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Last March, the BICEP2 collaboration announced that they had used a microwave telescope at the South Pole to detect primordial gravitational waves. These tiny ripples in spacetime would be the first proof of the theory known as "inflation," an astonishingly rapid expansion of the universe in the instants after the Big Bang.
The result was announced in a paper, a press conference, and a viral video of BICEP2 member Chao-Lin Kuo visiting cosmologist Andrei Linde, one of the inventors of inflation, at his home with a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
Last week, a new paper was released backtracking on last March's announcement. The BICEP2 team joined with rivals on the European Space Agency's Planck experiment, and found that their results were contaminated by dust. The signal is not large enough to constitute proof of inflation, so cosmology returns to its prior uncertain state. Rather than revolutionizing our understanding, the BICEP2 result is just the latest in a long line of highly public flops.
Did the hype hurt or help science?
Along with general disappointment, the new announcement has prompted discussion of what, if anything, the BICEP2 team did wrong. Many commentators fault them for over-hyping their results to the mass media before peer review. Some even argue that this has dire consequences – astronomer Marcelo Gleiser says the announcement and revision "harms science because it's an attack on its integrity," giving "ammunition" to those who raise doubts about politically charged areas of science.
Looked at another way, though, the BICEP2 story may in fact be ammunition for supporters of science. BICEP2 shows how science is properly done, and makes it easier, not harder, to detect the pseudo-science of attempts to discredit science for political gain.
We tend to think of science as a collection of esoteric information, but science is best understood as a process for figuring out the workings of the universe. Scientists look at the world, think of models to explain their observations, test those models with further observations and experiment, and tell each other the results. This process is familiar and universal, turning up in everything from hidden-object books to sports. More importantly, we can recognize the process even in cases where we don't understand all the technical details, and use that to distinguish real science from phony controversies.
Refining real science versus phony controversies
Real scientific controversies are widespread and mainstream. The BICEP2 results were publicly challenged within weeks, by other scientists working in the field, who quickly identified dust as a trouble spot. While few of the participants were disinterested—most complaints came from scientists associated with BICEP2's competitors and theorists who prefer alternatives to inflation—they were active and respected members of the community.
Phony controversies, on the other hand, can usually be traced to a handful of opponents, often outside their fields of expertise. Challenges to the scientific consensus on climate change mostly come from engineers and economists, not working climate scientists, and tend to originate in think tanks and lobbying groups, not university research labs. Fears about vaccines can be traced to a handful of thoroughly debunked studies, and are stoked by politicians and celebrities, not medical researchers.
Real scientific controversies play out in the scientific literature, through papers drawing on many other sources of data. Within months of the original announcement, a detailed re-analysis of the data was posted to the physics arxiv (the online repository physicists and astronomers use to share their results), using multiple alternative models to show how dust could explain the results. Others drew on previous measurements to show that BICEP2's claims were difficult to reconcile with existing data.
Phony controversies tend to play out in the media, through press releases, stump speeches, and polemical writing reshared via social media. Reliable reports from scientific journals are difficult to find, even after chasing back long chains of references.
And most importantly, real scientific controversies are self-correcting. The final nail in the gravitational-wave coffin was a joint paper by both BICEP2 and Planck, combining their data to settle the question. The end result is professionally embarrassing for scientists involved in the original announcement, but they were at the forefront of the effort to resolve the controversy because for real science reputation is less important than the truth.
Phony controversies, on the other hand, are endless, with proponents clinging stubbornly to the same positions year after year. Even as their sources are discredited, their conclusions remain unchanged, because phony science is less interested in truth than in selling a conclusion.
Rather than weakening the standing of science, then, the BICEP2 saga should serve to enhance it. While few of us can follow all the technical details on which the controversy turns, everyone should be able to follow the broad outlines of the process. By providing a clear example of real science done the right way, the controversy over BICEP2 exposes politically motivated phony controversies as hollow frauds.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.


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2012 Parrotheads Lacrosse Club Uniforms, Apparel, Gear
The Parrotheads LC went big this year. The Parrotheads are happy to announce the 2012 sponsor Zima Gear. Breaking out two totally new apparel sets/uniforms, new helmet decals, Maverik Rome Gloves, and a custom Maverik Monster bag to fit all of it in. These guys sound like fun and based off their apparel and gear they got a real sense of style. We got some tight pics of the their get-up below.
The Red sets will be used throughout the Summer including summer league games and the War at the Shore Tournament.
The Custom Maverik Rome gloves match the uniforms exactly thanks to color matching technique from ZimaGear. Shout Out to Ty for the work!
The Volt/Plaid Sets will debut at the 2012 Ocean City Classic in August including the pinnie. Some of Zima Gears best work went into these sets.
With all this new stuff, the Parrotheads decided to go with a custom Maverik Monster Bag to hold all of the new equipment. Complete with signature Margarita Glass.

subset: commoncrawl


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The National Broadcasting Company presents FAITH IN ACTION , a program designed to bring the viewpoints of those of many beliefs. In the first two programs concerned with Eastern Orthodoxy, the Very Reverend Alexander Schmemann, Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York, and author of "The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy," delivered the following talk:
THE WESTERN MAN, and in particular the Western Christian, doesn't know much about the world of Eastern Orthodoxy, that is, the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The final separation between the East and West took place in the 11th century, in 1054; and since then the Western history was so rich in events, so complex and tragical, that not many people in the West kept the memory of the great Eastern Church which at the same time was going through its very dark period.
Therefore, it's good if we begin by certain historical facts, by a general historical presentation.
It is certainly not an accident that the world into which the Church entered after it left its Jewish childhood in Palestine was called the Greek-Roman world; not only Greek, not only Roman, but Greek-Roman. It was a world in which that synthesis between the Latin West and the Greek East was already accomplished within one culture, which we call usually Hellenistic culture. It is within this world that Christianity developed at first when it had its formative age. And there can be no doubt — I think all historians will agree — that in this formative age it was the Eastern part of the Christian world, usually known as the Byzantine world, that had the leading role. It was in the East that Christianity took its historical form, acquired its shape, its canon, as a theologian would say.
And I think the best way to present this canon or shape of historical Christianity is to mention the three main dimensions of the Byzantine Eastern Orthodox Church.
It begins, certainly, with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in 312, the Roman Emperor who, at the famous battle at Ponte Milveo near Rome, became a Christian. From that moment on, the historical home of the Church was the Roman Empire as it developed primarily in the West when Constantine transferred the capital city of the empire from Rome, first to the city of Nicomedea, and then later on to the newly founded capital of Constantinople.
Constantinople is the center of that Byzantine world, and it was around Constantinople, in Asia Minor, in Syria and in Egypt that those dimensions of Eastern Orthodoxy, which still are shaping and forming it, developed. The first of these dimensions we may call the intellectual.
Eastern Orthodoxy means that the dogma, the doctrinal, the intellectual content of religion is given a very important priority. This theological content was developed not in academic work, but in a series of great theological disputes, controversies, in which basically what happened was the interpretation or the formulation of the content of Christian faith in terms of Greek philosophy. This is the real achievement, the first great intellectual achievement of Eastern Orthodoxy: the kerygma , or sermon, the proclamation of the Gospel given its intellectual consistency within the terminology of Greek mind and Greek thought.
This resulted in those great dogmas of Trinity, Christology, the person of Christ, His Divinity, His Humanity, the Holy Spirit, the Mother of God, and even a doctrine known as the Doctrine of Icons.
Eastern Orthodoxy historically is primarily a body of doctrine which formulates a certain vision of God, man, history, time, et cetera.
But this intellectual vision — I am now coming to the second dimension — found its true expression in an artistic language, primarily the language of architecture, worship, and liturgy.
Iconography also should be mentioned here. It was within this great Byzantine Rite, or Byzantine Liturgy, that Orthodoxy found its real heart. And even if today it's still called the Liturgical Church par excellence , it's not only because our worship has preserved certain colorful archaic forms attractive to Western man, but because it is in worship, in the Doxology, in the glorification of God, that an Orthodox finds the real center, the heart of his religious life.
Now, St. Sophia in Constantinople, the pattern, the prototype of all Orthodox Churches, is more than the place where people worship. It is in itself a vision of the new creation. The great dome covers not only the Church but potentially the whole world. St. Sophia exemplifies the great mysterion , the mystery of the Liturgy in its rich symbolism, and that great hymnography which is being sung in church. All this is not only an art of prayer; it is a manifestation, the revelation, the communication of that ultimate reality which, according to Eastern Orthodoxy, has been revealed to us, communicated to us in Christ and by Christ — the reality which, according to another Orthodox saying, makes the life of the Christian the heavenly life on earth.
This is the second dimension of historical Byzantinism.
And then finally the third dimension, after the intellectual and the liturgical, is that great world of spirituality which developed primarily in the monastic movement. It was in the fourth century after the Roman Empire became Christian that thousands and thousands of men left, if I can say so, the world and went into the desert in order not to betray, not to give up this ideal of absolute perfection which comes from the Gospel — to be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.
Now, this monasticism which developed in Egypt with St. Anthony and St. Pacomios, then in Palestine, finally in Asia Minor with St. Basil of Cicarene Capadocia, was not only one of the possible ways of Christian life according to the Orthodox understanding of it, but it was first of all a sort of laboratory where this whole ideal of human existence as communion with God, as appropriation of the grace and slow transfiguration of man, were put into practice.
Now this great monastic or spiritual tradition, therefore, became the real doctrine of man in Eastern Orthodoxy. And this doctrine of man is centered primarily on the idea of man's transformation or transfiguration. He is to become the temple of the Holy Spirit. He is to anticipate eternal life in his life here in this world.
Now, the doctrine of that spirituality has been codified more or less in the body of writings known as the Philokalia , the great spiritual writings of the Fathers, the Fathers of the desert, or some of the great teachers of Latin Byzantium.
Thus, we have in Byzantium the foundation of the Eastern Orthodox world. Today there are many Orthodox Churches, many national Orthodox Churches. But they are still a part of this Byzantine synthesis, encompassing a body of doctrine, the dogma of the Church, the doctrine of the seven ecumenical councils and of the Greek Fathers, the Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite, the Liturgy connected with the names of John Chrysostom and Basil the Great. And it is finally the ideal of life that comes to us from men like Isaac of Syria, or Maximus the Confessor, that constitutes still the main inspiration of life.
This is what all Orthodox Churches and what all Orthodox people have in common, their foundation, the source, the Byzantine pattern of Orthodoxy.
Now, all this lasted for many centuries, and yet ended in an historical catastrophe.
In 1453 Constantinople was taken by the Turks, and the Byzantine Empire came to an end. Within the next hundred years all independent Orthodox Churches in Syria, in Egypt, and elsewhere, were under the cloak of Islam, and this brilliant millenium came to an end.
However, this was not the end of Eastern Orthodox history. It continued. Byzantium as an historical reality came to an end. Byzantium as a spiritual reality gave birth to many new developments, and those developments will later on lead us to the 20th century and to cities like New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.
Therefore, in the end of one historical era, the beginning of the dark age of Orthodoxy in fact provoked new developments, new beginnings, and these involve, first of all, the geographical expansion of Orthodoxy, the Byzantine mission. There is the birth, for example, of the great Slavic Christianity, Russian Christianity, et cetera.
Second, there was a new encounter with the West. First, a negative one during the Holy Wars of all kinds which unfortunately provoked a world of great misunderstanding.
And finally came the influence, the progress, the growth of modern Orthodoxy, the Orthodoxy of the Diaspora: the presence of the Orthodox Churches today virtually in every land, in every geographical area of the world.
Thus, summing up, we can say that what began in the Greco-Roman world, what followed its first fullness, its first expression in the world of Byzantium, then went into a sort of dark age, but continues today in new forms and with the same loyalty to its foundation.
1453 marks a tragical date in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church. In that year the city of Constantinople, which for more than a thousand years was the center of the Byzantine Orthodox culture, was taken by the Turks and for many centuries after that the whole Eastern world, the world of Eastern Orthodoxy, rather, which included the flourishing provinces of Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, ceased to be in the hands of Orthodox rulers.
And yet, it did not stop the growth and the progress of Orthodoxy.
On the one hand, of course, these centuries between the 15th and the 20th were centuries of a great tragedy. Orthodoxy survived, but survived in the climate of constant persecution. A Patriarch of Constantinople died a martyr in the year 1821, killed in his own Patriarchate. And even today what we hear from the See of Orthodox Primacy of Constantinople in Istanbul is always a source of tragedy for all Orthodox hearts in the world.
But, as I said, if this great Byzantine world entered its dark age it gave birth prior to this historical tragedy to new Orthodox Churches. And the first one to be mentioned here in this very glorious missionary development is the birth of the great Slavic Orthodox world.
In the 9th century two Greek brothers by the name of Cyril and Methodius were sent from Constantinople to the Western Slavs, and there translated the whole body of Scripture, Liturgy, and doctrine into the Slavic language.
Their own mission ended rather tragically. They were both expelled from what is today Czechoslovakia, and Latinism triumphed there. But in the translations the whole spirit of that Bystantine mission was picked up, if one can say so, by the other Slavic countries, first by Bulgaria, then by Serbia, and last but not least, at the end of the 10th century, by the young kingdom of Russia, centered in Kiev. And thus began a new chapter in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy which gave not only to the Orthodox world, but one can say to universal culture, great treasures of thought, holiness, and in general, various great examples of what Christian culture is.
At the end of the 10th century the Prince of Kiev, Vladimir, invited bishops and priests from Constantinople and baptized his whole people in the river Dnieper.
From this Christian beginning there developed the great Church of Russia which, in the 19th century, primarily because it was at that time practically the only free Church in a free Orthodox country, gave to the world great theologians, great writers. The names of Dostoyevsky, and closer to us the names like that of Pasternak, for example, whose Doctor Zhivago , which created so much interest a few years ago, showed the depth and the quality and the message of that Orthodox Christian literature of Russia.
If one adds to this the names of many saints produced by the Slavic world — again one name may be mentioned here, that of St. Seraphim of Sarov, who was canonized only at the beginning of this century, and who yet is a sort of flower grown on the soil of Orthodoxy, reflecting the deep joy of its Liturgy, its spiritual expectation of the kingdom. If one but mentions all this one can see that in 1453 the history of Orthodoxy did not come to an end.
In addition to the great Byzantine tradition, and inside this Byzantine tradition, new material traditions developed. For it belonged to the nature of Orthodoxy to identify itself with the total life of the community in which it lives.
Even today Greeks or Russians do not call themselves Greek or Russian, but simply Christian. And such is the degree of their identification with their faith. And so when one speaks of national Orthodox cultures one touches upon what maybe is the great particularity, the great uniqueness of Orthodoxy. It is this combination of a tradition which is not national in its essence, which is universal dogma, Liturgy, spirituality, and at the same time its complete identification with the soul of the people which it baptizes.
One can really speak as all Orthodox nations spoke of the Holy Greece, the Holy Russia, the Holy Serbia, not meaning moral holiness — for we are quite aware of the many sins and shortcomings of those peoples, individual and social — but of the ideal of national existence. And the ideal of national existence is rooted in the Church, which is not only an agency for prayer or for religious action, but which becomes in a very real sense the central, the psychi , the soul of the nation to which it belongs. Now such was the development of Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople.
Little by little the nations which were under Islam were liberated. At the beginning of the 19th century came freedom for Greece. It became a free Orthodox country. Then Bulgaria, then Serbia, then Roumania became free.
Then another set of tragedies began. Today a great part of the Orthodox world is again behind the Iron Curtain, and if one limits the analysis of that situation only to Soviet Russia, one can see again how in some 48 years of Soviet atheistic domination in Russia, the great monopoly of the state father could not bring to an end the Church's existence. The Church reacted, first by thousands of martyrs, of people who went to concentration camps, and then, little by little, by attracting to itself people who could not be poisoned by the atheistic propaganda or by ideologies alien to the Orthodox world.
So all this is the history of achievements and also of tragedies.
But the last thing which must be mentioned in this very brief historical analysis of Eastern Orthodoxy is the new phenomenon, the expansion of Orthodoxy beyond the Christian East.
I began by comparing the Christian East to the Christian West. Orthodoxy is the Eastern form of Christianity, though it has always claimed to have preserved the fullness of faith, to be the true Church, not to be just a geographical expression of Christianity. In fact, its history was an Eastern history.
Yet the tragedy which I mentioned resulted in a great geographical expansion of Orthodoxy: the Greeks expelled from Turkey in the twenties of this century, the Russian refugees, people who were leaving the various non-Orthodox countries of Central Europe.
All these different sources fed what today is the great Orthodox Diaspora.
It is almost a strange feeling when driving through Los Angeles to see an Eastern Orthodox Church all of a sudden. This is the East coming to the West, and again without speaking of what happens in Australia or in South America, where there are Orthodox Churches. If one just limits it to the United States one should say that today Orthodoxy is here not only as a sort of Eastern ghetto, but very quickly develops into a real factor in the American religious and cultural scene.
There are some five to six million Eastern Orthodox in America. There are several thousand parishes in practically every area, and little by little a new generation of Orthodox born in this country, educated within the American culture, yet faithful to this whole Byzantine and Orthodox heritage, doctrine, Liturgy and spirituality, are making their entrance not only as refugees, not only as those who remember the past, but who want to make Orthodoxy a real part, if not the moving force, of their life and existence in the West.
We are living through this chapter now and therefore it doesn't belong yet to history, but there can be no doubt that the critical moment is behind. This transition from what American sociology knows as the immigrants' Church to the native Church is on its way, and although of course it provokes many difficulties, many misunderstandings between generations, between various groups, et cetera, the last events, the creation of a Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops uniting all the Orthodox traditions into one, the practical cooperation, the Pan-Orthodox Schools and Seminaries: all of these things show that we are on our way, the way which before us the Lutherans and the Catholics knew — to become not simply one of the American groups, but to make the presence of Orthodoxy felt in the shaping which never ends, the shaping of this great country.
Certainly there's a great hope that this integration of Orthodoxy into America is something which will mean much, not only for Orthodoxy, for those Orthodox who are here, but for Orthodoxy universal, and also, one may hope, for the West itself.


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From SF Bike Coalition:
Join the SF Bicycle Coalition for a District 1 Love Your Lanes neighborhood bike ride and mingle. We are putting together a survey bike ride through the Richmond, and Golden Gate Park neighborhood and want you to join. You can help us evaluate how effective recent improvements have been and identify what work we still need to do.
As the people who ride these streets everyday, you know them best. We know you have ideas about what would make your commute better, so let's hit the streets together and talk about these areas. And we'll raise a glass at the end to working together to make our city a terrific place to live, work and bike. Seesfbike.org/connectingthecity for more information and to RSVP. This ride is open to current SF Bicycle Coalition members.


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Taking inspiration from antique dolls, Yukarin of Priere has created an angelic vision that harkens back to what Lolita was in the 90's, as well as the Victorian revival of the 1970's that brands like Gunne Sax popularized. Japanese pop culture is experiencing some serious 90's nostalgia at the moment (perhaps all the 1980's Fairy Kei girls have grown up and the girls who grew up in the 1990's are taking their place as queens of street fashion?) and is coming up with ways to reinvent the looks of the decade in fresh new ways.
Perhaps the best way to make coordinates like this cutting edge is the way they're styled, gone are the bare faces and simple hair of early Lolita, and in their place are the currently trendy looks that seem to borrow heavily from moe pop culture. High bright blush, berry red lips, and flawlessly natural looking hair, often with professionally dyed unnatural colors, give a finished look to the old fashioned layered dresses.
One thing I particularly love about this brand's stylings is the use of mixed off-whites, with only touches of brown or gold, and yet most of the looks are paired with darker shoes, something that was very frequently seen in old Lolita street snaps. I think that the pairing of lighter frilly dresses with dark shoes has such an endearing look, and reminds me so much of sepia toned antique photographs of little Victorian children.
While Priere is not a Lolita brand, the aesthetics are very similar and I think that anyone interested in Lolita, particularly the current Classic Lolita trends, can find a lot of inspiration from this up-and-coming designer. The bell sleeves, the peeking bloomers, the layers of sheer lace, these are all things that elicit a strong sense of nostalgia from most Lolitas who've been in the fashion for a while, or even new Lolitas who know their roots, and it's exciting to see a new designer put a fresh face on the older designs.
Priere is a very new line and currently only has an Instagram with the promise of a future webshob. But you can also follow Yukarin's personal Twitter and Instagram for more. Tokyo Fashion also features an interview with Yukarin here.


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Fly-In-Fly-Out (FIFO) - government response
The Queensland Government has delivered on its election commitments to investigate the impacts of the use of fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workforces in Queensland.
Two processes were undertaken to ensure a comprehensive assessment of the issues and to provide the government with recommendations on future policy options.
Parliament's Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources Committee tabled their report into FIFO and other long distance commuting work practices in regional Queensland on 9 October 2015. The Queensland Government provided its response to the parliamentary inquiry ( 75 KB) on 17 March 2016.
A four-member panel was also appointed to undertake a review of fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) mines where the operation is located near a resource town or regional community. This report was publically released on 1 October 2015 and the Queensland Government's response to the review ( 511 KB) is now available.
The government's response detailed a range of measures to be adopted, including:
- improved social impact assessments by mining companies
- workforce plans that maximise the opportunity for local workers to get jobs
- workers to live in local existing housing, or in purpose-built villages, where there is community support
- accommodation that provides a safe, clean and healthy environment for workers.
Parliamentary Inquiry into FIFO and other long distance commuting work practices in regional Queensland
On 27 March 2015 the Queensland Government commissioned a parliamentary inquiry into FIFO and other long distance commuting work practices in regional Queensland, including mental health impacts.
A public submissions process was undertaken and closed on 25 May 2015. A total of 235 submissions were received. Public hearings also took place in Brisbane and throughout regional Queensland. The final report from the parliamentary inquiry ( 2.6 MB) was released on Friday 9 October 2015.
FIFO Review
In May 2015 the government appointed a panel of four resource community and sector leaders to undertake the FIFO review and the panel has delivered its final report and recommendations to the Minister for State Development. The FIFO Review Report ( 2.7 MB) was publicly released on 1 October 2015.
In line with the review's terms of reference targeted stakeholder consultation was undertaken by the panel. The panel visited 13 locations right across Queensland and met with more than 80 stakeholders including local governments, unions, mining services industries and peak industry bodies.
The panel examined the economic impact of FIFO work practices in regional resource communities and also the communities where the FIFO workers live.
Further information
For further information about the Parliamentary Inquiry, including the submissions received, please visit their website.
Related initiatives
The Queensland Government Statistician's Office has published reports on resource regions non-resident population projections 2015 to 2021. Reports for the Bowen and Galilee Basins, the Surat Basin and the Gladstone region provide annual projections of workers in these resource areas.
Email the FIFO Project Team at the Department of State Development at firstname.lastname@example.com
Last updated: 09 Nov 2021


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Family Only Reason Thibaut Courtois Moved To Real Madrid, Says Agent
Thibaut Courtois moved to European champions Real Madrid on Wednesday for a reported 38million pounds (48.5million dollars, 42million euros).
- Agence France-Presse
- Updated: August 12, 2018 05:35 PM IST
Courtois' agent said the keeper's move was only because of family
Thibaut Courtois wanted to move to Spain for personal reasons
Courtois won the Golden Glove award at the World Cup
Thibaut Courtois would probably still be a Chelsea player had his family lived in London and not Madrid his agent told the BBC on Sunday. The 26-year-old Belgian -- whose outstanding performances as Belgium finished a best-ever third at the World Cup earned him the Golden Glove award for best goalkeeper -- moved to European champions Real Madrid on Wednesday for a reported 38million pounds (48.5million dollars, 42million euros) the relatively low fee due to him having just one year left on his contract. However, his agent Christophe Henrotay insisted Sunday the Chelsea fans should not be angry and think of Courtois as being disloyal in seeking to move to Madrid even if his refusal to return as requested to the London club for pre-season training and talks with new manager Maurizio Sarri left a sour taste.
"There has been a misunderstanding that he wanted to get a move for the wrong reasons, but he was pushing to go out of Chelsea because of his children," said Henrotay.
"If the family were in London it would have been totally different. He would have stayed, there is no reason to leave a club like Chelsea, he could have won trophies.
"Unfortunately his kids are living with the mother in Madrid."
Henrotay said Chelsea had acted in a cooperative fashion illustrating they wished to act in his client's best interests -- his two children are in Madrid living with their mother from whom he is estranged -- as well as opening the way so they could replace him.
The FA Cup holders splashed out a world record fee for a goalkeeper signing 23-year-old Kepa Arrizabalaga for 80million euros from Athletic Bilbao.
"He had the contract and it depended on Chelsea, but running close to the end of his contract, Chelsea had an interest to find a deal with Madrid, which they did," he said.
"It is personal reasons so we have to respect this. Chelsea understood the situation and really helped to get the deal.
"They did a really quick and easy deal together, understanding the humanity of the situation.
"It is not doing something against their fans it is about getting the best of a situation that is not ideal."
Henrotay said the moment when Courtois -- who knows Madrid well having played on loan from Chelsea at Atletico Madrid for three seasons -- was united with his family added pathos to the transfer.
"When we arrived in Madrid to make the signing, I had his parents, his brother, his sister, his child, the mother of the child, everyone is there and I said to him that I am delighted to make a great deal for him in going to Real Madrid but also it's a family coming together," said Henrotay.
"I could see tears in their eyes and it delighted me to be able to do something not only for a player, for a client, but for a family, which is great."


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Fragrance Nation
Then there's the onslaught of the Yankee Candle craze, the plug-in-freshener craze, and don't get me started on the Febreeze craze. Seriously, why the need for these products?
To the best of my knowledge, consumers never asked for a perfume factory in the detergent aisle. It's not like we have crummy hygiene or a lack of plumbing that makes us all smell like we're living in 18th century France. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I only remember Tide as available in one scent--Tide. Today, Tide comes in Original Scent, Tide Plus Febreeze Freshness, Tide with a Touch of Downy (which is available in the scents "April Breeze", "Clean Breeze" or lavender) and Tide Totalcare, which is available in the scents "Renewing Rain" or "Cool Cotton." You mean they actually found a way to artificially reproduce the smell of "cool cotton"? I am forced to use Tide Free and Gentle, which is free of fragrance and dyes. The others are simply too stinky, and it's not like the smell fades once the clothes are rinsed and dried. It lingers until you wash the item again using a fragrance-free soap.


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Designer faithful to the substance but lover of the aesthetic.
Volitional admirer of Italian manufacturing workers.
Insatiable observer, I see in everyday objects the ability to live in relationship with man through new uses, beyond the confines of the customary. Ambition for excellence in the creative process translates into a thirst for tactile and aesthetic perfectionism, in ideas that create new sound, drawing from the existing to offer the new. Revisit and redefine.
Bagigia is the result of this.
the idea
the idea suddenly passed by me, on a cold day in Milan: a woman, whose name I didn't know, was casually carrying a hot-water bottle under her arm. It was love at first sight.
I fell in love with the idea and with the easiness of that woman who, stared at by curious passers-by, was taking a stroll along Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
There followed a courtship that lasted many years, during which the hot-water bottle dressed up in leather, it took on many different colours, a hot die left the typical marks on the rubber surface, it was embellished by a stainless steel stopper, it became more practical thanks to a shoulder strip and finally it was given a name: Bagigia


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Don't Know Your Login?
Your login name is typically your first name and last name separated by a period. For example: joe.server
If you're not sure, ask a leadersip person at your restaurant to look it up on their Team Page.
Don't Know Your Password?
Your initial password for Stella is the same as your login. When you login for the first time, you'll be asked to change it.
If your password doesn't work, ask a leadership person at your restaurant to reset it for you.


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What I Wear Is None of Your Business
LatestYesterday I was humiliated in a way I'm sure many girls have experienced. It was the first time I blushed so hard I could feel my cheeks burning. It was the first time I've ever been shamed for my sexuality.
And I am not amused.
This summer, I am working at an ice cream store in a large city. It's a very busy store, with tons of customers passing through each day. The store shares storage and freezer space with a popular restaurant in the same building.
Over the course of the day, when I am not cleaning the store or working at the cash register, I spend a fair amount of time working in the back of the restaurant preparing the ice cream, refilling toppings and engaging in other scintillating tasks. (Bear with me, I promise the background information is relevant. Or perhaps I should say "bare" with me…that's called foreshadowing, folks.)
Anyway, lately it has been absurdly hot where I live and ironically the soft serve machines that keep the ice cream cold make the store just a tad toastier than hell. I have taken to wearing shorts to work with my sneakers and uniform t-shirt. In short, it is a stunning combination.
Yesterday, at the end of my shift, my manager, a young guy with whom I get along very well, said he needed to talk to me. Apparently a customer, thinking the restaurant owns the store, told the restaurant manager I was dressed too provocatively and asked why (and I quote), he "lets his girls run around like that." And then he got into his time machine and returned to the 50s. No but seriously, whaaaaaaat?
To be fair, because my legs are pretty long they make most shorts look like they were previously owned by Thumbelina. But these were not booty shorts. In fact, they would have passed my middle school's dress code (with my arms at my sides the shorts passed the tip of my thumbs). My manager was clearly uncomfortable and kept saying he didn't mind my shorts (uhhh…thanks? I like your legs too?) but didn't want to cause trouble with the restaurant manager. I apologized and said I would wear longer shorts next time.
I don't think that it is ever appropriate to ask a stranger to dress differently in order to make you more comfortable. If someone is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with something truly offensive, I am more sympathetic to the possibility of speaking up. But I subscribe to the school of thought that clothing is a valid form of self-expression. And my bare legs convey no offensive message and express nothing other than the desire to be cool and comfortable.
Yet it seems as though the customer believed my shorts were evidence of my intention to be provocative. Why do you let your girls run around like that, he asked. Girls, really? Someone seems to think the restaurant, beloved for its sandwiches and revered for its bagel and schmear, doubles as a brothel. It was as if he believed my shorts were evidence of my insidious intentions to woo customers. Would you like a scoop of vanilla with that?
Seems as though, when it comes to the way young women dress, there is a constant confusion of intent versus outcome. And we're never given the benefit of the doubt. A well-endowed friend of mine struggles to find shirts that do not expose her cleavage for fear of being considered slutty or a showoff.
I am constantly questioned by my peers about the length of shorts (yesterday was the first time an adult has ever commented). Another friend was asked by a female teacher to consider what male teachers may think about her clothing choices. Miley Cyrus' outfit choices, and the nefarious motives behind them, are constantly criticized. When people hear that a young woman was assaulted they often wonder what she was wearing.
So let's clear this confusion up once and for all. Young women choose clothing based on what makes them feel good. We wear what we do because it matches our mood. The clothes that are supposedly meant to seduce, are worn because we are comfortable in our skin. I won't have long, lean legs forever.
Girls are urged to celebrate their bodies but when I wear shorts that highlight what I am proud of, I am accused of trying to sneak attack customers with my sexuality. What I experienced yesterday was a classic mistranslation of intent and outcome. I intended to wear shorts because I like the way I look in them and I wanted to stay cool. Yet a conversation about my sexuality was the outcome.
Sometimes I feel as though young women are so often portrayed as needing relationships that people have come to believe that everything we do has some relation to them. Nothing we do can be "just because" or "just for ourselves" because young women are judged by the relationships they maintain and the interactions they have. Teenage girls are expected to always include the needs and wants of others as they form their intentions. The outcome of a teenage girl's actions should benefit others first and her second.
It is as if young women exist solely to be touchstones for other people. Our actions are not for us. Our actions are for those around us. Regardless of the intention behind them, our actions are the colors others use to paint simplified pictures of who we are. Mean girl, popular girl, slutty girl, geeky girl, sad girl; we come to be defined by one-dimensional summaries of how we supposedly interact with people.
It's no wonder the customer automatically assumed that my clothing choice involved thinking about how said selection would affect male customers. I'm a teenage girl so that's what I do. I think about others above myself because at the end of the day what counts is who I've made happy. He thought that in deciding to wear shorts I was making a statement of wanting to be an object of sexual attention. He believed that my foremost concern is the comfort of some nutty customer and not myself. But here's the thing, sir, I like my shorts. I'm keeping them. And as Eve Ensler writes in her monologue "My Short Skirt," my clothing, "believe it or not, has nothing to do with you."
This post originally appeared on RachelSimmons.com. Republished with permission.
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Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly plans on distributing a treatment for coronavirus patients this week. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just gave it the green light.
The antibody treatment is for patients over the age of 65 who have mild to moderate symptoms. Patients who are 12 years and up are also eligible if they have an underlying health condition.
The FDA approval comes at a time when cases are going up again and hospitals are struggling to treat so many patients.
Infectious disease experts say one of the biggest challenges for hospitals right now is to figure out where they want to administer the treatment.
It is given through an IV and usually, IV treatments are given in an outpatient setting to cancer patients.
"If you're talking about hospitals that have infusion centers for cancer and chemotherapy, that's not generally a place where they're going to feel comfortable taking COVID-19 patients in the contagious phase of their disease, because they also have highly immuno-compromised patients there," said Dr. Shira Doron, a hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.
Some hospitals in the U.S. already have the resources and space to administer the treatment to COVID-19 patients, but many still don't.
Another option would be to administer it in an emergency room, while still following the same criteria for who receives it.
While there are guidelines for who receives it, cases are rising. That could add another limitation to how many patients get the new antibody treatment.
"And then how will patients be referred to that facility? Will doctors know about that? And defining exactly which patients will benefit from this is somewhat still up in the air," said Doron.
Health and Human Services will be responsible for distributing the treatment. It will focus on states where hospitalizations and overall cases are high.


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Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence
Howard Zinn with an introduction by Yuki Tanaka
Introduction to The Bomb by Howard Zinn
In January 2010, Howard Zinn passed away at the age of 87. His new book, The Bomb, will soon be published in the U.S. by City Lights Books. The Japanese edition will be published simultaneously by Iwanami Publishing House. This small book consists of two chapters – Chapter One, "Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence" and Chapter Two, "The Bombing of Royan." The texts of both chapters, which have previously been published separately elsewhere, are now combined in one book with a new introduction by the author. In Chapter One, which is excerpted here, Zinn lucidly analyzes the causes of the Pacific War and deals with important issues related to responsibility for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a comprehensive yet concise manner. In Chapter Two, he describes the tragic consequences of the unnecessary bombing mission over Royan, a small French coastal town, conducted by U.S. Forces only a few weeks before the end of World War II in Europe, a mission in which Zinn himself participated as a bombardier. Zinn passed away without seeing a final published copy of this compelling book, with its profound criticism of the inhumanity of indiscriminate bombing.
In June 1966, Howard Zinn, together with Ralph Featherstone, visited Japan at the invitation of Beheiren (the Japan Peace-for-Vietnam Citizen's Alliance), a major grassroots movement against the Vietnam War, led by Oda Makoto. Featherstone was a leading member of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), The following year, Featherstone became program director of SNCC. He was assassinated on March 9, 1970 when a car bomb exploded in Maryland outside the courthouse where H. Rap Brown, SNCC chairman, was to stand trial.
This was the first time that Zinn, a former bombardier of the U.S. Army Air Force, met Oda Makoto, a survivor of the fire bombings of Osaka City conducted by U.S. Forces in nearly 50 raids between 19 December 1944 and 14 August 1945. In total, U.S. Forces dropped 168,000 tons of bombs, including napalm bombs, on more than 100 cities throughout Japan. Ninety percent of these were dropped by B-29 bombers in the last five months of the Asia-Pacific War. According to statistical data compiled by the Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages, the estimated casualties of these bombings, including those of the two atomic bombings, come to 1,020,000, including 560,000 deaths.
Napalm bombs were first used experimentally in Europe towards the end of World War II, before being widely employed in aerial attacks against Japanese civilians. One such initial experiment with these new bombs containing "jellied gasoline," was conducted by more than 1,200 bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, for which Zinn was a bombardier, over a beautiful beach town called Royan near Bordeaux in mid-April 1945, three weeks before Germany's surrender. The target of this bombing mission was some 30,000 to 40,000 Nazi soldiers who were ready to surrender, and were merely awaiting the end of the war, as their commander, Vice-Admiral Ernst Schirlitz, negotiated an accommodation with Admiral Hubert Meyer, French commander in the region, preparatory to surrender. The result was the total destruction not only of the German base but also of this charming seaside resort town and its ancient chateaux. The Germans lost several hundred men, but the number of civilian deaths resulting from this attack is unknown. In the forthcoming book, The Bomb, Zinn describes this mission in the following words: "I remember distinctly seeing the bombs explode in the town, flaring like matches struck in fog. I was completely unaware of the human chaos below."
Oda Makoto, on the other hand, personally experienced many of the bombings of Osaka City. In total, about 15,000 people were killed, 340,000 houses were destroyed, and an estimated 1.2 million people lost their homes and were driven from the second largest city in Japan. Oda had vivid memories not only of hiding in a shabby and fragile air raid shelter in his backyard, trembling with fear from the horrific noise and vibration, but also of the distinctive smell of corpses under the rubble caused by the bombings. This terrifying experience as a teenage victim of aerial bombardment remained a vital source of energy for Oda's prolific writing as well as for his political activities and involvement in civil movements, which continued until his death in 2007, at the age of 75. These experiences also allowed him to extend his imagination to empathize with the victims of similar indiscriminate bombings, such as the Chinese civilians attacked by Japanese Imperial Forces, and later Vietnamese victims of American bombings. Undoubtedly the bombing was the experiential foundation for his lifelong search for peace and justice.
Shortly after the war Zinn, became acutely aware of the horror experienced by the victims of indiscriminate bombing, as he began imagining the experiences of victims of his own indiscriminate attacks. His humane sense of personal guilt impelled him to critically examine the history of his nation in a bid to discover how the U.S. had become capable of committing atrocities like indiscriminate bombing. After studying at New York University on the GI Bill, he earned a Columbia history M.A. in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1958. Together with his achievements as an historian, he became a leading anti-war, peace, and civil rights activist. In his best selling book, A People's History of the United States, originally published in 1980, he re-examined American history from the "bottom up," i.e., from the viewpoint of the working and often disadvantaged members of society rather than that of the political and economic elite.
Zinn and Oda, who started their careers from opposite directions – one a perpetrator, the other a victim of indiscriminate bombing – were united as anti-war campaigners in Japan in mid 1966. Together with Ralph Featherstone, they traveled all across Japan including Hiroshima, conducting "teach-ins" and attracting a large audience in each city they visited. Everywhere they talked passionately about the Vietnam War as well as many issues related to peace and justice, in particular civil rights issues.
Howard Zinn speaking in Colorado, 2004 |
To my regret, I never had the chance to meet Howard Zinn, though Oda Makoto was a close friend of mine for almost 30 years. In March 2003, less than a month before the Bush administration launched the Iraq War, the Japanese edition of Zinn's book, Terrorism and War, which I translated, was published. I wanted Zinn to come to Japan to promote his book, conducting "teach-ins" again with Oda in several cities. I e-mailed him and proposed this plan. Zinn replied immediately, informing me that regrettably, his schedule was booked for several months and it would not be possible to travel overseas for a while. This was not surprising, considering his constant and active involvement in anti-war campaigns in his home country.
Zinn, in this new book, The Bomb, tried to provide more than a simple historical account of indiscriminate bombings conducted during World War II. As stated in his introduction, "To this day, the vicious reality of aerial bombing is lost to most people in the United States, a military operation devoid of human feeling, a news event, a statistic, a fact to be taken in quickly and forgotten." He wanted to warn us that indiscriminate aerial attacks on civilians, a military strategy with a long history, are still part of the harsh reality of many peoples' lives in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine, and that we as civilians ought to do our utmost to prevent this carnage of our fellow human beings.
In remembering Zinn, one of his former students, Henry Maar, tells of a piece of advice Zinn once gave him: "Don't get buried in the profession. Stay at the edge, keep half of your self outside the academy, outside the library, in the real world of social conflict. Don't write for your colleagues but for your fellow citizens." It is true that academic work can be stimulated by involvement in civil movements, and that the significance of academic work is constantly challenged by social movements, above all by those that one participates in. Yet, I am acutely aware of how difficult it is to keep the balance between academic work and civil movements, and to produce outstanding results in both. Zinn demonstrated magnificently how to accomplish this difficult task. In this sense, he was my hero and remains so now that he is no longer with us.
Let me conclude this introduction to Zinn's work with one of my favorite passages from his You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train:
"If we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
The following are extracts from Chapter One, on atomic bombing, from The Bomb.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, turned into powder and ash, in a few moments, the flesh and bones of 140,000 men, women, and children. Three days later, a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki killed perhaps 70,000 instantly. In the next five years, another 130,000 in- habitants of those two cities died of radiation poisoning.
No one will ever know the exact figures, but these come from the most exhaustive report available, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, put together by a team of thirty-four Japanese scientists and physicians, then translated and published in this country in 1981. Those statistics do not include countless other people who were left alive, but maimed, poisoned, disfigured, blinded.
The sociologist Kai Erikson, reviewing the report by the Japanese team of scientists, wrote: "The question is: What kind of mood does a fundamentally decent people have to be in, what kind of moral arrangements must it make, before it is willing to annihilate as many as a quarter of a million human beings for the sake of making a point."
Let's examine the question properly raised by Kai Erikson, a question enormously important precisely because it does not permit us to dismiss horrors as acts inevitably committed by horrible people. It forces us to ask: what "kind of mood," what "moral arrangements" would cause us, in whatever society we live, with whatever "fundamental decency" we possess, to either perpetrate (as bombardiers, or atomic scientists, or political leaders), or to just accept (as obedient citizens), the burning of children in vast numbers.
That is a question not just about some past and irretrievable event involving someone else, but about all of us, living today in the midst of outrages different in detail but morally equivalent, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is about the continued accumulation by nations (ours being first) of atomic weapons a thousand times more deadly, ten thousand times more numerous, than those first bombs. It is about the expenditure each year of a trillion dollars for these and what are soberly called "conventional" weapons, while fourteen million children die each year for lack of food or medical care.
We would need, then, to examine the psychological and political environment in which the atomic bombs could be dropped and defended as legitimate, as necessary. That is, the climate of World War II.
It was a climate of unquestioned moral righteousness. The enemy was Fascism. The brutalities of Fascism were undisguised by pretense: the concentration camps, the murder of opponents, the tortures by secret police, the burning of books, the total control of information, the roving gangs of thugs in the streets, the designation of "inferior" races deserving extermination, the infallible leader, the mass hysteria, the glorification of war, the invasion of other countries, the bombing of civilians. No literary work of imagination could create a more monstrous evil. There was, indeed, no reason to question that the enemy in World War II was monstrous and had to be stopped before it enveloped more victims.
But it is precisely that situation—where the enemy is undebatably evil—that produces a righteousness dangerous not only to the enemy but to ourselves, to countless innocent bystanders, and to future generations.
We could judge the enemy with some clarity. But not ourselves. If we did, we might have noted some facts clouding the simple judgment that since they were unquestionably evil, we were unquestionably good.
The pronoun "we" is the first deception, because it merges the individual consciences of the citizenry with the motives of the state. If our (the citizens') moral intent in making war is clear—in this case the defeat of Fascism, the halt to international aggression—we assume the same intent on the part of "our" government. Indeed, it is the government that has proclaimed the moral issues in order to better mobilize the population for war, and encouraged us to assume that we, government and citizens, have the same objectives.
There is a long history to that deception, from the Peloponnesian wars of the fifth century before Christ through the Crusades and other "religious" wars, into modern times, when larger sections of population must be mobilized, and the technology of modern communication is used to advance more sophisticated slogans of moral purity.
As for our country, we recall expelling Spain from Cuba, ostensibly to liberate the Cubans, actually to open Cuba to our banks, railroads, fruit corporations, and army. We conscripted our young men and sent them into the slaughterhouse of Europe in 1917 to "make the world safe for democracy." (Note how difficult it is to avoid the "we," the "our," that assimilates government and people into an indistinguishable body, but it may be useful to remind us that we're responsible for what the government does.)
In World War II, the assumption of a common motive for government and citizen was easier to accept because of the obvious barbarity of Fascism. But can we accept the idea that England, France, the United States, with their long history of imperial domination in Asia, in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, were fighting against international aggression? Against German, Italian, Japanese aggression certainly. But against their own?
Indeed, although the desperate need for support in the war brought forth the idealistic language of the Atlantic Charter with its promise of self-determination, when the war ended, the colonized people of Indochina had to fight against the French, the Indonesians against the Dutch, the Malaysians against the British, the Africans against the European powers, and the Filipinos against the United States in order to fulfill that promise.
There were pious statements about self-determination, noble words in the Atlantic Charter that the Allies "seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other." However, two weeks before the Charter, U.S. Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles was assuring the French government: "This Government, mindful of its traditional friendship for France, has deeply sympathized with the desire of the French people to maintain their territories and to preserve them intact."
It is understandable that the pages of the Defense Department's official history of the Vietnam War (The Pentagon Papers) were marked "TOP SECRET—Sensitive," because they revealed that in late 1942 President Roosevelt's personal representative assured French General Henri Giraud: "It is thoroughly understood that French sovereignty will be re-established as soon as possible throughout all the territory, metropolitan or colonial, over which flew the French flag in 1939."
As for the motives of Stalin and the Soviet Union—it is absurd to even ask if they were fighting against the police state, against dictatorship. Yes, against German dictatorship, the Nazi police state, but not their own. Before, during, and after the war against Fascism, the fascism of the gulag persisted, and expanded.
And if the world might be deluded into thinking that the war was fought to end military intervention by great powers in the affairs of weaker countries, the post-war years quickly countered that delusion, as the two important victors—the United States and the Soviet Union—sent their armies, or surrogate armed forces, into countries in Central America and Eastern Europe.
Did the Allied powers go to war to save the Jews from persecution, imprisonment, extermination? In the years before the war, when the Nazis had already begun their brutal attacks on the Jews, the United States, England, and France maintained silence. President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull were reluctant to put the United States on record against the anti-Jewish measures in Germany.
Shortly after we were at war, reports began to arrive that Hitler was planning the annihilation of the Jews. Roosevelt's administration failed to act again and again when there were opportunities to save Jews. There is no way of knowing how many Jews could have been saved in various ways that were not pursued. What is clear is that saving Jewish lives was not the highest priority.
Hitler's racism was brutally clear. The racism of the Allies, with their long history of the subjugation of colored people around the world, seemed forgotten, except by the people themselves. Many of them, like India's Gandhi, had difficulty being enthusiastic about a war fought by the white imperial powers they knew so well.
In the United States, despite powerful attempts to mobilize the African American population for the war, there was distinct resistance. Racial segregation was not just a Southern fact, but a national policy. That is, the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1896, had declared such segregation to be lawful, and that was still the law of the land during World War II. It was not a Confederate army but the armed forces of the United States that segregated black from white all through the war.
A student at a black college told his teacher: "The Army Jim Crows us. The Navy lets us serve only as mess-men. The Red Cross refuses our blood. Employers and labor unions shut us out. Lynchings continue. We are disenfranchised, Jim Crowed, spat upon. What more could Hitler do than that?"
When NAACP leader Walter White repeated that statement to an audience of several thousand in the Mid-west, expecting they would disapprove, instead: "To my surprise and dismay the audience burst into such applause that it took me some thirty or forty seconds to quiet it."
Large numbers of blacks did go along with Joe Louis's famous statement that "There's lots of things wrong here, but Hitler won't cure them." And many were anxious to show their courage in combat. But the long history of American racism cast a cloud over the idealism of the war against Fascism.
There was another test of the proposition that the war against the Axis powers was in good part a war against racism. That came in the treatment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. There was contempt for the Nazis, but with the Japanese there was a special factor, that of race. After Pearl Harbor, Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi said: "I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps. . . . Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!"
Anti-Japanese hysteria grew. Racists, military and civilian, persuaded President Roosevelt that the Japanese on the West Coast constituted a threat to the security of the country, and in February of 1942 he signed Executive Order 9066. This empowered the army, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest every Japanese American on the West Coast, most of them born in the United States—120,000 men, women, and children—to take them from their homes, and transport them to "detention camps," which were really concentration camps.
John Dower, in War Without Mercy, documents the racist atmosphere that developed quickly, both in Japan and in the United States. Time magazine said: "The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing … indicates it."
Indeed, the Japanese army had committed terrible atrocities in China, in the Philippines. So did all armies, everywhere, but Americans were not considered subhuman, although as Pacific war correspondent Edgar Jones reported, U.S. forces "shot prisoners, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats."
We did do indiscriminate bombing—not atomic, but with enormous civilian casualties—of German cities. Yet, we know that racism is insidious, intensifying all other factors. And the persistent notion that the Japanese were less than human probably played some role in the willingness to wipe out two cities populated by people of color.
In any case, the American people were prepared, psychologically, to accept and even applaud the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One reason was that although some mysterious new science was involved, it seemed like a continuation of the massive bombing of European cities that had already taken place.
No one seemed conscious of the irony—that one of the reasons for general indignation against the Fascist powers was their history of indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. Italy had bombed civilians in Ethiopia in its conquest of that country in 1935. Japan had bombed Shanghai, Nanking, other Chinese cities. Germany and Italy had bombed Madrid, Guernica, and other Spanish cities in that country's civil war. At the start of World War II, Nazi planes dropped bombs on the civilian populations of Rotterdam in Holland, and Coventry in England.
Franklin D. Roosevelt described these bombings as "inhuman barbarism that has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity." But very soon, the United States and Britain were doing the same thing, and on a far larger scale. The Allied leaders met in Casablanca in January 1943 and agreed on massive air attacks to achieve "the destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system and the undermining of the morale of the German people to the point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened."
This euphemism—"undermining of the morale"— was another way of saying that the mass killing of ordinary civilians by carpet-bombing was now an important strategy of the war. Once used in World War II, it would become generally accepted after the war, even as nations were dutifully signing on to the U.N. Charter pledging to end "the scourge of war." It would become American policy in Korea, in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
There was huge self-deception, not among the political leaders who consciously made the decisions, but on the part of the lower-level military who carried them out. We had been angered when the Germans bombed cities and killed several hundred or a thousand people. But now the British and Americans were killing tens of thousands in a single air strike. Michael Sherry, in his classic study, The Rise of American Air Power, notes, "so few in the air force asked questions." (I certainly did not, participating in a napalm bombing of the French town of Royan a few weeks before the end of the war in Europe.)
One month after the Dresden bombing, on March 10, 1945, three hundred B-29's flew over Tokyo at low altitude, with cylinders of napalm and 500-pound clusters of magnesium incendiaries. It was after midnight. Over one million people had evacuated Tokyo, but six million remained. Fire swept with incredible speed through the flimsy dwellings of the poor. The atmosphere became superheated to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. People jumped into the river for protection and were boiled alive. The estimates were of 85,000 to 100,000 dead. They died of oxygen deficiency, carbon monoxide poisoning, radiant heat, direct flames, flying debris, or were trampled to death (Masuo Kato, The Lost War: A Japanese Reporter's Inside Story).
That spring there were more such raids on Kobe, Nagoya, Osaka, and in late May another huge bombing of what remained of Tokyo. This was accompanied in the press by continued dehumanization of the enemy. LIFE magazine showed a picture of a Japanese person burning to death and commented: "This is the only way."
By the time the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, our minds had been prepared. Their side was vicious beyond description. Therefore, whatever we did was morally right. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, and their general staffs became indistinguishable from German civilians, or Japanese school children. The U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay (the same one who, during the Vietnam war, said: "We will bomb them back to the Stone Age") asserted: "There is no such thing as an innocent civilian."
President Truman's secret diaries were not revealed until 1978. In them Truman referred to one of the messages intercepted by American Intelligence as "the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace." And, after Stalin confirmed that the Red Army would march against Japan, Truman wrote: "Fini Japs when that comes about." It seems he did not want the Japs to be "fini" through Russian intervention but through American bombs. This explains the obvious rush to use the bomb in August, days before the Russians were scheduled to enter the war, and months before any planned invasion of Japan.
The British scientist P M S Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote (Fear, War, and the Bomb) that the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia."
There has been endless discussion about how many American lives would be lost in an invasion of Japan. Truman said "half a million." Churchill said "a million." These figures were pulled out of the air. Historian Barton Bernstein's research could not find any projection for invasion casualties higher than 46,000.
The whole discussion about casualty figures is pointless. It is based on the premise that there would have to be an American invasion of Japan in order to end the war. But the evidence is clear that the Japanese were on the verge of surrender, that a simple declaration on keeping the position of the Emperor would have brought the war to an end, and no invasion was necessary.
Indeed, much of the argument defending the atomic bombings has been based on a mood of retaliation, as if the children of Hiroshima had bombed Pearl Harbor, as if the civilian refugees crowding into Dresden had been in charge of the gas chambers. Did American children deserve to die because of the massacre of Vietnamese children at My Lai?
If silence and passivity in the presence of evil committed by political leaders is deserving of a death sentence, then the populations of all the great powers do not deserve to live. But only in those ordinary people, rethinking their role, is there a possibility for redemption and change.
Down to the present day, the massive bombing of civilians is justified, by intellectuals putting into respectable words the crude and brutish argument: "Sure we committed mass murder. But they started it. Our conscience is clear."
That argument aims the slogan "Never Again" only at them, never at ourselves. It is a prescription for the endless cycle of violence and counter violence, terrorism and counterterrorism, that has plagued our times, for which the only response is: "No more wars or bombings, of retaliation. Someone, no, we, must stop that cycle, now."
Copyright 2010 by The Howard Zinn Revocable Trust. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.
Yuki Tanaka is Research Professor, Hiroshima Peace Institute, and a coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal. He is the author most recently of Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young, eds., Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth Century History. He wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal.
Recommended citation: Howard Zinn and Yuki Tanaka, "Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence," The Asia-Pacific Journal, 25-1-10, June 21, 2010.
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Christmas Puffins Birch Veneer and Melamine Tray
- Regular price
£27.50 - Regular price
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A birch veneer tray with a melamine surface illustrated with two happy puffins, wearing their party hats, and enjoying the starlit sky.
Specification & Care
- Birch veneer with a printed melamine surface
- 36 cm x 28 cm x 1.5 cm
- Heat resistant, lightweight and shockproof
- Made in Sweden
- Wash with warm water and dry
Delivery & Return
Please note that we currently only deliver to addresses within the United Kingdom. We hope to ship to the rest of the world again soon.
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UK mainland orders under £45 are sent Royal Mail Tracked 48 at a cost of £4.50.
Free delivery for UK mainland orders over £45.
Delivery Times
We aim to dispatch all orders within two working days (except Print and Original Artwork orders).
Royal Mail tracked 48 aims to deliver within 2-3 working days. Thus, your order will typically arrive within three to five working days. However, this may take a little longer just prior to Christmas and during our sale periods.
Please contact us on firstname.lastname@example.com if you need an order quickly or for a specific date and we will see if this is possible.
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The famed British physicist is seeking an assistant to help develop and maintain the electronic speech system that allows him to communicate his vision of the universe. An informal job ad posted to the famed physicist's website said the assistant should be computer literate, ready to travel, and able to repair electronic devices "with no instruction manual or technical support."There ya go! If you have the skills, you might get to travel all over the world and maintain the voice of this icon.
The synthesizer's robotic monotone has become nearly as famous as Hawking himself, but the computer — powered by batteries fastened to the back of Hawking's wheelchair — isn't just for speaking.
It can connect to the Internet over cell phone networks and a universal infrared remote enables the physicist to switch on the lights, watch television, or open doors either at home or at the office.


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The Citation Retrieval System (CRS) is the literature database for the Fire Effects Library, which is located at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory and serves the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS). CRS contains references on the distribution, biology, ecology, and fire responses of organisms in North America. The system contains more than 58,000 citations. You are welcome to search CRS to find citations! Please note that the Missoula Fire Lab is not a copying service or a lending library.
Contact CRS staff for help with complex searches.


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An Open Letter To Jack White
Original image found at Relevant
Hey there Mr. White… oh wait, that's already reserved for a movie character.
Can I call you Jack? Ok. Listen, Jack… this solo career you've got going on here. It's all nice that you are trying to be creative and shit. And your venture into keeping vinyl alive and well for music purists is pretty cool.
But let's get real here. You've gone off the rails lately. Making negative comments towards a band you appear to believe stole your sound is the latest. Dissing other musicians, including your previous partner in the band that made you famous and well-known, isn't cool.
And speaking of that band — that brings me to the point of this open letter.
Bring back The White Stripes!
Not for the long haul. Just one last tour. One last album. One last send off.
Yes, we all know about the one aborted tour for the "Get Behind Me Satan" albums, when Meg went through some stage fright issues. Or at least that was the report.
And I get that you are promoting your new album "Lazaretto", which stirring up the press with statements can put your name out there more.
But seriously Jack, your solo career can take a breather. Reissue the back catalog of the White Stripes music. Even if you have zero interest in creating new music with Meg, find an album's worth of unreleased songs. Put it out there. Hell, put it on 180 gram vinyl, too. See what kind of interest is out there. My guess is that it's a lot.
If I'm wrong and people don't care about the White Stripes anymore, you can search the web or this blog for negative shit about me. Feel free to put me in my place to the public. But if I'm right and us fans miss that band of raw sound and simplicity, then leave a comment below offering your best apology.
I'm listening and waiting…
Signed… a White Stripes fan that wants a comeback
– Marty


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Who's winning the robocar race
An ad from 1957 shows a family playing dominoes in a bubble-top car as it cruises down an eight-lane divided highway, its steering wheel pointedly unattended. "One day your car may speed along an electric super-highway, its speed and steering automatically controlled by electronic devices embedded in the road," reads the copy. "Highways will be made safe - by electricity! No traffic jams .?.?. no collisions .?.?. no driver fatigue."Now it finally seems to be happening. Google's self-driving cars have covered more than 300,000 miles, most recently wowing the Texas Transportation Forum with a demonstration on the streets of Austin. "The remarkable thing was that it was a little unremarkable," Coby Chase, director of the Texas Department of Transportation's government and public affairs division, told the Dallas Morning News after his ride.
Googlers aren't the only ones working on self-driving cars. Brad Templeton, an Internet pioneer and robocar advocate, counts 27 commercial and university projects, not including unmanned military vehicles. The 2014 Mercedes-Benz S Class, for instance, will include an autopilot feature for stop-and-go traffic.
With its aim of a fully autonomous car, however, Google's program is particularly audacious. And it illustrates how Silicon Valley, rather than traditional automotive centers, is increasingly shaping the future of cars. No wonder Road & Track magazine recently gave its entire 65-year archive not to some place in Michigan but to the two-year-old Revs Program at Stanford University, which sponsors interdisciplinary courses and research on the automobile "as a technological and aesthetic artifact and cultural symbol."
A reason for Silicon Valley's ascendency is the extraordinary quality of today's cars. Pretty much everybody makes reliable cars that drive well. So the main competitive differences don't come from mechanical engineering but from software.
"How the interior feels, how your iPhone integrates, etc .?.?. these all matter more than whether your car has 6 or 8 gears in the transmission," writes Diego Rodriguez, a partner at the design consulting firm IDEO and a founding professor at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (better known as the d.school), in an e-mail. Even in a hard-core driver's car like the new Porsche 911 GT3, he notes, "the entire experience is mediated by computers."
A car enthusiast with a blog called Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness, Rodriguez argues that Silicon Valley's designers and engineers "know how to knit together everything from new battery technologies to network protocols to very nuanced elements of onscreen aesthetics. Getting the cockpit of the car to produce a wonderful experience is a similar challenge to making an operating system for a computer really sing."
But Silicon Valley has more going for it than simple technological know-how. If in 10 or 15 years you have an invisible robot chauffeur whisking you to your destination, it will be because the area's distinctive culture made the idea work.
That culture includes, first and most obviously, the ambitious optimism that encourages experiments like Google's. Reilly P. Brennan, the executive director of the Revs program, observes that "there's an almost complete lack of skepticism in the Bay Area, which is very refreshing." In his native Detroit, he says, there was always "a feeling that somebody around the corner was going to take something you had." Disruptive change was threatening. In Silicon Valley, it's glamorous.
"Everyone here gave up a life somewhere else, and moved here to do something big," says Templeton, a native of Ontario. "There's a hunger for that." He promotes robocars, he says, because "it's hard to name things where the numbers and the consequences are bigger." By avoiding accidents and all the costs they entail, he argues, self-driving cars could save "millions of lives and trillions of dollars."
Addressing business people attending a recent weeklong program at Singularity University, a think tank devoted to "accelerating change," Templeton imagines a future of on-demand robotaxis replacing personal automobiles. Today's parking lots, he suggests, could become tomorrow's parkland. Fuel consumption would plummet, as people used tiny, single-person vehicles for most trips and electric cars for short hops, saving the gas- guzzlers for special occasions. Robocars, he declares, represent "a way that programmers can save the world."
It's classic Silicon Valley big-think speculation, with a flattering dose of technological boosterism. But along with the vivid scenarios that capture technologists' imaginations comes the understanding that it's all just guesses - and that future progress will grow from learning how such visions go wrong. "Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it's very hard to fail completely," Google Chief Executive Officer Larry Page says in Steven Levy's excellent book on the company, "In the Plex." "That's the thing that people don't get."
Templeton doesn't have to be right about the endpoint, in other words, and neither do the innovators working on self- driving cars. Maybe instead of small utilitarian vehicles, successful robocars will be super-luxurious on-demand limos. Maybe the earliest market will be rental cars for travelers. Maybe people will want to give up driving but not car ownership. The only way to find out is to try and see what works.
Trial-and-error experimentation is more likely if you don't have to overhaul the entire transportation system every time you need to make a tweak. Self-driving cars running on existing roads without central control represent a dramatic change from 20th-century visions.
"When a 100,000 automobiles speed along the elevated highways of the City of the Future," declared a 1930 ad, "engineers predict that the whole traffic system will operate as a single unit - under the control of one man's hand. The future of mechanism, they say, lies inevitably along the path of simplified and centralized control." The illustration showed a stylized male figure looking over a vast network of crowded highways, his hand perched on a dial. The family- friendly 1957 ad similarly assumed that the guiding intelligence would be embedded in the road.
Today's experiments, by contrast, put the smarts in the car itself. "The first rule of robocars is you do not change the infrastructure," Templeton reminds a Singularity audience member who inquires about smart highways. Just as the Internet restricts intelligence to the computers on either end of a transmission and doesn't care about the specific content of what it carries, paved streets constitute a "dumb network." They can carry anything, from Roman soldiers to California skateboarders, from a Model T to a robocar. Whether the traffic that a network carries is digital or motorized, revisions and improvements become much simpler when they don't require new infrastructure. Dumb streets and smart cars make for a more flexible, resilient system.
The world of software - Google's world - also produces a different mindset from the world of traditional car manufacturing. "Software companies have an amazing ability to release something un-perfect and slowly work their way up," says Brennan, the executive director at Revs. Consumers anticipate progress, making early adopters more tolerant of flaws and shortcomings.
Of course, early automobile adopters were also tolerant. Silicon Valley is where Detroit was in the 1920s or '30s, when cars were the newly indispensable technology. Its critics are culturally marginal, while its products remain touchstones of prosperity and progress. It's only lightly regulated. Silicon Valley's ever-optimistic innovators assume that if they're doing something cool and important, nobody will seriously try to stop them. That cultural confidence - or outright cockiness - is as crucial as any particular technology to delivering on the decades-old promise of self-driving cars.
*The author is a Bloomberg View columnist.
by Virginia Postrel


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Step into a world where sneaker culture meets anime fandom with our exclusive Air Jordan 1 Mid shoes tailored for Anime enthusiasts. Elevate your style with custom designs featuring iconic characters and scenes, meticulously crafted for comfort and distinction. These shoes seamlessly blend streetwear flair with the vibrant creativity of your favorite anime, making each step a unique expression of your passion. Unleash the perfect fusion of style and fandom with our Anime-inspired Air Jordan 1 Mid shoes—where sneaker artistry meets anime greatness.
- High-quality rubber sole for traction and exceptional durability.
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Don't miss this incredible opportunity to combine your love for anime with cutting-edge fashion – snag your Air Jordan 1 Mid from PODAnime Store today and make a statement wherever your adventures take you!
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Here's a tip. When you're packing to go back home from your upcoming or next summer vacation, toss your toothbrush. We all know bringing home a used toothbrush is a messy adventure, complete with wet and crushed bristles. And, when was the last time you replaced that thing, anyway? Changing your toothbrush after a trip is a great way to get into this good habit. And now that you know you'll be shopping for a new one, here are some tips to pick one that's the best fit for you.
Choosing the right toothbrush comes down to two specifics: what's recommended, and what's good for your own mouth.
The Standard Recommendations:
- Go soft: Overwhelmingly, soft bristles are better for your teeth and gums. Yes, you can buy medium bristles and stiff bristles, but unless your dentist has recommended that specific type of brush for your mouth, go soft.
- Go round: This confuses a lot of people since the shapes and patterns of bristles are mostly at all sorts of whacky angles. Nothing really appears to be "round!" What round actually means is that the bristles are "end-rounded," meaning the rough edges of each bristle have been smoothed out to avoid hurting sensitive gum tissue.
- Go for the seal: The seal of the American Dental Association (ADA), that is. Believe it or not, there aren't many toothbrushes allowed to display the ADA seal, which certifies the product as safe and will hold up to regular use. As in the bristles won't fall out and the handle won't break. This does happen with cheap toothbrushes!
The Personal Recommendations:
- Pick the right size: The head of the toothbrush should fit comfortably in your mouth so you can reach the surface of each tooth (front and back). This includes your back molars too, so if you can't do this with your current brush, it's likely too big.
- Pick the right handle: The shape and design of the handle all depends on how you like to hold your toothbrush when you're brushing. There are a myriad of ways to hold your brush. A little experimentation here is probably best. Non-slip handles are typically a good jumping off point. Also, most of us hold our toothbrush a bit too aggressively, so the next time you're in the office,bring your favorite brush with you to the office, and ask your hygienist to help you tweak your grip a bit. Your gums will thank you!
- Pick the right bristle shape: Bristles, bristles, bristles! Oh, so many shapes, angles and colors. Which to pick?! Experts say to pick the one that feels best in your mouth. That's not much guidance, we know. But the basic idea is that bristle design will feel different to different people depending on how big their teeth are, whether they have a lot of spacing, braces, prosthetics … a million things, really. So, again, "feel" is most important. That's why these are personal recommendations after all!
And that's it, really. Choose any color you'd like. We won't offer any advice on that!
© 2014 Revenue Well Systems, LLC. All rights reserved


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Sylvan Learning of Harker Heights-Killeen
Our Personalized Tutoring Delivers Results
At Sylvan Learning of Harker Heights-Killeen, we're focused on building academic confidence, igniting intellectual curiosity, and inspiring a love for learning – all of which make a big impact in school and in life. From math tutoring to reading and writing tutoring, we can help your child build confidence, become eager to learn and see real results in the classroom.
Our personalized tutoring is tailored to your child's specific needs to achieve the best results. In fact, Sylvan students achieve up to 3x more growth in their math and reading scores than their peers.
Special Offers
Spread Smiles With School Supplies!
Join our School Supply Stock-Up and help local students with what they need to make this school year a success!
Sylvan Learning
Harker Heights-Killeen
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Harker Heights TX 76548
Also serving: Ft. Hood & Copperas Cove
Mon | 9:00 am - 8:00 pm |
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Tutoring and services we offer at our Harker Heights-Killeen center
We offer K-12 tutoring, college and career readiness and test prep to help your child at any stage of his or her educational journey.
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Sylvan For Schools
It's different at Sylvan:
Learning. Personal. Fun
- Personalized plans with 3X Results
- Caring tutors engage your child
- Motivation program keeps it fun!
Meet Our Team
Our tutors are passionate, warm educators who love inspiring children to succeed. We selectively choose tutors who know local curriculum and can link Sylvan lessons to what's being taught in Harker Heights schools.
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We offer K-12 tutoring, college and career readiness and test prep to help your child at any stage of his or her educational journey.
Now Hiring Teachers for Reading, Writing, Math, Upper-Level Math, College Prep (SAT/ACT) and Science!
We are looking for great teachers who love kids and teenagers. At Sylvan students learn about three times faster than they do in school because our education is highly customized, and it is very easy for teachers to do what they love most…TEACH. Our environment is safe, and you get to see students make meaningful progress quickly! This job is very rewarding, and we ask our teachers to do a lot less than in school. For example, school class sizes are 25 to 30 and ours are three to four students per teacher. At school you must make lesson plans and at Sylvan there is already a student specific plan. There is no need to grade papers as assessment and progress results are part of the lesson at Sylvan. We love parents, but our directors work with the parents so you can focus on the students. In addition, most schools require you to teach to a specific test. We don't do that here, but we do guarantee results and we get them! Our teachers GET TO DO THE BEST PART about teaching and that is meet the kids where they are academically with a highly customized program in small groups. It is pretty amazing, and we would love to talk to qualified teachers.Start your child on the path to academic success today
Give us a call at (254) 449-7385 or fill out the form to discuss your child's learning goals and schedule our Insight™ Assessment to accurately determine where your child stands academically.


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Important: By pressing the search button all previous searches will be dropped.
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There are games that have cult followings and then there is Chrono Trigger. In a class by itself, this game has sold more copies on different systems than pretty much any other game that was released during its time. Able to stand the test of time and ports to different systems, the game still lives on and can now be played right on your Android device.
This particular port is the one from the Nintendo DS a few years ago, which means this game includes 2 additional areas: The Dimensional Vortex and The Lost Sanctum. The game has been optimized for Android so you can expect a smooth playing experience even if the game is almost 20 years old. If you're a fan of the series you will definitely want to check this classic in the link below, if you can stomach the price.
Play Link ($9.99)