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1. Bobby (2006)
For all the complaints made about the Academy Awards, they remain the highest honor a film can achieve. Picking up an Oscar not only ensures that the winning films will have a longer life and find more viewers, it boosts the career of everyone who walks off the stage with a gold statuette. In other words, there are reasons to want an Oscar beyond the satisfaction of receiving an award for a job well done. Maybe that's why some films seem a little too eager to assume Oscar-friendly shapes. Some offer somber adaptations of important literary works. Others give actors a chance to act to the fullest of their abilities for extended periods of time. Still others take on events that have shaped our times. A prime example of the lattermost, the Emilio Estevez-directed Bobby takes place in a single day at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel. But it's not just any day: It's the day of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, and the film brings in a once-in-a-lifetime—if rather bizarre—cast that includes Nick Cannon, Harry Belafonte, Christian Slater, Ashton Kutcher, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, and Shia LaBeouf to portray a cross-section of 1968 America. The film is Altman-esque in form but not in depth, filled with thin characters and easy period references. It met with indifference from audiences and Oscar alike, in spite of earning a couple of Golden Globe nominations.
2. Nine (2009)
A hit in another medium can seem like just the thing to catch fire with audiences as well as Oscar voters. If that hit doubles as a study of the filmmaking process, rich with opportunities to talk about the magic and misery of movies, hey, all the better. Hence, Nine, an adaptation of the Maury Yeston/Arthur Kopit Broadway hit from 1982, which was itself an adaptation of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, a self-reflexive, semi-autobiographical film about a director suffering from creative paralysis. Although the film boasts a cast that includes Daniel Day-Lewis, it faced two insurmountable problems: 1) Any director would have trouble approaching Fellini's stylistic flair, and Rob Marshall proved particularly ill-suited to the task, opting just to plant the camera indifferently, roll film, and then cut it all to ribbons in the editing room. 2) Nine's songs just aren't that good in the first place. Picked as a lock for multiple awards by Oscar prognosticators, it racked up a handful of nominations (most prominently Penélope Cruz for Best Supporting Actress and the undistinguished new Yeston song "Take It All"), but ended up a little-seen, less-loved also-ran.
3. The Shipping News (2001)
Somewhere along the line, probably around The Cider House Rules, Swedish director Lasse Hallström became the go-to director for self-consciously prestigious, awards-seeking fall movies, usually released by Miramax. And somewhere around The Shipping News, that career niche must have started to feel like a trap. Where Cider House is a best-case scenario, a prestige picture where any calculation gets swallowed up by the deeply affecting drama, The Shipping News comes from the opposite end of the spectrum. A dull adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel rendered sentimental to the point where the book's fans hardly recognized it, the 2001 film features a heavyweight cast of actors familiar with awards and nominations (Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett) slogging their way through dreary Newfoundland. If anyone expected to win any awards as hazard pay, however, they were left disappointed: Although the Golden Globes coughed up a couple of nominations, nobody else paid it much mind.
4. The Life Of David Gale (2003)
A sparking, unpredictable character actor, Kevin Spacey never quite recovered from the shock of winning a Best Actor Oscar for American Beauty. He spent the next few years trying to chase down another Oscar, never more blatantly than with The Life Of David Gale. A Big Important Movie about a Big Important Topic, Gale casts Spacey as a death-row prisoner who offers a tell-all story to a reporter played by Kate Winslet. The ironies begin with the fact that Spacey's character was a well-known death-penalty opponent prior to his imprisonment. But they don't end—or get any less cheap from—there, as further revelations involving leukemia and a faked sexual assault force the film to perform double duty as a message movie and a sleazy shocker. Alan Parker's usual slick directorial touches only make matters worse. Originally scheduled for an awards-season run during the fall of 2002, it disappeared from the schedule and quietly resurfaced the following February, to the acclaim of virtually no one.
5. Albert Nobbs (2011)
Though Glenn Close was nominated in the Best Actress category for her portrayal of an Irishwoman passing as a male butler (and Janet McTeer earned a Supporting Actress nod as another cross-dresser), Albert Nobbs limped its way out of the festival circuit and never gained any box-office or awards traction beyond the perfunctory recognition for Close's stunt-y performance. And "perfunctory" is the best way to describe it. Few critics were enthusiastic about the movie or Close, but it's hard not to acknowledge that she's doing something, with her cropped hair and blank expression and gravelly voice. Close isn't the least bit convincing as a man, but she is convincing as the kind of oddball that other people would leave alone. Close also co-wrote and produced Albert Nobbs (after playing the title character onstage in the '80s), so this is clearly the performance she wanted to give. It's also the kind of performance that makes awards voters with four slots already filled say, "And, oh I dunno… Glenn Close, I guess."
6. J. Edgar (2011)
Clint Eastwood is a good director. Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for 2008's Milk) is a good screenwriter. Leonardo DiCaprio is often a good actor. And tyrannical FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is a fascinating subject—from his persecution of those he considered "enemies" to his close, possibly homosexual relationship with his right-hand man Clyde Tolson. By all rights, J. Edgar should've been a nomination-generating machine—and truth be told, it's a mostly okay, occasionally inspired film. But because the film's flashback structure requires DiCaprio to spend large chunks of the movie in bad old-age makeup—on top of his broad Hoover-ian accent—J. Edgar seemed more like an elegantly filmed high-school play than the serious survey of American history it was meant to be. Eastwood's been an Academy favorite for decades, but J. Edgar was left dangling.
7. Amelia (2009)
Proving that Oscar prognostication is an inexact science at best, when it was announced that double Oscar-winner Hilary Swank would be starring in a movie about legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, most speculators went ahead and inked Swank in as a lock for a nomination. But who would've guessed that the usually reliable director Mira Nair would come down with a crippling case of biopic-itis with Amelia, making a gorgeous-looking but doggedly remedial period picture? Swank did at least resemble Earhart, but she had a hard time actually acting with her exaggerated accent—matched by Richard Gere's as Earhart's publisher/spouse George Putnam—and Amelia's dumbed-down approach to the complicated heroine proved too weak for even the oft-forgiving Academy to excuse.
8. I Am Sam (2001)
"Ask Sean Penn, 2001. I Am Sam, remember? Went full retard, went home empty-handed." In that crass but true speech in Tropic Thunder, Robert Downey Jr.'s character accentuates one of the many problems with I Am Sam, a film in which Sean Penn plays a mentally challenged man whose daughter is taken away from him. Adversity! But the story itself is so mawkish and sentimental that it was pretty much impossible to like. The Oscar bait almost worked: In spite of the film's largely negative reception, Penn was nominated for Best Actor. His performance was actually very good—too good, Patton Oswalt once noted—but it's such a difficult thing to tackle, and presented in such a rosy way, that it was doomed to fail.
9. Reservation Road (2007)
Director Terry George was riding high after the unexpected Oscar success of Hotel Rwanda, his account of how a hotel manager made a difference in the midst of a genocide. The film received acting nominations for stars Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, and George and his co-writers received a nomination for the script. For his follow-up project, he chose an adaptation of John Burnham Schwartz's acclaimed novel Reservation Road, the script for which he co-wrote with Schwartz. A family melodrama and thriller, the film revolved around two families drawn together when the father of one strikes and kills the son of the other with his car. Starring two Oscar winners in Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino, as well as an Oscar nominee in Joaquin Phoenix, and the always-terrific Mark Ruffalo, the film spent most of 2006 riding high on prognosticators' prediction charts. Then the film was yanked from its 2006 release date, and it disappeared without a trace, finally resurfacing in October of 2007 to terrible reviews and nonexistent box office. The convoluted twists and turns of the novel didn't work nearly as well on screen, and George's career took a near-fatal hit.
10. The Painted Veil (2006)
One could populate an entire list of this sort with Naomi Watts vehicles that failed to attract significant Oscar attention. The adventurous actress likes to pick risky material with a certain sheen of Oscar-primed quality, but it blows up in her face as often as not. (See also: Fair Game.) John Curran's The Painted Veil, however, is a handsome, stately epic, beautifully shot in China. Given the film's acclaimed source material (a W. Somerset Maugham novel), all-star cast (Watts, Edward Norton, and Liev Schreiber), and Oscar-friendly story about a woman who cheats on her husband, then learns to love him again in the midst of a cholera outbreak, it's a bit surprising the Academy completely ignored The Painted Veil. Blame for that probably lies with the studio that released the film, which could have milked it for a technical nomination or two, but also with the fact that it falls just short of greatness. It's a handsomely made, occasionally moving film, but it never overcomes its own lugubriousness to be truly impressive. Not that that's stopped the Oscars before…
11. The Majestic (2001)
When The Majestic came out in 2001, it practically had "Oscar" posted all over its old-timey single-screen movie palace marquee. Consider all the Academy-friendly elements at play: It's directed by Frank Darabont, who was hot off two serious Stephen King adaptations, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, that were embraced but unrewarded. It stars Jim Carrey, a rubber-faced comedian stretching into a dramatic role, which mainly involves trading his myriad wacky expressions for a single, pinched one. It bathes an iconic/generic small town in '50s America in a golden, nostalgic hue. It celebrates the movies themselves, in the form of a movie palace that closed after the war took 60 of the town's brave young men and reopens as a tribute to the country's enduring spirit. And it takes on an important chapter in history, in this case the '50s anti-Communist paranoia and the Hollywood blacklist. All in all, The Majestic is something Frank Capra would theoretically have been proud to make, an unabashed slice of Americana. Only Capra would have made it less of a dour, lifeless, soppy dud.
12. Finding Forrester (2000)
There have been times during his eclectic career when Gus Van Sant seems to have felt the need to prove himself as a craftsman in order to keep making the odd little movies at the heart of his oeuvre. There was some of that journeyman Van Sant in Good Will Hunting, his impeccable rendering of conventional material, but that film was like Wavelength compared to 2000's Finding Forrester, a paternalistic feel-good drama about a teenage African-American writing prodigy (Rob Brown) given a boost by a cranky, reclusive Pulitzer-winner (Sean Connery). Van Sant gets all the funky, flavorful scene-setting done in a great opening rap sequence, then settles into a series of predictable developments where racial assumptions are upended, the cranky author comes around ("You're the man now, dog!"), and both characters proceed to take the stuffing out of an arrogant private-school professor, played by F. Murray Abraham. It's probably no coincidence that Van Sant did an immediate career about-face after Finding Forrester, kicking off his Béla Tarr-inspired "Death Trilogy" the next year with Gerry.
13. All The King's Men (2006)
How could 2006's All The King's Men go this wrong? Director Steven Zaillian, an accomplished screenwriter (Schindler's List) and a capable filmmaker (Searching For Bobby Fischer, A Civil Action), had two excellent sources to draw from: Robert Penn Warren's classic 1946 political novel, about a corrupted idealist in Louisiana, modeled on Huey Long; and a first-rate 1949 adaptation by Robert Rossen, starring Broderick Crawford as the larger-than-life Long figure. Zaillian cast Sean Penn in the Crawford role, a sound move—at least before Penn gave that cartoonish Deep South accent a whirl—and filled out the other parts with big-time actors like Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, and Mark Ruffalo. But All The King's Men languished on the shelf for a full year before premièring at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the experience of watching the leaden catastrophe is like trying to ingest a dozen baked potatoes in one sitting. It sits there like a big, formless, starchy lump.
14. The Lovely Bones (2009)
When Alice Sebold's breakthrough novel was still in galley form, Morvern Callar director Lynne Ramsay snapped up the rights, determined to turn Sebold's book into a bruisingly unsentimental fantasy about a young girl who's raped and murdered and looks down on her family—and her killer—from heaven. But a not-so-funny thing happened to Ramsay en route to adapting the book: It became an unlikely sensation, which immediately vaulted the scale and popular appeal of the project beyond what Ramsay had anticipated. Enter Peter Jackson, who had just made the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and seemed either disinclined or incapable of treating The Lovely Bones with the intimacy it deserved. Instead, he fretted for months over what heaven should look like, eventually settling for a fantasy world that looks sprung from the cover of an Ursula K. Le Guin paperback, and played up the early-'70s trappings to garish effect. What's missing is the heart of the novel, which lies in the wrenching spectacle of a young girl who's trying to come to terms with what happened to her while watching helplessly as her family falls to pieces.
15. Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005)
There's empty pageantry, and then there's Memoirs Of A Geisha, Rob Marshall's adaptation of Arthur Golden's bestseller, which is like a Far East variant on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade: beautiful floats drifting down Middlebrow Avenue. Marshall casts three Chinese actresses (Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh) to play Japanese geishas in broken English, just the first indication of the generalized Orientalism that infects the whole production. Golden's story has the superficial sweep of characters transformed by history, with World War II as the dividing point between a life of servitude for these geishas and the uncertainty that comes when that tradition ends. It's an old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama, with illicit love affairs and tragic betrayals, but even the soap-opera elements are stifled by a fetishistic emphasis on ornate costumes, stunning backdrops, and other period bric-a-brac. That it won Oscars for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Production Design without so much as a nomination in any of the non-technical categories says it all.
16. Pay It Forward (2000)
On paper, Pay It Forward must have looked like surefire Oscar bait. It united two recent Academy Award winners—Kevin Spacey (again) and Helen Hunt—and a nominee (Haley Joel Osment) in a heartwarming story about selflessness, a saintly child whose generosity sparks a movement, and the usual horseshit about the dignity of the human spirit. Spacey even played a physically disfigured teacher! The only way Pay It Forward could have been more Oscar-friendly would have been if it had taken place entirely in a concentration camp. Alas, critics and audiences alike rightly laughed the maudlin, manipulative, and melodramatic Pay It Forward right out of awards consideration, and the film became a glib punchline about noble intentions gone amusingly awry instead of a revered Oscar winner.
17. The Phantom Of The Opera (2004)
As attested by the nine Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) scored by the disastrous flop 1967 adaptation of Doctor Doolittle, musicals don't necessarily have to be good in order to get Oscar nominations. They just have to be big. Joel Schumacher's phenomenally misguided 2004 adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's venerable rock-opera The Phantom Of The Opera was big all right, but it missed its cultural window by at least a decade and alienated fans of the original play by casting beefy Gerard Butler in the title role instead of Michael Crawford, the theater veteran who made it famous. Scathing reviews didn't help the tardy adaptation's cause, and Phantom Of The Opera was a failure with both audiences and Academy Award voters, who may not have the most highbrow taste but at least were discriminating enough to pass on this clattering camp. The Phantom Of The Opera was handsomely mounted, sure, but then so are taxidermists' animals.


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subset: commoncrawl


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New technologies reveal ambiguities and hidden assumptions in international humanitarian law.
Science fiction, or actual U.S. military project? Half a world away from the battlefield, a soldier controls his avatar-robot that does the actual fighting on the ground. Another one wears a sticky fabric that enables her to climb a wall like a gecko or spider would. Returning from a traumatic mission, a pilot takes a memory-erasing drug to help ward off post-traumatic stress disorder. Mimicking the physiology of dolphins and sled-dogs, a sailor is able to work his post all week without sleep and only a few meals.
All of these scenarios are real military projects currently in various stages of research. This is the frontlines of the Human Enhancement Revolution — we now know enough about biology, neuroscience, computing, robotics, and materials to hack the human body, reshaping it in our own image. And defense-related applications are a major driver of science and technology research.
But, as I reported earlier, we also face serious ethical, legal, social, and operational issues in enhancing warfighters. Here, I want to drill down on what the laws of war say about military human enhancements, as we find that other technologies such as robotics and cyberweapons run into serious problems in this area as well.
Should enhancement technologies — which typically do not directly interact with anyone other than the human subject — be nevertheless subject to a weapons legal-review? That is, is there a sense in which enhancements could be considered as "weapons" and therefore under the authority of certain laws?
In international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the laws of war, the primary instruments relevant to human enhancements include: Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), Geneva Conventions (1949 and Additional Protocols I, II, and III), Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (1972), Chemical Weapons Convention (1993), and other law. Below, I discuss these agreements and what their implications may be for human enhancement.
1. Would human enhancements count as weapons under the Geneva Conventions?
Let's start with the basic requirement that new weapons must conform to IHL. Article 36 of the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I of 1977, specifies:
In the study, development, acquisition or adoption of a new weapon, means or method of warfare, a High Contracting Party is under an obligation to determine whether its employment would, in some or all circumstances, be prohibited by this Protocol or by any other rule of international law applicable to the High Contracting Party.
But does Article 36 apply to human enhancement technologies? That is, should they be considered as a "weapon" or "means or method of warfare" in the first place? Unlike other weapons contemplated by IHL, enhancements usually do not directly harm others, so it is not obvious that Article 36 of Additional Protocol I would apply here. If anyone's safety is immediately at risk, it would seem to be that of the individual warfighter — thereby turning the debate into one about bioethics. To that extent, warfighters, whether enhanced or not, are not weapons as typically understood.
Yet in a broader sense, the warfighter is not only a weapon but perhaps a military's best and oldest weapon. Warfighters carry out missions, they sometimes kill enemies, and they represent one of the largest expenditures or investments of a military. They have cognitive and physical capabilities that no other technology currently has, and this can make them ethical, lethal, and versatile. The human fighter, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, would be the last remaining weapon when all others have been exhausted. So in this basic sense, the warfighter is undeniably a weapon or instrument of war.
If a military were to field a weaponized rhino in an urban battlefield that contains innocent civilians, we would be reasonably worried that the war-rhino does not comply with Article 36. Are weaponized humans any different, legally speaking?
Still, should Article 36 be interpreted to include warfighters themselves as weapons subject to regulation? There could be several reasons to think so. First, other organisms are plausibly weapons subject to an Article 36 review. Throughout history, humans have employed animals in the service of war, such as dogs, elephants, pigeons, sea lions, dolphins, and possibly rhinoceroses. Dogs, as the most commonly used animal, undergo rigorous training, validation, and inspections. If a military were to field a weaponized rhino in an urban battlefield that contains innocent civilians, we would be reasonably worried that the war-rhino does not comply with Article 36. If rhinos cannot reliably discriminate friends from foe, e.g., a rhino may target and charge a noncombatant child in violation of the principle of distinction. A similar charge would apply to autonomous robots in such a general environment in which distinction is important, as opposed to a "kill box" or area of such fierce fighting that all noncombatants can be presumed to have fled.
If autonomous robots are clearly regulatable weapons, then consider the spectrum of cyborgs — part-human, part-machine — that exists between robots and unenhanced humans. Replacing one body part, say a human knee, with a robotic part starts us on the cybernetic path. And as other body parts are replaced, the organism becomes less human and more robotic. Finally, after (hypothetically) replacing every body part, including the brain, the organism is entirely robotic with no trace of the original human. If we want to say that robots are weapons but humans are not, then we would be challenged to identify the point on that spectrum at which the human becomes a robot or a weapon.
The inability to draw such a line may not be a fatal blow to the claim that humans should be treated as weapons; after all, we cannot draw a precise line at which a man who is losing his hair becomes "bald", yet there's clearly a difference between a bald man and one who has a head full of hair. But a simpler solution may be to say that humans are weapons, especially given the reasons offered previously.
As it applies to military enhancements, integrated robotics may be one form of enhancement, but we can also consider scenarios involving biomedical enhancements such as pharmaceuticals and genetic engineering. Again, on one end of the spectrum would stand a normal, unenhanced human. One step toward the path of being fully enhanced may be a warfighter who drinks coffee or pops amphetamines ("go pills" in military-speak) as a cognitive stimulant or enhancer. Another step may be taking drugs that increase strength, erase fear, or eliminate the need for sleep. At the far, more radical end may be a warfighter so enhanced that s/he no longer resembles a human being, such as a creature with four muscular arms, fangs, fur, and other animal-like features. If a war-rhino should be subject to Article 36, then so should this radically enhanced human animal, so it would seem. And to avoid the difficult question of drawing the line at which the enhanced human becomes a weapon, a more intuitive position would be that the human animal is a weapon all along, at every point in the spectrum, especially given the previous reasons that are independent of this demarcation problem.
If we agree that enhanced human warfighters could be properly weapons subject to Article 36, what are the implications? Historically, new weapons and tactics needed to conform to at least the following: (1) principle of distinction, (2) principle of proportionality, and (3) prohibition on superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, often abbreviated as SIrUS.
To explain, first, the principle of distinction demands that a weapon must be discriminating enough to target only combatants and never noncombatants. Biological weapons and most anti-personnel landmines, then, are indiscriminate and therefore illegal in that they cannot distinguish whether they are about to infect or blow up a small child versus an enemy combatant. Unintended killings of noncombatants — or "collateral damage" — may be permissible, but not their deliberate targeting; but to the extent that biological weapons today target anyone, they also target everyone. (If they don't target anyone in particular but still kill people, then immediately they would seem to be indiscriminate.) However, future biological weapons, e.g., a virus that attacks only blue-eyed people or a certain DNA signature, may be discriminate and therefore would not violate this principle (but could violate others).
Second, the principle of proportionality demands that the use of a weapon be proportional to the military objective, so to keep civilian casualties to a minimum. For instance, dropping a nuclear bomb to kill a hidden sniper would be a disproportionate use of force, since other less drastic methods could have been used.
Third, the SIrUS principle is related to proportionality in that it requires methods of attack to be minimally harmful in rendering a warfighter hors de combat, or unable to fight. This prohibition has led to the ban of such weapons as poison, exploding bullets, and blinding lasers, which cause more injury or suffering than needed to neutralize a combatant.
However implausible, we can imagine a human enhancement that violates these and other provisions — for instance, a hypothetical "berserker" drug would likely be illegal if it causes the warfighter to be inhumanely vicious, aggressive, and indiscriminate in his attacks, potentially killing children. (For the moment, we will put aside enhancements that are directed at adversaries, such as a mood-enhancing gas to pacify a riotous crowd and a truth-enhancing serum used in interrogations; the former would be prohibited outright by the Chemical Weapons Convention in warfare, partly because it is indiscriminate, and the latter may be prohibited by laws against torturing and mistreating prisoners of war.) The point here is that it's theoretically possible, even if unlikely, for a human enhancement to be in clear violation of IHL.
But let us assume that the human enhancement technologies generally conform to these basic principles. (If they do not, then there's already strong prima facie reason to reject those technologies as unlawful under IHL; those are the easy cases that do not need to be examined here.) Given this assumption, are there other, less-obvious international laws that could prohibit military enhancements? Let's examine a few more possible areas of concern:
2. Would human enhancement count as a biological weapon under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention?
First, the above discussion on whether enhancements are weapons is relevant not only to Article 36 of Additional Protocol I but also arguably to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). The first article of the BTWC states that:
Each State Party to this Convention undertakes never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain: (1) microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes; (2) weapons, equipment or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.
Whether or not they are properly weapons, are military human enhancements "biological agents" in any reasonable sense? The BTWC is silent on this question, though it does anticipate unforeseen developments in genetic engineering, biotechnology, synthetic biology, and other scientific fields. The usual assumption is that these "agents" are both limited to roughly being microbial in size and to biological substances that are directed at adversaries, not directed to the enhancement of one's own military personnel. This assumption, unfortunately, is not explicit enough in the BTWC; that is, it does not define what a biological agent is. As a result, it is still an open question of whether the BTWC applies to human enhancement technologies.
To answer this open question, let's try to better understand what a "biological agent" is. This seems to mean an agent that is biological in nature (e.g., anthrax virus), as opposed to purely chemical (e.g., chlorine gas) or physical (e.g., a falling object); and an agent is a substance or actor employed for some effect or purpose (e.g., LSD is a psychotropic agent). In a broader but consistent sense, agents can be persons too (e.g., a government spy is a "secret agent"). If so, then enhanced warfighters can be agents. Even if we reject this understanding and stipulate that biological agents must be nonperson substances — an interpretation that is not explicit in the BTWC — we can still consider the enhancement technology itself as an agent, apart from the warfighter it enhances.
Again, insofar as the BTWC does not specify that biological agents must be of the kind that directly harms adversaries, then some human enhancements — such as anabolic steroids for increased strength — would seem to count as biological agents: they are substances employed for some effect and are biological in nature. They would serve "hostile purposes" in that they create a warfighter more capable of defeating adversaries and fulfilling military missions; so these enhancements would at least indirectly harm others.
If we understand the biological weapons convention to be interested in only microbial-sized agents — and returning to the position that humans can be agents — then consider a hypothetical process that can shrink a human soldier to the size of bacteria.
With respect to scale, it is difficult to see why size would matter for the BTWC, which again is not explicit on the issue. If we understand the BTWC to be interested in only microbial-sized agents — and returning to the position that humans can be agents — then consider a hypothetical process that can shrink a human soldier to the size of bacteria, such as in the theatrical film Fantastic Voyage: If size matters, then the BTWC would seek to regulate the microscopic soldier, but not the full-sized soldier who has the exact same capabilities. Why the difference in concern here? It may be that the microscopic soldier can be stealthier, infiltrate more places, and so on, but none of these concerns is cited in the BTWC as a motivating reason for regulation.
Related to enhancements, the BTWC arguably would have something to say about bioengineered insects and animals, for instance, that are used as weapons. Like pathogens, insects and most animals do not obey human orders and would therefore be unpredictable and indiscriminate as a weapon — and tiny attack-insects do not seem significantly different in kind than microscopic organisms also designed for attack. One possible difference is that microorganisms typically harm us from the inside-out, and somehow this could be less humane and more frightening than biting our bodies from outside-in. Yet we can also envision bioengineered animals that operate from the inside-out too, as tapeworms and mosquitoes do (or at least the disease they transmit into our bloodstreams). So if it's not unreasonable to think that bioengineered insects would be subject to the BTWC, then size does not matter for the BTWC, or at least the interest is not limited to microscopicorganisms.
As for other qualifiers in the BTWC, some enhancements could be noncompliant in that they have no "prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes." A hypothetical berserker drug could be an example: its only obvious function is to make a person a fiercer, rampaging combatant. This is to say that, under some plausible understanding of the BTWC, at least some possible warfighter enhancements could count as "biological agents" and therefore subject to the BTWC. If the BTWC intends or ought to rule out enhancements under its purview, then its language needs to be made more explicit.
3. Could human enhancement violate international humanitarian law because they are "repugnant to the conscience of mankind"?
Contributing to the above problem with the BTWC — i.e., what counts as a "biological agent" — is also a lack of specificity on the motivating reasons for the BTWC in the first place. That is, the convention is unclear on why we should want to prohibit biological and toxin weapons. But there are some clues. In the preamble to the BTWC, state parties to the convention declare they are:
Convinced of the importance and urgency of eliminating from the arsenals of States, through effective measures, such dangerous weapons of mass destruction as those using chemical or bacteriological (biological) agents, …
Convinced that such use would be repugnant to the conscience of mankind and that no effort should be spared to minimize this risk,
That is, biological agents, such as highly infectious bacteria or viruses, are difficult to control in their propagation and therefore are indiscriminate to use as a weapon. Anthrax spores, for instance, may be carried by the wind and can infect a child or entire populations just as easily and likely as a soldier. This would be a clear violation of the principle of distinction in IHL.
If this were the only motivating reason for the BTWC, then perhaps we can conclude that human enhancements are not the biological agents that the convention intends to address; enhancements generally are not infectious or "weapons of mass destruction." But this cannot be the only reason. In its categorical prohibition of biological and toxic weapons, the BTWC does not distinguish between infectious and noninfectious ones. For instance, a poison dart that can be used only once in a precisely targeted attack would still be banned, even though it is not a weapon of mass destruction, given that it is a toxin and especially if there were no "prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes" for the poison.
To explain why the prohibition is categorical, we can examine the next clue, that the BTWC is motivated by "the conscience" of humanity. That is, some methods of killing are more insidious and repugnant than others. Biological and toxin weapons, then, are of special concern, because they are usually silent, invisible, and indiscriminate ways of killing people — often with horrific, painful medical symptoms over the course of several days or weeks.
But is any of this relevant to human enhancements? Again, enhancements usually do not directly harm others, much less kill people in "repugnant" ways. Even if we say that enhancements indirectly harm others, they do not typically do so in ways more repugnant than conventional means, since an enhanced warfighter is still bound by IHL to never use certain weapons and tactics against adversaries.
Like the "weapons of mass destruction" clue, that a biological agent is "repugnant to the conscience of mankind" also does not seem to be a necessary requirement, just a sufficient one. Consider that some poisons or pathogens may kill quickly and painlessly, such as those administered in death-penalty executions: They seem to be much more humane than conventional means, such as shooting bullets and dropping bombs that render an adversary hors de combat through massive, bloody injury to human bodies and brains. Nevertheless, these "clean" poisons are prohibited by the BTWC and elsewhere, such as the Hague Conventions. So, even if human enhancements are not repugnant in the same ways that anthrax or arsenic may be, and even if they are not weapons of mass destructions, they could still fall under the authority of the BTWC, again since the convention is not explicit on its motivating reasons.
In any event, enhancements could be repugnant in different ways. We previously mentioned the possibility of creating a "berserker" drug, as well as a warfighter so enhanced that s/he no longer resembles a human being, such as a creature with four muscular arms, fangs, fur, and other animal-like features. If this sounds far-fetched, we need only look at the history of warfare to see that intimidating adversaries is a usual part of warfare. From fierce Viking helmets, to samurai armor designed to resemble demons, to tigers and sharks painted onto warplanes, to ominous names for drones (e.g., "Predator" and "Reaper"), scaring adversaries can demoralize and make them easier to defeat. This suggests that it may not be so irrational nor inconsistent with customary practices to design enhancements to be inhuman and therefore perhaps inhumane.
Further, biomedical research is presently ongoing with "chimeras", or animals composed of genes or cells from other organisms not involved with the reproduction of those animals. These may include animals created with human genes, for instance, in order to grow transplantable organs in vivo and for research to find medical cures. Manipulation of human embryos, too, can lead to human-animal chimeras, though this possibility has caused much ethical concern and debate, so much so that U.S. legislation — Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005 — had been proposed to prohibit this line of research, calling it an affront to human dignity as well as an existential threat.
Not all enhancements, of course, are as fanciful as a human-chimeric warrior or a berserker mode, nor am I suggesting that any military has plans to do anything that extreme. Most, if not all, enhancements will likely not be as obviously inhuman. Nonetheless, the "consciousness of mankind" is sometimes deeply fragmented, especially on ethical issues. So what is unobjectionable to one person or culture may be obviously objectionable to another.
Something as ordinary as, say, a bionic limb or exoskeleton could be viewed as unethical by cultures that reject technology or such manipulation of the human body. This is not to say that ethics is subjective and we can never resolve this debate, but only that the ethics of military enhancements — at least with respect to the prohibition against inhumane weapons — requires specific details about the enhancement and its use, as well as the sensibilities of the adversary and international community. That is, we cannot generalize that all military enhancements either comply or do not comply with this prohibition.
Beyond the BTWC, inhumanity as a prohibitory reason is a common theme that underlies IHL. In the preamble to the first Hague Convention in 1899:
Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity and the requirements of public conscience.
Known as "the Martens Clause", this basic principle is found throughout the laws of armed conflict, such as the Geneva Conventions and its Additional Protocols and opinions issued by the International Court of Justice. As one would expect, much debate has occurred on what the "laws of humanity" and "requirements of public conscience" are, especially related to the actual or even threatened use of nuclear weapons. And the same debate could be applied to emerging technologies, most notably in a recent report by Human Rights Watch on attack drones.
I won't engage that lengthy and unresolved debate here, except to note that a prohibition against inhumane weapons and methods is a fundamental principle, sometimes explicit and sometimes implied, that underwrites the laws of war and therefore relevant to an ethics assessment of military enhancements. This is also to say that an ethics assessment of new weapons, such as military enhancements seems to be legally required by IHL, at least in the context of the Martens Clause if not also Article 36 of the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I.
4. How will human enhancement redefine the ethical limits on how combatants may be treated?
The concept of inhumanity is important to clarify, not just for the legal evaluation of weapons but also for the ethical limits on how combatants may be treated. The prohibition on torture, for instance, presumes certain facts about the human condition, such as the kinds of treatment that cause pain, how much pain a person can withstand, how much sleep a person needs, and so on. For instance, if our tolerance for pain could be dramatically elevated, then what counts as torture today may no longer be so — and therefore such behavior may become morally permissible.
If our tolerance for pain could be dramatically elevated, then what counts as torture today may no longer be so — and therefore such behavior may become morally permissible.
More generally, ethics itself also presumes a similar set of facts about the human condition, such as that we are fairly susceptible to being killed. These facts inform our ethics, for instance, when self-sacrifice is permitted or prohibited and, again, what kinds of action toward others are unethical. If we change these presumed facts about human bodies and minds, then ethical prohibitions and permissions may also be affected. This gives us reason to believe that an ethical code of behavior for robots could very well be different from how humans ought to behave; for instance, robots — to the extent that they have no instinct for self-preservation, cannot feel pain, etc. — may be permitted to sacrifice themselves in more trivial scenarios than human ethics might allow.
At the beginning of this report's section, I suggested that there is a continuum from a fully human animal to a cybernetic organism to a fully robotic machine. This spectrum is perhaps defined by how many human body parts we replace with mechanical ones, ranging from zero to all. Enhanced warfighters, then, could fall somewhere in the middle of this continuum. If "robot ethics" is different from human ethics, at least where relevant facts about humans and robots differ, then it seems that "cyborg ethics" too would diverge from human ethics where there's a relevant difference in the construction and abilities between cyborgs and humans. Though not all enhanced persons are cyborgs, e.g., if the enhancements are genetic, pharmacological, or otherwise not robotic, we can also reasonably conclude that ethics for enhanced persons generally may be different from the standard human ethics.
So it becomes an interesting question of whether it would still be illegal or inhumane to whip a prisoner of war, or deprive him of food or sleep, if the individual can better withstand a whipping or does not have the same food or sleep requirements that normal people typically do. These actions possibly would not cause pain or suffering, or at least as much of it, to the enhanced subject; therefore, it would be difficult to count those actions as torture.
Beyond prisoners of war, questions about inhumane treatment could be directed at how we treat our own enhanced warfighters. For instance, drill sergeants may be tempted to push an enhanced soldier harder than other ones without augmented strength and endurance, and perhaps reasonably so. But where there are prohibitions on what military trainers are permitted to do, we may need to reevaluate those rules where an enhancement might change the presuppositions about human limits that motivated those rules in the first place.
The above discussion certainly does not exhaust all the legal issues that will arise from military human enhancements. In our new report, funded by The Greenwall Foundation and co-written with Maxwell Mehlman (Case Western Reserve University) and Keith Abney (California Polytechnic State University), we launch an investigation into these and other issues in order to identify problems that policymakers and society may need to confront.
Beyond IHL, we also examine in the report US domestic law, military policy, bioethics, and risk assessments; and then we offer a new framework for evaluating human enhancement technologies in a military context. As an initial model, we also discuss further considerations — related to virtues, emotions, as well as broader social impacts — that can be integrated into this evaluative framework. (This essay is adapted from that report.)
Given a significant lag time between ethics and technology, it is imperative to start considering their impacts before technologies fully arrive on the scene and in the theater of war. Consider, for instance, the explosion in number of robots in war: in its invasion of Iraq, the US had zero ground robots in 2003 and suddenly about 12,000 in 2008; and its inventory of aerial robots multiplied by 40-fold between 2002 and 2010. This report, therefore, is intended to anticipate ethical, legal, and policy surprises from new technologies, which — in the case of military drones — has already led to international outcry, as well as harm to reputation and real lives. With emerging human enhancements, we can think first before we act.
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Word Search Glove Level 6 Answer
BitMango the king developer of puzzles has added a new particular app for their players. Word Search: Hidden Words features an exciting gameplay where you must find the hidden words within the scrambled letters of each level. The game has multiple categories available on each level which will always keep you searching for the needed … Read more


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Froome blasts anti-doping bodies for lack of tests at altitude training
The Sky rider recently completed attitude training and said neither he nor the other Tour contenders there were tested
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
PARIS (AFP) — Tour de France champion Chris Froome has blasted anti-doping authorities for failing to test riders at altitude training in Tenerife.
Froome, 28, is one of several Tour contenders who use Tenerife's Mount Teide to help prepare for the grueling climbs in July's race.
But the Sky rider said he was stunned not to have been tested there during a two-week training camp that ended Wednesday.
"Three major TDF contenders staying on Mt Teide and no out-of-competition tests for the past two weeks. Very disappointing," said Froome on Twitter.
He added that he was not hoping to catch out his rivals — Italian Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) and Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) of Spain — but rather to demonstrate the validity of his efforts and those of his main competition.
"To clarify I am one of those three and I think it's in all our best interests to be able to prove we are clean no matter where we train," he added.
The Briton later told Cyclingnews he had asked other teams "but none of them, from what I could gather, had been tested either."
"Alberto, Vincenzo, we're all up here with our respective teams and at the end of the day we're the ones that have to stand in front of the television cameras in July and justify performances.
"All three of us are GC (overall) contenders and the probability is that whoever is in the yellow jersey in July is going to have to answer questions, and if we're not getting tested, that doesn't look good on any of us."
The Tour is just over a month away and potential winners are in a crucial phase of their training. If they were to take illegal substances to improve their condition in the run-up, now would be a logical time to do so.
This is why Froome thinks it is so important to test riders at this time, to help them prove their innocence.
"We're doing everything we can to show that cycling has turned a page and it's not like it was in the past, but things like this don't help," he added.
"I know from last year, journalists do ask whether we've been tested while we've been up here and we can only say we weren't. That's not good for the image of the sport or peace of mind.
"It would be good to have more testing done up here, especially this close to the Tour de France. This period of training is a building block for the Tour, before the Dauphine and I would have expected to see more testing and it's disappointing."
Nibali weighed into the debate by claiming he had been tested five times this season, although he admitted not while in Tenerife.
"Some may have misinterpreted my Tweet thinking that I was trying to turn on the other contenders up here, but that is not the case," clarified Froome.
"I think that if we're trying to show that the sport has changed it's difficult to do so if we're not being tested up here."


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Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories
The Fuccillo Auto Mall continues its huge push to sell 500 vehicles in the month of May.
All three Fuccillo dealerships on Alvin Road - Toyota, Chevrolet and Hyundai - are holding their largest sales event of the year. Also on Alving Road:
•The Grand Island Lions Club is manning a chicken barbecue at the Auto Mall this Saturday, with proceeds raised to be donated to the Miracle League of Grand Island and Western New York.
•Win prizes, including an iPad, given away on Mondays in May.
•Sound Choice Audio and Performance and Fuccillo are teaming up to create custom vehicles right off the lot. Together, they are offering one-stop shopping, and the custom work on a car or truck can be included with a buyer's financing. Fuccillo invites car-lovers to visit the Auto Mall on Alvin Road to check out the exotic car SCAP has built, and find out what they can do for anyone's ride.
Pictured are front office staff at Fuccillo Chevrolet with the 2010 SCAP custom Camaro that has a twin turbo V6, with an all-metal wide body. It has 500 wheel horsepower. The car is recognized as the No. 1 custom Camaro in the nation.


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Study: Autumn sets in rapidly on Saturn's moon Titan
Thanks to NASA's Cassini spacecraft which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, scientists have been able to observe for the first time ever the seasonal atmospheric circulation direction change on Titan – an event which only happens once every 15 years and is never observable from Earth. Their findings are published today in Nature.
Titan, while technically only a moon, is bigger than the planet Mercury, and is often considered a planet in its own right. It is the only known moon to have a significant atmosphere and is one of only four terrestrial atmospheres in our Solar System (the other three being Earth, Venus, and Mars). As Titan's rotation axis is tilted by a similar amount to that of the Earth, it experiences seasons in a similar way, but at a much more relaxed pace as Saturn takes 29.5 Earth years to orbit the Sun.
Dr Nick Teanby of the University of Bristol and colleagues used infrared spectra measured by Cassini's Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument to determine atmospheric temperature and global distributions of chemical tracers. This allowed them to map out the seasonal changes in great detail.
The team observed an enormous increase in Titan's exotic trace gases over the south pole within a relatively short time. These trace gases are produced high in Titan's atmosphere, where sunlight and highly energetic particles break down nitrogen and methane and recombine to form a vast array of more complex molecules like benzene and hydrogen cyanide.
Co-author, Dr Remco de Kok of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research said: "We were waiting for signs that the trace gas abundances would change together with the new season, but we did not expect such a large and rapid change: some gas concentrations increased more than a thousand times within only a few months. Also surprising was that this was happening at altitudes above 450 km, much higher than initially anticipated."
At these high altitudes the atmosphere goes around the planet much faster than the rotation of Titan's solid surface and can have horizontal wind speeds around the planet of up to 200m/s (450mph). Vertical winds caused by the seasonally varying hemisphere to hemisphere atmospheric circulation are much slower at a rather sluggish few millimetres per second and are hard to measure using conventional means.
Lead author, Dr Nick Teanby of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences said: "Using measurements of temperature and chemical tracers by Cassini, we were able to observe changes in the subtle vertical winds and reveal the pole-to-pole circulation cell. For the first time ever, we observed the circulation cell direction reverse over the south pole around the time of the 2009 southern autumnal equinox. The resulting distribution of gases shows that the circulation must extend much further than previously thought to 600 km or even higher. This calls into question our current understanding of how Titan's atmosphere works and suggests new avenues to explore."
"Our results provide a powerful new constraint for atmospheric models of Titan. Titan provides a natural laboratory for an Earth-like atmosphere in the cold outer solar system. So, these results could eventually lead to a more complete understanding of atmospheric processes on Earth, other Solar System planets, and the many exoplanetary systems now being discovered."
In the coming years Cassini will continue to observe how the seasons develop. Dr Conor Nixon at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre said: "These results are giving us the first detailed look at changes occurring in Titan's atmosphere around the time of equinox, a season which has not been viewed up close by a spacecraft previously. This shows the really great science that is coming out of the Cassini extended mission phases since 2008, and we look forward to seeing the further changes that will occur over the next five years until the end of mission in 2017."
More information: Active upper-atmosphere chemistry and dynamics from polar circulation reversal on Titan, Nicholas A. Teanby, Patrick G. J. Irwin, Conor A. Nixon, Remco de Kok, Sandrine Vinatier, Athena Coustenis, Elliot Sefton-Nash, Simon B. Calcutt & F. Michael Flasar, Nature, 2012.
Journal information: Nature
Provided by University of Bristol


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So, I wanted to know if I am the only one reading the warcraft books/comics or if there are others out there for the shared topic this week from Blog Azeroth.
I managed to get my hands on almost every single book and comic (including short stories) for Warcraft and I have only just started to read them. I have spent more time trying to find an actual chronoclogical order of reading, than actually reading, but they all seem to be different. I am at the point now where I am just treating them all as single stories and trying to just read them as such.
I started with "Rise of the Horde" – loved it, I wanted it to go on much longer, reading about Durotan and Ogrim was so cool and obviously where the cities names came from (although the time line doesn't go that far) and Durotan is Thrall's father which makes it even more awesome. I wish that book had a few more.
I then read the 5 books that form the Dawn of the Aspects, which was about the dragon aspects, so any book involving dragons had me hook, line and sinker. It is about Galakrond and how the aspects became the aspects – Ysera, Nozdormu, Malygos, Nelfarion and Alexstrasza – it is pretty spectacular reading learning how they started out. They are the guardians of Azeroth – everything stems from that book and it is both heartbreaking and inspiring. I and am currently reading the first of 3 books for the War of the Ancients Trilogy, which as far as I can tell is about the first time the Burning legion attacked Azeroth and the Well of Eternity – I just keep imagining the instance whilst I am reading the novel. I also started reading Vol'jin, but it wasn't gripping me, so I left it and will pick it up later.
I have so many books left to read, plus the comics – I may be reading them for the next few months, but it is so awesome to know the names and places that are being referred to and then understand the characters more – like the complete back story being revealed. There is something very enjoyable about it. I can't wait to get through more of the content! If you haven't read any of the novels, I suggest you do, it really does help flesh out the stories and motives of people and events.
I love this world, Azeroth, and so reading the novels brings more of it to life for me especially when I can't be playing. I can still be in the world reading and imagining the areas and feeling like I am in game. Go and get yourselves copies today! You won't regret it!!


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Thursday, 12 December 2013 05:43 PM EST
Aetna is the largest insurer yet to announce a decision on how it would proceed across the United States after President Barack Obama said last month that insurers could extend these health plans under a temporary transitional policy.
Aetna's move means that some consumers, who are required to have health insurance in 2014 or pay a fine, will need to buy a new plan for 2014. Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini made the comments at an investor meeting on Thursday.
Aetna, the third-largest U.S. insurer, declined to say how many individuals have plans that are being canceled or how many were offered early renewals on their expiring 2013 plans to enable them to continue coverage into 2014.
The company would have had to seek approvals for rate increases across the United States, which it said would distract it at a busy time of year.
Aetna's move is in contrast to some state-based Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, such as BCBS of Florida and BCBS of North Carolina, which have said they would extend these plans under the transitional policy.
Obama made the policy change allowing insurers to extend health plans under a temporary policy after hundreds of thousands of individuals received notices that their plans were being canceled. The cancellations became a political issue because Obama had promised Americans that if they liked their plan, they could keep it.
Aetna said that it has offered early renewals on plans, which allow consumers to keep their coverage for up to a year longer and into late 2014.
"We talked to the insurance commissioners and the insurance commissioners have agreed with us. If we were to go to all those states, refile all those plans, refile all those rates and do it in time for Dec. 23, we would have paid attention to nothing else," Bertolini said.
Consumers must decide whether to buy plans on the exchanges by Dec. 23 for coverage to start on Jan. 1, 2014.
Aetna is offering plans in 16 states, which means it covers about 30 percent of the exchange marketplace. The exchanges, created under the Affordable Care Act, opened on Oct. 1 to sell plans for 2014. Technology problems have hobbled the ability of consumers to sign up and highlighted the cancellation issue.
Some state insurance commissioners have said they will not allow these plans to continue while others have said they would allow insurers who rushed early renewals in by Dec. 31 to continue them in 2014.
Still other state commissioners have simply left it up to the insurers to decide. A few million plans were due to be canceled in 2014 and it is not clear yet how many people will in fact lose coverage.
Aetna said it expects to gain customers in only about 15 percent of the marketplaces where it is priced the most competitively.
Bertolini said he expects the public health insurance exchanges, which are under attack by Republicans, to survive the technology issues.
"By 2015, if we get it fixed right, it'll be a new start," he said.
In addition to front-end issues, the website has also had problems communicating data about enrollees to the insurance companies. The U.S. government said last week that over the first two months running the exchange, one in four transmissions had errors. That rate is now about one in ten, the government said.
Aetna said it is still seeing these problems, but could not provide an estimate of how many submissions have errors.
Aetna Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin said he is worried about consumers being confused about whether they are enrolled in a plan.
"With where we are now it inevitably will happen," Guertin said in an interview. "We tried to extend our payment dates to head that particular situation off, but when you look at the number of applications that we have and you look at the number of people that have actually paid for January 1 coverage, it's a relatively low number as a percentage."
"It does worry me a little bit whether people actually understand they have to pay that first month's premium," he said. Aetna has extended the payment date to Jan. 8 for Jan. 1 coverage.
Bertolini said it is important to get the information right in time for January and that the company has been working closely with the government.
"We're coming up with workaround solutions in case things aren't ready," he said. "There is a lot of that cooperation going on now, whereas in the past it was pretty much hands off, but once the stuff really hit the fan there was a lot of engagement."
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- Home
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Garbage & Recycling
The Solid Waste Division provide environmentally safe, time responsive and cost effective, collection, disposal and recycling services throughout the city. The division manages an integrated system for waste reduction, and recycling, in a safe, efficient, and environmentally sound manner. Such activities include the removal of dead animals, pick-up of bulk items, and roll-off and compact service.
Garbage (Trash / Solid Waste)
Garbage services for residents is a once a week program; utilizing the provided 95-gallon plastic garbage container. Residents and commercial customers must place their containers at the curbside no earlier than 6 p.m. the day before service and containers must be removed from the curb to a location other than the front yard, no later than 6 a.m. the day after service. Containers left at the curbside or visible from the street are subject to a violation warning or violation charge of $50 per day.
Additional containers are available for purchase for those residents requiring additional containers for $80 tax included and can be added to your water bill in six monthly installments.
Yard Waste
Yard waste is picked up on garbage collection day for bagged items such as leaves and grass clippings. Limbs are to be neatly stacked at the curb and can be no longer than 5 feet in length. Limbs cannot be commingled with garbage. If it is a large pile of yard waste that requires a claw truck, then it will be collected on a Wednesday. Please arrange pick up with a claw truck by calling the Haines City Public Works Department at 863-421-3777. Auto parts are not acceptable.
Recycling services for residents is a once a week program; utilizing the provided 65-gallon plastic recycle container. Additional containers are available for purchase for those residents requiring additional containers for $80 tax included and can be added to your water bill in six monthly installments.
Commonly accepted recyclables for your home include: cleaned and rinsed aluminum and metal cans, plastic containers (#1 through Number 7) and clear or colored glass (not broken). All paper and paperboard products, including newspapers, magazines, telephone books, junk mail, office paper, flattened boxes, etc., except food contaminated or wax coated paper, (flattened boxes should not exceed 3 feet by 3 feet in size). Place all your recycle materials inside the cart with the lid closed. Do not place any overflow outside the 65 gallon container. Break down your boxes to help with additional space in the cart. Do not bag recyclables because the plastic bags cannot be recycled through this program. Take plastic bags to your local grocery store for recycling.
Recycling Cart Information (PDF)
Tires without the rim can be placed 5 feet from the curb where you normally place your garbage container. Residents are allowed 4 tires each year for disposal. Tire pick-up is the third Saturday of each month.
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Menendez: W.H. 'fear-mongering'
Sen. Robert Menendez on Wednesday sharply criticized the Obama administration for urging Congress not to pass new sanctions on Iran.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman described White House rhetoric on the subject as both "over the top" and "fear-mongering."
Menendez said he appreciated President Barack Obama's ultimate goal to find a diplomatic solution with Iran. But he will keep pressing for fresh sanctions that take effect if the country stops cooperating with Western powers, seeking to increase pressure on Iran to reach a permanent nuclear deal.
And Menendez (D-N.J.) made it clear he did not look kindly on White House press secretary Jay Carney's recent description of the continued push for congressional sanctions as a "march to war."
"What I don't appreciate is when I hear remarks out of the White House spokesman that say … if we're pursuing sanctions we're marching the country off to war. I think that's way over the top, I think that's fear-mongering," Menendez said on NPR's "All Things Considered."
Menendez didn't dispute that he and other senators might be playing "bad cop" to the Obama administration's "good cop," pushing for the Senate to enact a fresh round of penalties on Iran while Obama warnsagainst "tough talk and bluster."
"We consistently hear about how we have to worry about the hard-liners in Iran. And it seems that the Iranians get to play good cop-bad cop, [Iranian President] Rouhani as the good cop, the hard-liners as the bad cop," Menendez said.
He described a dual-track diplomacy with the White House that would say to Iran: "'Hey look. This is what's coming if you don't strike a deal.' And at the same time the administration would say, 'But if we strike a deal those sanctions will never go into effect.'"
Menendez and other powerful Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) have not been shy with their criticism of an interim deal struck by Secretary of State John Kerry that temporarily rolls back sanctions on Iran in return for a slowdown of the country's nuclear program. They are vowing to work with Republicans on a fresh wave of sanctions when the Senate returns on Dec. 9, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saidhe will "take a look" at.
Many in the Senate believe Iran has gained far more from the deal in return for eased sanctions than it has surrendered on the nuclear front, which critics of the deal see as a poor omen for the U.S. as it pursues a permanent agreement with Iran.
"We basically have the Iranians running in place. But they're running. Their centrifuges are spinning," Menendez said. "Basically we are going to roll back some of our sanctions but they are rolling back nothing."


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Patrick Henningsen
An unsuspecting Tony Blair was door-stepped once again during one of his recent high-paid "lectures" in Hong Kong late last week by a British activist.
Tom Grundy, who hails from the city of Wednesbury in the West Midlands, England, confronted the UK's most notorious modern war criminal last Thursday, attempting a citizen's arrest for Blair's own deceptive role in the Iraq War citing a violation of the Nuremberg Principles – the internationally recognized rules of engagement put into place following the Second World War in order to prevent unnecessary aggression by one state against another.
After Blair's personal entourage of security managed to push Grundy out of the venue, the event organizer and host quips to the room of attendees, "I'm sure you're used to this all the time", to which the incredibly shady ex-British PM replied, "I am used to it."
War protester Grundy's efforts in Hong Kong are similar to the successful efforts of American journalist Luke Rudkowski, who's We Are Change media collective has successfully confronted globalist luminaries and operators like Jay Rockefeller, Larry Silverstein, Al Gore and Karl Rove to name only a few – further shedding a spotlight on globalists who would prefer pulling their strings of power from the shadows and who will only appear to the populace in a controlled public setting.
In this particular case, the issue is not whether Blair secretly committed the UK to war, but whether he deliberately gave a false account of the diplomatic situation in the lead-up to war. An unlikely foe has recently entered the fray in a way which could potentially change Blair's fortunes for the worst.
Former Blair spin doctor supreme and political attack dog, Alaister Campbell, a man believed by many to be Blair's co-conspirator in the Iraq War deception, is due to release his diaries on June 20, 2012. In these detailed accounts of the days, weeks and months leading up to the Iraq Invasion in March 2003, Campbell gives a personally documented picture of events which does not completely square-up with Blair's own testimonies under oath to a succession of rather white-washed public inquiries which took place and which were designed by establishment to divert any anti-war sentiment in British politics into a permanent cul-de-sac.
According to pre-released excerpts of Campbell's diaries, News Corp media mogul Rupert Murdoch applied substantial pressure on Tony Blair in order to accelerate Britain's role in legitimizing a hugely unpopular US-led coalition for the Iraq War in the weeks before the pivotal House of Commons vote in 2003:
"[Tony Blair] took a call from Murdoch who was pressing on timings, saying how News International would support us, etc," Campbell wrote.
Murdoch's recent admissions to the Levenson Inquiry harkens back to William Randolph Hearst's infamous quote made before the eventual false-flag sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, the seminal event that ignited the Spanish American War back in 1898. Hearst said of the mainstream media's involvement in selling the impending unwanted war to the public:
"You provide the pictures and I will provide the war."
These admissions may appear to be demonizing a now weak Murdoch on the surface, but the real story here is how Campbell's diaries offer further proof that Tony Blair had already decided to invade Iraq via diplomatic channels long before the matter went to Commons vote. Although Murdoch's call to Blair may have been prompted by the ruling Neocons in Washington, Blair's own complicity was surely motivated by his desire for News International's public support of him and his inner circle – support which would guarantee Labour's position of power in British politics and the financial fortunes that followed.
With so much to hide from public view and in the race for dollar fortunes, mistakes can easily be made. It seems that even ex-political hacks have to cash in on their political careers too, and Campbell has all but sold his old criminal ally down the Thames for a few pieces of silver – or publishing sales profit coined in Campbell's favor. In this instance, Blair may have been inadvertently caught out by his old gatekeeper. All evidence points to the reality that decisions were made, policy was agreed and commitments of political and military support were confirmed via unofficial diplomatic channels long before the matter appeared to surface as a public debate between elected officials.
Many would agree that it is inconceivable that a head of state and trained lawyer like Tony Blair would have no knowledge or understanding of the Nuremberg Principles - a set of internationally agreed guidelines determining what constitutes a war crime in our modern age. Nonetheless, Blair continues to remain ignorant of any culpability on his part.
If Blair was to be arrested, placed in a high court, and made to be held accountable for his crimes in relation to lying to Parliament, lying to multiple official hearings following the Iraq invasion, it could serve as a deterrent for future heads of state to engage in similar deception, as well as irresponsible and unaccountable behavior – all in all, criminal fraud which has cost countless innocent lives and trillions in black hole budget spending as has been the case with Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 onwards.
Still, many years on from his days in Downing Street, Blair continues to cash in on his criminal role in the destabilzation in the Middle East and Central Asia, thus far netting him, at very least, tens of millions in personal income as a result of his illegal and unethical activities whilst in office.
Regardless of the outcome of Campbell's latest revelations, rest assured that Tony Blair is not losing any sleep over his actions of the past because his is too preoccupied with earning millions under the cover as the United Nation's Middle East steering group, The Quartet's official 'Peace Envoy' to the region, a role conducted from his taxpayer-funded, multi-million dollar offices in Jerusalem.
As a result, Tony Blair Associates, or TBA (aka Tony Blair himself), remain ever busy accumulating a not so small fortune…


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CDS 270-4, 2010: Bio-Control
|Spring 2010
NOTE: The Friday lectures will include discussing a paper related to the week topic. Papers will be announced about a week prior to the discussion.
Course Schedule
Course Administration
This course is a special topics course in which much of the lecture material has been prepared by a senior graduate student. The class is P/F only and there is no required homework and no midterm or final exam. Students will be required to work on an individual or team course project.
Course Project
Project proposals are due at 5pm on the last day of the Midterm examination period (May 4) and are due by 5pm on the last day of the final examination period (June 7). Project theme: select a cellular regulatory mechanism, define a list of important features of the system, come up with a modeling framework and carry out an analysis of its properties (e.g. stability, robustness, modularity...).


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We've written plenty about the transformation of the global outlook for energy, which is being radically altered by a flood of new oil and gas production. But you can really see it happening. Like, right now. On Feb. 8 the US Commerce Department reported that record oil exports helped shrink the US trade deficit to its lowest level in three years.
We thought it was worth spotlighting this chart, which suggests how the United States, long the world's largest consumer of energy—until China nudged it aside in 2010—appears to be at a pretty interesting tipping point. Monthly barrels of crude oil imported into the US hit their lowest level since 1997 in December.
Americans still need a lot of oil. But they're getting more of it from the US, where high prices have made drilling more profitable and more productive techniques—particularly in offshore exploration—are sucking more of the stuff out of the earth. Cars and trucks in the US also consume less gas than they used to, helping to drive consumption down. The upshot? Some anticipate that the US could become the world's biggest oil producer sometime relatively soon. The International Energy Agency thinks it could happen by 2020. North America could start exporting more than it imports by 2030, the IEA says.


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Saturday, August 25, 2012
First Impressions of Guild Wars 2
Character Creation
There are five races and eight or so classes. Character creation has lots of sliders and buttons. I would have really liked a "reset to default" button, though.
The human females generally "need a sammich", as the saying goes. There didn't really seem to be any equivalent of SWTOR's body type 2 or WoW's human female. Either too much on one side or the other.
I did like the Sylvari art, the use of leaves and plant forms for hair and ears. That was very clever.
I also liked the use of additional choices to flesh out the character, like what god the character followed, or what spirit animal, or even greatest regret. I do wonder if those choices were orthogonal enough though. Sometimes it seemed like there were obvious choices for the magic users, and obvious ones for fighter types.
I also like the history for the races, especially humans being a race in retreat. Very different from the standard "humanity waxing" storylines.
I ended up creating a Human Guardian.
Oh, I should mention something about names. I think names have to be unique across the entire GW2 universe. So your regular name is probably taken. I know 'Coriel' was. But GW2 allows you to put spaces in the name, so you make a last name, and the combination is very likely to still be available. I named my Guardian "Coriel De Rohan". I really like this solution. It's a solid mix between uniqueness and availability.
Main Quest Line
The main quest line seems decent enough. The writing and voice acting is okay. Better than TERA, but not up to SWTOR or TSW. There was an investigation-style quest where you had to question different parties and accumulate evidence against a powerful noble that I thought was rather neat.
A main conceit in GW2 is that there are no "side" quests. Instead of quest hubs, you have a "heart" on the map.
In a quest hub, you would have four or so NPCs. One would give a quest to kill 10 boars. Another would give a quest to collect 15 trinkets. Another would give a quest to search through poop. And the last would tell you to kill 20 bandits and their leader.
In a GW2 heart, these are not discrete elements. Instead of you have to (all numbers made up) accumulate 100 points, where you get 5 points per boar, 2 points per trinket, 10 points per poop, and 6 points per bandit. And you can do any combination of things that add up to 100 points.
So if you really hate killing boars, you can avoid that entirely. Or you can just do stuff until you hit the required total.
What I find is that this lacks context, lacks those small stories that weave together. For example, in Elwynn Forest in WoW, I really enjoy the Young Lovers questline. It's nothing amazing, you take a note from Maybell Maclure to Tommy Joe Stonefield, get Grandma Stonefield to direct you to her old suitor, the alchemist William Pestle, kill some mulocs for ingredients for an invisibility potion, and give the potion to Maybell so she can elope. Nothing amazing, just a short little story. But I guess I'm a romantic at heart, so I always enjoy doing that questline.
The thing is that, so far, the hearts in GW2 really lack that. They're just a bar on the screen to be filled with repetitive tasks. And the tasks don't really build on each other to form a story, except in the vaguest, most general sense. (There are bandits attacking the farm. You kill the bandits. The farm is saved.) It's also very UI-driven. At least normal questing has a semblance of interacting with the people in the world.
Now, in the end, maybe normal questing is just the same. That the stories of side quests are just an illusion, a fig leaf over reality, and it's all about filling up many smaller bars instead of one bigger bar. But it turns out that I like--and maybe even need--that illusion.
GW2 Hearts are quests for people who think that skipping through instant quest text is too much work.
Events are basically a cross between public quests from Warhammer Online, and rifts from Rift. They're a public quest which is not always available. Instead, they sometimes "activate" like a rift and appear on your map. Then you do the event, and get some rewards. They differ from rifts by being more varied and not just monsters spilling out from another plane.
Sometimes it's an escort quest, sometimes it's a quest to kill a special monster, sometimes waves of monsters are attacking a certain point, etc.
Because the starting point is unknown, events are something that you don't really plan for. Instead you do them when you come across them.
They do make the world seem a bit more dynamic, and break up the questing a bit. But they do repeat, and if you stick around in the same area, you'll see the same event pop over and over.
I like events. But they're not revolutionary, they're evolutionary. A better Warhammer Online public quest.
Combat, Crafting, Skills
See this post.
Initial Conclusions
GW2 is an okay game. But not one that deserves anywhere near the hype it is getting. To be honest, so far it really feels like a better Warhammer Online.
Heh, it occurs to me that GW2 is the game where the "bears, bears, bears" promise from Warhammer Online was finally fulfilled.
Again though, this is early impressions. I haven't gotten very far, and I haven't been able to try out this WvWvW, as I've been on overflow servers most of the time.
11 comments:
That's interesting, because I'm hearing noises that the majority of my guild is going to GW2. Not sure what they saw in it, but it looks like our guild is going to be on a longer hiatus than I expected.ReplyDelete
My guild's the same, Redbeard. But they were with Rift, too, and SWTOR, and Warhammer Online, and... on it goes. About a month or two after each of those launched, everybody but a handful was back in WoW.ReplyDelete
I can see people sticking with GW2 longer since it's free-to-play (after you buy the box), but that also means they can play it and WoW at the same time.
Now, in the end, maybe normal questing is just the same. That the stories of side quests are just an illusion, a fig leaf over reality, and it's all about filling up many smaller bars instead of one bigger bar. But it turns out that I like--and maybe even need--that illusion.ReplyDelete
I totally agree. Ultimately, the whole point of an MMO is to put a skin of interesting story and setting over a bunch of repetitive mechanics. The more you thin out that skin, the less interested I am in mashing my 1-5 keys repeatedly.
The Renown Quest (aka Heart) thing is what gets me the most about GW2 discussions. How many times have we heard people complain about "boring quests" in WoW? All the damn time. But I cannot possibly imagine people suggesting that the solution is to remove all context to the quest itself. And yet here we are, killing the mole-people in this mine for... what reason? I guess it doesn't matter. /autoattack^100ReplyDelete
Of course, none of this matters because Dynamic Events(TM)! Nevermind that they don't have context either.
I am hoping this situation improves in the later levels, but I'm not sure how it could.
No context on heart quests or events? Let me guess, you just run from one area to another without talking to anybody. Every heart and every event got it's own story if you want to read it. You need to talk to the npc for that obviously.ReplyDelete
Seems complaining is easier than actually clicking on an npc.
I pretty much agree with you. but to be perfectly honest, what got me into guild wars 2 is the art style and general size of the world. I have spent most of my early access... just exploring. figuring out how to get to those vistas marked on a map, etc. it honestly almost feels like Bethesda game in some way. go forth into an open world and just... go nuts! do whatever you feel like doing, whenever. join a public quest. or dont. gather and craft. or don't. I'm actualy surprised that I'm enjoying it as much as I do, I'm not normally a fan of open world games like that.ReplyDelete
but you are, again correct. the game didn't deserve the hype it got and you are probably looking at it with a more critical eye BECAUSE of the hype and fervor. its getting really tiresome, all these people jumping on bandwagons, looking for the next WoW killer.
P.S. ariantes is correct, - you should try interacting with npc's. a lot of them have something to say, including many and varied bystanders that are only there for you to interact with. you just don't need to click on them to get the quest. but they are still there to chat to.
Wait, you're referring to the couple of throwaway oneliners each of the heart dispensers has? That's a story?ReplyDelete
I think I've seen more involved dialogue come out of the procedurally generated dialogue system in Daggerfall.
The GW2 main meat are the dynamic events, not the hearts. The hearts are there just for show a direction for players. However, the DE are simpler at starter zones, they start to chain and be more complex at higher level.ReplyDelete
Higher the zone level, less hearts that zone have and the DE chain more.
@B.J.-- Well, our guild went into hiatus shortly after the dual hit of TOR and WoW's 4.3 patch meant all raiders got to see end content, and it's been pretty empty since.ReplyDelete
There are a few of us who regularly log in, but especially since April you'd see maybe 3-4 people logged in an evening at most.
This has mirrored Ysera's Stormwind activity over the past several months, where the number of people hovers around 45-50, a far cry from busier days.
- Boghar6:36 PM, August 26, 2012
I completely agree with the premise of the original post. I've been playing MMO type games since UO. The hype for GW2 has been very strong and now I find my sitting here $80 lighter in the wallet wonderring just exactly what the hype is about.ReplyDelete
I find the essentially dead community that is Rift to be a far more enjoyable experience and that's saying a lot. I logged onto SWTOR late last night after a full day worth of GW2 and ran some warzones on a pre-50 toon and had a blast immediately. I also had a friend recently send me a scroll of resurection for good ole WoW and all 3 of those 'other' games seem to be to be much, much more enjoyable than what I have experienced with GW2. The only positives I see are some of the more dynamic and flexible approaches to PvP where skill overrides gear level as well as allowing high level players to scale down their level to enjoy the game with lower leveled friends/guildes/etc.
Having spent my money, I'll certainly invest some time exploring the game further and feeling out some of the different class types. But, overall, I am severely underhwelmed by this game thus far.
Some of those dynamic events will continue on and create a whole story as to why you are actually doing those events. ex. part 1 enter the stronghold,ReplyDelete
follow npc's to...
part 2 goo deeper into stronghold.
follow npcs some more to...
part 3 kill mastermind etc.etc.
The npcs have conversations as to whats going on between events. I find it to be very emersive, if you pay attention to whats going on, and don't just treat it as "kill some of these and those" quests.
There is a lot of detail in GW2, people just need to look and listen.