text:
It had had been weeks since I last had any scrap of nourishment go past my cold, slender lips. Ever since I broke off from the titanic sized school of shiny vessels, streaking through the endless darkness, I had been floating lonesome.

Life was tough on the continuous hunt for food. A lot of the other chums I knew, also ended up going at it alone. I think the thought of coming across a food source with that many other starved individuals scared a lot of them; I know that's why I went alone. I had a chilling feeling some left the group to die of starvation secretly, as to not look weak to the crowd of strangers.

It was the smallest flicker of light that caught the corner of my eye first.  My sluggish mind instantly assumes it will be nothing, like always, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of getting a meal in me. Battling an energyless body I changed my heading and rushed toward where I had seen the sparkle of hope. It was only a few minutes until the light came into view again, further away than I originally guessed, but I was going in the right direction. The light seemed to come and go in a steady glow, but it was getting bigger and bigger as I quickened my pace. This food was MINE. This was MY MEAL. I couldn't let anyone else get there before me. This was my last chance.

Completely drained of what tiny energy I had when I caught up to the glowing ball of substinance, I slowed my hunt down to a stalk, unsure of exactly what it was stalking. My luminous meal was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes on. The gleaming eggplant shaped object was like a small star I orbited at ghostly distance. Being extra cautious not to shimmer any light  back toward my prey I inched closer and closer. A few minutes of creeping in, I swoop down below my dinner and get in position to attack.

In an instant, moving faster than this scaly old shell had before, I attacked the light. Mouth wide open, stomach full of joy, I could almost taste the glow, when I got the first glimmer of the end of my days. The colossal, polished white teeth came into view faster than my dinner zoomed away into the darkness in front of me. Like in slow motion the endless rim of razors closed over my entire body; the sharpened fangs glinted as i watched my flaming meal pull further into the distance.

Looking out into the closing obscurity I see the silver shimmer of one of my old chums, slowly circling the delicious looking sphere of light.

title: [MF] A short story about food

question: What is the ball of light?

answer: Presumably the lure of an anglerfish.

question: What kind of creature is the narrator?

answer: It's described as a fish, though not explicitly stated.

question: Why is the narrator starving?

answer: It's implied there isn't enough food in the ocean.

question: What is the narrator's predator?

answer: It's implied to be/described as an anglerfish.

question: How does the narrator not see the predator coming?

answer: The narrator is so focused on preying on the light; it's watching out for others potentially snapping up the light/food, but it isn't expecting to be eaten itself. Plus, the narrator is so hungry that its life is worth risking for this, considering starvation is close anyway.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator (implied to be a fish) has gone weeks without food and is relieved to find a glowing light to eat, only to be eaten by another predator (implied to be an anglerfish, with its glowing lure).


split: test

text:
Rep. Keith Ellison is leading the House charge for Medicare For All — and he's frank about pushing the Dems left

By  Nicole Karlis

March 9, 2018 11:45PM (UTC)

(APAP PHOTO/LAUREN VICTORIA BURKE, FILE)

It’s no secret the Democratic Party wasn’t a united front during the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, it appeared that there were two parties within the left: labor-allied Democrats who embraced progressive and/or democratic socialist ideals, and Democrats who weren’t ready to part with the big business wing of the party. This divide manifested most visibly in the split between Bernie Sanders supporters and die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters.

These fissures haven't disappeared in the intervening  years  — which is perhaps why the appointment of Joe Kennedy to give the party's State of the Union response address in January gave some within the party hope, while frustrating others. One of the so-called progressive pillars that has been most divisive among Democrats is Medicare For All, a universal healthcare policy initiative that Senator Bernie Sanders, I.-Vt, campaigned for during the 2016 election.

Now, another progressive-wing stalwart, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said that his party is slowly uniting around the issue.

“Our movement [for Medicare for All] is ascending, but the truth is that, for many years, people weren’t there,” Ellison said in an interview with Yahoo News on Sirius XM’s politics channel, called POTUS. “So more and more people are coming on every day, but not everyone is on. We have to convince them, we have to talk to them, we need to engage in a respectful, fact-based debate about which systems are the best.”

Ellison is in charge of leading the bill known as “The Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act” (H.R. 676), which would give free health care to all Americans. The coverage would include primary care and prevention, dietary and nutritional therapies, prescription drugs, emergency care, long-term care, mental health services, dental services, and vision care, according to the bill.

“Everybody would get a card, and you can get the care that you need, not unlike what they have in Canada right now. And truth be told, every major industrial country has a universal system; many of them have single-payer systems,” Ellison said on the podcast.

“I’ve never met a Canadian that wants to switch their system for ours,” he continued. “They like their system. Do they complain about it? Yes. Because, guess what? People complain about stuff no matter where they live. … But I can tell you that people who live in Canada and benefit from that health care system, they like it.”

Hillary Clinton wasn’t a progressive in this regard: her biggest concession to the left on the health care issue was a suggestion that citizens could buy into Medicare. At its heart, private health insurance does not serve people, but for-profit corporations. The entire concept of a privatized or semi-privatized healthcare system suggests that health insurance is a commodity, not a right.

If Ellison is right, and the party is slowly inching towards supporting universal health care, that could be indicative of a greater shift within the Democratic Party. It could mean that those who once pegged themselves as centrists are inching left — in some ways, mimicking the right's co-optation of left-populist rhetoric. While this sounds positive for Democrats — at least the genuinely progressive ones — it only widens an apparently irreparable divide. Yet, it could give Democrats a real shot at winning the next election — after all, polls suggest the more populist and genuinely left candidate, Bernie Sanders, would have soundly defeated Trump.

Nicole Karlis

Nicole Karlis is a staff writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.

MORE FROM NICOLE KARLIS

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question: What is the hope for progressive democrats discussed in this article?

answer: While Hilary Clinton is not in favor of Medicare-for-all, Democrats in general have been inching towards supporting it. The article quotes a Representative Keith Ellison from Minnesota who discusses Canada's healthcare system, and how superior it would be to the American one.


text:
Perched on a steel beast of war, I pondered my own existence. A sergeant in the army, with a caring family and spouse, medals to my name and a desire to live. But how far did it go? How far can I run before I fall, and there is nobody there to pick me up? I wanted my memories to last forever. Lively, energetic, spirited: The men I commanded were my bread and butter. Valiantly serving under my order for 3 years prior to Operation Neptune, we held our lives in our rifles. I sat with them on our steel beast, waiting to be unloaded with the other men. How long did we have?

Huddled into a vehicle reminiscent to the Kraken himself, I became lost in thought. This strange plan, these peculiar men. Curled up amongst each other, ignorance of bliss, we stood shoulder by shoulder like lambs to the slaughter.

Dainty fingers dawdled on the triggers. Who was he? Who was he to take a life? Only the grateful had the heart to pull, and fire.

Eyes plunged backwards, body lurched forward. Crumpled to their knees. Fell to the trenches, writhing in the dirt, men howled in fits of pain.

Let the deceased roam the realms they no longer wanted to exist.

Waves trickled onto our clothes, soaking us from the inside out. The storm rose above our mortal toil; Mother Nature has no patience. Salty sea air tempted our nostrils of home and valour, but it did little to front the horrors on the beach. Gunfire ablaze, our Kraken approached the beachhead. This is true war. Fear, anger, pride, camaraderie, pain: a will to survive. Lead continued to find its way towards my men, but I convinced myself they could never hit me. Hot, piercing metal seared its way through the earth, which may as well have stood still, striking our position with brute inaccuracy. Inside the sudden silence, my superior barked those damn dreaded words.

I was told there was artillery inbound. No reinforcements. 30 seconds was all we had.

Mortar seemingly erupted from the crust, taking my men with it into the air. 3 of my men were taken in the first blast. They had aimed that one for my squad. These weren’t the first men to die with me, and certainly won’t be the last. More explosives inbound, and no clear way to escape. It didn’t look hopeless, just fatal. Another 2 fell down, injured, which is another pair of notches on my watch. The squad was starting to break down into fragments, and no longer sure who made it out, we tried to hide, run and fight.

Us, a ragtag group of soldiers, versus an entire German platoon. It was at this point we had all agreed to never be captured alive. We held our position over the lagoon, keeping our ground with joyful valence in the darkest hour. I took a step backwards, and promptly fell into the water. My men must have assumed I’d been hit, I didn’t see them again.

It seemed like I was floating gracefully for an eternity, and in my frenzy, I reasoned that I was hated by those I loved, and regrets filled my soul. It wasn’t death that did this; it was

war. I also reasoned that these would be my final emotions, my final tribute, to this earth, and I should cherish them. How would I know when I died? It faded to black long before I fell to my watery grave.

In my absence of consciousness, I was rescued by a British company steamrolling through the coastline, picking up survivors and POW’s alike. It appeared I was alive, and the luckiest one in the squad, according to those Brits. They would never be able to comprehend what I saw, and what I lost.

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who
are willing to endure pain with patience.”

- Julius Caesar

(Any and all constructive criticism greatly recommended)

title: [HF] Epitome of War

question: What is the setting of the story?

answer: The setting of the story is some sort of ocean-adjacent warzone. The narrator mentions salty sea air, as well as being on a boat.

question: What happens to the narrator at the end of the story?

answer: The narrator ends up surviving the German assault and is rescued by British forces. The rest of their men have died during the attack.


text:
You were laying in your bed when you died.

It was a heart attack. Nothing very profound or scandalous but it claimed your life just the same. You left behind no heirs, no wife, no lover, nothing. Your staff did not even try to save you. They let you die there. Just as well they didn’t bother. Even if you were to live, you would never truly be the same again. Trust me.

And that was when you met me here on this ashen hill.

“Wait. What? What happened?” you asked, “Where am I?”

“You died.” I said very monotonically. There was no sense in pulling punches, not now. The answer to the question was both what happened and where you were. You just did not know it yet. You could not understand then.

“I…I was trying to sleep for the night! I was a healthy man!”

“Do not be afraid. Everyone dies.” I said, devoid of emotion, for they served no purpose any longer for where we were.

You started to look around. At the bottom of the hill that you and I stood upon was molten lava, in front of us, in the not too far distance, was a foreboding and terrifying cave. Above us roared the mighty thunder and the lightning illuminated across the sky. Both screamed and stretched, and made their presence known, across the blackened sky, seemingly, at least to you, out of anger.

“What is going on here? Where am I?” You asked, as your eyes were skyward. Your fear was tangible and your confusion was well pronounced.

“I told you. You died.” I replied. Without hesitation and without bringing your eyes down to me, you asked once more but pointing to the sky.

“No. I meant, what is going on up there?” you asked with a mix of wonderment and angst.

“That is the All-Father and The Mother.” I replied matter-of-factly.

 Your eyes finally lowered from the sky and toward the personification I had taken so that you could see me, although your eyes struggled to gain focus at first. I appeared before you as a man, dressed in simple and forgettable garb.

 You continued in your confusion as you asked, somewhat rhetorically, “The All-Father and The Mother? What? And who are you?” Your questions were starting to get faster, which indicated both aimlessness and anxiety; and your nervous energy was oozing from your aura. I comforted you a bit.

“Yes. The All-Father and The Mother. You were taught about them on your planet, perhaps not by those names. You have heard of Ovid and Anaxilea in your studies.”

Your eyes blinked and face twitched some. Your countenance changed instantly to that of fear. Had you been living, your brow would have perspired with beads of sweat. Though, at this point, that would not happen to you. You simply asked me another question. You had many, though just a few were voiced to me on that day. "Why do they make so much noise? Are they upset with me?"

“No. We are all indifferent. There are no emotions in our justice.” I stated back at you. You knew exactly what I was talking about.

“There are emotions in everything!” You screamed at me. To which I replied with the same tone I had taken from the very first words we exchanged with each other. "Amongst mortal men and women, yes. Ours is a justice you could never truly know and may never truly appreciate. It is outside of the realm of possibility for beings, such as yourself, to fathom."

“Then they can save me! Tell them to save me, stranger.” You stated, thinking that you were a cunning one and could win this argument, as if it were one. There was nothing to argue. There was nothing to discuss, though you seemed as though you wanted to so I obliged.

“They have no jurisdiction here. There is no saving.” I said. I almost felt sorry for you as you stood there and looked bewildered. Your mind immediately went to dark and unnecessarily bleak places. It was as if you didn’t understand that you were already dead. And with that, I continued, “You are taking that to mean something cryptic. Don’t. It is just the way of things. There simply are the choices you make while you live and what has been decided is dispensed unto a man whence his mortal days pass.” I said as we both walked down the hill and towards the lava. I stepped onto the lava first. My feet rested upon the fiery seas of volcanic ooze unscathed. It was no different than resting them upon the soil in the reality from where you came, and I waited for you to follow. I knew you would not be led onto the lava without my insistence that you accompany me. And so, I reached my hand out for yours and assured you that you would be unharmed by the scalding fiery liquid. “Come, take my hand. Don’t worry about the lava…” I said knowing my own capabilities in this realm. “I will protect you.”

It was then that your eyes caught mine for the first real time. You suddenly knew who you were speaking to. "Zauriel?"

“Aye. It is me.” I answered. Deceiving you served no purpose. You took my hand and stood atop the lava. You looked down at your feet with opened mouth. You were astounded that you could feel no heat and no pain; and that you were not claimed by the torrid liquid.

Not long after, your eyes did rise from the lava and they looked back outward to the cave just across the lava on which we both now stood. From what you could see the opening was black as darkest night, the thunder and lightning roared above you once more and you were reminded of what I said about All-Father and The Mother. You were reminded that they had very little say here; so much so that the All-Father and The Mother chose not to speak. The thunder and lightning sufficed. Your gaze returned to the cave and immediately you knew what you were looking at. It was the realm to the Underworld. It was the gateway to the Queen of the Damned.

“I think I know who lives down there.” You told me. You did not know that I could read your thoughts. You did not know that I knew what was to happen before it would. “I know you do.” I replied reassuringly.

“Perseph-” I silenced you and I interrupted. “It is better not to state my sister’s name outright. It only calls you to her attention quicker.” You swallowed hard though your fear would not disappear that easily.

“So she does hate me! So there is a sense of revenge amongst this! There is emotion, Zauriel! You lied to me!” You exclaimed in anger and fear.

I simply looked to you and spoke, as I had all along. “I did not. There is no emotion. My Sister, the Underworld’s Queen, is simply serving her function to justice. She executes the justice. You have made your choices in your life and you have to go to her for what is rightly to be granted unto you.”

"And what is that?" you asked me.

“Punishment.” I said.

“Why?” you inquired once again, this time your tone was accepting. It was because you knew why. You knew why you were here; though I reminded you. You needed to hear it.

“You lived an unjust life. The harm you inflicted onto others is harm you also inflict upon yourself…here.”

You fell silent as your eyes moved from my face to the cave of the Underworld. You recalled, just then and more vividly than before, the very instances that you knew I was speaking of. You felt shame and hesitated to even look in my direction out of some form of embarrassment. You weren’t used to being spoken to so candidly and knew, deep down, you could not deny what I had said.

I remained silent, my gaze transfixed on your person. Before long, you spoke up once more, with a shaky timbre to your voice.

“This has to be a bad dream. I can’t! No! I didn’t have a choice!”

“Yes you did. Everyone has choices.” I reminded you in a friendly manner. You were going to yell back at me that it was not true. That your presence here was because of something else, something outside of your control, but you stopped. Swallowing those words and that line of thinking was a difficult thing for you to do. You were growing angrier, and more frightened, by the moment.  I finished my thought, “People are the sum of their choices. The ones you made got you here. Though all is not quite over, just yet, for you.”

Your eyes widened and with great impatience you spoke up, “It’s not? How so? Tell me, Zauriel!” you insisted.

"My Sister has allowed me to give you a choice. We are just, after all." You nodded your head with such nervous haste.

“Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you! What choice?” you anxiously, and happily, inquired.

“You can either go into the Underworld, subjected to unspeakable and unfathomable punishment that has a definitive end. I know you want to ask so I will answer before you do. I do not know when the end is. There is no time here.” I paused for a moment before I finished my thought. “Or I can take this away forever. You shall not know physical anguish by The Queen’s hand. The Underworld’s Kingdom shall not hear your soul’s screams. You will be left alone. For always.”

You stopped for a moment and thought. You could hear the voices of the damned scream out from the cave. Fear overcame you. You started to twitch. You were extremely afraid of what you did not know and so certain of what you thought you did. "You know what I am going to choose already don’t you?"

“Yes.” I answered. I did not want to lie to you. There was no point in doing such. You pondered some more.

“Then what is the point? Just give me what I was going to choose.” you stated unpleasantly in depressed, yet angered, resignation.

“That is not how it works. Each man is the sum…” You interrupted me with a wave of your hand and turned away from me. Your anger had returned to you. “Each man is the sum of his choices, yes I know, I get it!” I said not a thing, despite you being incorrect. You did not know, in the true sense of the word; not yet anyways.

“So I would be alone? Away from here?” You repeated the offer back to me, to be sure you heard correctly. Immediately, you continued. "What’s the catch, Protector?" You addressed me by the title many in your universe knew me by as you pivoted to face me again. I answered you honestly.

“The catch is that you will be alone.”

You thought about it, though you thought about it incorrectly. You thought you were able to evade your justice. You believed yourself to have been granted a great deal, and for the countless crimes against humanity that you had committed. You thought yourself an intelligent and cunning person. What it meant to be alone, in your reality, was not the same as it is here amongst the dead.

“I choose to be alone then.”

I remained unmoved and silent. You did not like that. “Did you not hear me, Protector? Was I unclear? I choose to be alone! Make it happen and rid me from this place!”

“Are you sure?” I wanted to give you one final chance before I made anything permanent.

“Of course I am sure!” You shouted at me. Without a moment wasted, you were suddenly in a void. It was a complete and true nothingness, where there existed no time and no one else for all eternity, without reprieve.

You would think on what got you to where you ended up, on my words; on your brief stay in what you thought was your hell. It would not be until later that you realized that the choice, the real choice, was between two separate hells.

The gods would have their justice.

A man is simply the sum of their choices and you would hear me say that in your head over and over again though you could not voice your discontent with that adage or with anything else. There was no one to voice it to. You were one with nothingness and, eventually, it was one with you…

**Author's Note**: This story is loosely inspired by "The Egg". Also, the name Zauriel is taken from the comic book superhero by the same name. Although, this Zauriel is not the same character.

title: Choices

question: Summarize the events that led to the protagonist being sentenced into the void.

answer: The protagonist finds himself in the underworld speaking to a being named Zauriel. Zauriel informs him that he died while laying in his bed. The protagonist argues how it happened but Zauriel is reluctant to share the details. Zauriel tells him that the All-Father and The Mother will judge him according to his deeds on earth. The protagonist is alarmed, stating he had no choice doing what he did. Zauriel says everyone has choices. The protagonist asks what his punishment will be. Zauriel gave him two options: enduring unspeakable punishment in the Underworld or being left alone. The protagonist chooses the latter and was left in a void with no sound or vision, a punishment far worse than he had imagined.

question: What crimes did the protagonist commit?


text:
“Come on, dude.  Just don't fuck Hannah,” he said, a whine coming into his voice.

He hadn't- that much was certain.  Maybe a pity handjob once, when she really began to realize how pathetic he was.  I guess I shouldn't be so harsh on the kid.  He gave it his best, miserable shot, and things fell through.  Now he was just going to blame himself, perhaps appropriately, but I couldn't fault him for going stiff as the Rockies the first time he saw her.  He was quicker than me to know what he wanted, I could give him credit for that.  But he didn't have my determination.

When I met this specimen on his first day of college, I knew immediately that something was weak about him.  I detected a strange mix of Eagle Scout values and the self-confidence that comes from a lifetime in Mom's basement.  He had the backbone of a beached jellyfish and the sexual instinct of a juvenile sloth that had sniffed too many paint thinners.  But the thought of exploiting him would never have crossed my mind.   Still doesn't, really.  What I do with my own penis is none of the kid's damned concern.

“Hi, I'm your RA, Steve,” I grinned.  He wilted, and I instead directed my handshake towards his mother.  Nice tits, really, still pretty firm considering she'd probably nursed this sack of shit until he was in high school.  I didn't see a father around, but I knew I still probably couldn't pull that off.  And there was no point in bothering with a surprising MILF when I was a senior with a private room, freshman pussy downstairs, gonna tear that shit up-

The kid knew how to make fast friends, I'd give him that.  He seemed to know as well as anyone that he was neither smart nor athletic, both unattractive and uninteresting.  But he had money, money that he converted into flashy toys that would give him the quick and shallow glow of false friendship.  I would stop by a few times a week to commandeer his Xbox, and pretend to listen to his troubles with women.

“I could hook you up with someone,” I joked.

“Dude, really, that'd be awesome.  Like don't tell anyone, but, well, I've never-”

“Shut up, shut up.  I don't want to hear about that.”

“So, for real?”

“Yeah.  One of my friends.  She could help you out with your 'little problem'.”  The damn kid.

He pestered me about that proposal for a while, which I'd suggested for no reason other than the hope that it might shut him the fuck up.  It backfired a little.  Thankfully, I'd had enough success with the junior girls that I didn't even need to hit up the freshman whores in our hall.  When I'd finally had enough, I took him to one of those sit-down nightclubs, not quite a bar, and let him watch my game.

I had two fingers deep in this chick's pussy when the kid made his life-changing discovery.  She was all over me in five minutes, said she was Canadian.  I could taste her black lipstick, and I got off just by hearing the little hiccup she gave when I touched her G-spot.  And the kid was nowhere to be seen.  I didn't give a fuck.  He'd better not tell anyone I'd brought him here.

As I dragged the Canadian along for the night, he bounced back up behind me.  “It's...” he paused for breath “it's a good night.”

“Sure is,” I laughed, as the drunken Canadian draped her arm across the back of my neck.  “Can you get back?”

“Yeah, yeah, I can!” he bubbled, and for once I felt something other than contempt for him.  He left my mind for the rest of the night as I fucked the Canadian mercilessly, but even then, she wasn't good enough to make me think it'd last forever.

I barely saw the kid for a week.  It was good to get a break from his bitching, but I didn't mind his Xbox and the free weed he'd been giving out lately.  To make things worse, my success with the ladies above the drinking age had faltered, and I'd been forced to take the plunge and tap into some freshman vagina.  It wasn't bad, really.  More of them were virgins than you'd think.

I came back late from a test one night and his door was open.  I peeked in and saw her.

He bumbled.  “Oh, yeah, this is Hannah,” he started.  “I guess we're kinda- I dunno-”

“I like him,” she shot up.

I gave the pair a look of wry amusement.  So the kid might finally have sex, I thought to myself.  I headed back to my room.  Hannah was reasonably attractive, though nothing about her stood out from the other freshman girls.  Except for that little indicator of confidence I'd seen- certainly, it offset him.  I had a booty call later with some nameless girl from the floor below.  Still unsatisfied, I masturbated a little to get to sleep.  The laptop on my chest was flipped open to some quality porn, and as I came, some unsettling feeling washed over me.  Feeling nauseous, I headed to the bathroom to wash my face.

It was gone now, my stomach settled, but my mind was still upset about something.  I walked out into the hall again, and saw Hannah sneak past the corner.  I did a double take.  Stalking quickly back to my room, I turned out all the lights and tried to sleep.  When I touched my penis again, Hannah's well-shaped body flashed through my mind.

Well, I just couldn't help it.  I devoured everything in my path- the darkest pornography I could find, the trashiest girls at the bars, even that Chinese chick in Econ who I'd been too intimidated by.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that she wanted the D like crazy.  But when she, too, abandoned my bed in the morning, I knew that I hadn't had enough.

I avoided the freshmen.  Still, I somehow couldn't keep Hannah off my mind.  The one girl I really shouldn't have, save for my mother.  If I made even the slightest move towards Hannah, I would never hear the end of this kid's complaints.  I saw her around campus sometimes, shot her a smile which she was unreliable at returning.  She just had an incredible *ass*, something I wanted to sink my teeth into like a vampire.  I couldn't control myself.  The kid must have noticed that I was stopping by his room more and more, without interest in the Xbox.  I just kept asking what was going on with Hannah.  But he was too fucking stupid to suspect *that*.

He knocked at a bad time.  I'd just finished with another blonde-haired freshman, this one with only a moderately voluptuous posterior.  For the first time in my life, I had a type.  She covered herself up, and I stepped outside.

“Dude...I need advice,” he sniveled.  “I haven't seen Hannah in a week.  She just...she doesn't seemed interested anymore.”

I consoled him like a jackal might assure a wounded antelope that the suffering would soon end.  “Don't worry,” I lied.

What was I thinking?  Was I really destroying this kid's relationship to get some ass?  I couldn't control myself at all anymore.

“Just give her some space.  Stop texting her.”

I was giddy.  I headed back inside and kicked the blonde out, hatching my plan.  Over the next few days, I kept seeing Hannah around campus.  There was no discernable change in her persona, but she met my gaze now.  Her eyelids would flutter, but her cheeks never flushed.  She had no shame, and knew exactly what she wanted.

“I think we're done,” the kid stated glumly.  “But like, I just have another problem...”

“What's that?” I intoned in an Academy Award-winning feint of concern.

“I keep seeing her on the floor.  And she doesn't even look at me, but like, well, it's an all-guys floor...”

“Well, maybe you can't trust her,” I shrugged.  “There are lots of women, it'll take you time to find a worthwhile one-”

“Just, dude,” he started.  “I think you're really cool and all, but like, you know, you haven't...”

“No, of course not,” I laughed harshly.

“Why does she keep coming down here?”

Fuck.  Was the kid onto me, or was he just jealous?

“Just do it for me,” he said.

“What are you talking about?  You're going to have to be more clear.”

“Come on, dude.  Just don't fuck Hannah.”

I assured him I wouldn't.  I was secretly thrilled at his timing, however- the clothes I was changing into weren't for the bar that night.  I showed him out, and grabbed an extra condom.

I'd insisted we do it in her room.  Somehow that tiny freshman dorm seemed tantalizing to me- I'd equated it as a sanctum with the smaller, biological one I was bound to enter, elevating both into divinity.

Hannah didn't scream or cry when we had sex, and she seemed remarkably composed afterwards.  I wasn't sure if I wanted her again, but I'd shrugged off my suspicion that she was like some early-maturing spider, trapping me in her sexuality for reasons unknown.  I felt little weight off my shoulders- in fact, the only thing I'd learned was that I was mostly a man led around by his penis, with a side hobby of devouring people's souls.

title: A Heart Sickening for Little Hannah

question: Summarize the narrator's perception of Steve.

answer: The narrator believed Steve to have a false self-confidence that has not been tested by the real world. He thinks he doesn't have a backbone, though he knows how to make friends quickly. Also, the narrator perceived Steve has lots of money to buy flashy toys that attract people and give him the glow of false friendship.

question: According to the passage, why did Steve not want his RA to fuck Hannah?


text:
[The Venezuelan national champions jersey] The VENEZUELAN NATIONAL ROAD RACE CHAMPIONSHIPS are held annually, and are governed by the Venezuelan Cycling Federation (in Spanish: _Federación Venezolana de Ciclismo_). The event also includes the Venezuelan National Road Race Championships.

Multiple winners

Men

  Wins              Name                     Years
  ----------------- ------------------------ ------------------------
  4                 José Chacón Díaz         2000, 2003, 2004, 2011
  Tomas Gil         2006, 2008, 2010, 2012
  3                 José Rujano              2007, 2009, 2013
  Pedro Gutierrez   2016, 2017, 2018

Women

  Wins   Name              Years
  ------ ----------------- ------------------------------------------------------------
  10     Danielys García   2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018

Men

Elite

  Year   Gold                     Silver             Bronze
  ------ ------------------------ ------------------ --------------------------
  1999   Aldrin Salamanca         Omar Pumar         Josmer Méndez
  2000   José Chacón Díaz         Alexis Méndez      Aldrin Salamanca
  2001   Jose Malave              Jorge Rodriguez    Henry Meneses
  2002   Franklin Chacón          José Chacón Díaz   Manuel Medina
  2003   José Chacón Díaz         Carlos Ochoa       Franklin Chacón
  2004   José Chacón Díaz         Tomas Gil          César Salazar
  2005   _No championship held_
  2006   Tomas Gil                Andris Hernández   Manuel Medina
  2007   José Rujano              Franklin Chacón    Tomas Gil
  2008   Tomas Gil                Víctor Moreno      Noel Vasquez
  2009   José Rujano              Víctor Moreno      Richard Ochoa
  2010   Tomas Gil                José Chacón Díaz   Carlos Gálviz
  2011   José Chacón Díaz         Tomas Gil          Richard Ochoa
  2012   Tomas Gil                José Chacón Díaz   Carlos Gálviz
  2013   José Rujano              Carlos Gálviz      Pedro Gutierrez
  2014   Carlos Gálviz            José Rujano        Tomas Gil
  2015   Yonder Godoy             José Rujano        Tomas Gil
  2016   Pedro Gutierrez          José Alarcón       Anderson Timoteo Paredes
  2017   Pedro Gutierrez          José Alarcón       Yonathan Salinas
  2018   Pedro Gutierrez          Carlos Gálviz      José Alarcón
  2019   Orluis Aular             Carlos Gálviz      Ángel Pulgar

Women

Elite

  Year   Gold                     Silver            Bronze
  ------ ------------------------ ----------------- -------------------
  1999   Lohana Torres            Anrosi Paruta     Melisa González
  2000   _No championship held_
  2001   Daeira Díaz              Dayana Marín      Maria Brito
  2002   Anrosi Paruta            María Maldonado   Ismary Orellana
  2003   Anrosi Paruta            Danielys García   Blendys Rojas
  2004   _No championship held_
  2005
  2006   Danielys García          Francimar Pinto   Angelica Quintero
  2007   Karelia Machado          Fanny Álvarez     Danielys García
  2008   Danielys García          María Briceño     Francimar Pinto
  2009   Danielys García          María Briceño     Fanny Álvarez
  2010   Danielys García          María Briceño     Fanny Álvarez
  2011   Danielys García          Angie González    María Briceño
  2012   Danielys García          María Briceño     Angie González
  2013   Danielys García          Lilibeth Chacón   Jennifer Cesar
  2014   Danielys García          Angie González    Wilmarys Moreno
  2015   Jennifer Cesar           Wilmarys Moreno   María Briceño
  2016   Danielys García          Lilibeth Chacón   Maria Rueda
  2017   Lilibeth Chacón          Yngrid Porras     Jennifer Cesar
  2018   Danielys García          Wilmarys Moreno   María Briceño
  2019   Wilmarys Moreno          María Briceño     Yngrid Porras

title: Venezuelan National Time Trial Championships

question: What does the story say about the Venezuelan National Road Race Championships?

answer: The Venezuelan National Road Race Championships is an event included in the Venezuelan National Time Trial Championships. It is held annually.


text:
THE equipment regarded as the most effective in the battle against marauding wild dogs in Victoria in the past decade has been banned.

The large rubber-jawed Lane’s trap can no longer be used effective from December 30 last year.

Some farmers have expressed concern about the phasing out of the highly successful trap, but the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning believes it has other viable options.

There are smaller rubber-jawed traps used by the eight dogmen working in the North East and the department, with some support from farmers, believes its baiting campaigns are starting to have a significant impact.

Recently released statistics indicate the dogmen are shooting and trapping a large number of dogs each year with the total increasing each of the past three years.

Back in 2014, just 179 dogs were killed by dogmen in the North East and Gippsland.

The number increased to 397 in 2015, with 195 in the North East, 439 in 2016 with 243 locally and last year 459 with 236 in our region.

Each of the past two years more dogs have been killed in the North East indicating there are still large numbers in the vast tracts of bush adjoining farming land.

Upper Murray farmer Neil Mitchell is sceptical about the prospects of trapping dogs with the smaller traps which are now being used.

Tallangatta Valley farmer Stuart Morant says the Lane’s rubber-jawed trap has been the most effective method of catching dogs in appropriate terrain.

And another Tallangatta Valley farmer, John Ried, believes it could be a disaster if the dogmen no longer have access to such traps.

It was back in 2008 that the Lane’s serrated jaw traps were banned in Victoria under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. The legislation stipulated commercially manufactured rubber pads must be attached to the Lane’s traps and they had to be inspected every 24 hours instead of 72 hours as previously indicated.

Tim Enshaw, the co-ordinator of North East dogmen based at Wodonga, said the dogmen and farmers were given an exemption and extension to use such traps until December.

Mr Enshaw said it had always been the intention for people using such traps to “wean” themselves off them before their use became illegal. He said the department and its employees have no control over the Acts they work under.

Mr Enshaw said some of the dogmen think the smaller traps are good and others do not like them. “They are all using the small traps and they are catching dogs. They do work. They can work,” he said.

He believes the baiting programs are being successful in keeping dog numbers down. It is a fact conceded by Mr Mitchell, who says baiting is helping with eradicating young dogs, but older dogs are too cunning.

Aerial baiting was done near the Walwa and Shelley Rd area last year and it seems to have worked well along with the removal of large tracts of pines reducing habitat for wild dogs. Mr Enshaw said aerial baiting was done in the region last October and further such baiting is planned for around May.

“At the moment, it is done twice a year,” he said.

But he said the department still needs feedback from the community about dog sightings. He said the dogmen need to know where dogs have been seen so they can target those areas.

Another new method being used by the dogmen is a meat bait attached to a spring-loaded injector with 1080 poison inside. It is something used in the US for coyotes which is successful.

The theory is when a dog grabs the meat bait and tries to pull it upwards, the injector fires 1080 into its mouth and kills it. But there has been a hiccup to its use caused by the most cunning of birds – crows. Mr Morant set up five such baits with the assistance of a dogman near a pit where his dead stock carcases are dumped. All the baits were taken and the injectors did not discharge.

So a camera was set up to monitor the baits and showed crows taking the meat by pulling it sideways and avoiding a discharge of the poison. The dogmen are now hiding such baits to avoid them being detected by birds.

[]

It will be quiet, and then something happens …

The proof is in the pudding to some extent about the success or otherwise of wild dog control in our region.

At present, there are few reported stock killings which is pleasing for both the department and farmers running sheep.

But there are still a few hot spots and one is in the Tallangatta Valley on property owned by long-time farmer John Ried.

In an eight-week period from August to October last year, 13 dogs were shot on his property.

Mr Ried’s son, Brett, and two shooters who were allowed access to the property shot nine pups and four grown dogs.

“That’s a bit frightening. They are all in one particular area,” Mr Ried said.

The Ried property is near the Left Hand Rd in the Tallangatta Valley, but the block frequented by all the dogs is in a back block on Campbell’s Road. There is a spur which runs off the peak of Mount Cudgewa near the property and provides a proven easily accessable track for dogs.

Mr Ried had for many years a successful super-fine wool sheep flock of about 2000.

“We had our first kills in 1982,” Mr Ried said.

He erected electric fencing in a bid to keep the dogs out and fought a losing battle for 20 years.

The most difficult part was maintaining the fence in working condition in tough terrain and eventually the family got out of sheep.

Now he runs about 100 heifer cattle on his back block, but the dogs still have an impact.

“About three per cent of the heifers lose their tails,” Mr Ried said.

“The dogs chase them and bite off their tails.”

Last year one of the heifers suffered a large bite mark on its rump and has struggled to overcome it.

A couple of weeks ago, a big yellow dog was seen on the back block.

Mr Ried set up four bait stations and three were taken.

“I bait twice a year in autumn and spring,” Mr Ried said.

Further up the valley, last spring a pack of seven dogs were seen in one farmer’s paddock, but they quickly disappeared.

Stuart Morant is one of the few farmers in the valley still running sheep. He concedes the dog problem is relatively quiet at the moment.

“But I do not take much notice of that. They come and they go,” he said.

“There is only about three of us around here left with sheep.

“The baiting may have helped. You keep your fingers crossed. All is quiet and then something happens.”

[DOG-FIGHT: Tim Enshaw, the co-ordinator of North East dogmen based at Wodonga, believes baiting programs are being successful in keeping dog numbers down. He said aerial baiting was done in the Upper Murray last October and further such baiting is planned for around May.]

__ DOG-FIGHT: Tim Enshaw, the co-ordinator of North East dogmen based at Wodonga, believes baiting programs are being successful in keeping dog numbers down. He said aerial baiting was done in the Upper Murray last October and further such baiting is planned for around May.

Opportunity for farmers to have their say

Farmers in the North East and Gippsland soon get their opportunity to comment on wild dog control measures.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s community workshops start later this month.

The workshops have been announced by the department’s state-wide manager for invasive species Vaughan Kingston.

“The workshops are an opportunity for the community to have input into the way dogs are controlled locally,” Mr Kingston said.

“Reducing the impact of wild dogs can be achieved by all land managers working together using a combination of trapping, baiting, shooting, exclusion fencing and good animal husbandry.

“The sessions will focus on local wild dog controllers and what they have caught on their trail cameras, as well as sharing the knowledge about current management techniques for wild dog control.

“We will also use this time to discuss what has worked well and what needs improving.”

Further information about the workshops in the North East can be obtained from Tim Enshaw in Wodonga.

The workshop for the Mansfield region will be held at Barwite from 10am to 1pm on February 27.

The following day there is a barbecue breakfast for the Corryong region at the Burrowye CFA shed, Guy’s Forest Road, from 8.30am to 11am.

Then on March 1 there is a barbecue breakfast from 8.30am to 11am at the Bullioh Hall for people in the Granya and Tallangatta region.

The Eskdale Football Ground is the venue on March 2 from 8.30am to 11am for people in the Mitta region. A workshop is being held at Alexandra on March 5, then the next day at Ovens from 10am to noon and on March 7 at Whitfield Sports Ground for a barbecue breakfast from 8.30am to 11am

question: Why are wild dogs a problem?

answer: There are many of them. They harass and hurt livestock including biting off the tails of cattle and taking bites out of them.

question: Summarize the tactics dogmen and farmers use to trap and kill wild dogs.

answer: In the past they used serrated jaw traps, but as they were banned in Victoria under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 2008. They switched to rubber-jawed traps, but now those too have been banned. Smaller rubber-jawed traps are allowed, but traps must be checked every 24 hours instead of the 72 hours previously indicated. Some trappers like the smaller traps, others do not. Another method being used is meat bait attached to a spring-loaded injector that shoots 1080 poison into the mouths of targets. One farmer erected electric fencing in a bid to keep the dogs out, but it was hard to upkeep and was only somewhat effective.


text:
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[Phishers Favorites Top 25, Q1 2019]
  May 2nd, 2019  _Adrien Gendre_

Phishers’ Favorites: It’s Lonely at the Top: Microsoft Remains the #1 Impersonated Brand in Phishing Attacks

Today, we published our Phishers’ Favorites report for Q1 2019. Now in its fourth edition, the list highlights the 25 most impersonated brands in phishing attacks. The ranking is based on the number of unique phishing URLs Vade Secure detects for each brand within the quarter.

For the past three quarters, we published separate Phishers’ Favorites editions for North America and Europe. However, since we’re seeing minimal difference in the top 25 brands for each region, we decided to publish a single global list.

Without further ado, here is the full list, with additional analysis below.

MICROSOFT REMAINS #1 AS HACKERS LURE TARGETS INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY

Perhaps a surprise to no one at this point, Microsoft topped our Phishers’ Favorites list for the fourth straight quarter. After a big dip in activity over the holidays, when hackers shifted their sights to consumer targets, Microsoft phishing slowly recovered in January before resuming its torrid pace in February and March. In fact, the week of March 4th was the biggest single week for Microsoft phishing since we started our analysis. Because of the sluggish start to the year, though, the number of Microsoft phishing URLs actually declined in Q1 for the first time, finishing down a modest 4.5% from Q4 2018.

Microsoft’s sustained popularity with hackers stems from the lucrativeness of Office 365 credentials, which provide a single entry point to the entire Office 365 platform while enabling them to conduct multi-phased attacks using compromised accounts. In fact, Microsoft’s own research estimates that Office 365 phishing increased 250% from Jan – Dec 2018.

[Phishers Favorites Q1 2019: Microsoft remains the most phished brand]

We continue to see a variety of Office 365 phishing attacks, from suspended account claims to links to phony OneDrive or SharePoint documents. Overall, the sophistication of these attacks is growing, with many Office 365 phishing pages being virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. To accomplish this, hackers mirror the actual Office 365 login page, pulling JavaScript and CSS directly from the legitimate website and inserting their own script to harvest credentials.

[Microsoft Office 365 Phishing Page]
Microsoft phishing page with identical branding to legitimate website

In addition, we’re seeing pages that redirect users to legitimate Microsoft pages once they’ve submitted their credentials in an attempt to convince them that nothing is amiss. For instance, one recent attack targeting multiple customers would redirect users to Office.com after they “logged in”. What’s also noteworthy about this phishing email is that the reply-to was a legitimate Microsoft email: support@microsoft.com. Again, this is intended to create a false sense of security with the user.

PAYPAL PHISHING SURGES, PROPELLING THE COMPANY TO THE #2 SPOT

Perennial phishers’ favorite PayPal regained the #2 spot, driven by a significant 88% increase in phishing URLs in Q1 2019. PayPal held the #2 spot in Q2 and Q3 2018, before falling to #3 in Q4 2018 with a 5.1% decline in phishing URLs.

PayPal has historically been one of the most targeted brands by phishers, and for obvious reasons: it is the most widely used online payment service worldwide, with more than 250 million active users as of Q3 2018. It’s also accepted by many online vendors worldwide, making PayPal credentials highly lucrative.

NETFLIX PHISHING ATTACKS TARGET BOTH CONSUMER AND CORPORATE USERS

Netflix fell one spot to #3 in the Q1 edition of Phishers’ Favorites. The growth in Netflix phishing URLs appear to be leveling off, from highs of 49.7% in Q2 2018 and 61.9% in Q3 2018, to 25.7% in Q4 2018 and 11.9% in Q1 2019.

[Netflix Phishing Trend, Phishers Favorites, Q1 2019]

In terms of content, most Netflix phishing emails claim that the user’s account has been suspended and/or their payment declined. What’s interesting is that more and more Netflix phishing emails are targeted at corporate email users. Since most users most likely use their personal email addresses for their Netflix accounts, one can only assume that hackers are hoping users won’t notice that the email was sent to their corporate email address. This is certainly possible, particularly when users read email on their mobile devices.

Another interesting trend is that many Netflix phishing emails contain as many as six or seven legitimate Netflix links (in addition to one malicious link). This technique is aimed at fooling both reputation-based email filters and users, who check one or two links and then assume that the email is legitimate.

ROUNDING OUT THE TOP 10 of Phishers’ Favorites

Facebook moved up three spots to #4, Bank of America dropped one spot to #5, and Credit Agricole shot up 15 spots to #6. Rounding out the top 10 were DHL at #7; Apple which increased eight spots to #8; Dropbox, which rose two spots to #9; and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) which shot up nine spots to #10.

Like Netflix, Apple phishing is an interesting example that targets both consumer and corporate users. Moreover, thanks to the variety of Apple products and services, we continue to see a range of phishing subjects, including important security updates, disabled Apple ID, and Apple store receipts. We’re also seeing a combination of attack vectors, including phishing emails that also contain malicious attachments purporting to be an invoice.

CLOUD CONTINUES TO REPRESENT THE MOST PHISHING URLS BUT SOCIAL MEDIA SAW THE LARGEST GROWTH

After remaining consistent in Q4 2018, the industry makeup of the Phishers’ Favorites list changed in Q1 2019. Two financial services companies dropped out of the top 25, leaving seven brands in the category. Meanwhile, social media and government each added one company, bringing their respective totals to three and one. Cloud (6), Internet/Telco (5), and E-Commerce/Logistics (3) remained unchanged.

[Industry Phishing Trend, Phishers' Favorites, Q1 2019]

In terms of percentage, cloud accounted for the most phishing URLs for the fourth straight quarter. 42% of all phishing URLs impersonate cloud providers, down from 49.6% in Q4. This decline was driven by the fact that four of six cloud brands in the top 25—Microsoft (-4.5%), Docusign (-24.2%), Adobe (-1.6%), and Google (-34.1%)— saw a quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) decline.

On the other hand, social media phishing saw the highest QoQ growth of any sector. Phishing URLs impersonating social media brands increased 74.7% in Q1, reversing the trend of three straight quarters of decline. This growth comes from attacks impersonating two brands: Facebook and Instagram.

Facebook and Instagram phishing surge

Facebook phishing increased 155.5% in Q1, propelling the social media giant into the #4 spot. Facebook was actually the #1 impersonated brand in Q1 2018, but then saw three straight quarters of decline, dropping to the #7 spot in Q4 2018.

[Facebook phishing trend, Phishers' Favorites Q1 2019]

It’s hard to know precisely why phishers are suddenly interested in Facebook credentials again. One plausible explanation could be the rise of social sign-on using Facebook accounts. With a set of Facebook credentials, hackers can see what other apps the user has authorized via social sign-on—and then compromise those accounts!

Another theory could be Facebook’s own questionable business practices, with recent headlines revealing that Facebook stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in plain text, and required some new users’ email passwords in order to sign up. Hackers could be taking advantage of the confusion and concerns of Facebook users to lure them into clicking on phishing pages.

[Instagram Phishing Trend, Phishers' Favorites, Q1 2019]

Instagram is another interesting example. For three quarters, Instagram phishing was virtually nonexistent. Then suddenly, in Q1, the number of URLs exploded 1,868.8%! What drove such massive growth? At the beginning of March, a number of news outlets reported on a wave of phishing emails claiming to offer a verified Instagram badge to trick recipients into providing their credentials. This same phishing attack was detected by Vade Secure’s technology.

[Instagram Phishing Page: Verified Badge Scam]
Instagram phishing page: verified badge scam

MONDAYS AND TUESDAYS ARE THE TOP DAYS FOR PHISHING

The most popular days for phishing attacks shifted from Tuesday and Wednesday in Q4 2018 to Monday and Tuesday in Q1 2019. The middle three days were Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And the bottom two days for phishing were Saturday and Sunday.

[Day of Week Phishing Trend, Phishers' Favorites, Q1 2019]

Looking at individual brands, Microsoft phishing attacks follow the overall trend, spiking on Monday and Tuesday; remaining strong Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and then dropping significantly over the weekend. Given the focus on Office 365 – versus Microsoft’s consumer products and services – hackers are clearly trying to take advantage of professionals being in the office and active on email during the week to increase their odds of success.

Microsoft phishing dominates weekdays, PayPal phishing weekends

To further illustrate the prevalence of Microsoft phishing on weekdays, we looked at which brand had the most new phishing URLs on each single day in Q1. Then we tallied up the results for all 90 days in the quarter. Microsoft was the #1 phished brand on 72% of weekdays, followed by PayPal (23%) and Facebook (3%).

[Single Day Highs, Phishers' Favorites, Q1 2019]

Looking at single day totals for the weekend days in Q1, the results shifted to PayPal (73%), followed by Facebook (11%) and Netflix (8%).

What’s clear across the board is that while there are many consistencies from quarter to quarter (e.g. Microsoft being the #1 target), hackers show no limit to their creativity. The way they construct their attacks—from the message content to the techniques they use to trick recipients—continues to evolve very rapidly.  To learn how to mitigate threats to Office 365, read the IDC Analyst Connection: Email Security: Maintaining a High Bar When Moving to Office 365.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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question: What does the article say about the 11th most impersonated brand in phishing attacks?

question: What does the article say about how the hackers create the illusion of authenticity?

answer: Hackers are able to mirror the actual Office 365 login page, pulling JavaScript and CSS directly from the legitimate website. Pages also redirect users to legitimate Microsoft pages once they've submitted their credentials. They also used a legitimate Microsoft email as the reply-to. Many Netflix phishing emails contain six or seven legitimate Netflix links.


text:
Welcome gentleman. I am here on behalf on the United Nations Committee on Asteroid Deflection. As I stand here before the heads of state of nearly every country, I am reminded of the immeasurable weight which we all have pressed upon us today. I believe that it is in our best interest for me to remind all of you why we are here today.

Three years ago, the scientists at NASA's Near Earth Objects Asteroid Detection Program discovered 2034 RG32, now known colloquially as the Hammer of God. After initial trajectory calculations, it was discovered that this asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, and was predicted to strike within 38 months. Now, three years later, we know that this asteroid will strike the Earth with 100% certainty in 48 days.

Let me put this in terms that you will understand, though no doubt all of you have read the reports already. This asteroid is three times larger than the one which killed the dinosaurs. It is twice as dense. When it strikes, it won't just wipe out one country, or one continent. It will destroy every bit of life on earth. Every human, every plant, every microbe and amino acid. All gone.

After it was discovered, nations put aside their differences and scrambled to develop a plan which would prevent the asteroid from striking the earth. I see several familiar faces among the audience today who I know approved the massive budget expenditures to try and get this thing done. Entire economies were set aside in order to focus on this threat to our existence. Eventually, one scientist  came forth with a theory that he had been working on since before the asteroid was discovered.

You are no doubt familiar with this scientist by now. He is known the world over, heralded as the savior of humanity. Lars Knutson, the Swedish theoretical physicist whose ideas we are all gambling on today, developed the theory of quantum magnetics. Although the details are beyond all but a handful of scientists, I will try to give you the basic gist of what this theory entails.

When a special type of magnet is cooled to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, a laser is fired into one side of the magnet. Inexplicably, the magnet releases more energy out of the other side than is put into it. Knutson theorized that this energy came from a parallel universe, and through higher order mathematics, proved that there is exactly ONE other universe. Think of it as a mirror image to this one, or for those among who are a bit more scientifically minded, an antimatter universe is closer to the concept, but still not quite exactly.

The problem with this mathematical theory is that Knutson could not prove which of the universes we belong to. One of the fundamental aspects to his theory is the idea of symmetry. Think of it like this: in our universe, more energy came out of the other side of the magnet. In the other universe, that energy came out of the same side of the magnet, presumably destroying the laser that fired in the first place. Knutson believed that if he ran a negtive electric charge through the magnet instead of the positive one that he used, he would see the same results. Sure enough, when he ran a negative charge through the magnet, the energy came out of the same side that it entered.

This is not the whole story, but I am afraid that I must simplify it so that all of you are able to understand the concept. As I said before, I barely understand it myself. This brings us to the main matter. After Knutson's theory was proved, it was decided that his principles could be used to disperse the asteroid which is heading towards earth. The "death laser," as the press have decided to call it, has been finished. It sits in the Australian outback, waiting to fire upon the asteroid.

The problem is this: Knutson's laser worked on a small scale. For the amount of energy that is needed destroy the asteroid, different construction methods had to be used. We have no way to test on a small scale which polarity will compound the energy of the laser, and which polarity will send the laser back where it came from. Knutson himself has admitted that he has no idea.

We have currently diverted the energy output of several countries to power this laser. If it fires successfully, it will completely vaporize the asteroid, and in 48 days, all that will happen is a small light show as the fragments of the asteroid enter the atmosphere. If we get it wrong, the energy output will be enough to crack a hole the size of Australia into the mantle, and we will not need an asteroid to wipe out all life on Earth.

Gentlemen, this is why we are gathered here. To make the most important decision of our lives, and the lives of every human that has ever existed. I hold in my hand an ordinary quarter. No doubt if we destroy this asteroid, this quarter will be the most treasured relic in human history. The laser is prepped, the calculations are done, all that is left to do is for you to make the biggest bet of your lives.

Heads or tails?

title: [SF] Toss-Up

question: What does the text say about the Milky Way?

question: Summarize the primary source of tension in the story.

answer: The primary source of tension in the story is the complete destruction of the Earth either by a planet-killing asteroid or a man-made laser designed to vaporize it. The asteroid 2034 RG32, also known as the Hammer of God, is on a collision course with Earth and poised to hit the planet with 100% certainty in 48 days. When the Hammer of God hits, it will wipe out all life on the planet, down to the microbe. Although the world's governments put aside their differences for 38 months and worked together for a solution, known as the "death laser" developed by Swedish theoretical physicist Lars Knutson, nobody is 100% sure if it will work because it has never been tested on a large scale. Theoretically, if all goes well, the laser should vaporize the asteroid. If the scientists get it wrong, however, the energy output from the laser will be enough to crack a hole the size of Australia into the mantle, which would also wipe out all life on Earth. World leaders will have to decide the fate of humanity with a coin flip.

question: Summarize Knutson's theory on quantum magnetics.

answer: Knutson's theory states that when a special type of magnet is cooled to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, a laser is fired into one side of the magnet. The magnet releases more energy out of the other side than is put into it. Knutson theorized that this energy comes from a parallel universe, and proved via mathematics that there is one other universe that is a mirror image to the present one, like an anti-matter universe. However, Knutson couldn't prove which universe they belonged to. One of the fundamental aspects of Knutson's theory is the idea of symmetry, which assumes that whatever happens in one universe happens to the other, but in reverse.

question: What does the story say about the reason behind the world leaders resorting to a coin flip to decide the fate of humanity?

answer: The UN head of the Committee on Asteroid Detection asked the world leaders to flip a coin because humanity's survival at that point was 50-50. They had the laser that could theoretically vaporize the incoming asteroid, but there was a 50% chance it would fail and destroy the planet anyway. One side of the coin would presumably be to fire the laser and hope it works, while the other was to not fire the laser and accept their destruction because of the chance the laser fails and destroys the planet anyway.


text:
“Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio's daily program "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.”

(CNN)The Trump-Fox News feedback loop-- where President Donald Trump gets ideas from Fox News or the network gets its talking points from Trump -- has been with us for years. The goal has always been the same: Help the President at all costs.

Potentially the most disturbing example of this unholy alliance has come recently regarding the deadly coronavirus. Some (not all) Fox News hosts, along with Trump, have spewed misleading informationabout the risks posed by Covid-19, making it hard to determine who was leading whom. For example, in late February,various Fox News hosts framed the Democrats' criticism of Trump's then handling of the outbreak as simply another attempt to hurt Trump politically.

Trump's chief cheerleader Sean Hannity, on his February 27 show, did note that the "rapid spread" of the coronavirus was "concerning." But Hannity gave his political spin, slamming "some on the left" for "literally whipping this country into a frenzy," as he claimed that Democrats were "sadly politicizing and weaponizing an infectious disease as their next effort to bludgeon President Trump."

[Donald Trump's supreme challenge]

Unsurprisingly, the very next night, Trump downplayed the threat of the coronavirus at a rally, instead going on the attack and, like Fox News, claiming the Democrats "are politicizing the coronavirus." The President then ticked off what he views as the Democrats' other attempts to take him down which he has deemed in the past "hoaxes," from "Russia" to "impeachment" then adding, "and this is their new hoax."

We also saw Fox News hosts follow Trump's lead in undermining the danger posed by the coronavirus as being no more dangerous than the seasonal flu. Trump stated that point-blank on February 26, saying, "This is like a flu," at a White House news conference. It comes as no surprise that soon Fox News hosts were making the same claim, such as Jeanine Pirro declaring on the March 7 edition of her show, "all the talk about coronavirus being so much deadlier doesn't reflect reality." Pirro argued that the flu would be much more deadly if not for the fact that we have a vaccine against it. She was pushing for a vaccine against Covid-19, although experts say it won't be ready for many months.

[Trump put American lives in China's hands]

But given that even Trump has recently declared that the virus could result in between 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying, the pro-Trump network hosts have lately been less about undermining the threat of the virus. Instead, Trump's Fox News media allies Hannity and Tucker Carlson appear to have pivoted to defending Trump from political fallout over the federal government's inability to provide states with desperately needed medical supplies and the economic consequences of shutting down large swaths of America in the absence of a robust national testing and tracing program to stem the virus' spread.

For example, in response to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's criticism that Trump has not provided New York with life-saving ventilators, Hannity took to his show on March 27 and slammed Cuomo for "whining, bitching and constant complaining" about the lack of such equipment. Hannity even falsely proclaimed that, "Everything that New York will need, Cuomo has requested, the President has delivered."Obviously that's not accurate as Cuomo the very next dayon March 28, and countless times since, noted the lack of ventilators and other medical supplies.

On SaturdayHannity penned an op-edfor Fox News again slamming Cuomo, this time blaming him for not spending money years ago to buy ventilators.

[The wartime president who Trump should learn from]

There's little doubt that Trump would wholly support Hannity's attacks on Cuomo. In fact, during Saturday's White House press briefing, Trump went after Cuomo claiming the he has not been "gracious," given that the Trump administration has "given the governor of New York more than anybody has ever been given in a long time."

The fact New York has received so much assistance from the federal government is obviously because the state has by far the most cases of coronavirus in America -- but to Trump doing the right thing demands that a governor be grateful to him.

Then there's Tucker Carlson who, unlike Hannity, did use his Fox News show to sound alarm bells about the deadliness of the coronavirus beginning on March 9, in a monologue that reportedly influenced Trump to take the threat of the virus more seriously.

But now Carlson appears to either be trying to make Dr. Anthony Fauci a scapegoat for our economic downturn -- thus giving Trump political cover -- or persuade Trump to ignore the advice of this world-renowned doctor. On his show Friday, Carlson attacked Fauci's call to shut down America for long periods to stop the spread of the virus as being "national suicide."Carlson went on to criticize Fauci by stating, "Fauci is not an economist -- or for that matter, someone who fears being unemployed." Carlson added that, "We should never let someone like that run the country."

Given Carlson's monologue Friday, it's no surprise that come Saturday's press conference Trump echoed his impatience with keeping the country closed, saying "We don't want to be doing this for months and months and months." This just moments after he warned that America's "toughest week" of the coronavirus crisis was upon us, predicting "there will be death."

It's impossible to know where Trump stops and Fox News begins or vice versa. But what's abundantly clear is that both have one common interest: Defend Trump at all costs -- even if that means undermining doctors and lying about a deadly virus that is killing our fellow Americans.

question: What aspect of Trump and Fox News' relationship did the writer find the most offensive?

answer: The conflicting information on the risks posed by Covid-19 from Fox News hosts and Trump makes it difficult to discern who was leading who. Various Fox News hosts characterized the Democrats' criticism of Trump's handling of the epidemic as a political attack. Trump's main supporter, Sean Hannity, said the quick spread of the coronavirus was worrying but blamed certain liberals for inflaming the situation. But, it is ludicrous of Hannity to imply that Democrats are politicizing and weaponizing an infectious disease to defame President Trump. The pro-Trump network hosts have recently been less focused on weakening the virus danger. As a result of the lack of national testing and tracing mechanism to halt the virus' spread, Trump's media friends Hannity and Tucker Carlson appear to have shifted their focus to defending Trump from political ramifications.

question: What did Andrew Cuomo have against Trump?

answer: Governor Andrew Cuomo slammed Trump for not giving life-saving ventilators to New York. On his broadcast, Hannity attacked Cuomo for continuously lamenting the lack of such technology. Hannity also claimed that the President had given New York everything it asked for. There is no doubt that Trump would support Hannity's attacks on Cuomo. Additionally, Trump told Cuomo during their press briefing at the White House that he hasn't been nice and that the Trump administration has given him more than anyone else in a long time. The federal government had aided New York since it had the highest coronavirus cases in the country. To Trump, doing the right thing necessitates gratitude.


text:
Posted on May 30, 2019

Robby Soave, Reason, May 29, 2019

{snip} A fascinating new study suggests that the kind of racism awareness training taught in many university classrooms is not only useless but may actually be detrimental.

The study was published in the _Journal of Experimental Psychology: General_ in April. Researchers provided participants with some academic literature explaining the concept of white privilege and then asked them to gauge their reactions to hearing a story about an unfortunate man. For some participants, the man was described as black, for others, he was described as white. Researchers also ran a separate experiment in which the participants were not told about white privilege before reacting to the story. They also queried both sets of participants about their political beliefs.

What they found was that conservatives who had learned about white privilege were no more sympathetic to the poor black man than conservatives who had not learned about white privilege. For liberals, the results were alarming: Liberals who read the educational materials about white privilege were similarly unsympathetic to the poor black man as the liberals in the second experiment, but they were even more unsympathetic to the poor _white_ man.

“What we found startling was that white privilege lessons didn’t increase liberals’ sympathy for poor Black people,” writes Erin Cooley, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor of psychology at Colgate University, in an explanatory post for _Vice_. “Instead, these lessons decreased liberals’ sympathy for poor white people, which led them to blame white people more for their own poverty. They seemed to think that if a person is poor despite all the privileges of being white, there must really be something wrong with them.”

{snip}

{snip} In researching my book, _Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump_, I found numerous similar examples of academic exercises that blurred the line between anti-racism and anti-whiteness, and between scholarship and activism. {snip}

{snip}

[Editor’s Note: The study “Complex intersections of race and class: Among social liberals, learning about White privilege reduces sympathy, increases blame, and decreases external attributions for White people struggling with poverty” is available here. There is a charge.]

question: What does the article cover?

answer: The article touches on a study published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The study's focus was on racism awareness training and its effectiveness.

question: Is the article opinion or fact?

answer: Fact, with an introduction of opinion "a fascinating new study"

question: Are any sources cited?

answer: Yes, Journal of Experimental Psychology.

question: When was the article written?

answer: May 29, 2019

question: Write a ~4 sentence summary.

answer: The article touches on a study published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology. The study's focus was on racism awareness training and its effectiveness. The study found that white privilege lessons don't increase liberals' sympathy for poor Black people; the lessons decreased liberals' sympathy for poor white people. Additionally, the lessons did nothing to change the opinion of conservatives.


text:
The Pakistani PM has said that the US "martyred" bin Laden after its 2011 raid. Khan was critical of his predecessors' relationship with Washington and rued Islamabad's decision to partner the US in the war on terror.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said Thursday that the United States "martyred" Osama bin Laden by killing the al-Qaida leader in 2011.

The US did not make the Pakistani government aware of its plans to take out the mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks and Khan delivered a thinly veiled criticism of Washington during a speech in parliament, while also denouncing his predecessors' foreign policies.

_Read more:_ Opinion: 'As an Afghan refugee in Iran, I grew up with fear and humiliation'

Khan said he regretted Pakistan's partnership with the US in the war on terror and accused the White House of using abusive language against Islamabad in the past.

The former cricketer turned politician also expressed his ire at Washington's covert operation on May 2, 2011, carried out the US Navy SEALs. The special operations force pounced on bin Laden's compound in the military garrison town of Abbottabad in the middle of the night, killing the al-Qaida chief along with several of his operatives.

"We sided with the US in the War on Terror," Khan said, "but they came here and killed him, martyred him and ... used abusive language against us (and) did not inform us (of the raid), despite the fact that we lost 70,000 people in the war on terror."

KHAN: 'THEY BLAMED US FOR EVERY FAILURE'

Over the years Washington has repeatedly accused Pakistan of harboring terrorists, something Pakistan has repeatedly denied and Khan was keen to send a broadside in the direction of Washington. He told parliament: "The way we supported America in the war on terror, and the insults we had to face in return. They blamed us for every failure in Afghanistan. They openly held us responsible because they did not succeed in Afghanistan,'' Khan said.

-   [Survivors of an attack in Kabul move away from the ensuing blaze (Reuters/M. Ismail)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Fragile security

    Repeated attacks in Afghanistan in 2018 and 2019 have killed and wounded hundreds of innocent Afghans, and shown the world the fragile and worsening state of security in the conflict-stricken country. The incidents have plunged war-weary Afghan citizens into a state of despair and highlighted the limitations faced by the government in Kabul in ensuring public security.

-   [Against a backdrop of black smoke, a helicopter flies over a military hospital in Kabul (picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Hossaini)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    A long series of attacks

    The violent incidents have made Afghanistan once again a staple of international headlines. Outfits like the Taliban and the "Islamic State" (IS) have claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Afghan government is under heavy pressure to restore security and take back territory controlled by a number of insurgent groups, including the Taliban and IS.

-   [Afghanistan Taliban Kämpfer in der Ghazni Provinz (Reuters)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Spring offensive

    In 2018, the Taliban announced the start of their annual spring offensive, dismissing an offer of peace talks by President Ashraf Ghani. The militants, fighting to restore their version of strict Islamic law to Afghanistan, said their campaign was a response to a more aggressive US military strategy adopted in 2017, which aims to force the militants into peace talks.

-   [USA Ashraf Ghani und Donald Trump auf der UN Vollversammlung in New York (Getty Images/AFP/B. Smialowski)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Trump's Afghanistan policy

    US President Donald Trump unveiled a new strategy for Afghanistan in 2017, vowing to deploy more troops to train and advise Afghan security forces. Trump also pledged to support Afghan troops in their war against the Taliban and maintain US presence in the country for as long as there was a need for it. In 2019, he reversed course and promised a troop pullout.

-   [Taliban Afghanistan Friedensprogramm (Getty Images/AFP/N. Shirzad)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Afghan peace process

    Despite President Ghani's offer in February 2018 for peace talks "without preconditions," the Taliban had until 2019 shown no interest, dismissing the peace overtures as a "conspiracy."

-   [Afghanistan Kabul Protest gegen vermutete pakistanische Unterstützung der Taliban (DW/H. Hamraz)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Pakistani support

    Pakistan has been under pressure from Kabul and Washington to stop offering safe havens to militants blamed for attacks in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad denies and insists that its influence over the insurgents has been exaggerated. Kabul and Islamabad regularly trade accusations of harboring the other country's militants and the harsh language has underscored the strains between them.

-   [ Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (Reuters/O.Sobhani)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    Role of the warlords

    Apart from the Taliban, Afghan warlords exercise massive influence in the country. Last year, Hizb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar returned to Kabul after a 20-year exile to play an active role in Afghan politics. In September 2016, the Afghan government signed a deal with Hekmatyar in the hope that other warlords and militant groups would seek better ties with Kabul.

-   [Polen Nato-Gipfel in Warschau - Ghani & Abdullah (Reuters/K. Pempel)]

    Endless battle for power in Afghanistan

    An inefficient government

    In the midst of an endless battle for power, President Ghani's approval ratings continue to plummet. Rampant corruption in the Afghan government and a long tug-of-war within the US-brokered national unity government has had a negative impact on the government's efforts to eradicate terrorism.

_Read more:_ Refugee numbers hit record high in 2019: UN report

However, opposition lawmaker Khwaja Mohammed Asif slammed Khan for calling bin Laden a martyr, saying the al-Qaida chief had brought terrorism to Pakistan. "He (bin Laden) ruined my country but he (Khan) is calling him a martyr,'' Asif said.

Since assuming power in August 2018, Khan said his government has reset the Pakistan-US relationship, elevating it to one of mutual respect, for which he also credited the personal rapport he has built with President Donald Trump.

"No one insults us now," Khan said of modern-day relations with foreign powers.

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were the only countries to formally recognize the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

But Washington has long-held grievances against the Taliban, particularly over harboring bin Laden while he planned terrorist attacks against the US.

After 9/11, Pakistan became an ally of the United States against the Taliban, which was eventually ousted by a US-led coalition in November 2001.

jsi/rc (AP, AFP, Reuters)

_A previous version of this article stated that the Taliban was ousted by the US coalition in 2011. This has now been corrected. The department apologizes for the error._

question: Summarize Trump's Afghanistan policy.

answer: According to Trump's new strategy for Afghanistan, he vows to deploy more troops to train and advise the Afghan security forces. He also pledged to support Afghan troops in their war against the Taliban and to maintain US presence in the nation for as long as necessary.

question: What was Khan's take on the US killing the al-Qaida leader?

answer: According to Khan, the US 'martyred' Bin Laden. He went on to give a thinly veiled criticism of Washington during a speech in the parliament. Imran Khan also said that he regretted Pakistan's partnership with the US in the war on terrorism. He further accused the White House of using abusive language against Islamabad in the past.

question: Summarize the Spring offensive.

answer: The Taliban announced their Spring offensive in 2018 while dismissing any peace talks by the President. The militants were responding to the aggressive US military strategy that was adopted in 2017 with the aim of forcing militants into peace talks.

question: How did the U.S. kill Bin Laden?


text:
David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London for 30 years, has lately led a double life. In his day job, he has pioneered painstaking research into the binding properties of molecules and contributed extensively to understanding the particular influences on ion channel function in the development of drugs. In his after-hours alter ego, however, he is the take-no-prisoners scourge of quackery and mumbo-jumbo in his unmissable blog, DC's Improbable Science.

For a decade or more, no homeopath or acupuncturist has been safe from Professor Colquhoun's scathing, and often comic, online analysis. No newspaper report of the latest carcinogen – sausages or coffee or cheese – can survive his statistical scrutiny. He wages rigorous war against the march of managerialism and corporate speak through academia and the NHS. And, at 76, you would have to say he rather enjoys it.

Sitting in his office at UCL, surrounded by shelves of box files yellowed with the smoke of the pipe that was always a necessary accompaniment to his algebra, he dwells with some amusement on the two halves of his public life. "I once wrote a textbook on statistics, which has been enormously useful to me in many ways," he says. "But that book, though pretty well received, sold 5,000 copies over several years. The latest blog I did on the Department of Health had 7,000 hits in three days. I have to say it is fun to have a big audience. All my life, I have been writing papers that have been read by a handful of people around the world. I love the science and I remain addicted to stochastic processes, but to write something that gets picked up on Twitter and has an immediate response is a different kind of addiction. If I get asked to go to a university these days to speak they ask me to do a seminar on ion channels and another on management gobbledegook or something. One gets a dozen committed students, the other fills a large lecture hall…"

The General Medical Council currently requires all medical students to be familiarised with alternative medicine as part of their studies. Some universities apparently ask practising homeopaths to conduct this briefing; others, such as King's in London, invite Colquhoun. "I tend," he says, with a guffaw, "to give them a version of my 'Patient's Guide to Magic Medicine', which was originally written as a response to the witterings of the Prince of Wales on the subject."

Colquhoun's guide is a _Devil's Dictionary_ of all things holistic: "Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of an ill-defined drug, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety… Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland… Spiritual healing: tea and sympathy, accompanied by arm-waving… Kinesiology, iridology, vega test, etc: various forms of fraud, designed to sell you cures that don't work, for problems you haven't got." And so on.

Colquhoun has lately won a series of victories against what he calls the "endarkenment" of healthcare. After lodging a freedom of information request, he obtained the background correspondence from the prince's homeopathic charity that apparently influenced the creation of an infamous page on alternative treatments on the NHS Choices web page. Colquhoun subsequently gained an admission that the advice had "let down the general public" and a reworking of the page to include the wording: "There is no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition…" Also long in his sights have been the universities that offer MSc qualifications in anti-science. "I discovered for example that 'amethysts emit high yin energy' was being taught as part of a BSc at Westminster just down the road." As a result of the attention brought by his blog, science degrees in homeopathy are a thing of the past in British universities.

Inevitably, none of this has been achieved without some fallout. After protracted complaints by one herbalist to the provost of UCL, Colquhoun was quietly, and outrageously, asked to remove his blog from the university site in 2007. When he did so, "all hell broke loose" after a column by Ben Goldacre in the _Guardian_ exposed the academic cowardice of the university hierarchy. No stranger to lawyers, Colquhoun now worries that unless the much-debated defamation bill is passed, legitimate scientific opinion will continue to be suppressed by anyone with money.

At the same time, he hopes that the "fashion for irrationality", which he dates back to the Beatles going to India "when flower power stopped being fun and started being mystical bollocks", may be fading. His abiding hero is Bertrand Russell, and he laces his conversation with favourite quotes, including Russell's maxim that "it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true".

Colquhoun ascribes some of his critical scepticism to his father, the only boy from Birkenhead to get a scholarship to Liverpool University in his year in the 1920s, who went on to become a schoolmaster, teaching languages to Harold Wilson and the geneticist Steve Jones among others. Colquhoun was hopeless at school and started to make his mark as an academic only after a miserable couple of years as an apprentice pharmacist in a branch of Timothy Whites & Taylors chemists in Birkenhead.

Having eventually gained tenure at UCL in the 60s, he devoted himself to solving the "affinity-efficacy problem". This dwelt on the idea that if "drug design is to become rational, it is essential to be able to measure separately the binding affinity of the drug for its receptor and the effectiveness of the drug in opening an ion channel once it has bound".

The only way to solve the problem was by measurement of single molecules. In collaboration with Alan Hawkes, the necessary mathematics was worked out for the interpretation of experiments done initially with Bert Sakmann, who, with Erwin Neher, got the Nobel prize in 1991 for discovering how to record from single molecules. "I don't think drug design will become fully rational in my lifetime," Colquhoun says. "But I have tried to make a small contribution to that long-term goal."

He doesn't link the two halves of his career very closely in his own mind, but talking to him you can see clearly how one has fuelled the other. Having spent half a lifetime trying to establish the smallest conceivable causalities at the molecular level, you can well imagine his righteous frustration when policy-makers disregard evidence-based models entirely in putting forward advice in relation to health or diet or anything else.

"People simply still don't get that to prove 'effect B' is caused by 'intervention A', you have to use randomised controlled testing," he says.

In his current semi-retirement, Colquhoun was hoping to complete a book on the mathematical and statistical principles of pharmacology, but he worries the sheer irrationality of the world might yet prevent him. "There is so much to do on the blog," he says, both cheerfully and guiltily, "that I fear that might get in the way…"

TEN QUESTIONS FOR David Colquhoun

WHAT IS THE MOST EXCITING FIELD OF SCIENCE AT THE MOMENT?

Too often what's trendy now turns out not to live up to its promise. Predictions are impossible: that's why it's called research.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN A GOD?

Not since I was 15. A nurse took me to an Easter mass, which struck me as a sadomasochistic orgy (of course I didn't know then that so many priests acted out their perversities). I'm with Steven Weinberg when he said: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion."

WHAT BOOK ABOUT SCIENCE SHOULD EVERYONE READ?

Fiction: George Eliot's _Middlemarch_. Nonfiction: Bertrand Russell's _On the Value of Scepticism_.

WHAT WORDS OF ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO A TEENAGER WHO WANTS A CAREER IN SCIENCE?

Live your dream, and stick to your principles. But be realistic about career prospects. At the moment they are lousy.

DO YOU HAVE A FANTASY EXPERIMENT OR STUDY THAT YOU HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DO FOR LOGISTICAL/ETHICAL/COST REASONS?

No. Single ion channel biophysics is cheap compared with many areas. The limitation is my brain, not cost.

WHAT SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE WOULD MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE TO YOUR DAILY LIFE?

Factors that limit my daily life are not to do with lack of science (unless you count the inability of medicine to fix my spine).

OUTSIDE OF YOUR WORK, DO YOU LIVE AN EVIDENCE-BASED LIFE?

Yes, I think so. The exception is my pipe, without which I can't do algebra (or much else).

WHY DO SO FEW SCIENTISTS ENTER POLITICS?

Because science is one of very few occupations where you can put honesty above expediency (though even in science that doesn't always happen). That being said, the lack of scientific education among politicians is scary. Can you imagine a minister of education referring to "Newton's laws of thermodynamics", or giving taxpayers' money to schools that believe in karma and gnomes? Michael Gove has done both.

WHO DESERVES A NOBEL PRIZE?

That's always contentious. I suspect that big prizes cause more misery than happiness, and do nothing to improve science.

IF I CALLED YOU A GEEK WOULD YOU HOLD IT AGAINST ME?

Not in the least.

question: What does the article say about the reception of Colquhoun's blog?

answer: His latest blog post at the time of the article had 7000 hits in three days. An audience for his books is able to fill a large lecture hall. Due to the attention brought by his blog, British universities no longer offer science degrees in homeopathy.

question: What does the article say about Colquhoun's personal life?


text:
The Yankees and Red Sox have a historic rivalry, one that’s considered among the best in all of sports. However, Boston’s 2019 season was nothing short of disappointing, especially coming off a campaign in which they won 108 regular season games and steam-rolled every team they faced in the postseason en route to a World Series victory.

J.D. Martinez has an opt-out clause in his contract, and Mookie Betts has swirled intrade rumors as the Red Sox agitate to get under the luxury tax. Both of them were top five in fWAR on their team this season and last season. If they are both in different uniforms in 2020, the Red Sox may be in danger of finishing under .500 for the first time since 2015.

On the flip side, the Tampa Bay Rays have developed a strong core of talent both offensively,and on the mound. Guys like Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, and Brandon Lowe all seem cornerstones that a successful team can build around. They won 90 games in 2018 and 96 this year, despite an unfathomably low payroll around $68 million. Only four other teams were lower, and none of them even sniffed the playoffs, let alone almost hitting triple digits in the win column.

With that said, the Rays may be New York’s toughest competitor to own the American League East over the next couple years. Over the last two seasons, Tampa Bay has played the Yanks better than the rest of the division, winning 16 of their 38 games against them. That’s a 42% winning percentage compared to Bostons 15-23 mark and 39% winning percentage against New York. The Red Sox could be losing their top two offensive weapons, while the Rays are just getting better and better.

The Rays’ treasure trove of young talent is what really could keep the Yankees up at night. Tampa bay has MLB’s top prospect Wander Franco, according to MLB.com, not top mention lefty pitcher Brandan McKay who is the 12th-best prospect in baseball. FanGraphs rates Tampa Bay’s farm system as easily the best in the game, stocked with high-upside hitters and pitchers, as well as considerable depth. Boston owns just one top-100 prospect in Triston Casas (85), and ranks dead-last among the league’s systems according to FanGraphs.

With the firing of Dave Dombroski, the Red Sox have left their future in the hands of general manager Brian O’Halloran and chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom. Once the offseason is officially upon us, the Red Sox’s newest men in power will likely begin to run the team far differently than Dombrowski. The team indicated even before it hired Bloom that it wanted to cut payroll, and after Bloom’s thrifty tenure in Tampa, all signs point to a dip under the luxury tax line. It wouldn’t really be a stunner if they attempted to flip Betts either before next season or before the deadline, both to cut salary and restock a barren farm system.

With the two teams heading in opposite directions, the Rays seemingly have a brighter future and will be a tougher challenge for the Yankees to overcome than the Red Sox. We shall see if the Yankees are up to the task, with a level of analytical wherewithal that can keep pace with the Rays, and a level of financial might that far outstrips them.

question: What sport is this article about?

answer: The article covers major league baseball.

question: In the sentence, "However, Boston's 2019 season was nothing short of disappointing...", what does "Boston's" refer to?

answer: "Boston's" refers to the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

question: What is the name of New York's baseball team?

answer: New York's baseball team is the Yankees.

question: What does the article suggest are the basis of the Tampa Bay Rays success and future growth?

answer: The Rays have a strong core of talent despite unfathomably low payroll, they are just getting better and better, and they have a lot of young talent.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The article covers three major league baseball teams: the NY Yankees, the Boston Red Sox, and the Tampa Bay Rays. While a historic rival exists between the Red Sox and the Yankees, the article highlights the possibility that the real threat to the Yankees that exists is the Tampa Bay Rays.