As feathers settle at the end of yet another Edinburgh Fringe Festival, this year's event—celebrating its 69th birthday—showed that, despite its staunch old age, material at the fest is increasingly relevant to contemporary discourses on social media, research, science, and technology.

These topics underpinned many of the performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. One such example was The Sick of The Fringe conceived by artist, performer, and Wellcome Trust engagement fellow Brian Lobel.

He explained the rationale behind the show to Ars: "As a performer in Edinburgh for the last eight summers, I found myself frustrated by the lack of nuanced conversation, particularly about issues of health, the body, trauma, illness, and disability." He added:

I hope that The Sick of the Fringe is a safer platform for artists making work on their body, providing spaces for nuanced conversation, and opportunities for connections among artists making work on subjects which are difficult, and identities that are marginalised by differences in health and presumed capacity. I also hope that The Sick of the Fringe provides space for those working in health, medicine, and research—both here in Edinburgh and abroad—to engage with the ideas put forward by artists at the Fringe, which we hope will inspire new research, new policy, and a renewed sense of purpose.

As a member of the Sick of the Fringe team of writers in Edinburgh this year, I was asked to become part of the discourse among artists who are making work that deals directly with their own experiences relating to, say, sickness, racism, or discrimination.

We were asked to diagnose their performances by looking beyond the production quality or entertainment value of the piece, and to instead analyse the ideas presented in the work and its context within scientific and medical inquiry—often pushing writers beyond their comfort zone. While undertaking my diagnosis, I was surprised by the preponderance of performances surrounding social media and sexuality, which suggested an emerging trend in how artists' experiences of new technological platforms are being reflected upon and filtered through to the diverse audiences that attend the Fringe.

Performers would often do their best to turn audience members into collaborators by asking them to tweet or blog questions or reaction.

One such performance was Blush—created by Snuff Box theatre in association with Underbelly Untapped—which presents the primal responses to those whose lives have been affected adversely by online porn.

It included stories that address revenge porn, porn addiction, and looked at how seeking validation and approval through sexual activity online can be harmful. Characters created by Charlotte Josephine were all defined by exposure to sexually explicit online content. A desk bell is used to simulate online notifications of venomously sexist comments. Every so often a blinding camera flash lit the stage to remind the audience that any intimate selfie can instantly become common digital property. And those targeted are left with little in the way of justice as revenge porn laws struggle to be enforced.

Blush certainly brought together familiar narratives and cautionary tales for the technological age.

Continuing that theme, Infinity Pool: A Modern Retelling of Madame Bovary by Bea Roberts explored technology and sexuality by updating Gustave Flaubert’s enduring narrative on adultery for the sexting age. The performance had no actors but—with the use of a TV, a soundboard, several projectors, an animated Powerpoint presentation, and a variety of physical props—it managed to be an immersive performance. Roberts showed staggering flexibility and skill in exploring how tech can lead to loss of sexual intimacy while lubricating virtual betrayal. The evolution of online relationships is detailed here in a flurry of flirtatious e-mails and suggestive sexting.

The vast programme of the Fringe, ensures that—for every serious reflection on the dark side of humanity and technology—there’s some light relief, often taking place in minuscule, dimly lit catacomb cellars with an alternative context for tackling scientific themes. Stand up performances strangely included reason and critical thinking in The Fringe of Reason—Undiluted Brilliance, while Dan Simpson's Artificial Ineloquence warned audiences of the imminent world domination by deep learning AIs, and Dissecting the Joke saw scientists and sceptics take to the stage.

Gareth Morinan’s performance, Graph Giraffe, used Venn diagrams and bell curves to call out "heightism," privilege, and what he believes would be the benefits of living in a "Dataocracy." Using some slightly suspicious statistics to educate the audience about lanky privilege, he suggested height wasn't a simple linear scale because it must be a function of gender, and in fact all privilege factors are also functions of something else. All of which led to some impressive privilege based equations.

A government ruling through evidence based policy instead of being 99 percent ideologically based, he reckoned, would lead to more data that is recorded and openly available. I’m sure Edward Snowden would approve.

The Wellcome Trust has said that it wants to spend £5 billion on research projects over the next five years—an important shot in the arm for projects such as The Sick of the Fringe, which will be back in Edinburgh in 2017. Meanwhile, a mid-February festival in London is planned.

Lobel told Ars that he has separately been working on There is a Light, a theatrical adaptation of the BRIGHTLIGHT study—the largest research ever undertaken with young adults who suffer from cancer.

***

Lucy Orr grew up close to CERN and Fermilab, while her father was busy searching for the Higgs boson (which he eventually found). While waiting for her mutant powers to manifest, Lucy kept herself occupied programming BASIC, reading comics, and playing MUDs. With an extensive career in digital art and animation, she still finds time to pet ferrets, listen to pop punk, and drink cider.


. --- Georgia juniorhas become the first Bulldog to win the Butkus Award, given to the nation's best collegiate linebacker.Smith, a native of Montezuma, Ga., garnered 60 percent of the first-place votes and 40 percent of the overall weighted vote, which is a greater margin than any linebacker in the past decade. He was chosen from the other finalists of Michigan's Devin Bush, Virginia Tech's Tremaine Edmunds, Wisconsin's T.J. Edwards and Clemson's Dorian O'Daniel, according to an announcement from the Butkus Foundation.Smith is the first Georgia player to win the Butkus Award in its 33-year history since 1985. There have been three other Bulldog finalists four different years in recent history, including Leonard Floyd (2015), Jarvis Jones (2011, 2012) and Justin Houston (2010).proved to be the overwhelming favorite in this year's collegiate linebacking class," according to the award selection committee. "He's always around the ball and is very tough, fast and instinctive, with exceptional football reflexes. He makes his presence felt all over the field and hits with the type of explosion that has come to define the Butkus Award. As terrific of a football player as he is, Roquan is highly regarded by teammates, coaches and support staff for his intelligence, intensity and leadership traits."Also a finalist for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy and the Chuck Bednarik Award, Smith has earned midseason All-American honors by leading the team for a second year in a row with 113 tackles (8.7 tackles/game) during Georgia's 12-1 campaign, highlighted by its 13Southeastern Conference title and first since 2005 this past weekend.Smith has added 10.5 tackles for loss, a team-leading 5.5 sacks, two fumble recoveries and a forced fumble to lead the Bulldogs. With the help from Butkus Award semifinalist, Georgia ranks second nationally in Passing Yards Allowed (158.3 yards/game), third in Scoring Defense (13.8 points/game) and fourth in Total Defense (270.9 yards/game).Georgia has held its last three opponents to a combined seven points in the second half, including the Bulldogs' 28-7 rout of second-ranked Auburn in the SEC Championship Game. In addition, Georgia blanked Tennessee 41-0 during the regular season, snapping the nation's fourth-longest active scoring streak and the sixth-longest streak in college football history.The third-ranked Bulldogs (12-1) travel to Pasadena, Calif., to face second-ranked Oklahoma (12-1) in the College Football Playoff's semifinal round in the Rose Bowl on Monday, January 1. Kickoff is at 5:10 p.m. ET.The Butkus Award selection committee is comprised of 51 football coaches, recruiters, talent scouts and journalists who study football talent yearlong. Selectors are asked to recognize qualities that defined Butkus' career; toughness, on-field leadership, competitiveness, football character, and linebacking skills. Selectors follow a 3-2-1 voting procedure for five named finalists or any linebacker they choose to write in.The 2017 high school winner is Solomon Tuliaupupu of Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif. The 2017 pro winner will be announced after the NFL season, succeeding 2016 winner Khalil Mack of the Oakland Raiders.The Butkus Award is presented by the Butkus Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit organization which advances health and wellness through special initiatives including the I Play Clean® program. The Butkus Award is part of the National College Football Awards Association (NFCAA), which includes 23 awards honoring 800 individuals since 1935.


A new video shows lots of cops restraining a suspect. Is it police misconduct or necessary force? One thing is clear: You'll only see the video here.

This is something we don't normally get to see -- what happens when a drunk driving suspect refuses to give his blood to police.

But there's a video inside the Pasadena jail, last July. Nine cops will get in the action.

"It almost looks like each officer that runs through the door is wanting to get a piece of the action, more so than stopping to look and see if their assistance is even needed," defense attorney Jim Medley said.

"They were beating on this guy excessively, stomping his broke leg," Defense Attorney Sam Cammack said. "He was basically begging for mercy."

It's video that's creating more tension.

"It looks like police held a whoop-a-black-man party that was held and sponsored by law enforcement officers," Community Activist Quanell X said.

Curtis Nelson was questioned by Houston police after a traffic wreck that wasn't his fault. The Houston police officer doesn't do a full sobriety test. Instead, Nelson is taken to the Pasadena jail. With a search warrant, his blood will be drawn there whether he likes it or not.

You hear Nelson begging for another way.

"Can I do a sobriety test?" he says in the video.

''He's been afraid of needles since he was old enough to talk," said Nelson's attorney.

But the cops will try to put him in the restraint chair, and Curtis Nelson doesn't want to go.

"This is what happens to citizens, that people don't get to see all the time, if you say, 'I don't want you to draw blood,'" Cammack said.

"We got a fighter," you hear an officer saying in the video.

One officer will grab him around the neck, and he'll be taken to the floor. Then a total of nine officers join in.

"You got nine officers on one man who's got a broke leg, who's already on the ground," Quanell X said. "You can see one officer clearly kneeing the young man as he was lying down on the ground, kneeing him on his side; then you saw him punching him at the same time."

One officer appears to step on Nelson's broken leg. You hear at least one officer using profanity.

The officers tell him to stop resisting.

"'Stop resisting' was nothing more than stage rhetoric to justify what they were doing to him," Quanell X said.

The male nurse positions himself right between two chairs in the middle of the room, maybe just a coincidence that it blocked a full camera view of the incident; maybe not.

"I don't care if he was black, green, red, but it makes you pause to think that this would have happened to a 16-year-old white female," Cammack said.

After he's restrained, Nelson is not put back in the chair to get the needle. The nurse sticks him right there on the ground.

"Why would you just take a needle and ram it in somebody's arm on a dirty, dusty floor inside of a jail, which is not one of the cleanest places anybody could be in," Quanell X said.

A judge threw out the needle results this week after lawyers argued it was done with excessive force and in unsanitary conditions.

But they now want you to see what happened to Curtis Nelson.

Coming after the Tolan verdict and the suspension of eight Houston cops for an alleged beating, this video won't help calm tensions.

"This city is on the verge of erupting in a full scale riot against police officers," Quanell X said.

We reached out to Pasadena police tonight, and they couldn't comment until Friday.

But you can see the entire incident caught on camera -- from theto the

The DA's office tells us Nelson was intoxicated because blood alcohol content was 1.9.


Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dragan Vasiljkov, centre, has been convicted of war crimes

A former Serbian paramilitary commander with Australian dual citizenship has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for war crimes.

Dragan Vasiljkovic, also known as "Captain Dragan", was convicted of torturing prisoners and a deadly attack on a village during the Croatian war of independence in the early 1990s.

He had been living in Australia prior to his extradition to Croatia in 2015.

Vasiljkovic, 62, was convicted by a court in the town of Split on Tuesday.

The court heard that Vasiljkovic had directed his subordinates to torture captured Croat soldiers in a makeshift prison he had set up in the rebel Serb stronghold of Knin.

He was also found guilty of orchestrating an attack on the town of Glina which killed two civilians and forced others to flee their homes.

Vasiljkovic was acquitted of the 1993 torture and murder of two Croat soldiers in another village.

Long process

During the year-long trial, witnesses told the court of the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Vasiljkovic and his unit.

The former commander has maintained his innocence, calling the trial an "oppressive fascist process".

Vasiljkovic moved to Australia in 1969 and later spent four years in the nation's army reserves before being courted by Serbian intelligence chiefs, The Australian reported.

He was arrested in Australia in 2006, where he had been working as a golf instructor under the name Daniel Snedden.

Vasiljkovic fought for almost a decade to prevent his extradition from Australia, arguing he would not receive a fair trial in Croatia.

His lawyers have said they will appeal the sentence.


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Yumeroh Administrator

Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 317

Ryzom Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and at the Paris Game Festival and the German IRL

In this last year, we have rolled out four patches. Now we are in September and it's time to get things rolling on the Ryzom front again. One of the areas that we will be working on is something you've all been asking for: Communication!

Yes, that's right. We still think actions speak louder than words, but now we're going to give you more words as well. We're going to keep you better informed of our thoughts, plans and actions and to make this possible and as dynamic as possible we have set up accounts on some social networking sites:

Facebook : Come join the Official Ryzom Group on Facebook.

: Come join the Official Ryzom Group on Facebook. Blog : You can now read the Official Ryzom Blog. We will communicate there exclusively in English for reasons of simplicity and speed, but please feel free to translate what we say there and post it on Facebook.

: You can now read the Official Ryzom Blog. We will communicate there exclusively in English for reasons of simplicity and speed, but please feel free to translate what we say there and post it on Facebook. Twitter: Join us on Twitter. We will "tweet" in English, usually, but you are free to re-tweet in your language if you want.

It's also possible to come meet and talk to members of the Ryzom Team:

In Paris, France, we will be attending the Paris Game Festival on September 19th and 20th. We won't have an exhibit there but Ryzom CTO Vianney Lecroart (vl), as well as other members of the dev and CSR teams will be roaming around the festival laden with goodies. You can find more information about this event on

In Bochum, Germany, on November 14th, one of Ryzom's biggest fans, Acridiel, will be organising an IRL. Leanon's Senior Game Master Boar will attend and bring some goodies with him. You can find more information about this IRL on

Wednesday, 16 September is the 5th anniversary of Ryzom. So that we can spend pleasant time together in celebration, we will be running small fun events during the (European) evening. Dear Players,In this last year, we have rolled out four patches. Now we are in September and it's time to get things rolling on the Ryzom front again. One of the areas that we will be working on is something you've all been asking for: Communication!Yes, that's right. We still think actions speak louder than words, but now we're going to give you more words as well. We're going to keep you better informed of our thoughts, plans and actions and to make this possible and as dynamic as possible we have set up accounts on some social networking sites:It's also possible to come meet and talk to members of the Ryzom Team:In, France, we will be attending the. We won't have an exhibit there but Ryzom CTO Vianney Lecroart (vl), as well as other members of the dev and CSR teams will be roaming around the festival laden with goodies. You can find more information about this event on the French forums In, Germany, on, one of Ryzom's biggest fans, Acridiel, will be organising an IRL. Leanon's Senior Game Master Boar will attend and bring some goodies with him. You can find more information about this IRL on the German forums Wednesday, 16 September is the 5th anniversary of Ryzom. So that we can spend pleasant time together in celebration, we will be running small fun events during the (European) evening.


A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook today, with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. Facebook has issued a formal “fact check” statement refuting the legalese.

The viral copyright notice last spread on Facebook in May and June. Now it’s back and garnering lots of attention.

The notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user’s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the “Berner Convention,” an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled “Berne Convention.” The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user’s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service. (The full text of the bogus copyright notice is below.)

Popular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:

There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.

A blunter way of summarizing the situation is to explain that if you want to use Facebook, you must play by Facebook’s rules, even when they change. If you don’t want to play by Facebook's rules anymore, you must quit Facebook. The idea of remaining on Facebook but playing by your own rules via magic spells is a fantasy. Stay on Facebook or leave Facebook. There is no third option � not even during the holidays.

Full hoax copyright notice:


A coalition of lawmakers in the Senate have penned a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission and the Attorney General, urging the Obama administration to scuttle a deal that would lead to high market concentration in the telecoms industry.

As representatives of Comcast and Time Warner Cable prepared to meet with the Department of Justice on Wednesday to discuss concerns related to the proposed merger between the two companies, liberal senators urged federal regulators to block the deal.

“We believe that Comcast-TWC’s unmatched power in the telecommunications industry would lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and poorer quality services for Americans,” they wrote.

“We urge you to defend American competition and innovation and…take a stand for US consumers and businesses and reject Comcast’s proposed acquisition of TWC,” the lawmakers added.

The letter was signed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

It’s ultimately up to the FCC and the DOJ to sign off on the $45 billion merger. If successful, it would result in a single company controlling 57% of the broadband market and 30% of the cable market.

The senators warned that the deal could have an adverse impact on upstart video streaming services, which are increasingly replacing pre-packaged cable offerings—a transition known as “cord cutting.”

“With Comcast’s ownership of NBCUniversal and the numerous popular TV networks it controls, the combined company would have incentives and means by which to extract higher prices from other multichannel video programming distributors,” they wrote.

Some of their concerns related to paid prioritization were alleviated earlier this year by the FCC, when it approved of stronger “Net Neutrality” rules. However, the senators warned that the merger could lead Comcast to “prioritize its own programming over that of competitors.”

Bloomberg reported last week that staff attorneys with the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division are likely to recommend blocking the merger. Meanwhile, the FCC, according to the Wall Street Journal, could be planning on referring approval of the deal to an administrative judge—a move that, people familiar with the process say, would amount to killing the acquisition.

The FCC’s own market data proves right many of the concerns already issued by opponents of the merger. Last December, the commission released a report showing that consumers in competitive media markets paid less, had a smaller rate of increase in their bills, and received more channels in their cable TV packages versus consumers who lived in markets with only one provider.


Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2017 July 25

Int-Ball Drone Activated on the Space Station

Image Credit: JAXA, ISS, NASA

Explanation: What if you were followed around by a cute floating ball that kept taking your picture? Then you might be an astronaut on today's International Space Station (ISS). Designed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the JEM Internal Ball Camera -- informally "Int-Ball" -- is a bit larger than a softball, can float and maneuver by itself but also be controlled remotely, can take high resolution images and videos, and is not related to Hello Kitty. Int-Ball was delivered to the ISS in early June and is designed to allow ground-control to increase the monitoring of ISS equipment and activities while decreasing time demands on human astronauts. Int-Ball moves by turning on small internal fans and sees with a camera located between its two dark eyes.


A COLLEGE ESSAY ON POKÉMON (649 words, complerted September quitetheoresama Nov 5th, 2014 792 Never 792Never

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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 3.92 KB Every time I look back on what makes me who I am, the roots of my personality always traced themselves to one video game franchise—Pokémon. The Pokémon franchise, developed by Game Freak, is a series of role-playing games for portable Nintendo consoles, such as the Game Boy and Nintendo DS. Now, my love for this franchise contributed to my desire to major in game design in college. The portable nature of the games in the Pokémon franchise encourages players to communicate with each other in real-life. Pokémon fans learn how Pokémon creatures develop from other like-minded Pokémon trainers by trading and battling with each othe. As a result, players didn’t just catch ‘em all, but learned how to exchange their ideas through their Pokémon creatures! In short, Pokémon games encouraged people to communicate and express their ideas with each other. I fell in love with the aspect of expressing oneself through play. I was just two years old when that game made me who I am. At that age, I owned a Game Boy Color which I brought wherever I went while playing Pokémon. I was using my Game Boy Color all the time, to the point where it would sometimes be confiscated by teachers or parents. If ever I wasn’t eating my food or paying attention to what my parents were saying—swipe!—it would be taken away. But the Pokémon games themselves captured my attention only because I was captivated by how Pokémon worked. More importantly, it made me fall in love with video games, and I wanted to know how I could use that technology to express my ideas. I ended up taking Japanese language classes when I was six just so I could communicate with game developers and learn from them, especially those of Nintendo, whose headquarters were based in Kyoto. Nintendo was responsible for publishing Pokémon, The Pokémon Company making it known the world over. I couldn’t help but feel the need but bring my ideas to their table! As a bonus, I learned how to read, write and converse fluently in Japanese. As I learned about how Pokémon’s art was inspired by Japanese manga comics, I ended up studying manga drawing techniques and how artists crafted their characters. I worked hard to analyze the styles of various artists so I could incorporate them into my own. Lo and behold, did my drawings improve! I then became the budding manga artist in my circle of friends, presenting my drawings to others and expressing my creativity and desire to improve. Manga in itself along with Japanese language classes gave me a high degree of exposure to Japanese culture. I learned about the subtle nuances in their crafts, their attention to detail and how orderly their societies worked. And even then, it gave me a thirst to learn about other cultures, and it encouraged me to understand how people express themselves. That thirst for learning made me absorb ideas like a sponge, making school much more enjoyable as I loved seeing what ideas people had to offer. Be it a discussion, presentation or even as simple as a conversation during lunch, I made sure to let others express themselves. That exchange and expression of ideas seemed like battles between Pokémon trainers, and it only made communicating with each other all the more fun. However, you can’t communicate if you can’t express yourself! What ideas would there be to learn from? Being able to exchange and express your ideas like Pokémon battles makes quite an impact on the world around us. After all, self-expression is what solves problems, what bridges faraway societies together and what enables human beings to break ground and evolve, much like Pokémon. It’s no wonder I’m known for being so talkative—I value self-expression. Pokémon, art, video games, language and communication all share one underlying thread, and that common thread is… …self-expression! By Ryen Raftery, for submission to NYU (this portion not included in the word count of 649)

RAW Paste Data

Every time I look back on what makes me who I am, the roots of my personality always traced themselves to one video game franchise—Pokémon. The Pokémon franchise, developed by Game Freak, is a series of role-playing games for portable Nintendo consoles, such as the Game Boy and Nintendo DS. Now, my love for this franchise contributed to my desire to major in game design in college. The portable nature of the games in the Pokémon franchise encourages players to communicate with each other in real-life. Pokémon fans learn how Pokémon creatures develop from other like-minded Pokémon trainers by trading and battling with each othe. As a result, players didn’t just catch ‘em all, but learned how to exchange their ideas through their Pokémon creatures! In short, Pokémon games encouraged people to communicate and express their ideas with each other. I fell in love with the aspect of expressing oneself through play. I was just two years old when that game made me who I am. At that age, I owned a Game Boy Color which I brought wherever I went while playing Pokémon. I was using my Game Boy Color all the time, to the point where it would sometimes be confiscated by teachers or parents. If ever I wasn’t eating my food or paying attention to what my parents were saying—swipe!—it would be taken away. But the Pokémon games themselves captured my attention only because I was captivated by how Pokémon worked. More importantly, it made me fall in love with video games, and I wanted to know how I could use that technology to express my ideas. I ended up taking Japanese language classes when I was six just so I could communicate with game developers and learn from them, especially those of Nintendo, whose headquarters were based in Kyoto. Nintendo was responsible for publishing Pokémon, The Pokémon Company making it known the world over. I couldn’t help but feel the need but bring my ideas to their table! As a bonus, I learned how to read, write and converse fluently in Japanese. As I learned about how Pokémon’s art was inspired by Japanese manga comics, I ended up studying manga drawing techniques and how artists crafted their characters. I worked hard to analyze the styles of various artists so I could incorporate them into my own. Lo and behold, did my drawings improve! I then became the budding manga artist in my circle of friends, presenting my drawings to others and expressing my creativity and desire to improve. Manga in itself along with Japanese language classes gave me a high degree of exposure to Japanese culture. I learned about the subtle nuances in their crafts, their attention to detail and how orderly their societies worked. And even then, it gave me a thirst to learn about other cultures, and it encouraged me to understand how people express themselves. That thirst for learning made me absorb ideas like a sponge, making school much more enjoyable as I loved seeing what ideas people had to offer. Be it a discussion, presentation or even as simple as a conversation during lunch, I made sure to let others express themselves. That exchange and expression of ideas seemed like battles between Pokémon trainers, and it only made communicating with each other all the more fun. However, you can’t communicate if you can’t express yourself! What ideas would there be to learn from? Being able to exchange and express your ideas like Pokémon battles makes quite an impact on the world around us. After all, self-expression is what solves problems, what bridges faraway societies together and what enables human beings to break ground and evolve, much like Pokémon. It’s no wonder I’m known for being so talkative—I value self-expression. Pokémon, art, video games, language and communication all share one underlying thread, and that common thread is… …self-expression! By Ryen Raftery, for submission to NYU (this portion not included in the word count of 649)


We don’t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but Webmonkey reports that Gmail Labs has added a very useful opt-in feature for sending text / SMS messages to mobile phones using the built-in Chat functionality.

Update: the Labs team found a glitch and is pushing the release back a bit (‘probably within two weeks’).

Update 2: make sure you read the open letter the Webmail team at AOL writes to Google. It’s supposed to be funny, I guess, but it’s really not and quite unprofessional to boot.

Turning the option on in your Gmail account settings apparently enables you to send an SMS as soon as you start typing a phone number into Chat’s search box. When you enter new phone numbers, it will save the digits in your contact entries as well. This means that when contacts go offline, the chat window will give you the option to switch to SMS.

Our invitation for a live demo was lost in the mail, but Webmonkey has been given a demonstration of the experimental feature by Gmail product manager Keith Coleman and adds:

The first time you send a text message, it will appear on the person’s phone as coming from a number in the 406 area code. Google has made several thousands of these numbers available for Gmail users, and once a number is associated with your account, all of the text messages you send through Gmail will come from that number. The 406 number works both ways, so your friend can reply to you via text message. Also, your friend can save that number in their phone as belonging to you, and they can even use it to initiate new chats with you.

We haven’t been able to try this out ourselves yet, but Google does list the text messaging feature on its ‘What’s new in Gmail Labs‘ page (only for US phones, for now).

This is probably one of the first results we’re seeing from Google’s acquisition of GrandCentral (dating back to June 2007 already).

No official word yet on the Gmail blog (the GrandCentral blog has been silent since last April), but we suspect an announcement and general roll-out to follow soon.

(Image credit: monkey_bites)


It is the most humble of vessels for New York City foodstuffs, ubiquitous at Chinese takeout joints and halal street carts. In pre-Starbucks days, coffee came packaged in its puffy embrace.

But the plastic-foam container may soon be going the way of trans fats, 32-ounce Pepsis, and cigarettes in Central Park.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose regulatory lance has slain fatty foods, supersize sodas, and smoking in parks, is now targeting plastic foam, the much-derided polymer that environmentalists have long tried to restrict.

On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg, in his 12th and final State of the City address, will propose a citywide ban on plastic-foam food packaging, including takeout boxes, cups and trays. Public schools would be instructed to remove plastic-foam trays from their cafeterias. Many restaurants and bodegas would be forced to restock.


Early interviews mentioning The Blue Album and Pinkerton. Check. A lead single that promised we’d be rocking out like it was '94. Check. It was clear what Weezer were trying to tell us: Honestly, we mean it, for real this time, this one’s going to be the one you’re waiting for. But put aside all of that and Everything Will Be Alright In the End is pretty much what you expect it to be: a record which, while sharing similarities with records from their earlier periods, is another predictably uneven entry in the Weezer discography.

It’s not actually anywhere near as much of a return to the sound of the Nineties that they’ve made it out to be. Within bars of the opener ‘Ain’t Got Nobody’, it’s clear that there’s just as much overlap with the crunch and flex of Maladroit as with the chugging fuzz of Blue. It’s a dense sound with glamorous guitar runs and, by blending the strengths of their career high points, they hit on some of the greatest moments of their recent output. The hooks of the opening track are genuinely reminiscent of Rivers’ golden age of song writing: ‘The British Are Coming’ sees a lilting turn of Rivers Cuomo’s falsetto morph into a solo which wanders from the main melody in the soulful, colourful way of Blue’s instrumental breaks. But sadly these moments of inspiration are fleeting.

One of the oddest problems with Weezer’s recent output is how blindly contradictory Cuomo can be on record nowadays in comparison to the robust character portraits he painted on his earliest records. Everything… is no different, and finds him sounding as oddly insincere as he has since on every record since 2005. After coming back on hands and knees to the audiences of the mid-nineties, he spends ‘I’ve Had It Up To Here’ rallying against those who want him to compromise some odd notion of integrity (“I’M NOT A HAPPY MEAL”, he proudly announces us in the album’s best wincer of a Cuomoism). How he squares this circle is unclear, but it totally undermines the seriousness of something like ‘Foolish Father’. Does he even mean this? Is he talking about himself? Is it all made up?

But beyond the continuation of Cuomo’s increasing incoherence, what’s perhaps most damaging is the general sense of low ambition across the record, despite gimmickry like the album’s title recurring through the lyrics, and suites of songs in trilogies. The chorus of ‘Eulogy For A Rock Band’ is lifted – almost completely intact – from Hurley’s lead single ‘Memories’. The 2D hooks of ‘Lonely Girl’ and ‘Go Away’ circle for a while, wandering out of your head immediately. Sure, it escapes outright disgrace. But that’s a pretty low benchmark for the band that wrote ‘Say It Ain’t So’, on an album based on a publicity cycle promising a return to that era to boot. In spite of its moments of charm, it’s a far cry from being either a fun retreat into 20 years ago, nor is it any indication that Weezer's reputation will be in better health 20 years from now.

![97956](http://dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com/540x310/97956.jpeg)


August 10, 2000

For the New College B.M.O.C., 'M' Is for 'Machine'

By LISA GUERNSEY

Left, Jim West/Impact Visuals for The New York Times; above, Barbara Martin for The New York Times WIRED - College students like, left, James L. Carey, and Shaun Encinias use computers for things like music, e-mail and homework.

How 20th century, college students today might say.

The computer, they declare, is the only item that could deserve to be first on any list of dorm necessities. In fact, the computer not only displaces other technology in importance but also replaces the need for some other appliances.

It serves as the stereo for students who listen to MP3 files and radio Webcasts. It makes answering machines less necessary because so much communication occurs via e-mail and instant messages. It can even substitute for televisions and alarm clocks.

The computer has also become the portal through which students do everything they need to do on campus. Using the Internet, they register for classes, turn in assignments, order books, browse the library catalog, listen to music, talk to friends, read the news, write papers, play games, pay bills, watch movies and carry on heated political discussions. Alumni returning to their alma maters will find that the quads and classrooms still exist, but the computer has become almost more central than the physical campus.

"It is an invisible change," said Matthew Pittinsky, co-chairman and founder of Blackboard, a software company that serves more than 3,300 colleges. "But it is probably the most profound change that colleges have seen since the G.I. Bill."

The computer's immense impact on the social and academic lives of college students is just beginning to become apparent. Some students say they are carrying on fewer conversations with their dorm mates and more conversations with friends across the country. Many students say that while they still hit the bars and coffee shops, they rarely go to the library. One study shows that students spend less free time watching television, now that they can be entertained online.

As students pivot toward online information, "something clearly has to give," said Eric Weil, managing partner in Student Monitor, a market research company that polls college students. In the latest Student Monitor survey, conducted in the spring, 56 percent of the 1,200 respondents at colleges across the country said that they had spent less time watching television in the previous six months.

What were they doing instead? About 42 percent said they were spending more time surfing the Web and 49 percent said they were spending more time sending and receiving e-mail. Academics played a role too: 57 percent said they were spending more time doing homework. In many cases, Mr. Weil said, that homework was probably being done on a computer, often online.

But some students say that it is not television that they neglect. Instead, they are spending less time on the telephone or talking face-to-face with their peers on campus. It is not that they are being antisocial, the students say. They are simply communicating with people in a different way, using e-mail, online chats and streams of instant messages.

Eric Kelson, a junior at Syracuse University, said he frequently chatted online with his parents, his sister, his grandmother in Florida and his friends at other colleges. "It helps because calling is expensive," Mr. Kelson said. "And e-mail is good but it is not as personal."

He and his friends often watch television while they chat, he said. And more often than not, he said, he is chatting with people in his dormitory, even though they may be only a few paces away. Instead of picking up the telephone or knocking on his neighbors' doors to see what they are up to, he will send them instant messages.

Students who once said, `See you on the quad,' now say, `Meet you online.'

Mr. Kelson's case is not unusual, said Bennett Fisher, vice president for community at CollegeClub.com, a social site for students that has attracted nearly three million users. "We used to sit in the hallway and talk to students in the dorm," Mr. Fisher said. "Now they do that on the Web."

Even conversations with professors, those moments of stimulating intellectual discussion that some baby boomers may recall with nostalgia, are often supplanted by online communication.

"Office hours are being replaced with e-mail discussions," said Gary Gigliotti, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rutgers University. Some regret the loss, but instead of waiting for those few hours a week when professors open their doors, students would rather talk online, Mr. Gigliotti said. "It is more convenient for them," he said.

The seeds of this shift were planted in the early 1980's, when technologically adept students started taking computers to campus. But back then, the machines were by no means essential. They were primarily used for typing papers, and most students relied on the word-processing programs in computer laboratories instead of buying their own machines. Computer science and statistics students were often the only ones to use computers for more than writing papers.

In the mid-1990's, when the Internet caught on beyond the halls of engineering and computer science departments, that started to change. Large universities began to invest tens of millions of dollars in wiring dormitory rooms in the hope of providing high-speed Internet access to every student. It was the beginning of the race to provide what administrators call "one port per pillow." On average, campuses have wired about 63 percent of their dormitories, according to the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of more than 500 institutions across the country. Private research universities have gone the furthest: Of those surveyed, all said they offered high-speed access in every dorm.

The availability of Internet access has become a deciding factor for students who are trying to decide where to apply to college. Yahoo Internet Life magazineproduces an annual ranking, "The 100 Most Wired Colleges." EduCause, a nonprofit organization that promotes technology in higher education, has created an online guide to help applicants determine which universities measure up to their needs ( www.educause.edu/consumerguide).

In a sign of how important Internet access has become, students at Michigan State University, where most dormitories are wired, lined up seven hours in advance last spring to make sure that they were assigned to wired housing. To help those who missed out, the college installed voice mail. Everyone in those dorms uses the telephone lines for dial-up access, said James L. Carey, a sophomore, "and students would be online so much they would never get phone calls."

One of the latest challenges facing administrators is whether to require all entering students to bring a computer to college, and if so, whether the computer should be a laptop or desktop. Reports on the Educause Web site show that about 100 universities have such a requirement, which in some cases is imposed only on students in certain programs.

Next fall, the number will probably increase; about 11 percent of the institutions surveyed by the Campus Computing Project last fall said they would have a laptop computer requirement in place by 2001.

Ohio University is one of the universities that have decided to tackle the issue another way. Every Ohio University undergraduate dorm room is equipped with at least one new $1,000 Gateway computer and printer. The cost of the equipment is covered in an annual student fee.

Exactly how much time do students spend on these machines? An increasing amount, according to surveys. In the fall of 1998, according to Student Monitor, students spent an average of 5.6 hours a week online. That rose to 7.2 hours in the fall of 1999 and 8.1 hours this spring.

But many students say those numbers are even higher among students with computers in dorms that have high-speed access to the Internet. Shaun Encinias, a student at San Diego State University, said he spent hours online each day, checking e-mail before leaving his room in the morning, between classes, after classes and after dinner.

E-mail, though, is not necessarily the most important reason for going online, according to the students polled by Student Monitor. More than 44 percent said that "schoolwork-related research" was their No. 1 priority.

Most courses now have an Internet component, professors say, whether it is a Web-based syllabus, an e-mail-based discussion board, an online repository of required reading or an interactive quiz. Some instructors set up online chats with experts and colleagues at other universities across the country. And many students use the Internet and online library resources to do most, if not all, of their research for papers and projects. When they are done, many send their papers via e-mail or click through Web pages during presentations in class.

The presence of the computer can sway some students away from academics, however. Mr. Carey, the sophomore at Michigan State, said he had failed all his classes his first semester. "I was shellshocked," he said. "I stayed in my room all the time." He would log on to the Internet as soon as he woke up and hung out with friends he had made online instead of doing homework or talking with friends on campus. This year, he said, he is doing much better and uses his computer mainly for homework.

he warned, it can also lead to more isolation. If students choose to interact online with people who are just down the hall, for example, they are missing the chance to see other people's facial expressions, how they look when they are joking and what their body language says about their personalities.

Kaycee Swenson, a high school senior in Wichita, Kan., who took several courses at her local college last year, said she talked to people online every day, most of whom were not at her campus. But she said she also hung out with friends in the physical world, listening to music and playing basketball. "You have to balance it," she said.

This fall, she will enroll full time at the University of California at San Diego, and she plans to take a new computer with her, even though she already has one equipped with a Pentium II processor. "It's fast," she said, "but not fast enough."

In fact, she said, when she talks to her mother about what she took to college decades ago, she cannot believe what students had to put up with. "She thought it was great," Ms. Swenson said, "that she was able to take a calculator to college or a cassette player to tape lectures." And when her mother said she had to stand in line to register for classes and to wait for professors to open their offices, she said she could hardly imagine it. "I laugh at those things," Ms. Swenson said, "but I'm sure it wasn't fun, you know?"

These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability.


Route of the M11 link road overlaid over an older map of the area, with key protest sites marked

The M11 link road protest was a major anti-road protest in Leytonstone, London, United Kingdom, in the early to mid-1990s opposing the construction of the "A12 Hackney to M11 link road", also known as the M11 Link Road, which was part of a significant local road scheme to connect traffic from the East Cross Route to the M11, avoiding urban streets.

The road had been proposed since the 1960s, as part of the London Ringways, and was an important link between central London and the Docklands to East Anglia. However, road protests elsewhere had become increasingly visible, and urban road building had fallen out of favour with the public. A local Member of Parliament Harry Cohen, representing Leyton, had been a vocal opponent of this scheme.

The protests reached a new level of visibility during 1993 as part of a grassroots campaign where protesters came from outside the area to support local opposition to the road. The initial focus was on the removal of a tree on George Green, east of Wanstead, that attracted the attention of local, then national media. The activity peaked in 1994 with several high-profile protesters setting up micronations on property scheduled for demolition, most notably on Claremont Road in Leyton. The final stage of the protest was a single building on Fillebrook Road in Leytonstone, which, due to a security blunder, became occupied by squatters.

The road was eventually built as planned, and opened to traffic in 1999, but the increased costs involved in management and policing of protesters raised the profile of such campaigns in the United Kingdom, and contributed to several road schemes being cancelled or reviewed later on in the decade. Those involved in the protest moved on to oppose other schemes in the country, while opinions of the road as built have since been mixed. By 2014, the road had become the ninth most congested in the entire country.

Background [ edit ]

The origin of the link road stems from what were two major arterial roads out of London (the A11 to Newmarket and Norwich, and the A12 to Colchester, Ipswich and Great Yarmouth) and subsequent improvements. The first of these was the Eastern Avenue improvement, that opened on 9 June 1924, which provided a bypass of the old road through Ilford and Romford.

Proposals for the route first arose in the 1960s as part of the London Ringways plan, which would have seen four concentric circular motorways built in the city, together with radial routes, with the M11 motorway ending on Ringway 1, the innermost Ringway, at Hackney Marsh.

The planned London Ringways.

A section of Ringway 1 known as the East Cross Route was built to motorway standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s and designated as the A102(M). A section of the M11 connecting Ringway 2 (now part of the North Circular Road) and Eastern Avenue to Harlow was completed in the late 1970s,[4] opening to traffic in 1977.

The Ringways scheme met considerable opposition; there were protests when the Westway, an urban motorway elevated over the streets of Paddington, was opened in 1970, with local MP John Wheeler later describing the road's presence within 15 metres of properties as "completely unacceptable environmentally," and the Archway Road public inquiry was repeatedly abandoned during the 1970s as a result of protests. By 1974, the Greater London Council announced it would not be completing Ringway 1. The first Link Road Action Group to resist the M11 link road was formed in 1976, and for the next fifteen years activists fought government plans through a series of public inquiries. Their alternative was to build a road tunnel, leaving the houses untouched, but this was rejected on grounds of cost. Drivers travelling in the areas where the new roads would have been built had to continue using long stretches of urban single-carriageway roads. In particular, the suburbs of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead suffered serious traffic congestion.

The Roads for Prosperity white paper published in 1989 detailed a major expansion of the road building programme and included plans for the M12 Motorway between London and Chelmsford, as well as many other road schemes. Although Harry Cohen, MP for Leyton suggested in May 1989 that the government should scrap the scheme, a public enquiry was held for the scheme in November.

The protest campaign in East London [ edit ]

The Humble Petition of The Stop the M11 Link Road Action Campaign sheweth: That the A12 Hackney Wick to M11 Link Road will be injurious to the health and well being of the Petitioners insofar as it will cause homelessness through their homes being demolished with in many instances no replacement being offered, it will cause ill health through noise and pollution and will be unfavourable to the community at large. Petition submitted to the House of Commons, June 1990

By the 1980s, planning blight had affected the area and many of the houses had become home to a community of artists and squatters. Eventually, contractors were appointed to carry out the work and a compulsory purchase of property along the proposed route was undertaken. In March 1993, in preparation for the construction of the road, the Earl of Caithness, then the Minister of State for Transport, estimated that there would be 263 properties scheduled for demolition, displacing 550 people, of which he estimated 172 were seeking rehousing. Several original residents, who had in some cases lived in their homes all their lives, refused to sell or move out of their properties.

Protesters from the local area against the link road scheme were joined by large numbers of anti-road campaigners from around the UK and beyond, attracted by the availability of free housing along the route. These experienced protesters, who had participated in earlier events such as the Anti-Nazi League riots in Welling, gave impetus to the campaign. The new arrivals used the skills they had developed during prior protests to construct "defences", blocking the original entrances to the houses and creating new routes directly between them.

Sophisticated techniques were used to delay the construction of the road. Sit-ins and site invasions were combined with sabotage to stop construction work temporarily. This led to large numbers of police and constant security patrols being employed to protect the construction sites, at great expense. By December 1994, the total cost of construction had been estimated at £6 million and rising by £500,000 every month.

The protesters were successful in publicising the campaign, with most UK newspapers and TV news programmes covering the protests on a regular basis. Desktop publishing, then in its infancy, was used to produce publicity materials for the campaign and send out faxes to the media. When the government began evicting residents along the route and demolishing the empty houses, the protesters set up so-called "autonomous republics" such as "Wanstonia" in some groups of the houses. Extreme methods were used to force the engineers to halt demolition, including underground tunnels with protesters secured within by concrete.

The chestnut tree on George Green [ edit ]

[28] The chestnut tree on George Green, Wanstead became a focal point and a symbol for anti-M11 Link Road protesters.

Until late 1993, local opposition to the M11 extension had been relatively limited. While opposition had been going for nearly ten years, institutional avenues of protest had been exhausted, and local residents were largely resigned to the road being built. When outside protesters arrived in September 1993, few residents saw their mission as "their campaign".

One section of the M11 extension was due to tunnel under George Green in Wanstead. Residents had believed that this would save their green, and a 250-year-old sweet chestnut tree that grew upon it, but because this was a cut and cover tunnel, this required the tree to be cut down.

Support for the protests started to extend to the local community when Jean Gosling, a lollipop lady in Wanstead, upon learning of the tree's impending destruction, rallied the support of local children (and was later fired from her job for doing so while wearing her uniform), who in turn recruited their parents into the protests. It was then that the non-resident radicals realised that they had significant local support. When local residents gathered for a tree dressing ceremony on 6 November, they found their way barred by security fencing. With support from the protesters, they pulled it down.

Protesters continued to delay the destruction of the tree. Solicitors for the campaign had even argued in court that receipt of a letter addressed to the tree itself gave it the status of a legal dwelling, causing a further delay. In the early morning of 7 December 1993, several hundred police arrived to evict the protesters,[a] which took ten hours to carry out.[b] Protesters made numerous complaints against the police;[36] police, in turn, denied these allegations, attributing any misbehaviour to the protesters.[c] Media attention started to increase regarding the protest, with several daily newspapers putting pictures of the tree on their front pages.

Harry Cohen, MP for Leyton, started to become critical of the scheme and its progress. In March 1994, he said "the Department of Transport's pig-headed approach to the M11 link road has been a shambles, and a costly one at that," and described the ongoing police presence as "a miniature equivalent of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait." According to him, local resident Hugh Jones had been threatened by demolition men wielding sledgehammers and pickaxes, adding "the project has cost £500,000 in police time alone, to take over and demolish a 250-year-old chestnut tree and half a dozen houses".

Claremont Road [ edit ]

The view from the tower in Claremont Road, Leyton.

By 1994, properties scheduled for demolition had been compulsory purchased, and most were made uninhabitable by removing kitchens, bathrooms and staircases. The notable exception was in one small street, Claremont Road, which ran immediately next to the Central line and consequently required every property on it to be demolished. The street was almost completely occupied by protesters except for one original resident who had not taken up the Department for Transport's offer to move, 92-year-old Dolly Watson, who was born in number 32 and had lived there nearly all her life. She became friends with the anti-road protesters, saying "they're not dirty hippy squatters, they're the grandchildren I never had." The protesters named a watchtower, built from scaffold poles, after her.

A vibrant and harmonious community sprung up on the road, which even won the begrudging respect of the authorities. The houses were painted with extravagant designs, both internally and externally, and sculptures erected in the road; the road became an artistic spectacle that one said "had to be seen to be believed".

In November 1994, the eviction of Claremont Road took place, bringing an end to the M11 link road resistance as a major physical protest. Bailiffs, accompanied by the police in full riot gear, carried out the eviction over several days, and the Central line, running adjacent to the road, was suspended. As soon as eviction was completed, the remaining properties were demolished. In the end, the cost to the taxpayer was over a million pounds in police costs alone. Quoting David Maclean, "I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that the cost of policing the protest in order to allow bailiffs to take possession of the premises in Claremont road was £1,014,060." Cohen complained in parliament about police brutality, stating "were not many of my constituents bullied—including vulnerable people, and others whose only crime was living on the line of route?" The then Secretary of State for Transport, Brian Mawhinney, pointed out that there had already been three public enquiries at which protesters could have lodged their objections against the line of the route.

Towards the end [ edit ]

Following the Claremont Road eviction, non-resident protesters moved on to other sites such as Newbury. Meanwhile, Fillebrook Road near Leytonstone Underground station had already had several houses demolished on it due to problems with vandalism. By 1995, the only house left standing was number 135. The house was originally scheduled for demolition at the same time as the others, but had been left standing in order to give the tenant additional time to relocate. After they had done so, on 11 April 1995, the Department for Transport removed the water supply and part of the roof, and left two security guards on duty. When the guards decided to sleep overnight in their cars that evening, leaving the house unoccupied, the protesters moved in. The house was renamed Munstonia (after The Munsters, thanks to its spooky appearance). Like "Wanstonia", they proclaimed themselves a micro-nation and designed their own national anthem and flag, though author Joe Moran mentions their legitimacy was complicated by the protesters continuing to claim unemployment benefits from the "mother country."

The eviction on Fillebrook Road, Leytonstone in June 1995

A tower was built out of the remains of the roof, similar to one that had existed at Claremont Road, and a system of defences and blockades were built. A core of around 30 protesters ensured that there were always people staying there (a legal requirement for a squatted home, as well as a defence against eviction). They were finally evicted on 21 June 1995, whereupon, as at Claremont Road, the building was immediately demolished. The total cost of removing the protesters from Munstonia was given to be £239,349.52, not including additional costs of security guards.

Construction of the road, already underway by this stage, was then free to continue largely unhindered, although systematic sabotage of building sites by local people continued. It was completed in 1999 and given the designation A12; its continuation, the former A102(M), was also given this number as far as the Blackwall Tunnel.

The official opening of the road in October 1999 took place without fanfare, being opened by the Highways Agency Chief Executive rather than a politician, with only journalists with passes being admitted to the ceremony.[50]

Consequences of the protest campaign [ edit ]

The M11 link road protest was ultimately unsuccessful in its aim to stop the building of the link road. The total cost of compensation for the project was estimated to be around £15 million.

Proposals for the M12 motorway were cancelled in 1994 during the first review of the trunk road programme. The most significant response from the government occurred when Labour came into office following the 1997 general election, with the announcement of the New Deal for Trunk Roads in England. This proposal cancelled many previous road schemes, including the construction of the M65 over the Pennines, increased fuel prices, and ensured that road projects would only be undertaken when genuinely necessary, stating "there will be no presumption in favour of new road building as an answer."

Some protesters went on to join the direct action campaign Reclaim the Streets. A protester arrested and detained on the grounds of breach of the peace unsuccessfully challenged the UK Government's legislation at the European Court of Justice.

In 2002, in response to a major new road building programme and expansion of aviation, a delegation of road protest veterans visited the Department for Transport to warn of renewed direct action in response, delivering a D-lock as a symbol of the past protests. One such protestor, Rebecca Lush went on to found Road Block to support road protesters and challenge the government. In 2007, Road Block became a project within the Campaign for Better Transport. The M11 Link road protests inspired the launch of the video activism organisation Undercurrents. Training activists to film the protests, they released You've got to be choking in 1994, a 40-minute documentary about the M11 link road campaign.

In 2007, the BBC reported that the cost of the M11 link road had doubled due to the intervention of protesters. Residents in Leytonstone have complained that, following the completion of the road, their streets became rat runs for commuters trying to get ahead of queues.

See also [ edit ]

Notes [ edit ]

^ The BBC give the figure as two hundred; Wall gives the figure as four hundred. ^ According to the BBC; Wall gives a figure of nine hours. ^ The BBC quotes then-Chief Superintendent Stuart Giblin as saying "My officers acted professionally despite some of the comments and behaviour of the protesters."

References [ edit ]

Citations [ edit ]

Books

News articles

Websites

Hansard

Further reading [ edit ]

Coordinates:


FRANKFURT, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Nokia NOK1V.HE needs to speedily boost its offering of mobile internet solutions, marketing head Anssi Vanjoki told a German magazine.

Nokia, the No. 1 global cellphone maker, needs to catch up with the rivals Apple (AAPL.O), Google (GOOG.O) and Blackberry-maker RIM RIM.TO in offering online solutions, Vanjoki was quoted as saying by weekly Wirtschaftswoche in an excerpt of an interview to be published on Monday.

Vanjoki did not rule out a sale of its core handset manufacturing business in the long term.

Nokia’s mobile-device factories offered an important competitive advantage but one should “never say never” should a sale at some point be warranted as part of Nokia’s transformation, he was quoted as saying. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Mike Peacock) ((ludwig.burger@thomsonreuters.com; +49 69 7565 1311; Reuters Messaging: ludwig.burger.reuters.com@reuters.net))


Kevin Yakes spends so much time trying to keep his Golden Valley construction firm staffed, he sometimes feels like a full-time recruiter. During a recent family getaway in Florida, Yakes hopped in the car and drove more than an hour to have beers with a refrigeration technician he wanted to attract to Minnesota.

“It’s like dating,” Yakes said. “I’ve never, ever, had such a hard time trying to find people.”

Nearly a decade after the U.S. economy collapsed and construction workers fled the industry, Twin Cities builders and contractors are in the midst of one of their busiest years. But a shortage of skilled workers means that new projects — from modest office renovations to soaring new apartment towers — are costing more and taking longer to complete. The situation has contributed to a housing shortage in the region.

Even last year’s completion of U.S. Bank Stadium, a project that kept thousands of workers busy for nearly three years, hasn’t fully replenished the pool of construction help. “We have more work than we know what to do with,” said Robert Heise, president of the Minnesota-North Dakota chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors.

As of May, there were more than 125,000 construction workers in Minnesota, the most for that month since 2006. And the latest tally of construction job openings was the highest in at least a decade. Electricians, carpenters and plumbers are among the most scarce.

Labor leaders say the industry has struggled to attract young people to replenish the pool of workers drained by the 2008-2009 recession, even though construction jobs pay above-average wages and most require just a high school diploma.

One reason for that, says Tim Worke, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota, is that vocational training has been devalued. “Everyone has been told that you have to have a four-year degree to be prosperous at life,” Worke said.

But it’s a fine line, he added, because the old notion that construction is a field only for those with a “strong back and a strong body” isn’t the case anymore. The work is more technical and workers need advanced training, Worke said.

James Mahler, a 35-year-old project manager for River City Tile & Underlayment in Chanhassen, joined the trades at age 19. “College was never something that appealed to me,” he said. “I was eager to begin working and making my own career path.”

In the recession, as others fled the industry, he stayed the course and is glad he did. He has never been without work and has been able to pick and choose jobs.

“We make extremely good money, work reasonable hours, get to be active and build actual communities within the Twin Cities,” he said. “I want young people to realize that it is not a step down to go into construction.”

With costs and job openings on the rise, the industry is getting more creative. This summer a consortium of industry groups will launch one of its most comprehensive efforts yet to help fill jobs: Project Build Minnesota, a marketing campaign aimed at “making construction sexy again,” said David Siegel, executive director of the Builders Association of the Twin Cities. The goal is to sweep as many trainees into both union and nonunion jobs. The consortium plans to raise $800,000.

Earlier this year, a collective of labor unions launched its own PR campaign dubbed Elevate Minnesota to promote union construction jobs.

A third group called the Twin Cities Construction Sector Initiative, which includes the Associated General Contractors, the Minnesota Building Trades Council, educational institutions and other stakeholders, is taking a higher-level look at workforce needs. That group hopes to roll out a multiyear plan by end of the summer.

Until those efforts gel, the effects of the tight labor market are rippling through Twin Cities property markets.

Commercial construction costs are increasing two to five times the rate of inflation, local analysts say. Jim Durda, executive vice president of the local office of Zeller Realty Group, which manages the Fifth Street Towers and LaSalle Plaza in Minneapolis, said that 10 years ago it might have cost $25 per square foot to build out or remodel a commercial space. Today, it’s $35 to $50 per square foot, partly because of labor costs.

Such increases can be even more detrimental for new buildings, which employ hundreds of workers from many trades. Last month, plans to build a Hy-Vee store in White Bear Lake were scuttled. High labor costs contributed to the decision not to build, according to both John Johannson, a manager in the local development company on the project, and Tara Deering-Hansen, a spokeswoman at Hy-Vee’s Des Moines headquarters.

Homebuilders are facing similar issues. Some builders have painted “help wanted” and phone referral numbers on their trucks.

Two weeks before the start of a luxury house tour in the Twin Cities, Scott Busyn and several other custom homebuilders were scrambling to finish in time for it. Busyn paid overtime and offered other perks to discourage subcontractors from jumping ship to work with other companies.

At CPM Cos., one of the biggest apartment developers in the Twin Cities, the situation is making it difficult to finish buildings on time.

Construction manager Troy Wenck of Reuter Walton Commercial said that he’s spending valuable time trying to recruit employees, and the company has had to turn away projects.

Mark Scherer, an owner of the one of the largest lumberyards and truss-building plants in the region, has managed to keep his staffing levels steady by regularly raising wages. At a plant in Albertville, he gave workers a nearly $1 an hour raise last fall. “That seemed to take care of the problem,” he said.

He hasn’t, however, been able to solve a more serious problem: Timing. He said it normally takes 90 days to build a house, but it’s now taking 120 to 180 days in some cases.

Houses are also more expensive. Scherer said an upscale house used to cost $175 per square foot, but increases in labor and other inputs means the price is now $250 to north of $300 per square foot.

For Yakes, the chief executive of Summit Commercial Facilities Group, a fix couldn’t come soon enough.

He has a handful of openings to add to his current staff of 30 — and he wasn’t able to persuade the Florida technician he met for drinks to join his company.

“It is a whole lot of work,” Yakes said. “You just always have to be ready to hire that next top talent.”

Nicole Norfleet • 612-673-4495 Twitter: @nicolenorfleet

Jim Buchta • 612-673-7376 Twitter: @JustListedBlog


The advantage of a hazelnut rod ... is the possibility to attach test-nodes (Testnosoden) at the tip. This allows to search more aimed at different oscillation patterns. … on my left pinky finger, there is a polarization ring made from ferrite material; this serves the determination of polarization, which means, whether the water vein spins right or left handed.

This is from a diploma dissertation presented to the faculty for landscaping architecture at the University Weihenstephan-Triesdorf in Bavaria. The German diploma is equivalent to the Master level. It was not forwarded to the campus health center’s mental health division to ensure that the student receives help. Professor Doctor F. Luz evaluated with the highest possible grade! The student now uses his 'dowsing expertise' to earn a living. No, not relieving cat-ladies of their money, but with urban planning, paid for by tax payers.

This was two years ago. Everything sorted out now? You bet. The university has officially opened the course “Landscape aesthetics&geomancy and Feng-Shui in Landscape Architecture”. Diploma certified Engineer S. Broennle teaches whenever Luz is out in the field dowsing. According to all we know, grades are established with pendulum and Ouija board.

This updates Germany ranks first in Internationalism, the one where I told you the secret about that studying in Germany is still free. Now you don’t even need to care about the science that traditionally was in the way of academic degrees. Pack your stuff, lazy students of the world. Germany Abolishes Itself.

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More from Vongehr Topic for Topic


JOE SCHMIDT HAS rejected the notion that the inclusion of Tommy Bowe in Ireland’s matchday squad is a ‘nostalgia’ call.

The 33-year-old wing was used off the bench in Ireland’s defeat to Scotland on the opening weekend of the Six Nations, after which Schmidt’s selection was criticised.

Bowe is now back on Ireland’s bench for tomorrow’s clash with Wales, with more eyebrows being raised by the decision.

Bowe is back on the Ireland bench for tomorrow. Source: Inpho/Billy Stickland

Former Ireland wing Shane Horgan, who played under Schmidt with Leinster, told the Second Captains podcast that Schmidt’s decision to include Bowe against Scotland had been an error.

“That looked like a nostalgia call, having him in the team,” Horgan said. “He hasn’t been playing well. I was very surprised that he was in the 23.”

Bowe was subsequently left out of Ireland’s matchday squad for the trip to Italy and missed out on the home win over France.

The Ulster wing was then ommitted from Schmidt’s extended 36-man squad for the closing two rounds of the championship.

However, a hand injury for Andrew Trimble saw Bowe called in as an injury replacement last weekend and he has jumped ahead of Tiernan O’Halloran, Andrew Conway, Craig Gilroy and Jared Payne for the 23 shirt ahead of tomorrow’s clash with Wales in Cardiff.

When Horgan’s suggestion that Bowe’s inclusion during this Six Nations was a nostalgic decision was put to the Ireland head coach, Schmidt rejected it outright.

“Look, I think Shane hasn’t spent any time in our environment, so he’s never seen Tommy train, so I think it’s a typically external opinion that is purely opinion based,” said Schmidt.

“We try to base our decision on how a player is performing. I’ve coached Shane and there’s probably been times when people have questioned my selecting him in the past. There’s always going to be people questioning selection.

33-year-old Bowe will win his 69th cap if used off the bench. Source: Ryan Byrne/INPHO

“I feel that we’re best placed. There’s no way I’d say we get it right every time, because again, there’s a human factor in coaching, just as there is in playing, as I referred to with George North.

“I think he’s a super player, and if somebody has a slightly off day, there’s no guarantee that off days continue, in fact it’s potentially going to be the reverse, they’re going to revert to type and be outstanding in their next performance.

“I’m not sure whether, over the last three and a half, four years, how many nostalgic decisions I’ve made. But I can’t really remember many.”

Having included Bowe as the 23rd man for a second time in this championship, Schmidt backed the 68-times capped Ulsterman to deliver for Ireland tomorrow night at the Principality Stadium.

The Ireland head coach also indicated that Bowe’s aerial strength was one of the key reasons for picking him.

“I think if you look at his last two Ulster performances, you can see his ability to read the game, to run a good line, to be in the right place at the right time,” said Schmidt.

“His aerial game is a real strength for him, and for us. That’s where they came after us last time with Dan Biggar and Liam Williams, George North is such a big man, Leigh Halfpenny got a couple of good aerial takes early in the game.

“Therefore, you cut your cloth, you account for how somebody’s training, you calculate what they bring to the game, and then you make decisions.

“That’s where I’d challenge anyone to do as much work looking at how people are preparing themselves, and then make decisions. The caveat of all that is – I’m not claiming that we’ve got it right, we’ve just worked hard to try to make the best decisions.”

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Thoughts

I’ve made some pretty bad mistakes in my past, and I’ll “fess up” to them at any point.. not because I’m proud that I messed up at something but because acknowledging your faults, weaknesses and most importantly stupidity in the past has taught me to be a better human being. And you see, being a better human being, by bettering yourself from your own mistakes is a concept that most can’t even dream of.

So, by doing this, as my “new year’s resolution” – Whatever kind of meaningless dribble people throw up on their facebook walls, as if to tell the world that this year they’ll be different, this very year they’ll increase their own self esteem by sorting after other peers appreciation of their own divisiveness to change. When in the very, very sad reality people don’t change – You never really change, you can regret a decision and improve on that decision but your mistakes WILL “haunt” (as if to say your past and your previous decisions were a different beings choices, and not your own which you didn’t, for even a slight second think of the repercussions) you for the rest of your life.

As a person, if you kill or hurt another person – You may face the repercussions and realize you can’t do it again or you’ll face the same music, but your head is still not screwed on right, and you know deep down in your head that every second of your life is a methodical plan to commit another… of whatever it is you’re ashamed (or maybe just scared of showing society, or a loved one, or any number of people or entities) of.

I used to be a “hacker” but it was more than that, and it was because of a few stupid mistakes I made that I got caught and won’t ever be doing anything stupid, like that again. That’s not because I don’t still think in my head (which is currently the only place of privacy we have) of what I could be doing, or that the women in front of me at the line of the grocery store just entered her pincode as 3782 or that my friend who works for the government just left her emails logged on in her computer. It’s because of the fear that I don’t want to “face the music” as some may say, and anyone who isn’t scared of that then I’ll look up to as a hero, hence my reference to Edward Snowden earlier.

“People aren’t as evil as you may think, but temptation pushes most to the brink.”

You might be asking yourself (or perhaps in your head, you’re asking me) wtf the point of this article even is, and why I’ve so far, refused to even give you a title (Not referring to the meta title here) well it’s to do with the subtitle of my blog “politically pissed off” and it has even more to do with a YouTube video I found on the front page of Reddit today –

This clip, and my entire rant here is about one specific thing and it’s a phrase that I’m sure has been used millions of times.

The World doesn’t owe you anything, but you owe it the world – It’s a slight alteration to “the world doesn’t owe you anything” which according to Google has been brought up over 55,000,000 times across the indexed web.

Mr Feenie proves this point even more. When most of you have a device in your pocket that could break most security precautions on the internet in minutes (with the right “push” of course) yet you decide to use it to take photos of yourself to create a falsified image of yourself on some random social networking site. That shows how pathetic of a life you’ve gotten yourself ravelled up in.

This extends to more than just the average joe as well. Justin Bieber has over 48,000,000 twitter followers (granted a lot will be fake/bots) as of writing this. If he were to, for example: tweet a small pizza restaurants website… Within minutes it’d more than likely crash. For a kid who put a song on YouTube this one time, he holds an unbelievably large amount of power – With the help of the internet of course.

Yet he decides to tweet selfies and him downloading his own tracks of iTunes.

Then again, I’m a paradox of my own stance on hypocrisy –

I’m sitting on a i7 3.4 ghz CPU, 16gb ddr3 ram and a 4gb DDR5 Graphics card… Whilst using about a percent of the CPU’s power and typing into an open source CMS, on a site that pretty much no one reads.

My moral of this story, and the question I bet you were asking yourself earlier is then?

Spend your time wisely, and spend your time learning – Because for though it may seem like an eternity in hell, your life is almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.


Hillary Rodham Clinton’s determination to reconnect with voters in localized, informative settings is commendable, but is in danger of being overshadowed by questions about the interplay of politics and wealthy foreign donors who support the Clinton Foundation.

Nothing illegal has been alleged about the foundation, the global philanthropic initiative founded by former President Bill Clinton. But no one knows better than Mrs. Clinton that this is the tooth-and-claw political season where accusations are going to fly for the next 19 months. And no one should know better than the former senator and first lady that they will fester if straightforward answers are not offered to the public.

The increasing scrutiny of the foundation has raised several points that need to be addressed by Mrs. Clinton and the former president. These relate most importantly to the flow of multimillions in donations from foreigners and others to the foundation, how Mrs. Clinton dealt with potential conflicts as secretary of state and how she intends to guard against such conflicts should she win the White House.

The only plausible answer is full and complete disclosure of all sources of money going to the foundation. And the foundation needs to reinstate the ban on donations from foreign governments for the rest of her campaign — the same prohibition that was in place when she was in the Obama administration.


Battle lines are being drawn for a fight over the future of rooftop solar energy in Maine, as the Public Utilities Commission prepares to hold a hearing Monday in Hallowell on proposed rules that would cut financial incentives for homeowners with solar panels.

Similar fights are taking place across the country, as utility regulators and politicians try to define the value and benefits of small solar-electric installations, as well as who should pay, and how much, to help expand their use.

Zach Good of ReVision Energy prepares a roof for solar panels at a home in Cape Elizabeth last year. The cost of solar technology has fallen dramatically. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Press Herald file SOLAR PANEL HEARING WHEN: Monday, 1 p.m. WHERE: Worster Room of Maine Public Utilities Commission building, 101 Second St., Hallowell

The outcome of these skirmishes matters because thousands of jobs are tied to these home-scale installations, and shifting policies about compensation have led many residents to put off investing in solar. Maine installers say that began happening last spring, after the Legislature failed by two votes to override Gov. Paul LePage’s veto of a bill that would have restructured the financial incentives.

What’s happening this fall at the PUC is likely to be only a prelude to a rematch next year in the Legislature. Clean-energy advocates are talking about drafting another bill, all but assuring that the matter won’t be settled in the near future.

At issue is a decades-old rule that requires utilities to credit the bills of small energy generators for the full retail price of all the electricity they send into the grid. Those credits chiefly help homeowners recover the investment in solar-electric panels, which can average $10,000 or so. They continued to be paid as long as the power’s being generated.

This arrangement, called net-energy billing or net metering, was set up in the 1980s to help jump-start solar when the technology was new. But panel costs have fallen sharply in recent years, and utilities and some policymakers say it’s time to trim the incentive. As solar’s popularity grows, they say, the payments are shifting the cost of serving homes with solar panels onto other customers.

Last month, the three PUC commissioners – all appointed by LePage – proposed a change that would grandfather net-metering credits for 15 years for residents who already have solar panels installed at their homes, and limit benefits for new solar owners to 10 years.

DISPUTING VALUE OF HOME SOLAR

The PUC review was triggered by a requirement that net metering be revisited once peak solar power production hit 1 percent of Central Maine Power Co.’s installed capacity. But reducing the net-metering incentives drew immediate fire from solar installers and clean-energy supporters. They countered that the value of this energy actually is greater than the cost of service. And they pointed to a study done for the PUC in 2015, and updated last summer, to prove it.

The updated study concluded that the value of distributed solar – power produced near its point of use – is worth roughly 27 cents per kilowatt hour over 25 years. In Maine, the average home electric rate today is less than 16 cents per kilowatt hour, so solar advocates see a clear benefit.

But teasing out the components that contribute to that 27-cents figure paints a more-complicated picture. The PUC’s consultant found that just over 17 cents of the total value was from avoiding “market costs,” largely by not needing power from large generators. The other 9 cents or so were “societal benefits,” linked to emitting less climate-changing carbon dioxide and pollutants into the air.

In testimony filed Wednesday, Portland-based ReVision Energy, the state’s largest solar installer, reiterated its view that the cost-shifting claim isn’t supported by the study. It also criticized the PUC for proposing changes to net metering before any investigation of the facts.

“The failure to fairly, fully and rigorously evaluate the overall impact of net metering delegitimizes the proposed rule and this proceeding,” ReVision said. “The commission has made critical findings of fact and proposes to fundamentally change the existing, legislatively approved rule based on these findings – yet there is no sworn testimony in the record.”

Responding to this criticism, PUC spokesman Harry Lanphear said the commission laid out its reasoning in a notice of rulemaking last month. In it, the commissioners acknowledged that net metering supports state energy policies to promote renewable, clean electricity supplies, and that there may be environmental values to ratepayers. But they added that “programs that involve the cross-subsidization of ratepayer funds among customer groups should be reviewed periodically,” especially when the cost of the technology is falling sharply.

CMP is expected to amplify that point Monday. John Carroll, a spokesman, said the cost of rooftop solar has fallen by roughly half over the past decade, yet it’s still being subsidized at the same level as it was in the 1980s. He said CMP gets little benefit from rooftop solar because the values cited in the PUC study are largely tied to generation and energy supply, not to the cost of delivering power to homes. CMP contends that the cost of crediting solar homeowners shifted $1.3 million in expenses to other ratepayers in 2015, although solar advocates say CMP hasn’t substantiated those figures.

CMP has hired an expert witness to testify about the value of solar. Ashley Brown is a former Ohio PUC commissioner and executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, which studies power issues. He is expected to make a case for why net metering should be discarded and replaced with market-based pricing.

LePage, through his Governor’s Energy Office, will make a similar plea. The office has filed comments that say the PUC’s proposed rule should be scrapped. A system should instead be adopted that uses CMP’s smart meters to compensate small generators for the value of their power in real time, because costs vary hour by hour.

The office wrote: “During the duration of the proposed rule that extends through 2040, there are companies proposing the colonization of another planet – yet the proposal is stuck in 20th-century thinking and fails to utilize modern metering technology that has already been deployed across the state.”

SOLAR DEBATE IN OTHER STATES

These opposing views, in various forms, underpin the debate nationwide. The Solar Energy Industries Association website has posted links to cost-benefit studies from 17 states that are studying or have examined the value of solar. They include California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. Various interest groups and think tanks also have weighed in with national studies.

But in Maine, as elsewhere, value studies are ammunition for larger political battles. In their filed testimonies, clean-energy advocates such as ReVision, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and SunRun, a national solar installer, urge the commission to hold off on any rule change and let the next Legislature set solar policy.

In a recent email message, ReVision also encourages its supporters to vote for candidates who will advance solar.

“We are confident that Maine’s Legislature can do the right thing for solar,” ReVision says, “and we will work to make the facts clear despite ongoing campaigns of misinformation and bullying on the side of anti-solar advocates.”

Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or

[email protected]

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Secretary of State Jon Husted today defended use of the word "monopoly" in ballot language describing state Issue 3, which seeks to legalize marijuana in Ohio. "We are trying to use simple, plain language that accurately describes the issue," Husted said during a Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon, where, when asked, he also said he is interested in being governor someday.

Secretary of State Jon Husted today defended use of the word monopoly in ballot language describing state Issue 3, which seeks to legalize marijuana in Ohio.

�What we tried to use is simple, plain language that we believe the average voter will understand and that accurately describes the issues,� Husted said during a Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon, where, when asked, he also said he is interested in being governor someday.

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Supporters of Issue 3 strongly disagree with ballot summary and title that uses the word monopoly and seems to stress that aspect of the issue over the marijuana legalization.

�The ballot title and language Jon Husted has assigned to Issue 3 is deceptive and misleading,� said Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio, the group of investors pushing to legalize marijuana in Ohio and set up 10 exclusive commercial growing sites.

�It's unthinkable that Ohio's chief elections officer is waging a campaign against Issue 3 from his elected office and using taxpayer dollars to confuse voters and rig the system.�

ResponsibleOhio wants the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn ballot language approved by Husted and the state Ballot Board.

Husted said ResponsibleOhio wants to use poll-tested language to describe the issue in a way voters will support, but he doesn�t want to use �weasel words� that mask what the issue really does.

�The folks who wrote this, if they didn�t want it called a monopoly, then they shouldn�t have created a monopoly,� Husted said, as both he and moderator Mike Thompson broke out the dictionary.

Husted also reiterated his position that if both Issue 3 and Issue 2, a legislative anti-monopoly proposal, pass in November, the marijuana issue would be invalidated, regardless of which issue gets more votes. The language of Issue 2, plus the fact that it would take effect immediately, makes it the dominant issue.

However, if both issues pass, that interpretation is likely to be challenged in court.

Husted also indicated his support for state Issue 1, altering the legislative redistricting process, which currently allows the majority party to gerrymander districts to its benefit. The new process would require minority-party votes in order to pass a 10-year map.

Outside the Athletic Club, more than a dozen protesters held signs and chanted largely in opposition to Husted�s decision in August to deny an effort to place fracking ban charter proposals on the ballot in Athens, Fulton and Medina counties. Three protesters later came into the luncheon, holding signs and chanting �let the people vote� after the program concluded.

Tish O�Dell, a community organizer with the Community Legal Defense Fund and a leader in organizing the protest, said the courts should be allowed to weigh in on the charter proposals, rather than Husted deciding they should be banned from the ballot.

�Residents are upset that they do not have a vote,� O�Dell said.

Husted argued that the Supreme Court has already ruled that the state, not local communities, have the authority to regulate fracking, and the proposals violated that law.

�That doesn�t mean we took the democratic process away from them,� he said. �They just need to use it in the proper venue.�

He suggested that supporters could go to the legislature, or use the initiated statute ballot process, to get the law changed.

Husted also discussed his continuing push to get online voter registration enacted in Ohio.

�I spoke to the speaker of the House (Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville) the other day, and he indicated he thought it was something they�d be able to do this year,� Husted said.

jsiegel@dispatch.com

@phrontpage