The pic follows Lawrence as a ne-er-do-well who is hired by a rich couple to befriend their socially awkward kid. Disney+/Broadway star Andrew Barth Feldman plays the kid; his parents are played by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, as Deadline first reported.
Moss-Bachrach’s credits include Hulu’s The Dropout, HBO’s Emmy Award-winning Girls, HBO’s John Adams, FX’s Damages, and Marvel’s Netflix series The Punisher, starring opposite Jon Bernthal. He recently reteamed with Girls creator Lena Dunham for her feature Sharp Stick. He’s also starring in Disney+/Lucasfilm’s Tony Gilroy Star Wars series Andor. Moss-Bachrach recently joined Sarah Paulson in the cast of Searchlight’s upcoming feature Dust. He is repped by UTA, Sue Leibman/Barking Dog Entertainment, and Peikoff-Mahan.
No Hard Feelings is written by Stupnitsky & John Phillips. Alex Saks, Marc Provissiero, Naomi Odenkirk, Lawrence and Justine Ciarrocchi are producing. John Phillips is executive producing.
Seán Curran Company and Darrah Carr Dance present “Céilí,” a pleasant show that doesn’t break much new ground.
“Céilí” is the word in Irish for a house party, and also for group dances with braiding spatial patterns drawn from Celtic knotwork. So “Céilí” is a fitting, if generic, title for a collaboration between two dance troupes with Irish roots: Seán Curran Company and Darrah Carr Dance.
Curran and Carr, the companies’ namesakes, have much in common. They’re both Irish Americans who grew up learning traditional step dance before turning to contemporary styles. They both formed companies in the late 1990s. They’ve even worked together before, creating “Dingle Diwali” for Carr’s group in 2012. The “Céilí” that they debuted at Irish Arts Center on Thursday is something of a reunion, and it’s more about coming together than breaking new ground.
The success of any céilí depends on the music, and this one is in sure hands, with the top-notch fiddle-and-guitar duo of Dana Lyn and Kyle Sanna playing live. They start the show invitingly and remain a pleasure throughout, supplying the requisite sweetness and drive, along with a few unusual touches — like a Baroque gigue.
Carr’s dancers enter first — Irish Arts Center is home turf for them — introducing intricate floor patterns and enlivening skill (especially in the sparky footwork of Trent Kowalik) but also a troubling soft focus and recital smiles. It actually feels like a surprise — and a welcome one — when Curran’s group shows up, like late-arriving guests.
Nir Arieli
After an initial merging, the two companies take turns. Curran’s cohort looks more professional, and his choreography is more sophisticated and original (though it borrows gestures from his time as a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company). He offers a male duet for the excellent Jack Blackmon and Benjamin Freedman that suggests attraction through canonical repetition and other formal means.
Carr’s choreography is more playful, alternately reflecting the appealing and distressing sides of amateur energy, getting its punch from hard-shoe solos, like one by the pert and crisp Kendal Griffler. When the two groups join, the energy rises from the addition of bodies — the stage full of intertwining motion — but the merger creates no special hybrid, no discovery.
Instead, the excitement comes from props and entrances. The high point is the interpolation of “Box Tops,” a 1985 body percussion duet by Tigger Benford and Martha Partridge in which two dancers sitting on wooden boxes work up layers of complex rhythms and tones with claps and stomps. Freedman and Lauren Kravitz give the duet a flirtatious edge, bringing a sexual charge to the shared risk of musical timing. The numbers that directly follow, brandishing spoons and brooms, try with mixed success to keep the balloon in the air.
But the big event — spoiler alert — is when the hosts finally make an appearance, Curran and Carr taking to the stage like mom and dad out to prove that they still have it. They do, and it’s fun to see.
Certain books are better known for being hard-to-finish rather than widely read. While taking the time to sit down and work through a difficult book can be a big ask, the rewards for doing so are often great. Furthermore, the experience of absorbing great literature or learning from a heavy tome can be a prize in and of itself.
Today, we’ll look at seven famously difficult books — and why you should read them, anyway.
A Brief History of Time
“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”
Stephen Hawking’s bestselling book on cosmology dives into the history of human understanding of the Universe, explains our current models for how everything works, and discusses the areas where physics is going in an accessible and witty manner. While covering some esoteric topics, the book famously contains only a single mathematical equation, E = mc2.
Despite selling 25 million copies, the book is the namesake for the Hawking Index — a not entirely scientific measure of how much of a book people will read before quitting. The index measures the five most highlighted portions in the Amazon Kindle version of the book for how close they are to the beginning. The idea is that the closer these are to the beginning, the less likely it is that most readers make it to the end of the book. Hawking’s book scores 6.6% on the index, suggesting that most who pick it up never finish — or even get close to finishing it.
Those who do finish it not only get to enjoy Dr. Hawking’s famed wit but also come to understand how human reason has evolved and, with it, our conception of our place in the Universe. If that’s not a good reason to finish a book, then what is?
One Hundred Years of Solitude
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
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The multi-generational story of the Buendía family of Macondo, Colombia, penned by Gabriel García Márquez, has sold 50 million copies and can be read in dozens of languages. It is considered the masterpiece of its author and one of the best works of literature to come out of Latin America.
The book has a complex storyline and is open to several interpretations of its central themes. It provides both a linear plot and alternative ways of looking at how time functions for the various characters. The magical realism gives us both fantastical events in a fictional town alongside real events influencing a family history, which can be confusing for those unfamiliar with the genre.
However, the book has earned its praise for a reason. Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy went so far as to say it should be “required reading for the entire human race.”
Ulysses
“Love loves to love love.”
A classic of modernist literature that follows a man around Dublin on a typical day, Ulysses by James Joyce is one of the go-to examples of a literary masterpiece that is terribly difficult to read while also being held in high regard by those who manage to do it.
The book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style — perhaps the best example of it there is — that can be difficult and tiring to work through if you are unprepared. It is also a long text, coming in at 265,222 words. (The average novel is less than half of that.) The shifting styles of writing that reflect the changing states of mind of the main characters can also be confusing.
Ulysses, by virtue of its stream-of-consciousness style, gives us a look into the lives of its characters as they are lived rather than just how they are observed. In addition, the richness of the connections between different parts of the text and its allusions to other works helps give it a sense of wholeness, making the reader feel like they have a connection to places and events that they have only seen through the characters’ eyes.
But if you can’t finish it, don’t feel too bad. British author Virginia Woolf — who used stream-of-consciousness herself — got 200 pages in and then decided she couldn’t be bothered to get through the rest.
Catch-22
“They don’t have to show us Catch-22,” the old woman answered. “The law says they don’t have to.”
“What law says they don’t have to?”
“Catch-22.”
A novel written by Joseph Heller about a U.S. Army Air Corps bombardier during the Italian campaign in WWII, Catch-22 explores the madness inherent in every bureaucracy, the comedy found inside every tragedy, and the paradoxes that every life includes that cannot be addressed by logic alone. The novel is the direct source for the term “Catch-22” (a situation in which contradictory rules prevent a resolution) and the inspiration for the term “black comedy” (which was first used to describe the novel).
The book is famously confusing with opaque language, an extremely non-linear plot, and story elements that alternate between highly grounded, bizarre, and horrific with great speed. Despite this, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, said that Catch-22 was the only war novel she ever read that made sense. It is also hilarious and can help readers come to terms with absurdity and moral grayness in their own lives.
Les Misérables
“If we would take a little pains, the nettle would be useful; we neglect it, and it becomes harmful. Then we kill it. How much men are like the nettle! My friends, remember this, that there are no weeds, and no worthless men, there are only bad farmers.”
Written by Victor Hugo, this is the tale of Jean Valjean, a group of young revolutionaries, a young girl named Cosette, and a determined policeman who views the world in black and white as they navigate life in France as it transitions out of the post-revolutionary era.
The text is a massive 545,925 words, and much of the book is unconnected to the main plot line. These chapters contain discussions on topics such as monasteries, architecture, French history, and the Parisian sewer system. That many choose instead to watch one of the movie versions — which can still be up to five hours long — is unsurprising.
Despite the length of the text and sections that are so disconnected from the plot that even Hugo names the chapters “Parenthesis,” the full version of the book rewards any reader willing to consider every chapter. The subjects covered apply to humanity at all times in all places, while the questions raised almost certainly bother the reader as much as they do the characters.
The Tale of Genji
“’No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly,’ His Highness replied, ‘…and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.’”
Authored by Murasaki Shikibu, this is a story exploring the lives of the members of the Japanese Imperial Court and has a claim to being the first novel ever written. Tracing the fall of a prince as he is demoted to a member of the common rabble, the book gives us an in-depth look at a world long vanished.
The original text that we have, part of which appears to be lost, is in a long-dead version of classical Japanese. It is only in modern times that translations of the text into contemporary Japanese and English have given the book a wider audience. The original text does not name the characters, expects the reader to fully understand 11th century Japanese poetry, and has so many homophones that many readers are left unable to understand what’s going on. Attempts to translate the work must balance faithfulness to the original text with a desire for readability — a tightrope walk that often satisfies no one.
For those who find a translation they like, the book not only provides an inside account of classical Japan but also a sense of how the medium of the novel has evolved over the last thousand years.
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
“To put it bluntly, the discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics.”
An examination of modern capitalism through history and political economy lenses, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty set off a firestorm of debate when it was first published in 2013. In the years since its publication, a number of follow-up books, including some by Dr. Piketty himself, have explored the foundations and implications of this text’s fundamental thesis — namely, that returns on investments are higher than wages and likely will continue to be.
The book can be a bit dense for those who have not studied economics; it scores even lower in the Hawking Index than A Brief History of Time, coming in at 2.4%. It is nearly 600 pages long and covers economic history, an infamously dry subject.
However, the book still has the power to help readers understand modern economic and social problems and can provide a course in the history of modern economies. While Dr. Piketty has tempered the positive reception of the book and the theory put forward in it by reminding us of how messy economics can be, it remains a vital tool for understanding the world we live in.
He knew the play was designed to go his way when the huddle broke, so Grant Calcaterra felt a little something extra on the opening play of third quarter of Sunday's game at FedEx Field. Calcaterra lined up on the left side of the formation and ran a crossing route, turned, and saw Jalen Hurts' pass thrown perfectly. Calcaterra made the catch, made a man miss, and turned upfield for another big chunk of yardage. Welcome to the NFL, kid. First-and-10 after that 40-yard gain.
"It was super exciting," Calcaterra said on Wednesday from his NovaCare Complex locker. "Obviously, before the play, I knew the play call and I was just kind of going out there and doing my job. It was a big catch and I was able to make a guy miss. That being my first one, it was exciting and afterwards I was pretty psyched. I smacked Coach (Nick) Sirianni's hand pretty hard, so yeah, it was a lot of fun."
A sixth-round selection in the 2022 NFL Draft, Calcaterra dressed for the first time on Sunday and he made the most of his 17 offensive snaps. Given everything that Calcaterra has been through in his football playing career – stepping away from the game after three seasons at Oklahoma due to a series of concussions only to return to play at SMU in 2021 – and then to work his way into the NFL Draft, only to suffer a hamstring injury in his first Training Camp, he was going to realize the significance of the moment.
He's in the NFL. He's on a 3-0 team. And in his first game in uniform, Calcaterra made a contribution to the team's victory and showed, in the process, that he was ready for the moment.
"That's the biggest thing, because they always say you have to be ready when your number is called, and it's true," he said. "This is a business and everyone is here to do his job, so really I felt like I was just going out there and doing my job. You learn right away that this is a business, so that's just the way it is. Obviously, I had the crazy deal in college and then I came here and faced more adversity. I just kept my head down and kept working hard, kept trusting the process, and trusting my coaches and doing everything I could to get ready.
As a co-founder of the group Earth First!, he advocated slashing tires and downing power lines in an effort to return vast swaths of the country to their natural state.
David Foreman, who as the co-founder of the environmental group Earth First! urged his followers to sabotage bulldozers, slash logging-truck tires and topple high-voltage power lines, earning him a reputation as a visionary, a rabble-rouser, a prankster and, even among some fellow activists, a domestic terrorist, died on Sept. 19 at his home in Albuquerque. He was 75.
John Davis, the executive director of the Rewilding Institute, a research and advocacy group that Mr. Foreman founded in 2003, said the cause was interstitial lung disease.
Mr. Foreman was a leading figure among a generation of activists who in the late 1970s grew frustrated with what they saw as the compromises and corporate coziness of many mainstream environmental organizations, including the Wilderness Society, where he worked as a lobbyist.
In 1980, during a hike through the Mexican desert, Mr. Foreman and four friends developed the idea for a grass-roots movement built around the aggressive protection of the environment for its own sake. He came up with the name, Earth First!, and its motto, “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth.”
The movement borrowed heavily from the civil rights movement, radical labor groups like the Wobblies and the anti-industrial Luddites of 19th-century England. Its logo featured a clenched fist, à la Black Panthers, and like the Wobblies the group advocated sabotage against its enemies, like pouring sand in the gas tanks of construction machinery.
Its members drew inspiration from the writer Edward Abbey, whose 1975 novel, “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” depicts a group of eco-warriors who attack increasingly grandiose targets — including the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona — in the name of the environment. Indeed, in Earth First!’s debut action, in 1981, Mr. Foreman and a group of activists unfurled a 300-foot-long banner, painted to look like an enormous crack, down the side of Glen Canyon Dam.
Earth First! and Mr. Foreman were not just more strident than the mainstream. They advocated a different philosophy, known as deep ecology, which holds that nature has inherent value, not just in its utility to people. Their vision included returning vast swaths of land to nature, ripping out any trace of human intervention.
“We’ve ended up with a wilderness system and national parks system that is really made up of islands of habitat in this sea of human development,” Mr. Foreman told The Baltimore Sun in 1986. “We need to try to reweave the natural fabric of North America.”
Bettmann, via Getty Images
Other radical groups emerged alongside Earth First!, but it quickly became the most prominent, in large part thanks to Mr. Foreman. Early on, he led colleagues on a nationwide speaking tour, attracting crowds of college students and other young people with his fiery oratory.
“He would get up in front of a roomful of people and just jump in the air and yell at the top of his lungs while talking about extinction and other species and the balance of life on the planet,” Karen Pickett, an early acolyte who continues to work as an environmentalist, said in a phone interview.
Some of the actions he advocated were benign guerrilla theater, like dressing in hazmat suits outside national parks to highlight the risk of pollution. Others were more menacing, like driving metal spikes into trees to damage chain saws — and potentially kill their operators.
Earth First! was always loose-knit and non-hierarchical, driven by local chapters and the message spread by the Earth First! Journal, which Mr. Foreman edited and which continues to be published both in print and online. The organization had a small membership — about 5,000 at its peak — but it inspired countless groups to take a similar direct-action approach.
The high profile of Earth First! almost immediately drew government interest: By the end of 1981 the F.B.I. had opened a file on it. Eventually the bureau planted a mole within Mr. Foreman’s circle, and in 1989 federal agents arrested him and four others on charges of conspiring to sabotage power lines in Arizona.
The arrests played into a public image of Earth First! as a group of dangerous ideologues, even terrorists. It was a reputation that Mr. Foreman both courted and disputed.
“It’s not terrorism and it’s not vandalism,” he told The New York Times in 1988. “It’s a form of worship toward the Earth. It’s really a very spiritual thing to go out and do.”
Still, even some in the movement found him beyond the pale. Murray Bookchin, a philosopher and environmental theorist, called him an eco-fascist for statements that appeared to prioritize animals over people, like when he seemed to endorse famine in Ethiopia and immigration restrictions in the United States as means to reduce the human population. (In both cases he had misspoken, he said.)
There was at times a method to his madness: Mr. Foreman argued that his stridency gave room to mainstream groups, or even less-aggressive direct-action organizations like Greenpeace, to negotiate in Washington; they could point to him as the extremist alternative.
“We will not make political compromises,” he wrote in 1980 in the first issue of the Earth First! newsletter, which he expanded into the Earth First! Journal. “Let the other outfits do that. EARTH FIRST will set forth the pure, hard-line, radical position of those who believe in the Earth first.”
It soon emerged that the F.B.I. agent had encouraged the sabotage, essentially trying to entrap Earth First! in a felony, and most of the charges were dropped. Mr. Foreman eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for giving the agent two copies of his book “Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching” (1985), an action that prosecutors said constituted conspiracy to commit a crime.
The stress of the legal proceedings nevertheless created fissures in the organization, as did the arrival of a new, younger cohort of activists who wanted to inject social justice issues into Earth First!’s environmentalism. Mr. Foreman, who called himself “a redneck for the environment,” had never shown much interest in left-wing politics, and in 1990 he and his wife, Nancy Morton, publicly split with Earth First!
The group, they wrote in a letter to its members, had become dominated by an “overtly counterculture/anti-establishment style.”
“We feel,” they added, “like we should be sitting at the bar of a seedy honky-tonk, drinking Lone Star, thumbing quarters in the country western jukebox, and writing this letter on a bar napkin.”
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
William David Foreman was born on Oct. 18, 1946, in Albuquerque, the son of Benjamin Foreman, an Air Force master sergeant who later worked as an air traffic controller, and Lorane (Crawford) Foreman, a homemaker.
He married Debbie Sease in 1976. They later divorced. He married Ms. Morton in 1986. She died in 2021. He is survived by his sister, Roxanne Pacheco.
David grew up conservative. In high school he founded a chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, the conservative youth group, and in 1964 campaigned for Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the right-wing Republican nominee for president. Attending San Antonio Junior College in Texas, he ran the campus chapter of Students for Victory in Vietnam and (to his later embarrassment) named J. Edgar Hoover as his hero.
After two years he transferred to the University of New Mexico, where he received a degree in history in 1967. In 1968, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, but he lasted just 61 days, a month of that in the brig for insubordination and going absent without leave. He was released with a separation then known as an undesirable discharge.
Mr. Foreman taught on a Zuni reservation in New Mexico and worked as a farrier, or horseshoer, before joining the Wilderness Society as its Southwest regional representative. He then worked as a lobbyist in its Washington office before becoming disillusioned with the organization.
“What’s happened is that environmental groups have become more conservative — instead of a cause, it’s become a career for many people,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1986. “They just don’t have the fire in the belly anymore. That leaves people who want to take a hard line with nowhere to go.”
After his decade with Earth First!, Mr. Foreman and several of his colleagues created a new organization, the Wildlands Network, which called on governments and nonprofit organizations to buy up large chunks of land and return it to its natural state. He later created the Rewilding Institute to develop policy ideas to realize that vision.
Distribution of lonsdaleite in yellow, diamond in pink, iron in red, silicon in green, and magnesium in blue within a meteorite detected by electron probe microanalysis. Credit: Nick Wilson
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Diamond, with its tough-to-break carbon lattice of interlocking cubes, is traditionally considered the hardest material on Earth. Yet a rare form of diamond known as lonsdaleite—a crystal with carbon atoms arranged in flexing three-dimensional hexagons—may be even harder than its cubic cousin.
To date, natural lonsdaleite has been found only in impact craters, where it has formed by the intense pressure of meteorites crashing to Earth. But now researchers say that they’ve identified lonsdaleite crystals that formed billions of years before the meteorites carrying them ever reached the planet. If the team’s theory of the crystals’ formation is correct, its findings could offer scientists a better way to manufacture the ultra hard substance on Earth.
For a study published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the research team, primarily based in Australia, examined 18 different meteorite samples from a family known as “ureilites.” Because ureilites are relatively homogeneous in their chemical composition—which is uniquely rich in carbon—scientists theorize they originate from the same parent body.
“There was this dwarf planet just after the start of our solar system—so 4.5 billion years ago—and the planet got hit by an asteroid,” says Alan Salek, a graduate student in applied physics at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and co-author of the new study. This cataclysmic impact tore the dwarf planet apart, sparking a chemical reaction that could have turned pieces of the planet’s graphite into lonsdaleite, he adds.
Graphite is made up of flat layers of carbon atoms bonded together as hexagons. These stacked layers are weakly attracted to each other and relatively easy to pull apart. On Earth, high heat and pressure can rearrange these carbon atoms into a 3-D lattice of cubes, thereby creating the traditional kind of diamond. But a brief period of extremely intense pressure—such as that of a meteorite impact—can preserve graphite’s original hexagonal arrangement while its layers bond into the strong 3-D lattice of lonsdaleite.
The researchers propose that rather than the rapid impact pressure known to produce tiny lonsdaleite crystals on Earth, these samples instead formed through a rapid release of pressure. They claim that a fluid mix of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur was heated and pressurized in the dwarf planet’s mantle until an asteroid impact smashed that mantle into pieces. Study co-author Andrew Tomkins, a geologist at Monash University in Australia, says that the rapidly depressurizing mix of chemicals could have interacted with the dwarf planet’s graphite to transform it into lonsdaleite.
In this particular reaction, graphite crystals would have been essentially torn apart and rebuilt into lonsdaleite. “It’s called ‘coupled dissolution-reprecipitation’ because it’s kind of dissolving this thing and replacing it at the same time,” Tomkins says. This fluid-driven reaction took place in chunks of the dwarf planet as they went flying into space. And much like escape vessels from the planet Krypton, those chunks eventually carried their precious cargo all the way to Earth.
The researchers landed on this lonsdaleite origin story through painstaking analysis of their 18 ureilite samples. Tomkins explains that the structure of these meteorites’ minerals indicates a rapid cooling process that points to a dramatic collision. Looking at particular radioactive signatures of the minerals, the researchers estimated a date for this collision—roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Plus, the samples contain interlocking layers of lonsdaleite, cubic diamond and graphite in a pattern that points to the fluid-driven transformation Tomkins’s team describes.
Outside researchers note that this is only one potential explanation for the presence of lonsdaleite in these meteorites. “I think the formation method presented here is logical and may be one possible pathway to form this material, but I admit I am not 100 percent convinced,” says Jodie Bradby, who researches high-pressure physics at the Australian National University but was not involved in the study. “I hope this paper prompts more theoretical and modeling studies in this area,” she adds.
Dominik Kraus, a high-energy-density physicist at the University of Rostock in Germany, who was also not involved in the study, feels similarly. “To me, it looks kind of like a Goldilocks scenario at the moment—everything has to be just right,” he says.
To verify the formation method, Kraus says, researchers will need to replicate it: a key next step is “to mimic these conditions ... and see if we can really grow these hexagonal diamond crystals somewhat effectively on this regime.”
Kraus and Bradby have both been involved in research projects that successfully created synthetic lonsdaleite by subjecting other forms of carbon to intense pressure, much like what occurs during a meteorite impact. And yet, like the lonsdaleite found in meteorite craters, these synthetic lonsdaleite crystals tend to be tiny—on the scale of nanometers. (That’s one billionth of a meter.)
The specks of lonsdaleite that Salek and Tomkins’s research group identified were up to a micron in size—still extremely small but roughly 1,000 times larger than any lonsdaleite crystals previously known. This suggests that a fluid-driven transformation of graphite into lonsdaleite might produce bigger crystals than the impact method.
If Salek and Tomkins’ team can re-create their theoretical transformation process in a lab, it wouldn’t just be a win for their theory but a win for materials science at large. Lonsdaleite has never been obtained in samples large enough to test its true hardness (or to evaluate its true color, which remains uncertain). But mathematical models of lonsdaleite’s structure indicate that the substance could be up to 58 percent harder than cubic diamond.
“A material like this, that could practically be undamageable by anything on Earth, would be pretty handy to have,” Salek says. It could replace diamond on saw blades and drill bits, for instance, or function as tiny, extremely durable electronic components. Bradby adds that lonsdaleite could help cut regular diamonds with relative ease.
Still, re-creating the exact conditions described in this paper will be a challenge. Researchers will have to produce extreme temperatures, elevated pressures and a precise mix of the chemicals that supposedly catalyzed the transformation of graphite into lonsdaleite. It’s doable, at least in theory. But even if such a process successfully produces the crystal, it’s unclear how difficult or expensive it would be to scale up to industrial-level output.
“It’s a long road ahead before we get a lonsdaleite ring on a finger,” Salek says.
Daniel Leonard is a freelance science journalist and current Scientific American editorial intern whose work focuses on space, tech and natural history. Follow Daniel on Twitter.
In the days since the Merge, the annualized net issuance rate of Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, ether (ETH), has fallen to a range of 0% to 0.7%, estimates Lucas Outumuro, head of research at crypto data and analysis firm IntoTheBlock. That compares with about 3.5% prior to the Merge. The net issuance rate, also referred to as the inflation rate, is essentially the new supply divided by the existing supply.
It’s common to hear stories like that of Adnan Syed, who has maintained his innocence through 23 years of imprisonment on a murder conviction and whose story was chronicled through the viral true crime podcast "Serial." A judge recently vacated his conviction because prosecutors withheld information that would have exonerated him.
That's the part the public doesn't hear about as often: Why it normally takes so long for people to prove their innocence, and why there's reason to think that documented exonerations are just the tip of the innocence iceberg. GBH News legal analyst and Northeastern law professor Daniel Medwed, whose book "Barred: Why the Innocent Can't Get Out of Prison" was released last week, joined GBH Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to talk about the subject. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Jeremy Siegel: First off, congratulations. The book is fantastic. It's generated a lot of buzz. And for people who haven't checked it out but should, it contains a bunch of stories of how legal procedures have blocked innocent people from getting out of prison. So we want to go through some of that and what's in the book. But first, what made you want to write this book?
Daniel Medwed: We've all read these stories. We've seen these pictures of innocent prisoners leaving the gates with their hands aloft, and their faces triumphant. But what's less well-known is why it took so long to get there. We know what put them there in the first place.
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We know that eyewitnesses make mistakes. We know that police interrogation tactics can induce juveniles and people with cognitive deficits to falsely confess to crimes they didn't commit. We know that police and prosecutors hide evidence, that defense lawyers are overworked and sometimes underperform and botch their trial strategy. We know about dubious forensic evidence, junk science that can be overvalued by jurors.
But why does it take so long after you've assembled compelling evidence of innocence to convince a judge or a prosecutor to release the person? I know this firsthand. About 20 years ago, I ran the day-to-day operations of a small innocence project in New York. It was the Second Look Program at Brooklyn Law School, where my students and I investigated and litigated claims of innocence by New York State prisoners. And time and time again, we'd find really powerful new evidence, evidence pointing to an alternative perpetrator or maybe a recantation from the main prosecution witness at trial. And judges and prosecutors wouldn't take a close look. Out of those frustrations, I think, this book emerged as I began to research this phenomenon.
"Time and time again, we'd find really powerful new evidence, evidence pointing to an alternative perpetrator or maybe a recantation from the main prosecution witness at trial. And judges and prosecutors wouldn't take a close look. "
-GBH News Legal Analyst Daniel Medwed
Paris Alston: And, Daniel, I just wonder if we hear about wrongful convictions all the time, why are they so hard to overturn? Is it the judges and the prosecutors being unwilling to reexamine a case, or is it the evidence getting caught up in the court system, which we know can move at a snail's pace?
Medwed: I think it's a little bit of both, and here's why. First, consider the psychology involved after a plea bargain or a trial results in a conviction. The presumption of innocence disappears. It's replaced by a presumption of guilt, which solidifies and hardens over time.
Cognitive psychologists talk about this in terms of the confirmation bias, or what we all know as tunnel vision: Once you've made a decision, once you've reached an outcome, it takes lots and lots and lots of countervailing evidence to deviate from that position, to get you to move from that vested position. It's why people stay in romantic relationships far longer than they should. It's why Morning Edition hosts stay in the job despite those 2:30 a.m. alarm clocks, right? We're wedded in these positions. And I think judges and prosecutors and even defense lawyers feel this. There's a conviction on the books. And cognitively, psychologically, it's hard to look at the case anew.
Second, I think the legal procedures that govern the appellate and post-conviction process sort of reflect this ideology, this emphasis on exalting finality and efficiency over accuracy. The cases have to be final at some point, or else our system would grind to a halt. There'd be no room for new cases, no room for new trials. Crime victims would never have closure. So what that means, in a practical sense, is that the appellate and post-conviction process is replete with procedural booby traps that make it hard for both the guilty and the innocent alike.
Siegel: Let's talk about some of those procedures, because in your book, you do the thing that you do so well when you talk to us, where you take these really boring, intricate pieces of the legal system and make them understandable. And talking about these booby traps and the procedure surrounding things, you've looked at how in some cases, there can be a situation where someone comes forward saying that they did a crime, but someone else is still unable to have the conviction for that crime overturned when there's someone else saying "I did this." I mean, what are these booby traps? What prevents a case like that or other cases from, you know, being a wrongful conviction overturned?
"Contrary to popular opinion, appeals aren't endless. And technically, you actually only have one right to appeal your case."
-GBH News Legal Analyst Daniel Medwed
Medwed: Contrary to popular opinion, appeals aren't endless. And technically, you actually only have one right to appeal your case. It's called the direct appeal, and there are limitations on what you can do on the direct appeal. There are other remedies, too, but let's talk a little bit about the direct appeal. So when you appeal your conviction to a panel of judges in a higher court, you're limited to what happened at trial, to the record that is developed through the trial transcript. You can't bring in newly discovered evidence, and even then you can typically only raise issues that, are adequately preserved for review, that were raised at trial where the defense attorney made an objection and there was a debate on the record.
What that means in practice is that even if you can convince a judge that there was an error in your case, they might not consider it enough to reverse your conviction, in part because of another booby trap known as the harmless error doctrine. Showing that bad things happened at your trial is insufficient in most cases to get a new trial to get a reversal, you have to show that it affected the outcome. And if judges look at the rest of the evidence and they say "no harm, no foul, you would have been convicted anyway," then your conviction will stay on the books.
I think the Supreme Court has really demonstrated the emphasis on trials. In a 2017 opinion called Davila v. Davis, it said that the trial is the main event. It's in the Constitution twice. There is nothing about the appeal in the Constitution. The trial is the main event and the appeal is basically the undercard, which wouldn't be so bad, I think, if we had a better safety record at trial. That's really the problem.
Let our headlines come to you.
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Piscataway, N.J. – (September 26, 2022) – It was a grudge match between two top 50 RPI teams on Monday night, as the Fordham Rams and Rutgers Scarlet Knights played to a 1-1 men's soccer draw at Yurcak Field.
With the draw, Fordham extended its unbeaten streak to eight matches, moving to 3-1-5 on the year, while Rutgers went to 5-1-2 on the season.
The Fordham defense was the story of the first half, holding Rutgers off the scoreboard. Defender Conrado Duhour was a one-man wall, blocking four of Rutgers' seven shots in the opening frame. Of the three that were not blocked, Fordham goalkeeper Callum James stopped two, while the final one went wide.
The match opened up in the second half, as Rutgers scored in the 49th minute to take a 1-0 lead. Jackson Temple crossed the ball to the center of the box for Pablo Avila, who connected on a sliding shot into the net for his second goal of the season.
A little over five minutes later, Fordham found the equalizer on a superb individual effort from Daniel Espeleta. Espeleta picked up a loose ball in the box and picked the upper right corner from 15 yards out for his first goal of the season.
From there, neither squad could find the go-ahead marker, but Rutgers came close in the 76th minute. It was Temple, who got in tight for a shot that James was able to grab the save just before the ball crossed the line.
James finished the match with six saves in his first start of the season for Fordham.
The Rams are back in conference play for their next match, which will be on Saturday, October 1st, against Massachusetts for a 7:00 PM start.
Cardano’s Vasil hard fork seeks to enhance the platform’s transaction throughput speeds, DApp development capacity, security and general usability.
Analysis
After several delays and some setbacks, Cardano’s long-awaited Vasil upgrade finally went live on Sept. 22. From the outside looking in, the hard fork is designed to help improve the ecosystem’s scalability and general transaction throughput capacity as well as advance Cardano’s decentralized applications (DApps) development capacity.
To commemorate the event, an announcement was made by blockchain firm Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) — which currently oversees the design, building and maintenance of the Cardano platform — just minutes after the development.
To obtain a more holistic overview of what the upgrade represents and its potential impact on Cardano (as well as the crypto ecosystem at large), Cointelegraph reached out to Shahaf Bar-Geffen, CEO of COTI, a protocol for creating decentralized payment networks and stablecoins. In his view:
“The Vasil Upgrade heralds the dawn of a new era for the Cardano ecosystem and the decentralized finance space at large. The upgrade aims to improve the network’s scalability and enhance Cardano’s smart contract capabilities.”
Bar-Geffen further noted that the hard fork will significantly improve the efficiency of Djed, an algorithmic stablecoin developed jointly by IOHK and the COTI Group, increasing the number of transactions carried out on the Djed platform and thus helping position Cardano as a prime contender for stablecoin transactions.
A closer look at what Vasil has to offer
Before looking at the functional and operational benefits afforded by the Vasil hard fork, it would be best to understand what exactly a hard fork is. In its most basic sense, a hard fork is a network upgrade set in motion when those governing a blockchain platform decide to add or fix certain features to the ecosystem.
In other words, when a hard fork takes place, the network splits into two versions that run separately, where one version follows existing features and rules while the other continues as an upgraded version of the network.
Expounding her view on the technical aspects of the upgrade, Charmyn Ho, head of crypto insights for cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, told Cointelegraph that at the application layer, Cardano’s Vasil hard fork aims to bolster the network’s current smart contracts to curate a better experience for both users and developers alike, adding:
“This will simultaneously lead to a more efficient building process with regard to applications on the chain. At the infrastructure level, the many upgrades that come with the Vasil hard fork will allow Cardano to increase its block size and TPS whilst maintaining its POS mechanism.”
Ho further highlighted that the Vasil hard fork is aimed not just at improving the scalability of the chain and optimizing its existing features but also at bolstering the network’s stability and connectivity. “This is a huge and prominent step forward for Cardano as the upgrade is expected to reduce the network's transaction costs while increasing transaction speeds,” she added.
Lastly, it is worth noting that Vasil is not Cardano’s first major network upgrade because a year or so ago, the project witnessed the launch of another hard fork called Alonzo, which was designed to allow users to devise DApps using smart contracts. The Alonzo upgrade, alongside many other developments, was Cardano’s way of providing users with an attractive alternative to Ethereum, another platform that allows for the seamless development of novel applications using smart contracts.
Why is Vasil so important?
Named after a prominent member of the Cardano community who passed away in 2021, Vasil St. Dabov, the upgrade will enhance the ecosystem’s transaction throughput, efficiency and block latency speeds. Furthermore, the hard fork will see the implementation of a technique called diffusion pipelining, which seeks to improve block propagation times while increasing the network’s transaction processing capabilities.
The Vasil hard fork will introduce three key Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs), namely CIP-31, CIP-32 and CIP-33. In this regard, CIP-31 will spur the introduction of a new reference input mechanism that will allow DApps to access transactional output data without having to recreate it as before, making the entire process extremely streamlined and time-saving. At the same time, CIP-32 is designed to enhance Cardano’s native decentralization levels by introducing an on-chain data storage feature for network participants.
CIP-33 will make transactions lighter by making changes to the system’s native programming script, allowing for faster processing as well as reduced fees. Lastly, another improvement called CIP-40 will be introduced as part of Vasil. It will introduce a new output transaction mechanism to help improve block transmission without full validation.
Other updates include an enhancement of Cardano’s native smart contract programming language Plutus, which will now be more functionally advanced than its previous iteration. Not only that, Vasil will also improve the platform’s security by making it easier to interface with Cardano’s UTXO model (which has been built to resemble that of Bitcoin) while keeping its transaction load off-chain.
Potential effects on ADA
While the first round of the hard fork started on Sept. 22, the remaining upgrades are set to take effect on Sept 27. To this point, the second phase of the hard fork will look to redefine Plutus’ cost model, which has a direct effect on the processing power and memory fees required to govern Cardano’s native smart contracts.
In addition to the Vasil upgrade, the Cardano team revealed that it has been working tirelessly on the development of its layer-2 scaling solution — the Hydra head protocol — which is capable of processing transactions from the Cardano blockchain while still making use of it as its core security and settlement layer.
To this point, a recent update by the Cardano team revealed it had successfully addressed a known issue with Hydra’s node framework. As things stand, the protocol does not have a fixed release date. However, the IOHK team has hinted that the offering could make its way into the market sometime in late 2022 or the first quarter of 2023.
Vasil was originally slated to go live earlier this year but faced numerous setbacks. Even though the upgrade is live now, the ecosystem continues to reel in from the impact of these delays. For example, since the start of 2020, Cardano’s native cryptocurrency, ADA, has continued to witness a dip in its transaction volume. Not only that, but from a purely price-performance standpoint, the upgrade has not been able to do much in terms of spurring ADA’s value, with the currency trading down less than 1% on the week.
Despite ADA’s price action continuing to remain quite lackluster, the fact that the Cardano ecosystem has made such tremendous strides over the past year shows that the project seems to be primed for big things in the near to mid-term.
SALEM, Ore. -- Two years after Oregon residents voted to decriminalize hard drugs and dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment, few people have requested the services and the state has been slow to channel the funds.
When voters passed the state's pioneering Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act in 2020, the emphasis was on treatment as much as on decriminalizing possession of personal-use amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.
But Oregon still has among the highest addiction rates in the country. Fatal overdoses have increased almost 20% over the previous year, with over a thousand dead. Over half of addiction treatment programs in the state lack capacity to meet demand because they don't have enough staffing and funding, according to testimony before lawmakers.
Supporters want more states to follow Oregon's lead, saying decriminalization reduces the stigma of addiction and keeps people who use drugs from going to jail and being saddled with criminal records. How Oregon is faring will almost certainly be taken into account if another state considers decriminalizing.
Steve Allen, behavioral health director of the Oregon Health Authority, acknowledged the rocky start, even as he announced a “true milestone” has been reached, with more than $302 million being sent to facilities to help people get off drugs, or at least use them more safely.
“The road to get here has not been easy. Oregon is the first state to try such a bold and transformative approach,” Allen told a state Senate committee Wednesday.
One expert, though, told the lawmakers the effort is doomed unless people with addictions are nudged into treatment.
“If there is no formal or informal pressure on addicted people to seek treatment and recovery and thereby stop using drugs, we should expect continuing high rates of drug use, addiction and attendant harm,” said Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Of 16,000 people who accessed services in the first year of decriminalization, only 0.85% entered treatment, the health authority said. A total of 60% received “harm reduction” like syringe exchanges and overdose medications. An additional 15% got help with housing needs and 12% obtained peer support.
The Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, also known as Measure 110, has become a campaign issue this year as Republicans seek to wrest the governorship from Democrats, who have held it since 1987.
“I voted no on Measure 110 because decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and meth was and is a terrible idea,” said GOP candidate Christine Drazan, who supports asking voters to repeal it. “As expected, it has made our addiction crisis worse, not better.”
Unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson, a former veteran lawmaker, said she would work to repeal what she called a “failed experiment.”
A spokeswoman for Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, a former House speaker, said Drazan and Johnson "want to go against the will of the voters. ... Oregonians do not want to go backward.”
“As governor, Tina will make sure that the state is delivering on what voters demanded: expanded recovery services statewide,” spokeswoman Katie Wertheimer said.
Under the law, people receive a citation, with the maximum $100 fine waived if they call a hotline for a health assessment. But most of the more than 3,100 tickets issued so far have been ignored, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Few people have dialed the hotline.
Tera Hurst, executive director of Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, which is focused on implementing Measure 110, said coerced treatment is ineffective. Hurst said it's important to focus on "just building a system of care to make sure that people who need access can get access.”
Allen called the outlay of million of dollars — which come from taxes on Oregon’s legal marijuana industry — a “pivotal moment.”
“Measure 110 is launching and will provide critical supports and services for people, families and communities,” he told the Senate committee.
It will take time, though, to use the funds to build out the services.
Centro Latino Americano, a nonprofit serving Latino immigrant families, plans to use its $4.5 million share to move treatment services to a bigger space and hire more staff, said manager Basilio Sandoval.
“Measure 110 makes it possible for us to provide this service free of charge," Sandoval said. “This allows us to reach people we could not serve previously because of a lack of insurance.”
Scott Winkels, lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, said residents are running out of patience.
”People are going to need to see progress," Winkels said. "If you're living in a community where you’re finding needles, how many times do you need to see a needle in a park before you lose your cool?"
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Two years after Oregon residents voted to decriminalize hard drugs and dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment, few people have requested the services and the state has been slow to channel the funds.
When voters passed the state’s pioneering Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act in 2020, the emphasis was on treatment as much as on decriminalizing possession of personal-use amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.
But Oregon still has among the highest addiction rates in the country. Fatal overdoses have increased almost 20% over the previous year, with over a thousand dead. Over half of addiction treatment programs in the state lack capacity to meet demand because they don’t have enough staffing and funding, according to testimony before lawmakers.
Supporters want more states to follow Oregon’s lead, saying decriminalization reduces the stigma of addiction and keeps people who use drugs from going to jail and being saddled with criminal records. How Oregon is faring will almost certainly be taken into account if another state considers decriminalizing.
Steve Allen, behavioral health director of the Oregon Health Authority, acknowledged the rocky start, even as he announced a “true milestone” has been reached, with more than $302 million being sent to facilities to help people get off drugs, or at least use them more safely.
“The road to get here has not been easy. Oregon is the first state to try such a bold and transformative approach,” Allen told a state Senate committee Wednesday.
One expert, though, told the lawmakers the effort is doomed unless people with addictions are nudged into treatment.
“If there is no formal or informal pressure on addicted people to seek treatment and recovery and thereby stop using drugs, we should expect continuing high rates of drug use, addiction and attendant harm,” said Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Of 16,000 people who accessed services in the first year of decriminalization, only 0.85% entered treatment, the health authority said. A total of 60% received “harm reduction” like syringe exchanges and overdose medications. An additional 15% got help with housing needs and 12% obtained peer support.
The Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, also known as Measure 110, has become a campaign issue this year as Republicans seek to wrest the governorship from Democrats, who have held it since 1987.
“I voted no on Measure 110 because decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and meth was and is a terrible idea,” said GOP candidate Christine Drazan, who supports asking voters to repeal it. “As expected, it has made our addiction crisis worse, not better.”
Unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson, a former veteran lawmaker, said she would work to repeal what she called a “failed experiment.”
A spokeswoman for Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, a former House speaker, said Drazan and Johnson “want to go against the will of the voters. ... Oregonians do not want to go backward.”
“As governor, Tina will make sure that the state is delivering on what voters demanded: expanded recovery services statewide,” spokeswoman Katie Wertheimer said.
Under the law, people receive a citation, with the maximum $100 fine waived if they call a hotline for a health assessment. But most of the more than 3,100 tickets issued so far have been ignored, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Few people have dialed the hotline.
Tera Hurst, executive director of Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, which is focused on implementing Measure 110, said coerced treatment is ineffective. Hurst said it’s important to focus on “just building a system of care to make sure that people who need access can get access.”
Allen called the outlay of million of dollars — which come from taxes on Oregon’s legal marijuana industry — a “pivotal moment.”
“Measure 110 is launching and will provide critical supports and services for people, families and communities,” he told the Senate committee.
It will take time, though, to use the funds to build out the services.
Centro Latino Americano, a nonprofit serving Latino immigrant families, plans to use its $4.5 million share to move treatment services to a bigger space and hire more staff, said manager Basilio Sandoval.
“Measure 110 makes it possible for us to provide this service free of charge,” Sandoval said. “This allows us to reach people we could not serve previously because of a lack of insurance.”
Scott Winkels, lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, said residents are running out of patience.
”People are going to need to see progress,” Winkels said. “If you’re living in a community where you’re finding needles, how many times do you need to see a needle in a park before you lose your cool?”
Kennesaw, Ga. –Central Arkansas dropped a tough matchup at Kennesaw State in five sets. With the loss, UCA falls to 0-2 in ASUN play.
The first set went to the Owls, as they took advantage of an early lead and never surrendered the lead for the rest of the set. UCA went on a 4-0 run late in the set, but it was too late, as Kennesaw State secured the set by a score of 25-18.
In the second set, the Sugar Bears weren't concerned that the ball didn't bounce their way early on in the match and played Kennesaw State tight early. UCA, like last night against Jacksonville State, capitalized on scoring runs, using two separate 3-0 runs to establish a nice little lead at 11-6. Any Kennesaw State comeback attempt would prove to be futile, as UCA established momentum and took the second set 25-19.
Momentum never lasts forever, and the third set was proof of that. UCA experienced some great highs, like back-to-back aces by Lilly Taylor. Ultimately, the highs were not quite enough for UCA to take the third set, as Kennesaw State used a 3-0 run down the stretch to take it by a score of 28-26. The Sugar Bears gave the Owls all they could handle, but fell just short in the third set, and just like that, the momentum swung back to the Owls.
The body language on the Sugar Bears' sideline was not what one would expect from a team that had just let an opportunity slip away. Instead, they looked ready to go, and proved as much when they forced an early timeout from Kennesaw State after taking a 10-7 lead. That lead would prove to be enough for the Sugar Bears, because they never trailed for the rest of the set. KSU attempted to wedge themselves back into the game late, but UCA denied them with a clutch kill by Kendall Haywood down the stretch which allowed the Sugar Bears to even things up and take the fourth set by a score of 25-20.
Neither team could take a substantial lead until late in the deciding fifth set. The score was deadlocked at 12 late in the set, and it looked like 15 wouldn't be enough, as the teams were content with going back-and-forth all set. Ultimately, Kennesaw State seized momentum and scored the final three points of the game and took the final set, 15-12.
Mackenzie Vernon and Alexis Stumbough once again had good performances, with Vernon tallying 16 kills to lead UCA and Stumbough adding 11. Marissa McKelvey led the Sugar Bears with 26 assists, but freshman Caylan Koons was not far behind with 24 assists.
Central Arkansas will hit the road and take on Little Rock on Tuesday, September 27th at 6 p.m. You can follow every game this season on Twitter at @ucavball.
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