The latest beta of Persevere features a new native object storage engine called JavaScriptDB that provides high-end scalability and performance. Persevere now outperforms the common PHP and MySQL combination for accessing data via HTTP by about 40% and outperforms CouchDB by 249%. The new storage engine is designed and optimized specifically for persisting JavaScript and JSON data with dynamic object structures. It is also built for extreme scalability, with support for up to 9,000 petabytes of JSON/JS data in addition to any binary data.

These statistics are even more impressive when one considers all the additional functionality that Persevere provides while outperforming these other storage systems. MySQL utilizes traditional fixed structure schemas requiring homogenous records in a table, while JavaScriptDB (as well as CouchDB) support storage of heterogeneous objects of any structure in tables. Persevere/JavaScriptDB goes further with the flexibility to evolve schemas and handle partial schemas. Persevere also provides integrated server side JavaScript (SSJS) with persistence, Comet-driven data change notifications, JSONQuery, standards based HTTP interface with content negotiation, JSON-RPC interface to SSJS, cross-domain handling, CSRF protection, and more. All of these things are additional features that one would have to add to the stack for other storage systems, making them even slower. Persevere includes this functionality out of the box, while still maintaining extremely fast performance.

Test Scenario

These tests were performed on a Mac/OS-X with a 2GHz dual-core Intel processor and 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 memory. The PHP/Apache/MySQL setup used MAMP 1.7.2 which includes PHP 5.2.6, MySQL 5.0.41, and Apache 2.0.59. The CouchDB tests were performed with CouchDBX version 0.8 (which uses CouchDB 0.8.1). Persevere’s nightly builds from late March were used for JavaScriptDB tests.

Three different operations were performed in the tests:

Insert/POST operation to create a new object

Update/PUT operation to update an object

Query/GET to search for objects by an (indexed) field/property

On the PHP/MySQL tests, all operations were handled by a very simple PHP script that first did a quick security check query against a small table (actually empty for the tests) to emulate the security capabilities of Persevere and CouchDB (although CouchDB’s security capabilities are limited, and probably often require additional logic), and then the main query was executed against MySQL, whether it be an INSERT, UPDATE, or SELECT. All the created objects/records had four properties/fields for all three systems. In MySQL, two properties were indexed, one being the primary key, the other being the property that was queried on in the query requests. In CouchDB, a simple view was created that indexed on a single property. This view was used for the requests that queried by index. Both Persevere and CouchDB tests used their standard HTTP interface for creating, updating, and querying.

Tests were carried out by a HTTP client running on 10 threads concurrently issuing a sequence of 200 of each type of request. The “full test” performed create, update, and query requests. The “write test” performed create and update requests, and the “read test” only performed query requests. The files used to perform the benchmarks are available here.

Test Conclusions

Two sets of tests were run—one that used fast commits that do not wait for committed data to be actually physically written to the disk (allowing for normal OS write-back caching), and high-integrity commits which cause the committed data to be forced to the disk. JavaScriptDB has a setting for choosing which style of commits to use. In MySQL, the MyISAM storage engine was used for fast commits, and the InnoDB storage engine was used for high-integrity commits. CouchDB always uses high-integrity commits.

While PHP is not the fastest language, the script that was used for these tests was very trivial, and it’s unlikely that PHP code execution significantly detracted from the overall performance of the PHP/MySQL combination. With this simple, streamlined PHP script, a very fast classic setup was used. Alternate languages would not be likely to improve the performance by very much. Yet, Persevere’s JavaScriptDB still beat this setup by a significant margin. With more complex request handlers that might provide more of the functionality that Persevere already provides, the margin would be likely to increase even more. Quite simply, the classic application server + MySQL database setup is hard-pressed to compete with Persevere in terms of performance for most normal database interactions.

So how does Persevere achieve this level of performance with the JavaScriptDB storage? The dynamic object-oriented nature of the data that is stored in JavaScriptDB is much different than that of a traditional relational database, so a number of innovative approaches were employed.

Direct Data-Bound Object Representation

One of the central concepts of Persevere is that all persisted data is mapped to JavaScript objects. This enables server side JavaScript functions and handlers to easily be able to interact with persisted data, and provides a convenient in-memory representation of data that allows for intuitive normal object-oriented data interaction. However, in Persevere this more than just a convenient API—it also facilitates efficient memory utilization by providing a single in-memory representation that can be reused at multiple levels.

In a traditional application stack, a record must have separate in-memory representations for each different level in the stack. A database may have an in-memory representation before serializing result sets back to the application. The application may have result set level representation, which then might be mapped to an object representation. Every one of these levels consumes more memory. These extra layers increase latency and overhead as well. In addition, most database driven applications rely on TCP/IP communication with the database, which consumes a large amount of resources as well. With the JavaScriptDB, the single in-memory object is efficiently reused at the database level for all result sets and data caching. This not only means less memory-consumption, but it also translates to more efficient CPU cache utilization for Persevere, and direct low-latency access to data.

Shared Cache of Objects with Copy-on-Write

Not only are in-memory objects shared between the application level and the database level, but Persevere also utilizes a shared cache of objects between threads to ensure that any given record/object only exists in memory at most one time. Traditional application frameworks process separate HTTP requests concurrently and each request will have its own result set and a copy of data. These can lead to significant duplication of data in memory. With Persevere, objects are always reused if they are still available in memory.

While this technique is relatively simple for read-only data, Persevere still maintains virtual memory isolation between threads to protect against concurrent access between threads and ensuing race conditions. Persevere does this by performing copy-on-write style values in objects. When a property is modified, internally its value is modified to being a “transactional” value that actually has multiple states depending on which thread is accessing the objects. Therefore an object can be modified by one thread, but another thread can access the same object without seeing the uncommitted change. Property changes are made visible when transactions are committed. This technique allows Persevere to maintain transactional isolation between concurrent request handlers, while minimizing the record/objects that must be held in memory. Persevere’s architecture combined with JavaScriptDB’s integration minimizes memory consumption, allowing internal caches to be maximized for optimal performance.

Persevere utilizes the sophisticated least recently used (LRU) caching capabilities of the Java Virtual Machines’s (JVM) soft referencing mechanism. In-memory objects, as well as JavaScriptDB’s indices, are cached via soft reference tables. This allows the JVM to utilize an integrated view of reachability and object access timestamps to determine which objects to collect and discard. This means that objects that are reachable by currently executing code will always stay in the cache (since they must stay in memory due to reachability) as long as they are reachable. Unreachable objects are then discarded according to LRU strategies. Since the JVM’s garbage collection handles object collection at a global level, it is also able to optimally select objects for collection without being constrained by module level view. This means that if the indices are not being used frequently, more memory can be allocated to the object cache and vice versa. Caches are maintained according to usage and reachability with the JVM’s global perspective for optimal discarding strategy.

Append-based Database Storage

JavaScriptDB uses an append-based database format to store data. Many traditional database will synchronously commit data to a transaction log file before committing data to the main storage table, which requires multiple writes. On the other hand, JavaScriptDB appends transactional data directly to the main storage file such that writes can be committed with a single IO operation. This also enables JavaScriptDB to efficiently maintain a version history of the database and its records. The storage file is essentially a running log of transactions, and these transactions are exposed as the Transaction table. By storing data as a sequential set of transaction, JavaScriptDB not only can persist data quickly, it also provides efficient access to the transactions that have taken place and a version history of the database and objects within it.

Adaptive On-Demand Concurrent Indexing

JavaScriptDB features a dynamic approach to indexing that minimizes the configuration and management required to create and maintain tables, and maximizes performance. By default, JavaScriptDB indexes all properties of persisted objects, so typical queries can almost always be run in fast O(log n) time. However, the indexer does not block write operations to complete index updates when objects are added, deleted, or modified. Rather, the indexer execution takes place concurrently in a background asynchronous task executing threads. As objects are indexed, the index update operations are delegated to the appropriate index nodes, which are also executed as asynchronous tasks. When an index is needed for a query, any outstanding updates along the node tree path are completed so the query can execute.

It is worth noting that this on-demand indexing does not mean that the entire index must be updated to execute a query. Often (and usually in the case of large databases) an object may be updated that affects an index node that isn’t used in a subsequent query. In this case, the query can still execute without waiting for the index node to be updated. JavaScriptDB properly orchestrates concurrent indexing such that nodes are updated through lower-priority background threads when possible, and immediately updated on-demand as necessary. This allows write operations to take place very quickly, while still allowing indexes to be ready for fast query operations as well. This also allows Persevere to utilize resources and CPU processing more evenly and smoothly. Background processes can take CPU time as needed when client requests are not demanding immediate data retrieval.

Furthermore, JavaScriptDB uses adaptive techniques with indexing. If a particular index has been unused for some time while many objects have been added to a table with the corresponding property, JavaScriptDB will stop proactively updating the index to conserve resources. When an index is no longer proactively updated, the index will only be updated on-demand, when a query is performed that requires that index. Once the index is updated, it will resume proactive updates (at least until disuse causes it to go back to a non-proactive update state). This approach allows JavaScriptDB to automatically do appropriate and efficient indexing with minimal manual configuration. JavaScriptDB does also support manual configuration of indexes, for situations where you may want explicit control of indexing.

Batched writes in integrity mode

One of the most expensive operations that a database can perform is a forced synchronous disk write operation. These operations are necessary for high-integrity commit mode where the commit does not return until the database is certain that the data has actually been written to the disk, fulfilling the durability component of ACID compliance. These operations can take around 10ms. In order to improve the performance of high-integrity commits, Persevere will detect when multiple writes are taking place concurrently and batch multiple writes together in a single synchronous disk write operation. When a number of concurrent write requests are being sent to Persevere, this can significantly reduce the number of synchronous writes that must take place and greatly improve performance.

Pluggable Storage

Persevere uses a pluggable storage system. JavaScriptDB is one of several data source plugins (the default data source) that can be used with Persevere. Persevere supports heterogeneous storage configurations. This means you can leverage the performance and flexibility of JavaScriptDB in Persevere without abandoning existing relational databases, as well as other data sources. Even custom data sources can be created for unique storage systems.

The ServerJS working group is also considering a standard API for database interaction that might possibly allow JavaScriptDB to be used as a standalone database engine for use by other Rhino-based frameworks like Helma (of course Persevere + JavaScriptDB can already be used with existing JavaScript modules, and it can be used as a database for Java applications through it’s Java API).

Future Improvements

This is the first release of JavaScriptDB, so there is still significant opportunities for continuing to improve and refine this storage engine. Currently, JavaScriptDB does not utilize indices for nested object queries (the equivalent of inner joins in relational DBs). Consequently queries of the form [?prop1=’something’] will execute in O(log n) time, but queries of the form [?prop1.prop2='something'] will only execute in O(n) . Future versions will provide fast O(log n) for a much broader range of queries. A later release will also provide true ACID compliance (the current version does not fulfill the atomicity constraint). Finally, replication/clustering services will be added in the future as well, for distributing Persevere workload across multiple servers.

Real Value

As Alex Payne pointed out, the economy may be ending the era of disregard for system performance and efficiency with the excuse of buying more servers. More servers costs more money, and architectures like Persevere that can efficiently handle large numbers of users and traffic with minimal hardware resources equates to real money saved.

Persevere combines numerous advanced capabilities for web-accessible data including standards-based HTTP interface, JSONQuery, JSON-RPC, server side JavaScript, Comet-based data notifications, robust security, and more. Now these capabilities are available with speed and scalability that outperforms the most common web application systems, allowing you to build high-performance client/server Ajax web applications with unprecedented ease, efficiency, and value.

Update: Jan Lehnardt pointed out that CouchDB is now at version 0.9.0 and OS-X is not the optimal platform for CouchDB, so the latest version CouchDB can presumably improve upon the CouchDB performance shown in these tests. Hopefully we can progress towards better benchmarking tools for this new breed of databases.


GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria’s political opposition hopes Hillary Clinton wins the U.S. presidential election next week because she has a better understanding of the conflict than Donald Trump, according to members of a delegation holding talks at the United Nations.

President of the Syrian National Coalition Khaled Khoja delivers remarks regarding Russian air strikes on Syria at the United Nations in Manhattan, New York September 30, 2015. Russia launched air strikes in Syria today in the Kremlin's biggest Middle East intervention in decades. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly - RTS2IBM

Khaled Khoja and Hind Kabawat, in Geneva on Monday to press for U.N.-led negotiations on the release of Syrian detainees, said they trusted Clinton, a former U.S. Secretary of State, to deliver on the opposition’s top priority - protecting civilians.

Clinton has called for the establishment of a no-fly zone and “safe zones” on the ground in Syria to protect non-combatants. Trump says this could “lead to World War Three” due to the potential for conflict with Russia, which is providing military support to President Bashar al-Assad.

Kabawat said Trump, who has never held public office and has no foreign policy experience, saw Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as the only alternative to Assad in Syria.

“For us a woman’s leadership at this time would be a good thing. Also for many, like Trump and others, they think that the Syrian conflict is comparing Assad with ISIS and they have to take one side or the other, and of course for them Assad will look more prominent than ISIS,” said Kabawat.

“She (Clinton) knows that is wrong. She knows that there is this moderate opposition that believes in democracy and freedom. This is what we are aiming for, to have a president of the U.S. with good experience who knows the difference between the different oppositions.”

Assad, whose forces have regained much territory against their opponents with the help of Russian warplanes, has branded all those opposed to his rule as “terrorists”.

ISLAMIC STATE

Trump has said defeating Islamic State should be a higher priority than trying to persuade Assad to step aside, a departure from a long-held U.S. policy objective.

Khoja, leading the Syrian opposition delegation in Geneva, disagreed with this viewpoint.

“Dealing with only the ISIS issue will not help with solving the crisis in Syria or the region because the root cause of the crisis is the (Assad) regime itself,” he said.

Kabawat, an attorney and a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee, added that the Syrian political opposition wanted to see women playing an equal role to men in the nation’s politics.

The opposition delegation, which has links to the Free Syrian Army but not with Islamic State or al Qaeda-linked groups, is in Geneva this week to revive the issue of prisoner releases, sidelined during months of fruitless peace talks.

Khoja said more than 100 armed groups had shown their willingness to cooperate but there had been no sign of cooperation from Assad’s government or Russia, adding that the United Nations should form a committee on the matter.

“If it’s needed, if there is a response from the regime side to release the detainees and stop killings inside Syria, then we can have the representative of the military groups also in this committee, and if the regime wants to send someone to this committee, we can discuss it,” Khoja said.

The Syrian Network of Human Rights has documented more than 90,000 detainees held by the Syrian government, 6,000 held by Islamic State and 2,400 held by the rest of the opposition, but estimates the real numbers are twice as high.


Over the long weekend, somebody directed my attention to an article on the Everyday Feminism site entitled ‘Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies‘. It’s a pretty attention-grabbing headline, especially to a gay male feminist, so I clicked through, and ultimately came away massively conflicted about what I’d just read. The writer, Yoko Akili, is a gay male writer, poet and educator, and it is definitely important to view the article within the context of his Queer American perspective.

There’s plenty within the article to agree with. He relates the story of a female friend who had her breasts grabbed aggressively in a club by a gay man she had never met before. The man refused to apologise or admit he had done anything wrong, saying “It’s no big deal, I’m gay, I don’t want her – I was just having fun.”

To be frank, that’s an utterly vile statement. I don’t give two shits whether or not you find somebody sexually attractive – do not ever grab somebody’s junk without their consent. Like, ever. That is assault. It is not okay.

I’ve seen plenty of online commentators make the comparison with hordes of straight women flooding into gay bars and clubs, making the occasional vodka-induced crotch-grab on a passing Muscle Mary, but I’m not going down that route. Yes that’s equally wrong and equally fucking annoying, but I do think Akili is spot on when he points out that this issue exists and highlights a male sense of ownership of women’s bodies, regardless of sexuality.

When a skinny, permatanned twink grabs a girl’s tits on the dancefloor of a gay club, their motivation clearly isn’t the same as when those teenage boys in Steubenville, Ohio raped a passed-out girl at a party, but they’re both parts of the same damn problem – it’s sexism and it’s misogyny, pure and simple. It’s the viewpoint that women’s bodies are only there for the experiencing of pleasure, of “having fun”. Whether it’s of a sexual nature or not is entirely beside the point. This is what feminism exists for – to challenge behaviours such as this and to expose the pervasively misogynistic worldviews that motivate them.

Akili says that he has “experienced this attitude as being very common amongst gay men”, and opens his article with the admittedly less-than-scientific observation that a group of gay men in the audience of one of his presentations all admitted to touching a woman’s body without her consent, and also to offering a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or fashion. He is clearly basing this article on his own anecdotal experience. To a certain extent I, and I’m sure many readers, share those experiences – I’m painfully aware that this behaviour does occur on a regular basis within parts of the LGBT community. That being said, however, I’m pleased to report that the vast majority of my friends who identify as gay/queer men would find the idea of feeling up a female stranger in a club completely awful.

Here’s a not so shocking fact for you – gay men are no more a monolithic entity than any other social group. We know it’s not okay to begin sentences with hideously sweeping, absolutist statements like “all Muslims are…” or “all Chinese people are…”, because those statements are almost always demonstrably fallacious. Not all gay men grope women in clubs. Not all gay men go to clubs. Not all gay men would routinely walk up to a woman they barely know and start telling her what is wrong with the way she looks or the clothes she wears. Don’t get me wrong – it happens, and the rest of us should do whatever we can to smash that kind of bullshit wherever we experience it. Akili’s problem is that he extrapolates out from his own personal experiences of a small subsection of a nationally-defined subculture and attempts to apply his findings to “all gay men” – a mythically homogenous group if ever there was one.

The part of the article which baffles and confuses me most is the leap Akili then makes from discussing the grabbing of breasts and the inherent misogyny therein to classifying gay men’s “diva worship” and “celebrating women” as “objectification, assault and dehumanisation”. It’s a frankly insulting and entirely unfounded assertion, and it really does come out of left field. If you grope a woman in a club or feel you have the Gucci-given right to tell her how she should look, then you’re a douchebag and you’re a dehumanising misogynist. But to go from that to asserting that when a gay man idolises or celebrates a woman, or group of women, he is objectifying them – there’s no basis for such a claim and it’s almost offensive. To leap from your own personal, limited experience and make sweeping and damning claims about an entire group of people…well it definitely doesn’t sit too comfortably with me.

Akili’s intentions are pure, I have no doubt. The patriarchy is an insidiously pervasive and damaging force – from the glass ceilings of our workplaces to the sticky dancefloors of our gay bars, it’s everywhere and it must be challenged at every available opportunity. But not all gay men are misogynists, and thank God for that. We do receive a certain amount of the privilege that comes with being male in our Western society, and that’s a huge part of why some gay guys are sexist ass-hats, but it’s not all of us. Gay men aren’t all the same, but if we could all recognise where the misogyny is occurring within our community and stomp it out, maybe we could be. And then that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.


Before the start of the 2013-14 NBA season, a springtime Thursday night matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers seemed like a pretty attractive primetime affair, with visions of league-leading scorer Kevin Durant leading another title-contending Thunder squad into a contest with a Lakers team perhaps scrapping for a playoff spot behind a version of Kobe Bryant rounding into form after knocking off nearly eight months of Achilles-rehab rust. That, of course, wasn't to be.

While Durant's turned in an MVP-caliber campaign to lead the Thunder to contention for the top seed in the Western Conference, injuries and setbacks (and, y'know, losing an All-Star center in free agency and "replacing" him with Chris Kaman) have derailed Bryant and the rest of the Lakers this season, leading to L.A. dragging a 22-42 record into Thursday's game, which the Lakers entered fresh off having ruled Bryant and point guard Steve Nash out for the remainder of the season. Four days after the Lakers pulled off a stunning upset of the Thunder, OKC returned the favor with a 131-102 smackdown behind 29 points apiece from Durant and Russell Westbrook. The game would've been more fun — although perhaps not necessarily all that much more competitive — with Bryant around.

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As it turns out, though, the Mamba was present in spirit, after a fashion. During a conversation with Durant that served as the basis for a piece leading up to Thursday's game, Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News spoke with Durant about the way he works on his game, and how he's modeled that approach on his experiences with Bryant over the years:

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“Of course. He’s the greatest of all time. His skill is second to none. Him and [Michael Jordan] are neck and neck as far as skill. You can put in athleticism and be the best passer and strongest and quickest. But it’s about skill. I think that’s how his game is played. That’s why Kobe is the top two best ever in just having skill, footwork, shooting the three, shooting the pull up, posting up, dunking on guys and ball handling. It’s flat out skill. Him and Jordan are 1 and 1A. They’re neck and neck as far as the skills are concerned.”

“Kobe plays his game no matter what with his intensity and focus and he will play to win. He also will do what he needs to do to get ready to play. If he sees a mismatch, he’ll take it down low and demand the ball. He’s one of those guys who will always bring the same intensity every time no matter who’s on the court.”

This will undoubtedly rub some readers the wrong way, as such statements always seem to. That's fine — rankings are, of course, a matter of personal preference, Durant's entitled to his opinion as to Kobe's all-time greatness, and the specific elements Durant's talking about (the breadth of Bryant and Jordan's skills, their commitment to technique, the variety of different things they could do offensively) might not dovetail perfectly with everyone else's definitions of "greatest of all time." There's still plenty of room to state cases for any number of other "1 or 1A" players, from Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson, to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, to Larry Bird and Bill Russell, and any number of others in between. Your mileage may vary. Please feel free to argue this on a barstool to your heart's content this weekend, so long as I am not on the barstool next to you.

What's most interesting to me, though, is the way Durant's praise of Bryant's game and accomplishments came in the context of acknowledging not only that he's modeled his own approach to skill development and improvement on Kobe's, but also that he's actively sought advice from his 2012 Summer Olympics teammate on matters both specific and general. More from Medina:

What’s Kobe’s personality like?

“He’s one of those guys that’s to himself and real quiet. That’s how it was being around the Olympics. He’s a great guy to talk to and somebody that I remember two years ago, I called him at like 3 in the morning. We both had a game the next day. I was picking his brain a little bit. He’s one of those guys who’s a night owl.”

What were you asking him?

“I was picking his brain about different situations in the game and how I can handle my teammates better and how I can approach the game a little better. I don’t think I told anybody that. But I texted him one night and said, 'Man, I need to talk to somebody before playing the next day.' It was three in the morning. He picked the phone up. That’s something I’ll always remember. When we play each other, it’s better now that we have that relationship because it was almost bragging rights.”

Durant's language here is very similar to what Indiana Pacers forward Paul George used in a recent interview, where he said he'd like to develop a mentor/mentee-type relationship with LeBron James, "because I think he’s a player that can help me get to the next level and continue to keep going to the next level." (George also said he wishes Bryant "would mentor [him]," noting that every time he runs into Kobe, "he gives me a couple words.") James, for his part, said he'd be open to mentoring George: "You know me, I don't mind it at all. I don't mind giving guys [advice], whatever he wants to ask. Guys know I have an open door/phone policy."

When those stories broke, some cast sideways glances at George for saying he'd like to be mentored by the guy whose spot he's trying to take and at James for saying he'd be willing to mentor the guy trying to take his spot. I suspect Durant won't be seeing any such side-eye in this instance, if for no other reason than that — at age 35, after a year lost to major leg injuries, on a Lakers team that looks unlikely to compete for anything meaningful any time soon — Bryant and the Lakers no longer really represent the same sort of threat to Durant's primacy as the West's best scorer or the Thunder's chances of being the West's best team that George and the Pacers do to James and the Heat. Kobe doesn't think that way, obviously — he'll believe he could compete for a championship until he's six feet under, same as Jordan — but in the context of the NBA world as it actually exists, it makes more sense in the minds of many for a great player from the new school to seek counsel from a prior generation's top star rather than for contemporaries to compare notes.

It shouldn't, though. I like the idea that LeBron and KD have worked out together. I think it's cool that the best and brightest want to not only go after each other and tear one another apart, but also want to learn from one another and try to get better by figuring out stuff they don't know from people who might. Nobody's saying that everybody needs to be the best of friends all the time, but considering that one of the primary developments of the post-AAU-basketball-playing social structure is that these guys mostly are friends, why not make the most of those other awesome people you know as you attempt to become the best possible version of yourself?

You're never going to know everything, and you're never going to be the unquestioned best at everything if you don't ceaselessly attempt to get better. A lot of that work is physical, of course, coming through hour after hour of hard labor in the practice gym and weight room, but important additions can also come from simple conversations, whether during All-Star Weekend shootarounds or 3 a.m. check-ins. Do collaboration and competition have to be mutually exclusive? Or can players adopt an "each one teach one" mentality off the court, and still go all out to take one another to school on it? It sure seems to be working for guys like LeBron and Durant; if this "mentoring" thing catches on, the rising tide could lift quite a number of super-talented young boats in the years to come.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

Stay connected with Ball Don't Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, "Like" BDL on Facebook and follow BDL's Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.


This is a signboard located on the Makran Coastal Highway. The signboard can easily be ignored by any passersby but ignoring it means ignoring a history of around 9000 years.

The signboard points a traveler to the historic Hinglaj Devi Temple located in Hinglaj of Balochistan region in Pakistan’s southwest.

It is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Pakistan for the country’s minority Hindus. Because it is located near Karachi, the Islamic country’s only cosmopolitan city, Hindus find Hinglaj easily accessible.

Why is the religious significance of Hinglaj?

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Any temple in the repressive, anti-minority Pakistani establishment is important for the Hindus, and Hinglaj has a history that even the native Balochistanis are proud of.

According to the Hindus, the site is one of the 51 Shakti Peeths of Hinduism. A Shakti Peeth is a place associated with Sati – the wife of Lord Shiva. Hindus believe that the head of Sati fell at Hinglaj, thus making it the most important of all Shakti Peeths in the sub-continent.

Hinglaj is also the only Shakti Peeth in Pakistan.

Despite its religious significance, Hinglaj does not even look like a Hindu temple.

The temple is like a shrine nestled in a small cave like opening at the foot of a mountain. There is only a mark of a Sun and a Moon on the shrine believed to have been made by Lord Ram.

The idol of the Goddess is inside a low-roof structure. Proper Hindu rituals are followed in the worship of the Goddess.

Pilgrims walk on foot over the rocky desert landscape to reach the temple as a form of penance.

How is Hinglaj still surviving despite increasing fundamentalism in Pakistan?

The temple would have been lost to the establishment condoned rising fundamentalism in Pakistan but for the locals of Balochistan.

It is the Balochistani people, Muslims by faith, who have helped protect the shrine for this long. They call it ‘Nani ki Mandir’.

The caretakers of the shrine and Baloch tribesmen live in a local village close by. The tribesmen revere the Hinglaj Devi temple and help the Hindu pilgrims in whichever way they can during the pilgrimage.

It is because of the Baloch tribesmen that the temple survives to this day in a land where everything related to minorities face persecution at the hands of fundamentalists and a government that has kept its eyes closed.


"Drinks for all my friends!" Mickey Rourke (right) and Frank Stallone in a scene from "Barfly," the quintessential dive bar movie, from 1987. "Trees Lounge" is also an esteemed member of the genre. (The Cannon Group)

Recently, I lamented the passing of John’s Place, a dive bar in Fairfax City which closed Jan. 1. It seemed perhaps symbolic of the evolution of shiny new Northern Virginia, leaving grubby old Northern Virginia behind.

But readers jumped in with many suggestions of dive bars still thriving in NoVa. I will soon undertake a research mission to explore the places you’ve pointed out. But I needed a template, a philosophical guide: What, in Northern Virginia in 2013, is a dive bar?

I turned to Fritz Hahn, tavern expert for The Post’s Going Out Guide and a man well-acquainted with the dives of NoVa, D.C. and elsewhere. I asked what rules should be used to define a dive bar. I started out with some suggestions: 1) No kids. 2) Decent jukebox. 3) Inedible food.

His response, below, is hilarious. Insightful, clearly spoken from experience, and a total roadmap. Read on, and then add your own defining characteristics of a dive bar in the comments:

Fritz: Good start. I don’t think the food has to be inedible. I’ll admit to liking the burger at Quarry House (Silver Spring) and the chili dog at Vienna Inn. But the menu should be full of things you’d get at a fire station or a church picnic. Chili, Italian subs, fried mac and cheese, wings or tacos would be fine. Even fish and chips. Strip steak, anything topped with boursin cheese, any “wrap,” fancy fish — all out. At least half of the menu items should have come in contact with a deep fryer.

What a dive bar looks like. From the Surf Club in Hyattsville, now gone. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

The exception I’ll make is for places that have found ethnic neighborhoods spring up around them. I’ve been to some bars in Silver Spring and Annandale where the cooks were Latin American and talked the owners into putting quesadillas or empanadas on the menu, and they’re better than the American dive food.

Anyway, more suggestions:

No microbrews that you don’t see advertised on TV, i.e. Sam Adams, though I’m flexible with this: I know of some dives where the owner or a bartender prefers good beer, so they stock it, or the regulars asked for DC Brau or another local brew.

No drink over $10. Better yet, no beer-and-a-shot combo over $10.

A dusty bottle of Galliano, Frangelico or Benedictine that probably hasn’t been used since the ’80s.

House wine poured from large jugs behind the bar.

No framed reviews on the wall unless they’re 10 years old, from an actual newspaper.

I used to say no internet jukebox, and while I’m easing off that, I still prefer a CD Jukebox. Or, as Galaxy Hut did when they caved, a jukebox that the owner can ban artists from. While the Hut has an internet juke, you can’t punch up Britney or One Direction or something.

A dive bar regular, in this case, Tom Orlowski at Mark’s Place in Virginia Beach. "They oughta hang 'em and get it over with," Orlowski said of sniper John Allen Muhammad and his trial then starting in Virginia Beach. (Stephanie K. Kuykendal/FTWP)

Should be dark or dimly lit. Bonus points for a light that’s out or flickering.

Something about the place should be local without being hokey — maybe a high school team’s hat or jersey on the wall, an old photo of the building, a sign advertising an event at the local VFW.

At least one patron should look like they got there before 10 a.m. Corollary: If the bar doesn’t open before 5, it’s not a dive.

Bonus points for a family photo of the owner, more for a family photo showing the bartender, even more for photos of regulars.

Pool table is a plus, especially if the felt is faded and you see obvious wear in front of the head spot. (And, like Hank Dietle’s in Rockville, there’s a sign telling you not to use the pool balls in a fight.)

(Fritz’s top Virginia dives: Jay’s in Clarendon, JV’s in Falls Church, McKeever’s in McLean, Mark’s Pub in Falls Church and the Forest Inn in Arlington. )

(Here’s a list of Fritz’s top Virginia bars, of all varieties.)


Ash Carter announces extra personnel and criticises allies in Middle East for not doing enough in fight against Isis

The US defence secretary has announced that 200 more military personnel will be sent to Syria to strengthen the fight against Islamic State in its stronghold of Raqqa.

Speaking at talks on Middle East security, Ash Carter said Barack Obama had approved deployment of the extra troops, who would include special forces trainers, advisers and bomb disposal experts.

Three hundred US special forces are already in Syria working with a coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters who are attempting to capture the city. The Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) has been gaining ground in areas north of Raqqa, the caliphate’s Syrian capital. The US has mostly been supporting the effort through airstrikes.

Carter also made one of his most direct attacks yet on other Middle Eastern countries for not lending more military muscle to the fight against Isis while complaining about American efforts.

In a speech on Saturday at a security conference in Bahrain, Carter said the additional troops would “continue organising, training, equipping, and otherwise enabling capable, motivated local forces” to take the fight to Isis.

He went on to criticise America’s Middle East partners for failing to help in the broader campaign to defeat the group and counter-extremism. He suggested US politicians had been irritated by what he saw as disingenuous criticism from “regional powers here in the Middle East”.

Carter said: “I would ask you to imagine what US military and defence leaders think when they have to listen to complaints sometimes that we should do more, when it’s plain to see that all too often, the ones complaining aren’t doing enough themselves.”

He said it was not unreasonable for Washington to expect regional powers who opposed extremism in the Middle East to do more to help fight it, “particularly in the political and economic aspects of the campaign”.

Carter noted how many Sunni-led Gulf countries had expressed concern about the spread of Iranian influence in the region.

“The fact is, if countries in the region are worried about Iran’s destabilising activities – a concern the United States shares – they need to get in the game. That means getting serious about starting to partner more with each other, and investing in the right capabilities for the threat.”

He added that Russia, Syria’s main ally, had “only inflamed the civil war and prolonged suffering”.

Carter said Obama had approved the extra troop movements last week. It is thought they are needed in the urgent efforts to train Arab volunteers who are joining the Raqqa push.

“By combining our capabilities with those of our local partners, we’ve been squeezing Isis by applying simultaneous pressure from all sides and across domains, through a series of deliberate actions to continue to build momentum,” he said.

The military push is complicated by the role played by local Kurdish fighters, the most effective US partner against Isis in Syria, but who are viewed by Turkey, a US ally, as a terrorist threat.

Meanwhile, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, was in Paris on Saturday meeting European and Arab foreign ministers to discuss Syria, a conflict he described as the worst catastrophe since the second world war.

He was due to hold talks afterwards with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, a day after admitting to US embassy staff in Paris that he was “tired” of trying to negotiate with the Russians over the civil war in Syria.

“I know people are tired of these meetings. I’m tired of these meetings,” Kerry said. “And people are sort of: ‘Oh, another meeting. OK. This one will end the same way the other one did.’ I get it, folks. I’m not born yesterday. But what am I supposed to do? Go home and have a nice weekend in Massachusetts while people are dying? Sit there in Washington and do nothing? That’s not the way you do business.”

Kerry has struggled to make progress since Russia intervened militarily to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s regime. On Friday in Aleppo, pro-regime forces were claiming to occupy 85% of the city, much of which has now been reduced to ruins.

Lavrov announced on Wednesday a temporary “humanitarian pause” to the bombardment of Aleppo to allow civilians to leave, and on Thursday 10,500 fled the city. The UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said on Saturday that an estimated 100,000 people remained, squeezed into an “ever-shrinking” pocket of resistance to Assad’s forces and without access to food, water or medicine.

De Mistura said the expected government victory in Aleppo would not end the war, as has been predicted. “A serious discussion about the future political set-up of Syria” was the only way to achieve peace, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.


As the large-scale FBI investigation into corruption in college basketball continues nationwide, Hurricanes coach Jim Larrañaga and his staff are cooperating with authorities looking into the Miami program, Larrañaga’s attorney said late Tuesday night.

Stuart Z. Grossman, a Coral Gables attorney who is representing Larrañaga, told the Sun Sentinel the coach has turned over phone records and other documents to both school and government officials investigating the Hurricanes men’s basketball team.

Their efforts, Grossman says, will help prove that neither Larrañaga nor any member of his coaching staff knew about an alleged payoff being potentially made to a prospect Miami was recruiting.

“We are living up to our pledge to cooperate with the government and with the University of Miami from Coach Larrañaga’s point of view by giving them anything and everything they ask for, whether it’s emails, phone receipts, or any documented records that we have,” Grossman said. “And I think it’s impressive because we don’t play games. We’re very straightforward, and we believe that anyone that objectively looks at this, and we’re convinced they will, will conclude that the University of Miami, Coach Larrañaga and his assistants don’t know a thing about this conversation that took place in which a coach was named as supporting some type of payoff to a high school player.

“I’m not denying that somebody may have mentioned a coach’s name, but I’m absolutely telling you that none of our coaches were involved in that, in the conversation or in attempted bribery or anything like that.”

Federal corruption and bribery charges were filed against 10 people tied to college basketball nationwide last week, including four assistant coaches, Adidas executive Jim Gatto and youth travel basketball coach Jonathan Brad Augustine.

In the Department of Justice complaint filed against Gatto, the DOJ alleges that a “Coach-3” from “University-7” had knowledge of a plan to funnel approximately $150,000 to “Player-12,” an unnamed high school basketball recruit set to graduate in 2018 in order to secure that athlete’s verbal commitment to the “University-7.”

No Miami coaches were named in the complaint or were arrested, but school president Dr. Julio Frenk confirmed last Wednesday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was investigating a potential tie between a recruit and a member of the coaching staff at UM, which fit the description of the unnamed “University-7” mentioned in the complaint against Gatto.

Grossman said that Larrañaga, like everyone else, learned about the allegations involving the Miami program last Tuesday. And he said the coach has been “devastated” by what has unfolded since.

Grossman said Larrañaga has spoken with his three assistant coaches — Chris Caputo, Adam Fisher and Jamal Brunt — and Grossman said the coach remains confident none of them are involved in the matter.

“First of all, he was devastated because each individual knows what he or she did or does in broad daylight or in the middle of the night,” Grossman said. “Coach L knew he had not participated in anything like this. So his No. 1 concern was his assistants, had any of the three of them betrayed him, because he loves these guys. And that, I think, hurt him the most. He didn’t know anything other than what he read, and he’s satisfied that none of the assistants did anything. They’re like sons to him. And if you know him, that’s the way he is. He is the father of Miami basketball. … Now, we just sit around and wait and cooperate.”

Grossman said he’s uncertain how long the investigation into Miami’s program will go on, but the longer it takes, the greater impact it will have on Miami’s recruiting.

The Hurricanes, who had one of their best recruiting classes in program history a year ago and are projected to be a preseason Top 25 team this season, currently do not have any recruits committed in their 2018 class. And at least one top prospect has reportedly said he is no longer considering the program.

As the investigation continues, so, too does the preparation for the upcoming season. Miami, which was 21-12 last year and advanced to the first round of the NCAA Tournament, opened practice last Friday.

It’s on the court, Grossman said, that Larrañaga and the Hurricanes have found a brief respite from their off-court issues.

“Frankly, that’s their best moment of the day, when they can get on the floor and practice and they’ll forget about — for that period of time — what’s going on,” Grossman said. “It weighs on everybody’s minds. It weighs on the coaches’ minds, I’m sure on the players’ minds, you have to reassure them that everything’s going to be OK and whatnot. The saddest part is Coach works all of his life to build a program on his own reputation and you sell it to recruits and they, of course, do their due diligence … come for a campus visit, check out the coaches, this and that and up until this moment, it’s been just flawless under his leadership. Now, you’ve got this taking place and it’s just highly disruptive to the recruiting process.

“I would just like the folks out there who believe in the truth and believe in the university to hang in there. We’ll get through this. We’re doing all we can to cooperate.”

CAPTION Manny Diaz is introduced as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes and outlines his vision for the program moving forward. Manny Diaz is introduced as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes and outlines his vision for the program moving forward. CAPTION Manny Diaz is introduced as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes and outlines his vision for the program moving forward. Manny Diaz is introduced as head coach of the Miami Hurricanes and outlines his vision for the program moving forward. CAPTION Hurricanes running back DeeJay Dallas discusses some of Miami’s woes. Hurricanes running back DeeJay Dallas discusses some of Miami’s woes. CAPTION Manny Diaz talks Hurricanes defense, Temple job Manny Diaz talks Hurricanes defense, Temple job CAPTION UM’s Ephraim Banda on the changes around UM’s defense. UM’s Ephraim Banda on the changes around UM’s defense. CAPTION Hurricanes coach Mark Richt discusses the end of UM's losing streak ahead of Saturday's regular-season finale against Pittsburgh. Hurricanes coach Mark Richt discusses the end of UM's losing streak ahead of Saturday's regular-season finale against Pittsburgh.

ccabrera@sun-sentinel.com; On Twitter @ChristyChirinos.


Ducati Motor Holding is reporting another record sales year, and that the Italian motorcycle manufacturer sold 45,100 bikes in 2014. This marks the fifth year in a row that Ducati has shown sales growth, and it’s the third year in a row that the sales figures have been an all-time record for the Italian brand.

Sales for 2014 were up 2% over 2013, with the USA again leading as Ducati’s most important market (8,804 units sold in the USA). Unsurprisingly, the Asian market is growing quickly for Ducati as well, up 11% in 2014.

Ducati attributes its sales growth in-part to its new water cooler Monster line, where the Ducati Monster 1200 and Ducati Monster 821 helped raise Monster sales by 31%, with 16,409 new bikes sold in 2014.

The Ducati 899 Panigale helped the Italian company’s Superbike line reach a 12% growth overall, with 9,788 bikes sold in 2014 — 5,806 of those superbikes were Ducati 899 Panigales, up 74% over 2013 (readers will remember that the 899 had a early-autumn launch).

Geographically, Ducati saw sales increases in Mexico (8%) and Brazil (74%, 1,174 bikes). Sales in Europe however were down 3%, with only 19,743 bikes sold in 2014.

This sales drop was due mainly to specific markets, namely Italy, where sales were down 14% at 4,284 units. Sales in the UK however were up 16%, with 2,742 bikes sold.

In other markets, Ducati sold 5,787 bikes in Asia, with Thailand leading growth with its 22% gain (3,057 units). Sales in China doubled, but no unit figures were given for this market by Ducati. Australia was up 13% with 2,132 bikes sold, and Japan was up 1% with 2,558 bikes sold.

Source: Ducati


Secret Empire Tie-ins (ongoing series)

In this post:

Amazing Spider-Man Vol 4 #29 – 31

Occupy Avengers #8 – 9

Champions Vol 2 #10 – 11

X-Men: Blue #7 – 9

Previous Posts:

Tales from Inside Hydra

Avengers #9 – 10

U.S. Avengers #6 – 9

Deadpool Vol 4 #31 – 35

Under the Darkforce Dome

Uncanny Avengers Vol 3 #24 – 25

Doctor Strange Vol 4 #21 – 24

X-Men: Gold Vol 2 #7 – 8

Beyond the Defense Shield

Ultimates 2 Vol 2 #7

Mighty Captain Marvel #5 – 8

All-New Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1

Amazing Spider-Man #29 – 30

Background:

Tie-in Synopsis:

Issue 29

As the issue opens, Peter Parker is London preparing to do an interview about the recent involvement of his companies involvement in the liberation of Symkaria. Peter’s publicist, who knows he is Spider-Man, tells him that now is the time for Peter Parker, Spider-Man and no matter what he has to do this interview for the sake of the company.

Shortly after the interview begins, the news that the Alpha Flight Station is under attack by a wave of Chitauri and the Masters of Evil are attacking Manhattan. The newscaster tells Peter that interview is over so they can cover these two events as they unfold. Peter is understanding and returns to the Parker Industries office.

When he arrives his Spider-sense tells him something is wrong so he suits up as Spider-Man, Peter Parker’s bodyguard and goes inside.

Once inside he realizes that things are amiss and it turns out that they are all Hydra agents.

Before they can attack, a voice tells them to stand down and tells Spider-Man to come into Parker’s office…

Sitting at the desk is

who proceeds to ask Peter to peacefully transfer the control of Parker Industries to him, since as he says it basically his inventions that Peter is profiting from his inventions.

Sidenote time: Most people reading this probably know but just in case, Doc Ock at one point transferred his consciousness into Peter’s body and Peter’s into his comatose body. While Doc Ock was in Peter’s body he went by the Superior Spider-Man. ..or something along those

Of course, Peter refuses and Doc Ock shows him a news report about the Darkforce Bubble over Manhattan and Parker Industries is responsible. Of course, the two start fighting after Parker refuses to give into his demands. Spider-Man also receives Tony’s message about Hydra’s assault on Washington D.C. Peter jumps in his rocket and heads to D.C. to help as Doc Ock leaves also destroying the Parker Industries building in the process.

Issues 30 – 31

The book open with the scene of the heroes defeated and Hydra-Cap holding Thor’s Hammer. Spider-Man orders the other heroes to retreat, taking Mockingbird with him. Once they are back at his plane, Mockingbird says that need to start a resistance but Spider-Man says he has to stop Doc Ock from taking over Parker Industries as Hydra sees it as either a threat or asset to their plans.

Doc Ock is at the San Francisco Parker Industries building where he is greeted by some X-Men who are also laying claim to the building. The X-Men allow Ock in after he threatens future Hydra entanglements with the mutant nation that Hydra-Steve has allowed to exist.

Peter decides to make his stand in Shanghai and sets plans in place in case things don’t go in his favor. When Doc Ock shows up and Peter uses his Spider vehicles to try and take him down, Peter learns that Doc Ock has hacked all his vehicles and has complete control over them.

After Peter realizes he can’t beat Doc Ock, he uses the “nuclear option” and shuts down and destroy all the research the company was doing so it didn’t fall into Hydra’s and Doc Ock’s control.

In the last page, Doc Ock is back at the Hydra base

How does it tie-in to the overall Secret Empire storyline and when does it take place?

The tie-in story takes place at the beginning of the Secret Empire event. Issue #29 takes place around Secret Empire #0 and Issue# 30 and 31 take place after the events of the Secret Empire FCBD comic and before the Secret Empire #1.

Is it necessary to read to understand the read Amazing Spider-Man to understand what is happening in the larger story?

As things stand in the event at this moment, not really. At most, it explains why Peter has not been seen after the events in Washington D.C. and sets up Doc Ock up as a member of the Hydra-Avengers. It is also the way the new Superior Doc Ock is reintroduced back into continuity.

It would be nice to know why Hydra-Cap wanted Parker Industries taken off the board… was it important or was he just being a dick.

— — — — — — — — — —

Occupy Avengers #8 – 9

Background:

Super heroes – they’re a privileged class. Doing what they want, when they want and suffering no consequences. They have no regard for the ordinary people who are left behind to suffer in their wake. Who will stand up for the little guy? There is a man. If you can find him, and if he believes in your story, he and his friends will put things right. Some call them outlaws, rebels, Robin Hoods. To others, they are heroes. No powers to speak of – just skills, smarts and a burning drive to do the right thing. His name is Hawkeye. Occupy Avengers: It’s time to “Take Back Justice”!

Tie-in Synopsis:

After Hawkeye leaves to go lead the Resistance, the Occupy Avengers team is left to help the common folk who are being terrorized by the Hydra forces. Hydra has been forcing farmers to send their goods elsewhere and the people who depend on them are left to fend for themselves.

Hawkeye tasks the team with making sure that the people who need the food get it which means hijacking a food convoy and locating one of Nick Fury’s secret bases for supplies that the resistance needs.

The team splits up and makes their stand against the Hydra forces after they retrieve the weapons that Hawkeye knows that Nick Fury has stashed away.

How does it tie-in to the overall Secret Empire storyline and when does it take place?

The story seems to fit best after the events of Secret Empire #0 and before Secret Empire #2. One of the clues is the fact that The Champions are still at The Mound and Natasha has yet to recruit them for her Red Room.

Is it necessary to read to understand the read Occupy Avengers to understand what is happening in the larger story?

Not really, now I will admit that these two issues are the only ones I have read of the series aside from Issue #1 when it first came out so I have no real knowledge of the characters involved but at the same time it wasn’t hard to pick up, read, and understand the situation these heroes found themselves in once Hawkeye left to led the Resistance.

— — — — — — — — — —

The Champions #10 – 11

Background:

Following the fallout of CIVIL WAR II, Avengers Ms. Marvel, Nova and Spider-Man strike out on their own — joined by Cyclops, Viv Vision and the Totally Awesome Hulk! Six young heroes determined to change the world — and they`re only the beginning!

Tie-in Synopsis:

Issue #10

The issue begins inside one of the Hydra Camps for the Inhumans which looks like a normal neighborhood.

The scene shifts to Viv Vision, Amadeus Cho (Hulk), and Miles Miguel (Spider-Man) searching the Dark Web for information as to the where about of Ms. Marvel. They know that Cyclops is with his X-Men team, Nova is trapped in space outside the Defense Sheild, but fear Ms. Marvel is in a relocation camp.

Viv finds the location of one of the camps, which it turns out Amadeus helped design as a place where they could put Banner and keep him from changing into The Hulk.

The Champions break into the relocation center hoping to free the Inhumans but are surprised when none of them want to leave. Instead of freeing the Inhumans, Amadeus and Viv rewire the power grid using Viv’d ability to turn invisible to hide the town so that the Hydra reinforcements can’t find it.

As a way of saying ‘Thank You,’ one of the Inhumans promise that they will use their abilities to search for Ms. Marvel and will contact the Champions if they find anything.

Issue #11

The issue begins with the Champions searching thru the rubble of Las Vegas following Hydra’s attack. The Champions are joined by Falcon, Wasp, Ironheart and Rayshaun Lucas, the new Patriot.

The team has split up to search for survivors. Falcon and Hulk are searching the North part of the city. As they are searching, Hulk is trying to keep his hopes up by trying to calculate the probability that they are going to find survivors.

The rescue effort to the South is Ironheart, Spider-Man, and Patriot. The three find an airplane that has crashed, when they open it up, they find that the people inside were cooked alive from the blast of the attack.

Patriot, who is on his first outing as a superhero, is having a difficult time dealing with the carnage and hopelessness.

The rest of the team is having just as much luck. After they regroup, they begin to question what they are really doing fighting against Hydra.

Suddenly they hear a noise which turns out to be Patriot, who has found a baby that survived the attack. This raises the team’s spirits as they head back to The Mound.

How does it tie-in to the overall Secret Empire storyline and when does it take place?

Issue #10 takes place between the FCBD issue and Secret Empire #1. As covered in the last post on the Secret Empire event, Ms. Marvel’s story that takes place over in Secret Warriors and Scott “Cyclops” Summers.

Issue #11 takes place during the first few pages of Secret Empire #2 before The Champions decide to follow Natasha’s plan to kill Steve Rogers.

Is it necessary to read to understand the read The Champions tie-ins to understand what is happening in the larger story?

Again these issues are probably not important in the overall story. While I enjoy The Champions I feel that the way the characters are written in the Secret Empire issues is almost opposite of the way series writer Mark Waid handles them in the event.

In their own series, there is a sense of proactiveness and helping those affected by the Hydra takeover, whereas in the Secret Empire series they are more than willing to at least go with the plan that involves killing (yes, they do try to temper Black Widow’s responses and plan, but are still willing to be accomplices to her assassination plans).

Issue #10 does give more insight into the plight of the Inhumans’ situation under the Hydra rule, but has a more positive outcome then is displayed throughout the rest of the event for the Inhuman race. There is no mention as to if The Champions continue to look for Ms. Marvel or just assume that she is somewhere else (okay so maybe Las Vegas getting leveled puts a damper on finding Ms. Marvel) that but it would have been nice for the two issues tied together rather than being two one-and done

Another small nitpick would be that in Secret Empire #2 they find some survivors in Vegas, in The Champions they only find the baby, ending the story on an upbeat positive note rather than the doom and gloom of the main Secret Empire title. Then again who am I to tell Mark Waid how to write a comic book

Then again who am I to tell Mark Waid how to write a comic book? I guess I am just looking for a consistent tone to go along with the main story.

— — — — — — — — — —

X-Men: Blue #7-9

Background:

Tie-in Synopsis:

The time-displaced young X-Men, who are being helped by Magneto, find themselves at odds with the leadership of the sovereign mutant nation of New Tian, where humans and mutants are supposed to be living in harmony. However, those that dissent against the new regime is being unfairly incarcerated and punished, which the young X-Men won’t stand for.

The team has been operating in New Tian, freeing those unjustly imprisoned.

Emma Frost, the true ruler of New Tian, sends a strike force of Mutants led by Havok to capture the young X-Men and stop their rebellion. Cyclops, Beast, Angel, and Iceman are captured and while Jean and Jimmy Hudson (alternate universe son of Wolverine) must rescue them.

Upon learning that some of the young X-Men have been captured Magneto, says that he plans to honor his promise to Hydra-Cap not to get involved with the mutant nation, but he has ways he can help rescue the captured X-Men.

Speaking of the captured X-Men, Emma Frost is trying to turn the young Scott Summers into the recently killed Scott Summers by mentally torturing him and trying to rewrite his brain.

Jean and Jimmy are able to rescue their teammates with the help of Polaris (Magneto’s daughter) and the mutant Danger (which turns out is also the Blackbird and Danger Room).

Emma tries to use Scott against his teammates but Jean is able to prevent her from doing so even though Emma’s powers are being boosted by the Cosmic Cube shard she possesses. Jean is also able to temporarily release Xorn from Emma’s control.

Following the events in New Tian, Captain America confronts Magneto:

How does it tie-in to the overall Secret Empire storyline and when does it take place?

The X-Men: Blue issues are the only other comics that focus on the events taking place in the mutant nation of New Tian besides those in Secret Empire: United and the main series.

Where this story takes place in the timeline is kind of tricky to place, but if I had to I would say that it happens sometime after the events of Captain America #25 but before Emma surrenders here Cosmic Cube shard.

Here is why:

Secret Empire: United

Xorn is established as the Ruler of New Tian at the beginning of the issue

At the end of the one-shot Hydra-Cap reveals that he knows Xorn is a puppet of Emma

Beast gives no indication that he is aware of Emma’s presence or manipulation of Xorn here or when he and Hydra-Cap meet in Washington DC and Cap tells Beast that if he wanted he could take Thor’s hammer and crush New Tian.

In X-Men-Blue #7, the mutant Random is one of the mutants the team liberates from the prison. Random was also part of the group that attacked the Hydra border at the beginning of Secret Empire: United.

In Captain America #25 when the members of the Hydra High Council demand to speak to the ruler of New Tian, the other mutants assume they have come for Xorn. When Emma reveals herself, there is a lot of surprise from Beast.

X-Men: Blue #7

Emma seems to be the one in control here and through out the story arc and it is even mentioned that Jean is able to break Emma’s control over Xorn temporarily.

Is it necessary to read to understand the read X-Men: Blue to understand what is happening in the larger story?

Unless you are already reading X-Men: Blue or just want to find out what is happening with the mutants in New Tian, then you really don’t need to read these issues. Like I said above, it is hard to pinpoint where these issues would fit in the overall story as the X-Men are more of a side story in this event.

—

Next post will probably cover Secret Empire #9 and the Secret Empire: Brave New World


A new episode of David Tennant’s podcast series David Tennant Does A Podcast With... is now live. This week David's guest is the American actor and producer Jon Hamm. Jon is perhaps best known for his role as Don Draper in the worldwide hit TV drama Mad Men for which he received critical acclaim and won multiple awards including a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award. Jon has also received 16 Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in or production of Mad Men, 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. In the podcast Jon talks about the trial and tribulations of Hollywood and how the success of Mad Men changed his life.

You can see him next in Amazon Prime’s Good Omens as Archangel Gabriel when’s it drops on 31st May.

Produced by Somethin’ Else and No Mystery with Georgia Tennant, new episodes of David Tennant Does A Podcast With... will be released on Tuesdays. Expect revealing conversation, surprise stories and lots of laughs as David chats to the likes of Micha…


An 'immigrant hating' Frenchman who planned 15 mass attacks on the Euro 2016 football championship was today facing a range of terrorist charges after being arrested in Ukraine.

Police announced the arrest of the 25-year-old, identified as Gregoire Moutaux, on the day the England team flew into Paris ready for the tournament's kick off on Friday.

'Gregoire was armed to the teeth and ready to strike,' said a source close to the investigation, who said details of targets emerged during questioning.

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An 'immigrant hating' Frenchman who planned 15 mass attacks on the Euro 2016 football championship was today facing a range of terrorist charges after being arrested in Ukraine (pictured)

Ukraine police said he had massed a 'vast arsenal' including five Kalashnikov assault rifles, two anti-tank grenade launchers, 5000 rounds of ammunition and 125kg of TNT explosives

A source close to the investigation said the 25-year-old suspect was 'armed to the teeth and ready to strike'

Police announced the arrest of the 25-year-old, identified as Gregoire Moutaux, on the day the England team flew into Paris ready for the tournament's kick off on Friday

The 'far-right nationalist', who originally comes from Bar-le-Duc, near Reims, in northeast France, was arrested on Ukraine's border with Poland on May 21st.

Ukraine police said he had massed a 'vast arsenal' including five Kalashnikov assault rifles, two anti-tank grenade launchers, 5000 rounds of ammunition and 125kg of TNT explosives.

'He could have caused carnage,' said the source, who also described Moutaux as 'a farm worker from the Lorraine district of France, who objected to his country being taken over by immigrants.'

Moutaux was a confirmed Islamophobe and anti-Semite, and specifically wanted to targets mosques, synagogues, and 'large crowds building up around Euro 2016.'

Vasyl Grytsak, of the SBU Ukrainian security service, said: 'We were able to prevent fifteen terrorist acts that were planned in France on the eve of and during the European Championship football.'

The suspect had allegedly bought a series of weapons including machine guns, explosives and grenade launchers

Ukraine police said he had massed a 'vast arsenal' including five Kalashnikov assault rifles, two anti-tank grenade launchers, 5000 rounds of ammunition and 125kg of TNT explosives

The Frenchman arrived in eastern Ukraine last year and was 'trying to establish ties with Ukrainian troops under the guise of volunteering,' the Ukrainian agency said

He confirmed Moutaux aimed 'to blow up a Muslim mosque, a Jewish synagogue, tax collection organisations, police patrol units and numerous other locations'.

Mr Grytsak added: 'He obtained five Kalashnikov rifles, more than 5,000 bullets, two anti-tank grenade launchers, 125 kilogrammes (275 pounds) of TNT, 100 detonators, 20 balaclavas and other things.'

Moutaux was particularly opposed to France's policy of allowing in migrants, the spread of Islam and globalisation, said Mr Grytsak.

Soon after Moutaux's arrest in Ukraine, a raid was carried out at his home in France.

There officers found Neo-Nazi t-shirts, as well as chemicals used to produce explosives and five balacalvas. He had no criminal record.

He is believed to have travelled to Ukraine, one of the most unstable states in the world at the moment, because it is so easy to pick up arms and explosives.

Ukrainian agents had been following the man since December, and allowed him to buy a series of weapons

The Paris prosecutor's office, which handles terrorism cases at a national level, said no investigation had been opened yet

Moutaux was particularly opposed to France's policy of allowing in migrants, the spread of Islam and globalisation, said Ukraine authorities

Despite this, locals in Nant-le-Petit, which has a population of just 80 people, described Moutaux as a 'polite and pleasant lad'..

Mayor Dominique Pensalfini-Demorise said: 'He was a kid who was pleasant to his neighbours, intelligent and kind.He was always ready to help people.'

British football fans will risk an unprecedented security threat when they travel to France for Euro 2016 this week.

It follows warnings from a range of security agencies, ranging from the U.S.. State Department to French police that Islamic State terrorists are planning to strike.

Marseille commander Laurent Nunez said the Three Lions 'opening match against Russia on Saturday in in the Mediterranean port city was 'a particularly high risk'.

Suggestions that the city will be attacked emerged on a computer belonging to Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving member of the ISIS death squad that hit Paris last November.

The 'far-right nationalist', who originally comes from Bar-le-Duc, near Reims, in northeast France, was arrested on Ukraine's border with Poland on May 21st

Ukraine authorities said Moutaux 'aimed to blow up a Muslim mosque, a Jewish synagogue, tax collection organisations, police patrol units and numerous other locations'

French regional newspaper L'Est Republicain identified the man as Gregoire Moutaux and said investigators raided his home (pictured) in Nant-le-Petit near the eastern city of Nancy in late May.

It managed to murder 130 people, with suicide bombers exploding their devices around the Stade de France during a football friendly between France and Germany.

Abdeslam is currently on remand in a high-security prison in Paris, and has confirmed that ISIS want to attack again, while the eyes of the world are on France during Euro 2016.

France remains under a State of Emergency following last November's attack, with thousands of soldiers joining police on the streets.

SOUTH AFRICA INSISTS 'NO IMMEDIATE DANGER' DESPITE TERROR WARNING South Africa has moved to allayed fears after Washington warned Americans of a possibly imminent terror attack by Islamic extremists in the country's major cities. 'We remain a strong and stable democratic country and there is no immediate danger,' State Security Minister David Mahlobo said in a statement. The United States on Saturday said it had received information that terrorist groups were planning to carry out attacks in South Africa during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The warning said attacks may target sites frequented by US citizens, including high-end shopping areas and malls in the economic hub of Johannesburg and Cape Town, which is popular with tourists. It came against the background of ISIS' 'public call for its adherents to carry out terrorist attacks globally during the upcoming month of Ramadan,' the US embassy in South Africa said. But the South African government played down the threat. State security ministry spokesman Brian Dube said authorities have not stepped up security following the alert. He said: 'Our information has not necessarily confirmed what has been raised by the Americans.' This is the second alert the US has issued for South Africa in under a year and was followed by British government travel advice, cautioning against a 'high threat from terrorism' in South Africa. 'Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places visited by foreigners such as shopping areas in Johannesburg and Cape Town,' said the online foreign travel advice. South Africa has so far escaped the jihadist attacks seen in several other African countries. But according to Robert Besseling, Executive Director at Ex Africa Business Risk Intelligence, a threat of Islamist terrorism in South Africa was real. 'A successful terrorist attack in South Africa is feasible, given police ineffectiveness, serious weaknesses within the intelligence apparatus, and the lack of a counter-terrorism strategy,' he said in a statement. However, a local analyst said South Africa's neutral foreign policy did not place it at risk. 'We don't have a history of terrorism here, we have got a foreign policy that's quite neutral, we don't engage in any counter-insurgency operations either on the continent or elsewhere that would place us in at risk of retaliatory attacks,' said Ryan Cummings, an analyst with Cape Town-based Signal Risk think tank.

Elite special forces will be on hand to deal with possible terrorist incidents, scrambling to danger zones in a matter of minutes.

French authorities have extended a state of emergency until the end of the tournament, as well as the Tour de France cycling race, which will be held from July 2 to July 24.

Some 2.5 million football fans are expected in stadiums, including 1.5 million foreign visitors.

Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said that the threat of extremism won't stop the European Championships from being successful.

Elite special forces will be on hand to deal with possible terrorist incidents, scrambling to danger zones in a matter of minutes. Police are pictured outside the Stade de France in Paris in March

A French citizen arrested on the Ukrainian-Polish border with 125kg of explosives was planning a string of attacks in France to coincide with Euro 2016, it has emerged. French forensic officers take part in a mock terror attack drill outside the Stade des Lumieres, near Lyon earlier this week

Hollande said in an interview on Sunday with France Inter radio that precautionary measures throughout the matches, including a 90,000-strong security force, will ensure the matches scattered in 10 French cities are safe.

Hollande said France decided to go ahead with Euro 2016 despite two waves of attacks last year, and make it a 'festival for people and for sports.'

But he said that spectators at the month-long tournament must accept security checks as they enter stadiums and fan zones.


- Big Lake High School has made an amendment to its policy over the display of guns in yearbook photos, and the Big Lake Trap Team photo will now be included.

Trapshooting coach Rhonda Eckerdt said she learned Wednesday from the athletic director that the team picture wouldn’t be included in the yearbook because it's against school policy to show firearms in photos.

The team, coaches, parents and community members said the guns are a piece of sporting equipment – do different from a baseball bat – and should be part of the photo. The issue was expected to be raised by parents during a school board meeting Thursday night, but Thursday morning the school made an exception for the trap team and will allow the photo.

This year’s photo was particularly special because it was the first year the team has its photo in the current yearbook, and the first year ever that all team members were included in the photo.

Big Lake Schools statement on policy change

The Big Lake Schools administration accepted a request this morning to change a handbook policy concerning the display of guns in yearbook photos.

The past policy said the administration may edit or exclude any photos or artwork that displayed firearms or weapons.

Once the procedure for modifying a handbook policy was followed, the district was able to amend the policy so that the school-sponsored Trap Shooting team photo can be included.

It is important to remember that a school district has rules and procedures that need to be followed. The intense conversation around this topic on social media and the phone calls and emails we received, only delayed the process.

We encouraged the public to follow the process when a request is being made to review a rule or policy. As always, we appreciate feedback and comments from the public.

Policy Amendment

All photos, written text, and artwork must conform to school policies and are subject to approval by the yearbook advisor and/or administration. Photos and artwork that violate school policy, display firearms, weapons, drugs, alcohol, inappropriate gestures or poses, and revealing or obscene clothing may be edited or excluded without permission or notification. Exception given to our school-sponsored trap-shooting team which will be allowed to have team pictures in the yearbook, team poster displayed in the school, and any approved photos taken by yearbook staff. These photos would include their firearms.


When I see what some companies are doing these days with cloud and big data, I often wonder whether technology has ever been focused on business value in their organizations. I’ve worked primarily in industries where technology had to deliver business value or it was a non-starter. These days it is no longer sufficient to be a technologist that is simply putting bits and bytes together. Today it’s all about how those bits and bytes add value. Defining how a new technology approach will add value is the role of an IT executive, but that’s where too many executives drop the ball.

Removing the Bias from Big Data

With cloud and big data in particular I think there’s a real danger in buying into the hype without understanding the implications. If you do that, it’s almost certain you will make bad decisions. With big data, the risk is that you find the answer you’re looking for –whatever it is. It’s a psychological fact that if you have a preconceived notion, data will help drive to that point of view. If you say, “What is impacting my sales growth…and by the way I think it’s poor product performance,” you’re magically going to get a lot of data coming in about poor product performance and it will validate that notion. This predictive bias often ends up being an organizational, structural, and mindset issue.

Big data is really about measuring what matters versus measuring what’s measurable. And to be honest there are not enough good data scientists out there. So it can still be more dangerous to do big data than not. It’s accessible to anyone now, but sometimes you want to take the keys away from people so they don’t hurt themselves. You may be better off taking a more cautious path than diving into the deep end, but at a minimum go in with eyes wide open.

Cloud Initiatives Beg for Clarity

In the same way, you can’t decide to be a cloud-first organization without deciding what cloud first should mean for you. Does it mean Platform-as-a-Service or email? Does it mean development or delivery? If you don’t get into the right level of detail, you’re sending your teams into blood fights to battle for what they want, versus what the strategic direction is. Leaders need to take a more active role in getting into the details of what is meant by these strategic decisions. You don’t want to micromanage things, but at a very minimum you should be sending teams off to come back with the critical decisions that need to be made and have those discussions and make those decisions at the right levels. If the bosses are not aligned the employees will be wasting precious time fighting losing battles. Sometimes it’s easier not to have fights with your peers, but that just means you’re leaving it for your employees and that is simply cowardice. Forcing uncomfortable discussions about what a cloud or big data strategy means and then getting into the detail is often the better course to take.

Executives have to drill in to get agreement at the deeper levels. They have to make the hard decisions. If you’ve got three bosses that aren’t aligned, it’s patently unfair to expect their teams to get aligned. So if you have to have uncomfortable conversations, have them.

Even Agile Can Slow You Down

There’s a faddish IT dynamic out there across a lot of things. Look at agile. There isn’t a developer or development organization out there today saying, “I’d really prefer to be doing waterfall.” The problem is, most of the architectures they’re working on don’t lend themselves to agile. If you work in an agile model in a fragile architecture, things are likely to break. You don’t want DevOps guys making minimum marketable changes in a legacy, tightly coupled architecture.

But nobody wants to do waterfall, so you get sprawl of organizations saying we do agile. What they often want is to do waterfall with limited documentation and agile practices, which is going to cause more problems than do good. There may be a fear you can’t get the right talent. There’s a real passion that says, “I can’t get the talent I want unless I’m doing agile.” Then organizations do agile but don’t have real product managers and they aren’t really managing stories. You’re doing some things, but not in a way that’s valuable.

Yes, you can dive into an IT fad without thinking about it, but I can promise you’ll look back and be horrified someday. The only time you can fully adopt some of these new methods is when you are starting from scratch. Most of us don’t have that luxury because we are working with legacy architectures and technical debt so you have to play hand you’ve been dealt, communicate well, set clear and measurable outcomes, and use these fads to thoughtfully supplement the environment you are working in to benefit the ecosystem.

Read this Harvard Business Review article, "Beware the next big thing."

Sven Gerjets is Chief Technology Officer at Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, with 40,000 employees in more than 80 countries. He brings 20 years of IT experience to his role, including application development, system integration, enterprise program management, and large organization leadership.


Sarkeesian criticizes gaming tropes

By Max Moran | Published 6 hours ago | Updated 6 hours ago

On Monday, the University welcomed media critic Anita Sarkeesian for a lecture on sexist and anti-feminist tropes in video games. The lecture had initially been planned for February, but it had to be rescheduled due to major snowfall that caused travel problems.

Sarkeesian is the host and co-writer of “Feminist Frequency,” an online video series deconstructing sexist tropes in media, particularly video games. Since her work discussing games began, she has been the subject of online harassment, including rape and death threats, hacking and identity theft. Sarkeesian was one of the major targets of the “Gamergate” movement, which is a reaction against media trends toward diversifying gaming culture and criticizing the “gamer” identity. Previous Sarkeesian talks in other venues have received bombing and mass shooting threats, which may have been why audience members passed through a metal detector before entering the Wasserman Cinematheque to hear the lecture.

Chairman of the Computer Science department Prof. Jordan Pollack (COSI) introduced Sarkeesian, stating his pleasure at the lecture’s co-sponsors, and pointing out that “it’s not often that computer science works together with the various women’s studies groups on campus.” Pollack said he was inspired to invite Sarkeesian to speak at the University after a colleague suggested that more women and people of color might be inspired to pursue computer science if the University’s department taught game programming and design, and Sarkeesian’s story stood out to Pollack. “I believe a modern university must study and teach video games as a multidisciplinary media,” Pollack said.

Sarkeesian then took the stage, beginning with what she said was a simple assertion: “video games matter.” She said that while it is not “a simple one-to-one correlation,” the media that people consume influences them, which is why criticism, especially feminist criticism, is important. Sarkeesian said she started Feminist Frequency because she was frustrated at the inaccessibility of feminist thought she discovered in college and wanted to use pop culture as a way to engage a wider audience with feminism. Her first series of Feminist Frequency videos dissected tropes in pop culture at large, and after they found moderate success, she decided to release a second series. Noticing that almost all of the tropes she was interested in were prevalent in video games, Sarkeesian decided that this series of videos would specifically discuss tropes in gaming.

Next, Sarkeesian briefly discussed the online harassment she’s received for her work, though she stressed that she didn’t want to talk about harassment for the majority of the lecture. She characterized her harassers as a “cyber mob,” — a group which collectively shames and discredits its target with the underlying goal of reinforcing their own dominance within a given culture, in this case, gaming.

Sarkeesian asserted that Gamergate is an extension of this same mob mentality and that it works to maintain the status quo of games being made primarily for men. She then compared the exclusion of women in gaming to the common stigma within gaming that certain games are not played by “true gamers.”

“The idea that you can love something and be critical of it at the same time is so important to what I do,” Sarkeesian told the audience as she transitioned into the heart of the lecture with a slide reading “8 Ways To Improve Games For Women.” She listed eight tropes in gaming plots and presentation that portray women negatively and offered solutions and examples of games which have avoided the tropes.

The first trope was the “Smurfette Principle,” wherein a story has only one female character for a full ensemble of men. Sarkeesian specifically pointed out 2013’s “The Wonderful 101,” which features seven playable male characters who are color-coded, but only one female character, whose color is pink. Sarkeesian noted that the female character’s abilities reinforce that “‘girl’ is her personality,” pointing out that she fights with a dominatrix-esque whip and is introduced in a trailer for the game through a shots that needlessly include her underwear.

Sarkeesian introduced the second trope — “Lingerie Is Not Armor,” — by showing a trailer for the 2000 game “Perfect Dark,” which depicted its female spy protagonist taking a shower, putting on makeup, and deciding on an outfit. Sarkeesian argued that game designers often think only about titillating a straight male audience when designing outfits for female characters, and jokingly suggested a solution to the problem by changing the slide to several pictures of sports bras. “They’re designed to prevent jiggle physics,” she added.

Her third trope was called “One Size Does Not Fit All,” which she introduced by pointing out that almost all female characters in the game “League of Legends” are young, large-breasted, slender women. Sarkeesian stated that since sexualized women are almost the only women depicted in the medium, it reinforces that these characters’ worth is to excite the audience. She elaborated that those who point out sexualized men in games to counter her arguments are creating a false equivalency. Showing an image of the main characters from the upcoming game “Overwatch,” Sarkeesian pointed out that the male characters have a range of body types, while all but one of the female characters are sexualized.

The fourth trope, humorously titled “Strategic Butt Coverings,” began with a series of clips of female player characters walking in games, all of which featured camera angles that prominently display the characters’ behinds. To contrast this, Sarkeesian showed clips of male player characters — when the player could focus the camera on a male characters’ behind, heavy clothing or capes obscured the characters’ cheeks, which contrasted sharply with the female characters. According to Sarkeesian, this emphasis on characters’ rear ends tells players that the woman’s sexual body parts are what they should focus on, rather than the character themselves, as for the men. She pointed to 2015’s “Life is Strange” as a game which avoided this problem, simply by having its female protagonist wear jeans and a knapsack.

Fifth, Sarkeesian noted that women in games are overwhelmingly white, and that when women of color are depicted, it is usually through a lens of sexualized racism that caricatures these characters as “savage” or “untamable.” She pointed to “Never Alone,” a game made by an Alaskan indigenous community about their own culture, as a notable exception to this trope.

Sarkeesian then pointed out the sexualization of female characters’ walking animations, comparing a clip of Catwoman in “Batman: Arkham City” to a model on a runway. Her seventh trope was titled “Fighting and Fucking are Different,” which she introduced by playing audio of a female character moaning sexually. When she revealed that this audio was of a “League of Legends” character in combat, the audience laughed. Sarkeesian extended the trope to point out that female fighting dialogue is often sexual as well and that this trope both conflates violence with sex and communicates that female sexuality is dangerous, rather than positive or fun. She indicated “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” as a recent game that avoided this trope.

Finally, Sarkeesian asked the audience: “Where Are All the Female Combatants?” She pointed out that games rarely feature women as standard enemies and said that game designers she’s interviewed often say that this is done to avoid depicting violence against women. Sarkeesian said that there are ways to show female enemies without it being problematic, saying that violence against women is an issue when the violence is committed specifically because the target is a woman.

A brief question-and-answer segment followed the lecture, which was this year’s Martin Weiner lecture in Computer Science, and was co-sponsored by the Computer Science department, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the Chief Information Officer, the English department, the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies program, the Sociology and Social Justice Police Program and the Women’s Studies Research Center.


A new, 2015 Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet has leaked ahead of the stylus-packing device’s official unveiling.

Although Samsung has yet to shed any formal light on the existence of such a device, the 2015 Note 10.1 has popped up on the company’s official website.

Spotted by the folks over at TechTastic, the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2015) has been prematurely referenced in a services and app descriptions page. It was listed as one of a number of devices compatible with a range of Samsung services.

Name teasing aside, the leak has offered up no further insight into the capabilities of the 2015 Galaxy Note 10.1.

The timing, however, could be particularly telling. With the 2014 Galaxy Note 10.1 having been unveiled last October, annual refresh patterns would suggest that the 2015 Galaxy Note 10.1 could be with us in the very near future.

With the tablet’s name having leaked, new Galaxy Note 10.1 rumours have started to surface. One such report has suggested the device could be held off until November so as to hit retailers running Android 5.0 Lollipop direct from the box.

Last year’s Note 10.1 packed a 2560 x 1600 pixel display alongside a Snapdragon 800 processor and Samsung’s S-Pen stylus.

With the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone having recently jumped to a QHD panel, Snapdragon 805 chipset and a stylus with twice the sensitivity of its predecessors, we would expect any new Note tablets to follow suit.

Next, read everything you need to know about the Samsung Galaxy S6