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Why has the West pressed the mute button on Africa? | Recent crackdowns in several African countries have been met with a muted response from the international community. Image copyright AFP Image caption Congolese protesters talked about the death of democracy after the election result For even the most mildly superstitious souls it was an unsettling moment: the newly sworn-in president of the Democratic Republic of Congo was delivering his maiden speech when he was unable to go on. "I am not OK," Felix Tshisekedi declared. Aides moved in to help and he was eventually able to resume. An adviser later reported that the new president's flak-jacket was too tight and he had felt faint. President Tshisekedi was standing near his predecessor, Joseph Kabila, whom many fear will continue to exert a powerful control over the government - a suffocating influence some have suggested after allegations, which have been denied, of a secret deal between the two. The world looked at DR Congo, suspected a big electoral fix but decided to look the other way. There was no appetite for confrontation on the part of the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), the European Union or the United States. Image copyright AFP Image caption President Tshisekedi (R) has been accused of doing a deal with his predecessor Joseph Kabila (L) The AU hastily convened and just as hastily abandoned a mission to DR Congo's capital, Kinshasa, that had been intended to promote a negotiated solution to the row over electoral fraud. The requests to delay the announcement of official results were ignored. US contradiction The AU was left with nothing to negotiate. For a regional body that promotes "African solutions to African problems" it was a humiliation. The US ambassador to Kinshasa, Mike Hammer, hailed a "first-ever peaceful, democratic transfer of power", in the process managing to look past the State Department's own publicly expressed concerns over the electoral process. There was no easy answer to the dilemma presented by the vote. From early on it was clear that there were not going to be large demonstrations against the government, no great manifestation of public fury to pressure the international community into action. This in part was to do with the fractured nature of the political opposition, fear of the security forces and the decision by the Catholic Church and civil society to refrain for now from large-scale mobilisation. Image copyright AFP Image caption Western powers have opted for promoting stability in the DR Congo Looking at all of this, the regional and international actors opted for what diplomats call "stability". In DR Congo this means a continuation of the existing muddle while hoping that it does not all collapse into disaster. For the millions of Congolese - displaced from their homes by conflict, living with dire poverty and the threat of disease, denied a share in the immense mineral wealth of their nation, bullied and preyed upon by armed groups - do not expect an amelioration of their plight any time soon. In all of this it is also worth considering what I would call the politics of preoccupation. It is not just in relation to DR Congo but also to Zimbabwe with its crackdown on dissent and Sudan in the throes of a popular uprising against the regime of President Omar al-Bashir. The last few weeks have seen deepening repression. Soldiers in Zimbabwe terrorise their fellow citizens and their counterparts in Sudan fire live ammunition into crowds. Yet the international response has been muted, to put it mildly. Image copyright AFP Image caption Young people have been at the forefront of protests in Sudan British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt called on Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa not to "turn the clock back". This statement was based on the assumption that the clock had moved forward in Zimbabwe since the ousting of Robert Mugabe at the end of 2017, a doubtful proposition just now. Rather than condemn the brutality in Zimbabwe, the most powerful country in the region, South Africa, called for the lifting of economic sanctions. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has his own preoccupations. There is the fight against corruption and for his political base within the governing African National Congress (ANC) where allies of his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, still lurk. Winning a handsome majority in the coming elections will strengthen Mr Ramaphosa's hand. Do not expect any emphatic foreign policy departures until he feels more secure. You may be interested in: The other major continental power, Nigeria, is facing elections in a fortnight in which President Muhammadu Buhari is running for a second term. Mr Buhari has just caused uproar by firing his chief justice, who could have played a crucial role in a disputed election result. The US, EU and the UK all sounded their displeasure. 'Ethical intervention' In Britain foreign policy is consumed by the Brexit debate. Across the rest of the EU Brexit and a host of domestic crises have led to a turning inwards. African political problems are not a priority. How distant now the days of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's "ethical foreign policy" and the sight of British troops patrolling Sierra Leone. The disastrous aftermath of the Iraq war ended that brief period of ambitious interventionism. The French still maintain strong military and economic links in several African countries. But their limited, and purely rhetorical, response to the DR Congo election outcome indicates the priority of domestic issues like the ongoing "gilets jaunes" protests. In America, the White House and the legislators are kept busy with the Mueller investigation, the continuing border wall saga and the 2020 elections. A month ago US Secretary of State John Bolton outlined an Africa policy aimed at challenging the expansion of Chinese, and to a lesser extent Russian influence. But with the cutbacks at the State Department under the Trump administration it is difficult to see how a more vigorous Africa policy - whatever its ideological or political focus - can be implemented. With Sudan, the Americans have other reasons to go easy on the criticism: the Bashir regime has been helpful in the fight against violent Islamist extremism. The Western powers have expressed "deep concern" while the AU reminded "Sudanese political leaders of their collective responsibility to pursue constructive, peaceful avenues for addressing the country's pressing challenges". The words have been lost in the cries and bullets on the streets. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Victims tell of being beaten and shot by Zimbabwe's security forces But constantly looking to what the rest of the continent or international community does or does not do fails to reflect the deeper dynamics of change on the continent. It cannot be said often enough: Africa is not a single social, political, economic or cultural entity. As the popular phrase goes, Africa is not a country. DR Congo, Sudan and Zimbabwe are each shaped by different histories, albeit with a common legacy of colonial rule. But these days there is another crucial commonality. It is what you might see as the upside of the current period of turmoil. Arc of intolerance In each country a highly organised, youth-driven and tech-savvy civil society has learned that change need not always be sponsored by mainstream politicians or foreign governments. History has taught them that politicians can promise change and deliver only more of the same or worse. The young activists of Bulawayo, Goma and Omdurman do not depend on outsiders. Image copyright AFP Image caption Young activists in Uganda have been instrumental in the rise of musician-turned-MP Bobi Wine The post-colonial era saw too many foreign interventions that were cynical and selfish, or inadequate, fleeting or poorly thought out. Recognition of this has helped create a vigorous spirit of self-determination among today's protesters. These are the people who patiently record the terror inflicted by the Zimbabwean security forces, who are circulating flyers across Khartoum to organise demonstrations, and whose activism forced then-President Kabila to hold an election, however flawed. Nothing has been more important in African politics over the last two decades than the rise of this activist generation. That is why the counsel of despair should be avoided when contemplating the crises that have been playing out in recent weeks. A swathe of the continent is suffering from either regressive authoritarianism, flawed elections, entrenched corruption, or combinations of each. One might call it an arc of intolerance. In Cameroon, the leader of the opposition has been arrested in the wake of a highly compromised election. The authorities in Uganda are accused of persecuting charismatic politician Bobi Wine, while in Tanzania, President John Magufuli is steadily squeezing the life out of democratic opposition. East v West These are just a few examples that have produced a muted response from most of the international community. I say most because the Chinese and the Russians have always stood apart from the language of condemnation. Image copyright AFP Image caption It was all smiles from African leaders at last year's Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit It is common currency these days to argue that where the West steps back because of its own preoccupations China and Russia will rush in. Both Beijing and Moscow have their own agendas to pursue without even lip service to ideals of human rights and accountable government. The Gulf powers are also jostling for influence. But it risks being patronising to assume that people across the continent cannot recognise, and mobilise to counter, a new kind of exploitation when it appears. The ruling party in Zimbabwe especially needs international economic assistance to counter the catastrophe created by its own incompetence and brutal tactics. That help will not be forthcoming as long as a climate of fear continues. Nor do the Chinese or the Russians have endlessly deep pockets, or the inclination, to bankroll an inherently unstable system. But I am focusing here on a more powerful long-term agent of change. I stress long term. None that I met - from Goma in the east all the way to Kinshasa in the west - believe they will be rescued by foreigners. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Congolese protester who gave his life for the cause Likewise in Sudan and Zimbabwe there are vibrant debates taking place around the economy, education and women's rights. The activist movements are crucibles of thought as well as street protest. The activism we see is not driven by ideological or sectarian fanaticism. It is characterised above all by reason. That is no small thing in a world where ideologues have wreaked so much misery in recent decades. Yet activism alone cannot solve the legacy of decades of misrule and corruption. But what it has created is a growing sense of democracy as something more expansive and inclusive than a ballot box that can be stuffed with fake votes or stolen by a power elite. DR Congo's pro-democracy activist group, Lucha, which was a target of Mr Kabila's violent crackdown, recently expressed the tireless hope of its activism in a tweet. "In this tumultuous period, our people must redouble their efforts and vigilance. We must be even more demanding to make the policies accountable to us. Regardless of our political affiliation or our ethnic identity, we must put the nation above all." | Recent crackdowns in several African countries have been met with a muted response from the international community. The world looked at DR Congo, suspected a big electoral fix but decided to look the other way. | pegasus | 1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-47060799 | 0.100107 |
Will Expenses Kill Skechers Stock in 2019? | From one standpoint, eclectic shoe designer Skechers USA (NYSE: SKX) had a great 2018. Through the first three quarters of the year, sales rose by double digits, led by expansion overseas and strong U.S. consumer spending. At the same time, the company's bottom line has gone stale, eaten up by rising costs. Expenses could remain elevated in 2019. However, investors shouldn't lose sight of the fact that higher expenses are the name of the game when a company is growing. 2018 (so far) in review During the third quarter, Skechers reported that international wholesale sales increased 11.8% compared with the prior-year period, while global retail (stores in the U.S. and abroad that the company owns and operates itself) grew 10.8%. International wholesale and retail combined made up 55.5% of the company's total revenue. That continued the positive trend the shoe brand enjoyed all year. However, investors were more concerned with the bottom line, which barely increased in the first nine months of 2018. Skechers stock has fallen more than 30% over the last 12 months. Metric Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2018 Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2017 YOY Increase Revenue $3.56 billion $3.19 billion 12% Gross profit margin 48% 46.5% 1.5 p.p. General and administrative expenses $1.08 billion $905 million 19% Selling expenses $289 million $263 million 10% Earnings per share $1.62 $1.57 3.2% Data source: Skechers. Chart by author. YOY = year over year; p.p. = percentage point. In spite of the big top-line increase and stronger gross margin, a big increase in general and administrative expense severely limited Skechers' profit growth. Skechers has been ramping up spending on advertising and infrastructure in international markets -- particularly China -- including a new distribution center to handle increased demand there related to the country's November 11 Singles' Day shopping holiday (akin to Black Friday here). The interior of a Skechers retail store. More Image source: Skechers. Fortunately, spending in China is reaching an inflection point and could start to ease up, according to management -- although Skechers may make additional investments there depending on need. The company continues to grow its number of retail stores, too. On the third quarter conference call, Skechers CFO John Vandemore stated: "For the [fourth quarter] of 2018, we expect our ongoing capital expenditures to be approximately $20 million to $25 million, which includes an additional 10 to 15 company-owned retail store openings, 10 to 15 store remodels, expansions, or relocation, as well as office renovation. This estimate excludes capital expenditures related to our distribution centers worldwide, including China, as well as office expansion at our corporate headquarters." In short, investors should expect Skechers to continue making substantial investments to support its growth. Specific to the home office expansion, the company broke ground in January 2019 on a multiyear project that will more than double its office space and include a new showroom and design center. Skechers hasn't disclosed the total cost of this project yet, but it's something to keep an eye on in the quarters ahead. However, if Skechers can continue its strong sales growth, investors shouldn't fear an increase in expenses in 2019. The stock's plunge over the past year reduces the pressure on the company to post strong earnings growth this year. Yet profit growth will inevitably come sooner or later once management is content with its ambitions overseas. Thus, expense growth should be a secondary consideration at Skechers -- as long as costs don't get too out of hand -- with sales growth once again taking center stage. More From The Motley Fool Nicholas Rossolillo and his clients owns shares of Skechers. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Skechers. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | Skechers stock has fallen more than 30% over the last 12 months. Sales have been strong, but the company's bottom line has gone stale. General and administrative expenses could remain elevated in 2019. | pegasus | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/expenses-kill-skechers-stock-2019-005100796.html | 0.543059 |
Will Expenses Kill Skechers Stock in 2019? | From one standpoint, eclectic shoe designer Skechers USA (NYSE: SKX) had a great 2018. Through the first three quarters of the year, sales rose by double digits, led by expansion overseas and strong U.S. consumer spending. At the same time, the company's bottom line has gone stale, eaten up by rising costs. Expenses could remain elevated in 2019. However, investors shouldn't lose sight of the fact that higher expenses are the name of the game when a company is growing. 2018 (so far) in review During the third quarter, Skechers reported that international wholesale sales increased 11.8% compared with the prior-year period, while global retail (stores in the U.S. and abroad that the company owns and operates itself) grew 10.8%. International wholesale and retail combined made up 55.5% of the company's total revenue. That continued the positive trend the shoe brand enjoyed all year. However, investors were more concerned with the bottom line, which barely increased in the first nine months of 2018. Skechers stock has fallen more than 30% over the last 12 months. Metric Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2018 Nine Months Ended Sept. 30, 2017 YOY Increase Revenue $3.56 billion $3.19 billion 12% Gross profit margin 48% 46.5% 1.5 p.p. General and administrative expenses $1.08 billion $905 million 19% Selling expenses $289 million $263 million 10% Earnings per share $1.62 $1.57 3.2% Data source: Skechers. Chart by author. YOY = year over year; p.p. = percentage point. In spite of the big top-line increase and stronger gross margin, a big increase in general and administrative expense severely limited Skechers' profit growth. Skechers has been ramping up spending on advertising and infrastructure in international markets -- particularly China -- including a new distribution center to handle increased demand there related to the country's November 11 Singles' Day shopping holiday (akin to Black Friday here). The interior of a Skechers retail store. More Image source: Skechers. Fortunately, spending in China is reaching an inflection point and could start to ease up, according to management -- although Skechers may make additional investments there depending on need. The company continues to grow its number of retail stores, too. On the third quarter conference call, Skechers CFO John Vandemore stated: "For the [fourth quarter] of 2018, we expect our ongoing capital expenditures to be approximately $20 million to $25 million, which includes an additional 10 to 15 company-owned retail store openings, 10 to 15 store remodels, expansions, or relocation, as well as office renovation. This estimate excludes capital expenditures related to our distribution centers worldwide, including China, as well as office expansion at our corporate headquarters." In short, investors should expect Skechers to continue making substantial investments to support its growth. Specific to the home office expansion, the company broke ground in January 2019 on a multiyear project that will more than double its office space and include a new showroom and design center. Skechers hasn't disclosed the total cost of this project yet, but it's something to keep an eye on in the quarters ahead. However, if Skechers can continue its strong sales growth, investors shouldn't fear an increase in expenses in 2019. The stock's plunge over the past year reduces the pressure on the company to post strong earnings growth this year. Yet profit growth will inevitably come sooner or later once management is content with its ambitions overseas. Thus, expense growth should be a secondary consideration at Skechers -- as long as costs don't get too out of hand -- with sales growth once again taking center stage. More From The Motley Fool Nicholas Rossolillo and his clients owns shares of Skechers. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Skechers. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | Skechers stock has fallen more than 30% over the last 12 months. Sales have been strong, but the company's bottom line has gone stale. General and administrative expenses are the name of the game when a company is growing. If Skechers can continue its strong sales growth, investors shouldn't fear an increase in expenses in 2019. | pegasus | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/expenses-kill-skechers-stock-2019-005100796.html | 0.449233 |
Are LeBron James and James Harden playing by another set of rules? | Yes, James Harden and LeBron James seem to know they have an edge. (Getty) A weekly dive into the NBAs hottest topics. Take One: Collusion and collisions Scroll to continue with content Ad Some people just get to break the rules. Thats what it seems like, at least, with LeBron James saying it would be amazing to play alongside Anthony Davis barely skirting tampering rules while agent Rich Paul, one of LeBrons closest friends and business partners, was preparing to request a trade from the Pelicans on behalf of his client. James Harden, in the meantime, has scored 28.4 percent of his January 43.6-points-per-game average from the free-throw line, elbowing, cajoling, flopping and crashing his way to MVP candidacy. Consider what got less notice: After a game at the Fiserv Forum, Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo shook Daviss hand and told him, Come to the Bucks, man. Three days ago, Patrick Beverley received a flopping warning for a Matrix-recalling backward dive. The truth is, some rules were made to be broken. And everybody breaks them. Only the very bad and the very effective draw notice, their advantage drawing the ire of their opponents. (Yahoo illustration/Amber Matsumoto) Story continues Thats certainly the case with Harden. He leads the league in drives, at 19.7 per game, but he only gets 3.5 of his 13.5 driving points from the free-throw line. The rest are because of his uncanny strength and finishing ability, a feathers touch and, recently, an ability to scare his defenders into submission with the threat of the whistle. (Remember when the Lakers defended him with their arms behind their backs?) He also leads the league in points from pull-up jumpers, one of the toughest shots in the game. The Ringers Zach Kram put it best: Eliminate free throws, and Harden would still lead the NBA in scoring. Hardens ability to get to the line doesnt make his game gimmicky. He utilizes the games most effective gimmick better than anyone else because he can still beat you every other way. It may well be the case with the Lakers, too, the gravitational pull of LeBron James and Showtime combining and naturally drawing in the NBAs most promising trade target. [Ditch the pen and paper on footballs biggest day. Go digital with Squares Pickem!] Everybody flops. Everybody talks. James Harden will keep lighting defenses on fire, and the Lakers will keep drawing the eye of the leagues best players, less because of foul play, and more because that is simply what they do. Take Two: Anthony Davis is already on LeBrons level Davis camp has made it clear what he wants: to no longer be a Pelican, to play for the Lakers alongside LeBron James, and to do it sooner rather than later. Thats illuminating, because up until this season, we havent learned a great deal about Davis since he and his unibrow showed up in Lexington, Kentucky, and blocked nearly every shot at Rupp Arena eight years ago. Hes mostly been a quiet guy playing in a quiet market. It came as a slight surprise, then, that he would be the one to want to play with LeBron James a prospect other stars reportedly shudder at on basketballs biggest stage. Then again, maybe its because Davis possesses the talent necessary to walk onto a court with LeBron and not feel immediately like a second wheel. He has been a superstar for years a megastar-in-waiting and theres no reason to believe that as Davis inches toward his peak and LeBron descends, their abilities wont meet. In fact, they might already have. Davis is the leagues second-leading scorer at 29.3 points per game, and pulls down 13.3 rebounds and dishes a healthy four assists per game. Hes a defensive monster who hits his free throws, hardly ever fouls, and leads the league in player-efficiency rating. All hes missing is a team that can turn his impact into a shot at a championship. Take Three: Luka Doncics fearless creativity Doncic invites trouble. He likes to do the hard thing, like split pick-and-roll traps, zip passes to open shooters crosscourt and throw Hail Mary passes across the court. With 30-foot range that gives him a shooters touch when hes driving, generational vision and deceptive ball-handling skills, Doncic is a perpetual threat. His every move provokes a reaction. He knows this. He uses it like few before him. Hell fake a pocket pass to get off a clean floater. Hell look off opponents at the top of his jump, turning a mid-range shot into a corner triple assist. And then theres my personal favorite, the first in what I hope is a career full of intrepid reactions to difficult defenses: the falling, impossible floater turned into an alley-oop. (Hes done it a few times now, so you know its not a fluke.) Doncic should be at the end of his rope. Hes falling away on the baseline, trying to nail the hardest shot in basketball with defenders lunging at him. But thats the beauty of Luka: He has more court awareness falling sideways than most players do standing upright. Take Four: Shooting like Steph Just less than two years ago, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive shipped DeMarcus Cousins to the Pelicans in a deal that included Buddy Hield and a first-round pick because he felt Hield had Steph Curry potential. It was a lot to put on a second-year player with a single-digit average, prompting a series of Kangz-related schadenfreude. We might have been better off tapping the brakes. Hield certainly isnt Curry, but hes turned himself into a 20-point-per-game scorer and hes scoring 7.7 of them third-best in the league from catch-and-shoot jumpers, which hes sinking at a scorching 49.1 percent. The Splash Brothers. On Dec. 12, the Kawhi Leonard-less Raptors narrowly inched by the Warriors and discovered the tiniest of weapons. With Steph Curry consistently switching onto Danny Green and busting the Raptors offense, head coach Nick Nurse opted to do something Green only did twice in his final year as a Spur: put him in the post. With a three-inch, 30-pound advantage, Green took Curry to task and discovered a new facet to his game. Hes posted up 20 times this year twice more than he did in his last five seasons as a Spur. Its still not a big part of Greens game, but its the kind of wrinkle that can keep a 10-year vet engaged and could potentially pay dividends in key postseason moments. More from Yahoo Sports: NFL cancels Maroon 5s Super Bowl news conference Pats Brady labeled known cheater on broadcast Ex-NFL star says he drank Hennessy before NFL games Martin: Rams RB never strayed far from West Coast roots | Some people just get to break the rules. James Harden has scored 28.4 percent of his January 43.6-points-per-game average from the free-throw line. Anthony Davis is already on LeBron James' level. | pegasus | 1 | https://sports.yahoo.com/lebron-james-james-harden-playing-another-set-rules-151509461.html?src=rss | 0.112206 |
Who is Ralph Northam, the Virginia governor who faces resignation calls after racist yearbook photo? | Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaks during a news conference in the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Amazon, which has grown too big for its Seattle hometown, said it will split its much-anticipated second headquarters between New York and northern Virginia. WASHINGTON The backlash was nearly instant. Within hours of a photo surfacing on Friday that showed Virginia's Democratic governor in a photo showing two people dressed in blackface in Ku Klux Klan robes, a chorus calling for Ralph Northam to resign grew and spread across social media. The photo was part of Northam's 1984 yearbook during his last year at Eastern Virginia Medical School. A half-page with four photos of Northam included one of two people, one in a blackface costume and the other wearing a KKK robe. Northam admitted he was in the photo and apologized, but did not detail which of the pictured individuals he was dressed up as. Here's what you should know: Soft-spoken and moderate Northam is widely viewed as a moderate within his party, someone who says he voted twice for former Republican President George W. Bush. He has described himself as a fiscal conservative but socially liberal, as Northam has advocated for tighter gun laws and loosening abortion restrictions. Republicans in the state at one point tried to recruit Northam to switch parties, according to the New York Times, something Northam rejected. My fellow Virginians, earlier today I released a statement apologizing for behavior in my past that falls far short of the standard you set for me when you elected me to be your governor. I believe you deserve to hear directly from me. pic.twitter.com/1rSw1oxfrX Ralph Northam (@GovernorVA) February 2, 2019 A former doctor, Northam is soft-spoken and was relatively unknown outside of Virginia when he took up a bid for governor. Northam entered politics in 2007 when he ran and won a bid to become a state senator. In 2013, he took up a bid for lieutenant governor, winning the post to become second in command for then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe. His military, medical history Before his political career, Northam served as a doctor in the U.S. Army and treated soldiers overseas during the Gulf War. He served eight years in the military and traveled to Germany where he tended to soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. He attended both Virginia Military Institute and Eastern Virginia Medical School and, after completing his residency, started treating children as a pediatric neurologist. He continued that work while serving as lieutenant governor, spending his days both at the state capitol and treating children suffering from illnesses. Response to Charlottesville The deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville stunned the nation and thrust the small, southern city into the epicenter of a radical discussion about race and anti-Semitism. After the 2017 rally, which left one woman dead and several injured after a neo-Nazi rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters, politics became even divisive. President Donald Trump cast blame on "both sides" and said "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," causing an uproar that took over the news cycle for days. Northam, after the rally, denounced the "ugly" event and praised the city and its residents for promoting a place that values "openness, diversity and inclusion," according to the Washington Post. "White supremacists have descended upon Charlottesville again to evoke a reaction as ugly and violent as their beliefs just as they did before, I am urging Virginians to deny them the satisfaction," Northam said in a statement. More: 'I am deeply sorry': Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam apologizes for yearbook photo with blackface, KKK costumes More: Calls for Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to resign flood in after blackface, KKK photo surfaces An effort to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led to the rally and violence. Northam, at first, supported the removal of all Confederate statues in the aftermath of the event. He later changed his mind, saying it should be left up to local officials. Racially charged governor's race Northam ran for governor in 2017 in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, an event that shifted politics in the state. The rally drew neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, many of whom carried Confederate flags or wore clothing with Nazi or KKK insignias. | Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is widely viewed as a moderate within his party. He served as a doctor in the U.S. Army and treated soldiers overseas during the Gulf War. | bart | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/ralph-northam-virginia-governor-faces-030818061.html | 0.11299 |
Who is Ralph Northam, the Virginia governor who faces resignation calls after racist yearbook photo? | Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam speaks during a news conference in the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Amazon, which has grown too big for its Seattle hometown, said it will split its much-anticipated second headquarters between New York and northern Virginia. WASHINGTON The backlash was nearly instant. Within hours of a photo surfacing on Friday that showed Virginia's Democratic governor in a photo showing two people dressed in blackface in Ku Klux Klan robes, a chorus calling for Ralph Northam to resign grew and spread across social media. The photo was part of Northam's 1984 yearbook during his last year at Eastern Virginia Medical School. A half-page with four photos of Northam included one of two people, one in a blackface costume and the other wearing a KKK robe. Northam admitted he was in the photo and apologized, but did not detail which of the pictured individuals he was dressed up as. Here's what you should know: Soft-spoken and moderate Northam is widely viewed as a moderate within his party, someone who says he voted twice for former Republican President George W. Bush. He has described himself as a fiscal conservative but socially liberal, as Northam has advocated for tighter gun laws and loosening abortion restrictions. Republicans in the state at one point tried to recruit Northam to switch parties, according to the New York Times, something Northam rejected. My fellow Virginians, earlier today I released a statement apologizing for behavior in my past that falls far short of the standard you set for me when you elected me to be your governor. I believe you deserve to hear directly from me. pic.twitter.com/1rSw1oxfrX Ralph Northam (@GovernorVA) February 2, 2019 A former doctor, Northam is soft-spoken and was relatively unknown outside of Virginia when he took up a bid for governor. Northam entered politics in 2007 when he ran and won a bid to become a state senator. In 2013, he took up a bid for lieutenant governor, winning the post to become second in command for then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe. His military, medical history Before his political career, Northam served as a doctor in the U.S. Army and treated soldiers overseas during the Gulf War. He served eight years in the military and traveled to Germany where he tended to soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. He attended both Virginia Military Institute and Eastern Virginia Medical School and, after completing his residency, started treating children as a pediatric neurologist. He continued that work while serving as lieutenant governor, spending his days both at the state capitol and treating children suffering from illnesses. Response to Charlottesville The deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville stunned the nation and thrust the small, southern city into the epicenter of a radical discussion about race and anti-Semitism. After the 2017 rally, which left one woman dead and several injured after a neo-Nazi rammed his car into a group of counterprotesters, politics became even divisive. President Donald Trump cast blame on "both sides" and said "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," causing an uproar that took over the news cycle for days. Northam, after the rally, denounced the "ugly" event and praised the city and its residents for promoting a place that values "openness, diversity and inclusion," according to the Washington Post. "White supremacists have descended upon Charlottesville again to evoke a reaction as ugly and violent as their beliefs just as they did before, I am urging Virginians to deny them the satisfaction," Northam said in a statement. More: 'I am deeply sorry': Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam apologizes for yearbook photo with blackface, KKK costumes More: Calls for Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam to resign flood in after blackface, KKK photo surfaces An effort to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee led to the rally and violence. Northam, at first, supported the removal of all Confederate statues in the aftermath of the event. He later changed his mind, saying it should be left up to local officials. Racially charged governor's race Northam ran for governor in 2017 in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, an event that shifted politics in the state. The rally drew neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, many of whom carried Confederate flags or wore clothing with Nazi or KKK insignias. | Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is facing calls for him to resign after a racist yearbook photo surfaced. Northam admitted he was in the photo and apologized, but did not detail which of the pictured individuals he was dressed up as. He is a former doctor and served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/ralph-northam-virginia-governor-faces-030818061.html | 0.146826 |
Would An Increased Salary Cap In Australia's Slumping Big Bash League Lure International Stars? | Everyone in Australia is trying to be a problem solver. The lucrative Big Bash League (BBL), Cricket Australias (CA) goldmine, has had a gradual decline in popularity in the past couple of seasons sparking fears that the Twenty20 competition is in a terminal slump. The current season has been marred by low crowds, poor matches on slow pitches and a downturn in television ratings. Undoubtedly, the overstretched and watered down BBL is now on the nose. After being in damage control with concerned broadcasters, CA is plotting changes to next season. This is a big deal for all involved with much at stake. This season has stretched out to 59 matches, an increase of 16 matches as part of CA's (USD) $800 million television deal with cable channel Fox Sports and free-to-air Channel 7. The eight teams now play 14 games in a proper home-and-away format, which makes a great deal of sense, except is has blown out the season to two months and well past the school holidays period. It is longer than the Indian Premier League (IPL), the most popular and successful Twenty20 competition in the world. The BBL has been invaluable in luring a new wave of fans to the sport, especially kids and families, but they dont particularly want the tournament to go well into February when school returns. With so much money committed, the current home and away season is locked in for the six-year duration of the broadcasting agreement. With reducing the season off the table it means other aspects of the league are being evaluated. There has been much criticism over the declining standard of the BBL, particularly the lack of headliners compared to previous seasons. International stars such as AB de Villiers and Andre Russell have chosen the lucrative and shortened Bangladesh Premier League (BPL) ahead of the BBL, which has also always suffered from the absence of its best Australian players due to schedule clashes. The IPL, in a notable contrast, has a fixed window in April-May where the India national team does not play. CA chief executive Kevin Roberts has indicated the BBLs (USD) modest $1.2 million salary cap will be reviewed in a desperate bid to lure marquee players. Potentially increasing the BBL salary cap is tricky and would require consultation from the Australian Cricketers Association due to concerns about domestic cricketers losing out financially and on playing opportunities. "We need to be competitive in terms of player payments and make sure we really cement the position of the BBL in the top two domestic T20 leagues in the world, he said. "But it's a delicate thing to work through." The situation has created uncertainty and a lack of continuity throughout the BBL, notably reinforced when Melbourne Stars lost Nepalese spinning sensation Sandeep Lamichhane to the BPL midway through the tournament. "I think the Pakistan Super League, the Emirates league, could start to take our overseas players and the Bangladesh Premier League's obviously got Sandeep throughout the middle of our tournament, Glenn Maxwell, the Stars marquee player, told SEN Radio. "I think when you're expanding the competition and making it 14 games (each), you've probably got to be expanding the salary cap a little bit more just to make sure you can get those signings in otherwise we are going to be competing. According to ESPNcricinfo, BBL chiefs want overseas players to be paid outside of the salary cap and an idea has been mooted that to ensure players are distributed equitably there would be an implementation of drafts for overseas, domestic and rookie players. Picks would be distributed based on the previous season's standings. "I think going forward there may be a way for us to have a separate salary cap for the overseas players for each team to make sure we are getting the big draw cards, the (Dwayne) Bravos of the world, and potentially AB de Villiers down the road," Maxwell said. The BBL is only in its eighth season and its swift emergence into a money spinner has been monumental but there needs to be much deliberation and inventiveness to ensure it isnt merely a fad. | Australia's Big Bash League (BBL) is struggling to attract international stars. The BBL has stretched out to 59 matches, an increase of 16 matches as part of CA's $800 million television deal with cable channel Fox Sports and free-to-air Channel 7. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlavalette/2019/02/01/would-an-increased-salary-cap-in-australias-slumping-big-bash-league-lure-international-stars/ | 0.154079 |
Why Are We For Globalization But Against The AI Revolution? | One of the great ironies of the debate about AIs disruptive impact on society is the way in which it offers an almost perfect mirror image of the debate around globalization. We speak of AIs potential to cause mass job displacement as an existential danger that must be addressed with Universal Basic Income or legal protections, while lauding the disruptive job loss of globalization as simply the natural and inevitable course of nature. In fact, many of the same policymakers and thought leaders that have long promoted globalization have been among the loudest voices warning we must protect society against similar disruption from AI. Once arcane subjects like Universal Basic Income (UBI) have become household names over the last few years as governments have struggled with how to address what many have projected to be the coming AI-fueled employment apocalypse. According to Google Trends, US-based web searches on UBI have surged since the start of 2016, coinciding with the identical rise in public searching about AI as a whole. In short, as AI has roared back into the public consciousness over the last two years it has brought with it a parallel surge in concerns about what this new AI renaissance will mean for peoples jobs. In many ways this reflects the extraordinary string of rapid advances over the last few years that have seen AI algorithms achieve unprecedented advances in everything from image categorization and speech recognition to gameplay and driverless cars. AI has finally reached a tipping point where the general public no longer regards it as merely a laboratory curiosity and the antagonist of Hollywood movies. Populations are recognizing that while current AI systems are still in their infancy, they are finally approaching accuracy levels and application domains where they could begin to have a measurable impact on employment in certain sectors. As ordinary citizens begin grappling with the idea that a soulless machine could take their job, politicians and pundits alike have begun warning that governments must take immediate measures to curb the spread of AI before it can begin to take peoples jobs or at least compensate those who lose their jobs to their silicon counterparts. In essence, the idea of AI algorithms taking our jobs is seen as something unnatural, an affront against how society is supposed to function. AIs impact on employment is something to be curbed, corralled and controlled. Partially this is a reaction to the idea that humans might make themselves obsolete. In the rush of formerly impossible AI achievements over the last several years such as driverless cars and algorithms that can master advanced strategy games and learn to play video games all by themselves, the public is increasingly seeing the classical science fiction trope of humanity creating AI that replaces humans as more and more plausible. Replacing human jobs is merely the first step in this progression. Seen in this light, the objection to AI displacing human jobs is a reaction not to job loss, but to the subordination of humans to their machine creations. That by ceding their employment to machines, we are one step closer to machines entirely replacing us. However, this simplistic description does not fully explain the outsized reaction and policy proscriptions that have arisen in the reaction to AIs rapid rise. If our fear was solely limited to AI run amok, our focus would be on designing failsafe mechanisms for ensuring positive control over AI creations in the event they deviate from their expected behaviors. We would be exploring approaches for understanding algorithmic abnormalities beyond simply trying to detect how they can fooled, such as examining how AI systems of the future could leverage those vulnerabilities to escape their failsafe programing. We would be seriously examining topics like Isaac Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics. Those are the kinds of responses that might emerge if the primary concern about AIs advances were with respect to its potential to eventually turn on humanity. Instead, nearly all of the conversation to date has been around the economic impact of AIs potential to replace an ever-growing number of jobs. Ideas like Universal Basic Income narrowly focus on the employment impact of AI as a traditional technological disrupter like the Industrial Revolution. This is a critical distinction because it reinforces that our fears over AI are rooted not in future hyperbolic concerns of terminator robots someday launching nuclear war on society, but rather on the very real employment impact that AI may bring in the coming years. Seen through this lens, there are remarkable parallels between the fears of future AI-fueled job loss and the steady march of historical job loss that has occurred due to globalization. AI replaces human workers with cheaper silicon versions. Globalization replaces a local worker with the cheapest available human option, potentially on the other side of the world. In both cases a local job is lost and a job somewhere else is created. The difference is that globalization has impacted largely working-class jobs, while the middle and upper classes have been not only insulated from its effects, but actually benefited from reduced costs for goods and services. In contrast, the AI revolution stands poised to bring these same disruptive impacts to the middle class, wreaking the same havoc to their economic standing as globalization has done to the working class. AI has taken on the role of public embodiment of this new form of job displacement, as evidenced by the lockstep increases in public interest in both AI and UBI. Putting this all together, it is no small irony that the same forces that have relentlessly promoted globalization in spite of its economic impacts to the working class are now treating AIs potential for a similar disruption to the middle class as a public emergency that requires radical intervention to protect against. While AI may still be very much in its infancy, its impact is already being felt in forcing us as a society to confront the impact of how our ever-changing digital world affects us all. | Because we are afraid of machines replacing us. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/01/why-are-we-for-globalization-but-against-the-ai-revolution/ | 0.12368 |
Why Are We For Globalization But Against The AI Revolution? | One of the great ironies of the debate about AIs disruptive impact on society is the way in which it offers an almost perfect mirror image of the debate around globalization. We speak of AIs potential to cause mass job displacement as an existential danger that must be addressed with Universal Basic Income or legal protections, while lauding the disruptive job loss of globalization as simply the natural and inevitable course of nature. In fact, many of the same policymakers and thought leaders that have long promoted globalization have been among the loudest voices warning we must protect society against similar disruption from AI. Once arcane subjects like Universal Basic Income (UBI) have become household names over the last few years as governments have struggled with how to address what many have projected to be the coming AI-fueled employment apocalypse. According to Google Trends, US-based web searches on UBI have surged since the start of 2016, coinciding with the identical rise in public searching about AI as a whole. In short, as AI has roared back into the public consciousness over the last two years it has brought with it a parallel surge in concerns about what this new AI renaissance will mean for peoples jobs. In many ways this reflects the extraordinary string of rapid advances over the last few years that have seen AI algorithms achieve unprecedented advances in everything from image categorization and speech recognition to gameplay and driverless cars. AI has finally reached a tipping point where the general public no longer regards it as merely a laboratory curiosity and the antagonist of Hollywood movies. Populations are recognizing that while current AI systems are still in their infancy, they are finally approaching accuracy levels and application domains where they could begin to have a measurable impact on employment in certain sectors. As ordinary citizens begin grappling with the idea that a soulless machine could take their job, politicians and pundits alike have begun warning that governments must take immediate measures to curb the spread of AI before it can begin to take peoples jobs or at least compensate those who lose their jobs to their silicon counterparts. In essence, the idea of AI algorithms taking our jobs is seen as something unnatural, an affront against how society is supposed to function. AIs impact on employment is something to be curbed, corralled and controlled. Partially this is a reaction to the idea that humans might make themselves obsolete. In the rush of formerly impossible AI achievements over the last several years such as driverless cars and algorithms that can master advanced strategy games and learn to play video games all by themselves, the public is increasingly seeing the classical science fiction trope of humanity creating AI that replaces humans as more and more plausible. Replacing human jobs is merely the first step in this progression. Seen in this light, the objection to AI displacing human jobs is a reaction not to job loss, but to the subordination of humans to their machine creations. That by ceding their employment to machines, we are one step closer to machines entirely replacing us. However, this simplistic description does not fully explain the outsized reaction and policy proscriptions that have arisen in the reaction to AIs rapid rise. If our fear was solely limited to AI run amok, our focus would be on designing failsafe mechanisms for ensuring positive control over AI creations in the event they deviate from their expected behaviors. We would be exploring approaches for understanding algorithmic abnormalities beyond simply trying to detect how they can fooled, such as examining how AI systems of the future could leverage those vulnerabilities to escape their failsafe programing. We would be seriously examining topics like Isaac Asimovs Three Laws of Robotics. Those are the kinds of responses that might emerge if the primary concern about AIs advances were with respect to its potential to eventually turn on humanity. Instead, nearly all of the conversation to date has been around the economic impact of AIs potential to replace an ever-growing number of jobs. Ideas like Universal Basic Income narrowly focus on the employment impact of AI as a traditional technological disrupter like the Industrial Revolution. This is a critical distinction because it reinforces that our fears over AI are rooted not in future hyperbolic concerns of terminator robots someday launching nuclear war on society, but rather on the very real employment impact that AI may bring in the coming years. Seen through this lens, there are remarkable parallels between the fears of future AI-fueled job loss and the steady march of historical job loss that has occurred due to globalization. AI replaces human workers with cheaper silicon versions. Globalization replaces a local worker with the cheapest available human option, potentially on the other side of the world. In both cases a local job is lost and a job somewhere else is created. The difference is that globalization has impacted largely working-class jobs, while the middle and upper classes have been not only insulated from its effects, but actually benefited from reduced costs for goods and services. In contrast, the AI revolution stands poised to bring these same disruptive impacts to the middle class, wreaking the same havoc to their economic standing as globalization has done to the working class. AI has taken on the role of public embodiment of this new form of job displacement, as evidenced by the lockstep increases in public interest in both AI and UBI. Putting this all together, it is no small irony that the same forces that have relentlessly promoted globalization in spite of its economic impacts to the working class are now treating AIs potential for a similar disruption to the middle class as a public emergency that requires radical intervention to protect against. While AI may still be very much in its infancy, its impact is already being felt in forcing us as a society to confront the impact of how our ever-changing digital world affects us all. | We speak of AIs potential to cause mass job displacement as an existential danger that must be addressed with Universal Basic Income or legal protections. Many of the same policymakers and thought leaders that have long promoted globalization have been among the loudest voices warning we must protect society from AI. | pegasus | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/01/why-are-we-for-globalization-but-against-the-ai-revolution/ | 0.218202 |
Why are we so coy about sex education for gay teens? | For novelist Lev Rosen, school sex ed involved putting condoms on fruit. We need to be much more creative and fun, he argues When I was 13 years old, when I knew I was queer but wouldnt be saying so for a year, I remember some boys at school during lunch talking about gay sex. They called it gross, they laughed about it. Thats what I heard from my peers about the topic. I heard nothing from my teachers; I wasnt about to ask my parents; and the gay people on TV never did more than peck each other on the lips. Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. No one wants to talk to them about sex. It sounds pervy to tell kids how to have sex as if youre ruining their innocence or, worse, grooming them. I dont know what your sex education was like, but I remember mine: it was putting condoms on bananas. Fun fact about bananas: theyre all genetically identical. Every banana youve eaten is the same as every other banana youve eaten. And many of the sex-education classes taught today are exactly the same as the one I attended more than a decade ago. Condoms on bananas, STDs, reproduction no talk of pleasure or consent, much less gay sex. The message is clear across all media: gays have to be kept sexless because theyre already too much about sex So, I wrote a novel for teens that features guides to oral sex, anal sex, and basic BDSM. I didnt do this just so people had someone new to send hate mail to; I did it because teens have heard all this already from TV, playground talk, and online porn. Even sheltered teens already have some idea about how sex works; pretending they dont isnt going to help anyone. And while not all of them want to try these things, those who do, need to know how to do it safely, and with consent. Instead, they learn all of that from the media. In most media aimed at teens, queer men tend to be sweet and sexless. Youve seen or read the gay best friend character who talks about how hot guys are but never touches one. Or youve experienced mainstream gay romance with gentle kissing, hand-holding, maybe a hug (fully clothed). Even when they get to say what they want, these boys on TV or in film rarely long for more than a kiss and a cuddle. We never see the mimed, under-the-covers sexy-and-shirtless making-out that our straight peers are treated to. Straight teens get to have sex on TV. Gay ones, not so much. Theres this thing I call the glass closet: the idea that liberal-minded, well-meaning folks who genuinely dont think they have a problem with queer people tend to confine them to a rigid definition of good queerness. For women, this means not going too butch, usually. For men, it means not going too femme, and also, not being too slutty. Thats way too gay. Society likes to keep gay teens sexless. It likes to maintain that gay content (even something non-sexual, like the representation of gay parents) is inappropriate for childrens TV or books. Those who complain say its too adult implying that queerness, essentially, is all about sex, while straightness is just what a normal relationship looks like. Its a weird dichotomy: straight people holding hands are non-sexual, while queer people holding hands is somehow the same as broadcasting pornography. The message is clear across all media: gays have to be kept sexless because theyre already too much about sex. And so, if all the gay teenagers on our screens are portrayed as good gays, kept safely in the confines of the glass closet, and sex-ed doesnt discuss more than bananas and STDs, then real queer teens turn to the one place they can see their desires: porn. If you havent seen any gay (male) porn, let me describe most of it: everything is clean and polished (yes, even most of the dirty stuff). Everyone has lots of vocal fun. No one ever flags until they finish. Of course, porn is fantasy, and the men in these videos do massive prep for these scenes. It looks much easier than it is thats half the fantasy. And as fantasy, its fine. But as a primary source of education, gay porn leaves young queer men with an idealised, routine set of acts that suggest a (wrongly) regimented set of requirements for real queer sex. Standardised sexual imagery, it turns out, is just bananas with abs. The lesbian sex in mainstream porn is designed for male visual pleasure. So queer women have to navigate male sexuality Ive also spoken to queer women about their sexual education. They didnt always go to porn for their sex-ed, but they didnt find it at school or home either. Those who did look for it in porn had the additional problem that the fantasy being presented wasnt even being presented for them. Many young women will encounter lesbian sex through mainstream porn, says Allison Moon, sex educator and author of Girl Sex 101. This means everyone, not only girls, can get some very wrong ideas about lesbian sex, because the lesbian sex in mainstream porn is designed for male visual pleasure. So queer women have to navigate male sexuality whether or not it interests them. And that leaves queer teens in sex-education classes in an awkward place. Straight teens can ask about things theyve seen on TV, they can apply condoms-on-bananas to what they learn from the media, and come away with a basic framework of sex. Queer teens can only turn to porn. The good news is that, in some places, things are changing. When I contacted my old high school to find out how the condom bananas were going, I spoke to the director of health and wellness about how the sex-education curriculum has changed, and how its about to change even further. We can do better, and were on the cusp, she told me, before going into future plans: a curriculum that covers the usual safe-sex issues, but also talks about consent, healthy relationships, porn literacy and queer sex. I was thrilled to hear it. I may have even become a little teary, thinking about a class of young queer people who get a real sexual education that applies to them. But not every school does this. And they need to, because queer people are everywhere. Weve made strides in acceptance, but today I still see gay men in their 20s and 30s online saying they dont know how things work. I get emails from men saying my book taught them things they wish they had learned as a teen. Teens today tell me that its so nice to hear someone talk about gay teens having sex, about how they feel, as though, even if theyre out, theyre still not allowed to act on their desires or are unsure how. Right now, teenagers choices for learning are two extremes (the good gay or the bad gay) neither of which is helpful. Either way, these teens end up feeling as if theyve done something wrong. And we can fix that so easily. Just start talking about it, teaching it. We do it with straight sex. We can fix this the way we can fix most things in life: just gay it up. What gay teens should watch and read Another Gay Movie (2006) A raunchy teen sex comedy about four gay guys trying to lose their virginity before graduating. There are gross sex gags, some nudity, and the pressure to lose ones virginity is problematic, but if you wanted a queer male version of the American Pie movies (or the more recent Blockers), this is it. I Killed My Mother (2009) A French-Canadian film that features young gay men having fun, sexy sex without being porn like many of the straight teens you see on TV today. Release, by Patrick Ness There are plenty of graphic, but beautifully wrought sex scenes in this book about a queer teen trying to find some freedom for himself in a small American town and with his deeply religious family. Under The Lights, by Dahlia Adler This fun romp on the set of a Hollywood television show has explicit lesbian sex behind the scenes, as the character deals with who shes playing on TV, and who she is when shes with her publicists daughter. Princess Cyd (2017) In this quiet and beautiful film about a teen girl (Cyd) spending the summer with her aunt, theres one great scene between Cyd and Katie, who is a little bit boy (and played by a non-binary actor). Its exactly the sort of sex we should be seeing everywhere. Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen is published in paperback by Penguin on 7 February at 7.99. To order a copy for 6.99, go to guardianbookshop.com. | Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. Society likes to keep gay teens sexless. Lev Rosen wrote a novel for teens that features guides to oral sex, anal sex, and basic BDSM. | bart | 1 | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/02/why-are-we-so-coy-about-sex-education-for-gay-teens | 0.322056 |
Why are we so coy about sex education for gay teens? | For novelist Lev Rosen, school sex ed involved putting condoms on fruit. We need to be much more creative and fun, he argues When I was 13 years old, when I knew I was queer but wouldnt be saying so for a year, I remember some boys at school during lunch talking about gay sex. They called it gross, they laughed about it. Thats what I heard from my peers about the topic. I heard nothing from my teachers; I wasnt about to ask my parents; and the gay people on TV never did more than peck each other on the lips. Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. No one wants to talk to them about sex. It sounds pervy to tell kids how to have sex as if youre ruining their innocence or, worse, grooming them. I dont know what your sex education was like, but I remember mine: it was putting condoms on bananas. Fun fact about bananas: theyre all genetically identical. Every banana youve eaten is the same as every other banana youve eaten. And many of the sex-education classes taught today are exactly the same as the one I attended more than a decade ago. Condoms on bananas, STDs, reproduction no talk of pleasure or consent, much less gay sex. The message is clear across all media: gays have to be kept sexless because theyre already too much about sex So, I wrote a novel for teens that features guides to oral sex, anal sex, and basic BDSM. I didnt do this just so people had someone new to send hate mail to; I did it because teens have heard all this already from TV, playground talk, and online porn. Even sheltered teens already have some idea about how sex works; pretending they dont isnt going to help anyone. And while not all of them want to try these things, those who do, need to know how to do it safely, and with consent. Instead, they learn all of that from the media. In most media aimed at teens, queer men tend to be sweet and sexless. Youve seen or read the gay best friend character who talks about how hot guys are but never touches one. Or youve experienced mainstream gay romance with gentle kissing, hand-holding, maybe a hug (fully clothed). Even when they get to say what they want, these boys on TV or in film rarely long for more than a kiss and a cuddle. We never see the mimed, under-the-covers sexy-and-shirtless making-out that our straight peers are treated to. Straight teens get to have sex on TV. Gay ones, not so much. Theres this thing I call the glass closet: the idea that liberal-minded, well-meaning folks who genuinely dont think they have a problem with queer people tend to confine them to a rigid definition of good queerness. For women, this means not going too butch, usually. For men, it means not going too femme, and also, not being too slutty. Thats way too gay. Society likes to keep gay teens sexless. It likes to maintain that gay content (even something non-sexual, like the representation of gay parents) is inappropriate for childrens TV or books. Those who complain say its too adult implying that queerness, essentially, is all about sex, while straightness is just what a normal relationship looks like. Its a weird dichotomy: straight people holding hands are non-sexual, while queer people holding hands is somehow the same as broadcasting pornography. The message is clear across all media: gays have to be kept sexless because theyre already too much about sex. And so, if all the gay teenagers on our screens are portrayed as good gays, kept safely in the confines of the glass closet, and sex-ed doesnt discuss more than bananas and STDs, then real queer teens turn to the one place they can see their desires: porn. If you havent seen any gay (male) porn, let me describe most of it: everything is clean and polished (yes, even most of the dirty stuff). Everyone has lots of vocal fun. No one ever flags until they finish. Of course, porn is fantasy, and the men in these videos do massive prep for these scenes. It looks much easier than it is thats half the fantasy. And as fantasy, its fine. But as a primary source of education, gay porn leaves young queer men with an idealised, routine set of acts that suggest a (wrongly) regimented set of requirements for real queer sex. Standardised sexual imagery, it turns out, is just bananas with abs. The lesbian sex in mainstream porn is designed for male visual pleasure. So queer women have to navigate male sexuality Ive also spoken to queer women about their sexual education. They didnt always go to porn for their sex-ed, but they didnt find it at school or home either. Those who did look for it in porn had the additional problem that the fantasy being presented wasnt even being presented for them. Many young women will encounter lesbian sex through mainstream porn, says Allison Moon, sex educator and author of Girl Sex 101. This means everyone, not only girls, can get some very wrong ideas about lesbian sex, because the lesbian sex in mainstream porn is designed for male visual pleasure. So queer women have to navigate male sexuality whether or not it interests them. And that leaves queer teens in sex-education classes in an awkward place. Straight teens can ask about things theyve seen on TV, they can apply condoms-on-bananas to what they learn from the media, and come away with a basic framework of sex. Queer teens can only turn to porn. The good news is that, in some places, things are changing. When I contacted my old high school to find out how the condom bananas were going, I spoke to the director of health and wellness about how the sex-education curriculum has changed, and how its about to change even further. We can do better, and were on the cusp, she told me, before going into future plans: a curriculum that covers the usual safe-sex issues, but also talks about consent, healthy relationships, porn literacy and queer sex. I was thrilled to hear it. I may have even become a little teary, thinking about a class of young queer people who get a real sexual education that applies to them. But not every school does this. And they need to, because queer people are everywhere. Weve made strides in acceptance, but today I still see gay men in their 20s and 30s online saying they dont know how things work. I get emails from men saying my book taught them things they wish they had learned as a teen. Teens today tell me that its so nice to hear someone talk about gay teens having sex, about how they feel, as though, even if theyre out, theyre still not allowed to act on their desires or are unsure how. Right now, teenagers choices for learning are two extremes (the good gay or the bad gay) neither of which is helpful. Either way, these teens end up feeling as if theyve done something wrong. And we can fix that so easily. Just start talking about it, teaching it. We do it with straight sex. We can fix this the way we can fix most things in life: just gay it up. What gay teens should watch and read Another Gay Movie (2006) A raunchy teen sex comedy about four gay guys trying to lose their virginity before graduating. There are gross sex gags, some nudity, and the pressure to lose ones virginity is problematic, but if you wanted a queer male version of the American Pie movies (or the more recent Blockers), this is it. I Killed My Mother (2009) A French-Canadian film that features young gay men having fun, sexy sex without being porn like many of the straight teens you see on TV today. Release, by Patrick Ness There are plenty of graphic, but beautifully wrought sex scenes in this book about a queer teen trying to find some freedom for himself in a small American town and with his deeply religious family. Under The Lights, by Dahlia Adler This fun romp on the set of a Hollywood television show has explicit lesbian sex behind the scenes, as the character deals with who shes playing on TV, and who she is when shes with her publicists daughter. Princess Cyd (2017) In this quiet and beautiful film about a teen girl (Cyd) spending the summer with her aunt, theres one great scene between Cyd and Katie, who is a little bit boy (and played by a non-binary actor). Its exactly the sort of sex we should be seeing everywhere. Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by LC Rosen is published in paperback by Penguin on 7 February at 7.99. To order a copy for 6.99, go to guardianbookshop.com. | Sex education for teens is one of those topics we tend to dance around. Condoms on bananas, STDs, reproduction no talk of pleasure or consent. Gays have to be kept sexless because theyre already too much about sex. | pegasus | 2 | https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/02/why-are-we-so-coy-about-sex-education-for-gay-teens | 0.393984 |
Is deep freeze the latest sign climate change is accelerating? | Hundreds of thousands of fish have choked during Australias hottest month since records began, swathes of the United States is colder than the north pole, new ruptures have been found in one of the Antarctics biggest glaciers and there are growing signs the Arctic is warming so fast that it could soon be just another stretch of the Atlantic. And so the new year is carrying on where the old one left off, with growing signs climate disruption is accelerating at a more destructive rate than many scientists predicted. The US deep freeze, which has plunged temperatures in Minnesotato -50C (-58F), may appear to have little in common with the searing heatwave that cooked Marble Bar, Australia, in 49.1C. But the extremes are consistent with theories about how increasing human emissions change major weather systems. Polar vortex: cold that has killed at least 21 to give way to 'spring-like' weather Read more As carbon builds in the atmosphere, the planet warms and the ice caps melt, so the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles flattens out. Although the science is not yet conclusive, many scientists believe this is weakening the jet streams, which are important drivers of weather systems. During the summer, this means high-pressure fronts linger for longer causing heatwaves such as those in parts of the northern hemisphere last May, June and July, and in the southern hemisphere over the past two months. During the northern winter, it loosens the polar vortex, which lets the warmer southern air in, causing the freakishly high Arctic temperatures recorded last winter, and allows the frozen air out, which is being seen in the US. This also manifested itself last year in Europe as the Beast from the East. Despite seasonal ups and downs, the overwhelming global trend is towards higher temperatures. Last month, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European institute that gathers satellite data, was the latest institution to confirm the past four years have been the warmest recorded. Dramatic climatic events like the warm and dry summer in large parts of Europe or the increasing temperature around the Arctic regions are alarming signs to all of us, said Jean-Nol Thpaut, the head of Copernicus Climate Change Service. Only by combining our efforts, can we make a difference and preserve our planet for future generations. In October, the United Nations top climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that North America and Australia were among the areas likely to feel the impact of significant rises in extreme heat. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A fire raging in the Bunyip state park near Labertouche in Australia. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: It is very important to note that, despite the cold weather, there is a very clear trend in the United States and Canada of winters becoming warmer, as they are around the world. It is a reminder that part of the challenge of climate change is that many of the impacts may be unexpected and unprecedented. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been on Earth for millions of years. Modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years, so we have no historical or even evolutionary experience of the climate that we are creating. That is why nobody can claim with confidence that we will be able to cope with all the impacts that everyone can see are developing around the world, including more extreme droughts, heavy rainfall, and heatwaves, disappearing glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels and acidifying oceans. | US deep freeze is latest sign climate change is accelerating. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/02/deep-freeze-latest-sign-climate-change-is-accelerating | 0.428045 |
Is deep freeze the latest sign climate change is accelerating? | Hundreds of thousands of fish have choked during Australias hottest month since records began, swathes of the United States is colder than the north pole, new ruptures have been found in one of the Antarctics biggest glaciers and there are growing signs the Arctic is warming so fast that it could soon be just another stretch of the Atlantic. And so the new year is carrying on where the old one left off, with growing signs climate disruption is accelerating at a more destructive rate than many scientists predicted. The US deep freeze, which has plunged temperatures in Minnesotato -50C (-58F), may appear to have little in common with the searing heatwave that cooked Marble Bar, Australia, in 49.1C. But the extremes are consistent with theories about how increasing human emissions change major weather systems. Polar vortex: cold that has killed at least 21 to give way to 'spring-like' weather Read more As carbon builds in the atmosphere, the planet warms and the ice caps melt, so the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles flattens out. Although the science is not yet conclusive, many scientists believe this is weakening the jet streams, which are important drivers of weather systems. During the summer, this means high-pressure fronts linger for longer causing heatwaves such as those in parts of the northern hemisphere last May, June and July, and in the southern hemisphere over the past two months. During the northern winter, it loosens the polar vortex, which lets the warmer southern air in, causing the freakishly high Arctic temperatures recorded last winter, and allows the frozen air out, which is being seen in the US. This also manifested itself last year in Europe as the Beast from the East. Despite seasonal ups and downs, the overwhelming global trend is towards higher temperatures. Last month, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European institute that gathers satellite data, was the latest institution to confirm the past four years have been the warmest recorded. Dramatic climatic events like the warm and dry summer in large parts of Europe or the increasing temperature around the Arctic regions are alarming signs to all of us, said Jean-Nol Thpaut, the head of Copernicus Climate Change Service. Only by combining our efforts, can we make a difference and preserve our planet for future generations. In October, the United Nations top climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that North America and Australia were among the areas likely to feel the impact of significant rises in extreme heat. Facebook Twitter Pinterest A fire raging in the Bunyip state park near Labertouche in Australia. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said: It is very important to note that, despite the cold weather, there is a very clear trend in the United States and Canada of winters becoming warmer, as they are around the world. It is a reminder that part of the challenge of climate change is that many of the impacts may be unexpected and unprecedented. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been on Earth for millions of years. Modern humans have only been around for about 200,000 years, so we have no historical or even evolutionary experience of the climate that we are creating. That is why nobody can claim with confidence that we will be able to cope with all the impacts that everyone can see are developing around the world, including more extreme droughts, heavy rainfall, and heatwaves, disappearing glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels and acidifying oceans. | There are growing signs climate disruption is accelerating at a more destructive rate than many scientists predicted. The US deep freeze, which has plunged temperatures in Minnesotato -50C (-58F), may appear to have little in common with the searing heatwave that cooked Marble Bar, Australia, in 49.1C. | bart | 2 | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/02/deep-freeze-latest-sign-climate-change-is-accelerating | 0.273873 |
Are gas stoves as good as woodburners? | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment, so were looking at coal- or log-effect ones Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and its up to you to help him or her out a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturdays paper. Now that woodburning stoves are seen as the devil, weve been looking at realistic coal- or log-effect gas stoves but prices vary hugely and then theres the installation cost. Email your suggestions to money@theguardian.com or write to us at Money, the Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment. We're looking at coal- or log-effect gas stoves. | pegasus | 0 | https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/02/gas-stoves-woodburning-stoves-environment | 0.168427 |
Are gas stoves as good as woodburners? | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment, so were looking at coal- or log-effect ones Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and its up to you to help him or her out a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturdays paper. Now that woodburning stoves are seen as the devil, weve been looking at realistic coal- or log-effect gas stoves but prices vary hugely and then theres the installation cost. Email your suggestions to money@theguardian.com or write to us at Money, the Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment. Were looking at realistic coal- or log-effect gas stoves. Prices vary hugely and then theres the installation cost. | bart | 1 | https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/02/gas-stoves-woodburning-stoves-environment | 0.163272 |
Are gas stoves as good as woodburners? | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment, so were looking at coal- or log-effect ones Every week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and its up to you to help him or her out a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturdays paper. Now that woodburning stoves are seen as the devil, weve been looking at realistic coal- or log-effect gas stoves but prices vary hugely and then theres the installation cost. Email your suggestions to money@theguardian.com or write to us at Money, the Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU | Woodburning stoves are seen as bad for the environment. Weve been looking at realistic coal- or log-effect gas stoves. But prices vary hugely and then theres the installation cost. Email your suggestions to money@theguardian.com. | bart | 2 | https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/02/gas-stoves-woodburning-stoves-environment | 0.145227 |
Is Tesla a Buy? | Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) may be the most hotly debated stock on the market. And in early 2019, the debate has reached a fever pitch. The company ended 2018 with 90,700 deliveries in the fourth quarter, and it already plans a production expansion in the Chinese market. As good as growth is, Tesla has struggled to make as much money as it needs to in the long term, and hasn't come anywhere near making the $35,000 Model 3 that investors were promised. With billions in debt coming due in the next year, Tesla faces a future that is far from certain, and investors have a lot to think about before buying the stock. Tesla Model S driving on oceanside highway. More The Tesla Model S. Image source: Tesla. Tesla's growth machine is in full swing The ramp-up of Model S, Model X, and Model 3 production has driven a massive growth curve for Tesla, as you can see below. But revenue growth doesn't mean Tesla is making money. TSLA Revenue (TTM) Chart More TSLA Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts You can see that Tesla has burned through billions of dollars over the past five years, mainly to build the Gigafactory in Nevada and its Fremont, California, factory. If Tesla stopped investing in growth, it could eventually generate positive free cash flow, but here's where the company's fundamentals and continued investment complicate the investment thesis. Tesla isn't making as much money as it hoped When Tesla announced that it was laying off 7% of its workforce, it wasn't the layoffs that worried investors. It was Elon Musk's admission that Tesla is nowhere near making the Model 3 for a cost that would allow a $35,000 version and/or a 25% gross margin that Musk has long been projecting. You can see below that the ramp-up of the Model 3 has coincided with a drop in gross margins -- and that's despite Tesla selling only high-priced, high-margin Model 3s thus far. | Yes, but there's a lot to think about before buying the stock. Tesla's growth is great, but the company isn't making as much money as it should. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/tesla-buy-120400150.html | 0.140243 |
Is Tesla a Buy? | Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) may be the most hotly debated stock on the market. And in early 2019, the debate has reached a fever pitch. The company ended 2018 with 90,700 deliveries in the fourth quarter, and it already plans a production expansion in the Chinese market. As good as growth is, Tesla has struggled to make as much money as it needs to in the long term, and hasn't come anywhere near making the $35,000 Model 3 that investors were promised. With billions in debt coming due in the next year, Tesla faces a future that is far from certain, and investors have a lot to think about before buying the stock. Tesla Model S driving on oceanside highway. More The Tesla Model S. Image source: Tesla. Tesla's growth machine is in full swing The ramp-up of Model S, Model X, and Model 3 production has driven a massive growth curve for Tesla, as you can see below. But revenue growth doesn't mean Tesla is making money. TSLA Revenue (TTM) Chart More TSLA Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts You can see that Tesla has burned through billions of dollars over the past five years, mainly to build the Gigafactory in Nevada and its Fremont, California, factory. If Tesla stopped investing in growth, it could eventually generate positive free cash flow, but here's where the company's fundamentals and continued investment complicate the investment thesis. Tesla isn't making as much money as it hoped When Tesla announced that it was laying off 7% of its workforce, it wasn't the layoffs that worried investors. It was Elon Musk's admission that Tesla is nowhere near making the Model 3 for a cost that would allow a $35,000 version and/or a 25% gross margin that Musk has long been projecting. You can see below that the ramp-up of the Model 3 has coincided with a drop in gross margins -- and that's despite Tesla selling only high-priced, high-margin Model 3s thus far. | Yes, but there's a lot to think about before buying the stock. Tesla's growth is great, but the company isn't making as much money as it needs to. With billions in debt coming due in the next year, Tesla faces a future that isn't certain. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/tesla-buy-120400150.html | 0.144927 |
What's the Women Ice Angler Project? | Shelly Holland (left) lands a brown trout while Shantel Wittstruck celebrates the catch during a Janurary, 2019 ice fishing outing on Lake Superior as part of the Women Ice Angler Project. (Photo: Rikki Pardun) Barb Carey of Oxford founded the Women Ice Angler Project five years ago to help increase awareness of female participation in the sport and provide learning opportunities for new or novice hard-water anglers. The group held its most recent event Jan. 23 to 27 on Lake Superior near Bayfield. Attendees included Carey and pro-staff anglers Shelly Holland, Bonnie Timm, Shantel Wittstruck and Rikki Pardun, as well as outdoor media specialists K.J. Houtman, Hannah Stonehouse Hudson and Krissie Mason. Future Women Ice Angler Project outings in Wisconsin are planned Feb. 9 at the Milwaukee lakefront for trout, Feb. 16 on Big Green Lake and March 8 to 10 near Hayward. To become a member, attend an event or learn more about the group, contact Carey at icefishher@gmail.com or visit wiwomenfish.com. | Women Ice Angler Project provides learning opportunities for new or novice anglers. | pegasus | 0 | https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/outdoors/2019/02/02/what-women-ice-angler-project/2745971002/ | 0.267469 |
What's the Women Ice Angler Project? | Shelly Holland (left) lands a brown trout while Shantel Wittstruck celebrates the catch during a Janurary, 2019 ice fishing outing on Lake Superior as part of the Women Ice Angler Project. (Photo: Rikki Pardun) Barb Carey of Oxford founded the Women Ice Angler Project five years ago to help increase awareness of female participation in the sport and provide learning opportunities for new or novice hard-water anglers. The group held its most recent event Jan. 23 to 27 on Lake Superior near Bayfield. Attendees included Carey and pro-staff anglers Shelly Holland, Bonnie Timm, Shantel Wittstruck and Rikki Pardun, as well as outdoor media specialists K.J. Houtman, Hannah Stonehouse Hudson and Krissie Mason. Future Women Ice Angler Project outings in Wisconsin are planned Feb. 9 at the Milwaukee lakefront for trout, Feb. 16 on Big Green Lake and March 8 to 10 near Hayward. To become a member, attend an event or learn more about the group, contact Carey at icefishher@gmail.com or visit wiwomenfish.com. | The Women Ice Angler Project helps increase awareness of female participation in the sport. The group held its most recent event Jan. 23 to 27 on Lake Superior near Bayfield. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/outdoors/2019/02/02/what-women-ice-angler-project/2745971002/ | 0.224783 |
What's the Women Ice Angler Project? | Shelly Holland (left) lands a brown trout while Shantel Wittstruck celebrates the catch during a Janurary, 2019 ice fishing outing on Lake Superior as part of the Women Ice Angler Project. (Photo: Rikki Pardun) Barb Carey of Oxford founded the Women Ice Angler Project five years ago to help increase awareness of female participation in the sport and provide learning opportunities for new or novice hard-water anglers. The group held its most recent event Jan. 23 to 27 on Lake Superior near Bayfield. Attendees included Carey and pro-staff anglers Shelly Holland, Bonnie Timm, Shantel Wittstruck and Rikki Pardun, as well as outdoor media specialists K.J. Houtman, Hannah Stonehouse Hudson and Krissie Mason. Future Women Ice Angler Project outings in Wisconsin are planned Feb. 9 at the Milwaukee lakefront for trout, Feb. 16 on Big Green Lake and March 8 to 10 near Hayward. To become a member, attend an event or learn more about the group, contact Carey at icefishher@gmail.com or visit wiwomenfish.com. | The Women Ice Angler Project helps increase awareness of female participation in the sport. The group held its most recent event Jan. 23 to 27 on Lake Superior near Bayfield. It's the fifth year the group has held an event in Wisconsin to help increase female participation. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/outdoors/2019/02/02/what-women-ice-angler-project/2745971002/ | 0.252828 |
Can Disney Keep Its Momentum Going Into 2019? | Disney (NYSE: DIS) has a remarkably stable business thanks to its diverse entertainment empire. In fact, even as parts of the business, such as ESPN, have struggled at times, the media titan notched record sales and profit results in seven of the last eight years. Yet Disney is entering more volatile territory in 2019. The company faces a high bar to pass given last year's massive outperformance at the theaters, for example, while major strategic initiatives like the push into subscription streaming and the integration of its 21st Century Fox acquisition threaten to pinch short-term profits. A father and daughter eating popcorn at the movies More Image source: Getty Images. Investors will get more details about each of these challenges when the company kicks off its fiscal 2019 with earnings results set to publish on Feb. 5. Here's a look at what to expect from the media giant. The bad news Most investors who follow the stock are predicting modestly lower results on both the top and bottom lines. A big reason for that decline is the fact that Disney did so well in the box office in the year-ago period. Hit releases included Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Thor: Ragnarock, and Coco. This year's schedule was much lighter and led by Mary Poppins Returns and Ralph Breaks the Internet. CEO Bob Iger and his team said back in November that the relative weakness in the release calendar could mean far lower sales in the theatrical division and as much as $600 million less in profit. Comparisons should get a bit easier as Disney progresses through the year and releases more of its heavy-hitters from the Marvel, Disney Animation, and Pixar studios. It has a high bar to meet overall, though, after having dominated the global box office in each of the last two calendar years. The two smaller trends expected to pinch results this quarter are a spike in programing costs at ESPN, which is driven by the timing of content investments, and continued spending to support the ESPN Plus streaming app. The good news On the positive side of the ledger, look for Disney to show continued strength at the parks and resorts business, which has been flexing its pricing power muscles lately. That segment expanded revenue by double-digits last year with help from record attendance; the new Shanghai park; and rising prices, spending, and occupancy rates. All of these factors should contribute to another record year for Disney's in-person entertainment offerings. Meanwhile, investors have good reasons to be optimistic about the cable broadcasting segment, which has posted improving subscriber trends in each of the last five quarters. Sure, Disney is still watching its pool of pay TV fans shrink, but the pace of the decline fell to below 2% last quarter, from 5% a few quarters earlier. Another improvement, or even stable results, would confirm that there's plenty of life left in the company's cash-producing TV broadcasting business. Looking ahead The big wildcards for investors this year include the closing of the 21st Century Fox deal, which will be sure to trigger spiking short-term expenses. Greater challenges lie ahead in the integration of the business and any potentially large writedown charges that might occur once management has a better idea of how productive these assets actually are. | Disney is entering more volatile territory in 2019. The company faces a high bar to pass given last year's massive outperformance at the theaters. | bart | 0 | https://news.yahoo.com/disney-keep-momentum-going-2019-154700903.html | 0.101103 |
Can Disney Keep Its Momentum Going Into 2019? | Disney (NYSE: DIS) has a remarkably stable business thanks to its diverse entertainment empire. In fact, even as parts of the business, such as ESPN, have struggled at times, the media titan notched record sales and profit results in seven of the last eight years. Yet Disney is entering more volatile territory in 2019. The company faces a high bar to pass given last year's massive outperformance at the theaters, for example, while major strategic initiatives like the push into subscription streaming and the integration of its 21st Century Fox acquisition threaten to pinch short-term profits. A father and daughter eating popcorn at the movies More Image source: Getty Images. Investors will get more details about each of these challenges when the company kicks off its fiscal 2019 with earnings results set to publish on Feb. 5. Here's a look at what to expect from the media giant. The bad news Most investors who follow the stock are predicting modestly lower results on both the top and bottom lines. A big reason for that decline is the fact that Disney did so well in the box office in the year-ago period. Hit releases included Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Thor: Ragnarock, and Coco. This year's schedule was much lighter and led by Mary Poppins Returns and Ralph Breaks the Internet. CEO Bob Iger and his team said back in November that the relative weakness in the release calendar could mean far lower sales in the theatrical division and as much as $600 million less in profit. Comparisons should get a bit easier as Disney progresses through the year and releases more of its heavy-hitters from the Marvel, Disney Animation, and Pixar studios. It has a high bar to meet overall, though, after having dominated the global box office in each of the last two calendar years. The two smaller trends expected to pinch results this quarter are a spike in programing costs at ESPN, which is driven by the timing of content investments, and continued spending to support the ESPN Plus streaming app. The good news On the positive side of the ledger, look for Disney to show continued strength at the parks and resorts business, which has been flexing its pricing power muscles lately. That segment expanded revenue by double-digits last year with help from record attendance; the new Shanghai park; and rising prices, spending, and occupancy rates. All of these factors should contribute to another record year for Disney's in-person entertainment offerings. Meanwhile, investors have good reasons to be optimistic about the cable broadcasting segment, which has posted improving subscriber trends in each of the last five quarters. Sure, Disney is still watching its pool of pay TV fans shrink, but the pace of the decline fell to below 2% last quarter, from 5% a few quarters earlier. Another improvement, or even stable results, would confirm that there's plenty of life left in the company's cash-producing TV broadcasting business. Looking ahead The big wildcards for investors this year include the closing of the 21st Century Fox deal, which will be sure to trigger spiking short-term expenses. Greater challenges lie ahead in the integration of the business and any potentially large writedown charges that might occur once management has a better idea of how productive these assets actually are. | Disney is entering more volatile territory in 2019. The company faces a high bar to pass given last year's massive outperformance at the theaters. Major strategic initiatives like the push into subscription streaming threaten to pinch short-term profits. Investors will get more details about each of these challenges when the company kicks off its fiscal 2019 with earnings results. | bart | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/disney-keep-momentum-going-2019-154700903.html | 0.123853 |
Could Mastercard Be a Millionaire-Maker Stock? | While Mastercard (NYSE: MA) has corporate roots more than a half century old and has existed under the current name since the late 1970s, it only went public about 13 years ago. Yet in that baker's dozen years, it has delivered incredible returns. The stock price today is up more than 4,200%, and when adding in dividends paid, investors since the IPO have enjoyed an incredible 4,520% in returns. To put that in monetary terms, every $1,000 invested in Mastercard on its first day of trading would be worth more than $45,000 at this writing. There's no doubt that a few fortunate investors have been able to ride Mastercard's success to millionaire status. While it's probably wildly optimistic to expect 4,000%-plus returns over the next 13 years, the company remains one of the best growth stocks for the next decade and beyond. There are major global economic and demographic trends that bode well for the company's prospects. Man looks at light bulbs drawn on a chalkboard, one of which has a dollar sign inside it. More Image source: Getty Images. Mastercard may not be a millionaire-maker stock all on its own; frankly, counting on any one single stock to achieve that kind of wealth is dicey at best. But I have little doubt that Mastercard, as part of a strong portfolio, can help investors build great wealth over the long term. Two huge trends helping push Mastercard forward As much as Americans see debit and credit cards as nearly ubiquitous, the global truth is that cash is still king, making up the vast majority of worldwide transactions. Furthermore, even in developed economies, cash still makes up a substantial portion of payments between merchants and customers. But that's quickly changing as the global middle class becomes steadily bigger, and technology gives more people the power to use electronic means to conduct commerce. As several Foolish colleagues call it (with some tongue in cheek), there's a "war on cash" happening around the world. MA Chart More MA data by YCharts. The global middle class is set to add some 1 billion new members over the next decade, and the advent of mobile computing is proving to be a powerful confluence of events that's making electronic payments the first, most-convenient choice for many global consumers. These two trends are already driving growth for Mastercard. Gross dollar volume surged 10.2% in the U.S. and 16% in international markets last quarter, improving on already-strong 9.5% growth in the U.S. and 13% internationally in the prior quarter. Even as volume and revenue surged to record levels, management took steps to rein in expenses, helping grow adjusted net income an incredible 33%. | Mastercard's stock is up more than 4,200% since its IPO 13 years ago. There are major global economic and demographic trends that bode well for the company's prospects. Mastercard may not be a millionaire-maker stock all on its own, but it can help investors build great wealth over the long term. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/could-mastercard-millionaire-maker-stock-170100182.html | 0.313089 |
Will Anyone Save Black Colleges? | Black collegeswhich were founded, primarily after the Civil War, to educate black people who were shut out of most higher educationhave been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. Of course, financial woes like those Bennett is dealing with arent limited to black colleges. Small liberal-arts institutions are struggling, tooand those troubles have led some schools to close or merge with other colleges in the past several years. According to Alvin Schexnider, a former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University who now operates a higher-education management-consulting firm, any institution that has a high tuition-discount rate, is located in a rural area, has fewer than 1,000 students, or has a small endowment will likely face existence-threatening struggles in the coming years. The risk is amplified at black colleges, where even less existence-threatening challenges such as taking on debt to pay for building improvements on campus are more expensive. The lack of transformational gifts means that they rely on smaller donations year after year. And when they are on the ropes, they often have to consider fundamentally restructuring their business model, whereas some other institutionsmost notably, Sweet Briar College, whose alumnae raised $21 million in three months to help keep the institution openare able to marshal resources in a serious pinch. Getting large donations is like getting a small-business loan, Schexnider told me. Are we going to be back here, being asked for money again, two, three, four years down the road? The goal, of course, is to build a consistent stream of private gifts, but donors would prefer not to provide bailout funds on an ongoing basis. Read: The limits of a billion-dollar donation to Johns Hopkins In 1986, Hugh Gloster, a former president of Morehouse College, offered a prescient assessment. History has shown that the private black college experiences a very slow death, he said. You will have an increasing number of weak private colleges lose accreditation, and they will lose enrollment, and then they will lose financial stability. He stopped short of saying that the institutions would die off, but he foreshadowed the fate of several HBCUs in the following three decades. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or SACS, Bennetts accreditor, will review the schools appeal on February 18. Though the school may have been able to marshal the $5 million, it does not guarantee that its accreditation will be restored. The college will maintain its accreditation while the appeal process is ongoing. If its appeal is unsuccessful, administrators have said the college will sue SACS, and maintain its accreditation while the lawsuit works its way through court. Meanwhile, the school has applied to another accreditor, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Black colleges are historically important institutions that still produce more than 25 percent of black STEM-degree holders, and a quarter of black education-degree holders. But the private ones are dealing with the issues small liberal-arts colleges also facelow enrollments, smaller endowmentsand many of them are doing so without the safety net of wealthy donors who can bail them out in an emergency. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. | Black colleges have been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. | bart | 0 | https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/what-bennett-colleges-pledge-drive-foreshadows-for-black-colleges/581863/?utm_source=feed | 0.103234 |
Will Anyone Save Black Colleges? | Black collegeswhich were founded, primarily after the Civil War, to educate black people who were shut out of most higher educationhave been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. Of course, financial woes like those Bennett is dealing with arent limited to black colleges. Small liberal-arts institutions are struggling, tooand those troubles have led some schools to close or merge with other colleges in the past several years. According to Alvin Schexnider, a former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University who now operates a higher-education management-consulting firm, any institution that has a high tuition-discount rate, is located in a rural area, has fewer than 1,000 students, or has a small endowment will likely face existence-threatening struggles in the coming years. The risk is amplified at black colleges, where even less existence-threatening challenges such as taking on debt to pay for building improvements on campus are more expensive. The lack of transformational gifts means that they rely on smaller donations year after year. And when they are on the ropes, they often have to consider fundamentally restructuring their business model, whereas some other institutionsmost notably, Sweet Briar College, whose alumnae raised $21 million in three months to help keep the institution openare able to marshal resources in a serious pinch. Getting large donations is like getting a small-business loan, Schexnider told me. Are we going to be back here, being asked for money again, two, three, four years down the road? The goal, of course, is to build a consistent stream of private gifts, but donors would prefer not to provide bailout funds on an ongoing basis. Read: The limits of a billion-dollar donation to Johns Hopkins In 1986, Hugh Gloster, a former president of Morehouse College, offered a prescient assessment. History has shown that the private black college experiences a very slow death, he said. You will have an increasing number of weak private colleges lose accreditation, and they will lose enrollment, and then they will lose financial stability. He stopped short of saying that the institutions would die off, but he foreshadowed the fate of several HBCUs in the following three decades. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or SACS, Bennetts accreditor, will review the schools appeal on February 18. Though the school may have been able to marshal the $5 million, it does not guarantee that its accreditation will be restored. The college will maintain its accreditation while the appeal process is ongoing. If its appeal is unsuccessful, administrators have said the college will sue SACS, and maintain its accreditation while the lawsuit works its way through court. Meanwhile, the school has applied to another accreditor, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Black colleges are historically important institutions that still produce more than 25 percent of black STEM-degree holders, and a quarter of black education-degree holders. But the private ones are dealing with the issues small liberal-arts colleges also facelow enrollments, smaller endowmentsand many of them are doing so without the safety net of wealthy donors who can bail them out in an emergency. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. | Black colleges have been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. Small liberal-arts institutions are struggling, too, and some schools have closed or merged. | bart | 1 | https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/what-bennett-colleges-pledge-drive-foreshadows-for-black-colleges/581863/?utm_source=feed | 0.115144 |
Will Anyone Save Black Colleges? | Black collegeswhich were founded, primarily after the Civil War, to educate black people who were shut out of most higher educationhave been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. Of course, financial woes like those Bennett is dealing with arent limited to black colleges. Small liberal-arts institutions are struggling, tooand those troubles have led some schools to close or merge with other colleges in the past several years. According to Alvin Schexnider, a former chancellor of Winston-Salem State University who now operates a higher-education management-consulting firm, any institution that has a high tuition-discount rate, is located in a rural area, has fewer than 1,000 students, or has a small endowment will likely face existence-threatening struggles in the coming years. The risk is amplified at black colleges, where even less existence-threatening challenges such as taking on debt to pay for building improvements on campus are more expensive. The lack of transformational gifts means that they rely on smaller donations year after year. And when they are on the ropes, they often have to consider fundamentally restructuring their business model, whereas some other institutionsmost notably, Sweet Briar College, whose alumnae raised $21 million in three months to help keep the institution openare able to marshal resources in a serious pinch. Getting large donations is like getting a small-business loan, Schexnider told me. Are we going to be back here, being asked for money again, two, three, four years down the road? The goal, of course, is to build a consistent stream of private gifts, but donors would prefer not to provide bailout funds on an ongoing basis. Read: The limits of a billion-dollar donation to Johns Hopkins In 1986, Hugh Gloster, a former president of Morehouse College, offered a prescient assessment. History has shown that the private black college experiences a very slow death, he said. You will have an increasing number of weak private colleges lose accreditation, and they will lose enrollment, and then they will lose financial stability. He stopped short of saying that the institutions would die off, but he foreshadowed the fate of several HBCUs in the following three decades. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, or SACS, Bennetts accreditor, will review the schools appeal on February 18. Though the school may have been able to marshal the $5 million, it does not guarantee that its accreditation will be restored. The college will maintain its accreditation while the appeal process is ongoing. If its appeal is unsuccessful, administrators have said the college will sue SACS, and maintain its accreditation while the lawsuit works its way through court. Meanwhile, the school has applied to another accreditor, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Black colleges are historically important institutions that still produce more than 25 percent of black STEM-degree holders, and a quarter of black education-degree holders. But the private ones are dealing with the issues small liberal-arts colleges also facelow enrollments, smaller endowmentsand many of them are doing so without the safety net of wealthy donors who can bail them out in an emergency. We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. | Black colleges have been underfunded for decades. That they are now overlooked for big donations in favor of wealthier schools seems like insult on top of injury. The risk is amplified at black colleges, where even less existence-threatening challenges such as taking on debt to pay for building improvements are more expensive. | bart | 2 | https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/what-bennett-colleges-pledge-drive-foreshadows-for-black-colleges/581863/?utm_source=feed | 0.127237 |
Who's in, who's out among possible 2020 Democratic candidates? | Democratic governors, senators, U.S. House members, mayors and business titans are angling for the chance to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Hes running; he never disbanded his 2016 campaign. Democrats are courting donors, hiring staff, booking flights to Iowa and New Hampshire, writing books and vying for TV time to make their case. One year from today, on Feb. 3, 2020, the Iowa caucuses will kick off the presidential election process. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were the caucus winners in 2016. These men and women wont all decide to run, and the eventual nominee could be a surprise after another rollercoaster campaign. But heres a look at whos capturing the buzz right now. Yes, already. Joe Biden Former vice president Says hes most qualified to run for the office. Assets: High name ID, deep roots in party, linked to Barack Obama. Iowans like him best so far. Challenges: Hes 76 and has a long record, including some gaffes. Hes run twice (1988, 2008) and lost. Not exactly new blood. Michael Bloomberg Former NYC mayor Plans to decide this month. Assets: Billionaire businessman with progressive bona fides on gun regulations and climate change. Challenges: Used to be an independent and a Republican. Backed disputed stop-and-frisk approach to fighting crime. Cory Booker U.S. senator, New Jersey Announced that hes definitely in on Feb. 1. Assets: Has an aggressive presence on Capitol Hill and visibility on social media. He says hes fearlessly authentic. Challenges: Faces a name-recognition deficit in a crowded field; relied on big donors in campaigns. Sherrod Brown U.S. senator, Ohio Hes touring early-voting Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. Assets: Won a third term last year in a state that no Republican has won the presidency without. Challenges: He a populist on economic issues, less so on trade. Steve Bullock Montana governor Hes been spending a lot of time in Iowa. Assets: Hired top Democratic strategists and favors an assault-weapons ban. Challenges: Hell need to boost his public profile. May not decide whether to run until the legislative session ends in April. Pete Buttigieg South Bend, Ind., mayor Announced an exploratory committee Jan. 23. Assets: Hes a gay Rhodes scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, ran for DNC chairmanship. Challenges: No mayors made a direct leap to Oval Office, but Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland once presided over city halls. Julian Castro Former HUD secretary Announced that hes definitely in on Jan. 12. Assets: Familys background gives him immigration/wall credibility. Challenges: He would be, at 45, the third-youngest person to become president. Fellow Texan Beto ORourke is the newest rising Democratic star. John Delaney Former U.S. rep., Maryland Hes been campaigning for the job since July 2017. Assets: Early start includes multiple visits to Iowa, New Hampshire. Promises to pursue bipartisan ideas. Tulsi Gabbard U.S. rep., Hawaii Said shes running, but hasnt made a formal announcement yet. Assets: She was the first Hindu and first American Samoan in Congress and served in combat in Iraq. Challenges: Her campaign manager quit last week, suggesting disarray, and shes under fire at home. Kirsten Gillibrand U.S. senator, New York She officially became a candidate on Jan. 15. Assets: Says its time for a woman and she votes against Trump policies. Challenges: Shes still blamed not just in Minnesota for shoving Sen. Al Franken out of office and once backed tougher deportation policies. Kamala Harris U.S. senator, California She said on Jan. 21 that shes going for it. Assets: Shes a liberal black woman with a tough-on-crime background. California has new clout after moving its primary to early March. Challenges: CSPAN fans know her, but polls show many voters dont yet. John Hickenlooper Ex-Colorado governor Hes hiring staff and odds favor a run, he says. Assets: Hell leverage the states track record on health care, environment and the economy. Challenges: Needs to raise cash to introduce himself to voters, but money doesnt readily flow to unknown candidates. Jay Inslee Washington state governor Hes not ruling out a run. Assets: Hes banking on the urgency of fighting climate change and creating clean-energy jobs. Some fellow Dem govs have criticized him. Amy Klobuchar U.S. senator, Minnesota Shes dropping hints that shes going to run. Assets: She won big in last years re-election bid and is seen in stark contrast to Trump as a calm, centrist pragmatist. Challenges: A Washington Post columnist noted her perceived lack of toughness. Mitch Landrieu Former New Orleans mayor Waiting and watching. You never say never. Assets: He has built a reputation for encouraging racial reconciliation and led a fight for removal of Confederate monuments. Terry McAuliffe Former Virginia governor Says hes obviously looking at a run. Assets: Calls himself compulsively optimistic. Backs a realistic Medicare-for-all plan. Challenges: Longtime links to Clintons might turn off some voters. Former party chairs support might overlap with Bidens. Beto ORourke Former U.S. rep., Texas Not ruling anything out. Assets: He became a star by almost beating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and setting fundraising records. Challenges: Hes 46, which might make him a more plausible vice presidential candidate. National media focused recently on his go-it-alone streak. Bernie Sanders U.S. senator, Vermont Hes seriously considering running again. Assets: He could capitalize on support and buyers remorse from 2016. Challenges: Hes older than Biden, and some Democrats say his attacks doomed Clinton. Hes apologized for campaigns sexual harassment issues. Elizabeth Warren U.S. senator, Mass. Announced an exploratory committee Dec. 31. Assets: Her economic populism could give her a blue-collar advantage in crucial Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Challenges: The DNA test she took to prove American Indian heritage was widely viewed as clumsy. | Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Steve Bullock and others are already making their cases for the Democratic presidential nomination. | ctrlsum | 0 | http://www.startribune.com/the-possible-2020-democratic-presidential-field/505036972/ | 0.155669 |
Who's in, who's out among possible 2020 Democratic candidates? | Democratic governors, senators, U.S. House members, mayors and business titans are angling for the chance to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Hes running; he never disbanded his 2016 campaign. Democrats are courting donors, hiring staff, booking flights to Iowa and New Hampshire, writing books and vying for TV time to make their case. One year from today, on Feb. 3, 2020, the Iowa caucuses will kick off the presidential election process. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were the caucus winners in 2016. These men and women wont all decide to run, and the eventual nominee could be a surprise after another rollercoaster campaign. But heres a look at whos capturing the buzz right now. Yes, already. Joe Biden Former vice president Says hes most qualified to run for the office. Assets: High name ID, deep roots in party, linked to Barack Obama. Iowans like him best so far. Challenges: Hes 76 and has a long record, including some gaffes. Hes run twice (1988, 2008) and lost. Not exactly new blood. Michael Bloomberg Former NYC mayor Plans to decide this month. Assets: Billionaire businessman with progressive bona fides on gun regulations and climate change. Challenges: Used to be an independent and a Republican. Backed disputed stop-and-frisk approach to fighting crime. Cory Booker U.S. senator, New Jersey Announced that hes definitely in on Feb. 1. Assets: Has an aggressive presence on Capitol Hill and visibility on social media. He says hes fearlessly authentic. Challenges: Faces a name-recognition deficit in a crowded field; relied on big donors in campaigns. Sherrod Brown U.S. senator, Ohio Hes touring early-voting Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. Assets: Won a third term last year in a state that no Republican has won the presidency without. Challenges: He a populist on economic issues, less so on trade. Steve Bullock Montana governor Hes been spending a lot of time in Iowa. Assets: Hired top Democratic strategists and favors an assault-weapons ban. Challenges: Hell need to boost his public profile. May not decide whether to run until the legislative session ends in April. Pete Buttigieg South Bend, Ind., mayor Announced an exploratory committee Jan. 23. Assets: Hes a gay Rhodes scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, ran for DNC chairmanship. Challenges: No mayors made a direct leap to Oval Office, but Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland once presided over city halls. Julian Castro Former HUD secretary Announced that hes definitely in on Jan. 12. Assets: Familys background gives him immigration/wall credibility. Challenges: He would be, at 45, the third-youngest person to become president. Fellow Texan Beto ORourke is the newest rising Democratic star. John Delaney Former U.S. rep., Maryland Hes been campaigning for the job since July 2017. Assets: Early start includes multiple visits to Iowa, New Hampshire. Promises to pursue bipartisan ideas. Tulsi Gabbard U.S. rep., Hawaii Said shes running, but hasnt made a formal announcement yet. Assets: She was the first Hindu and first American Samoan in Congress and served in combat in Iraq. Challenges: Her campaign manager quit last week, suggesting disarray, and shes under fire at home. Kirsten Gillibrand U.S. senator, New York She officially became a candidate on Jan. 15. Assets: Says its time for a woman and she votes against Trump policies. Challenges: Shes still blamed not just in Minnesota for shoving Sen. Al Franken out of office and once backed tougher deportation policies. Kamala Harris U.S. senator, California She said on Jan. 21 that shes going for it. Assets: Shes a liberal black woman with a tough-on-crime background. California has new clout after moving its primary to early March. Challenges: CSPAN fans know her, but polls show many voters dont yet. John Hickenlooper Ex-Colorado governor Hes hiring staff and odds favor a run, he says. Assets: Hell leverage the states track record on health care, environment and the economy. Challenges: Needs to raise cash to introduce himself to voters, but money doesnt readily flow to unknown candidates. Jay Inslee Washington state governor Hes not ruling out a run. Assets: Hes banking on the urgency of fighting climate change and creating clean-energy jobs. Some fellow Dem govs have criticized him. Amy Klobuchar U.S. senator, Minnesota Shes dropping hints that shes going to run. Assets: She won big in last years re-election bid and is seen in stark contrast to Trump as a calm, centrist pragmatist. Challenges: A Washington Post columnist noted her perceived lack of toughness. Mitch Landrieu Former New Orleans mayor Waiting and watching. You never say never. Assets: He has built a reputation for encouraging racial reconciliation and led a fight for removal of Confederate monuments. Terry McAuliffe Former Virginia governor Says hes obviously looking at a run. Assets: Calls himself compulsively optimistic. Backs a realistic Medicare-for-all plan. Challenges: Longtime links to Clintons might turn off some voters. Former party chairs support might overlap with Bidens. Beto ORourke Former U.S. rep., Texas Not ruling anything out. Assets: He became a star by almost beating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and setting fundraising records. Challenges: Hes 46, which might make him a more plausible vice presidential candidate. National media focused recently on his go-it-alone streak. Bernie Sanders U.S. senator, Vermont Hes seriously considering running again. Assets: He could capitalize on support and buyers remorse from 2016. Challenges: Hes older than Biden, and some Democrats say his attacks doomed Clinton. Hes apologized for campaigns sexual harassment issues. Elizabeth Warren U.S. senator, Mass. Announced an exploratory committee Dec. 31. Assets: Her economic populism could give her a blue-collar advantage in crucial Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Challenges: The DNA test she took to prove American Indian heritage was widely viewed as clumsy. | Joe Biden, Cory Booker and Steve Bullock are among the Democrats who have already announced they are running for president in 2020. The Iowa caucuses will kick off the presidential election process on Feb. 3, 2020. | ctrlsum | 1 | http://www.startribune.com/the-possible-2020-democratic-presidential-field/505036972/ | 0.584059 |
Who's in, who's out among possible 2020 Democratic candidates? | Democratic governors, senators, U.S. House members, mayors and business titans are angling for the chance to take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Hes running; he never disbanded his 2016 campaign. Democrats are courting donors, hiring staff, booking flights to Iowa and New Hampshire, writing books and vying for TV time to make their case. One year from today, on Feb. 3, 2020, the Iowa caucuses will kick off the presidential election process. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were the caucus winners in 2016. These men and women wont all decide to run, and the eventual nominee could be a surprise after another rollercoaster campaign. But heres a look at whos capturing the buzz right now. Yes, already. Joe Biden Former vice president Says hes most qualified to run for the office. Assets: High name ID, deep roots in party, linked to Barack Obama. Iowans like him best so far. Challenges: Hes 76 and has a long record, including some gaffes. Hes run twice (1988, 2008) and lost. Not exactly new blood. Michael Bloomberg Former NYC mayor Plans to decide this month. Assets: Billionaire businessman with progressive bona fides on gun regulations and climate change. Challenges: Used to be an independent and a Republican. Backed disputed stop-and-frisk approach to fighting crime. Cory Booker U.S. senator, New Jersey Announced that hes definitely in on Feb. 1. Assets: Has an aggressive presence on Capitol Hill and visibility on social media. He says hes fearlessly authentic. Challenges: Faces a name-recognition deficit in a crowded field; relied on big donors in campaigns. Sherrod Brown U.S. senator, Ohio Hes touring early-voting Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. Assets: Won a third term last year in a state that no Republican has won the presidency without. Challenges: He a populist on economic issues, less so on trade. Steve Bullock Montana governor Hes been spending a lot of time in Iowa. Assets: Hired top Democratic strategists and favors an assault-weapons ban. Challenges: Hell need to boost his public profile. May not decide whether to run until the legislative session ends in April. Pete Buttigieg South Bend, Ind., mayor Announced an exploratory committee Jan. 23. Assets: Hes a gay Rhodes scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, ran for DNC chairmanship. Challenges: No mayors made a direct leap to Oval Office, but Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland once presided over city halls. Julian Castro Former HUD secretary Announced that hes definitely in on Jan. 12. Assets: Familys background gives him immigration/wall credibility. Challenges: He would be, at 45, the third-youngest person to become president. Fellow Texan Beto ORourke is the newest rising Democratic star. John Delaney Former U.S. rep., Maryland Hes been campaigning for the job since July 2017. Assets: Early start includes multiple visits to Iowa, New Hampshire. Promises to pursue bipartisan ideas. Tulsi Gabbard U.S. rep., Hawaii Said shes running, but hasnt made a formal announcement yet. Assets: She was the first Hindu and first American Samoan in Congress and served in combat in Iraq. Challenges: Her campaign manager quit last week, suggesting disarray, and shes under fire at home. Kirsten Gillibrand U.S. senator, New York She officially became a candidate on Jan. 15. Assets: Says its time for a woman and she votes against Trump policies. Challenges: Shes still blamed not just in Minnesota for shoving Sen. Al Franken out of office and once backed tougher deportation policies. Kamala Harris U.S. senator, California She said on Jan. 21 that shes going for it. Assets: Shes a liberal black woman with a tough-on-crime background. California has new clout after moving its primary to early March. Challenges: CSPAN fans know her, but polls show many voters dont yet. John Hickenlooper Ex-Colorado governor Hes hiring staff and odds favor a run, he says. Assets: Hell leverage the states track record on health care, environment and the economy. Challenges: Needs to raise cash to introduce himself to voters, but money doesnt readily flow to unknown candidates. Jay Inslee Washington state governor Hes not ruling out a run. Assets: Hes banking on the urgency of fighting climate change and creating clean-energy jobs. Some fellow Dem govs have criticized him. Amy Klobuchar U.S. senator, Minnesota Shes dropping hints that shes going to run. Assets: She won big in last years re-election bid and is seen in stark contrast to Trump as a calm, centrist pragmatist. Challenges: A Washington Post columnist noted her perceived lack of toughness. Mitch Landrieu Former New Orleans mayor Waiting and watching. You never say never. Assets: He has built a reputation for encouraging racial reconciliation and led a fight for removal of Confederate monuments. Terry McAuliffe Former Virginia governor Says hes obviously looking at a run. Assets: Calls himself compulsively optimistic. Backs a realistic Medicare-for-all plan. Challenges: Longtime links to Clintons might turn off some voters. Former party chairs support might overlap with Bidens. Beto ORourke Former U.S. rep., Texas Not ruling anything out. Assets: He became a star by almost beating GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and setting fundraising records. Challenges: Hes 46, which might make him a more plausible vice presidential candidate. National media focused recently on his go-it-alone streak. Bernie Sanders U.S. senator, Vermont Hes seriously considering running again. Assets: He could capitalize on support and buyers remorse from 2016. Challenges: Hes older than Biden, and some Democrats say his attacks doomed Clinton. Hes apologized for campaigns sexual harassment issues. Elizabeth Warren U.S. senator, Mass. Announced an exploratory committee Dec. 31. Assets: Her economic populism could give her a blue-collar advantage in crucial Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Challenges: The DNA test she took to prove American Indian heritage was widely viewed as clumsy. | Joe Biden, Cory Booker and Steve Bullock are among the Democrats who have already announced they are running for president in 2020. The Iowa caucuses will kick off the presidential election process on Feb. 3, 2020, and the eventual nominee could be a surprise after another rollercoaster campaign. | ctrlsum | 2 | http://www.startribune.com/the-possible-2020-democratic-presidential-field/505036972/ | 0.635022 |
How have the Patriots fared against the spread in the Super Bowl? | The Patriots are 55 all-time in the Super Bowl and 53 since Tom Brady became New England's starter in 2001. The Patriots have struggled to cover the spread in the Super Bowl, sitting at 361 overall and 35 in the Brady-Bill Belichick era. New England has noticeably struggled as favorites. Brady and Co. are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl, with the lone cover coming in a 34-28 win in Super Bowl LI. The Patriots entered as three-point favorites against the Falcons. Check out the full list of Patriots' spreads in the Super Bowl below: Super Bowl LII: Entered -4.5, lost 41-33 to Philadelphia (no cover) Super Bowl LI: Entered -3, beat Atlanta 34-28 (covered) Super Bowl XLIX: Entered +1, beat Seattle 28-24 (covered) Super Bowl XLVI: Entered -2.5, lost to Giants 21-17 (no cover) Super Bowl XLII: Entered -12, lost to Giants 17-14 (no cover) Super Bowl XXIX: Entered -7, beat Philadelphia 24-21 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVIII: Entered -7, beat Carolina 32-29 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVI: Entered +14, beat St. Louis 20-17 (covered) Super Bowl XXXI: Entered +14, lost to Green Bay 35-21 (pushed) Super Bowl XX: Entered +10, lost to Chicago 45-10 (no cover) | The Patriots are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/02/patriots-super-bowl-against-spread-brady-belichick-rams | 0.72807 |
How have the Patriots fared against the spread in the Super Bowl? | The Patriots are 55 all-time in the Super Bowl and 53 since Tom Brady became New England's starter in 2001. The Patriots have struggled to cover the spread in the Super Bowl, sitting at 361 overall and 35 in the Brady-Bill Belichick era. New England has noticeably struggled as favorites. Brady and Co. are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl, with the lone cover coming in a 34-28 win in Super Bowl LI. The Patriots entered as three-point favorites against the Falcons. Check out the full list of Patriots' spreads in the Super Bowl below: Super Bowl LII: Entered -4.5, lost 41-33 to Philadelphia (no cover) Super Bowl LI: Entered -3, beat Atlanta 34-28 (covered) Super Bowl XLIX: Entered +1, beat Seattle 28-24 (covered) Super Bowl XLVI: Entered -2.5, lost to Giants 21-17 (no cover) Super Bowl XLII: Entered -12, lost to Giants 17-14 (no cover) Super Bowl XXIX: Entered -7, beat Philadelphia 24-21 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVIII: Entered -7, beat Carolina 32-29 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVI: Entered +14, beat St. Louis 20-17 (covered) Super Bowl XXXI: Entered +14, lost to Green Bay 35-21 (pushed) Super Bowl XX: Entered +10, lost to Chicago 45-10 (no cover) | The Patriots are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl. The Patriots entered as three-point favorites against the Falcons, but they're just 1-5 as favorites. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/02/patriots-super-bowl-against-spread-brady-belichick-rams | 0.770184 |
How have the Patriots fared against the spread in the Super Bowl? | The Patriots are 55 all-time in the Super Bowl and 53 since Tom Brady became New England's starter in 2001. The Patriots have struggled to cover the spread in the Super Bowl, sitting at 361 overall and 35 in the Brady-Bill Belichick era. New England has noticeably struggled as favorites. Brady and Co. are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl, with the lone cover coming in a 34-28 win in Super Bowl LI. The Patriots entered as three-point favorites against the Falcons. Check out the full list of Patriots' spreads in the Super Bowl below: Super Bowl LII: Entered -4.5, lost 41-33 to Philadelphia (no cover) Super Bowl LI: Entered -3, beat Atlanta 34-28 (covered) Super Bowl XLIX: Entered +1, beat Seattle 28-24 (covered) Super Bowl XLVI: Entered -2.5, lost to Giants 21-17 (no cover) Super Bowl XLII: Entered -12, lost to Giants 17-14 (no cover) Super Bowl XXIX: Entered -7, beat Philadelphia 24-21 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVIII: Entered -7, beat Carolina 32-29 (no cover) Super Bowl XXXVI: Entered +14, beat St. Louis 20-17 (covered) Super Bowl XXXI: Entered +14, lost to Green Bay 35-21 (pushed) Super Bowl XX: Entered +10, lost to Chicago 45-10 (no cover) | The Patriots are just 15 against the spread as favorites in the Super Bowl. The Patriots entered as three-point favorites against the Falcons, but they're just 1-5 as favorites overall and 3-5 in the Brady-Bill Belichick era. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/02/patriots-super-bowl-against-spread-brady-belichick-rams | 0.735302 |
Who's The Better Lakers Player At Age 34, LeBron James Or Kobe Bryant? | Maybe it's unfair to compare two Hall of Fame players. In any sport. But we do it anyway. In the case of two Lakers' greats, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, we're comparing guys who played different positions, with different teammates around them at different times in a somewhat different league. Clearly, with his five championships and all things considered Kobe is the better Los Angeles Laker. First things first. Bryant appeared in 78 games as a 34-year-old Laker in the 2012-2013 season. The best James can do at 34 this year is 65 games. He could very well finish with a 50-60 game season. Points per game couldn't be closer. Kobe finished in the spring of 2013 at 27.3. LBJ is at 27.2 as we speak. Minutes per game: Bryant 38.6, James 34.8. Field goal percentage: James .515, Bryant .463. Three point percentage: James .350, Bryant .324. Free throw percentage: Bryant .839, James .683. Rebounds per game: James 8.5, Bryant 5.6. Assists per game: James 7.2, Bryant 6.0. Steals per game: Bryant 1.4, James 1.3. Blocks per game: James 0.7, Bryant 0.3. Turnovers per game: James 3.4, Bryant 3.7. Forgive me for the pet peeve, but it's the free throw shooting that gets to me. As as fan I enjoy watching LeBron play for the Lakers; almost as much as I did watching Kobe. It's fun as hell. But I find it difficult to comprehend the missed free throws at key points during a game. And at non-key points. Kobe always made his free throws. He was simply automatic. Bryant famously made his final two shots of his 34-year-old season from the line after tearing his Achilles against Golden State on April 12, 2013, and did not appear in the postseason. James may make a playoff appearance for Los Angeles this spring and we can add those numbers to the mix. We'll update after the final game of the regular season on April 9, too. My purpose here is not so much to answer the question, but to ask it. Or to have you answer it. And to make sure that Kobe Bryant -- the 20-year Laker and five time NBA Finals champion -- is appreciated for what he did over a fifth a century in Los Angeles. James has played 35 games in purple and gold. Kobe, 1346. For perspective, I've added the 34-year-old numbers for some other Lakers Hall of Famers below. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1981-82): 35.2 MP, .579 FG%, .706 FT%, 8.7 TRB, 3.0 AST, 0.8 STL, 2.7 BLK, 3.0 TOV, 23.9 PTS. Elgin Baylor (1968-69): 40.3 MP, .447 FG%, .743 FT%, 10.6 TRB, 5.4 AST, 24.8 PTS. Wilt Chamberlain (1970-71): 44.3 MP, .545 FG%, .548 FT%, 18.2 TRB, 4.3 AST, 20.7 PTS. Jerry West (1972-73): 35.7 MP, .479 FG%, .805 FT%, 4.2 TRB, 8.8 AST, 22.8 PTS. And remember, glove conquers all. | Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are both 34-years-old. Bryant has played more games than James at the same age. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardcole/2019/02/02/whos-the-better-lakers-player-at-age-34-lebron-james-or-kobe-bryant/ | 0.117223 |
Who's The Better Lakers Player At Age 34, LeBron James Or Kobe Bryant? | Maybe it's unfair to compare two Hall of Fame players. In any sport. But we do it anyway. In the case of two Lakers' greats, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, we're comparing guys who played different positions, with different teammates around them at different times in a somewhat different league. Clearly, with his five championships and all things considered Kobe is the better Los Angeles Laker. First things first. Bryant appeared in 78 games as a 34-year-old Laker in the 2012-2013 season. The best James can do at 34 this year is 65 games. He could very well finish with a 50-60 game season. Points per game couldn't be closer. Kobe finished in the spring of 2013 at 27.3. LBJ is at 27.2 as we speak. Minutes per game: Bryant 38.6, James 34.8. Field goal percentage: James .515, Bryant .463. Three point percentage: James .350, Bryant .324. Free throw percentage: Bryant .839, James .683. Rebounds per game: James 8.5, Bryant 5.6. Assists per game: James 7.2, Bryant 6.0. Steals per game: Bryant 1.4, James 1.3. Blocks per game: James 0.7, Bryant 0.3. Turnovers per game: James 3.4, Bryant 3.7. Forgive me for the pet peeve, but it's the free throw shooting that gets to me. As as fan I enjoy watching LeBron play for the Lakers; almost as much as I did watching Kobe. It's fun as hell. But I find it difficult to comprehend the missed free throws at key points during a game. And at non-key points. Kobe always made his free throws. He was simply automatic. Bryant famously made his final two shots of his 34-year-old season from the line after tearing his Achilles against Golden State on April 12, 2013, and did not appear in the postseason. James may make a playoff appearance for Los Angeles this spring and we can add those numbers to the mix. We'll update after the final game of the regular season on April 9, too. My purpose here is not so much to answer the question, but to ask it. Or to have you answer it. And to make sure that Kobe Bryant -- the 20-year Laker and five time NBA Finals champion -- is appreciated for what he did over a fifth a century in Los Angeles. James has played 35 games in purple and gold. Kobe, 1346. For perspective, I've added the 34-year-old numbers for some other Lakers Hall of Famers below. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1981-82): 35.2 MP, .579 FG%, .706 FT%, 8.7 TRB, 3.0 AST, 0.8 STL, 2.7 BLK, 3.0 TOV, 23.9 PTS. Elgin Baylor (1968-69): 40.3 MP, .447 FG%, .743 FT%, 10.6 TRB, 5.4 AST, 24.8 PTS. Wilt Chamberlain (1970-71): 44.3 MP, .545 FG%, .548 FT%, 18.2 TRB, 4.3 AST, 20.7 PTS. Jerry West (1972-73): 35.7 MP, .479 FG%, .805 FT%, 4.2 TRB, 8.8 AST, 22.8 PTS. And remember, glove conquers all. | Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are both 34-years-old. Bryant has played more games than James in his 34-year-old season. Kobe has won more championships than James. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardcole/2019/02/02/whos-the-better-lakers-player-at-age-34-lebron-james-or-kobe-bryant/ | 0.248196 |
Who's The Better Lakers Player At Age 34, LeBron James Or Kobe Bryant? | Maybe it's unfair to compare two Hall of Fame players. In any sport. But we do it anyway. In the case of two Lakers' greats, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, we're comparing guys who played different positions, with different teammates around them at different times in a somewhat different league. Clearly, with his five championships and all things considered Kobe is the better Los Angeles Laker. First things first. Bryant appeared in 78 games as a 34-year-old Laker in the 2012-2013 season. The best James can do at 34 this year is 65 games. He could very well finish with a 50-60 game season. Points per game couldn't be closer. Kobe finished in the spring of 2013 at 27.3. LBJ is at 27.2 as we speak. Minutes per game: Bryant 38.6, James 34.8. Field goal percentage: James .515, Bryant .463. Three point percentage: James .350, Bryant .324. Free throw percentage: Bryant .839, James .683. Rebounds per game: James 8.5, Bryant 5.6. Assists per game: James 7.2, Bryant 6.0. Steals per game: Bryant 1.4, James 1.3. Blocks per game: James 0.7, Bryant 0.3. Turnovers per game: James 3.4, Bryant 3.7. Forgive me for the pet peeve, but it's the free throw shooting that gets to me. As as fan I enjoy watching LeBron play for the Lakers; almost as much as I did watching Kobe. It's fun as hell. But I find it difficult to comprehend the missed free throws at key points during a game. And at non-key points. Kobe always made his free throws. He was simply automatic. Bryant famously made his final two shots of his 34-year-old season from the line after tearing his Achilles against Golden State on April 12, 2013, and did not appear in the postseason. James may make a playoff appearance for Los Angeles this spring and we can add those numbers to the mix. We'll update after the final game of the regular season on April 9, too. My purpose here is not so much to answer the question, but to ask it. Or to have you answer it. And to make sure that Kobe Bryant -- the 20-year Laker and five time NBA Finals champion -- is appreciated for what he did over a fifth a century in Los Angeles. James has played 35 games in purple and gold. Kobe, 1346. For perspective, I've added the 34-year-old numbers for some other Lakers Hall of Famers below. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1981-82): 35.2 MP, .579 FG%, .706 FT%, 8.7 TRB, 3.0 AST, 0.8 STL, 2.7 BLK, 3.0 TOV, 23.9 PTS. Elgin Baylor (1968-69): 40.3 MP, .447 FG%, .743 FT%, 10.6 TRB, 5.4 AST, 24.8 PTS. Wilt Chamberlain (1970-71): 44.3 MP, .545 FG%, .548 FT%, 18.2 TRB, 4.3 AST, 20.7 PTS. Jerry West (1972-73): 35.7 MP, .479 FG%, .805 FT%, 4.2 TRB, 8.8 AST, 22.8 PTS. And remember, glove conquers all. | Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are both 34-years-old. Bryant has played more games than James in his 34-year-old season. Kobe has won more NBA championships than James has won any other player in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers. Click here for more Lakers news. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardcole/2019/02/02/whos-the-better-lakers-player-at-age-34-lebron-james-or-kobe-bryant/ | 0.429208 |
What Does It Mean To "Consent" To The Use Of Our Data In The Facebook Era? | As Facebook has struggled to contain the fallout from its latest privacy fiasco this week, the company has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented and granted their permission for what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones to convert them into highly intimate surveillance systems. Indeed, the companys response to nearly every one of its privacy stories over the past year has been to argue that its users legally consented to its practices so they have nothing to complain about. Once upon a time, researchers wishing to collect intimate information from individuals were largely required to adhere to a standard known as informed consent. Informed consent refers to the idea that signing your name on the dotted line of a 50-page legal contract filled to the brim with arcane legal technicalities and unenforceable clauses may mean that the company has the legal right to do what they please to you, but that such practices are not ethical or moral because the individual likely didnt actually truly understand what would be happening to them. Instead, obtaining informed consent means carefully explaining to a research subject issues like the complete inventory of every piece of information that will be obtained from them, the reason for its collection, how it will be collected, how long it will be stored for, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. Most importantly, it entails explaining to the subject what the pros and cons of the research are, especially the unintended consequences and dangers they might face through their participation. Informed consent is about the idea that research subjects arent merely rows in a spreadsheet or records in a database. They are real live human beings whose lives may be irreversibly impacted by the research being conducted on them. For many decades this was the standard that prevailed in most human behavioral research. The rise of the digital era with its massive repositories of datasets free for the taking have upended all of the ethical practices that had developed over the previous half century. Once researchers themselves were no longer collecting data, but rather making use of data that someone else had collected for an entirely different purpose, perhaps without the knowledge of the subject or even against the explicit demands of the subject, those researchers argued they shouldnt be held responsible for ethical data use anymore, since they were merely using someone elses data. Even medical records and data stolen through computer breaches were suddenly fair game. In essence, researchers were able to launder issues of data ethics by using data that others had collected. It was the rise of commercial social media platforms that really accelerated this trend. As the companies began to publish in the literature using their exquisitely intimate and breathtakingly large datasets, the journals that in the past would have acted as ethical stewards and refused publication, suddenly could not resist the temptation to be the first to publish these large studies and so set aside their decades of ethical practices and welcomed these massive studies with open arms. Funders rushed to support this new wave of informed consent-free research and academics raced to get their hands on large social datasets through any means possible, terms of service be darned. As journals and funders normalized the idea that informed consent was no longer required and that mere legal consent per website click-through agreements was sufficient, informed consent has rapidly faded away from behavioral research. In todays world no academic can afford to work only with data that has been obtained through informed consent. That would place them at such a disadvantage that they would lose all possibility of obtaining tenure or promotions. Or at least that seems to be the unfortunate view that has become so prevalent in academia of late. In turn, the rise of the microtasking gig economy through services like Amazon Mechanical Turk brought this disdain for informed consent to academic data collection. An academic researcher who pays a group of community members to sit for a 15-minute interview in their university lab must go through extensive ethical review. Recruit those subjects on Amazon Mechanical Turk and most institutions require no ethical review at all in practice, considering it exempt since it is collected online. In essence, as our interactions with other humans are increasingly mediated through digital channels, we have dehumanized them from living breathing people to mere datapoints devoid of any rights, protections or considerations. Even children, once an extraordinarily tightly protected research class, can now be mass harvested and manipulated at will without so much as the most cursory ethical review, so long as they are accessed online, rather than in person. Academia has wholeheartedly embraced this retrenchment from the traditional norms of data ethics, which in turn has produced a steady stream of researchers headed for the big technology companies that arrive viewing ethics as an outdated quaint relic of history. In turn, as these researchers push ethical boundaries ever further and publish those studies in the literature, academia rushes to match this newly lowered ethical bar, producing a new cohort of researchers that head to the companies to push the bar even further lower in an endless downward cycle. The journals that once firmly condemned or refused to publish even the most minimally ethically questionable research now warmly welcome studies that lack informed consent or the right of subjects to opt out. Ironically, even the new data ethics initiatives refuse to actually talk about data ethics. Legal standards continue to be lowered as companies find new ways to redefine outside entities as partners and providers so that they can freely share our data with them without violating their legal agreements. In the case of Facebooks latest fiasco, the company has repeatedly emphasized that it had parental consent for the teenagers as young as 13 years old that granted it the right to harvest their data. Yet, when I asked how precisely it ensured that teenagers didnt just sign the consent forms on behalf of their parents and how they controlled who had access to the intimate details of children so young, the company never responded. It turns out the reason for Facebooks silence is that the companys parental consent was merely a sadly comical click-through form that did not require even the most rudimentary of verification to ensure that teens didnt just sign for themselves. It is a truly extraordinary commentary that weve reached a point in data ethics where companies now see it as entirely acceptable to treat simple click-through forms that teens can fill in themselves as proof of parental consent for a child as young as 13. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Given current academic IRB ethical trends, it is unlikely that any major US university ethical review board would raise even the slightest objection to treating this data as exempt preexisting public data and permitting academic researchers to do as they please with the digital lives of these children. Putting this all together, the digital world has undone decades of progress on building ethical standards around how the public is treated when it comes to research. It took a series of atrocities for society to agree to the ethical standards that governed research up through the digital era. It seems breach after breach, scandal after scandal has done nothing but accelerate this trend, with companies treating privacy scandals not as evidence that we need more ethical protections, but rather as evidence that ethical protections are outdated and irrelevant in the digital age. In the end, perhaps weve been so programmed by the digital world that we dont care about our privacy anymore and welcome the idea of being reduced from being human to being just a number. If so, perhaps the AI revolution is closer than we thought. | Facebook has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented to what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/02/what-does-it-mean-to-consent-to-the-use-of-our-data-in-the-facebook-era/ | 0.103092 |
What Does It Mean To "Consent" To The Use Of Our Data In The Facebook Era? | As Facebook has struggled to contain the fallout from its latest privacy fiasco this week, the company has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented and granted their permission for what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones to convert them into highly intimate surveillance systems. Indeed, the companys response to nearly every one of its privacy stories over the past year has been to argue that its users legally consented to its practices so they have nothing to complain about. Once upon a time, researchers wishing to collect intimate information from individuals were largely required to adhere to a standard known as informed consent. Informed consent refers to the idea that signing your name on the dotted line of a 50-page legal contract filled to the brim with arcane legal technicalities and unenforceable clauses may mean that the company has the legal right to do what they please to you, but that such practices are not ethical or moral because the individual likely didnt actually truly understand what would be happening to them. Instead, obtaining informed consent means carefully explaining to a research subject issues like the complete inventory of every piece of information that will be obtained from them, the reason for its collection, how it will be collected, how long it will be stored for, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. Most importantly, it entails explaining to the subject what the pros and cons of the research are, especially the unintended consequences and dangers they might face through their participation. Informed consent is about the idea that research subjects arent merely rows in a spreadsheet or records in a database. They are real live human beings whose lives may be irreversibly impacted by the research being conducted on them. For many decades this was the standard that prevailed in most human behavioral research. The rise of the digital era with its massive repositories of datasets free for the taking have upended all of the ethical practices that had developed over the previous half century. Once researchers themselves were no longer collecting data, but rather making use of data that someone else had collected for an entirely different purpose, perhaps without the knowledge of the subject or even against the explicit demands of the subject, those researchers argued they shouldnt be held responsible for ethical data use anymore, since they were merely using someone elses data. Even medical records and data stolen through computer breaches were suddenly fair game. In essence, researchers were able to launder issues of data ethics by using data that others had collected. It was the rise of commercial social media platforms that really accelerated this trend. As the companies began to publish in the literature using their exquisitely intimate and breathtakingly large datasets, the journals that in the past would have acted as ethical stewards and refused publication, suddenly could not resist the temptation to be the first to publish these large studies and so set aside their decades of ethical practices and welcomed these massive studies with open arms. Funders rushed to support this new wave of informed consent-free research and academics raced to get their hands on large social datasets through any means possible, terms of service be darned. As journals and funders normalized the idea that informed consent was no longer required and that mere legal consent per website click-through agreements was sufficient, informed consent has rapidly faded away from behavioral research. In todays world no academic can afford to work only with data that has been obtained through informed consent. That would place them at such a disadvantage that they would lose all possibility of obtaining tenure or promotions. Or at least that seems to be the unfortunate view that has become so prevalent in academia of late. In turn, the rise of the microtasking gig economy through services like Amazon Mechanical Turk brought this disdain for informed consent to academic data collection. An academic researcher who pays a group of community members to sit for a 15-minute interview in their university lab must go through extensive ethical review. Recruit those subjects on Amazon Mechanical Turk and most institutions require no ethical review at all in practice, considering it exempt since it is collected online. In essence, as our interactions with other humans are increasingly mediated through digital channels, we have dehumanized them from living breathing people to mere datapoints devoid of any rights, protections or considerations. Even children, once an extraordinarily tightly protected research class, can now be mass harvested and manipulated at will without so much as the most cursory ethical review, so long as they are accessed online, rather than in person. Academia has wholeheartedly embraced this retrenchment from the traditional norms of data ethics, which in turn has produced a steady stream of researchers headed for the big technology companies that arrive viewing ethics as an outdated quaint relic of history. In turn, as these researchers push ethical boundaries ever further and publish those studies in the literature, academia rushes to match this newly lowered ethical bar, producing a new cohort of researchers that head to the companies to push the bar even further lower in an endless downward cycle. The journals that once firmly condemned or refused to publish even the most minimally ethically questionable research now warmly welcome studies that lack informed consent or the right of subjects to opt out. Ironically, even the new data ethics initiatives refuse to actually talk about data ethics. Legal standards continue to be lowered as companies find new ways to redefine outside entities as partners and providers so that they can freely share our data with them without violating their legal agreements. In the case of Facebooks latest fiasco, the company has repeatedly emphasized that it had parental consent for the teenagers as young as 13 years old that granted it the right to harvest their data. Yet, when I asked how precisely it ensured that teenagers didnt just sign the consent forms on behalf of their parents and how they controlled who had access to the intimate details of children so young, the company never responded. It turns out the reason for Facebooks silence is that the companys parental consent was merely a sadly comical click-through form that did not require even the most rudimentary of verification to ensure that teens didnt just sign for themselves. It is a truly extraordinary commentary that weve reached a point in data ethics where companies now see it as entirely acceptable to treat simple click-through forms that teens can fill in themselves as proof of parental consent for a child as young as 13. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Given current academic IRB ethical trends, it is unlikely that any major US university ethical review board would raise even the slightest objection to treating this data as exempt preexisting public data and permitting academic researchers to do as they please with the digital lives of these children. Putting this all together, the digital world has undone decades of progress on building ethical standards around how the public is treated when it comes to research. It took a series of atrocities for society to agree to the ethical standards that governed research up through the digital era. It seems breach after breach, scandal after scandal has done nothing but accelerate this trend, with companies treating privacy scandals not as evidence that we need more ethical protections, but rather as evidence that ethical protections are outdated and irrelevant in the digital age. In the end, perhaps weve been so programmed by the digital world that we dont care about our privacy anymore and welcome the idea of being reduced from being human to being just a number. If so, perhaps the AI revolution is closer than we thought. | Facebook has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented and granted their permission for what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones. | bart | 1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/02/what-does-it-mean-to-consent-to-the-use-of-our-data-in-the-facebook-era/ | 0.113303 |
What Does It Mean To "Consent" To The Use Of Our Data In The Facebook Era? | As Facebook has struggled to contain the fallout from its latest privacy fiasco this week, the company has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented and granted their permission for what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones to convert them into highly intimate surveillance systems. Indeed, the companys response to nearly every one of its privacy stories over the past year has been to argue that its users legally consented to its practices so they have nothing to complain about. Once upon a time, researchers wishing to collect intimate information from individuals were largely required to adhere to a standard known as informed consent. Informed consent refers to the idea that signing your name on the dotted line of a 50-page legal contract filled to the brim with arcane legal technicalities and unenforceable clauses may mean that the company has the legal right to do what they please to you, but that such practices are not ethical or moral because the individual likely didnt actually truly understand what would be happening to them. Instead, obtaining informed consent means carefully explaining to a research subject issues like the complete inventory of every piece of information that will be obtained from them, the reason for its collection, how it will be collected, how long it will be stored for, what it will be used for and who will have access to it. Most importantly, it entails explaining to the subject what the pros and cons of the research are, especially the unintended consequences and dangers they might face through their participation. Informed consent is about the idea that research subjects arent merely rows in a spreadsheet or records in a database. They are real live human beings whose lives may be irreversibly impacted by the research being conducted on them. For many decades this was the standard that prevailed in most human behavioral research. The rise of the digital era with its massive repositories of datasets free for the taking have upended all of the ethical practices that had developed over the previous half century. Once researchers themselves were no longer collecting data, but rather making use of data that someone else had collected for an entirely different purpose, perhaps without the knowledge of the subject or even against the explicit demands of the subject, those researchers argued they shouldnt be held responsible for ethical data use anymore, since they were merely using someone elses data. Even medical records and data stolen through computer breaches were suddenly fair game. In essence, researchers were able to launder issues of data ethics by using data that others had collected. It was the rise of commercial social media platforms that really accelerated this trend. As the companies began to publish in the literature using their exquisitely intimate and breathtakingly large datasets, the journals that in the past would have acted as ethical stewards and refused publication, suddenly could not resist the temptation to be the first to publish these large studies and so set aside their decades of ethical practices and welcomed these massive studies with open arms. Funders rushed to support this new wave of informed consent-free research and academics raced to get their hands on large social datasets through any means possible, terms of service be darned. As journals and funders normalized the idea that informed consent was no longer required and that mere legal consent per website click-through agreements was sufficient, informed consent has rapidly faded away from behavioral research. In todays world no academic can afford to work only with data that has been obtained through informed consent. That would place them at such a disadvantage that they would lose all possibility of obtaining tenure or promotions. Or at least that seems to be the unfortunate view that has become so prevalent in academia of late. In turn, the rise of the microtasking gig economy through services like Amazon Mechanical Turk brought this disdain for informed consent to academic data collection. An academic researcher who pays a group of community members to sit for a 15-minute interview in their university lab must go through extensive ethical review. Recruit those subjects on Amazon Mechanical Turk and most institutions require no ethical review at all in practice, considering it exempt since it is collected online. In essence, as our interactions with other humans are increasingly mediated through digital channels, we have dehumanized them from living breathing people to mere datapoints devoid of any rights, protections or considerations. Even children, once an extraordinarily tightly protected research class, can now be mass harvested and manipulated at will without so much as the most cursory ethical review, so long as they are accessed online, rather than in person. Academia has wholeheartedly embraced this retrenchment from the traditional norms of data ethics, which in turn has produced a steady stream of researchers headed for the big technology companies that arrive viewing ethics as an outdated quaint relic of history. In turn, as these researchers push ethical boundaries ever further and publish those studies in the literature, academia rushes to match this newly lowered ethical bar, producing a new cohort of researchers that head to the companies to push the bar even further lower in an endless downward cycle. The journals that once firmly condemned or refused to publish even the most minimally ethically questionable research now warmly welcome studies that lack informed consent or the right of subjects to opt out. Ironically, even the new data ethics initiatives refuse to actually talk about data ethics. Legal standards continue to be lowered as companies find new ways to redefine outside entities as partners and providers so that they can freely share our data with them without violating their legal agreements. In the case of Facebooks latest fiasco, the company has repeatedly emphasized that it had parental consent for the teenagers as young as 13 years old that granted it the right to harvest their data. Yet, when I asked how precisely it ensured that teenagers didnt just sign the consent forms on behalf of their parents and how they controlled who had access to the intimate details of children so young, the company never responded. It turns out the reason for Facebooks silence is that the companys parental consent was merely a sadly comical click-through form that did not require even the most rudimentary of verification to ensure that teens didnt just sign for themselves. It is a truly extraordinary commentary that weve reached a point in data ethics where companies now see it as entirely acceptable to treat simple click-through forms that teens can fill in themselves as proof of parental consent for a child as young as 13. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Given current academic IRB ethical trends, it is unlikely that any major US university ethical review board would raise even the slightest objection to treating this data as exempt preexisting public data and permitting academic researchers to do as they please with the digital lives of these children. Putting this all together, the digital world has undone decades of progress on building ethical standards around how the public is treated when it comes to research. It took a series of atrocities for society to agree to the ethical standards that governed research up through the digital era. It seems breach after breach, scandal after scandal has done nothing but accelerate this trend, with companies treating privacy scandals not as evidence that we need more ethical protections, but rather as evidence that ethical protections are outdated and irrelevant in the digital age. In the end, perhaps weve been so programmed by the digital world that we dont care about our privacy anymore and welcome the idea of being reduced from being human to being just a number. If so, perhaps the AI revolution is closer than we thought. | Facebook has repeatedly emphasized that participants consented and granted their permission for what amounted to spyware being installed on their phones. Informed consent refers to the idea that signing your name on a 50-page legal contract may mean that the company has the legal right to do what they please to you. | bart | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/02/what-does-it-mean-to-consent-to-the-use-of-our-data-in-the-facebook-era/ | 0.162843 |
Are We Past the Golden Era of iPhone Launches? | Just a few years ago, Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone launch events were so popular that people were sleeping outside the stores to ensure they got their hands on one of the new models the day they came out. If you didn't, you might have to wait a month until they were restocked. But the era of camping outside Apple stores may be over. This year, Apple's three new iPhone models launched without much fanfare and to lackluster demand. For the past quarter, iPhone revenue fell 15% year over year. While the iPhone business used to be central to Apple's revenue growth, this year it weighed on the company. Apple said its total quarterly revenue declined 5% year over year to $84.3 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook opens the doors of an Apple store on launch day 2016. More Apple's annual iPhone launch days used to be a cultural phenomenon. Image source: Apple. Reminiscing on the golden years of the iPhone launches Apple's iPhone became a lucrative overnight phenomenon the day the original model launched on June 29, 2007. The company even had to make a rule limiting customers to two devices per person. On that first day of sales, the atmosphere at the crowded Apple store in New York City's SoHo neighborhood was like a rock concert, CNN reported. In fact, the intersection around that store had to be shut down due to the number of people trying to get a peek at the first-generation iPhone. The hype around iPhone launches kept this same level of enthusiasm into 2014, when Apple announced that it sold over 4 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones within the first 24 hours after pre-orders began. Apple had to warn customers that demand for the new iPhone models had already exceeded its initial pre-order supply. iPhone launches begin to lose their luster You might have noticed that it has become a lot easier to get your hands on new iPhone models the day they launch. While Apple still had a few loyal customers line up outside its stores this past September, the lines were noticeably shorter compared to past years. In fact, last quarter, Apple overestimated how many customers would be interested in upgrading to one of its three new iPhone models. Hence, the downward revision in its revenue guidance in early January and the drop in iPhone and overall revenue for the quarter. If you were watching closely, there were signs of iPhone sales weakness even a year ago when Apple sold nearly a million fewer iPhones than it had in the same period a year earlier. The company tried to brush over this fact by reminding investors that it had still hit a new record for quarterly iPhone revenue thanks to the higher average selling price (ASP) of its newer models. If you need more proof that the golden age of iPhone sales might be over, consider the fact that Apple isn't reporting iPhone unit sales anymore. It's not necessarily Apple's fault that iPhone launches have lost some of their excitement. The overall smartphone market has matured. For 10 years, the company was able to offer big enough changes in the new models to warrant a considerable upgrade cycle. But that couldn't last forever. | Apple's three new iPhone models launched without much fanfare and to lackluster demand. The iPhone business used to be central to Apple's revenue growth, but this year it weighed on the company. Apple isn't reporting iPhone unit sales anymore, suggesting that the golden age of iPhone sales might be over. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/past-golden-era-iphone-launches-213600744.html | 0.16744 |
Could Apple Ban Unethical Facial Recognition And Become The Patron Saint Of Privacy? | Apple stepped forward this week into the unexpected role of privacy regulator, banishing Facebooks ethically fraught data harvesting application from its devices. Apples willingness to stand up to Facebooks data practices raises the tantalizing question of how device manufacturers like itself could potentially help rid our devices of unethical applications as governments refuse to penalize the highly profitable world of the surveillance economy. Governments throughout the world have been reluctant to reign in the extraordinarily profitable world of data harvesting that powers the modern internet. Those that have tried have ultimately yielded to the demands of corporate lobbyists, ensuring the resulting laws have been so watered down as to be almost useless. In some cases technology companies have actually weaponized new legislation to reverse the previously strong privacy laws that had prevented them from rolling out particularly sensitive technologies like facial recognition. Our digital lives are increasingly lived through our smartphones, smart watches, tablets and other mobile devices. Companies like Apple wield near absolute control over their application ecosystems, directly approving each app that is permitted to be installed onto their devices. This was the power that Apple leveraged this past week to deactivate Facebooks entire suite of internal applications with the flip of a switch. Facial recognition has proven to be an increasingly controversial application of AI. While many applications of facial recognition do not involve smartphones, there are plenty that do, including the mass facial recognition performed by social media companies like Facebook. Apps that want to use the users face to authenticate the user in lieu of a password could still do so, as long as they agreed to use the biometrics exclusively for authentication and not for any other task. Any usage of the authentication biometric data for other tasks would result in an immediate lifetime ban for the developers from Apples ecosystem. While it would be difficult for Apple to identify every misuse entirely on its own, it would grant it the leverage to take immediate action against bad actors when it discovered them. Most facial recognition tasks are performed remotely in the cloud, rather than entirely on the local device. For example, Facebooks mobile application uploads images to Facebooks server farm where it runs its facial recognition models and tags the image with the people it contains. Apple could easily accommodate this in its terms of service for application developers, requiring them to agree not to perform non-authentication facial recognition in the cloud on any images taken by that device. In Facebooks case, such a rule would mean Facebook would not be permitted to perform facial recognition on any images submitted by its Apple users, cutting it off from harvesting the biometric information of a broad swatch of its user base. In essence, Apple users would become privacy privileged netizens, granted the right to use their phones without having themselves monetized into digital biometric models powering Facebooks surveillance engine. Of course, Facebook in particular has taught us how creative companies can get in pushing the boundaries of their legal contracts or even violating them outright. However, this has largely been because companies have faced few penalties for violating those restrictions. Even the Facebooks of the world would think twice about risking being entirely banned from Apple devices even temporarily. Larger companies could get around these rules by forming shell companies to perform the actual facial recognition and allowing those shells to be banned without impact to the parent company, though Apple could easily adjust its legal contracts to address this. Smaller startups would likely be the ones taking the risks to build illegal facial databases, but here again Apple could add contractual language legally encumbering these models from being used by any reputable company, dramatically reducing their value and permanently blacklisting their programmers from the Apple ecosystem. Given the immense economic havoc this would wreak to the surveillance economy, it is likely that companies like Facebook would respond by lobbying for new legislation that would enshrine their right to mine our biometrics and make it illegal for any company to protect us from having our bodies harvested and replicated into the digital world. Putting this all together, Apples sharp rebuke of Facebooks data practices this week has awakened a slumbering giant and shown us the power of the device companies like Apple to take a stand and protect us from unethical data practices. Likely Apple will quietly go back to the status quo, but it is worth considering what might be possible if Apple stepped forward and took a leadership role against some of the most egregious tactics of the online world like biometric harvesting for facial recognition. Perhaps Apple could become the new patron saint of our digital privacy. | Apple stepped forward this week into the unexpected role of privacy regulator, banishing Facebooks ethically fraught data harvesting application from its devices. | pegasus | 0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/02/could-apple-ban-unethical-facial-recognition-and-become-the-patron-saint-of-privacy/ | 0.124651 |
Could Apple Ban Unethical Facial Recognition And Become The Patron Saint Of Privacy? | Apple stepped forward this week into the unexpected role of privacy regulator, banishing Facebooks ethically fraught data harvesting application from its devices. Apples willingness to stand up to Facebooks data practices raises the tantalizing question of how device manufacturers like itself could potentially help rid our devices of unethical applications as governments refuse to penalize the highly profitable world of the surveillance economy. Governments throughout the world have been reluctant to reign in the extraordinarily profitable world of data harvesting that powers the modern internet. Those that have tried have ultimately yielded to the demands of corporate lobbyists, ensuring the resulting laws have been so watered down as to be almost useless. In some cases technology companies have actually weaponized new legislation to reverse the previously strong privacy laws that had prevented them from rolling out particularly sensitive technologies like facial recognition. Our digital lives are increasingly lived through our smartphones, smart watches, tablets and other mobile devices. Companies like Apple wield near absolute control over their application ecosystems, directly approving each app that is permitted to be installed onto their devices. This was the power that Apple leveraged this past week to deactivate Facebooks entire suite of internal applications with the flip of a switch. Facial recognition has proven to be an increasingly controversial application of AI. While many applications of facial recognition do not involve smartphones, there are plenty that do, including the mass facial recognition performed by social media companies like Facebook. Apps that want to use the users face to authenticate the user in lieu of a password could still do so, as long as they agreed to use the biometrics exclusively for authentication and not for any other task. Any usage of the authentication biometric data for other tasks would result in an immediate lifetime ban for the developers from Apples ecosystem. While it would be difficult for Apple to identify every misuse entirely on its own, it would grant it the leverage to take immediate action against bad actors when it discovered them. Most facial recognition tasks are performed remotely in the cloud, rather than entirely on the local device. For example, Facebooks mobile application uploads images to Facebooks server farm where it runs its facial recognition models and tags the image with the people it contains. Apple could easily accommodate this in its terms of service for application developers, requiring them to agree not to perform non-authentication facial recognition in the cloud on any images taken by that device. In Facebooks case, such a rule would mean Facebook would not be permitted to perform facial recognition on any images submitted by its Apple users, cutting it off from harvesting the biometric information of a broad swatch of its user base. In essence, Apple users would become privacy privileged netizens, granted the right to use their phones without having themselves monetized into digital biometric models powering Facebooks surveillance engine. Of course, Facebook in particular has taught us how creative companies can get in pushing the boundaries of their legal contracts or even violating them outright. However, this has largely been because companies have faced few penalties for violating those restrictions. Even the Facebooks of the world would think twice about risking being entirely banned from Apple devices even temporarily. Larger companies could get around these rules by forming shell companies to perform the actual facial recognition and allowing those shells to be banned without impact to the parent company, though Apple could easily adjust its legal contracts to address this. Smaller startups would likely be the ones taking the risks to build illegal facial databases, but here again Apple could add contractual language legally encumbering these models from being used by any reputable company, dramatically reducing their value and permanently blacklisting their programmers from the Apple ecosystem. Given the immense economic havoc this would wreak to the surveillance economy, it is likely that companies like Facebook would respond by lobbying for new legislation that would enshrine their right to mine our biometrics and make it illegal for any company to protect us from having our bodies harvested and replicated into the digital world. Putting this all together, Apples sharp rebuke of Facebooks data practices this week has awakened a slumbering giant and shown us the power of the device companies like Apple to take a stand and protect us from unethical data practices. Likely Apple will quietly go back to the status quo, but it is worth considering what might be possible if Apple stepped forward and took a leadership role against some of the most egregious tactics of the online world like biometric harvesting for facial recognition. Perhaps Apple could become the new patron saint of our digital privacy. | Could Apple ban Unethical facial recognition and become the Patron Saint of Privacy? Apple could easily accommodate this in its terms of service for application developers, requiring them to agree not to perform non-authentication facial recognition in the cloud on any images taken by that device. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/02/could-apple-ban-unethical-facial-recognition-and-become-the-patron-saint-of-privacy/ | 0.361302 |
Can the arts afford to be too fussy about how sponsors make their money? | The Man Group pulled out of the Booker prize and the hunt is now on for a replacement. The true purpose of art is to recycle money, or so once said the American theatre director Peter Sellars. Its a mischievous suggestion that is a favourite with Ruth Mackenzie, the British arts director and curator. Lets face it, there are ethical issues about money pretty much wherever it comes from, said Mackenzie, speaking from Paris, where she is soon to launch her first season as artistic director of the Chtelet theatre. Arts organisations anywhere are lucky to find a business prepared to support them. And it is crucial now. These are very difficult circumstances. In the past few days the big-bucks mechanics of corporate backing for the arts have come under scrutiny following Man Groups decision to pull out of sponsoring Britains leading fiction prize, known commonly as the Booker. Its high-profile termination of a relationship that, by the time they bow out in October, will have cost them 25m is thought to have been prompted by the author Sebastian Faulks, who last year suggested the global hedge fund managers behind the prize were, in fact, kind of the enemy and ought not to be applauded by literary figures. Faulks has since denied this is what he meant, and its probable that the 18-year annual prize sponsorship was already at the end of its natural life, but in an era when businesses find it difficult to plan just one month ahead, and when arts institutions face shrinking state subsidies, corporate philanthropy is especially precious. Peter Bazalgette, the former chair of the Arts Council of England, recalls the difficulty of getting cultural organisations to seek greater support from the world of business immediately following the credit crunch: Every organisation, whether a book prize, a theatre or dance company, or a little gallery, needs to have a properly worked-out policy about whose donations it accepts. All these policies will be different, but it is very important that a board has agreed it with the executive. Among other sponsorship deals under the ethical microscope are the oil giant BPs support of the British Museum, the annual portrait award and the Royal Shakespeare Company, an arrangement particularly unpopular with actors Mark Rylance, Vanessa Redgrave and Maxine Peake. Shells former sponsorship of the National Theatre also prompted protests a decade ago, as did last springs abortive attempt by BAE Systems, the weapons manufacturer, to support the Great Exhibition of the North. Eyebrows will no doubt also rise when Huawei, the Chinese technology company accused of high-tech state espionage, unveils its latest creative venture in London, a musical collaboration that has used artificial intelligence to complete Schuberts Unfinished Symphony. It may not allay fears to hear that Huaweis European boss, Walter Ji, said this weekend: If our smartphone is intelligent enough to do this, what else could be possible? Yet it is no time for British arts to be squeamish. The chair of the governments digital, culture, media and sport select committee, Damian Collins, has called for more corporate sponsorship of the arts outside London. Meanwhile, the Arts Council of England is carrying out a major review of its grant-giving strategy for the next 10 years, with a predicted new emphasis on improving diversity and correcting geographical bias. This could mean a threat to the museums, galleries, theatres and opera houses of the capital city. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anna Burns receives the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2018. Photograph: Getty If so, willing corporations will have plenty of fresh holes to plug, and for Mackenzie, whose Parisian project is sponsored by the US financial media company Bloomberg, the hope remains that world-class firms will always want to be associated with top-quality art. Organisations in Britain are now very good at getting sponsorship from everywhere; local and national governments, and from charitable foundations. But the government needs to help them along, she saidNevertheless, a survey conducted a year ago by the online magazine Arts Professional detected that British arts workers are resistant to dirty lucre from the commercial world. Nearly all of those asked wanted their organisation to look carefully before signing up, while 73 per cent feared they were vulnerable to reputational damage through links with the wrong sponsor or donor. Bazalgette respects, he says, the ethical positions adopted by arts organisations, but he praised Man for promoting the book prize for so long and the Edinburgh-based investment firm Baillie Gifford for supporting the arts in its home city, as well as sponsoring the non-fiction book award he currently chairs, known as The Samuel Johnson Prize until 2015. The key thing is that each organisation develops its own rationale, Bazalgette said. Personally, I also think BP have been magnificent supporters of the arts and I would happily take money from them. I see everyone driving around in cars, so I think that is reasonable. Several arts prizes are so tightly entwined with the name of a former longterm sponsor it takes time for public perception to shift. For many, Britains leading annual award for fiction remains The Booker, in recognition of its first corporate sponsor, a food distributor. Similarly the Womens Prize for Fiction still looks distinctly Orange to some, while on the Edinburgh fringe circuit comedians continue to yearn for a prize once associated with a particular French fizzy water, some 13 years after Perrier walked away.The Edinburgh comedy prize, run by Nica Burns, has moved through several sponsors since Perrier and the key, she believes, is finding the right fit. I would say you need a sponsor who is genuinely going to benefit, she said. Done properly, it gives them a lot of brand awareness and the longer it goes on, the more benefit they get. A good match is so vital for Burns that she funded the comedy prize herself one year because you have to be comfortable with a sponsor. On the broader cultural field, Burns believes prizes are a great way to find unsung talent, but admits lengthy sponsorship deals have become trickier to secure. I could look any sponsor in the eye and say it would be good for them, but a longer commitment is hard now because the commercial world is changing so fast. Toby Mundy, director of the Baillie Gifford Prize, also sees backing an arts prize as tremendously good value. Not only is there an annual news hook for media coverage, but also a clear association with excellence. Arts organisations may have become more cautious, Mundy adds, but with a good partner the benefits are better than just cash. Generally theres tremendous asymetery between a wealthy sponsor corporation and the sponsored arts organisation, who are usually short of the business advice a sponsor can offer. For Mundy, changing the name of a prize seems a small concession to make for a corporation putting a ton of money in. Among the other corporate benefactors out there are Merrill Lynch, Deloitte, Coutts and Travelex, which until last year provided the National Theatre with 15 years of discounted tickets, and the French champagne maker Ruinart which supports the annual Frieze art fairs in London.Philanthropy, whether personal or via a legacy foundation, is a different but equally fruitful source of arts funding. Illustrious surnames such as Clore, Duffield, Sainsbury, Blavatnik and Manoukian regularly reappear across the cultural piste. Sackler has proved more problematic, with the Tate and the New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art criticised for their association with a family linked to the US opioid epidemic through their company Purdue Pharma. Some argue that at least global corporations, whatever their flaws, are forced to be transparent due to the pressure exerted by shareholders and regulators. Risk of reputational damage swings both ways, of course, because artists are inclined to be volatile. In 1972 the late novelist John Berger blamed Booker for exploiting workers at its sugar plantations in Guyana when he won the prize for his book, G. Similarly when Hyundai sponsored the latest installation in Tate Moderns Turbine Hall, it could not have guessed it would be drawn into a diplomatic dispute when its Cuban creator, Tania Brugera, was detained for four days on her native island. Moral implications on both sides of a sponsorship deal are increasingly soupy, agrees Stephen Deuchar, director of The Arts Fund. Fiscal propriety, personal behaviour, and even historical links to a colonial past are all now likely to be spotlighted. The ethical tide is certainly rising, said Deuchar, a former director of Tate Britain, but good models include the arrangement between Ernst & Young and the Tate. It works when there is a long-term affinity. Mackenzie, who was once Chris Smiths advisor at department of culture and is current London head for the Arts Council, thinks companies must be encouraged to see that British cultural institutions are world leaders. Whatever happens, the British Museum and the National Theatre are not moving out. They are staying where they are. And, within reason, we should agree there is no such thing as totally clean money. After all, I dont ask the people buying tickets for my shows where their money comes from. | Man Group pulled out of sponsoring Britain's leading fiction prize, known commonly as the Booker. But the arts can't be too fussy about how sponsors make their money, says Anna Burns. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/feb/03/arts-funding-booker-prize-how-sponsors-make-money-ethical-tide | 0.189981 |
Who is Kevin Limbaugh, killer of Davis Officer Natalie Corona? | Kevin Limbaugh never owned guns as a young man growing up in Michigan, never even talked about them. He dressed well, and was a handsome but shy young man whose high school girlfriend still remembers him coming to her 16th birthday party with an oversized teddy bear to add to her collection. As a young high school graduate, Limbaugh was accepted into Central Michigan University to study to be an orthodontist, but his college days ended after he got a job at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant, Mich., and began a lifelong career in the gaming industry. That career brought him to a small rental house on E Street in Davis and a job working on slot machines at the Cache Creek Casino Resort in nearby Brooks. Digital Access for only $0.99 For the most comprehensive local coverage, subscribe today. Until Jan. 10, Limbaugh apparently led an unremarkable life, an only child who grew up with divorced parents, a 48-year-old bachelor who left virtually no trace of his life in online databases or local newspapers. Kevin Limbaugh, 48, seen in a booking photo related to September incident at Cache Creek that resulted in a misdemeanor conviction for battery. Yolo County Sheriff's Office Then, for reasons even those who were once closest to him cannot fathom, Limbaugh went on a shooting spree in downtown Davis, ambushing rookie police Officer Natalie Corona and shooting up his neighborhood before killing himself inside his home. I dont think youre going to figure out how this ever came about to happen, his father, Rodney Limbaugh, said in a brief telephone interview last week from his Michigan home. It sounds like he just flipped. Sacramento County Sheriffs detectives, who have taken over the investigation of the shooting, are still examining what little evidence Limbaugh left behind, including the two semiautomatic handguns he used in his rampage. Police said Limbaugh used a .45-caliber and 9 mm, both weapons he was prohibited from possessing because of a September battery charge stemming from a late-night incident at Cache Creek during which he sucker punched a co-worker. As a result of that case, Limbaugh was ordered to surrender a black .22-caliber Bushmaster AR-15 rifle he owned. California Department of Justice records show Kevin Limbaugh agreed to surrender a .223-caliber Bushmaster AR-15 rifle in November. Detectives still are researching how Limbaugh obtained the handguns. But the fact he owned any firearms and used them to randomly gun down a 22-year-old police officer stunned people who grew up with him. He wasnt anything like that, said Jennifer Wells, his high school sweetheart in Owosso, Mich., a town of about 15,000 residents 25 miles west of Flint. He never talked about guns with me. I never pictured him to be the type to have guns. Wells, 48, remembers Limbaugh as kind of quiet, laid back. He didnt get into trouble in school, he was well-dressed, very handsome, she said. He was a gentleman to me. Wells said Limbaughs parents divorced when he was a young boy, and that he split his time living with his mother in the summers in Florida and in Michigan with his father during the school year. He was smart, he was like an A student, maybe some Bs, she said. But he was very smart, and he got accepted into CMU and was going to be an orthodontist. The two dated for nearly two years, she said, starting when he was 16 and she was 15. Jennifer Wells and then-boyfriend Kevin Limbaugh in a July 1986 photo while the two were high school students in Michigan. Courtesy Jennifer Wells We were young, but we were young and in love, she said. Wed go to the movies. He lived two blocks from me, so we would spend a lot of time together. Wed walk home from school, sometimes Id go to his house or hed go to mine. Wells recalls Limbaugh as bashful, and a photo taken during her 16th birthday party shows Limbaugh turning away from the camera and holding a hand over his face. On the table, partygoers are sitting around a bouquet of pink flowers and a balloon, one of the gifts Limbaugh brought for Wells. He came to my Sweet 16 birthday party, Wells said. I collected teddy bears, and he brought me a large one. I had it till about three years ago. A puppy thought it was a toy and got it and tore it up. Wells and another childhood friend recalled Limbaugh growing up in a strict household where his father, a salesman, traveled frequently. His dad was real strict with him, said Doug Skutt, a cousin of Limbaughs who grew up with him. When he sat down to eat he had to sit exactly straight up. Limbaugh and his father had a falling out, Skutt said, and Rodney Limbaugh acknowledged that he had spoken to his son only rarely over the years after a family split convinced Kevin Limbaugh to only keep track of his mothers side of the family. I havent talked to him in quite a while, Rodney Limbaugh said. Last time I knew, he was in Bakersfield. Wells and Limbaughs father both said he never exhibited signs of mental illness, or anything that could explain the bizarre, typewritten note he left behind on his pillow before he shot himself in the head after police surrounded his home. The note accused Davis police of bombarding him for years with ultra sonic waves and said, I cant live this way anymore. The letter Davis Police say Kevin Douglas Limbaugh left on the bed of his rental home after he gunned down Davis Police Officer Natalie Corona. Davis Police Department The note was signed Citizen Kevin Limbaugh. Davis police said they have no record of Limbaugh ever complaining to them about sonic waves. The note and Limbaughs rampage mystifies Wells. I cant put my head around this, that he did this, she said. It doesnt make sense. Wells has been married for 28 years and said she still wanted to stay in contact with Limbaugh over the years, but had little luck finding any details about him online. In 1995 or 1996, she said, she got Limbaughs phone number from his uncle and called him for a brief chat. We talked briefly, she said. I told him I was married, that I had a son. I think I kind of broke his heart. Wells said that was the last time she talked to Limbaugh, or heard anything about him. Then, on Jan. 20, 10 days after the shooting, she says a premonition woke her up at 3 a.m. and she thought of Limbaugh. Id been trying to find him for the longest time but I could not find any mention of him at all, she said. Im like, you know what, Im just going to put his name in there. So I Googled his name and I could not believe what I was seeing. All of a sudden Im reading all of this and Im thinking, It cant be the same guy, it just cant. Wells and Skutt said they both are devastated for the Corona family, and that they wanted to discuss Limbaughs past to give people a sense of what he was like when they knew him. Im so sorry for Ms. Corona, it just breaks my heart, Wells said. SHARE COPY LINK | Kevin Limbaugh, 48, went on a shooting spree in downtown Davis, California, on Jan. 10. He ambushed rookie police Officer Natalie Corona and shot up his neighborhood before killing himself inside his home. Limbaugh was an only child who grew up with divorced parents, a bachelor who left virtually no trace of his life in online databases or local newspapers. | bart | 2 | https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article225054545.html | 0.184381 |
Can researchers bring a brain-stimulation remedy for depression out of clinics and into the home? | Open this photo in gallery Julie Marriott undergoes repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment at Toronto's Krembil Research Institute. She commutes from the Hamilton area to treat her depression, which she has had for around 30 years. The bulky equipment and prohibitive cost of the procedure make it out of reach for many Canadians. Fred Lum Its safe, its effective, and its been approved by Health Canada for treating depression since 2002. Yet, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) a non-invasive brain stimulation treatment that brings relief to patients who do not respond to antidepressants remains out of reach for most Canadians because most provinces dont fund it, and the cost at private clinics can be out of reach. In an effort to make it more efficient, cost-effective and accessible, a team of Canadian researchers investigated a new method of administering rTMS that makes treatment more than 10 times faster. In a large, landmark study published in the journal The Lancet last year, they showed that by using a different pattern of currents, rTMS could be just as effectively delivered in, shorter, considerably cheaper three-minute sessions, instead of the standard 37 minutes. Now Dr. Jonathan Downar, who is a scientist at the Krembil Research Institute at Torontos University Health Network, wants to take this work another step further. He believes that if rTMS can be safely, cheaply and effectively self-administered by patients at home, many more will be able to receive the treatment. Story continues below advertisement Open this photo in gallery Dr. Jonathan Downar demonstrates the rTMS with Ms. Marriott. Fred Lum During a typical session at a clinic, the patient sits back in a chair, while a doctor or technician positions a magnetic coil against his or her forehead. The coil generates a magnetic field strong enough to induce currents in targeted areas of the brain to regulate brain circuits that are not working properly. Roughly 30 per cent of patients with depression do not respond to antidepressants. But with rTMS, about 50 per cent see a significant reduction in their symptoms, including 30 per cent who achieve remission. Patients typically need 20 to 30 sessions, as well as periodic follow-up booster sessions, since their symptoms tend to return after several months. Dr. Downar is looking to study whether a portable rTMS device that is on the market and already approved by Health Canada can produce the same effect on patients at home as the ones used in clinics. (He declined to name the device to avoid promoting the manufacturer.) He suggests that if his clinic were to issue the devices to patients and show them how to administer rTMS on themselves, it would save them from having technicians or doctors deliver the treatment. Plus, since patients can often go months between courses of treatment, the clinic could lend out the devices temporarily, so that multiple patients could use the same one. If it works, he believes the cost of rTMS treatment could be further reduced to less than $5 per session. Health Canada-approved home brain stimulation that you can get from your doctor is coming, says Dr. Downar, co-director of the University Health Network rTMS clinic, though he cautions, it is at least five years away. Health professionals currently advise against people using any type of brain stimulation on their own without expert guidance. For Julie Marriott, 69, the prospect of avoiding the long daily drive from her home in Ancaster, Ont., to Toronto for treatment and some day being able to administer it in the comfort of her own home, would be a life-changer. In the meantime, Dr. Downar and his colleagues say rTMS could be made widely available to Canadians who need it now, if only it were publicly funded. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement RTMS is only publicly covered in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon and at certain Alberta Health Services centres. According to Albertas Ministry of Health, publicly funded treatment will be available in Edmonton as of this January, and it will be available in Calgary later this year. But Canadians suffering from treatment-resistant depression are out of luck if they live outside major cities, or are unable to afford the treatment at the few private clinics that offer it. (Using the three-minute version, a full course of treatment costs approximately $1,500, compared with $3,000 for a standard course.) We need to level the playing field here a bit, and provide access [to rTMS] across the country, says Dr. Fidel Vila-Rodriguez, director of the non-invasive neurostimulation therapies laboratory at the University of British Columbia. In B.C., he says his clinic, which relies on research grants, is the only site in the province to offer rTMS at no cost to patients. Although rTMS was offered in Victoria from October, 2016, to March, 2017, that program was halted because the treatment is not a publicly funded health care service in B.C., a spokesperson for B.C. 's Island Health, formerly known as the Vancouver Island Health Authority, said in an e-mail. Encouraged by the results of The Lancet study, however, Dr. Vila-Rodriguez, who was a co-author, says he made a submission to the B.C. Health Technology Assessment committee in December, suggesting that it review rTMS for treating depression. The committee is responsible for making recommendations about health services and medical devices to the Ministry of Health. Ontarios health technology assessment committee recommended publicly funding rTMS in 2016. However, the province has yet to cover the treatment. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care said the ministry is continuing to review the provision of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in the province. In Toronto, Dr. Daniel Blumberger, the lead author of The Lancet study, says it is important for governments to consider funding rTMS, since it can prevent patients from requiring other treatments, like electroconvulsive therapy, which involves putting a patient under general anaesthetic and inducing a seizure. Electroconvulsive therapy also has the potential for more side effects. Story continues below advertisement At the end of the day, the investment [in rTMS] could lead to very good returns in the long term by getting more people back to work, getting more people better, and reducing the societal cost of treatment-resistant depression, says Dr. Blumberger, medical head and co-director of the Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Once people get into that cycle of not getting better, its harder to get them out and the costs increase exponentially. Dr. Downar points out that rTMS is covered across the U.S. by Medicare, the national publicly-funded insurance program. And based on the Canadian findings in The Lancet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved of the three-minute theta burst form of rTMS in August, allowing U.S. doctors to see many more patients. It would be nice if Canadian taxpayer funded research actually led to better access for Canadians, he says. | Brain-stimulation treatment for depression is out of reach for many Canadians. Canadian researchers are investigating a new method of administering it. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-can-researchers-bring-a-brain-stimulation-remedy-for-depression-out-of/ | 0.131143 |
Can researchers bring a brain-stimulation remedy for depression out of clinics and into the home? | Open this photo in gallery Julie Marriott undergoes repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment at Toronto's Krembil Research Institute. She commutes from the Hamilton area to treat her depression, which she has had for around 30 years. The bulky equipment and prohibitive cost of the procedure make it out of reach for many Canadians. Fred Lum Its safe, its effective, and its been approved by Health Canada for treating depression since 2002. Yet, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) a non-invasive brain stimulation treatment that brings relief to patients who do not respond to antidepressants remains out of reach for most Canadians because most provinces dont fund it, and the cost at private clinics can be out of reach. In an effort to make it more efficient, cost-effective and accessible, a team of Canadian researchers investigated a new method of administering rTMS that makes treatment more than 10 times faster. In a large, landmark study published in the journal The Lancet last year, they showed that by using a different pattern of currents, rTMS could be just as effectively delivered in, shorter, considerably cheaper three-minute sessions, instead of the standard 37 minutes. Now Dr. Jonathan Downar, who is a scientist at the Krembil Research Institute at Torontos University Health Network, wants to take this work another step further. He believes that if rTMS can be safely, cheaply and effectively self-administered by patients at home, many more will be able to receive the treatment. Story continues below advertisement Open this photo in gallery Dr. Jonathan Downar demonstrates the rTMS with Ms. Marriott. Fred Lum During a typical session at a clinic, the patient sits back in a chair, while a doctor or technician positions a magnetic coil against his or her forehead. The coil generates a magnetic field strong enough to induce currents in targeted areas of the brain to regulate brain circuits that are not working properly. Roughly 30 per cent of patients with depression do not respond to antidepressants. But with rTMS, about 50 per cent see a significant reduction in their symptoms, including 30 per cent who achieve remission. Patients typically need 20 to 30 sessions, as well as periodic follow-up booster sessions, since their symptoms tend to return after several months. Dr. Downar is looking to study whether a portable rTMS device that is on the market and already approved by Health Canada can produce the same effect on patients at home as the ones used in clinics. (He declined to name the device to avoid promoting the manufacturer.) He suggests that if his clinic were to issue the devices to patients and show them how to administer rTMS on themselves, it would save them from having technicians or doctors deliver the treatment. Plus, since patients can often go months between courses of treatment, the clinic could lend out the devices temporarily, so that multiple patients could use the same one. If it works, he believes the cost of rTMS treatment could be further reduced to less than $5 per session. Health Canada-approved home brain stimulation that you can get from your doctor is coming, says Dr. Downar, co-director of the University Health Network rTMS clinic, though he cautions, it is at least five years away. Health professionals currently advise against people using any type of brain stimulation on their own without expert guidance. For Julie Marriott, 69, the prospect of avoiding the long daily drive from her home in Ancaster, Ont., to Toronto for treatment and some day being able to administer it in the comfort of her own home, would be a life-changer. In the meantime, Dr. Downar and his colleagues say rTMS could be made widely available to Canadians who need it now, if only it were publicly funded. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement RTMS is only publicly covered in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon and at certain Alberta Health Services centres. According to Albertas Ministry of Health, publicly funded treatment will be available in Edmonton as of this January, and it will be available in Calgary later this year. But Canadians suffering from treatment-resistant depression are out of luck if they live outside major cities, or are unable to afford the treatment at the few private clinics that offer it. (Using the three-minute version, a full course of treatment costs approximately $1,500, compared with $3,000 for a standard course.) We need to level the playing field here a bit, and provide access [to rTMS] across the country, says Dr. Fidel Vila-Rodriguez, director of the non-invasive neurostimulation therapies laboratory at the University of British Columbia. In B.C., he says his clinic, which relies on research grants, is the only site in the province to offer rTMS at no cost to patients. Although rTMS was offered in Victoria from October, 2016, to March, 2017, that program was halted because the treatment is not a publicly funded health care service in B.C., a spokesperson for B.C. 's Island Health, formerly known as the Vancouver Island Health Authority, said in an e-mail. Encouraged by the results of The Lancet study, however, Dr. Vila-Rodriguez, who was a co-author, says he made a submission to the B.C. Health Technology Assessment committee in December, suggesting that it review rTMS for treating depression. The committee is responsible for making recommendations about health services and medical devices to the Ministry of Health. Ontarios health technology assessment committee recommended publicly funding rTMS in 2016. However, the province has yet to cover the treatment. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care said the ministry is continuing to review the provision of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in the province. In Toronto, Dr. Daniel Blumberger, the lead author of The Lancet study, says it is important for governments to consider funding rTMS, since it can prevent patients from requiring other treatments, like electroconvulsive therapy, which involves putting a patient under general anaesthetic and inducing a seizure. Electroconvulsive therapy also has the potential for more side effects. Story continues below advertisement At the end of the day, the investment [in rTMS] could lead to very good returns in the long term by getting more people back to work, getting more people better, and reducing the societal cost of treatment-resistant depression, says Dr. Blumberger, medical head and co-director of the Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Once people get into that cycle of not getting better, its harder to get them out and the costs increase exponentially. Dr. Downar points out that rTMS is covered across the U.S. by Medicare, the national publicly-funded insurance program. And based on the Canadian findings in The Lancet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved of the three-minute theta burst form of rTMS in August, allowing U.S. doctors to see many more patients. It would be nice if Canadian taxpayer funded research actually led to better access for Canadians, he says. | Brain-stimulation treatment for depression is out of reach for many Canadians. Canadian researchers are investigating a new method of administering rTMS that makes treatment more than 10 times faster. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-can-researchers-bring-a-brain-stimulation-remedy-for-depression-out-of/ | 0.155197 |
Can researchers bring a brain-stimulation remedy for depression out of clinics and into the home? | Open this photo in gallery Julie Marriott undergoes repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) treatment at Toronto's Krembil Research Institute. She commutes from the Hamilton area to treat her depression, which she has had for around 30 years. The bulky equipment and prohibitive cost of the procedure make it out of reach for many Canadians. Fred Lum Its safe, its effective, and its been approved by Health Canada for treating depression since 2002. Yet, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) a non-invasive brain stimulation treatment that brings relief to patients who do not respond to antidepressants remains out of reach for most Canadians because most provinces dont fund it, and the cost at private clinics can be out of reach. In an effort to make it more efficient, cost-effective and accessible, a team of Canadian researchers investigated a new method of administering rTMS that makes treatment more than 10 times faster. In a large, landmark study published in the journal The Lancet last year, they showed that by using a different pattern of currents, rTMS could be just as effectively delivered in, shorter, considerably cheaper three-minute sessions, instead of the standard 37 minutes. Now Dr. Jonathan Downar, who is a scientist at the Krembil Research Institute at Torontos University Health Network, wants to take this work another step further. He believes that if rTMS can be safely, cheaply and effectively self-administered by patients at home, many more will be able to receive the treatment. Story continues below advertisement Open this photo in gallery Dr. Jonathan Downar demonstrates the rTMS with Ms. Marriott. Fred Lum During a typical session at a clinic, the patient sits back in a chair, while a doctor or technician positions a magnetic coil against his or her forehead. The coil generates a magnetic field strong enough to induce currents in targeted areas of the brain to regulate brain circuits that are not working properly. Roughly 30 per cent of patients with depression do not respond to antidepressants. But with rTMS, about 50 per cent see a significant reduction in their symptoms, including 30 per cent who achieve remission. Patients typically need 20 to 30 sessions, as well as periodic follow-up booster sessions, since their symptoms tend to return after several months. Dr. Downar is looking to study whether a portable rTMS device that is on the market and already approved by Health Canada can produce the same effect on patients at home as the ones used in clinics. (He declined to name the device to avoid promoting the manufacturer.) He suggests that if his clinic were to issue the devices to patients and show them how to administer rTMS on themselves, it would save them from having technicians or doctors deliver the treatment. Plus, since patients can often go months between courses of treatment, the clinic could lend out the devices temporarily, so that multiple patients could use the same one. If it works, he believes the cost of rTMS treatment could be further reduced to less than $5 per session. Health Canada-approved home brain stimulation that you can get from your doctor is coming, says Dr. Downar, co-director of the University Health Network rTMS clinic, though he cautions, it is at least five years away. Health professionals currently advise against people using any type of brain stimulation on their own without expert guidance. For Julie Marriott, 69, the prospect of avoiding the long daily drive from her home in Ancaster, Ont., to Toronto for treatment and some day being able to administer it in the comfort of her own home, would be a life-changer. In the meantime, Dr. Downar and his colleagues say rTMS could be made widely available to Canadians who need it now, if only it were publicly funded. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement RTMS is only publicly covered in Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon and at certain Alberta Health Services centres. According to Albertas Ministry of Health, publicly funded treatment will be available in Edmonton as of this January, and it will be available in Calgary later this year. But Canadians suffering from treatment-resistant depression are out of luck if they live outside major cities, or are unable to afford the treatment at the few private clinics that offer it. (Using the three-minute version, a full course of treatment costs approximately $1,500, compared with $3,000 for a standard course.) We need to level the playing field here a bit, and provide access [to rTMS] across the country, says Dr. Fidel Vila-Rodriguez, director of the non-invasive neurostimulation therapies laboratory at the University of British Columbia. In B.C., he says his clinic, which relies on research grants, is the only site in the province to offer rTMS at no cost to patients. Although rTMS was offered in Victoria from October, 2016, to March, 2017, that program was halted because the treatment is not a publicly funded health care service in B.C., a spokesperson for B.C. 's Island Health, formerly known as the Vancouver Island Health Authority, said in an e-mail. Encouraged by the results of The Lancet study, however, Dr. Vila-Rodriguez, who was a co-author, says he made a submission to the B.C. Health Technology Assessment committee in December, suggesting that it review rTMS for treating depression. The committee is responsible for making recommendations about health services and medical devices to the Ministry of Health. Ontarios health technology assessment committee recommended publicly funding rTMS in 2016. However, the province has yet to cover the treatment. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care said the ministry is continuing to review the provision of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in the province. In Toronto, Dr. Daniel Blumberger, the lead author of The Lancet study, says it is important for governments to consider funding rTMS, since it can prevent patients from requiring other treatments, like electroconvulsive therapy, which involves putting a patient under general anaesthetic and inducing a seizure. Electroconvulsive therapy also has the potential for more side effects. Story continues below advertisement At the end of the day, the investment [in rTMS] could lead to very good returns in the long term by getting more people back to work, getting more people better, and reducing the societal cost of treatment-resistant depression, says Dr. Blumberger, medical head and co-director of the Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Once people get into that cycle of not getting better, its harder to get them out and the costs increase exponentially. Dr. Downar points out that rTMS is covered across the U.S. by Medicare, the national publicly-funded insurance program. And based on the Canadian findings in The Lancet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved of the three-minute theta burst form of rTMS in August, allowing U.S. doctors to see many more patients. It would be nice if Canadian taxpayer funded research actually led to better access for Canadians, he says. | Brain-stimulation treatment for depression is out of reach for many Canadians. Canadian researchers are investigating a new method of administering rTMS that makes treatment more than 10 times faster. Dr. Jonathan Downar is looking to study whether a portable rT MS device can produce the same effect on patients at home as the ones used in clinics. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-can-researchers-bring-a-brain-stimulation-remedy-for-depression-out-of/ | 0.545259 |
Should the day after the Super Bowl be a national holiday? | The Super Bowl is one of the most celebrated events in the United States, but some may regret a few game day decisions once the work week starts. Whether fans celebrated or grieved too hard, many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. With an estimated $3 billion in lost productivity for employers, it is pointless to force employees to go to work. Still, adults should make adult decisions--like not overindulging in celebration. PERSPECTIVES The people want it. HR wants it. Politicians want it. It's time to make the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday. With companies losing billions of dollars from workers calling in "sick," it's pointless to even open up shop. The Super Bowl is an annual celebration many Americans take part in. Expecting them to be productive the day after is unfair. The key to a good business is a happy and productive workforce. If companies want happy workers, they should allow their employees to recover after a game that nearly a third of the United States watches. Let's make the day after the Super Bowl a federal holiday! That is new level lazy, folks. The Super Bowl is just a football game. Just because people decided to make poor decisions regarding alcohol and food consumption doesn't mean they should not be held accountable. Maybe instead of having that extra greasy sausage or beverage, you could show a little self-control. Production shouldn't be sacrificed because of bad choices. Get off your butt and work. Not only that, the government loses about $200 million a day on federal holidays. There is no way the government is sacrificing that because of football. This Is Why "Super Bowl Monday" Isn't A Holiday & Yes, We're All Mad About It The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | Many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. | bart | 0 | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/02/should_the_day_after_the_super_1.html | 0.147065 |
Should the day after the Super Bowl be a national holiday? | The Super Bowl is one of the most celebrated events in the United States, but some may regret a few game day decisions once the work week starts. Whether fans celebrated or grieved too hard, many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. With an estimated $3 billion in lost productivity for employers, it is pointless to force employees to go to work. Still, adults should make adult decisions--like not overindulging in celebration. PERSPECTIVES The people want it. HR wants it. Politicians want it. It's time to make the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday. With companies losing billions of dollars from workers calling in "sick," it's pointless to even open up shop. The Super Bowl is an annual celebration many Americans take part in. Expecting them to be productive the day after is unfair. The key to a good business is a happy and productive workforce. If companies want happy workers, they should allow their employees to recover after a game that nearly a third of the United States watches. Let's make the day after the Super Bowl a federal holiday! That is new level lazy, folks. The Super Bowl is just a football game. Just because people decided to make poor decisions regarding alcohol and food consumption doesn't mean they should not be held accountable. Maybe instead of having that extra greasy sausage or beverage, you could show a little self-control. Production shouldn't be sacrificed because of bad choices. Get off your butt and work. Not only that, the government loses about $200 million a day on federal holidays. There is no way the government is sacrificing that because of football. This Is Why "Super Bowl Monday" Isn't A Holiday & Yes, We're All Mad About It The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | Many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. With an estimated $3 billion in lost productivity for employers, it is pointless to force employees to go to work. The Super Bowl is an annual celebration many Americans take part in. | bart | 1 | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/02/should_the_day_after_the_super_1.html | 0.200892 |
Should the day after the Super Bowl be a national holiday? | The Super Bowl is one of the most celebrated events in the United States, but some may regret a few game day decisions once the work week starts. Whether fans celebrated or grieved too hard, many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. With an estimated $3 billion in lost productivity for employers, it is pointless to force employees to go to work. Still, adults should make adult decisions--like not overindulging in celebration. PERSPECTIVES The people want it. HR wants it. Politicians want it. It's time to make the day after the Super Bowl a national holiday. With companies losing billions of dollars from workers calling in "sick," it's pointless to even open up shop. The Super Bowl is an annual celebration many Americans take part in. Expecting them to be productive the day after is unfair. The key to a good business is a happy and productive workforce. If companies want happy workers, they should allow their employees to recover after a game that nearly a third of the United States watches. Let's make the day after the Super Bowl a federal holiday! That is new level lazy, folks. The Super Bowl is just a football game. Just because people decided to make poor decisions regarding alcohol and food consumption doesn't mean they should not be held accountable. Maybe instead of having that extra greasy sausage or beverage, you could show a little self-control. Production shouldn't be sacrificed because of bad choices. Get off your butt and work. Not only that, the government loses about $200 million a day on federal holidays. There is no way the government is sacrificing that because of football. This Is Why "Super Bowl Monday" Isn't A Holiday & Yes, We're All Mad About It The Tylt is focused on debates and conversations around news, current events and pop culture. We provide our community with the opportunity to share their opinions and vote on topics that matter most to them. We actively engage the community and present meaningful data on the debates and conversations as they progress. The Tylt is a place where your opinion counts, literally. The Tylt is an Advance Local Media, LLC property. Join us on Twitter @TheTylt, on Instagram @TheTylt or on Facebook, we'd love to hear what you have to say. | Many feel the day after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday. With an estimated $3 billion in lost productivity for employers, it is pointless to force employees to go to work. The Super Bowl is just a football game. Production shouldn't be sacrificed because of bad choices. | bart | 2 | https://www.oregonlive.com/tylt/2019/02/should_the_day_after_the_super_1.html | 0.199375 |
Will General Motors' Earnings Be a Blowout or a Miss? | General Motors (NYSE: GM) will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 earnings before markets open on Wednesday, Feb. 6. What Wall Street expects Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter, down from $1.65 per share in the year-ago period. They expect GM to report revenue of $36.48 billion, down from $37.7 billion a year ago. How GM's sales fared in the fourth quarter GM's U.S. sales fell 2.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. While sales of many of GM's sedans fell sharply year-over-year, sales of its big-selling Chevrolet Equinox and Traverse crossovers rose 26.4% and 14.1%, respectively. Those increases suggest that GM may be successfully moving many of its former sedan customers to (more profitable) crossovers. A dark red 2019 Chevrolet Traverse, a 7 passenger crossover SUV. More Nearly all of GM's crossovers were new in the last couple of years, and most are selling very well. Chevrolet Traverse sales rose 14% in the fourth quarter. Image source: General Motors. GM's full-size pickup sales fell 1% in the fourth quarter, but note that GM was selling a mix of highly profitable all-new 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups along with deeply discounted outgoing 2018 models. The proportion of 2019 to 2018 pickups grew as the quarter unfolded, meaning that while GM's pickup sales may have been down slightly, its pickup profits may well have risen significantly year over year. The story was different in China, where the overall market for new vehicles came under intense pressure toward the end of 2018. GM's sales in China fell 25.4% in the fourth quarter -- and while that's a disturbing drop, several of GM's mass-market rivals fared much worse. The good news, such as it is, is that the market for luxury vehicles in China held up somewhat better than the mainstream market in the fourth quarter. Sales at GM's luxury Cadillac brand were up 17.2%, beating out market leader Audi's 0.4% gain. What to expect from GM's earnings report At an investor briefing in January, CFO Dhivya Suryadevara said that GM's full-year adjusted earnings per share and adjusted automotive free cash flow will both be above the guidance she gave in October, when she said that GM expected: Adjusted earnings per share between $5.80 and $6.20. 2018 result: $6.62. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of "around $4 billion." 2018 result: $5.2 billion. GM's "adjusted" figures exclude the effects of one-time items, and its "automotive" figures exclude results related to subsidiaries GM Financial and Cruise Automation. Through the first three quarters of 2018, GM generated: Adjusted earnings per share of $5.11. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of negative-$310 million. If we subtract those from the full-year guidance, assuming that we should be at least a bit above the ranges given, we learn that we should expect adjusted earnings per share of at least $1.10, to get a full-year total of $6.21, a penny above the guidance range, and adjusted automotive free cash flow of more than $4.31 billion, for a full-year total of over $4 billion. Suryadevara said the result was driven by "strength across every operating segment," that North America finished the year particularly strong, that China performed well despite difficult market conditions, and that GM's financial-services subsidiary also delivered a good result. If GM can deliver that cash flow -- and it's not at all implausible, given that GM delivered $4.2 billion in adjusted automotive free cash flow in the year-ago quarter -- then Wall Street's consensus estimate for adjusted earnings per share of $1.30 probably isn't far off. It might even be a bit low. More From The Motley Fool John Rosevear owns shares of General Motors. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | Analysts expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter. | pegasus | 0 | https://news.yahoo.com/general-motors-apos-earnings-blowout-140300052.html | 0.128175 |
Will General Motors' Earnings Be a Blowout or a Miss? | General Motors (NYSE: GM) will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 earnings before markets open on Wednesday, Feb. 6. What Wall Street expects Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter, down from $1.65 per share in the year-ago period. They expect GM to report revenue of $36.48 billion, down from $37.7 billion a year ago. How GM's sales fared in the fourth quarter GM's U.S. sales fell 2.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. While sales of many of GM's sedans fell sharply year-over-year, sales of its big-selling Chevrolet Equinox and Traverse crossovers rose 26.4% and 14.1%, respectively. Those increases suggest that GM may be successfully moving many of its former sedan customers to (more profitable) crossovers. A dark red 2019 Chevrolet Traverse, a 7 passenger crossover SUV. More Nearly all of GM's crossovers were new in the last couple of years, and most are selling very well. Chevrolet Traverse sales rose 14% in the fourth quarter. Image source: General Motors. GM's full-size pickup sales fell 1% in the fourth quarter, but note that GM was selling a mix of highly profitable all-new 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups along with deeply discounted outgoing 2018 models. The proportion of 2019 to 2018 pickups grew as the quarter unfolded, meaning that while GM's pickup sales may have been down slightly, its pickup profits may well have risen significantly year over year. The story was different in China, where the overall market for new vehicles came under intense pressure toward the end of 2018. GM's sales in China fell 25.4% in the fourth quarter -- and while that's a disturbing drop, several of GM's mass-market rivals fared much worse. The good news, such as it is, is that the market for luxury vehicles in China held up somewhat better than the mainstream market in the fourth quarter. Sales at GM's luxury Cadillac brand were up 17.2%, beating out market leader Audi's 0.4% gain. What to expect from GM's earnings report At an investor briefing in January, CFO Dhivya Suryadevara said that GM's full-year adjusted earnings per share and adjusted automotive free cash flow will both be above the guidance she gave in October, when she said that GM expected: Adjusted earnings per share between $5.80 and $6.20. 2018 result: $6.62. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of "around $4 billion." 2018 result: $5.2 billion. GM's "adjusted" figures exclude the effects of one-time items, and its "automotive" figures exclude results related to subsidiaries GM Financial and Cruise Automation. Through the first three quarters of 2018, GM generated: Adjusted earnings per share of $5.11. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of negative-$310 million. If we subtract those from the full-year guidance, assuming that we should be at least a bit above the ranges given, we learn that we should expect adjusted earnings per share of at least $1.10, to get a full-year total of $6.21, a penny above the guidance range, and adjusted automotive free cash flow of more than $4.31 billion, for a full-year total of over $4 billion. Suryadevara said the result was driven by "strength across every operating segment," that North America finished the year particularly strong, that China performed well despite difficult market conditions, and that GM's financial-services subsidiary also delivered a good result. If GM can deliver that cash flow -- and it's not at all implausible, given that GM delivered $4.2 billion in adjusted automotive free cash flow in the year-ago quarter -- then Wall Street's consensus estimate for adjusted earnings per share of $1.30 probably isn't far off. It might even be a bit low. More From The Motley Fool John Rosevear owns shares of General Motors. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | General Motors will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 earnings before markets open on Wednesday, Feb. 6. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter. | bart | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/general-motors-apos-earnings-blowout-140300052.html | 0.160152 |
Will General Motors' Earnings Be a Blowout or a Miss? | General Motors (NYSE: GM) will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 earnings before markets open on Wednesday, Feb. 6. What Wall Street expects Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter, down from $1.65 per share in the year-ago period. They expect GM to report revenue of $36.48 billion, down from $37.7 billion a year ago. How GM's sales fared in the fourth quarter GM's U.S. sales fell 2.7% in the fourth quarter of 2018, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. While sales of many of GM's sedans fell sharply year-over-year, sales of its big-selling Chevrolet Equinox and Traverse crossovers rose 26.4% and 14.1%, respectively. Those increases suggest that GM may be successfully moving many of its former sedan customers to (more profitable) crossovers. A dark red 2019 Chevrolet Traverse, a 7 passenger crossover SUV. More Nearly all of GM's crossovers were new in the last couple of years, and most are selling very well. Chevrolet Traverse sales rose 14% in the fourth quarter. Image source: General Motors. GM's full-size pickup sales fell 1% in the fourth quarter, but note that GM was selling a mix of highly profitable all-new 2019 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups along with deeply discounted outgoing 2018 models. The proportion of 2019 to 2018 pickups grew as the quarter unfolded, meaning that while GM's pickup sales may have been down slightly, its pickup profits may well have risen significantly year over year. The story was different in China, where the overall market for new vehicles came under intense pressure toward the end of 2018. GM's sales in China fell 25.4% in the fourth quarter -- and while that's a disturbing drop, several of GM's mass-market rivals fared much worse. The good news, such as it is, is that the market for luxury vehicles in China held up somewhat better than the mainstream market in the fourth quarter. Sales at GM's luxury Cadillac brand were up 17.2%, beating out market leader Audi's 0.4% gain. What to expect from GM's earnings report At an investor briefing in January, CFO Dhivya Suryadevara said that GM's full-year adjusted earnings per share and adjusted automotive free cash flow will both be above the guidance she gave in October, when she said that GM expected: Adjusted earnings per share between $5.80 and $6.20. 2018 result: $6.62. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of "around $4 billion." 2018 result: $5.2 billion. GM's "adjusted" figures exclude the effects of one-time items, and its "automotive" figures exclude results related to subsidiaries GM Financial and Cruise Automation. Through the first three quarters of 2018, GM generated: Adjusted earnings per share of $5.11. Adjusted automotive free cash flow of negative-$310 million. If we subtract those from the full-year guidance, assuming that we should be at least a bit above the ranges given, we learn that we should expect adjusted earnings per share of at least $1.10, to get a full-year total of $6.21, a penny above the guidance range, and adjusted automotive free cash flow of more than $4.31 billion, for a full-year total of over $4 billion. Suryadevara said the result was driven by "strength across every operating segment," that North America finished the year particularly strong, that China performed well despite difficult market conditions, and that GM's financial-services subsidiary also delivered a good result. If GM can deliver that cash flow -- and it's not at all implausible, given that GM delivered $4.2 billion in adjusted automotive free cash flow in the year-ago quarter -- then Wall Street's consensus estimate for adjusted earnings per share of $1.30 probably isn't far off. It might even be a bit low. More From The Motley Fool John Rosevear owns shares of General Motors. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | General Motors will report its fourth-quarter and full-year 2018 earnings before markets open on Wednesday, Feb. 6. Analysts expect GM to report adjusted earnings per share of $1.22 for the fourth quarter. GM's full-size pickup sales fell 1% in fourth quarter, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/general-motors-apos-earnings-blowout-140300052.html | 0.183211 |
What's the Difference Between a Tax Deduction and a Tax Credit? | If you're not familiar with the difference between tax deductions and tax credits, you won't know which represents the better deal for your tax return. They both reduce the amount of your hard-earned cash that goes to the government, but in different ways. Below, I'll explain how the mechanics of tax deductions and tax credits differ, as well as walk you through some of the most popular ones. Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS, or in other words, how much money the government will consider in deciding what rate to use in taxing your income and how much cash to apply that rate to in tallying up your tax bill. If you take a $1,000 tax deduction, your taxable income for the year will be reduced by $1,000. Depending on your annual income and how many tax deductions you qualify for, you could wind up in a lower income tax bracket, resulting in the government taxing a smaller percentage of your earnings. Even if your tax deductions don't change the bracket you occupy, allowing you to be taxed at a lower rate, they can still reduce the amount you owe in tax, by reducing your taxable income. You can figure out how much you're saving by multiplying the value of the deduction by the income tax bracket you're in. For example, a $1,000 tax deduction would be worth $220 off the tax bill for someone in the 22% income tax bracket. When it comes time to do your taxes, you'll have the choice between a standard deduction and itemized deductions. The standard deduction may change from year to year and depends on your tax filing status. Individuals will get a standard deduction of $12,000 when they file their taxes for the 2018 tax year, as will married couples filing separately. Married couples filing jointly have a standard deduction of $24,000 and heads of household have a standard deduction of $18,000. These numbers are slightly higher for the elderly, blind, and disabled. It's worth noting you can't take the standard deduction and itemize deductions at the same time. You have to choose one or the other. The only time it makes sense to forego the standard deduction, instead itemizing your deductions, is when you believe the other tax deductions you qualify for exceed the value of the standard deduction. Tax-filing software will automatically calculate whether a standard deduction or itemized deductions is your better option, so you don't need to worry about choosing if you go that route. An example: For people who are self-employed and have a number of business expenses to write off, itemized deductions may make sense. Other popular tax deductions filers can write off their taxbale income include medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI), charitable contributions, state income and property taxes, and mortgage interest. Tax credits reduce the amount of taxes you owe, but instead of doing so by reducing your taxable income, tax credits reduce your actual tax liability, acting as a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill. If you qualify for a $1,000 tax credit, the total in taxes you owe will be reduced by $1,000. So to answer the question at the start of this article: You're much better off taking the $1,000 tax credit over the $1,000 tax deduction. | Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS. | bart | 0 | https://news.yahoo.com/apos-difference-between-tax-deduction-134500373.html | 0.103003 |
What's the Difference Between a Tax Deduction and a Tax Credit? | If you're not familiar with the difference between tax deductions and tax credits, you won't know which represents the better deal for your tax return. They both reduce the amount of your hard-earned cash that goes to the government, but in different ways. Below, I'll explain how the mechanics of tax deductions and tax credits differ, as well as walk you through some of the most popular ones. Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS, or in other words, how much money the government will consider in deciding what rate to use in taxing your income and how much cash to apply that rate to in tallying up your tax bill. If you take a $1,000 tax deduction, your taxable income for the year will be reduced by $1,000. Depending on your annual income and how many tax deductions you qualify for, you could wind up in a lower income tax bracket, resulting in the government taxing a smaller percentage of your earnings. Even if your tax deductions don't change the bracket you occupy, allowing you to be taxed at a lower rate, they can still reduce the amount you owe in tax, by reducing your taxable income. You can figure out how much you're saving by multiplying the value of the deduction by the income tax bracket you're in. For example, a $1,000 tax deduction would be worth $220 off the tax bill for someone in the 22% income tax bracket. When it comes time to do your taxes, you'll have the choice between a standard deduction and itemized deductions. The standard deduction may change from year to year and depends on your tax filing status. Individuals will get a standard deduction of $12,000 when they file their taxes for the 2018 tax year, as will married couples filing separately. Married couples filing jointly have a standard deduction of $24,000 and heads of household have a standard deduction of $18,000. These numbers are slightly higher for the elderly, blind, and disabled. It's worth noting you can't take the standard deduction and itemize deductions at the same time. You have to choose one or the other. The only time it makes sense to forego the standard deduction, instead itemizing your deductions, is when you believe the other tax deductions you qualify for exceed the value of the standard deduction. Tax-filing software will automatically calculate whether a standard deduction or itemized deductions is your better option, so you don't need to worry about choosing if you go that route. An example: For people who are self-employed and have a number of business expenses to write off, itemized deductions may make sense. Other popular tax deductions filers can write off their taxbale income include medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI), charitable contributions, state income and property taxes, and mortgage interest. Tax credits reduce the amount of taxes you owe, but instead of doing so by reducing your taxable income, tax credits reduce your actual tax liability, acting as a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill. If you qualify for a $1,000 tax credit, the total in taxes you owe will be reduced by $1,000. So to answer the question at the start of this article: You're much better off taking the $1,000 tax credit over the $1,000 tax deduction. | Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS. Tax credits reduce the amount of taxes you owe, but instead of doing so by reducing your taxable income, tax credits reduce your actual tax liability. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/apos-difference-between-tax-deduction-134500373.html | 0.471572 |
What's the Difference Between a Tax Deduction and a Tax Credit? | If you're not familiar with the difference between tax deductions and tax credits, you won't know which represents the better deal for your tax return. They both reduce the amount of your hard-earned cash that goes to the government, but in different ways. Below, I'll explain how the mechanics of tax deductions and tax credits differ, as well as walk you through some of the most popular ones. Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS, or in other words, how much money the government will consider in deciding what rate to use in taxing your income and how much cash to apply that rate to in tallying up your tax bill. If you take a $1,000 tax deduction, your taxable income for the year will be reduced by $1,000. Depending on your annual income and how many tax deductions you qualify for, you could wind up in a lower income tax bracket, resulting in the government taxing a smaller percentage of your earnings. Even if your tax deductions don't change the bracket you occupy, allowing you to be taxed at a lower rate, they can still reduce the amount you owe in tax, by reducing your taxable income. You can figure out how much you're saving by multiplying the value of the deduction by the income tax bracket you're in. For example, a $1,000 tax deduction would be worth $220 off the tax bill for someone in the 22% income tax bracket. When it comes time to do your taxes, you'll have the choice between a standard deduction and itemized deductions. The standard deduction may change from year to year and depends on your tax filing status. Individuals will get a standard deduction of $12,000 when they file their taxes for the 2018 tax year, as will married couples filing separately. Married couples filing jointly have a standard deduction of $24,000 and heads of household have a standard deduction of $18,000. These numbers are slightly higher for the elderly, blind, and disabled. It's worth noting you can't take the standard deduction and itemize deductions at the same time. You have to choose one or the other. The only time it makes sense to forego the standard deduction, instead itemizing your deductions, is when you believe the other tax deductions you qualify for exceed the value of the standard deduction. Tax-filing software will automatically calculate whether a standard deduction or itemized deductions is your better option, so you don't need to worry about choosing if you go that route. An example: For people who are self-employed and have a number of business expenses to write off, itemized deductions may make sense. Other popular tax deductions filers can write off their taxbale income include medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI), charitable contributions, state income and property taxes, and mortgage interest. Tax credits reduce the amount of taxes you owe, but instead of doing so by reducing your taxable income, tax credits reduce your actual tax liability, acting as a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill. If you qualify for a $1,000 tax credit, the total in taxes you owe will be reduced by $1,000. So to answer the question at the start of this article: You're much better off taking the $1,000 tax credit over the $1,000 tax deduction. | Tax deductions reduce your amount of taxable income in the eyes of the IRS. Tax credits reduce the amount of taxes you owe, but instead of doing so by reducing your taxable income, tax credits reduce your actual tax liability, acting as a dollar-for-dollar reduction of your tax bill. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/apos-difference-between-tax-deduction-134500373.html | 0.518108 |
Where Will DryShips Inc. Be in 1 Year? | DryShips Inc. (NASDAQ: DRYS) stock is up more than 40% over the past year. That showing trounces many of its shipping peers. The stock's solid run has been driven in part by improving financial performance. However, even a year from now, there's going to be one thing DryShips can't change. Here's what that is and what it means for investors. Things are looking better DryShips lost $0.85 a share in 2017, but it's on pace to be solidly in the black in 2018. Through the first nine months of the year, the shipping concern had earned roughly $0.16 per share. From that perspective, you can understand why investors have rewarded the stock with a higher price. A natural gas tanker ship at sea More Image source: Getty Images. Driving that earnings improvement was underlying strength in the company's two largest divisions. The rates DryShips was able to charge in its bulk shipping group, for example, were more than 60% higher year over year through the first nine months of 2018. Rates were more than 65% higher in the tanker business. These two businesses accounted for roughly 75% of the company's total revenue over the span. And while rates were roughly flat in the company's gas carrier fleet, it added new ships and was able to increase revenue in the division from around $3.3 million to over $31 million. DRYS Chart More DRYS data by YCharts. DryShips has clearly benefited from an upturn in the shipping business and from the expansion and diversification of its fleet. On the surface, there's a lot to like, here, and it makes sense that the stock has done quite well over the past year. A bigger-picture view However, you need to pull back a little more to see the full picture with DryShips. Go back three years, and suddenly the stock has lost virtually all of its value. The upturn over the past year is coming off of a near-total collapse in the stock price. That changes things in a big way, and one key cause of that decline isn't going away soon. That's true even if the company continues to benefit from improved shipping rates over the next year, which is far from a given in the highly cyclical and economically driven shipping business. The truth is that it doesn't really matter what happens to shipping rates from here -- DryShips isn't worth owning for most investors. The important story goes back to 2016, when the then-heavily indebted company was facing a cash crunch. CEO George Economou provided a cash infusion. It also sold shares to a third-party investor. All in, it had access to as much as $400 million dollars. | DryShips Inc. stock is up more than 40% over the past year. The shipping concern is on pace to be solidly in the black in 2018. However, the stock has lost nearly all of its value in the last three years. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/where-dryships-inc-1-131600840.html | 0.112814 |
Where Will DryShips Inc. Be in 1 Year? | DryShips Inc. (NASDAQ: DRYS) stock is up more than 40% over the past year. That showing trounces many of its shipping peers. The stock's solid run has been driven in part by improving financial performance. However, even a year from now, there's going to be one thing DryShips can't change. Here's what that is and what it means for investors. Things are looking better DryShips lost $0.85 a share in 2017, but it's on pace to be solidly in the black in 2018. Through the first nine months of the year, the shipping concern had earned roughly $0.16 per share. From that perspective, you can understand why investors have rewarded the stock with a higher price. A natural gas tanker ship at sea More Image source: Getty Images. Driving that earnings improvement was underlying strength in the company's two largest divisions. The rates DryShips was able to charge in its bulk shipping group, for example, were more than 60% higher year over year through the first nine months of 2018. Rates were more than 65% higher in the tanker business. These two businesses accounted for roughly 75% of the company's total revenue over the span. And while rates were roughly flat in the company's gas carrier fleet, it added new ships and was able to increase revenue in the division from around $3.3 million to over $31 million. DRYS Chart More DRYS data by YCharts. DryShips has clearly benefited from an upturn in the shipping business and from the expansion and diversification of its fleet. On the surface, there's a lot to like, here, and it makes sense that the stock has done quite well over the past year. A bigger-picture view However, you need to pull back a little more to see the full picture with DryShips. Go back three years, and suddenly the stock has lost virtually all of its value. The upturn over the past year is coming off of a near-total collapse in the stock price. That changes things in a big way, and one key cause of that decline isn't going away soon. That's true even if the company continues to benefit from improved shipping rates over the next year, which is far from a given in the highly cyclical and economically driven shipping business. The truth is that it doesn't really matter what happens to shipping rates from here -- DryShips isn't worth owning for most investors. The important story goes back to 2016, when the then-heavily indebted company was facing a cash crunch. CEO George Economou provided a cash infusion. It also sold shares to a third-party investor. All in, it had access to as much as $400 million dollars. | DryShips Inc. stock is up more than 40% over the past year. The shipping concern is on pace to be solidly in the black in 2018. However, the stock has lost nearly all of its value in the last three years, and that decline isn't going away soon. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/where-dryships-inc-1-131600840.html | 0.125953 |
Is niece being damaged by her parents fighting? | I see this a lot, says her 5-year-old niece of her parents arguments. DEAR CAROLYN DEAR CAROLYN: My brother and sister-in-law have two little girls, 5 and 2, and I love the four of them very much. My brother is a doctor and works many irregular and overnight shifts; my sister-in-law must necessarily manage the girls by herself a lot. My brother and sister-in-law fight frequently. Typically at very low volumes, and never ever physically, but I tend to witness at least one fight per day when I visit. During the last visit, I was coloring with my nieces in one room while their parents fought in the other. The 5-year-old looked at me and said, Well just be quiet, Auntie. I see this a lot. That broke my heart. My husband and I were in couples therapy recently, and it helped us so much something Ive shared with my brother and sister-in-law. I desperately want to suggest they begin seeing a therapist because their small children are very clearly being affected by their fights but I dont know how to do this, or if I should bring up what my niece said to me. L. DEAR L.: Ugh. You have to tell your brother what your niece said. Only a parent who is openly pro-denial wouldnt want to know. Though he might still respond to you with something short of gratitude for telling him; the two arent mutually exclusive. Anyway, as you approach this difficult task, stay focused on these three essential elements: truth, compassion and discretion. Tell your brother exactly what you witnessed, tell him privately and tell him you dont judge reminding him of your recent go-round with couples counseling. Then say youve shared your one reportable fact and are officially butting back out, unless and until he requests otherwise. DEAR CAROLYN: I met a woman through a friend, and we soon began a fun and interesting relationship. After we went out a few times, she told me she had a serious, chronic illness that makes her extremely fatigued. Now, that illness has gotten worse, and she sleeps basically all day and is awake only in the evenings. Fortunately she has enough money to support herself but as her condition has worsened, her personality has soured. I want to help, but I also didnt sign up for this. The life I had envisioned for myself and us isnt possible. Shes told me that if I leave her, it would wreck her. I have dreams and aspirations too, and she wont be able to have children or to lead a normal life. B. DEAR B.: Im sorry. Sometimes there is no good answer. There is only a bad answer, and a worse one. The bad answer is that you break up with your seriously ill girlfriend. The worse answer is that you stay with someone you dont love and have not committed to, just out of guilt. You do have some choice. You always have the prerogative to choose a path thats right for you. Just know the consequences beforehand. The consequence of breaking up will be to inflict pain on someone already in pain. This matters. The consequence of staying will be that, as long as you stay, neither of you will experience the joys of being in love, or the pervasive warmth of knowing your partner could be anywhere else but wants to be with you. These matter, too. Your only appropriate course is to see where things are going and decide accordingly. Sharp pain now, or at best dull ache always. She has choices too, by the way. She can recognize you didnt sign up for this before and arent invested enough to sign up now and lovingly set you free. | I see this a lot, says her 5-year-old niece of her parents arguments. My husband and I were in couples therapy recently, and it helped us so much. I want to suggest they begin seeing a therapist because their small children are very clearly being affected by their fights. | bart | 2 | https://www.seattletimes.com/life/is-niece-being-damaged-by-her-parents-fighting/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_all | 0.145562 |
How Does the Puppy Bowl Work? | Puppy Bowl XV is upon us. For two hours before Super Bowl LIII kicks off, the country's most adorable (and adoptable) pups will play one another in a Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff showdown on Animal Planet. Thirty-six puppies have made 2019's starting lineup, with another 55 second stringers to stand watch on the Puppy Bowl sidelines. The competition kicks off at 3 p.m. ET on Super Bowl Sunday, and we've got you covered with all the rules you need to know to follow along with the furry antics. Here's how the Puppy Bowl works: The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field in the Geico Puppy Bowl Stadium. The rules of the Puppy Bowl are rather flexible given the energy, excitement and lack of training that characterizes most of the participating players. The rules loosely resemble existing American football rules in that the goal is for a puppy to drag one of the multiple on-field chew toys across the finish line (on either side) for a touchdown. Regardless of finish line crossed, the touchdown counts as a score for whatever team the puppy belongs to. Puppies can be called for penalties including pass inter-fur-ence," unnecessary ruffness, and premature watering of the field. If a dog commits any of the aforementioned fouls, the puppy will be replaced by a second stringer on the sidelines. All participating puppies are within 12 and 21 weeks of age meet certain height and weight restrictions due to the size of the stadium. A rotating species of cheerleaders will root for their favorite ruff and fluff pups from the sidelines along with the backup team members. One dog will be crowned the MVP of the game depending on online votes from viewers. Last year's winner was Bear, an adorable hound mix from Virginia Beach, Va. A big congrats to Bear for earning #PuppyBowl XIV @BISSELLcleans MVP honors. #ad pic.twitter.com/8OLjUJUvRR Animal Planet (@AnimalPlanet) February 5, 2018 The highest scoring teamRuff or Fluffwill take home the "Lombarky Trophy," a large Petco-branded stuffed toy (and a riff on the Lombardi Trophy given to the NFL's Super Bowl champion). The Dog Bowl, a one-hour special is dedicated to older adpotable dogs, will follow the Puppy Bowl, with 21 dogs, divided into Team Paws and Team Tails and ranging in age from 2 to 15, taking the field for their own match-up. | The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field in the Geico Puppy Bowl Stadium. | bart | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-rules-scoring-penalties-explained-animal-planet | 0.1798 |
How Does the Puppy Bowl Work? | Puppy Bowl XV is upon us. For two hours before Super Bowl LIII kicks off, the country's most adorable (and adoptable) pups will play one another in a Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff showdown on Animal Planet. Thirty-six puppies have made 2019's starting lineup, with another 55 second stringers to stand watch on the Puppy Bowl sidelines. The competition kicks off at 3 p.m. ET on Super Bowl Sunday, and we've got you covered with all the rules you need to know to follow along with the furry antics. Here's how the Puppy Bowl works: The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field in the Geico Puppy Bowl Stadium. The rules of the Puppy Bowl are rather flexible given the energy, excitement and lack of training that characterizes most of the participating players. The rules loosely resemble existing American football rules in that the goal is for a puppy to drag one of the multiple on-field chew toys across the finish line (on either side) for a touchdown. Regardless of finish line crossed, the touchdown counts as a score for whatever team the puppy belongs to. Puppies can be called for penalties including pass inter-fur-ence," unnecessary ruffness, and premature watering of the field. If a dog commits any of the aforementioned fouls, the puppy will be replaced by a second stringer on the sidelines. All participating puppies are within 12 and 21 weeks of age meet certain height and weight restrictions due to the size of the stadium. A rotating species of cheerleaders will root for their favorite ruff and fluff pups from the sidelines along with the backup team members. One dog will be crowned the MVP of the game depending on online votes from viewers. Last year's winner was Bear, an adorable hound mix from Virginia Beach, Va. A big congrats to Bear for earning #PuppyBowl XIV @BISSELLcleans MVP honors. #ad pic.twitter.com/8OLjUJUvRR Animal Planet (@AnimalPlanet) February 5, 2018 The highest scoring teamRuff or Fluffwill take home the "Lombarky Trophy," a large Petco-branded stuffed toy (and a riff on the Lombardi Trophy given to the NFL's Super Bowl champion). The Dog Bowl, a one-hour special is dedicated to older adpotable dogs, will follow the Puppy Bowl, with 21 dogs, divided into Team Paws and Team Tails and ranging in age from 2 to 15, taking the field for their own match-up. | The Puppy Bowl kicks off at 3 p.m. ET on Super Bowl Sunday. The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field. | pegasus | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-rules-scoring-penalties-explained-animal-planet | 0.217543 |
How Does the Puppy Bowl Work? | Puppy Bowl XV is upon us. For two hours before Super Bowl LIII kicks off, the country's most adorable (and adoptable) pups will play one another in a Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff showdown on Animal Planet. Thirty-six puppies have made 2019's starting lineup, with another 55 second stringers to stand watch on the Puppy Bowl sidelines. The competition kicks off at 3 p.m. ET on Super Bowl Sunday, and we've got you covered with all the rules you need to know to follow along with the furry antics. Here's how the Puppy Bowl works: The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field in the Geico Puppy Bowl Stadium. The rules of the Puppy Bowl are rather flexible given the energy, excitement and lack of training that characterizes most of the participating players. The rules loosely resemble existing American football rules in that the goal is for a puppy to drag one of the multiple on-field chew toys across the finish line (on either side) for a touchdown. Regardless of finish line crossed, the touchdown counts as a score for whatever team the puppy belongs to. Puppies can be called for penalties including pass inter-fur-ence," unnecessary ruffness, and premature watering of the field. If a dog commits any of the aforementioned fouls, the puppy will be replaced by a second stringer on the sidelines. All participating puppies are within 12 and 21 weeks of age meet certain height and weight restrictions due to the size of the stadium. A rotating species of cheerleaders will root for their favorite ruff and fluff pups from the sidelines along with the backup team members. One dog will be crowned the MVP of the game depending on online votes from viewers. Last year's winner was Bear, an adorable hound mix from Virginia Beach, Va. A big congrats to Bear for earning #PuppyBowl XIV @BISSELLcleans MVP honors. #ad pic.twitter.com/8OLjUJUvRR Animal Planet (@AnimalPlanet) February 5, 2018 The highest scoring teamRuff or Fluffwill take home the "Lombarky Trophy," a large Petco-branded stuffed toy (and a riff on the Lombardi Trophy given to the NFL's Super Bowl champion). The Dog Bowl, a one-hour special is dedicated to older adpotable dogs, will follow the Puppy Bowl, with 21 dogs, divided into Team Paws and Team Tails and ranging in age from 2 to 15, taking the field for their own match-up. | The annual contest features two teams of 18 tiny puppies romping around on a mini football field in the Geico Puppy Bowl Stadium. The highest scoring teamRuff or Fluffwill take home the "Lombarky Trophy," a large Petco-branded stuffed toy. | bart | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-rules-scoring-penalties-explained-animal-planet | 0.215553 |
What channel is the Puppy Bowl 2019 on? | Puppy Bowl XV, the 15th annual showdown between adorable (and adoptable) puppies, will be broadcast on Animal Planet on Super Bowl Sunday. The event will air at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 3. Animal Planet will begin coverage at 11 a.m. ET with the Puppy Bowl XV "Training Camp Confidential." The day will be filled with fluffy faces, with the pregame show starting at 2 p.m. before kickoff at 3 p.m. ET. Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff will play for two hours, with a winner crowned before the show's end at 5 p.m. ET. Take a look at each team's starting lineup before the big game and the backup pups here. You can watch Super Bowl LIII on CBS after the Puppy Bowl. | Puppy Bowl XV will air on Animal Planet at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 3. | bart | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-2019-tv-channel-watch-broadcast-info | 0.157534 |
What channel is the Puppy Bowl 2019 on? | Puppy Bowl XV, the 15th annual showdown between adorable (and adoptable) puppies, will be broadcast on Animal Planet on Super Bowl Sunday. The event will air at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 3. Animal Planet will begin coverage at 11 a.m. ET with the Puppy Bowl XV "Training Camp Confidential." The day will be filled with fluffy faces, with the pregame show starting at 2 p.m. before kickoff at 3 p.m. ET. Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff will play for two hours, with a winner crowned before the show's end at 5 p.m. ET. Take a look at each team's starting lineup before the big game and the backup pups here. You can watch Super Bowl LIII on CBS after the Puppy Bowl. | The 15th annual Puppy Bowl will air on Animal Planet on Sunday, Feb. 3. There will be a two-hour game between Team Ruff and Team Fluff. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-2019-tv-channel-watch-broadcast-info | 0.277524 |
What channel is the Puppy Bowl 2019 on? | Puppy Bowl XV, the 15th annual showdown between adorable (and adoptable) puppies, will be broadcast on Animal Planet on Super Bowl Sunday. The event will air at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 3. Animal Planet will begin coverage at 11 a.m. ET with the Puppy Bowl XV "Training Camp Confidential." The day will be filled with fluffy faces, with the pregame show starting at 2 p.m. before kickoff at 3 p.m. ET. Team Ruff vs. Team Fluff will play for two hours, with a winner crowned before the show's end at 5 p.m. ET. Take a look at each team's starting lineup before the big game and the backup pups here. You can watch Super Bowl LIII on CBS after the Puppy Bowl. | The 15th annual Puppy Bowl will air on Animal Planet on Sunday, Feb. 3. There will be a two-hour game between Team Ruff and Team Fluff. The winner will be crowned before the show's end at 5 p.m. ET. Click here for more information. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/puppy-bowl-2019-tv-channel-watch-broadcast-info | 0.2986 |
Who Has the No. 1 Pick in the 2019 NFL Draft? | The Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft after their league-low three-win season. Arizona, who finished the season at 313, secured the first pick following their season-ending loss to the Seahawks. The 49ers (412), Jets (412), Raiders (412) and Buccaneers (511) will follow the Cardinals in taking the top-5 picks. The Giants (511) have the No. 6 pick, the Jaguars (511) have No. 7, while the Lions, the Bills, and the Broncos take slots eight, nine and ten after all three finished at 610 in 2018. The 2019 NFL Draft will begin on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in Nashville, Tenn. The second and third rounds will take place on Friday, April 26 and rounds four through seven will conclude the draft on Saturday, April 27. Here's the complete draft order: 1. Cardinals 2. 49ers 3. Jets 4. Raiders 5. Buccaneers 6. Giants 7. Jaguars 8. Lions 9. Bills 10. Broncos 11. Bengals 12. Packers 13. Dolphins 14. Falcons 15. Redskins 16. Panthers 17. Browns 18. Vikings 19. Titans 20. Steelers 21. Seahawks 22. Ravens 23. Texans 24. Raiders (via Bears) 25. Eagles 26. Colts 27. Raiders (via Cowboys) 28. Chargers 29. Chiefs 30. Packers (via Saints) | The Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/2019-nfl-draft-order-number-1-pick-arizona-cardinals | 0.386573 |
Who Has the No. 1 Pick in the 2019 NFL Draft? | The Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft after their league-low three-win season. Arizona, who finished the season at 313, secured the first pick following their season-ending loss to the Seahawks. The 49ers (412), Jets (412), Raiders (412) and Buccaneers (511) will follow the Cardinals in taking the top-5 picks. The Giants (511) have the No. 6 pick, the Jaguars (511) have No. 7, while the Lions, the Bills, and the Broncos take slots eight, nine and ten after all three finished at 610 in 2018. The 2019 NFL Draft will begin on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in Nashville, Tenn. The second and third rounds will take place on Friday, April 26 and rounds four through seven will conclude the draft on Saturday, April 27. Here's the complete draft order: 1. Cardinals 2. 49ers 3. Jets 4. Raiders 5. Buccaneers 6. Giants 7. Jaguars 8. Lions 9. Bills 10. Broncos 11. Bengals 12. Packers 13. Dolphins 14. Falcons 15. Redskins 16. Panthers 17. Browns 18. Vikings 19. Titans 20. Steelers 21. Seahawks 22. Ravens 23. Texans 24. Raiders (via Bears) 25. Eagles 26. Colts 27. Raiders (via Cowboys) 28. Chargers 29. Chiefs 30. Packers (via Saints) | The Arizona Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft. The 49ers, Jets, Raiders, Buccaneers and Giants follow in the top-5. The draft will begin on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. | pegasus | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/2019-nfl-draft-order-number-1-pick-arizona-cardinals | 0.687875 |
Who Has the No. 1 Pick in the 2019 NFL Draft? | The Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft after their league-low three-win season. Arizona, who finished the season at 313, secured the first pick following their season-ending loss to the Seahawks. The 49ers (412), Jets (412), Raiders (412) and Buccaneers (511) will follow the Cardinals in taking the top-5 picks. The Giants (511) have the No. 6 pick, the Jaguars (511) have No. 7, while the Lions, the Bills, and the Broncos take slots eight, nine and ten after all three finished at 610 in 2018. The 2019 NFL Draft will begin on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in Nashville, Tenn. The second and third rounds will take place on Friday, April 26 and rounds four through seven will conclude the draft on Saturday, April 27. Here's the complete draft order: 1. Cardinals 2. 49ers 3. Jets 4. Raiders 5. Buccaneers 6. Giants 7. Jaguars 8. Lions 9. Bills 10. Broncos 11. Bengals 12. Packers 13. Dolphins 14. Falcons 15. Redskins 16. Panthers 17. Browns 18. Vikings 19. Titans 20. Steelers 21. Seahawks 22. Ravens 23. Texans 24. Raiders (via Bears) 25. Eagles 26. Colts 27. Raiders (via Cowboys) 28. Chargers 29. Chiefs 30. Packers (via Saints) | The Arizona Cardinals have the No. 1 pick in the 2019 NFL draft. The 49ers, Jets, Raiders, Buccaneers and Jaguars round out the top-5. The 2019 NFL Draft will begin on Thursday, April 25, 2019 in Nashville, Tenn. The Cardinals finished the season with a record of 313. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/2019-nfl-draft-order-number-1-pick-arizona-cardinals | 0.701923 |
Did Sean McVay Play in the NFL? | Rams' coach Sean McVay did not play professional football in the NFL but joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers coaching staff in 2008 immediately after graduating from Miami University of Ohio. McVay, 33, played collegiate football as a wide receiver from 2004 to 2007. While in Oxford, Ohio, McVay recorded 39 receptions for 312 yards for the RedHawks. He began his coaching career with the Buccaneers as an assistant wide receivers coach under then-Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden after graduating from Miami of Ohio. The young coach spent one year learning from Gruden before taking a position as the quality control and wide receivers coach for the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League in 2009. In 2010, McVay joined Mike Shanahan in Washington and stayed with the Redskins through the 2016 season. McVay was hired as the Rams' 28th head coach on January 12, 2017 at just 30 years old. With Los Angeles's hire, McVay became the youngest head coach in modern NFL history. | Sean McVay was hired as the Rams' 28th head coach on January 12, 2017 at just 30 years old. The 33-year-old played collegiate football as a wide receiver from 2004 to 2007. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/did-sean-mcvay-play-nfl-football-playing-history-coaching-rams | 0.148256 |
Did Sean McVay Play in the NFL? | Rams' coach Sean McVay did not play professional football in the NFL but joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers coaching staff in 2008 immediately after graduating from Miami University of Ohio. McVay, 33, played collegiate football as a wide receiver from 2004 to 2007. While in Oxford, Ohio, McVay recorded 39 receptions for 312 yards for the RedHawks. He began his coaching career with the Buccaneers as an assistant wide receivers coach under then-Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden after graduating from Miami of Ohio. The young coach spent one year learning from Gruden before taking a position as the quality control and wide receivers coach for the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League in 2009. In 2010, McVay joined Mike Shanahan in Washington and stayed with the Redskins through the 2016 season. McVay was hired as the Rams' 28th head coach on January 12, 2017 at just 30 years old. With Los Angeles's hire, McVay became the youngest head coach in modern NFL history. | McVay, 33, played collegiate football as a wide receiver from 2004 to 2007. He began his coaching career with the Buccaneers as an assistant wide receivers coach under then-Tampa Bay head coach Jon Gruden. McVay was hired as the Rams' 28th head coach on January 12, 2017 at just 30 years old. | pegasus | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/did-sean-mcvay-play-nfl-football-playing-history-coaching-rams | 0.258751 |
What Are The Rules For Robots Delivering Food? | A fleet of 25 robots started delivering Blaze custom pizzas, Starbucks lattes and Dunkin Donuts pastries to students at George Mason Universitys Fairfax, Va., campus last week. It turns out those guidelines, mostly involving safety and customer service, are largely unwritten. But that hasn't stopped the experts from thinking about them. If your idea of a robot is shaped by the work of mid-20th-century science fiction (as mine is), then your imagination is running wild right about now. Robots delivering food! Isaac Asimov would have a field day. So before we answer the question, let's just get a few things out of the way: The robots, developed by Starship Technologies, are "small" and "cute." They don't menace the professors or students. The robots do not shoot you with lasers if you get in the way. They drive around you. The robots do not run amok. They use a GPS pinpoint on a map to find your location to drop off your order. But seriously, they're delivering food. Some of the rules for these clever food-delivery bots are outlined in a message from administrators to George Mason students. Among them: The robots move s-l-o-w-l-y They move at about 4 mph. Delivery happens within 30 minutes. Robots will not be able to enter buildings, so you have to meet them at the door. No phone, no service Bring your phone to the pick-up point. The locked robots can only be unlocked through the app. Space is limited The small robots can hold up to three pizzas, along with a few salads and drinks. They are temperature controlled so your pizza will stay hot while your salads will stay cold, according to officials. The robots do social media Seriously. The fleet of robots even has its own Twitter and Instagram - the handle is @StarshipGMU. Told you they were smart! "Our robots are designed to always be safe and polite," a spokesman for Starship told me. "One of the things were proud of is how happy customers are when the robot arrives with their order. Weve received thank-you notes and special robot drawings from every location where we operate. The bots have become famous across social media at GMU, with many students posting pictures of their deliveries." The biggest potential problem, according to officials, is a collision with a robot. "The robots look both ways before crossing a street and can detect people walking around them," the university reassures students. "They are not likely to run into a person standing still, but if something does happen, incidents can be reported to Mason Police." It's hardly the only danger. At UC Berkeley, a food delivery bot operated by KiwiBot reportedly burst into flames in December. No one was hurt. Other than not running over a student or exploding, the number one rule for a food delivery robot is food safety, according to Candess Zona-Mendola, the editor of MakeFoodSafe.com, an advocacy site. Specifically, it's keeping foods at the right temperature. "In Haidilao, a robotic restaurant chain in China, an automated cold room kept at 0 to 4 degrees Celsius is on view, where queues of robotic arms prepare and deliver raw meat and fresh vegetables," she says. Zona-Mendola says robots are not equal substitutes for humans. At MITs robo restaurant Spyce, for example, humans still handle food prep. She says cutting, chopping, and measuring each ingredient still needs a personal touch. "Workers on-site take care of the details and load everything into containers for the robots to select," she adds. "Humans are still needed to clean up." Sodexo, the food service company working with Starship to deploy the robot deliveries, says humans are still essential. Some tasks, such as food preparation, are still being done by people. Other jobs can't -- and should never be -- automated. "We firmly believe that the community thats built when you share a meal together can never be replaced," a spokeswoman told me. "Many of our students have longstanding relationships with our employees and see them as their second parents or grandparents while away from home." "Robots should not be used to replace customer relationships" Good customer service is also important, say observers. "Obviously, you have the potential to lose the human touch," says Bret Greenstein, the head of Artificial Intelligence for Cognizant. "We may miss chatting with people and saying 'Have a great night,' and, Wow its cold out there.'" He adds, "Robots should not be used to replace customer relationships." Food delivery has always been a guessing game, he adds. Even under the best of circumstances, with experienced human delivery, questions remain. "Will I get my order or someone elses?" he asks. Even if it was understood when the order was taken, there are a lot of handoffs in a restaurant and lots of room to get an order wrong. Will the charges be correct?" I pressed Greenstein on the rules. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. "Like Asimovs rules, which are all about protecting people and robots, companies that use robots and AI to provide delivery and service must put customers first at every point of their experience," he says. "Dont design for automating tasks, reinvent the experience to leverage the power of AI and robotics, not to replicate what people did." It's only a matter of time before robots show up at your doorstep with a package from Amazon, a parcel from the postal service, or a hot pizza from Domino's. If they don't deliver, maybe you can invoke Greenstein's rules for robots delivering food. | A fleet of 25 robots started delivering food to students at George Mason University last week. The robots are designed to always be safe and polite, a spokesman for Starship Technologies told CNN. The number one rule for a food delivery robot is food safety, an advocacy site says. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherelliott/2019/02/03/what-are-the-rules-for-robots-delivering-food/ | 0.289581 |
Who is Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam? | A scandal over old college photographs featuring blackface and KKK robes has thrust Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam into the national spotlight. Northam, a Democrat, has faced pressure from both Republicans and his own party to resign over these photos, but he has so far declined to do so. Until this controversy bubbled up on Friday, Northam's history was relatively low key on the path to becoming a public servant. Northam grew up on Virginia's rural Eastern Shore, where its two counties have less than a combined 45,000 residents. His father was a judge. He became a doctor and served in the U.S. Army before becoming a state delegate, then was elected lieutenant governor in 2013 and governor in 2017. Despite being the commonwealth's top official, Northam was often seen returning to the Eastern Shore. Before news broke about a racist yearbook photograph on the page bearing Northam's name, the Virginia governor came home to Accomack County to contribute his memories of a local blacksmith. Northam said of the African-American man he used to watch fix tools, tractors, bicycles and other items his family brought into the blacksmith shop: "Growing up, the way we were raised, my brother and I, we didn't see color and I don't think he saw color either. He just treated everybody as human beings. I think that's a lesson that everybody needs to hear." Northam's Eastern Shore roots Northam is only the second Virginia governor to hail from the Eastern Shore of Virginia two counties at the narrow southernmost tip of the Delmarva Peninsula. The first governor from the Eastern Shore was Henry A. Wise, elected in 1855. The area is perhaps best known to the outside world for its Chincoteague ponies and rocket launches from NASA Wallops Flight Facility. Northam also became the first lieutenant governor from the Eastern Shore, after winning the November 2013 election. The same weekend he recorded his recollections about Outlaw, Northam celebrated the Martin Luther King Jr. Day at an Eastern Shore church whose congregation King himself addressed nearly 70 years ago and where Northam is now a member. Gov. Ralph Northam, left, is pictured with church deacon Charles Bell, center, and Pastor the Rev. Kelvin F. Jones after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King celebration service at First Baptist Church in Capeville. More First Baptist Church in Capeville was founded as an African-American congregation in the19th century. The mixed congregation today attracts visitors from as far as Virginia Beach for worship. Northam counts the church's pastor, the Rev. Kelvin Jones, as a mentor. It was Jones who gave the invocation at Northam's inauguration. Northam spoke at the Sunday celebration service at the church on Jan.20. We may have all come on different ships but were in the same boat now, Northam quoted King as saying, adding We have made great progress, but we have more work to do to make sure we are a country where everyone is treated successfully. Northam continued: There are many things that were trying to do in Virginia to be inclusive and to really embrace diversity and to embrace equality ... We must continue to raise our voices that we do not condone hatred or bigotry in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Northam told the congregation about being a student during school desegregation on the Eastern Shore in 1971. He was in sixth grade at the time. While many white families chose to send their children to private school, Northam's parents kept their sons in the public schools. Eastern Shore of Virginia youth Northam grew up on a small farm outside Onancock, a town of around 1,200. He graduated from Onancock High School in 1977. Northam's father is retired Circuit Judge Wescott B. Northam. Northam was a good student and as a teenager always held down a job, his father recalled in previous interviews including as a stock boy at the Meatland grocery store, driving a tractor on a farm, and as a boat mate. | Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam grew up on the Eastern Shore of the Delmarva Peninsula. Northam is only the second Virginia governor to hail from the area. He is a doctor and served in the U.S. Army before becoming a state delegate, lieutenant governor and governor. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/virginia-gov-ralph-northam-155225094.html | 0.235859 |
Is Microsoft's Biggest Growth Engine Losing Its Mojo? | Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had a mixed second quarter based on last week's earnings report. Its revenue rose 12% annually to $32.5 billion, but that marked its slowest growth in four quarters and missed expectations by $40 million. However, its non-GAAP net income rose 14% to $8.6 billion, as its EPS rose 15% to $1.10 per share -- which beat estimates by a penny. Microsoft expects its revenue to rise 10%-12% annually in the third quarter, which matches analysts' expectations. Analysts expect its earnings to rise 7%. Those forecasts indicate that Microsoft's growth is decelerating as its growth engines cool off. Microsoft's strongest growth engine over the past year was its commercial cloud business, which generates most of its revenue from Office 365, Azure, and Dynamics CRM. However, several components of that engine posted softer growth during the second quarter. Two IT professionals in a data center. More Image source: Getty Images. Taking apart the engine Microsoft's commercial cloud revenue rose 48% annually to $9 billion during the quarter and accounted for 31% of its top line. That represents a slight acceleration from its 47% growth in the first quarter, but remains below its 50%-plus growth rate in 2018. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Commercial cloud revenue $5.3 billion $6.0 billion $6.9 billion $8.5 billion $9.0 billion Year-over-year growth 56% 58% 53% 47% 48% Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Microsoft doesn't disclose exactly how much revenue comes from each of its cloud services, it only reports year-over-year growth rates. Azure, its infrastructure cloud platform, remains the fastest-growing division -- but its growth clearly decelerated over the past year. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Azure revenue 98% 89% 85% 76% 76% Year-over-year growth, constant currency. Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Azure is still growing at a faster rate than its main competitor, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Web Services (AWS), which posted 45% sales growth last quarter. But Azure has a lower market share than AWS, so it could fall further behind if its growth peaks. Microsoft isn't worried Microsoft doesn't seem concerned about the year-over-year deceleration in Azure's growth. During the conference call, CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that Azure was the "core platform" that powers "everything" -- including Office 365 and Dynamics 365, the two other pillars of its commercial cloud business. The growth of those two businesses also decelerated over the past year, although Dynamics' growth slightly accelerated during the second quarter on more "modular, extensible, and AI-driven" offerings for its customers according to Nadella. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Office 365 Commercial 41% 40% 35% 35% 33% Dynamics 365 68% 62% 56% 49% 50% Year-over-year growth, constant currency. Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Simply put, Microsoft believes that it can keep leveraging the strength of Windows, Office, Dynamics, and its other products to tether more customers to Azure. Once they're locked in, Microsoft can cross-sell other services to boost its commercial cloud revenue. Microsoft also holds another key advantage against Amazon. Brick-and-mortar retailers that were burned by Amazon are more likely to partner with Microsoft, since they don't want to support Amazon's highest margin business. That's why Microsoft recently added Walmart, Kroger, and Walgreens Boots Alliance to its growing list of retail partners. | Microsoft's revenue rose 12% annually to $32.5 billion in the second quarter. The company's growth engine, the commercial cloud business, is decelerating. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-apos-biggest-growth-engine-143000903.html | 0.192237 |
Is Microsoft's Biggest Growth Engine Losing Its Mojo? | Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had a mixed second quarter based on last week's earnings report. Its revenue rose 12% annually to $32.5 billion, but that marked its slowest growth in four quarters and missed expectations by $40 million. However, its non-GAAP net income rose 14% to $8.6 billion, as its EPS rose 15% to $1.10 per share -- which beat estimates by a penny. Microsoft expects its revenue to rise 10%-12% annually in the third quarter, which matches analysts' expectations. Analysts expect its earnings to rise 7%. Those forecasts indicate that Microsoft's growth is decelerating as its growth engines cool off. Microsoft's strongest growth engine over the past year was its commercial cloud business, which generates most of its revenue from Office 365, Azure, and Dynamics CRM. However, several components of that engine posted softer growth during the second quarter. Two IT professionals in a data center. More Image source: Getty Images. Taking apart the engine Microsoft's commercial cloud revenue rose 48% annually to $9 billion during the quarter and accounted for 31% of its top line. That represents a slight acceleration from its 47% growth in the first quarter, but remains below its 50%-plus growth rate in 2018. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Commercial cloud revenue $5.3 billion $6.0 billion $6.9 billion $8.5 billion $9.0 billion Year-over-year growth 56% 58% 53% 47% 48% Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Microsoft doesn't disclose exactly how much revenue comes from each of its cloud services, it only reports year-over-year growth rates. Azure, its infrastructure cloud platform, remains the fastest-growing division -- but its growth clearly decelerated over the past year. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Azure revenue 98% 89% 85% 76% 76% Year-over-year growth, constant currency. Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Azure is still growing at a faster rate than its main competitor, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Web Services (AWS), which posted 45% sales growth last quarter. But Azure has a lower market share than AWS, so it could fall further behind if its growth peaks. Microsoft isn't worried Microsoft doesn't seem concerned about the year-over-year deceleration in Azure's growth. During the conference call, CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that Azure was the "core platform" that powers "everything" -- including Office 365 and Dynamics 365, the two other pillars of its commercial cloud business. The growth of those two businesses also decelerated over the past year, although Dynamics' growth slightly accelerated during the second quarter on more "modular, extensible, and AI-driven" offerings for its customers according to Nadella. Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018 Q1 2019 Q2 2019 Office 365 Commercial 41% 40% 35% 35% 33% Dynamics 365 68% 62% 56% 49% 50% Year-over-year growth, constant currency. Source: Microsoft quarterly reports. Simply put, Microsoft believes that it can keep leveraging the strength of Windows, Office, Dynamics, and its other products to tether more customers to Azure. Once they're locked in, Microsoft can cross-sell other services to boost its commercial cloud revenue. Microsoft also holds another key advantage against Amazon. Brick-and-mortar retailers that were burned by Amazon are more likely to partner with Microsoft, since they don't want to support Amazon's highest margin business. That's why Microsoft recently added Walmart, Kroger, and Walgreens Boots Alliance to its growing list of retail partners. | Microsoft's revenue rose 12% annually to $32.5 billion in the second quarter. The company's growth engine, the commercial cloud business, is decelerating. Microsoft isn't worried about the deceleration in the cloud division's growth, though it could fall further behind if it peaks. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-apos-biggest-growth-engine-143000903.html | 0.20681 |
Who is Travis Scott, Super Bowl LIII halftime performer? | CLEVELAND, Ohio For anyone under the age of, say, 25, it may seem like an obvious question. Meanwhile, those older than the millennial generation are left scratching their heads about one of Sundays Super Bowl 53 performer Travis Scott. Hip hop acts rarely play the Super Bowl halftime show. Since P Diddy and Nelly took the stage for small roles in 2004, only a few pure hip-hop acts (specifically, Nicki Minaj and Missy Elliott) have assisted the performance; never headlining. Well, Scotts not the household name that an artist like Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye West or Eminem is. But he is the hottest thing going in urban music. Scott (real name Jacques Webster II) scored a No.1 album in 2018 with Astroworld and released one of the biggest singles of the year with the Drake-assisted Sicko Mode. Astroworld is nominated for three Grammys at the Feb. 10 ceremony. Meanwhile, Scott graced the cover of Rolling Stone last December. Scott was picked to join Maroon 5 for the Pepsi Halftime Show after other artists Cardi B, Rihanna, Andre 3000 turned it down. Even then, Scott required the NFL to make a hefty donation to his non-profit Dream Corps. Scott has yet to collaborate with a big name pop star (other than Drake) that would put him on the radar of baby boomers. But that hasnt stopped teens and college students from streaming his music in huge numbers. Still, given all of that, most people probably know Scott, age 26, for something outside of music He is currently dating Kylie Jenner of the Kardashian family. The two have a daughter together named Stormi Webster. | Travis Scott will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday. The rapper is one of the hottest things going in urban music. Scott has a daughter with his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/02/who-is-travis-scott-super-bowl-liii-halftime-performer.html | 0.135269 |
Who is Travis Scott, Super Bowl LIII halftime performer? | CLEVELAND, Ohio For anyone under the age of, say, 25, it may seem like an obvious question. Meanwhile, those older than the millennial generation are left scratching their heads about one of Sundays Super Bowl 53 performer Travis Scott. Hip hop acts rarely play the Super Bowl halftime show. Since P Diddy and Nelly took the stage for small roles in 2004, only a few pure hip-hop acts (specifically, Nicki Minaj and Missy Elliott) have assisted the performance; never headlining. Well, Scotts not the household name that an artist like Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye West or Eminem is. But he is the hottest thing going in urban music. Scott (real name Jacques Webster II) scored a No.1 album in 2018 with Astroworld and released one of the biggest singles of the year with the Drake-assisted Sicko Mode. Astroworld is nominated for three Grammys at the Feb. 10 ceremony. Meanwhile, Scott graced the cover of Rolling Stone last December. Scott was picked to join Maroon 5 for the Pepsi Halftime Show after other artists Cardi B, Rihanna, Andre 3000 turned it down. Even then, Scott required the NFL to make a hefty donation to his non-profit Dream Corps. Scott has yet to collaborate with a big name pop star (other than Drake) that would put him on the radar of baby boomers. But that hasnt stopped teens and college students from streaming his music in huge numbers. Still, given all of that, most people probably know Scott, age 26, for something outside of music He is currently dating Kylie Jenner of the Kardashian family. The two have a daughter together named Stormi Webster. | Travis Scott will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday. The rapper is one of the hottest things going in urban music. Scott is nominated for three Grammys for his album, "Astroworld" He has a daughter with his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/02/who-is-travis-scott-super-bowl-liii-halftime-performer.html | 0.155789 |
What Player Has Won the Most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady and pass rusher Charles Haley have both won five Super Bowl rings, the most of any player in NFL history. Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots during his ongoing 19-year career, and he'll have a chance to win a sixth on Sunday against the Rams. The quarterback won his first ring in his second season when New England defeated the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Panthers and Super Bowl XXXIX against the Eagles. New England went to two more Super Bowls over the next nine season, but lost to the Giants in both. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XLIX over the Seahawks and Super Bowl LI over the Falcons. The Patriots lost to the Eagles last year in Super Bowl LII. In his five Super Bowl wins entering 2019, Brady won Super Bowl MVP in four of them, which is the most of any player in NFL history. Haley won his five Super Bowls with the 49ers and Cowboys over his 13-year career. Haley's first Super Bowl win came in Super Bowl XXIII when the 49ers beat the Bengals, and he won a second ring when the 49ers beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. Haley's next three Super Bowls came as a member of the Cowboys, who beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII before topping the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. | Quarterback Tom Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/most-super-bowl-wins-rings-player-tom-brady-charles-haley | 0.141293 |
What Player Has Won the Most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady and pass rusher Charles Haley have both won five Super Bowl rings, the most of any player in NFL history. Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots during his ongoing 19-year career, and he'll have a chance to win a sixth on Sunday against the Rams. The quarterback won his first ring in his second season when New England defeated the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Panthers and Super Bowl XXXIX against the Eagles. New England went to two more Super Bowls over the next nine season, but lost to the Giants in both. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XLIX over the Seahawks and Super Bowl LI over the Falcons. The Patriots lost to the Eagles last year in Super Bowl LII. In his five Super Bowl wins entering 2019, Brady won Super Bowl MVP in four of them, which is the most of any player in NFL history. Haley won his five Super Bowls with the 49ers and Cowboys over his 13-year career. Haley's first Super Bowl win came in Super Bowl XXIII when the 49ers beat the Bengals, and he won a second ring when the 49ers beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. Haley's next three Super Bowls came as a member of the Cowboys, who beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII before topping the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. | Quarterback Tom Brady and pass rusher Charles Haley have both won five Super Bowl rings, the most of any player in NFL history. Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots during his ongoing 19-year career. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/most-super-bowl-wins-rings-player-tom-brady-charles-haley | 0.358344 |
What Player Has Won the Most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady and pass rusher Charles Haley have both won five Super Bowl rings, the most of any player in NFL history. Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots during his ongoing 19-year career, and he'll have a chance to win a sixth on Sunday against the Rams. The quarterback won his first ring in his second season when New England defeated the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Panthers and Super Bowl XXXIX against the Eagles. New England went to two more Super Bowls over the next nine season, but lost to the Giants in both. The Patriots then went on to win Super Bowl XLIX over the Seahawks and Super Bowl LI over the Falcons. The Patriots lost to the Eagles last year in Super Bowl LII. In his five Super Bowl wins entering 2019, Brady won Super Bowl MVP in four of them, which is the most of any player in NFL history. Haley won his five Super Bowls with the 49ers and Cowboys over his 13-year career. Haley's first Super Bowl win came in Super Bowl XXIII when the 49ers beat the Bengals, and he won a second ring when the 49ers beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV. Haley's next three Super Bowls came as a member of the Cowboys, who beat the Bills in Super Bowl XXVII and Super Bowl XXVIII before topping the Steelers in Super Bowl XXX. | Quarterback Tom Brady and pass rusher Charles Haley have both won five Super Bowl rings, the most of any player in NFL history. Brady has won all five of his Super Bowls with the Patriots during his ongoing 19-year career, and he'll have a chance to win a sixth on Sunday against the Rams. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/most-super-bowl-wins-rings-player-tom-brady-charles-haley | 0.37045 |
Which quarterbacks have won the most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady is often called the G.O.A.T., or "Greatest of All Time." And for good reason. The 41-year-old Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. Brady leads the list with five rings, winning his most recent in 2017 against Atlanta in Super Bowl LI. He could have won his sixth last season in Super Bowl LII, but the Patriots lost 4133 to the Eagles. He'll have another chance to win his sixth on Sunday against the Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana have four Super Bowl titles to their names. Troy Aikman has three championships, while 12 quarterbacks have won multiple Super Bowls. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3. | Tom Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. | bart | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/which-quarterbacks-have-won-most-super-bowls | 0.442825 |
Which quarterbacks have won the most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady is often called the G.O.A.T., or "Greatest of All Time." And for good reason. The 41-year-old Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. Brady leads the list with five rings, winning his most recent in 2017 against Atlanta in Super Bowl LI. He could have won his sixth last season in Super Bowl LII, but the Patriots lost 4133 to the Eagles. He'll have another chance to win his sixth on Sunday against the Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana have four Super Bowl titles to their names. Troy Aikman has three championships, while 12 quarterbacks have won multiple Super Bowls. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3. | Quarterback Tom Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. He could have won his sixth last season in Super Bowl LII, but the Patriots lost 4133 to the Eagles. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/which-quarterbacks-have-won-most-super-bowls | 0.435691 |
Which quarterbacks have won the most Super Bowls? | Quarterback Tom Brady is often called the G.O.A.T., or "Greatest of All Time." And for good reason. The 41-year-old Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. Brady leads the list with five rings, winning his most recent in 2017 against Atlanta in Super Bowl LI. He could have won his sixth last season in Super Bowl LII, but the Patriots lost 4133 to the Eagles. He'll have another chance to win his sixth on Sunday against the Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana have four Super Bowl titles to their names. Troy Aikman has three championships, while 12 quarterbacks have won multiple Super Bowls. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3. | Quarterback Tom Brady leads the pack of quarterbacks with the most Super Bowl titles. He could have won his sixth last season in Super Bowl LII, but the Patriots lost 4133 to the Eagles. Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana have four titles to their names. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/which-quarterbacks-have-won-most-super-bowls | 0.498122 |
Could AI-Powered Traffic Cameras Finally Stop Distracted Driving? | The other evening as I worked in a coffee shop on a busy intersection at rush hour in Washington, DC, I was struck by the sheer magnitude of the number of drivers passing by that were looking down at their phones. Over the hour I watched, at least half of the drivers who were stopped at the red light looked down at their phone screens at least once, hurriedly scrolling and typing away, entirely oblivious to the fact that the light had turned green until they received a helpful honk from the car behind. When the light was green at least a quarter of those passing through were glancing down at their phones or fixated on some knob or dial on their console, glancing up only sporadically to see if the car ahead was braking. The quaint days when driving meant actually focusing on the road are long gone, merely a bygone relic of a long-distant historical era. Today our vehicles are essentially computers with car seats, bombarding us with information and offering every imaginable distraction, from adjusting the temperature every 60 seconds to switching radio stations during a commercial break to searching for that perfect song to go with the moments traffic conditions. In our laps we lovingly cradle smartphones whose tiny screens belie their ability to connect us to the entire planet. Pay attention to the cars going by on a weekday evening and youll see it all: drivers watching movies, video chatting with friends, reviewing documents, reading and sending email, checking social media, reading digital books or simply surfing the web. Look close enough and you might even see a few Pokemon players war driving while stopped at a red light. It seems we cannot bear the idea of spending even a few minutes disconnected from the digital world. With all those distractions, actually piloting our one-ton missiles safely is the least of our concerns. On top of all these distractions are the myriad drivers gazing down or fiddling with the GPS maps on their phones. Private drivers, ride sharing services and even increasingly taxi drivers now are glued to their GPS maps as they navigate the city streets. There was once upon a time when any taxi driver in DC could get you to the Capitol from memory. Today Ive lost track of how many taxi drivers have had to plug the Capitol into their GPS to find the route, while even seasoned veterans sometimes use their GPS for traffic conditions. Ride sharing vehicles are a particular offender when it comes to their phones. Many seem glued to their phone GPS, either trying to figure out what their next turn is or relentlessly examining surrounding traffic conditions in search of a creative route to drop the passenger off as quickly as possibly so they can move on to their next fare. Often their phones will ping regularly with alerts of other possible passenger pickups or phone calls from friends, forcing them to look down at their phones to decide whether to accept or not. Washington, as a tourist mecca, suffers the additional indignity of hordes of lost tourists trying to navigate the labyrinth of one-way streets, roundabouts, divided turn lanes and traffic jams by GPS, adding to the number of drivers whose eyes are glued to their smartphones and oblivious to the world around them. Cities like DC are filled to the brim with surveillance cameras, with traffic cameras silently watching intersections all across the city. One could imagine plugging all of these cameras into AI systems that look for each drivers gaze. Drivers that are looking down at a smartphone device could be automatically flagged, with a photograph and warning mailed automatically to the registered driver of the vehicle. A certain number of violations could result in human review to confirm the violation and then a ticket issued under existing laws banning distracted driving. While such applications might raise Orwellian surveillance concerns, we are already heading in this direction as cities examine the use of mass facial recognition through AI and many already deploy mass license plate recognition in production. In fact, there are already some early pilots doing precisely this. Putting this all together, cities across the world are saturating their roadways with surveillance cameras and increasingly connecting those camera networks to everything from license plate scanners to facial recognition systems. | Many drivers in Washington, DC, are glued to their phones as they navigate the city streets. AI-Powered Traffic Cameras could be used to spot distracted drivers. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/03/could-ai-powered-traffic-cameras-finally-stop-distracted-driving/ | 0.473485 |
Could AI-Powered Traffic Cameras Finally Stop Distracted Driving? | The other evening as I worked in a coffee shop on a busy intersection at rush hour in Washington, DC, I was struck by the sheer magnitude of the number of drivers passing by that were looking down at their phones. Over the hour I watched, at least half of the drivers who were stopped at the red light looked down at their phone screens at least once, hurriedly scrolling and typing away, entirely oblivious to the fact that the light had turned green until they received a helpful honk from the car behind. When the light was green at least a quarter of those passing through were glancing down at their phones or fixated on some knob or dial on their console, glancing up only sporadically to see if the car ahead was braking. The quaint days when driving meant actually focusing on the road are long gone, merely a bygone relic of a long-distant historical era. Today our vehicles are essentially computers with car seats, bombarding us with information and offering every imaginable distraction, from adjusting the temperature every 60 seconds to switching radio stations during a commercial break to searching for that perfect song to go with the moments traffic conditions. In our laps we lovingly cradle smartphones whose tiny screens belie their ability to connect us to the entire planet. Pay attention to the cars going by on a weekday evening and youll see it all: drivers watching movies, video chatting with friends, reviewing documents, reading and sending email, checking social media, reading digital books or simply surfing the web. Look close enough and you might even see a few Pokemon players war driving while stopped at a red light. It seems we cannot bear the idea of spending even a few minutes disconnected from the digital world. With all those distractions, actually piloting our one-ton missiles safely is the least of our concerns. On top of all these distractions are the myriad drivers gazing down or fiddling with the GPS maps on their phones. Private drivers, ride sharing services and even increasingly taxi drivers now are glued to their GPS maps as they navigate the city streets. There was once upon a time when any taxi driver in DC could get you to the Capitol from memory. Today Ive lost track of how many taxi drivers have had to plug the Capitol into their GPS to find the route, while even seasoned veterans sometimes use their GPS for traffic conditions. Ride sharing vehicles are a particular offender when it comes to their phones. Many seem glued to their phone GPS, either trying to figure out what their next turn is or relentlessly examining surrounding traffic conditions in search of a creative route to drop the passenger off as quickly as possibly so they can move on to their next fare. Often their phones will ping regularly with alerts of other possible passenger pickups or phone calls from friends, forcing them to look down at their phones to decide whether to accept or not. Washington, as a tourist mecca, suffers the additional indignity of hordes of lost tourists trying to navigate the labyrinth of one-way streets, roundabouts, divided turn lanes and traffic jams by GPS, adding to the number of drivers whose eyes are glued to their smartphones and oblivious to the world around them. Cities like DC are filled to the brim with surveillance cameras, with traffic cameras silently watching intersections all across the city. One could imagine plugging all of these cameras into AI systems that look for each drivers gaze. Drivers that are looking down at a smartphone device could be automatically flagged, with a photograph and warning mailed automatically to the registered driver of the vehicle. A certain number of violations could result in human review to confirm the violation and then a ticket issued under existing laws banning distracted driving. While such applications might raise Orwellian surveillance concerns, we are already heading in this direction as cities examine the use of mass facial recognition through AI and many already deploy mass license plate recognition in production. In fact, there are already some early pilots doing precisely this. Putting this all together, cities across the world are saturating their roadways with surveillance cameras and increasingly connecting those camera networks to everything from license plate scanners to facial recognition systems. | Many drivers in Washington, DC, are glued to their phones as they navigate the city streets. AI-Powered Traffic Cameras could be used to spot drivers who are distracted by their phones, according to the Washington Post's John Sutter. Sutter: We are already heading in the direction of Orwellian surveillance. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/02/03/could-ai-powered-traffic-cameras-finally-stop-distracted-driving/ | 0.557453 |
When Was the Last Time the Patriots Weren't in the Super Bowl? | Tom Brady and the Patriots will play in their third straight Super Bowl come Feb. 3, appearing in the championship game for the fourth time in five years after defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 3731 in the AFC Championship. The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016, when the Broncos beat the Patriots in the AFC Conference Championship, 2018, stopping the Pats short of a shot at another Super Bowl just one season after they claimed the title in Glendale, Ariz., in 2015. Denver went on to beat the NFC champion, the Carolina Panthers, 2410, to win Super Bowl 50 in Levi's Stadium. The Patriots returned to the championship game the next two consecutive seasons, beating the Falcons in the first reappearance before falling to the Eagles last year. Brady has led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls appearances since entering the league as the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. All five of New England's Super Bowl championships have come under Brady, who has also added four Super Bowl MVP honors to his resume during his astounding 19-season tenure with the Patriots. The 41-year-old quarterback is one of only two signal callers to win the Super Bowl in their first season as a starter, accomplishing that feat when the Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXVI for his first ring. Brady will attempt to clinch another championship against the Rams when the two teams meet in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Super Bowl Sunday. | The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/new-england-patriots-super-bowl-appearance-history-last-missed-championship-game | 0.234589 |
When Was the Last Time the Patriots Weren't in the Super Bowl? | Tom Brady and the Patriots will play in their third straight Super Bowl come Feb. 3, appearing in the championship game for the fourth time in five years after defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 3731 in the AFC Championship. The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016, when the Broncos beat the Patriots in the AFC Conference Championship, 2018, stopping the Pats short of a shot at another Super Bowl just one season after they claimed the title in Glendale, Ariz., in 2015. Denver went on to beat the NFC champion, the Carolina Panthers, 2410, to win Super Bowl 50 in Levi's Stadium. The Patriots returned to the championship game the next two consecutive seasons, beating the Falcons in the first reappearance before falling to the Eagles last year. Brady has led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls appearances since entering the league as the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. All five of New England's Super Bowl championships have come under Brady, who has also added four Super Bowl MVP honors to his resume during his astounding 19-season tenure with the Patriots. The 41-year-old quarterback is one of only two signal callers to win the Super Bowl in their first season as a starter, accomplishing that feat when the Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXVI for his first ring. Brady will attempt to clinch another championship against the Rams when the two teams meet in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Super Bowl Sunday. | The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016. Tom Brady has led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls appearances since entering the league as the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/new-england-patriots-super-bowl-appearance-history-last-missed-championship-game | 0.337963 |
When Was the Last Time the Patriots Weren't in the Super Bowl? | Tom Brady and the Patriots will play in their third straight Super Bowl come Feb. 3, appearing in the championship game for the fourth time in five years after defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 3731 in the AFC Championship. The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016, when the Broncos beat the Patriots in the AFC Conference Championship, 2018, stopping the Pats short of a shot at another Super Bowl just one season after they claimed the title in Glendale, Ariz., in 2015. Denver went on to beat the NFC champion, the Carolina Panthers, 2410, to win Super Bowl 50 in Levi's Stadium. The Patriots returned to the championship game the next two consecutive seasons, beating the Falcons in the first reappearance before falling to the Eagles last year. Brady has led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls appearances since entering the league as the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. All five of New England's Super Bowl championships have come under Brady, who has also added four Super Bowl MVP honors to his resume during his astounding 19-season tenure with the Patriots. The 41-year-old quarterback is one of only two signal callers to win the Super Bowl in their first season as a starter, accomplishing that feat when the Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXVI for his first ring. Brady will attempt to clinch another championship against the Rams when the two teams meet in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Super Bowl Sunday. | The last time New England didn't play on Super Bowl Sunday was in 2016. Tom Brady has led the Patriots to nine Super Bowls appearances since entering the league as the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. The 41-year-old quarterback is one of only two signal callers to win the Super Bowl in their first season as a starter. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/new-england-patriots-super-bowl-appearance-history-last-missed-championship-game | 0.435413 |
How do Super Bowl squares work? | There are numerous ways to make money gambling on the Super Bowl, from point spreads to player props. But for casual fans, the best move may be to participate in Super Bowl squares. We'll explain below. Format: The setup for Super Bowl squares is simple. Create four 10-by-10 boards (one for each quarter), with zero-to-10 on each axis. The Patriots will take one axis, placing the Rams on the other. Each square should be priced equallylet's say $1 per square. The members of your respective Super Bowl party can then buy as many squares as they'd like in each quarter. The more squares that are bought, the greater the payout for the winner, although it's not necessary to have every square bought by gametime. How to win: Once the board is settled, finding a winner is easy. Take the last digit of each team's score in a given quarter and match it on each axis. Whomever owns the square wins the pot. If the square is unowned, you can roll over the money to the next quarter. Here's a quick example: Say you have the Patriots on the Y axis and the Rams on the X axis. If New England enters the second quarter with a 7-3 lead, the person who selected the box with seven on the vertical axis and three on the horizontal axis would win the first quarter. Repeat the steps in each of the four quarters. Safest Betting Sites.com You may have low odds of winning in Super Bowl squares, but the game is a low-risk commitment with a significant reward. Not a bad way to win a few bucks on Super Bowl Sunday. | The setup for Super Bowl squares is simple. Create four 10-by-10 boards with zero-to-10 on each axis. The more squares that are bought, the greater the payout for the winner. | bart | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/super-bowl-squares-rules-how-works-patriots-rams | 0.507502 |
How do Super Bowl squares work? | There are numerous ways to make money gambling on the Super Bowl, from point spreads to player props. But for casual fans, the best move may be to participate in Super Bowl squares. We'll explain below. Format: The setup for Super Bowl squares is simple. Create four 10-by-10 boards (one for each quarter), with zero-to-10 on each axis. The Patriots will take one axis, placing the Rams on the other. Each square should be priced equallylet's say $1 per square. The members of your respective Super Bowl party can then buy as many squares as they'd like in each quarter. The more squares that are bought, the greater the payout for the winner, although it's not necessary to have every square bought by gametime. How to win: Once the board is settled, finding a winner is easy. Take the last digit of each team's score in a given quarter and match it on each axis. Whomever owns the square wins the pot. If the square is unowned, you can roll over the money to the next quarter. Here's a quick example: Say you have the Patriots on the Y axis and the Rams on the X axis. If New England enters the second quarter with a 7-3 lead, the person who selected the box with seven on the vertical axis and three on the horizontal axis would win the first quarter. Repeat the steps in each of the four quarters. Safest Betting Sites.com You may have low odds of winning in Super Bowl squares, but the game is a low-risk commitment with a significant reward. Not a bad way to win a few bucks on Super Bowl Sunday. | The setup for Super Bowl squares is simple. Create four 10-by-10 boards with zero-to-10 on each axis. The more squares that are bought, the greater the payout for the winner. You may have low odds of winning, but the game is a low-risk commitment with a significant reward. | bart | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/super-bowl-squares-rules-how-works-patriots-rams | 0.595239 |
Which team has won the most Super Bowls? | The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for their ninth appearance in the last 18 years behind another strong performance from quarterback Tom Brady. But despite the dominance over the last two decades, New England does not have the most Super Bowl titles ever. That honor goes to the Steelers: Pittsburgh has won the most Super Bowls with six titles in eight appearances. The Steelers last won in Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009. San Francisco, Dallas and New England have five wins apiece. The Patriots picked up their last victory in Super Bowl LI in an epic comeback win over the Falcons. New England appeared in Super Bowl LII last year, but lost 4133 to the Eagles. The Patriots will face the Rams in this year's big game. The Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants have four titles. The Denver Broncos, Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders and the Washington Redskins have three each. On the flipside, 12 teams have never won a Super Bowl. With a victory over the Patriots last year, the Eagles picked up their first Super Bowl championship in franchise history. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3 in Atlanta. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | The Steelers have won the most Super Bowls with six titles. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/teams-most-super-bowl-wins-titles-rings-history | 0.475384 |
Which team has won the most Super Bowls? | The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for their ninth appearance in the last 18 years behind another strong performance from quarterback Tom Brady. But despite the dominance over the last two decades, New England does not have the most Super Bowl titles ever. That honor goes to the Steelers: Pittsburgh has won the most Super Bowls with six titles in eight appearances. The Steelers last won in Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009. San Francisco, Dallas and New England have five wins apiece. The Patriots picked up their last victory in Super Bowl LI in an epic comeback win over the Falcons. New England appeared in Super Bowl LII last year, but lost 4133 to the Eagles. The Patriots will face the Rams in this year's big game. The Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants have four titles. The Denver Broncos, Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders and the Washington Redskins have three each. On the flipside, 12 teams have never won a Super Bowl. With a victory over the Patriots last year, the Eagles picked up their first Super Bowl championship in franchise history. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3 in Atlanta. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | The Steelers have won the most Super Bowls with six titles in eight appearances. 12 teams have never won a Super Bowl. The Patriots will face the Rams in this year's big game. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/teams-most-super-bowl-wins-titles-rings-history | 0.483239 |
Which team has won the most Super Bowls? | The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for their ninth appearance in the last 18 years behind another strong performance from quarterback Tom Brady. But despite the dominance over the last two decades, New England does not have the most Super Bowl titles ever. That honor goes to the Steelers: Pittsburgh has won the most Super Bowls with six titles in eight appearances. The Steelers last won in Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009. San Francisco, Dallas and New England have five wins apiece. The Patriots picked up their last victory in Super Bowl LI in an epic comeback win over the Falcons. New England appeared in Super Bowl LII last year, but lost 4133 to the Eagles. The Patriots will face the Rams in this year's big game. The Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants have four titles. The Denver Broncos, Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders and the Washington Redskins have three each. On the flipside, 12 teams have never won a Super Bowl. With a victory over the Patriots last year, the Eagles picked up their first Super Bowl championship in franchise history. Super Bowl LIII will be played Feb. 3 in Atlanta. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | The Steelers have won the most Super Bowls with six titles in eight appearances. 12 teams have never won a Super Bowl. The Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for their ninth appearance in the last 18 years behind another strong performance from quarterback Tom Brady. The Steelers last won in Super Bowl XLIII in February 2009. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/teams-most-super-bowl-wins-titles-rings-history | 0.435699 |
Could Vasyl Lomachenko Vs. Richard Commey April 12 Lightweight Unification Fight Be In Jeopardy? | If just under nine weeks wasn't a quick enough turnaround for Richard Commey to defend his newly won IBF lightweight world title, add a potential hand injury into the mix and a WBO, WBA and IBF unification bout against top-five pound-for-pound Vasyl Lomachenko seems in jeopardy. Commey puts Chaniev on the mat in the first! #AlvarezKovalev2 pic.twitter.com/0QqphkJoPq Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) February 3, 2019 After Commey's less than two round destruction of Isa Chaniev by knockout on Saturday night in Texas, Mike Coppinger of The Ring, immediately reported from ringside that Commey might have suffered a hand injury. Commey says he felt something pop. I asked him if he can fight on April 12. Says he wont know until X-Ray https://t.co/GemcDaayz2 Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) February 3, 2019 I reached out to Commey's promoter Lou DiBella immediately after the fight regarding the injury. DiBellas said, "Going to get it checked out. Doesn't LOOK that bad, but quick turnaround." Meaning, if Commey has to nurse any hand injury, that could sideline him for at least two weeks, maybe even more, giving him ample time for training camp, improbable. In three minutes and 39 seconds of a blistering performance, @RichardCommey dropped Isa Chaniev three times over two rounds to make history as Ghana's 9th world champion, capturing the IBF lightweight title. Well, initially, Matchroom Boxing was lobbying for the purse bid scheduled on February 6 to move forward for mandatory WBA challenger, Anthony Crolla. The WBA was inclined to provide Lomachenko with a special exception to face Commey in April, for the purposes of unifying the WBA, WBO and IBF belts. Leaving only Mikey Garcia's WBC belt left from a true lightweight unification, in which Lomachenko seems to be after. The April 12 bout between Lomachenko and Commey was ambitious to say the least. Commey would have barely had enough time to enjoy his first world title victory in his second attempt having previously lost a highly contested and controversial split decision loss to Robert Easter in 2016. According to DiBella, Commey will have his hand looked at on Tuesday by his doctor and make a decision based on that prognosis. If the injury were to prevent the Lomanchenko fight from taking place, it could put a Lomachenko vs. Commey unification bout on ice until the summer, depending on what contingency plans are made by Top Rank. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Top Rank will keep Lomachenko's April 12 date and look to make a deal with Crolla's promoter, Matchroom to get Lomachenko's mandatory out of the way. After Commey's destruction of Chaniev, many of the TV analysts during the ESPN broadcast were suggesting that Commey's style and power could pose problems for Lomachenko. The hard-working lightweight from Ghana is heavy-handed and can end a fight in the split of a second as was on full display against Chaniev, to leave no questions this time around in his quest for the IBF world title. Whether or not Commey faces Lomachenko remains to be seen. It will all play out this week. Finally, the latest from Mike Coppinger at the time I published this post. | Richard Commey could miss the April 12 bout against Vasyl Lomachenko. | ctrlsum | 0 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterkahn/2019/02/03/vasyl-lomachenko-richard-commey-fight-hand-injury/ | 0.210913 |
Could Vasyl Lomachenko Vs. Richard Commey April 12 Lightweight Unification Fight Be In Jeopardy? | If just under nine weeks wasn't a quick enough turnaround for Richard Commey to defend his newly won IBF lightweight world title, add a potential hand injury into the mix and a WBO, WBA and IBF unification bout against top-five pound-for-pound Vasyl Lomachenko seems in jeopardy. Commey puts Chaniev on the mat in the first! #AlvarezKovalev2 pic.twitter.com/0QqphkJoPq Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) February 3, 2019 After Commey's less than two round destruction of Isa Chaniev by knockout on Saturday night in Texas, Mike Coppinger of The Ring, immediately reported from ringside that Commey might have suffered a hand injury. Commey says he felt something pop. I asked him if he can fight on April 12. Says he wont know until X-Ray https://t.co/GemcDaayz2 Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) February 3, 2019 I reached out to Commey's promoter Lou DiBella immediately after the fight regarding the injury. DiBellas said, "Going to get it checked out. Doesn't LOOK that bad, but quick turnaround." Meaning, if Commey has to nurse any hand injury, that could sideline him for at least two weeks, maybe even more, giving him ample time for training camp, improbable. In three minutes and 39 seconds of a blistering performance, @RichardCommey dropped Isa Chaniev three times over two rounds to make history as Ghana's 9th world champion, capturing the IBF lightweight title. Well, initially, Matchroom Boxing was lobbying for the purse bid scheduled on February 6 to move forward for mandatory WBA challenger, Anthony Crolla. The WBA was inclined to provide Lomachenko with a special exception to face Commey in April, for the purposes of unifying the WBA, WBO and IBF belts. Leaving only Mikey Garcia's WBC belt left from a true lightweight unification, in which Lomachenko seems to be after. The April 12 bout between Lomachenko and Commey was ambitious to say the least. Commey would have barely had enough time to enjoy his first world title victory in his second attempt having previously lost a highly contested and controversial split decision loss to Robert Easter in 2016. According to DiBella, Commey will have his hand looked at on Tuesday by his doctor and make a decision based on that prognosis. If the injury were to prevent the Lomanchenko fight from taking place, it could put a Lomachenko vs. Commey unification bout on ice until the summer, depending on what contingency plans are made by Top Rank. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Top Rank will keep Lomachenko's April 12 date and look to make a deal with Crolla's promoter, Matchroom to get Lomachenko's mandatory out of the way. After Commey's destruction of Chaniev, many of the TV analysts during the ESPN broadcast were suggesting that Commey's style and power could pose problems for Lomachenko. The hard-working lightweight from Ghana is heavy-handed and can end a fight in the split of a second as was on full display against Chaniev, to leave no questions this time around in his quest for the IBF world title. Whether or not Commey faces Lomachenko remains to be seen. It will all play out this week. Finally, the latest from Mike Coppinger at the time I published this post. | Richard Commey could miss the April 12 bout against Vasyl Lomachenko. The WBO, WBA and IBF Lightweight Unification Fight could be in jeopardy. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterkahn/2019/02/03/vasyl-lomachenko-richard-commey-fight-hand-injury/ | 0.423634 |
Could Vasyl Lomachenko Vs. Richard Commey April 12 Lightweight Unification Fight Be In Jeopardy? | If just under nine weeks wasn't a quick enough turnaround for Richard Commey to defend his newly won IBF lightweight world title, add a potential hand injury into the mix and a WBO, WBA and IBF unification bout against top-five pound-for-pound Vasyl Lomachenko seems in jeopardy. Commey puts Chaniev on the mat in the first! #AlvarezKovalev2 pic.twitter.com/0QqphkJoPq Top Rank Boxing (@trboxing) February 3, 2019 After Commey's less than two round destruction of Isa Chaniev by knockout on Saturday night in Texas, Mike Coppinger of The Ring, immediately reported from ringside that Commey might have suffered a hand injury. Commey says he felt something pop. I asked him if he can fight on April 12. Says he wont know until X-Ray https://t.co/GemcDaayz2 Mike Coppinger (@MikeCoppinger) February 3, 2019 I reached out to Commey's promoter Lou DiBella immediately after the fight regarding the injury. DiBellas said, "Going to get it checked out. Doesn't LOOK that bad, but quick turnaround." Meaning, if Commey has to nurse any hand injury, that could sideline him for at least two weeks, maybe even more, giving him ample time for training camp, improbable. In three minutes and 39 seconds of a blistering performance, @RichardCommey dropped Isa Chaniev three times over two rounds to make history as Ghana's 9th world champion, capturing the IBF lightweight title. Well, initially, Matchroom Boxing was lobbying for the purse bid scheduled on February 6 to move forward for mandatory WBA challenger, Anthony Crolla. The WBA was inclined to provide Lomachenko with a special exception to face Commey in April, for the purposes of unifying the WBA, WBO and IBF belts. Leaving only Mikey Garcia's WBC belt left from a true lightweight unification, in which Lomachenko seems to be after. The April 12 bout between Lomachenko and Commey was ambitious to say the least. Commey would have barely had enough time to enjoy his first world title victory in his second attempt having previously lost a highly contested and controversial split decision loss to Robert Easter in 2016. According to DiBella, Commey will have his hand looked at on Tuesday by his doctor and make a decision based on that prognosis. If the injury were to prevent the Lomanchenko fight from taking place, it could put a Lomachenko vs. Commey unification bout on ice until the summer, depending on what contingency plans are made by Top Rank. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Top Rank will keep Lomachenko's April 12 date and look to make a deal with Crolla's promoter, Matchroom to get Lomachenko's mandatory out of the way. After Commey's destruction of Chaniev, many of the TV analysts during the ESPN broadcast were suggesting that Commey's style and power could pose problems for Lomachenko. The hard-working lightweight from Ghana is heavy-handed and can end a fight in the split of a second as was on full display against Chaniev, to leave no questions this time around in his quest for the IBF world title. Whether or not Commey faces Lomachenko remains to be seen. It will all play out this week. Finally, the latest from Mike Coppinger at the time I published this post. | Richard Commey could miss the April 12 bout against Vasyl Lomachenko. The WBO, WBA and IBF Lightweight Unification Fight could be in jeopardy. Com mey beat Isa Chaniev by knockout in less than two rounds on Saturday night. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterkahn/2019/02/03/vasyl-lomachenko-richard-commey-fight-hand-injury/ | 0.469152 |
How Long is Halftime at the Super Bowl? | Halftime normally lasts between 12 and 15 minutes during a regular NFL game, but the Super Bowl's break is much longer due to the broadcast's elaborate halftime show. Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, which can be more than twice as long as the traditional break time during regular season games. The longer halftime accommodates for lengthy Super Bowl halftime shows. Justin Timberlake spent almost 14 minutes performing during the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show, getting parts of 11 songs in after the stage was set on the field in Minneapolis. Lady Gaga, the 2017 performer, went on for 13 and a half minutes, while Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars finished in just over 13 minutes the year before. The extended halftime means that players and coaches have much more time in the locker room to prepare and reset for the second half of the season's biggest game during the performances, but the period of rest is much longer than what most players are accustomed to. Some teams actually practice for the lengthy break, like the Patriots in 2012. On the Wednesday before the game, head coach Bill Belichick stopped practice and made his players go back to the locker room for 30 minutes to prepare for halftime at the Super Bowl, adding in a pep talk to complete the training. It really gets into a whole restarting mentality, Belichick said then. Its not like taking a break and coming out in the second half. Its like starting the game all over again. Its like playing a game, stopping, and then playing a second game. Maroon 5 is headlining this year's Super Bowl halftime show in Atlanta, with rappers Travis Scott and Atlanta native Big Boi also joining the band in Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday. The Patriots and the Rams will meet at Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 3. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes. Justin Timberlake spent almost 14 minutes performing during the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show. | bart | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/super-bowl-halftime-length-time-performances-players-break | 0.685153 |
How Long is Halftime at the Super Bowl? | Halftime normally lasts between 12 and 15 minutes during a regular NFL game, but the Super Bowl's break is much longer due to the broadcast's elaborate halftime show. Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, which can be more than twice as long as the traditional break time during regular season games. The longer halftime accommodates for lengthy Super Bowl halftime shows. Justin Timberlake spent almost 14 minutes performing during the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show, getting parts of 11 songs in after the stage was set on the field in Minneapolis. Lady Gaga, the 2017 performer, went on for 13 and a half minutes, while Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars finished in just over 13 minutes the year before. The extended halftime means that players and coaches have much more time in the locker room to prepare and reset for the second half of the season's biggest game during the performances, but the period of rest is much longer than what most players are accustomed to. Some teams actually practice for the lengthy break, like the Patriots in 2012. On the Wednesday before the game, head coach Bill Belichick stopped practice and made his players go back to the locker room for 30 minutes to prepare for halftime at the Super Bowl, adding in a pep talk to complete the training. It really gets into a whole restarting mentality, Belichick said then. Its not like taking a break and coming out in the second half. Its like starting the game all over again. Its like playing a game, stopping, and then playing a second game. Maroon 5 is headlining this year's Super Bowl halftime show in Atlanta, with rappers Travis Scott and Atlanta native Big Boi also joining the band in Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday. The Patriots and the Rams will meet at Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 3. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, which can be more than twice as long as the traditional break time during regular season games. Some teams actually practice for the lengthy break, like the Patriots in 2012. | ctrlsum | 1 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/super-bowl-halftime-length-time-performances-players-break | 0.692323 |
How Long is Halftime at the Super Bowl? | Halftime normally lasts between 12 and 15 minutes during a regular NFL game, but the Super Bowl's break is much longer due to the broadcast's elaborate halftime show. Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, which can be more than twice as long as the traditional break time during regular season games. The longer halftime accommodates for lengthy Super Bowl halftime shows. Justin Timberlake spent almost 14 minutes performing during the 2018 Super Bowl halftime show, getting parts of 11 songs in after the stage was set on the field in Minneapolis. Lady Gaga, the 2017 performer, went on for 13 and a half minutes, while Coldplay, Beyonce and Bruno Mars finished in just over 13 minutes the year before. The extended halftime means that players and coaches have much more time in the locker room to prepare and reset for the second half of the season's biggest game during the performances, but the period of rest is much longer than what most players are accustomed to. Some teams actually practice for the lengthy break, like the Patriots in 2012. On the Wednesday before the game, head coach Bill Belichick stopped practice and made his players go back to the locker room for 30 minutes to prepare for halftime at the Super Bowl, adding in a pep talk to complete the training. It really gets into a whole restarting mentality, Belichick said then. Its not like taking a break and coming out in the second half. Its like starting the game all over again. Its like playing a game, stopping, and then playing a second game. Maroon 5 is headlining this year's Super Bowl halftime show in Atlanta, with rappers Travis Scott and Atlanta native Big Boi also joining the band in Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Super Bowl Sunday. The Patriots and the Rams will meet at Super Bowl LIII on Feb. 3. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | Super Bowl halftime usually lasts anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes, which can be more than twice as long as the traditional break time during regular season games. Some teams actually practice for the lengthy break, like the Patriots in 2012, when they stopped practice for 30 minutes before the Super Bowl. | ctrlsum | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/super-bowl-halftime-length-time-performances-players-break | 0.715601 |
How old is Sean McVay? | Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay is the youngest head coach currently in the NFL. On Feb. 3, he could also become the youngest to ever lead his team to a Super Bowl win. McVay turned 33 years old on Jan. 24. McVay was hired as the Rams' head coach when he was just 30 years old, the youngest to achieve that feat since Art "Pappy" Lewis for the Cleveland Rams in 1938. Lewis was just 27 years old when he took over. McVay is also three years younger than the NFL's current youngest Super Bowl-winning head coach: Mike Tomlin of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Like McVay this year, Tomlin was also in just his second season coaching the Steelers when his team defeated the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII. He was 36 years old. The Rams will play Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday, Feb. 3. Kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. ET. | Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay is the youngest head coach in the NFL. On Feb. 3, he could also become the youngest to ever lead his team to a Super Bowl win. McVay was hired as the Rams' head coach when he was just 30 years old. | pegasus | 2 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/how-old-sean-mcvay-los-angeles-rams | 0.382104 |
Which Quarterback Has Played in the Most Super Bowls? | When the Patriots face the Rams in Super Bowl LIII on Sunday, quarterback Tom Brady will be playing his ninth Super Bowlmore than any other quarterback in NFL history. Brady, in fact, has appeared in more Super Bowls than every NFL franchise except the Patriots. Brady has four more Super Bowl appearances than the Broncos' John Elway, who is second on the all-time list among quarterbacks with five. Quarterbacks Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, Roger Staubach, Peyton Manning and Jim Kelly are all tied for third with four appearances apiece. Brady has five Super Bowl wins on his resume, while Rams quarterback Jared Goff will be making his first Super Bowl appearance on Sunday. | Tom Brady has appeared in more Super Bowls than any other quarterback in NFL history. | bart | 0 | https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/02/03/quarterback-super-bowl-starts-apperances-record-tom-brady | 0.451293 |
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