir ancestors burying complex. It housed the charcoal of a acclaimed ancestors of priests mentioned by name in the Bible. Christians aswell alarm this the Tomb of St. James for, according to tradition, afterwards the beheading Jesus’s accessory James hid from the Romans in the Hezir ancestors tomb.
The a lot of arresting anatomy in the Kidron Valley is Yad Avshalom, or Cairn to Absalom. A aerial 22 meters in height, it was hewn out of the bedrock and is absolutely abstracted from the abruptness abaft it. Columns and capitals adorn the massive lower allotment of the monument, which is acclaimed by a annular top catastrophe in a long, attenuate point. The altar dates aback to the aboriginal aeon B.C.E – about a thousand years afterwards Absalom rebelled adjoin his ancestor and was run through with a javelin by the king’s captain.
2012年7月30日星期一
Early Travers Thoughts
It seems a bit funny now, but it was alone a brace of weeks ago, appropriate afterwards the retirement of Belmont Stakes champ Union Rags and the advertisement that a accessory affliction affected Bodemeister to absence training at a acute time, if there was abundant afflicted handwringing over how abhorrent this year’s Travers was traveling to be. It’s amazing how bound perceptions can change.
This Travers, at Saratoga on August 25, will accept a covering name afterwards all. That, of course, is Paynter, and I say that as one who absolutely brand Alpha as a chase horse. But a day afterwards Alpha able for the Travers with a absolute account in Saratoga’s Jim Dandy, and two canicule afterwards Street Life punched his Travers admission with a achievement in the Curlin at the Spa, Paynter addled in Sunday’s Haskell at Monmouth.
Even if you accept alone been about antagonism for two minutes, you could acquaint just by searching at it that Paynter’s Haskell was a ample cut aloft the pertinent performances that anon preceded it. I mean, Hansen could go out and win Saturday’s West Virginia Derby by 20 lengths (which he might, but I still accept he’s a abundant bigger fit for the seven furlongs of the King’s Bishop on the Travers undercard than the 10 furlongs of the Travers itself), and that would be a big addition for Travers promotion. But that wouldn’t change the actuality that Paynter is the able Travers favorite, and carefully the horse to beat.
I still haven’t bought into Street Life yet. He is bigger and he is in abundant hands, but I anticipate he about is still a grinder who got a abundant set up in the Curlin. Alpha is a altered story. Yes, he got abroad with simple fractions in his front-running Jim Dandy victory. But Alpha is best as a closer, and he in fact deserves credibility for accepting acceptable abundant to acclimate to a paceless bearings Saturday. I admired his successful, if temporary, change of active appearance against speed. To me, that is an apparent assurance of an arising horse, just as a horse who loses his positional acceleration is usually a assurance of decline.
I couldn’t advice but admiration if Winter Memories swishing her appendage and swerving about in the amplitude en avenue to her achievement in Saturday’s Diana at Saratoga wasn’t a assurance that she ability be accepting apathetic with this antagonism thing. She acutely wasn’t focused.
It is actual air-conditioned that two old, able geldings won the two big weekend contest at Del Mar – Abuse Cruise in Saturday’s San Diego Handicap and Amazombie in Sunday’s Bing Crosby. Abundant belief both, but do these performances angle up to scrutiny? Amazombie, endure year’s best macho sprinter, got a absolute cruise in the Crosby sitting just off a contested clip and exhausted a admired in The Factor who is just not himself appropriate now.
As for Abuse Trip, he is acutely at his best aback in Southern California and aback with trainer Ron Ellis. But what does it say about the San Diego ‘cap that if he was in New York with a trainer (Rick Dutrow) who wins with acutely 83% of his starters, Abuse Cruise wasn’t even an brief stakes horse?
The chargeless Wi-Fi at Saratoga is a abundant idea, and because every bazaar coffee boutique in America has offered this for years, it’s amazing this hasn’t been a accepted advantage at every clue in the land. I accept noticed that duke captivated tablets are acceptable added all-over at advance with anniversary casual week. I use one, and it acquainted like a affluence accepting able to bet with it at Saratoga. I even noticed a brace of guys walking about Restaurant Row there staring at laptops. Presumably, they were application Formulator.
Unfortunately, I can’t say annihilation nice about the widened, acute Mellon accommodation advance at Saratoga. Is it absolutely accessible that, if this activity was undertaken endure fall, no one at NYRA advised that the acute alfresco abuse on the Mellon accommodation would accomplish afterward horses on the far about-face in clay contest about impossible? Really? Of course, annihilation important happens on the far turn, anyway.
This Travers, at Saratoga on August 25, will accept a covering name afterwards all. That, of course, is Paynter, and I say that as one who absolutely brand Alpha as a chase horse. But a day afterwards Alpha able for the Travers with a absolute account in Saratoga’s Jim Dandy, and two canicule afterwards Street Life punched his Travers admission with a achievement in the Curlin at the Spa, Paynter addled in Sunday’s Haskell at Monmouth.
Even if you accept alone been about antagonism for two minutes, you could acquaint just by searching at it that Paynter’s Haskell was a ample cut aloft the pertinent performances that anon preceded it. I mean, Hansen could go out and win Saturday’s West Virginia Derby by 20 lengths (which he might, but I still accept he’s a abundant bigger fit for the seven furlongs of the King’s Bishop on the Travers undercard than the 10 furlongs of the Travers itself), and that would be a big addition for Travers promotion. But that wouldn’t change the actuality that Paynter is the able Travers favorite, and carefully the horse to beat.
I still haven’t bought into Street Life yet. He is bigger and he is in abundant hands, but I anticipate he about is still a grinder who got a abundant set up in the Curlin. Alpha is a altered story. Yes, he got abroad with simple fractions in his front-running Jim Dandy victory. But Alpha is best as a closer, and he in fact deserves credibility for accepting acceptable abundant to acclimate to a paceless bearings Saturday. I admired his successful, if temporary, change of active appearance against speed. To me, that is an apparent assurance of an arising horse, just as a horse who loses his positional acceleration is usually a assurance of decline.
I couldn’t advice but admiration if Winter Memories swishing her appendage and swerving about in the amplitude en avenue to her achievement in Saturday’s Diana at Saratoga wasn’t a assurance that she ability be accepting apathetic with this antagonism thing. She acutely wasn’t focused.
It is actual air-conditioned that two old, able geldings won the two big weekend contest at Del Mar – Abuse Cruise in Saturday’s San Diego Handicap and Amazombie in Sunday’s Bing Crosby. Abundant belief both, but do these performances angle up to scrutiny? Amazombie, endure year’s best macho sprinter, got a absolute cruise in the Crosby sitting just off a contested clip and exhausted a admired in The Factor who is just not himself appropriate now.
As for Abuse Trip, he is acutely at his best aback in Southern California and aback with trainer Ron Ellis. But what does it say about the San Diego ‘cap that if he was in New York with a trainer (Rick Dutrow) who wins with acutely 83% of his starters, Abuse Cruise wasn’t even an brief stakes horse?
The chargeless Wi-Fi at Saratoga is a abundant idea, and because every bazaar coffee boutique in America has offered this for years, it’s amazing this hasn’t been a accepted advantage at every clue in the land. I accept noticed that duke captivated tablets are acceptable added all-over at advance with anniversary casual week. I use one, and it acquainted like a affluence accepting able to bet with it at Saratoga. I even noticed a brace of guys walking about Restaurant Row there staring at laptops. Presumably, they were application Formulator.
Unfortunately, I can’t say annihilation nice about the widened, acute Mellon accommodation advance at Saratoga. Is it absolutely accessible that, if this activity was undertaken endure fall, no one at NYRA advised that the acute alfresco abuse on the Mellon accommodation would accomplish afterward horses on the far about-face in clay contest about impossible? Really? Of course, annihilation important happens on the far turn, anyway.
2012年7月24日星期二
New York Hospital Queens Tests RFID Account System
Acute-care ability New York Hospital Queens, amid in the Flushing breadth of New York City, is aerodynamics radio abundance identification technology to advice it administer its account of medical accessories and consumables, including stents, catheters and filters acclimated aural its interventional radiology unit. The RFID solution, provided by LogiTag Systems, allows agents associates to abolish implants or added all-important items from a bound cabinet, and automatically creates a agenda almanac of which items accept been removed, and by whom. In addition, the arrangement enables the hospital to advance a almanac of which items were in fact acclimated during a accurate procedure, via bar-code scans. In the future, says Jed Golden, New York Hospital Queens' administrator of abstracts management, this advice may be affiliated to absolute administration software, for the purpose of announcement those articles to that patient.
LogiTag was founded in 2004 in Netanya, Israel, to action RFID solutions for a array of markets, including an alive RFID real-time breadth arrangement (RTLS) for hospitals. Its technology is installed at every medical centermost in Israel, according to Glenn Tamir, LogiTag Systems' VP of business development.
New York Hospital Queens has deployed LogiTag's Smart Chiffonier and StockBox solutions, both accumulation RFID technology adjustable with the ISO 15693 accepted for 13.56 MHz acquiescent RFID tags. The Smart Cabinet, advised for tracking such high-value and time-sensitive items as implants acclimated during surgical procedures, has a congenital RFID clairvoyant advised and bogus by LogiTag—Tamir declines to specify the bulk of readers or antennas installed aural anniversary cabinet—to abduction if articles admission and leave its shelves, and to accommodate admission to accustomed employees. The StockBox is advised for consumables, such as surgical supplies, that are acclimated alone once. If a agreed bulk of artefact is consumed, an RFID tag is placed aural an RFID-enabled box, thereby triggering the reordering of that account from the barn or stockroom.
New York Hospital Queens installed two Smart Cabinets aural its interventional radiology breadth in January 2012, in adjustment to analysis the technology, and added a StockBox this spring. If the arrangement proves to accredit it to automate account administration at the unit, the hospital affairs to install the technology at added locations aural its 519-bed facility, such as the interventional cardiology and operating rooms.
As articles destined for the interventional radiology assemblage are accustomed at the hospital, advisers attach a acquiescent high-frequency (HF) RFID tag to anniversary item. They again advance a bar-code scanner to apprehend the product's consecutive bulk and hotlink that advice to the RFID number, as able-bodied as the product's make, model, admeasurement and cessation date, all of which are again stored in the LogiTag software, residing on the hospital's back-end system.
The Smart Chiffonier is a bound bowl absolute 5 shelves, on which up to 350 implantable accessories and added medical items are stored. If a hospital agent requires an implant or added items, he or she have to aboriginal present an agent brand with a congenital RFID tag. The Smart Cabinet's RFID clairvoyant captures the tag's different identifier and uses the LogiTag software to actuate whether that alone is accustomed to admission that accurate cabinet. If admission is approved, the software sends instructions to absolution the lock, while accompanying autumn the ID bulk affiliated to that agents member's identity.
LogiTag was founded in 2004 in Netanya, Israel, to action RFID solutions for a array of markets, including an alive RFID real-time breadth arrangement (RTLS) for hospitals. Its technology is installed at every medical centermost in Israel, according to Glenn Tamir, LogiTag Systems' VP of business development.
New York Hospital Queens has deployed LogiTag's Smart Chiffonier and StockBox solutions, both accumulation RFID technology adjustable with the ISO 15693 accepted for 13.56 MHz acquiescent RFID tags. The Smart Cabinet, advised for tracking such high-value and time-sensitive items as implants acclimated during surgical procedures, has a congenital RFID clairvoyant advised and bogus by LogiTag—Tamir declines to specify the bulk of readers or antennas installed aural anniversary cabinet—to abduction if articles admission and leave its shelves, and to accommodate admission to accustomed employees. The StockBox is advised for consumables, such as surgical supplies, that are acclimated alone once. If a agreed bulk of artefact is consumed, an RFID tag is placed aural an RFID-enabled box, thereby triggering the reordering of that account from the barn or stockroom.
New York Hospital Queens installed two Smart Cabinets aural its interventional radiology breadth in January 2012, in adjustment to analysis the technology, and added a StockBox this spring. If the arrangement proves to accredit it to automate account administration at the unit, the hospital affairs to install the technology at added locations aural its 519-bed facility, such as the interventional cardiology and operating rooms.
As articles destined for the interventional radiology assemblage are accustomed at the hospital, advisers attach a acquiescent high-frequency (HF) RFID tag to anniversary item. They again advance a bar-code scanner to apprehend the product's consecutive bulk and hotlink that advice to the RFID number, as able-bodied as the product's make, model, admeasurement and cessation date, all of which are again stored in the LogiTag software, residing on the hospital's back-end system.
The Smart Chiffonier is a bound bowl absolute 5 shelves, on which up to 350 implantable accessories and added medical items are stored. If a hospital agent requires an implant or added items, he or she have to aboriginal present an agent brand with a congenital RFID tag. The Smart Cabinet's RFID clairvoyant captures the tag's different identifier and uses the LogiTag software to actuate whether that alone is accustomed to admission that accurate cabinet. If admission is approved, the software sends instructions to absolution the lock, while accompanying autumn the ID bulk affiliated to that agents member's identity.
2012年7月22日星期日
Forget a blooming calendar - hire yourself a anchorage
The abstraction of a amphibian utopia, chargeless from authoritative meddling, has continued been a autonomous dream. The motivations active these kinds of projects accept historically been varied: in accession to the political agenda, a amphibian abject could be the ideal website for a tax haven, or a breadth for activities on the outskirts of legality, like gambling, corruption or the advertisement of charlatan radio stations.
Under accepted law, countries accept territorial affirmation up until 12 abyssal afar from shore. Beyond that, the breadth extending to 200 abyssal afar is an “exclusive bread-and-butter zone”, which agency that all corruption of accustomed assets is the sole arena of the authoritative country, but it allows for argosy or added structures to be stationed there. In the past, attempts to authorize some affectionate of adopted micro-nation accept collapsed into two categories: those which use ships, oil rigs and the like; and those which attack to body up acreage on absolute bounded appearance like reefs.
In the 1960s, the angle acquired drive and took on added coercion for Americans acquisitive to contrivance the abstract and abstain getting beatific to Vietnam (and for whom Canada was an airedale prospect). In the closing allotment of that decade US corrective mogul Werner Stiefel spent years on planning “Operation Atlantis”, which was to be an absolute antecedents for hardline chargeless marketeers. Stiefel’s aboriginal plan was to actualize an bogus island as abutting to the US as laws would allow. He realised this dream was absurd afterwards the case of Louis M. Ray, a developer who in 1969 was barred from architecture a new country on top of apricot reefs off the bank of Florida.
Stiefel interpreted the judge’s accommodation in this amount to beggarly that “Uncle Sam will abide no new adopted nation which utilises absolute reefs or added accustomed structures,” as he wrote in his newsletter, the Atlantis News, at the time. So he afflicted tack and had a 38-foot baiter congenital out of cement. The Atlantis II, as the barge was named, was launched down the Hudson River in December 1971. It agitated about immediately, because in adjustment to accomplish it fit for purpose, the address had appearance like a accurate deckhouse, which fabricated it top-heavy.
Erwin Strauss’s 1985 book How To Start Your Own Country declared what happened afterwards that: “All accessory was bare from the address except what was bare to accomplish it operable, and replaced with ballast. It still about agitated from architecture icing while bridge the aperture of New York harbour. Then it bankrupt a ballista shaft off South Carolina, and assuredly limped into the Bahamas. There it backward until it sank in a hurricane.”
This setback didn’t avert the active Stiefel. He switched his absorption to an breadth in the Caribbean alleged Silver Shoals, which was claimed by both Haiti and the Bahamas, and began to backpack out landfill operations with an eye to creating an island. Alas, it was not to be – Haitian admiral Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier beatific in his gunboats and ran Stiefel out of the area. Wired annual belletrist that Stiefel had one added attempt at his dream if he bought an oil rig and attempted to ballast it amid Cuba and Honduras, but a storm destroyed it.
There accept been added Stiefels in the endure century. Addition abolitionist autonomous millionaire, Michael Oliver, created the Republic of Minerva in 1971 by loading beach on to the Minerva Reefs in the Pacific Ocean. It’s acceptable that cipher would even accept noticed, except that on 19 January 1972 the Republic of Minerva beatific belletrist to neighbouring countries announcement their acknowledgment of independence. Tonga absitively that it was appealing abiding the reefs belonged to the island kingdom, a affirmation which was backed by Australia and New Zealand, and Tongan King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV promptly beatific an campaign to acquaint the Minervans to get packing. A decade later, addition accumulation of Americans approved to beat Minerva, but Tongan troops afresh disposed of them.
Under accepted law, countries accept territorial affirmation up until 12 abyssal afar from shore. Beyond that, the breadth extending to 200 abyssal afar is an “exclusive bread-and-butter zone”, which agency that all corruption of accustomed assets is the sole arena of the authoritative country, but it allows for argosy or added structures to be stationed there. In the past, attempts to authorize some affectionate of adopted micro-nation accept collapsed into two categories: those which use ships, oil rigs and the like; and those which attack to body up acreage on absolute bounded appearance like reefs.
In the 1960s, the angle acquired drive and took on added coercion for Americans acquisitive to contrivance the abstract and abstain getting beatific to Vietnam (and for whom Canada was an airedale prospect). In the closing allotment of that decade US corrective mogul Werner Stiefel spent years on planning “Operation Atlantis”, which was to be an absolute antecedents for hardline chargeless marketeers. Stiefel’s aboriginal plan was to actualize an bogus island as abutting to the US as laws would allow. He realised this dream was absurd afterwards the case of Louis M. Ray, a developer who in 1969 was barred from architecture a new country on top of apricot reefs off the bank of Florida.
Stiefel interpreted the judge’s accommodation in this amount to beggarly that “Uncle Sam will abide no new adopted nation which utilises absolute reefs or added accustomed structures,” as he wrote in his newsletter, the Atlantis News, at the time. So he afflicted tack and had a 38-foot baiter congenital out of cement. The Atlantis II, as the barge was named, was launched down the Hudson River in December 1971. It agitated about immediately, because in adjustment to accomplish it fit for purpose, the address had appearance like a accurate deckhouse, which fabricated it top-heavy.
Erwin Strauss’s 1985 book How To Start Your Own Country declared what happened afterwards that: “All accessory was bare from the address except what was bare to accomplish it operable, and replaced with ballast. It still about agitated from architecture icing while bridge the aperture of New York harbour. Then it bankrupt a ballista shaft off South Carolina, and assuredly limped into the Bahamas. There it backward until it sank in a hurricane.”
This setback didn’t avert the active Stiefel. He switched his absorption to an breadth in the Caribbean alleged Silver Shoals, which was claimed by both Haiti and the Bahamas, and began to backpack out landfill operations with an eye to creating an island. Alas, it was not to be – Haitian admiral Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier beatific in his gunboats and ran Stiefel out of the area. Wired annual belletrist that Stiefel had one added attempt at his dream if he bought an oil rig and attempted to ballast it amid Cuba and Honduras, but a storm destroyed it.
There accept been added Stiefels in the endure century. Addition abolitionist autonomous millionaire, Michael Oliver, created the Republic of Minerva in 1971 by loading beach on to the Minerva Reefs in the Pacific Ocean. It’s acceptable that cipher would even accept noticed, except that on 19 January 1972 the Republic of Minerva beatific belletrist to neighbouring countries announcement their acknowledgment of independence. Tonga absitively that it was appealing abiding the reefs belonged to the island kingdom, a affirmation which was backed by Australia and New Zealand, and Tongan King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV promptly beatific an campaign to acquaint the Minervans to get packing. A decade later, addition accumulation of Americans approved to beat Minerva, but Tongan troops afresh disposed of them.
2012年7月18日星期三
Google execs: addition bare to action cartels
A brace of months ago we visited Juarez, Mexico, a city-limits appropriate beyond our bound — yet so far away.
The arena was about surreal: We got off the even and were met on the alley by a accompany of armored cars and open-back trucks alive with police. The admiral were polica federal. Like the ones you apprehend about, they agitated apparatus accoutrements and wore masks to adumbrate their identities. They afraid off the backs of their trucks, alert, consistently swiveling as they surveyed the landscape.
They were searching for agitated criminals. Meanwhile, anybody we met with — civilian association leaders, nonprofit activists, private-sector admiral and adolescent humans — were searching for answers.
Their city-limits has been afflicted by crime, their lives afflicted with fear. They acquainted defeated, disillusioned and a little helpless. They asked us: What can we do?
The cartels that roam Juarez are savvy. Smugglers abrasion GPS bracelets so they can be tracked — the aforementioned dejected dots that advice smartphone users get from A to B are blipping forth in the account of kingpins and their associates.
We apperceive that technology can be acclimated for good. As added humans about the apple become connected, they can see, apprehend and apprehend more. Greater admission leads to stronger demands for accountability. We accept the advance of avant-garde accessories and admission for those a lot of threatened will actualize a virtual, admitting nascent, antithesis adjoin the world’s affliction criminals. Even adamant governments will one day accept to accommodated their citizens’ ascent expectations.
Yet connectivity will not, on its own, agitate adulterous networks. Humans tend to accept that "name and shame" will fix things — as though, already a video of atrocity is uploaded, the apple will burden the bad guys. It’s bright that alien burden hardly fixes anemic or base institutions. As we watch abandon disentangle in Syria, added than video is acutely needed. The burden has to be internal, from those who are anon afflicted and accept the incentives and mechanisms to fundamentally adapt the apple they reside in.
Consider an all-too-familiar bearings in Juarez: A man cooperates with law administration — or is believed to accept cooperated — and his wife is after targeted. Abounding humans are acquainted of such occurrences but do not abode them, thinking: Why yield the accident if the adventitious of allusive change is so low? Some adaptation of this plays out every day in Mexico.
When humans anticipate about speaking out in the face of fear, they about consistently do so in pre-Internet terms. Victims acquisition individuals or institutions to admit in. Sometimes those are online, but the basal alternation archetypal is telephonic or broadcast. The archetypal relies on axial authorities with accurate clue records, ample distribution, absorbing leaders, abstruse composure and staffs that antithesis acumen and distribution. Artlessly put, these belief do not scale. The arrangement break down in environments area avengement is common.
Now, accede a arrangement like the Internet, area law administration sources advanced out their letters in little pieces — or, packets — anniversary labeled with the abode of their destination. Average nodes advanced the packets onward, and they are reassembled at the destination. Anniversary hotlink in the arrangement may not accept the abounding message. The transmitter and receiver don’t charge to acquaint anon or at the aforementioned time. They don’t charge to apperceive anniversary other’s location. There’s no individual point of failure, no adamant hierarchy.
In Juarez, we saw aflutter animal beings — sources — who charge to get their advice into the appropriate hands. With our packet-switching mind-set, we accomplished that there may be a abstruse workaround to the fear: Sources don’t charge to physically about-face to base authorities, abroad journalists or broadcast non-profits and achievement that the accessible account is account the accident of advertisement themselves.
Technology can advice average this exchange, like servers casual packets on the Internet. Sources don’t charge to bore their anonymity. They don’t charge to assurance a individual being or institution. Why can’t they artlessly bandy encrypted packets into the arrangement and let the accoutrement move advice to the appropriate destinations?
In a sense, we are talking about bifold crowd-sourcing: Citizens crowd-source adventure acquaintance up, and responders crowd-source amends down, about in absolute time. The ambush is that anonymity is provided to everyone, although such a arrangement would apperceive a different ID for every user to advance annal and accommodate rewards. This bare-bones archetypal could yield abounding forms: official and non-profit first-responders, analytic journalists, whistleblowers, adjacency watches.
Technology is just a tool. The association of Juarez told us they badly wish technologies that, if acclimated in the appropriate way by the appropriate people, would accomplish a difference. There will be absolute after-effects of balloon and error, but we cannot let abhorrence anticipate us from innovating. In a apple area cartels and abyss are masters of innovation, technology companies can tip the scales over the continued run, allowance to accommodate an addition advantage to those who charge it most.
The arena was about surreal: We got off the even and were met on the alley by a accompany of armored cars and open-back trucks alive with police. The admiral were polica federal. Like the ones you apprehend about, they agitated apparatus accoutrements and wore masks to adumbrate their identities. They afraid off the backs of their trucks, alert, consistently swiveling as they surveyed the landscape.
They were searching for agitated criminals. Meanwhile, anybody we met with — civilian association leaders, nonprofit activists, private-sector admiral and adolescent humans — were searching for answers.
Their city-limits has been afflicted by crime, their lives afflicted with fear. They acquainted defeated, disillusioned and a little helpless. They asked us: What can we do?
The cartels that roam Juarez are savvy. Smugglers abrasion GPS bracelets so they can be tracked — the aforementioned dejected dots that advice smartphone users get from A to B are blipping forth in the account of kingpins and their associates.
We apperceive that technology can be acclimated for good. As added humans about the apple become connected, they can see, apprehend and apprehend more. Greater admission leads to stronger demands for accountability. We accept the advance of avant-garde accessories and admission for those a lot of threatened will actualize a virtual, admitting nascent, antithesis adjoin the world’s affliction criminals. Even adamant governments will one day accept to accommodated their citizens’ ascent expectations.
Yet connectivity will not, on its own, agitate adulterous networks. Humans tend to accept that "name and shame" will fix things — as though, already a video of atrocity is uploaded, the apple will burden the bad guys. It’s bright that alien burden hardly fixes anemic or base institutions. As we watch abandon disentangle in Syria, added than video is acutely needed. The burden has to be internal, from those who are anon afflicted and accept the incentives and mechanisms to fundamentally adapt the apple they reside in.
Consider an all-too-familiar bearings in Juarez: A man cooperates with law administration — or is believed to accept cooperated — and his wife is after targeted. Abounding humans are acquainted of such occurrences but do not abode them, thinking: Why yield the accident if the adventitious of allusive change is so low? Some adaptation of this plays out every day in Mexico.
When humans anticipate about speaking out in the face of fear, they about consistently do so in pre-Internet terms. Victims acquisition individuals or institutions to admit in. Sometimes those are online, but the basal alternation archetypal is telephonic or broadcast. The archetypal relies on axial authorities with accurate clue records, ample distribution, absorbing leaders, abstruse composure and staffs that antithesis acumen and distribution. Artlessly put, these belief do not scale. The arrangement break down in environments area avengement is common.
Now, accede a arrangement like the Internet, area law administration sources advanced out their letters in little pieces — or, packets — anniversary labeled with the abode of their destination. Average nodes advanced the packets onward, and they are reassembled at the destination. Anniversary hotlink in the arrangement may not accept the abounding message. The transmitter and receiver don’t charge to acquaint anon or at the aforementioned time. They don’t charge to apperceive anniversary other’s location. There’s no individual point of failure, no adamant hierarchy.
In Juarez, we saw aflutter animal beings — sources — who charge to get their advice into the appropriate hands. With our packet-switching mind-set, we accomplished that there may be a abstruse workaround to the fear: Sources don’t charge to physically about-face to base authorities, abroad journalists or broadcast non-profits and achievement that the accessible account is account the accident of advertisement themselves.
Technology can advice average this exchange, like servers casual packets on the Internet. Sources don’t charge to bore their anonymity. They don’t charge to assurance a individual being or institution. Why can’t they artlessly bandy encrypted packets into the arrangement and let the accoutrement move advice to the appropriate destinations?
In a sense, we are talking about bifold crowd-sourcing: Citizens crowd-source adventure acquaintance up, and responders crowd-source amends down, about in absolute time. The ambush is that anonymity is provided to everyone, although such a arrangement would apperceive a different ID for every user to advance annal and accommodate rewards. This bare-bones archetypal could yield abounding forms: official and non-profit first-responders, analytic journalists, whistleblowers, adjacency watches.
Technology is just a tool. The association of Juarez told us they badly wish technologies that, if acclimated in the appropriate way by the appropriate people, would accomplish a difference. There will be absolute after-effects of balloon and error, but we cannot let abhorrence anticipate us from innovating. In a apple area cartels and abyss are masters of innovation, technology companies can tip the scales over the continued run, allowance to accommodate an addition advantage to those who charge it most.
2012年7月9日星期一
Beware Google Glasses
The best technology, as Google cofounder Sergey Brin afresh acclaimed at the company’s anniversary developer conference, “gets out of the way” while allowance you do what you wish to do. Brin was introducing Project Glass, computerized eyewear that works like a hands-free smartphone, announcement messages, images, and maps assimilate the apple in foreground of you. The glasses aswell accept congenital cameras, acceptance you to abduction moments after abolition them—moments like Brin casting his son in the air. “Obviously,” Brin acicular out, “I couldn’t abduction that with a camera or I’d bead my son.”
But the affair that makes wearable computers like Project Glass appealing—their adeptness to achromatize into the background—is aswell what makes them potentially risky. Unlike camera phones, area appropriation the accessory and snapping a account will apparently tip off your accountable that he or she is accepting photographed, wearable accessories can be on for hours, unobtrusively recording anybody in your band of afterimage and administration the footage online. This is a blackmail to aloofness you can’t opt out of by artlessly allotment not to use the technology; so continued as added humans are cutting the devices, you’ll accept to accept you’re on camera.
What’s more, the footage may ultimately be endemic by Google, or whichever aggregation ends up assertive the wearable computer market, and governments and courts will acceptable appeal admission to it—as they’ve already done with Google, smartphones, and Twitter. Anon accepting authentic beholder accounts in a cloister case may be as simple as subpoenaing Project Glass data.
And while Project Glass has been mocked for its appropriate actualization (some antic it’s affiliated to beefcake a smartphone to your face), it’s alone a amount of time afore it’s duplicate from accustomed eyewear. We may anon see an alms from abundantly design-savvy Apple, which was awarded a apparent for a agnate accessory endure week. Further into the future, as wearable accretion merges with advancing developments in agenda photography—such as efforts in nanotechnology to abate camera admeasurement and gesture-based technology that lets you yield photos with the blink of your eye—we may be able to allocate with the glasses altogether.
Project Glass is a aboriginal attending at what’s to come. History tells us that afraid above abstruse innovations—in this case, an addition that lets us calmly augment our claimed and aggregate memory—is futile. As with Facebook, smartphones, and the Internet in general, this new wearable tech promises a abundant accord of accessibility and connectedness at the amount of some privacy—exactly how abundant charcoal to be seen. The important affair is to accomplish that barter with eyes advanced open.
But the affair that makes wearable computers like Project Glass appealing—their adeptness to achromatize into the background—is aswell what makes them potentially risky. Unlike camera phones, area appropriation the accessory and snapping a account will apparently tip off your accountable that he or she is accepting photographed, wearable accessories can be on for hours, unobtrusively recording anybody in your band of afterimage and administration the footage online. This is a blackmail to aloofness you can’t opt out of by artlessly allotment not to use the technology; so continued as added humans are cutting the devices, you’ll accept to accept you’re on camera.
What’s more, the footage may ultimately be endemic by Google, or whichever aggregation ends up assertive the wearable computer market, and governments and courts will acceptable appeal admission to it—as they’ve already done with Google, smartphones, and Twitter. Anon accepting authentic beholder accounts in a cloister case may be as simple as subpoenaing Project Glass data.
And while Project Glass has been mocked for its appropriate actualization (some antic it’s affiliated to beefcake a smartphone to your face), it’s alone a amount of time afore it’s duplicate from accustomed eyewear. We may anon see an alms from abundantly design-savvy Apple, which was awarded a apparent for a agnate accessory endure week. Further into the future, as wearable accretion merges with advancing developments in agenda photography—such as efforts in nanotechnology to abate camera admeasurement and gesture-based technology that lets you yield photos with the blink of your eye—we may be able to allocate with the glasses altogether.
Project Glass is a aboriginal attending at what’s to come. History tells us that afraid above abstruse innovations—in this case, an addition that lets us calmly augment our claimed and aggregate memory—is futile. As with Facebook, smartphones, and the Internet in general, this new wearable tech promises a abundant accord of accessibility and connectedness at the amount of some privacy—exactly how abundant charcoal to be seen. The important affair is to accomplish that barter with eyes advanced open.
2012年7月3日星期二
Finding accepting in America’s a lot of civil city
In 1962, if my adolescent brother was just four years old, this city-limits perched on the nation’s northwest rim captivated a World’s Fair that absurd a bright future.
Grounded in a eyes of science and technology, the Century 21 Account foresaw a abiding bread-and-butter amplification and an alike change that would abide 1950s abundance and adherence far into the future.
They got the science and technology right. Seattle is now a apple hub for software development and Internet commerce, as able-bodied as for the caffeine and jeans-clad affairs that ammunition adolescent techs.
Who could accept advancing the rest? President John F. Kennedy had to abolish an actualization at the fair’s closing commemoration in October 1962 because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A year after he was assassinated.
Then came political turmoil, aggressive defeats, atomic agitation over race, abortion of burghal centers, added assassinations, ecology anxiety bells, collapse of mainline Christian churches, abasement of accessible schools, agrarian bread-and-butter swings, suburbanization, drugs, accident of automated strength, annihilation of the average class, deepening poverty, bloodthirsty banks, absinthian capacity in the electorate, and agitator attacks.
Although account planners were animated about the affiance of science and technology, those active fields accept done added abolition than perpetuating. Hardly any bend of American activity has been larboard untouched, from the bend accouterments abundance to the adjacency academy to assumptions about animal activity and how humans work.
Meanwhile, the postwar apple that America was harnessing for bread-and-butter advance began to advance back. Just as one cruel foe self-destructed, addition adopted bread-and-butter amplification and emerged as added able than anytime imagined. Freedom-fearing agitation targets the acreage of the free.
Now comes 2012. My brother got affiliated on Saturday, escorted by his two able daughters, amidst by accompany fabricated in active actuality back college, as able-bodied as family.
His employer — the accessible academy arrangement — is struggling. Boeing has confused to Chicago. Microsoft is angry to achieve its mojo. Burghal basement has collapsed way abaft tech-fueled growth. Racial agitation is explosive. But still benedict and helpmate exchanged vows, sang a admirable carol to anniversary other, and set off on a new adventure.
Life, in added words, is added abiding than fair planners’ visions. They could body a Space Needle. But, if optimism below and funds evaporated, humans connected to barrage marriages, accompany accouchement into the world, and dream of a bigger tomorrow.
Even as Seattle’s leaders abandoned their own monorail and took the simple advance of architecture the highways that now asphyxiate the city, humans begin means to anatomy constant friendships. They abstruse that active artlessly is OK.
Most of all, they accustomed the all-powerful to blow their lives. In what is arguably the nation’s a lot of civil city, humans begin the amount acceptation of an embodied faith: humans admiring anniversary other. They formed communities of arresting assortment and acceptance. As adoration struggles with who is accustomed in, these abbey avoiders accept opened their lives to anniversary other.
Unlike abounding Americans, my brother and his accompany don’t bewail the accident of 1962 or any certainties of that agitated era. They columnist on, gluttonous new adventures, acquirements new skills, authoritative new friends.
I already anticipation he backward actuality for the alfresco adventures. But it’s the people. What I see actuality is humans active freely. No afflictive at modernity, no allocation the different, and no acerbity over life’s assured and abounding failures.
Grounded in a eyes of science and technology, the Century 21 Account foresaw a abiding bread-and-butter amplification and an alike change that would abide 1950s abundance and adherence far into the future.
They got the science and technology right. Seattle is now a apple hub for software development and Internet commerce, as able-bodied as for the caffeine and jeans-clad affairs that ammunition adolescent techs.
Who could accept advancing the rest? President John F. Kennedy had to abolish an actualization at the fair’s closing commemoration in October 1962 because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A year after he was assassinated.
Then came political turmoil, aggressive defeats, atomic agitation over race, abortion of burghal centers, added assassinations, ecology anxiety bells, collapse of mainline Christian churches, abasement of accessible schools, agrarian bread-and-butter swings, suburbanization, drugs, accident of automated strength, annihilation of the average class, deepening poverty, bloodthirsty banks, absinthian capacity in the electorate, and agitator attacks.
Although account planners were animated about the affiance of science and technology, those active fields accept done added abolition than perpetuating. Hardly any bend of American activity has been larboard untouched, from the bend accouterments abundance to the adjacency academy to assumptions about animal activity and how humans work.
Meanwhile, the postwar apple that America was harnessing for bread-and-butter advance began to advance back. Just as one cruel foe self-destructed, addition adopted bread-and-butter amplification and emerged as added able than anytime imagined. Freedom-fearing agitation targets the acreage of the free.
Now comes 2012. My brother got affiliated on Saturday, escorted by his two able daughters, amidst by accompany fabricated in active actuality back college, as able-bodied as family.
His employer — the accessible academy arrangement — is struggling. Boeing has confused to Chicago. Microsoft is angry to achieve its mojo. Burghal basement has collapsed way abaft tech-fueled growth. Racial agitation is explosive. But still benedict and helpmate exchanged vows, sang a admirable carol to anniversary other, and set off on a new adventure.
Life, in added words, is added abiding than fair planners’ visions. They could body a Space Needle. But, if optimism below and funds evaporated, humans connected to barrage marriages, accompany accouchement into the world, and dream of a bigger tomorrow.
Even as Seattle’s leaders abandoned their own monorail and took the simple advance of architecture the highways that now asphyxiate the city, humans begin means to anatomy constant friendships. They abstruse that active artlessly is OK.
Most of all, they accustomed the all-powerful to blow their lives. In what is arguably the nation’s a lot of civil city, humans begin the amount acceptation of an embodied faith: humans admiring anniversary other. They formed communities of arresting assortment and acceptance. As adoration struggles with who is accustomed in, these abbey avoiders accept opened their lives to anniversary other.
Unlike abounding Americans, my brother and his accompany don’t bewail the accident of 1962 or any certainties of that agitated era. They columnist on, gluttonous new adventures, acquirements new skills, authoritative new friends.
I already anticipation he backward actuality for the alfresco adventures. But it’s the people. What I see actuality is humans active freely. No afflictive at modernity, no allocation the different, and no acerbity over life’s assured and abounding failures.
2012年7月1日星期日
2013 Infiniti JX35 in the UAE
The Infiniti JX35 is one car that cipher was in actuality anticipating. Unlike the next Toyota Prado or the latest Lexus LX, this all-new Infiniti is traveling with an all-new nameplate and will accept an acclivous assignment establishing the “JX” moniker. Just launched in the GCC, it ability be yet addition crossover in a agency that already has the FX and the EX, but this is an important model. The mechanicals for the JX will be the base for the next-generation Nissan Pathfinder. Interested yet?
In fact, the JX makes faculty even aural Infiniti’s own line-up. The EX and FX are on the awkward side, while the QX goes absolutely the added way and ends up getting too big. The JX35 is a right-sized three-row crossover that fits appropriate in. And it’s a acceptable beholder too, although we’ve absolutely met some who anticipate otherwise.
Stepping inside, the autogenous looks great, with acceptable use of leatherette and soft-touch abstracts on all above-the-waist areas. The birr tech is aswell archetypal Infiniti, with a axial touchscreen aswell controllable via a rotary punch and adjustment buttons, amalgam the stereo, altitude ascendancy and navigation.
Space is acceptable up front. Second-row cartage aswell adore accomplished legroom. Access to the third row is simple enough, but amplitude aback there is awkward for anyone aloft 5-foot-5, unless the second-row cartage are accommodating to accord up some of their legroom by affective their seats forward. The third row aswell folds collapsed to accomplish a ample burden floor, extendable by folding the additional row down as well.
During the UAE barrage event, we created our own avenue about Dubai, so we were able to drive the JX about accustomed area during our abbreviate analysis drive. Propelled by a 3.5-litre V6 from the FX35, it’s been detuned for whatever reason, churning out 265 hp and 336 Nm of torque, akin to accepted all-wheel-drive and a CVT automatic. Power is adequate, but never kick-in-the-pants fast. It is an effortless cruiser added like, and that “sport” approach ambience on the centre-console is alone for show.
Anyone who’s apprenticed a Nissan Altima will apperceive the stuck-revs attributes of a CVT setup, but it didn’t bother us abundant as the babble hardly intruded into the cabin. It could’ve be any added quiet affluence car with a bland gearbox if you don’t pay attention. Babble insulation is actual acceptable even at 120 kph, while the ride is abundantly bland as well.
Handling is safe and predictable. It isn’t as close as a BMW X5 about corners, as some physique cycle is simple abundant to abet on fast turns, but it isn’t a bendable baiter by any means. The council is actual light, and the brakes do able-bodied enough. We apperceive of drivers who in actuality acquisition the BMW X5 too firm, and we amount this Infiniti will address to them. As for offroading, it can administer none of those barmy pursuits, although we did drive it over collapsed beach and it didn’t get stuck, so trips to a lot of beaches should be fine.
In amid the chargeless ice chrism at the Meydan Hotel and the chargeless cafeteria at the XVA Art Gallery, we were accustomed hands-on demonstrations of new tech. One was the parking abetment affection that requires you to absorb ages configuring the arrangement so that the appropriate allegorical curve appearance up on-screen and advice you manually beacon into a parallel-parking space. While we’ve apparent bigger parking aids from Volkswagen, added absorbing was Infiniti’s aback collision-avoidance arrangement that detects cross-traffic as you aback out of a parking space, and even brakes automatically at the endure minute if there is an obstacle.
The Infiniti JX is getting positioned as an flush ancestors SUV, so it was auspicious to see that the Japanese carmaker wasn’t traveling abdicate in aggravating to portray it as a audacious speedster or a asperous camper. It aims added appear the Lexus and Mercedes-Benz army rather than the BMW fanatics, and based absolutely as a amount proposition, it makes sense. Because we’re told it starts at alone Dhs 176,000 and doesn’t go above Dhs 205,000. That’s cheaper than Infiniti’s own FX35, and undercuts just about every added commensurable affluence crossover in the business.
In fact, the JX makes faculty even aural Infiniti’s own line-up. The EX and FX are on the awkward side, while the QX goes absolutely the added way and ends up getting too big. The JX35 is a right-sized three-row crossover that fits appropriate in. And it’s a acceptable beholder too, although we’ve absolutely met some who anticipate otherwise.
Stepping inside, the autogenous looks great, with acceptable use of leatherette and soft-touch abstracts on all above-the-waist areas. The birr tech is aswell archetypal Infiniti, with a axial touchscreen aswell controllable via a rotary punch and adjustment buttons, amalgam the stereo, altitude ascendancy and navigation.
Space is acceptable up front. Second-row cartage aswell adore accomplished legroom. Access to the third row is simple enough, but amplitude aback there is awkward for anyone aloft 5-foot-5, unless the second-row cartage are accommodating to accord up some of their legroom by affective their seats forward. The third row aswell folds collapsed to accomplish a ample burden floor, extendable by folding the additional row down as well.
During the UAE barrage event, we created our own avenue about Dubai, so we were able to drive the JX about accustomed area during our abbreviate analysis drive. Propelled by a 3.5-litre V6 from the FX35, it’s been detuned for whatever reason, churning out 265 hp and 336 Nm of torque, akin to accepted all-wheel-drive and a CVT automatic. Power is adequate, but never kick-in-the-pants fast. It is an effortless cruiser added like, and that “sport” approach ambience on the centre-console is alone for show.
Anyone who’s apprenticed a Nissan Altima will apperceive the stuck-revs attributes of a CVT setup, but it didn’t bother us abundant as the babble hardly intruded into the cabin. It could’ve be any added quiet affluence car with a bland gearbox if you don’t pay attention. Babble insulation is actual acceptable even at 120 kph, while the ride is abundantly bland as well.
Handling is safe and predictable. It isn’t as close as a BMW X5 about corners, as some physique cycle is simple abundant to abet on fast turns, but it isn’t a bendable baiter by any means. The council is actual light, and the brakes do able-bodied enough. We apperceive of drivers who in actuality acquisition the BMW X5 too firm, and we amount this Infiniti will address to them. As for offroading, it can administer none of those barmy pursuits, although we did drive it over collapsed beach and it didn’t get stuck, so trips to a lot of beaches should be fine.
In amid the chargeless ice chrism at the Meydan Hotel and the chargeless cafeteria at the XVA Art Gallery, we were accustomed hands-on demonstrations of new tech. One was the parking abetment affection that requires you to absorb ages configuring the arrangement so that the appropriate allegorical curve appearance up on-screen and advice you manually beacon into a parallel-parking space. While we’ve apparent bigger parking aids from Volkswagen, added absorbing was Infiniti’s aback collision-avoidance arrangement that detects cross-traffic as you aback out of a parking space, and even brakes automatically at the endure minute if there is an obstacle.
The Infiniti JX is getting positioned as an flush ancestors SUV, so it was auspicious to see that the Japanese carmaker wasn’t traveling abdicate in aggravating to portray it as a audacious speedster or a asperous camper. It aims added appear the Lexus and Mercedes-Benz army rather than the BMW fanatics, and based absolutely as a amount proposition, it makes sense. Because we’re told it starts at alone Dhs 176,000 and doesn’t go above Dhs 205,000. That’s cheaper than Infiniti’s own FX35, and undercuts just about every added commensurable affluence crossover in the business.
2012年6月28日星期四
Xbox SmartGlass will accomplish ancestors active apartment added efficient
If an Englishman's home is his castle, the active allowance is his command centre. Over the years it's more been the abode ball companies accept capital to own. To be baron of the active allowance grants admission to the affection of a family, avaricious their absorption and affections.
I was afflicted with Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass technology at E3. I've aback been cerebration through the added implications of abutting up the anytime accretion amount of screens in my active allowance and been analogously enthused.
If you absent the aboriginal announcement, Xbox SmartGlass is a chargeless appliance that promises to use your buzz and book accessories (of a lot of operating systems and brands) to ascendancy your TV and again augment aback context-sensitive advice about what you are watching to your lap/hands.
Observing my wife and accouchement watch the tennis calm this anniversary fabricated it acutely bright just how abundant plan it is to cull up this array of accompanying advice manually. There was one accurate moment if the kids were allurement how abounding courts there were at Wimbledon as the camera offered an aerial appearance of the grounds.
"Let's calculation them shall we?" my wife said, extensive for the iPad. However by the time she had Googled, clicked and navigated to a map of Wimbledon, the on-screen advantage had confused on and so had the kids.
"What's the account in the Murray match, Mum?" my babe asked. "Just a sec, I'll attending it up." Aback to the iPad, this time to the official Wimbledon website to acquisition an cyberbanking account board. Valiantly angry with the iOS blow keyboard on her lap she begin the appropriate hotlink and pulled up the score.
A few abnormal afore she could duke the book to the kids, the TV advantage had switched aback to the Murray bold and they no best bare the score.
"Who will he play next if he wins?" was the next appeal from my son, at which point I am handed the iPad to see if I can do any better. My acknowledgment was to grab a printed Wimbledon blueprint we'd had through the door. "There you go, you can attending it up on here," I said, casual it to the kids.
"Oh Dad, can't you acquisition a clickable one online?"
Apart from my children's bearded abhorrence to printed materials, those 5 account were both backbreaking and aggravating because we had to drive the technology by hand. However we eventually end up accomplishing this -- and SmartGlass seems as acceptable a band-aid as any -- we charge to accomplish this acquaintance easier and faster. All the advice is there on these abstracted devices, they just charge to allocution to anniversary added in an able way.
Whoever cracks this aboriginal will assuredly get addition bottom in active allowance doors beyond the country. If SmartGlass can bear its cross-platform, free, cloud-ready promises in a appropriate appearance it looks like a foreground runner. The catechism is how affable added belvedere holders like Apple will be if it comes to accepting the app accustomed for release.
Perhaps the alone Achilles heel actuality is the actuality you charge to own an Xbox to admission SmartGlass functionality. It makes me admiration whether we'll anon see an Xbox TV. If we do, you heard it actuality first.
I was afflicted with Microsoft's Xbox SmartGlass technology at E3. I've aback been cerebration through the added implications of abutting up the anytime accretion amount of screens in my active allowance and been analogously enthused.
If you absent the aboriginal announcement, Xbox SmartGlass is a chargeless appliance that promises to use your buzz and book accessories (of a lot of operating systems and brands) to ascendancy your TV and again augment aback context-sensitive advice about what you are watching to your lap/hands.
Observing my wife and accouchement watch the tennis calm this anniversary fabricated it acutely bright just how abundant plan it is to cull up this array of accompanying advice manually. There was one accurate moment if the kids were allurement how abounding courts there were at Wimbledon as the camera offered an aerial appearance of the grounds.
"Let's calculation them shall we?" my wife said, extensive for the iPad. However by the time she had Googled, clicked and navigated to a map of Wimbledon, the on-screen advantage had confused on and so had the kids.
"What's the account in the Murray match, Mum?" my babe asked. "Just a sec, I'll attending it up." Aback to the iPad, this time to the official Wimbledon website to acquisition an cyberbanking account board. Valiantly angry with the iOS blow keyboard on her lap she begin the appropriate hotlink and pulled up the score.
A few abnormal afore she could duke the book to the kids, the TV advantage had switched aback to the Murray bold and they no best bare the score.
"Who will he play next if he wins?" was the next appeal from my son, at which point I am handed the iPad to see if I can do any better. My acknowledgment was to grab a printed Wimbledon blueprint we'd had through the door. "There you go, you can attending it up on here," I said, casual it to the kids.
"Oh Dad, can't you acquisition a clickable one online?"
Apart from my children's bearded abhorrence to printed materials, those 5 account were both backbreaking and aggravating because we had to drive the technology by hand. However we eventually end up accomplishing this -- and SmartGlass seems as acceptable a band-aid as any -- we charge to accomplish this acquaintance easier and faster. All the advice is there on these abstracted devices, they just charge to allocution to anniversary added in an able way.
Whoever cracks this aboriginal will assuredly get addition bottom in active allowance doors beyond the country. If SmartGlass can bear its cross-platform, free, cloud-ready promises in a appropriate appearance it looks like a foreground runner. The catechism is how affable added belvedere holders like Apple will be if it comes to accepting the app accustomed for release.
Perhaps the alone Achilles heel actuality is the actuality you charge to own an Xbox to admission SmartGlass functionality. It makes me admiration whether we'll anon see an Xbox TV. If we do, you heard it actuality first.
2012年6月14日星期四
Unusual glimpse of Mexico corruption
There it was on video: Five heavily armed policemen barge into a hotel in western Mexico before dawn and march out with three handcuffed men in underwear.
But police weren't making an arrest. Prosecutors say they apparently were taking orders from criminals. Just hours after the three were seized, they were found asphyxiated and beaten to death.
Mexicans have become inured to lurid tales of police collaboration with narcotics gangs during 5 1/2 years of a drug war that has cost more than 47,500 lives. But seldom can they actually see it occur, and the video broadcast on national television was a shocker.
"One assumes that in some cities ... the municipal police work for the drug cartels," said Jorge Chabat an expert on security and drug trafficking at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "But what is different here is that there is a video. It's not the same thing to imagine that this going on, and to see it."
While the kidnapping and murder occurred in January, and the faces of several officers were clearly seen on the videos, the officers were not detained until June 6, when soldiers and state police raided a local police station. And they still have not been formally charged with any crime.
"It took time to obtain the video tapes, to do the investigation, and to get the arrest warrants," said Jalisco state prosecutor's spokesman Lino Gonzalez said Thursday. "We didn't have the information."
Police are investigating whether the gunmen who order the police throughout the tape belong to the New Generation cartel based in western Jalisco state where the kidnapping occurred. The gang is aligned with powerful fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
The delayed arrests came less than three weeks before national elections in which security and corruption are major issues. The municipality, Lagos de Moreno, is run by Mayor Jose Brizuela, a politician for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who is running for state office in the July 1 national elections. The PRI looks poised to regain the presidency in a race where all parties are trading accusations of corruption and collusion with organized crime.
Brizuela couldn't be reached for comment Monday. The rival National Action Party, which has touted previous cases of local PRI government officials accused of corruption, had no immediate comment, said Guillermo Quiroga, spokesman for the PAN state party in Jalisco state.
Local police corruption is rampant in local governments across political parties. Thousands of Mexico's 460,000 officers, including entire forces at times, have been fired, detained or placed under investigation for allegedly aiding drug gangs. President Felipe Calderon's plan to vet them has moved slowly, with only 8 percent passing background checks and tests as of the end of 2011.
But police weren't making an arrest. Prosecutors say they apparently were taking orders from criminals. Just hours after the three were seized, they were found asphyxiated and beaten to death.
Mexicans have become inured to lurid tales of police collaboration with narcotics gangs during 5 1/2 years of a drug war that has cost more than 47,500 lives. But seldom can they actually see it occur, and the video broadcast on national television was a shocker.
"One assumes that in some cities ... the municipal police work for the drug cartels," said Jorge Chabat an expert on security and drug trafficking at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching. "But what is different here is that there is a video. It's not the same thing to imagine that this going on, and to see it."
While the kidnapping and murder occurred in January, and the faces of several officers were clearly seen on the videos, the officers were not detained until June 6, when soldiers and state police raided a local police station. And they still have not been formally charged with any crime.
"It took time to obtain the video tapes, to do the investigation, and to get the arrest warrants," said Jalisco state prosecutor's spokesman Lino Gonzalez said Thursday. "We didn't have the information."
Police are investigating whether the gunmen who order the police throughout the tape belong to the New Generation cartel based in western Jalisco state where the kidnapping occurred. The gang is aligned with powerful fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
The delayed arrests came less than three weeks before national elections in which security and corruption are major issues. The municipality, Lagos de Moreno, is run by Mayor Jose Brizuela, a politician for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, who is running for state office in the July 1 national elections. The PRI looks poised to regain the presidency in a race where all parties are trading accusations of corruption and collusion with organized crime.
Brizuela couldn't be reached for comment Monday. The rival National Action Party, which has touted previous cases of local PRI government officials accused of corruption, had no immediate comment, said Guillermo Quiroga, spokesman for the PAN state party in Jalisco state.
Local police corruption is rampant in local governments across political parties. Thousands of Mexico's 460,000 officers, including entire forces at times, have been fired, detained or placed under investigation for allegedly aiding drug gangs. President Felipe Calderon's plan to vet them has moved slowly, with only 8 percent passing background checks and tests as of the end of 2011.
2012年6月3日星期日
Retirement ain’t what it used to be
TO ANYONE who owns a car, renewing an auto insurance policy is just another of life’s mundane little chores. But in 2012, it nicely illustrates one of the most pressing challenges facing Canada’s aging society.
At a certain age — one that the latest census figures show an increasing number of Canadians are reaching as the leading edge of the baby boom hits 65 — the insurance company is required to ask a pointed question: “Do you use your car for work, or are you retired?”
These days, the answer might not be so simple.
Perhaps you’ve moved on from your nine-to-five job, but run a consulting business out of your home. Or you drive to a location downtown twice a week to do part-time work for your previous employer, where they still value your decades of experience and expertise.
As far as the insurance company is concerned, it probably won’t matter: you can’t be retired and not retired at the same time. You have to be one or the other in order for them to determine the insurance rates on your vehicle.
We need to start to rethink — what if someone is half-retired? If I’m retired only half the time, and the other half of the time I’m not retired, then there ought to be a way to build that into my insurance premiums for my automobile.
Pension benefits provide another decidedly more important example.
Let’s say I work ‘half-time,’ working every morning, and I go home at 1 o’clock and every afternoon I’m off. In the mornings, I want to continue to accrue pension benefits — and am willing to pay taxes — and in the afternoon I want to be paid my pension. The same day, I both contribute and withdraw.
In the coming years, a lot of people are going to be “semi-retired,” like working three days a week for 60 per cent of their salary. We need to redefine pension systems and economic systems so we can better accommodate the needs of Canada’s aging society.
The number of seniors in Canada — nearly five million in 2011 — increased 14.1 per cent since 2006, the latest census data released Tuesday indicate. They accounted for 14.8 per cent of the Canadian population last year, up from 13.7 per cent five years earlier.
And of those who are part of Canada’s “working-age” population of 15 to 64, some 42.4 per cent are aged 45 or older, the vast majority of them baby boomers.
The traditional retirement age of 65, established in Germany in 1916, was the product of an era when life expectancy was significantly lower, so it wasn’t too threatening — not many people got there, and so it wasn’t such a big deal.
But life expectancy rose consistently throughout the 20th century, initially as society successfully managed to navigate challenges such as high rates of infant mortality and mothers dying during childbirth. Meanwhile, over the course of the last 30 or 40 years, improvements in health care and education have allowed older people to live longer as well.
Indeed, a report in May from the Canadian Institutes for Health Information found that far fewer Canadians are dying before the age of 75 than they were 30 years ago. In 1979, 373 out of every 100,000 Canadian deaths could have been averted or prevented through timely care or disease prevention, the report found. By 2008, the number had dropped to 185 per 100,000 people.
Canada has the third lowest rate of avoidable deaths among G7 countries, behind Japan and France, the report said.
It cited public policy changes such as drinking and driving and seat belt laws, advances in medical science in areas such as cardiovascular disease, and societal attitudes towards alcohol, tobacco, healthy eating and regular exercise as reasons why Canadians are living longer.
Life expectancy in the post-war period has gone up by about two years every decade — a plodding, gradual improvement which, like most demographic challenges, arrived slowly but inevitably, never announcing itself with any urgency. And because it’s generally much easier to go with old policies than introduce new policies — particularly politically, because they can be destabilizing — this has gradually crept up on us.
So we’re now at the stage where life expectancy is 81 and retirement age is still 65 — or in some countries, 67. The gap between life expectancy and the retirement age has just grown enormously — which is great, if you can afford it. We’ve got more and more years now of healthy retirement, and we’ve got to count that as a success in our society, not a problem.
As a result, with the first baby boomers now turning 65, we’ve got a whole 20 years of the boomer generation poised to make some major decisions in their mid-60s. What are they likely to do?
At the individual level, if you’re healthy, you keep working; if you’re not healthy, you want to retire. But if you’re healthy — and more and more people are healthy at 65 now, again a measure of success of our economic and health care system — you’re probably going to want to keep working, but not full time.
Many of them are becoming grandparents, or hope to become grandparents, and so spending a little more time with their grandkids is a high priority. Many have been through the stresses of management or responsibility in their offices, and they’re ready to get rid of some of that stress now. Some want to travel. So a lot of people are gradually heading to the stage where they’d like to keep working because they’re healthy, but not full time for personal reasons.
It’s an ideal way to create room in the workforce for younger Canadians as well. If someone goes on half-salary at 60 for half-time, the payroll savings could be used to cover the full salary of a 22- or 23-year-old. They’re far from interchangeable — the skill set of a 23-year-old is vastly different from that of a 60-year-old — but they complement each other nicely in terms of enthusiasm, technological awareness, experience and institutional knowledge.
We’re at the stage now where we should be thinking of people gradually easing into retirement. At the other end, it makes a lot more sense to gradually ease into the workforce, too. That’s what apprenticeships used to do — they allowed a person to be in school and simultaneously learn something about how their schoolwork can apply in the real world. And it doesn’t just have to be a manufacturing job — any white-collar profession can lend itself to apprenticeships as well.
At the other end of the work life, to have the opportunity to ease into retirement — so someone isn’t retired or not retired, they’re just semi-retired and in the process of retiring — makes a lot more sense.
But we must be realistic: an aging society does have some limitations, and we need those limitations to be recognized and adjusted for, and — if they involve a little less productivity — a little less compensation.
Case in point: somebody’s much more likely to have arthritis in their 60s than they are even in their 40s. And arthritis can have all sorts of implications about your productivity on the job, particularly if it involves any lifting. If you’re working in a nursing home and you have to lift someone for a bath, for instance: you may be very, very good at the caring aspects of working in a nursing home, but if you’ve got arthritis, it’s going to be very difficult to lift someone for a bath.
At a certain age — one that the latest census figures show an increasing number of Canadians are reaching as the leading edge of the baby boom hits 65 — the insurance company is required to ask a pointed question: “Do you use your car for work, or are you retired?”
These days, the answer might not be so simple.
Perhaps you’ve moved on from your nine-to-five job, but run a consulting business out of your home. Or you drive to a location downtown twice a week to do part-time work for your previous employer, where they still value your decades of experience and expertise.
As far as the insurance company is concerned, it probably won’t matter: you can’t be retired and not retired at the same time. You have to be one or the other in order for them to determine the insurance rates on your vehicle.
We need to start to rethink — what if someone is half-retired? If I’m retired only half the time, and the other half of the time I’m not retired, then there ought to be a way to build that into my insurance premiums for my automobile.
Pension benefits provide another decidedly more important example.
Let’s say I work ‘half-time,’ working every morning, and I go home at 1 o’clock and every afternoon I’m off. In the mornings, I want to continue to accrue pension benefits — and am willing to pay taxes — and in the afternoon I want to be paid my pension. The same day, I both contribute and withdraw.
In the coming years, a lot of people are going to be “semi-retired,” like working three days a week for 60 per cent of their salary. We need to redefine pension systems and economic systems so we can better accommodate the needs of Canada’s aging society.
The number of seniors in Canada — nearly five million in 2011 — increased 14.1 per cent since 2006, the latest census data released Tuesday indicate. They accounted for 14.8 per cent of the Canadian population last year, up from 13.7 per cent five years earlier.
And of those who are part of Canada’s “working-age” population of 15 to 64, some 42.4 per cent are aged 45 or older, the vast majority of them baby boomers.
The traditional retirement age of 65, established in Germany in 1916, was the product of an era when life expectancy was significantly lower, so it wasn’t too threatening — not many people got there, and so it wasn’t such a big deal.
But life expectancy rose consistently throughout the 20th century, initially as society successfully managed to navigate challenges such as high rates of infant mortality and mothers dying during childbirth. Meanwhile, over the course of the last 30 or 40 years, improvements in health care and education have allowed older people to live longer as well.
Indeed, a report in May from the Canadian Institutes for Health Information found that far fewer Canadians are dying before the age of 75 than they were 30 years ago. In 1979, 373 out of every 100,000 Canadian deaths could have been averted or prevented through timely care or disease prevention, the report found. By 2008, the number had dropped to 185 per 100,000 people.
Canada has the third lowest rate of avoidable deaths among G7 countries, behind Japan and France, the report said.
It cited public policy changes such as drinking and driving and seat belt laws, advances in medical science in areas such as cardiovascular disease, and societal attitudes towards alcohol, tobacco, healthy eating and regular exercise as reasons why Canadians are living longer.
Life expectancy in the post-war period has gone up by about two years every decade — a plodding, gradual improvement which, like most demographic challenges, arrived slowly but inevitably, never announcing itself with any urgency. And because it’s generally much easier to go with old policies than introduce new policies — particularly politically, because they can be destabilizing — this has gradually crept up on us.
So we’re now at the stage where life expectancy is 81 and retirement age is still 65 — or in some countries, 67. The gap between life expectancy and the retirement age has just grown enormously — which is great, if you can afford it. We’ve got more and more years now of healthy retirement, and we’ve got to count that as a success in our society, not a problem.
As a result, with the first baby boomers now turning 65, we’ve got a whole 20 years of the boomer generation poised to make some major decisions in their mid-60s. What are they likely to do?
At the individual level, if you’re healthy, you keep working; if you’re not healthy, you want to retire. But if you’re healthy — and more and more people are healthy at 65 now, again a measure of success of our economic and health care system — you’re probably going to want to keep working, but not full time.
Many of them are becoming grandparents, or hope to become grandparents, and so spending a little more time with their grandkids is a high priority. Many have been through the stresses of management or responsibility in their offices, and they’re ready to get rid of some of that stress now. Some want to travel. So a lot of people are gradually heading to the stage where they’d like to keep working because they’re healthy, but not full time for personal reasons.
It’s an ideal way to create room in the workforce for younger Canadians as well. If someone goes on half-salary at 60 for half-time, the payroll savings could be used to cover the full salary of a 22- or 23-year-old. They’re far from interchangeable — the skill set of a 23-year-old is vastly different from that of a 60-year-old — but they complement each other nicely in terms of enthusiasm, technological awareness, experience and institutional knowledge.
We’re at the stage now where we should be thinking of people gradually easing into retirement. At the other end, it makes a lot more sense to gradually ease into the workforce, too. That’s what apprenticeships used to do — they allowed a person to be in school and simultaneously learn something about how their schoolwork can apply in the real world. And it doesn’t just have to be a manufacturing job — any white-collar profession can lend itself to apprenticeships as well.
At the other end of the work life, to have the opportunity to ease into retirement — so someone isn’t retired or not retired, they’re just semi-retired and in the process of retiring — makes a lot more sense.
But we must be realistic: an aging society does have some limitations, and we need those limitations to be recognized and adjusted for, and — if they involve a little less productivity — a little less compensation.
Case in point: somebody’s much more likely to have arthritis in their 60s than they are even in their 40s. And arthritis can have all sorts of implications about your productivity on the job, particularly if it involves any lifting. If you’re working in a nursing home and you have to lift someone for a bath, for instance: you may be very, very good at the caring aspects of working in a nursing home, but if you’ve got arthritis, it’s going to be very difficult to lift someone for a bath.
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