Construction crane signals progress at Vancouver waterfront – The Columbian

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The first of two construction cranes expected on the Vancouver waterfront this summer was erected Thursday and Friday.

The progress, clearly visible from downtown and the Interstate 5 Bridge, illustrates the transformation of the old Boise Cascade paper mill site into offices, restaurants, retail and residential space.

Underground parking will be provided in two of the first four buildings now under construction by the firm of Robertson & Olson. One building will be for offices; the other, apartments.

A pier jutting into the Columbia River and a waterfront park are also under construction, as are two retail/restaurant buildings. The first waterfront restaurants should open sometime in 2018.

Gramor Development is the lead on the public-private project, which at full build-out will cover 21 blocks at an investment estimated at nearly $1.5 billion.

To the east, nearer the bridge, the Port of Vancouver also has major development plans for its property.

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Construction crane signals progress at Vancouver waterfront - The Columbian

Putting Infants Down Like Dogs – First Things

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The Charlie Gard tragedy has renewed public advocacy for legalizing infanticide. Writing in the New York Times earlier this month, Gary Comstock recounted the tragic death of his son, Sam, who was born with a terminal genetic condition. Many years later, Comstock believes that his son should have been killed instead of being taken off of life support:

We should empathize with Comstock in his grief. But emotion must not tempt us to reject the venerable principles of human exceptionalism. Babieseven those with dire prospectsare precious human beings whose lives have intrinsic dignity and inherent moral value beyond that of any nonhuman.

Acceptance of Comstocks premisethat parents should kill babies who are likely to diewould be culturally catastrophic. It would lead to the legalization of murder. At Nuremberg, the German infanticide program was deemed a crime against humanity. Lets not abandon that wisdom.

The death of his son is not the only motive driving Comstocks advocacy. Comstock is a moral philosopher who rejects human exceptionalism and embraces animal rights and transhumanism. From his webpage:

Judging by Comstocks Times column, it seems these practical implications include legalizing infanticide. Indeed, in my decades of work around issues such as euthanasia, utilitarian bioethics, animal rights, transhumanism, and other associated agendas, I have found that the more one rejects human exceptionalism, the more likely one is to declare that immoral and (still) illegal wrongslike infanticideare virtuous.

The evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne is an even more vivid case in point. Coyne authors ablog titled Why Evolution is True, where he extrapolates evolutionary theoryinto highly questionable conclusions of morality, philosophy, and ethics. Using Comstocks pro-infanticide column as his launching pad, Coyne argues that if we can abort a fetus diagnosed with serious health issues, we should also be allowed to kill born babies with those conditions. He then makes the predictable claim that since we euthanize our sick pets, we should also be permitted to kill seriously ill and disabled babies:

Coyne then brings in anti-human exceptionalism:

Contrary to Coyne, human exceptionalism need not rely on religion to demonstrate its validity. But heres the germane point: To reject human exceptionalism is essentially to claim that we are just another animal in the forest, which leads to the logical conclusion that killing should be an allowable remedy to illness and disability. This view has already infected the Netherlands, where babies born with serious disabilities and terminal conditions are allowed by winked-at practicenot lawto be killed by doctors.

Many no longer believe that human life has ultimate, objective value simply because it is human. With human exceptionalism cast aside, our new prime directive is to eliminate suffering, and eliminating the sufferer is now advocated in high places as a moral good rather than a pernicious harm. As a result, dying and disabled babies are in mortal danger of consignment into a killable caste that canliterallybe put down like dogs.

Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institutes Center on Human Exceptionalism and a consultant to the Patients Rights Council. His most recent book isCulture of Death: The Age of Do Harm Medicine.

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Fear the Walking Dead Comic-Con Trailer and Interviews – ComingSoon.net

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In a long, gold filigree ballroom at the San Diego Hilton, the lights are dimming andthe Fear the Walking DeadComic-Contrailer is playing (watch it below!). The castruns through the hills of Mexico in a preview of the second half of Season 3 (airing September 10 on AMC) trying desperately to make a deal with the antagonistic Black Hat reservation introduced in the first half. And for the first time since the end of season two, the main cast is back together as team mom Madison (Kim Dickens) heads out into the wild to reunite with Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) and Victor Strand (Coleman Domingo). Not everyone in the reunion looks happy.

Then lights come up and the cast of Fear the Walking Dead (minus Blades and the departed Cliff Curtis but with new stars Daniel Sahrman and Sam Underwood) replaces their video counterparts, joined by series show runner Dave Erickson. In a lot of ways they seem very much like their characters on the show (though less grimy), particularly Frank Dillane who sports even wilder, more mussed hair than Nick Clark and who refuses to speak the entire time.

Q: We saw just now many of the original cast coming back together, has there been any change in the characters and how they relate? For instance with Madison and Strand coming back together?

Dickens:What did you see?

Domingo:Were we getting along?

Dickens:We have such a good time working together, it was great to get to do it again. It was surprising the way they got back together.

Domingo:Were up to our old hijinks.

Q: Have those relationships changed any? How have the characters, the original ones, evolved?

Dickens:Madison has become more merciless. At first she was probably a merciless high school counselor but really beholden to morality. By Season 3 she realizes the new currency is brutality. Her main goal is to survive and protect her family.

Domingo:What I loved was Strand was initially a mysterious man of means and Season 2 was all about his deconstruction and the deconstruction of western civilization in many ways. Every so often I was confused on what I was doing and would call Dave [Erickson] up, but thats the great journey for this man. Season 3 is about emerging into a new man, to take the skills he knew and rebuild on them, to survive because thats what he is. A survivor.

Mason [Ophelia]:When we met Ophelia she was daddys little girl but the moment she was orphaned she became stronger. The beauty is we see now how much like her father she is becoming and now that we know Daniel is alive, I love the idea of them meeting again and seeing how they will fare together. Hopefully he recognizes her when he sees her.

Domingo:I put together a collage looking at the way we evolved from Season 1 to now. We were just human beings and now we have scavenged and taken what we needed and become something else. I love that our audience is responding to that. We want to be our own organism.

Debnam-Carey [Alicia]:Whats so wonderful is our cast is very, very tight. We all do really get along well and for us to come from Season 1 and get to add people and kind of keep them weve been able to bond. And our locations have been quite remote this year, so weve had to entertain each other.

Underwood:And the social zeitgeist in the world is like a zombie apocalypse right now and being able to band together like a family is when things are so stressful right now.

Callie [Jeremiah]:Obviously they were floundering till I got there. I was the example. It felt good.

[cue copious good natured eye rolling from the rest of the cast]

Q: You mentioned the remote location how has that worked into this season, going from LA in Season 1 to the boat in Season 2 to Mexico for Season 3? How did you decide thats the direction you wanted?

Erickson:It was sort of a build starting last season, a lot of what went on in Season 2 was to set up for it. Thematically a lot of Season 3 is about resources and appropriation and re-appropriation. The apocalypse has wiped away existing borders.

Greyeyes [Walker]:This is a world where the old rules are broken and what emerges are our base instincts. What we need to do to ensure our survival. Ive described it as the return of feudalism; Fear has always been a show which pushed those boundaries.

Q: As much as theyve changed theyre still doing the same things, still looking for a place to settle down, put down roots

Domingo:Theyre constantly going to this new place and saying well build here and it falls down. We said that at the hotel and saw how that went.

Dickens:Thats the human spirit.

Mason:And its exciting for fans. I remember watching Walking Dead when they were stuck wandering for a while and we were all come on!

Greyeyes:And it raises tension in the narrative. It presses on the nerves of the audience.

Sharman:The challenging thing is to make something real about the situation. Whats so good about thee show is that, outside the premise that were saying there is a zombie apocalypse, thats not what its about. Its a specific and well made investigation into what it is to be human. There isnt a character on the show who is black and white. It gets a lot more interesting for Troy as we get to the end of the season, as youll see.

Q: There is an interesting dynamic going on between Troy and Jake, almost Caine and Able.

Calliee:Theyre draining [laughter]; pains in the ass, cant do anything theyre told. Its just wearing the sh*t out of me.

Debnam-Carey:You love it.

Underwood:I think this idea of Nick connecting to Troy and Alicia to Jake makes an interesting thing, the struggle for power. Caine and Able has definitely come up, so has Of Mice and Men.

Sharman:I do have a brother and theres something about that sibling relationship which makes me emotional. Theres something that is interesting to explore, especially when theyre so different. They do family well.

[Dillane laughs]

Debnam-Carey:What are you laughing about? I love working on sibling scenes. We rarely get to do them. Frank is one of my favorite people to work with and its always a treat when we get to.

Q: You mentioned an interesting journey for Troy coming up in the second half of the season, can you elaborate?

Sharman:The first part of the next half is Troy figuring out he knows something is up. Theres an investigation.

Callie:Frank. Frank. Frank.

Sharman:Thanks Dayton. So the first half is figuring that out and then does he have the ability to assume the throne.

Debnam-Carey:By the end of this half the family is involved in this murder cover up. That starts to divide them and thats great for Alicia because we see her stake out her own path. Im looking forward to that. That fact that I find out what Nick did

[Dillane reacts with surprise and incomprehnsion]

Debnam-Carey:Have you not read the scripts? Theyre really good. Theres a whole difference of opinion between whats right and wrong.

Dillane:I dont know. I have no idea what the second half will be like. I use a knife a lot.

Callie:I dont know this, but I think the camp is going to go to hell without me.

Q: The main show after seven seasons has been a lot about survivalism and community survival surrounding a core group will your core group get back together and stick together?

Erickson:There are two answers to that. The first is I dont know. Its really in someone elses hands right now, however Scott and Robert want to move forward. We intentionally sent everyone out an apart at the end of Season 2 and now the story is about bringing them back and thats difficult to do in an organic way.The show has been under a microscope since it started and embracing that and making a different show we have the same rules but are tonally distinctive one of the great things about this season in particular is it has evolved into its own thing. I like to think some of the comparisons have fallen away to an extent.

Domingo:Please give a round of applause to our showrunner, Dave Erickson.

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Fear the Walking Dead Comic-Con Trailer and Interviews - ComingSoon.net

It’s Time to Overanalyze the First American Horror Story: Cult Teaser – POPSUGAR

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It's Time to Overanalyze the First American Horror Story: Cult Teaser

It's that time of year again! Time to crawl under your blanket and whimper, because American Horror Story is coming back. This week, creator Ryan Murphy revealed that season seven is titled American Horror Story: Cult. In addition to getting some exciting details on his Twitter account, we saw the first major teaser of the season, and there's a lot to go over. Ready for some in-depth analysis of everything you've seen so far? Because we sure are.

In just the past week, Murphy has layered a bunch of bee symbolism into his Cult teasers. He posted an Instagram of a man covered in bees. The shortened teaser on AHS7.com shows a man releasing a swarm of bees from his mouth, and much of the full-length teaser features that six-sided hexagon, which obviously correlates to the six-sided honeycomb of a beehive. But what do bees have to do with cults? Well, if you trace back to historic uses of bees and bee-related imagery, you'll get some answers.

The concept of the beehive traces back to the Egyptians. Bees symbolized obedience in Egypt, because they are the only insect to have a "king" or "queen" among them. This creates a model of subservience, and it continued in history with the rise of the Freemasons. The Freemasons are perhaps one of the most mysterious organizations in the present day. The group was first established in medieval Europe as a guild for stonemasons but has continued as a society up through modern times. Nowadays, it's regarded as the world's oldest and largest fraternity. But there are many, many conspiracy theories about it.

Here are the facts: if you want to join, you must "demonstrate good character and belief in some sort of Supreme Being." The meetings happen primarily in lodges, and they are exclusive to men. And despite the fact that it's a publicly known organization, it's not without its secrets. When it comes to meeting, non-Masons and cameras are forbidden. At the center of these meeting rooms is an altar, and there are certain secret ceremonies that are often performed at meetings. This is where we circle back to bees. The Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences says bees have historically been viewed in the same way by Freemasons as they were by Egyptians. It's a symbol of industry and obedience.

As for the cultish associations? Due to the shroud of secrecy that seems to surround Freemasonry, there are plenty of conspiracy theories that link Freemasonry to cult-like behavior. I mean, a worldwide network of men that meet secretly in lodges, approach altars, and perform ceremonies sounds pretty suspicious. But of course, there are wilder theories about Illuminati connections and Satanism. So, there's the connective tissue from Ryan Murphy's bee imagery to the new Cult title.

Murphy's decision to include clowns again is a little more enigmatic, at least in the context of a cult. It's pretty easy to see why he did it from a horror standpoint. After all, clowns are a staple of modern horror. The most iconic clown monster is Pennywise from It, which has a remake hitting theaters in just over a month. Scary clowns have popped up elsewhere; there's the creepy doll in Poltergeist and the clowns in Rob Zombie's movies, House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. In real life, John Wayne Gacy dressed up as a clown to lure in and murder young boys. There references go on and on, and AHS is not the exception. Twisty the Clown was the show's own nightmarish entry into clown culture, and he's coming back in AHS: Cult.

All horror aspects considered, clowns also have a sinister history attached to them. An in-depth exploration of the psychology behind scary clowns from the Smithsonian traces the origins of clowns to something more unsavory than good. According to David Kiser, the director of talent for Ringling Bros., clown comedy was first derived from a hedonistic appetite for food, sex, drink, and other manic behavior. "In one way, the clown has always been an impish spirit," Kiser said.

From an impish spirit, it's a short jump to a demon or the devil himself. It could be that Murphy is combining the horror canon of clowns with the darker origins of clown culture, and that's why we're seeing a cult of clowns in season seven. It makes sense to attach some sort of Satanic symbolism to clowns as well. The devil will never show his true face, much like a clown hides behind an unchanging painted smile.

"Do you ever feel alone?" the full-length teaser asks. "Does it seem like no one really understands you? Do some people just make you sick? Are you afraid? We can set you free. We will make you strong. We want you." When it comes to the 2016 election, many outlets reported after the fact that Donald Trump had rallied the "angry white man" to win the race. He sought to connect with those in the nation that felt like they were being ignored by the Democratic party. "There is a lot to fear in a Trump presidency," Time notes. "Economic chaos, entrenched bigotry and xenophobia, the demise of American international power. But there's just as much to fear in the American people and, especially, in the white America that elected Trump." The AHS teaser, which Murphy has confirmed will involved the 2016 election, seems to follow this same path. Do people make you sick? Are you afraid? We can fix it.

Then, of course, there's color imagery. Red and black are the predominant colors in each shot. But it's not until the shocks of blue that the political connections become more apparent. There's also the fact that these blue glimpses come from shots featuring a single woman: the woman with blue hair on the altar, and the other woman with blue hair and makeup in the crowd. In this setting, she could represent the progressive Democrats, and she is severely outnumbered. As Trump continues to attack women's rights and rallies his supporters against liberals, it's pretty easy to connect the dots.

American Horror Story: Cult premieres on Sept. 5.

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It's Time to Overanalyze the First American Horror Story: Cult Teaser - POPSUGAR

‘Rick and Morty’ Creators Explain Why The Show is Horrifying – Inverse

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Rick and Morty, the biggest hit Adult Swim has ever seen, encapsulates the networks unique collection of playful, edgy, somber, and recalcitrant programming in a single sitcom. Co-written by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, the 30-minute animated series is as wacky and chaotic as it is heartfelt, and its that magic combo that has captured millions of fans. Rick and Morty is more intelligent than the average animated comedy, and more sexual and profane than the average science fiction serial. It has also succeeded in only two seasons in creating, fleshing out, and complicating a standalone set of rules in canon: it comments on its own structure without feeling too high-brow, and its creators are aware of all its tiny moving parts.

In a phone interview with Inverse, Harmon and Roiland described how they maintain a balance between sweet and vicious in their writing. They guessed at what makes their protagonist Rick Sanchez so evocative for so many depressed, smart people, and urged obsessive fans trying to decode the shows little hints that theyre in the right place. They want people developing theories about easter eggs and rewatching old episodes; they just dont want to hear about it.

How do you keep things balanced? When do you know that an episode needs a note of realism, and when are you allowed to go nuts with a joke?

Justin Roiland: The answer is, one follows the other. I belong to the school of thought that maintains comedy is, at its heart, about terror. It starts with a game of peekaboo, right? Your mom covers her face and you believe that shes disappeared from the earth entirely. She opens her face back up, she says peekaboo, and though the world was just ending a second ago, it turns into a laugh.

Life is tragic but comedy reminds you that life goes on. You get the last laugh on the things that terrify you. In order to get visceral laughs from your writing, you need to go where things are terrifying. I think people sometimes mistake that for pure nihilism or toxic, dark comedy, but theres a way to do it with a purpose. You try to alleviate that terror and say everyone feels the same, everyones scared that this all means nothing in the end.

Youve said that in Season 2, you didnt want the show to circle back on itself, so you avoided too many callbacks. Can we expect references to earlier things in Season 3?

Justin: We definitely having a running continuity that we respect in the show. We dont pretend to reset things completely. There are things that now shape the show moving forward, and the environment and characters have changed forever, because of ccertain events. Relationships change

Thats an important thing to us. We write as many evergreen, standalone episodes as we can, but we are alway respectful of the continuity and that all actions have consequences and that theres weight to those consequences. Im trying to think of specific references in Season 3, aside from the pilot, which was specifically referencing previous events. I feel like the material is all fairly new as we plow ahead.

This is the biggest hit Adult Swim has ever had - whats your relationship with the network like? Do they ever tell you no anymore?

Dan: Well, we were a year behind schedule. I guess getting away with that comes from a good relationship.

Justin: [Adult Swim Executive Vice President] Mike Lazzo is so supportive. I cant even believe how much. Hes such a huge fan of the show, and his notes are always really on point, and its usually a pretty legit thing hes catching. Or its something hes thinking about and we recognize it as a good thing to bring up. He says, You guys know what youre doing. The creative freedom is incredible. I mean, this is my first crack at a TV show I know Harmonwith Community, it just wasnt like that at all. Right?

Dan: No, of course not. Its insane the amount of stuff the network does on its own to support the show, things we dont even have a chance to approve of, but then we marvel at how faithful and clever their promotions are. Its an unprecedented creative network for me.

Is this the kind of show where fan theories and guessing at patterns is worth it? Do you plant clues for later reveals?

Justin: I think its normal and human and fun for fans to theorize and try to connect the dots. Theyre gonna do that no matter what, and I like to let them. I dont wanna get in the way. I get canonical questions, people asking us to put an end to a debate You know, theyll say, theres 3 camps that believe certain things. I avoid answering things because i like that the fans arewell, they have their thing, they get to have that.

A lot of times, we dont even know! We honestly havent thought that deeply about certain theories. I also tend to avoid diving into stuff on Reddit. Im on Reddit a lot, but I look at dumb stuff and just skip past the deep fan theories. Its bad to have that stuff sticking around my subconscious. The goal is to hit that fresh canvas feeling we had in Season 1, all those ideas coming straight from our brains and not potentially things that came up from reading all the fan theories.

Dan: If you think about it, the showrunner and the fan are at cross purposes. Decoding and theorizing, thats a fan at their best and highest form when theyre thinking about the show on a level that the showrunner at peak form just isnt.

The best way Ive been able to put it is, if you ask your parents, Are we going to the zoo tomorrow?, and if they say, I dont know yet, theyre kind of being bad parents. If you ask a showrunner, What state was rick born in?, thats a good showrunner who says, I dont know yet. You want people to feel that affection for a show, but you dont actually want all your answers determined at the beginning of some conference, six years before theyre important to the plot. Were very dedicated to canon, though, and we try as hard as we can not to contradict and keep things sacred.

Rick and Morty Season 3 will continue on Adult Swim July 30.

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'Rick and Morty' Creators Explain Why The Show is Horrifying - Inverse

PS Spotlight: Remembering celebrity fancy dress for the grand Cointreau Ball – The Sydney Morning Herald

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In the years before we had to endure Instagramselfiesfrom the AmalfiCoast, mid-winter was one of the hottest times on the Sydney social calendar.

For an epic 14-year run, Bastille Day would be marked in Sydney with the grandest party of them all, the Cointreau Ball, the ultimate celebration of the '80s and '90s.

On par with today's Met Ball in New York, and dressed up as a promotion for the French liqueur, it was really more of a licence for a boozy knees up, where titled socialites would disappear under dinner tables and get up to all sorts of a mischief before dessert had even arrived.

Remember, this wasan era when such things were rejoicedrather than frowned upon.

Today's PS Spotlight shines back on those days of unbridled hedonism, when 400 or so of this town's most glamorouscitizens would converge on a secret location in a fleet of limos to indulge in an all-night event (one went for 48 hours) of bacchanalian delights, a sort of Mardi Gras at the Ritz, which Sydney has not seen since the lastCointreau Ball was held in 1999.

And yes, a much youngerPS managed to get along to a few Cointreau Balls, and while some of the memories are admittedly a little hazy,a few areindelible.

Like the year Sheila Scotter, the grand dame of Australian society who retained an imperial air about herself well into her dotage and was the founding editrix of Vogue Australia in 1962, turned up dressed as Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. It was a fitting costume as she sailed into the room.

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Society set hairdresserJohBaileywas dressed as a living Academy Award one year, his hairless body (thanks to a painful wax session) entirely covered in gold paint that also camouflagedhis goosebumps. Bailey was pulled around the exclusive party on a specially made podium on wheels, towed by a glamorous Oscars "presenter" carrying a huge envelope emblazoned with the words: "And the winner is ..."

Another year Johdescended a grand staircase in a huge showgirl-inspired number replete with ostrich feathers and giant peacock fan tail behind him with the wingspan of a small private jet. The feathers didn't last though, after working the dance floor,Joh's crumpledplumage was a shadow of its former self by night's end, a sight that would have him in rehab according to today's petty puritans.

The brainchild of public relations dynamo Deeta Colvin, the Cointreau Ballwas the first eventin the country to bring dodgem cars and ice rinks into parties. Each year outrageous themes were thoroughly embraced by the party set who turned it into the ultimate costume party, the result ofmonths of meticulous planning.

Before he ended up in jail for dealing cocaine, Gough Whitlam's self-proclaimed "adopted" grandson (although the Whitlam's disowned him years ago)Andrew "Baci" Whitlam turned up to one Hollywood-themedCointreau Ball asLiz Taylor, but there was no room in the limo for the wheelchair he planned to take with him.

A newly single Johanna Griggs arrived dressed as Marilyn Monroe,aspiring party girl and magazine wunderkind Mia Freedman dressed up as aroller girl(complete with skates), while newlyweds Charlotte Dawson and Scott Miller were the hottest "it" couple in town. They truly lookedhappy together.

Of course the Cointreau Ball generated its own controversies, too. In its later years one scribe pennedit had lost its cutting edge: "a predictable mishmash that's become a self-regarding outing for B-grade celebrities who look like they've been dressed by Helen Keller and Ray Charles." He was never invited again.

That was also the year when some of Sydney's socialites had been bumped from the guest list in favour of soap stars, leading anothercolumnist to declare it was "more E Street than Queen Street".

But that didn't stopLeo Schofield from turning upin what looked like a creation from a Venetian masked ball. His daughter Nell went for a cocktail commando number.

Hotfashion designer of the dayLeona Edmiston wore a body suit that was covered, top to toe, in glittering sequins. Game show host Larry Emdur channelled Hugh Hefner, turning up with a bevy of his New Price Is Right models to finish off the look.

And who could forget television host Kerri-Anne Kennerley and husband John when they came as the Queen and King of Hearts?Indeed,the photoshaunted KAK for years to follow.

Today we now look back and smile and remember what a swell party it was.

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PS Spotlight: Remembering celebrity fancy dress for the grand Cointreau Ball - The Sydney Morning Herald

Last Night Guns N’ Roses Played An Epic Set At The Apollo, Today Appetite For Destruction Turns 30 – Stereogum

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Appetite For Destruction turns 30 today. If youre a fan of rock music, it doesnt really matter when you were born thats bound to make you feel old, whether you were a teenager in 1987 or whether that album served as a hand-me-down gateway drug 10 or 15 years later. You could look at 80s hard rock and hair metal as the bastard child of classic rock, the delinquent and mutated end game, and now its best and most respected poster boys have a debut thats a full three decades old. Guns N Fuckin Roses doesnt have quite the same ring when it applies to guys in their 50s sporting a somewhat frightening array of hats. And yet, here we are.

Last night, the semi-reunited Guns N Roses played for subscribers of SiriusXM (a GNR channel launched on the satellite radio service this month) at Harlems historic Apollo Theater. It was the kind of thing that thoroughly underlined their status in some echelon of the classic rock pantheon: a sprawling three hour set that made room for an instrumental cover of Wish You Were Here and a Layla tease before November Rain, an Allman Bros. intro to Patience, a Voodoo Child tag on Civil War, and full readings of the Whos The Seeker, Soundgardens Black Hole Sun, and AC/DCs Whole Lotta Rosie. (As of last year, Axl Rose moonlights as AC/DCs new frontman.) The Kills another performatively rock n roll group in a very different context opened, prompting conversations like, Wait, whos the opener? I dont know some indie rock band

On some level, Guns N Roses status is very much solidified a massively popular band with only a few albums and one of the most its better to burn out than to fade away stories in rock history at the same time as its a dragged out, zig-zagging epic fitting for any of their 70s stadium rock forebears. But seeing them in the context of Appetites 30th birthday highlights the inescapably lost quality of their identity now. Theyre caught in some nexus between the bloated final act of classic rock in the late 70s up against the rise of punk, and then on the other side the rise of Alt Nation and a new era of now-classic rock, with a much different set of standards and proprieties that made Guns N Roses seem like dinosaurs when they were just about 30 years old.

Even when if you set aside how poorly some of this has aged their casual misogyny, Axl being a complete asshole, the general image of a belligerently wasted and debaucherous young group now scanning completely illegibly you have to buy into it if youre going to enjoy Guns N Roses in 2017. I mean, this is a band with people named Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, Slash, and Dizzy Reed. Again, there are a lot of hats and leather, and long solos, and rock n roll swagger. Theres a quality to the whole thing that, essentially, feels like the sort of fever dream someone would concoct for either a very ham-fisted fiction about a stratospherically successful (and thus free to be very dumb) rock band, or a Spinal Tap-esque parody.

On the flipside, thats precisely what always made them so cool. Thats precisely what made them one of the last real rock n roll demigods that suburban kids around the country looked at and thought, Thats the life. Three decades on, their power might seem alien in our current musical landscape, but it is far from diminished.

Technicalities first: somehow blatantly defying a wildly self-destructive past, Axl sounds pretty great live these days, especially considering hes now in his mid-50s and some of these songs require screams and actual range. And even though it isnt the full classic lineup, its something else to see Axl flanked by Duffs punk-leaning sneer and Slash as the still-vigorous guitarist, duckwalks and everything. There are still a few anonymous figures hanging out onstage, but its better than Axls very obvious attempt to replace Slash with his cartoonish doppelgnger Buckethead.

As for that three hour setlist, it afforded the group time to play just about everything youd want to hear. (And a few things you could probably do without, but who would expect rigorous self-editing from the crew behind the dual Use Your Illusion release, let alone now that they stand as one of the last torchbearers for an ancient hard rock brand of excess.) The setlist was pretty much the same as at any given recent show, with no alteration for or acknowledgment of the fact that it was the eve of their first albums 30th anniversary. Axl barely said anything, for that matter, aside from occasionally shouting out a band member or thanking the crowd.

The latter part worked in favor of the show, though: This was a no-nonsense, powerhouse set despite its rambling length deep into the night. They played the exact Chinese Democracy songs youd want to hear Better is a monster live and selected a good mix of hits and deep cuts from the Use Your Illusion albums, with You Could Be Mine a particular burner live, Estranged the still-more-interesting cousin to November Rain, and the welcome surprise of Coma.

Then, of course, there was the Appetite material the stuff where most of us first fell in love with them, the stuff that had a heightened impact given the timing. Thirty years later, Its So Easy and Mr. Brownstone make for a perfect, decadent one-two punch of an opening. Thirty years later, Sweet Child O Mine is still the earnest salve to its more caustic siblings. Thirty years later, Rocket Queen remains one of their best songs, a blend of serpentine groove and genuine beauty. Thirty years later, Welcome To The Jungle is as foreboding and exhilarating and infectious as ever, deserving a spot amongst the greatest classic rock songs.

By the time they finally finished playing at 1:30 AM, the weight of those 30 years could be felt in other ways, too. There was something out of time about the whole thing, seeing one of the most monolithic stadium rock bands ever in a tiny-ish theater, all these years removed from their heyday, their relevance. Out of any of the revivals and retro trends from the past 10 or 15 years, theres almost nothing major that you could point to and find actual sonic influence from Guns N Roses or their peers. Without being as vaunted as their 60s or 70s predecessors, Guns N Roses have found themselves in a similar place, exhuming the now increasingly distant past night to night.

But none of that really matters, because when you see them play these songs live, it has the effect its supposed to. It makes you feel like a wannabe rebellious teen all over again. It makes you fall back in love with their extreme depiction of rock n roll hedonism from the final days of that brand of rock n roll hedonism. It makes you remember that this was a band formed of lost kids who somehow conquered the world and for a time were the biggest thing anywhere and, song to song, it makes you remember exactly why.

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Last Night Guns N' Roses Played An Epic Set At The Apollo, Today Appetite For Destruction Turns 30 - Stereogum

Dream Hoarders – HuffPost

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In a recent Times Op Ed, ("How We are Ruining America,"7/11/17), David Brooks cites a book entitled Dream Hoarders, by Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution. Brooks point is that the privileged classes of America not only want to insure that their children maintain educational hegemony, but that they make sure that those of more modest means are prevented from gaining entre. The fact that affluence breeds an intrinsic parsimoniousness and miserliness and that rather than being sated those who have been able to achieve their goals perpetually want more is practically an axiom of human behavior. Countermanding this tendency is the so-called altruistic impulse that some epigenetics people feel is naturally selective, but to put forth another term employed by Daniel Kahneman in books like books like Thinking, Fast and Slow, many people suffer from irrational, emotion-based behaviors. Part of the lack of generosity evidenced by a materialistic culture, in which hedonism has attained almost ethical status, derives from the feeling that there isnt enough to go around and that one persons pleasure is anothers pain. With these kinds of priorities, its no wonder that society is polarized in a way that mirrors the accumulation of wealth itself--in which money invested and reinvested creates ever great amounts of capital accumulation and inequity. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn famously coined the term "paradigm shift." The reformation of our educational system requires a sea change in thinking. Its one thing to be single-minded and another to narrowcast to such an extent that you dont see the woods from the trees. Its like a fighter who throws punches but doesnt know anything about defense. Eventually he or she will be knocked out.

{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levys blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}

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Dream Hoarders - HuffPost

Letters to the editor, July 21, 2017 – Peterborough Examiner

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Scientific atheism and intellectual contempt

I give you a quote from David Berlinski: "Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt ? Dead on."

Berlinski was a research assistant in molecular biology at Columbia University,[3] and was a research fellow at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria and the Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques (IHES) in France. How is it that he has come up with a totally different outcome?

Blair Hancock, Downie St.

Vastly different viewpoints on Khadr

Talk about black and white! The two letters printed Wednesday show both sides of this argument, I'm sure.

Mary Liz Allen describes so beautifully the point of view of Mr. Khadr, as the situation presented itself to a child of 15. Marion Hanysh describes a point of view that the rest of our great country is somehow being left out of some prize bestowed upon Mr. Khadr unfairly.

A Canadian is a Canadian and as such deserves all the protection that we have been taught to expect. If you really want to know what a burgeoning "banana republic" feels like, Ms. Hanysh, may I suggest you relocate to Mr. Trump's jurisdiction. I, too, am on the downslide, and am most grateful that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchild are growing up in the best, most open, accepting country on earth.

I sincerely hope that they will be part of an ever-caring and just society, throughout their lifetimes, and beyond. Thank you, Ms. Allen, for helping us all to FEEL what young Omar had to endure for all those years.

Bev Miles, Omemee

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Letters to the editor, July 21, 2017 - Peterborough Examiner

Of robots and men – Buenos Aires Herald

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With a rather unimpressive budget of US$13 million, RoboCop premiered in the United States on July 17, 1987.

At the time, Walter Goodman, writing for the New York Times, called the film a police drama, and chose to focus on its violence and spectacularity though, fortunately, he also observed that humour glimmers amid the mayhem. This couldnt be truer: in the very first scene we are introduced to pitiable piece of mock news about the possibility of nuclear war in South Africa, immediately followed by a comedic report on a bumpy visit of the president of the United States to a space station.

Thus, RoboCop, with its hyperbolic, over-the-top style, can be viewed as a satire. As Sue Short, in Cyborg Cinema and Contemporary Subjectivity (2005), puts it, the film is filled with satirical stabs at American culture, using SF as a veil by which to ridicule cultural mores.

RoboCop blends science fiction and action, yet its also a buddy cop film, that genre so beloved of the 1980s. Think of 48 Hours (1982), Lethal Weapon (1987) or Tango and Cash (1989), where opposite pairs such as black/white, good/bad, funny/serious, compassionate/brutal or liberal/reactionary are essential to the plot. In RoboCop, these oppositions are shown through a police officer who in his double nature of man and automaton must face corrupt businessmen, psychopathic gangsters and a deadly, but clumsy, antagonist robot, and a motherly, rather sweet girl, The beauty in The Beauty and the Beast, according to Peter Weller, who plays Alex Murphy, our hero in a metallic shell.

Paul Verhoeven tried his luck in Hollywood with Flesh+Blood (1985) a medieval adventure charged with eroticism that came after The Fourth Man (drama/thriller, 1983), his last Dutch film. His tale of a robotic policeman is tinged with elements of auteur cinema, as there seems to be a personal trademark in the motifs hes exploited: urban and rather obscene violence, excess, decadence, and a tone of kitsch. The director commented that he wanted Murphy to have an extramarital affair with officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), but a puritan code mostly to be found in (American) science fiction stopped him from digressing in that direction.

In Flesh+Steel (2001), a documentary that shows the making of RoboCop, Verhoeven mentions intertextual connections which he drew upon as influences for the film, including Metropolis (1927) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). From Langs classic he took the futuristic, metropolitan architecture filled with skyscrapers in which the plot unfolds and from Wises admonitory film the design of the robot policeman, similar to the helmet and the visor that Gort, the alien guardian robot, wears. Additionally, in an interview published in Christine Corneas Science Fiction Cinema, Between Fantasy and Reality (2007), Verhoeven states that he had been studying comic books (he mentions specifically Judge Dredd) since his childhood, and that RoboCop owes much to that influence. He also connects his film with James Camerons Terminator, which he studied thoroughly before shooting RoboCop.

Like its successful predecessor Terminator (1984), RoboCop has elements of Christian theology. The director comments in the cited documentary that he wanted to show Satan killing Christ, although hes probably likening Jesus to the type of mythological hero that returns from the dead to avenge his killers, rather than to the Christ of orthodoxy that forgives his murderers. Murphy is trapped in a kind of hypostatic union between man and machine: his mortal frame, with memories and feelings that make him thus human, ends up being revived. In his role of incorruptible protector, but of mortal flesh, Alex Murphy dies to be resurrected, in this case by a greedy corporation and in the form of an android. Just as Jesus is part-God, part man, Murphy/Robocop is part-man, part-machine.

In RoboCop, theres still law and the officers in charge of enforcing it suffer as much as the rest of the working-class. Detroit, once the cradle of the auto industry in the United States, is now a dystopia plagued with crime and drugs. The RoboCop becomes a machine that rages against the machine in a recognisable age, of wild capitalism and vulgar upstarts and yuppies.

Ours is an era in which corporations dominate the political scene of the world, and in which minuscule pressure groups lobby such a first world concern! for social rights for cyborgs. Theres talk of Transhumanism, of post-humanism, of the obsolescence of the human body as weve known (and experienced) it for centuries. Considering the anticipatory function of speculative fiction (another name for sci-fi), it wouldnt be outrageous to conclude that our times are quite like those depicted in Verhoevens film.

For this, and for the way in which it satirises the world of business and media, RoboCop is a masterpiece that hasnt lost its force. Set up that dusty VCR and watch it again, even for the sake of nostalgia.

You wont be disappointed.

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Of robots and men - Buenos Aires Herald

Setting the record straight on ‘Setting the record straight on Martin Luther’ – Washington Post

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July 21 at 8:04 PM

While Donald L. Rosss July 8 Free for All letter, Setting the record straight on Martin Luther, was on the right track in concluding that Luthers Reformation is only partially responsible for giving birth to the modern Western world, heconflated Renaissance humanism and the Reformation with a third revolution he did not mention: the scientific revolution. That observation is cemented by Rosss belief that Isaac Newtons Principia Mathematica in 1687 inspired the Enlightenment more than anything else. To say Renaissance humanism had begun at least 150years earlier in Italy, Ross must be counting back from Luthers 95 Theses on that Wittenberg church door in 1517 to the mid-1300s, when Francesco Petrarch rediscovered the letters of Roman politician and philosopher Cicero. In fact, Petrarch was so taken with Cicero that he described the 900 years of cultural stagnation that preceded his own time asthe Dark Ages.

In the 1450s, the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type, marked the beginning of the printing revolution that spread information and learning to the masses and eventually played a key role in the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In 1605, the first modern newspaper was published in the Alsatian city of Strasbourg when Johann Carolus distributed a weekly journal in German by reporters from several Central European cities (giving rise to our use of the word press). The philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment came to dominate European ideas about individual liberty, progress, reason and religious tolerance in opposition to the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. But while the French like to place the Enlightenment between 1715, when King Louis XIV died, and 1789, when the French Revolution began, the case can easily be made that it actually started in the early 1600s, when the scientific revolution fostered questioning of orthodoxy both religious and scientific in favor of increased empiricism and scientific rigor. We all know what happened to astronomer Galileo in 1633 the Roman Inquisition confined him to house arrest for the rest of his life because he wouldnt agree that the sun circled the Earth. The scientific revolution and therefore the Enlightenment were well underway by the time Newton published Principia Mathematica.

George Diffenbaucher, Alexandria

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Setting the record straight on 'Setting the record straight on Martin Luther' - Washington Post

China internet censorship: WhatsApp crackdown only scratches the … – CNN

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Sina and Tencent, which own Weibo and WeChat respectively, did not respond to requests for comment.

While Liu's case is an outlier in terms of the intense efforts to wipe out all mention of the deceased activist, it is in keeping with trends in Chinese online censorship that have been building since Xi assumed power in 2012.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

This month saw new bricks added to the wall, as Beijing went after two means of bypassing its controls.

That would be an extreme step, as VPNs are also used by many companies to enable secure networking and file sharing between offices.

Previously Beijing has tolerated commercial services offered to foreigners to allow them to access banned sites like Facebook and Twitter while they're in China --international hotels in major Chinese cities have also been known to offer this service.

Lokman Tsui, an expert on censorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was "possible that some of the newer developments we have seen are experimental in nature, e.g. let's try and float this to see how well it works ... and see what public reaction we get."

Even if the VPN ban does not pan out, Tsui said, the direction things are going in is clear, and it's not positive.

It was one startlingly at odds with the free and open network expounded by the internet's inventors. In Xi's view, sovereignty, not freedom or communication or sharing, was the most important factor in online policy.

"Cyberspace is not a domain beyond the rule of law," Xi said. "Greater efforts should be made to strengthen ethical standards and promote civilized behavior."

Instead of the world wide web as we know it, countries would each maintain their own national internet, by force if necessary, with the border controls and immigration standards they see fit.

Peter Micek, general counsel for Access Now, which lobbies in favor of an open internet, said Chinese officials and technicians are increasingly working to water down protections for online freedoms at the United Nations and other bodies which oversee internet standards and governance.

"More and more Chinese engineers and engineers from Chinese companies are proposing and developing and adopting standards," he added.

Technical bodies like the International Telecommunication Union, the World Wide Web Consortium and others have huge influence on how the global internet operates, but sometimes with little transparency and limited democratic input.

"That's one place where quietly there is a more concerted effort (by China) to take control of what the internet actually is," Micek said.

China's efforts to influence global internet policy are largely designed to legitimize -- and prevent other countries from complaining about -- Beijing's existing controls on expression online, but they could have far-reaching consequences.

"A lot of governments would like to follow China's lead, and exercise if not complete control then effective control over the boundaries of what people can say and do online," Micek said.

Nor is the situation likely to improve anytime soon in China, said CUHK's Tsui.

"Other governments have definitely gotten worse at pushing back at Chinese censorship," he said, pointing to a push by the UK, US and others to water down encryption protections in the name of fighting terrorism.

"This allows China to say 'what we are doing is not so different'," he said. "Overall the trend is towards more censorship .. so the bar is getting lower, meaning it is easier for China to go even lower."

Back in China, controls are expected to ramp up even further as the country nears the all-important Communist Party Congress, the once every five years handover of power, at which the next Politburo Standing Committee, which runs the country, will be chosen. Some have suggested there may be a corresponding relaxation following the meeting, but experts CNN spoke to were skeptical.

Charlie Smith, co-founder of censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, said it was a mistake "to tie any crackdown on internet freedom in China to specific events or characters."

"Things started trending in the wrong direction when Xi Jinping took power," he said. "Regardless of what meetings are on the horizon, the authorities have been instructed to entirely control what people say, read, watch and hear on the internet."

Tsui said new trends like the WhatsApp block and crackdown on VPNs will either continue "or they are filing this knowledge away for future reference, to try again at some later date."

"The (Party Congress) is not the cure for the situation, it's not even a pain killer" Badiucao said. "I see no hope or willingness for the CCP to make a positive change."

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China internet censorship: WhatsApp crackdown only scratches the ... - CNN

BDS: Free-Speech Conservatives Oppose Senate Bill That Would … – National Review

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Sometimes in the course of our political life, someone proposes something so mind-bogglingly stupid that its hard to know exactly what to say about it. Senate Bill 720 is one of those things.

Over the past few years, a small but prominent movement has cropped up, using the age-old tactic of boycott to protest what it sees as Israels unjust occupation of territories that are assumed to belong rightfully to the Palestinians. Called BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) after the strategy it employs against the state of Israel and goods produced therein, it has acquired a certain notoriety on college campuses, not least for its uncomfortable associations with veritable anti-Semites.

Israels supporters in the Senate, justifiably seeing this as a problem, have come up with an innovative solution: Make participation in BDS or other boycotts of Israel a felony, punishable by enormous fines and up to two decades in prison. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act enjoys remarkable bipartisan support: Its not often you can get Ted Cruz and Ben Sasse to sign onto a measure alongside Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Its proponents number 43 in the Senate and 234 in the House.

The American Civil Liberties Union opposes it. This bill would impose civil and criminal punishment on individuals solely because of their political beliefs about Israel and its polices, the organization writes in a letter to senators. The thrust of itscriticism is simple. Many companies and individuals conduct no transactions with Israel, for lack of a need to; the bill would make illegal such an action only if it bears a political motivation. The bill therefore penalizes political beliefs and so is both unconstitutional and unconscionable.

This is correct, and we should be pleased that the ACLU has taken a break from mind-numbing Resistance-focused anti-Trump litigation and has rediscovered the meaning of the civil liberties so prominent in its name. This proposed legislation is indeed unconstitutional and unconscionable, an abridgment of the right to free speech, which is quasi-sacred in American life and enshrined in the founding document of our government. The senators who currently support it should be, quite frankly, ashamed of themselves; they have lost sight of one of the founding principles of American government, allowing it to be overshadowed by the spectral world of the IsraeliPalestinian dispute.

This condemnation will, I would hope, suffice for those on the Left whose first instinct, on hearing the news of the bills consideration, was to ask somewhat sardonically when the ostensible right-wing defenders of free speech would profess their opposition to the bill. Sean McElwee wrote on Twitter: I expect our valiant campus speech warriors will stay silent. From The New Republics Jeet Heer: Its interesting how silent free speech absolutists are when attack is not on campus but from Senate.

This point, now made rotelyon the left, is meant to insinuate that those on the center and Right who care deeply about the state of free speech on campus Conor Friedersdorf, Nicholas Christakis, Jonathan Chait, even some at National Review are in fact nothing but reactionaries dishonestly appropriating the free speech argument to keep the boots of the rich, white, and powerful stamped down upon the backs of leftist agitators.

This is, of course, total bunk. A significant number of prominent supporters of campus free speech have also expressed opposition to the Senate bill. Nicholas Christakis has; Jonathan Chait has; Yair Rosenberg has; Walter Olson has. The hypocrites whom those on the left desperately wish their opponents to be have not materialized; they are, by and large, a highly principled bunch.

Such is exactly how most debates over free speech have played out recently. Consider the case of Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at Essex County College who was fired after making controversial comments on Fox News. Leftists jumped on the apparent lack of outcry as prima facie proof of conservative hypocrisy on the subject: Conservatives care only when its one of their own facing opprobrium. One commentator wrote:

In contrast to other free speech-related controversies on college campuses, there has been almost no media coverage of Durdens ouster. That omission is part of a pattern: When wealthy, right-wing speakers encounter protest, the tendency among both right-wing and centrist writers is to scold snowflake students while dutifully preaching the virtues of diverse ideas in a college education, no matter how outr or dangerous those ideas may be. When marginalized faculty, often women of color, encounter professional censure, the same centrist writers say nothing. Once could almost conclude that the PC-run-amok and trigger warning controversies exist solely to reaffirm existing power dynamics. Its not really about free speech on campus at all.

And, yes, when it comes to Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos or Tomi Lahren, thats more or less correct; they really are distasteful hypocrites who care not one bit about free speech and who use the principle instead to advance their particular cause. They are of the new breed of conservatism that views its primary goal as melting special snowflakes and doesnt give much of a damn about anything beyond that. But we knew that already; weve always known theyre unprincipled actors seeking only to aggrandize themselves. Their silence on Lisa Durden tells us nothing new or interesting about their character. Their place in the intellectual debate over free speech is marginal in any case, and what really matters is not what they think but what the more rational, principled minds of the Right and center say. From them we might be able to glean whether the defense of free speech is something truly principled or is just a veil for contemptible beliefs.

From them we hear a near-universal condemnation of Durdens firing. Jonathan Haidt of Heterodox Academy, a centrist talisman for the free-speech cause, wrote that in 2017, its clear that the threat profile is now bipartisan. Jonathan Marks, a conservative, said, I am no fan of Lisa Durden....Yet it is precisely as an academic conservative that I must say, to coin a phrase, Im with her. Similar reactions could be found across the span, from right to center, of defenders of free speech. Again, the supposed hypocrites were not what they were presumed to be.

As goes the debate over free speech, so drifts the broader current in our public sphere. Over and over again, it seems, we care more about scoring partisan points in the eternal shouting chamber of Twitter than we do about achieving concrete change in the tangible conditions of everyday life. Rank partisanship has allowed us to rest quite content with having uncovered hypocrisy on the other side. This tactic is nothing but a cheap cop-out. We blissfully avoid all the difficulties of a serious debate that challenges our intellectual precepts. It is possibly the least edifying, most counterproductive way to run a civil society. It only heightens the tensions already latent in our partisan system. It distracts us from the content and merits of the issue at hand.

Ive focused on the Left so far, but I dont mean to suggest that this phenomenon occurs only there. Its prominent enough on the right as well publications like The Federalist specialize in a sort of Obama did it too! smarminess, always allowing them to the elide the actual issue at hand. Through this strategy, they decline to express an opinion on the content of the actual matter, instead directing their ire at the Left. This is a convenient way to avoid being trapped in the contradictions and convulsions of the Trump administration, but its a terrible way to run a public sphere in a democratic society.

What, then, is a reasonable path forward? Besides taking a Luddite approach to Twitter a remarkably poor platform for any sort of reasoned and constructive discussion, prone more to aggravation than to conciliation the world might be a substantially better place if we simply decided to step away from the partisan register in which we conduct our debates. Stop thinking about what the other side thinks, at least for a while. Start looking more critically, with a more penetrating eye, at what you and your side think. Otherwise the cycle of finger-pointing will do little but deepen, and our public sphere become all the more barren.

Noah Daponte-Smith is a student of modern history and politics at Yale University and an editorial intern at National Review.

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BDS: Free-Speech Conservatives Oppose Senate Bill That Would ... - National Review

Take that Milwaukee. Pokemon Go is protected free speech – CNET

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Do you think the creators of Pokemon Go should have to fill out a 10-page event-permit application each time you want to play the augmented reality game in a public park?

Neither does a Wisconsin district judge, who just pressed pause on a local ordinance that singled out AR games for particularly tough treatment.

Some three months after Candy Lab, the creator of a Pokemon Go-like game sued Milwaukee County over the local law, US district Judge J.P. Stadtmueller gave the company, and by extension the makers of other AR games, a temporary win.

In an order Thursday, Stadtmueller ruled AR games constitute free speech and thus any law affecting them would have to be narrowly tailored so as not to unreasonably harm companies or citizens and avoid falling afoul of the First Amendment. The county had been trying to control the games after parks were allegedly trampled by Pokemon Go players last year.

Here's the ordinance:

Permits required for location-based augmented reality games. Virtual and location-based augmented reality games are not permitted in Milwaukee County parks except in those areas designated with a permit for such use by the director of the department of parks, recreation, and culture (DPRC). Permits shall be required before any company may introduce a location-based augmented reality game into the parks, effective January 1, 2017. The permitting application process is further described on DPRC's website for companies that create and promote such games. That process shall include an internal review by the DPRC to determine the appropriateness of the application based on site selection, protection of rare flora and fauna, personal safety, and the intensity of game activities on park lands. Game activity shall only occur during standard park hours, unless otherwise authorized by the DPRC director, who has the authority to designate special events and activities within the parks outside of the standard operational hours.

The permit application also requires a $250 deposit and for the event sponsor to have $1 million worth of general liability insurance.

As it stands, the judge believes the law may be unconstitutional. So Milwaukee is now unable to enforce it, at least until the relevant lawsuit -- again, by Candy Lab, not Pokemon Go creator Niantic -- reaches its conclusion.

Representatives for Milwaukee County, Candy Lab and Niantic didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

You can read the judge's order below.

Candy Lab Wisconsin Preliminary Injunction Order Augmented Reality Games by CNET News on Scribd

via The Associated Press

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Take that Milwaukee. Pokemon Go is protected free speech - CNET

Censorship: It’s Always for Your Own Good – National Review

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Censorship is demeaning.

When the New York Times finds a professor of psychology to tell us that hold on to your seats words can actually hurt, and therefore certain speakers should be prohibited from campuses, it is arguing that the vulnerable students need protection from authorities on high.

When the U.K.s Advertising Standards Authority proposes to ban harmful traditional gender roles from all advertisements, it makes clear that it doesnt believe women can handle a depiction of a mother cleaning up after her family. Even if women are not bothered, they must be protected: They may not recognize harm because certain negative stereotypes are so normalised.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the aforementioned professor of psychology, demeans us with science. On Sunday, she wrote, If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech at least certain types of speech can be a form of violence. This allowed her to conclude that its reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school and that we should halt any speech that bullies and torments.

Barretts conclusion does not follow from her premises. As Jesse Singal notes in New York, the studies that Barrett cites are mostly about chronic stress, attributable to prolonged and sustained emotional neglect or verbal abuse during childhood. They has nothing to do with attending a college at which a loathsome person happens to be giving a speech that can be protested or simply ignored. Yiannopoulos, stupid as he is, is not going to physically damage your brain by speaking on your campus.

Barrett surely knows this, which is why she adds that Yiannopoulos is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. Therein lies her sleight-of-hand: On the one hand, he can be banned because his words are literally violent, but on the other, it is acknowledged that his words dont actually cause physical harm, but only contribute to the larger campaign of abuse that can be claimed, without any evidence, to have equivalent effects to sustained verbal abuse during childhood.

Barrett poses as a faithful interpreter of scientific evidence, determined to protect students from the words endangering their telomeres. But in reality, her argument would pave the path to the criminalization of unpopular speech. Violence is dangerous, after all, and it merits state violence to subdue and prevent it. By her logic, any controversial speaker could be grouped with a campaign of some sort and thus made into a contributor to something akin to physical violence in its effects.

Consider what the results would be of treating this argument seriously. Take Linda Sarsour. Among her other activities, she delights in claiming that Zionists have no place in the feminist movement. So whats stopping me from saying that, while not physically harmful in themselves, Sarsours bullying statements join a larger campaign of abuse against Jews, and therefore deeming her speech responsible for causing chronic stress? Should she on these grounds be prohibitedfrom criticizing Zionism?

In Britain, you can be arrested for speech, even if its only an offensive Facebook post. This is all for the safety of the public, of course. On Tuesday, Britains Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) published a new report, pushing Britain further into the free-speech abyss. The report presented an evidence-based case for stronger regulation of ads that feature stereotypical gender roles or characteristics which might be harmful to people.

The report will form the basis of new standards to be created for 2018 by the ASAs sister organization, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). Together, the ASA and CAP self-regulate the advertising industry, a power they have been granted by the British government. Advertisers cannot opt out of their advertising codes unless theyd like to face sanctions as severe as criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and confiscation of financial assets.

This means that, for example, ads that depict men as stereotypically inept at performing housework or women cleaning up after a mess they did not make themselves will be prohibited. Ella Smillie, the lead author of the ASA report, says she hopes to ensure that modern society is better represented. I would have no problem with that, but it is not what Smillie has recommended. She has sought to forbid the representation of anything but modern society, whatever that means. So just like that, Britain will essentially make it illegal to depict my father and mother in advertisements.

To depict a man struggling with an old vacuum cleaner while a woman succeeds with a newer product would supposedly restrict the choices, aspirations, and opportunities of children, young people and adults. But again, this has nothing to do with expanding womens range of choices. Rather, the new proposals aim to promote one choice and forbid the representation of another.

The ASA claims its report is backed by a major independent research study by GfK, the German market research firm. But if you care to read the report in full, you will find its evidence laughably sparse. Free speech and liberty to offend does not correspond with a right to cause harm, its authors assert, unaware of how broad a claim they have just made. On this logic, one could call for the banning of a million books and the suppression of a thousand columnists for causing harm.

But the report continues, As the evidence links the depiction and reinforcement of stereotypes to unequal outcomes and real-word harms for men and women, it could be argued that the right to offend does not apply. But just a few lines earlier, the authors state that the literature is not conclusive on the role advertising plays in constructing or reinforcing gender stereotypes. In any event, these harms are suspect, relying on value judgments about men and women that the British people never authorized their advertising regulators to make. And the report uncritically presents very controversial claims about them, including about so-called stereotype threat. This is the contested idea that people will perform more poorly when they feel at risk of conforming to a stereotype.

Of course the media can encourage conformity, and of course the British regulators pose as advocates of choice and liberation from conventions. They cast themselves as protectors of women everywhere, vulnerable to have their ambitions crushed by ads for home appliances. However, this is just a pose. In reality, the regulators only offer a different, more modern conformity, casting traditional practices as not only unjust, but bad for your health.

In suppressing free speech, the paternalistic censors in Britain and at the Times cannot claim to be on the side of freedom or the little guy. Long past destroying the old orthodoxies, they seek to create new ones. While claiming to watch out for your interests, they pursue social engineering.

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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Censorship: It's Always for Your Own Good - National Review

Commentary: Free speech far from free – Jacksonville Journal Courier

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There is a cartoon making the rounds on Facebook accompanied by comments announcing that Rick Friday, the cartoonist who drew the panel, had been fired by The Farm News, a Fort Dodge, Iowa, publication, after 21 years on the job.

The cartoon depicts two guys in bib overalls standing at a fence row. One of them says, I wish there was more profit in farming and the second guy says, There is. In the year 2015, the CEOs of Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer and John Deere combined made more money than 2,129 Iowa farmers.

Not exactly knee-slappingly funny, but apparently the companies named in the cartoon are also big advertisers with The Farm News.

The posting quotes the fired cartoonist as saying, When it comes to altering someones opinion or someones voice for the purpose of wealth, I have a problem with that. Its our constitutional right to free speech and our constitutional right to free press.

Although I can understand Fridays frustration at being let go, his objection that being fired is a violation of his constitutional rights of free speech and a free press shows a remarkable ignorance about those rights.

The First Amendment to the Constitution states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment says that the government cannot pass laws prohibiting cartoonists from making fun of companies, but with respect to its employees, The Farm News can and is completely within its rights to fire the cartoonist.

The First Amendment outlines a relationship between the government and the people, not between a publishing enterprise and its employees. The management of The Farm News has an obligation to its owners and employees to maintain the financial integrity of the company. When one employees behavior threatens the finances of the company, management may discipline or even terminate the employee without violating his freedom of speech and press rights.

The constitutional protections of speech and press freedom do not guarantee that people may express themselves any way they want. You cannot post on the company bulletin board a notice declaring that the boss is an imbecile and then expect to be protected from being disciplined or fired because of your First Amendment rights. There is nothing in the Constitution compelling companies to spend advertising money in a particular publication, nor is there any provision in the First Amendment that requires a particular company to employ someone.

The government may not constrain Friday from drawing and having his cartoons published, but his employers are within their rights to fire him without violating his First Amendment rights.

Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who refused to stand for the National Anthem last year, was completely within his rights not to stand. However, just like Kaepernicks relation with the NFL, Fridays dismissal from The Farm News is not a violation of his First Amendment rights.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from silencing individuals and the press in most cases, but it is silent on work arrangements voluntarily entered into between both employees and management.

The Farm News has since rehired Rick Friday.

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Jacksonville resident Jay Jamison writes each Friday for this page.

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Commentary: Free speech far from free - Jacksonville Journal Courier

Letter: Lesko shows disdain for citizens’ freedom of speech – Arizona Daily Star

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RE: AZ Star (7/18/17) - "Opponents of vouchers find funds..." In response to the possibility that groups opposing vouchers are successful in collecting enough signatures to get a petition regarding the vouchers on the 2018 election ballot, state representative Debbie Lesko has a strategy to defeat the voters. She stated that if the referendum drive succeeds and the issue goes to the ballot, the legislature could make changes prior to the election. She explained that that would effectively repeal the current legislation and eliminate a public vote. If the public didn't like the new plan they would have to start the referendum drive all over again.

Such thinking demonstrates a clear disdain for the public exercising its right to free speech through voting. Lesko introduced a large number of bills in an effort to further weaken public education and promote the use of public funds for for-profit schools.

Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.

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Letter: Lesko shows disdain for citizens' freedom of speech - Arizona Daily Star

"Will atheists admit that there is good reason to leave atheism and … – Patheos (blog)

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In another thread, Dave Armstrong, Catholic blogger here at Patheos, asked this:

Will atheists admit that there is good reason to leave atheism and adopt Christianity?

I find this an interesting question, and it can be split into two areas: the psychologicalreasons for leaving any belief system and the rational reasons. I will deal with the former and then the latter.

I would say that there can be good psychologicalreasons for leaving atheism for religion of any sort. But I would attach lots of caveats. This is person and context dependent. Atheism can be a tough sell for some people, and some find leaving the comfort blanket of eternal life, heaven and ultimate purpose (in a divine sense, not a personal sense) difficult to deal with. Religion, especially if they have once experienced this in some way earlier in life (perhaps),canoffer a psychological comfort to people in need of such. Religion, after all, is functional. It has developed over evolutionary history for a reason its not that it is some weird random hangover from our past it is functional. We (naturalists) rationalise its existence.

Of course, good reason here might perhaps need more closely defining, but certainly, I can see how some or many people might be powerfully psychologically attracted to religion. This is a truism, after all, since literally billions of people believe in religious worldviews, and these are (by and large in the population at large) for psychological reasons. But, you ask, are these psychological reasonsirrational or even a-rational? This might even be part of the definition of psychological in this particular context.

However, in order to give in to psychological persuasion, one must be pretty weak on the rational side of things.

And s we come to the other side. Rationality. I am, for obvious reasons (see my books, chapters, public talks and well over a thousand blog posts), very rationally comfortable in my position of (agnostic) atheism. Indeed, if I were to be someone who went through a torrid time (losing those close to me, getting a terminal illness, etc.), even if I was psychologically tempted with religion, my rational foundations for my atheistic beliefs are so solid that I severely doubt they would crumble.

Moreover, I am very self-reflective: there is always a meta-conversation going on behind the scenes. When I feel or believe or do something, I always reflect on why. I believe that I simply would never have a good reason to leave atheism. In order for me to do so, there would have to be new data. Really very good new data. Because as it stands, for me, I cannot see there possibly being a good reason to leave atheism.

For others, as mentioned, psychologically youcouldargue there might be a good reason, or at least powerful emotional reasons. But otherwise, no. And this is obvious. If I did think, after all, that there was a good reason to be Christian, I would be Christian.

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Trump Was Right: NATO Is Obsolete – Foreign Policy (blog)

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The much-discussed requirement that NATO members spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense is a crude measure, often misunderstood or criticized. But there are clear benefits to such a benchmark. It focuses attention on the need for adequate military spending especially important in democracies, where votes are typically to be found in tax cuts and social care, not tanks and soldiers pensions. It is a tool that builds unity, enhances NATOs capacity to act, including in humanitarian operations abroad, and is a deterrent, offering no encouragement to adventurism from Moscow or anywhere else.

But all tools can get rusty or outdated, and the existing 2 percent benchmark is a perfect example. Now that war is as much about hacking, subversion, espionage, and fake news as it is about tanks, the West needs a minimal baseline requirement for spending on hybrid defense: police services, counterintelligence services, and the like.

Much of this may sound as if it shouldnt be NATOs business; this is a military alliance, after all, and it should be no more responsible for parachuting forensic accountants in to check whether British banks are laundering dirty Russian cash than it should be hunting spies in the Balkans. But it should matter just as much to members of the alliance when their fellow members underspend on hybrid defense measures as it does when they underspend on the military. Given that NATO now recognizes cyberattacks as possible grounds for invoking Article 5, the alliances mutual defense clause, weak national cyberdefenses are a potential invitation to a wider conflict. More broadly, a failure to address nonkinetic defense undermines the solidarity and common confidence building at NATOs heart.

After all, NATO membership is a powerful but only partial guarantee. Take Montenegro for example (which spends about 1.3 percent of its GDP on defense). The latest country to join the NATO club, the tiny Balkan nation was welcomed under the alliance umbrella in early June, as part of an effort to push for further integration with the West and to secure greater NATO commitment to the Balkan region. Montenegro is now likely safe from overt Russian military action, but what about covert measures? Shortly after joining, the country came under serious cyberattack likely as a consequence of its new membership. The attacks came a few months after 20 Montenegrins and Serbians were arrested and, along with two Russians, charged with planning a coup. Montenegro claimed Moscow was behind the operation, and Russias ritual denials lacked conviction.

Had the coup succeeded, it would have left NATOs newest member in severe disarray, vulnerable to further political subversion. It would have been an ominous warning to the rest of the Balkans: Mess with Moscow, put your faith in the West, and who knows what kind of underhanded dangers youll face. And had Montenegro successfully been destabilized, the chaos likely would have encouraged yet more aggressive Russian adventurism and not just in the Balkans.

With the West, and Europe especially, engaged like it or not in a political war, we ought to pay as much attention to ensuring common minimal standards of hybrid defense as we do to outright military spending. My own preliminary investigation with an assist from Jakub Maco, a research assistant at the Institute of International Relations Prague indicates that spending on the sorts of things that constitute hybrid defense indeed varies widely across the alliance.

Graphic by C.K. Hickey.GDP figures are from Eurostat for 2016. Police figures are from Eurostat (2015) except for Albania, Spain and Turkey. Intelligence budget figures are from various sources, but comparable ones for Greece, Iceland, Italy and Luxembourg were not available. New member Montenegro was not included.

Policing, for example, contributes directly to hybrid security. Not only is organized crime sometimes an instrument of Russian covert activity, but a sense of public insecurity can be mobilized by malign propaganda to generate social tensions and support divisive extremist political agendas. A capable, well-trained, and resourced police force also provides the state with more scalable responses in times of crisis. Deploying soldiers against rioters, for example, is not just bad optics; it increases the risk of escalation. Yet the available data suggest that some countries take adequate funding for policing more seriously than others. While allowing for some discrepancies in the quality of this early and still partial information police spending is often hard to compare across countries because of the variety of local and national forces we still found significant variation. Police spending averages 0.93 percent of GDP, with ranges from Bulgarias and Greeces 1.4 percent to the 0.5 percent of Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Spain.

Security and counterintelligence services are also a critical aspect of hybrid defense. They are necessary to help monitor and close down foreign espionage and subversion operations and the secret black account funding used to support destabilizing groups and activities. When comparing spending here, the quality of data is again worth noting: Frances anomalously low security service figure and Romanias unexpectedly high one are likely artifacts of inconsistent definitions of what qualifies as a security agency. But its possible to draw a broad conclusion namely that such spending varies enormously across the continent. Counterintelligence and security spending among European countries averages 0.07 percent of GDP but (absent France and Romania) ranges from the United Kingdoms 0.15 percent down to Belgiums 0.01 percent. These disparities risk creating vulnerabilities for everyone. It is widely acknowledged, for example, that the Czech Republic (below average on counterintelligence spending) is a hub for Russian intelligence operations across Central Europe and NATO, and the EU headquarters in Belgium (lower yet) is a playground for Moscows spooks. One can certainly question the details here. This was a quick-and-dirty exploratory exercise, aimed less at providing answers than investigating whether there might be grounds for future, more serious analysis. But, nonetheless, it throws up interesting evidence of European priorities and concerns. Countries such as Bulgaria and Estonia, for example, which acknowledge a serious and sustained effort by Moscow to penetrate and subvert them, have above-average counterintelligence spending to match. However, others appear to be neglecting this element of their security, focusing perhaps too much on policing, the regular military, or neither.

Simply having a common benchmark for hybrid defense will inevitably improve the quality of the data. It will also force European countries to do something new to most of them: to consider the whole gamut of nonkinetic defensive measures available, from counterintelligence to media awareness, as part of a single, unified security concept.

So it is time to have this conversation. Nonkinetic security spending, just like defense budgets, buys protection on a variety of levels. It blocks malign foreign activities, provides wider ranges of capability and response, and acts as a deterrent. In an age of hybrid war, minimum common standards of hybrid defense are a must.

Photo credit:Getty Images/Foreign Policy illustration

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Trump Was Right: NATO Is Obsolete - Foreign Policy (blog)

Putting the North Atlantic Back on NATO’s Agenda – Carnegie Europe – Carnegie Europe

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NATOs political intent in the North Atlantic was clearly spelled out in the communiqu of the alliances July 2016 summit in Warsaw: In the North Atlantic, as elsewhere, the Alliance will be ready to deter and defend against any potential threats, including against sea lines of communication and maritime approaches of NATO territory. We will further strengthen our maritime posture and comprehensive situational awareness.

Now is the time to translate that intent into tangible action. The North Atlantic Ocean, a top strategic priority for NATO and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, has not been a major strategic concern for the alliance in the past two decades. But today, as Russia builds up its maritime capabilities and increases its naval activities in the area, there are reasons for NATO allies to be concerned. The alliance should take concrete and visible steps to enhance its focus on, and presence in, the North Atlantic.

For the Russians, the North Atlantic hasnt gone off the radar screen. Quite the contrary. Russias development of high-end maritime capabilities and its increased presence in the North Atlantic are reflections of the vital importance of this region for the Kremlin.

Russias 2014 military doctrine and 2015 maritime doctrine identified the North Atlantic and Arctic regions as being of prime interest, for two military-strategic reasons. The first is to protect Russias nuclear deterrent forces in the Barents Sea. To do so, Moscow is keen to exert control over and deny access to its Northern flankfrom both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific into the Arctic.

The second reason is to project power and fulfill Moscows global ambitions. The North Atlantic is Russias main maritime gateway to the rest of the worldnot least to the Mediterranean Sea, where in November 2016 Russia demonstratively sailed its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which had come all the way from Severomorsk in the Arctic.

Acknowledging the importance Russia attaches to the North Atlantic, and in light of the growing Russian naval posture in the region, the NATO allies are paying greater attention to current and potential future security developments in this maritime space. In recent years, Russia has demonstrated that it has the maritime capabilitiesnuclear, conventional, and nonconventional, including hybridto probe the allies and even challenge NATOs control of the high seas in the North Atlantic. Russian submarines operating close to the UKs submarine base in Scotland in early 2015 and skirting close to vital undersea communications cables are just some examples of Russias more assertive moves in this space.

Looking ahead, Russia may well be in a position where it could, in times of crisis, disrupt critical allied sea lines of communication in the North Atlantic that are needed to deploy and reinforce U.S. forces and supplies in Europe. The credibility of NATOs collective defense and Europes overall stability are at stake.

With this in mind, there are three important steps that the alliance could take to start restoring NATOs presence in the North Atlantic.

To begin with, NATO should conduct an ongoing political-military assessment of the maritime security dynamics in the North Atlantic. This assessment could be an opportunity to bring NATO partner countries Finland and Sweden, as well as the EU, to the table. A more inclusive discussion would help all stakeholders gain better maritime situational awareness in an area of common concern.

Second, allies should ensure that NATOs deterrence and defense posture, including its maritime posture, is adequately strengthened in the North, alongside the East and the South. In recent years, the alliance has largely focused on the Baltic and Black Sea regions, as well as on the Mediterranean. The North Atlanticthe backbone of transatlantic relationsequally deserves to be in the limelight. At the same time as NATO seeks to strengthen its maritime deterrence and defense posture, the alliance could extend its current dialogue with Russia on transparency and risk reduction in the maritime domain to the North Atlantic.

Third, NATO should recognize more visibly that its effectiveness as an alliance depends as much on maritime power as on land and air power. Over the years, NATOs maritime missions have received insufficient attention, and its maritime capabilities have shrunk. It is time to reverse this trend. Aside from updating the alliances maritime strategy (the latest version of which dates from 2011) and beefing up NATOs Maritime Command in Northwood, UK, as several experts have recently argued, the alliance needs a group of allies to lead a maritime initiative and a high-level champion of maritime issues embedded in NATOs headquarters in Brussels. Without a maritime push at a high political level, there is less chance for a discussion on maritime questions to go beyond the immediate operational approach that the alliance has taken in recent years.

All of the above is not to say that NATO is unprepared for potential military challenges at sea in the North Atlantic. Much work is already under way when it comes to strengthening NATOs deterrence and defense posture. Importantly, several NATO allies have the required capabilities, which could be used today, to deal with a resurgent Russia in this space. NATO allied military exercises in the area are another demonstration of NATOs preparedness. Trident Juncture, NATOs largest military exercise, which will be held in Norway in 2018, is a welcome opportunity to get all allied militaries to look North.

Threats in the North may be considered less imminent, but some are critical for the alliance and require NATO and allies to act now. In the words of former NATO supreme allied commander for Europe U.S. General Philip Breedlove, NATO must put the North Atlantic back on its agenda.

Claire Craanen works in the Strategic Analysis Capability at NATO Headquarters and is the secretary general of Women in International Security (WIIS) Brussels. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of NATO.

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