Everything's obvious in hindsight. That's a lesson that Fire Hose Games founder Eitan Glinert has learned at least twice in the past few years.

The first time happened at PAX Prime 2011, way up on the sixth floor where many of the indie developers had rented small booths two floors above the show floor. There was no good reason for everybody to keep doing this alone, Glinert thought. And out of that thought grew the Indie Megabooth, a collection of developers who band together and stake their claim on the main floor of PAXes east and west.

More recently, Glinert realized he had the power to organize something else for the tight-knit indie development community, many of whom he's seen fail "for just some stupid, avoidable problem." And the realization, coupled with what he'd been able to accomplish with the Indie Megabooth, kind of pissed him off that nobody'd figured this out before — including him.

"That really set me off thinking that, if indies can do such a good job getting together for something like showing off at a conference, imagine what they could do if they kind of banded together a little bit more when it came to making their own games," Glinert told Polygon in a recent interview.

That idea's been bouncing around in his head for the last year or so. Now he's figured out what to do with it. Tonight at a monthly gathering of indie developers called the Boston Post Mortem, Glinert will outline his plans to help fellow indies by turning Fire Hose Games into an indie developer incubator.

"Imagine what they could do if they kind of banded together a little bit more."

"You know how you kind of have an epiphany on this sort of thing and and after you have it, it's like, 'Oh, my gosh! That was so obvious. How did I not realize that sooner? Well, that's exactly where we are, and frankly. I'm shocked that we don't see more people doing it."

Glinert isn't interested in a classic incubator model, which he said were designed for businesspeople who want to create businesses. Instead, he wants to incubate games and the people who make them. He wants to create an environment where it's safe and sustainable to make games.

"It's no secret that all of indies talk to each other, right?" he said. "There's just been uncountable numbers of times when I've seen people failing with their project for just some stupid, avoidable problem. Maybe they just didn't have a little bit of money that they needed. Maybe they made a bad business decision. Maybe they didn't understand that it was time to iterate on their game. Maybe they didn't make the right connection, they didn't talk to the right person. Maybe they had some sort of healthcare issue.

"There's all these really solvable problems that come up, and it prevents a lot of indies form making a good game or from being successful. And we realized that that's the sort of thing that Fire Hose is set up to help people with. That's something that we can do to help people with."

He has "spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet" which he thinks proves that the model can make money. And he's currently talking to investors to raise funds for the quasi-incubator that envisions.

In the gaming world, he said, the way it often works is that publishers look for good games to fund. But for Glinert, the goal will be different. The goal will be to find good developers, who will make good games. He believes it will work because he's seen it work in the studio he founded.

"We eat our own dog food. We are living it right now."

"Instead of us trying to pick the winner games, we're trying to pick the winner developers," he said. "And that's a really big difference, right? I think it's actually a much easier problem to identify people that are really good at making games, and really good at making indie games. I say that because we've done that. We have great people at Fire Hose."

There's something else he's doing inside the studio that he hopes will teach him about how the incubation model he envisions will work: Fire Hose has been practicing the model for months.

"We eat our own dog food. We are living it right now. We are currently working on four fucking games. We have lost our goddamn minds," he said with a laugh. "We're working on all these games in tandem. We're giving people huge amounts of creative control while they make the games. And we're pushing this forward as we speak."

That's Eitan Glinert's idea in a nut: Use the success of Fire Hose games to find and empower other developers to make great games. He doesn't have all the details yet — he's considering an interview process that doesn't even ask about games, at least for now — but he's working on it, and he's sure of a couple things. He wants the developers to stick around to make second, third and fourth games. But he also wants an escape lever built into the contract, so they can leave if and when they want to and their their intellectual property with them.

And he wants Fire Hose Games to be at the forefront of this evolution in how he hopes indie games are made. As he sees it, it's a way to help others and help his business, too. It's a lot like what he did with the Indie Megabooth.

"That's how I feel about the games industry," he said. "Why aren't people fixing this indie problem? Why the fuck do I have to go do it? Alright, I'll do it. Somebody's got to."


A serious security vulnerability in Windows code is currently being exploited, Google researchers said on Monday.

Google discovered the flaw, which also affects Adobe's Flash media player, on Oct. 21. Adobe issued a fix a few days later, but Microsoft still has not issued its own, according to a Google blog post. Google said its policy is to publish actively exploited critical vulnerabilities seven days after it reports them to the software's creator.

The flaw, which exists in the Windows kernel, can be used as a "security sandbox escape," according to Google. Most software contains sandboxes in order to stop malicious or malfunctioning programs from damaging or snooping on the rest of the computer.

It's unclear how extensively the Windows flaw has been exploited. Google said only that it is being "actively exploited." In a statement, Microsoft acknowledged the security flaw and criticised Google for disclosing it before a fix was ready.

"We believe in coordinated vulnerability disclosure, and today's disclosure by Google puts customers at potential risk," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. "Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible."

The company added that it recommends Windows owners use the Microsoft Edge browser, though it did not say whether Edge can prevent the vulnerability from being exploited. Google, meanwhile, said its Chrome browser prevents the exploit.

Citing a source close to Microsoft, VentureBeat reported that the vulnerability requires Flash to be exploited. Since Adobe has already issued a fix for Flash, users with the latest Flash updates may be protected even without a Microsoft fix.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.


Current Treasurer Joe Hockey and former Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello both criticised Mrs Bishop's use of expenses on Sunday, with Mr Hockey pointedly noting that he hadn't "heard of anyone who has taken a helicopter to a fundraising event". Defiant: Bronwyn Bishop attends a memorial service at the Sydney War Memorial on Sunday to commemorate the Battle of Fromelles. Credit:Steven Siewert The Department of Finance is now conducting an audit of Mrs Bishop's expenses, despite Labor writing to the Australian Federal Police and requesting an investigation, as happened with former Speaker Peter Slipper. But in comments that ratchet up political pressure on the Prime Minister for the mistakes of the Speaker, Mr Shorten said on Sunday that Mr Abbott needed to act and remove his "captain's pick", Mrs Bishop, from the Speaker's chair. "This has now become a test of Tony Abbott's leadership. Does Mr Abbott have the character to tell Bronwyn Bishop to stand aside? Because he knows - and the world knows - that this arrogant misuse of taxpayer funds needs to be held to account," he said.

"He can't dismiss this, as he apparently has, as village gossip ... Mr Abbott's Liberals are addicted to privilege. Expenses: Bronwyn Bishop at Saturday's press conference. Credit:James Brickwood "<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-AU JA X-NONE <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <![endif]--><!--StartFragment-->There is not a hint of apology in the ranks of the Liberal Party, there is no apology from Mrs Bishop, she just doesn't seem to understand what the fuss is about." Earlier on Sunday, Mrs Bishop was swamped by journalists after the unveiling of a new Anzac memorial in Sydney's Hyde Park. She faced further questions about the $5000 charter helicopter flight from Melbourne to Geelong – a journey that takes as little as an hour by car - and dismissed suggestions she should apologise.

"When we talked about the helicopter, that is now with the Department of Finance so I don't think it's appropriate to talk about it any further, except to say, if you look at other people's charter allowances, I think Mr [Tony] Burke spent in the same period $31,000. You have got to get things into proportion," she said. "The best form of apology is to repay the money." A journalist countered: "The best form of apology, Mrs Bishop, is to say 'I'm sorry.' " But she swatted away that question and claims her case was comparable to that of Mr Slipper, who faced public wrath over his use of Cabcharge dockets, describing it as "totally a different matter altogether". And Mrs Bishop also attempted to justify the huge expenditure involved in a recent two-week trip to Europe.

"It wasn't $90,000, it was $88,000," she said of Fairfax's recent coverage of her fortnight-long trip to Europe, including time spent campaigning for an international job. And she repeated her claim that the money on the helicopter flight was spent within the rules, which requires expenditure to relate to the duties of office, even though she was attending a party political fundraiser. The event was, in fact, a form of community outreach, she said. Loading "The [criticism about the] grandiosity [of arriving in a helicopter] is quite right," she said.

"That's why I've repaid the money."


The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath and Children’s Hospital Oakland have reached an agreement to allow a critical care team to transfer the brain-dead girl to another medical facility. Under the agreement reached Friday, her mother, Naliah Winkfield, will be “wholly and exclusively responsible” for Jahi during the transfer, including in the event that the teen’s heart stops beating.

For weeks, the McMath family has been searching for a medical facility to accept Jahi while simultaneously fighting in court to keep her on life-support. She was declared brain dead on Dec. 12– three days after a tonsillectomy surgery aiming to alleviate her sleeping problems resulted in heavy bleeding and cardiac arrest.

Alameda County Superior Judge Evelio Grillo refused the family’s request for hospital doctors to insert feeding and tracheostomy tubes for the move, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Two hospital physicians and three outside doctors requested by the family have deemed Jahi brain-dead. Children’s does not allow physicians to perform procedures on the deceased.

”Right now, arrangements are being made, and what we needed to know was that when all the balls were in line, that we could move quickly, and not to have impediments, so that we all understood what the protocol was,” said Christopher Dolan, attorney for the family. “So this is a victory in terms of getting us one step closer.”

Meanwhile, the case continues to make headlines across the globe and foster discussions about the ethics of artificially prolonging life. Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, an organization launched shortly after the contentious death of Terri Schiavo in 2005, has been overseeing efforts by several groups to assist in Jahi’s transfer.

“Together with our team of experts, Terri’s Network believes Jahi’s case is representative of a very deep problem within the U.S. healthcare system– particularly those issues surrounding the deaths of patients within the confines of hospital corporations, which have a vested financial interest in discontinuing life,” the organization said in a statement.

Ronda Hughes, an associate professor at Marquette University’s College of Nursing specializing in health services research and patient safety, said Jahi will not benefit from more treatments. “When someone is brain-dead that means that the brain cannot function to support life on its own,” Hughes told Life Matters Media. “In this case, the hospital has said the patient is brain-dead. There is no technology, there is nothing to bring the patient back to life, no matter the hospital.”

Death is difficult for many Americans to accept, partly because modern medical technologies have made it possible to prolong life longer than ever before. “This is an extremely difficult situation for anyone to go through, because it involves the death of what appeared to be an otherwise normal, healthy child. No parent expects anything to go wrong with their child,” Hughes said. “We can keep her alive for years on life-support, but to what end? Are we doing what is best for the patient or what is best for the family?”

Hughes said that Americans are much more accepting of deaths after a long illness, and even of those as a result of automobile accidents. “As a society, we have a lot of faith that our medical technology can do things that in reality it can’t.”

[Jan. 6 Update: Brain-Dead Girl Released From Oakland Hospital]


About 10 days ago, his backup point guard situation seemed destined to cause Stan Van Gundy indigestion or insomnia.

Not so much anymore. Van Gundy saw enough from Steve Blake in his only preseason appearance – Friday’s 28-point win over Atlanta in the finale – to feel comfortable going into Tuesday’s season opener with Blake as his backup point guard.

But he also saw a different Spencer Dinwiddie over the second half of the preseason.

“He’s just got a lot of experience. I like the way he moves the ball, passes the ball,” Van Gundy said of Blake after Sunday’s practice. “I thought Spencer, though, has played four pretty good games in a row. I’ve been happy with him. He’s played a lot better. I thought early in the preseason he was not real solid. He was very up and down. But over the last four games, I think he was good.”

Things are falling into place for the Pistons on the health front, it appears. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope threw a scare into Van Gundy when he limped off in the first quarter last Wednesday against Charlotte, but he’s on course to play Tuesday. He missed Sunday’s practice, but was scheduled to run on a treadmill with 100 percent body weight after taking it to 70 percent on Saturday.

Van Gundy expects confirmation on Monday that backup center Aron Baynes will have the conditions under which he played in the preseason – a 15-minute limit per game and a ban on playing in back to backs – lifted by the doctor in charge of Baynes’ rehab from off-season ankle surgery.

Blake and Baynes will play key roles off the bench along with rookie Stanley Johnson, Jodie Meeks, Anthony Tolliver and Reggie Bullock. Blake, in fact, could be used in tandem with Reggie Jackson if Van Gundy sees a need to inject more ball movement. The Pistons spent part of Sunday’s practice with that look, he said. Van Gundy says how deep he does into his bench from game to game will vary.

“It’ll be situational,” he said. “My guess is we’ll use at least 10, maybe 11. All depends.”

Marcus Morris and Ersan Ilyasova will be the starting forwards, Van Gundy confirmed. They started against Charlotte and Van Gundy said last week that unless something caused him to change his mind, that would be the starting combination for the season opener.

Two other bits of housekeeping to note:

The Pistons picked up fourth-year options on both Caldwell-Pope – there was never a doubt about that – and Bullock. That completes a remarkable month for Bullock, who entered training camp competing with Adonis Thomas and Cartier Martin for a roster spot and now has two more seasons of salary guaranteed – a measure of how good he was throughout the preseason.


Call it the curious case of gold and bonds.

Typically, the yellow metal and U.S. Treasurys move in opposition as investors shift from one to the other in search of a safe haven amid changing economic conditions.

However, Dennis Gartman, editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, highlighted some very unusual activity that's been underway in recent months.

"Having been at this for 40 years, I always look for anomalies," explained Gartman on CNBC's "Futures Now" on Thursday. "It's very strange to me that, since June, as went gold so went the bond market."

To this end, both gold and the U.S. 10-year Treasury note remained nearly unchanged in the last quarter. And, as Gartman pointed out, the absolute prices of both have rallied and fallen in tandem.

"It doesn't make any sense to me," said Gartman. "If you go back over the course of the past many years, they move in contravention."


HYDERABAD: Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali has criticised the syllabus being taught at educational institutions of the country and called for rewriting it to make it more realistic.

“The existing syllabus is meant for [producing] people of a particular mentality. If we teach such things to our young generation then what do we expect from them,” he said while delivering a lecture on ‘Role of youth in the country’s development’ organised by the Centre of Excellence in Art and Design of the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology at Jamshoro on Saturday.

He said that educational institutes should be free from law enforcement agencies personnel but the situation in Pakistan, particularly in Sindh, was different. Many countries had developed only through education and it still remained the only weapon to bring about a revolution in a society, he said.

He said that he was proud of being a student and teacher at the Sindh University but at the same time expressed disappointment over the fact that SU, Sindhi Adabi Board and other educational institutions were not delivering as was expected from them in the fields of culture, history and education with the result that today’s students were unaware of their rights.

“If we look at history, students have produced great leadership in the world. In Pakistan and Sindh students have played a vital and productive role in the past even during the rule of military dictator Ayub Khan,” he said.

He said that students played a central role in the freedom struggles in Bangladesh, Germany and several other countries and they were playing a similar role to bring about change in Pakistani society when Gen Ayub imposed a ban on student unions. But they led from the front and forced him to take back his decision, he said.

He said the countries like Germany where education was free right from primary to university level were developing by leaps and bounds as they knew they needed skilled youth to maintain the progress but Pakistanis did not pay the attention to education it required.

About pitfalls of writing fragmented history, he said, for instance people quoted examples of Quaid-i-Azam and Allama Iqbal without giving necessary details to enable youth to make their own opinions about them.

MUET Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Aslam Uqaili said that Dr Mubarak had contributed enormously to the history of Pakistan and Sindh and his books were guidelines for the youth.

He said that unfortunately people’s attitudes had hardened and no one was ready to listen to the other’s point of view and accept him as he is. “Sindh is a citadel of Sufi teachings but prolonged Afghan war has had a bad impact on its dwellers’ behaviour, which needs to be changed to promote harmony,” he said.

CEAD director Prof Dr Bhai Khan Shar said that it was an honour for Sindh and Pakistan to have towering scholars like Dr Mubarak Ali.

The CEAD would continue to organise such informative and highly enlightening lectures to educate its students, he added.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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After years of declared victories, Cuyahoga County's public health advocates and leaders fear that once again they are losing the battle against smoking.

The county's smoking rates had fallen to less than 19 percent of residents in 2007. But that rate is back up to about 24 percent. And in in some Cleveland neighborhoods, more than 30 percent of adults smoke.

For Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman, the statistics are a call to action.

"Our goal is to change the culture of smoking in Cleveland and if people have a problem with that than that's good," Cimperman says. "People should have a problem with people dying too soon from diseases like emphysema and lung cancer."

The city had already banned cigarette smoking in publicly-owned outdoor areas such as parks, community gardens, and within 150 feet of public places like City Hall and the convention center. Now, that law extends to e-cigarettes.

Nigel Aviles, who sells e-cigarettes at Record Revolution in Cleveland Heights, rolls his eyes when he hears the new rules.

"It helps people to stop smoking traditional cigarettes. They wean off of it through various dosages of nicotine," Aviles says.

Executives in the e-cigarette industry have said the product can help people quite tobacco. But Cuyahoga County's Health Commissioner Terry Allan says there's no definitive proof and disagrees.

Instead, Allan says, e-cigarettes are another way to become addicted to nicotine.

"Public health people see e-cigarettes as a renormalization of tobacco use. It's a tobacco product," Allans says. "And we consider it a tobacco product."

Other cities that have banned smoking e-cigarettes include New York and Chicago. And, closer to home, Lakewood banned the sale of e-cigarettes to minors earlier this summer.


Instant public surveys on Barack Obama's address before Congress showed, by and large, that the public was incredibly receptive to his speech, regardless of political party. But that did not hold true for every single study.

A CBS News poll of approximately 500 people saw approval of the president rise from 62 percent before the speech to 69 percent afterward.

Meanwhile, a poll on CNN showed that 68 percent of respondents -- who skewed a bit Democratic -- viewed the speech positively, 24 somewhat positively, and only eight percent not positively. Eighty-two percent supported the president's economic plan as outlined in the speech, while 17 percent opposed it.

Those results were buttressed by the findings of longtime Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. In his own dial poll, which included 50 participants of mixed gender, education and politics, Greenberg found a large swath of bipartisan support for Obama's addres. That included a 14 percent jump, from 62 to 76 percent, in the favorability rating for the president.

Saying at the onset that this was an "immensely successful speech," he highlighted a few issues on which Obama won over the audience.

* On taxes, "there was a 26-point gain," from 38 to 64 percent, "the biggest gains that he made."

* On the deficit, "there was an 18 point swing... from 42 percent to 60 percent."

* On Iraq, "there was a 18-point swing" (no numbers were offered)

"I've never seen this," Greenberg added. For a large part of the speech, all three, the Republican, Democratic and independent line where virtually in the same place."

What was striking, Greenberg concluded, was "how un-polarized the reaction was to this speech. I have not quite seen that."

He should tell that to the generally conservative Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research group. Mike Maslansky, the CEO of that firm, when speaking with the Huffington Post, said he found "some of the biggest partisan divides that we ever see" in the reaction to Obama's address.

In a survey of 29 registered Democrats and Republicans in suburban Virginia, who Maslansky said were ALL generally skittish about Obama's economic plans and housing proposals, Obama managed to win over a large chunk of the crowd. Eleven respondents, nine of whom were Democrats, thought that the speech exceeded expectations. Only three thought it failed to meet expectations, all of whom were Republicans. But the responses often broken down by political affiliation.

Talk on the stimulus, Maslansky said, proved most divisive, as did talk of repairing the housing industry and, more generally, health care reform.

On energy, Obama won bipartisan plaudits, as he did when he emphasized personal responsibility both for parents dealing with their kids' education and politicians dealing with on pet interests.


How To Talk About A Significant Other's Weight

Dear Sugar Radio is a weekly podcast from member station WBUR. Hosts Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed offer "radical empathy" and advice on everything from relationships and parenthood to dealing with drug problems or anxiety.

toggle caption Courtesy of WBUR

Today the Sugars take on a sensitive issue for millions of Americans: physical appearance — and specifically, how much someone weighs. A young man writes to the Sugars, wondering how to talk about his girlfriend's weight. It's an especially complicated issue, given how society has historically treated women related to their appearance.

They're joined by Lindy West, a writer, editor and performer whose work focuses on pop culture, social justice and body image. She's the author of Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman.

Dear Sugars,

I am a 24-year-old college graduate in my first serious romantic relationship. My experience with girls before this was extremely limited. I've been dating my girlfriend for over six months now, and she is wonderful.

However, her weight has always been a minor issue in the back of my mind: She is not fat but she has a few extra pounds and this can be seen more when she's wearing fewer clothes. I love her and would never ask or demand her to change just for me, but I've been thinking more and more about how her weight bothers me a little bit.

I'm a very thin guy and have naturally gravitated physically toward thinner girls. Until now, I have avoided talking about the matter with my girlfriend except in general terms about others, or the few times she has brought up and engaged with me directly on the matter. When her doctor told her she needed to lose some weight to be healthier, she was upset, although she did not disagree.

So I spoke to my therapist and my roommate, and although they're both men, they both thought that if it was something on my mind and was making me a little uneasy that I should bring it up with her. I did, and she did not respond with as much understanding as I hoped.

She felt hurt and a little violated, like the one guy who's supposed to love and accept her and find her beautiful just the way she is was attacking a part of her identity. She was shocked, confused and taken aback. She tried to explain how some issues are so sensitive, touchy and personal for women that they should never really be brought up for the sake of the satisfaction in the relationship. In all fairness, I did bring it up a little suddenly and not in the most tactful or direct way, but I didn't know how else to start a hard, uncomfortable conversation I was not looking forward to.

She has genes that make it easier for her to gain weight and harder to lose. She has recently started going to the gym, and I was trying to support and encourage her to go more consistently.

My question for you is: Was I wrong for not being sensitive to how women think? Should I have let it go if I considered it a smaller issue in our relationship? Would it have made a difference if I spoke to another woman to ask her thoughts beforehand on if and how I should bring this up with my girlfriend? Did I need to?

I love her and she is very big on being honest and open and comfortable in trusting each other. Our relationship never hinged on her weight, but I just want to come out stronger.

Signed,

The Question of Weight

Cheryl Strayed: The Question of Weight, you sound like such a sweet and innocent and naive young man, and I think you made a big mistake. Indeed, you are supposed to love and accept her and find her beautiful just the way she is.

I think you stepped into something that has a deeper and more complicated social and cultural history. Women are under scrutiny in enormously harmful ways when it comes to their bodies and their appearance and their weight in relation to their value to men, especially in romantic relationships.

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And I think that, honestly, if you found her to be chubbier than you want her to be, you maybe should have not dated her to begin with, or you should have decided that it was worth ending this relationship with this person.

Steve Almond: I have a slightly different take on this. I think he's coming to us in his first serious relationship with insecurities of his own about his body. There's something in him that feels a little bit unmanned by her being larger. It's not just about her body. His attitudes toward this woman, who isn't thin, somehow is triggering within him a kind of self-doubt about his own body image that he hasn't quite recognized.

Cheryl: The Question of Weight, I have strong feelings about what you did because I know how it feels to be that woman who is being told by a man, "You don't meet this ideal that I've constructed and that society has helped me construct. And even though I love you and you're wonderful and I don't have any complaints about you, I've decided that I'm going to ask you to be physically perfect for me, too."

I don't know what's going to happen in this relationship. I do think that this was hurtful to your lover, and she's probably going to carry this into your sex life, as well. I do think that honesty is really important. I think kindness is too, and generosity. I think that, Question of Weight, your relationship might be permanently damaged because of this. But whether it is or not, I encourage you to examine those messages that you've received about what women should look like, and how you might open your mind a bit.

Lindy West: What comes through in this letter is that their relationship isn't "real" until she can fix herself. That's how I felt about myself; I needed to fix this problem that made me not a real woman and not worthy of the respect that every other human being deserves. Everything was on hold until I could make myself thin. There was just this really low-grade despair all the time, because the narrative that you're fed is that as a woman, your job is to be pretty and small — small physically and small in your presence. And then you wait for someone to pick you. I was always very aware that I didn't look like the kind of girl who got picked, and so I was sort of resigned to the fact that I would be alone.

But what you learn when you grow up is, what you look like is irrelevant compared to what you are like. If you're confident and fun and engaged with people and you go out and are yourself, that's extremely attractive. And that proved true for me.

You can get more advice from the Sugars each week on Dear Sugar Radio from WBUR. Listen to the full episode to hear more discussion about how weight and physical appearance can affect relationships.

Have a question for the Sugars? Email dearsugarradio@gmail.com and it may be answered on a future episode.

You can also listen to Dear Sugar Radio on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app.


If the international spread of SlutWalk means anything, it means this: You should never underestimate the power of a simple idea. Nor should you expect that idea to remain simple for very long.

SlutWalk has become massive; its website lists completed or planned events in several dozen American and Canadian cities, with still more marches occurring in Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the UK. But it’s worth noting that its inspiration was relatively small and local. This January, at Osgoode Hall Law School, a Toronto policeman giving a lecture on campus safety told students that, although he’d been “told not to say it,” he thought women should stop dressing like “sluts” so as to avoid being sexually assaulted.

Which, of course, is one of the oldest and worst lines in the book, when it comes to excusing rape. The fact is, anyone can be sexually assaulted; young or old, of any gender, of any race, conventionally attractive or not. The only common denominator in any rape or sexual assault is the presence of a sexual assailant. But the fact that a police officer, someone to whom a victim would be expected to turn to after an assault, could include victim-blaming in his “safety tips”: Well. It was a small incident. But it spoke volumes.

Hence, SlutWalk: Women and men taking to the streets to demand accountability from the Toronto police. Its goals were small and local focused; its message was equally simple and unequivocal. Its branding, however, stood out.

“Whether dished out as a serious indictment of one’s character or merely as a flippant insult, the intent behind the word [‘slut’] is always to wound,” said the organizers, “so we’re taking it back. ‘Slut’ is being re-appropriated.”

And so they did. The SlutWalk movement said — indeed, implicitly demanded — that those who participated in the march should be willing to identify as “sluts or allies.” It was an incredibly catchy, implicitly theatrical premise. Many of the protesters played that up, dressing in the sorts of revealing and provocative outfits that the Toronto policeman had condemned. The cameras tended to find those protesters first.

For some of those who joined, it was a simple way to identify. Some were sex workers, used to hearing that their impermissible sexuality was an excuse for police brutality, legal oppression, and violent assault or even murder. Others were women who enjoyed casual sex, or people who had sex in non-vanilla ways. For others, the label came less naturally; still, since any given woman can be labeled a “slut,” even the most monogamous or virginal among us, it made sense to march in solidarity. The simplicity of the message — no matter who you are, or how anyone else views your sexuality, you deserve safety — made it possible for the movement to gain ground anywhere that message rang true, until the outrage was not so much about anything that one man had done, but about the rage and pain that come with being sexual in a rape culture. And so, SlutWalk transcended Toronto, and the offending police officer, and became an international movement.

And yet. Several women of color have written that the event is based in white culture, white problems, and white assumptions — for example, the idea that one can expect “safety” when dealing with law enforcement in the first place.

“This event will not stop the criminalization of black women in New Orleans,” wrote Aura Blogando, “nor will it stop one woman from being potentially deported after she calls the police subsequent to being raped. SlutWalk completely ignores the way institutional violence is leveled against women of color. The event highlights its origins from a privileged position of relative power, replete with an entitlement of assumed safety that women of color would never even dream of.”

Still others have pointed out that the mere fact of wearing a “slutty” outfit does not always signify freedom, and feeling pressured to do so, or to reclaim the “slut” label, can in fact intensify and re-iterate their oppression: “In the post 9/11 climate,” wrote Harsha Walia, “the focus on a particular version of sex(y)-positive feminism runs the risk of further marginalizing Muslim women’s movements who are hugely impacted by the racist ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate and state policies against the niqab.” Simply telling women that they “can” or “should” be more sexually open or dress more scantily does not make sense, if those women are routinely persecuted for a seeming lack of sexual availability, or for wearing clothes that cover “too much” of their bodies. In a virgin-whore dichotomy, women are of course assaulted on both ends of the spectrum; anyone who plays the game will lose. That’s how rigged games work.

This matters. Because these are the dangers of making an international movement out of a simple, local protest. “SlutWalk” made sense, as an immediate reaction to the events in Toronto: When the police officer blames rape on revealing outfits, you wear a revealing outfit. When the police officer uses the term “slut” in a derogatory way, you use it in a positive one. But once it was exported, its flaws became apparent. It did not, and could not, speak to the needs of every woman; nor could it adequately sum up and address every facet of rape culture. And so, removed from its original context, it stopped being simple, and became simplistic.

Simple ideas are great for attracting crowds, especially when they come with camera-ready spectacle. But there is no way that SlutWalk can be made to bear the entire weight of anti-rape activism; relying solely on SlutWalk as our means of protesting anything — rape, sexism, even something as specific as slut-shaming — will invariably reveal that it does not measure up. No one protest or movement, not even one as widespread and as great at calling attention to itself as SlutWalk, can do that.

Feminism cannot live on SlutWalks alone. The fact that the movement has been so widely embraced does not mean that we should turn to it exclusively. What it means is that other protests can and should be happening; in addition to making the SlutWalk movement itself more inclusive and responsive, it’s essential that its organizers turn the mic over to other organizers, with ideas about protesting rape culture that extend beyond the “reclaiming slut” banner. The best thing for SlutWalkers now is to listen to the people who feel left out, and help them. The Sluts can and should keep Walking. But they should also recognize when to follow someone else’s lead.


TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) — Judges may have another way to help repeat DUI offenders sober up for good.

Instead of blowing into a machine which keep their cars from starting, they may have to get their breath tested twice a day.

The proposal, approved by a House committee last week, would allow judges to place repeat DUI offenders into a new program, known elsewhere as “24/7 Sobriety,” instead of having ignition interlock devices installed on their vehicles. State law currently requires interlock devices for drivers with more than one DUI. Judges would have the discretion to order the devices as well as the 24/7 program.

In general, the program outlined in HB 7005, approved unanimously by the House Economic Affairs Committee, would require that drivers submit to twice-daily breath tests, random urinalysis or continuous monitoring devices, such as drug patches or ankle bracelets.

Supporters say the 24/7 abstinence-based programs have shown significant reductions in drunken driving and other alcohol- or drug-related offenses such as domestic violence, and have better compliance rates than the interlock devices.

The proposal is the latest salvo in a vendor-driven fight about possibly expanding the use of ignition interlock devices, used by more than 10,000 Floridians, to first-time DUI offenders. Vendors have pushed that idea over the objections of state highway safety officials.

But instead of adding to the vendors’ market share, an amendment slipped onto HB 7005 last week would lead to the new 24/7 program — possibly shrinking the use of interlock devices. The bill also includes a priority of House Speaker Will Weatherford dealing with driver’s licenses.

Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Executive Director Julie Jones, who recently lost a court fight to interlock-device vendors, is one of a growing number of driving safety experts who believe the abstinence-based programs are a better way to ensure that repeat offenders clean up their act. Jones has proposed shifting half of interlock-device users into a 24/7 program and measuring the effectiveness of both programs for five years.

“The current IID (ignition interlock device) program has been very helpful for the treatment of impaired driving offenders. But why limit ourselves to one method that is exclusive to drinking while driving while drugged-driving violations continue to increase?” Jones said recently.

Jones said she was not responsible for the amendment that would give judges the option to impose the 24/7 program instead of the interlock devices, but she did change it so that her department would have to authorize the program. And she has repeatedly objected to efforts by the vendors to expand the interlock-device program — a $10 million a year industry in Florida — to first-time offenders, something backed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and favored by federal transportation officials. But Jones said research shows that the majority of first-time offenders don’t need more intervention to stay out of trouble.

The amendment was proposed by a vendor for Intoximeter, a hand-held breath testing device used by 24/7 programs elsewhere and already in use in other programs in Florida.

Letting drivers with multiple DUI offenses get behind the wheel without interlock devices would be a major shift in policy, Douglas Mannheimer, a lobbyist for Alcohol Countermeasure Systems, told the House panel last week. ACS is one of three interlock vendors now doing business with the state.

“The difference in policy now is that person that’s in the program may … go to the convenience store, buy something, get in that car. Right now … the car would not start,” Mannheimer said.

But under the proposed changes, “we could have second, third or even fourth offenders driving when I think the word is they proverbially fell off the wagon that afternoon,” he said.

Meanwhile, a pilot 24/7 program in Jacksonville, the first in Florida, is slated to begin during the first week in May. The program was developed by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and the Northeast Florida Safety Council, the organization that provides court-ordered services, including DUI programs, in a nine-county region including Jacksonville.

Bill Mickelson helped create the country’s first “24/7 Sobriety” program in 2005 when, as a deputy state attorney general in South Dakota, he was intent on reducing the number of prisoners locked up for alcohol- or drug-related offenses, about two-thirds of those behind bars in the state at the time.

Mickelson, now a consultant, came to Florida to try to convince sheriffs and others to embrace the 24/7 abstinence approach for habitual offenders. In the eight years since South Dakota implemented 24/7, 37,000 individuals have participated in the program and provided a total of 7 million breath tests. A RAND Corp. study found a 12 percent reduction in repeat DUI arrests over a five-year period.

“It’s the first time in their alcoholic careers that somebody’s held them accountable for their sobriety,” Mickelson, who also consults for Intoximeters, Inc., said. “There is a sure and measured and a swift consequence for a bad act, unlike other testing methodologies where there’s a time delay.”

South Dakota’s 24/7 program has become a model for the country, and federal highway safety officials are encouraging states to adopt it. So far, only two other states — North Dakota and Montana — have implemented similar programs statewide.

The programs are premised on frequent testing paired with immediate consequences, usually jail time, for individuals who fail breath tests. In Jacksonville, those who fail breath tests for the first time will go to jail for 12 hours and face 24 hours for a second slip. The same consequences apply for individuals wearing patches or bracelets measuring alcohol or drugs. A third failure would result in an appearance before a judge and incarceration.

The interlock devices have been in use in Florida for a decade. Since then, nearly 6,000 of the 68,048 drivers ordered into the program received subsequent DUIs, and about 1,000 received DUIs while they were in the interlock program, according to data provided by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

The Jacksonville pilot project will give judges the option of ordering the 24/7 program as a requirement for pretrial release, probation or bond, and is not limited to driving offenses. Drivers ordered into the program may also have to participate in other programs, including rehab or counseling, required separately for some DUI offenders.

Northeast Florida Safety Council Executive Director Sue Holley, who helped develop the Duval County pilot project, said interlock devices work well for some drivers. But the devices don’t stop people from drinking and driving or from drinking altogether.

“The substance abuse issue is so complicated and complex and it’s very difficult to find the one thing that works for everybody,” Holley, who has worked with DUI programs for three decades.

Like DHSMV Director Jones, Holley views 24/7 sobriety as a more modern, holistic approach toward treating repeat offenders before allowing them to have their licenses fully reinstated.

“We’re looking at this program, the 24/7 program, as probably being the next revelation for the DUI programs to be able to better serve the DUI offender, to provide better outcomes as far as their success with not re-offending, which is our goal,” she said. “I want to be able to go home and sleep at night. I don’t want to have to rely on one single tool to be the magic torch.”

“The News Service of Florida’s Dara Kam contributed to this report.”


SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. Navy commander was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison for his role in a fraud and bribery scheme that cost the government about $35 million.

Cmdr. Bobby Pitts, 48, of Chesapeake, Virginia, was the latest person to be sentenced in connection with a decade-long scam linked to a Singapore defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard” Francis.

Francis bribed Navy officials to help him overbill the Navy for fuel, food and other services his company provided to ships docked in Asian ports, according to prosecutors. The bribes allegedly ranged from cash and prostitutes to Cuban cigars and Spanish suckling pigs.

Pitts pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges that alleged he tried to obstruct a federal investigation while in charge of the Navy’s Fleet Industrial Supply Command in Singapore.

In handing down the sentence against Pitts, U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino told him that he had “betrayed the Navy and betrayed the country,” prosecutors said in a news release.

“Pitts deliberately and methodically undermined government operations and in doing so, diverted his allegiance from his country and colleagues to a foreign defense contractor, and for that, he is paying a high price,” said Adam Braverman, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego.

In addition to his prison sentence, Pitts was also ordered to pay $22,500 in fines and restitution.


Jan 20, 2013; Atlanta, GA, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) runs for a touchdown against the Atlanta Falcons during the third quarter of the NFC Championship game at the Georgia Dome. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

The San Francisco 49ers are very angry about last year, so they want to take out their anger on Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons. And Colin Kaepernick and company are more than capable.

San Francisco and Atlanta meet today at 12 PM PT at the Georgia Dome with a berth in Super Bowl 47 at stake. Colin Kaepernick accumulated 444 total yards last year, and he is trying to exploit a defense that has struggled against the read-option. Ryan and his star receivers are going to try and tear up San Francisco’s secondary. But they won’t be able to do that if Aldon and Justin Smith apply pressure.

Stay tuned here for updates and analysis of the 2013 NFC Championship.


PULLMAN, Wash. - Researchers at Washington State University have discovered a new type of cooperative photosynthesis that could be used in engineering microbial communities for waste treatment and bioenergy production.

They report today on the unique metabolic process seen for the first time in a pair of bacteria in Nature Communications.

Photosynthetic bacteria account for nearly half of the world's food production and carbon-based organic material. The research could also improve understanding of lake ecology.

Phototroph + electron generator

Prosthecochloris aestaurii , a green-tinged, plant-like microbe, comes from the extreme environment of Hot Lake, a high salinity lake in northern Okanogan County near Oroville, Wash. Discovered and identified a few years ago by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Southern Illinois University, the bacterium is able to photosynthesize, using sunlight along with elemental sulfur or hydrogen sulfide to grow.

The researchers noticed that P. aestuarii tended to gather around a carbon electrode, an electricity conductor that they were operating in Hot Lake. The researchers isolated and grew P. aestuarii and determined that, similar to the way half of a battery works, the bacterium is able to grab electrons from a solid electrode and use them for photosynthesis. The pink-colored Geobacter sulfurreducens meanwhile, is known for its ability to convert waste organic matter to electricity in microbial fuel cells. The bacterium is also used in environmental cleanup.

G. sulfurreducens, like animals and humans, can't photosynthesize. It consumes organic compounds, such as acetate, and "breathes" out carbon dioxide.

The bacterium is known for its ability to donate electrons to a solid electrode. As it consumes acetate, it generates electrons, which can be collected as electricity.

Microbes paired up in WSU lab

Led by Haluk Beyenal, the Paul Hohenschuh Distinguished Professor in the WSU Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, and postdoctoral researcher Phuc Ha, the research team surmised that the bacteria might be able to help each other grow and put them together in the lab.

The researchers found that P. aestuarii could accept electrons generated from G. sulfurreducens and use them in a new type of anaerobic photosynthesis never before seen. Similar to how a battery or fuel cell works, the bacteria transfer electrons. They feed off each other to grow under conditions in which neither could grow independently.

Ecology-friendly implications

From an ecological perspective, this new form of metabolism may play an important role in carbon cycling in oxygen free zones of poorly mixed freshwater lakes. It may also present new possibilities for engineering microbial communities for waste treatment and bioenergy production.

"We think this could be a common bio-electrochemical process in nature," said Beyenal, whose team is working to better understand the electron transfer mechanism.

###

The work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Researchers from PNNL and China University of Geoscience also collaborated on the project.

The work is in keeping with WSU's Grand Challenges, a suite of research initiatives aimed at large societal issues. It is particularly relevant to the challenge of sustainable resources and its theme of meeting sustainable energy needs while protecting the environment.


Donald Trump’s poll numbers in the Philly suburbs have gone from bad to worse.

The latest poll shows his trouble might be even bigger than anticipated, and because respondents in the crucial ring around the city have a big problem with the “Access Hollywood” tape.

According to a poll released this morning from Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton now leads Trump in the Philly ‘burbs by 28 points. Her overall lead in the state among likely voters is 48-39. This is the first major poll of Pennsylvania since an audio recording of Trump saying, among other comments, “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

The difference between the rest of Pennsylvania and Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties is stark. All of Pennsylvania, for instance, is pretty lukewarm on Trump. Forty percent of Bloomberg respondents said they had a favorable rating of him. But people in the Philly suburbs really can’t stand him. Only 28 percent of respondents said they had a favorable rating of him.

The lack of love for Trump is obvious when compared to how the ‘burbs voted in 2012. Then, Barack Obama still beat Mitt Romney handily, but his margin was 10 percent. This poll shows Clinton 18 points ahead of that. It also shows Clinton eight points ahead of a late September poll that showed her with a 20-point lead in the Philly suburbs.

Why such a huge margin for Clinton? The growth in Clinton’s lead may have a little to do with the “Access Hollywood” tape. In the suburbs, 83 percent of respondents said they were bothered either a little or a lot by Trump’s comments. But the rest of the state was angered, too, with 78 percent of Pennsylvania respondents overall saying they were bothered.

Like many other pieces of this election, Clinton’s huge advantage in the suburbs in some ways defies explanation. While she expectedly leads by huge margins among women and college graduates in the suburbs, she’s also tied with Trump among whites and leading him by one point among men in the combined area of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Chester counties, according to the Bloomberg poll. In the rest of the state, Trump is dominating these categories and catering to them with his message.

Bloomberg noted that in the rest of Pennsylvania Trump has an 11-point lead. The problem for Trump — and the positive for Clinton — is the rest of Pennsylvania doesn’t matter if you’re failing in the ‘burbs, which accounted for 22 percent of the state’s voters in 2012.

“I don’t know how you win if you lose the suburbs by a certain percentage,” said Terry Madonna, a Franklin and Marshall pollster. “You can’t lose by 20 points.”


While discussions continue on the future of the Prototype Challenge platform, the existing spec Oreca FLM09 cars could receive a series of updates for next year’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.

The possible updates, ranging from a 30-50 horsepower increase, to a new ECU that includes traction control and telemetry, and minor aero changes have been proposed by teams as a cost-effective, stop-gap measure for the aging French prototype until the introduction of an all-new platform for as early as 2017.

IMSA met with PC team owners last weekend at Circuit of The Americas to discuss various options for the future.

“IMSA continues to evaluate the future of the Prototype Challenge class through 2016 and beyond,” said Simon Hodgson, IMSA managing director, racing operations.

“As part of this process, IMSA has ongoing dialog with current PC competitors, as well as ORECA and Katech, the current single-specification suppliers, in addition to considering other options.

“IMSA will ensure our loyal PC stakeholders – and any future stakeholders – are kept fully informed as we near a conclusion to this evaluation process.”

While PC team owners had previously been split on the category’s future direction, the majority appear to be in agreement of rolling out updates to the existing car for 2016, prior to a complete new platform the following year.

“We’ve been working pretty hard with IMSA since Laguna on this project, everything from the future of the class to trying to bring in the LMP3 car,” Starworks Motorsport team owner Peter Baron told Sportscar365.

“I think the series has done a good job with trying to be financially reasonable and responsible for what the class needs and not go crazy with it. LMP3 didn’t work out, so now the future is to upgrade the PC car.”

IMSA hosted an open test with a Ginetta-Nissan LMP3 car at Watkins Glen in June, which saw a number of drivers walk away less-than-impressed with the low power output and handling of the British-built entry level prototype.

While further LMP3 examples have come online since, including the highly regarded Ligier JS P3, current PC teams have expressed interest in developing an all-new platform for 2017 that’s largely based off of a new-spec P2 car.

The latest proposal differs from ORECA’s proposed upgrade kit, which would have resulted in an entirely new set of bodywork.

“From my perspective, there’s only really two viable paths,” CORE autosport Chief Operating Officer Morgan Brady told Sportscar365. “The one that we’re discussing are the smaller technical updates as a stop-gap measure.

“The one I’m interested in and excited about would be basically a P2-derived spec chassis as a replacement for the LMPC car. That would certainly be interesting for me.

“As far as LMP3, I don’t think it’s really an option based on outright performance. And if the LMPC car has a short lifecycle left, it doesn’t make sense to do a large, excessive update.”

While IMSA has yet to make a final decision on possible updates to the existing FLM09s, Brady feels the proposed changes, estimated to cost between $30,000-50,000 in total, would be a step forward for next year.

“When we started looking at options for the PC car, there’s not a whole lot of things wrong with it but there are some key aspects missing,” he said.

“I think with a cost-effective update that brings some additional technology and drivability to the car, it would create a lot of interest and potentially increase the car count for next year.”

Baron, meanwhile, agrees that interest in the class could go up, particularly as operating costs are expected to rise in other categories.

“With the costs of the GTD packages all going up, I think there’s a lot more activity and interest for the PC class,” he said.

A final decision on what upgrades will be used in 2016 is expected to be made in the coming weeks, possibly during the Petit Le Mans weekend.

“Time is of the essence, and it’s of paramount importance that any decision provides clear direction for stakeholders and reflects IMSA’s continued goal of providing our competitors with a platform that is cost effective, stable and speaks to the Pro-Am nature of the class,” Hodgson added.


Anders Lindsjo Coaching the Snatch w/ Christmas Abbott – TechniqueWOD

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A few weeks ago the Barbell Shrugged team had the pleasure of training with Anders Lindsjo, Head Strength Coach for Eleiko Sport in Halmstad, Sweden.

Anders is kind, highly knowledgeable, and very well qualified. He was also a Swedish World and Olympic team member for about 10 years, so he’s spent plenty of time underneath the barbell.

Usually on TechniqueWOD we break down movements into their essential components and demonstrate how they should be done. But this week we thought we’d offer you a different kind of experience, something you don’t get to see that often.

This week Anders leads our friend Christmas Abbott through some intense technique work for the snatch. If you’re an aspiring coach pay very close attention and get your notepad ready. There are about a million knowledge bombs here that you’re going to want to write down.

If you want to become an expert coach, start by observing an expert coach.

Enjoy,

For more

What does it take to make the world’s finest barbell? Learn all about Eleiko on Episode 155 of Barbell Shrugged .

. Learn more about Eleiko’s excellent coaching courses by visiting their website .

. Want more TechniqueWOD? We’ve got you covered.


With the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is turning its sights elsewhere. Quietly, the Obama administration is building up a vast array of military resources in West Africa, and specifically in Portuguese-speaking Lusophone countries. Reportedly, the Pentagon wants to establish a monitoring station in the Cape Verde islands, while further south in the Gulf of Guinea U.S. ships and personnel are patrolling local waters. Concerned lest it draw too much attention to itself, the Pentagon has avoided constructing large military installations and focused instead on a so-called “lily pad” strategy of smaller bases. In SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe, an island chain in the Gulf of Guinea and former Portuguese colony, the Pentagon may install one such “under the radar” base, and U.S. Navy Seabees are already engaged in construction work at the local airport.

Just why has the Obama administration invested so much time and effort in this corner of the globe? To be sure, controlling remote “lily pads” may come in handy in the battle against Islamist militants operating farther inland in such countries as Mali and Niger. Washington also wants to counteract drug smuggling emanating from West Africa, a volatile and politically unstable region. Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, has in recent years turned into a cocaine hub, and the United Nations has called the country a “narco-state.” Guinea-Bissau is geographically situated at Africa’s most westerly point, and South American smugglers are thought to transport drug shipments from here on to Cape Verde and then to Europe.

Reportedly, Brazil has become South America’s largest net exporter of drugs to Africa. However, in recent years African traffickers have begun to produce methamphetamines and have muscled in on their Latin counterparts, wresting an increasingly large portion over the drug smuggling business. The Africans ship cocaine by sea and have assumed international control over cocaine exports as far away as the Brazilian city of SÃ£o Paulo. Brazilian drug traffickers, meanwhile, are left with the domestic side of the business and are forced to sell coke to locals.

Oil Intrigue in the Gulf of Guinea

To be sure then, the U.S. is interested in patrolling West African waters in an effort to stem the tide of drug traffic. There may be other, less public reasons for the U.S. military buildup in the region, however. In an effort to ease its dependence on the volatile Middle East, the U.S. is looking elsewhere for its oil and is likely to receive a whopping 25 percent of its imported petroleum from Africa by 2015. Former American Vice Admiral and Deputy Commander of the U.S. Africa Command Robert Moeller has stated that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” is highly important, as well as forestalling oil disruption. What is more, the U.S. must now confront a rising China, a nation which is also interested in securing oil deposits in West Africa.

In its drive to acquire natural resources, China has been pursuing offshore oil exploration contracts in the politically unstable nation of SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe. In 2009, Chinese petroleum corporation Sinopec acquired Swiss company Addax which gave Beijing control over four oil blocs in the SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe-Nigeria joint development zone. The Sinopec purchase in the Gulf of Guinea made China the leading player in the SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe oil sector. Whether the islands will actually take off as a major oil producer is still unclear, though drilling is under way and commercial production is expected to begin within a few years.

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If SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe take off as a major oil supplier, China will certainly be well positioned to reap maximum reward from the petroleum bonanza. However, Beijing will also have to reckon with a growing U.S. military profile on the islands. Recently, U.S. Navy Seabees have been renovating a boat ramp on SÃ£o TomÃ©’s coast guard base and building a guard house on the premises. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and State Department have installed a new surface surveillance system on the islands. SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe is the first African nation to install the program and to integrate such technology into its overall maritime safety program.

A Growing Role for SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe

Meanwhile, politicians on the island have broached the idea of deepening security ties, and Washington is reportedly receptive to the notion. U.S. officials see the island chain as a lily pad or forward operating base staffed by several hundred troops. SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe could be a promising site, the Americans believe, since the islands are heavily Catholic and have no history of Islamic militancy. Recently, American Coast Guard cutters have been patrolling local waters in an effort to assess threats to oil access. Coming ashore, the crewmen then fix door hinges no less in a blatant public relations maneuver.

Needless to say, not everyone is thrilled about the contingency plans. Speaking to the Associated Press, one local legislator was under no illusions about the growing American presence. “Unfortunately,” he remarked, “Americans are interested in SÃ£o TomÃ© because of oil, but SÃ£o TomÃ© existed before that.” Former Prime Minister Guilherme Posser, meanwhile, says there should be greater transparency when it comes to military discussions. The notion of a base should be submitted to a national referendum, he argues.

The China-Macau Connection

Faced with a growing U.S. profile in West Africa, the Chinese have busily sought to counteract such influence. According to a sensitive U.S. diplomatic cable, Chinese immigrants advance the Asian Tiger’s business interests in the region by forming joint ventures with African firms. The influx of new Chinese entrepreneurs has been accompanied by “organized crime elements, which are involved in trafficking, smuggling, and other illegal activities.” Moreover, in a specific effort to counteract the U.S. in African Lusophone countries, Beijing has appealed to its own business community in Macau, a peninsula connected to the southern Chinese mainland. A former Portuguese colony, Macau reverted to Chinese rule in 1999.

Speaking with American diplomats, local contacts told the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong that Macau could be useful to China due to the former colony’s ties to the Catholic Church. To be sure, “more than a few” of Macau’s ethnically Portuguese residents had relocated to Portugal after the colony’s handover to Beijing, and only a very small percentage of local residents spoke Portuguese. Nevertheless, diplomats reported that “a comparatively high 7.6 percent of civil servants in the Macau government claim that Portuguese is their primary language [and] this has helped maintain the Macau government's capacity to interface with Lusophone counterparts on behalf of Beijing.”

According to diplomatic cables, China hopes to take advantage of such cultural links and believes that Macau should “expand its economic and trade links with overseas Chinese communities” while also providing “a stable platform for China’s trade ties and linkages” with such Lusophone countries as SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Beijing also hopes that Macau will extend ties to the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony located in the Gulf of Guinea and Africa’s only Spanish-speaking nation. Though American diplomats report that overall volume of trade between China and the Lusophone countries remains low, Macau could prove quite useful for Beijing in the coming struggle for West African resources.

Enter Brazil

Overstretched and facing budgetary constraints, the Pentagon may have difficulties containing China in far-flung corners of the globe. In an effort to overcome such disadvantages, the Obama administration has been turning to Brazil, a nation which has common cultural and historical ties to former Portuguese colonies in West Africa [for a longer discussion about the politics surrounding Brazil’s rising role see my earlier al-Jazeera column here]. Though Brazil has not been able to rival China’s economic presence, the South American newcomer has been deploying its corporations to Africa in the hope of cashing in on Africa’s oil boom and deepwater petroleum exploration.

Establishing cordial ties to Brasilia may be a shrewd move for Washington. Under former President Lula, Brazil did its utmost to establish links with SÃ£o TomÃ© and PrÃncipe and recently the South American powerhouse wrote off the impoverished island’s debt. During his tenure, Lula traveled to Cape Verde to attend a summit meeting of the so-called Portuguese speaking countries, otherwise known as Comunidades dos Paises de Lingua Portuguesa [or CPLP]. While in Cape Verde, Lula sought to highlight Brazil's long-standing social and economic ties and assistance programs with the island. In a further effort to extend its cultural influence, Brazil is backing Equatorial Guinea’s desire to join the CPLP.

Washington seems to hope that Brazil will act as an assistant policeman in West Africa so the Obama administration can avoid unnecessary political entanglements. There are some signs that Brazil, which seeks to guarantee its investments and the free flow of commerce, might just oblige. According to a recent article in the New York Times, Brazil has been training elite African forces at a remote military base in the Amazon. Meanwhile, the Brazilian Ministry of Defense, which wants to halt the spread of piracy, has pledged to donate aircraft to Cape Verde for maritime patrol duties.

Washington’s Wary Ally?

In West Africa, the Pentagon needs all the help it can get. The U.S. Coast Guard has been paying visits to Cape Verde and Equatorial Guinea, but oil facilities are considered vulnerable. In politically unstable Equatorial Guinea, some American oil platforms are protected not by the local government’s insignificant Navy but by private unarmed guards. Interviewed by the Associated Press, one U.S. military officer described Equatorial Guinea’s military authorities as “distant and standoffish,” speculating that the estrangement had to do with increasing Chinese influence in the troubled West African nation.

Coming to the aid of an ally, Brazil has trained U.S. military personnel at its own jungle warfare center. Meanwhile, U.S. ships perform joint exercises with the Brazilian Navy and both countries patrol the waters stretching from Rio de Janeiro to the Gulf of Guinea. Presumably, Brazil carries out such collaboration because it is concerned with maritime security and drug trafficking, though perhaps this South American newcomer also shares Washington’s concern over rising Chinese influence.

Whatever the case, Brazil seems perfectly happy for the time being to act in concert with the Obama administration. The question, however, is whether Brazil will view such collaboration as desirable in the long-term. Already, there have been strains in the U.S.-Brazilian relationship, and there may come a time when this up and coming South American nation may wish to carve out its own sphere of influence in the Lusophone world without any interference from outside powers.


The best network TV show that no one’s watching is ABC’s “American Crime.”

How this provocative drama from Oscar winner John Ridley got lost in the programming shuffle — and has yet to be renewed — is one of the more distressing mysteries of the TV season. Ideally, it should have premiered last fall, when audiences were primed for new offerings, instead of being tacked on the schedule in March — after the conclusion of the dopey (and unresolved) Viola Davis acting seminar “How To Get Away With Murder.”

Thematically challenging and structurally ambitious, “American Crime” offers something lacking in any other show on the ABC lineup: an actual adult story about an issue that affects us all — the nation’s criminal defense system. While Ridley’s point of view is very distinct, he skilfully dramatizes how one crime can ruin the lives of almost any family — and how the search for justice is, at the very least, frustrating and sometimes meaningless.

We meet the three families after the murder of Matt Skokie, a US military veteran who has become a petty drug dealer in Modesto, Calif. His divorced parents, recovering gambling addict father Russ (Timothy Hutton) and racist mother Barb (Felicity Huffman), are bitterly reunited. Matt’s wife, Gwen (Kira Pozehl), survives the shooting but is left stricken with aphasia and cannot help the case; her parents (W. Earl Brown and Penelope Ann Miller) are more concerned with their daughter’s recovery than with Barb’s crusade for justice. A local family, the Gutierrezes, becomes swept up in the arrests when a teenage boy (Johnny Ortiz) is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The series, whose eighth episode airs next Thursday, kicks into high gear when the prime suspect, African-American drug addict Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco), is released in the face of circumstantial evidence. Barb goes ballistic, flat-out telling the cops they don’t know how to do their jobs. She successfully campaigns to have the case reclassified as a hate crime and states her case on television. Not long after, a thrown brick shatters her car window. There is no witness to the crime and the cops can’t do much without one. Barb buys a gun for her own protection, gets a license and starts practicing on a firing range.

The demoralization of Barb is only one of the consequences of the original crime, but each is rendered powerfully. Ridley is greatly aided by a first-rate cast. After wallowing way too long in the silliness of “Desperate Housewives,” Huffman rebounds to striking effect as the intolerant Barb, a woman who will not back down from her crusade. Hutton does his best work in years as the wayward father who will never make up for lost time. Had “American Crime” premiered in September, the stars and supporting players, including Benito Martinez as Alonzo Gutierrez, would all be touted for Emmy consideration.


MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- White supremacists and neo-Nazis planned two rallies in Tennessee on Saturday after law enforcement officials made lengthy preparations to prevent violence between marchers and counter-protesters.

The two "White Lives Matter" marches were scheduled in Shelbyville and Murfreesboro on Saturday. Despite high tensions and insults exchanged with counter-protesters, there was no violence reported at the first rally in Shelbyville, CBS affiliate WTVF reports.

The Shelbyville rally began Saturday morning and ran until 1 p.m. local time.

Only one person was arrested as of Saturday afternoon. A male was taken into police custody after jumping a barrier in an attempt to advance toward the white supremacist rally, WTVF reports.

The second event was canceled by "White Lives Matter" protesters shortly after the first march ended. "Apparently it took so long to get through lines in Shelbyville," WTVF journalist Matthew Torres reports.

The heavy law enforcement presence at both locations included police helicopters, K-9 units and officers armed with sniper rifles. Several large trucks were used as roadblocks to prevent vehicles from driving into crowds.

Counter-protesters were allowed to enter the public square through two designated streets. Safety checkpoints were set up to prevent protesters from bringing weapons and masks into the area.

Two lines for counter protesters in Murfreesboro to get through. One of two checkpoints. MANY items are prohibited. @NC5 pic.twitter.com/8RJAqk8DXE — Matthew Torres (@NC5_MTorres) October 28, 2017

The city of Murfreesboro estimates between 400 and 500 protesters were in attendance at the "White Lives Matter" rally.

Footage of the demonstrations on social media showed white nationalist protesters chanting "closed borders, white nation, now we start the deportation."

The Nationalist Front marchs in Tennessee, chanting: "Closed borders, white nation, now we start the deportation!" pic.twitter.com/i5NT5pttEJ — Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) October 28, 2017

The rallies were held weeks after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, at a white nationalist rally in August. One counter-protester was killed when a man drove his car into a group marching through the streets.


North America: Tuesday, February 3 @ 4:00 p.m. PST

Tuesday, February 3 @ 4:00 p.m. PST Europe: Wednesday, February 4 @ 4:00 p.m. CET

Wednesday, February 4 @ 4:00 p.m. CET Asia: Wednesday, February 4 @ 4:00 p.m. KST

North America: Friday, February 13 @ 6:00 p.m. PST

Friday, February 13 @ 6:00 p.m. PST Europe: Friday, February 13 @ 6:00 p.m. CET

Friday, February 13 @ 6:00 p.m. CET Asia: Friday, February 13 @ 6:00 p.m. KST

Greetings, nephalem!Season 1 is about to draw to a close, and we wanted to give players an opportunity to prepare for the start of the new season with some dates and times to plan around.Season 1 will be ending at the following dates and times for each region:Season 2 will be starting at the following dates and times for each region:For time zone assistance, click here We look forward to seeing you in Season 2!*Please note that Era 1 will end at the same time as Season 1. For more information, please click here


Serbian Vladimir Vermezovic has been appointed coach of South African side Orlando Pirates, two years after he resigned from rivals Kaizer Chiefs.

The 50-year-old succeeds Roger de Sa, who quit last month because of exhaustion after 18 months at the helm.

Cheifs said Vermezovic will replace caretaker coach Eric Tinkler once a work permit has been granted.

Vermezovic left Chiefs in 2012 after a three-year spell in which he twice won the League Cup.

His last job was coach of Partizan Belgrade, who he left in April 2013 after less than a year in charge.

Under former South Africa goalkeeper De Sa, Pirates reached last year's African Champions League final, losing 3-1 over two legs to Egyptian giants Al Ahly.

They were also beaten in two domestic cup finals this season, and a fixture backlog means they trail league leaders Chiefs by 17 points halfway through the season.


During weekly protest near town of Modiin Illit, Arab protester sends small child towards IDF soldiers, tells them to shoot his son.

For nearly a decade, residents of the villages of Nilin and Bilin, located near the haredi town of Modiin Illit, have held fiery, often violent demonstrations against the construction of the security fence every Friday.

The demonstrations, which often include stone-throwings, draw anarchists and opponents of the Jewish state from around the world.

While provocations against soldiers and Border Police are common, this Friday, one Arab participant attempted to use his son in the propaganda war against Israel, in a disturbing form of child exploitation.

A recording of the incident shows the man carrying his young son towards several Border Police officers, setting him down, and shoving him off in the officers’ direction while waving a PLO flag.

The man then seemingly yells at the soldiers to shoot his son, hoping to create a news item and fire up anti-Israel sentiment.

The officers, however, do not take the bait. They instead attempt to shake the boy’s hand and speak with him, though the father, apparently intent on exploiting his son and turning him into the latest “martyr,” seems to scream at him to attack the soldiers with stones.

The child eventually attempted to comply with his father’s demands, but posed little threat as the soldiers watched him harmlessly toss stones aimlessly.


Gwinnett mom felt “devil like spirit” before stabbing children, husband

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Nine-year-old Diana Romero said she saw her mother stabbing her brothers, sister and father, but before the woman turned on Diana she told her that she was “going to the sky to see Jesus,” according to a state child welfare report obtained Wednesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The young girl cried and told her mother that she didn’t want to go to see Jesus, according to the report by the state Division of Family and Children Services.

The DFCS documents include a caseworker’s notes on her interview with Diana, who describes in horrid detail watching her mother slay her siblings and father one by one in their Loganville home.

The child, for instance, says that her father tried to stop the mother but couldn’t. Isabel Martinez, 33, is accused of stabbing and killing her husband, 33-year-old Martin Romero, and four of her children, 2-year-old Axel, 4-year-old Dillan and 7-year-old Dacota Romero and 10-year-old Isabela Martinez, early on July 6.

Isabel Martinez gestures towards news cameras during her first court appearance Friday. (AP Photo/John Bazemore) Photo: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

She was charged with five counts of malice murder, five counts of murder and six charges of aggravated assault.

The DFCS report also includes a interview with the mother in the Gwinnett jail, who says she is innocent and that the killings were performed by a “family friend,” but she provides no name. Martinez tell the DFCS caseworker that she tried to stop the friend and he cut her on the wrist. Martinez also described a recent family trip to Savannah where, according to the report, she felt “a devil-like spirit” and where she felt the waves trying to take her and her children away.

IN DEPTH: A peaceful neighborhood, a monstrous crime

RELATED: Hundreds gather to mourn husband, 4 children slain in Gwinnett

The child welfare agency had one prior interaction with the family in September of 2015, when the agency received an accusation saying the father struck one of the daughters with a shoe and a phone charger at night when she wouldn’t sleep. It’s unclear in the report which daughter was being struck. The agency investigated and both parents admitted disciplining the children using a belt on their behinds.

But the agency found there were no safety threats and the case was closed soon after.

“In Georgia corporal punishment crosses the line when there are welts or marks or bruises,” said Ashley Fielding Cooper, DFCS chief operating officer. “Based on the information we gathered in this case we determined that corporal punishment was used within the bounds of the law and that maltreatment did not occur.”

On the deadly night of July 6, Diana Romero, a fourth-grader at Magill Elementary School, was stabbed by her mother, police say. She is the only survivor of the attacks. Family members have said she is steadily improving but has a long road to recovery both physically and mentally.

In a small mobile home community in Gwinnett, Isabel Martinez was charged with multiple counts of murder in the stabbing deaths of four of her children and their father. (Erica A. Hernandez/AJC)

The caseworker spoke with Diana at 12:15 p.m. July 10. Before she opened up to the caseworker about the attacks, the child talked about having fun on the beach in Savannah. She said her mother and father did not fight while the family was away. She said her mother seemed normal when they all came home.

Diana said the police had never come to her home before. As she began to speak about that night, Diana cried, the report said. She said everyone seemed to be asleep when the trouble started.

She said she saw her mother take the knife out of the kitchen and start cutting her brothers and sister.

A public GoFundMe site set up by family member identified the surviving child as Diana. The site says Diana remains in the hospital and is expected to stay there for another two to three weeks to recover from her injuries. The site is seeking donations to cover the familys funeral and medical costs. Photo: GoFundMe Romero Family Funeral and Medical Fund. Photo: HANDOUT

Her father rushed into the living room and tried to get help, but when he was walking to the door, she cut him too, according to the report.

Diana told the caseworker that, watching all this before her, she could not move. She said her mother was not crying or screaming during the stabbings, the report said. She said her mother called the police after she cut herself. Five of the family members were dead when police arrived at the home in the pre-dawn hours.

Martinez said that before police arrived she placed all the bodies in the same room so they could be together.

In a subsequent court appearance Martinez exhibited bizarre behavior, smiling and giving cameras the thumbs-up sign.

On Tuesday, the attorney for the woman said she will not undergo a psychological evaluation at this stage in her case, but could later on.


Advertising network Turn announced today that they will suspend their zombie tracking cookie program. Turn was recently caught using Verizon Wireless' invasive UIDH header to undelete tracking cookies that web visitors had previously deleted. This unacceptable practice means that users who delete cookies to avoid Turn's and others' tracking will continue to be tracked against their will, using information associated with their previous activity through a permanent identity.

This is a step toward victory for everyone who spoke out against Turn's zombie cookies, but it is not enough. Turn's cookies just underscore the huge privacy problems with Verizon's header injection. Turn's cookies were the first example found, but Verizon enables any company to use the identifier in similarly abusive ways, some of which may not be visible to users.

Verizon needs to follow Turn's lead, and end their UIDH header injection program immediately.

Turn plans to "suspend" the zombie cookie program "pending re-evaluation." We again call on Turn to end their zombie cookie program permanently, and to commit not to use headers, browser fingerprinting, or any other method to circumvent individuals' decision to delete cookies. Additionally, Turn says, "By early February, Turn will not 'respawn' cookie IDs associated with the Verizon UIDH." Turn should treat this as the urgent privacy problem that it is, and end the cookie respawning today, not three weeks from now.

Companies that engage in cookie syncing with Turn, as EFF described recently, should immediately disable the Turn cookie syncing program and delete existing cookie syncing data until Turn has confirmed that they have stopped respawning cookies and have purged any cookies that they may have respawned.


Gov. Scott activates 100 Florida National Guard members

NAPLES – Today, Governor Rick Scott activated 100 members of the Florida Air and Army National Guard to support with planning, logistics and operations in preparation for potential impacts from Hurricane Irma. These 100 members will be stationed across the state, and will advise the Governor on available and needed resources to ensure communities are fully prepared for the storm. In addition, at the direction of Governor Scott, all 7,000 National Guard members will be reporting for duty Friday morning. Yesterday, Governor Scott issued Executive Order 17-235, which declared a state of emergency in all 67 counties within the State of Florida in response to Hurricane Irma and allowed for the immediate activation of National Guard members as preparedness actions continue.

Governor Scott said, “Today I am activating 100 members of the Florida Air and Army National Guard to immediately begin assisting with ongoing Hurricane Irma preparation. Per my direction, they will be stationed throughout the state. I have also directed all 7,000 guard members to report for duty this Friday, however, if resources are needed before then, I stand ready to activate as many guard members needed to support our aggressive preparedness actions. With Hurricane Irma now a category 5 storm, we must do all we can to prepare our families and communities for any potential impact from this major weather event. We do not know the exact path of this storm, but weather can change in an instant and while we hope for the best, we must prepare for the worst.”


Researchers ID Ways to Exploit ‘Cloud Browsers’ for Large-Scale, Anonymous Computing

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon have found a way to exploit cloud-based Web browsers, using them to perform large-scale computing tasks anonymously. The finding has potential ramifications for the security of “cloud browser” services.

At issue are cloud browsers, which create a Web interface in the cloud so that computing is done there rather than on a user’s machine. This is particularly useful for mobile devices, such as smartphones, which have limited computing power.The cloud-computing paradigm pools the computational power and storage of multiple computers, allowing shared resources for multiple users.

“Think of a cloud browser as being just like the browser on your desktop computer, but working entirely in the cloud and providing only the resulting image to your screen,” says Dr. William Enck, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research.

Because these cloud browsers are designed to perform complex functions, the researchers wanted to see if they could be used to perform a series of large-scale computations that had nothing to do with browsing. Specifically, the researchers wanted to determine if they could perform those functions using the “MapReduce” technique developed by Google, which facilitates coordinated computation involving parallel efforts by multiple machines.

The research team knew that coordinating any new series of computations would entail passing large packets of data between different nodes, or cloud browsers. To address this challenge, researchers stored data packets on bit.ly and other URL-shortening sites, and then passed the resulting “links” between various nodes.

Using this technique, the researchers were able to perform standard computation functions using data packets that were 1, 10 and 100 megabytes in size. “It could have been much larger,” Enck says, “but we did not want to be an undue burden on any of the free services we were using.”

“We’ve shown that this can be done,” Enck adds. “And one of the broader ramifications of this is that it could be done anonymously. For instance, a third party could easily abuse these systems, taking the free computational power and using it to crack passwords.”

However, Enck says cloud browsers can protect themselves to some extent by requiring users to create accounts – and then putting limits on how those accounts are used. This would make it easier to detect potential problems.

The paper, “Abusing Cloud-Based Browsers for Fun and Profit,” will be presented Dec. 6 at the 2012 Annual Computer Security Applications Conference in Orlando, Fla. The paper was co-authored by Vasant Tendulkar and Ashwin Shashidharan, graduate students at NC State, and Joe Pletcher, Ryan Snyder and Dr. Kevin Butler, of the University of Oregon. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army Research Office.

-shipman-

Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

“Abusing Cloud-Based Browsers for Fun and Profit”

Authors: Vasant Tendulkar, Ashwin Shashidharan and William Enck, North Carolina State University; Joe Pletcher, Ryan Snyder and Kevin Butler, University of Oregon

Presented: Dec. 6, 2012, at ACSAC in Orlando, Fla.

Abstract: Cloud services have become a cheap and popular means of computing. They allow users to synchronize data between devices and relieve low-powered devices from heavy computations. In response to the surge of smartphones and mobile devices, several cloud-based Web browsers have become commercially available. These “cloud browsers” assemble and render Web pages within the cloud, executing JavaScript code for the mobile client. This paper explores how the computational abilities of cloud browsers may be exploited through a Browser MapReduce (BMR) architecture for executing large, parallel tasks. We explore the computation and memory limits of four cloud browsers, and demonstrate the viability of BMR by implementing a client based on a reverse engineering of the Puffin cloud browser. We implement and test three canonical MapReduce applications (word count, distributed grep, and distributed sort). While we perform experiments on relatively small amounts of data (100 MB) for ethical considerations, our results strongly suggest that current cloud browsers are a viable source of arbitrary free computing at large scale.


Last week, we took a stab at naming one All-Star squad that spanned both leagues, and judging by the actual rosters that were announced Sunday we guessed pretty well.

But what about, for lack of a better term, the Non-Stars? The players who've put up the most disappointing first halves in baseball, relative to expectations? What would that team look like?

FAGAN: The best players not on an All-Star roster — yet

Let's go position by position and find the players who fit the bill:

C: Jonathan Lucroy, Rangers

Numbers: .263/.311/.375, 4 HR, 20 RBI, 0.1 WAR

Why he's here: Lucroy's numbers are way down from his career averages across the board, and he's in danger of posting his lowest OPS since his rookie season in 2010. One of the better offensive catchers in baseball up until this year, Lucroy was supposed to be a key cog in a powerful Rangers lineup but has underachieved just like the entire team. There have been rumblings that the team is listening to offers for him, which shows just how far out of favor he's fallen.

1B: Miguel Cabrera, Tigers

Numbers: .264/.358/.456, 11 HR, 39 RBI, 0.5 WAR

Why he's here: First base was a tough position to fill, because there really isn't one guy who's having the kind of year that would land him on this list. So it's the future Hall of Famer Cabrera almost by default, as he's sporting what would be the lowest slugging percentage of his career and his lowest OPS since 2003. It's worth noting that Cabrera went crazy at the plate in the second half last year, so his stay on this list may be short-lived.

2B: Rougned Odor, Rangers

Numbers: .211/.249/.387, 14 HR, 35 RBI, -0.3 WAR

Why he's here: The league seems to have adjusted to Odor after his breakout 2016 season, and he's yet to adjust back. Like his teammate Lucroy, Odor has underachieved considerably with an OPS that right now is 162 points lower than his total from last year. He's never been an on-base demon, but this year he's striking out at an alarming rate and managed just one walk the entire month of June. He's dug himself quite a hole in the first half, and he's yet to find the answers to get himself out.

SS: Trevor Story, Rockies

Numbers: .224/.305/.409, 11 HR, 31 RBI, 0.6 WAR

Why he's here: Expectations were sky-high for Story after his impressive debut last year, when he looked to be neck-and-neck with Corey Seager in the NL ROY race before an injury ended his season early. He hasn't quite lived up to those expectations thus far, posting mostly pedestrian numbers while playing in one of the best hitter's parks in the game. He hasn't been bad, per se — he's dealt with injuries this year, too — but considering what he showed last year, it's hard not to be disappointed with the numbers he's put up in the first half.

The Rockies' Trevor Story has struggled to match the performance he showed early in his rookie season. (Getty Images)

3B: Manny Machado, Orioles

Numbers: .217/.289/.420, 15 HR, 38 RBI, 1.0 WAR

Why he's here: The past two seasons made it look like Machado would be a perennial MVP candidate, which is why his start to the year has been so puzzling. He was bothered by a wrist injury early in June, and it's possible that it's still affecting him, but that doesn't explain away his struggles in April and May. Whatever the reason, Machado's first half might be the most disappointing in either league.

HOME RUN DERBY: Participants, date, time, how to watch

OF: Carlos Gonzales, Rockies

Numbers: .221/.300/.348, 6 HR, 20 RBI, -0.9 WAR

Why he's here: CarGo went through a horrendous slump in June, which at one point saw him go hitless in 27 straight at-bats. His numbers never recovered and he's on track to post his worst career numbers over a full season just before hitting free agency this winter. Talk about awful timing.

OF: Gregory Polanco, Pirates

Numbers: .246/.310/.379, 6 HR, 22 RBI, -0.1 WAR

Why he's here: He was expected to be a key cog in the Pirates' lineup after posting career-best numbers last year; however, the struggles that plagued him in the second half of '16 have carried over into this year. Polanco's numbers are rather pedestrian, and while he's had flashes this year (a .900 OPS in May, for instance) he hasn't been able to keep it up (a .520 OPS in June).

OF: Kyle Schwarber, Cubs

Numbers: .171/.295/.378, 12 HR, 28 RBI, -0.7 WAR

Why he's here: No one will forget his incredible comeback from a devastating injury last season to play in the World Series and help push the Cubs over the finish line. But Schwarber hasn't been able to carry over that momentum into this season, to the point where his struggles became so pronounced that the Cubs had no choice but to send him to the minors to get straightened out. This definitely wasn't the season anyone had in mind for Schwarber after watching him hit .412 in the World Series last fall.

DH: Albert Pujols, Angels

Numbers: .234/.278/.372, 11 HR, 52 RBI, -1.2 WAR

Why he's here: Father Time is undefeated, as the old saying goes, and he seems to finally be catching up to Pujols. While he's still a smart, dangerous hitter at times, Pujols has seen his overall numbers plummet this year to career lows virtually across the board. And he still has four years left on his contract. Yeesh.

Albert Pujols reacts after striking out. (Getty Images)

SP: Rick Porcello, Red Sox

Numbers: 5.06 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, .312 BAA, -0.3 WAR

Why he's here: Like Dallas Keuchel in 2016, Porcello has been a huge disappointment the year after winning the AL Cy Young Award. Even if he wasn't expected to match last year's achievements, few could have seen such a major drop in production for Porcello, who hasn't been able to fool anyone this season. His teammate David Price could've taken this spot, too.

RP: Mark Melancon, Giants

Numbers: 4.35 ERA, 1.35 WHIP, .298 BAA, 4 blown saves, 0.1 WAR

Why he's here: The Giants gave him a monster contract last winter to fix their bullpen woes. It hasn't quite worked out that way, as Melancon has as many blown saves this season as he did in all of 2016 and has found his way to the DL twice. It's not much better than what the Giants got from their bullpen last year, only it's costing them a lot more money this time. In a year when almost nothing has gone right for the Giants, Melancon's performance still manages to stand out.