Daily Archives: May 16, 2021

Winning Lotto numbers for Saturday May 15, 2021? The results are in: are you holding the winning ticket? – Born2Invest

Posted: May 16, 2021 at 1:05 pm

Todays Lotto results are in. Here are the winning numbers for Saturday May 15, 2021

Ready to check your lottery ticket against the Lotto results? We have you covered. Born2Invest instantly streams your Lotto results at the end of every drawing.

Your Lotto results for Saturday May 15, 2021 are as follows:

Did you get lucky today or not? Remember, you can come back to this page shortly after each draw in order to find out if you are holding the winning numbers.

Incredible lottery opportunities you can play right now:

Need more options? Dont disregard games like Lightning Roulette, which features has a hand-crafted wheel, an immensely engaging and educated live vendor, and the full exhibit of roulette wagers. Additional options would be American Roulette, which is played on a wheel which presents 38 numbers containing boxes 0 and 00 or European Roulette. The European roulette wheel has 37 divisions, where numbers from 1 to 36 and 0 can be found.

They say you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than at winning the lottery. If the math is right, the odds of winning in a pick-6 game is 1 in 14 million. Is it ever worth playing, or is it just a waste of money?

If youre looking for strategies on how to win, youll find that a lot of these tips dont work. Thats because, at the heart of it, the lottery is largely influenced by probabilities. But fear notyou can still follow these:

Did you know that?

Celebrities, authors and journalists have mused about the lottery for centuries. Among a sea of quotes, here are a couple of great ones about the lottery:

People would love to be rich, but theyre looking for the easy way. Who wouldnt want to win the lottery? Just to score. Bryan Cranston

My first audition was for a commercial for the lottery. I didnt get it, so I hate the lottery. Kat Dennings

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Winning Lotto numbers for Saturday May 15, 2021? The results are in: are you holding the winning ticket? - Born2Invest

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The Witcher’s Geralt Voice Actor Reacts To Cyberpunk 2077 Issues – GameSpot

Posted: at 1:04 pm

Doug Cockle, the voice actor for Geralt from CD Projekt Red's The Witcher series, has shared his thoughts on the issues around Cyberpunk 2077. Cockle said in an appearance on Wassup Conversations that he's waiting until the bugs are fixed before diving in. The actor also spoke about why he feels bad for the developers and more.

He said he plays games on a PS4, which is one of the platforms that appears to have been more seriously impacted in terms of bugs and other issues. Even if Cockle wanted to play Cyberpunk 2077 right now on PS4, he might have some problems doing so as Sony removed the game from the PlayStation Store (of course, he could buy a physical copy).

Overall, though, Cockle said he "felt really bad" for the developers at CD Projekt Red over the issues that cropped up at launch.

"I'm looking forward to playing it eventually. Bless them, CD Projekt; I love them so much and I felt really bad for them when Cyberpunk came out and there was all that stuff about bugs," he said. "I can't imagine how disappointed they must have been in some of the public reaction to the game."

As for why he hasn't played yet, Cockle said he's just too busy with other projects and commitments. "I decided I'd wait. I have a PS4 so I thought, 'I'm just gonna wait it out until CD Projekt fixes everything they want to fix' and then I'll have a smoother experience, I suppose," he said.

For its part, CD Projekt Red has pledged to continue to support and update Cyberpunk 2077 to help get it in better shape so it can sell well for a long time. The game sold more than 13 million copies in just three weeks to become one of the fastest-selling games of all time. Due in part to the game's financial success, executives and developers at the studio received bonuses.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

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Quantum Replica brings stealthy cyberpunk action to PC and consoles – Flickering Myth

Posted: at 1:04 pm

PQube and developer ON3D Studios have announced the release of their fast-paced action stealth game Quantum Replica on Xbox One and Series X, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. With Quantum Replica explore a cyberpunk metropolis to uncover the secrets of the Syndicate.

Travel to 2084, a time when the world is run by a ruthless corporate alliance known as the Syndicate, and take the role of a young man called Alpha who awakes without any memory. As Alpha, travel across a sprawling megacity to discover the memories that have been buried and the secrets that the faceless corporation have hidden from the repressed citizens.

As players explore the city they will discover abilities that allow them to manipulate time and use this skill to avoid the all-seeing eyes of the citys omnipresent AI as well as to escape from the mercenary armies that it sends after Alpha.

Featuring:

Its 2084, and the world bows to a ruthless corporate alliance known as the Syndicate. Under the flickering neon lights of an endless metropolis, citizens scratch out a living, fearful of mercenary armies and their faceless masters. Here, secrets are buried bitter and deep.

Quantum Replicais available now on PC and consoles.

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Introducing Nwa, the sustainable Mars megacity of the future: Exclusive interview – Space.com

Posted: at 1:04 pm

Ready to pack your bags and hit the cosmic highway for a new off-world home? The folks at ABIBOO Studio and SONet are putting out the welcome mat and presenting their vision for what might become the first capital city on Mars, housing up to 250,000 residents.

The city, called Nwa, was brilliantly conceived by ABIBOO and SONet, a scientific think tank headed by astrophysicist Guillem Anglada, who led the discovery of exoplanet Proxima b. It's a visionary concept for a completely scalable, sustainable Red Planet metropolis carved into the 3,000-foot (1,000 meters) cliff face of Tempe Mensa, and was selected as a finalist by The Mars Society's 2020 contest for feasible settlement designs.

ABIBOO founder and chief architect Alfredo Munoz and his team created the comprehensive design work and its stunning digital artwork, including urban parks and hydroponic gardens, that have Earthlings yearning for a one-way ticket to this large-scale Martian community.

The ABIBOO team thinks construction could begin as early as 2054 and welcome the first wave of colonists by 2100.

According to their official report, the design includes five cities, with Nwa as the capital and each city hosting 200,000 to 250,000 people. The rest of the settlements mirror the urban strategy. For example, Abalos City would be located at Mars' north pole to leverage ice access, and Marineris City would be in Valles Marineris, one of the biggest canyons in the solar system.

Space.com spoke with internationally known architect Alfredo Munoz about his involvement in the Nwa city project, his enthusiasm for its modular blueprints, why he believes it's a global construction enterprise for the ages, what the team's imaginative influences were in its conception and more.

Space.com: What's your role in this ambitious project, and what excites you most about its potential?

Alfredo Munoz: I'm the founder of ABIBOO Studio, which is an international architectural firm. But I'm also on the board of directors of SONet, a multidisciplinary group with experts in different fields in the space industry. We were interested in using the group to provide solutions for sustainable innovations in an outer space settlement. Together, we designed the Nwa city project, which we believed could be the first sustainable city on Mars.

Space.com: How did you approach the aesthetic and logistical concerns for Nwa city?

Munoz: I think it was a combination of factors. First, it was the vision and the challenge that The Mars Society contest proposed. Coming up with a permanent settlement for 1 million people was the core of the stratification for the city. Up until now, there have been other solutions for settlements on Mars, but nothing like this. The challenge for a small amount of people to live temporarily on Mars is a completely different strategy from a design point of view than coming up with a city that must improve the lives of people who are born and live and die in the city.

From a design aspect, Nwa was created by top scientists in a variety of fields. That gives the project a strong confidence that the design is valid and feasible. It's not just about beautiful images and beautiful architectural solutions. It's got experts behind it, and it was innovative in the way we solved so many of the challenges we'll face while setting up a Mars settlement. We did it in a very scalable manner, creating spaces that will be potentially exciting and beautiful. Architecture is not always about solving problems; it's about creating art.

That combination is what myself and the team on this project were able to bring. The marriage between strong technical and scientific solutions, along with innovative architectural ideas, as well as The Mars Society's vision, has created the amount of new interest in society saying that this is really possible. Why not be optimistic with a permanent city on Mars?

With urban planning projects, we often face issues where we need to create identity. How can we create environments that are attractive for people so it creates a sense of identity and belonging? It goes beyond beauty. It's about the emotional well-being of the people that are going to enjoy and live in that space. That was critical for us and something we wanted to do from the very beginning.

Space.com: What does the chosen name "Nwa" mean?

Munoz: Nwa comes from Chinese mythology. There was a goddess that created the universe and protected humans from all the bad things that happen, and her name was Nwa. So when we were talking to SONet about potential names, we thought it was a fantastic representation not only of what the name means, but also how we envision Nwa as a multicultural location.

Most of the team is from Europe and the United States, but we thought to bring in Asian culture and Asian background that compensated for that lack of Asian aspects on the team. Again, we envision Nwa city as a completely inclusive city with people coming from all backgrounds, and we thought this was a beautiful opportunity on both fronts. We really want this to be global.

Space.com: What were some of your influences in creating this Mars megacity?

Munoz: It's funny; we really didn't look at science fiction when we were trying to solve the problems we have on Mars. Consciously, there's always some influence from things like "Blade Runner," and that movie had a very big impact on architects in my generation.

In my case, it was more of my experience with Toyo Ito. He's one of the most influential architects alive. He was granted the prestigious Pritzker [Architecture] Prize in 2013, which is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and he's the architect I worked with years ago in Japan. He gives a lot of importance to systems that can be replicated in a very conceptually easy manner.

So when I approached this with the rest of the team, it was very important to come up with something that was simple, scalable and able to generate an identity. We never really went back to science fiction. We were trying to do engineering and architecture. Sometimes, when you look at references that are visually too appealing, you can let go of that anchor of science.

Space.com: Besides the challenges of creating enough breathable air and tunneling technologies, what are other obstacles that need to evolve for Nwa to be born?

Munoz: Yes, there are some critical parts that we've identified that exist ahead, and until those parts are resolved, we won't be able to properly implement construction on a scale like Nwa. The first one is the fact that we'll be relying on steel. Based on the scientists, it will be relatively easy to obtain steel from water and CO2, which can create carbon. We're basically building the entire city with local resources. We're barely bringing things from Earth, which is critical for that scalability and sustainability. We'll still need to test and develop that technology before going ahead.

Another challenge is that we will need on-the-ground confirmation from a geological point of view that the location conditions are appropriate, and that requires actual astronauts the same way that here on Earth, we're not going to perforate the mountain without doing the proper site analysis. A lot can be done with robotics, but some astronauts will need to be there.

The use of artificial intelligence and robotics will also be critical. The way the robotics industry is going, in more than 20 years, we'll be more than ready to have the know-how to start construction. But even if the city is ready to be built, we still need to bring the population to actually live there.

One of the biggest hurdles we found is that, due to the two-year window of opportunity, [planetary alignment for most efficient transit time to Mars] the amount of rockets required to send 250,000 people from Earth to Mars will be huge. Even if [SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk is doing great work and will be able to send humans to Mars very soon, the volume needed is completely mind-blowing. Our engineers are working on ideas of how we can scale that component up. We are hopeful that in the next 30 years, we'll get to the point where those critical parts are resolved so we can start implementing a construction like Nwa on Mars.

Space.com: It's difficult to put a price tag on such a monumental endeavor, but what would you speculate as the costs for Nwa?

Munoz: We were basically comparing it to what the Panama Canal cost back in time. We're talking about a large infrastructure that takes decades to build and requires a lot of commitment. The impact it can have concerning well-being and commerce can be staggering.

We still have no detailed analysis of cost. It's a primary process, and we're working on trying to build prototypes and getting the right partners and financing to continue moving forward. We have a journey of many years ahead, and part of that journey will be doing a detailed breakdown of costs. If we solve some of these obstacles in the next 10 years, we'll have a much better idea.

If we compare it with 60 years ago, when Yuri Gagarin went into space, the amount of complexities involved for trying to send someone into orbit were staggering. In 60 years, which will be 2081, if we compare back in time how much humans have been able to develop technology, we could be in a position where we could speed up our timeline beyond what we're currently targeting. Sixty years is nothing.

Space.com: How do you hope your conceptual Martian city will stir the imaginations of future generations?

Munoz: I'm really passionate about education, and I've been involved in academia and teaching in the past. I think the role that education can have is huge. And architecture has a critical role in having either a positive or negative impact for future generations. To be able to create a plan and be part of the team that came up with a highly scalable solution that could be a road map for a permanent settlement on Mars, to come up with such a landmark in what being a human is and what society can become, is so enriching as a professional. It's fascinating.

Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Pete Davidsons Chad on Mars Is the Only Musk-Watch New SNL Sketch – Fatherly

Posted: at 1:04 pm

Chad was back on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and it was the highlight of a surprisingly solid show hosted by Elon Musk. This time around, Pete Davidsons uber-slacker starred in Chad on Mars, with an expedition to Mars gone wrong. Musk, playing himself, oversees the operation from SpaceX mission control and calls upon a hero to save the day as a massive solar storm bears down upon the colonists on Mars.

Enter Chad, whos super-chill, monosyllabic, and just stupid enough to take on the suicide mission. The whole sketch is funny, making the nights best use of Musk, delivering top-notch visual effects, and recruiting musical guest Miley Cyrus to play Chads girlfriend, whos got some big news to share with him before he sacrifices himself for all mankind. Among the sterling nuggets of dialogue, delivered with deadpan perfection by Davidson: OK, Bye, No, thank you, Balls are sweaty.

Long live Chad! Watch the full episode here.

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Rachel Kushner Wants to Radicalize the Novel – Jacobin magazine

Posted: at 1:04 pm

I had an idea of where my sympathies lay in terms of that geopolitical situation which is more of a history of settler colonial theft and subjugation than it is a conflict, because the two sides are so asymmetrical but for a long time felt it wasnt really my battle. When I was invited to Palestine, I was focused on things much closer to home, here in California prison, poverty and I was writing a contemporary novel about California and its struggles.

But after going there, I could absolutely see how it becomes an obsession for people, because what you witness is so intolerable. The refugee camp I went to, Shuafat, has Gazans living in it, and it has Gaza-like attributes, in the sense that its both incredibly densely populated and also, if somebody ends up there with neither paperwork that allows them to travel in the West Bank nor paperwork that allows them to enter Israel, they are essentially stuck in a one-square-kilometer refugee camp for the foreseeable future.

The logic of the military occupation, shutting down freedom of movement, and the stated military objective of making every Palestinian feel they are being hunted and chased, was totally overwhelming. Its a lot to absorb, as a witness, which is nothing compared to living under it, or trying to.

I mean, watching Palestinian construction workers line up at 4:00 a.m. at a checkpoint to go through what are essentially cattle chutes to get to their jobs in Jerusalem, and to see that their very survival depends upon learning to consent to conditions of subhuman treatment it was just totally awful and unbelievable. Older people will be stuck in this line who are incontinent, or who have diabetes and cannot stand on their feet for six hours. If you have a health emergency in the line, theres chain overhead and chain walls on both sides, and there are hundreds of people lined up in front and behind you. Theres no way to get out. Thousands of Palestinian men endure this every day to get to work.

Thats just one example of the many outrageous things I saw there of the military occupation. Going there had a real effect on me. Our government not only supports this the United States more or less underwrites the whole thing. I am convinced that anyone who saw what I saw would not be able to continue to believe in Israel as the ethnostate that it is. Its tragic for everyone, including the Jews, that after a war in which literally two-thirds of European Jews were erased thats so staggering, I mean, Im stunned by that over and over that after a genocide of that engulfing scale, the reparation was to become a settler colony with nukes pointed at all their neighbors. Its agony.

Anyhow, as you mention, the essay in my new book, The Hard Crowd, is specifically about this refugee camp, called Shuafat, that is technically inside of Israel. I was interested in the idea of going to a refugee camp because a lot of them have become permanent homes for people, for better or worse. There is high-rise housing in Shuafat. The idea refugee camp suggests transience, but many of these refugee camps have now been there for fifty years. I wanted to know how that feels, what it looks like, how it works for those who live there.

Shuafat is a place where 85,000 people live in one square kilometer without any infrastructure or services. It is surrounded by twenty-five-foot concrete walls. Israeli authorities never enter except to storm the camp to make an arrest or arbitrarily bulldoze somebodys house then they fine the person whose house was bulldozed, for the cost of doing so.

Theres no garbage service in Shuafat. Theres no water system. Theres no electrical grid. Almost no schools. No fire trucks nor ambulances. Theres no land registration, no safety or building codes. There are roads, but they arent paved nor named, they arent zoned, they dont have addresses, and they dont have sidewalks. There are no parks. Theres no place for kids to play.

There are reasons to live in Shuafat. If you do, you can hold on to your Israeli residency, which is precious for people who need to get inside of Israel in order to work. But also, people dont want to leave Jerusalem, because thats where they are from, where their parents are from, even as they are stripped of citizenship, as Palestinians, and only have a provisional version of it, in the form of a Jerusalem residency status that can be revoked at any time.

My guide there and my host, I stayed with him and his family, was community organizer Baha Nababta an amazing person I write about in the book. He was assassinated in the street fourteen days after I left.

I didnt exactly sign up to be exposed to that kind of violence. When it happened, I was immersed in writing my novel The Mars Room, and in doing activism work with people serving life sentences. I was going to prisons all the time, and talking to people and thinking about different kinds of violence, and then Baha was killed, and I felt like I was sandwiched between worlds that were just really tough, really brutal, if in different ways.

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Wisconsin Examiner Kids are getting their shots so should Ron Johnson – Wisconsin Examiner

Posted: at 1:03 pm

My eighth-grader cannot wait to get her COVID vaccine. Gone are the days of needle dread, when every trip to the doctors office prompted the same anxious question: Will I have to get a shot?

Now the question is, How soon can I get vaccinated? and, Then can I hug my friends?

The youngest, she will be the last one in our family to get the vaccine, approved this week for 12-to-15-year-olds by the FDA, with the CDC expected to deliver final public health guidance shortly. She can hardly wait.

My oldest daughter, now in college, is already fully vaccinated. She was 5 years old when, during a flu shot appointment, she made a break for it. She ran all the way down the clinic hallway and out the revolving door. She was headed for the parking lot when I caught up with her and dragged her back inside a scene neither of us will ever forget.

For years she hated needles. In high school she passed out cold after a series of shots at that same doctors office. But she, too, was delighted when she became eligible for the COVID vaccine, and rushed to get an appointment. It was great, she said nothing to it.

Lets hope all the vaccine-hesitant people in our lives undergo a similar transformation, from leery to gung-ho.

As public health officials keep reminding us, we need everyone who can get a COVID shot to get one, so we can achieve herd immunity and get our lives back.

We are on the brink, this spring, of getting back to normal.

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I recently started going into the Examiner office, after a winter spent sitting around the house with my loved ones, staring at our separate screens and bumping into each other as we cruised the kitchen and binged on crackers. Dont get me wrong, its wonderful to have the option to work from home, and cozy to be with the family. Everyone enjoyed it, for a while. Especially the dog. But its amazing to be back in the world again. The first day I visited our silent office after a year away, I cleared up yellowing newspapers with headlines from March 2020 about the pandemic, threw away dried flower petals scattered across the carpet by a bouquet that was quickly turning to dust.

Now, I look out the window and see crowded cafe tables on the street below. I hear bubbling conversation and music from the coffee shop downstairs. The coffee crowd slowly gives way to the after-work beer crowd as the sun sinks behind the Capitol. It feels like the world is coming alive again, especially in the beautiful spring weather.

We cant hibernate forever.

You would think the Reopen crowd would be thrilled by the success of Wisconsins tops-in-the-nation vaccination program, and eager to get their shots and put the pandemic behind us. But alas, you would be wrong about that.

Our own Sen. Ron Johnson the same guy who said COVID deaths were not such a big deal, that people needed to get back to work early in the pandemic and that stay-at-home orders were not worth the economic cost, is pushing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Johnson claimed on rightwing talker Vicki McKennas radio show last week that lots of people have died after getting the vaccine, and cited those (debunked) statistics as a reason for sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated.

Johnson, an Ayn Rand acolyte, truly does not seem to grasp the concept of public health or society, for that matter. If youhave avaccine, quite honestly, whatdo you care ifyour neighbor has one or not? he said,firmly staking out the political terrain that opposes the control of contagious disease.

This is the same guy who publicized snake oil remedies for COVID at a U.S. Senate hearing, to the dismay of doctors.

No surprise, then, that he was an outlier no vote on Tuesday when Andrea Palm, the former head of Wisconsins Department of Health Services, sailed through Senate confirmation to become the No. 2 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Palm must be so delighted to be moving up and out from Wisconsin, after enduring relentless attacks from state Republicans just for doing her job and trying to protect us all from a deadly virus. Johnsons no vote is practically an endorsement.

What is it with our states Republican leaders? Why must they start a war with sane public health policies in the middle of a public health crisis? Why must they opposemasks and social distancing and vaccination? Couldnt they pick one?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated. Some of the same dont tread on me sign-carriers who gathered on the State Capitol lawn to protest Gov. Tony Evers stay-at-home order last spring appear to have moved on to the Alliant Center, holding some of the same signs objecting to the nanny state while promoting Johsonesque anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Driving past this crowd reminded me of chasing my daughter through the revolving door when she was running away from her shot. Irrational fear is hard to control. The least our political leaders can do is not give it a running start.

Instead, they should remind people how badly they wanted to reopen the state a year ago. Nows their chance. Get vaccinated, so we can get back to normal.

If my shot-resistant kids can do it, so can all those Republican men. Because Im getting too old to chase you through the parking lot.

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Kids Are Getting VaccinatedSo Should Ron Johnson – Progressive.org

Posted: at 1:03 pm

My eighth-grader cannot wait to get her COVID-19 vaccine. Gone are the days of needle dread, when every trip to the doctors office prompted the same anxious question: Will I have to get a shot?

Now the question is, How soon can I get vaccinated? and, Then can I hug my friends?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated.

The youngest, she will be the last one in our family to get the vaccine, approved this week for twelve- to fifteen-year-olds by the FDA, with the CDC expected to deliver final public health guidance shortly. She can hardly wait.

My oldest daughter, now in college, is already fully vaccinated. She was five years old when, during a flu shot appointment, she made a break for it. She ran all the way down the clinic hallway and out the revolving door. She was headed for the parking lot when I caught up with her and dragged her back insidea scene neither of us will ever forget.

For years she hated needles. In high school she passed out cold after a series of shots at that same doctors office. But she, too, was delighted when she became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, and rushed to get an appointment. It was great, she saidnothing to it.

Lets hope all the vaccine-hesitant people in our lives undergo a similar transformation, from leery to gung-ho.

As public health officials keep reminding us, we need everyone who can get a COVID-19 shot to get one, so we can achieve herd immunity and get our lives back.

We are on the brink, this spring, of getting back to normal.

I recently started going into the Wisconsin Examiner office, after a winter spent sitting around the house with my loved ones, staring at our separate screens and bumping into each other as we cruised the kitchen and binged on crackers. Dont get me wrong, its wonderful to have the option to work from home, and cozy to be with the family.

Everyone enjoyed it, for a while. Especially the dog. But its amazing to be back in the world again. The first day I visited our silent office after a year away, I cleared up yellowing newspapers with headlines from March 2020 about the pandemic, threw away dried flower petals scattered across the carpet by a bouquet that was quickly turning to dust.

Now, I look out the window and see crowded cafe tables on the street below. I hear bubbling conversation and music from the coffee shop downstairs. The coffee crowd slowly gives way to the after-work beer crowd as the sun sinks behind the Capitol. It feels like the world is coming alive again, especially in the beautiful spring weather.

We cant hibernate forever.

You would think the Reopen crowd would be thrilled by the success of Wisconsins tops-in-the-nation vaccination program, and eager to get their shots and put the pandemic behind us. But alas, you would be wrong about that.

Our own Senator Ron Johnsonthe same guy who said COVID-19 deaths were not such a big deal, that people needed to get back to work early in the pandemic and that stay-at-home orders were not worth the economic cost, is pushing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Johnson claimed on rightwing talker Vicki McKennas radio show last week that lots of people have died after getting the vaccine, and cited those (debunked) statistics as a reason for sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated.

Johnson, an Ayn Rand acolyte, truly does not seem to grasp the concept of public healthor society, for that matter. If youhave avaccine, quite honestly, whatdo you care ifyour neighbor has one or not? he said, firmly staking out the political terrain that opposes the control of contagious disease.

This is the same guy who publicized snake oil remedies for COVI-19 at a U.S. Senate hearing, to the dismay of doctors.

No surprise, then, that he was an outlier no vote on Tuesday when Andrea Palm, the former head of Wisconsins Department of Health Services, sailed through Senate confirmation to become the No. 2 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Palm must be so delighted to be moving up and out from Wisconsin, after enduring relentless attacks from state Republicans just for doing her job and trying to protect us all from a deadly virus. Johnsons no vote is practically an endorsement.

What is it with our states Republican leaders? Why must they start a war with sane public health policies in the middle of a public health crisis? Why must they opposemasks and social distancing and vaccination? Couldnt they pick one?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated. Some of the same dont tread on me sign carriers who gathered on the State Capitol lawn to protest Governor Tony Everss stay-at-home order last spring appear to have moved on to the Alliant Center, holding some of the same signs objecting to the nanny state while promoting Johnson-esque anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Driving past this crowd reminded me of chasing my daughter through the revolving door when she was running away from her shot. Irrational fear is hard to control. The least our political leaders can do is not give it a running start.

Instead, they should remind people how badly they wanted to reopen the state a year ago. Nows their chance. Get vaccinated, so we can get back to normal.

If my shot-resistant kids can do it, so can all of those Republican men. Because Im getting too old to chase you through the parking lot.

This article first appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner.

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Reverential and referential: A review of the Hebrew Bible for Shavuot eve – The Jewish Standard

Posted: at 1:03 pm

We customarily spend Shavuot Eve (Layl Tikkun) engrossed in study of sacred texts and Jewish thought and history, gratefully re-enacting and reimagining and to a certain degree expanding upon the Revelation at Sinai that the festival commemorates. The specific subject matter we examine varies from tradition to tradition, year to year, community to community, student to student.

What follows is a collection of quotations from a wide variety of sources that acts as a book-by-book review of the Hebrew Bible all 39 books (counting the 12 minor prophets as discrete works). In some cases, the familiar English name of the biblical book is mentioned explicitly. Some books are identified by reference to their central theme, or invocation of a leading literary motif or famous verse. Others are alluded to still more obliquely through pun, word-play, even anagram. Often, more than one of these methods are combined to establish a clearer reference to the book in question. Some quotations incorporate the meaning of the biblical works Hebrew name, notwithstanding the books more familiar English appellation.

Shavuot celebrants aiming reverently to revel in revelation are invited thoughtfully to consider these quotes, presented in the traditional order of the Masoretic text (see below) and to explore (and perhaps to discuss, debate, and dispute) how they relate to the corresponding sections of the Hebrew Bible.

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In so doing, this Shavuot and through all the days that follow, may we come more deeply to celebrate and more gratefully to embrace what Abraham Lincoln referred to as the best gift God has ever given us the Bible itself.

Chag sameach!

Torah

I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the imagination. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,, or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions)

Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed ecstasy, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an on-going exodus out of the closed inward-looking self toward its liberation through self-giving toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God. (Pope Benedict XVI)

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: What does his voice sound like? What games does he like best? Does he collect butterflies? They ask: How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does he have? Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves at the roof, they wont be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, I saw a house worth a thousand francs. Then they exclaim, What a pretty house! (Antoine de Saint-Exupry, The Little Prince)

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. (Yehuda Berg)

Former Prophets (Neviim Rishonim)

Joshing and ribbing need not always be cruel or inappropriate. It is okay sometimes to laugh at othersa comic or even our friendsespecially if they are in a position to tease us back. Humor offers an important way for us to have fun together, to laugh with (not just at) others, and to exercise our abilities for socialization. (Robert R. Clewis, Kants Humorous Writings)

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue. (Francis Bacon)

I would not, could not, in the rain. Not in the dark. Not on a train. Not in a car. Not in a tree. I do not like them, Sam, you see. (Dr. Seuss)

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings. (Lewis Carroll)

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. (Thomas Jefferson)

Latter Prophets (Neviim Acharonim)

I say a final last prayer, this one in gratitude that there are people in the world who will protect kids with a fire that makes them sprint after cars, fight systems, curse with rage. Its enough to make you believe. Maybe not in symbols; maybe not in gods. But certainly in people. (Emery Lord, The Names They Gave Us)

Mark Twain said that every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction; jeremiads are the caustic, but necessary herbicide that keeps those seeds from ever bearing fruit. (Brett & Kate McKay, Were Going to Hell in a Handbasket! Hooray! Why Every Man Should Embrace the Jeremiad)

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency the belief that the here and now is all there is. (Allan Bloom)

Minor Prophets (Trei Asar)

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, youll become happy; if you get a bad one, youll become a philosopher. (Socrates)

For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal. (Sren Kierkegaard)

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. (Barry Goldwater)

Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintaind Against revolted multitudes the cause of truth. (John Milton)

They will abide a great deal, sailors, but not a Jonah. (Patrick OBrian, Master and Commander)

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. (Maya Angelou)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. (C. S. Lewis)

Though vine nor fig-tree neither,Their wonted fruit shall bear,Though all the field should wither,Nor flocks nor herds be there;Yet God the same abiding,His praise shall tune my voice,For, while in Him confiding,I cannot but rejoice. (William Cowper, Sometimes a Light Surprises)

We cannot begin to define Gods knowledge. We know, simply and profoundly, that nothing is hidden from Him or incomprehensible to Him. (Elizabeth George)

Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination. (Jane Jacobs)

Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles. (Alex Karras)

Man is a messenger who forgot the message. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

Writings (Ketuvim)

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and Id be a damn fool if they werent. (Dylan Thomas)

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience. (Miguel de Cervantes)

Be thankful for your problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job. (Jim Lovell)

A bells not a bell til you ring it, A songs not a song til you sing it, Love in your heart wasnt put there to stay, Love isnt love til you give it away! (Oscar Hammerstein II)

People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him. (Robert F. Kennedy)

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. (Elie Wiesel, Night)

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialistic than it cares to acknowledge. (Lionel Blue)

I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people. (Elizabeth I)

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Dont set out to raze all shrines, youll frighten men, enshrine mediocrity and the shrines are razed. (Ayn Rand)

God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

(Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ( E. M. Forster)

To bring our forebears back to mind,Their deeds, their words, their manners kind,We must their chronicles at least,And their histories read out at feasts;The foul plotting of the knave,The noble record of the brave. (Robert Wace, Roman de Rou)

Joseph H. Prouser is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey in Franklin Lakes.

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)

Genesis Coleridge)

Exodus (Benedict)

Leviticus (Emerson)

Numbers (Saint Exupery)

Deuteronomy (Burg)

Joshua (Clewis)

Judges (Bacon)

I Samuel (Seuss)

II Samuel (Tolkien)

I Kings (Carroll)

II Kings (Jefferson)

Isaiah (Lord)

Jeremiah (McKay)

Ezekiel (Bloom)

Hosea (Socrates)

Joel (Kierkegaard)

Amos (Goldwater)

Obadiah (Milton)

Jonah (OBrian)

Micah (Angelou)

Nahum (Lewis)

Habakkuk (Cowper)

Zephaniah (George)

Haggai (Jacobs)

Zechariah (Karras)

Malachi (Heschel)

Psalms (Thomas)

Proverbs (Cervantes)

Job (Lovell)

Song of Songs (Hammerstein)

Ruth (Kennedy)

Lamentations Wiesel)

Ecclesiastes (Blue)

Esther (Elizabeth)

Daniel (Gandhi)

Ezra (Rand)

Nehemiah (Claiborne)

I Chronicles (Forster)

II Chronicles (Wace)

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Reverential and referential: A review of the Hebrew Bible for Shavuot eve - The Jewish Standard

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Fired Windsor officer files motion to dismiss Army officers lawsuit following traffic stop incident – WAVY.com

Posted: at 1:03 pm

NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) A former Windsor police officer has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a U.S. Army lieutenant following a traffic stop incident which resulted in the soldier being pepper-sprayed.

Joe Gutierrez, one of the two Town of Windsor police officers involved in a traffic stop incident involving Army2nd Lt. CaronNazario, was fired back in April following the incident which occurred in December 2020.

According to an initial lawsuit filed by Nazario in federal court, Nazariowas in uniformwhen he was stopped on Dec. 5.

Nazario is asking for at least $1 million in damages and for the court to rule that the two officers violated his rights, including rights under the Fourth Amendment.

He was stopped by officers Gutierrez and Daniel Crocker. Crocker said he initiated the stop because he couldnt see Nazarios SUVs license plate, which was displayed inside a tinted back window at the time of the stop.

Nazario did not comply with the officers orders to get out of the car, saying he was scared. Gutierrez could be heard in body camera footage saying Nazario was fixin to ride the lightning, an expression associated with execution.

The incident escalated to the point Gutierrez used OC spray on Nazario several times while he was still sitting in the vehicle. Nazario eventually got out of his SUV after being sprayed in the face at close range, then Gutierrez used knee strikes to force him to the ground. At that time, the officers handcuffed him.

The situation began to deescalate as officers spoke with Nazario about the traffic stop and allowed EMS to render aid.

Following further investigation into the incident, a release from the town manager of Windsor stated that Officer Joe Gutierrez was terminated in early April.

On Friday, Gutierrezs attorney filed a motion at the U.S. District Court Clerk in Norfolk to dismiss Nazarios complaint.

Read the full motion here.

That same day, the NAACP asked Isle of Wight Commonwealths Attorney Georgette C. Phillips to recuse herself in the case.

Since this incident, our local chapter has called for full accountability and transparency amongstthe Town of Windsor officials and the Windsor police department, the NAACP said in a statement. Instead we have seen the local government unapologetically stand by the actions of these officers, provide the citizens with incoherent answers and have used their powers to stifle the transparency process.

The NAACP is also asking Gov. Ralph Northam to authorize Attorney General Mark Herrings Office to review all evidence from the Virginia State Police investigation into the case, and make any and all legal decisions.

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Fired Windsor officer files motion to dismiss Army officers lawsuit following traffic stop incident - WAVY.com

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