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***Disclaimer: This post was created in partnership with Whole Foods Devon to help build awareness of the role honeybees play in our food supply and how we can help make a difference in the alarming decrease of honeybee colonies. ***
Where does your food come from? How about those pretty flowers in your garden? Or the ‘weed’ flowers in your yard? Let’s have a quick review from school days. Many flowers require pollination in order to thrive and produce fruit. What pollinates the plants?
A small fraction of pollination occurs via wind but the majority of plants are pollinated by other insects, especially bees. The problem is our honeybees are dying. Why? How can you help save the honeybees?
With the increased use of insecticides being applied to crops, plants, and yards, we are seeing a decrease in bees. In fact, with all contributing causes of colony collapse (complete colonies dying off), the annual rate of honey bee loss in the US is over 30%.
The conclusion many studies have come to is that the increase in insecticides is directly impacting the health of our bees and many other beneficial insects. Loss of habitat and parasites are the other 2 main contributing factors to loss of complete honey bee colonies here in the USA.
It is estimated that 1 out of every 3 bites of food is directly impacted by honeybees. If we don’t have these important insects to pollinate our plants how will we grow the fresh whole foods we rely on? Where will we get the honey so many of us enjoy in our tea and desserts?
13 Tips for How You Can Help Save the Honeybees
- Limit insectides/chemical based pesticides you use in your gardens and yards.
- Buy organic when you are able.
- Grow plants bees love – a simple search of ‘plants bees like’ will give you so many plant options for your garden – herbs, flowers, and produce. Have a variety of plants that bloom throughout the seasons.
- Great simple list of bee friendly plants
- Leave the clover and dandelions for the bees rather than trying to rid your yard of them.
- Share the Buzz: Create and build awareness in your community on how every one can work together to create a welcoming environment for bees.
- Want to try something big? Become a beekeeper. This is something I would love to do if I owned my own home.
- Buy local honey from beekeepers who care for their honey bees. It tastes better too!
- Encourage the government to cut down on the allowed usage of insecticide use.
- ‘Bee’come educated.
- See a swarm? Let authorities know so they can contact a beekeeper to remove them safely.
- Shoppers can help support efforts in-store too! Buy a box of Cascadian Farms Buzz Crunch at Whole Foods and $1 (up to $100,000) will be donated to the Xerces Society.
- For more local initiatives check out Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild and Rodale Institute.
Whole Foods in the Philly area will be hosting a “Share the Buzz” Event with fun for the whole family on April 18, 2015. Bring the family out for an evening of fun and education on honeybees with tastings, demonstrations, and local bee partnerships. Follow #SharetheBuzz hashtag to see what’s happening.
Love honey? Stay tuned! Next week I am sharing a brand new recipe using local honey with you. | <urn:uuid:0647ff02-b217-43af-8fea-f31463c5b94e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.realthekitchenandbeyond.com/share-the-buzz-13-tips-to-help-save-bees/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00069-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925454 | 722 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Description: Lecture covering parallelism, scheduling theory, the Cilk++ runtime system, and Cilk chess programs.
Speaker: Charles Leiserson
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PROFESSOR: So today, we're going to talk a bit more about parallelism and about how you get performance out of parallel codes. And also, we're going to take a little bit of a tour underneath the Cilk++ runtime system so you can get an idea of what's going on underneath and why it is that when you code stuff, how it is that it gets mapped, scheduled on the processors.
So when people talk about parallelism, one of the first things that often comes up is what's called Amdahl's Law. Gene Amdahl was the architect of the IBM360 computers who then left IBM and formed his own company that made competing machines and he made the following observation about parallel computing, he said-- and I'm paraphrasing here-- half your application is parallel and half is serial. You can't get more than a factor of two speed up, no matter how many processors it runs on.
So if you think about it, if it's half parallel and you managed to make that parallel part run in zero time, still the serial part will be half of the time and you only get a factor of two speedup. You can generalize that to say if some fraction alpha can be run in parallel and the rest must be run serially, the speedup is at most 1 over 1 minus alpha. OK, so this was used in the 1980s in particular to say why it was that parallel computing had no future, because you simply weren't going to be able to get very much speedups from parallel computing. You're going to spend extra hardware on the parallel parts of the system and yet you might be limited in terms of how much parallelism there is in a particular application and you wouldn't get very much speedup. You wouldn't get the bang for the buck, if you will.
So things have changed today that make that not quite the same story. The first thing is that with multicore computers, it is pretty much just as inexpensive to produce a p processor right now, like six processor machine as it is a one processor machine. so it's not like you're actually paying for those extra processing cores. They come for free. Because what else are you're going to use that silicon for?
And the other thing is that we've had a large growth of understanding of problems for which there's ample parallelism, where that amount of time is, in fact, quite small. And the main place these things come from, it turns out, this analysis is kind of a throughput kind of analysis. OK, it says, gee, I only get 50% speedup for that application, but what most people care about in most interactive applications, at least for a client side programming, is response time. And for any problem that you have that has a response time that's too long and its compute intensive, using parallelism to make it so that the response is much zippier is definitely worthwhile. And so this is true, even for things like game programs. So in game programs, they don't have quite a response time problem, they have what's called a time box problem, where you have a certain amount of time-- 13 milliseconds typically-- because you need some slop to make sure that you can go from one frame to another, but about 13 milliseconds to do a rendering of whatever the frame is that the game player is going to see on his computer or her computer.
And so in that time, you want to do as much as you possibly can, and so there's a big opportunity there to take advantage of parallelism in order to do more, have more quality graphics, have better AI, have better physics and all the other components that make up a game engine.
But one of the issues with Amdahl's Law-- and this analysis is a cogent analysis that Amdahl made-- but one of the issues here is that it doesn't really say anything about how fast you can expect your application to run. In other words, this is a nice sort of thing, but who really can decompose their application into the serial part and the part that can be parallel? Well fortunately, there's been a lot of work in the theory of parallel systems to answer this question, and we're going to go over some of that really outstanding research that helps us understand what parallelism is.
So we're going to talk a little bit about what parallelism is and come up with a very specific measure of parallelism, quantify parallelism, OK? We're also going to talk a little bit about scheduling theory and how the Cilk++ runtime system works. And then we're going to have a little chess lesson. So who here plays chess? Nobody plays chess anymore. Who plays Angry Birds? [LAUGHTER] OK. So you don't have to know anything about chess to learn this chess lesson, that's OK.
So we'll start out with what is parallelism? So let's recall first the basics of Cilk++. So here's the example of the lousy Fibonacci that everybody parallelizes because it's good didactically. We have the Cilk spawn statement that says that the child can execute in parallel with the parent caller and the sync that says don't go past this point until all your spawn children have returned. And that's a local sync, that's just a sync for that function. It's not a sync across the whole machine. So some of you may have had experience with open MP barriers, for example, that's a sync across the whole machine. This is not, this is just a local sync for this function saying when I sync, make sure all my children have returned before going past this point.
And just remember also that Cilk keywords grant permission for parallel execution. They don't command parallel execution. OK so we can always execute our code serially if we choose to. Yes?
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] Can't this runtime figure that spawning an extra child would be more expensive? Can't it like look at this and be like--
PROFESSOR: We'll go into it. I'll show you how it works later in the lecture. I'll show you how it works and then we can talk about what knobs you have to tune, OK?
So it's helpful to have an execution model for something like this. And so we're going to look at an abstract execution model, which is basically asking what does the instruction trace look like for this program? So normally when you execute a program, you can imagine one instruction executing after the other. And if it's a serial program, all those instructions essentially form a long chain. Well there's a similar thing for parallel computers, which is that instead of a chain as you'll see, it gets bushier and it's going to be a directed acyclic graph.
So let's take a look at how we do this. So we'll the example of fib of four. So what we're going to do is start out here with a rectangle here that I want you think about as sort of a function call activation record. So it's a record on a stack. It's got variables associated with it. The only variable I'm going to keep track of is n, so that's what the four is there. OK, so we're going to do fib of four. So we've got in this activation frame, we have the variable four and now what I've done is I've color coded the fib function here and into the parts that are all serial. So there's a serial part up to where it spawns, then there's recursively calling the fib and then there's returning. So there's sort of three parts to this function, each of which is, in fact, a chain of serial instruction.
I'm going to collapse those chains into a single circle here that I'm going to call a strand. OK, now what we do is we execute the strand, which corresponds to executing the instructions and advancing the program calendar up until the point we hit this fib of n minus 1. At that point, I basically call fib of n minus 1. So in this case, it's now going to be fib of 3. So that means I create a child and start executing in the child, this prefix part of the function.
However, unlike I were doing an ordinary function call, I would make this call and then this guy would just sit here and wait until this frame was done. But since it's a spawn, what happens is I'm actually going to continue executing in the parent and execute, in fact, the green part. So in this case, evaluating the arguments, etc. Then it's going to spawn here, but this guy, in fact, is going to what it does when it gets here is it evaluates n minus 2, it does a call of fib of n minus 2. So I've indicated that this was a called frame by showing it in a light color. So these are spawn, spawn, call, meanwhile this thing is going.
So at this point, we now have one, two, three things that are operating in parallel at the same time. We keep going on, OK? So this guy that does a spawn and has a continuation, this one does a call, but while he's doing a call, he's waiting for the return so he doesn't start executing the successor. He stalled at the Cilk sink here. And we keep executing and so as you can see, what's happening is we're actually creating a directed acyclic graph of these strands. So here basically, this guy was able to execute because both of the children, one that he had spawned and one that he had called, have returned. And so this fella, therefore, is able then to execute the return. OK, so the addition of x plus y in particular, and then the return to the parent. And so what we end up with is of all these serial chains of instructions that are represented by these strands, all these circles, they're embedded in the call tree like you would have in an ordinary serial execution. You have a call tree that you execute up and down, you walk it like a stack normally. Now, in fact, what we have is embedded in there is the parallel execution which form a DAG, directed acyclic graph.
So when you start thinking in parallel, you have to start thinking about the DAG as your execution model, not a chain of instructions. And the nice thing about this particular execution model we're going to be looking at is nowhere did I say how many processors we were running on. This is a processor oblivious model. It doesn't know how many processors you're running on. We simply in the execution model, are thinking about abstractly what can run in parallel, not what actually does run in parallel in an execution.
So any questions about this execution model? OK. So just so that we have some terminology, so the parallel instruction stream is a DAG with vertices and edges. Each vertex is a strand, OK? Which is a sequence of instructions not containing a call spawn sync, a return or thrown exception, if you're doing exceptions. We're not going to really talk about exceptions much. So they are supported in the software that we'll be using, but for most part, we're not going to have to worry about them.
OK so there's an initial strand where you start, and a final strand where you end. Then each edge is a spawn or a call or return or what's called a continue edge or a continuation edge, which goes from the parent, when a parent spawns something to the next instruction after the spawn. So we can classify the edges in that fashion. And I've only explain this for spawm and sync, as you recall from last time, we also talked about Cilk four. It turns out Cilk four is converted to spawns and syncs using a recursive divide and conquer approach. We'll talk about that next time on Thursday. So we'll talk more about Cilk four and how it's implemented and the implications of how loop parallelism works.
So at the fundamental level, the runtime system is only concerned about spawns and syncs. Now given that we have a DAG, so I've taken away the call tree and just left the strands of a computation. It's actually not the same as the computation we saw before. We would like to understand, is this a good parallel program or not? Based on if I understand the logical parallelism that I've exposed. So how much parallelism do you think is in here? Give me a number. How many processors does it make sense to run this on? Five? That's as parallel as it gets. Let's take a look. We're going to do an analysis. At the end of it, we'll know what the answer is.
So for that, let tp be the execution time on p processors for this particular program. It turns but there are two measures that are really important. The first is called the work. OK, so of course, we know that real machines have caches, etc. Let's forget all of that. Just very simple algorithmic model where every strand, let's say, costs us unit time as opposed to in practice, they may be many instructions and so forth. We can take that into account. Let's take that into account separately.
So T1 is the work. It's the time it if I had to execute it on one processor, I've got to do all the work that's in here. So what's the work of this particular computation? I think it's 18, right? Yeah, 18. So T1 is the work. So even though I'm executing a parallel, I could it execute it serially and then T1 is the amount of work it would take.
The other measure is called the span, and sometimes called critical path length or computational depth. And it corresponds to the longest path of dependencies in the DAG. We call it T infinity because even if you had an infinite number of processors, you still can't do this one until you finish that one. You can't do this one until you finish that one, can't do this one till you've finished that one and so forth. So even with an infinite number of processors, I still wouldn't go faster than the span. So that's why we denote by T infinity.
So these are the two important measures. Now what we're really interested in is Tp for a given p. As you'll see, we actually can get some bounds on the performance on p processors just by looking at the work, the span and the number of processors we're executing on. So the first bound is the following, it's called the Work Law. The Work Law says that the time on p processors is at least the time on one processor divided by p. So why does that Work Law make sense? What's that saying? Sorry?
AUDIENCE: Like work is conserved sort of? I mean, you have to do the same amount of work.
PROFESSOR: You have to do the same amount of work, so on every time step, you can get p pieces of work done. So if you're running for fewer than T1 over p steps, you've done less than T1 work over and time Tp. So you won't have done all the work if you run for less than this. So the time must be at least Tp, time Tp must be at least T1 over p. You only get to do p work on one step. Is that pretty clear?
The second one should be even clearer, the Span Law. On p processors, you're not going to go faster than if you had an infinite number of processors because the infinite processor could always use fewer processors if it's scheduled. Once again, this is a very simple model. We're not taking into account scheduling, we're not taking into account overheads or whatever, just a simple conceptual model for understanding parallelism.
So any questions about these two laws? There's going to be a couple of formulas in this lecture today that you should write down and play with. So these two, they may seem simple, but these are hugely important formulas. So you should know that Tp is at least T1 over p, that's the Work Law and that Tp is at least T infinity. Those are bounds on how fast you could execute. Do I have a question in that back there?
OK so let's see what happens to work in span in terms of how we can understand our programs and decompose them. So suppose that I have a computation A followed by computation B and I connect them in series. What happens to the work? How does the work of all this whole thing correspond to the work of A and the work of B? What's that?
PROFESSOR: Yeah, add them together. You get T1 of A plus T1 of B. Take the work of this and the work of this. OK, that's pretty easy. What about the span? So the span is the longest path of dependencies. What happens to the span when I connect two things in a series? Yeah, it just sums as well because I take whatever the longest path is from here to here and then the longest one from here to here, it just adds.
But now let's look at parallel composition, So now suppose that I can execute these two things in parallel. What happens to the work? It just adds, just as before. The work always adds. The work is easy because it's additive. What happens to the span? What's that?
PROFESSOR: It's the max of the spans. Right, so whatever is the longest, whichever one of these ones has a longer span, that's going to be the span of the total. Does that give you some Intuition So we're going to see when we analyze the spans of things that in fact, we're going to see maxes occurring all over the place.
So speedup is defined to be T1 over Tp. So speedup is how much faster am I on p processors than I am on one processor? Pretty easy. So if T1 over Tp is equal to p, we say we have perfect linear speedup, or linear speedup. That's good, right? Because if I put on use p processors, I'd like to have things go p times faster. OK, that would be the ideal world. If T1 over Tp, which is the speedup, is greater than p, that says we have super linear speedup. And in our model, we don't get that because of the work law. Because the work law says Tp is greater than or equal to T1 over p and just do a little algebra here, you get T1 over Tp must be less than or equal to p.
So you can't get super linear speedup. In practice, there are situations where you can get super linear speedup due to caching effects and a variety of things. We'll talk about some of those things. But in this simple model, we don't get that kind of behavior. And of course, the case I left out is the common case, which is the T1 over Tp is less than p, and that's very common people write code which doesn't give them linear speedup. We're mostly interested in getting linear speedup here. That's our goal. So that we're getting the most bang for the buck out of the processors we're using.
OK, parallelism. So we're finally to the point where I can talk about parallelism and give a quantitative definition of parallelism. So the Span Law says that Tp is at least T infinity, right? The time on p processors is at least the time on an infinite number of processors. So the maximum possible speedup, that's T1 over Tp, given T1 and T infinity is T1 over T infinity. And we call that the parallelism. It's the maximum amount of speedup we could possibly attain. So we have the speedup and the speedup by the Span Law that says this is the maximum amount we can get, we could also view it as if I look along the critical path of the computation. It's sort of what's the average amount of work at every level. The work, the total amount of stuff here divided by that length there that sort of tells us the width, what's the average amount of stuff that's going on in every step.
So for this example, what is the-- I forgot to put this on my slide-- what is the parallelism of this particular DAG here? Two, right? So the span has length nine-- this is assuming everything was unit time-- obviously in reality, when you have more instructions, you in fact would make it be whatever the length of this was in terms of number of instructions or what have you, of execution time of all these things. So this is length 9, there's 18 things here, parallelism is 2. So we can quantify parallelism precisely. We'll see why it's important to quantify it.
So that the maximum speedup we're going to get when we run this application. Here's another example we did before. Fib of four. So let's assume again that each strand takes unit time to execute. So what is the work in this particular computation? Assume every strand takes unit time to execute, which of course it doesn't, but-- anybody care to hazard a guess? 17, yeah, because there's four nodes here that have 3 plus 5. So 3 times 4 plus 5 is 17. So the work is 17.
OK, what's the span? This one's tricky. Too bad it's not a little bit more focused. What the span?
PROFESSOR: 8, that's correct. Who got 7? Yeah, so I got 7 when I did this and then I looked harder and it was 8. It's 8, so here it is. Here's the span. There is goes. Ooh that little sidestep there, that's what makes it 8.
OK so basically, it comes down here and I had gone down like that when I did it, but in fact, you've got to go over and back up. So it's actually 8. So that says that the parallelism is a little bit more than 2, 2 and 1/8. What that says is that if I use many more than two processors, I can't get linear speedup anymore. I'm only going to get marginal performance gains. If I use more than 2, because the maximum speedup I can get is like 2.125 if I had an infinite number of processors.
So any questions about this? So this by the way deceptively simple and yet, if you don't play around with it a little bit, you can get confused very easily. Deceptively simple, very powerful to be able to do this.
So here we have for the analysis of parallelism, one of the things that we have going for us in using the Cilk tool suite is a program called Cilkview, which has a scalability analyzer. And it is like the race detector that I talked to you about last time in that it uses dynamic instrumentation. So you run it under Cilkview, it's like running it under [? Valgrhen ?] for example, or what have you. So basically you run your program under it, and it analyzes your program for scalability. It computes the work and span of your program to derive some upper bounds on parallel performance and it also estimates a scheduling overhead to compute what's called a burden span for lower bounds.
So let's take a look. So here's, for example, here's a quick sort program. So let's just see this is a c++ program. So here we're using a template so that the type of items that I'm sorting I can make be a variable. So tightening-- can we shut the back door there? One of the TAs? Somebody run up to-- thank you.
So we have the variable T And we're going to quick sort from the beginning to the end of the array. And what we do is, just as you're familiar with quick sort, if there's actually something to be sorted, more than one thing, then we find the middle by partitioning the thing and this is a bit of a c++ magic to find the middle element. And then the important part from our point of view is after we've done this partition, we quick sort the first part of the array, from beginning to middle and then from the beginning plus 1 or the middle, whichever is greater to the end. And then we sync.
So what we're doing is quick sort where we're spawning off the two sub problems to be solved in parallel recursively. So they're going to execute in parallel and they're going to execute in parallel and so forth. So a fairly natural thing to divide, to do divide and conquer on quick sort because the two some problems can be operated on independently. We just sort them recursively. But we can sort them in parallel. OK, so suppose that we are sorting 100,000 numbers. How much parallelism do you think is in this code? So remember that we're getting this recursive stuff done. How many people think-- well, it's not going to be more than 100,000, I promise you. So how many people think more than a million parallels? Raise your hand, more than a million? And how many people think more than 100,000? And how many people think more than 10,000? OK, between the two. More than 1,000? OK, how about more than 100? 100 to 1,000? How about 10 to 100? How about between 1 and 10?
So a lot of people think between 1 and 10. Why do you think that there's so little parallels in this? You don't have to justify yourself, OK. Well let's see how much there is according to Cilkview. So here's the type of output that you'll get. You'll get a graphical curve. You'll also get a textual output. But this is sort of the graphical output. And this is basically showing what the running time here is. So the first thing it shows is it will actually run your program, benchmark your program, on in this case, up to 8 course. We ran it. So we ran up to 8 course and give you what your measured speedup is.
So the second thing is it tells you the parallels. If you can't read that it's, 11.21. So we get about 11. Why do you think it's not higher? What's that?
AUDIENCE: It's the log.
PROFESSOR: What's the log?
PROFESSOR: Yeah, but you're doing the two things in parallel, right? We'll actually analyze this. So it has to do with the fact that the partition routine is a serial piece of code and it's big. So the initial partitioning takes you 100,000-- sorry, 100 million steps of doing a partition-- before you get to do any parallelism at all. And we'll see that in just a minute. So it gives you the parallelism. It also plots this. So this is the parallelism. Notice that's the same number, 11.21 is plotted as this bound. So it tells you the span law and it tells you the work law. This is the linear speedup. If you were having linear speedup, this is what your program would give you. So it gives you these two bounds, the work law and span law on your speedup. And then it also computes what's called a burden parallelism, estimating scheduling overheads to sort of give you a lower bound.
Now that's not to say that your numbers can't fall outside this range. But when they do, it will tell you essentially what the issues are with your program. And we'll discuss how you diagnose some of those issues. Actually that's in one of the handouts that we've provided. I think that's in one of the handouts. If not, we'll make sure it's among the handouts.
So basically, this gives you a range for what you can expect. So the important thing here is to notice here for example, that we're losing performance, but it's not due to the parallelism, to the work law. Basically, in some sense, what's happening is we are losing it because the Span Law because we're starting to approach the point where the span is going to be the issue. So we'll talk more about this. So the main thing is you have a tool that can tell you the work and span and so that you can analyze your own programs to understand are you bounded by parallelism, for example, in particular, in the code that you've written.
OK let's do a theoretical analysis of this to understand why that number is small. So the main thing here is that the expected work, as you recall, of quick sort is order n log n. You tend to do order n log n work, you partition and then you're solving two problems of the same size. If you actually draw out the recursion tree, it's log height with linear amount of work on every level for n log end total work.
The expected span, however, is order n because the partition routine is a serial program that partitions up the thing of size n in order n time. So when you compute the parallelism, you get parallelism of order log n and log n is kind of puny parallelism, and that's our technical word for it. So puny parallelism is what we get out of quick sort.
So it turns out there are lots of things that you can analyze. Here's just a selection of some of the interesting practical algorithms and the kinds of analyses that you can do showing that, for example, with merge sort you can do it with work n log n. You can get a span of log qn and so then the parallelism is the ratio of the two. In fact, you can actually theoretically get log squared n span, but that's not as practical an algorithm as the one that gives you log cubed n. And you can go through and there are a whole bunch of algorithms for which you can get very good parallelism.
So all of these, if you look at the ratio of these, the parallelism is quite high. So let's talk a little bit about what's going on underneath and why parallelism is important. So when you describe your program in Cilk, you express the potential parallelism of your application. You don't say exactly how it's going to be scheduled, that's done by the Cilk++ scheduler, which maps the strands dynamically onto the processors at run time. So it's going to do the load balancing and everything necessary to balance your computation off the number of processors. We want to understand how that process works, because that's going to help us to understand how it is that we can build codes that will map very effectively on to the number of processors.
Now it turns out that the theory of the distributed schedulers such as is in Cilk++ is complicated. I'll wave my hands about it towards the end, but the analysis of it is advanced. You have to take a graduate course to get that stuff. So instead, we're going to explore the ideas with a centralized, much simpler, scheduler which serves as a surrogate for understanding what's going on.
So the basic idea of almost all scheduling theory in this domain is greedy scheduling. And so this is-- by the way, we're coming to the second thing you have to understand really well in order to be able to generate good code, the second sort of theoretical thing-- so the idea of a greedy scheduler is you want to do as much work as possible on each step. So the idea here is let's take a look, for example, suppose that we've executed this part of the DAG already. Then there are certain number of strands that are ready to execute, meaning all their predecessors have exited. How many strands are ready to execute on this DAG? Five, right? These guys. So those five strands are ready to execute.
So the idea is-- and let me illustrate for p equals 3-- the idea is to understand the execution in terms of two types of steps. So in a greed schedule, you always do as much as possible. So is what would be called a complete step because I can schedule all three processors to have some work to do on that step. So which are the best three guys to be able to execute? Yes, so I'm not sure what the best three are, but for sure, you want to get this guy and this guy, right? Maybe that guy's not, but this guy, you definitely want to execute. And these guys, I guess, OK. So in a greedy schedule, no, you're not allowed to look to see which ones are the best execute. You don't know what the future is, the scheduler isn't going to know what the future is so it just executes any p course. You just execute any p course. In this case, I executed the p strand. In this case, I executed these three guys even though they weren't necessarily the best. And in a greedy scheduler, it doesn't look to see what's the best one to execute, it just executes as many as it can this case. In this case, it's p.
Now we have what's called an incomplete step. Notice nothing got enabled. That was sort of too bad. So there's only two guys that are ready to go. What do you think happens if I have an incomplete step, namely p strands are ready, fewer than p strands are ready? I just to execute all of them, as many as I can. Run all of them.
So that's what a greedy scheduler does. Just at every step, it executes as many as it can and we can classify the steps as ones which are complete, meaning we used all our processors versus incomplete, meaning we only used a subset of our processors in scheduling it. So that's what a greedy scheduler does.
Now the important thing, which is the analysis of this program. And this is, by the way, the single most important thing in scheduling theory but you're going to ever learn is this particular theory. It goes all the way back to 1968 and what it basically says it is any greedy scheduler achieves a bound of T1 over p plus T infinity. So why is that an interesting upper bound? Yeah?
AUDIENCE: That says that it's got the refinement of what you said before, even if you add as many processors as you can, basically you're bounded by T infinity.
AUDIENCE: It's compulsory.
PROFESSOR: So basically, each of these, this term here is the term in the Work Law. This is the term in the Span Law, and we're saying you can always achieve the sum of those two lower bounds as an upper bound. So let's see how we do this and then we'll look at some of the implications. Question, do you have a question? No?
So here's the proof that you meet this. So that the proof says-- and I'll illustrate for P equals 3-- how many complete steps could we have? So I'll argue that the number of complete steps is at most T1 over p. Why is that? Every complete step performs p work. So if I had more complete steps than T1 over p, I'd be doing more than T1 work. But I only have T1 work to do. OK, so the maximum number of complete steps I could have is at most T1 over p. Do people follow that?
So the trickier part of the proof, which is not all that tricky but it's a little bit trickier, is the other side. How many incomplete steps could I have? So we execute those. So I claim that the number of incomplete steps is bounded by the critical path length, by the span. Why is that? Well let's take a look at the part of DAG that has yet to be executed. So that this gray part here. There's some span associated with that. In this case, it's this longest path. When I execute all of the ready threads that are ready to go, I guarantee to reduce the span of that unexecuted DAG by at least one. So as I do here, so I reduce it by one when I execute.
So if I have a complete step, I don't guaranteed to reduce the span of the unexecuted DAG, because I may execute things as I showed you in this example, you don't actually advance anything. But I execute all the ready threads on an incomplete step, and that's going to reduce it by one. So the number of incomplete steps is at most infinity. So the total number of steps is at most the sum. So as I say, this proof you should understand in your sleep because it's the most important scheduling theory proof that you're going to probably see in your lifetime. It's very old, and really, very, very simple and yet, there's a huge amount of scheduling theory if you have a look at scheduling theory, that comes out of this just making this same problem more complicated and more real and more interesting and so forth. But this is really the crux of what's going on. Any questions about this proof?
So one corollary of the greedy scheduling algorithm is that any greedy scheduler achieves within a factor of two of optimal scheduling. So let's see why that is. So it's guaranteed as an upper bound to get within a factor of two of optimal. So here's the proof. So let's Tp star be the execution time produced by the optimal scheduler. This is the schedule that knows the whole DAG in advance and can schedule things exactly where they need to be scheduled to minimize the total amount of time. Now even though the optimal scheduler can schedule very officially, it's still bound by the Work Law and the Span Law. So therefore, Tp star has still got to be greater than T1 over p and greater than T infinity by the Work and Span Laws. Even though it's optimal, every scheduler must obey the Work Laws and Spam Law.
So then we have, by the greedy scheduling theorem, Tp is at most T1 over p plus T infinity. Well that's at most twice the maximum of these two values, whichever is larger. I've just plugged in to get the maximum of those two and that's at most, by this equation, twice the optimal time. So this is a very simple corollary says oh, greedy scheduling is actually pretty good. It's not optimal, in fact, optimal scheduling is mP complete. Very hard problem to solve. But getting within a factor of two, you just do greedy scheduling, it works just fine.
More importantly is the next corollary, which has to do is when do you get linear speedup? And this is, I think, the most important thing to get out of this. So any greedy scheduler achieves near perfect linear speedup whenever-- what's this thing on the left-hand side? What's the name we call that?-- the parallelism, right? That's the parallelism, is much bigger than the number of processors you're running on. So if the number of processors are running on is smaller than the parallelism of your code says you can expect near perfect linear speedup. OK, so what does that say you want to do in your program? You want to make sure you have ample parallelism and then the scheduler will be able to schedule it so that you get near perfect linear speedup. Let's see why that's true.
So T1 over T infinity is much bigger than p is equivalent to saying that T infinity is much less than T1 over p. That's just algebra. Well what does that mean? The greedy scheduling theorem says Tp is at most T1 over p plus T infinity. We just said that if we have this condition, then T infinity is very small compared to T1 over p. So if this is negligible, then the whole thing is about T1 over p. Well that just says that the speedup is about p. So the name of the game is to make sure that your span is relatively short compared to the amount of work per processor that you're doing. And in that case, you'll get linear speedup. And that happens when you've got enough parallelism compared to the number processors you're running on. Any questions about this? This is like the most important thing you're going to learn about parallel computing.
Everything else we're going to do is going to be derivatives of this, so if you don't understand this, you have a hard time with the other stuff. So in some sense, it's deceptively simple, right? We just have a few variables, T1, Tp, T infinity, p, there's not much else going on. But there are these bounds and these elegant theorems that tell us something about how no matter what the shape of the DAG is or whatever, these two values, the work and the span, really characterize very closely where it is that you can expect to get linear speedup. Any questions? OK, good.
So the quantity T1 over PT infinity, so what is that? That's just the parallelism divided by p. That's called the parallel slackness. So this parallel slackness is 10, means you have 10 times more parallelism than processors. So if you have high slackness, you can expect to get linear speedup. If you have low slackness, don't expect to get linear speedup. OK. Now the scheduler we're using is not a greedy scheduler. It's better in many ways, because it's a distributed, what's called work stealing scheduler and I'll show you how it works in a little bit. But it's based on the same theory. Even though it's a more complicated scheduler from an analytical point of view, it's really based on the same theory as greedy scheduling. It guarantees that the time on p processors is at most T1 over p plus order T infinity. So there's a constant here.
And it's a randomized scheduler, so it actually only guarantees this in expectation. It actually guarantees very close to this with high probability. OK so the difference is the big O, but if you look at any of the formulas that we did with the greedy scheduler, the fact that there's a constant there doesn't really matter. You get the same effect, it just means that the slackness that you need to get linear speedup has to not only overcome the T infinity, it's also got to overcome the constant there. And empirically, it actually turns out this is not bad as an estimate using the greedy bound. Not bad as an estimate, so this is sort of a model that we'll take as if we're doing things with a greedy scheduler. And that will be very close for what we're actually going to see in practice with the Cilk++ scheduler.
So once again, it means near perfect linear speedup as long as p is much less than T1 over T infinity generally. And so Cilkview allows us to measure T1 and T infinity. So that's going to be good, because then we can figure out what our parallelism is and look to see how we're running on typically 12 cores, how much parallels do we have? If our parallelism is 12, we don't have a lot of slackness. We won't get very good speedup. But if we have a parallelism of say, 10 times more, say 120, we should get very, very good parallelism, very, very good speedup on 12 cores. We should get close to perfect speedup.
So let's talk about the runtime system and how this work stealing scheduler works, because it different from the other one. And this will be helpful also for understanding when you program these things what you can expect. So the basic idea of the schedule is there's two strategies the people have explored for doing scheduling. One is called work sharing, which is not what Cilk++ does. But let me explain what work sharing is because it's helpful to contrast it with work stealing.
So in works sharing, what you do is when you spawn off some work, you say let me go find some low utilized processor and put that worked there for it to operate on. The problem with work sharing is that you have to do some communication and synchronization every time you do a spawn. Every time you do a spawn, you're going to go out. This is kind of what Pthreads does, when you do Pthread create. It goes out and says OK, let me create all of the things it needs to do and get it schedule then on a processor.
Work stealing, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. Whenever it spawns work, it's just going to keep that work local to it, but make it available for stealing. A processor that runs out of work is going to go looking for work to steal, to bring back. The advantage of work stealing is that the processor doesn't do any synchronization except when it's actually load balancing. So if all of the processors have ample work to do, then what happens is there's no overhead for scheduling whatsoever. They all just crank away. And so you get very, very low overheads when there's ample work to do on each processor.
So let's see how this works. So the particular way that it maintains it is that basically, each processor maintains a work deck. So a deck is a double-ended queue of the ready strands. It manipulates the bottom of the deck like a stack. So what that says is, for example, here, we had a spawn followed by two calls. And basically, it's operating just as it would have to operate in an ordinary stack, an ordinary call stack. So, for example, this guy says call, well it pushes a frame on the bottom of the call stack just like normal. It says spawn, it pushes a spawn frame on the bottom of the deck.
In fact, of course, it's running in parallel, so you can have a bunch of guys that are both calling and spawning and they all push whatever their frames are. When somebody says return, you just pop it off. So in the common case, each of these guys is just executing the code serially the way that it would normally executing in C or C++. However, if somebody runs out of work, then it becomes a thief and it looks for a victim and the strategy that's used by Cilk++ is to look at random. It says let me just go to any other processor or any other workers-- I call these workers-- and grab away some of their work. But when it grabs it away, what it does is it steals it from the opposite end of the deck from where this particular victim is actually doing its work. So it steals the oldest stuff first. So it moves that over and now here what it's doing is it's stealing up to the point that it spawns. So it steals from the top of the deck down to where there's a spawn on top. Yes?
AUDIENCE: Is there always a spawn on the top of every deck?
PROFESSOR: Close, almost always. Yes, so I think that you could say that there are. So the initial deck does not have a spawn on top of it, but you could imagine that it did. And then when you steal, you're always stealing from the top down to a spawn. If there isn't something, if this is just a call here, this cannot any longer be stolen. There's no work there to be stolen because this is just a single execution, there's nothing that's been spawned off at this point. This is the result of having been spawned as opposed to that it's doing a spawn. So yes, basically you're right. There's a spawn on the top.
So it basically steals that off and then it resumes execution afterwards and starts then operating just like an ordinary deck. So the theorem that you can prove for this type of scheduler is that if you have sufficient parallelism, so you all know what parallelism is at this point, you can prove that the workers steal infrequently. So in a a typical execution, you might have a few hundred load balancing operations of this nature for something which is doing billions and billions of instructions. So you steal infrequently. If you're stealing infrequently and all the rest of the time you're just executing like the C or C++, hey, now you've got linear speedup because you've got all of these guys working all the time.
And so as I say, the main thing to understand is that there's this work stealing scheduler running underneath. It's more complicated to analyze then the greedy scheduler, but it gives you pretty much the same qualitative kinds of results. And the idea then is that the stealing occurs infrequently so you get linear speedup. So the idea then is just as with greedy scheduling, make sure you have enough parallelism, because then the load balancing is a small fraction of the time these processors are spending executing the code. Because whenever it's doing things like work stealing, it's not working on your code executing, making it go fast. It's doing bookkeeping and overhead and stuff. So you want to make sure that stays low. So any questions about that?
So specifically, we have these bounds. You have achieved this expected running time, which I mentioned before. Let me give you a pseudo-proof of this. So this is not a real proof because it ignores things like independence of probabilities. So when you do a probability analysis, you're not allowed to multiply probabilities unless they're independent. So anyway, here I'm multiplying probabilities that are independent. So the idea is you can view a processor as either working or stealing. So it goes into one of two modes. It's going to be stealing if it's run out of work, otherwise it's working. So the total time all processors spend working is T1, hooray, that's at least a bound.
Now it turns out that every steal has a 1 over p chance of reducing the span by one. So you can prove that of all of the work that's in the top of all those decks that those are where any of the ready threads are going to be there are in a position of reducing the span if you execute them. And so whenever you steal, you have a 1 over p chance of hitting the guy that matters for the span of unexecuted DAG. So the same kind of thing as in theory. You have a 1 over p chance. So the expected cost of all steals is order PT infinity. So this is true, but not for this reason. But it's kind, the intuition is right. So therefore the cost of all steals is PT infinity and the cost of the work is T1, so that's the total amount of work and time spent stealing by all the p processors. So to get the time spent doing that, we divide by p, because they're p processors. And when I do that, I get T1 over p plus order T infinity. So that's kind of where that bound is coming from.
So you can see what's important here is that the term, that order T infinity term, this the one where all the overhead of scheduling and synchronization is. There's no overhead for scheduling and synchronization in the T1 over p term. The only overhead there is to do things like mark the frames as being a steel frame or a spawn frame and do the bookkeeping of the deck as you're executing so the spawn can be implemented very cheaply.
Now in addition to the scheduling things, there are some other things to understand a little bit about the scheduler and that is that it supports the C, C++ rule for pointers. So remember in C and C++, you can pass a pointer to stack space down, but you can't pass a pointer to stack space back to your parent, right? Because it popped off. So if you think about a C or C++ execution, let's say we have this call structure here. A really cannot see any of the stack space of B,C,D or E. So this is what A gets to see. And B, meanwhile, can see A space, because that's down on the stack, but it can't see C, D or E. Particularly if you're executing this serially, it can't see C because C hasn't executed yet when B executes.
However, C, it turns out, the same thing. I can't see any of the variables that might be allocated in the space for B when I'm executing here on a stack. You can see them in a heap, but not on the stack, because B has been popped off at that point and so forth. So this is basically the normal rule, the normal views of stack that you get in C or C++. In Cilk++, you get exactly the same behavior except that multiple ones of these views may exist at the same time. So if, for example, B and C are both executing at the same time, they each will see their own stack space and a stack space. And so the cactus stack maintains that fiction that you can sort of look at your ancestors and see your ancestors, but now it's maintained. It's called a cactus stack because it's kind of like a tree structure upside down, like a what's the name of that big cactus out West? Yes, saguaro. The saguaro cactus, yep. This kind of looks like that if you look at the stacks.
This leads to a very powerful bound on how much space your program is using. So normally, if you do a greedy scheduler, you could end up using gobs more space then you would in a serial execution, gobs more stack space. In Cilk++ programs, you have a bound. It's p times s1 is the maximum amount of stack space you'll ever use where s1 is the stack space used by serial execution. So if you can keep your serial execution to use a reasonable amount of stack space-- and usually it does-- then in parallel, you don't use more than p times that amount of stack space.
And the proof for that is sort of by induction, which basically says there's a property called the Busy Leaves Property that says that if you have a leaf that's being worked on but hasn't been completed-- so I've indicated those by the purple and pink ones-- then if it's a leaf, it has a worker executing on it. And so therefore, if you look at how much stack space you're using, each of these guys can trace up and they may double count the stack space, but it'll still be bounded by p times the depth that they're at, or p times s1, which is the maximum amount. So it has good space bounds. That's not so crucial for you folks to know as a practical matter, but it would be if this didn't hold. If this didn't hold, then you would have more programming problems than you'll have.
The implications of this work stealing scheduler is interesting from the linguistic point of view, because you can write a code like this, so for i gets one to a billion, spawn some sub-routine foo of i and then sync. So one way of executing this, the way that the work sharing schedulers tend to do this, is they say oh, I've got a billion tasks to do. So let me create a billion tasks and now schedule them and the space just vrooms to store all those billion tasks, it gets to be huge. Now of course, they have some strategies they can use to reduce it by bunching tasks together and so forth. But in principle, you got a billion pieces of work to do even if you execute on one processor. Whereas in the work stealing type execution, what happens is you execute this in fact depth research. So basically, you're going to execute foo of 1 and then you'll return. And then you'll increment i and you'll execute foo of 2, and you'll return. At no time are you using more than in this case two stack frames, one for this routine here and one for foo because you basically keep going up. You're using your stack up on demand, rather than creating all the work up front to be scheduled.
So the work stealing scheduler is very good from that point of view. The tricky thing for people to understand is that if executing on multiple processors, when you do Cilk spawn, the processor, the worker that you're running on, is going to execute foo of 1. The next statement-- which would basically be incrementing the counter and so forth-- is executed by whatever processor comes in and steals that continuation. So if you had two processors, they're each going to basically be executing. The first processor isn't the one that excuse everything in this function. This function has its execution shared, the strands are going to be shared where the first part of it would be done by processor one and the latter part of it would be done by processor two. And then when processor one finishes this off, it might go back and steal back from processor two. So the important thing there is it's generating its stack needs sort of on demand rather than all up front, and that keeps the amount of stack space small as it executes.
So the moral is it's better to steal your parents from their children than stealing children from their parents. So that's the advantage of doing this sort of parent stealing, because you're always doing the frame which is an ancestor of where that worker is working and that means resuming a function right in the middle on a different processor. That's kind of the magic of the technologies is how do you actually move a stack frame from one place to another and resume it in the middle?
Let's finish up here with a chess lesson. I promised a chess lesson, so we might as well do some fun and games. We have a lot of experience at MIT with chess programs. We've had a lot of success, probably our closest one was Star Socrates 2.0, which took second place in the world computer chess championship running on an 1824 node Intel Paragon, so a big supercomputer running with a Cilk scheduler. We actually almost won that competition, and it's a sad story that maybe be sometime around dinner or something I will tell you the sad story behind it, but I'm not going to tell you why we didn't take first place. And we've had a bunch of other successes over the years. Right now our chess programming is dormant, we're not doing that in my group anymore, but in the past, we had some very strong chess playing programs.
So what we did with Star Socrates, which is one of our programs, was we wanted to understand the Cilk scheduler. And so what we did is we ran a whole bunch of different positions on different numbers of processors which ran for different amounts of time. We wanted to plot them all on the same chart, and here's our strategy for doing it. What decided to do was do a standard speedup curve. So a standard speedup curve says let's plot the number of processors along this axis and the speed up along that axis. But in order to fit all these things on the same processor curve, what we did was we normalize the speedup. So what's the maximum pot? So here's the speedup. If you look the numerator here, this is the speedup, T1 over Tp. What we did is we normalized by the parallelism. So we said what fraction of perfect speedup can we get?
So here one says that I got exactly a speedup, this is the maximum possible speed up that I can get because the maximum possible value of T1 over p is T1 over T infinity. So that's sort of the maximum. On this axis, we said how many processors are you running on it? Well, we looked at that relative to essentially the slackness. So notice by normalizing, we essentially have here the inverse of the slackness. So 1 here says that I'm running on exactly the same number of processors as my parallelism. A tenth here says I've got a slackness of 10, I'm running on 10 times fewer processors then parallelism. Out here, I'm saying I got way more processors than I have parallelism. So I plotted all the points. So it doesn't show up very well here, but all those green points, there are a lot of green points here, that's our performance, measured performance. You can sort of see they're green there, not the best color for this projector. So we plot on this essentially the Work Law and the Span Law. So this is the Work Law, it says linear speedup, and this is the Span Law. And you can see that we're getting very close to perfect linear speedup as long as our slackness is 10 or greater. See that? It's hugging that curve really tightly.
As we approach a slackness of 1, you can see that it starts to go away from the linear speedup curve. So for this program, if you look, it says, gee, if we were running with 10 time, slackness of 10, 10 times more parallelism than processors, we're getting almost perfect linear speedup in the number of processors we're running on across a wide range of number of processors, wide range of benchmarks for this chess program. And in fact, this curve is the curve. This is not an interpolation here, but rather it is just the greedy scheduling curve, and you can see it does a pretty good job of going through all the points here. Greedy scheduling does a pretty good job of predicting the performance.
The other thing you should notice is that although things are very tight down here, as you approach up here, they start getting more spread. And the reason is that as you start having more of the span mattering in the calculation, that's where all the synchronization, communication, all the overhead of actually doing the mechanics of moving a frame from one processor to another take into account, so you get a lot more spread as you go up here.
So that's just the first part of the lesson. The first part was, oh, the theory works out in practice for real programs. You have like 10 times more parallelisms than processors, you're going to do a pretty good job of getting linear speedup. So that says you guys should be shooting for parallelisms on the order of 100 for running on 12 cores. Somewhere in that vicinity you should be doing pretty well if you've got parallelism of 100 when you measure it for your codes. So we normalize by the parallel there.
Now the real lesson though was understanding how to use things like work and span to make decisions in the design of our program. So as it turned out, Socrates for this particular competition was to run on a 512 processor connection machine at the University of Illinois. So this was in the mid in the early 1990's. It was one of the most powerful machines in the world, and this thing is probably more powerful today. But in those days, it was a pretty powerful machine. I don't know whether this thing is, but this thing probably I'm pretty sure is more powerful. So this was a big machine.
However here at MIT, we didn't have a great big machine like that. We only had a 32 processor CM5. So we were developing on a little machine expecting to run on a big machine. So one of the developers proposed to change the program that produced a speedup of over 20% on the MIT machine. So we said, oh that's pretty good, 25% improvement. But we did a back of the envelope calculation and rejected that improvement because we were able to use work and span to predict the behavior on the big machine. So let's see how that worked out, why that worked out.
So I've fudged these numbers so that they're easy to do the math on and easy to understand. The real numbers actually though did sort out very, very similar to what I'm saying, just they weren't round numbers like I'm going to give you. So the original program ran for let's say 65 seconds on 32 cores. The proposed program ran for 40 seconds on 32 cores. Sounds like a good improvement to me. Let's go for the faster program. Well, let's hold your horses. Let's take a look at our performance model based on greedy scheduling. That Tp is T1 over p plus infinity. What component we really need to understand the scale this, what component of each of these things is work and which is span? Because that's how we're going to be able to predict what's going to happen on the big machine.
So indeed, this original program had a work of 2048 seconds and a span of one second. Now chess, it turns out, is a non-deterministic type of program where you use speculative parallelism, and so in order to get more parallelism, you can sacrifice and do more work versus less work. So this one over here that we improved it to had less work on the benchmark, but it had a longer span. So it had less work but a longer span. So when we actually were going to run this, well first of all, we did the calculation and it actually came out pretty close. I was kind of surprised how close the theory matched. We actually on 32 processors when you do the work spanned calculation, you get the 65 seconds on a 32 processor machine, here we had 40 seconds.
But now what happens when we scale this to the big machine? Here we scaled it to 512 cores. So now we take the work divided by the number of processors, 512, plus 1, that's 5 seconds for this. Here we have the work but we now have a much larger span. So we have two seconds of work for processor, but now eight seconds of span for a total of 10 seconds. So had we made this quote "improvement," our code would have been half as fast. It would not have scaled.
And so the point is that work and span typically will beat running times for predicting scalability of performance. So you can measure a particular thing, but what you really want to know is this thing this going to scale and how is it going to scale into the future. So people building multicore applications today want to know that they coded up. They don't want to be told in two years that they've got to recode it all because the number of cores doubled. They want to have some future-proof notion that hey, there's a lot of parallelism in this program.
So work and span, work and span, eat it, drink it, sleep it. Work and span, work and span, work and span, work and span, work and span, OK? Work and span. | <urn:uuid:52d73a7e-98e9-45a9-af16-7f233b1145b3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-172-performance-engineering-of-software-systems-fall-2010/video-lectures/lecture-13-parallelism-and-performance/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00020-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973819 | 14,108 | 2.59375 | 3 |
NASA's LADEE spacecraft was never destined for a long life, and early Friday morning Eastern Daylight Time, the intrepid little robot completed its mission and crashed onto the surface of the Moon.
Just three days after the "Blood Moon" lunar eclipse dazzled those lucky enough to see it from earth, LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer – pronounced "laddie" – quietly fell out of orbit as planned and smashed into the dark side of the moon. NASA gave the time of the impact as 10:59 PDT on Thursday.
LADEE successfully completed its 100-day primary science mission on March 1, and was able to stay in orbit through this morning thanks to "the spectacular performance of the Minotaur V launch vehicle" and "the precise performance of the LADEE main engine," according to NASA.
... a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the structure and composition of the thin lunar atmosphere, and determine whether dust is being lofted into the lunar sky. A thorough understanding of these characteristics of our nearest celestial neighbor will help researchers understand other bodies in the solar system, such as large asteroids, Mercury, and the moons of outer planets.
The LADEE spacecraft's modular common spacecraft bus, or body, is an innovative way of transitioning away from custom designs and toward multi-use designs and assembly-line production, which could drastically reduce the cost of spacecraft development, just as the Ford Model T did for automobiles. NASA's Ames Research Center designed, developed, built, and tested the spacecraft and manages mission operations.
LADEE launched on Sept. 6 aboard a Minotaur V rocket from NASA's Wallops Island test flight facility in Wallops Island, Va. The launch could be seen from locations up and down the East Coast. LADEE arrived at the moon on Oct. 6 and began its 100-day science mission on Nov. 20.
During those 100 days, LADEE stayed nimble and performed 16 Orbit Maintenance Maneuvers in order to keep it at the right altitude so its instruments could make their measurements. Even after its 100-day mission was completed on March 1, LADEE stayed on the job and continued to make observations and obtain data. | <urn:uuid:c605d144-bf25-40a4-bc0c-9fea0fd6ca12> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/04/ladee_we_hardly_knew_ye_moon_o.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950327 | 457 | 3.4375 | 3 |
Vaults: From Biological Mystery to Nanotech Workhorse?
Natural nano-capsules show promise for drug delivery, electrical switches and circuits
Naturally occurring nano-capsules, known as "vaults," could provide a whole new class of delivery vehicles for therapeutic drugs and DNA, according to recent research. Indeed, vaults could be used for a wide range of applications in nanotechnology--even though no one can figure out how nature itself uses them.
That's not for lack of trying. In the nearly two decades since vaults were discovered, researchers have found that these hollow, barrel-like structures circulate by the tens of thousands in just about every cell of the human body, as well as in the cells of monkeys, rats, frogs, electric rays and even slime molds. Vaults are presumably doing something worthwhile; otherwise, they never would have survived millions of years of evolution.
But when scientists breed mice that are genetically incapable of making the particles, the mice show no ill effects whatsoever. They just grow and thrive and eat their mouse pellets like lab mice the world over. Even their vault-free cells seem perfectly normal.
Still, this ongoing struggle with the mystery of vaults hasn't slowed researchers' efforts to explore their practical uses. To begin with, notes UCLA biochemist Leonard Rome, who runs the laboratory where vaults were discovered in 1986, he and his fellow vault researchers have gained a good understanding of the particles' structures and how they assemble themselves out of smaller protein molecules (plus a tiny bit of RNA). Thus, Rome says, by using the standard techniques of biotechnology, "we can engineer the particles to give them just the properties we want"--a prospect that could lead to vaults being used as structural elements for nanoscale machines, say, or as switches for nanoscale electrical circuits.
Better yet, Rome and his UCLA colleagues have recently shown that vaults can function as nanoscale Trojan Horses, carrying foreign molecules past cellular membranes that are expressly designed to keep such interlopers out. Their experiments were funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under a nanoscale interdisciplinary research team grant, and were published in the March 7, 2005, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As a critical first step, the researchers identified a molecular "zip code" that will reliably steer foreign molecules into the vault cavity. The zip code is actually a sequence of about 100 amino acids they isolated from one of the vault's protein building blocks. Its natural function is to chemically bind that protein to the capsule's inside wall. So once the researchers had attached the sequence to the molecule of interest--they used two different fluorescent molecules for the experiments--they just mixed that result with native vault proteins in the process of assembling themselves, then found the molecule snuggly encased in the vault interior.
"As a proof of concept this is very, very exciting," says Eve Barak, the UCLA group's program officer at NSF. But of course, she adds, there is also a second critical step, which is to demonstrate that vaults can actually cross the cell membrane and get inside. "That's not been shown before," she says.
In practice, that step turned out to be almost easy, says Rome. "You just feed them to the cells," he says, describing how a liquid full of suspended vault particles was poured across a tissue sample in a laboratory dish, "and the cells take them up."
And then, the final critical step: proving the vaults and their cargo molecules could survive and function inside the cell. There, too, the news was good, says Rome. When vaults carrying the fluorescent "green-lantern" protein were added to the mix, the objects entered the cells and glowed green from the inside. And in a separate experiment, when vaults carrying the firefly enzyme, luciferase, were placed in a test tube and doused with the compounds luciferase needs to fire up and glow--it did. Although the response was slow, Rome says the vaults did get through--at the molecular level the walls are actually an open latticework that looks like nanoscale chicken wire. And this fact strongly suggests that in practical applications, vault-encapsulated drugs, DNA strands and other such molecules will be able to interact successfully with cell contents.
In future experiments, says Rome, he and his team hope to bioengineer vaults that will hone in on specific cell surface receptors, so that they can be directed to enter only certain types of cells. "And then we'll be able to go after some of the applications on our list," he says. That list is a long one, with possibilities in both the medical and non-medical arenas. For example: | <urn:uuid:8edc880c-adee-4775-b4a6-452448a8e891> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=104106&org=MCB | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00085-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963227 | 978 | 2.984375 | 3 |
If you’re arrested, you’ll usually be taken to a police station, held in custody in a cell and then questioned.
After you’ve been taken to a police station, you may be released or charged with a crime.
Your rights in custody
The custody officer at the police station must explain your rights. You have the right to:
- get free legal advice
- tell someone where you are
- have medical help if you’re feeling ill
- see the rules the police must follow (‘Codes of Practice’)
- see a written notice telling you about your rights, eg regular breaks for food and to use the toilet (you can ask for a notice in your language) or an interpreter to explain the notice
You’ll be searched and your possessions will be kept by the police custody officer while you’re in the cell.
Young people under 18 and vulnerable adults
The police must try to contact your parent, guardian or carer if you’re under 18 or a vulnerable adult.
They must also find an ‘appropriate adult’ to come to the station to help you and be present during questioning and searching. An appropriate adult can be:
- your parent, guardian or carer
- a social worker
- another family member or friend aged 18 or over
- a volunteer aged 18 or over
The National Appropriate Adult Network provides appropriate adult services in England and Wales.
Your rights when being questioned
The police may question you about the crime you’re suspected of - this will be recorded. You don’t have to answer the questions but there could be consequences if you don’t. The police must explain this to you by reading you the police caution:
“You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.” | <urn:uuid:3464eda9-d1ed-49b3-8858-4ddb6433cbb3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.gov.uk/arrested-your-rights/when-youre-arrested | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937538 | 413 | 2.625 | 3 |
Woodland Park Zoo’s new red-crowned crane chick is on a mission, living as an ambassador for cranes facing habitat loss and life-threatening, human-wildlife conflicts in their Asian range. Photo credit: Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo
Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle is home to a new male red-crowned crane chick! The fluffy, brown chick, hatched on May 13, will play an integral role in the survival of the species. Red-crowned cranes are severely endangered, with only 2,700 cranes remaining in the Amur Basin of Northeast Asia.
The zoo works with Muraviovka Park for Sustainable Land Use and the International Crane Foundation, through the zoo’s Partners for Wildlife, with the goal to bring the red-crowned crane population back from the brink of extinction.
“Muraviovka Park gives red-crowned cranes a chance to flourish; it’s a safe haven for them to breed, nest and raise their young,” says Fred Koontz, Woodland Park Zoo Vice President of Field Conservation. “This wildlife sanctuary is the first nongovernmental protected area, and the first privately run nature park in Russia since 1917, and it’s making a tremendous difference for the future of cranes and many other species.”
If you would like to help red-crowned cranes, you can get involved with Woodland Park Zoo’s efforts at zoo.org/conservation.
Photo credit: Dennis Dow/Woodland Park Zoo
An injured adult sandhill crane and an orphaned crane chick bond at SeaWorld. Photo provided by SeaWorld.
A few weeks ago, the aviculture team at SeaWorld Orlando took into their care an adult sandhill crane with a rubber gasket stuck around his bill. The gasket not only made it impossible for the crane to eat, it impeded upon the proper development of his bill. The SeaWorld team removed the gasket and provided around-the-clock care to rehabilitate the bird.
While caring for the adult, SeaWorld rescued a newly-hatched, orphaned sandhill crane chick. Although older cranes sometimes do not tolerate unfamiliar chicks, the team decided to see if their rescued adult might act as a surrogate for the chick. And to everyone’s delight, the pair bonded!
By taking the orphan under wing, the adult crane has given the chick the opportunity to mimic and learn behaviors needed to survive in the wild. Eric Reece, SeaWorld’s Supervisor of Aviculture, adds, “The fact that the adult crane took to the chick bodes well for the development of the chick. It is now growing and doing well.”
Once the adult crane has recovered from his injuries and the chick learns to fly, both birds will be released into the wild together. | <urn:uuid:3bbbd7dd-ca9c-459f-ba27-aa356c21ecb6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.animalfactguide.com/tag/cranes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00150-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938748 | 602 | 2.75 | 3 |
Of boron: boric oxide
More example sentences
- Glass-forming substances are usually silica, boric oxide, phosphorous pentoxide, or feldspars.
- So boric acids, or boric salts, are products which traditionally used to protect buildings that perhaps have already suffered from some rot or decay.
- A mild acid (usually citric, but sometimes acetic, boric, lactic or tartaric) is often added to amidol formulae to prevent oxidation, which can cause staining of the print.
Words that rhyme with boricauric, folkloric
For editors and proofreaders
Definition of boric in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:b5eb0dc6-46c6-4246-8025-2554ff0c30da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/boric | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00191-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899444 | 173 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Two-thirds of U.S. pregnancies now end with the birth of a baby, a significantly higher rate than in 1990, when abortions were one-third more common than now, says a federal report on pregnancy rates and outcomes.
In 2008 — the latest year for these data — more than 6.5 million pregnancies were reported. Of these, 4.2 million, or 65 percent, resulted in live births, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) said in its report released Wednesday.
The remaining third of pregnancies were almost evenly split between abortion and fetal loss, with 1.2 million pregnancies, or about 18 percent, ending intentionally and an additional 1.1 million, or 17 percent, ending in miscarriage or stillbirth.
The 2008 figures are quite different from 1990, when 61 percent of pregnancies went to term, 15 percent were lost and 24 percent ended in abortion.
Besides showing that abortion is continuing to wane as an outcome of pregnancy, the 2008 figures point to a gradual increase in fetal loss — “which is one of those tricky areas” to assess, said Stephanie J. Ventura, lead author of the NCHS report.
One explanation for increases in fetal loss could be that more pregnancies are identified earlier, which would allow for more early-term miscarriages to be identified as well, said Ms. Ventura. Also, since the risks for miscarriage and stillbirth rise with a woman’s age. The overall trend toward later-in-life pregnancies may be playing a role, too.
Pregnancy rates for women in their early 20s “declined to the lowest level in more than three decades,” the report said. Also, women in their early 30s continued to have higher pregnancy rates than women age 18 or 19, a dramatic reversal that started around 2002.
A major highlight of the report is the record-low pregnancy rate for teens.
The 2008 rate of 69.8 pregnancies per 1,000 15- to 19-year-olds is the lowest since 1976. Teen pregnancy rates have trended down for all ages and for all racial and ethnic groups.
This decline is “one of the nation’s great success stories of the past two decades,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Moreover, teen pregnancy rates should continue to fall because teen birthrates between 2008 and 2010 have continued to drop, he said. Teen abortion rates have not gone up, which means teens are doing “what everyone had hoped for,” Mr. Albert said — actively preventing pregnancy.
Other highlights of the NCHS report, “Estimated Pregnancy Rates and Rates of Pregnancy Outcomes for the United States, 1990-2008”:
• The 2008 U.S. pregnancy rate was 105.5 pregnancies per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.
• Among teens, 754,000 pregnancies were reported in 2008. About 58 percent of these pregnancies ended in live births, while 26 percent ended in abortions and the rest in fetal loss.
• The pregnancy rate for young teens reached a record low in 2008, with 1.4 pregnancies per 1,000 girls 15 and younger. Of the estimated 14,000 pregnancies in 2008 in this group, 6,000 ended in live births, 6,000 were aborted and 2,000 ended in fetal loss.
• Pregnancy rates for both married women and unmarried women were fairly stable, with 116.2 pregnancies per 1,000 married women, and 96.2 pregnancies per 1,000 unmarried women. However, 84 percent of abortions in 2008 were to unmarried women. | <urn:uuid:8bd3f669-04a3-4173-b02b-da1048019efe> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/20/report-shows-bounce-in-bouncing-babies/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966979 | 754 | 2.65625 | 3 |
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With so many people in Indiana interested in water quality , it is possible that water quality data in your watershed has already been collected. You’ll want to look at as many of these studies as you can in order to get a broad view of what is going on. A great place to start is the Indiana Water Monitoring Council and Inventory. This resource attempts to map “Who is monitoring what” in Indiana’s watersheds. In addition, look to agencies responsible for monitoring water quality in Indiana, like IDEM, U.S. EPA, Hoosier Riverwatch, Indiana University, School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana Clean Lakes Program, and U.S. Geological Survey.
When you are using data collected by other entities, you need to consider how relevant and comparable those data are to yours. For example, what methods have been used to collect the data? Is it comparable with your data? To find out which protocols, or methods, are being used by Indiana Agencies, go to the Purdue Catalog of Monitoring Protocols Used by Indiana Agencies. Never heard of a specific protocol? Go to the National Environmental Methods Index, a website maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, to decode those elusive method designations and find out how professionals measure water quality parameters. There’s even an estimate of cost associated with each method. As you are perusing these methodologies, consider the sensitivity of the test and which media are collected to perform the test to help determine comparability.
In addition to methods, you’ll want to look at the date the data was collected. Generally IDEM includes data from up to 5 years ago as “current.” However, “old” data is still data – at the very least, it might help to characterize historical conditions.
Beyond water quality data, you can get spatial data layers, such as soils, topography, land-use and NPDES permitted facilities, from several sources.
IndianaMap and other interactive maps and downloadable geospatial data are available through the Indiana Geological Survey. This suite of interactive mapping websites allows users to create custom maps using a variety of geographic, geologic, environmental and demographic content. The maps can be viewed or printed at any scale using only a Web browser. Desktop GIS users may also connect to the map services directly and download the data for use with existing GIS applications.
Purdue hosts the Geographic Information System (GIS) Tools for Watershed Management. This website contains links to several Web-based GIS tools, including an online watershed delineation tool that calculates the watershed area draining to a point selected on an interactive map. Once you have delineated the watershed, you can use other tools on the website to estimate the impervious area, run hydrologic models such as L-THIA or download the data for use in a GIS program.
U.S. EPA's EnviroFacts Data Warehouse is a database that is connected to state databases in many program areas, including permitted dischargers, drinking water facilities, brownfields, hazardous waste sites, grants awarded in area of interest and compliance history. Ignore the note that information from Indiana has been frozen. Aside from the occasional glitch, everything from Indiana should be available in the database.
For those working with interstate watersheds, a particularly helpful tool might be the National Map Viewer from USGS. It includes downloadable data layers from the National Hydrography Dataset (including hydrologic unit codes (HUCs), stream lines, and other hydrologic features) as well as land cover, topo maps and large-scale imagery. Be patient – it takes a few minutes to load.
These are just a few of the tools that are available for finding other data for use in your watershed management efforts. A full listing of watershed inventory resources is available in chapter 3 of the Indiana Watershed Planning Guide [PDF]. | <urn:uuid:b7a72ef4-1af6-4eca-9aec-ceefc8c12585> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.state.in.us/idem/nps/3445.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92573 | 843 | 3.234375 | 3 |
|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Sveinn Eiriksson is a man of:
(a) Few words.
(c) Ill repute.
(d) Poor judgment.
2. How long does the the Mauna Loa eruption of 1984 last?
(a) Thirty-three days.
(b) Thirty-three weeks.
(c) Three weeks.
(d) Three months.
3. Sigurdur Jonsson is an Iceland resident who works on what?
(a) Fishing boats.
(c) Polar bear protection.
(d) Pumping crews.
4. During the 1973 volcanic eruptions, many farmers and fishermen leave Heimaey:
(a) For the first time.
(b) For a day only.
(c) Against their will.
(d) Never to return.
5. When the author recounts the moments before the 1973 eruption in Heimaey, he describes what?
(a) An uncanny silence settling over the land.
(b) A violent shaking of the ground.
(c) Vibrations that are not unusual for the region.
(d) A loud, deep sound emanating from the volcano.
Short Answer Questions
1. What does the author observe about historical attempts to control lava?
2. What ultimately happens to the moving piece of mountain on Vestmannaeyjar?
3. In Hawaii, how many volcanoes are there within the group that includes Mauna Loa?
4. When the author walks the streets of Iceland's Heimaey years after the 1973 eruption, what does he see?
5. What childhood fear does Magnus Magnusson share with the author?
Short Essay Questions
1. Describe how Heimaey residents are evacuated following the eruptions that begin unexpectedly in 1973.
2. Is there any warning prior to the eruption in Heimaey that began on January 23, 1973?
3. How do the views of Hawaiian natives towards volcanoes differ from the views of the U.S. Army Air Corps?
4. Briefly describe Mauna Loa.
5. How old are the oldest parts of Hawaii and Iceland?
6. Describe work crews' first attempts at cooling off the lava flows of Heimaey in 1973.
7. Describe how workers are able to walk upon lava fields as they try to cool down the lava on Heimaey in 1973.
8. What hazards do workers face as they try to stop the lava flows?
9. What role does Magnus Magnusson play during the 1973 volcanic eruptions in Heimaey?
10. The author moves away from his discussion of Iceland's 1973 lava eruptions to talk about Hawaii's volcanoes. Describe what he writes about the U.S. Army Air Corps' attempts to stop lava from burying Hawaii's towns and cities.
This section contains 911 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:d46987c6-afff-4a3d-a12a-1d48fefd53d2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/the-control-of-nature/test4.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90341 | 659 | 3.21875 | 3 |
Introduces principles of satellite-based surveying and presents Global Positioning System (GPS) as it is utilized in land surveying and the various components of the GPS technology and the techniques through which the GPS technology may be used in land surveys. Utilizes field surveys using the GPS equipment as part of the laboratory activities. [This course covers the same content as GIS 256
. Credit will not be granted for both courses].
Lecture 2 hours. Laboratory 3 hours. Total 5 hours per week. | <urn:uuid:accf3467-53ff-4429-9555-b65a642217fa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://courses.vccs.edu/courses/CIV256-GlobalPositioningSystemsforLandSurveying | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00040-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920718 | 105 | 2.734375 | 3 |
DETROIT - Here's how you know that automakers are feverishly pursuing ways to improve fuel efficiency by harnessing engine heat: They won't talk about it.
The pressure to improve mileage has been stepping up for years, and the straightforward gains - cutting aerodynamic drag, lowering rolling resistance - have been long since mined. So researchers are increasingly probing small improvements once thought too troublesome to bother with.
The competition is fierce and the secrecy intense.
An example: After an exchange of emails requesting answers to questions about thermodynamic research, a Honda spokesman, Brad Nelson, shut off further discussion with a reply that "several of these things touch on confidential engineering work at the company, so our team prefers not to offer comments at this time."
It may be, industry experts hint, that thermodynamic advances will lengthen the life of internal combustion engines.
Thermodynamics involves the physics of heat and energy, and automakers are applying this science to a quest for efficiency, developing devices to use heat that would otherwise be wasted to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions.
A number of automakers, including BMW, are exploring ways to use heat energy to generate electricity. The principle is simple: Voltage can be generated between two thermoelectric semiconductors held at different temperatures. NASA has long relied on this technology, known as the Seebeck effect, to power space probes.
BMW has said that it developed a thermoelectric device positioned in the exhaust system that provides 200 watts of power. The latest generation of the device uses more advanced materials to generate 600 watts. The automaker's goal is 1,000 watts of thermoelectric power.
Electricity produced by a thermoelectric generator can be used in place of an alternator, reducing workload on the engine, or it can be used to charge batteries for a hybrid system.
Thermoelectric devices are just one of many ways auto engineers are trying to use the heat energy rather than waste it.
Waste is a key word, because much of the energy produced when fuel is burned is lost to the atmosphere as heat.
How much is dispersed through thermal losses? The Energy Department puts the number at 58 to 62 percent for a typical internal combustion engine. This energy is transferred to the atmosphere primarily through the tailpipe and radiator. Much of that heat transmission is intentional. If the engine isn't cooled, gasoline ignites prematurely, lubricants are rendered ineffective, and moving parts are destroyed. But while the engine must be cooled, some extracted heat can be put to good use.
Turbocharging is the age-old way to use heat energy for increased power and efficiency. The earliest turbochargers were a compromise for automobile engines because of their poor low-speed response. But turbocharging has come a long way and modern systems use twin turbos that operate in sequence to reduce lag.
Exhaust-driven turbines can also drive a generator that provides electricity for accessories, batteries and powertrain motors, and turbocompound engines use turbine power directly, coupling it to the vehicle's drivetrain to help turn the drive wheels.
Ford was willing to discuss its work in thermodynamics. In a telephone interview, Zafar Shaikh, manager of powertrain cooling and thermal energy recovery, said that while he was not at liberty to discuss proprietary projects, he could say that Ford's research efforts are many and include turbocompounding, electricity generation, heat storage devices and Rankine cycle thermodynamics that use engine heat to produce steam that can power an electric generator.
A paper by two Ford engineers, Quazi Hussain and David Brigham, presented at the 2011 Directions in Engine-Efficiency and Emissions Research Conference described a closed-loop Rankine cycle device: A pump delivers fluid to an exhaust-heated vaporizer and the resulting steam drives a turbine, which turns an electric generator. The vapor is returned to liquid form in a condenser, and the cycle is repeated.
Shaikh said the challenge is fitting the Rankine device into an automobile. "We're close in hardware," he said, "but packaging remains a challenge."
BMW is developing a system that is similar in principle. Jürgen Ringler, BMW's team leader for thermal energy converters, described a heat exchanger that recovers heat from the engine exhaust.
"This energy is used to heat a fluid which is under high pressure - this heated fluid then turns into steam, which powers an expansion turbine that generates electrical energy from the recovered heat," he said in a statement.
The automaker says that when complete, the system is expected to reduce fuel consumption by up to 10 percent on long trips.
Toyota hybrids use a heat storage device based on a three-liter stainless-steel thermos that stores coolant after the engine is shut off. When the car is restarted, the warm coolant is cycled back to the cylinder head. This allows for a leaner fuel mixture on startup, improving efficiency and reducing emissions. A warmer startup also means the passenger cabin can be heated rapidly on cold mornings.
FiatChrysler uses engine waste heat to preheat the transmission fluid of Ram trucks with the eight-speed automatic transmission. In a telephone interview, James Adams, chief transmission engineer, said that starting cold, a typical automatic transmission requires 35 to 40 minutes to reach optimum operating temperature, but by preheating fluid with engine coolant, which warms more rapidly, the transmission reaches optimum temperature in about 10 minutes. The technology, according to Adams, is worth "a couple percent in fuel economy on the overall cycle." | <urn:uuid:c58cb847-d920-45c6-82ff-2031ac3f50c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140809/PC2107/140809411/1136/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941191 | 1,145 | 3.484375 | 3 |
This complete unit plan can be taught in seven class periods, or lesson components can be taught individually as described below.
The focus for students in this age group is to gain an understanding of the Olympic Games and focus on the current events aspect of the games. Students will be writing and presenting their material.
Hold a class discussion on the upcoming Olympic Games. Ask students if they remember the last Olympics. Prompt students to talk about why the games are held, and the spirit of international cooperation that the games are meant to foster. At the end of the discussion, tell students that they are going to look at the history of the Olympics in order to know more about the present day Olympics especially when they watch them on TV in August.
History of the Games
Either hand out printouts of the background article on the Olympic Games or direct students, in groups of two or three, to the computers where the article is already loaded. Once they have read through the articles, students should raise their hands in order to receive the Organizer Pattern: Timeline. Once they have the handout, students should go through the Olympics in Photos activity. As they click through the photos, students should fill out their timelines with appropriate details.
If there is time at the end of the class, have students return to talk about what they learned. Did they find any facts that surprised them? What were they and why were they surprised. Looking at their filled out timelines, do students want to make any guesses as to what kind of historic events could happen in this upcoming Olympics?
Have students hand in their filled out timelines for teacher assessment.
Depending on the time available, you may want to choose either the "In My Backyard" or the "Olympics in the News” activity. Alternately, you can have students choose one of these activities to complete. If different groups of students complete different activities, you may want to set up some time
In My Backyard (13 days)
Print out the article "How Olympic Locations are Chosen" for students to read as homework. The next day, hold a class discussion. Now that students have an idea of what past Olympic Games were like, ask students if it makes sense for a city to host the Olympics. On the board, write the pros and cons to hosting the Olympics. Then, ask students if they would want the Olympics to come to their hometown. What would they like about it? How could it help their city or town? Add these comments to the board.
Direct students to the Writing with Writers: Speechwriting activity and tell them that they will be writing and presenting persuasive speeches that will convince the International Olympic Committee to bring the Olympics to their hometown. If there is more class time for the project, have students complete the activity the following day. Or, these final steps should be done as homework. Some class time should be devoted for practice with one another before recording their speech. Check back within a month to see if your speeches were published online!
Extend This Lesson
Ask for volunteer students to present their speech to the class. As each student presents their speech, tell the rest of the class that they are acting as the International Olympic Committee. The Committee members should judge each speech on clarity and whether it addresses each of the important needs pointed out in the "How Olympic Locations are Chosen" article.
Olympics in the News and Be a Reporter (1-3 days)
Tell students that they are going to be reporters on the scene at the Olympics. As reporters, they must read what other reporters are reporting on the games and then write their own newspaper article, and they will do this with Scholastic News online.
Direct students to the Scholastic News special report on the Olympics and hand each student a printed copy of the 5 Ws (PDF). Either pick a topic for them to explore (a specific event, an athlete, Greece, etc.) or have them pick a topic on their own. They should fill out the 5 Ws organizer as they explore and read different articles. Give them the rest of the class period, and have them hand the filled organizers for teacher assessment.
On the second day, have the Be a Reporter game loaded on the computer and hand back the completed 5 Ws graphic organizers. Instruct students to follow the steps in the activity, write the best newspaper article they can, and print out the results. Before printing the article, students should highlight the entire article, photo and caption, copy everything and paste into a word document. Save the World document, print the article and switch their article with a peer. For homework, students should read through their peer's printed article, writing notes on the printout.
On the third day, students should hand back their edited articles, and students should go through the steps of the Be a Reporter game, using their saved Word document and completing a final draft. This final version should be printed and handed in along with the original draft for a final grade.
Get in the Game (12 days)
As a wrap-up, cross-curricular activity for the Olympics, have students play the "It's Greek to Me" activity.
Regroup the students and ask them what clues they have gathered on how the ancient Greeks have influenced the Olympic Games and our modern society. Ask them about the themes of the games, the politics of the ancient Greeks, and the actual sports themselves.
Explain to the students that the Greeks also influenced the English language and they are going to find out through the "It's Greek to Me" activity. If a computer is available for each student, students should play the game individually. If students are paired to a computer, have one student as the driver and one student as the decision maker and reverse these roles halfway through the class. Alternately, if fewer computers are available, print a study list (PDF) for students to review as other students test their knowledge. Encourage students to play the game often enough to receive a medal which they can print out and put on a bulletin board.
See assessment and evaluation.
Art and Writing
Before the class begins, pre-load the Olympic Spirit postcards on the computers. When students come to class, tell them that they are going to create their own e-cards, print them out, and send them to friends. Encourage students to make cards that tell a story. When students have their printouts, have them write the story on the back of the printout. These stories should be as descriptive as possible. If there is time, students should further illustrate their stories by hand.
What do you see as some of the differences between the theme and spirit of the Ancient Olympics and the modern Olympics?
Why are the Olympics important to the world?
Are the Olympics important to you?
If you were on the International Olympic Committee, what arguments would persuade you to choose a specific location for the next Olympics?
What are some of the themes you see in current events stories about the Olympics today? | <urn:uuid:f427fd78-9f57-48e9-9761-6f8c43d8bc63> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/athens_games/tguide/teaching_3-5.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00177-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965777 | 1,430 | 4.1875 | 4 |
One essentially irreplaceable role that Ted Kennedy played in the United States Senate was that he was such an iconic figure of American liberalism that he had the credibility necessary to stare down Democratic-leaning interest groups when their narrow interests subverted broader progressive goals. The most recent case of this was in Kennedy’s work on the No Child Left Behind Act that substantially increased school funding and focus on the educational needs of poor and minority students, but tended to antagonize teacher’s unions.
A related story, however, comes from the now-unknown story of trucking deregulation. For decades, it was extremely burdensome for anyone to get into the business of shipping anything, because incumbent stakeholders could use the regulatory apparatus to block you from entry. The result was severely limited competition and, consequently, higher prices for just about everything. But eventually things changed:
Both the Teamsters Union and the American Trucking Associations strongly opposed deregulation and successfully headed off efforts to eliminate all economic controls. Supporting deregulation was a coalition of shippers, consumer advocates including Ralph Nader, and liberals such as Senator Edward Kennedy. Probably the most significant factor in forcing Congress to act was that the ICC commissioners appointed by Ford and Carter were bent on deregulating the industry anyway. Either Congress had to act or the ICC would. Congress acted in order to codify some of the commission changes and to limit others.
The Motor Carrier Act (MCA) of 1980 only partially decontrolled trucking. But together with a liberal ICC, it substantially freed the industry. The MCA made it significantly easier for a trucker to secure a certificate of public convenience and necessity. The MCA also required the commission to eliminate most restrictions on commodities that could be carried, on the routes that motor carriers could use, and on the geographical region they could serve. The law authorized truckers to price freely within a “zone of reasonableness,” meaning that truckers could increase or decrease rates from current levels by 15 percent without challenge, and encouraged them to make independent rate filings with even larger price changes.
A similar tale can be told about airline deregulation.
The moral of the story isn’t that “regulation is bad” but that progressive politics at its best isn’t about bigger government but about attacking privilege and power. At times that requires more government and more regulation (right now we badly need more regulation of polluters whose carbon dioxide emissions are threatening the viability of the planet) but at times the forces of privilege and power are using existing regulatory structures to re-enforce their own position. Kennedy, rightly, saw no contradiction between his record as a deregulator and his record as a champion of the little guy. | <urn:uuid:8de867f9-6497-4261-baa2-18965900644a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2009/08/27/194177/ted-kennedy-deregulator/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971206 | 552 | 2.625 | 3 |
Eye tracking is a really cool technology used in dozens of fields ranging from linguistics, human-computer interaction, and marketing. With a proper eye tracking setup, it’s possible for a web developer to see if their changes to the layout are effective, to measure how fast someone reads a page of text, and even diagnose medical disorders. Eye tracking setups haven’t been cheap, though, at least until now. Pupil is a serious, research-quality eye tracking headset designed by [Moritz] and [William] for their thesis at MIT.
The basic idea behind Pupil is to put one digital camera facing the user’s eye while another camera looks out on the world. After calibrating the included software, the headset looks at the user’s pupil to determine where they’re actually looking.
The hardware isn’t specialized at all – just a pair of $20 USB webcams, a LED, an infrared filter made from exposed 35mm film negatives, and a 3D printed headset conveniently for sale at Shapeways.
The software for Pupil is based on OpenCV and OpenGL and is available for Mac and Linux. Calibration is easy, as seen in the videos after the break, and the results are amazing for an eye tracking headset thrown together for under $100. | <urn:uuid:3854ee78-b870-4719-ac1c-b9897cce03bf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hackaday.com/2013/02/12/build-an-eye-tracking-headset-for-90/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946238 | 275 | 2.71875 | 3 |
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More About Lizards
Label Me! Printouts
Habitat and Distribution: Iguanas are found in many different habitats in North and South America. For example, the Green Iguana lives in rainforests, the Desert Iguana lives in deserts, and the Marine Iguana lives on the sea by the Galápagos Islands.
Anatomy: Iguanas vary in color from green to brown to yellow (their coloring lets them blend into the background). These reptiles have a long tail, eyelids, and four sprawling legs. A row of spines runs along the back from the head to the tail. Iguanas have a dewlap, a loose fold of skin under the neck that can be extended to signal to other iguanas. On the top of the head, iguana have a "third eye," a patch of pale, scaly skin that senses light (but does not see images). Iguanas use their powerful, clawed legs to swim and climb trees. The biggest iguanas (green iguanas) average 5-6 feet long; the smallest species of iguanas are less than a foot long.
Diet: Iguanas are primarily herbivores (plant-eaters). They eat leaves, flowers, and fruit. They also supplement their diet with insects, worms, and other small animals.
Reproduction: A female will dig a shallow trench in moist soil in which she will lay 20-70 eggs. After covering the eggs with soil, there is no more parental care. When the eggs hatch, the young live in trees and eat insects that they catch themselves.
Predators: Iguanas are killed by some large birds of prey, foxes, rats, weasels, some snakes, and people. Their eggs are also eaten by many animals.
|Search the Enchanted Learning website for:| | <urn:uuid:f05ffe5f-791b-4dba-a733-d349c1571105> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/reptiles/lizard/Iguanaprintout.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00024-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910091 | 470 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Ensuring your training avoids negative training scars
Because the artifact we are looking for in our training is a high level of performance designed to win on the street, our training should have a lot more scrimmaging than standing
The word “artifact” has many meanings depending on its context or what profession is using it. Museums are filled with artifacts. So are computer programs. What matters to us is that so do many of our motor programs. The dictionary describes these artifacts as method-depend results. In police lingo we call it, “Playing the way you practice!”
We all know you perform a motor program under stress exactly as you trained it and anything the learner does in the performance of that repetition during training will do it under duress.
Faulty Programmers, Faulty Programming
The problem is, when students do a skill a certain way to fulfill the criteria for measurement, the limitations of the facility — or the whim of the trainer — that student can get programmed with useless or detrimental artifacts.
Firearms’ training is filled with artifacts, from the design of ranges to courses of qualification.
Why are we standing, without cover, at seven, fifteen15, and twenty-five25 yards?
Why is a two-by-four bolted on a pole considered a barricade?
Why are some agencies still having officers shoot two and evaluate? Evaluate what?
If you do enough repetitions, this is will become an artifact that will pop up in the midst of a life-and-death struggle. We shoot until we stop the threat then we look for another...period!
Early firearms simulators simply reinforced the bad artifact of standing in the open. Worse they taught students to continue to stand, frozen in place in the open.
Today, simulators shoot back, cover is often used and video feedback is given to the officer to enhance learning and give feedback that help minimize artifacts. This is sort of the same as scrimmaging in sports to give a skill context and mitigate or eliminate any artifact the initial learning phase may have given the athlete.
In law enforcement the student is an athlete of another sort performing under extreme stress without the benefit of referees, coaches and timekeepers or even boundaries. Our skills are performed in a purely “open” environment where sports are performed in various degrees of structure or “closed” activities.
Graphically, a continuum of activities or skills it would look something like this:
|Closed Skills||Open Skills|
In darts, the instrument, the distance, and the board are all fixed. As we move down the continuum more and more ambiguity is introduced and the participant needs to have a greater and greater awareness of the outside world — there is little time for introspection or pacing, mostly recognition and reaction.
Whereas darts is one, self-paced skill, law enforcement has no line to stand at, no starting whistle, no clock to run out. There is pure ambiguity as to when a particular crisis will occur and what skill you will need when it does.
The Artifacts of Measurement
Unfortunately, traditional firearms training has been a lot closer to darts than police work. This was due to the need to acquire a training score (versus winning a life-and-death struggle on the street.
Because the artifact we are looking for in our training is a high level of performance designed to win on the street, our training should have a lot more scrimmaging than standing. The need to qualify often leaves the officer with several bad habits which are nothing more than the physical manifestations — the artifacts — of measurement.
Trainers can introduce artifacts by simply doing repetitions a certain way because of facilities or ease of observation, or by the way they measure the progress of the learning, or simply failing to have the learner do the skill in the context it will be performed. Where does this skill occur, what are the cues that trigger it, what are cues that the performer needs to attend to, and does the officer believe in that skill?
In this day and age, we can use Airsoft, Simunition, and red man gear, to train in context…to scrimmage, and that is an essential element in the training process. Not only does the brain learn the final parts of the “schema” of a motor program but the trainer can spot any artifacts that are being done and correct them.
Getting smacked with Simunition is a pretty good reinforcement for effectively using cover!
The goal of our training isn’t to just get a certificate or to qualify — it is to WIN on the street and WIN in life.
The trainer is in a unique position to not only provide skills to our officers, but to help them to develop and maintain a winning attitude and faith in their performance that will give our law enforcement folks the edge they need.
The main artifact of training should be a Winning Mind! | <urn:uuid:a25edbc0-015d-4292-99c4-ec0c235d0d6e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.policeone.com/police-trainers/articles/6040832-Ensuring-your-training-avoids-negative-training-scars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00098-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95777 | 1,015 | 2.5625 | 3 |
About the UN
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. It is currently made up of 193 Member States. The mission and work of the United Nations are guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter.
Each of the 193 Member States of the United Nations is a member of the General Assembly. States are admitted to membership in the UN by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a symbol of the Organization's ideals and a spokesman for the interests of the world's peoples, in particular the poor and vulnerable. The current Secretary-General of the UN, and the eighth occupant of the post, is Mr. Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea, who took office on 1 January 2007. The UN Charter describes the Secretary-General as "chief administrative officer" of the Organization.
The Secretariat, one of the main organs of the UN, is organized along departmental lines, with each department or office having a distinct area of action and responsibility. Offices and departments coordinate with each other to ensure cohesion as they carry out the day to day work of the Organization in offices and duty stations around the world. At the head of the United Nations Secretariat is the Secretary-General.
The UN system, also known unofficially as the "UN family", is made up of the UN itself and many affiliated programmes, funds, and specialized agencies, all with their own membership, leadership, and budget. The programmes and funds are financed through voluntary rather than assessed contributions. The Specialized Agencies are independent international organizations funded by both voluntary and assessed contributions. | <urn:uuid:b9d4a68d-3283-4a5f-a529-a7edb81188ea> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.un.org/en/about-un/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00079-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964612 | 337 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Early land grants and patents become an important part of tree climbing. Understanding how to use the acreage involved will often make a difference in getting out the right branch. Also, placing various land grants together by associated surnames will help break down many brick walls.
The following pages show how this can be done using graph paper. [By now you should have bunches of this stuff!] Making a scale that can be used to give a general outline of a land amounts can be useful. The upper page is taken from an article written 1997 outlining the use of maps. It ends with the outline shown giving one square mile to every 640 acres of land. A line is then drawn showing that at 2 square mile = 1280 acres, 3 square mile = 1920 acres, 4 square mile = 2560 acres, etc., etc... If you have an ancestor who takes up a land patent of 4,000 acres, he would have a land area of six miles long and one mile deep, or any short of other combinations. If his initial grant was along one of the water courses marked by "mile markers", this would directly apply. [This was true of the first land grants in Virginia along the water highways!]
The figure to the right tries to show an enlargement of the graph which can be scaled to plot the grants as recorded. A beginning way to think about land grants!
Taken from: The Jones Genealogist, Vol. IX, No. 2, July/August, 1997, p. 4. | <urn:uuid:c6e4decb-9dcb-4704-8c10-400913948b1d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thebrickwallprotocol.blogspot.com/2012/02/land-grant-analysis.html?showComment=1330532257660 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392099.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949747 | 306 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Sociology of: childhood · culture
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In sociology an upper class is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area, but only to the extent that the power of the state can intervene in free exchange or distort investment. This expression of class refers to access to power through the state or marketplace. A market exchange is one expression of society (society being understood as spontaneous unfettered exchange between or among individuals of leisure, goods, ideas and the artifacts of culture). Under the market, the consumer has decided the apportionment of the success to any upper class, a status that is fluid and as vulnerable to failure as to success. Without special access to the political means of acquiring or allocating wealth ( the political means requires force or the threat of force), and useful only if the state has exceeded its proper role, the upper classes have no especial power except maybe as mere swindlers. They are, in the marketplace, constrained to offer value to the consumer, and are just as vulnerable to the vicissitudes of consumer whim or other qualifications, as any other "group." The consumer as always controls to what extent and for how long an unscrupulous operator endures in the marketplace. Consumers are especially empowered with the advent of modern communications to expose fraud. Under systems that allocate the power of decision to the state, the upper class takes on a sinister role as it seeks to allocate rewards and failures, and status, based on special interests and the access to the use of coercion the state).
In the market economy, a fluid upper class develops parallel to its success in serving the needs/wants of consumers. In primitive societies, upper classes seek status through the facilities of the state to secure security, status and wealth.
The phrase "upper class" has had a complex range of meanings and usages. In many traditional societies, membership of the upper class was hard or even impossible to acquire by any means other than being born into it.
Historically in some culture, members of an upper class often did not have to work for a living, as they were supported by earned or inherited investments (often real estate), although members of the upper class may have had less actual money than merchants. Upper-class status commonly derived from the social position of one's family and not from one's own achievements or wealth. Much of the population that comprised the upper class consisted of aristocrats, ruling families, titled people, and religious hierarchs. These people were usually born into their status and historically there was not much movement across class boundaries. This is to say that it was much harder for an individual to move up in class simply because of the structure of society.
In many countries the term "upper class" was intimately associated with hereditary land ownership and titles. Political power was often in the hands of the landowners in many pre-industrial societies (which was one of the causes of the French Revolution), despite there being no legal barriers to land ownership for other social classes. Power began to shift from upper-class landed families to the general population in the early modern age, leading to marital alliances between the two groups, providing the foundation for the modern upper classes in the West. Upper-class landowners in Europe were often also members of the titled nobility, though not necessarily: the prevalence of titles of nobility varied widely from country to country. Some upper classes were almost entirely untitled, for example, the Szlachta of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In the United States the upper class, also referred to simply as the rich, is often considered to consist of those with great influence and wealth. In this respect the US differs from countries such as the UK where membership of the 'upper class' is also dependent on other factors. The American upper class is estimated to constitute less than 1% of the population, while the remaining 99% of the population is either middle class, working class or "steerage/under class." The main distinguishing feature of the class is its ability to derive enormous incomes from wealth rather than work. CEOs, politicians, investment bankers, some lawyers, heirs to fortunes, successful venture capitalists, stockbrokers as well as celebrities are considered members of this class by contemporary sociologists, such as James Henslin or Dennis Gilbert. There may be prestige differences between different upper-class households. The actor Bruce Willis, for example, might not be accorded as much prestige as former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Yet, all members of this class are so influential and wealthy as to be considered members of the upper class.
"Upper-class families... dominate corporate America and have a disproportionate influence over the nation's political, educational, religious, and other institutions. Of all social classes, members of the upper class also have a strong sense of solidarity and 'consciousness of kind' that stretches across the nation and even the globe." -William Thompson & Joseph Hickey, Society in Focus, 2005.
While most sociologists define the upper class as the wealthiest 1%, sociologist Leonard Beeghley classifies all households with a net worth of $1 million or more as "rich", while classifying the wealthiest 0.9% as the "super-rich". Since the 1970s income inequality in the United States has been increasing, with the top 1% experiencing significantly larger gains in income than the rest of society. Social scientists (such as Alan Greenspan) see it as a problem for society, with Greenspan calling it a "very disturbing trend."
According to the book Who Rules America?, by Domhoff, the distribution of wealth in America is the primary highlight of the influence of the upper class. The top 1% of Americans own around 34% of the wealth in the U.S. while the bottom 80% own only approximately 16% of the wealth. This large disparity displays the unequal distribution of wealth in America in absolute terms.
In the United Kingdom, entry to the upper class is still considered difficult, if not impossible, to attain unless one is born into it. Marriage into upper-class families rarely results in complete integration, since many factors (to be outlined below) raise a challenging barrier between the upper, upper middle, and middle classes.
Titles, while often considered central to the upper class, are not always strictly so. Both Captain Mark Phillips and Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, the respective first and second husbands of HRH The Princess Anne lacked any rank of peerage, yet could scarcely be considered to be anything other than upper class. The same is true of Francis Fulford, who memorably featured in Channel 4's documentary The F***ing Fulfords and whose family has owned estates in Devon for over 800 years. In fact the Fulfords represent the group that makes up the largest component of the upper class: the landed gentry.
That being said, those in possession of an hereditary (as opposed, importantly, to a conferred) peerage – for example a Dukedom, a Marquessate, an Earldom, a Viscounty or a Barony (though any of these may be conferred) – will, almost invariably, be members of the upper class.
Where one was educated is often considered to be more important than the level of education attained. Traditionally, upper class children will be brought up — at home — by a Nanny for the first few years of life, until old enough to attend a well-established prep school or pre-preparatory school. Moving into secondary education, it is still commonplace for upper-class children to attend one of Britain's prestigious public schools, typically Westminster School, Eton College, Harrow School, and Ampleforth College, although it is not unheard of for certain families to send their children to Grammar schools.
Insofar as continuing education goes, this can vary from family to family; it may, in part, be based on the educational history of the family. In the past, both the British Army and Clergy have been the institutions of choice, but the same can equally apply to the Royal Navy, or work in the Diplomatic Corps. HRH Prince Harry of Wales, for instance, has recently completed his training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in preparation for entry into the Army. Otherwise, Oxbridge, Imperial College and other 'traditional' universities (such as Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, and St Andrews University) are the most popular sources of higher education for the upper class, although a high academic standard is required and social class does not as readily secure entry as it once did.
Sports — particularly those involving the outdoors — are a popular pastime, and are usually taken up from a school age or before, and improved upon throughout the educational years. Traditionally, at school, Rugby union is much more popular than Association Football: indeed, the two sports are often taken to represent the two extremes of social classes 'at play'. Other frequented sports include lawn tennis (which has a broad appeal and could hardly be considered to be dominated by any one class), croquet (quite the opposite), cricket and golf.
Equestrian activities are also popular — with both sexes. There is a long-standing tradition of the upper class having close links to horses; indeed, one of the foremost example of three-day eventing prowess is Zara Philips, daughter of Princess Anne and recently-crowned Sunday Times Sportswoman of the Year. Men who ride will more often participate in Polo, as is the case with both HRH Prince Charles and his sons, Their Royal Highnesses Prince William and Prince Harry.
Hunting and shooting, too, are favoured pastimes. Some upper class families with large estates will run their own shoots (typically they would need 1,000 acres (4 km2), or more, though some shoots do operate on about half that), but many will know someone who keeps pheasants, or other game, and may instead shoot with them. Much as with horses, there is a particular affinity for dogs (especially Labradors and Spaniels) amongst the upper class — and, equally, sporting pursuits that involve them. It should, however, be noted that none of the aforementioned sports are, of course, exclusively upper-class.
Language, pronunciation and writing style have been, consistently, one of the most reliable indicators of class. (Upper and otherwise.) The variations between the language employed by the upper classes and those not of the upper classes has, perhaps, been best documented by linguistic Professor Alan Ross's 1954 article on U and non-U English usage. The discussion was perhaps most famously furthered in Noblesse Oblige - and featured contributions from, among others, Nancy Mitford. Interestingly, the debate was revisited in the mid-seventies, in a publication by Debrett's called 'U and Non-U revisited'. Ross contributed to this volume too, and it is remarkable to notice how little the language (amongst other factors) changed in the passing of a quarter of a century.
The choice of house ('home', to a non-U-speaker), too, is an important feature of the upper class. While it is true that there are fewer upper class families nowadays that are able to maintain both the well-staffed town house and country house than in the past, there are still many families which have an hereditary 'seat' somewhere in the country that they have managed to retain: Woburn Abbey, for example, has been in the family of the Duke of Bedford for centuries. Many upper class country houses are now open to the public, or have been placed in the care of the National Trust to aid with the funding of much-needed repairs. (In some cases, both are true).
The inside of a house, however grand the façade, is equally indicative of class. An upper class house (if privately owned, and not staffed) tends to be a comparatively untidy composite of grand furniture — having been inherited — which may have become frayed and threadbare over time and vast piles of ancient books, papers and other old reading material for which there is now no home.
Many upper class families will be in possession of works of art by old masters, valuable sculpture or period furniture, having had said pieces handed down through several generations. Indeed, inheriting the vast majority of one's possessions is the traditional form in upper class families. On that point, there is a well-known derisory quotation from Conservative politician Michael Jopling, who referred to cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine as the kind of person who 'bought his own furniture' (in the Alan Clark Diaries). (The former was then put down himself by a Baron as "the kind of person who bought his own castle").
So too is the organisation (or lack thereof) of the garden an important upper class trait. Bedding plants, rockeries, hanging baskets and goldfish ponds will all have been banished in favour of box hedges, shrub roses, herbaceous borders and stone pathways. Upper class gardens will look more natural and unconstructed than artificially preened (although as with houses, this is not always true where staff are employed).
Money and material possessions are often thought of as a less important factor as regards the United Kingdom's upper class than those upper classes of other countries, but, although this allows for an upper class family to be impoverished, an upper class family is likely to have had wealth at some point in its history.
Vast financial prosperity (only slightly dependent on how it is earned) is the subject of derision and contempt — the nickname “fat cat”, encompassing more than just one's wages, is not one often levelled at members of the upper class. According to Kate Fox, the present-day anthropologist, the main difference between the English and American social system is that in the latter, the rich and powerful believe they deserve their wealth and power and are more complacent. In the former, they tend to have a greater sense of social responsibility and compassion for those less privileged than themselves.
In Australia and the United Kingdom, the term "upper class" is now sometimes used pejoratively by the middle and lower classes (as in the stereotypical term, "upper-class twit, RAH or Toff"), and Australians and Britons may be more anxious to avoid being labelled "upper class" (or even "upper-middle class") than their American or Canadian counterparts (though the overall validity of such a comparison may be questioned). For more on this phenomenon, see reverse snobbery, Australian mateship, and class consciousness.
Social class in Canada, as an observable phenomenon (though possibly more subtle than in the United States), is not as entrenched as in Europe nor as taboo a topic of conversation as it is in Britain and Australia. The subject of social class nevertheless remains a matter of controversy in Canada (see for example, the debate over the granting of a life peerage to former Canadian citizen, Conrad Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, and the remarks of then Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien about creating an aristocracy in Canada, and his insistence on upholding the Nickle Resolution).
Social classes in Mexico have remained relatively unchanged over the years. A system of social classes still exists, and it is commonly understood that the different classes, especially the first (or upper) and third (or lower), do not mix. As with much of Latin America, Mexico is divided by race. Descendants of pre-Hispanic inhabitants constitute the lower classes while descendants of Europeans tend to form the upper classes. The middle class is composed of admixtures of the two races, and it is rare to find descendants of indigenous peoples or persons of mixed blood in the upper class. The "first" class comprises the rich, powerful, and celebrated, who have greatly disproportionate control over the country. The most common route for a family to join the upper class is through politics and business, but those born into the upper class tend to disregard any who try to enter the established upper class. "New rich" or "naco" is applied to nouveaux riches who still lack the customs and manners of the educated upper class.
In Japan, the term "Haiso", or in katakana as "ハイソ", is used as a reference to "High Society" and is commonly applied to luxury products, such as cars and fashion houses.
In Thailand, Although in the 1980s the hierarchy of social status or prestige and the hierarchy of political and economic power in the rural community overlapped, a disjunction of sorts existed between them at the national level. A rich villager—other things being equal—wielded political and economic power and had prestige. In the national system, the hierarchy of status began with the hereditary nobility—the royal family and the holders of royal titles. None of these people were poor; the royal family owned much land and some of its members had political influence. The royal family was not part of the ruling class, however, nor did it control the economy. The ruling class consisted of several levels, the uppermost of which comprised the military and, to a lesser extent, the bureaucratic elite. | <urn:uuid:d260ff96-47de-4ee2-942f-5989a7fb4b3a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.thefullwiki.org/Upper_class | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402699.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966327 | 3,559 | 3.90625 | 4 |
The Bells Summary
In this poem Poe imagines the sounds of four different kinds of bells, and the times and places where you might hear them. There's no plot in this poem, exactly, but there is something like an emotional arc, as we move from light, bubbly happiness to sadness, fear, and misery.
First, we hear silver bells on a sleigh, and the speaker tells us about the happy, tinkling sound they make. Next we hear the golden bells of a wedding, and he describes their mellow, joyful noise. Then things take a turn, as we hear the sound of brass alarm bells warning us about a fire. Finally, we hear the heavy, miserable sounds of iron bells. The sound of those bells makes the people who hear them really sad. Apparently, however, the creatures that are ringing the bells (the "ghouls") are delighted by the sound and the misery they are creating. It's classic Poe – things really come to life as soon as the terrifying noises and the weird monsters show up. | <urn:uuid:4903b34b-a905-4618-badf-6fec7cf27f06> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.shmoop.com/bells-poe/summary.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963759 | 214 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Though it can be found in almost every color, the most prized hue of topaz is referred to as imperial topaz. A rare type topaz ranging from yellow to reddish orange in color, this shade of topaz derives its name from its association with the Russian Czars of the 1800s. It is this celebrated color of topaz that is considered the birthstone for November. In antiquity, all yellow gems were referred to as topaz. Modern definitions of gems are more discriminating and allow us to identify topaz in a wide spectrum of colors. In fact, topaz in its purest state is colorless. In antiquity, the gem was sometimes mistakenly identified as a diamond. Colored varieties include the classic spectrum from yellow through sherry orange as well as blue, pale green, pink, and red. Some of these colors are unstable and can fade over time. | <urn:uuid:3d7ccb1d-9928-4c25-a313-3385ba67e202> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.michaelcfina.com/jewelry/learn/preciousgems/topaz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975292 | 178 | 2.75 | 3 |
Living smart homes : a pilot Australian sustainability education program
This paper documents the rationale and experience of a pilot Australian sustainability education program, ‘Living Smart Homes’ (LSH) based on a community-based social marketing model. Inspired by the Australian ‘Land for Wildlife’ scheme, LSH is designed to engage homeowners with sustainable practices through face-to-face workshops, an interactive website with action learning modules, and a recognition scheme, a sign displayed in front of participant’s houses to which additions were made as they completed modules on energy, water, waste and transport. Participants were asked to change household behaviours and to discuss the changes and the barriers to participation in the program and to making the behavioural changes.-----
More than 120 people participated in the program. This paper documents feedback from two surveys (n=103) and four focus groups (n=12). Participants enjoyed and learnt from LSH, praising the household sign as a tangible symbol of their commitment to sustainability and a talking point with visitors. Their evaluation of the LSH program, website and workshops, as well as their identification of barriers and recommendations for improvement and expansion of the program, are discussed.
Impact and interest:
Citation counts are sourced monthly from and citation databases.
These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.
Citations counts from theindexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.
Full-text downloads displays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.
|Item Type:||Journal Article|
|Keywords:||Pilot Australian Sustainability Education Program, evaluation, barriers to sustainability, intervention|
|Subjects:||Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES (170000) > PSYCHOLOGY (170100) > Social and Community Psychology (170113)|
|Divisions:||Past > QUT Faculties & Divisions > Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering
Past > Schools > School of Design
|Copyright Owner:||Copyright 2009 Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd|
|Deposited On:||18 Jun 2009 03:26|
|Last Modified:||21 Jan 2015 02:58|
Repository Staff Only: item control page | <urn:uuid:b0000003-c0ba-4567-b13c-e5b2c4e50770> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://eprints.qut.edu.au/21261/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895741 | 566 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Rev. Jesse Jackson, a major figure of the Civil Rights Movement and Baptist minister who ran for president in 1984 and 1988, sat down with The Daily Texan this morning to discuss the civil rights issues he feels students in the United States are most affected by today. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.
DT: What do you think are the most important civil rights issues the United States is facing today?
Jackson: We’ve gone from horizontal segregation by race to vertical disparity by race and class ... [as demonstrated by] the radical rise in student loan cost. In the ‘50s, when the Russians sent Sputnik up, we thought they might have an advantage on us in science. We passed the National Defense [Education] Act and paid for kids to go to school. In five years, we caught the Russians and surpassed them because we lowered ourselves to scientific development. ...We should, in fact, have a plan now for student loan debt forgiveness, and reach out to that talent pool. That is one of the challenges of our time — radically reducing student loan debt. The other, of course, is that we need an amendment to the Constitution for the fundamental right to vote. We have a fundamental right to bear arms. Only states right to vote. So we have 50 states separate and unequal election processes. Beneath the fundamental right to vote, we need the constitutional right to vote, and, right now, we do not have that.
DT: On the subject of higher education, which you have talked a lot about before in the past, to what extent do you think the cost of higher education is a civil rights issue?
Jackson: Money should not determine who gets higher education. It should be based upon will and skill, and not based upon money. Many students [who] would be good teachers, or doctors, or lawyers, or scientists or researchers cannot afford to go to school. We cannot afford to discard great minds. We can afford to educate our children, and we must. And, right now, we’re making education costs prohibitive. Jails for profit and schools for profit do not reign true, but a bright future.
DT: Do you think there’s a racial element to that issue?
Jackson: Well, the evidence is fairly obvious that, of two million-plus Americans in prison, half are African-American. A survey [that] came out on the topic of education last week showed that black students at the kindergarten level are suspended more than white students. Blacks hit with more time for the same crime. Three Strikes and You’re Out was aimed at young black youth. ... So the evidence is there’s a strong racial component that blacks are targeted and steered.
DT: You mentioned a debt forgiveness program earlier, do you feel that’s the best way to solve the issue of the costs of higher education?
Jackson: It’s a major step in the right direction. Too many students are graduating with a diploma, but they bring in no job or they graduate with a diploma and they have to go back home and live with their parents as opposed to being free to go out and buy a house, buy a car, get married, have a family, the cannot afford to do so. So they go back home, which stifles the economy. President Barack and his wife Michelle said in a book he wrote when he ran for president, could not handle their student loan debt. It’s unbearable. Poor people ought to be able to go to school. And yet no one knows that the genius we need to cure cancer, the genius we need may be in the mind of a poor student.
DT: UT is involved in a major affirmative action court case. What do you think is the solution to that issue?
Jackson: Well, we have to accept that an advantage of 246 years of slavery, it was illegal for blacks to get on the track and whites could run as fast as they could run. We finally enable for them to get on the track freely and plan or path to repair the damage done by the time lost compounded by another 100 years of legal segregation. That’s why Johnson says in his speech at Howard University that it’s irrational to think that someone after 346 years can get on the track that they have been locked out of and be equal with those who have been running for three and a half centuries. So there has to be some affirmative action to offset negative action for women and people of color. ... Affirmative action is not a zero-sum game. Inclusion has led to growth. When there’s growth, everybody wins. The more blacks and Latinos and women educated expands the economy. It does not replace A with B. Because the walls have come down in the South, for example, and there’s no longer the fear that once existed. All these new airports – that’s the federal government. The Interstate Highways – that’s the federal government. The research and investment in this University – that’s the federal government. And so to see people like Perry run against the federal government de-benefits so many people. It’s demagoguery.
DT: [Regarding] the costs of higher education, how do you feel students can justify studying certain subjects, such as education, fine arts and the humanities, when high student debt and low pay make it financially impractical?
Jackson: Students should be protesting the rising cost of higher education en masse. There should be more focus on protesting the cost of higher education than going to football games. ... How many students are at the University of Texas?
DT: About fifty-thousand.
Jackson: If those students held a mass protest for student debt forgiveness, your legislature would come into a special session. If that took place at the University of Texas and Texas A&M and Texas Southern and across the state, you have the power. Our power is in marching and civil disobedience — you have the power through your vote — to march on campuses en masse demanding student loan debt forgiveness. And, of course, we’ve gone from in the fifties when education was free to now being cost prohibitive. We’re not going to remain a great nation if education is cost prohibitive because it means we’ll have to import students from other countries — which is what we’re doing, by the way.
DT: As somebody who was a part of these major social movements in the past, how would you advise students who support this cause to mobilize in such large numbers?
Jackson: First of all, students must be advised ... you must not self-degrade. You must not diminish your own power, your moral power, the rightness of your cause. Students fighting for the right to go to school but can’t afford the cost in money is a righteous cause. Students marching en masse for student loan debt reduction to administrative office is a righteous cause. That cause can go viral. Students pursuing their academics seriously, pursuing the highest and best grades they can get, likewise. Because, again, you want an airline pilot who is skilled in aeronautics, a medical doctor who knows his or her skill, but so many of our students who have the right credentials just do not have the money.
DT: Some here in Texas have argued that the solution is to have a more affordable but less substantial higher education system that focuses on quickly turning out graduates with technical skills. Rick Perry has talked about $10,000 degrees.
Jackson: Well, that’s another class strata. There are some people who should learn those technical skills because we always need trade skills. Plumbers and masons and carpenters and glaziers and builders and constructionists — we’ll always need the infrastructure workers. They’re highly valued skills because they’re necessary. Hard to find an unemployed plumber. On the other hand, the humanities and the arts also matter. Getting these high degrees also matter. So why have a cheap degree and an expensive degree? That’s just another class separation.
DT: You’ve come out very strongly against Voter ID laws, one of the most strict of which is here in Texas, so how would you go about trying to reverse the actions those laws have taken?
Jackson: The same people who didn’t want the Voting Rights Act in the first place saw mixed results, and they’ve never stopped trying to take it back. In this state, you can register with a gun ID but not a student ID. That’s an ideological loaded statement, choosing guns as an ID. In North Carolina, they’re already taking precincts off of campuses. In Ohio, they’re reducing the number of days you can vote. ...The Voting Rights Act enabled a new coalition of Americans to emerge out of the shadows. Blacks couldn’t vote, most couldn’t serve on juries, 18-year-olds couldn’t vote, though serving in Vietnam. You couldn’t vote on college campuses — you either had to go home and vote absentee. You couldn’t vote bilingually. That generation has changed the course of American politics. So everything they can do to make that more difficult, for seniors who might not have a voter ID, for students or for easy access — the countermovement to the Voting Rights Act is on the way. And it’s so sad to see the governors, as in the days of old, and the secretaries of state leading that movement, being the same people who are quick to fight wars for democracy in Ukraine or someplace. If they had voter ID in Ukraine, they’d be protesting just as loudly as the Democrats.
— Jacob Kerr and Pete Stroud | <urn:uuid:39f49e4b-45ae-44d9-acd2-b360a14da0ef> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2014/04/10/qa-with-reverend-jesse-jackson | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962881 | 2,029 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Thais orbita (Gmelin, 1791)
Description: This species varies widely in sculpture. The eastern Australian shell (Figs. 1a, 2a) usually has strong spiral sculpture; 7 to 9 strong spiral ribs on body whorl, with intervening grooves of about the same width; ribs and grooves with secondary spiral riblets. Anterior fasciole about same size as spiral ribs. Columella smooth; outer lip internally reflects external sculpture. Colour off-white or grey, aperture cream, often pale yellow on the edge.
Size: Average length 60 mm, maximum 120 mm.
Distribution: In Australia, from Fraser Is., Qld, to North West Cape, WA, including Tasmania. Also New Zealand and Lord Howe Is.
Habitat: On rock platforms and rocky shores, in the surf zone, particularly in crevices at low tide and below. Abundant.
Synonym: Dicathais vector Thornley, 1952
Remarks: The southern Australian form (Figs. 1b, 2b) is generally much less coarsely sculptured than the eastern form (Figs. 1a, 2a) and has been known as Dicathais textilosa (Lamarck, 1822). The figured specimen of this southern form (Figs. 1b, 2b) from Tasmania has about 25 spiral ribs, and the interior of the lip has about 20 lirae. West Australian specimens (Figs. 1c, 2c) are often nodulose, and have been called D. aegrota (Reeve 1846).
Phillips, Campbell and Wilson (1973) examined a large number of specimens of this species from central Queensland to central Western Australia. They concluded that a single variable species exists, with variation in shell shape and sculpture being a function of water temperature, diet, substrate and degree of exposure to wave action. They kept specimens of the NSW orbita form in an aquarium for three years, and found that the new shell growth was no longer coarsely ribbed, but first striated and then smooth.
At Rottnest Island, WA, T. orbita is a pedator on another large gastropod, Ninella torquata, normally attaching by drilling at the edge of the operculum of its victim (Taylor & Glover, 1999).
Figs. 1a, 2a: Newport, Sydney, NSW (DLB2600)
Figs. 1b, 2b: Tasmania (DLB1262)
Figs. 1c, 2c: West Wallabi Is., Houtman Abrolhos, WA (C.69353) | <urn:uuid:b148b683-209a-481e-88ee-160b525202dc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://seashellsofnsw.org.au/Rapaninae/Pages/thais_orbita.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00010-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928993 | 560 | 2.703125 | 3 |
unhealthiest is a valid word in this word list. For a definition, see the external dictionary links below.
The word "unhealthiest" uses 12 letters: A E E H H I L N S T T U.
No direct anagrams for unhealthiest found in this word list.
Adding one letter to unhealthiest does not form any other word in this word list.Words within unhealthiest not shown as it has more than seven letters.
Try a search for unhealthiest in these online resources (some words may not be found):
Wiktionary - OneLook Dictionaries - Merriam-Webster - Google Search
Each search will normally open in a new window.
All words formed from unhealthiest by changing one letter
Browse words starting with unhealthiest by next letter | <urn:uuid:dd3a1bd2-201f-49a3-bb23-eb571278d3a3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.morewords.com/word/unhealthiest/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00094-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.787965 | 173 | 2.625 | 3 |
Concentration in Government
Who says it’s never polite to talk about politics or religion? The truth is both government and religion are foundations for every society. Evangel’s Government program provides a deeper look into the foundations and principles upon which the American and world governmental systems are based and have operated both past and present. The program examines the Christian heritage of America’s founders and integrates faith-inspired discussion of past and current government systems.
The Government program is built around classroom lecture, study, discussion and real-world experiences. The program is focused on six primary categories of courses: American politics and government, comparative politics and government, international relations, judicial process and constitutional law, political philosophy, and public administration and policy. We believe these fields of study provide for a solid foundation of governmental theories and practice. These areas of study are based upon course lectures, reading within each subject and opportunities for class discussion. Beyond course work, the Government program provides excellent opportunities to study government through personal experience. Each spring, History and Government majors have the opportunity to spend a week and a half in Washington, D.C., through the Washington Studies Program. This trip allows for learning practical skills while interning in a government office. We also encourage students to participate in political clubs and organizations on campus. We believe that Evangel offers the best path for integrating your faith and study of government in a way that will prepare you to interact with and lead in tomorrow’s political world.
Program Plan (pdf)
|Want to see exactly what classes you will take? The Program Plan (sometimes called a degree sheet) includes all specific requirements - including University proficiencies, Frameworks courses and degree requirements.|
Each of Evangel's academic programs is made up of a set of core curriculum, program requirements and electives. The courses listed below are just a small sample of courses that might be taken as a part of this specific program.
|Intro to American Government||Analysis of the structure, principles, and processes of the American federal government.|
|Church State Relations||Study of the background, development, problems, and Constitutional aspects of church-state relations in the United States.|
|International Relations||Study of the background, development, problems, and Constitutional aspects of church-state relations in the United States.|
|Political Philosophy||Study of the foundational principles of Western political and social philosophy from Augustine to the present, including such philosophers as Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.|
|Latin American Political Development||An area specific topical study of Latin American political development. Specific emphasis on Central America. The development of political practices and attitudes of the area and the development of political relations with the United States.|
Evangel University's world-class faculty is made up of caring, Christian professionals who are distinguished in their fields and dedicated to the development of tomorrow's Christian leaders.
Dr. Bryan Sanders, a 1982 graduate of Evangel, is chairman of the Department of Social Sciences. He is a man of integrity and passion to see his students succeed. He enjoys promoting new development and vision for his department while continuing to promote the development of his advisees and students as their careers begin to […] read more
- Secret Service Agent
- State Department Diplomat
- Congressional Representatives
- Field Rep for Congressman
- CIA Analyst
No special requirements for this program.
General Undergraduate Requirements
The following are general requirements for all students beginning an undergraduate program at Evangel. For more information visit Undergraduate Admissions Requirements.
|Faith||As a boldly Christian university, all of our students have made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.|
|Diploma||Graduation from high school, or having the equivalent of a high school diploma such as the General Education Development (GED) examination.|
|Core Subjects||A minimum of a 2.0 GPA in core college prep classes (English, math, social sciences and science with a lab)|
|Grade Average||A "C" average. However, in some cases, a student with a weak academic record may be considered. To remain at Evangel, however, the student must meet scholastic requirements.|
|Standardized Tests||>Entering freshmen should take the ACT or SAT test. The codes for Evangel are as follows: SAT: 6198. ACT: 2296.|
When it comes to life at Evangel, there's always something happening on campus and there are always new lessons to learn, even outside of the classroom...Learn More | <urn:uuid:4a21fbac-0da7-48d4-83e5-ef41ac4080ac> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.evangel.edu/programs/government-concentration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00189-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935001 | 938 | 2.53125 | 3 |
This Demonstration permits exploration of a famous dataset collected by Professor David Baldus involving the results of 100 Georgia criminal cases from arrests between March 1973 and June 1983 in which the death penalty was a potential punishment and there were eight explanatory variables. Defendants were arrested in Georgia between March 1973 and June 1983, convicted after trial of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment or death. You may select the variables to be included in a multiple regression and see the power of those variables to explain any sentencing patterns.
black defendant — whether the defendant was "black"
white victim — whether the victim was "white"
aggravated — whether various aggravating factors were present
female victim — whether the victim was female
stranger victim — whether the victim was a stranger to the defendant
multiple victims — whether there were multiple victims of the crime
multiple stabbings — whether there were multiple stab wounds involved
young victim — whether the victim was a minor
Technically, one should probably be using nonlinear regression techniques such as logit or probit regression to analyze this data, in which the dependent variable can only take on values 0 or 1. Linear regression is used here for the sake of simplicity.
The data used in this Demonstration is available online in Excel format at http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/puaf610/notes/10-Multiple_regression/death-penalty.xls. The analysis of a superset of this data did not persuade the United States Supreme Court, in McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987), that the death penalty violated the United States Constitution. | <urn:uuid:dd96f510-9b7b-4c91-821f-7b5d9b82dc04> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/DeathPenaltyRegressions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397744.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945718 | 335 | 2.625 | 3 |
800 million year old shelled fossil found in Yukon, Canada
|June 14, 2011||Posted by News under Evolution, stasis|
In “Yukon fossils reveal oldest armoured organism” (CBC News, Jun 13, 2011), we learn,
… 800 million-year-old fossilized evidence that organisms were trying to protect themselves by forming their own shield-like plates.It is the oldest evidence ever of biomineralization, the use of minerals by a living thing to form a hard shell, similar to the way clams or lobsters form their own protection. The tiny fossils date back between 717 and 812 million years.
[ … ]
Until now the oldest evidence from similar organisms biomineralizing was found in Africa and dates back to about 550 million years ago, Cohen said.
The fossils are microscopic, of course. Do they raise questions one doesn’t ask nowadays?
See also “Spider in amber is 49-million-year-old member of living genus”
“Life forms that never change are telling us something about evolution”
“Darwinians ignoring stasis is ‘denialism,’ physicist charges”
Follow UD News for breaking news on the design controversy. | <urn:uuid:12ce0555-778c-497a-bcf1-0af658c5a967> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/800-million-year-old-shelled-fossil-found-in-yukon-canada/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00106-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937335 | 263 | 3.1875 | 3 |
"I want an education job, but I don't have a teaching degree." Sound like something you might say? If you think that going to college is the only way you'll ever be able to get a job in education, you might want to reconsider. There are a lot of education jobs you can get with just a high school diploma or a GED.
For instance, many teaching assistant jobs, school bus driver jobs, cafeteria worker jobs and even nanny jobs don't require that you have a degree. These education jobs are a great way to get experience in this field and as a bonus, you'll feel really good about the work you're doing.
Education jobs outlook
It's a great time to get into the education field, especially if you're interested in teaching. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS
), the education industry is expected to grow by 12 percent over the next decade. On average, teachers (without degrees) make just over $10 an hour. Bus drivers, janitors and teaching assistants make, on average, between $22,000 and $25,000 a year. Many education jobs do require that you have at least a high school diploma, especially for teaching assistant jobs. One way to advance in this field is to get an online degree
, either in education, teaching or school administration. | <urn:uuid:1f8c7d34-50a3-4f71-95af-4c15474ab3b1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.snagajob.com/i/education-jobs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00090-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976609 | 273 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The question of how Stonehenge was built has never been properly answered.
A full-scale version of the Litho Lift is now planned
One suggestion for how the giant rocks which comprise the 5,000-year-old monument were raised into place even involves Merlin the wizard.
But what is known is the first stones - weighing about five tons - were brought from Wales by water in about 2500 BC.
Some 200 years later, they were dug up and rearranged into the familiar 100m-diameter outer circle and inner horseshoe seen today.
Heavier stones were also brought in - weighing up to 45 tons - which were dragged from the Marlborough Downs.
It is accepted sheer manpower played some part in erecting each upright in holes in the ground.
But the real puzzle is how ancient Britons managed to hoist the massive "crossbars" on to the top of the towering edifices, up to 22ft high.
Engineer Nick Weegenaar, 52, of Bristol, claims simple mechanics and a cunning invention played their part.
Although he has never actually been to the World Heritage site, Mr Weegenaar has built a model of how he thinks the stones were put in place, and christened it the Litho Lift.
At a meeting in his workshop, unveiling the lift for the first time, he said: "This is a unique type of machine as far as I know. A full scale version is now needed."
According to Mr Weegenaar, the uprights were wrapped in a wood case and rolled forward, before being pulled into holes in the ground using pulleys and counter-weights.
But it is the stones resting on top of the uprights - the lintels - which really excite the father-of-two.
"The lintels were rolled in the wheel until they were above the uprights, and then lowered down.
"The wheel would have been on a track, with counterweights to act as ballast."
He points to sockets in the top of the uprights to back up this view and insists the counterweights would not have weighed as much as the lintels themselves.
Archaeologist and broadcaster Julian Richards, who has also seen the Litho Lift, said it was an "interesting idea".
"The principles all work - but was it too sophisticated for the people at the time? I would be very interested to see how it would scale up."
But Dave Batchelor, head of local authority, historic environment liaison, at English Heritage, raised more serious concerns.
"This level of infrastructure is very likely to have left some traces and none have yet been found."
The Stonehenge site is 5,000-years old
He also questioned whether the wheel would have been in use in England when the stones were raised.
Mr Weegenaar is not the first theorist to enter the ring - and he won't be the last.
In 2004, Gordon Pipes, of the Stonehengineers group, suggested that levers may have been used to move the giant stones.
The question may never be answered and this, in part, is what fascinates so many people about Stonehenge.
Mr Weegenaar is now keen to build a proper version of his invention - draft carpentry plans are in place - with a wheel some 12ft to 14ft in diameter, to prove his thesis.
"If it isn't this way, it must be another and we would continue to modify it until it worked," he said. | <urn:uuid:8520b9be-be06-4250-a9e2-bfb22af5cffa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wiltshire/6908300.stm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00178-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9836 | 736 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Scotland is having the worst weather for November since the 1960s. Edinburgh is ankle deep in snow, which is very pretty but is causing some chaos. (More chaos than it needs perhaps in some areas, some people are questioning why our schools are closed when schools in Siberia, Finland and Alaska are all open as normal!).
These extreme cold weather conditions of course are causing some people to question climate change, as sceptics always will. The most obvious cause for extreme weather hitting the UK while global temperatures increase, would be the loss of the Gulf Stream. This is the current of warm water that comes up from the southern oceans and passes by the UK making our winters, at least up until two years ago, milder than we would otherwise experience given how far north we are. The Gulf Stream could be lost as Arctic seas become warmer. There is a good article in the Telegraph newspaper, that explains this and other reasons why extremely cold winters in the UK are compatible with overall global warming.
Wildlife is vulnerable in this weather, so if you have a garden, make sure you put out food for the birds. The RSPB offer some excellent advice on how to feed the birds. The RSPB offer some specific advice for feeding birds in winter.
Of course people can be vulnerable in this weather too, so if you have elderly neighbours, please check up on them to see if they need anything.
As ever red text in this post contains hyperlinks which you can follow to find out more! | <urn:uuid:e8662e0a-50a3-4b20-be0c-996f7c691aab> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.com/2010/12/snow.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970368 | 304 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Roget's Int'l Thesaurus
Fowler's King's English
The King James Bible
Brewer's Phrase & Fable
Frazer's Golden Bough
Shelf of Fiction
The End of the Middle Ages
The Canterbury Tales
The Legend of Good Women
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.
The Canterbury Tales
That he found what he wanted in the scheme of
The Canterbury Tales,
and that, though these also are unfinished (in fact not half finished according to their apparent design), they are one of the greatest works of literatureeverybody knows. Of the genesis of the scheme itself nobody knows anything. As Dickens says, I thought of Mr. Pickwick: so, no doubt, did Chaucer think of his pilgrims. It has been suggestedand deniedthat Boccaccio, so often Chaucers immediate inspirer, was his inspirer in this case also, by the scheme and framework of
It is, indeed, by no means unlikely that there was some connection; but the plan of collecting individually distinct tales, and uniting them by means of a framework of central story, was immemorial in the east; and at least one example of it had been naturalised in Europe, under many different forms, for a couple of centuries, in the shape of the collection known as
The Seven Sages.
It is not necessary to look beyond this for general suggestion; and the still universal popularity of pilgrimages provided a more special hint, the possibilities of which it certainly did not require Chaucers genius to recognise. These fortuitous associationsmasses of drift-wood kept together for a time and then separatedoffer almost everything that the artist, desirous of painting character and manners on the less elaborate and more varied scale, can require. Though we have little of the kind from antiquity, Petronius shows us the germs of the method; and, since medieval literature began to become adult in Italy, it has been the commonest of the common.
To what extent Chaucer regarded it, not merely as a convenient vehicle for anything that he might take a fancy to write, but as a useful one to receive anything of the less independent kind that he had already written, is a very speculative question. But the general tendency has been to regard
The Knights Tale,
that of the
and, perhaps, others, as examples of this latter process, while an interesting hypothesis has been started that the capital
Tale of Gamelyn
which we find mixed up with Chaucers works, but which he cannot possibly have writtenmay have been selected by him and laid by as the subject of rehandling into a Canterbury item. But all this is guesswork; and, perhaps, the elaborate attempts to arrange the tales in a consistent order are a little superfluous. The unquestionable incompleteness of the whole and of some of the parts, the irregular and unsystematic character of the minor prologues and framework-pieces, alike preclude the idea of a very orderly plan, worked out so far as it went in an orderly fashion. In fact, as has been hinted above, such a thing is repugnant to Chaucers genius as manifested not merely here but everywhere.
Fortunately, however, he was able to secure a sufficient number of happy moments to draw the main part of the framework
in which the plan of the whole is sketched, the important characters delineated and the action launchedwithout gap or lapse. For it would be short-sighted to regard the grouping of certain figures in an undescribed batch as an incompleteness. Some writers of more methodical disposition would, probably, have proceeded from this to work out all the framework part, including, perhaps, even a termination, however much liberty they might reserve to themselves for the inset tales. But this was not Chaucers way. There have been controversies even as to the exact number of tales that he originally promises or suggests: and the incident of the canons yeoman shows that he might very well have reinforced his company in numbers, and have treated them to adventures of divers kinds. In fact, the unknown deviser of the
The Pardoner and the Tapster,
though what he has produced is quite unlike Chaucer in form, has been much less out of the spirit and general verisimilitude of the whole work than more modern continuators. But it is most probable that the actual frame-stuffso much of it as is genuine (for there are fragments of link in some MSS. which are very unlikely to be so)was composed by its author in a very haphazard manner, sometimes with the tale he had in his mind, sometimes to cobble on one which he had written more or less independently. The only clear string of connection from first to last is the pervading personality of the host, who gives a unity of character, almost as great as the unity of frame-story, to the whole work, inviting, criticising, admiring, denouncing, but always keeping himself in evidence. As to the connection of origin between individual tales and the whole, more hazardous conjectures in things Chaucerian have been made than that the couplet-verse pieces were all or mostly written or rewritten directly for the work, and that those in other metres and in prose were the adopted part of the family. But this can never be known as a fact. What is certain is that the couplets of
which must be of the essence of the scheme, and those of most parts of it where the couplets appear, are the most accomplished, various, thoroughly mastered verse that we find in Chaucer himself or in any English writer up to his time, while they are not exceeded by any foreign model unless it be the
of Dante. A medium which can render, as they are rendered here, the manners-painting of
the comic monodrama of
The Wife of Bath
and the magnificent description of the temple of Mars, has handed in its proofs once for all.
Whether, however, it was mere impatience of steady labour on one designed plan, or a higher artistic sense which transcended a mere mechanical conception of unity, there can be no doubt of the felicity of the result. Without the various subject and quality, perhaps even without the varied metre, of the tales, the peculiar effect of Gods plenty (a phrase itself so felicitous that it may be quoted more than once) would not be produced; and the essential congruity of the tales as a whole with the mixed multitude supposed to tell them, would be wholly impossible. Nothing is more remarkable than the intimate connection between the tales and
They comment and complete each other with unfailing punctuality. Not only is it of great importance to read the corresponding portion of
with each tale; not only does each tale supply, as those of the Monk and the Prioress especially, important correction as well as supplement; but it is hardly fantastic to say that the whole
ought to be read, or vividly remembered, before reading each tale, in order to get its full dramatic, narrative and pictorial effect. The sharp and obvious contrasts, such as that of
The Knights Tale
with the two that follow, though they illustrate the clearness with which the greatest English men of letters appreciated the value of the mixture of tragedy or romance with farce or comedy, are less instructive, and, when properly appreciated, less delightful, than other contrasts of a more delicate kind. Such is the way in which the satire of
is left to the host to bring out; and yet others, where the art of the poet is probably more instinctive than deliberate, such as the facts that nobody is shocked by the
The Wife of Baths Prologue
(the interruption by the friar and summoner is of a different character), and (still more incomprehensible to the mere modern) that nobody is bored by
The Tale of Melibeus.
Of the humour which is so constantly present, it will be more convenient to speak presently in a separate passage. It cannot be missed, though it may sometimes be mistaken. The exquisite and unlaboured pathos which accompanies it, more rarely, but not less consummately, shown, has been acknowledged even by those who, like Matthew Arnold, have failed to appreciate Chaucer as a whole. But, on the nature and constitution of that variety which has also been insisted on, it may be desirable to say something here and at once.
It is no exaggeration or flourish, but a sound and informing critical and historical observation, to say that
The Canterbury Tales
supply a miniature or even microcosm, not only of English poetry up to their date, but of medieval literature, barring the strictly lyrical element, and admitting a part only of the didactic, but enlarged and enriched by additional doses, both of the personal element and of that general criticism of life which, except in Dante, had rarely been present. The first or
is romance on the full, if not on the longest, scale, based on Boccaccios
but worked out with Chaucers now invariable idiosyncrasy of handling and detail; true to the main elements of fierce wars and faithful loves; possessing much more regular plot than most of its fellows; concentrating and giving body to their rather loose and stock description; imbued with much more individuality of character; and with the presence of the author not obtruded but constantly throwing a shadow. That it is representative of romance in general may escape those who are not, as, perhaps, but a few are, thoroughly acquainted with romance at largeand especially those who do not know the man of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries regarded the heroes of the Charlemagne and Arthur stories, and those of antiquity, as absolutely on a par.
With the high seriousness and variegated decoration of this romance of adventure and quality contrast the two tales that follow, one derived from a known
the other, possibly, original, but both of the strict
kindthat is to say, the story of ordinary life with a preferably farcical tendency. If the morals are not above those of the time, the nature and the manners of that timethe nature and manners no longer of a poetic Utopia, localised, for the moment, in France or Britain or Greece or Rome or Jerusalem or Ind, but of the towns and villages of Englandare drawn with a vividness which makes their French patterns tame. What threatens a third story of this same kind,
The Cooks Tale,
is broken off short without any explanation after about fifty linesone MS. asserting that Chaucer maked namore of it.
The Man of Laws Tale,
the pathetic story of the guiltless and injured Constance, returns to a favourite romance-motive and treats it in rime royalthe most pathetic of metreswhile
falls back on the
and the couplet. But Chaucer was not the man to be monotonous in his variety. The next pair,
The Prioresss Tale
and Chaucers own
indeed, keep up the alternation of grave and gay, but keep it up in quite a different manner. Approximately in every way, the beautiful and pathetic story of the innocent victim of Jewish ferocity is an excursion into that hagiology which was closely connected with romance, and which may even, perhaps, be regarded as one of its probable sources. But the burlesque of chivalrous adoration is not of the
kind at all: it is parody of romance itself, or, at least, of its more foolish and more degenerate offshoots. For, be it observed, there is in Chaucer no sign whatever of hostility to, or undervaluation of, the nobler romance in any way, but, on the contrary, great and consummate practice thereof on his own part. Now, parody, as such, is absolutely natural to man, and it had been frequent in the Middle Ages, though, usually, in a somewhat rough and horseplayful form. Chaucers is of the politest kind possible. The verse, though sing-song enough, is of the smoothest variety of romance six or
); the hero is a very parfit
knight; it cannot be proved that, after his long preparation, he did not actually encounter something more terrible than buck and hare; and it is impossible not to admire his determination to be satisfied with nobody less than the Fairy Queen to love
But all the weak points of the weaker romances, such as
are brought out as pitilessly as politely. It is one of the minor Chaucerian problems (perhaps of as much importance as some that have received more attention), whether the hosts outburst of wrath is directed at the thing as a romance or as a parody of romance. It is certain that uneducated and uncultivated people do not, as a rule, enjoy the finer irony; that it makes them uncomfortable and suspicious of being laughed at themselves. And it is pretty certain that Chaucer was aware of this point also in human nature.
The tale of Melibeus
something has been said by a hint already. There is little doubt that, in a double way, it is meant as a contrast not merely of grave after gay, but of good, sound, serious stuff after perilously doubtful matter. And it is appreciated accordingly as, in the language of Tennysons farmer, whot a owt to a said. But the monks experience is less happy, and his catalogue of unfortunate princes, again strongly indebted to Boccaccio, is interrupted and complained of, not merely by the irrepressible and irreverent host but by the knight himselfthe pattern of courtesy and sweet reasonableness. The criticism is curious, and the incident altogether not less so. The objection to the histories, as too dismal for a mixed and merry company, is not bad in itself, but a little inconsistent considering the patience with which they had listened to the woes of Constance and the prioresss little martyr, and were to listen (in this case without even the sweetmeat of a happy ending) to the physicians story of Virginia. Perhaps the explanation is meant to be that the monks accumulation of drerimentdisaster heaped on disaster without sufficient detail to make each interestingwas found oppressive: but a subtler reading may not be too subtle. Although Chaucers flings at ecclesiastics have been exaggerated since it pleased the reformers to make arrows out of them, they do exist. He had thought it well to atone for the little gibes in
at the prioresss coquettishness of way and dress by the pure and unfeigned pathos and piety of her tale. But he may have meant to create a sense of incongruity, if not even of hypocrisy, between the frank worldliness of the monkhis keenness for sport, his objection to pore over books, his polite contempt of Austin, his portly personand his display of studious and goody pessimism. At any rate, another member of the cloth, the nuns priest, restores its popularity with the famous and incomparable tale of the Cock and the Fox, known as far back as Marie de France, and, no doubt, infinitely older, but told here with the quintessence of Chaucers humour and of his dramatic and narrative craftsmanship. There is uncertainty as to the actual order here; but the Virginia story, above referred to, comes in fairly well, and it is noticeable that the doctor, evidently a good judge of symptoms and of his patients powers of toleration, cuts it short. After this, the ancient and grisly but powerful legend of Death and the robbers strikes a new veinin this case of eastern origin, probably, but often worked in the Middle Ages. It comes with a sort of ironic yet avowed impropriety from the pardoner: but we could have done with more of its kind. And then we have one of the most curious of all the divisions, the long and brilliant
Wife of Baths Prologue,
with her short, and by no means insignificant but, relatively, merely postscript-like, tale. This disproportion, and that of the prologue itself to the others, seems to have struck Chaucer, for he makes the friar comment on it; but it would be quite a mistake to found on this a theory that the length was either designed or undesigned.
Vogue la galère
seems to have been Chaucers one motto: and he let things grow under his hand, or finished them off briefly and to scale, or abandoned them unfinished, exactly as the fancy took him. Broadly, we may say that the tales display the literary and deliberately artistic side of his genius; the prologues, the observing and dramatic side; but it will not do to push this too hard.
The Wife of Baths Prologue,
it may be observed, gives opportunity for the display of reading which he loves, as well as for that of his more welcome knowledge of humanity: the tale is like that of Florent in Gower, but the original of neither is known
The interruption by the friar of
The Wife of Baths Prologue,
and a consequent wrangle between him and the summoner, lead to a pair of satiric tales, each gibing at the others profession, which correspond to the earlier duel between the miller and reeve. The friars is a tale of
as well as a lampoon, and of very considerable merit; the summoners is of the coarsest
type with a farcically solemn admixture. There is no comment upon it; and, if
The Clerks Tale
was really intended to follow, the contrast of its gravity, purity and pathos with the summoners ribaldry is, no doubt, intentional. For the tale, introduced by some pleasant rallying from the host on the clerks shyness and silence, and by a most interesting reference of the clerks own to Francis Petrarch the laureate poet, is nothing less than the famous story of Griselda, following Petrarchs own Latin rendering of Boccaccios Italian. Some rather unwise comment has been made (in a purely modern spirit, though anticipated, as a matter of fact, by Chaucer himself) on the supposed excessive patience of the heroine. But it is improbable that Griseldas ever were, or ever will be, unduly common; and the beauty of the piece on its own scheme and sentiment is exquisite. The indebtedness to Boccaccio is still more direct, and the
element reappears, in
The Merchants Tale
of January and Maywith its curious fairy episode of Pluto and Proserpine. And then romance comes back in the half-told tale of the squire, the story of Cambuscan bold; which Spenser did not so much continue as branch off from, as the minor romances of adventure branch off from the Arthurian centre; of which Milton regretted the incompleteness in the famous passage just cited; and the direct origin of which is quite unknown, though Marco Polo, the French romance of
and other things may have supplied parts or hints. The romantic tone is kept up in
The Franklins Tale
of Arviragus and Dorigen, and the squire Aurelius and the philosopher-magician, with their strange but fascinating contest of honour and generosity. This is one of the most poetical of all the tales, and specially interesting in its portrayalside by side with an undoubted belief in actual magicof the extent of medieval conjuring.
The Second Nuns Tale
Life of St. Cecily
is introduced with no real link, and has, usually, been taken as one of the poets insertions of earlier work. It has no dramatic or personal interest of connection with the general scheme; but this is largely made up by what followsthe tale of the follies and rogueries of alchemy told by the Yeoman of a certain canon, who falls in with the pilgrims at Boughton-under-Blee, and whose art and mystery is so frankly revealed by his man that he, the canon, flees away for very sorrow and shame. The exposure which follows is one of the most vivid parts of the whole collection, and shows pretty clearly either that Chaucer had himself been fleeced, or that he had profited by the misfortunes of his friends in that kind. Then the host, failing to get anything out of the cook, who is in the drowsy stage of drunkenness, extracts from the manciple
The Tale of the Crow
and the reason that he became blackthe whole ending with the parsons prose tale, or, rather, elaborate treatise, of penitence and the seven deadly sins. This, taken from both Latin and French originals, is introduced by a verse-prologue in which occur the lines, famous in literary history for their obvious allusion to alliterative rhythm,
But trusteth wel, I am a southren man,
I can nat geste
rum, ram, ruf
and ending with the retraction of his earlier and lighter works, explicitly attributed to Chaucer himself, which has been already referred to.
Of the attempts already mentioned t distribute the tales according to the indications of place and time which they themselves contain, nothing more need be said here, nor of the moot point whether, according to the hosts words in
the pilgrims were to tell
stories eachtwo on the way to Canterbury and two on the return journeyor
in allone going and one returning. The only vestige we have of a double tale is in the fragment of the cooks above referred to, and the hosts attempt to get another out of him when, as just recorded, the manciple comes to the rescue. All these matters, together with the distribution into days and groups, are very problematical, and unnecessary, if the hypothesis favoured above be adopted, that Chaucer never got his plan into any final order, but worked at parts of it as the fancy took him. But, before speaking shortly of the general characteristics of his work, it will be to notice briefly the parts of it not yet particularised.
The Parsons Tale,
as last mentioned, will connect itself well with the remainder of Chaucers prose work, of which it and
The Tale of Melibeus
are specimens. It may be observed that, at the beginning of
and in the retraction at the end of
The Parsons Tale,
there are some curious fragments of blank verse.
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
The Legend of Good Women | <urn:uuid:fa4ff6d0-b06b-4d0d-93ba-ba4518635099> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bartleby.com/212/0711.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960801 | 4,703 | 3.125 | 3 |
The Book of Redemption:
by Chuck Missler
The second book of the Torah, or Pentateuch, is one of the basic "seed-plots" of the Bible. It is basic, dramatic, and provides an essential background for all that follows.
It centers on the call of Moses, one of the most pivotal men of all history and a participant at the Transfiguration.1 We also suspect that he will reappear as one of the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11.
The family of Jacob ("Israel"), who had migrated to Egypt in the Book of Genesis, now emerges as a nation, earning its title as God's "Firstborn."
(It is this designation that is deliberately contrasted with the subsequent death of Egypt's firstborn when Moses is called out of Midian.2 )
A Non-Egyptian Pharaoh?
Much has been speculated about the specific Pharaoh in this book. Stephen gives us a clue when he notes that, "Another king arose who knew not Joseph."3 The Greek term used was 'eterwV, heteros, another of a different kind, not alloV, allos, another of the same kind. This Pharaoh was of a different race and dynasty. (Josephus also makes mention of this fact, who describes "the crown being come to another family.")4 It seems that he was the Assyrian of Isaiah 52:4.
No wonder he became uncomfortable with the continuing growth of a non-Egyptian constituency in Goshen!5
The plight of Israel under the taskmasters leads to the famed Passover and the deliverance of God's chosen people.
The celebration of the Passover continues as one of their principal observances to this day. In fact, the instruction to the nation was to make this month (Nisan) "the beginning of months." Thus, Israel has two calendars; one, their civil calendar, begins in the fall (Tishri, about September/October on our calendar); the other, their religious calendar, begins in the spring (Nisan, about April/May on our calendar.)
It is interesting that John the Baptist's first public introduction of Jesus declared, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."6 This was an allusion to the Passover Lamb. Paul reminds us that all these things were also "a shadow of things to come."7
It is also astonishing to discover that the "new beginning" of the Planet Earth after the flood of Noah occurred on the anniversary-in advance-of our "new beginning" in Christ, on the 17th of Nisan, the 7th month of the old calendar.8
The House of Blood
When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai, he not only carried the famed Ten Commandments; he also brought with him the detailed specifications of a portable sanctuary that would accompany the nation until replaced by Solomon's Temple.
A careful study of this "Tabernacle" reveals amazing mystical discoveries, each pointing to the Messiah. (A detailed study of this mysterious structure is essential for every serious student of the Bible.)
The Book of Exodus is an adventure of discovery, since the dramatic narrative is laced with numerous hidden messages in the form of microcodes and macrocodes, each anticipating the New Testament climax.
In addition to Moses himself and the hidden symbolism of the Burning Bush, the Tabernacle structure, and its observances, we also encounter the strange manna, the role of the two rocks,9 the numerous elements of the priesthood, et al.
The Book of Exodus is the bedrock of God's plan of redemption and is one of the most rewarding studies in the Old Testament.
* * *
- Matthew 17:3.
- Exodus 4:22-23.
- Acts 7:18.
- Antiquities ii, 9.
- Exodus 1:9, 10.
- John 1:29.
- Colossians 2:17.
- Genesis 8:4. Crucified on the 14th + 3 days in the tomb = 17th.
- 1 Corinthians 10:4.
RELATED ARTICLES FROM KOINONIA HOUSE | <urn:uuid:bc4e7561-dff3-4c9b-b986-73f73abeca39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.khouse.org/articles/1999/242/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00076-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939287 | 858 | 3.203125 | 3 |
Many white Southerns have cherished the memory of Nathan Bedford Forrest -- a Confederate general and founding Klansman. But a new controversy reveals how much Civil War remembrance has changed.
Earlier this month the city council in Memphis, Tennessee, voted to rename Forrest Park, a local site named in honor of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Since Forrest's death in 1877, few names associated with the American Civil War have sparked more outrage among black Americans.
In contrast, white views of Forrest have long been mixed. "To many," wrote historian Court Carney, "he was the quintessential Confederate hero, whose rough-hewn, unschooled martial style reflected the virtues of the southern "plain folk"; others, in contrast, found him an ambiguous figure at best."
The decision to rename Forrest Park brought these polarities into the public eye. The Ku Klux Klan immediately organized a large protest rally to be held next month. The Sons of Confederate Veterans announced their own plans to protest the name change in "a gentlemanly fashion" but asked the Klan not to get involved. "There might be people who are opposed to the Klan that might turn it into a hostile situation," explained SCV spokesperson Lee Millar.
Forrest's controversial status can be traced to three distinct phases of his life. Born in 1821, he rose to become one of the wealthiest slave traders along the stretch of the Mississippi River from his home in Memphis to New Orleans. With the wealth accumulated on the backs of slaves, Forrest organized his own cavalry regiment for the Confederacy at the beginning of the war. By the end of the war he had risen to the rank of lieutenant general.
Forrest then distinguished himself in a number of small battles, but at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864, his men committed one of the worst atrocities of the war against U.S. Colored Troops. It is unclear whether Forrest issued the orders to massacre these men once they surrendered; however, it is likely that he knew what was taking place inside the fort.
Finally, in 1867, the Ku Klux Klan selected Forrest as its first Grand Wizard. Forrest served for a short period before losing interest, but during that time, the Klan and other white supremacy organizations committed ferocious acts of violence against newly freed slaves in an attempt to maintain antebellum social and racial norms.
Despite Forrest's involvement in the slave trade, the Fort Pillow massacre, and the Klan, Carney notes that popular memory of the general has been largely positive. Southerners have celebrated his humble beginnings, his prowess and bravery on the battlefield, and his defense of the rural South against encroachment by Northern industry, as well as his protection of plain folk and advocacy of civic virtue.
At a time when Southerners felt their way of life being threatened, Forrest became a convenient symbol of white supremacy and "massive resistance."
Only on a few occasions has the white community in Memphis highlighted Forrest's connection to a past steeped in racism. And each time, those discussions have centered on the park named in his honor. Forrest Park was dedicated in May 1905, when 30,000 white Memphians took part in the unveiling of an equestrian statue to the general. The park also contained the remains of the general and his wife.
The ceremony came at a turbulent time in the city's history. Its economy had been depressed, and its racial composition had shifted following a yellow-fever outbreak in 1878: Memphis lost a sizable number of white elites, and the black community became roughly half the population. Meanwhile, by the 1890s, the city was experiencing sharp uptick in racial strife, due to an influx of rural farmers who, according to Carney, "were less racially tolerant than their urban contemporaries."
In 1901, Memphis hosted the annual United Confederate Veterans Reunion, and that same year, local papers began openly celebrating Forrest's connection to the Klan. The unveiling of the Forrest monument four years later coincided with the publication of Thomas Dixon's bestselling book, The Clansman.
As white Memphians united to defend of their community and shared values, one Memphis editorial proclaimed, "Forrest has come to his own again." The writer praised the Klan's commitment to "the protection of the honor and independence of Southern social condition" and recalled Forrest as "that leader whose iron hand held the reins of safety over the South when Northern dominion apotheosized the negro and set misrule and devastation to humiliate a proud race."
The next time white Memphis rallied around the monument was in July 1958, when large numbers turned out to celebrate Forrest's birthday. Many participants could be seen waving Confederate flags. Forrest's own granddaughter, Mary Forrest Bradley, explained the upsurge of interest as a backlash against school desegregation. At a time when Southerners felt their way of life being threatened, Forrest became a convenient symbol of white supremacy and "massive resistance" against encroachment by the federal government.
These demonstrations, according to Carney, didn't last long; they were soon followed by a relatively peaceful integration process. The assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 led to another round of racial unrest that altered the city's demographics once again: After white residents fled to the suburbs, black Memphians constituted more than half the population, exercising increased political control over local affairs.
The control that white Memphians enjoyed over popular perceptions of Forrest's past all but ended by the 1970s. Since then, the public's understanding of slavery has continued to evolve, as reflected by the 1977 television miniseries Roots, the 1989 movie Glory, and the recent Hollywood films Lincoln and Django Unchained.
At the same time, the many public events related to the Civil War sesquicentennial are bringing a new level of scrutiny to Confederate monuments and symbols -- and along with it, a renewed effort to address many of the tough questions related to the Civil War and Reconstruction. Unlike 50 years ago, when Americans celebrated the Civil War centennial, African Americans now hold many political positions throughout the South and have significant influence over the ways their communities commemorate the past.
In the case of Forrest, it means that the Confederate general's history as a slave trader, massacre enabler, and Klan leader can no longer be ignored. A generation ago, after the Memphis chapter of the NAACP called for the removal of the Forrest monument, a respected scholar like Shelby Foote was able to soften Forrest's image by suggesting that "he avoided splitting up families or selling [slaves] to cruel plantation owners." Foote also denied that the Klan "was a hate group when Forrest knew it." Such gentlemanly defenses would fail to hold up today for anyone with even a cursory understanding of the relevant historical sources.
Forrest still has his advocates, but they are now forced to defend his record against increased attacks that highlight the history of slavery and racism. Millar, the SCV spokesperson, recently claimed, as Foote did, that Forrest was a "humane slave holder." The difference is that these views of are now on the fringe of mainstream society; they no longer unify white Southerners the way they once did.
As it currently stands, the Memphis city council has organized a committee to decide on permanent names for Forrest Park, as well as Jefferson Davis and Confederate Parks. The SCV, with their staunch opposition to the name change, have not been included in this committee. But in a strange twist, they've joined forces with the NAACP as they oppose the Klan's planned rally. (The city of Memphis has approved the Klan's gathering on the condition that the Klansmen remain unarmed and leave their faces uncovered.)
The verdict is still out on whether Forrest Park will be stripped permanently of its association with the Confederate general. What can no longer be denied, however, is that a significant number of white and black Southerners no longer see such monuments as a reflection of shared values, or a historical legacy worth honoring. | <urn:uuid:ef38d611-7c4e-428b-987c-216b9be1deac> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/the-ku-klux-klan-protests-as-memphis-renames-a-city-park/273560/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966353 | 1,619 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Cardiac rehabilitation-the poor relation of treatment and prevention
Coronary heart disease (CHD), which usually presents as a heart attack (or myocardial infarction, MI) is the most common cause of death and disability both in the UK and globally. The way in which CHD is treated and prevented therefore has huge implications for patients, health professionals and policymakers. Once a person has a heart attack, prevention of further heart attacks, stroke or death, or secondary prevention, is crucial. There is strong evidence for benefit of several drugs and treatments after heart attacks to this end, including aspirin, statins, ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers. Such treatments have undoubtedly saved lives, but studies in the US and the UK, have shown that between 30-60% of MI patients receive appropriate treatment. There are strong arguments for giving more people the right drugs with benefits in terms of mortality and cost-effectiveness. Current NICE guidelines therefore recommend these treatments for all patients following a heart attack.
This week, the British Heart Foundation reported that only 38% of such patients were receiving adequate rehabilitation care. “Cardiac rehab includes advice from dieticians, physiotherapists and psychologists about how to live with the consequences and improve the survival chances following heart attacks, coronary artery bypass operations and angioplasties.” The components of cardiac rehab have benefits individually and together. For example, a review of 46 trials including 9000 patients showed that exercise-based rehabilitation reduces all deaths by 20%, and cardiac deaths by 26%. Some patients are too ill to benefit from cardiac rehabilitation, and others choose not to partake or continue with the rehabilitation programme.
Provision of drug treatment and primary angioplasty programmes has improved more than cardiac rehabilitation, which has remained the poor relation. This is partly because we tend to favour treatment rather than prevention, and pills rather than behaviour changes. To a greater extent than other treatments, cardiac rehabilitation needs the commitment of the patient. However, this does not mean that we cannot be innovative in designing ways of increasing access to this vital aspect of care for patients after MI.
Carl Heneghan and Matthew Thompson on Tamiflu in children: what’s all the fuss?
Carl Heneghan:The last few days has been hectic since the publication of our systematic review in the BMJ on the use of antivirals in children. By now, you are probably aware of the findings given the media interest. Basically, our study raised questions about the usefulness of antiviral flu drugs in preventing and treating flu in children, indicating the harmful effects may not be justified by the limited benefits provided. This puts us in direct conflict with the DOH policy of antivirals for all. I think what is important in the present pandemic is to remember how we spent a number of years preventing a similar strategy with the use of antibiotics in sore throat; especially when the published research showed limited benefits in mild disease and the emergence of resistance became a real issue. We have been slightly overwhelmed by all the media but are trying to keep a cool head. Having just come out of an interview on the Becky Anderson Show on CNN live at 9 o’clock on Wednesday there are a couple of things I have learnt over the last few days that have been helpful. One is to keep up-to date with the news on a daily basis. Why? Well when you are live on TV and the interviewer asks you in a forceful way: “WHO continues to recommend use of antivirals as treatment for people who are severely ill or are at risk of other health complications,” “isn’t your advice in direct conflict with the WHO?“ Difficult question to answer when you are on live TV and you are about to directly question whether the WHO advice is correct. However, as I said keeping up to date is the trick, because if you read the rest of the guidance it goes on to say: “However, it also stressed that the antiviral, made by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, should not be taken by those showing just mild flu-like symptoms.” Having knowledge of and being able to reverberate the above statement made the whole interview go much smoother. Over the last few days Matthew and I have also been canvassing a number of GP colleagues to see where they stand on this and reassuringly they are in accordance with the advice in mild disease. On a lighter note, what is the best way to keep up to date? I find google news and reader effective. You can easily set yourself up email feeds for key words and guidance and alerts on google reader. Also, believe it or not, I find twitter very useful: I follow about 50 people or organizations – such as the BMJ who give great information and updates on news stories as they emerge: but, because they only have 140 characters you never feel overwhelmed by the amount of information provided. Finally doing the press briefings with two of you makes it a lot easier; you can bounce ideas off each other, check where you are up to and distribute some of the workload around so you can meet all of the commitments. Carl Heneghan is Clinical Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in the Department of Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford. He is also a General Practitioner.
Matthew Thompson:The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind, with normal work and meetings put on hold for now. Fortunately, I have a quiet day in surgery this week, so managed to gather thoughts and do some real work and see some real patients. This is certainly the biggest press event I have been involved in, and suspect the same is true for our Department. Left me thinking how often the BMJ gets such international attention. Overall, it was great to have a paper fast tracked in the BMJ - the usual weeks or months of waiting to hear about reviews etc was compounded into a couple of weeks, and at times days. What this meant was rapid fire back and forth responding to the journal, editor and proof reader comments – helpfully all fielded by Carl while I managed to drag myself away from my holiday in France to check manuscript versions etc at a cyber cafe. I thought the paper would generate some press interest, but was honestly surprised that it has been such a big story. I suppose the combination of swine flu, children, government policies, big pharma etc. was too much to ignore, especially on a relatively quiet week in the press. The question now in my mind, is what to make of the media onslaught that followed? First of all I was amazed by the skills of many of the reporters - they seemed to be able to turn new information (after all we have been working on this paper for a couple of months, they had a few minutes) into coherent questions and statements for live TV. They did this incredibly rapidly. For instance it took the BBC four minutes to post the story online after the embargo time. Carl and I both did a bunch of live interviews on TV and radio. Years ago, I used to be terrified to put my hand up in the class at school (you know the shaky voice, trembling chest type anxieties); but overtime the nerves for these big occasions have lessened. I think the major issue is being confident in knowing what you are talking about form a knowledge and a methodological aspect In terms of live TV interviews what I found tricky was looking directly into the camera (which you cannot really see as it is disguised in some black hole), while being blinded by studio lights, while the producer is giving you a countdown in one ear, and all the time trying NOT to look at the screen, with the live pictures on it, which were always curiously situated off to one side. If you do look at the screen to the side then you have the appearance of looking really shifty! Was the reporting fair? Well mostly it was. Clearly no-one is going to report the umpteen thousand words of carefully crafted systematic review, so very brief take home points were inevitable. A few of the headlines were ever so slightly over the top, i.e. the “pig flu drug bad for children”, and you could clearly see how both the print and TV would try to grab attention with a catchy headline followed by more balanced report. As the media interest died down (as it inevitably does), I wondered if it had been too over the top. A day in surgery was a good way to reflect on it all, none of my patients mentioned that they had seen me on the news, which I was kind of glad about. It was nice “just” being a GP for a day again and focussing on day to day clinical problems (interesting no-one with suspected swine flu that day though…). Should we have done a press release at all, or just let it sneak out there via the on line BMJ and eventually trickle into the news? Well, we believed the research and our conclusions were valid, and that we were addressing a really important clinical problem …..so why not? Should we have told the UK Department of Health first, or asked for comments from the WHO, or the pharmaceutical manufacturers of the antivirals….. where would you stop? What if they didn’t really like our conclusions, would we have changed anything? Not really. So, if the point of research is to actually inform clinicians, patients, policy makers etc, I think we were right to get this particular research study out there into the world. Matthew Thompson is a GP in Oxford, and a clinical scientist at the Department of Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford. He trained originally in Glasgow, but has since worked in South Africa and the USA as a GP. He combines GP work, with research mostly into children’s health issues in primary care, as well as teaching evidence based medicine and supervising academic GP fellows.
US Healthcare debate 2009. Should passion and anecdote ever outweigh evidence?
Gobsmacked, bamboozled, annoyed: my emotions on following news stories about the ongoing US healthcare reform debate this week. Then came the onslaught on the UK’s National Health Service by various Americans and Tory MEP, Daniel Hannan. Hannan described the NHS as “a 60 year mistake" and that he "wouldn't wish it on anyone". The Republican former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has called health rationing by NICE "downright evil" , referring to it as a “death panel”. Stephen Hawking has come to the defence of the NHS and even the PM has been Twittering his support.
Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Hannan’s last blog entry on 14th August had drawn over 450 comments from both supporters and fervent opposers of his standpoint. When a person in authority gives an opinion, it is naturally given more coverage than if a member of the public made a statement. Therefore, politicians have a responsibility to check their facts before opening their mouths and we, the public, whether in the UK or the US, have a responsibility to check the facts. In his blog, “The NHS row: my final word”, Hannan argues the sales pitch for his book, “The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain”, which has “a lengthy chapter on healthcare which sets out how Britain compares with other countries in terms of survival rates, waiting times and so on”. Since when did whether or not a book is a bestseller equate to factual scientific evidence? And would you take financial advice from a doctor? Would you take plumbing advice from a banker? Then why are we listening to a politician/bookseller to tell us what is best for the US or the UK’s health?
As somebody who trained and works in the NHS, I know that it has many flaws and many changes are necessary. However, we have to get our facts right when comparing with other systems. I have previously blogged about how charges and private user fees make health systems less fair and less efficient. I am not going to repeat the evidence that is freely available in the public domain. In a nutshell, the UK spends half of the US on healthcare as a percentage of GDP and per capita, has lower infant mortality and higher survival rates as a population. Most importantly, the US comes bottom out of industrialised nations in terms of health equity and 15% of its population do not have health insurance, whereas every UK citizen, regardless of who they are, what colour they are, where they are, is entitled to NHS care.
Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public health advocate in Boston, wrote a great piece in the New Yorker in June about the financial incentives which have led to a country with spiralling health costs and inadequate health services for its population, and makes a strong case for universal health insurance in the US. This week’s NEJM includes a review of recent US nationwide opinion polls, showing that “most of the public wants a major change in the health care system. But majority support for a specific legislative proposal will depend on Americans’ believing that they and the country will be better off if such a change is enacted”. Obama has higher approval ratings than Bill Clinton, the last man to attempt US health reform on this scale and he likes evidence-based medicine, which shows that the US is failing its citizens at the moment. If he can’t make America focus on the health of its population, nobody can.
Steroids good in sore throat, Tamiflu not that good in swine flu
It has been difficult to resist blogging about swine flu as the furore surrounding the pandemic has grown over the last four months, but I am finally giving in to temptation. Recently, the estimated new cases of swine flu per week fell from 110,000 to 30,000 in England. The government has stuck by its policy of offering antivirals to anyone infected and has stockpiled Tamiflu, but it now appears that this strategy may be unhelpful in children. The UK Department of Health has moved from the “containment” phase to the “treatment phase”, recommending antiviral treatment in “at-risk groups, “…defined as those who are at higher risk of serious illness or death should they develop influenza,” including children under the age of 5.
A meta-analysis by members of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine studied the seven randomised trials of Tamiflu (oseltamivir) and Relenza (Zanamivir) in seasonal flu in children, and has shown that Tamiflu probably has no role in children. Although none of the trials looked specifically at swine flu, the authors concluded that the H1N1 virus was unlikely to be that different. Importantly, there was no added benefit of use in Tamiflu in children with asthma, a population defined as high-risk by the Department of Health. Conversely, Tamiflu increased the risk of vomiting in already sick children. Their bottom line for treatment was that Tamiflu reduced the course of flu by 1 day (on average) in an illness that usually last 7-10 days. Their bottom line for prevention was that a 10-day course of Tamiflu propylaxis reduced the risk of flu by 8%, meaning that 13 children need to be treated to prevent 1 case of flu. “In the current pandemic, there is a pressing need to understand the benefits and potential adverse effects of these drugs as the current evidence base supporting this age boundary is limited.” That’s an understatement if ever I heard one.
The CEBM boys and girls have also been busy doing another meta-analysis in this week’s BMJ, but this time looking at the role of steroids in sore throat in adults and children. An evaluation of 8 trials including 750 patients showed that steroids increased the chance of complete resolution of pain at 24 hours by three-fold, particularly in severe throat infections. It seems we sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees when it comes to drugs. We are much more likely to trial complex, expensive therapies than simple, older, and often more effective treatments, which might actually save the National Health Service some money.
Will a 48-hour working week for doctors affect patient safety?
Ara Darzi’s departure as health minister last month was steeped in speculation and controversy for many reasons including how long one has to serve as a government minister to earn a place in the House of Lords, and whether clinicians can be effective in political roles and vice versa. Like many others, I think he has left his legacy by emphasis on at least three crucial aspects of the NHS: high-quality care for all; “clinicians as practitioners, partners and leaders” and innovation.
This week’s New England Journal included Darzi’s recommendations for US health reforms, which are being debated and observed all over the world. One of his prescriptions is “placing professional responsibility for health outcomes in the hands of clinicians, rather than bureaucrats or insurance companies”. One facet of this responsibility is ensuring safe working conditions for health professionals. In the NHS Next Stage Review, published in July, he talks of the significant changes in work culture in the last decade: “Pay and conditions have been made fairer. This was an almost silent revolution in making sure that the NHS recognises and rewards the talents of all its staff. Significant workforce contracts were changed, in partnership with the professions. There was an unprecedented investment in education and training that saw the largest expansion in the numbers of doctors, nurses, and other clinicians for a generation.”
One of the major changes of the last 10 years has been in doctors’ working hours. This happened largely due to the large body of evidence from all over the world, but particularly from the US, that showed negative outcomes for patients when doctors (usually early in their training) worked 100-hour weeks. In critical care, medicine and surgery, the mistakes made when doctors were tired were probably of most concern. Studies have shown that less mistakes happen when doctors were not sleep-deprived. Comparisons were made between working conditions in other professions with a similar responsibility for the lives of others. Doctors’ hours were found to be far longer. The long hours also had negative impact on doctor and patient satisfaction and medical training. This week, under European law, it became illegal for doctors to work more than 48 hours per week in the UK.
It is very unlikely that all doctors in all hospitals will immediately meet these time limits largely due to work culture and constraints on time and resources within the NHS. There are also legitimate concerns about the adequate training of future generations of doctors. Data suggest that it is not just doctors’ hours that are the problem and focusing on this aspect alone will not bring a comprehensive solution in the UK or in other countries. However, as long as future changes are made in consultation with doctors and with the welfare of patients in mind, as Darzi recommends, we are surely moving in the right direction. | <urn:uuid:e32843af-bcb7-4cd7-a69f-af8234c1308e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.trusttheevidence.net/archive/200908 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00088-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973915 | 3,925 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Hurricane Sandy confirmed what Irene and Katrina had suggested: We will retreat from the edge of the sea. We should do so in a planned, organized manner that protects citizens’ interests and the ecological, economic, recreational and aesthetic values of our coasts. This endeavor will require major changes in the way we manage coastal lands.
Coastal storms have killed thousands of people and have caused more than $250 billion in damages in the past 12 years. Costs are increasing with each storm because more and more people live, and build infrastructure, in risky places. For example, hundreds of thousands of people live on barrier islands along the East and Gulf Coasts. The nature of these low-lying sand islands is to move. Independent of hurricanes, winds, waves and currents cause barrier islands to roll toward the shore and migrate along the coast. Put another way, they naturally migrate from under buildings placed on them. The population density of U.S. coastal counties increased 28 percent from 1980 to 2003, to about 153 million. Clearly, coastal development must be rethought. | <urn:uuid:ab142f3b-0574-4601-ae6b-42f2b0329a81> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2012/11/22/were-too-close-to-the-sea/comment-page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00158-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950756 | 215 | 2.875 | 3 |
UH astronomers track invisible pyrotechnics
Mauna Kea facilities help locate the source of a gamma ray burst
Using space telescopes and the Gemini telescope on Mauna Kea, astronomers scored two firsts in July: They pinpointed the source galaxy of a short gamma ray burst, and they calculated the distance of the burst from Earth.
"We've finally tracked down a short burst to a small galaxy a long way from our own," said University of Hawaii astronomer Paul Price.
The cause of the July 9 burst is believed to be the collision of two dead stars, according to a UH Institute for Astronomy statement.
The findings by Hawaii astronomers Price and Kathy Roth of the Gemini North observatory, working with other astronomers around the world, were published yesterday in the journal Science.
Gamma rays are an extremely high-energy form of radiation, more energetic than X-rays.
If a gamma burst happened even somewhat close to Earth, it would destroy the protective ozone layer, electrify the atmosphere and cause widespread destruction of life, Price said.
Such a burst is expect 300 million years from now from a pair of neutron stars just 3,000 light-years from Earth, Price said.
Price and Gemini astronomer Roth calculated the distance of the July 9 gamma burst as 1.3 billion light-years, meaning it was much too far away to affect Earth.
Astronomers have known about short gamma bursts, lasting no more than about two seconds, for about 35 years. They were first discovered by U.S. military satellites designed to monitor Russian nuclear tests.
But those satellites had low resolution, meaning they could not tell exactly where the flashes were coming from or how far away they were.
The short bursts from neutron stars are different from another type of gamma flash, called long bursts, which last a few minutes and are believed to be caused by supernovas, Price said.
The July 9 event was first detected by NASA's High Energy Transient Explorer satellite, then observed with the Chandra X-ray satellite and finally by the Gemini Telescope on Mauna Kea.
The original burst lasted just a half second, a Chandra statement said. But the event created a shock wave in the highly rarefied matter of space, with the wave still visible days later, Price said.
Astronomers believe the event started with a neutron star falling into a black hole or possibly two neutron stars spinning around each other until they collided and both fell into a black hole.
Neutron stars are dense, dead stars in which matter weighs more than a trillion tons per cubic inch, the UH statement said. But matter in a black hole has a density that can be considered infinite, Price said.
Although anything coming too close is sucked into a black hole, a blast of material is also thrown off, hitting other matter, creating gamma and X-rays, Price said. | <urn:uuid:085b8fbd-f20a-4140-a6f6-c54fe0468f42> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://archives.starbulletin.com/2005/10/06/news/story12.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00075-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953536 | 592 | 3.5625 | 4 |
Set Your Household Appliances to Vibrate and Gather Free Energy
Photo via craigmdennis via Flickr CC
Vibrations from your appliances just might be the next energy source for charging up your handheld devices. Harvesting vibrations is one area Bristol University researchers are exploring as a way to provide free power to homes and businesses. Kinetic energy created by, say, your water kettle or dish washer could power up your MP3 player or other small gadgets, sparing how much stuff you plug into the wall. But it's all dependent on creating a new device that can tap into those vibrations to harvest them.Business Green reports the researchers are looking at harvesting kinetic energy from a new type of harvesting device that uses non-linear spring and mass. The change would allow the device to resonate over a broader frequency range so that the single device can be used for more applications, such as charging small batteries or even monitoring vitals like blood pressure and heart rate on hospital patients.
The researchers state these devices would be more environmentally friendly than using actual batteries for recharging devices, since it lacks polluting chemicals and they would last longer than batteries.
"There's a huge amount of free, clean energy out there in the form of vibrations that just can't be tapped at the moment. Wider-frequency energy harvesters could make a valuable contribution to meeting energy needs more efficiently and sustainably," said Burrow.
These aren't the only researchers working on utilizing energy harvesting for a range of uses. Reaching into the smart grid scene, wireless microcontroller vendor Jennic has created the ability to send ZigBee information using energy harvested from an electro-mechanical switch. EETimes reports the company had already announced energy harvesting technology demonstrators utilising thermal, vibrational, RF and solar energy harvesting techniques to power end devices in a wireless sensor network, and while an electro-mechanical switch harvester is promising as a way to use small amounts of free energy to send information via ZigBee platform, the company admits it presents many design challenges.
AdaptivEnergy is working on solutions as well, partnering up with GainSpan Corp, a Wi-Fi sensor network technology developer, to combine kinetic energy harvesting with wireless sensors to create battery-less autonomous intelligent sensor networks.
The devices - including those created by AdaptiveEnergy with GainSpan Corp, Jennic, as well as by the researchers at Bristol University - will be of particular help to sensors attached to infrastructure like bridges and buildings, and machinery like engines that need to be monitored for stress, as well as for creating intelligent buildings. But also on the smaller scale, it's interesting to think that while solar chargers are currently the most popular off-grid charging option for gadgets, on overcast days you might turn to your washing machine as a way to keep your handheld gadgets running.
"Even just a few milliwatts can power small electronic devices like a heart rate monitor or an engine temperature sensor, but it can also be used to recharge power-hungry devices like MP3 players or mobile phones," said Dr Stephen Barrow, who is leading the project.
More on Kinetic Energy Harvesting
nPower PEG Harnesses Kinetic Energy in a Stick
Kyocera Dreams Up Flexible Cell Phone Charged By Kinetic Energy
Tibet's Prayer Wheels Could Generate Both Positive and Kinetic Energy | <urn:uuid:c94846d7-5c94-40d3-ad22-2aa38b35d9ad> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/set-your-household-appliances-to-vibrate-and-gather-free-energy.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403508.34/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934996 | 690 | 2.984375 | 3 |
MUSSOLINI FIAT RIVA DEL GARDA DISC
By Rob Arndt
On June 13, 1933 on orders from Il Duce Mussolini, a crashed disc aircraft of unknown origin was ordered recovered from Lombardia.
There was also a Senatorial letter describing in detail the strategy to be followed after the craft had been recovered which included censorship of the newspapers, arrest of the eyewitnesses by the O.U.R.A. (The Italian Government's Political Police), elaboration of a series of conventional explanations for the disc (balloons, meteors, weather phenomenon) to be fed to the public via the Breara Astronomical Observatory at Milan, and notification of the Prefect (Civil Governor).
From this single recovery the top-secret Cabinet RS/33 had been created at La Sapienza University in Rome following the recovery of the mysterious disc. The only direct controllers of the RS/33 Cabinet were - Benito Mussolini, Count Galeazzo, Ciano (Mussolini‘s son-in-law and Foreign Minister of Italy), and the Italian airman General Italo Balbo. It was charged with both investigating and covering up what the documents called "unconventional aircraft" or "aeromobiles."
Guglielmo Marconi believed Martians could be reached by radio
The Cabinet RS/33 had links with the Fascist secret police OVRA and with "Agenzia Stefani," the regime's news agency in charge of disseminating Fascist propaganda. Cabinet RS/33 was headed by the Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi (known for his belief in Martians, although he never played an active part in the Cabinet, always sending in his place the astronomer Gino Cecchinin from Turin). Marconi believed that alien life existed on Mars and that contact with the “Martians” would be possible from powerful radio transmissions. Probably due to this belief he was chosen to lead the RS/33 once it became apparent that the recovered disc was not a man-made one from a Western nation - especially an enemy of Italy.
Fearing aliens, Mussolini put Marconi in charge, someone who was trying to communicate with them.
Among its members the Cabinet had many of the most highly respected of Italian academics, members of the Royal Italian Academy of Sciences, and the best Italian engineers. Among them was Dr. Ruggero Costanti Cavazzani, Professor Severi, Professor Bottazzi, Professor Giodani, and Professor Crocco, all historically real personages. These people had been studying the UFO phenomenon, but only occasionally did they consider the extraterrestrial hypothesis, being more inclined, as they were, to believe in the existence of secret new Western weaponry.
In the first place, it had come to light that ever since 1929 that a German rocket engineer named Hermann Noordung had been attempting to build a "solar" flying disc to be sent out into space - subsequently re-baptized as the "flying wheel", and so it is no wonder that the Italian Fascists, having found themselves confronted with a crashed disc, should have opted for the explanation that it was a secret weapon!
The "conspiracy of silence" imposed upon the affair of the crashed disc in Italy was subsequently demonstrated by the various articles put out in the entire Italian press (and quite particularly in the newspapers of Lombardia). These articles embraced such things as changes of many political leaders, sudden moves of Fascist Blackshirts for no known reason, and even an improvised sudden visit by the Queen of Milan. Furthermore a mass of contradictory reports about the existence of life on other planets were suddenly published after the recovery of the saucer, in many newspapers ranging from the Gronaca Prealpino to the Italia; from the Balilla to L'Italiano; all declaring that there was already telepathic communication with Martians (due to what the "Aliens" were reputed to be at the time).
Mussolini for his part had actually created in 1933 the world’s first UFO research team.
On August 17, 1926 another aerial incident occurred in Italy with the sighting of a flying cylindrical object over the regions of Venice and Mestre. This incident was graphically reconstructed on two pages, showing a "flying cigar" - described as "torpedo-shaped" along with two spheres beside it, one of which resembled ‘the planet Saturn“, being pursued by Italian fighter aircraft.
It was sighted in the morning, a metallic disc, polished and reflecting light, with a length of ten or twelve meters. Two fighters from a near base took off, but were not able to reach it even at 130 km/h. It didn't emit sound, which would lead one to consider it an airship. But nobody knows of aerostats that can fly faster than the wind. A report was made and arrived into the hands of Ciano.
Count Ciano was Mussolini’s son-in-law and Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs; he was later executed after participating in the cabal to overthrow the Duce and surrender to the Allies in 1943. The report continued:
Then, after approximately at least an hour and after passing over Mestre, it was seen as a sort of metallic tube, gray or slate. It was described like a kind of aerial torpedo, with very clear windows ... and alternating, white and red lights. Following were two disc “hats; two hats like those used by priests: wide, round, with a dome in the center, metallic and following the torpedo without changing their relative positions.
The document mentions that "the Prefecture has opened an inquiry, but you can imagine that it will make little impact and will have a similar outcome to that of 1933. The Duce has expressed his worries, because he says that if it were a matter of real English or French aircraft, his foreign policy would have to start all over again“.
It also, discloses that Mussolini and Ciano, Italy's number one and two leaders at the time, were intimately appraised of the situation.
Whether Cabinet RS/33 had studied the flying saucer that had been recovered or learned anything from the strange aerial encounters is not known. But on the other hand they had, in seven years of research, assembled a thirty-page dossier ( the same one that had been sent to the newspaper Resto del Carlino) about UFO sightings (termed by them "velivolvi sconoscuti, "unknown aircraft“), and had also gathered photos and films.
Italy's accession to the Berlin-Rome Axis, by arrangement with Hitler personally meant that this material was all subsequently to be turned over to the Nazis, including the recovered disc when war started in 1939. One year later in 1940, Cabinet RS/33 was dissolved.
In 1941 before America became involved in the war Mussolini made a speech at a time when tensions between America and the Axis was strong.
In that speech, Mussolini said the USA should “care more about attack from 'Martians' (extra-terrestrial civilization which could land on Earth in the crafts that people have never seen), than about the Axis forces“. In that time, that speech hadn't been understood as a serious one. But looking back on the incidents of 1933 and 1936 in addition to all the material compiled by Cabinet RS/33 led by Marconi it is understandable. The Germans, on the other hand, were already heavily involved in occult projects led by Thule, Vril, and a special SS unit E-IV. Where they got their technology from is also debatable as Germany claimed that a crashed disc near Freiberg in 1936 was taken to Himmler’s Wewelsburg Castle for examination and disassembly.
But as the war progressed and Germany tightened it’s grip on it’s fascist ally Italy, the Fiat Riva Del Garda complex was renamed the Hermann Göring Institute - a complex for advanced research into exotic engines and aircraft. Dr. Giuseppe Belluzzo, a turbine expert, was recruited from there to help aid in “Projekt Flugkreisel” which was an SS project to improve or replace Rudolf Schriever’s disc-fan. Belluzzo made some proposals but ultimately the leader of the team Dr. Richard Miethe was responsible for the new German disc.
Dr. Belluzzo returned to Riva Del Garda to pursue his own design of a radical Italian round flying bomb he named the “Turbo Proietti” (Turbine Projectile) which removed him from the German project altogether.
At Riva Del Garda were other engineers and specialists that were pressured by the Germans to develop radical new aircraft and that included disc types as well. One scientist came up with an Italian disc aircraft that was very different from the types being developed in Germany.
Dubbed the “Piastra di Volo” (Flying Plate) this disc was to be powered by four staggered underslung turbojets, had a round plexiglass canopy, twin canted vertical tailfins and had a series of round circles all over the body that defy explanation with conventional Italian landing gear.
Drawings of the disc that survived the war give no official name nor designation for the craft but it may have used some technical material from the recovered 1933 disc as evidenced by the two strange missile-shaped objects that are neither turbojets nor weapons. No one has figured out what those are… yet. The scientist that designed the craft died and only recently was his work discovered among his things in his apartment.
But it is nonetheless a purely Italian design, separate completely from the German Flugscheiben.
Top view of disc
Top view of disc
Early Italian Disc Craft
Strange Sight in the Italian Skies in the 1930s | <urn:uuid:76a7a532-1dcf-4c4f-b001-d040a62c879c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/MUSSOLINI%20FIAT%20RIVA%20DEL%20GARDA%20DISC.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979983 | 2,063 | 2.796875 | 3 |
- Historic Sites
Prelude To War:
The Slaughter of the Buffalo
February 1976 | Volume 27, Issue 2
to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the past thirty years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary … for the sake of lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy, who follows the hunter as a second forerunner of an advanced civilization.
As Phil Sheridan was the commander of the military division in which the slaughter was taking place, it seemed unlikely that the buffalo runners would meet any opposition from the Army; indeed, the soldiers enjoyed a buffalo hunt as much as anybody, and they did not even take the hides; they were just after the sport. As early as the campaigns of the i86o’s the men under Colonel George A. Custer, operating as part of Sheridan’s famous “winter campaign,” divided into small squads to see which could kill the most buffalo in one day. Tallies were kept by cutting out the animals’ tongues (later fed to camp dogs), and the rule was that the losers had to fix dinner for the others.
With the Army standing idly by, the “dead line,” once accepted as the Arkansas River and then moved south to the border of the Indian Territory, was moved south yet again in 1873, on a de facto basis, all the way to the next large river south of the Arkansas, the Cimarron. That meant that the Indians had lost all control over what had been the reservation given them at Medicine Lodge, of which the Cimarron was the southern boundary. They were left to look for game in lands to the south and west.
For the voracious buffalo runners the 1873 killing season on the Cimarron was so successful that the Great Southern herd was depleted to the point where it would never again migrate north of the Canadian River, which at the Texas panhandle meridian is some one hundred miles south of the Cimarron. To gain any sense of the proportion of the slaughter one need only trace the carnage on a map: from the Arkansas to the border of the Indian Territory to the Cimarron to the Canadian, the prairies denuded of their thundering black herds and left silent and white, with millions of skeletons bleaching in the sun—all in the space of the three years 1872-74. The Indian tribes reeled before the juggernaut.
Totally heedless of what this would mean to the Indians, the hunters began to lay plans for the 1874 hunt on the Canadian. That, however, meant a hundred miles deeper penetration into the Indian Territory, a forbidding foray to even the bravest of them. Since none of them wished to isolate themselves in the middle of hostile Indian country, two of the plainsmen, Wright Mooar and John Webb, rode south of the territory into the panhandle of Texas, where very little hunting had ever been done except by the Comanche and Kiowa Indians, to investigate rumors that the prairies there were still grazed by huge and untouched herds of buffalo. Mooar and Webb did indeed find the herds and on their return reported that they had ridden through “an almost solid mass” of buffalo.
At this time, in the fall of 1873, the Kansas hunters began to worry that the Army might for once try to hinder their crossing Indian land, and sent emissaries in the persons of Wright Mooar and another hunter, Steele Frazier, to Major Dodge, the commander of Fort Dodge, whose job it was to patrol the border. Anxious to make a good impression on the major, Mooar and Frazier bathed (reputedly an extreme measure for a buffalo hunter) and wore brandnew suits of clothes to the interview. As he later reported, Mooar’s specific question to Dodge was “Major, if we cross into Texas, what will be the government’s attitude towards us?” Even to cross Indian land was illegal by the terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, but it was the only way to get from Kansas to Texas, and besides it could be argued, technically, that a crossing would not be illegal if it were made over the so-called no man’s land to the west of the actual Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation. On the other hand, they would have no license to hunt there, and Texans might feel differently about shooting their buffalo—not because the Texans were against killing buffalo, but because the presence of buffalo in the panhandle helped keep the Kiowas and Comanches out of central Texas settlements. Mooar and Frazier soon found their caution unnecessary, however. Major Dodge, himself a sportsman and hunter, received them warmly and finally confided: “Boys, if I were a buffalo hunter, I would hunt where the buffaloes are.” And thus was formalized the unwritten alliance between the hidemen and the United States Army.
The buffalo runners therefore agreed to carry out the next season’s hunt high on the “Staked Plains” (El Llano Estacado) of the Texas panhandle, the vast, grassy plateau that rises abruptly from the flat lowlands. This would put them west of the Indian Territory and outside the Indians’ hunting reserves, the northern part of which of course they had already depleted. Theoretically, the Indians should have no quarrel with them, except for the brief but necessary trespass, if indeed it were a trespass. The hunters knew, however, the Indians would not see it that way. As far as the Indians were concerned, all the buffalo south of the Arkansas River were theirs, and the whites had stolen from them. The heat for revenge was high; the presence of white hunters among the last herds of buffalo on the South Plains would likely touch off a savage Indian war, and the hunters knew it. | <urn:uuid:9dcb694f-86cd-4856-b937-3fa26835c0a2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.americanheritage.com/content/prelude-war?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00071-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977804 | 1,250 | 2.875 | 3 |
Display list is a group of OpenGL commands that have been stored (compiled) for later execution. Once a display list is created, all vertex and pixel data are evaluated and copied into the display list memory on the server machine. It is only one time process. After the display list has been prepared (compiled), you can reuse it repeatedly without re-evaluating and re-transmitting data over and over again to draw each frame. Display list is one of the fastest methods to draw static data because vertex data and OpenGL commands are cached in the display list and minimize data transmissions from the client to the server side. It means that it reduces CPU cycles to perform the actual data transfer.
Another important capability of display list is that display list can be shared with many clients, since it is server state.
For optimal performance, put matrix transforms, lighting and material calculation inside display list if possible, so OpenGL processes these expensive computations only once while display list is created, and stores the last results into the display list.
However, display list has a disadvantage. Once a display list is compiled, it cannot be modified later. If you need frequent changes or dynamic dataset, use Vertex Array or Vertex Buffer Object instead. Vertex Buffer Object can handle both static and dynamic dataset.
Note that not all OpenGL commands can be stored into the display lists. Since display list is a part of server state, any client state related commands cannot be placed in display list, for example, glFlush(), glFinish(), glRenderMode(), glEnableClientState(), glVertexPointer(), etc. And any command that returns a value cannot be stored in display list either, because the value should be returned to client side, not in display list, for example, glIsEnabled(), glGet*(), glReadPixels(), glFeedbackBuffer(), etc. If these commands are called in a display list, they are executed immediately.
Using display list is quite simple. First thing to do is creating one or more of new display list objects with glGenLists(). The parameter is the number of lists to create, then it returns the index of the beginning of contiguous display list blocks. For instance, glGenLists() returns 1 and the number of display lists you requested was 3, then index 1, 2 and 3 are available to you. If OpenGL failed to create new display lists, it returns 0.
The display lists can be deleted by glDeleteLists() if they are not used anymore.
Second, you need to store OpenGL commands into the display list in between glNewList() and glEndList() block, prior to rendering. This process is called compilation. glNewList() requires 2 arguments; first one is the index of the display list that was returned by glGenLists(). The second argument is mode which specifies compile only or compile and also execute(render); GL_COMPILE, GL_COMPILE_AND_EXECUTE.
Up to now, preparation of display list has been done. Only thing you need to do is executing the display list with glCallList() or multiple display lists with glCallLists() every frame.
Take a look at the following code for a single display list first.
// create one display list GLuint index = glGenLists(1); // compile the display list, store a triangle in it glNewList(index, GL_COMPILE); glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES); glVertex3fv(v0); glVertex3fv(v1); glVertex3fv(v2); glEnd(); glEndList(); ... // draw the display list glCallList(index); ... // delete it if it is not used any more glDeleteLists(index, 1);
Note that only OpenGL commands between glNewList() and glEndList() will be recorded into a display list once and cached multiple times whenever it is called by glCallList().
In order to execute multiple display lists with glCallLists(), you need extra work to do. You need an array to store indices of display list that are only to be rendered. In other words, you can select and render only limited number of display lists from whole lists. glCallLists() requires 3 parameters; the number of list to draw, data type of index array, and pointer to the array.
Note that you don't have to specify the exact index of the display list into the array. You may specify the offset instead, then set the base offset with glListBase(). When glCallLists() is called, the actual index will be computed by adding the base and offset. The following code shows using glCallLists() and the detail explanation follows.
GLuint index = glGenLists(10); // create 10 display lists GLubyte lists; // allow maximum 10 lists to be rendered glNewList(index, GL_COMPILE); // compile the first one ... glEndList(); ...// compile more display lists glNewList(index+9, GL_COMPILE); // compile the last (10th) ... glEndList(); ... // draw odd placed display lists only (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th) lists=0; lists=2; lists=4; lists=6; lists=8; glListBase(index); // set base offset glCallLists(5, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, lists);
For convenience, OpenGL provides glListBase() to specify the offset that is added to the display list indices when glCallLists() is executed.
In the above example, only 5 display lists are rendered; 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th of display lists. Therefore the offset from index value is index+0, index+2, index+4, index+6, and index+8. These offset values are stored in the index array to be rendered. If the index value is 3 returned by glGenLists(), then the actual display lists to be rendered by glCallLists() are, 3+0, 3+2, 3+4, 3+6 and 3+8.
glCallLists() is very useful to display texts with the offsets corresponding ASCII value in the font.
This application draws a teapot (6320 polygons) using display list. Originally, it uses vertex array, glDrawElements(), to render the teapot, but all glDrawElements() calls are placed in the display list. You can see the performance difference between using vertex array and using display list.
Remember that you cannot place any client state commands in the display list, therefore, glEnableClientState(), glVertexPointer() and glNormalPointer() should not be included in the display list.
Download the source and binary: displayList.zip. | <urn:uuid:13514294-385c-4183-9bd0-187a86766b91> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_displaylist.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.758404 | 1,435 | 2.9375 | 3 |
New York State Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Services
Flood Safety Tips
- Think safety first. It is important to remain alert to the hazards - some obvious, some hidden - that may be associated with storm-damaged areas. If you are returning home to a flood-impacted area, it is vital that you use caution and follow the guidance that we and emergency management experts across the nation recommend to keep you and your family safe and healthy.
Terms To Know
Flash Flood or Flood Watch
Indicates flash flooding or flooding is possible within the designated watch area. When a watch is issued, be alert and ready to take action.
Flash Flood or Flood Warning
Flash flooding or flooding has been reported or is imminent. You should take necessary precautions and actions at once.
Act Now To Be Prepared
- Learn the safest route from your home or business to high, safe ground should you have to leave in a hurry.
- Develop and practice a 'family escape' plan and identify a meeting place if family members become separated.
- Make an itemized list of all valuables including furnishings, clothing and other personal property. Keep the list in a safe place.
- Stockpile emergency supplies of canned food, medicine and first aid supplies and drinking water. Store drinking water in clean, closed containers.
- Plan what to do with your pets.
- Have a portable radio, flashlights, extra batteries and emergency cooking equipment available.
- Keep your automobile fueled. If electric power is cut off, gasoline stations may not be able to pump fuel for several days. Have a small disaster supply kit in the trunk of your car.
- Find out how many feet your property is above and below possible flood levels. When predicted flood levels are broadcast, you can determine if you may be flooded.
- Keep materials like sandbags, plywood, plastic sheeting and lumber handy for emergency water-proofing.
During the Flood
- Monitor the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Weather Radio or your local radio and TV station broadcasts for information.
- If local officials advise evacuation, do so promptly.
- If directed to a specific location, go there.
- Know where the shelters are located.
- Bring outside possessions inside the house or tie them down securely. This includes lawn furniture, garbage cans, and other movable objects.
- If there is time, move essential items and furniture to upper floors in the house. Disconnect electrical appliances that cannot be moved. DO NOT touch them if you are wet or standing in water.
- If you are told to shut off water, gas, or electrical services before leaving, do so.
- Secure your home: lock all doors and windows.
Travel With Care
- Leave early to avoid being marooned on flooded roads.
- Make sure you have enough fuel for your car.
- Follow recommended routes. DO NOT sightsee.
- As you travel, monitor NOAA Weather Radio and local radio broadcasts for the latest information.
- Watch for washed-out roads, earth-slides, broken water or sewer mains, loose or downed electrical wires, and falling or fallen objects.
- Watch for areas where rivers or streams may suddenly rise and flood, such as highway dips, bridges, and low areas.
- DO NOT attempt to drive over a flooded road. Turn around and go another way.
- DO NOT underestimate the destructive power of fast-moving water. Two feet of fast-moving flood water will float your car. Water moving at two miles per hour can sweep cars off a road or bridge.
- If you are in your car and water begins to rise rapidly around you, abandon the vehicle immediately.
The Hidden Danger - Low-Water Crossing
- Nearly half of all flash flood fatalities are vehicle related! When driving your automobile during flood conditions, look out for flooding at highway dips, bridges and low areas.
- Even the largest and heaviest of vehicles will float. Two feet of water will carry most cars away.
- As little as six inches of water may cause you to lose control of your vehicle. Do not drive through flowing water!
- A hidden danger awaits motorists where a road without a bridge dips across a creek bed.
- Motorists develop false confidence when they normally or frequently pass through a dry low-water crossing.
- Road beds may have been scoured or even washed away during flooding creating unsafe driving conditions.
- Those who repeatedly drive through flooded low-water crossings may not recognize the dangers of a small increase in the water level.
- Driving too fast through low water will cause the vehicle to hydroplane and lose contact with the road surface.
- Visibility is limited at night increasing the vulnerability of the driver to any hidden dangers.
- Heed all flood and flash flood watches and warnings.
- Remain aware of road conditions!
After the Flood
- Listen to the radio or TV for instructions from local officials.
- Wait until an area has been declared safe before entering it. Be careful driving, since roads may be damaged and power lines may be down.
- Before entering a building, check for structural damage. Turn off any outside gas lines at the meter or tank. Let the building air out to remove foul odors or escaping gas.
- Upon entering the building, use a battery-powered flashlight. DO NOT use an open flame as a source of light. Gas may be trapped inside.
- When inspecting the building, wear rubber boots and gloves.
- Watch for electrical shorts and live wires before making certain the main power switch is off.
- DO NOT turn on electrical appliances until an electrician has checked the system and appliances.
- Throw out any medicine or food that has had contact with flood waters.
- Test drinking water for portability. Wells should be pumped out and water tested for drinking.
- If the public water system is declared 'unsafe' by health officials, water for drinking and cooking should be boiled vigorously for 10 minutes.
- Shovel out mud with special attention to cleaning heating and plumbing systems.
- Flooded basements should be drained and cleaned as soon as possible. Structural damage can occur if drained too quickly. When surrounding waters have subsided, begin draining the basement in stages, about 1/3 of the water volume each day. | <urn:uuid:99dce4fd-ab5b-47e2-8064-196fb605d79f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dhses.ny.gov/oem/safety-info/flood/floodprepare.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00051-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914603 | 1,311 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Eels and Lampreys may look similar, but fundamental physiological characteristics separate the two families. The first step to identifying an eel is to determine that it is not a lamprey.
Lampreys are parasites with round sucker mouths and no scales or paired fins. They have no bones; only cartilage.
Eel Life Cycle
Eels are catadromous, in that they spawn in the oceans, live out some of their lives there, and then migrate to freshwater for a longer period of their lives until they are ready to spawn again. The eel’s life cycle can be divided into seven stages. Eggs hatch into Leptocephalus eels, which are transparent, leaf-shaped larvae that drift on the upper surfaces of the open ocean for several years feeding on plankton. Leptocephali develop into Glass eels and begin to take on the typical eel shape. They are still transparent (thus the name), but their internal organs are visible, and their bodies can reach lengths of 4 inches. Glass eels migrate to coastal areas and congregate in the brackish waters of estuaries in great numbers. Some Glass eels begin to migrate upstream; others remain in the estuaries. Eels are so versatile and adapted to this freshwater migration that they find their way into most bodies of fresh water in the world; even scaling waterfalls and traversing land to do so.
Through their journey up freshwater channels, eels develop pigmentation and begin feeding on larger prey (crustaceans, worms and insects) in what is considered the Elver, or young eel stage. They begin to take on a yellow color as they reach 22 to 31 inches in length and are then known as Yellow eels. At this point they are considered to be sexually immature adults. Yellow eels will continue “running” upstream, crossing lakes and wetlands for up to 30 years, with some (females mostly) growing as large as 5 feet long. Those that remain in the estuary environment, continue through their life-cycle a lot more quickly than those that travel up freshwater. Those that do venture into freshwater tend to live longer and grow much larger.
When eels mature, they lose their yellow pigment and take on a dark grayish-brown color on top and silver underneath. Their eyes enlarge, their bodies thicken, and they discontinue feeding. Now referred to as Silver eels, they head back out to sea to spawn.
In Upstate NY we only have one species of Eel in our waters; the American Eel (Anguilla rostrata).
New York State Eel Identification Guide
Research / Writing | <urn:uuid:1f8d73ca-4ee3-468e-81fc-d6002ab54966> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://nyfalls.com/wildlife/fish/eels/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952826 | 552 | 3.9375 | 4 |
Protect Dolphins Campaign
It is against the law to feed or harass wild dolphins. For the dolphins' sake, and for your safety, please DON'T FEED, SWIM WITH, OR HARASS WILD DOLPHINS. We encourage you to observe them from a distance of at least 50 yards.
- Dolphins have a reputation for being friendly. However, they are really wild animals who should be treated with caution and respect. Interactions with people change the behavior of dolphins for the worse. They lose their natural wariness which makes them easy targets for vandalism and shark attack.
- Dolphins are hunters, not beggars, but when people offer them food, dolphins, like most animals, take the easy way out. They learn to beg for a living, lose their fear of humans, and do dangerous things.
- They swim too close to churning boat propellers and can be severely injured. They learn to associate people with food and get entangled with fishing hooks and lines and die. They get sick from eating bait and people food like beer, pretzels, candy and hot dogs.
- Dolphin scientists have proof of injuries. Feeding wild dolphin disrupts their social groups which threatens their ability to survive in the wild. Young dolphins do not survive if their mothers compete with them for hand-outs and don't teach them to forage.
- Dozens of bites have been reported, and people have been pulled under the water. A woman who fed a pair of dolphins and then jumped in the water to swim with them was bitten. "I literally ripped my left leg out of its mouth," she said during her week stay in the hospital.
- Dolphins are not water toys or pets--the "Flipper myth" of a friendly wild dolphin has given us the wrong idea. Flipper was actually a trained, captive dolphin who did not bite the hand that fed him. However, truly wild dolphins will bite when they are angry, frustrated or afraid. When people try to swim with wild dolphins, the dolphins are disturbed. Dolphins who have become career moochers can get pushy, aggressive and threatening when they don't get the hand-out they expect.
How You Can Help
Let the wild ones stay wild.
Feeding or attempting to feed wild dolphins is prohibited under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) and implementing regulations. Violations can be prosecuted either civilly or criminally and are punishable by up to fines of $100,000 and/or up to a year in jail.
- Protect Dolphins Brochure [pdf] [1.4 MB]
- Report to Congress on Results of Feeding Wild Dolphins 1989-1994 [pdf] [4.5 MB]
- Interactions Between the Public and Wild Dolphins in the United States: Biological Concerns and the Marine Mammal Protection Act [pdf]
- NMFS Reminds Public of the Dangers of Feeding and Harassing Wild Dolphins [pdf]
- Judge Fines Panama City Boast Company and Operator $4,500 for Illegally Feeding Dolphins
- NOAA News Release: Dolphin Feeding and Harassment is Harmful and Illegal, Federal Agency Reminds Public and Boaters
Updated: June 25, 2012 | <urn:uuid:23bf0748-696e-4576-b0c6-4a2b738e3985> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/education/protectdolphins.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00167-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955726 | 664 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Charles William Wallace (February 6, 1865 – August 7, 1932) was an American scholar and researcher, famed for his discoveries in the field of English Renaissance theatre.
Wallace was born in Hopkins, Missouri to Thomas Dickay Wallace and Olive McEwen. Intending to be a teacher, he graduated from Western Normal College, Shenandoah, Iowa, and taught briefly in country schoolhouses before becoming a professor of Latin and English at his alma mater. He also founded and directed a preparatory school for the state university in Nebraska. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska, and a doctorate from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. He was an instructor at the University of Nebraska in 1901, and appointed professor of English Dramatic Literature at that institution in 1910. He married Hulda Alfreda Berggren in 1893.
From 1907 through 1916, he and his wife conducted an intensive survey at the Public Record Office in London. The Wallaces discovered the court record papers of the dispute between Alleyn and the owners of The Theatre, an account of which he published as The First London Theatre: Materials for a History. They also discovered Shakespeare's 1612 deposition in the Bellott v. Mountjoy lawsuit, and records of the suits Keysar v. Burbage (1610), Ostler v. Heminges (1615), and Witter v. Heminges and Condell (1619), among a range of other documents, yielding important new knowledge in the study of Jacobean drama. The Wallaces' work provided a vastly improved comprehension of the role of the children's companies in English Renaissance drama.
Wallace's dedication to his research took an unusual, perhaps unique form: in order to finance further work, he became a wildcatter in the oil industry in 1918. He made successful discoveries in that arena too, and planned to use his new wealth to publish a lavish collection of original records in Elizabethan and Jacobean studies; but his death from cancer in 1932 prevented the realization of his plan.
Wallace's most important publications are his books,The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597–1603 (1908), The Evolution of the English Drama Up to Shakespeare (1912), and The First London Theatre: Materials for a History (1913). | <urn:uuid:ade83e2f-ac9a-46f3-b632-7385e9edff26> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mashpedia.com/Charles_William_Wallace | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00066-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965269 | 478 | 2.96875 | 3 |
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Iowa City Press-Citizen: West High Project Lead the Way Class Creates Model Cars
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Students Connect Hydrogen Fuel Cells, Model Cars
by Rob Daniel
Wadood Daoud sat at the table in the West High engineering classroom Wednesday, working on wiring an engine that eventually will connect to a hydrogen fuel cell for a model car.
"We want to get the Innovation Award," the West High freshman said of his group, referring to the award given to the most creative solution in a project. "We don't want (our car) to stop in the middle, so we want to have a backup."
Daoud is part of the engineering classes at West High that spent last week working on alternative energy cars. Part of the Project Lead the Way curriculum, the project had 63 students building cars that ran on solar power, hydrogen fuel cells or both, teacher Dominic Audia said.
Audia said the idea was to focus on "cutting edge technology."
"They're trying to power a car with 100 percent green energy," he said. "They're learning about the chemistry and science of the fuel cells. Now they're trying to make it better."
On Wednesday, the class, divided into teams of two to four students each, spent the class time figuring out how to get the most power out of the alternative fueling. Many of the students used both the solar power and hydrogen fuel, planning to keep one or the other as a backup.
They included sophomore Austin Brenner, 15, and junior Nick Grimsman, 17. They spent much of the class time on the loading dock outside of the classroom, aiming a solar panel at the sun to charge the hydrogen fuel cells. Brenner said both were needed to really get the job done.
"You have to have the fuel cells to back it up," he said.
While Daoud worked on wiring the engine, other members of his team worked on figuring out how to keep the car's weight down while having the hydrogen fuel cell, which adds more size and weight to the vehicle.
Senior Gabriel Hanson said one way could be to adjust the angle of the body so the weight is distributed more evenly.
"It'll be more compact," he said.
Audia said the key to the project was making the vehicle as light as possible while also wiring the engine to the fuel cells to get the most current for more power. He said he was confident the students would figure it out.
"I never see a project that's the same," he said. "They surprise me with their ingenuity." | <urn:uuid:cf298f75-7013-4994-9ab2-b274c0f904e4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/news/iowa-city-press-citizen-west-high-project-lead-way-class-creates-model-cars | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976159 | 541 | 2.625 | 3 |
Central cord syndrome (CCS) is a type of incomplete spinal cord injury. CCS is marked by damage to the nerve fibers that bring messages from the brain to the body. This condition affects how you can use your arms and hands, and in some cases, your legs. There may be a loss of sensation and motor control.
CCS is caused by damage to the central part of the spinal cord. This damage may occur when the neck is hyperextended. This can be associated with:
Common causes of injury include:
CSS can also be due to:
Males over 50 are more likely to have this condition. Risk factors that increase your chances of developing CCS include:
Symptoms of CCS may include:
If CCS is due to trauma, symptoms usually come quickly. Sometimes, however, symptoms may come more slowly.
You will be asked about your symptoms and medical history. A physical exam will be done. A neurologic exam may also be done.
Images may be taken of your spinal cord. These can be done with:
Talk with your doctor about the best treatment plan for you. Rehab can take a long time for some patients. If you are young and have more muscle function, you have a better chance of recovering.
Treatment options include the following:
In most cases, surgery is not needed. Often treatment involves:
To help reduce your chance of getting a spinal cord injury, take the following steps:
Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Canadian Spinal Research Organization
Spinal Cord Research Centre
Check for safety: a home fall prevention checklist for older adults. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/toolkit/Falls_ToolKit/DesktopPDF/English/booklet_Eng_desktop.pdf. Published 2005. Accessed November 20, 2014.
Clinical Syndromes. J Spinal Cord Med. 2007;30:215-224.
Cortez R, Levi AD. Acute Spinal Cord Injury. Current Treatment Options in Neurology. 2007;9:115-125.
Finnoff JT, Midlenberger D, et al. Central cord syndrome in a football player with congenital spinal stenosis. Am J Sports Med. 2004;32:516-521.
NINDS central cord syndrome information page. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke website. Available at: http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/central_cord/central_cord.htm. Updated October 24, 2014. Accessed November 20, 2014.
Rich V, McCaslin E. Central cord syndrome in a high school wrestler: a case report. J Athl Train. 2006;41:341-344.
Spinal cord injury—acute management. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed. Updated December 10, 2014. Accessed November 20, 2014.
Spinal cord injury—chronic management. EBSCO DynaMed website. Available at: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed. Updated August 11, 2014. Accessed November 20, 2014.
Spinal cord injury (SCI): fact sheet. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/TraumaticBrainInjury/scifacts.html. Updated November 4, 2010. Accessed November 20, 2014.
Visocchi M, Di Rocco F, et al. Subacute clinical onset of post-traumatic myelopathy. Acta Neurochir. 2003;145: 799-804.
Last reviewed December 2014 by Rimas Lukas, MD
Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. | <urn:uuid:1551c11f-9484-43b8-b238-68e75d1773b7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wmhs.com/microsites/library.php?chunkiid=434768 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895117 | 899 | 3.390625 | 3 |
In the chloroplast, both types are associated with integral membrane proteins in the thylakoid membrane.
Note the system of alternating single and double bonds (white bars) that run around the porphyrin ring. Although I am forced to draw the single and double bonds in fixed positions, actually the "extra" electrons responsible for the double bonds are not fixed between any particular pair of carbon atoms but instead are free to migrate around the ring. This property enables these molecules to absorb light.Both chlorophylls absorb light most strongly in the red and violet parts of the spectrum. Green light is absorbed poorly. Thus when white light shines on chlorophyll-containing structures like leaves, green light is transmitted and reflected and the structures appear green.
Chloroplasts also contain carotenoids. These are also pigments with colors ranging from red to yellow.
Carotenoids absorb light most strongly in the blue portion of the spectrum. They thus enable the chloroplast to trap a larger fraction of the radiant energy falling on it.
Carotenoids are often the major pigments in flowers and fruits. The red of a ripe tomato and the orange of a carrot are produced by their carotenoids.
In leaves, the carotenoids are usually masked by the chlorophylls. In the autumn, as the quantity of chlorophyll in the leaf declines, the carotenoids become visible and produce the yellows and reds of autumn foliage.
The figure below shows the structure of beta-carotene, one of the most abundant carotenoids. Note again the system of alternating single and double bonds that in this molecule runs along the hydrocarbon chain that connects the two benzene rings. As in chlorophyll, the electrons of the double bonds actually migrate though the chain and also make this molecule an efficient absorber of light.
Many animals use ingested beta-carotene as a precursor for the synthesis of vitamin A. | <urn:uuid:7ec5e9c3-172c-4c6a-b3e1-5f37b8c1b72b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/Chlorophyll.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398873.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913803 | 407 | 3.9375 | 4 |
Kronos’ Fifty for the Future Composers
Fodé Lassana Diabaté - MaliWebsite: http://www.facebook.com/triodakali
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Program NotesSunjata’s Time is dedicated to Sunjata Keita, the warrior prince who founded the great Mali Empire in 1235, which at its height stretched across the West African savannah to the Atlantic shores. Sunjata’s legacy continues to be felt in many ways. During his time as emperor he established many of the cultural norms that remain in practice today—including the close relationship between patron and musician that is the hallmark of so much music in Mali.
The word “time” is meant to denote both “rhythm,” an important element in balafon performance, and “epoch,” since the composition sets out to evoke the kinds of musical sounds that might have been heard in Sunjata’s time, drawing on older styles of balafon playing which Lassana Diabaté has learned while studying with elder masters of the instrument in Guinea.
Each of the first four movements depicts a character who played a central role in Sunjata’s life, and each is fronted by one of the four instruments of the quartet. The fifth movement brings the quartet together in equality to portray the harmonious and peaceful reign of this great West African emperor who lived nearly eight centuries ago.
1. Sumaworo. Sumaworo Kante was the name of the sorcerer blacksmith king, Sunjata’s opponent, who usurped the throne of Mande, a small kingdom on the border of present-day Guinea and Mali, to which Sunjata was the rightful heir. Sumaworo was a fearsome and powerful character who wore human skulls as a necklace. The balafon originally belonged to him and its sound was believed to have esoteric powers. (This movement is dedicated to the viola.)
2. Sogolon. Sogolon Koné was Sunjata’s mother, a wise buffalo woman who came from the land of Do, by the Niger river in the central valley of Mali, where the music is very old and pentatonic and sounds like the roots of the blues. It was predicted that Sogolon would give birth to a great ruler, and so two hunters brought her to Mande, where she married the king. But her co-wives were jealous and mocked her son. When Sunjata’s father died, Sunjata’s half-brother took the throne, and Sunjata went into exile with his mother (dedicated to the second violin).
3. Nana Triban. Nana Triban was Sunjata’s beautiful sister. When Sunjata went into exile, the sorcerer blacksmith wrested the throne from Sunjata’s half-brother. So the people of Mande went to find Sunjata, to beg him to return and help overthrow Sumaworo. Sunjata gathered an army from all the neighboring kingdoms. But it seemed that the Sumaworo was invincible, drawing on his powers of sorcery to evade defeat.
Finally, Nana Triban intervened. She used her skills of seduction to trick Sumaworo into revealing the secret of his vulnerability, escaping before the act was consummated. Armed with this knowledge, Sunjata was victorious, restoring peace to the land, and building West Africa’s most powerful empire (dedicated to the cello).
4. Bala Faseké. Bala Faseké Kouyaté was Sunjata’s jeli (griot, or hereditary musician), and his instrument was the balafon, with its enchanting sound of rosewood keys and buzzing resonators. Bala Faseké was much more than just a musician: he was an adviser, educator, a go-between, and a loyal friend to Sunjata. And, of course, he was an astonishing virtuoso. The Mali Empire would never have been formed without the music of Bala Faseké, and the history of West Africa would have been very different. (This movement is dedicated to the first violin.)
5. Bara kala ta. The title means, “ he took up the archer’s bow.” Sunjata was unable to walk for the first seven years of his life; as a result, his mother was mercilessly taunted by her co-wives: “ Is this the boy who is predicted to be king... who pulls himself along the ground and steals the food from our bowls?” (This is why he is called “ Sunjata,” meaning “ thief-lion”).
Finally, unable to take the insults any longer, Sunjata stood up on his own two feet—a moment that was immortalized in a well-known song, a version of which became the national anthem of Mali. In little time, he became a gifted archer and revealed his true nature as a leader.
This final movement makes subtle reference to the traditional tune in praise of Sunjata, known to all Mande griots. It brings together the quartet in a tribute to this great ruler—and the role that music played in his life.
Notes about Sunjata’s Time by Lucy Durán
For the composition of Sunjata’s Time, Diabaté first recorded the piece on his own instrument, the balafon. The recording was then transcribed and arranged for string quartet by Jacob Garchik. Hear Diabaté’s original balafon recordings here.
About Fodé Lassana Diabaté
Fodé Lassana Diabaté is a virtuoso balafon (22-key xylophone) player. He was born in 1971 into a well-known griot family and began playing balafon at the age of five with his father, Djelisory Diabaté, a master balafon player. Diabaté later apprenticed himself to celebrated balafon masters such as El Hadj Djeli Sory Kouyaté and Alkali Camara. To this day, Diabaté cherishes the now rare recordings of his mentors, whose unique styles continue to be an important inspiration to him.
In the late 1980s Diabaté was invited to join the band of Ami Koita, one of Mali’s most popular divas of the time, and has since recorded with many of Mali’s top artists such as Toumani Diabaté, Salif Keita, Babani Koné, Tiken Jah Fakoly, and Bassekou Kouyaté. He has collaborated with international artists across a number of genres including jazz and Latin music, and was a member of the Grammy-nominated Mali-Cuba collaboration, Afrocubism. He is the leader of the new group, Trio Da Kali, a trio of Malian griots whose aim is to bring back forgotten repertoires and styles of the Mande griot tradition. Trio Da Kali made its US debut at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley as part of Kronos’ 40th Anniversary celebration concert in December 2013. A second performance with Kronos took place a few months later at The Clarice, University of Maryland. The Kronos-Trio Da Kali collaboration was made possible by the Aga Khan Music Initiative.
Trio Da Kali has also performed to great critical acclaim in the Royal Albert Hall for the Proms Festival (2013), the South Bank for the London Jazz Festival, and Paris’ Theatre de la Ville, and are touring the UK in February 2015 in the series ‘Making Tracks’. Trio Da Kali’s eponymous debut album, released by World Circuit Records in March 2015, includes two remarkable balafon solos by Diabaté.
Diabaté’s style of playing balafon is unique in its range of expressive tone and lyrical melodies, and he has perfected the complex art of carving - and tuning - the smoked rosewood keys of the balafon, a craft he learned in Guinea. | <urn:uuid:58359f1d-d802-4884-a1a8-f4b3d8e53ab4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://kronosquartet.org/fifty-for-the-future/composers/fode-lassana-diabate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969077 | 1,755 | 2.578125 | 3 |
What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?
February 29, 2008; Page W1
High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.
Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.
|Finland's students are the brightest in the world, according to an international test. Teachers say extra playtime is one reason for the students' success. WSJ's Ellen Gamerman reports.|
The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.
The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.
Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.
|Fanny Salo in class|
Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is a bubbly ninth-grader who loves "Gossip Girl" books, the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.
Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.
At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.
Fanny's more rebellious classmates dye their blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks. Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are popular in one clique. Teens sift by style, including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari," or hip-hop, or the confounding "fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short for "Check it on Google, you idiot." Heavy-metal fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.
The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.
One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.
|Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi|
Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."
In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping to learn how Scandinavian educators used technology. Officials from the Education Department, the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith Krueger was less impressed by the technology than by the good teaching he saw. "You kind of wonder how could our country get to that?" says Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of school technology officers that organized the trip.
Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn't translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: " 'Nah. So what'd you do last night?'" she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely "glue this to the poster for an hour," she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.
|At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu|
Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.
Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don't speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.
Another difference is financial. Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland's high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.
Finnish students have little angstata -- or teen angst -- about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties -- medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don't have the elite status of a Harvard.
|Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki|
Taking away the competition of getting into the "right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.
Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.
The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, but they, too, worry about falling behind in the shifting global economy. They rely on electronics and telecommunications companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia, along with forest-products and mining industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland needs to fast-track its brightest students the way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at producing more go-getters. Parents also are getting pushier about special attention for their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of the suburban Olari School. "We are more and more aware of American-style parents," he says.
Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus. Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of his school's advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him, instead calling on others. While napping in class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says, "We just have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're learning how to live."
Write to Ellen Gamerman at firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:479b8387-ed24-47e5-9330-20961d6e211d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://hceducation.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-makes-finnish-kids-so-smart.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00110-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96952 | 2,466 | 2.734375 | 3 |
From Abracadabra to Zombies | View All
The fallacy of false implication occurs when a statement, which may be clear and even true, implies that something else is true or false when it isn't. For example, if I write in my 30-day evaluation log of an employee that on May 15th she was on time for work, someone reading the log might infer that this was unusual and that usually the employee did not arrive on time. Perhaps she is always on time but by indicating her promptness just once I can give the false impression that she is usually late for work.
One of the more common places to find examples of false implication is the grocery store. Products are labeled and named in ways that are often misleading.
For example, a package of Carnation Breakfast Bars asserts that the product inside provides 25% of the daily-recommended amount of protein, if taken with a glass of milk. What the package does not tell you is that almost all of the protein is provided by the milk. A package of Healthy Choice lunchmeat says that it is 97% fat-free, which is true if measured by weight, but when 25% of its calories come from fat, isn’t the claim deceptive? Cow’s milk and other dairy products are high in fat and cholesterol, but the dairy industry cleverly expresses fat content as a percentage of weight. Using this system, milk said to have 2% fat is actually 31% fat when fat is measured as a percentage of calories. Whole milk and yogurt are 49% fat, cheese is 60-70% fat. (There is no low fat butter; butter is 100% fat.) (Carroll 2004: 36).
Many products use words in their labeling to falsely imply that they contain fruit. None of the following products have any fruit or fruit juice in them*:
- Berry Berry Kix
- Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries
- Dannon Danimals XL (Strawberry Explosion)
- Froot Loops
- Fruity Cheerios
- Juicy Fruit Gum
- Life Savers (Wild Cherry)
- Nestle Nesquik milk and drink mix (strawberry)
- Post Fruity Pebbles
- Push Pop (cherry)
- Ring Pop (cherry)
- Trix cereal
- Trix yogurt (strawberry kiwi)
- Yoplait Go-Gurt yogurt (Strawberry Splash)
The critical consumer has to read the ingredient list to find out if those foods that seem to have fruit in them or are touted as being 'natural' or 'organic' are really what they appear to be from the words or pictures on the product.
You might think that a product called Country Time® Lemonade Flavor Drink might have some lemon in it. Not a chance. This Kraft Foods product has no lemon juice, no lemon pulp, not even any lemon peel in it. Here’s a list of the ingredients: Water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, contains less than 2% of natural flavor, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), citric acid, sodium citrate, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preserve freshness), ester of wood rosin, and yellow 5. According to the distributor of this drink, “the name is reminiscent of a time when it was easier to get good old-fashioned lemonade.” When asked how Pillsbury could call a product that contains artificial flavorings and BHA (a preservative) “Natural Chocolate Flavored Chocolate Chip Cookies,” a company representative replied that ‘natural’ modifies ‘chocolate flavored’ not ‘cookie.’ Says [William] Lutz, “You’d better brush up on the syntactic structure of modification if you want to be able to read food labels these days” (Lutz 1989: 28). (Carroll 2004: 36)
Many products you might think have fruit in them don't but they have lots of corn syrup, which is not exactly what a mom or dad should be pumping into their kids.
What significance is there to Tetra Pak’s and Combibloc’s claim that their juice boxes are “easily recyclable” when there are few recycling programs that accept juice boxes? What was the point of Mobil Corp.’s claim that its Hefty trash bags are “degradable” when they degrade only if exposed to the ultraviolet light of the sun, but most such bags end up buried in landfills? Being made from recycled materials may not be significant if the percentage of recycled material in the product is negligible. Being compostable may be insignificant if there are not many facilities available to do the composting. Thus, what is the point of Proctor and Gamble, which has roughly half of the $3.8 billion U.S. market for disposable diapers, advertising that it is developing technology that converts disposable diapers into compost? “The fact that they’re running these ads has led to a direct misleading effect,” said John McCaull, general council for Californians Against Waste. “It’s fostering a belief in the public that these facilities and programs actually exist when that’s hardly the case.” It may be made of 75% recyclable material but it’s still 100% garbage. (Carroll 2004: 36)
Berrivale Orchards Limited of Australia sells GlenPark Cherry Berry 100% Fruit Juice. On the one-liter pack the words 'Cherry Berry 100% Fruit juice' appear. There are also graphics of cherries and berries. However, the product only has one percent each of blackcurrant juice and cherry juice. The rest is apple juice.*
The only way to find out that a product that proclaims it is "100% Fresh Orange Juice" contains sugar and preservatives is to read the ingredients list.
Caveat emptor! The life you save may be your child's.
here for a
complete list of the SD critical thinking mini-lessons | <urn:uuid:1cb344e1-63b5-441d-8733-8f809e87373b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://skepdic.com/falseimplication.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94218 | 1,279 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Tropical Storm Maria is moving away from Japan and strong wind shear is pushing its rainfall east of the storm's center, with no areas of heavy rain remaining in the tropical cyclone. The low-level center of the storm is now exposed and a wind shear greater than 30 knots (34.5 mph) continues to further weaken the storm.
Wind shear is a critical factor in hurricane formation and destruction, primarily in the vertical direction from the surface to the top of the troposphere, the region of the atmosphere that our active weather is confined to, about 40,000 feet altitude. Tropical cyclones are heat engines powered by the release of latent heat when water vapor condenses into liquid water and wind shear hurts tropical cyclones by removing the heat and moisture they need from the area near their center. See more at Weather Underground.
At 4:45 a.m. EDT, NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite saw that rain associated with Tropical Storm Maria was limited to the east of the storm's center. Rainfall was also light to moderate, falling at a rate between .78 to 1.57 inches/20 to 40 mm per hour. By 11 a.m. EDT, Maria's maximum sustained winds were down to 35 knots (~40 mph) and weakening. It was located near 31.9 North and 155.6 East, about 780 nautical miles east of Tokyo, Japan. It was moving to the east and into the open waters of the northern Pacific at a speed of 14 knots (16 mph).
By tomorrow, the combination of the strong wind shear with cooler sea surface temperatures are expected to make Maria dissipate.
On Oct. 18 at 0845 UTC (4:45 a.m. EDT), NASA's TRMM satellite saw that rain associated with Tropical Storm Maria was limited to east of the storm's center, and was light to moderate (pictured in green and blue) and falling at a rate between .78 to 1.57 inches/20 to 40 mm per hour. Credit: SSAI/NASA, Hal Pierce
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Battle rages over racist paintings in the Minnesota State Capitol
Critics say works like Father Hennepin Discovering St. Anthony Falls and others paint slanted historical picture.
Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
Standing in the waters of the Mississippi river, a Native American man in an elaborate war bonnet wears only a loincloth. A Native American maiden lies beside him, half naked. She leans away from him, lured toward a large crucifix held out by a monkish figure backed by the growling "hounds of hell."
The Anishinaabe Great Spirit appears like God from a children's book. To the onlooking European settlers, the Great Spirit offers the river's resources, the fruits of the forest — even the Native American couple.
And as the Native couple is freely relinquishing the land, the water, and the woods around them, they undergo a Christian baptism. Above, two angels offer moral cover for the white discoverers and civilizers, who receive this bounty for the state of Minnesota.
Made to look like a mural, the painting Discoverers and Civilizers Led to the Source of the Mississippi is actually adhered to the wall of the Minnesota Senate Chamber, where it looms over the heads of legislators. As such, it is slated for restoration along with the rest of the state Capitol building, as part of a massive $310 million, multiyear project.
But its very existence, along with other paintings of Native Americans in this building, has whipped up a maelstrom. Minnesota's violent, whitewashed past is at the center of it all.
Almost all of the Capitol's paintings were commissioned circa 1905 when the grand building was erected. From what hangs on the Capitol walls, it appears Minnesota's moral evolution came to a grinding halt that year.
The 120,000 visitors to the Capitol every year get a glimpse into an era when women couldn't vote (installing women's bathrooms is one of the few modifications to the structure), when Native Americans could apply for U.S. citizenship if they abandoned their tribes and adopted "the habits of civilized life," and when the population of Minnesota was 98 percent white.
St. Paul in 1905 was mostly red brick buildings and dirt roads, falling behind the rapid growth and expansion of its neighbor Minneapolis. Large mills and granaries were built around St. Anthony Falls, while industry waned in St. Paul. Cass Gilbert, a St. Paul native and the architect and designer of the Capitol, could see that government would be the foothold in his city. He wanted a monument that befit a capital city, and he wanted to fill it with high-quality art.
Gilbert hired mostly artists from the East Coast, who had never been to Minnesota, to tell the story of the state's progress. They were to depict the Star of the North as a bastion of culture and civilization, saved from the savages who once roamed here.
Edward Simmons painted Civilization of the Northwest, affixed to the wall between the arches of the most public and grandest space of the Capitol — the Rotunda. The series of paintings is rich with allegory declaring the settlers rightful owners of the land and resources of Minnesota. A robust young white man is the central character in all the paintings. He cracks a whip, menacing a strange group of beasts and one man: a cowering Native American.
Francis Davis Millet, an esteemed artist with a strong national reputation, was hired to paint The Signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, a retelling of one of the most important events in the formation of the state of Minnesota: the signing of a treaty between the U.S. government and the Dakota tribe.
The Signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux
Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society
Millet was charged with painting the state's first territorial governor, Alexander Ramsey, in the best light possible. Ramsey stands on a platform, shaking hands with a Native American chief under a large makeshift canopy. Teepees fill up the background and Native American families sit and watch peacefully as other tribal members sign the large scroll on a table.
Douglas Volk, a Minnesota painter, captured a scene from a book by the French priest Father Hennepin, recounting his six-month stay in Minnesota as a captive of the Dakota. Father Hennepin Discovering St. Anthony Falls depicts the first time a European saw the only waterfall on the Mississippi. The painting's holy namesake rises up above the group of Dakota and one European companion to hold out his crucifix and bless the waterfall, which would later power many mills and breweries at the heart of Minneapolis. Off to the right in this painting, the sole woman carries a portage, topless.
"Cass Gilbert executed the art in great classical style that reflects the mores of the times," Minnesota Historical Society Director, Stephen Elliott, told MPR in July 2015. "It is the story of white triumphalism."
What really happened at the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux is quite different from what Francis Davis Millet painted for Gilbert. For starters, Millet had the wrong Sioux: His were Lakota, who had nothing to do with the treaty.
During the early 1800s, European settlers began moving west of the St. Croix River and saw the value of the land and its resources. Alexander Ramsey and Henry Sibley, key players in the founding of the state of Minnesota, convinced the U.S. government to negotiate the purchase of land from the Dakota people living here. In 1851, Dakota chieftains came to a locale called Traverse des Sioux to hear about the proposed treaty, listening intently to Sibley, a fur trader who had married a Dakota woman and translated the document for them.
When Dakota chiefs went to the table to sign the treaty, they were told to sign a third piece of paper. A third copy of the treaty, they assumed. But, in fact, they were handing over most of their share of treaty money to local fur traders to "settle their affairs." Henry Sibley walked away with $66,000. Although the treaty gave 24 million acres of Dakota land to the soon-to-be state of Minnesota (basically everything south of I-94) in return for three cents an acre, Sibley got more of that money than the Dakota did.
With little land or money, the Dakota struggled in the coming years to feed their families. In the summer of 1862 the government had delayed giving the Dakota the food and annuity payments promised by the treaty. They were starving. The brutal three-month War of 1862 that followed left many people dead, mostly settlers, and led to the ultimate capture of hundreds of Dakota warriors. Ramsey and Sibley wrote to President Abraham Lincoln requesting that the federal government allow them to hang 303 Dakota men. Lincoln agreed to 38.
On December 26, 1862, 4,000 people came from miles around to watch the largest mass execution in U.S. history in downtown Mankato. Millet's painting of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux makes the treaty look like a respectable act of diplomacy. In truth, it was deceitful, and ushered in the war that led to the ultimate expulsion of the Dakota from Minnesota.
In her book North Country: The Making of Minnesota, historian Mary Lethert Wingerd writes that such ugly victories over Native tribes cleared the way for Minnesota's 20th-century success. "With prospects ahead unlimited," Wingerd writes, "Minnesotans resolutely put their shoulders to the wheel of progress. If they looked back at all, it was only to fashion a selective memory that shone with benevolence on their brave new world."
Whites were already predominant when Cass Gilbert was handed the artistic reins at the Capitol. The laws enacted inside his new building made sure tribal lands continued to dwindle. In 1906, the Legislature passed the Snyder Act, helping lumber barons in northern Minnesota encroach upon the forests of the White Earth Reservation, while giving the tribe little in return.
In an otherwise boring Capitol Preservation Commission meeting in late 2013, Gov. Mark Dayton asked, perhaps innocently, whether there needed to be so many paintings of the Civil War in the Governor's Reception Room.
That one question spawned many more. Soon every image in the Capitol, even the whole purpose of the building, was up for debate.
Should paintings that reflect Minnesota's sins against Native Americans and others be preserved as part of the historic record? Or should the vestiges of a shameful time be scrubbed from a forward-facing Legislature?
Art decisions at the Capitol have fallen under the jurisdiction of the Minnesota Historical Society since 1972. During that time, the state institution removed no paintings, and added few, except to update with new portraits of modern governors.
After Dayton's Reception Room reflection, the Preservation Commission formed an art subcommittee, bringing together experts from the state's art, historical, legislative, and cultural bodies. The art subcommittee would pass recommendations on to the Preservation Commission and then work with the Minnesota Historical Society to reach a final decision. The experts were charged with reviewing all 148 artworks in the Capitol, including the seemingly endless governors' portraits and much Civil War memorabilia. None of the artwork has garnered more thorny, emotionally charged debate than the paintings of Native Americans.
Gwen Westerman's Dakota ancestors were expelled from their Minnesota homeland after the War of 1862. Not until she was hired as an English professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, did Westerman, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota tribe, learn the full extent of her ancestral roots to her new home. Her great-great-great-grandmother Ta Sina Sapa Win was the sister of Ta Oyate Duta, or Little Crow, one of the key Dakota chiefs who participated in the treaty that ceded huge tracts of land to white settlers.
Westerman, one of two Native Americans on the Capitol art subcommittee, says her comments were often discounted at their first meetings. When the group discussed the Civil War art, one presenter noted the the incredible attention to accurate detail of the Civil War experience. The man, a descendant of a Union soldier, asked subcommittee members to consider the pride people take in seeing their ancestors depicted in paintings inside the Capitol.
At the next meeting, it was Westerman's turn to lead a close study of paintings representing the Dakota people. "I asked [them] to imagine they were Dakota, and saw their ancestors portrayed in these paintings. Not with loving and accurate detail, but distorted to look like how others perceived them to be." She felt a shift in the conversation.
Westerman says Native viewpoints like hers are often disregarded "from the get-go, before we even speak." Depictions of Dakota history published by white writers are often considered to be "the truth, the whole truth, and the only truth," shutting out Dakota accounts.
"A full account of Minnesota's history will include multiple perspectives of events, not just the master narrative," believes Westerman.
When Andrea Carlson, a local artist of Native descent, walks into the Capitol, "I just start laughing. I see European fantasy paintings in this faux-classical style that is selling something really hard, like super propaganda."
Discoverers and Civilizers Led to the Source of the Mississippi
Courtesy of David Oakes, Senate Media Services
In a letter to the art subcommittee, the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe singled out the purported discovery of St. Anthony Falls, an area Native tribes had occupied for some 12,000 years — the Ojibwe knew it as Kakabika, or "severed rock" — as especially insulting. "Importantly, some pieces of art misrepresent our history and puts Native Americans in an offensive and inaccurate light, such as the Governor's Reception Room painting of Father Hennepin 'discovering' St. Anthony Falls."
Carlson sees that painting as proof that "the collusion of church and state is okay if it means that lands can be procured for the white man." When she looks at the Capitol's collection as a whole, she sees "romantic fantasies of the genocide of a people," Carlson says.
But, she reasons, maybe keeping them where they are "means they can be teaching tools, to remind the state about how wrong they have been."
Paul Anderson assumes the role of elder statesman on the Capitol art subcommittee. In a December meeting of the group, the retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice cried out, "These paintings are too much a part of our history."
Preservationists like Anderson and Sen. David Senjem, R-Rochester, want the Capitol to remain a historic monument and keep the art as it has been for a hundred years. They think removing and relocating controversial pieces would destroy Gilbert's vision and diminish the value of the artwork. A piece of Minnesota history would be lost.
The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, in its letter to the subcommittee, calls for the removal "of offensive, traumatizing paintings," and to give them a new home. "Preferably a museum," reads the letter. The two Native American people serving on the subcommittee, Westerman and Anton Treuer, professor of Ojibwe language at Bemidji State, both favor removing from the Capitol the most controversial art.
"This is our Confederate flag battle," Treuer says. "We want these one-sided historical paintings, these paintings that glorify the white settlers and disparage the Native people, to be removed and relocated. Even with the context of time, it is not fair to say that what was racist then is no longer racist now."
Rep. Dean Urdahl, R-Grove City, a subcommittee member and noted Minnesota history buff, talks about "the Capitol telling a story that needs to be told." He agrees that it might not be the only story that can be told. "Most of the artwork that is offensive to some is too valuable to be moved," he says, citing the Discoverers and Civilizers Senate chambers painting as one example. Anderson chimed in at a recent meeting, "These paintings they want moved are worth millions."
Brian Szott, the Minnesota Historical Society's art curator and head of collection, reports that no one has ever put a price tag on the Capitol artwork. Pieces that are thought to be permanent are usually not given a monetary value. Not that it couldn't be done: A value estimate could be arrived at by looking at the artists' other sales, and the condition, size, content, and historical importance of the pieces.
In the case of the Capitol, much of the art was created by some of the biggest names in America at that time. "There is no concrete answer and it is a good question to think about," Szott told the subcommittee, "whether or not the value will be enhanced or diminished by relocation."
Last fall, the subcommittee held public input meetings around the state, a dozen in all. They created an online survey, including frank questions asking if paintings depicting Native Americans should stay or go.
"Having public meetings is all well and good," says Christina Woods, who attended a meeting in Duluth, "but there were only four Native people at this meeting." As a member of the Bois Forte band of Chippewa and cultural competency trainer, she serves as a bridge between the city of Duluth and its homeless Native community. She is concerned that those who are misrepresented within the Capitol are not being granted equal opportunity to give feedback. "Most reservations struggle to get both cell coverage and effective broadband, so digital access is sketchy," says Woods.
Even taking Woods' concerns into account, the majority of online survey respondents want some sort of change to the controversial art. Only 22 percent of nearly 1,300 people surveyed said that the art should be kept in place with no changes. Some 36 percent wanted the offensive works removed from the Capitol, with another 10 percent wanting them relocated within the Capitol. And 32 percent suggested changes like new interpretive material, or balancing the old paintings with new pieces.
Matt Massman, the commissioner of administration, who serves on the art subcommittee, proclaimed at its December meeting, "We can see this as an opportunity," and then wondered out loud, "How much
change can we stomach in the room?" The question seemed directed at the more conservative members. Dean Urdahl has what looks like a firm position, that none of the paintings should be removed. Once the decision-making process leaves the subcommittee and enters the political arena, a few key legislators will have considerable sway on what happens. Urdahl is one of them.
Other states have had to deal with controversial art, but never in this amount. The Colorado State Capitol chose in 1999 to keep a controversial painting in a prominent location, but renamed it and gave it a new purpose. The Battle of Sand Creek became The Massacre of Sand Creek, and an artwork that once honored a great battle became a commemorative piece to help mourn 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho who were slaughtered that day.
Ted Lentz, Cass Gilbert Society president and a member of the art subcommittee, brought forward to the panel a compromise solution: to move the controversial paintings from the main governmental spaces, such as the Governor's Reception Room, to designated space in the Capitol for a five-year trial period. Lentz says this will "remove the controversy and provide an opportunity for all voices to be heard in a way that is nonconfrontational, removing the 'black or white' arguments around the work."
Lentz was once one of the staunchest supporters of preservation. But he was persuaded by the testimonies of many Native and non-Native people alike. He found Martin Luther King's words suitable justification for his change of heart: "Injustice to anyone threatens justice to everyone."
"Government credibility is at stake here," says Andrea Carlson. "If the government sits by and does nothing, it looks like they support this arcane thinking." Minnesota ranks as one of the worst states for racial disparity in education and standard of living. "Keeping this artwork in a place of authority gives credibility to the idea of white racial supremacy," says Carlson.
Paintings of Native Americans in the civic spaces of the Minnesota Capitol are dangerous, argues Christina Woods, because they affect the actions of legislators and civically engaged people. She says, "We need to talk about today. These images no longer operate in the past."
After a year of meetings, the art subcommittee has come to a consensus on exactly two paintings: The Signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux and Father Hennepin Discovering St. Anthony Falls in the Governor's Reception Room. When the Preservation Commission reconvened on February 23, the subcommittee recommended that these two paintings be removed from the reception room, but not the Capitol.
Where will they go? The Capitol renovation will double public space by lowering the basement level, creating an extra floor. An interpretive center for the art could also be created within the Capitol.
Despite all this work, research, and argument, the end result could mean almost all the art will stay exactly where it has been for over 100 years.
The subcommittee's omission of the offensive mural-like paintings Discoverers and Civilizers Led to the Source of the Mississippi or Civilization of the Northwest means their removal and relocation is unlikely. If these images of Native Americans being "civilized" through coerced baptism, whitewashing, and whipping remain in key civic spaces of the Capitol, the question becomes how and who will provide interpretations.
The decision-making process is still a little murky. "Nothing is as clear as one might hope," says Paul Mandell, executive secretary of the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board. "Art subcommittee recommendations are just that, a recommendation: one which the Preservation Commission may or may not act on."
The Minnesota Historical Society will have the final say in what happens to the artworks. "We don't want to take a side," says Jessica Kohen, public relations manager for MNHS. "We just want to listen right now, and it seems like there is still more listening to be done."
In the meantime, the art subcommittee has passed its recommendations up to the Preservation Commission, where its 22 members, all of them white, will wrestle with how, or if, Minnesota should finally reckon with its past.
State Rep. Diane Loeffler, tri-chair of the art subcommittee, says, "If 2 percent of the population is offended by how they are represented in the art, then that is 2 percent too many." Especially if that 2 percent are the people in the paintings.
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In 1994, a genocide took place in Rwanda and it is probably safe to say that few of us remember hearing much about it. How was it possible, we now ask ourselves, that we could have so easily ignored the brutal slaughter of nearly one million people.
A look back to those 100 days in 1994 reveals that while we may not have heard much about Rwanda, we most certainly heard a great deal about many other things.
April to July 1994: A Timeline
On April 7, 1994 Rwandan soldiers and trained militias armed with machetes unleashed a murderous campaign to destroy the minority Tutsi population.
On April 8, Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home from a self-inflicted gun shot wound.
On April 15, an estimated 20,000 Rwandans who had sought shelter Nyarubuye Church were slaughtered by government forces and members of the Interahamwe militia.
On April 22, former President Richard Nixon died and his funeral was held five days later.
On May 5, Michael Fay, an 18 year-old US citizen, was caned in Singapore as punishment for vandalism.
In mid May, the International Red Cross estimated that 500,000 Rwandans had been killed.
On June 17, OJ Simpson led police on a slow speed chase in a White Ford Bronco.
On July 4, the rebel army took control of the Rwandan capitol of Kigali and the genocide came to an end in a country littered with nearly one million corpses. It is widely acknowledged that the world largely ignored the genocide in 1994 and failed the people of Rwanda. A decade later, it is worth asking if our priorities have changed.
On September 8, 2004 "60 Minutes" ran a controversial story regarding President Bush's service in the Air National Guard that relied, in part, on forged memos.
On September 9, former Secretary of State Colin Powell officially declared that genocide was taking place in Darfur, Sudan.
On October 4, Romeo Dallaire, the head of the UN mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide warned that the world was responding to the crisis in Darfur much in the same way it responded to the genocide in Rwanda – with complete indifference.
On October 6, comedian Rodney Dangerfield died.
On January 24, 2005, Johnny Carson died.
On January 25, the UN released a report chronicling "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law"; among them the "killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence."
On March 11, Brian Nichols overpowered a deputy, stole her gun and killed three people in an Atlanta courthouse before escaping.
On March 14, the United Nation's estimated that at least 180,000 people have died in Darfur in the last year and a half.
Ten years ago, a genocide unfolded right in front of our eyes, but the media was more focused on the legal problems of various celebrities than it was on the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Africa.
And the same thing is happening today.
One has to wonder if, ten years from now, we'll be saying to one another "I vaguely remember hearing about the genocide in Sudan. It took place about the time of the Michael Jackson trial, right?"
We at the Coalition for Darfur
ask you to join us in raising awareness of the genocide and to consider making a small donation to any of the organizations providing life saving assistance to the neglected people of Darfur. | <urn:uuid:46ee8f58-ff25-49ed-bc42-df176d88d3f9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://restlessmania.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397842.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00164-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97235 | 730 | 2.65625 | 3 |
The earthquake and tsunami that struck the East Coast of Japan in 2011 killed nearly 20,000 people, displaced 500,000, caused $360 billion in economic damage and destroyed 138,000 buildings. It also created a large, coastal uninhabitable zone and left many shoreline residents unsure about rebuilding their residences and their lives.
Two-and-a-half years later, these issues still resonate. As the Brookings Institute reported, “The reconstruction challenges remain daunting for Japan. Hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced, the quality of the nuclear cleanup continues to raise concerns and the financial cost of rebuilding the Tohoku region is staggering.”
The Japanese government has pledged a massive, long-term reconstruction budget of $262 billion. But the question has to be asked: Given the frequency of devastating natural disasters in earthquake-prone regions of Japan, as well as the likelihood of a sea-level rise as a result of climate change, should population-intensive human settlements be rebuilt just as they were?
Scientists and other experts are questioning the wisdom of such policies. It was a topic at the May 2013 Wharton Global Forum in Tokyo, organized by the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership (IGEL) at Wharton, in a session titled “Risk, Challenges and Opportunities: Lessons Learned from 3/11.”
Given the frequency of devastating natural disasters in earthquake-prone regions of Japan, as well as the likelihood of a sea-level rise as a result of climate change, should population-intensive human settlements be rebuilt just as they were?
The issue is also relevant in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., where federal insurance until recently has been greatly subsidized, enabling some residents to repeatedly rebuild coastal property more easily. As is often the case, financial and political considerations — including the high valuation of shoreline homes and businesses continue to influence policy decisions.
National Geographic, in a 2013 article titled “Rising Seas,” predicts that coastal storm damage is set to rise dramatically. Shoreline cities, it said, “face a twofold threat: Inexorably rising oceans will gradually inundate low-lying areas, and higher seas will extend the ruinous reach of storm surges. The threat will never go away; it will only worsen. By the end of the century a 100-year storm surge like Sandy’s might occur every decade or less…. By the next century, if not sooner, large numbers of people will have to abandon coastal areas in Florida and other parts of the world.” In 2070, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the at-risk population in large port cities could reach 150 million, with $35 trillion worth of property under threat.
Abandoning coastal property, no matter how it may be threatened by future natural disasters, is difficult for people worldwide. In Japan, the post-Fukushima challenge is complicated by both the nature of the destruction and the limited options available in such a small island nation. Japan, says Robert Giegengack, professor of earth and environmental science at Penn, “is almost all coast. It’s coast and Mount Fuji.”
Yet people affected by the nuclear disaster have to relocate. The tragedy in Japan was not just “the thousands of people who were killed, and the people who were made sick by radiation sickness and will die within decades, but also that you have this beautiful region of the country that’s been decimated for many hundreds of years,” said Eric W. Orts, a Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics who chaired the Wharton Forum panel in Tokyo and who also heads IGEL. Erwann Michel-Kerjan, managing director of the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at Wharton, adds that people in Japan “want to stay where they are — they don’t want to move — but nuclear contamination means that hundreds of miles of coastline may be lost.”
Unlike Japan, says Michel-Kerjan, “the U.S. is huge. We really could relocate entire cities elsewhere.” But in the absence of an immediate and lethal threat, such as nuclear contamination, it’s much harder to declare property off-limits. “When people’s houses are destroyed, they say, ‘I will rebuild again right here,’” he notes. “And politicians, mayors or governors, how many of them will say, ‘You guys are out.’ They know they wouldn’t be re-elected if they said that. In any case, these aren’t easy questions to answer, because some of the people affected have been living in those locations for generations.”
The Catastrophe Paradox
Given that large-scale earthquakes and tsunamis regularly assault the Japanese coast (though not usually of such magnitude and usually not together), why were reactors like Fukushima Daiichi built along fault lines?
“When people’s houses are destroyed, they say, ‘I will rebuild again right here.’ And politicians, mayors or governors, how many of them will say, ‘You guys are out.’ They know they wouldn’t be re-elected if they said that.” — Erwann Michel-Kerjan
According to J. Mark Ramseyer, a professor of Japanese legal studies at Harvard Law School, it’s because owners such as the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) faced limited liability. In a 2011 journal article for Theoretical Inquiries in Law, he argues that TEPCO “would not pay the full cost of a meltdown anyway.… It could externalize the cost of running reactors. In most industries, firms rarely risk tort damages so enormous they cannot pay them. In nuclear power, ‘unpayable’ potential liability is routine. Privately owned companies bear the cost of an accident only up to the fire-sale value of their net assets. Beyond that, they pay nothing — and the damages from a nuclear disaster easily soar past that point.”
Total claims against Tokyo Electric have been estimated by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch to reach $31 billion to $49 billion, well beyond the pre-storm market capitalization of the company. Beyond that amount, Ramseyer says, “any losses fell on its victims –or if the government so chose, on taxpayers.”
Ramseyer’s point also applies to homeowners living on the coast in both Japan and the U.S. for whom routine rebuilding, often at public expense, has been a given. But the catastrophic nature of the recent Japanese and American coastal disasters has led to some rethinking of those assumptions.
The World Bank estimated the cost of the Japanese catastrophe at $235 billion, plus $125 billion related to shutdowns and delays in business recovery. The Japanese government has pledged huge long-term aid, but so far has offered a fraction of this amount for rebuilding efforts. It faces its own budget issues — Japan has the highest level of public debt in the world.
Questions are arising about spending many billions on rebuilding, only to face another devastating event, but that is indeed what has been proposed in the Tohoku area. Satoshi Kitahama, representative director of the Kizuna Foundation in Tokyo (a non-profit created to aid the survivors of the March 11, 2011 twin disasters), asks if that effort — though it may be emotionally satisfying — is economically viable. Given a small and aging population of just 20,000 people, with a limited number of those in the workforce, he says that paying residents to relocate might be a more viable option.
“I have suggested to many of the mayors — just pay them,” he says. “You can’t hold [residents] hostage for the nostalgia of what this used to be, because it is never coming back to that.” He suggests that efforts to raise low-lying areas or replant ancient forests are poor public policy. “Instead of dispersing those funds and letting the individual decide what to do with them, they put it into projects like this, spending billions of dollars for a population of 20,000,” he said. “Instead, give people a couple of hundred thousand dollars per resident and let them make the decision. Let people move to higher ground, to other parts of Japan.”
Major Commitments, But Talk of Retreat
As in Japan, the U.S. has made a major federal commitment to rebuilding the Northeast after Hurricane Sandy, committing $50 billion, much of which has not yet been spent. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, warning of more storms ahead and a predicted sea-level rise of as much as 31 inches by 2050, has asked for $20 billion to erect flood barriers, including dunes and bulkheads, to protect low-lying areas.
It’s easy to see how, in a litigious society, rebuilding, rather than relocating became the priority. A small coastal town in New Jersey, Harvey Cedars, had the prescience to work with the federal government’s Army Corps of Engineers on a $26 million plan to protect itself against the storms that have repeatedly caused major damage and wiped out both beach and beachfront property.
Some homeowners held out against signing on to the project, which required the building of sand dunes on their property — and in some cases destroyed their view. Harvey and Phyllis Karan took opposition to their dune further than most — to court — and as reported in a 2013 article for The New Yorker, won a $375,000 judgment in March of 2012.
Seven months later, in October, Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast, taking 159 lives, causing $69 billion in damages, and carrying away 37 million cubic yards of sand. But most of dune-sheltered Harvey Cedars was spared, including the Karans’ house. Despite that, their lawsuit continued, though their financial verdict was overturned last July. “All we wanted was our view,” said Phyllis Karan.
But simply rebuilding the Northeastern shore and moving on won’t be simple, especially in the wake of expensive new building requirements (some homes will have to go up on pilings) and escalating federal flood insurance premiums that can reach $30,000 annually. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has long provided subsidized coverage to property owners, but since early 2013 it has been phasing out subsidies for second homes and vacation residences, with premiums rising 25% annually until they reach actual market rates.
For companies, including those in Japan, “The event is seen as so catastrophic, there’s no reason to prepare for it. Small companies may not take protective measures because they can’t afford it — if a major event occurs, they’ll just go under.” — Howard Kunreuther
Until recently, the default position was that property would routinely be rebuilt at federal expense. As Justin Gillis and Felicity Barringer write in The New York Times in late 2012, “Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas.”
Marshall W. Meyer, a Wharton professor of management with a specialty in Asia, said of the FEMA insurance program, a lot of people think they over-insure – “the government shouldn’t be putting public funds at risk to insure homes on the New Jersey shore.”
The Times cites the example of 1,300-resident Dauphin Island on the Gulf Coast, which has been repeatedly battered by a dozen hurricanes and storms — and rebuilt each time.
According to Kitahama, speaking at Wharton’s Tokyo forum, “When thinking about how to rebuild, it’s very difficult. There will be another quake on the coast of Japan, and communities exist there in areas that have been inundated in the past. Also, some areas that were devastated this time, like Tohoku, had never had a quake or a tsunami.” One city that saw widespread damage “was in a safe zone.”
Reconstruction — in Japan and New York
Kitahama noted that there has been “a lot of focus on reconstruction, because that is the easy way to demonstrate action by the government — but it’s not really what’s needed.” He pointed to action by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to buy heavily damaged coastal property and put it into no-build zones.
“This is not happening on Tohoku,” Kitahama said, “so some are sitting on properties deemed to be in non-build areas, but they haven’t been given any kind of offer for their land.” Kitahama said that one of the best uses for the land in no-build zones would be as locations for renewable energy farms (see the separate report on alternative energy prospects for Japan).
In reality, New York’s efforts have been far from decisive, reflecting the high stakes involving any valuable coastal property. Governor Andrew Cuomo launched a $400 million homeowner buyout, and the Bloomberg administration followed up last spring with a $1.8 billion effort using federal Community Development Block Grant funding.
Cuomo’s plan, which also leverages federal funds, is unambiguous about what should be done with the abandoned property. “There are some parcels that Mother Nature owns,” Cuomo stated.
But Brad Gair, director of New York City’s housing recovery office, said its own funding is not oriented toward turning stricken property into open space — instead, it will be offered for redevelopment by new buyers. “If there is one element that we have not yet come to full alignment on,” he noted, “it’s whether properties acquired should be made permanently open space or whether some of those would be suitable for redevelopment — preferably for the home owners in the area. These are valuable properties. There is a limited amount of coastline properties.”
In announcing the $1.8 billion in grants, deputy mayor for operations Caswell Holloway said in early 2013 that the money would go to “restore neighborhoods, re-open businesses, and better protect our coast and coastal communities from the dangers of climate change.”
In the New York area alone, more than 300,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Sandy (with repair costs estimated at $9.6 billion), but city officials predict that only 10% to 15% will agree to city or state buyout offers. The storm has totally transformed the real estate market in some Northeastern shoreline communities. Although most homeowners are rebuilding, new buyers are asking questions about flood map zones, federal insurance and building elevations — and if they don’t like the answers, they’re looking for property elsewhere.
President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force issued a report in August 2013 that documents $110 billion in damages from 11 U.S. climate-related natural disasters in just the last year ($69 billion of that from Hurricane Sandy). The report, which embraces resilience as the new planning paradigm for disaster relief, makes sobering reading. It recognizes the elevated risk to shorelines from climate change, and suggests that such recognition be incorporated into all future relief planning. And it says that there may be limits to rebuilding efforts — despite new, stronger building codes that require elevating buildings above the high-water mark.
“Over time,” the report noted, “the ability to incrementally increase the height of flood control structures may be limited. Some communities are already facing limits to their ability to adapt to risk, presenting challenging questions for policy makers about managing consequences…. Understanding the limits of tolerable risk is an active area of research and public debate.”
Taxpayers, opined the Times in an editorial on the federal report, “should not be paying to rebuild and then re-rebuild as the sea level rises. Even those politicians who say they still don’t believe in climate change must see that the system needs fixing.”
Insurance and Catastrophe Planning
The shock of responding to such a severe and fast-moving event as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami has heightened emotions and complicated rebuilding plans. Howard Kunreuther, a Wharton professor and co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, argues that people “aren’t prepared for low-probability, high-consequence events — the likelihood is very small, so it’s below a threshold level of concern. The general feeling that an earthquake of that magnitude coupled with a tsunami was not going to happen.”
For companies, including those in Japan, Kunreuther adds, “The event is seen as so catastrophic, there’s no reason to prepare for it. Small companies may not take protective measures because they can’t afford it — if a major event occurs, they’ll just go under.”
Kunreuther argues that short-term insurance is part of the problem. “The industry has traditionally looked at annual policies,” he says. “But there is very little concern over climate change or other long-term effects in setting rates with one-year policies. We have been arguing for five-year policies so the costs can be spread over multiple years — but there’s not a lot of movement on that.”
Robert Meyer, a Wharton marketing professor who also is co-director of the school’s Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, says that simply having flood insurance available, even at federally subsidized rates, is no guarantee that people will buy it — only 13% of American homeowners have such policies, for instance. New Jersey Manufacturer’s Insurance, which has 280,000 homeowner policies (and paid out $241 million in Sandy-related claims), said only 11,000 (or 4%) of them include flood coverage. That percentage didn’t change after Hurricane Sandy, said spokesman Pat Breslin.
Chile Sets an Example
According to Meyer, “If you give people discretion on whether to buy flood insurance, they won’t make the right decision. Even people who have been through hurricanes forget pretty quickly if they weren’t badly affected. You need strong leadership at the very top, and you need very strong building codes. If new nuclear plants are built in Japan, it will have to be to very high standards.”
“If you give people discretion on whether to buy flood insurance, they won’t make the right decision. Even people who have been through hurricanes forget pretty quickly if they weren’t badly affected.” — Robert Meyer
Meyer cites the positive example of Chile, most recently hit with an 8.8-magnitude quake in 2010. According to Bloomberg.com, “Since 1960, when the country suffered a 9.5 magnitude quake, the largest ever recorded, Chile has steadily improved building codes to protect lives and property. In 2010’s temblor, only five commercial buildings designed with the help of structural engineers were destroyed, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey.” One building, the $200 million Titanium Tower, incorporated the latest earthquake technology (including shock-absorbing steel dampers) and survived with no structural damage.
Nonetheless, Meyer says it’s impossible to build infrastructure to survive severe, 1,000-year natural disasters, even if the political will existed. “New York City is a great example. It’s sitting right on the water, one hurricane away from a $100 billion disaster. But with the probability of such a storm at 1.0, it’s very difficult to get people to take action. After Sandy, an unused airport was used to store 15,000 storm-damaged cars, and yet people with vehicles or fleets of them took no action to prevent them from getting flooded.”
According to Meyer, the risk management center has responded to that problem by building online simulations that “can realistically give a sense it what it would be like to experience a serious hurricane. It helps people develop options for protective action.” That’s in line with the federal Sandy report, which found that many residents of storm-prone regions are unaware of the risks they face, or how severe the consequences might be.
Looking forward, the case against reoccupying some hard-hit coastal regions of both the U.S. and Japan — despite their high value on many levels — can be compelling. As adopted policy, however, it is fraught with political consequences and strong emotions. Rebuilding efforts will go forward, in both countries, but with greater awareness of risk, and with limits on insurance coverage and the location and design of rebuilt buildings. In some cases, federal safety nets will be gone. Given that, the marketplace is likely to play a major role in determining the future of shoreline communities. | <urn:uuid:8891e34c-0f40-48d7-911a-1312528106f2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/tale-two-storms-rebuilding-u-s-japanese-disasters/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00086-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960825 | 4,419 | 3.140625 | 3 |
Fighting Corruption: What Everyone Should Know (Infographic)
Ukraine takes the first place in Europe in terms of corruption.
Fight against corruption: the trust of Ukrainians to officials.
²f Ukrainian citizens do not believe that authority represents their interests, they tend not to follow the law and are ready to commit corruption.
83% of Ukrainians people believe that officials act in their own interests.
Ñorruption ³n Ukraine is a necessity. ²n the EU - a choice.
Ñorruption ³n Ukraine is often perceived as a survival strategy and the easiest way to achieve its goals.
33% of Ukrainians are forced to pay bribes to have things done.
Is there any good news?
From year to year there is growing proportion of those who believe that corruption cannot be justified in any case.
41% of Ukrainians believe that corruption cannot be justified.
Who should fight against corruption?
77.6 % of Ukrainians consider that fight against corruption is the duty of the president.
Secrets of an effective fight against corruption.
There are three factors concerning fight against corruption: transparency of the procedures, public participation and inevitability of punishment. One of the main secrets is liquidation of unnecessary approvals and simplification of all procedures.
Overcoming corruption requires systemic reforms.
Corruption affects all the EU countries. Every 12-th European has experience of corruption. However, European countries have developed effective mechanisms for combating and preventing corruption.
The revolution of professionals.
National Anti Corruprtion Investigation Bureau.
There should be a specialized anti-corruption official body with the powers to conduct preliminary investigation, especially against senior government officials.
However, the work of anti-corruption bureau will not be successful without fair and impartial courts.
The project “New European Policy” is conducted with the support of the “Ukraine National Initiatives to Enhance Reforms” (UNITER) project funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Pact. The partners of the IWP are Centre for Political and Legal Reforms, Transparency International in Ukraine and Anticorruption Action Centre. | <urn:uuid:ac408bcc-b9aa-44f5-b776-659f60ba5e3d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://iwp.org.ua/eng/public/1022.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930784 | 439 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Tom McCullough MEd., MSS
Have you ever gone into the lunch room and seen what your athletes
eating? Try it some time, it will literally shock you. Many of our
have little or no breakfast. For lunch they often fill up on chips,
and sodas. Then come game time they run out of gas about half way
Is it any wonder why?
Athletes are much like high a performance race car, they need lots
high grade fuel to power the body for optimal performance on the field.
Anytime an athlete does not provide the body with enough nutrients or
performance on the field is going to sputter and sooner than
So obviously, one of the most important parts of preparation for an
event is proper nutrition. In order for an athlete to perform their
a balanced diet must be eaten in combination with plenty of calories
high in complex carbohydrates. Proper pre-competition nutrition will
to ensure that your athletes will have plenty of energy to perform
best during the competition.
What Is A Pre-competition Meal
The pre-competition meal or food that is eaten on the day of the
is very important. This is the food that the athlete will use to
fuel to the body during the game. Because it is a well proven fact that
food eaten just before a game will not help perform any better, it is
for the athlete to eat meals at the right time.
Here is what we want to accomplish with the pre-competition meal:
1. Allow for the stomach to be relatively empty at the start of
2. Help avoid being hungry during the competition.
3. Keep plenty of energy available for competition.
4. Avoid stomach upset.
5. Provide plenty of fluids for the body.
In general, a solid meal should be eaten about 3 to 4 hours before your
athletes have to compete. So if your competition starts 7:30, your
probably don't want to eat a solid meal after about 3:30 that day. So
excuses---everyone on your team will have plenty of time to eat a big
and still have enough time for the food to digest properly. Instruct
athletes to eat a lunch that is high in carbohydrates like potatoes,
bread, fruit and vegetables, and light in high fatty foods like fried
chili, or chips. These fatty foods are much harder to digest and may
your stomach to be upset during competition.
Liquid meals have some advantages over solid meals. They are well
have a high carbohydrate content, have little bulk, and may be even
than a solid meal. Some of these liquid meals are Ensure, Ensure-plus,
Nutriment, Slim Fast, instant breakfasts, etc.
Because liquid meals can be digested much quicker than a solid meal,
they may be used much closer to the competition. Research has shown
liquid meals may be used up to 2 hours before game time. So if the game
is at 7:30, your athletes could have an instant breakfast as late as
If your athletes want to really provide their bodies with extra energy
for the game, have them bring a package of Carnation Instant Breakfast
from home. Mix it with a carton of milk or even pack it along with
Foods To Avoid
Suggest that your athletes try to stay away from foods like chips,
or spicy foods on game day. These foods may likely cause heart burn or
stomach upset during competition. High sugar foods like candy and soft
drinks may also lead to stomach upset and diarrhea. Not something an
needs the day of the game. Large amounts of sugar and soft drinks may
cause the athlete to have less energy and ultimately hurt their
Drink Plenty of Fluids
Plenty of fluids should also be consumed during the day, especially if
the event is long in duration or in a hot environment. Avoid beverages
that contain caffeine or alcohol, like tea, coffee or many soft drinks.
These beverages may cause the body to lose fluids more and will
hurt performance. Lots of fluids may be taken in up to 15 minutes
competition. Have your athletes drink plenty of liquids even though
may not be thirsty at the time.
What Type of Foods Should Be Eaten Before the Competition
The following are some foods that contain high amounts of the energy
nutrient carbohydrate. Lots of carbohydrates are necessary to fuel the
athletes' body during competition:
• one cup of low fat yogurt
• an 8 oz glass of orange juice
• a toasted bagel
• a bowl of oatmeal
• 2 pieces of toast with jelly
• 1 oz of turkey breast
• 1/2 cup of raisins
• sliced peaches with milk
• English muffins, bagels, or toast with jelly
• Muffins with Canadian bacon
• French toast
• Hot cereals like oatmeal
• Ready to eat, high-fiber cereals
• Orange juice
• Grilled chicken
• Lean roast beef
• Baked potatoes, with toppings
• Pasta, spaghetti, macaroni
• All breads
• Orange juice
• Yogurt or frozen yogurt
What Should I Eat After The Competition
In general, a good balanced meal is all that is necessary to meet all
your athletes' nutrient needs and restore the body back to normal
competition. Make sure your athletes eat plenty of food. Make sure that
they have included plenty of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Foods
provide plenty of these nutrients are needed to help them recover from
all of the stress of competition. Athletes' shouldn't be afraid to eat
plenty of food, their body needs the extra calories. All of those extra
nutrients and calories are used to replace those that were used in
Remember also that just being thirsty will not normally provide
water to replace the losses caused by hard training or competition. So
it is always best to drink a little extra water, even if you are not
Good nutrition is one of the keys to great performance. If your
do not eat right, they will never be able to perform at their best.
long hours are spent teaching and training the athlete to perform on
day, so why take the chance that it will be less than optimal on game
Educate your kids on the value of proper nutrition. You will soon find
that your kids will have the energy it takes to win!
All material on these pages is subject to and
Copyright © 1999-2000 Excel Sport Fitness, Inc.
Do not copy or use in any manner under penalty of law.
Pages created and maintained by The Texas Powerlifting | <urn:uuid:540307c8-2e66-400d-8e3b-6a806ec7d283> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.texaspowerscene.com/articles/nutrition/meals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00052-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935074 | 1,383 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Cardiologist, author, and heart health expert Dr. Sarah Samaan offers advice on how to live a heart smart life.See all posts »
Heart Disease Prevention Myths
As expected, the guidelines include principles of a heart-healthy diet, recommendations for optimal exercise, and updates on what constitutes a heart smart lifestyle. They also offer doctors strategies for preventive medicine and treatment of a wide range of heart conditions. Perhaps just as important is a list of commonly used medications and supplements that have been shown to be ineffective at preventing heart disease, and perhaps even dangerous.
Menopausal Hormone Therapy
Menopausal hormone therapy is the first in the list of fruitless treatments. Years ago, many cardiologists strongly believed that hormone therapy held promise for heart disease prevention. Those hopes have been dashed in the past ten years, as research studies involving thousands of women have suggested that in many cases, hormones may hurt, rather than help, heart health. This issue remains a hot and controversial topic, and the last word is yet to be written. There are still questions about the relative effects of different forms of hormone therapies (for example hormone patches vs. pills), and the impact of a woman’s age and duration of treatment, but for now, hormone therapy cannot be recommended specifically for heart disease prevention.
Antioxidant supplements, such as vitamin E, vitamin C, and beta carotene, are also discouraged. High doses of these supplements have been shown to be of no benefit and, in the case of vitamin E and beta carotene, may even cause harm.
Similarly, high doses of folic acid are not recommended for heart disease prevention, since this supplement has not been proven to be helpful, and may even increase the risk for cancer. The authors do make an exception for women of childbearing years, since folic acid during pregnancy can help protect the developing fetus’s nervous system.
Finally, aspirin in healthy women under the age of 65 is not advised, since studies have shown that it is more likely to cause serious bleeding and ulcers than it is to prevent heart attacks. On the other hand, a woman who has, or is at high risk for, heart disease should usually take aspirin regardless of age, as long as its use is approved by her physician.
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Should You Eat Organic? | <urn:uuid:268e44f9-fe49-4303-9160-4b6e9c909a57> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.healthline.com/health-blogs/heart-smart-living/heart-disease-prevention-myths | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00120-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936389 | 508 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Mrs. Wurtz leaves a blank notebook in her class’s writer’s corner. The kids are supposed to write in it, and write whatever they want. The only rule is that each person who writes in the book must sign his or her name. It’s fun to read the entries and look at the pictures the kids draw. At first, you don’t know who is who, but as you read you can tell who the kids are by their style of writing and the kind of pictures they draw. The kids reveal their feelings and even fight with each other. Why do boys have to write about puke and boogers and stuff like that? That’s what the girls want to know! In the end, they work out their classroom problems with words. What a great idea! Writing about your feelings is a great way to work things out in your own head. Author: Mary Amato
If you like Dear Dumb Diary (Author: Jim Benton) or Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Author Jeff Kinney), try reading about the kids in this story. Speaking of Dear Dumb Diary, book #7 is out Dear Dumb Diary, Never Underestimate Your Dumbness.
- Funbrain: Amelia Writes Again
- Funbrain: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg’s Journal
- Scholastic: Dear Dumb Diary | <urn:uuid:555f0da9-88e8-49fa-a50e-9161a28d4b97> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.imcpl.org/kids/blog/?p=357 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956363 | 285 | 2.875 | 3 |
Report: Roaring Fork River under development strains
A report released Thursday gives Roaring Fork Valley residents a better idea of how their local river rates.
The State of the Roaring Fork Watershed Report intensively evaluates not only the Roaring Fork River, but also its tributaries. The report analyzes water quantity and quality as well as water-dependent ecosystems for the 1,453-square-mile watershed of the Roaring Fork.
The second-largest tributary to the Colorado River within the state, the Roaring Fork runs from below Independence Pass above Aspen to Glenwood Springs. The report identifies threats to local water resources from pollution, diversions, channel instability and other sources. It also points to gaps in existing data.
Totaling more than 500 pages, it’s the first phase of the Roaring Fork Watershed Plan. The next steps will be to develop goals aimed at preserving and improving local waters and to come up with actions that can be taken by water managers, governments and individual water users.
“We look forward to that process and to a healthy future for the waters of the Roaring Fork Watershed,” Mark Fuller, director of the Ruedi Water and Power Authority, said in the report’s preface.
The authority is the sponsor of the watershed plan, and the Roaring Fork Conservancy nonprofit group is its lead consultant. The plan had its origins in the Roaring Fork Watershed Collaborative, an informal group of planners, government officials and citizens.
The new report identifies global warming as one threat to the watershed. Warming will result in more rain rather than snow, earlier snowmelt and runoff, and decreased runoff, the report says. Besides causing effects such as increased fire risk and insect outbreaks,
it will create more water demand challenges for a watershed already heavily taxed in that regard.
“Overall, competition for water will increase among municipal, agricultural, recreational, industrial and ecological uses,” the report says.
Already, it notes, an average of 37 percent of the annual water yield of the upper Roaring Fork River is removed by a transmountain diversion project.
Elsewhere in the watershed, “Woody, Little Woody and Collins creeks are often dried up downstream of large diversion structures in the summer and fall, disconnecting them from the Roaring Fork River,” the report says.
But it also points to areas of improvement. For example, Aspen cut its municipal water use almost in half since 1993, to the benefit of Maroon and Castle creeks, both water sources
for the city.
The study is available at http://www.roaringfork.org. | <urn:uuid:64bfb928-ce13-4cbe-8e2d-52b1ae6ebcd8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gjsentinel.com/outdoors/articles/report-roaring-fork-river-under-development-strains | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397213.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00096-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.922345 | 556 | 2.765625 | 3 |
The bottom line:
The Common Core exemplar we worked with was intellectually limiting,
shallow in scope, and uninteresting.
I don’t want my lessons to be any of those things.
--Jeremiah Chaffee, teacher
Am I mistaken, or is the anatomy of how a good idea (high common core standards) can be bastardized by too much focus on high-stakes assessment? If this author can be believed, low-ordered thinking skills dictated by Common Core "Exemplars" seem to undermine creative and critical thinking. Will we find ourselves five years from now wondering why such a great idea isn't working? ...and blaming teachers for the failure?
This from NY High School English teacher Jeremiah Chaffee in The Answer Sheet:
The high school English department in which I work recently spent a day looking at what is called an “exemplar” from the new Common Core State Standards, and then working together to create our own lessons linked to that curriculum. An exemplar is a prepackaged lesson which is supposed to align with the standards of the Common Core. The one we looked at was a lesson on “The Gettysburg Address.”
The process of implementing the Common Core Standards is under way in districts across the country as almost every state has now signed onto the Common Core, (some of them agreeing to do in hopes of winning Race to the Top money from Washington D.C.). The initiative is intended to ensure that students in all parts of the country are learning from the same supposedly high standards.
As we looked through the exemplar, examined a lesson previously created by some of our colleagues, and then began working on our own Core-related lessons, I was struck by how out of sync the Common Core is with what I consider to be good teaching. I have not yet gotten to the “core” of the Core, but I have scratched the surface, and I am not encouraged.
Here are some of the problems that the group of veteran teachers with whom I was with at the workshop encountered using the exemplar unit on “The Gettysburg Address.”
Each teacher read individually through the exemplar lesson on Lincoln’s speech. When we began discussing it, we all expressed the same conclusion: Most of it was too scripted. It spelled out what types of questions to ask, what types of questions not to ask, and essentially narrowed any discussion to obvious facts and ideas from the speech.
In some schools, mostly in large urban districts, teachers are forced by school policy to read from scripted lessons, every day in every class. For example, all third-grade teachers do the same exact lessons on the same day and say exactly the same things. (These districts often purchase these curriculum packages from the same companies who make the standardized tests given to students.)
Scripting lessons is based on several false assumptions about teaching. They include:
* That anyone who can read a lesson aloud to a class can teach just as well as experienced teachers;
* That teaching is simply the transference of information from one person to another;
* That students should not be trusted to direct any of their own learning;
* That testing is the best measure of learning.
Put together, this presents a narrow and shallow view of teaching and learning.
Most teachers will tell you that there is a difference between having a plan and having a script. Teachers know that in any lesson there needs to be some wiggle room, some space for discovery and spontaneity. But scripted cookie-cutter lessons aren’t interested in that; the idea is that they will help students learn enough to raise their standardized test scores.
Yet study after study has shown that even intense test preparation does not significantly raise test scores, and often causes stress and boredom in students. Studies have also shown that after a period of time, test scores plateau, and it is useless, even counter-productive educationally, to try to raise test scores beyond that plateau.
Another problem we found relates to the pedagogical method used in the Gettysburg Address exemplar that the Common Core calls “cold reading.”
This gives students a text they have never seen and asks them to read it with no preliminary introduction. This mimics the conditions of a standardized test on which students are asked to read material they have never seen and answer multiple choice questions about the passage.
Such pedagogy makes school wildly boring. Students are not asked to connect what they read yesterday to what they are reading today, or what they read in English to what they read in science.
The exemplar, in fact, forbids teachers from asking students if they have ever been to a funeral because such questions rely “on individual experience and opinion,” and answering them “will not move students closer to understanding the Gettysburg Address.”
(This is baffling, as if Lincoln delivered the speech in an intellectual vacuum; as if the speech wasn’t delivered at a funeral and meant to be heard in the context of a funeral; as if we must not think about memorials when we read words that memorialize. Rather, it is impossible to have any deep understanding of Lincoln’s speech without thinking about the context of the speech: a memorial service.)
The exemplar instructs teachers to “avoid giving any background context” because the Common Core’s close reading strategy “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge, and levels the playing field for all.” What sense does this make?
Teachers cannot create such a “level playing field” because we cannot rob any of the students of the background knowledge they already possess. Nor can we force students who have background knowledge not to think about that while they read. A student who has read a biography of Lincoln, or watched documentaries about the Civil War on PBS or the History Channel, will have the “privilege” of background knowledge beyond the control of the teacher. Attempting to create a shallow and false “equality” between students will in no way help any of them understand Lincoln’s speech.
(As a side note, the exemplar does encourage teachers to have students “do the math:” subtract four score and seven from 1863 to arrive at 1776. What is that if not asking them to access background knowledge?)
Asking questions about, for example, the causes of the Civil War, are also forbidden. Why? These questions go “outside the text,” a cardinal sin in Common Core-land.
According to the exemplar, the text of the speech is about equality and self-government, and not about picking sides. It is true that Lincoln did not want to dishonor the memory of the Southern soldiers who fought and died valiantly. But does any rational person read “The Gettysburg Address” and not know that Lincoln desperately believed that the North must win the war? Does anyone think that he could speak about equality without everyone in his audience knowing he was talking about slavery and the causes of the war? How can anyone try to disconnect this profoundly meaningful speech from its historical context and hope to “deeply” understand it in any way, shape, or form?
Here’s another problem we found with the exemplar: The teacher is instructed in the exemplar to read the speech aloud after the students have read it to themselves; but, it says, “Do not attempt to ‘deliver’ Lincoln’s text as if giving the speech yourself but rather carefully speak Lincoln’s words clearly to the class.”
English teachers love Shakespeare; when we read to our classes from his plays, we do not do so in a dry monotone. I doubt Lincoln delivered his address in as boring a manner as the Common Core exemplar asks. In fact, when I read this instruction, I thought that an interesting lesson could be developed by asking students to deliver the speech themselves and compare different deliveries in terms of emphasis, tone, etc.
The exemplar says, “Listening to the Gettysburg Address is another way to initially acquaint students with Lincoln’s powerful and stirring words.” How, then, if the teacher is not to read it in a powerful and stirring way? The most passionate speech in Romeo and Juliet, delivered poorly by a bad actor, will fall flat despite the author’s skill.
Several years ago, our district, at the demand of our state education department, hired a consultant to train teachers to develop literacy skills in students. This consultant and his team spent three years conducting workshops and visiting the district. Much of this work was very fruitful, but it does not “align” well with the Common Core.
The consultant encouraged us to help students make connections between what they were reading and their own experience, but as you’ve seen, the Common Core exemplar we studied says not to.
Was all that work with the consultant wasted?
At one point during the workshop, we worked with a lesson previously created by some teachers. It had all the hallmarks of what I consider good teaching, including allowing students to make connections beyond the text.
And when it came time to create our own lessons around the exemplar, three colleagues and I found ourselves using techniques that we know have worked to engage students — not what the exemplar puts forth.
The bottom line: The Common Core exemplar we worked with was intellectually limiting, shallow in scope, and uninteresting. I don’t want my lessons to be any of those things. | <urn:uuid:f8dc8185-bbfa-4b79-aff9-10cb9d490d0e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://theprincipal.blogspot.com/2012/03/teacher-one-maddening-day-working-with.html?showComment=1333766137045 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399522.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00065-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966069 | 1,983 | 2.625 | 3 |
The Old Man and the Sea Strength and Skill Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Day.Paragraph). We artificially created chapters by defining "days," because there are no chapter breaks in The Old Man and the Sea. Here’s how we divided up the days:
- Day 1 = the start of the book until the old man falls asleep for the night
- Day 2 = begins when the old man wakes up and goes until sunrise of the next day
- Day 3 = begins at sunrise and goes until the old man dreams about the lions
- Day 4 = begins when the old man wakes and ends when the old man gets back to his shack for the night
- Day 5 = begins with the boy seeing the old man in the morning and goes until the end of the book
He did not need a compass to tell him where southwest was. He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail. I better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get something to eat and drink for the moisture. But he could not find a spoon and his sardines were rotten. So he hooked a patch of yellow Gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff. There were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas. The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails. They were very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good. (4.79)
The old man’s vast knowledge of the sea becomes apparent again after the threat of the fish has gone.
Sometimes he lost the scent. But he would pick it up again, or have just a trace of it, and he swam fast and hard on the course. He was a very big Make shark built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a sword fish’s and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a sword fish except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws. They were nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. Now he speeded up as he smelled the fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water. (4.84)
The old man marvels at the strength of the shark, just as he did at the strength of the marlin.
I could not expect to kill them, he thought. I could have in my time. But I have hurt them both badly and neither one can feel very good. If I could have used a bat with two hands I could have killed the first one surely. Even now, he thought. (4.143)
The old man still has confidence in his skill, even after his supposed defeat. | <urn:uuid:dc2a2601-a5ff-4d18-a5fa-a4c46e2cc4cb> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.shmoop.com/old-man-the-sea/strength-skill-quotes-11.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00084-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993205 | 738 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Over the past 60 to 70 years humanity has leaped ahead technologically in what can only be described as a wild ride. The easiest way to notice this is to read science fiction books or watch an older TV series.
Have you noticed how some of the advanced futuristic gadgets used seem like yesterday’s stuff?
I’ve recently watched all of Star Trek TNG on Netflix with my son. This gave me the opportunity to observe more closely how things are portrayed on the show, from a 21st century perspective. I noticed, for example, how on an episode which showed their school, all the kids in class were using a tabled with the approximate size of an iPad mini. The same sort of device is presented all throughout the show, with people reading and making notes and complex calculations on them.
Star Trek’s replicators have always seemed like a form of magic. Rearranging matter at a subatomic level to create whatever you want would certainly be amazing, but consider that with 3D printing we’ve already started down a path which will very soon allow you to, seemingly, create objects out of thin air.
Not so long ago, when you wanted to watch some form of video entertainment you would sit in front of a bulky TV and flip through a TV guide to see what would be on, on which channel. Now, you connect your incredibly thin, but large screened, TV directly to Netflix, through the Internet and choose what you feel like watching.
These changes have moved in on us, at an accelerated pace, though not all at once. We are so used to these novelties and have become so used to the incredible rhythm of innovation, that some things just pass us by. When you actually stop a moment and look around and really observe, you see that you are living in a world of wonders which we routinely take for granted.
The greatest example of something amazing that we simply don’t even think about anymore has to be the smartphone. Think about it!
Martin Cooper, who’s credited with creating the first mobile phone, has stated that he was inspired in his work, by watching Captain Kirk of the original Star Trek series talk on his communicator. Well, Captain Kirk’s communicator didn’t give him his precise position on the planet’s surface, the weather forecast or tell him how traffic was flowing on his way home. Most smartphones in the market today do all that and a lot more, such as allowing you to target green pigs with wingless birds that are propelled by a huge sling.
I’m writing this on an iPad mini, and having the text automatically synced to my Mac through Apple’s iCloud. This little tablet weighs just a bit over 300 grams and probably has a couple of hundred times the raw computing power of my first PC. I routinely use the mini for all my email, most of my Web browsing and pretty much all of my reading.
I really like paper books and the experience of going to a good bookshop to browse through the new titles. Still, I almost never buy a paper book for myself. Why? First because I haven’t got the space to store them. Second, because just about everything I want to read is available in digital form, which ends up being much more convenient to carry around. Actually, living in Rio and reading a lot of books in English, the digital option gives me instant access to titles which would only be available on local stores several weeks later.
This instant access to all forms of content, books, music and video through such handheld devices, takes me again to the more recent Star Trek series. At the same time it makes me reflect about all the other stories in which such devices or their successors are nowhere to be seen.
Our way of life is changing and instant access to information is something people are more and more used to. It seems hard to believe that we will re-adapt to living without this convenience.
Not even the most creative science fiction writers could foresee just how fast technology would evolve and how it would change the way we do things. We are already living further in the future than we think. | <urn:uuid:b47337d6-613b-4e29-a041-800dd5025e4b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ipadwatcher.com/2013/02/11/welcome-to-the-24th-century/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967452 | 854 | 2.546875 | 3 |
This Labor Day marks a milestone in the history of the U.S. union movement. It is the first Labor Day on which a majority of union members in United States work for the government. In January the Department of Labor reported that union membership in government has overtaken that in the private sector. Three times as many union members work in the Post Office as in the entire domestic auto industry. The face of the union movement is not a worker on the assembly line but a clerk at the DMV.
This is a dramatic shift for the union movement. The early trade unionists did not believe that unions had a place in government. They believed the purpose of unions was to redistribute business profits from owners to workers … and the government makes no profits. Not until the 1960s did unionizing government employees become widespread. Now government employees make up 52 percent of all union members.
So what? Why should Americans care if unions are now dominated by workers who get their paychecks from governments, instead of workers who get their paychecks from private firms? There’s one simple reason: private firms face competition; governments don’t.
Collective bargaining, the anti-trust exemption at the heart the labor movement’s power, was created to help workers seize their “fair share” of business profits. But if a union ends up extracting a contract from a private firm that eats up too much of the profits, then that firm will be unable to reinvest those resources and will lose out to competitors. But when a union extracts a generous contract from a government, there is no check on that spending. Instead of being forced out by more efficient competitors, the government just raises taxes.
The shift from private to public sector has fundamentally changed organized labor’s priorities. Unions used to support policies that would help their private sector employers grow. But now that they are largely dependent on the government, the only growth that unions are interested in is the growth of government. So unions push for tax increases across the country. Consider recent union activism:
- Illinois. Unions want state lawmakers to increase the state income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent and to expand the sales tax to cover some services. In April 2010 they organized rallies of government workers outside the state capitol shouting “Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!” At that rally, a government union member was caught on camera chanting “Where’s the money?” and “Give up the bucks!”
- Montana. The Montana teachers union openly sees itself as a supporter of tax and spend politics. Its President boasts, “Were it not for us almost any one of the … anti-tax and spend ballot issues proposed in the last 25 years would have passed.”
- New Mexico. Unions lobbied the state’s legislature to raise taxes to deal with its budget deficit. The union got its wish, but it was not the wealthy who paid – the legislature imposed a 2 percent sales tax on food.
- Washington state. Washington state has no income tax, and unions want to change that. They have placed an initiative on the November ballot creating a state income tax and are among the top donors to the campaign to pass it.
Government unions are the backbone of the Obama dependency economy. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize union campaigns, much less those that call for tax increases. At the very least Congress should end the automatic payroll deduction of union dues. | <urn:uuid:f0f388f3-826a-4786-9ebd-2a611e8f58cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://dailysignal.com/2010/09/06/morning-bell-labor-day-has-become-government-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396224.52/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969318 | 713 | 2.984375 | 3 |
“This might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly,” said Alan Christianson, a doctor of naturopathic medicine.
Even though nearly 30 million people have died from AIDS related causes worldwide, Christianson believes the effect of the gonorrhea bacteria is more direct.
“Getting gonorrhea from this strain might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days,” Christianson said. “This is very dangerous.”
“It’s an emergency situation,” said William Smith, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. “As time moves on, it’s getting more hazardous.”
This gonorrhea strain, HO41, was discovered in Japan two years ago in a 31-year-old female sex worker who had been screened in 2009. The bacteria has since been found in Hawaii, California and Norway. | <urn:uuid:447c8c8f-d044-4fc4-9c5c-68aaf36d8c63> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://truthisscary.com/2013/05/gonorrhea-superbug-sex-superbug-could-be-worse-than-aids/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00177-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971702 | 203 | 2.65625 | 3 |
This data set consists of active layer thickness (ALT) measurements based on soil temperatures in the Russian Arctic. The active layer is the top layer of ground that freezes in the winter and thaws in the summer over permafrost. Changes in ALT over northern high-latitude permafrost regions have important impacts on the surface energy balance, hydrologic cycle, carbon exchange between the atmosphere and the land surface, plant growth, and ecosystem as a whole. Warming may thicken the active layer and induce permafrost thaw. Investigators collected data from 31 ground-based stations. Derived from monthly averages, the record includes annual maximum active layer depths from 1930 to 1990. Data are in tab-delimited ASCII text format. | <urn:uuid:e5485137-e67c-4a98-8a39-d7950f68bb36> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://data.eol.ucar.edu/codiac/dss/id=106.arcss160/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00179-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.883805 | 150 | 3.1875 | 3 |
Not to be a party pooper but those CNN holograms weren’t actually holograms, according to the geeks.
You see (adjusts glasses), real holograms are composited from a pattern of light reflection and interference. Laser beams are involved. CNN’s technology was simply a matter of shooting political reporter Jessica Yellin with a bunch of different cameras and mashing them all together on a TV screen.
CNN used 35 HD video cameras set up around a circular room. The video cameras were spaced six inches apart, 220 degrees around their subject (including will.i.am) and shooting him/her simultaneously. In CNN’s own gleeful story about their "holograms," Chuck Hurley, the Washington bureau’s senior producer of video, called it simple chroma-key technology that’s been taken "to the Nth degree."
"Weathermen have been standing in front of green screens for years now, but that’s [with] one camera," Mr. Hurley said. "Now we can do that times 35, so you can send all the way around the subject." All those little images were digitally composited into CNN’s broadcast image of their studio. Wolf Blitzer wasn’t talking to a live, luminous, 3D picture that was in the same room as him. It was just an image of Ms. Yellin on TV screens.
University of North Carolina physics professor Charles A. Bennett told The Chicago Tribune: "I am absolutely sure that it is not a hologram in the literal sense," he wrote in an e-mail. "A ‘real’ hologram uses diffraction to reconstruct the wave front that would have come from the actual 3D object. A hologram cannot be viewed from the front and from behind as in the CNN segment—this was a dead giveaway that the image shown was not in fact a hologram. A real hologram can only be viewed within a specific range of viewing angles."
CNN called their stunt "hologram technology" and kept hologram "in quotes" for good measure, simply because it was the most recognizable way of describing the technology without getting into the science of it all. So maybe it wasn’t a true hologram. It was still kinda cool, though.
CNN called their stunt "hologram technology" and kept hologram "in quotes" for good measure, simply because it was the most recognizable way of describing the technology without getting into the science of it all.
So maybe it wasn’t a true hologram. It was still kinda cool, though. | <urn:uuid:c9e9ca0e-c511-486d-ad34-287a25554e90> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://observer.com/2008/11/cnns-holograms-werent-actually-holograms/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968085 | 546 | 2.546875 | 3 |
Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 Instrument Handbook for Cycle 14
5.1 Effects of OTA Spherical Aberration
The OTA spherical aberration produces a Point Spread Function (PSF-the apparent surface brightness profile of a point source), as presented to the instruments, with broad wings. Briefly, the fraction of the light within the central 0.1" was reduced by a factor of about 5. The resulting PSF had "wings" which extended to large radii (several arcseconds), greatly reducing the contrast of the images and degrading the measurements of sources near bright objects or in crowded fields. Burrows, et al. (1991, Ap. J. Lett. 369, L21) provide a more complete description of the aberrated HST PSF. Figure 5.1 shows the PSF in three cases.Figure 5.1: PSF Surface Brightness. The percentage of the total flux at 4000Å falling on a PC pixel as a function of the distance from the peak of a star image.
It shows the aberrated HST PSF, the WFPC2 PSF, and for comparison the PSF that would be obtained from a long integration if HST were installed at a ground based observatory with one arcsecond seeing. All of the PSFs were computed at 4000Å. The FWHM of the image both before and after the installation of WFPC2 is approximately proportional to wavelength, at least before detector resolution and MTF effects are considered. (The WF/PC-1 core was approximately 50% broader than the core that is obtained with WFPC2). Figure 5.2 shows the encircled energy (EE), the proportion of the total energy from a point source within a given radius of the image center, for the same three cases.Figure 5.2: Encircled Energy. The percentage of the total flux at 4000Å within a given radius of the image peak.
The WFPC2 curve shown is the average of measurements taken with F336W and F439W. It can be seen that the core of the image in WFPC2 contains most of the light. At this wavelength, 65% of the light is contained within a circle of radius 0.1". However, this proportion is considerably less than the optics deliver. The reason for this is discussed in CCD Pixel Response Function. Encircled energy curves for other filters are shown in Figure 5.3 and Figure 5.4; note that these curves are normalized to unity at 1.0" radius.Figure 5.3: Encircled Energy for CCD PC1. The fraction of energy encircled is plotted vs. aperture radius for several filters. Curves are normalized to unity at a radius of 1.0". From Holtzman, et al. 1995a.
Figure 5.4: Encircled Energy for CCD WF3. The fraction of energy encircled is plotted vs. aperture radius for several filters. Curves are normalized to unity at a radius of 1.0". From Holtzman, et al. 1995a.
Space Telescope Science Institute
Voice: (410) 338-1082 | <urn:uuid:87808cfd-e7cc-48e4-9bb5-d6c0e2f9f1f7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.stsci.edu/itt/review/ihb_cy14/WFPC2/ch5_psf2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926482 | 656 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Date: November 8, 2001
Creator: Rowberg, Richard E
Description: Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen used to enhance the explosive yield of every thermonuclear weapon. Tritium has a radioactive decay rate of 5.5% per year and has not been produced in this country for weapons purposes since 1988. To compensate for decay losses, tritium levels in the existing stockpile are being maintained by recycling and reprocessing it from dismantled nuclear weapons. To maintain the nuclear weapons stockpile at the level called for in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II (not yet in force), however, a new tritium source would be needed by the year 2011. If the START I stockpile levels remain the target, as is now the case, tritium production would be needed by 2005.
Contributing Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department | <urn:uuid:29622152-12d7-42c1-a312-56f3a2c91119> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/CRSR/browse/?q=%22weapons+systems%22&start=20&t=dc_subject&sort=added_a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908783 | 180 | 3.765625 | 4 |
Cannabis, also known as marijuana (from the Mexican Spanish marihuana), and by other names,a[›] is a preparation of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug and as medicine. Pharmacologically, the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC); it is one of 400 compounds in the plant, including other cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN), and tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV).
Contemporary uses of cannabis are as a recreational drug, as religious or spiritual rites, or as medicine; the earliest recorded uses date from the 3rd millennium BC. In 2004, the United Nations estimated that global consumption of cannabis indicated that approximately 4.0 percent of the adult world population (162 million people) used cannabis annually, and that approximately 0.6 percent (22.5 million) of people used cannabis daily. Since the early 20th century cannabis has been subject to legal restrictions with the possession, use, and sale of cannabis preparations containing psychoactive cannabinoids currently illegal in most countries of the world; the United Nations has said that cannabis is the most used illicit drug in the world.
Tags: ver fotos maconha , ver folha da maconha , feuille de cannabis , hoja mas grande del mundo , feuille cannabis , cannabis wallpaper , folha da maconha wallpapers , foglia di marijuana , fondo de marihuana | <urn:uuid:cdb4b809-bad1-461f-97c8-5e6a01124cac> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.appszoom.com/android_themes/themes/marijuana-leaf-widget_cuqyn.html?nav=mfta | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00132-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.924804 | 311 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Locating Resources Using JNDI (Java Naming and Directory Interface)
The javax.naming.Name Interface
This interface symbolizes a generic name of an object that is bound into a naming service. There can be many different implementations of a name, such as URLs or host names, but the Name interface provides methods for accessing the name that are independent of the underlying naming service. A name typically consists of a string or a group of name components.
In general, applications that need to manipulate individual components in a name would use the Name interface to build a name or compare with another name, for instance. Simple applications generally use a java.lang.String to perform a lookup operation.
The javax.naming.Reference Class
JNDI defines the javax.naming.Reference class that represents a reference to an object. A reference contains information that enables you to access an object. JNDI maintains the illusion that what the client looks up in the naming service (a reference) is in fact an object.
The javax.naming.directory Package
The javax.naming.directory package contains classes and interfaces that you can use to access directory services. For example, you can retrieve the attributes that are associated with an object. You can also perform searches for objects whose attributes match certain search criteria that you specify.
The two most important interfaces in the javax.naming.directory package are Attribute and DirContext.
The javax.naming.directory.Attribute Interface
This interface represents an attribute of a named object in the directory service. The actual forms that an attribute's name and value can take are dictated by the directory service. Some directory services allow you to specify a schema that sets the forms for the name and value.
An attribute has zero or many values associated with it. It is perfectly legal for a particular attribute value to be null. You can use the get and getAll methods to obtain the attribute values; the set method allows you to set a value at a specified index; and the remove method deletes an attribute at a specified index.
The javax.naming.directory.DirContext Interface
This interface represents a directory context, and defines methods that enable you to write software that examines (getAttributes) and updates (modifyAttributes) the attributes of a named object in the directory service.
There is also a set of overloaded search methods that enable you to search the directory service based on the name of a context (or object) and attribute values.
The DirContext interface extends the javax.naming.Context interface, and thus you can also use it as a naming context. This means that any object in the directory service can act as a naming context. For example, there could be an object in the directory service that represents an employee in your company. The employee object can have attributes associated with it as well as act as a naming context so that you could locate objects that belong to the employee such as their PCs, mobile telephones, and PDAs.
The javax.naming.event Package
The javax.naming.event package defines classes and interfaces that support event notification mechanisms in naming and directory services.
If you have used the Java Event Model (as used in GUIs and by JavaBeans) that has been available since JDK 1.1, the mechanism described here will sound familiar. The basic idea is that an event source generates events that are sent to registered event listeners. The event mechanism is of an asynchronous nature, and means that applications can register an interest in changes to the directory service without having to poll the directory service for changes.
The NamingEvent class and the NamingListener interface described later are part of the javax.naming.event package.
The javax.naming.event.NamingEvent Class
The javax.naming.event.NamingEvent class represents an event object that is generated when something changes in a naming or directory service. The object contains information about the event that occurred, such as the source of the event, as well as a type that indicates the form that the event took. Events are classified into those that affect the namespace, and those that do not. An example of the former category would be when an object is added, whereas an example of the latter category is when an object is changed.
Other information about the change, such as information before and after the change, is also stored in the NamingEvent object.
An event source creates an instance of the NamingEvent class, and passes it to the registered listeners who can then use the instance methods of the object to extract information about the event.
The javax.naming.event.NamingListener Interface
You can implement the javax.naming.event.NamingListener interface to listen for NamingEvents. However, there are several subinterfaces of NamingListener that correspond to the different categories of event that can occur.
For example, there is a NamespaceChangeListener for events that change the namespace, such as the addition, removal, or renaming of an object. There is also the ObjectChangeListener for notification of modifications to objects in the namespace, which covers when an object's binding is replaced with another and when an object's attributes are replaced or removed.
Typically, you implement a subinterface rather than directly implement NamingListener.
The javax.naming.ldap Package
You can find classes and interfaces in the javax.naming.ldap package that enable you to access features specific to LDAP v3 that are not already covered by the classes and interfaces in the javax.naming.directory package.
Most JNDI applications will not need to use the javax.naming.ldap package. The only time that you will is if you are writing software that needs access to LDAP functions such as Controls, Extended Operations, and Unsolicited Notifications. You can find more information about these in the LDAP RFC at http://www.ietf.org/ rfc/rfc2251.txt.
The javax.naming.spi Package
The classes and interfaces defined in the javax.naming.spi package are primarily for use by developers of naming/directory service providers.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, JNDI is a standard component of JDK 1.3 and higher, and as such, is also shipped as part of J2EE 1.2 and above. If you want to run JNDI applications under JDK 1.2 then you can download a standard extension from Sun's Web site at http://java.sun.com/products/jndi.
While you are developing an application, you must ensure that the CLASSPATH contains the location of the JNDI libraries so that the Java compiler has access to them. This will be the case as long as the JAVA_HOME environment variable has been set to correctly point to the installation directory of a compatible JDK.
When you run a JNDI-aware application, whether it is a simple command-line client or a Web application, there must be a JNDI service running, and the classes for that service must be available to the program. Again, this means setting the CLASSPATH correctly, usually by placing one or more vendor-supplied JAR files on the CLASSPATH. For specifics, you should consult the documentation supplied by either the JNDI provider or J2EE server vendor.
When you start a J2EE server, the default behavior is that a naming service is automatically started, too. If this default behavior is not required, for example, if you want to use an existing JNDI server, you need to change the J2EE server configuration appropriately.
In this part of the chapter you will see a command-line example that uses Sun's J2EE Reference Implementation (RI) to bind and look up an object. Later in the chapter you can find an example that uses BEA's WebLogic J2EE server to publish an Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) that a JSP uses.
JNDI and Sun's J2EE Reference Implementation
It is straightforward to set up your machine so that you can use JNDI with Sun's J2EE RI. All you must do is ensure that
The J2EE_HOME environment variable is set to the directory in which the J2EE SDK is installed. You can download the J2EE SDK from http://java.sun.com/products/j2ee.
The CLASSPATH environment variable contains the j2ee.jar file that is in the lib directory under the J2EE home directory, for use by JNDI clients.
The way that I tend to set up my development machines is to set a system-wide environment variable for J2EE_HOME, and then have a command-line script that I can run from a command prompt to set up the CLASSPATH when I need it. This prevents unnecessary clutter, and means that I know exactly what is on the CLASSPATH at any given point! Setting the CLASSPATH as a system-wide variable can lead to all sorts of confusion when you have multiple JAR files from different vendors, especially when they ship different versions of the same JARs.
The batch file on my Windows XP machine looks like this:
set path=%J2EE_HOME%\bin;%PATH% set classpath=%J2EE_HOME%\lib\j2ee.jar;%CLASSPATH%;.
Under Unix or Linux, you could use a line like this:
To start the J2EE server, all you need to do is issue the following command at a command prompt:
The J2EE server runs until you either close its window, or issue the following command at another command prompt:
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Scholars and laymen today continue their dispute over the degree to which the Puritan colonists influenced American law, morality, and culture, and whether this influence was for good or ill. Yet on one point, all readily agree: the Puritan appellation entered common parlance on both sides of the Atlantic as a pejorative adjective connoting excessive rigidity and austerity in matters of law and morality. Thus, modern English speakers, in recreating an image of the Puritans from this linguistic legacy, commonly perceive the Puritans as persons all too ready to apply their considerable theological skills to splitting even the finest of ethical hairs, all done with an excess of zeal.
In the area of law, this image is supplemented by lurid accounts of witch trials and corporal, public punishments. But is this image of Puritan jurisprudence accurate?
In the following discussion, I wish to present an overview of the New England Puritan legal history. I will show its historical development was both a consistent outgrowth of Reformation theology and the Puritans' efforts to apply this theology in the development of a legal system for the New World. Yet, by examining of the way in which the Puritans implemented their legal theory in seventeenth-century New England, I will show that the practice of their legal theory was not always consistent with their theology.
This inconsistency was not due to any internal contradiction inherent in either Puritan theology or the Puritan world view. Rather, this inconsistency resulted when the Puritans ignored the precepts of their own Calvinistic philosophy which posited the ultimacy of the revealed authority of Biblical law and instead uncritically smuggled back into their legal thinking ideas assuming the autonomy and primacy of human reason and thought.
This inconsistency occurred precisely at points where the Puritans failed to allow their theology to shape their legal system completely and instead borrowed from the reigning conventions of English legal tradition and thought. Puritan jurisprudence reached the height of its inconsistency when the Puritans: (1) equivocated between natural law on the one hand and Biblical divine law on the other, (2) conflated the concepts of sin and crime in lawmaking and (3) declared penal sanctions contrary to Biblical mandates, thus vesting judges with autonomous and unbridled discretion.
Modern-day jurisprudes generally assume that Puritan legal theory is nothing more than an interesting historical footnote of no continuing relevance. In my concluding section discussing the legacy of Puritan legal thought, I suggest that this assumption is based upon a complex matrix of historical, environmental and philosophical factors, the substratum of which is ultimately religious. This antipathy to Puritan jurisprudence is the result of a shift in the reigning metaphysical paradigm in America from one that posited, at least in principle, the absolute authority of God's revealed law in Scripture to one that posits the primacy and infallibility of human reason apart from special revelation.
The term "Puritan" itself originated as a term of derision leveled at clergy and laity who wanted to "purify" the Church of England of Roman residues and reform the Church after the model of John Calvin's Geneva. These reformers were not Separatists (as were the Pilgrims of Plymouth) out to start a new church. Rather, they chose to work within the Church of England to effect their reforms.
As a religious term, however, Puritanism has a broader application, and it is in this sense, that this discussion uses the term. As Eusden notes, "The importance of early seventeenth-century Puritanism does not lie in ecclesiology, doctrinal or organizational. We must look to theology and belief and the attendant pattern of life in order to assess the significance and meaning of the movement." In the social and political implications of Puritanism as a religious movement, the term denotes the goal of Christians both inside and outside the Church of England to implement a thoroughgoing remaking of society and social institutions according to a consistently Biblical world view. The Puritan movement distinctively sought the ideal of a "holy community" and that community was to be:
....an experiment in Christian living which sought to reconstruct the church and every other institution and facet of life in the light of the world view inherent in their Calvinistic theology. That theology demanded that they look anew at the form and nature of government, the community, the family, and to have reformed attitudes toward work and leisure.
In the Puritan settlements of New England, the Puritans were at last free to break with the legal conventions of their day and implement a legal system consistent with Biblical law. Thus, the true flowering of Puritan legal thought and the problems it encountered in applying that thought to real-life situations are not found among the English Puritans but among the Puritans of New England. And among the New England settlements, it was the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony who innovatively created the legal codes and standards imitated by the other New World colonies, both Puritan and non-Puritan. For this reason, an overview of this colony's legal history provides the best understanding of the development of Puritan jurisprudence and the problems it encountered.
....to make Lawes and Ordinances for the Good and Welfare of the saide Company and for the Government and ordering of the saide Landes and Plantacon, and the People inhabiting and to inhabite the same, as to them from tyme to tyme shall be thought meete, soe as such Lawes and Ordinances be not contrarie or repugnant to the Lawes and Statuts of this our Realme of England.In 1630, Winthrop arrived at the Bay with one thousand colonists. However, only ten or eleven of the more than one hundred freemen of the Company actually emigrated to the Colony. This meant that political power was concentrated in the colonies in the hands of roughly a dozen men. This almost immediately created problems. Within a year, Winthrop was forced to broaden the Colony's political base by admitting most of the Colony's adult males to freemanship. The freemen of each village were given the right to elect the magistrates which, together with the Governor and Deputy-Governor, comprised the General Court. The Court held both legislative and executive powers and sat as the highest and, until lesser courts were created, only court in the Colony's judicial system. Sitting as a judicial body, the Court claimed complete discretion to pass whatever judgments and sentences it saw fit. It was from this judicial process that most of the Colony's substantive and procedural law developed during the first decade.
The freemen strongly objected to the magistrates' complete discretion in lawmaking and in sentencing. As Seventeenth-century men familiar with the summary and discretionary justice of English Chancery Courts and the Star Chamber, they were intensely aware of their vulnerability before the law without a written code of laws to protect them from arbitrary justice. For this reason they demanded that a written code of law be drafted that would clearly state the laws of the Colony as well as provide a hedge against judicial discretion. The freemen were joined in their demands by many of the Colony's clergy. "They will be like a Tempest if they be not limited," said Reverend John Cotton of the magistrates. Reverend Thomas Hooker, in a letter to Winthrop, expressed fears that judicial discretion was "a way which leads directly to tyranny."
Winthrop and the magistrates opposed the movement for a written code, feeling that it was unnecessary and would unduly limit their benevolent paternalism. Winthrop, who trained as a lawyer at the Inner Court and had served as a justice of the peace in England, was especially hostile to the idea. On theological grounds Winthrop maintained that, since the office of magistrate is divinely instituted, magistrates were "God's upon the earthe" who could act with complete discretion in each case.
To agree in advance on positive applications would impose an impossible rigidity. God's will would be defeated on the very attempt to carry it out. Much better to leave the magistrates a free hand. Let them search the Scriptures for the proper rule in each case as it alone arose. The decisions would be recorded, and when a similar case arose in the future, the judges could hark back to it and be guided by it. Through just such precedents the common law of England had arisen.Winthrop also had a politically strategic reason for opposing a written code. The charter granted to the Colony explicitly forbade the colonists from making any laws contrary to England's. Winthrop feared that if the colonists drafted and published a written code, such a code might draw England's attention to the differences between the Colony's laws and those of England. This could lead to intervention by England in the Colony's legal system. By keeping the Colony's laws buried in the precedents of individual court decisions, the divergences from England's laws would be better hidden and less likely to arouse suspicion.
Under continuing pressure from the freemen and ministers, the General Court appointed a committee of four of its members in 1635 "to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a Magna Charta," but nothing was produced. The following year, this same committee, now enlarged to include three members of the clergy--John Cotton, Hugh Peter and Thomas Shepard--again was requested to "make a draught of lawes agreeable to the word of God, which may be the Fundamentalls of this commonwealth, & to present the same to the nexte General Court." One member of the committee--John Cotton--single-handedly drafted a code and presented it to the Court in October, 1636.
Cotton's code, Moses His Judicials, was a document of ten chapters and represented a major departure from English common law. "[I]ts heavy reliance upon Scripture provides an important illustration of the strong religious influence which infused Puritan thinking about law and the administration." The chapters on crime and inheritance were drawn directly from the Scriptures and Scriptural proof texts were provided for sections which recapitulated the existing civil code. Civil and due process rights unknown in the common law but found in Scripture were included in the work. Considering that Cotton had no legal training and was not an officer of the Colony, his code displayed a remarkable understanding of the Colony's government and existing laws. Although, for reasons that are unclear, this code was never enacted into law, it formed the basis for the codes adopted by the colonies of New Haven and Southampton as well as serving as the prototype for the Codes which were finally adopted by the Colony.
In March, 1638, a third committee was appointed to draft a code. In November, 1639, Nathanial Ward, a member of the committee and the minister of Ipswich, submitted his draft of a code of the General Court. Ward had studied law at the Inn of Lincoln and had worked as a lawyer for ten years in England before emigrating to Massachusetts. His code comprised one hundred sections and drew heavily upon Cotton's earlier draft; Cotton even provided the scriptural annotations justifying the criminal law and penal sanctions of Ward's code. Section 65 explicitly set forth this code's Biblical basis: "No custome or prescription shall ever prevaile amongst us...that can be proved to bee morrallie sinfull by the word of God."
The section on criminal law especially displayed the influence of Biblical law in its departure from the common law. Crimes which were capital offenses in the Bible--idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, murder, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, kidnapping and perjury resulting in the execution of an innocent person --were capital offenses in his code. This was a major departure from English common law, where the number of capital crimes amounted to about fifty during the seventeenth century and rose to well over one hundred in the eighteenth. This code, referred to as The Body of Liberties, was finally accepted by the General Court. The name perhaps is significant: "Viewed as a whole, it resembles a bill of rights of the type which was later to become a familiar feature of American state and federal constitutions."
Further tinkering and fine-tuning of The Body of Liberties resulted in the production of the Lauues and Libertyes Concerning the Inhabitants of Massachusetts, which served, with minor revisions in 1660 and 1672, as the basis for civil and criminal law in the Colony until the eighteenth century. This code was laid out in the alphabetical form familiar to lawyers of the day and has been described as "a lawyerly piece of work." Its biblical borrowings and departure from the common law are likewise apparent, as in its prohibition against "inhumane, barbarous or cruel" punishment and the limitation of corporal punishment to no more than forty lashes.
In August of 1677, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of England condemned the laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in a work titled Objections to the Laws of New England. In 1684, the Court at Chancery in England annulled the Colony's charter and, in 1686, James II, in an attempt to tighten his grasp on the recalcitrant colonies, combined New England, New York, and New Jersey into one vice-royalty. The colonists were outraged by this and were glad when James was dethroned in the Glorious Rebellion of 1688. The following year, William and Mary recognized the original colonial charters and, in 1692, granted a new charter to the newly combined colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth. While admiralty courts and a new court of appeals were set up, nothing was done to alter the local practice of law.
In 1700, England's Privy Council asked the governors of the American colonies to report on their court procedures. The reports submitted revealed an embarrassing amount of divergence in law between the colonies and from English common law. With political turmoil behind it, England now took actions to regularize the legal systems of the colonies. These actions were largely successful in Massachusetts due to changes that had been occurring within the Colony itself.
The succeeding generations of Puritans lacked the religious fervency of their foreparents. This gradual loss of loyalty to distinctive Puritan tenets led later Puritans to adopt a conventionalism that saw no conflict between English common law and Biblical law. By the Eighteenth century, the commentaries of Blackstone and treatises of Coke had replaced the Bible as the Puritan's primary source of legal theory.
The Puritans totally relied upon the authority of Scripture because of the Puritan doctrine of sin. According to this doctrine, the fall of Adam resulted in the distortion of all of man's attributes including his powers of reason. Thus, man's rationality, a reflection of the imago Dei, could not be trusted to provide undistorted knowledge. Reason had to be in submission to the Word of God in order to be profitable for guidance.
Stated in this form, Puritan legal theory seems elegantly simple. Yet this very simplicity of form concealed problems. For when the theory was applied to specific situations it became clear that the Puritans had not resolved several underlying problems in their theory: the relationship between civil law, natural law and divine law; and the exegetical question of what constitutes immutable divine law, the range of judicial discretion in sentencing, and a blurring of the distinction between sin and crime. These problems reveal that the Puritans were not completely consistent in their claims that Scripture was the authoritative standard. In these areas, they returned to human wisdom as a standard apart from Scripture.
The tension arose over the exegetical question of what laws in the Bible were civil laws and what laws were divine laws. Again following Calvin, the Puritans divided the Mosaic law of the Old Testament into three parts. First, the ceremonial law was concerned with the particularly religious rites of Israel. All Puritans agreed with Calvin that, in interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New, these laws were prefigurements of the work of Christ clearly fulfilled by him and thus no longer obligatory. Second, the moral law, as summarized in the Decalogue, prescribed universal ethical norms. This law all Puritans held to be immutable and therefore permanently binding upon all humanity as the basis of both natural and civil law. Third, the judicial law served as the civil law of Israel and contained the penal sanctions for crimes. Most Puritans agreed with Calvin that civil law varied from age to age and from country to country, and thus the judicial law was relevant only to Israel.
Thus, for example, while the legal codes (civil law) of nations might justifiably disagree with the Mosaic judicial law and amongst themselves on the manner in which murder is to be punished, the internal natural law of equity and justice would compel all to agree that murder is a violation of the moral law, and this violation deserves some form of punishment.
This view is also flawed logically. On the one hand, the Puritans held that Scripture was the highest authority. This same Scripture sets forth an authoritative standard of equity and justice in its penal sanctions. On the other hand, the Puritans maintained that natural law was that equity and justice which God placed within the individual's conscience. There are three problems here. First, how is it that the sense of equity which God provides in the conscience could be different from His equity which He reveals in Scripture? Second, how can one continue to maintain that Scripture is the supreme authority, if the natural law equity resident in the individual's conscience can sit in judgment of Scriptural equity? Finally, if the natural law sense of equity with regard to punishment can vary significantly from culture to culture, how can the very notion of equity be preserved, since at the heart of that notion is the repudiation of arbitrariness? Significantly, this issue was the subject of debate by two of the finest minds of Massachusetts Bay colony: John Winthrop and John Cotton.
Winthrop, arguing in a recognizably Thomistic vein, but citing Scripture for support, maintained that "law" and "penalty" were totally different concepts; the former was eternal and binding, the latter temporary, and belonging to the magistrate's discretion. John Cotton, on the other hand, believed that the judicial laws of the Pentateuch, in which God had further elaborated upon the moral laws of the Ten Commandments and had prescribed penalties for their breach, were of a force in civil society equal to that of the laws of the Decalogue.In this debate, Cotton, the theologian, was more consistent with Calvinist theology than Winthrop the lawyer. Winthrop's purpose in propounding his view was obvious: he wanted to allow magistrates to individuate punishments according to the criminal and not the crime. This practice is explicitly prohibited in Scripture, however, which demands that punishments be meted out without regard to the person of the criminal.
As long as Biblical penal sanctions are held to be binding, the difference between sins and crimes is maintained. However, once these penal sanctions are dismissed as no longer relevant, the difference between sins and crimes disappears. When this occurs, all sins become fair game to be declared crimes. This is indeed what happened in the Puritan colonies of New England, as a plethora of laws were passed criminalizing behaviors which were never criminal in Scripture. Drunkenness, idleness, gossiping and many other moral sins were made criminal and a whole range of behaviors previously thought to be punished only by God or, if a church member, subject to church discipline, became subject to civil punishment.
Rather than looking to the Biblical sanctions as imposing an upper limit on the number of sins which were also crimes and therefore subject to judicial punishment, the biblical sanctions, if anything, were viewed as a minimum threshold and a starting point from which additional sins could be criminalized. Inevitably, this led to compromising the functional separations of the state from the church in Puritan society.
Several reasons account for its disappearance. A change in population dynamics diluted their original Calvinistic consensus when non-Calvinist immigrants arrived in the New World. This created a loss in Puritan political influence. Deism, Arminianism and Enlightenment ideas began chipping away at the foundations of Puritan theology. Calvinism was subjected to relentless ridicule and attack and became a favorite whipping-boy of the intelligentsia during the nineteenth century. Even anti-semitism might have played a part as when, in 1851, a Committee of the General Court of Massachusetts finally discarded the old Puritan legal code, repudiating it as the "Jewish Code."
Second, part of the fault must be apportioned the Puritans themselves. The famous "Puritan work ethic" brought great wealth to many Puritans. Striving after material riches began to supplant the original striving after spiritual riches and holy community. Wealth also brought respectability, and in grasping this respectability, Puritans dropped their role as prophetic critics of social mores and assumed an easy conventionalism toward them. In philosophy, Puritans allowed their love of reason and logic to subordinate revelation, as, for example, the Cambridge Platonists, who were almost all Puritans.
Underlying all of the explanations for the decline in Puritan influence is a shift in religious paradigms. In each case, the Puritan's paradigm of the inadequacy of human reason apart from its restoration in Christ and submission to the law of God as revealed in Scripture is replaced by a paradigm that posits the self-sufficiency of human reason apart from revelation. Rather than God being absolute, the Puritans absolutized reason or the state; thus reason or the state became the gods and ultimate authority of the system. This paradigm shift has striking consequences from generation to generation, as one grandson of a Puritan minister, for example, confidently asserted that "The Common Law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the voice of some sovereign or quasi-sovereign."
Even when they professed and appear to be following God's word most literally, they were influenced by their English inheritance, intellectual as well as legal, and by pragmatic or expedient considerations growing out of the conditions of settlement, the same kind of eclecticism that was motivated, guided, and made coherent by the distinctive ethic that marked Puritan scholarship generally is clearly apparent in the shaping of Massachusetts law. For all their reverence for the scriptures, the colonists almost never enacted literal bible texts as law before those texts had passed a rigorous logical justification.Yet for a time, the New England Puritans implemented Biblical law into their civil laws to a degree unparalleled at any time in history. Two observations can be made regarding this achievement. First, by adopting Biblical law, the Puritans actually created a criminal code less severe than that of their English contemporaries. Second, it is not in their adherence to Biblical law that Puritans ought to be criticized today. Rather, it is in those laws they promulgated regulating personal dress and behavior which exceeded the scope of Biblical law that has tarnished their legal legacy in the eyes of their posterity.
The Bible in Massachusetts was an indispensable touchstone, but not the cornerstone of Puritan legal thinking. Central as was its position in Puritan life and thought, it was only one influence among many in a rich cultural heritage which was quickened by the challenge of new problems in a new land. | <urn:uuid:79f03777-9051-40a1-ad58-effd7c9f125e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.reformed.org/webfiles/antithesis/v1n1/ant_v1n1_juris.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969764 | 4,794 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Better Disaster Preparedness and Recovery
Don't wait for disaster to strike -- or for feds to arrive -- to prepare for a catastrophe.
Natural disasters have been in the news lately. Tornadoes in Missouri and Massachusetts, floods in South Dakota, and the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan.
While neighbors can lend a hand after a "normal" disaster, massive catastrophes that disrupt the most basic social functions generally call for a government response.
Once the levees gave way in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, only the government was equipped to deal with the problem. Unfortunately, most governments aren't prepared to deal with disaster, and as the Katrina response showed, neither was the federal government.
So instead of relying entirely on the feds, San Francisco decided in 2008 to take its own preparedness steps. The city's Board of Supervisors decided to set an ambitious goal: "To build the city's capabilities to restore lifelines and facilitate economic and community recovery following a major incident." Just a few years later, it had crafted one of the most comprehensive municipal disaster recovery plans in the nation.
This thinking may have been prompted by the city's past. Perched atop the San Andreas fault, the City by the Bay was devastated by an earthquake and fire in 1906, which left perhaps 3,000 dead and more than 200,000 homeless.
Today, there is a 62 percent chance that San Francisco will see a quake of 6.7 or greater, according to the U.S. Geologicial Survey. Destruction could be massive. City officials estimate that a magnitude 7.2 quake could damage or destroy one third of all the private buildings in the city.
Rather than just planning for the immediate impact, such as providing food, shelter and medical care, San Francisco recognizes that dealing with a major disaster takes a long time. City officials believe that civic response to a catastrophic disaster will require not only immediate action, but a massive public and private commitment to long-term recovery and reconstruction.
San Francisco has taken recovery planning farther than almost any other city. Some of the steps taken include:
- a lifeline council of major utilities to explore interdependencies and restoration strategies;
- a robust financial planning strategy;
- a long-term housing plan; and,
- coordination with regional and federal recovery efforts.
Part of San Francisco's efforts are complemented by California's Volunteer Disaster Corps. This disaster response program (see a video here) identifies highly trained volunteers who are available to assist in the case of emergency under the direction of state and local officials.
After all, the budget isn't the only disaster that threatens California. From wildfires to oil spills to mudslides, the Golden State seems to get hit with more than its fair share of problems. The ability to tap into a network of possible aid providers is an important tool in dealing with overwhelming circumstances.
In tight budget times, it can be hard to devote resources to planning for an eventuality that may not occur for years. But every city faces potential threats, both natural disasters and manmade, that deserve some planning. Terrorism, pandemic outbreaks of disease, biological warfare -- you don't have to live on the San Andreas fault to be at risk of serious disaster these days.
Be honest: Is your community prepared to deal with a really big disaster? Do you have contingency plans for continuation of governance? Have you already reached out to possible partners in the private sector before disaster hits, so that protocols will be in place for making sure utilities, clean water and transit get back in operation as soon as possible?
It's never a good time to plan for a disaster. But without question the worst time is after disaster strikes.
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Court Backs Ohio's Cleanup of Voter List15 hours ago | <urn:uuid:734747ba-1ee2-4965-935e-be21e6db5c1f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.governing.com/blogs/bfc/better-disaster-preparedness-recovery.html?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00059-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938268 | 886 | 3.15625 | 3 |
From "Plural But Equal" (pg.8) , Harold Cruse says, " A critical reason why such an examination of the real origins of the twentieth-century civil rights movement is not simplistic is because the NAACP was not, as is commonly believed, the first effort on the part of historic black leadership to establish a civil rights organization.
He goes on to say...
Why the NAACP was not the first, became a major determinant in what it became as the major twentieth-century, both black and whites had attempted a number of short - lived conferences to deal with the "problems peculiar to the Negro." The most significant attempt, and the one that gained a degree of national attention and critical response, was the National Afro American League (1887 - 1908).
It was not generally understood during the heyday of the Sixties that the modern civil rights movement had an important history that had interacted with practically every major American reform, radical, labor, or progressive movement of the Twentieth century: that is was not a fortuitious aberration inspired or plotted by "subversive" elements bent on promoting anti-American domestic unrest. But the ahistorical character or our mind-set affects even historians when dealing with the racial factor in American developments. Truths are evaded aand consequences ignored. Thus, it was not acceidental that in the first comprehensive black history, From Slavery to Freedom (1947) , written seven years before the historic Brown decision, the National Afro-American League was not even mentioned.
The National Afro- American League was founded on the initiative of T. Thomas Fortune, a will-known journalist and newspaper editor who in 1887 called for the creation of an organization led by blacks "to fight for the rights denied them." After three years of intense effort and lively debate on the pros and cons of such a enture, the National Afro Amercian League wa formally organized at its first convention in Chicago in 1890. The convention agreed on a six-point program:
1. The securing of voting rights
2. The combating of lynch laws
3. The abolition of inequities in state funding of public school education for blacks and whites
4. reforming the southern penitentiary system --- its chain gang and convict lease practices
5. combating discrimination in railroad and public travel conveyances;
6. and discrimination in public places, hotels, and theaters.
Let's stop and reflect. The National Afro-Amercian League struggled to establish itself as a legitimate civil rights protest organization by and for, and supported by, black themselves.
What accomplishments emerged from the 6 point program?
Can you see the historical civil rights, African-centered leadership ideals, and philophies of the 1890's represented in these accomplishments listed below?
- The National Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Civil Rights Act of 1871, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
- * Blair Education Bill, The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, an d the the "No child Left Behind Act".
- Plessy v. Ferguson
With the exception of the last item (listed in the 6 point program), all the racial issues in the leagues's platform were either peculiar to the southern states or else more stringently enforced in that region than in the North. This was especially true because the league was established just ten years after the demise of Reconstruction, when practically all the advances blacks had won as a consequence of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 were rapidly being eroded in the South.
- and at last the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The launching of the National Afro-American League coicided with South's concerted move to disfranchise and completely remove southern blacks from participation in the political life of the region.
* The Blair Bill was introduced at The Fifty-first United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1889 to March 3, 1891, during the first two years of the administration of U.S. PresidentBenjamin Harrison.
The apportionment of seats in this House of Representatives was based on the Tenth Census of the United States in 1880. Both chambers had a Republican majority.
The Congress was dominated by the Republican Party. It was responsible for a number of pieces of landmark legislation, many of which asserted the authority of thefederal government.
Bills were discussed but some failed to pass, including two significant pieces of legislation focused on ensuring African Americans the right to vote.Henry Cabot Lodge sponsored a so-called Force Bill that would have established federal supervision of Congressional elections so as to prevent the disfranchisement of southern blacks.
Henry W. Blair sponsored the Blair Education Bill, which advocated the use of federal aid for education in order to frustrate southern whites employing literacy tests to prevent blacks from registering to vote.
51st United States Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peace be upon you | <urn:uuid:8f4e3b69-2670-4536-a4a4-4cf2be42c2d2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/shoulders-our-freedom-fighters/38112-national-afro-american-league-1887-1908-a.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396872.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00142-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961151 | 1,058 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Overall Rating: 4.6 (of 5)
Introduction To Inversions
What is an inversion?
Well, alot of the chords that guitarists learn early on are in ROOT POSITION. This means that the lowest tone being played (the bass note) is the ROOT of the chord. The other chord members, or tones that make up the rest of the chord, are stacked and doubled above the root.
The words ABOVE and BELOW refer to pitch, or how high or low the note is.
An inversion is a chord whose bass note is another chord member besides the root. We will deal with the standard inversions first, with a small explanation of chord construction, and then check out some other nice bass options for chords. | <urn:uuid:1197aaf0-268f-410f-b5c1-444791dda17f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wholenote.com/l4247--Introduction-To-Inversions | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395039.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00035-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95622 | 156 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Political Parties of United States
Today, the United States has two major political parties. One is the Democratic Party, which evolved out of Thomas Jefferson’s party, formed before 1800. The other is the Republican Party, which was formed in the 1850s, mostly by people in the states of the North and West who wanted the government to prevent the expansion of slavery into new.Most Americans today consider the Democratic Party the more liberal party. By that they mean that Democrats believe the federal government and the state governments should be active in providing social and economic programs for those who need money to go to college.
Republicans are not necessarily opposed to such programs. They place more emphasis on private enterprise and often accuse the Democrats of making the government too expensive and of creating too many laws that harm individual initiative. For that reason, Americans tend to think of the Republican Party as conservative.There are other, smaller parties in the United States besides the two major parties- Communist party and other Marxist Socialist parties. | <urn:uuid:daa8b388-693c-496c-b75b-ef8af62b814e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://georgeallen2008.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00048-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972011 | 207 | 3.390625 | 3 |
The role of genes may seem obvious when we are discussing physiologic disease, but less so when considering social and behavioral phenotypes. Social and behavioral scientists will need no convincing that biology isn't the whole story, and geneticists are learning more about the importance of environment. However, there is ample evidence of a biological contribution to behavior, which lays a foundation for understanding how genes and environment may interact.
Behavior often is species specific.
A chickadee, for example, carries one sunflower seed at a time from a feeder to a nearby branch, secures the seed to the branch between its feet, pecks it open, eats the contents, and repeats the process. Finches, in contrast, stay at the feeder for long periods, opening large numbers of seeds with their thick beaks. Some behaviors are so characteristic that biologists use them to help differentiate between closely related species.
Behaviors often breed true.
We can reproduce behaviors in successive generations of organisms. Consider the instinctive retrieval behavior of a yellow Labrador or the herding posture of a border collie.
Behaviors change in response to alterations in biological structures or processes.
For example, a brain injury can turn a polite, mild-mannered person into a foul-mouthed, aggressive boor, and we routinely modify the behavioral manifestations of mental illnesses with drugs that alter brain chemistry. Geneticists also have created or extinguished specific mouse behaviors-ranging from nurturing of pups to continuous circling in a strain called "twirler"- by inserting or disabling specific genes.
In humans, some behaviors run in families.
For example, there is a clear familial aggregation of mental illness, substance misuse, and personality traits
Behavior has an evolutionary history that persists across related species.
Chimpanzees are our closest relatives, separated from us by a mere 2 percent difference in DNA sequence. We and they share behaviors that are characteristic of highly social primates, including nurturing, cooperation, altruism, and even some facial expressions. Adaptive behaviors can be conserved through natural selection and evolution in the same way as physical features.
- Connection between phenotype and genotype in our Variation module
- A consideration of the biological pathways underlying behaviors is explored further in the Research in Action example Exploring Genetic Methods, which discusses nicotine abuse.
- Determining underlying genetic contributions to complex behaviors in our Research in Action example Linking Genes with Environment, which focuses on major depression. | <urn:uuid:89d49adb-369f-4bb0-8532-0e054b41974b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nchpeg.org/bssr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=121:biological-basis-for-behavior&catid=34:demo-category | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00043-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923417 | 504 | 3.890625 | 4 |
Colville Tribes Receive Grant for Innovative Wolf-Monitoring Program
“There is a policy decision currently to reduce the number of wolves in Montana,” Pauley said. “We’re accomplishing that with hunter harvest.”
Montana is doing DNA analysis from every wolf that authorities can get their hands on and has a joint understanding with Idaho and Wyoming for similar work in those states.
“Wolves disperse phenomenal distances,” Pauley said. “You might see genetic signatures from all over heck.”
Wyoming has had a wolf hunt the past two years. Their season is structured somewhat differently than Idaho and Montana. Most wolves in Wyoming are located adjacent to Yellowstone N.P. The area is divided into managed units and wolves are treated like any other trophy animal. When the allotment of wolves is taken in any managed unit, hunting ceases in that unit. In 2012 the quota for those units was 50 wolves and in 2013 that quota was reduced to 27 wolves.
In about 85% of Wyoming wolves are considered a predator with no closed season and no wolf license required, but the wolf population is very low and no kills have been reported.
Idaho also has a big population of wolves. At the end of 2012, 117 packs had been documented, a decline of 11 percent from the prior year. The Nez Perce Tribe also works with the state in monitoring wolves. In addition there are 23 so-called border packs in Montana, Wyoming and Washington whose ranges overlap into Idaho.
Hunting and trapping are allowed in Idaho during specified seasons. The agreement that states have had with the federal government since the wolf was taken off the endangered list includes numbers of breeding pairs of wolves each year. Idaho’s Panhandle Region borders northeastern Washington, putting the Colville Reservation well within the range a wolf might cover. Some of Colville’s wolf population likely came from Idaho as well as migrating south from British Columbia in Canada.
DNA analysis is also being done in the Panhandle, which may help answer that question. Analysis is being conducted by experts such as wolf biologist Lacy Robinson, who plans to visit four to six wolf dens this spring to document pup survival, place collars on the pups and obtain DNA material from fecal matter. Timing is key, she said with a chuckle.
“I try to get them when they’re old enough to wear a collar but not big enough to run away,” said Robinson, who is based in northern Idaho.
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Please use the log in option at the bottom of this page | <urn:uuid:44dc48d2-a417-431e-8ee8-0e69d8e0074f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/03/13/colville-tribes-receive-grant-innovative-wolf-monitoring-program-153980?page=0%2C1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00134-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974186 | 549 | 3.015625 | 3 |
The soft spot is a diamond-shaped area on the top of the head in newborns. This area is also called the anterior fontanel. The soft spot is located where 2 growth lines (suture lines) for the skull cross. Babies have a soft spot to allow the bone of the skull to expand as the brain grows rapidly. The soft spot normally becomes larger over the first 2 or 3 months of life and then gradually closes. It normally looks flat or slightly depressed. The soft spot should not look full or bulging. If it is bulging, it means that the brain is under some pressure and your child needs to be seen by your healthcare provider.
A soft spot is closed when the opening can no longer be felt. The soft spot commonly closes at 18 months of age, but it could close any time between the ages of 5 and 26 months.
If your child reaches 27 months of age and the soft spot is not closed, your child needs to be checked by your healthcare provider. A soft spot that closes before a child reaches 5 months of age is very rare. This is called premature closure of the fontanel and may also need to be checked by your healthcare provider.
Soon after birth, the soft spot is about 1 by 1 inch. It can get as large as 2 by 2 inches. If the area is larger than this, you should have your child checked by your healthcare provider.
It is quite safe to touch the soft spot. The open space between the bones is covered by a tough fibrous membrane that protects the brain. You can wash your baby's hair and continue with normal activities without worrying about harming the soft spot. | <urn:uuid:494c9440-50fd-4a2d-a58c-0b32ce4154bc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.abcdpediatrics.com/advisor/pa/pa_fontanel_hhg.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397795.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00055-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973558 | 339 | 2.953125 | 3 |
There are many reasons to fire Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) next Tuesday. But some people in Wisconsin and others who are following the recall battle between Walker, who last year eliminated the collective bargaining rights of 380,000 public employees, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D), who supports workers’ rights to bargain, are asking:
What’s so important about collective bargaining in the first place?
Let’s start with the fact that collective bargaining builds and protects the middle class, not just for union members, but for all workers. Here’s how.
Companies and other employers don’t just hand out fair wages and better benefits, even to employees they say they value. Middle-class wages and benefits like health care and paid sick days are built over time by working people who come together to insist on fair standards.
Through their unions, working people bargain collectively with employers—both private and public—to determine their terms of employment, including pay, health care, pensions and other benefits, hours, leave, job health and safety policies, ways to balance work and family and more.
Raising standards in an industry affects other workers in the industry, too, even if they aren’t part of a union. As the American Worker Project pointed out in its 2011 report “Unions Make the Middle Class,” collective bargaining draws the map for all workers to get to the middle class.
In America today, states with higher concentrations of union members have a much stronger middle class. The 10 states with the lowest percentage of workers in unions all have a relatively weak middle class.
Let’s not forget another basic fact about collective bargaining. It is an internationally recognized core workers’ right. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls it an “enabling” right—a fundamental right that ensures the ability to protect other rights.
Collective bargaining also provides a check and balance to employers’ power—and yes, cities, counties and states are employers. You really can’t expect every worker to bargain his or her own terms of employment. Without collective bargaining, employers can and do unilaterally impose their own terms and conditions.
Then we have the cold hard political reasons why collective bargaining is so damn important, especially for public workers like the 380,000 Wisconsin teachers, health care workers, snow plow drivers, social workers and more.
Politicians like Walker and others in the past couple of years who have attacked workers’ rights claim they are simply trying to curb spending and arrest state budget problems by eliminating collective bargaining.
But just a little closer look makes it clear they want to limit the power of working people, balance budgets on the backs of working families and deliver political pay-back to corporate and wealthy campaign contributors.
In Walker’s case, the elimination of collective bargaining was part of a package that included tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and drastic cuts to health care, education and other vital working family programs. It’s no surprise that Walker’s close allies such as the extremist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the far, far right-wing Koch Brothers and other corporate and anti-worker groups so passionately back Walker.
You could even make the case that collective bargaining is a core conservative principle. In 1968, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan (R) signed a law granting public employees collective bargaining rights. Who’s more core conservative than Reagan? Of course, he changed his tune as president, but that’s another story.
There are many reasons to fire Scott Walker next Tuesday and his attack on collective bargaining is a pretty good one. | <urn:uuid:64263226-2949-44e8-841c-4e661e53107e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Wisconsin-What-s-So-Important-About-Collective-Bargaining | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393146.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00119-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950852 | 750 | 2.875 | 3 |
We invited Neal Jahren and his students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design to respond to Dave Douglas & Bill Morrison’s production of Spark of Being. The class is Science and Culture in America. The Frankenstein myth, where technological innovation creates unintended consequences that then must be addressed by decision makers and society, apparently resonated with some of the material they are discussing in the class. They are interested in how ideas they have discussed in classroom applies to Spark of Being.
Some of the questions students will address include:
– In what ways does human and social creativity contribute to the risks presented in the Frankenstein myth?
– How can creativity contribute to resolving or minimizing those risks?
– What specific features of the film and what in the music compositions brought the themes in the performance home for you?
– How did the two mediums strengthen the theme?
– What was left up to the imagination?
– What was missing?
– What did you discover?
Feel free to comment on this post and answer along with the students too! | <urn:uuid:ab330fbe-79ac-4825-9e59-4c9c1dd68d03> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2010/10/07/studying-the-frankenstein-myth/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00156-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95842 | 213 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Online audio is definitely on an upswing, fueled by the iPod revolution, improved online playback, and broadband penetration. Audio search is keeping up with demand for new content, thanks in part to national security spending in the Cold War and beyond. In this post I will outline the current state of audio search, and how machines make sense of spoken word, progressing from easy to difficult.
First, let’s define the space. I’m interested how a search engine might index content with non-professionally produced metadata. The President’s weekly radio address contains a full transcript. Music catalogs are available for purchase from Muze and others to provide structured data about Bob Dylan and what he’s saying. A voicemail message or a podcast might not be as thoroughly described.
Let’s take a look at audio files a search engine might discover during a web crawl and current methods of understanding the content.
Audio content can be broken down into a few unique file extensions that hint at the remote audio container.
- The waveform audio format is a common form of uncompressed audio on Windows PCs.
- The Audio Interchange File Format is a common form of uncompressed audio on Apple computers.
- MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 is a popular form of distribution for compressed audio files.
- Windows Media Audio, popular on Windows machines.
- Advanced Systems Format, a container for streaming audio and video commonly used by Microsoft products.
- MPEG 4 audio files, most likely Advanced Audio Coding compressed audio created by Apple software.
- RealAudio format by Real Networks
- Ogg Vorbis open source compression format.
- The Free Lossless Audio Codec is a compressed format used by audioheads and for archival purposes.
A web search engine can take a look at all of the links in its index and identify possible audio files based on these file extensions without retrieving any file information from the host server. You can search Google for URLs containing “MP3” and referencing “Bob Dylan.” Audio files are not currently supported in Google’s file type operator. del.icio.us exposes bookmarked audio through the system:media:audio tag.
Audio files found in the wild are often described and referenced from within HTML pages. Here’s an example of how an audio file might be described within a web page link:
<a href="speech.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" hreflang="en-us" title="A longer description of the target audio"> A short description</a>
href attribute points to the location of the audio file. The
type value provides a hint for user agents about the type of file on the other end of the link. The
hreflang attribute communicates the base language of the linked content. The
title attribute provides more information about the linked resource, and may be displayed as a tooltip in some browsers. The element value, “A short description,” is the linked text on the page.
It’s not very likely publishers will produce more data than the functional effort of
href. Title is a semi-visible attribute and therefore more likely to be included in the description, but still uncommon. It’s possible to identify audio by a given MIME type such as
audio/mpeg but few sites provide the advisory hint of
type in their HTML markup. Collecting a file’s MIME type requires “touching” the remote file, and will most likely return default values of popular hosting applications such as Apache or IIS, so a search engine is likely better off relying on a local list of mapped extensions and helper application behaviors.
It is possible for a publisher to include more information about a file using a syndication feed combined with a specialized namespace such as the iTunes podcasting spec or Yahoo! Media RSS. A search engine may parse these feeds to gather more information about a particular audio item such as title, description, and length, which often provides a closer correlation than an audio link present on a web page.
Large search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have not created the same sort of hosted audio community for user-generated content as is present in images or video. Sites such as the Internet Archive host audio such as a Grateful Dead concert complete with data such as artist, title, performance date, equipment used, and audio editors.
Apple’s GarageBand software is one example of integrated recording, compression, descriptive markup, and remote hosting.
Once you reach out and “touch” the audio file the search engine can discover more description information embedded within. An ID3 tag describes the track title, artist, album, genre, and other information provided by the publisher. The metadata descriptor might contain additional information such as album art, lyrics, or descriptions specific to a specific segment of the audio file described as “chapters.” An audio metadata parser takes a look at each frame it knows how to read to extract the associated descriptive data.
ID3 tags often occur at the beginning of the file to assist streaming applications and a metadata indexer might not grab the entire audio file, opting instead to only look for data in those first bytes.
Parsing spoken word
Speech recognition has enjoyed rapid improvement over the last decade, thanks in part to the large budgets of national security indexing spoken words captured through ECHELON and other methods. Similar technology is now being applied to medical and legal transcriptions and creating more searchable content for each podcast.
Speech-to-text software such as AVOKE from BBN Technologies is used to create transcripts of phone calls to call centers, the nightly news, and government surveillance. The system utilizes known vocabularies by language applied over a continuous density hidden Markov model to analyze speech phonemes in various contexts. The system uses multiple passes to determine context and associative clustering of words and phrases.
Spoken word analysis is utilized in consumer search engine PodZinger to track a search term and jump to the appropriate marker within the file containing the given term. You can search for audio containing mentions of the Athletics and Tigers and view your results in the context of the file with direct links to that segment of the audio program.
Online audio content will only continue to get bigger, as more content makes its way online and into the ears of consumers on a PC, iPod, or other listening device. The maturity of online audio and the current business feasibility should consolidate audio format offerings into audio understood by dominant market players in the desktop, portable, and home theater markets.
I expect even more speech-to-text work in the future as the CPUs, memory, and disk space available continues to become computationally and monetarily cheaper. Perhaps we might even see client-side analysis of content similar to analysis work being conducted on images. Windows Media Player and iTunes are just two examples of popular media players that connect to the Internet to retrieve more information about your media files, from album art to recorded year. In the future such applications might also query data services such as Last.fm, MusicBrainz, or the Music Genome Project to apply more data to each file based on a purchased database, collective intelligence, or expert analysis.
Creating new sources of audio content is becoming easier. The popularity of VoIP will place new value on microphones connected to our PCs, gaming systems, and other connected electronics devices. Voice will become an integrated feature, allowing you to easily save a compressed audio file of a recent planning call or your Halo trash-talking session.
I think many search engines have looked past audio search due to the litigious nature of the RIAA and others evidenced by last year’s MGM vs. Grokster Supreme Court ruling. Google’s recent $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube is perhaps a sign that search technology will continue to advance, challenging any emergent legal roadblocks along the way.
As with most search sectors, audio search is still in very early stages. Expect known vocabularies and relationship mappings to increase over time, providing more insight not only into each word, but also speaker identification, tone, and possibly even relationships between events such as a power outage’s correlation to customer service calls. We’ll keep talking and publishing and search will attempt to keep up with our rate of speech, accents, and methods of describing our creations. | <urn:uuid:e25e83bf-a421-4f26-ac5c-17bffa9fb70e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/10/audio-search.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398516.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90181 | 1,734 | 2.5625 | 3 |
From the moment Karl Benz perfected the modern automobile, architecture has contended with this most ubiquitous of machines.
This session is dedicated to the historical, cultural, and artistic intertwining of cars and buildings over a century. Modernist interest in the car is well known, from Le Corbusier’s juxtaposition of car and temple to car factory designs by Albert Kahn and Matte Trucco that served as modernist typologies. Wright, Neutra, and Archigram embraced the car as a technology that would radically transform architecture, the Smithsons drew inspiration from the Jeep, Citroën and Cadillac, and GM turned to Saarinen to affirm brand identity. The Chevy “Suburban” meanwhile hailed an architecturally-determined lifestyle. The car was equally relevant to post-modernism: Venturi and Scott-Brown’s Learning from Las Vegas and Koolhaas’s team in Lagos relied on observations from moving vehicles, the latter example reminding us of the centrality of the car to the documentation of architecture in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Yet the historical consideration of the relationship between cars and architecture is largely isolated (for instance, in the scholarship of Reyner Banham) and anecdotal (by regarding the car as a pop phenomenon). This session instead posits that the car is an inextricable part of architectural history that necessitates a reconsideration of the methodological distinction between architectural history and design history, environmental studies, and cultural studies. We seek papers that examine or reveal the ways cars have shaped architecture and the ways architecture has shaped cars—not accidentally, but intentionally, in all countries and time periods of the automotive era. Papers may also examine how history has explored or occluded an automotive dimension to architecture.
Members and friends of the Society of Architectural Historians are invited to submit abstracts by 14 August 2010. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent directly to the appropriate session chair; abstracts are to be headed with the applicant’s name, professional affiliation [graduate students in brackets], and title of paper. Submit with the abstract a short curriculum vitae, home and work addresses, email addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Abstracts should define the subject and summarize the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. The content of that paper should be the product of well-documented original research that is primarily analytical and interpretative rather than descriptive in nature.
Papers cannot have been previously published, nor presented in public except to a small, local audience. Only one submission per author will be accepted. All abstracts will be held in confidence during the selection process.
Gabrielle Esperdy, Associate Professor of Architectural History, NJIT School of Architecture, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102; 973-596-3026; firstname.lastname@example.org
Simon Sadler, Professor of Architectural and Urban History, University of California, Davis, Art Building, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616; 530-304-5722; email@example.com Email: firstname.lastname@example.org
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Details about An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature:
A superb cross-section of literature produced over 4,000 years ago, translated by the author and including extracts from The Book of the Dead, legends of the gods, historical and autobiographical literature, tales of travel and adventure, fairy tales, moral and philosophical literature, poetical compositions, and much more.
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Rent An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Literature 1st edition today, or search our site for other textbooks by E. A. Wallis Budge. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Dover Publications, Incorporated.
Need help ASAP? We have you covered with 24/7 instant online tutoring. Connect with one of our Classics tutors now. | <urn:uuid:e002a09d-bd10-4a60-b32b-86ebd6cbbdf7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.chegg.com/textbooks/an-introduction-to-ancient-egyptian-literature-1st-edition-9780486295022-0486295028?ii=17&trackid=e4ef5286&omre_ir=1&omre_sp= | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891581 | 157 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Today we get up close and personal in our steps against breast cancer. Anchor Abby Powell takes us into a mammography room to give us a look at exactly what happens during a mammogram. By taking October's Awareness Month into Action in November, we are gaining more knowledge so that the women of Texoma will be empowered to fight and beat breast cancer together.
-One in eight women living in the U.S. will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime.
-Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in U.S. women. It's the leading cause of death in 35-to-65-year-old women.
-Approximately 2.4 million American women with a history of breast cancer are alive today.
-If the cancer is detected before it has spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body, the chance for a cure is nearly 100 percent.
Regular mammography screening began in the United States in 1990. Since then, the mortality rate from breast cancer, which had been unchanged for the preceeding 50 years, drecreased by 30 percent. *
Talk to your doctor or contact the American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org) for more information.
A special thank you to Dr. Alex Ehsan of Texas Oncology, Jennifer Reed, and the staff at TMC for making the screening on camera possible.
*American Cancer Society, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services | <urn:uuid:563e2ee7-d929-4e2e-9423-35c83cc032cf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.kxii.com/morningshow/headlines/Part_2_of_Our_Taking_ACTION_Against_Breast_Cancer_-_Anchor_Abby_Gets_a_Mammogram_133872483.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393533.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948729 | 304 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Animation, in a simple understanding, can be defined as creation of a succession of image frames which are combined into a film. Likewise, computer animation can be defined as an art of giving life and realism to computer-generated graphics or an art form that involves bringing still images to life using computer technology. It encompasses the integration of certain macro rules; the synchronization of complete multi-media where graphics, sound and motion are integrated. In fact the word ‘animation’ is derived from the phrase ‘giving life’. Computer animation is one of the youngest, most dynamic and most rewarding sector of today's Multi-media industry.
Animation has come a long way in the last few decades. It has been used from advertising to movies and from online pages to special effects to video games. Animation is not just for kids to enjoy after school cartoons or fairy tales in their TV screens. They are used exquisitely in education sector, business projects, Advertisements, Manufacturing industries, Medical science and engineering. Whether online or on the big screen, animation is in high demand— making animation a rewarding sector for making a good career. Animation can be a great contributor to the national revenue if government does its share to develop animation as a full-fledged industry in Nepal. But, though we won’t dare call animation an industry in case of Nepal, there are some self-taught, some qualified and some polished professionals doing their bits around to push the business volume up, to convince the local industries, the media, the corporates and the common people about what animation is and what it takes to create a mute character and breathe life into it.
Creating an animation consists of idea development, pre-production, production and post-production. The characters are created in idea development. In pre-production, the ideas are converted into layouts. Scriptwriting, storyboarding, character development, backgrounds, layout designing, animatics and voice comes under per-production. The actual result of the story can be visualised in the production stage which is a blend of animation, in-betweening or tweening (i.e the creation of intermediate frames between two main images to give the appearance that the first image flows smoothly into the second one), scanning, compositing (i.e combining images from different sources to create a finished frame of animation), background preparation and colouring. Final sound recordings, colour editing, testing and special sound effects are all added at the post-production stage. Post production stage activities includes editing, special effects (SFX), colour correction, compositing, voice and music editing and rendering. Rendering is the final touches to an animation scene, in which the data is converted to the raster image or animation.
To become an animator, one doesn't require any specific academic qualification. There are abundance of sources and tutorials available online. Those with a basic sketching skill and a passion for animation can enter this field. But having a degree or diploma in animation would always be an additional attribute for getting a better job as while pursuing a degree a student develops skills in drawing, acting, direction, camera movements for animation and digital animation, all of which are essential for 2D and 3D animation. Minimum qualification for a degree and diploma course in animation is plus two or equivalent. | <urn:uuid:83f73c1c-15ea-4a53-a8e8-fb4aaa28c8da> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.educatenepal.com/career_choice/detail/animation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399117.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00166-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940867 | 668 | 3 | 3 |
Although popularized in the West by Stanley Kubrick's 1955 film, the story of Spartacus in Russia is popularly associated with ballet. The image of the hunky rebel slave, standing up for freedom against cruelty and oppression, brings to mind not Kirk Douglas, but Vladimir Vasilev of the Bolshoi Ballet.
The idea of a slave rising up against the slave state (Rome) as an exemplary hero of the proletariat goes back to Karl Marx. And the idea of putting this story in the ballet starts with Nikolai Volkov in 1938. It was he who began creating a version of Spartacus that could be danced. Starting with the accounts of Plutarch and Appian, he embellished the story to include the characters of the Aegina and Harmodius who would betray Spartacus and his army. Although he gave the scenario to Igor Moiseyev at the Bolshoi, the production never got off the ground.
Volkov did not give up on his idea. He pursued Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (you'll recall his "Sabre Dance") to work on a ballet. Like any other composer of his day, Khachaturian worked within the strictures of Soviet realism. Music was supposed to celebrate "the people," and be rooted in folk song, and Khachaturian, in the early 1940's, was celebrated for his incorporation of Armenian folk melodies in his work. But soon this officially sanctioned composer found his reputation waning-- he was accused of "bourgeois tendencies" for formalism appearing in his work. He, along with Shostakovich and Prokofiev were declared "anti-people." Eventually, after making official apologies, and scoring pro-Stalin films, he began work on a ballet in 1950, and by 1954, he had a four act score.
Spartacus finally got its premiere, under the staging of Leonid Jacobsen at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad in 1956. Askold Makarov danced the lead and Inna Zubkovskaya created the role of Phrygia, Spartacus's wife. It was not successful. Over at the Bolshoi, Moiseyev thought he could do it better, and the ballet got its Moscow premiere in 1958. It was not a success. Neither was a 1962 re-staging at the Bolshoi, helmed this time by Jacobsen again.
Despite this, Khachaturian was still busy working on the score. He put together the music in Four Suites, for orchestras to perform as standalone pieces. (The recordings you find today are not of the ballet score, but of Khachaturian's suites. The music is out of sequence from what you would hear at the ballet). Khachaturian won the Lenin Prize for the score in 1959.
In 1964, the Bolshoi got a new artistic director: Yuri Grigorovich. He came at Spartacus with a new eye, and began a reworking. He tossed out Volkov's scenario, tightened the story, going back to Raffaello Giovagnoli's 1874 novel for inspiration. He called in Khachaturian to shorten the work to three acts.
And so, in 1968, the Bolshoi presented the new improved Spartacus. Vladimir Vasilev returned to the lead (he'd played it in 1958), and this time he was hailed as exceptional. Ekaterina Maximova, the star ballerina of the Bolshoi, played Phrygia. It is this production that established the ballet as a Soviet classic, and established Grigorovich as a genius. (A DVD is available of this staging, filmed in 1977 with Natalia Bessmertnova as Phyrgia. It has been called "one of the best dance films ever made"-- although apparently the video transfer by Kultur is abominable).
The ballet story features four main characters: Spartacus, the hero, noble, brave, steadfast, et cetera, dances freedom, strength, and honor-- you can tell he's the good guy because he's dancing classical ballet steps. Crassus, the Roman general, is cruel, vain, domineering, lustful, et ceterea (Maris Liepa played the role at the Bolshoi, and it brought him acclaim) is clearly the villain as he has a neo-classical style of dance. Phrygia, Spartacus's lover, comes across as caring, gentle, fragile. Aegina, a concubine, is a scheming traitor, cold and deceitful (Nina Timofeyeva). There are various and many Gladiators, slaves, shepherds, courtesans, soldiers, slavers, patricians, and peasants.
Here's the plot: Spartacus and Phrygia, slaves, are separated. Crassus spies Phrygia, is lust-struck, is about to take her when Aegina, the jealous type, intervenes with some sensual dancing. Meanwhile, Spartacus is made to become a gladiator and has to kill a friend for the pleasure of Crassus. Filled with remorse, he decides to lead the slaves in revolt, and his army actually manages to capture and defeat Crassus. But they let him go (to humiliate him further). Bad move, as Crassus has the might of the entire Roman empire at his command, as well as Aegina and her stable of hussies, who invite Spartacus's men into an orgy. Blissful, but spent, they are decimated by the Roman legions, and Spartacus is captured and killed, hoisted aloft on Roman spears. Phrygia mourns Spartacus and his body is held aloft for the immortal cause of freedom for the people.
In addition to being a classic of Soviet ballet, this is a guy's ballet. If you think of ballet as all about the ballerinas, with the occasional man needed for a pas de deux, this is the ballet for you. Gladiators. Roman legions. The Bolshoi ballet corps are wearing armor and carrying weapons, for cryin' out loud.
Khachaturian's music from Spartacus
has one infamous tune: the romantic "Adagio
of Spartacus and Phrygia" (which appears in the ballet as they are re-united, in the score in the Second Suite). It has re-surfaced in the soundtrack
s of many films and television shows, becoming the theme to the series The Onedin Line
, and featured notably in both Caligula
and The Hudsucker Proxy.
Richard Bratby. "Spartacus: Suite No. 2." Classicalnotes.co.uk. 1999. <http://www.classicalnotes.co.uk/notes/khachaturian1.html> (4 June 2004)
Paul Dorn. 1 March 2002, "Grigorovich Ballet Performs "Spartacus" in Sacramento" <soc.culture.russian> (4 June 2004)
John W. Goff. Review of Khachaturian: Spartacus DVD. Amazon.com 14 March 2003. <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000YEDLS/002-4325403-7659261> (4 June 2004)
Kristian Hibberd. Programme Notes for the London Shostakovich Orchestra Concert at St Cyprian's Church, 19 May 2001. Shostakovich.com. <http://www.shostakovich.com/may2001.html> (4 June 2004)
Gary Lemco. Review of Khachaturian: Spartacus DVD. Audiophile Audition Web site. Jan/Feb 2004. <http://www.audaud.com/audaud/JAN-FEB04/dvd-v/dvd1.html> (4 June 2004)
Anne Marriott. Review of Spartacus by the Bolshoi Ballet, July 1999, London, Coliseum. Ballet Magazine. July 1999. <http://www.ballet.co.uk/magazines/yr_99/aug99/am_rev_bolshoi_0799.htm> (4 June 2004)
Brenda Miller. "Spartakus." Music Lovers Web site. <http://www.music-lovers.co.il/russia/concerts_files/concert_pages/ballets/spartakus.html> (4 June 2004)
<rss28> Review of Khachaturian: Spartacus VHS. Amazon.com 4 March 2000. <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6301217888/002-4325403-7659261> (4 June 2004)
Kozet Sinanyan. "Grigorovich Brings 'Spartacus' to Stage in Pasadena." Usanogh. 1 October 2003. <http://www.usanogh.com/articles/article.php?story_id=200&author_id=47> (4 June 2004)
Internet Movie Database. "Aram Khachaturyan." <http://imdb.com/name/nm0006154/> (4 June 2004)
The Guardian. "Cinematic for the People." 12 June 2003. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,975624,00.html> (4 June 2004) | <urn:uuid:541f42fb-303f-4895-a3f9-98d4c8e5a515> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://everything2.com/title/Spartacus | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950646 | 2,009 | 2.8125 | 3 |
The Oxford Dictionary of English is at the forefront of language research, focusing on English as it is used today, informed by the most up-to-date evidence from the largest language research program in the world, including the 800-million-word Oxford English Corpus. This British English dictionary includes hundreds of brand-new words and senses, as well as up-to-date encyclopedic information, and extensive appendices covering topics such as countries, heads of state, and chemical elements.
Ideal for anyone who needs a comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of current English; for professionals, students, academics, and for use at work or at home.
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"For all its entries, the Oxford has good clear definitions, excellent descriptions of word origins, and plenty of usage boxes."' - Richard Bell, Writing Magazine
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Contact us: firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:264065bc-aaee-4498-8442-2f2f4d1a4856> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://download.pandaapp.com/android-app/oxford-dictionary-of-english-2.12-67-id3589.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400572.45/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00006-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.893079 | 261 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Get the basics
Check out The Project Approach created by University of Alberta Professor Sylvia Chard, an expert on learning through projects. The Buck Institute for Education offers an extensive introduction to project-based learning, including research and training manuals for middle and high school teachers.
Encourage implementation of multiple projects
In its Challenge 2000 Year 4 report SRI researchers said that having more than one project a year makes the project model an integral part of the school structure.
Support teachers' efforts to implement project-based learning
A University of Michigan research team led by Ronald W. Marx found that when first implementing project-based learning, teachers may have trouble with such critical issues as classroom and time management, technology use, and assessment. However, the authors found that such problems can be alleviated with a supportive school environment that allows for reflection, collaboration, and feedback. Newsome Park Elementary School Principal Peter Bender says it's a good idea to support a core group of teachers that have shown interest in project-based learning. And, he says, take plenty of time to build choice for students into the process.
Invite policymakers to "Project Day."
Whatever your school calls the public celebration or presentation at the end of a project, policymakers should be included among special guests invited to attend. Seeing is believing, and policymakers who see firsthand the beneficial results of project-based learning are more likely to support such an approach.
Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project. With evidence of its own work at a number of San Francisco Bay Area schools, project officials outline the components of project-based learning and make the case for its benefit to students and teachers.
Coalition for Essential Schools. The coalition advocates working on real-world problems as a way to engage students.
Co-nect. Co-nect works with schools to create real-world projects that integrate technology into a rigorous curriculum.
Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach. This book by Professors Sylvia Chard and Lilian Katz, first published in 1989 and revised in 2000, provides an introduction to the project approach to learning.
Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound. At the heart of this comprehensive school reform model are long-term, multidisciplinary expeditions.
Global SchoolNet Foundation Project Registry. Created for teachers, this Web site contains worldwide projects using technology from classroom teachers and organizations such as NASA, iEARN, and GLOBE. The projects can be sorted by age level, subject, and project start date.
Investigation Station. This Web site, hosted by The Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education at the University of Michigan, provides teachers and students with ideas, tools, and resources for inquiry-based science projects.
Roadmap to Restructuring. Newsome Park Elementary School Principal Peter Bender says he heavily relied on this book by David Conley in making project-based learning the focal point of his school's curriculum.
Virtual Architecture. University of Texas Professor Judi Harris created a Web site that is rich in ideas on how to mine the Internet for projects. She offers a framework for designing and implementing curriculum-based telecomputing projects.
WebQuest. Created by San Diego State University Professor Bernie Dodge, this Web site offers teachers and students examples and explanations on using, selecting, and analyzing information found on the Web for teaching any subject at any grade level. WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented approach that supports thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Weizmann Institute of Science. This institute, located in Rehovot, Israel, offers teachers and administrators tips for professional development for project-based learning. | <urn:uuid:475e3d39-afff-4832-818e-84617047f041> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.edutopia.org/what-administrators-can-do?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393997.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939897 | 737 | 3.234375 | 3 |
What's your personality type?
iOS iPhone Entertainment
Do you know what Temperament is? It is defined as the characteristics of a person's behavior that are more or less consistent over time. We're not talking about a person who is nervous about something, but about someone who is nervous all the time. Nor about someone who is happy from time to time, but someone who is almost always happy.
These character types have been identified and classified, forming the basis of the theory of the "Four Temperaments": Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic.
With this test, you can discover what YOUR PERSONALITY is, and what your corresponding strengths and weaknesses are. Have your friends take this test, so that they can discover their temperament too! | <urn:uuid:dbc0c7fd-1cfd-4c64-a02e-e399adb2337a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://appshopper.com/entertainment/whats-your-personality-type | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00177-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958662 | 161 | 2.625 | 3 |
Two teams of six players skate on the ice at one time. Teams usually line up with one center, two wings, two defensemen, and one goalie. Any player may score a goal and all skaters contribute on defense. Substitutions may take place at any time during a game. Offensive and defensive players generally are substituted as complete lines, rather than individually.
Center - Plays on the front line of the offense between the two wings. On an offensive attack, the center attempts to gain a position in front of the opposing teams net for scoring opportunities.
Wings - Together with the center, they lead the offensive attack against the opposition. They usually play along the boards to contain the puck, pass to teammates or shoot on goal.
Defensemen - Play in front of the net in their teams defensive zone. They use stick and body checks to prevent opposing players from shooting the puck at their goal. They work to keep the puck out of their own territory by pushing it up toward their opponents zone.
Goalie - Plays directly in front of the net to stop opponents shots from going in the goal. The goalie is the only player on the ice allowed to catch and hold the puck.
Entire contents copyright © 1997-2006, MomsGuide.com , Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any form for commercial re-use without prior written permission is forbidden. Moms Guide to Sports is a registered trademark of MomsGuide.com, Inc. | <urn:uuid:8f203c21-0342-4d7f-9d18-2c7cf4c78665> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.momsguide.com/icehockey/ih2.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395621.98/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00095-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96058 | 299 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Animal Studies Bibliography
Sanders, Clinton. 1993. Understanding dogs: Caretakers' attributions of mindedness in canine- human relationships. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22(2): 205-226.
Animal-human interaction has been generally ignored by sociology because Meadian social interaction theory is phonocentric, holding that true exchanges (intersubjectivity) occur through language. People with consistent contact with animals, however, consistently interpret animals as subjective actors in an meaningful social relationship with them. This attribution occurs both among pet owners and among workers who make it despite other ideologies they are expected to adhere to (e.g. for lab workers, the animal as mindless scientific object). Sanders used participant observation at a veterinary clinic, open-ended interviews, and autoethnography to study how dog owners constructed their interactions with dogs. The processes at work parallel those outlined by Bogdan & Taylor (1989) for nondisabled people construe their relationships with severely disabled others. Assigning or denying human status is a social activity. Designating groups of people as less than human and dehumanizing people in an institutional setting are common practices historically. Dog owners in the study did not literally think their dogs were people, nor did they use a keyed frame to consider the dogs pretend people as suggested by Hickrod & Schmitt (1982). Rather, recognized that the dog was not literally human while still experiencing their interactions as a real social relationship. They did this through the same 4 mechanisms described by Bogdan & Taylor. First, they attributed mindedness to the dog. Owners generally believed that their dogs thought differently than humans do, describing dogs' thought as nonlinear, composed of images, emotion-based, and focused on basic issues like immediate events and its physical and emotional experience. As evidence of the dogs' thought, owners told stories of dogs altering their behavior during training or everyday life as they figured out problems and tried to get owners to alter their behavior in some desired way (e.g. dogs' actions to get the owner to open the door or give a dog treat), or as dogs interacted in play with each other and showed learning, thought, and deception to get what they wanted. Second, owners described their dogs as individuals, based on the dogs' personality, preferences in food, activities, toys, and people, and dogs' personal histories, described as shaping their personalities. Third, owners described their dogs as emotional beings, and this emotion was the reciprocal aspect of the relationship. Owners described dogs as expressing their feelings of happiness, anger, etc. to their owners, as showing guilt when they violated the rules of the house (their awareness of which was further support for their humanness), and sharing emotion with the owner, through reciprocal love and particularly by the dog sensing owners' distress and comforting the owner. These shared feelings produced strong emotional ties between owner and dog. Fourth, the dog was given a social place. Dogs were considered family members or close friends. As such they were part of the daily household routine (natural rituals that create a mutual sense of being together') and of special events like Christmas and the dog's birthday. Owners expressed discomfort with questions asking them directly about their dogs' humanness, because they were aware of social stigma attached to people who take pets too seriously. This research helps to expand symbolic interactionists' concept of the mind, moving from the Meadian definition of the mind as an individual conversation/object to the mind as a entity. The use of emotion and prolonged interaction as a way for the nondisabled human to engage in doing mind, or giving voice to the mind of an alingual other, is of particular interest, as is expanded understanding of the iconographic mind. Creation of identities starts with social expectations and ideologies, and further interaction with the other then affirms or disconfirms those ideas about the other. Further sociological research should consider people's interactions with species other than dogs, work and leisure settings involving animals, variations in human-animal interaction by race, class, and ethnicity, and dependent human-animal relationships (people and their guide dogs, etc.). | <urn:uuid:46831f29-1558-4202-a7fd-533acaead6ae> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.animalstudies.msu.edu/ASBibliography/sanders1993_2.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403502.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974893 | 832 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Health officials are warning Minnesotans to take steps to stay healthy as temperatures hover in the mid-90s this week.
Minnesota Department of Health Climate and Health Program Director Kristin Raab said this level of heat can bring on heat exhaustion, which can lead to heat stroke and death. Symptoms of heat exhaustion include muscle cramps, dizziness, nausea and fainting.
Raab said people who experience these symptoms should immediately try to get cool. If the situation does not improve, they should seek medical attention.
"Young children are really susceptible, older people are really susceptible and then people who are exposed to the heat or sun for long periods of time," Raab said. "We typically think we're kind of invincible, nothing's going to happen to us, but in reality, if you're out there in the sun, you're exposed to these conditions and you could become sick."
To avoid a medical situation, people should drink lots of water and avoid alcoholic or sugary drinks.
"It's important to stay cool, to stay indoors with air conditioning," Raab said. "If they don't have air conditioning we suggest that people go to someplace that does have air conditioning like a mall or a library or other public space," Raab said.
Raab said that fans are no longer effective when it gets so hot. She also recommended that people cool down with a cold shower or bath.
At least 35 people in Minnesota have died directly of heat-related causes between 2000 and 2010, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety said.
The Minnesota Department of Health maintains a guide to help people deal with extreme heat on their website. | <urn:uuid:4ad7bed8-e592-47a2-afb6-8fe7c3cb57a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.mprnews.org/story/2012/07/02/weather/heat-warning-advisory | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00004-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975521 | 339 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Image courtesy of Hal Pierce, NASA GSFC. More TRMM images may be found at the TRMM Website (http://trmm.gsfc.nasa.gov).
small (1.2 MB MPEG)
large (3.3 MB QuickTime)
This image shows rainfall accumulation over California and Oregon's Coastal Ranges from December 14 - 17, 2002. The area has been
battered by a series of North Pacific storms called extratropical lows. Several lives have been lost as a consequence of flooding rains, high winds and significant snow accumulations. The Guadalupe
and Napa Rivers in California have overflowed their banks and wind gusts in the 50-80 mph range have occurred. The rain image, based on data from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite shows how mountains dramatically enhance precipitation when moist, southerly winds flow off the ocean and are forced to ascend. Rain
totals exceeded 16 inches in many locations. The series of powerful storms may be related to a moderate El Niño currently active across
the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
Note: Often times, due to the size, browsers have a difficult time opening and displaying images. If you experiece an error when clicking on an image link, please try directly downloading the image (using a right click, save as method) to view it locally.
This image originally appeared on the Earth Observatory. Click here to view the full, original record. | <urn:uuid:2182375e-70db-4d4d-9fc7-1c1a70db2d0f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=3048 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393442.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00140-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.891962 | 302 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Boring Clams and Beaches
November 22, 2009
Boring clams (Penitella penita) are anything but boring. If you've spent much time picking up rocks along the beaches of southern California you may have wondered how those nearly perfectly round holes are "drilled" into so many of them. I found the answer last summer while walking along the shore at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The perfect fit of the clam shells into the holes in the sandstone in the photo at left suggest that the clams may have had something to do with creating those holes. A closer examination of the shells reveals the sharp ridges visible in the close-up picture on the right. By persistent grinding and rotation of the cutting edges of their shells against the rock, these rock boring clams create safe homes for themselves -- in solid rock. In doing so, they significantly wear the shoreline rocks, thereby contributing additional sand to the beaches. See also the Earth Science Picture of the Day for September 7, 2009.
Goleta Point UCSB coordinates: 34° 24' 17" N, 119° 50' 39" W | <urn:uuid:301f51f3-c734-4273-b342-fb431d18e5f0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2009/11/boring-clams-and-beaches.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00162-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946534 | 232 | 3.34375 | 3 |
During the last meeting of the Permanent Council the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) celebrated the inclusion on the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) list of World Heritage sites of the Andean road system Qhapaq Ñan, which crosses six members of the Organization.
The Secretary General of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, welcomed the decision by UNESCO to include “a road system that demonstrates the genius of the Incas and the incredible reach of their culture, and that also reminds us that the unity of the Americas is not just a political slogan, but a historical reality. This reality is reflected today in the joint efforts of Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador that culminated in this announcement.”
In a meeting of the Permanent Council of the hemispheric institution, the Permanent Representative of Peru to the OAS, Juan Federico Jiménez Mayor, explained that, “thanks to the Qhapaq Ñan, the Incas were able to join the great historical, natural and cultural diversity of the territory that today is part of the countries of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.”
“The inclusion of this route in the World Heritage List of UNESCO is a recognition of the historical richness of these six OAS member countries, joined historically by this system of roads, that was crossed a complex geography along the ridge of the Andes, with monumental pathways and thanks to the management of the outstanding construction techniques of the Inca civilization,” said Ambassador Jiménez Mayor.
Upon the announcement of its inclusion in the list of World Heritage sites, UNESCO explained the decision, saying “this extraordinary network through one of the world’s most extreme geographical terrains, linked the snow-capped peaks of the Andes – at an altitude of more than 6,000 meters – to the coast, running through hot rainforests, fertile valleys and absolute deserts.” The worldwide organization highlighted that the inclusion emphasizes “the social, political, architectural and engineering achievements of the network, along with its associated infrastructure for trade, accommodation and storage, and sites of religious significance.”
The Qhapaq Ñan, which means in Quechua “royal road,” is some 5,200 kilometers long, and reaches from Quito to what is today Tucumán, in Argentina. Although some portions lie beneath cities today, a large part of the enormous network remains passable. Connecting Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire, with all of its territories, the Qhapaq Ñan eased communication with the many peoples of the empire, and served as a means of integration as much political as administrative, socioeconomic, and cultural. Among other cities, the route passes through the current sites of Lima, La Paz, Cochabamba, Santiago and Salta. Its most famous stretch, known as “the path of the Inca,” connects Cuzco with Machu Picchu, and attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists annually.
This is the first time that six countries have presented a proposal to the World Heritage Committee, and was the result of a process that lasted more than ten years, and in which the cooperation between the six OAS member states was critically important. Together with the Qhapaq Ñan, UNESCO added to the list of now 988 World Heritage Sites the Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey in Germany, and the Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche.
During the meeting, the Peruvian Ambassador presented a video showing the historic and cultural value of the Andean road system.
For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org. | <urn:uuid:238e7005-3197-48d7-be72-d2741a12d5a5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-299/14 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00138-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941682 | 788 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Ancient Pine Trees
Steven.Burke at f379.n633.z3.fidonet.org
Tue Jan 3 13:55:32 EST 1995
li> The discovery of an ancient strain of pine trees in Australia was
li> described in the New York Times of Dec. 15, 1994. The discovery was
li> compared to the discovery of a dawn redwood tree in China in 1944.
li> This discovery in 1944, was this the only one in the world? Palo Alto
li> Califoria has a dawn redwood, is this tree a relative to the one found
li> in China?
The ancient pine tree was recently discovered in a canyon in the Blue
Mountains less than 100 kilometres from Sydney. Apparently there are
only about 40 individuals including 20 mature trees. The trees are in the
family Araucariacae which has other species elsewhere in Australia,
New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and South America as far as I am aware of.
I understand that the trees are quite different to living relatives
similar to fossilised leaves. The trees will be a new genus. Seedlings of
the trees are being propogated so they can't all be wiped out in a
|Fidonet: Steven Burke 3:633/379
|Internet: Steven.Burke at f379.n633.z3.fidonet.org
| Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.
More information about the Ag-forst | <urn:uuid:905f90dd-5781-47a6-8b1b-0846bfda97de> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/ag-forst/1995-January/001071.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396538.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00029-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915168 | 317 | 2.71875 | 3 |
- Institut Pasteur
- Support us
Institut Pasteur researchers in the Antibacterial Agents Unit, directed by Patrice Courvalin, studied resistance to vancomycin in enterococcus bacteria and demonstrated why the mechanism of resistance to this antibiotic has spread so effectively throughout the world. It was previously believed that only large-scale antibiotic use would be responsible for the resistance spread. However, this study reveals that some resistance mechanisms are able to persist even if no antibiotics are present in the environment, and to spread even in their absence.
Researchers from the Antibacterial Agents Unit, directed by Patrice Courvalin, focused on the mechanism of resistance to vancomycin in enterococci, one of the main species responsible for nosocomial infections. In an article published in PNAS, the Institut Pasteur team explained why the genes responsible for resistance to this antibiotic have spread so effectively throughout the world. In recent decades, enterococci have developed multiple resistance, and vancomycin is a last-resort treatment.
The seven vancomycin resistance genes are carried by a mobile genetic element that can be transferred to other bacteria. When these genes are expressed, they cause the bacterial wall to be entirely remodeled. This confers to the bacteria a high level of resistance to vancomycin but also has a high fitness cost, slowing down bacterial growth.
In the present case, it would appear that in the absence of the antibiotic, this mechanism involves no fitness cost for the resistant bacteria since the resistance genes are only expressed when the bacteria are in the presence of the antibiotics. Both in vitro and in vivo, the resistant bacteria retain the same characteristics as their vancomycin-sensitive counterparts, whether in terms of growth rate, their ability to colonize an environment, or their capacity to spread.
The data obtained using clinical isolates and mutants constructed in vitro highlight a major problem in the fight against antibiotic resistance. It is the first demonstration of a complex and costly resistance mechanism that can operate in bacteria without putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
This observation will encourage researchers to strive for a better understanding of resistance mechanisms and their “biological cost” for the bacteria that host them. The Institut Pasteur team is continuing to explore these properties, particularly in the bacteria that cause nosocomial infections.
This work received funding from the European Commission.
Inducible expression eliminates the fitness cost of vancomycin resistance in enterococci, PNAS, vol 107, n° 39, p. 16964 – 16969, September 28, 2010.
Marie-Laure Foucault, Florence Depardieu, Patrice Courvalin, and Catherine Grillot-Courvalin
Antibacterial Agents Unit, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France
209-211 rue de Vaugirard
0 890 710 811 (0,15 €/mn) | <urn:uuid:7371024a-df6b-4794-b480-435b16edb85d> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.pasteur.fr/en/institut-pasteur/press/press-documents/bacteria-disseminate-resistance-even-absence-antibiotics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908682 | 608 | 3.375 | 3 |
Organic dried fruits are not only delicious to munch on while backpacking, but have many health benefits as well.
For instance, the phenols in the skin of an apple provide UV-B protection against sun damage, and the potassium in a banana help maintain muscle function.
Dry fruits contain multiple vitamins (A, B, C, Calcium, Iron, and Magnesium) and are loaded with fructose, a natural fruit sugar that provides its sweet taste. Fructose, unlike man-made sugar, works in combination with the soluble fiber of the fruit to break sugar down gradually (keeping the body’s glucose stabilized) while it converts it into energy for the body.
Dried fruit is also an excellent source of dietary fiber!
Potassium, Iron and Exercise
Backpackers will need more potassium to replace that which is lost from the muscles while hiking and excreted through sweating and urination. It is extremely important to replenish potassium levels if you become sick and are vomiting or have diarrhea. Low potassium levels can cause muscle cramps, fatigue, and an irregular heart beat.
Also, consuming processed foods loaded in sodium (such as ramen noodles) increases the need for potassium. This is because potassium and sodium work together to maintain the body’s water balance. A diet high in sodium causes more potassium to be lost. Unfortunately, potassium is missing or at inadequate levels in processed foods. Sport and vitamin drinks are often poor sources of potassium.
Your best source of potassium is from fruit. Eating dried fruits such as banana, raisins dates, or meals containing potato is sufficient to replace the potassium lost while backpacking.
Which dried fruits should you take backpacking?
Apples depending on how they are dried, apples can be leathery and chewy or crunchy and crisp. They range from sweet to tart. Since apples are common to North America, we often make the mistake of assuming they are somehow less significant than the latest exotic berry import commanding a premium price. This could not be further from the truth! Apples are a fruit unmatched by other fruits in their ability to combine fiber, flavonoids and antioxidant nutrients.
To get the most nutrient advantage, look for apples that are dried with their skin intact as most of the benefits of apples (antioxidants) are contained within the skin. Be sure to be purchase organic dried apples. Conventional apples contain one of the highest amounts of pesticides of any fruit (see EWG chart below).
- Freeze Dried Apples 1 C or 1 oz (28g) = 100 calories
- Dehydrated Apples 1/2 C or 1.5 oz (40g) = 100 calories
Grapes when dried, become small and chewy and burst with sweetness. Iron, an essential mineral for maintaining delivery of oxygen throughout the body, is high in raisins. Since grapes grow in abundance in North America, they are easy to purchase. Their small size and weight to calorie ratio make them excellent for packing out.
Be sure to be purchase domestically grown raisins. Imported grapes contain high amounts of pesticides (see EWG chart below).
- Raisins ¼ C or 1.5 oz (40g) = 130 calories
The sweet fleshy part of the fruit is dried into chips and strips, or powdered to make instant smoothies and to sweeten dishes. Banana acts as a natural antacid for the body by helping the digestive system activate the cells responsible for coating the lining of the stomach with a thick protective mucus. They also contain pectin, a soluble fiber to normalize the elimination of food through the digestive system. Most important, bananas replenish potassium, an important electrolyte for regulating fluid balance, muscle function and a regular heart rhythm.
- Dried Banana Slices 1.5 oz (40g) = 133 calories
The U.S. contains about a quarter of a million date palm trees, most of which are located in the arid Coachella Valley of southern California. Dates are classified as soft, semi-soft and dry (bread dates). The chewy bread dates keep longest and are often stored as “survival food” for emergency preparedness.
Dried date pieces are a great source of potassium. They are not typically eaten alone, but do taste great if eaten this way. We add them into a few of our dishes to provide a subtle sweet flavor and healthy calories.
- Dried Dates 10 pieces 1.5 oz (40g) = 130 calories
5. MANGO or PINEAPPLE
A taste that blends flavors of pineapple and peach, mangoes are a good source of Potassium, Vitamins A and C, and Beta Carotene. In the U.S. mangoes are primarily grown in South Florida. Many of the groves were destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but are slowly returning. We should see a greater number of domestic grown mangoes available in the next few years as the trees continue to recover.
Pineapple contains a substance called bromelain, which offers many health benefits, including reduced inflammation & tumor growth and blood coagulation.
- Dried Mango pieces 1.5 oz (40g) = 160 calories
- Dried Pineapple pieces 1.5 oz (40g) = 140 calories
BERRIES – we don’t recommend packing out dried berries for a snack even though their high levels of antioxidants, flavanoids, vitamin C and potassium make it seem like a great choice. Most berries are very low in calories and are not readily available (especially organic, which is the best choice). Instead, eat them fresh if you find them growing wild along the trail (if you can positively identify what is edible) or incorporate them as part of your meal.
Be Careful! If you do opt to purchase commercially dried berries, be aware that they often contain sugar additives. For instance, almost all dried cranberries (because they are tart) contain added sugar. Look for cranberries that contain natural sugars such as apple juice concentrate versus refined sugars such as corn syrup.
Purchase Organic Dried Fruits
Many commercially processed fruits contain food coloring, added sugar, sulfur, and other enhancers to prolong shelf life, cover up bad taste and improve ascetics. Buying organic means you are getting fruit that has not been saturated with harmful chemicals or preservatives.
Of all fruits listed here, the most important ones to purchase organic are raisins and apples. Conventional grapes (especially imported) and apples (domestic & imported) are sprayed with high quantities of toxic pesticides, which when rinsed, still remain within the fruit (residues in the soil spread to the flesh of the fruit). Thus, when the fruit is dried the pesticide level is concentrated to the small surface area of a bite sized piece. Since apples & raisins are incorporated into many outdoor dishes to provide extra calories & sweetness, they are consumed in higher quantities (than typical), making exposure a concern for the outdoor adventurer. Buying organic also prevents the addition of sulfite or sulfur dioxide, a preservative that contains questionable health risks. See the EWG Shopper’s pesticide guide for more information on organic produce.
We offer several backpacking meals that include organic dried fruits. Try one for your next outdoor adventure.
You choice of food impacts much more than your own health. It impacts the health of our environment too. May you consume wisely. | <urn:uuid:a8494d85-0cca-471f-878f-525c28ab6b63> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blog.outdoorherbivore.com/organic/dried-fruits/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927748 | 1,540 | 2.96875 | 3 |
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