“Why Officials In Oregon Are Practicing For A Plague Outbreak - Forbes” plus 4 more

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• Why Officials In Oregon Are Practicing For A Plague Outbreak - Forbes
• How John Singleton changed the world with Boyz n the Hood - Vox.com
• The Black Crowes Drummer Steve Gorman Pens 'Hard To Handle - The Life & Death Of The Black Crowes' Memoir - JamBase
• 500 years after his death, Leonardo Da Vinci remains the ultimate Renaissance Man - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• GameTech: A Plague Tale Innocence is a game that impresses - Irish Examiner

Why Officials In Oregon Are Practicing For A Plague Outbreak - Forbes Posted: 30 Apr 2019 06:53 PM PDT FILE - In this June 15, 2010 file photo, a rat wanders the subway tracks at Union Square in New York. Hantavirus, West Nile, Lyme disease and now, bubonic plague. The bugs of late summer are biting, although the risk of getting many of these scary-sounding diseases is very small. Bubonic plague can spread through contact with an infected flea, rodent or cat. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File) ASSOCIATED PRESS On April 30, 1665, Samuel Pepys recorded his first diary entry about the Great Plague of London: "Great fears of the sickness here in the city, it being said that two or three hourses are already shut up. God preserve us all." 354 years later, to the day, officials in Portland, Oregon, are practicing for a plague outbreak. From April 30 to May 2, emergency responders and public health agencies are rehearsing their response to a simulated bioterrorism attack unleashing Yersinia pestis on the port city of 650,000. The three-day drill is part of how those agencies ensure that they're prepared to contain an outbreak if (or when) it happens -- which is part of how we keep modern cities from turning in London, circa 1665. It's no wonder that Pepys and his neighbors trembled at the first appearance of plague in London. A few generations before, in the 1300s, the disease had slaughtered nearly half the population of Europe. The bodies had piled up so quickly that they had to be piled in mass graves, and in some communities, there was no one left standing to do even that. No one in Pepys' day was sure what caused the plague, but they had good reason to fear it. Another plague outbreak started in rural southwest China and reached Hong Kong in 1894. That's where Alexandre Yersin discovered the bacterium behind the disease (although it's still not clear that Yersinia pestis was the only killer in the Black Death of the 1340s). The bustling port city of Hong Kong was the perfect place for the newly-identified bacteria to hitch rides to ports around the world, and the pandemic exploded outward with terrifying speed. In San Francisco, it kicked off a 1907 outbreak that left the western U.S. with its own endemic plague reservoir today. Other destinations included Australia, India, Japan, Singapore, South America, and Taiwan. Plague travels in the guts of fleas who, in turn, ride on the backs of rats -- and rats have always loved to travel by ship. Today the disease is endemic in 11 countries (including Bolivia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Peru, Tanzania, Uganda, and the U.S. -- all of which owe their modern reservoirs of plague to the 19th-century outbreak), and the world's cities are more connected than ever. That's why some epidemiologists have begun to call the plague a "re-emerging disease," because the risk of it spreading and igniting an outbreak is growing. "Indeed, in the last years, the frequency of plague outbreaks in developing countries in Africa should not be overlooked; industrialized countries must react promptly to plague outbreaks as well as other epidemic diseases, in order to inform the population and help fight against them," wrote Barbara Bramanti (University of Oslo and University of Ferrara) in a recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The plague reached London by September 1896, when two sailors died aboard ships from Mumbai docked in the Thames. Their deaths were the first harbingers of plague in Europe. At this point you may be wondering why you hadn't heard about the turn-of-the-century return of the Black Death. The answer is that it never quite took off in the same way it did in the 1300s; from 1896 to 1947, only about 1,700 people in Europe got sick, and only around 460 of them died, compared with the millions struck down in the 1340s. Even in Manchuria and Mongolia, where 60,000 people had fallen ill by 1910, the death toll paled in comparison with the sourge of the 1340s, and mostly thanks to the efforts of physician Wu Lien Teh, the outbreak there had nearly stopped by 1910. The next year, Wu Lien Teh chaired an international conference in Shenyang to address the pandemic. Countries cooperated to share information and limit the spread of the disease, and that cooperation played a major role in making sure the Third Plague Pandemic didn't live up to the medieval scourge of the Black Death. In other words, the plague found itself set loose in a world that knew exactly what it was and had the resources to fight it. Yersin had identified the bacterium in 1897, and that same year, researchers began to connect the spread of the plague with the presence of flea-infested rats. Port cities around the world began to check ships for sick crew members, dead rats, and signs of rats or fleas among the cargo. Local sanitary authorities also searched cities for dead rats, and tested them for Yersina pestis. Some cities, like Venice in 1897, established quarantines and set strict requirements for hygiene and cleanliness aboard incoming ships. In 1665, when the Great Plague swept through London, physicians still believed the disease was spread by unhealthy air, and national health authorities certainly weren't meeting with their counterparts overseas to strategize. Two things kept the plague in check in the early 1900s: more knowledge and better infrastructure. Today, we've antibiotics to that arsenal, and they're vital -- but the best antibiotics in the world won't prevent a pandemic if we don't see it coming and take steps to react in time. And that's true of every infectious disease, not just the plague. Preventing a devastating pandemic depends on disease surveillance (reporting cases and watching for signs of an impending outbreak), good sanitation practices, and quick, organized responses from public health and emergency response agencies. And quick, organized responses don't happen without funding, planning, and practice.

How John Singleton changed the world with Boyz n the Hood - Vox.com Posted: 30 Apr 2019 10:40 AM PDT When John Singleton snagged two Oscar nominations in 1992 for writing and directing his debut feature Boyz n the Hood, he made history twice over. At 24, he was the youngest nominee in Oscar history. And for the first time in its 64 years, the Academy had finally nominated an African-American filmmaker for Best Director. But Singleton — who died April 29 at age 51, almost two weeks after suffering a debilitating stroke — was no flash in the pan. And though he rose to early fame, in the 27 years following his historic nominations, the director, writer, and producer went on to do something even more significant: He kept making good movies. And with his films, he endeavored to do something that was radical in Hollywood then, and still radical in Hollywood now: Telling black stories to America. Singleton shifted American cinema from the start of his career A native of South Central Los Angeles, Singleton burst onto the scene with Boyz n the Hood in 1991. The film starred Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Laurence Fishburne, Nia Long, Regina King, Angela Bassett, and Cuba Gooding Jr. in his first major role. Boyz n the Hood is the story of a group of teenagers in South Central, centering on Tre (Gooding) — whose father (Fishburne) and girlfriend (Long) are keeping him on the straight and narrow — and two of his friends (Cube and Chestnut), who are drawn toward the neighborhood's gangs. The idea for the screenplay came from an idea Singleton proposed when applying to film school at USC, and Singleton was still a recent graduate when he got the go-ahead to make it. "I was a smartass film student who thought he knew everything about movies," he said in 2016. "When it got green-lit is when I got scared." Singleton, reflected in a poster for Boyz n the Hood, as he visited an exhibition at the California African American Museum in LA in 2003. Photo by Carlo Allegri/Getty Images Reportedly, Singleton was offered $100,000 by the studio to walk away from directing the film and hand it over to someone more experienced. But he refused. "I wasn't going to have somebody from Idaho or Encino direct this movie," he said. The movie screened in the prestigious Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival and premiered in July, almost a year before the widespread unrest in LA around the Rodney King verdict. It cracked open a way of seeing black life in a place like South Central that would have ripple effects for decades, showing not just family and street life, but the death of a young black man in the midst of a story of promise. "Singleton showed us how our West Coast cousins were living," writes the critic Eisa Nefertari Ulen, in the wake of Singleton's death. "And, in a stunning cinematic montage, he also showed us how they were dying." One of the most memorable scenes in Boyz n the Hood comes when Doughboy (played by Ice Cube) looks for coverage of his brother's death on the news, and discovers it hasn't even registered as news: "Turned on the TV this morning," Doughboy says. "... Either they don't know...don't show...or don't care about what's goin' on in the 'hood." Young black men die, but it's not headline fodder. Doughboy's statement felt prophetic in the early '90s, and still does decades later. And Singleton never backed down from showing black American life in his subsequent work, from 1993's Poetic Justice (which starred Janet Jackson and Tupac), 1995's Higher Learning, and 1997's Rosewood to action films like 2000's Shaft and 2003's 2 Fast 2 Furious. In 1992, he directed the nine-minute music video for Michael Jackson's "Remember the Time," which was marketed as a "short film" and imagined a story about Jackson (as a magician) and the ancient Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Chance the Rapper tweeted that the video "literally changed my life." More recently, Singleton also directed episodes of the TV shows Empire and Billions, and he was nominated for an award by the Directors Guild of America for helming the episode of FX's Emmy-winning The People vs. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story entitled "The Race Card." He also developed, wrote, and produced the FX crime drama Snowfall, about the crack epidemic in LA in 1983, which is currently shooting its third season. Singleton was often critical of Hollywood's tendency to favor white directors to tell black stories, writing blisteringly in 2013 that "even when there are black directors or writers involved, some of the films made today seem like they're sifted of soul. It's as if the studios are saying, 'We want it black, just not that black.'" A year later, addressing students at Loyola Marymount University, Singleton said that Hollywood "want[s] black people to be who [Hollywood wants] them to be, as opposed to what they are. The black films now — so-called black films now — they're great. They're great films. But they're just product. They're not moving the bar forward creatively." "When you try to make it homogenized, when you try to make it appeal to everybody, then you don't have anything that's special," he continued. The outpouring of tributes following news of Singleton's death has made it clear that he, at least, lived up to his own standard. "John Singleton was an innovator - he came with drive & a creative vision when people of color didn't have the same visibility we do now," tweeted Halle Berry. "He not only made me a movie star but made me a filmmaker," wrote Ice Cube. And Jordan Peele, a pioneering filmmaker of black stories in his own right, added: "John was a brave artist and a true inspiration. His vision changed everything."

The Black Crowes Drummer Steve Gorman Pens 'Hard To Handle - The Life & Death Of The Black Crowes' Memoir - JamBase Posted: 30 Apr 2019 08:06 AM PDT Longtime The Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman will tell all in a new memoir entitled Hard To Handle: The Life & Death Of The Black Crowes. The 288-book page is due out September 24 via Da Capo Press. Gorman, who was behind the kit from 1989 until the band's final tour in 2013 outside a handful of shows in 2005, tapped journalist Steven Hyden to co-write the tome. The pair dive into the group's rise to fame, drama-filled days and dissolution ahead of what was expected to be a final 25th anniversary tour in 2015. Here's a full description of the book: The Black Crowes played big, Southern rock and became popular precisely while hair bands and grunge were rebelling against it. They stayed on the radio through hip-hop's rise to the mainstream and dominated the charts no matter what the tastes of the day might have been. They've sold 35 million albums and they continued to tour up until they finally had enough of each other in 2013. Even then, more than twenty years after Rolling Stone named them the Best New American Band in a 1990 cover story, they drew thousands of fans across the country at over 120 nearly sold-out dates on what ended up being their final tour. That last tour was so successful that they planned to do a bigger, truly final 25th anniversary tour in 2015. Unfortunately, the animosity between the three founding members didn't allow that to happen. Instead, they reverted to their old habits of fighting, blaming each other, drinking too much, and indulging all the other demons that the music industry seems to feed upon. While Steve Gorman may have felt relief at not having to head back out on the road, he did feel bad for the band's fans. He felt he owed them one final show. This book is that final show. Steve Gorman talked extensively about his days in the Black Crowes during a 2017 appearance on Hyden's Celebration Rock podcast. After the Crowes broke up, Gorman had a lengthy run hosting a sports radio talk show that ended last September. Musically, the drummer is a member of Trigger Hippy, a supergroup that last played in 2015. We don't currently have any upcoming shows for Steve Gorman. Pro Tip: Click "Add to My Bands" above and we'll notify you when Steve Gorman announces shows in your area.

500 years after his death, Leonardo Da Vinci remains the ultimate Renaissance Man - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Posted: 30 Apr 2019 09:24 AM PDT MENU ACCOUNT SECTIONS OTHER CLASSIFIEDS CONTACT US / FAQ

GameTech: A Plague Tale Innocence is a game that impresses - Irish Examiner Posted: 30 Apr 2019 11:00 AM PDT We keep plaguing developers to do something different. Gaming, we tell them, needs different voices and different stories.  Well, one plague begets another. A Plague Tale: Innocence is exactly the kind of title gaming used to produce in the Playstation 2 era, an offbeat story that borrows elements from popular big budget games to tell a different story.  In this case, the setting is France, during theBlack Death, and the main characters are an orphan, Amica, and her younger brother, Hugo. The developers, Focus Home Entertainment, say they want a story in which Amica has to grow and adapt in a time of fierce hardship, while taking care of her brother and guiding him to safety.  These themes are heavily evident in the gameplay videos that Focus Home have released, showing Amica sneaking through the streets of a filthy, disease-ridden France, desperately hoping she won't be caught by the prowling guards or, worse, the rats who infest the shadows. In A Plague Tale, rats are the 'demons' of this vision of history, working together in huge packs and hunting their prey with cold ferocity.  In the gameplay videos, the only way Amica could get passed them was by using fire or distracting them.  In that sense, A Plague Tale seems to be a stealth game at its core, where avoiding both guards and the rats, and solving the landscape puzzles those enemies provide, will be key to the fun. The presentation, especially the music and graphics, seems of high quality for a mid-range title and the tone and feel bring to mind Hellblade, a game that similarly brought a unique story to gaming's lower budget landscape. A game set during the Hundred Years War, in which inquisitors roam the land and two children face a bleak fight against the plague?  Call us twisted, but that just might catch on. A Plague Tale releases this month on PC and consoles. MAN FROM ATLANTIS If the Black Death is a little too grim for you, then you can always retreat to a world of fantasy, instead.  Last year, there was no better game for that than Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Ubisoft have just released the first chapter of some pretty exciting DLC. Called The Fate of Atlantis, this DLC does a number of things that will likely entice people back to the game.  Firstly, it takes players to the titular Atlantis, albeit through a 'simulation' provided by one of the game's gods.  This means you'll be running into all kinds of demi-gods and famous figures from myth, which is exactly what we want from a game of this nature. Secondly, The Fate of Atlantis allows player to create their own character, which is a first for a mainline Assassin's Creed game and will likely make fans pretty happy.  It also means you can jump right in and play the DLC, as it doesn't require your main quest Odyssey character to be at a certain level. All in all, The Fate of Atlantis looks to be very solid wish fulfillment on Ubisoft's part.  In this case, we highly doubt it sinks without a trace. ANNO'S YEAR Finally, for those who prefer to take matters of history into their own hands, there's Anno 1800.  Much like Civilization and the Paradox simulation family, Anno is a game for people who enjoy building societies and seeing them crumble, due to logistical ineptitude. Set in 1800, this latest release in the Anno series asks you to micro-manage every aspect of your burgeoning industrial settlement and expand further into the New World.  You need sheep, so that you can weave wool, so that you can clothe your farmers, so they can feed the miners, who can, and so on.  There's a lot of multi-layered management and planning required. We love these types of games, especially when they are as beautifully meticulous and designed as Anno, but we're also terrible at them.  With the way we manage our towns, history would surely have written us out of the story. Still, Anno is a must buy for fans of empire-building. It's not Anno from us — it's a yes.

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