After a late Senate vote after midnight on Friday, the NSA is starting to take moves to shut down its bulk surveillance programs. With the legal foundation of those programs, the Patriot Act, set to expire at the end of the month, lawmakers have been working to agree on which parts of the mass surveillance systems should stay and which should go. The Senate failed to pass a replacement bill, the USA Freedom Act, and another measure proposed by Senate Majority Leader McConnell (R-KY) to extend the program as-is also did not pass.
"That process has begun."
In response to the news, officials said that the NSA would have to start taking action to prepare to shut down its bulk surveillance programs, like those that controversially collect...
Two things jumped out at me when I received this press release. Firstly the name, which comes out as a mouthful – it isn’t something you could casually mention in conversation, even if you worked closely with the motherboard. The second is the amount of DRAM slots, which is ultimately what the EP2C612D24 and EP2C612D24-4L are catering for.
The Haswell-EP/Xeon E5 v3 DDR4 memory controllers are designed for up to three DIMMs per channel, similarly to Ivy Bridge-EP (E5 v2) and Sandy Bridge-EP (E5), although in all cases it is usually reserved for more niche systems. With 16GB UDIMMs, this allows for a maximum of 384GB, although moving up to RDIMM, LRDIMMs or 64GB NVDIMMs pushes the max to 1.5TB in a dual socket motherboard. Only those with deep pockets, big budgets or stringent requirements need apply, as the major cost here will be the DRAM.
The motherboard uses a staggered processor arrangement with narrow ILM versions of the LGA2011-3 socket. Combined with the 24 DRAM slots means there is little room for anything else. We get three PCIe 3.0 x8 slots which are open ended, allowing for x16 sized cards to come in, although one slot will be limited to reduced width cards as some of the DRAM slots would encroach a super long co-processor. The ten onboard SATA ports are supported by an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and an onboard USB 3.0 Type-A port for in-chassis licensing dongles or Live-USB OSes. One downside to mention, according to the specifications for Haswell-EP, is that when fully populated, the memory should reduce down in speed, from 2133 to 1600 MHz.
Network connectivity is provided by an Intel i350 which gives four gigabit ports on the 4L model, but only two on the regular SKU, but we also get another network port for the AST2400 which provides IPMI 2.0 network management. ASRock Rack is targeting the usual suspects when it comes to large DRAM packages – intensive compute tasks, big data analysis, Hadoop and cloud computing.
Health care reform is a complex national issue that demands robust debate and creative solutions from the entire government, regardless of party affiliation.
But also: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) was attempting to summarize the GOP's position on King v. Burwell, a Supreme Court case relating to the Affordable Care Act, when he turned to the internet's best-known symbol of laissez-faire acceptance: the shruggie. "The Republicans' plan if King v. Burwell goes in favor of the plaintiffs is essentially a shrug of the shoulders," Murphy said on the Senate floor, in front of the shruggie.
The Boy Scouts of America on July 27 ended its ban on openly gay troop leaders. Of those present and voting, 79 percent of BSA's National Executive Board voted in favor of the resolution.
The board was challenged with reviewing the current adult leadership policy "denying membership to homosexuals." Their decision could impact how other education-focused organizations approach the matter. According to its website, BSA has about 2.5 million youth members and more than 960,000 volunteers.
BSA President Robert Gates signaled major changes to the organization's leadership policy in May, including the embrace of gay troop leaders nationwide. The BSA has been criticized in years past for its controversial policies on gay members. In 2013, the organization decided to allow gay scouts but maintained a ban on gay troop leaders on Scout councils.
Below are the sections of the May speech in which Gates discussed the complicated history of sexual orientation, marriage equality, and the BSA. The speech comprises the primary arguments Gates publicized leading up to the executive committee vote.
Gates reviewed state of sexual orientation discrimination laws as well as same-sex marriage laws in the United States:
Nor can we ignore the social, political and juridical changes taking place in our country – changes taking place at a pace over this past year no one anticipated.
He pointed out that states like Arkansas and Indiana are considering laws that review sexual orientation discrimination. He also noted that the Supreme Court review of same-sex marriage laws, which was legalized nationwide in June:
I remind you of the recent debates we have seen in places like Indiana and Arkansas over discrimination based on sexual orientation, not to mention the impending U.S. Supreme court decision this summer on gay marriage. I am not asking the national board for any action to change our current policy at this meeting.
Gates said that he would speak "plainly and bluntly" to BSA leadership in advocating to remove the ban against gay scout members:
But I must speak as plainly and bluntly to you as I spoke to presidents when I was director of CIA and secretary of defense. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
Between a reference to his own past and the reluctance of local chapters to reform, Gates argued the organization required change:
The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained.
The BSA would deny the "lifelong benefits of scouting" to potential members by revoking the charters of chapters who do not agree, he argued:
We can expect more councils to openly challenge the current policy. While technically we have the authority to revoke their charters, such an action would deny the lifelong benefits of scouting to hundreds of thousands of boys and young men today and vastly more in the future. I will not take that path.
Gates raised the examples of "dozens" of state reform efforts, including those in New York and Utah:
Moreover, dozens of states – from New York to Utah – are passing laws that protect employment rights on the basis of sexual orientation.
Gates, before shifting to closing remarks, acknowledged that the organization has "an unsustainable position":
Thus, between internal challenges and potential legal conflicts, the BSA finds itself in an unsustainable position. A position that makes us vulnerable to the possibility the courts simply will order us at some point to change our membership policy. We must all understand that this probably will happen sooner rather than later.
In closing remarks, Gates urged leaders to "seize control" of their own future.
He's also making a decent policy point about the policy stakes in the King v. Burwell litigation. The basic issue is that conservative activists have a lawsuit that, if successful, will strip millions of Americans of their Obamacare subsidies. Entire states' worth of health insurance exchanges will likely collapse, with dramatic consequences for people's lives. The Supreme Court could avoid this outcome by ruling for the government. And Congress could avoid this outcome by amending the Affordable Care Act. Democrats would embrace either of those ideas.
Republicans, by contrast, don't want to disagree with conservative activists about the litigation but also don't want to amend the law. Their basic stance is, for lack of a better word, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Sanders seems like a left-leaning Ron Paul. I'm not a fan of some of his social issues, but I might swallow it when looking at some of the republican candidates.
The media isn't taking Bernie Sanders seriously as a presidential candidate because he doesn't seem to have a realistic path to winning the nomination. But he does have a large and highly engaged fan presence on the internet, and his Tuesday question and answer session on Reddit was full of moments that illustrate why his fans love him so much. He is an utterly self-confident, utterly fearless exponent of liberal and social democratic ideals in a country where such notions are rarely shouted from the rooftops.
He's a politician who doesn't care about hitting his next quarterly fundraising numbers or what he can round up 60 votes for in the Senate. He's just here to speak the truth as he sees it. Here, excerpted from the Q&A, are 11 answers that exemplify why he's such a hero to online progressives.
1) Delivering tudent debt relief
sambogina: Is there funding in the [free college tuition] bill to alleviate the debt currently possessed by recent and past college graduates?
Bernie Sanders: Great question. Our legislation not only would make tuition free at public colleges and universities, it would also cut student debt in half. It is absurd that millions of college graduates today are carrying debts of $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 or more. Our legislation deals with the issue of student debt in a very significant way.
2) Ending the war on drugs
ynmidk: could you update us on your position regarding the war on drugs?
Bernie Sanders: Let me just say this -- the state of Vermont voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana and I support that. I have supported the use of medical marijuana. And when I was mayor of Burlington, in a city with a large population, I can tell you very few people were arrested for smoking marijuana. Our police had more important things to do.
Colorado has led the effort toward legalizing marijuana and I'm going to watch very closely to see the pluses and minuses of what they have done. I will have more to say about this issue within the coming months.
3) Curbing government surveillance
Gavinrara Fonara: Do you think that wiretapping of American citizens is necessary for security of America and Americans?
Bernie Sanders: I voted against the USA Patriot Act and voted against reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act. Obviously, terrorism is a serious threat to this country and we must do everything that we can to prevent attacks here and around the world. I believe strongly that we can protect our people without undermining our constitutional rights and I worry very very much about the huge attacks on privacy that we have seen in recent years -- both from the government and from the private sector. I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian society and this is something I will oppose as vigorously as I can.
4) Reforming a broken political system
denibir: what are your thoughts on electoral reform in the United States?
Bernie Sanders: The major issue in terms of our electoral system is truly campaign finance reform. Right now, we are at a moment in history where the Koch brothers and other billionaires are in the process of buying politicians and elections. We need to overturn Citizens United with a constitutional amendment. We need to pass disclosure legislation. We need to move toward public funding of elections. We also have got to see an increased federal role in the outrageous gerrymandering that Republican states have created and in voter suppression. These are the main issues that I'll be tackling in the coming months.
5) Helping regular people make a difference
carrol_quigly: what is the best way for us to influence our legislators?
Bernie Sanders: In terms of getting the attention of elected officials, writing letters and emails as well as phoning is very important. But, what is even more important is grassroots organizing. Putting together a meeting of 100 people about an issue and inviting that elected official to that meeting to hear comments would be a huge step forward in making politicians aware that you know what's going on and that you want your concerns addressed. I have done hundreds of town meetings as an elected official and urge citizens to organize them as fast as they can.
6) Staying out of new wars
Afrisker: What is your opinion about possible US ground military operation in the Middle East against ISIS or Bashar Asad in Syria?
Bernie Sanders: I voted against the war in Iraq and I voted against the first Gulf War. I am strongly opposed to sending American combat troops into Iraq and Syria. At the end of the day, the war against ISIS will only be won when the Muslim countries in the area fully engage and defeat ISIS and other groups that are distorting what Islam is supposed to be about. The United States and other western countries should be supportive of the efforts of those governments, but cannot lead them. The nightmare, which I believe a number of Republicans want to see, is perpetual warfare in the quagmire of the Middle East.
7) Future-proofing the economy
ImLivingAmongYou: What do you think will have to be done regarding massive unemployment due to automation permanently killing jobs with no fault on the people losing these jobs?
Bernie Sanders: Very important question. There is no question but that automation and robotics reduce the number of workers needed to produce products. On the other hand, there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done in this country. Our infrastructure is crumbling and we can create millions of decent-paying jobs rebuilding our roads, bridges, rail system, airports, levees, dams, etc. Further, we have enormous shortages in terms of highly-qualified pre-school educators and teachers. We need more doctors, nurses, dentists and medical personnel if we are going to provide high-quality care to all of our people. But, in direct response to the question, increased productivity should not punish the average worker, which is why we have to move toward universal health care, making higher education available to all, a social safety net which is strong and a tax system which is progressive.
8) Standing firm against nuclear power
plainplainplane: Could you give some opinions on emerging nuclear technology?
Bernie Sanders: I believe that climate change is perhaps the most significant planetary crisis that we face and we have got to be extremely bold in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and towards energy efficiency and sustainability. The fact is that investing in solar, wind, geothermal and energy efficiency is far more cost-effective than nuclear plants. Further, I do not support more nuclear power plants when we do not know how we get rid of the toxic waste from the ones that already exist.
9) Ending corporate control of the political system
littlenicky174: realistically what can be achieved when [corporate] interest are so intertwined with current political campaigns and current issues?
Bernie Sanders: Excellent questions. You are right. People in general and young people in particular are increasingly alienated and disillusioned with the political process. The middle class is disappearing, the rich get richer, young people cannot afford college, the crisis of climate change is ignored, and Congress continues on its merry way paying attention to the needs of billionaires and multinational corporations. The truth is that we are in a very difficult political moment. But despair of giving up is just not an option. I would not be doing what I am doing if I did not believe that this country could provide health care to all as a right; that we could lead the world in transforming our energy system and dealing with climate change; that we could make education affordable for all. My strong belief is that it is imperative that we maintain our vision of what American can be, and that we fight hard to make that happen. DO NOT GIVE UP.
10) Working toward a universal basic income
Stack0verfl10w: What is your stance on Universal Basic Income(UBI)?
Bernie Sanders: So long as you have Republicans in control of the House and the Senate, and so long as you have a Congress dominated by big money, I can guarantee you that the discussion about universal basic income is going to go nowhere in a hurry. But, if we can develop a strong grassroots movement which says that every man, woman and child in this country is entitled to a minimum standard of living -- is entitled to health care, is entitled to education, is entitled to housing -- then we can succeed. We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we've got to go forward in the fight to make that happen.
11) Emphasizing grassroots organizing
BEEPBOPIAMAROBOT: What, specifically, do you feel you can realistically accomplish in your first term as President that my age bracket can get excited about?
Bernie Sanders: The answer is that everything depends upon the kind of strong grassroots movement that we can develop. If we do not have tens of millions of people actively involved in the political process, there is very little that any president can do because of the power of big money over the political and economic process. So what I have said time and time again is that we need a political revolution in this country, which means that 80 percent. of the people vote, not 40 percent, and which means that people demand that Congress represent the middle class and working families of this country and not just the billionaire class.
One of the most important aspects of fine art macro photography is capturing a non-distracting background so your subject stands out. I tend to like clean and colorful backgrounds, but there are situations where dark backgrounds may be desirable. This article will showcase one method of how to capture black backgrounds in macro photography. We’ll take a look at using flash falloff.
Inverse Square Law
Flash falloff is a product of the inverse square law, which states that a “specified physical quantity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity.”
This law explains many phenomena but it’s particularly helpful for photographers in explaining why we get dark or black backgrounds when our subject is set apart from its background.
To explain in simpler terms, each time you double the distance your light travels, the power is reduced by two stops (or 75%). When using flash as your primary light source, the farther your subject is from the nearest background object, the darker the background will appear.
This happens because the flash output is so fast (and the shutter is generally open for a short enough amount of time) that the light from the flash doesn’t have time to reach the background, bounce back, and enter the camera before the shutter closes.
Using Flash Falloff for Black Backgrounds
Take a look at the photo of the damselfly below. You’ll notice that the background is mostly dark with a vertical green ribbon in the center. That vertical green ribbon is some sort of grass or plant that was nearer to the camera than the rest of the background. The light output from the flash was able to reach that plant material and bounce back to the camera by the time the shutter closed. The rest of the background is completely dark because there was nothing close enough for light to bounce off of in the short amount of time that the shutter was open. The damselfly in the foreground is close enough to the camera that the flash output completely illuminates (and freezes) the insect.
The photo of the water lily below is similar to the damselfly in that the flash output was able to reach the lily, but nothing in the background. The lily is nicely illuminated by natural light which really makes it stand apart from the dark background.
Using Flash Falloff to Your Advantage
The photo below of a longlegged fly is one of my favorite photographs. The metallic eyes and abdomen of the fly paired with the mysterious black background make this photo look like a painting. I love the effect that flash falloff produced.
You can achieve this same effect by setting your subjects apart from the background. Keep in mind, however, when it comes to nature photography, some people may feel like this effect is unnatural. Many people have asked if I digitally manipulated the photo to achieve this effect (other than a minimal crop, the photo is original). Others have asked if I took this shot at night.
The reality is, I took this photo in broad daylight in my backyard. The nearest background was actually my ugly yellow garage. Fortunately, the fly was set far enough away from the garage that the flash “fell off” before producing a hideous light yellow background.
About the author: Danae Wolfe is a macro nature photographer residing in Northeast Ohio. Her primary artistic interests include shooting candid insect and botanical portraits. She recently launched Chasing Bugs, a new blog for photographers interested in shooting macro photos of insects in their natural habitats. This article originally appeared here.
Not so, the American Chemical Society says. The secret, instead, is in the technique.
Making a traditional New York bagel requires two steps that are sometimes skipped: you have to keep the bagels somewhere cool for a while to deepen the flavors before baking, and you have to boil them before you bake them. In other words, you don't need New York tap water — you just need a good recipe. (I like this one.)
There's been a spate of inquiries into bagel science lately: Cooks Illustrated wrote in its latest issue that "the vast majority" of tasters couldn't taste the difference between bagels made with water from New York and bagels made with water from Brookline, Massachusetts. Coincidentally, over the weekend I tried it myself with tap water from New York and DC, and found the same result.
Taylor Swift's Grammy-winning single "Shake it Off" had an incredibly weird music video to begin with — notably featuring Swift "surfbort"-ing in Swan Lake get-up and improvising her own stilted impression of twerking. But her damn-near irresistible charm (and scientifically tested hooks) eventually won viewers (read: me) over. The fourth most-watched video of 2014 has, at time of publish, over 808 million views on VEVO.
Now the video has been redone with 2,767 rotoscoped frames that imagine Swift as a humanoid octopus one minute and Marilyn Monroe the next. Striking realistic visuals are intercut with abstract ones, a comic book strip lives comfortably next to what looks like one of the original iPod commercials, and in the end,...
To sort out the truth about the Illuminati, I consulted a variety of experts on the subject. Mark A. Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, sums up the group's long-lasting appeal. "It's absurd on its face that you've got this sacred group that's more than 300 years old and continue to see arguments about its relevance today," he says. "The fact that the discussion is alive is amazing."
The Illuminati wasn't always just some crazy chimera — it used to be a very real group with ambitious goals. And even though it doesn't exist anymore, the fact that many people still have paranoid beliefs about it reveals a lot about power, our culture — and, of course, what we think about Jay Z.
1) What are the Illuminati?
Universal History Archive/Getty Images
A drawing depicting the initiation of an Illuminati member.
In a historical sense, the term "Illuminati" refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society that operated for only a decade, from 1776 to 1785. This organization was founded by Adam Weishaupt, a German law professor who believed strongly in Enlightenment ideals, and his lluminatenorden sought to promote those ideals among elites. Weishaupt wanted to educate Illuminati members in reason, philanthropy, and other secular values so that they could influence political decisions when they came to power.
The Illuminati's goals — and reputation — often exceeded their means, Hodapp notes. In its early days, the group was just a handful of people. And even at its largest, it only consisted of somewhere between 650 and 2,500 members. The group grew to that size by becoming a sort of sleeper cell within other groups — Illuminati members joined Freemason lodges to recruit members for their own competing secret society.
A drawing of an owl from the 1780s, the short period of time the Illuminati was active.
There were two sides to the historical Illuminati: their odd rituals and their ideals.
The Illuminati did plenty of unusual things. They used symbols (like the owl), adopted pseudonyms to avoid identification, and had complicated hierarchies like Novice, Minerval, and Illuminated Minerval that divided the ranks. In the beginning, Hodapp says, Illuminati members didn't trust anyone over 30, because they were too set in their ways. Other reports of rituals are harder to confirm, but we know that members were very paranoid and used spy-like protocol to keep one another's identities secret.
But while they were following these bizarre rituals, they also promoted a worldview that reflected Enlightenment ideals like rational thought and self-rule. Anti-clerical and anti-royal, the Illuminati were closer to revolutionaries than world rulers, since they sought to infiltrate and upset powerful institutions like the monarchy.
3) Did the Illuminati manage to control the world?
Historians tend to think the Illuminati were only mildly successful — at best — in becoming influential. (Though, of course, there are also those who believe the Illuminati successfully took over the world — and still control it today. If an all-powerful group does dominate the world, we probably wouldn't know about it. Δ.)
It's also difficult to untangle the success of the Illuminati from that of the Freemasons, which they infiltrated and commingled with. It's just as tough to tell what influence the Illuminati actuallyhad as opposed to the influence people think they had.
We do know the Illuminati had some influential members — along with many dukes and other leaders who were powerful but are forgotten today, some sources think writer Johann Goethe was a member of the group (though other sources dispute the claim). In a way, Illuminati influence depends on what you believe about them. If you think their revolutionary idealsspread to other groups, like the French Revolution's Jacobins, then they were successful. If you think those ideas would have prospered regardless, then they were mainly a historical curiosity.
This is the duke of Bavaria, the guy who singlehandedly took down the Illuminati.
"They were wiped out," Hodapp says. "People have tried to revive them over the years, but it's a moneymaking scheme."
In 1785, Duke of Bavaria Karl Theodor banned secret societies, including the Illuminati, and instituted serious punishments for anyone who joined them. Most of the group's secrets were disclosed or published, and, if you believe most historians, the Illuminati disappeared.
From the moment of the disbanding, however, the myth expanded. As described in Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, documents found in the homes of high-ranking Illuminati members like Xavier von Zwack confirmed some of the spookiest Illuminati theories, like their dreams of world domination and cultish behavior (even though those documents may exaggerate the truth about the group).
5) If the Illuminati vanished, how did their legend live on?
In debunking the Illuminati, George Washington inadvertently promoted it.
Almost immediately after the Illuminati were disbanded, conspiracy theories about the group sprang up.
The most famous conspiracy theories were authored by physicist John Robison in 1797, who accused the Illuminati of infiltrating the Freemasons, and Abbe Augustin Barruel, whose 1797 history of the Jacobins promoted the theory that secret societies, including the Illuminati, were behind the French Revolution. Historians tend to see these as the first in a long line of conspiracy theories (though, again, for those who believe the Illuminati run the world today, this is arguably proof of the group's power).
Later on, some of the Founding Fathers managed to stoke interest in the Illuminati in the United States. In 1798, George Washington wrote a letter addressing the Illuminati threat (he believed it had been avoided, but his mentioning it helped bolster the myth). In the panic caused by the anti-Illuminati books and sermons, Thomas Jefferson was (baselessly) accused of being a member of the group.
Though these early Illuminati panics fizzled out, they gave the group a patina of legitimacy that, later on, would help make a centuries-long conspiracy seem more plausible.
The cryptic pyramid on the dollar ... but it's not about the Illuminati.
Conspiracy theories have always been popular in the United States, but for centuries, the Illuminati were less feared than the Freemasons. The 1828 Anti-Masonic Party was based on an opposition to the Freemasons, and though the party died out, Freemasons remained a focal point for paranoia in America. Because the Illuminati recruited many members in Europe through Freemason lodges, the two groups are often confused for each other.
To some degree, Freemason paranoia grew out of the Freemasons' influence in the United States. Many Founding Fathers were members, after all. And some key American symbols may have been derived from the Freemasons: There's a strong argument that the floating eye on the dollar, the Eye of Providence above a pyramid, comes from Freemasonry. (There's also an argument that it was meant as a Christian symbol; the only thing we know for certain is that it has nothing to do with the Bavarian Illuminati.)
That early Freemason paranoia can help us understand the conspiracy theories about the Illluminati today. "People will use a term like 'Illuminati' to define anything that they don't like that might challenge their values," says Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami and co-author of American Conspiracy Theorieswith Joseph Parent.
7) Why do people still believe in the Illuminati today?
The Illuminatus Trilogy, some of the books that set the tone for our modern idea of the Illuminati.
The Illuminati never completely disappeared from popular culture — it was always burbling in the background. But in the mid-1970s, the Illuminati made a marked comeback thanks to a literary trilogy that gave the group the simultaneously spooky and laughable image it holds today.
The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, depicted the Illuminati with ironic detachment. This trilogy became a countercultural touchstone, and its intermingling of real research — Weishaupt, the founder of the real Illuminati, is a character — with fantasy helped put the Illuminati back on the radar.
"It was a great example of the post-'60s ways of ironizing elite forms of power," Mark Fenster says. "That ironic vision of conspiracy theory is extremely widely distributed. You can be both a serious conspiracy theorist and joke about it."
From there, the Illuminati became a periodic staple of both popular culture — as in Dan Brown's massively popular novel Angels and Demons — and various subcultures, where the group is often intermingled with Satanism, alien myths, and other ideas that would have been totally foreign to the real Bavarian Illuminati.
Uscinski clarifies that most Americans today don't actually believe in the Illuminati. In a survey of conspiracy theories he conducted in 2012, he says zero people claimed that groups like Freemasons or Illuminati were controlling politics. Even so, the Illuminati seem to persist in our collective consciousness, serving as the butt of jokes and the source of lizard people rumors (explained here).
8) Are Jay Z, Kanye West, and other celebrities in the Illuminati?
Jay Z and Jamal Crawford make the Roc-a-Fella Records diamond (or, to conspiracy theorists, an Illuminati triangle).
We contacted Kanye West and Jay Z's spokesmen, but they did not return our request for comment. Jay Z has previously said that he thinks rumors of his membership in the Illuminati are "stupid." Kanye West has said it's "ridiculous." Of course, to conspiracy theorists, that's exactly what a member of the Illuminati would say.
In a broader sense, rumors about the Illuminati and celebrities speak to their place in our culture. Fenster sees the half-ironic, half-serious accusations of Illuminati membership as the latest expression of an old American phenomenon. "It marks that Jay Z and Beyoncé seem to live in a different universe than us," he says. "They have secret lives and secret access that seems reptilian. We notice how bizarre their lives seem to be and how powerful they seem to be."
Uscinski also notes the ties between power and conspiracy. "The thing that ties conspiracy theories together is that they always point at someone who is supposedly powerful," he says. "You never hear a conspiracy theory about the homeless guy in the street or a gang of poor children."
Both Fenster and Uscinski noted that conspiracy theories can, in many ways, represent genuine anxieties about social problems. In a global, media-driven world, celebrities represent a new and unusual form of power that has an appropriately conspiratorial response.
9) Will the Illuminati kill me for reading this article?
NFL owners just made a pretty rare and substantial change to one of the core aspects of the game. Starting this season, after scoring a touchdown, teams will kick extra points from the 15-yard-line.
Previously, extra points were kicked from the two-yard line. Now, teams will have to kick from farther out — or opt for a two-point conversion, which can still be done from the two-yard line.
How did the old system work?
In football, touchdowns are worth six points — to get the full seven, you have to kick an extra point afterward. Since 1912, this has been done from the two-yard-line, allowing for an extremely short kick that's pretty easy to make.
Since 1958, in college football, teams have also been allowed to try for two points, instead of one, by running or throwing the ball into the end zone. The NFL adopted the same rule in 1994.
So why is the NFL changing things?
The extra point has gotten too easy. Kickers have gotten extremely good over time: over the past four seasons, they've missed just 26 of 4,939 extra points. They've made at least 97 percent of extra points every season since 1988.
Partly as a result, teams rarely try for two-point conversions — they only attempted 59 in total last season, less than two per team.
From an entertainment perspective, such a predictable play is suboptimal. As Sports Illustrated's Peter King points out, combined with the commercial that follows the extra point and the kickoff, which is rarely returned (due to recent rule changes intended to make the sport safer), it means there's about 4 minutes of dead time after each touchdown.
So what will teams do now after a touchdown?
The league intends to force teams to make a difficult choice. They can kick an extra point from the 15-yard-line, or try for a two-point conversion from the two. (The same system was implemented as an experiment for part of last year's preseason.)
A kick from the 15 is actually a 33-yard field goal, because the end zone is ten yards deep, and the kicker usually kicks from eight yards behind the line of scrimmage.
This might actually get some teams to go for two on a regular basis. Over the past few years, kickers have made about 93 percent of kicks from this distance. Meanwhile, in 2014, teams scored on 47.5 percent of two-point conversions.
This means that, on average, you can expect to score very slightly more points going for two than one. The expected value, though, is extremely close, so coaches' decisions here will depend a lot on the game situation (how much they're winning or losing by), the success of their offense, the skill of their kicker, and other variables.
Is there anything else to know?
Yes. In the past, if a team missed an extra point or fumbled on two-point conversion, the play was immediately blown dead. Defensive teams couldn't score by running it back to the other end zone.
Now, if the offensive team fumbles, throws an interception, or misses the kick, the defense can try to run it back for two points themselves. This means we should see some pretty exciting 90-yard chases down the field this coming season — and it's something coaches will have to keep in the back of their minds when deciding whether to go for two.
Also, the new rule is only in place for this year. If it doesn't get enough teams to try for two, experts say the league could push extra points back even further in 2016.
Thousands of spiders "rained" on an Australian town this week. It's not literal rain, but sometimes spiders like to put their butts in the air and float on silken threads, and let the wind carry them to better places. This behavior is called "ballooning." When it's a large amount of spiders, it's colloquially referred to as "spider rain."
If you're worried about the chances of spider rain coming to a town near you, rest assured! There's a very small number of places where this will never happen.
Of course, there are many places where it could happen. The red areas encompass all the places where you are not safe:
Is there good news? Yes. Spiders do not like extremely cold weather. You could move to Antarctica to escape spiders — at least before the continent melts away.
Spiders avoid the coldest northernmost areas of Earth, too. For example, they will only follow you to the beaches of Iceland before you can escape them, or until about minus 7° Celsius, whichever comes first.
Your privacy is important, even if our concern for it is often misplaced . Nowhere is it more misplaced than the tech we use at work. When you use office computers, phones, or other gear, you shouldn’t expect privacy. And yet, so many still do. Here’s why it doesn’t make sense, and what you can actually do if you want to have an off the record conversation.
It's a first world solution to a first world problem: a super-thin, rechargeable Bluetooth keyboard that arrives with your tray of fast food, connects to your smartphone, and lets you text with sticky fingers without messing up your screen. The KFC Tray Typer — part of an advertising campaign for the fast food chain in Germany — is a high-tech replacement for the usual grease-absorbing paper slip that's served up on fast food trays. Presumably, it's durable enough to get wiped down and re-used — although the advert's creator, Serviceplan, claims the smart paper trays were so popular when handed out during the opening week of new restaurants that "every single one ... was taken home."
This is the dumbest thing ever. Sure Fury Road has a strong woman who takes matters in her own hands, but she wouldn't have got far without the male protagonist. These "Men's Rights" activists clearly didn't see the same movie I saw.
ideonexus writes: Aaron Clarey, author of the blog Return of Kings and prominent figure in the Men's Rights Movement, is calling for a boycott of George Miller's new edition to the Mad Max franchise "Mad Max: Fury Road," calling the film a "Trojan Horse feminists and Hollywood leftists will use to (vainly) insist on the trope women are equal to men in all things..." and citing the fact that "Vagina Monologues" author Eve Ensler was brought in to coach the actresses on playing sex slaves who escape a warlord's possession. Critics have been applauding the film, which currently scores 98% on RottenTomatoes.
Economics can help explain all sorts of things in life, from what we eat to our choice of romantic partners to where we live. To encourage my Cornell students to consider how economics applies to their everyday lives, I challenge them to "pose an interesting question based on something you've seen or experienced personally, and then use basic economic principles to craft a plausible answer to it." I call it the Economic Naturalist writing assignment.
In my first installment in this series, I described some of my students' most interesting responses to this assignment. For this installment, I'll share one more from a 2007 collection of my all-time favorites and two new ones submitted this year. In future pieces, I'll describe more examples from the past and also respond to questions that you submit. You can send me questions via Twitter (@econnaturalist) or email (voxcrowdsource@vox.com).
Why are child safety seats required in cars but not in airplanes? –Greg Balet
Greg began with the observation that government regulations require strapping your toddler into a safety seat for even a two-block drive to the grocery store, yet permit your child to sit on your lap untethered when you fly from Miami to Seattle. Why this difference?
The cost of using a safety seat is much lower in cars than on a full flight. (Mick Stevens)
Many people are quick to respond that if a plane crashes, all passengers usually perish, whether they're strapped in or not. It's true, but then why were seat belts required in airplanes long before they were required in cars? The answer is that being tethered is actually far more important in airplanes than in cars, because severe air turbulence happens far more frequently than serious auto accidents. But then why do regulators permit toddlers to fly untethered?
Using standard cost-benefit reasoning, Greg argued that the real reason for the difference in regulations is rooted in the cost side of the equation rather than the benefit side. Once you have a safety seat set up in your car, there is no additional charge for strapping your child into it. Since the marginal cost is zero and the marginal benefit is improved safety for your child, strapping your child in while traveling in your car makes perfect economic sense.
But if you're flying across the country on a full flight, you must buy an extra ticket in order to put your child in a safety seat. And that might cost you $1,000 or more.
Some people object that taking monetary costs into account is improper when dealing with issues of life and safety. By that logic, however, people should get the brakes checked on their cars each time they go anywhere. Like it or not, costs matter, even for decisions involving safety.
Why do Nigerian email scammers still use the same tired cover stories? –Erin Popelka
Shortly after Erin moved to Nigeria several years ago, her PayPal account stopped working. When she reported the problem to customer service, she was told that the company blocks accounts on Nigerian IP addresses because of the ubiquitous "Nigerian prince" or "419" email scams. In these scams, someone posing as a former member of the Nigerian royal family promises to send millions of dollars to the email recipient in exchange for a relatively small investment that is urgently needed to release those millions from some sort of legal purgatory.
Since she had received those same emails while living in the US more than 15 years earlier, Erin was shocked to see that scammers were still using the same tired story lines. Why, she wondered, weren't enterprising young cybercriminals able to come up with more convincing cover stories?
On reflection, she realized that the scams are actually more likely to succeed the less convincing their narratives are. In order for the target of a scam to cooperate, she wrote, he must believe that the value of a stranger's promise of a fortune is greater than the thousands of dollars he is being asked to front. This requires an extremely naive buyer who is just greedy enough to forget that there's no such thing as a free lunch. How do scammers find these people? They are careful to use storylines that are unconvincing enough to weed out anyone too savvy to be scammed.
The Nigerian prince stories fit this requirement perfectly. Only an inordinately gullible person could entertain even the possibility that they might be true. Erin went on to note that Nigeria has become so closely associated with this specific type of email scam that fraudsters from all over the world actually claim to be writing from Nigeria in their emails. They know full well that once a normal person sees a Nigerian prince email, it will go immediately into the trash folder.
So as awareness of the Nigerian prince scams diffuses throughout the population, the same unconvincing storyline actually becomes a more effective tool for weeding out unprofitable targets, enabling scammers to focus their efforts on those naive or uninformed enough to consider the requests seriously.
Why do older cars in Japan so often travel in packs? –Erin Popelka
"When I lived in Japan," she wrote, "I noticed that most of the cars on the road were very new, even in relatively low-income areas. The one exception was that once in a while something like a 1995 Toyota Corolla would drive by ... followed by 10 to 12 other Toyota Corollas from the same year."
To explain why such caravans were a common sight, she invoked "shaken," Japan's mandatory vehicle inspection program. Under this program, every car must go through a comprehensive re-certification process every two years. The inspection fee, administrative fee, and relevant repair costs total about $2,000 for newer vehicles, an amount that usually escalates sharply as cars get older. So long before cars are 20 years old, the cost of re-certifying them exceeds their value, and at that point they are usually scrapped or exported. Erin's conclusion:
The only logical reason to continue driving your 1995 Corolla past this stage is if you are emotionally attached and really, really love driving that car. So, if you chose to continue driving that 1995 Corolla, it's no longer a mere preference, it is a full blown passion. And when you have a passion, it's only natural to seek out other people who share it. So, what do you do? You put together a 1995 Corolla Enthusiasts Club. And what do you do at club meetings? You put together a convoy and drive through the countryside in your 1995 Toyota Corollas!
Keep your eyes peeled and you'll notice many product design features and behavioral patterns that pique your curiosity. Basic economic principles can help explain many of them. If you have a question about economics and the world around you, please contact me on Twitter (@econnaturalist) or email (voxcrowdsource@vox.com), and I'll try to answer it in an upcoming column.
An anonymous reader writes: As Microsoft prepares for the launch of Windows 10, review sites have been performing all sorts of benchmarks on the tech preview to evaluate how well the operating system will run. But now a computer science student named Alex King has made the most logical performance evaluation of all: testing Windows 10's performance on a 2015 MacBook. He says, "Here's the real kicker: it's fast. It's smooth. It renders at 60FPS unless you have a lot going on. It's unequivocally better than performance on OS X, further leading me to believe that Apple really needs to overhaul how animations are done. Even when I turn Transparency off in OS X, Mission Control isn't completely smooth. Here, even after some Aero Glass transparency has been added in, everything is smooth. It's remarkable, and it makes me believe in the 12-inch MacBook more than ever before. So maybe it's ironic that in some regards, the new MacBook runs Windows 10 (a prerelease version, at that) better than it runs OS X."
An anonymous reader writes: Jeff Venancio has done some research that's perfect reading for a lazy Saturday afternoon: figuring out a coherent taxonomy for sci-fi spaceships. If you're a sci-fi fan, you've doubtless heard or read references to a particular starship's "class" fairly often. There are flagships and capital ships, cruisers and corvettes, battleships and destroyers. But what does that all mean? Well, there's not always consistency, but a lot of it comes from Earth's naval history. "The word 'corvette' comes from the Dutch word corf, which means 'small ship,' and indeed corvettes are historically the smallest class of rated warship (a rating system used by the British Royal Navy in the sailing age, basically referring to the amount of men/guns on the vessel and its relative size; corvettes were of the sixth and smallest rate). ... They were usually used for escorting convoys and patrolling waters, especially in places where larger ships would be unnecessary." Venancio takes the historical context for each ship type and then explains how it's been adapted for a sci-context. "Corvettes might be outfitted to have some sort of stealth or cloaking system for reconnaissance or spec ops missions; naturally it would be easier to cloak a smaller ship than a larger one (though plenty of examples of large stealth ships exist). In some series they are likely to be diplomatic vessels due to their small size and speed, particularly seen in Star Wars, and can commonly act as blockade runners (again; their small size and speed makes them ideal for slipping through a blockade, where a larger ship presents more of a target)."
angry tapir writes: MenuetOS, a GUI-toting, x86-based operating system written entirely in assembly language that's super-fast and can fit on a floppy disk, has hit version 1.0 — after almost a decade and a half of development. (And yes, it can run Doom). The developers say it's stable on all hardware with which they've tested it. In this article, they talk about what MenuetOS can do, and what they plan for the future. "For version 2.0 we'll mostly keep improving different application classes, which are already present in 1.00. For example, more options for configuring the GUI and improving the HTTP client. The kernel is already working well, so now we have more time to focus on driver and application side."
With Instant Articles, Facebook has not only done a 180 from
what Mark Zuckerberg has called the company’s biggest
mistake,
they’ve now done another lap just to prove a point. Not only
is the web not fast enough for apps, it’s not fast enough for
text either.
And you know what, they’re right.
Such a stance will be considered blasphemy in some circles. But it
doesn’t change the very real and very obvious truth: on mobile,
the web browser just isn’t cutting it.
And:
Speaking of that “end,” it’s important to note that Facebook is,
of course, still powered by that very same web. What it’s no
longer powered by is a web browser. That’s very different.
I’ve been making this point for years, but it remains highly controversial. HTML/CSS/JavaScript rendered in a web browser — that part of the web has peaked. Running servers and client apps that speak HTTP(S) — that part of the web continues to grow and thrive.
I like the idea of this, but I imagine it'll be used by idiots to yell at me when I'm just doing a zipper merge.
Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is one of the next big sea changes to hit the auto industry — within a few years, every new car on the road will be wirelessly talking with every other new car on the road, delivering position and speed information that can help prevent accidents. NHTSA had already committed to delivering a set of proposed rules for V2V by next year, but USDOT secretary Anthony Foxx doesn't think that's fast enough: he's asked the agency to "accelerate the timetable" in comments made this week. Additionally, he says that he's gearing up for "rapid testing" in concert with the FCC to make sure that there are no radio interference issues with V2V systems. (Various industry groups have been concerned that efforts to e...
Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" was the first music video with which I fell in love. I fell hard. My parents bought me that goofy hat and some fresh sneakers, and then I rearranged the furniture in my neighbor's basement so I could recreate the moment Jay Kay narrowly, but confidently skitters past the gliding sofa (video below). We didn't have a special effect budget so Alex, my best friend, had to manually push the couch — naturally.
I loved that video so much that I kept buying Jamiroquai albums for years, even though I couldn't tell if I actually enjoyed the band's modern-funk vibe. This was 1996. I was 11. I couldn't be sure of anything. So I saved my money, and blew it all on a copy of Canned Heat and a Sony Discman.
In the past week, quite a few media outlets have posted articles claiming that SSDs will lose data in a matter of days if left unpowered. While there is some (read: very, very little) truth to that, it has created a lot of chatter and confusion in forums and even I have received a few questions about the validity of the claims, so rather than responding to individual emails/tweets from people who want to know more, I thought I would explain the matter in depth to everyone at once.
First of all, the presentation everyone is talking about can be found here. Unlike some sites reported, it's not a presentation from Seagate -- it's an official JEDEC presentation from Alvin Cox, the Chairman of JC-64.8 subcommittee (i.e. SSD committee) at the time, meaning that it's supposed to act as an objective source of information for all SSD vendors. It is, however, correct that Mr. Cox works as a Senior Staff Engineer at Seagate, but that is irrelevant because the whole purpose of JEDEC is to bring manufacturers together to develop open standards. The committee members and chairmen are all working for some company and currently the JC-64.8 subcommittee is lead by Frank Chu from HGST.
Before we go into the actual data retention topic, let's outline the situation by focusing on the conditions that must be met when the manufacturer is determining the endurance rating for an SSD. First off, the drive must maintain its capacity, meaning that it cannot retire so many blocks that the user capacity would decrease. Secondly, the drive must meet the required UBER (number of data errors per number of bits read) spec as well as be within the functional failure requirement. Finally, the drive must retain data without power for a set amount of time to meet the JEDEC spec. Note that all these must be conditions must be met when the maximum number of data has been written i.e. if a drive is rated at 100TB, it must meet these specs after 100TB of writes.
The table above summarizes the requirements for both client and enterprise SSDs. As we can see, the data retention requirement for a client SSD is one-year at 30°C, which is above typical room temperature. The retention does depend on the temperature, so let's take a closer look of how the retention scales with temperature.
EDIT: Note that the data in the table above is based on material sent by Intel, not Seagate.
At 40°C active and 30°C power off temperature, a client SSD is set to retain data for 52 weeks i.e. one year. As the table shows, the data retention is proportional to active temperature and inversely proportional to power off temperature, meaning that a higher power off temperature will result in decreased retention. In a worst case scenario where the active temperature is only 25-30°C and power off is 55°C, the data retention can be as short as one week, which is what many sites have touted with their "data loss in matter of days" claims. Yes, it can technically happen, but not in typical client environment.
In reality power off temperature of 55°C is not realistic at all for a client user because the drive will most likely be stored somewhere in the house (closet, basement, garage etc.) in room temperature, which tends to be below 30°C. Active temperature, on the other hand, is usually at least 40°C because the drive and other components in the system generate heat that puts the temperature over room temperature.
As always, there is a technical explanation to the data retention scaling. The conductivity of a semiconductor scales with temperature, which is bad news for NAND because when it's unpowered the electrons are not supposed to move as that would change the charge of the cell. In other words, as the temperature increases, the electrons escape the floating gate faster that ultimately changes the voltage state of the cell and renders data unreadable (i.e. the drive no longer retains data).
For active use the temperature has the opposite effect. Because higher temperature makes the silicon more conductive, the flow of current is higher during program/erase operation and causes less stress on the tunnel oxide, improving the endurance of the cell because endurance is practically limited by tunnel oxide's ability to hold the electrons inside the floating gate.
All in all, there is absolutely zero reason to worry about SSD data retention in typical client environment. Remember that the figures presented here are for a drive that has already passed its endurance rating, so for new drives the data retention is considerably higher, typically over ten years for MLC NAND based SSDs. If you buy a drive today and stash it away, the drive itself will become totally obsolete quicker than it will lose its data. Besides, given the cost of SSDs, it's not cost efficient to use them for cold storage anyway, so if you're looking to archive data I would recommend going with hard drives for cost reasons alone.
Truth Facts posted this simple tongue-in-cheek infographic showing how smartphone cameras have impacted the way people take and view photos. It’s a then-and-now comparison of three simple measures: pictures taken, pictures developed, and pictures looked at.
Instead of snapping and cherishing a precious handful of photos, people are now amassing troves of digital images that they may never lay eyes on ever again.
For years, hardcore cartoon fans have been publishing evidence that Disney "reused" animations in its classic films. This video is the first of its kind that I've seen use Disney's new high-definition remasters as its source. Reused or not, the animations look stunning.
Because this is the internet, I imagine there's some community that finds the company plagiarizing itself is a controversy. But when I watch this video I'm reminded of the incredible quality of the work. It's hard to believe Snow White, with its crisp lines and bold color, was released in 1937. And while Walt Disney didn't love the Xerox animation process, which has a more rugged appearance, Robin Hood still looks like it could be released today.
I mean, the headline says it all really. This is a website you go to and type something in and then that something gets turned into a drum beat. You can literally stick any words you like into it — famous words, rude words, long words, made-up words, you get the idea. The whole project is the creation of developer Kyle Stetz and follows in a long line of musical-keyboard-procrastination tools. (See also Daft Punk keyboard and Patatap.) You'd be mad not to at least type your name in.
Longer sentences turn into weird, meandering breakbeats
Unfortunately, most longish sentences end up getting turned into weird, triphop-style breakdowns that meander and go nowhere, but if you use short words that repeat letters (e.g. "lollipop") you can...
History is supposed to be classy: there's a reason antiques are so expensive. The past is as quiet and cool to the touch as a marble statue, while the present is loud and slightly sticky.
But the truth is that just like today, the world never had good taste. Yes, tackiness is subjective, but these examples show that everybody in the past — including the elites — were occasionally trashy.
1) Greeks slapped paint on their marble sculptures
It turns out the pinnacle of civilization was pretty tacky. This is a reconstruction of what a Greek sculpture probably looked like.
We imagine Greek sculpture as we see it today: perfect marble bodies, blemished only by time. But what most people don't realize is that in their own day, these statues were covered in tacky paint.
As Smithsonian magazine reported in depth, researchers have used ultraviolet light and microscopic examination to uncover the original colors of Greek statues, and they believe they were very bright (and very tacky). In the exhibition "Gods in Color," archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann has made it his mission to restore the full color versions of ancient statues. And they are definitely ... bright.
In addition, color had the artistic benefit of helping distinguish shapes and different figures more easily (which was important if you had a bunch of sculptures in a row). From textual evidence, like contemporary poetry, we know the Greeks believed wiping the paint from a statue was akin to defacing it.
Coincidentally, it's the garish nature of the painted statues that led scholars to ignore color for so long. Scholars began to develop a belief that the "ideal" statue was unpainted, and that led some to overlook textual and physical evidence of paint. Though there have long been pockets of scholars who believed in painted sculptures, technology since the 1980s has helped it become more universally embraced. It took so long because preconceptions made it harder to break away and realize the truth: the Greeks were tacky.
2) There were so many wallpaper murals — including in Andrew Jackson's house
Wallpaper doesn't have to be tacky, but when it's a mural depicting ancient Greece, the word "tasteful" does not apply.
At the Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's Nashville estate, the walls are still covered in a version of the Telemachus wallpaper he bought in 1836. They depict the journey of Telemachus as he searched for his father, Ulysses, which means Jackson and his family spent all day staring at various pictures of Greek people.
The wallpaper was designed by a French firm and cost about $40 a set (not cheap for the time, but also not a one-of-a-kind masterpiece). Thanks to the multiple sets of Telemachus wallpaper displayed in the mansion, everyone who entered the home got to stare at people wearing togas.
The French were the only craftsmen able to make these sophisticated panoramas, and that kept them in high demand. Other popular (tasteless) wallpapers included "Adventures of China," "Indian Hunts," and "Savages of the Pacific Ocean." Takeaway point: from the 1800s on, rich people were gluing giant pictures to their wall (and they were pictures that we'd probably call racist today).
Over time, the wallpaper only got tackier: one traveler reported that in hotels and dining rooms across the country, bored patrons enjoyed drawing tiny speech bubbles next to the people's heads.
3) The Washington Monument is topped with Reynolds Wrap
At the very top, you can see the capstone to the Washington Monument — basically a bunch of Hershey's Kisses wrappers.
The Washington Monument was dedicated in February 1885, and it had what was then a rare and exotic metal at the top: aluminum.
At the time, putting aluminum on top of a national monument seemed fitting, rather than being the equivalent of wrapping up a monument like a leftover sandwich. George J. Binczewski wrote why in his history of the monument's unusual top: the original intention was to create a lightning rod from copper, bronze, brass, or platinum plating, but aluminum was ultimately chosen because of its color and stain-resistant qualities.
Photographer Theodor Horydczak checks out the "precious" metal.
At the time, aluminum was considered a precious metal. That's because the Hail-Heroult process, which made aluminum easy to mass-produce, hadn't been invented yet. In 1884, aluminum cost $1 an ounce — the same price as silver, even though there was more aluminum than silver around. The aluminum pyramid cost $256.10 to make, despite being less than a foot tall (that would be about $6,600 today).
The precious nature of aluminum wasn't necessarily the reason it was chosen to top the Washington Monument, but it didn't hurt, either. Contemporaneous reports characterized it as an extremely classy metal. As late as 1911, the New York Tribune called it "silver from clay." Today, of course, getting a roll of "silver from clay" wrap will cost you about $2.99.
4) The English decorated with ornamental hermits — who were real people
A drawing of an ornamental hermit from the 18th century.
Imagine the tackiness of a pink flamingo on your lawn. Now imagine if that flamingo were a person in costume.
Gordon Campbell wrote about these hermits in The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome. It's about what it sounds like: in the 18th century, rich English people housed or hired other people to dress like druids and live in constructed "hermitages" on their property. It was an easy way to be entertained: Campbell describes how in 1784 a hermitage let you ring a bell and go inside to look at the delightful hermit.
People kept hermits in their yards to demonstrate that they were contemplative people. To heighten the illusion, the hermits often grew out their beards and hair so they looked even more like druids.
If you couldn't afford a real (fake) hermit for your lawn, a stuffed one was considered an acceptable replacement. Though living garden hermits went out of vogue around the end of the 18th century, they were replaced by the slightly less tacky garden gnome and hermit statues that you still might see around today.
Paste, glass, and quartz from the 16th century. Later, fake jewelry became even more common.
You could reasonably say that fake jewelry is not tacky but prudent. But there's still something a little gauche about the massive fake jewels many elites wore in the 18th century.
During that time, something called "paste jewelry" became prominent thanks to jeweler Georges Frédéric Strass, who also discovered the rhinestone (so named because he found them in the Rhine river).
Paste jewels were polished leaded glass that, with a lot of time and effort, ended up looking something like true gems. In another indicator of their classiness, the "paste" name might come from the jewels being soft, like pasta.
Fans of paste jewelry (like those interviewed here) would say it's an art form of its own that's much more than a mere imitation of real jewels.
Those connoisseurs still argue that paste jewelry is better than the stuff you'd find at Claire's. But the fact remains that rather than go without jewelry at all, the elites of the 1700s chose to wear fake baubles to impress people at parties.
Those who forget the tacky past are doomed to repeat it
All this tackiness isn't a reason to judge the past. Instead, it's better taken as proof that what we once viewed as classy can quickly pass out of favor. In the same way, what's classy today will be the kitsch of tomorrow.
Just as we realized it wasn't awesome to have a hermit living in your home, soon we'll reach that golden day when people realize that crazily patterned Lululemon leggings are tacky, too — after all, don't they look like something that might be painted on a Greek sculpture?
One of the most common objections to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to complete in the next few months, is its lack of rules against currency manipulation.
Critics such as Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) charge that for more than a decade, Japan and China have been stockpiling dollars in an effort to artificially reduce the value of their currencies. That allegedly gives them an unfair advantage in international markets. These members of Congress want to add rules to the TPP (which doesn't include China but includes Japan and could set a precedent for future trade deals) to stop countries from depressing the value of their currencies.
This argument ignores an important fact: a cheaper yuan is mostly good for American consumers. It means American consumers get bargains on every Chinese-made product they buy, from electronics to clothing. And most of the time, our central bank should be able to offset the harmful effects of currency manipulation.
But many economists believe there are circumstances in which central banks are unable or unwilling to do that. In those circumstances, such as during the Great Recession that began in 2008, currency manipulation may indeed have harmful macroeconomic effects.
The broader issue here is that policymakers and pundits tend to focus on the interests of American businesses trying to export goods overseas while ignoring the real benefit of cheap exports for consumers. There are decent arguments against currency manipulation. But overall I think the case that it hurts the average American, and America as a whole, is weak, and it’s probably not worth including in the TPP.
Cheap foreign currencies can be good for American consumers
Critics say Chinese currency manipulation gives Chinese steel plants like this one in Chongqing Municipality an unfair advantage over American producers. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Chuck Schumer says he had an epiphany on currency manipulation when he visited a steel plant in Syracuse, New York, a decade ago. The plant's managers told Schumer they were having trouble competing because of cheap Chinese currency. The strength of the dollar made it hard for American companies to sell steel in China, and relatively easy for Chinese companies to sell steel in the United States.
Schumer and other currency hawks blame the Chinese government, which has been printing yuan and using them to buy dollars. The result, they say, is that dollars become more scarce — and therefore valuable — and yuan less so.
It's easy to see why American steel companies don't like this. And this particular steel plant was in New York, so it's not hard to see why Schumer was concerned. But it's less obvious that it's bad for the US economy as a whole. Cheap Chinese steel means Americans have to pay less for everything from cars to bridges to skyscrapers, leaving us with more income to spend on other products and services. If China wants to provide us with cheap steel, maybe we should just take it.
The Fed can offset most harms from currency manipulation
Fed Chair Janet Yellen is America's first line of defense against currency manipulation. (Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)
A possible concern here is that cheap foreign currencies could have broader macroeconomic consequences. Opponents of currency manipulation worry that it could reduce demand for American goods and services so much that companies across the economy will be forced to cut back production and lay off workers. In other words, cheap foreign currencies could trigger a recession or, if the US is already in a recession, make the situation worse.
Fortunately, the US economy has a mechanism for dealing with this kind of problem: monetary policy. America's central bank, the Federal Reserve, uses its control over the money supply to keep the economy growing at a steady rate. If demand starts to falter, the Fed is supposed to respond by pumping more money into the economy. That boosts consumer spending and keeps the economy humming along.
From this perspective, changes in exchange rates are just one of many factors — others include tax hikes and financial crises — that can affect the boom-and-bust cycle of the economy. If the Fed is doing its job correctly, it will notice when the economy starts to stall and react by pumping more money into the system, keeping the economy growing steadily.
The Fed can create an unlimited number of dollars, so there's no mathematical limit to its ability to offset the macroeconomic effects of other countries' currency manipulation. No matter how many dollars the Chinese government stockpiles, the US government can always replace them.
Why monetary policy might not be enough
Paul Krugman. (PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Some economists believe there are situations where monetary policy becomes ineffective. Paul Krugman is probably the best-known advocate for this view. He argues that when interest rates fall to zero, as they did in late 2008, further monetary easing by the Federal Reserve may not be sufficient to get the economy moving again. Krugman believes that in this situation, called a other measures, such as massive deficit spending, are needed to get the economy growing again.
Other economists, including market monetarists like Scott Sumner, believe central banks can always supply more stimulus to the economy, even when interest rates have fallen to zero. Indeed, that's exactly what the Federal Reserve did between 2008 and 2014. The central bank bought hundreds of billions of dollars of assets in an effort to boost the economy, and there's considerable evidence that the policy was effective. If the liquidity trap thesis is wrong, then the Fed can offset the harmful effects of currency manipulation even when interest rates have fallen to zero.
A third view, held by economists such as Joe Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says that central banks may be able but not willing to counteract the harmful effects of currency manipulation.
"We had a very weak recovery" since 2009, Gagnon says. "I think currency manipulation made that worse."
If either Krugman or Gagnon is right, then currency manipulation is most harmful during a severe recession. The rest of the time, the Fed should be able to counteract much of the harms from currency manipulation.
Yet Gagnon worries that even if the Fed can prevent cheap foreign currencies from depressing demand for US products, it could still lead to a misallocation of resources. Maybe that steel plant in New York really is more efficient than its Chinese competitors. And Gagnon worries that even if the US economy — with help from the Fed — can adjust in the long run, there can still be significant short-term costs, like retraining steel workers.
Trade distortions are in the eye of the beholder
Yet it's not always obvious what's an economic distortion and what's merely a difference of priorities here and abroad. For example, Sumner points out that America's large trade deficit with China is intimately connected with the high Chinese savings rate and correspondingly lower savings rate in the United States. For whatever reason, the Chinese people have chosen to defer consumption now in favor of accumulating assets, resulting in Americans buying more Chinese goods than vice versa.
From one perspective, that's a source of economic distortion. Maybe the Chinese would be better off if they consumed more American consumer goods and accumulated fewer dollars, US Treasury bonds, and other American assets.
But the Chinese surely believe they have good reasons for their high savings rates and investments in foreign assets. And American taxpayers benefit from the lower interest rates fostered by Chinese government policies.
Is currency manipulation a poison pill?
Obama's top trade negotiator, Michael Froman, has resisted calls to include currency manipulation language in the TPP. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
US negotiators have resisted pushing for currency manipulation language because they believe foreign countries won't go for it.
Dan Ikenson, a trade analyst at the Cato Institute (where I worked from 2003 to 2005), argues that an asymmetry in the global monetary system makes foreign governments less likely to agree to currency manipulation language. The dollar is the world's reserve currency, widely accepted for payment in international exchange. That means that other countries are more likely to hold reserves of dollars than the US is to hold foreign currencies.
Most currency manipulation critics want a rule that focuses on a country's holdings of foreign currency. If a country accumulates "too much" foreign currency (for example, more than the value of three months of imports) and has a current account surplus, it could be subject to trade sanctions under the TPP's dispute resolution process.
The US doesn't need to worry about running afoul of these rules, because our currency is accepted around the world. By contrast, Ikenson says, countries like Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam have significant dollar holdings that put them closer to being defined as currency manipulators.
Gagnon is skeptical of this argument, however. He says large currency reserve holdings are a relic of an era when countries tried to maintain fixed exchange rates. In the modern system of floating exchange rates, he says, large economies like China and Japan don't need to hold significant currency reserves.
In any event, the Obama administration has resisted including currency manipulation in the TPP. US trade negotiators believe foreign governments won't go for it, and that insisting on currency language at this point would run the risk of derailing the entire agreement.
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