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- About Dulles International
- About Dulles International Airport
- A to Z Index of Dulles Information
- Travel Tips
- Air Cargo
- Special Events
- Construction Program
- D2 Projects Map
- Project Details
- AeroTrain System
- AeroTrain Maintenance Facility
- Airport Traffic Control Tower
- Concourse B Expansion
- Concourse C/D
- Fourth Runway
- Future Fifth Runway
- IAB Expansion
- Main Terminal AeroTrain Station
- Main Terminal Improvement Project
- Parking Garages
- Passenger Walkway
- Roadway Improvements
- Runway 12-30 Reconstruction
- About D2
- D2 Photo Galleries
- Dulles Environment Studies
- Dulles Corridor Information
- Pass & ID Office
- IAD Photo Galleries
Dulles Development Projects
Click on project headings for more detailed information.
The AeroTrain replaces most of the Mobile Lounge system that prevailed at Dulles, though Mobile lounges remain integral to the airport's operation. The system operates on an underground dual track system. Trains rapidly carry passengers between the Main Terminal and Concourses A, B, and C. The stations are located at convenient points along the concourses to minimize walking distances to the airline gates. The C-Gates station is constructed beneath the site for a future Concourse which will ultimately replace the present-day C/D Concourse.
AeroTrain Maintenance Facility
This buliding supports the AeroTrain System with a vehicle storage yard and maintenance facility. It is located near the south end of the Airport and connects to the AeroTrain route via a branch from the main tunnel. 29 Vehicles comprise the present-day AeroTrain system.
Airport Traffic Control Tower
This project constructed the structural shell of a new Airport Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) and a support/base building. The site of the new, 325 foot tall tower is about one mile south of the existing tower, directly adjacent to the future permanent Concourse C footprint. It provides views all around the Airport for the safe guidance of aircraft.
Concourse B Expansion
The first phase to expand Concourse B added four airline gates to the west end of the building and was completed in April 2003. The final phase of the expansion of Concourse B completes the build-out of the facility to the west, providing 15 additional aircraft gates attached to a two-level concourse building. The new gates opened in January 2008.Constructing the Concourse B AeroTrain station was also part of this project. The station opened concurrently with the entire AeroTrain System 2010.
A new, permanent midfield concourse will be constructed to replace the existing Concourse C/D, which is a temporary structure. The new Concourse will be built near the base of the new Airport Traffic Control Tower. Preliminary planning calls for a three-level structure with 44 airline gates and amenities similar to Concourse B. The existing Concourse C/D was rehabilitated in 2005-2006 and 2011 to extend its service until it can be replaced.
This project adds a fourth runway and paves the way for a future fifth runway. The fourth runway is a north-south runway, approximately 9,400 feet long and 150 feet wide. Construction began in 2006 and the runway entered operational service on November 20, 2008.
Future Fifth Runway
The fifth runway will be an east-west runway approximately 10,500 feet long and 150 feet wide. It will be parallel to existing runway 12-30 near the south side of the Airport. Construction dates for the fifth runway will be set in the future.
International Arrivals Building Expansion
The expansion of the existing facility allows the Customs and Border Protection Services to serve approximately 2,400 passengers per hour--nearly double that of its previous capacity. Baggage claim devices were enlarged and new primary inspection positions were added. Skylights and a large window area allow natural light to filter into the space providing a more welcoming entry to the United States. The project was completed in September 2011, and improvements through the baggage recheck and passenger greeting areas were completed in Spring 2012.
Main Terminal Improvements
Renovation of both the ticketing and baggage claim levels of the original 1962 section of the Main Terminal was completed in 2005. Ticket counter kiosks and baggage claim devices were upgraded to match the facilities in the east and west extensions of the Main Terminal. A new below-grade baggage basement was added to support expanded baggage handling systems.
Main Terminal Train Station
The Main Terminal Train Station represents a major expansion on the airfield side of the Main Terminal. But since it was constructed about 60 feet below ground, exterior views of the Main Terminal remain unblocked. The station spans the entire length of the Main Terminal (about 1,600 feet) and has four distinct levels: Departures, Arrivals, Security Mezzanine, and Train Platform. The Security Mezzanine opened on September 15, 2009. The Train Platform opened along with the AeroTrain system on January 26, 2010.
This project provided two five-level parking garages close to the Terminal. The 1.2 million square foot Daily Garage 2 opened in 2002, with parking for approximately 3,700 cars. The 1.5 million square foot Daily Garage 1 opened in 2003, with parking for approximately 4,800 cars. Both garages are connected to the Main Terminal with walkways.
This walkway provides passengers with an alternative path between the Main Terminal and Concourses A and B. It is equipped with moving sidewalks in each direction. The walkway crosses underneath a set of airplane taxiways and has escalators and elevators at each end. The project included the construction of a structural shell and architectural finishes for the tunnel.
Traffic lanes and signaling devices have been added to improve the efficiency of the Airport roadways. Roads and ramps connecting the Airport Access Highway have been improved and the circle in front of the Main Terminal has been expanded to include additional travel lanes and entrances to the parking facilities.
Runway 12-30 Reconstruction
Runway 12-30 opened 1962 and the original pavement required replacement. This project demolished and reconstructed the runway in a single phase. In the process, additional drainage features and strength improvements were added, accommodating aircraft much heavier than those estimated in the original design. The project was completed over the summer of 2004.
The Z-gates provide convenient access to flights from a concourse located adjacent to the Main Terminal. They were constructed to replace temporary T-gates. The first completed phase of the Z-gates is located to the east of the airport’s original Airport Traffic Control Tower. The building features gates furnished with counters, holdrooms, restrooms, concessions, airline operations offices and other terminal services. | <urn:uuid:380c54c2-1cc7-4a9b-be5d-ee590d318a95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://metwashairports.com/dulles/749.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933205 | 1,382 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Chocolates have long been one of the favorite desserts in the world that there are so many recipes that uses chocolates in them. It is a perfect gift idea to a loved one and is a perfect treat even to yourself. It has become one of the comfort foods of people, and researches have shown and proven that it does release a happy hormone that can make a person feel better.
If you are tired of the usual chocolates you find in any grocery stores, why not learn how to make chocolate yourself? It is easy as well as a fun thing to do.
What You Need
The ingredients you will need are raw cocoa beans. The best way to find and purchase raw cocoa beans is through the Internet. You can look for companies selling cocoa beans and have them ship the beans to your home.
You will also need an oven, a pan, mortar and pestle, and a grinder – that is all.
The Process of How to Make Chocolate
It is quite simple, really, to make a chocolate. First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees before you roast your cocoa beans in it. On a pan, spread the beans, making sure that you have spread them evenly so as to ensure even roasting. Put them in the oven for about half an hour at 400 degrees. After that, let them cool off for a while before you peel off their husks, a fussy task that will test your patience.
After all the husks have been removed, break the cocoa beans apart with the use of your mortar and pestle. Once done and you have smaller pieces, put them through the grinder, taking care that they do not liquefy. Grind them just enough that you can use the mortar and pestle on them again before they undergo the final process.
In the last process, you place the grinded cocoa beans in a dish and heat the dish over a pan of water so as not to overcook them. The cocoa beans become mushy after you have grinded them in the mortar and pestle once more for a smoother texture. Now you have a pure chocolate, but it is still bitter. Add in your flavorings like sugar (to taste) and mint flavoring (about a drop).
Note, for every pound of cocoa beans that have been processed, it will need about half a cup of sugar, but then again, you can add sugar until it suits your preferences. | <urn:uuid:c6bea34d-ac8b-4694-89d8-403fbada9bc6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crazynfunny.com/how-to-make-chocolate/stories/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962849 | 499 | 1.679688 | 2 |
"I support intelligent design," Bachmann told reporters following her speech at the conference, CNN reports. "What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don't think it's a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides."On behalf of all educated and sensible Minnesotans, I would like to apologize for Mrs. Bachmann's continuing presence in the political arena.
"I would prefer that students have the ability to learn all aspects of an issue," Bachmann said. "And that's why I believe the federal government should not be involved in local education to the most minimal possible process."
23 June 2011
Michele Bachmann supports intelligent design | <urn:uuid:4a943868-f1fd-4c82-803c-8d6bc6ea40fa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.nl/2011/06/michelle-bachmann-supports-intelligent.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968023 | 158 | 1.585938 | 2 |
BOMBAY, India – Pravin Pereira, a graphic designer, was on his way home from work when his train, which had stopped at Borivili station in northern Bombay, shook violently from a loud blast.
A bomb had exploded three compartments ahead of him, in a men's compartment of the 5:47 p.m. train out of Bombay Central station.
“The sound was terrible, really terrible,” Pereira, 33, said by telephone. “Everyone started running. There were a number of bodies lying there on the railway tracks.”
Artie Jacinto, 41, was heading home on a train that had just pulled out of the Matunga Road station when she heard the deafening sound of one blast, followed by the screams of the women around her.
The train was plunged into darkness, Jacinto said. She jumped out as quickly as she could, she recalled later by telephone. Strangers poured out of nowhere to help with rescue operations, she said. She watched as a man poured cold water on the head of a badly wounded passenger.
Train guard Kishan Namdev Shelke, 57, said he was in the last of nine compartments of Train No. 1748, from Churchgate station, when he heard what he described as thunder and lightning. Then he saw bodies tumbling out of the train. He pulled the emergency brake, bringing the train to a halt.
The blast that hit Shelke's train – the first of at least seven – struck around 6:30 p.m. as the train pulled out of the station at Khar Road and rolled past the residential neighborhood of Santa Cruz.
Kalpana Gosalia, 53, a homemaker, rushed out to her balcony when she heard the blast. The sight before her was ghastly: The roof of the train had been blown off, and bodies lay strewn on the railroad tracks. As evening fell, Gosalia strung a bright halogen lamp to a tree outside her balcony to help the rescue efforts. Her daughter rushed down to help carry the wounded.
Nizamuddin Sheikh, the manager of the nearby Santa Cruz station, ran down the tracks to carry the wounded and then scoop up valuables – purses, jewelry, work files. He said he locked them in his office.
Well past midnight, under a steady drizzle, railway workers were struggling to separate the bloodstained wreckage from the rest of the train, in an effort to open the tracks for today's commuters. The gory detritus littered the rails: shoes, plastic bags, water bottles, and the saris that were used as stretchers.
At Lokmanya Tilak Medical College and Hospital, the dead lay swathed in sheets, waiting to be identified. There were 45 in all, some wounded beyond recognition.
Ramesh Gandhi rushed in for signs of his cousin. The body of Manish Manihar, a newly married accountant on his way home, was found. | <urn:uuid:50d9fe73-b771-4fb2-97db-8f229996510e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060712/news_1n12scene.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981433 | 622 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The beginning of the end for the Tea Party faux revolution occurred this Sunday on ABC’s This Week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell effectively tipped his hand when asked whether the Tea Party will help or hurt Republicans. “One thing we know about everybody who’s been active in this movement, we know none of them are going to go out and vote Democrat,” he stated.
McConnell confirms what polls show and many of us have long suspected: The Tea Party is the Grand Old Party with a caffeinated beverage.
In early August on NBC’s Meet the Press, House Minority Leader John Boehner plugged the website “America Speaking Out” as part of the Rush Limbaugh maligned “GOP Listening Tour.” Visitors submitted ideas and then those ideas were voted up or down by others. With millions of votes and page views the site is a fascinating read. Strangely, the ideas voted highest are mostly centrist: abolishing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; divorcing from the Religious Right; not kowtowing to the NRA; and, denouncing Palin/Beck/Limbaugh.
An idea voted “up” over one thousand times reads, “Can we make policy decisions that are based on sound science and that are data driven and quantifiable? Not politicized ones?”
One responder put it best, “I don’t think this is a libtard. He actually has a decent point. People should make policy decisions based on common sense.”
Some most selected ideas on the site: not outsourcing jobs overseas and cutting back expense allowances given to Members of Congress. Party defining issues like abortion? The one receiving the most votes said to make it “safe, legal and rare.” The “open mike” section contained almost unanimous calls to legalize weed. Keep in mind these are the new ideas Republicans asked for and were given by other self-identified Republicans.
So what did the Republican Party do with this new information? They released their 21-page “Pledge to America” legislative agenda last week. In it they played right into the recent criticism from President Barack Obama that the GOP just wants to go back and do the same thing they were doing during the Bush Years. They’ve even used the phrase “back to 2008 levels.” Yes, relive the golden era of 2008 when the economy imploded and the Democrats won in a landslide. Great idea…for the Democrats.
Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, cut clips from the 1994 “Contract with America” footage and aired it alongside the current video – some talking points are verbatim. Congressman Boehner is on videotape twice, first 12 years ago and then again most recently at the unveiling of the Pledge at a hardware store, stating, “A smaller, less costly and more accountable government in our nation’s capital.”
“Your fresh new ideas sound slightly – did I say ‘slightly’ – exactly like your old ideas,” Stewart quipped.
Reading the “Speaking Out” site it’s clear there is more common ground than partisanship would have us believe. Many originally Republican ideas, like mandating all Americans purchase health insurance as a way to ensure coverage and contain costs (introduced as an alternative to “HillaryCare”), the GOP is now vehemently against since the Democrats implemented it. Cap and Trade is a free market idea. It came out of conservative ideology, but now somehow it’s a cattle prod to electrify the base against “job-killing environmentalists.” The bailout is despised by Republicans and blamed on Obama – but it was signed by Bush. The soaring deficit? Republicans were for it before they were against it.
The current Republican Party is counting on the Tea Party’s morphing into the attack wing of the GOP – isolating moderates and anyone with genuine new ideas. And that means there will be Representatives who are not actually representative.
In a two-party system, if one party is broken – then the entire system is broken.
The extremists have had their two years of attention screaming in front of television cameras. Is it time for the conversationalists yet? Is the center due for a comeback? Already springing up are non-profit groups like No Labels, who will officially launch later this year, seeking to promote centrist candidates and to bring Democrats and Republicans together.
Hm. The moderates? That seems like…a pretty new – if not novel idea. | <urn:uuid:738b9b34-0d37-44e9-bd3e-260f0154f1a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laprogressive.com/moderates-lament/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958273 | 953 | 1.625 | 2 |
Use yum to install your packages. Really. Either that or use a thumbdrive to move the actual RPMs over if you cannot use a networked system to the net.
Linux is not like windows really, when it comes to installing software. Linux like to break things into small very specific tools/tasks/utilities and have other software link to that as it needs to. Thus making the software modular and more easily updated when a security flaw needs to be rolled out.
On FC6 (the box I am on now), the command to get the file(s) you need would be a simple (I think that is the package. Install as root, or via sudo or su):
Code:yum install mysql-devel | <urn:uuid:49133402-5ec2-4d8b-8b09-dcab71ec009f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/forums/showthread.php/19473-difference-between-bin-sbin-usr-bin-and-usr-sbin?goto=nextoldest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931667 | 153 | 1.695313 | 2 |
By Patrick Madden
Lessons from the political campaign are shaping one D.C. neighborhoods fight against crime. At a police substation in Columbia Heights, about twelve or so residents are training to become neighborhood block watch captains.
Besides learning the basics of crime prevention such as keeping doors locked and valuables out of sight, these residents are learning how to organize their neighbors.
One of the speakers is a former Obama campaign staffer. He didn't want to be recorded but his tips were straight out of the campaign playbook: canvass the block, reach out to different groups, and tailor your message.
Organizers say many crimes can be prevented if residents are looking out for each other.
David Hawkings, political columnist at Hawkings Here for Roll Call, talks about the latest behind a Virginia lawmaker's push to get a high-skill immigration bill in the House. | <urn:uuid:eef879e7-416d-48be-b139-e2b31fdfdbf8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wamu.org/news/09/12/09/columbia_heights_neighbors_organize_to_fight_crime | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971032 | 177 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Frehley explains how the band developed their style in the early days, making their own clothes, wearing make-up and platform shoes. Ace himself even designed the band's double lightning bolt logo. Before long his persona "the Spaceman" was born and the familiar KISS look established - almost overnight they left behind 1,500 seater theatres in the Midwest and were playing sold-out stadiums around the world.
Life in KISS was a whirlwind of accidents, overdoses and excess. Ace partied with the likes of John Belushi and Nic Nolte and enjoyed the seemingly endless supply of fringe benefits that came from being in one of the most successful bands in the history of rock 'n' roll. But soon problems with substance abuse would lead to his leaving the band in 1982, before returning for a second tenure in 1996.
Ace in the Hole is the story of KISS but much more than that - it's the story of a kid from the Bronx who found purpose and salvation through music and rose to the top. It's the story of a guy who lived life to the fullest and almost forfeited his life as a result. And ultimately it's a survival story - Ace is alive and kicking, still making music and influencing a new generation of guitarists.
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Read an Excerpt
A BRONX TALE
When I was a kid I used to carry around this awful image in my head—a picture of three men tangled awkwardly in high-tension wires, fifty feet in the air, their lifeless bodies crisping in the midday sun.
The horror they endured was shared with me by my father, an electrical engineer who worked, among other places, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, helping with the installation of a new power plant in the 1950s. Carl Frehley was a man of his times. He worked long hours, multiple jobs, did the best he could to provide a home for his wife and kids. Sometimes, on...see more
Get our latest book recommendations, author news and sweepstakes right to your inbox | <urn:uuid:9886aa6c-490f-4341-aff9-11bf0af94576> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://books.simonandschuster.com.au/No-Regrets/Ace-Frehley/9780857204783?intcmp=l_fl&cp_type=l_fl_books_detail_the%20dovekeepers_alice%20hoffman_ebook_9780857205452&prefd=l_fl_9780857204783 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97948 | 432 | 1.609375 | 2 |
- Who We Are
- What We Do
- Get Involved
REACH began in 1981 as the Waltham Battered Women Support Committee, Inc., founded by a committed group of volunteers who saw the need for domestic violence services in the western suburbs of Boston and decided to take action. These women recognized that domestic violence was not a problem limited to urban areas or specific socioeconomic groups. Over the years, we have grown from this small, volunteer-led effort to a leading multi-service agency serving 6,000 people a year. We changed our name to REACH – an acronym for Refuge, Education, Advocacy, and CHange – in 2004 to better reflect our inclusive approach.
In the late 1990s, we became one of the first shelters in the state to accept male survivors and parents with teenage sons and we continued this trend toward inclusivity when, in 2002, we became the first mainstream domestic violence agency in the Commonwealth to begin serving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender survivors. Since 2005, we have been at the front of the curve in teen dating violence prevention as one of the only programs in the state offering youth-focused programming. In 2010, we reached an important milestone when we completed our $2.5 million capital campaign, which allowed us to open a new shelter facility with twice as much space as before. In the past 10 years, the agency has tripled in size – in staff, budget, and the number of people served. | <urn:uuid:5914a298-a48a-4fac-96da-cb68e0aab9c9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.reachma.org/who-we-are/history | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968455 | 297 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The two-year swap spread, a closely watched gauge of credit-market risk, keeps blowing out and now trades at the widest level since June 2010.
Growing worries about counterparty risks — especially involving banks exposed to Greek government bonds, such as Dexia — could spell more problems for eurozone banks, sending their funding costs even higher.
Shares of big US banks, such as Morgan Stanley, have fallen significantly in recent sessions, and bank bonds have taken a beating.
Taking note of possible fallout from the eurozone crisis, Ben Bernanke said that the central bank is ready to give US banks liquidity if European woes hit.
The two-year US swap spread recently widened by about 2 basis points to 37.75. The spread has jumped from a recent low of 14 basis points in April.
Stocks are fighting back a little after a week of brutal selling, but credit-market indicators continue to flash warning signals. They’re certainly calmer than yesterday, but have essentially frozen at high stress levels.
In the worst corner of the market, Greece’s two-year debt spread against German bunds is 360 basis points wider today, with Greek debt yielding more than 75%. The debt is trading at less than 40 cents on the dollar — pricing in a default.
Bond-yield spreads are also wider in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland.
The TED spread, a measure of bank funding stress, has cooled a little bit today, but is still at 35 basis points, its highest level since July 2010.
The CDS market has calmed down, too, with the cost of insuring against sovereign defaults for Spain and Italy flat, according to Markit data. At 532 basis points for Italy, however, this is nothing to write home about.
In the US, meanwhile, Bank of America’s CDS spread is hanging around the record high 400 basis point level it hit yesterday.
And the VIX is still rising, up to nearly 42 at last check. Though it’s not a credit market indicator, it can reflect credit-market anxiety as well as stock-market fear.
With the Fed’s latest policy decree less than ten minutes away, let’s take a look around the market dashboard.
The Dow is down 26 points at about 11383, the S&P is off 5 points at about 1197 and the Nasdaq is actually up 12 points at about 2601.
The market is being led by tech — the tech sector of the S&P 500 is up 1%. The worst performing sector is materials, down 1.8%. Industrials are off 1.4%.
And the Dow transports are down 2.6% — not exactly a vote of faith in the market.
The 10-year Treasury yield has risen a bit from its earlier lows, but is still extraordinarily low at 1.92%.
The euro is up against the dollar, to $1.378.
Nymex crude oil is down about 0.7% to $86.31 a barrel.
Gold is down about 0.2% to $1804.90 an ounce.
After a week of optimism that Europe might have gotten further along the road to fixing its problems, or at least kicked its problems further down the road where they wouldn’t sully up our view of the lovely roadside, fear has returned with a vengeance to European stock and bond markets.
Germany’s DAX is off 3.1%, Italy’s FTSE is down 3%, the French CAC is off 3% and the STOXX 50 is down 2%. Banks are of course bearing the brunt of it, with Societe Generale and BNP Paribas down 5% and Credit Agricole down 2%.
In credit markets, Greek 2-year debt now yields about 62% and is about 5 full percentage points wider today against German debt. Greek 2-year bonds are priced at 46 cents at the dollar.
Portuguese, Belgian, Italian, Spanish and Irish bond spreads are also wider on the day.
In the CDS market, you’re going to have to pay $6.05 million up front and $100,000 a year to insure $10 million in Greek debt for five years. Not exactly worth it!
The spread on Greek credit default swaps, or CDS, widened three basis pointsto 60.5 points up front on Monday, according to Markit. That means it would cost$6.05 million up front and $100,000 annually to insure $10 million of Greek debtagainst default for five years.
Spanish CDS spreads, meanwhile are 8% wider at nearly 400 basis points. Italy is 8% wider at about 480 basis points.
The credit market was warning us last week that all was not well. Today the stock market is getting the message.
The market is a Sargasso Sea of placid green, thanks to the the League of Central Bankers and the Super EFSF. Only the awful screaming of the shorts disturbs the silence on this beautiful Friday. So is that all, then? Market panic over?
Not quite. The current calm could last a little while, particularly with a Fed about to spring into twisting action early next week. But nobody should sound the all-clear just yet.
The US economy is struggling to find the next gear. Macroeconomic Advisers on Thursday cut its tracking estimate of third-quarter GDP growth to 1.6%, which is a stall speed of growth, and leading indicators suggest a slowdown ahead.
That raises questions about the still-bullish forecasts of most strategists and analysts for the rest of the year. They have been trimming their targets for the S&P 500 and for corporate earnings, but have they trimmed enough yet?
And some of Europe’s symptoms may have been alleviated for the short term, but not all of them, writes Michael Darda at MKM Partners:
European stocks managed to claw back some of their losses today, and US stocks are mimicking that action here toward the end of trading.
But there are still obviously pressures in the eurozone that have not gone away, even as the selloff has started to lose a bit of steam. Ben pointed out one sign of stress a little while ago.
Now along comes Zero Hedge with another sign of funding stress, the amount of cash parked with the ECB, a sign European banks are too scared to put cash any place else.
The Tyler Durden collective point out that tomorrow we get a peek at how much money has been borrowed from the ECB’s dollar-lending facility.
Stress in the European financial system is at 2008 levels, according to one market indicator —the three-month euro basis swap.
The basis, a financial derivative that allows two firms to exchange floating-rate debt denominated in euros for dollar-denominated debt, measures the cost for a European financial institution to obtain dollars for funding purposes. Over the weekend, it jumped from 0.8%, already a post-financial-crisis high, to 1%, the highest since Dec. 2008, according to Aneta Markowska, an economist at Societe Generale in New York.
The world’s chock full of problems but Europe is probably at the top of the list now. Until the cost of a basis swap comes down, the market’s unpredictable swings are likely to continue.
Now that we’ve got the August ISM number, the next big event for markets is tomorrow’s job report. We’re on a streak of better than expected economic data recently. Can jobs keep the string alive? It sure doesn’t seem likely.
Here’s a look, courtesy of Ian Lyngen at CRT Capital, at all of the labor-market indicators on the dashboard, most of which are pointing in the wrong direction.
By Anusha Shrivastava and Javier E. David
With some closely watched indicators of market stress flashing red, investors are understandably worried about the health of the financial system. But a repeat of the previous crisis will likely be avoided.
The sphere of worry this time is Europe. The costs to protect against defaults by some European banks are far higher than three years ago, and costs have flared each time new issues about banks’ exposure to sovereign debt have surfaced.
The Markit iTraxx Europe Senior Financials credit default swap index, which tracks the senior unsecured debt issued by European banks, is at 242 basis points, way above the peak of 210 basis points on March 9, 2009. It was at 196 basis points on Jan. 3 this year, according to data provider Markit.
Hold onto your hat — it could get blustery in the financial markets.
Why? Because the so-called TED-spread is spiking.
It measures stresses in the banking system. The higher it is the more stress there is in banking system.
Be warned stress never just stays between the banks. It usually reaches the so-called real economy in fairly short order. That’s where you and I live.
Over the past month the TED-spread has risen steadily to 32 yesterday from 16 at the end of July, levels not seen in way more than a year. That’s still well short of the extreme levels seen in 2008-2009 when it reached 463.
Be warned though, it can expand quickly so keep a close eye on it.
This somewhat obscure metric is easily calculated. Take the 3-month LIBOR rate (the rate at which banks lend to each other) and subtract the 3-month t-bill rate (the rate at which the government funds its short term borrowings.)
We’ve been warning here about the warning lights flashing on the credit-market dashboard. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch credit strategists recently suggested that one of those indicators is pointing to a recession.
Oleg Melentyev and Christopher Hays write:
Hate to follow up one downbeat post with another, but I have to mention a note from Mike Darda at MKM Partners today pointing out that the credit market is still singing a very different tune than the cheery stock market.
First, a note about Mr. Darda. He is not a perma-bear. Going back to the crisis, he has consistently done a good job in sussing out the direction of the market and economy, both higher and lower, by following credit-market indicators.
He warned ahead of the crash in 2008 that things were about to get ugly, and he pivoted with near-perfect timing to bullishness in March 2009.
He maintained that bullishness throughout 2009 and much of 2010, but warned that 2011 would be a tougher year.
Sure enough, it has indeed been a tough year, and unfortunately, according to the indicators Mr. Darda is watching, it could get tougher still:
Although some recent data releases have come in better than expected (jobless claims, retail sales), we believe these could be misleading, given the abrupt tightening in financial conditions and the associated spike in equity volatility.
Here are the indicators on his dashboard flashing red:
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On August 16th, CytoTherapeutics Incorporated announced the commencement of its FDA-approved trial involving polymer-encapsulated islet cells. The trial is designed to establish that their semi-permeable membrane can allow enough nutrients through to keep the encapsulated cells alive while protecting them from destruction without the use of immunosuppressive drugs. The implant will be tested in people with type I and type 2 diabetes, as well as in a nondiabetic control group. The trial will be conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and results of the 4 month viability study are expected by the end of 1993.
0 comments - Nov 1, 1993
Diabetes Health is the essential resource for people living with diabetes- both newly diagnosed and experienced as well as the professionals who care for them. We provide balanced expert news and information on living healthfully with diabetes. Each issue includes cutting-edge editorial coverage of new products, research, treatment options, and meaningful lifestyle issues. | <urn:uuid:8d95b156-6c0e-4b40-9e85-22b5a849ff8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://diabeteshealth.com/read/1993/11/01/133/clinical-trial-of-encapsulated-islet-cells/mysqli.query | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943259 | 264 | 1.625 | 2 |
It’s funny how drastically different this spring season is compared to last year’s. We enjoyed such a mild winter and early spring last year, we were able to get a lot done. The only reason we waited until May 2 to plant our tomatoes last year was because we hadn’t yet acquired the land for them. This year has been so cold and wet that a lot of things have been delayed.
Along with tomatoes in the back section of our Iowa Ave. garden we also transplanted some pepper plants last week. Because of the invasive grass, we planted the peppers in holes we cut through burlap coffee bags and lined all the paths between plants with burlap and straw.
We also started a new tomato container garden in the section by the west fence where we were growing nothing but tall grass and weeds. To keep the grass out, we laid out a tarp and plastic sheeting before placing the pots and topping with wood chips. This method worked well for us in a different section last year.
Besides dealing with the terrible grass, we’ve also found evidence of pest damage to some of our newly-sprouted bean plants (above is an Italian pole bean seedling). It happens every year, the beans and peppers are the first to be eaten. We’ve used Dawn dish soap in the past but this year I got some Dr. Bronner’s castile soap- more natural. Mixed with water, I’ve been spraying the tops and bottoms of the leaves and stems of all of our bean plants, and the damage has been limited.
We have two new raised beds at Iowa Ave. (as seen in our garden outline) this year. I planted horseradish, mustard, and kale in one, and Eric planted ginger (pictured above) in the other. We grew ginger last year in our side yard after sprouting it in shallow pots first. This year we direct seeded- the smaller pieces are our ginger from last year, the bigger pieces are organic ginger from Local Harvest.
The other thing keeping us busy this spring is setting up a new garden space at Eric’s sister’s new house. She found a house in the city with a 1/4 acre lot, and she’s letting us farm it (thanks Amy!). We tilled up this section of her yard literally the same day she closed on the house, May 1.
After several hours, Tom had mowed the overgrown grass and tilled up these two big sections for us. Unfortunately we were losing daylight, so he was only able to pass over each area once with the tiller.
To really remove all the grass, we needed it tilled again. Of course it rained for the next four days straight, so it took a week before Tom was able to come out to finish the job. As he tilled we worked to pull out grass clumps, and we returned yesterday to continue pulling them out.
Today I applied some fertilizer and crushed gypsum to the longer, thinner section where we’ll plant tomatoes, then covered with a layer of free compost. Eric is planning to return tomorrow with our little tiller to work the compost in and space out our mounded rows, then plant tomatoes and peppers! We’re also hoping to install a drip irrigation system to help with watering.
The weather has really forced us to be super productive in the short periods of time between rain. The forecast for this coming week looks pretty clear, thankfully. Lots of work ahead of us! | <urn:uuid:0088f2b2-97c2-492a-b5ba-2dbc9e9280f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wildgourdfarm.wordpress.com/tag/st-louis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968056 | 729 | 1.507813 | 2 |
‘Clearing the Smoke’: The Benefits, Limits of Medical Marijuana
PBS tackles the question of the “legitimacy” of medical marijuana.
JEFFREY BROWN: And finally tonight: the benefits and limitations of medical marijuana treatments.
Sixteen states have passed laws that allow patients to use the drug to treat side effects of various illnesses. But now some are moving to either limit or repeal those laws. One of them is Montana.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I used to be on approximately 14 different prescriptions, and I would still have up to 12 seizures a day. I used to have to take two handfuls of pills. No more.
ANNA RAU, Montana PBS: While this 27-year-old epilepsy patient in Montana is relieved to be taking medical marijuana…
WOMAN: I’m not using it to get any psychological effects off of it. I’m just eating the butter raw with bread.
ANNA RAU: … she’s considerably more anxious about showing her face, and has requested we conceal her identity.
Why do you not want to show your face?
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I am not comfortable showing my face because of all of discrimination that has already happened.
ANNA RAU: She says both she and her husband have lost jobs when she spoke openly about using marijuana to treat her seizures.
Medical marijuana use has been legal in Montana since 2004, when voters there approved an initiative allowing doctors to recommend it to their patients. However, the federal government still classifies the plant as a schedule one drug. That makes it illegal for doctors to prescribe it, and it means state law doesn’t protect patients from federal arrest and prosecution.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: But the fact of the matter is, somebody has to speak up, or nobody will hear these stories.
ANNA RAU: She told us her story in her artist’s studio. Here, she creates much happier works than she did even a few years ago, when her self-portraits plainly showed the toll epilepsy had taken since she was diagnosed at 15.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I have taken pretty much every anti-epileptic on the market, and some with a little bit more success than others.
ANNA RAU: None of them stopped her seizures, and, by her early 20s, the epilepsy had also spawned depression, anxiety and insomnia. She had to withdraw from college just a few credits short of a fine arts degree. Unable to hold a job, she was bed-bound for years while the epilepsy ruled her life.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: It’s not a life, to live like that.
ANNA RAU: Then she remembered reading stories about the potential of cannabis to treat epileptic seizures, and she desperately wanted to try it, but her home state doesn’t have a medical marijuana law.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: So, I did what I could do. I moved to a state where I could treat it myself.
ANNA RAU: Medical marijuana critic Dr. Eric Voth says the problem is, patients are treating themselves with a plant that’s voter-approved, not FDA-approved.
DR. ERIC VOTH, Institute on Global Drug Policy: So much of the medical excuse movement has come through ballot initiatives and legislative initiatives. And that’s not the way we bring medicines to market. We bring them to market through the FDA and a very careful process of proving safety and efficacy.
ANNA RAU: Dr. Voth is an addiction and pain specialist in Kansas, and he’s also the chairman of the Institute on Global Drug Policy. He says scientific research is the only legitimate route to understanding marijuana’s medical potential, not a hodgepodge of state laws and anecdotal stories.
He says, when patients smoke or ingest marijuana, they are getting a complex and largely unresearched mix of chemicals known as cannabinoids.
DR. ERIC VOTH: If we’re delivering THC, which is the major active ingredient, shouldn’t we be delivering that alone or other cannabinoids alone? But, in fact, what we’re doing is we’re delivering not only one, but 66 cannabinoids. On top of that, were delivering hundreds of contaminants.
ANNA RAU: This epilepsy patient says she’s willing to take the risk, because something in that cornucopia of substances has changed her life.
How did that impact your seizures?
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: They started slowing down. I had to build it up in my system. And it wasn’t until I started ingesting it that they really stopped completely.
DR. ERIC VOTH: I’m very suspicious about it because for someone to have been on 14 medications and not solve her problem, and then have this miraculous benefit from one medicine, I just find that suspect.
ANNA RAU: But the potential of marijuana to mitigate epileptic seizures has been recognized by the U.S. Institute of Medicine. The institute has released two reports on the therapeutic potential of cannabis.
The first report, from 1982, found “substantial evidence from animal studies to indicate that cannabinoids are effective in blocking seizures.” Scientists who wrote the 1999 report also found marijuana had anti-seizure effects, but doubted it could be developed into a pharmaceutical-grade epilepsy drug.
However, both reports detailed the promising ability of cannabis to treat pain and disease differently than conventional pharmaceuticals. That’s exactly what scientists at the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research found during several placebo-controlled clinical trials.
Dr. Igor Grant is the center’s director, and he says marijuana is not just an anti-nausea drug.
DR. IGOR GRANT, University of California, San Diego: I can say that the cannabinoids are almost certain to be useful in pain, based on the research that we have done, and probably have a place in muscle spasm.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS, University of California, San Francisco: Marijuana contains anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and probably anti-cancer compounds in it.
ANNA RAU: Dr. Donald Abrams is an oncology physician who conducted some of the center’s clinical research. He agrees the cannabis plant is a complex mix of substances, but he believes this is a medical benefit, not a detriment.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS: I’m a cancer doctor, and I often suggest to my patients that they consider marijuana for their loss of appetite, nausea, pain, depression and insomnia. It’s one medicine they could use, instead of five.
ANNA RAU: Critics like Dr. Voth are especially skeptical of these kinds of claims. How is it possible that one plant has the potential to impact so many different ailments?
Intriguing answers started appearing in the early ’90s, when researchers pinpointed receptors in the brain and the body that bind with cannabis. Receptors can be described as locks on the surface of a cell, and when the correct key binds with the correct lock, or receptor, it opens the door and delivers messages. Sometimes, the messages are urgent, for example, that the body is feeling pain, or that there’s an invader and the immune system must attack.
Researchers believe cannabinoids can turn down those messages, helping to temper chronic pain and autoimmune disorders. These special receptors are extremely abundant in the brain, but they are also found all over the body and in the major organs, the heart, the liver, kidneys and pancreas.
After finding all these locks that accepted the cannabis key, researchers made the next big discovery: The human body makes its own cannabinoids.
DR. DONALD ABRAMS: We have these circulating chemicals that we produce ourselves that really are very, very similar to the chemicals in the marijuana plant.
DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI, University of South Carolina: The only difference is that the cannabinoids that we produce are in such small quantities, and they’re also rapidly degraded, so that, therefore, we are not high all the time.
ANNA RAU: Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti is a professor of pathology and microbiology at the University of South Carolina. He’s one of many scientists in a race to unlock the mysteries of the receptors by using newly created synthetic drugs, instead of tightly restricted whole cannabis.
These synthetics have made research much easier and potentially lucrative. The U.S. patent database shows numerous large pharmaceutical companies have filed recent patents, claiming their cannabinoid receptor drug has the potential to treat almost everything: multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, rheumatoid arthritis, Tourette’s, epilepsy, heart disease, obesity, various mental illnesses and the Holy Grail of medicine, a cancer cure.
Dr. Nagarkatti and his team of researchers were one of the first labs to prove a cannabinoid key can seek out a cancerous cell in the immune system, unlock the receptor, and direct the cancer cell to self-destruct.
DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI: So, basically, telling the cells basically to commit suicide.
ANNA RAU: Dr. Nagarkatti’s experimental drug was able to eradicate almost 100 percent of the cancer in test tubes. And when they moved on to live mice:
DR. PRAKASH NAGARKATTI: To our surprise, we found that almost 25 to 30 percent of the mice completely rejected the tumor. They were completely cured.
ANNA RAU: Tumors in the rest of the mice shrank significantly. The results have been so promising that Dr. Nagarkatti is already beginning clinical trials with leukemia patients.
Dr. Voth believes researchers like Nagarkatti are headed in the right direction.
DR. ERIC VOTH: Let’s keep it in the corridors of science. Let’s keep it in the FDA. Let’s deliver what’s really medicine. That is the individual cannabinoids.
ANNA RAU: But this epilepsy sufferer says patients cannot afford to wait on science.
MEDICAL MARIJUANA USER: I don’t know how long it’s going to be before they really find out exactly what is working for me and for others.
ANNA RAU: Medical marijuana remains legal in Montana, for now. In April, lawmakers passed a full repeal of the law, but Gov. Brian Schweitzer vetoed it.
JEFFREY BROWN: Anna Rau’s one-hour documentary, “Clearing the Smoke: The Science of Cannabis,” is airing on many public television stations this summer.
Marijuana and the fountain of youth?
Does marijuana have anti-aging properties? Well according to the family of the recently deceased Fulla Nayak, she claimed it did. Fulla Nayak who passed away at the age of 125 claimed that smoking cannabis daily was her secret to a long and healthy life. She also was a avid cigar conisuor, so we may need to take that into consideration.
There have been a few indications on the link between marijuana and anti-aging. In 2005 it was reported that marijuana use in rats was shown to decrease the propensity to get Alzheimer disease.
Dr. Robert Melamede, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, testified in court to the anti-aging effects of marijuana. Melamede also stated after his testimony:
“You can look at the harm caused by free radicals as biological friction or biological rust and the endocannabinoid system minimizes the impact of that and directly acts as an antioxidant as well as modifying the biochemistry in a way that minimizes the impacts,”
“I’m saying what science has now shown is that marijuana and cannabinoids are effective anti-aging agents which means that they are effective in minimizing the onset and the severity of age-related illnesses which include cognitive dysfunction things like Alzheimers, cardiovascular disease be it heart attacks, strokes, or clogged arteries.”
Gary Wenk, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at The Ohio State University discusses here about the way cannaboids in marijuana can be used to counter the effects of aging by reducing the natural inflammation that aging has on the brain. He also uses coffee as a example which is good since I am also an avid coffee lover.
So does marijuana actually have anti-aging properties? It appears there is some very good indicators that is does. Yet where are the extensive studies? In 2009 a study was launched for Rapamycin a compound found in the soil Easter Island which was shown to possibly reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. Yet Rapamycin has a very dangerous side effect of suppressing the bodies immune system.
Now marijuana has both cancer and heart disease reduction, plus the cognitive advantages of “oiling” the aging brain and preventing Alzheimer and other forms of dementia with no known negative side effects, yet once again there is no fanfare or research money for marijuana. I guess that comes with the stigma of having the nickname of “pot”.
Oh well, the best fountain of youth is the one that everyone else rejects. If you do not want our fountain of youth we will keep it for ourselves. Happy cannabis everyone and RIP Fulla Nayak.
I have 4 dif types of lights. fluorescent, halogen, plant bulb from wal-mart, and a sodium halide with no fixture. now to get the max payoff from my plants i know i need the sodium halide eventually. But can i still get a good amount from what i have ready?
Alex, florescent/halogen lights work fine for growing marijuana. Make sure you use the suggested lighting spectrum and wattage’s for both the vegetative stage and flowering.
why are all on my plants fallin over after they bust i try to do about 20 at a time i keep only the one that have strong steams but they keep fallin over some shoot up 7 in. some only 1 r 2 thats the one i keep i water them only if soil is dry but never let them go more than two days
Over watering marijuana plants is a common mistake when first growing marijuana. With that said there could be many factors that could contribute to your plants falling over. The most common reason is that your lights are too far away from your plants. If you are using CFL’s they should be an inch or so away from the tips of the plants. Other lights that produce high heat and wattage should be further away. Also try and put a fan inside your grow room on low. A nice gentle breeze can help strengthen your stems.
Heyy Owen Sup..iHave a question,Im a first time grower but I’ve grown past crops And they all ended up a disaster. I usually F’dd up on the seedling stage from having the tempature to hot And no fan, Do you have any advice?
During the seeding stage of any marijuana grow, humidity is the most important factor. If you think that the heat is killing them (must be awfully hot) then move them to out of the direct sunlight. If you are using the method in the guide, then the cover should take care of this part. If you think a fan would help, then by all means use one. It cannot hurt. My gut feeling is that you might be waiting to long before you transport them to their permanent grow room.
Android application for those of you that, for some ludicrous reason, cannot grow your own marijuana. Weed Farmer is a game that lets you get up and running growing your own high quality marijuana. Interesting enough but it also contains over 30 cannabis strains to pick from and looks addicting as hell. Unfortunately it is not for iPhone.
Looks like a blast to play. | <urn:uuid:0a7f02e2-fde2-4f3a-bc80-3074ddd65848> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.marijuanagrowguide.net/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955353 | 3,350 | 1.820313 | 2 |
I. Merrick Kerr – Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President & Treasurer
Rentech, Inc. (RTK) Wall Street Analyst Forum Presentation March 26, 2008 9:50 AM ET
In our ongoing attempt to adhere to the published schedule I’d like to introduce the next company in this morning’s alternative energy and clean technology conference. Rentech, incorporated in 1981, provides clean energy solutions. The company has developed and patented the Rentech process which transforms underutilized domestic energy resources into valuable and clean alternative fuels and chemicals. These energy resources include coal, petroleum coke, biomass and municipal solid waste.
Rentech trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol RTK. The Rentech process produces a diverse and high value set of products just as JP8 and jet fuel, specialty chemicals and ultra low sulfur diesel fuel. The resulting greenhouse gas footprint of fuels from the Rentech process is significantly below that of petroleum derived fuels. Rentech is currently constructing the first fully integrated coal and biomass product demonstration unit in the United States which will produce approximately 10 barrels a day of ultraclean synthetic fuels beginning in the spring of 2008.
Rentech has many projects in its pipeline among which is the US first commercial scaled synthetic fuels facility scheduled to produce up to 1,600 barrels a day of ultraclean synthetic fuels by the year 2011.
Without any further introduction I’d like to introduce Merrick Kerr, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the company.
I. Merrick Kerr
Good morning everybody I had a chance to watch the last presenter and while I was sitting here they actually did some of the work for me. You’ve already heard about some of the advantages of the technology. The technology which Rentech has is effectively the part mentioned in the middle where they said gas to liquids, that’s effectively the part that Rentech has. A similar Safe Harbor statement to what you just saw.
Rentech itself has been a leader in synthetic fuels technology for some time. The distinction here between Rentech of today and Rentech two years ago is that we’re now looking to take what was basically a technology research and development company, take it through to the next phase of commercialization and actually get the technology out there in the marketplace. [Inaudible] the same technology, its CO2 capture ready and we also have significant reductions in the regulated emissions which you see from traditional petroleum derived diesel and jet fuel. Technology has 25 plus years of development. We have several partners around the technology. We’ve demonstrated the technology in the past at pilot plants but at each phase they’ve been kind of batch operated plants and individual parts of the technology have been proven out. What we’re doing now is doing the first fully integrated where you have feedstock coming in at one end and product effectively going into tanks at the other end.
We have a clear strategy and a new management team that’s been in place for 18 to 20 months now and moving forward with those plans. [Inaudible] fuels in the market you heard some of this earlier, the global demand trend, the instability in the Middle East and Africa, the supply limitations, the environmental awareness, the political consensus and agreement around global warming and the impact of CO2, the tightening EPA restrictions and then the actual national policy objectives as well is to enhance self sufficiency here in the US, increase national security, creation of jobs in the US, we’re just a trade and budget deficit. $1 billion a day going overseas for the imported oil really doesn’t help with your balanced payments.
So, the opportunities remain, you heard some of the problems talked about with ethanol on the prior slide, Rentech actually owns a fertilizer company which supplies fertilizer for the corn industry so I’m not going to knock it and hope that the corn business continues to boom in the way that it has. But, I think even under the current views of how much corn ethanol can get done it’s about 7 billion gallons right now. The new mandate for 15 billion gallons, maybe it can be done, maybe it can’t.
There are a lot of people working on cellulosic ethanol, the latest suggestions are potentially 5 billion by 2022. There’s maybe a couple of billion that you could get to in first generation biodiesel but even if you believe all of them that still leaves a big gap about 14 billion gallons a year. We believe that XTL as we call it which could be coal to liquids, municipal waste to liquids, biomass to liquids or a combination thereof can fill that gap.
The market opportunity specifically for the fuels that we produce the first place you would go is JP8 which is effectively the jet fuel that’s used by the Air Force. The volume of the fuels that we produce specifically for the Department of Defense they have some unique benefits, they call it single battlefield fuel. They can use this fuel on the ground equipment, they can use it in their jets, they have even used it in their supersonic jets, the ones that kind of go out of the atmosphere and come back in. So the fuel is very, very useful for them in terms of its characteristics, its cleanliness and its ability to be used in a wide variety of areas. It also has the benefit that it’s actually lighter on a BTU per pound basis. The Air Force will spend millions of dollars to shave an extra pound off the weight of their jet fighters so they can fly further, out of their bombers so they can carrier a higher payload so they get significant advantage as well just on the fact that they can either take a higher payload or fly further on the same amount of weight, so a lot of advantages. Some of the advantages obviously play across into commercial aviation too. If you fly and you don’t get blankets and pillows on your airplanes anymore that’s about saving weight. So again, having a fuel that’s lighter gives them advantages as well.
The product that we make, we’ll go into the process a little later but we very much clean up on the way through. The syn gas gets cleaned so it’s a very pure – syn gas is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, it’s very pure when it goes through so the product that you make at the back end is very, very clean so it’s ideal for some of those specialty chemicals that you heard about earlier, the detergents, the biodegradable soaps, that Proctor & Gamble and others make. Because, when they get food products they have to spend a lot of time cleaning up before they can use it, the product they get from us is very, very pure. Then, eventually the ultra low sulfur diesel market itself.
The Pentagon has suggested that they want to purchase 50% of its aviation fuel needs from domestic synthetic sources by 2016. That’s a ready market of around 135 to 150,000 barrels a day depending on whether the synthetic fuels is a pure blend or a 50/50 blend. Then, the FAA is working to certify these fuels for use. The process itself as I mentioned you start with petro waste product from the refining industry. You can use coal, you can also use coal [inaudible] or waste coal, biomass again, a variety of different biomasses you could get wood waste, forestry waste, you could do fast throw away [inaudible] trees, algae, all of the things that are being talked about as potential feedstock in a carbon constrained world.
And then, you heard about the last group talking about municipal waste and the volume of the BTU content that basically we bury in the ground right now and then it turns into methane and it releases into the air and methane 30 times worse for global warming than CO2 is so utilizing that in an efficient way clearly brings value in many ways.
The products get gasified. At the petro coal level there are numerous well proven gasification technologies out there by very large companies GE, Shell, Seimans, Conical Philips, technologies that are very well proven. On the biomass and municipal waste site there are a lot of people out there who have done gasification of municipal waste and biomass to power, the challenge from moving municipal waste and biomass power to fuels is the quality of the syn gas that you require when you move into the Rentech process or [inaudible] process. The gas needs to be significantly cleaner, the carbon dioxide needs to be removed, you have to remove a lot of the inert gases that when you go into power that doesn’t matter so much. We’ve been working with several gasification companies in that area to demonstrate the production of what we call chemical grade syn gas so that we can move it through into the Rentech process.
We capture the CO2 at that point after gasification. We also remove all of the base metals as well and sulfur as well, sulfur, mercury etcetera are all taken out and they’re taking out in the raw source so with the sulfur you can sell it. Sulfur you can upgrade it into sulfuric acid and then the syn gas that is left then goes through the Rentech process and it creates a very long chain hydrocarbon wax, that hydrocarbon wax is then upgraded to diesel and jet fuel using traditional hydrocracking and hydrotreating so it just looks like a traditional refiner once you get to that last part. The think to note is that this is a chemical process it’s not a power plant so you’re not burning the coal or the municipal waste and letting a stack of pollutants go up. You gasify it, you collect the gas, the gas is then utilized.
The technology has some unique advantages. We have an iron based slurry reactor, the alternative ways of doing Fischer-Tropsch is to use cobalt catalyst rather than iron and then also you can either use fixed-bed reactor or a slurry reactor. Basically I like to think of the difference between slurry and fixed-bed is like a rechargeable battery versus a use and dispose. Fixed-bed you put it in, you use it up, you remove it and you replace it. With a slurry reactor we are able to constantly regenerate the catalyst by injecting new catalyst all of the time as we go through the process so hence the ability to keep the higher online [inaudible].
The feedstock flexibility really comes around based on the ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide required in the syn gas. For an iron based catalyst you’re looking for a ratio of about one-to-one between carbon monoxide and that’s pretty much what you get from coals, peat coal, municipal waste, biomass type products once they are through gasification. Natural gas is a little higher and actually lends itself better to cobalt catalyst rather than iron. But, the area where we are focused is the coal, the peat coal, the municipal waste and the biomass technologies are a very good fit. Iron catalyst also gives you more of the diesel or jet fuel production. The off product that you make at the back end is naphtha its end put ethylene cracking used by the petro chemical industry. Again, very high quality naphtha that’s produced but it’s lower volume, trades about the same value as crude as opposed to diesel and jet fuel which trade at premium. It’s lower cost and simple disposal.
The actual fuel itself that we produce you can see what it looks like in a glass here. That is not what you would imagine diesel to look like and certainly not the diesel you would have traditionally seen. It’s very high performing, it’s very high cetane rating, the equivalent of octane rating in gasoline which you’re use to which means it burns much cleaner and much purer. The other thing is it works in today’s pipelines and today’s engines so no need for new infrastructure, a big change from the ethanol which we know is a problem for today’s pipelines. It’s an environmentally superior fuel, you’ll see in the next slide some emissions reductions as it burns in the engines and then it also exceeds our global sulfur and out-of-market requirement. Ultra low sulfur diesel in the US right now is 15 parts per million on the sulfur, our fuels the sulfur is effectively trace amounts that’s in the parts per billion. Then storage ability as well, this is very important, it’s an ideal fuel to be used for emergency force responders. During Hurricane Katrina they ran out of diesel fuel because diesel is not an ideal fuel to store. It settles or sediments, it needs to be turned on a regular basis whereas this can be put in a tank and left for years and will be there when required. It’s also biodegradable which is obviously a good thing, hopefully, there never would be any spills but if there were.
So those are lower regulated emissions that I talked about. The unburned hydrocarbons coming out the tailpipes are reduced by 60 to 70% because it burns so cleanly. Significant 40 to 50% reductions in carbon monoxide, nitrogen monoxide notes reductions in 10 to 15%. And the particulate matter, if you’ve every followed a diesel truck on the highways and you see the stuff spewing out of the back of the exhaust where you can see it or when you see jets taking off and you can see everything coming out the back that’s effectively the particulate matter or soot which is effectively what it is. We can reduce that by 40 to 50%. When the Air Force did its testing on these fuels and they flew one of eight engines on this it was great and credible when you saw from behind you could see seven engines spewing out all the soot and then the one engine you could hardly see anything at all so real significant improvements there.
So if any of you follow Fischer-Tropsch and coal to liquid type industries you’d have heard that the challenge that we get from the environmentalist is that effectively on a carbon dioxide basis we basically spew out twice the CO2 of traditional crude based diesel products when you do it on a well head to wells basis. Rentech does not dispute that, if you simply do gasification of coal and allow the CO2 to vent into the atmosphere. What the environmentalist haven’t recognized is that Rentech has no intention to build a plant that looks like that. Never have had and do not want to do that. We’re going to implement and commercialize this technology in an environmentally sound way and the way that you do that initially and the way that we would have believed would be enough for this technology to get the support was to effectively do sequestration. We actually pull out between 70 to 80% of the CO2 that’s produced in the manufacturing process and when you sequester that CO2 as we will be doing in our first plant in Mississippi well head to well CO2 footprint actually becomes slightly less than that of the imported bottle. And I’ve [inaudible] as an example of the margin value coming into the US, it’s probably the one we’d cut first if we were able to reduce our consumption. If I compare it to some of the other marginal ones, Canada’s tar sands for example we would be significantly better. In fact, even without sequestration I’m probably better than tar sands on a CO2 basis.
That’s where we wanted to go. We got push back from both the environmentalist and Washington as a result of the environmentalist that said they really only wanted to support alternative fuels that have a CO2 footprint that was better than what they were replacing. They don’t really want to support alternative fuels, they weren’t going to have a problem with us implementing the technology in this way but if we wanted government support to help back the process then we needed to reduce our CO2 footprint even lower. So that was effectively the challenge that was set us. So what we looked out was how could you achieve that and the way to do that at these large scale plants where we would use petroleum coal or coal waste would be to take a blend of the feedstock so rather than doing 100% peat coal or 100 coal or coal waste you would put a percentage of your feedstock coming through from biomass and we will be testing that in our demonstration unit and then introduce that in our plant.
Our plan at the first plant is to put 5% of the BTU content to come from biomass and in Natchez, Mississippi where that plant is, it’s initially likely to be some municipal sludge type waste and then also paper waste as well. There’s a significant amount of paper manufacturing in the area. When you do that with a 5% BTU content plus the sequestration we can take that CO2 footprint down to about 20% or so less than that of the traditional diesel from crude. That’s about where the ethanol industry claims that it is so it puts us right there with the other alternative fuels. Then similarly if we were to take it to the next phase on the smaller scale plants where you would use municipal waste to jet fuel or diesel, in those circumstances the carbon footprint becomes even lower because effectively the CO2 that you use in biomass or municipal waste plant somebody has already produced that CO2. Just to back up what we said here, there was a DOE study that also was effectively looking at the same issue and they have said with the right blend of carbon biomass then you can get that 20% goal that we were talking about. That’s just some independent evidence to back up.
Our strategy for execution we’re going to accelerate deployment of the process so effectively get the demonstration unit up and running, prove out the technology then take that scale up opportunity to Natchez, Mississippi and then just look to build more of these plants at scale around the country focusing on initially waste products so peat coal, municipal waste, biomass waste and coal waste as well as available. Then, as an infrastructure develops around carbon sequestration part of what we’re doing at our first site is using the carbon not only for enhanced oil recovery but also to test [deep saline aquifer] as a way to store CO2 for sequestration. It looks very promising the scientist like it but we do have to test it and we’ll be doing that as part of that first plant we’re doing with Denbury Resources to actually buy all of the CO2 from us for that plant and the other enhanced oil recovery field in Cranfield, very close to our facility in Natchez, Mississippi.
Alongside the demonstration unit in Denver we’ve also built a research and development lab so we can maintain our technology leadership in the area and then we will expand the reach of the process by doing domestic and international licensing. Once the PDU is up and running we are at the current time be having what I would class as interest and discussions from people from similar geographic than what you saw from the previous investors. Australia, China, India, Russia, all areas where they have coal for coal to liquids and then in the far east Africa and Russia where they have gas, gas to liquids. Then western Europe where the biomass to liquids and second generation biodiesel is becoming very important. I think they recognize that importing palm oil for biodiesel which is generated by burning rain forestry grown palm trees really wasn’t environmentally sound so they’re looking as quickly as they can for the second generation biodiesel in Europe.
Our belief is that once the demonstration unit is up and running and we’re able to show people the product and the technology that we’ll be very quickly able to turn those interest and discussions into commercial agreements. What about the competitiveness of a lot of the fuels? We talk a lot about how to get AR, that’s all well and good but if we don’t make any money it’s probably not going to interest the people in this room. So, here’s looking at effectively our first facility built at scale. You’re looking at a cash course to meet FDDs of about $62 a barrel. If you look at the traditional crack spread between FDDs or diesel and crude that takes you about to about $50 in crude equivalent. So, at $100 crude it’s very economical. This includes blending in biomass, it does assume that I’m able to sell CO2 from housed oil recovery so there is a bit of an offset there to achieving that 20% less than conventional fuels. But still, highly competitive in today’s market. These numbers assume no government support. Currently there is a $0.50 per gallon support for these fuels which is about $21 a barrel so it would take that $62 down to $41. But, given that that runs out currently in 2009 and our first plant are later than that I did not include it in the economics. But, important to note is these fuels work at today’s numbers with no government support.
The product demonstration unit I talked about here’s a picture of it, it’s in Sand Creek just outside of Denver, Colorado. As the first plant we will use it to do a variety of feedstocks. Initially we will run it on natural gas and then we’ll quickly move to use other feedstocks as well. It’s also an ideal training center for the operators. We have very much built a small scale fully operating plant. It actually has more controls on it then you would have on a full scale plant because we will be doing online gas testing, etcetera. But, the control center and everything has been built as if we’re building a full scale commercial plant.
The first commercial plant I talked about is in Adams County, Mississippi just outside of Natchez. We’re going to look to build it in two phases. It’s about a 1,600 barrel per day plant initially. It’s fair to note that at 1,600 barrels a day and $450 million this is not the scale you would want to build it at, the economics are not particularly strong at this point. It’s very much seen as a stepping stone, as a first phase to get to phase two. Once you get to phase two that’s kind of 2,500 plus barrels per day is the scale you want to get to on this type of technology in order to take advantages of the economies of scale. The site is ideally located for product distribution, feedstock access and of course, most importantly it has the CO2 solution. The site purchase we’re looking at having that done in the near future, not necessarily April 1st but certainly soon. We do have exclusive right to the site right now. The carbon and coal feed to peat coal with the biomass as I mentioned, we have the CO2 and we also have an inducement to $2,725,000 billion of bonds from the State of Mississippi, a mixture of tax exempt and taxable bonds to help finance the project.
So, the economics when you combine phase one and phase two again, this assumes no government support, it assumes that I sell jet fuel to mostly the Air Force but at today’s prices jet fuel sells for over $130 a barrel and in those economics you can see we’ve assumed $125 a barrel. I’ve assumed that I sell naphtha at crude and I’ve used $70 a barrel for crude and again, no government support based on these numbers. That throws off an EBITDA number north of $700 million. Obviously you’re going to ask how much does it cost to build, and it’s probably somewhere between the $4 to $4.5 billion range including financing costs and capitalized interest which is a big part of the cost of these plants. Probably two and half to three years construction time and obviously with that type of money invested you have a fairly large capitalized interest over the period. This assumes peat coal at about $60 per ton and biomass at $35 per ton.
We have some other projects that we are working on as well. In Mingo County West Virginia, this one is a mixture of wood waste and coal waste in the location. Again, we look to do it in two phases starting with 3,000 barrels per day growing it to 27. The issue with this one right now is there is no contract solution for CO2 right now. There are promising opportunities in the area for coal bed methane recovery there are a lot of coal beds in the area that can’t be mine and with a CO2 injection you can actually produce methane from the coal and we are looking at that. There’s also potentially CO2 pipelines that could be built in the area to take the CO2 to [inaudible] oil fields for [inaudible] oil recovery.
We have two projects that we’re looking at with Peabody Energy on straight coal to liquid plants. 10,000 to 30,000 barrels a day plants in Montana and Kentucky. Those plants are effectively, they’re not on hold is probably the wrong word but being slow paced while we solve the CO2 solution. There are no obvious CO2 solutions in the area for these two plants. We continue to look at them obviously if [deep saline aquifer] proves out on plant number one then these plants would very quickly be ready to move forward again but as of right now there’s no obvious CO2 solution in those locations.
In northern California we have a joint development agreement with the Solena Group who has a municipal waste gasification system. They are leaving the development on this project. They are in site evaluation for a site. They use plasma arc gasification so they use plasma gasifiers to break it down. We think this would be the first commercial biomass to jet fuel production facility probably in the 1,500 to 3,000 barrel per day. Our involvement in that right now is we are sharing our technology with them and giving them the requirements that we require on the syn gas in order to be able to insure that they can produce syn gas of the quality required to then go on and make the jet fuel needed. Once they demonstrate the success of that and allocation to site we would then join them on a 50/50 basis to develop that project through.
As I mentioned earlier we actually own a fertilizer company right now. This effectively gives us the cash flow to support the business. It does 830 tons per day. Originally we were going to convert it from natural gas to coal gasification and build our first synthetic fuels plant there. Unfortunately, this plant does not have a CO2 solution big enough. There was a CO2 solution, we were selling some of the CO2 to coal and [inaudible] for the bottling industry. We were also utilizing some of the CO2 to make some of the fertilizers that we make. However, there was no solution for all of the CO2 and therefore we have put that project on hold for now until we get a CO2 solution. In the meantime we continue to run the plant on natural gas and this year our fiscal year ends in September and we are forecasting that we would do EBTIDA of about $45 million so that helps effectively fund the business on the cash flow from the fertilizer plant as we look to commercialize our synthetic fuels technology.
Legislative impact, as I mentioned we don’t need government support to get this done but I think where government support is really important is in getting a large fuel commercial facility financed. As I mentioned it’s $4 to $4.5 billion, that’s a large investment for anybody to do where the end product is a commodity and has all the risks that go along with a commodity. It’s crude based, crude related the product that we make so very important for ever who is investing in that whether it’s the banks or the equity to recognize if crude goes back to $30 or $40 they haven’t invested $4.5 billion for something that is worthless. So, some of the ways that that can be done is one would be an Air Force contract. Right now the Air Force loves the fuels, wants to buy them but we’d need an act of Congress in order for them to be able to sign up long term contracts for the fuels. We continue to work with the Air Force and in Washington to demonstrate the value to the Air Force of having that and the value to the country of having 50% of its requirements for the Air Force domestically sourced on this high quality fuel.
Another way that we’d be able to do that would be a proposition that was put forward where effectively if crude fell below a certainly number say $50 or $60 then the government would keep us whole up to that $60 level in terms of a loan and then if crude went above say $110 then we would repay that loan. Personally, I think that’s also a good way to do this. Most people’s forward views is that crude is going to stay above $50 to $60 so it really shouldn’t cost the federal government anything but if it does think about the other benefits the economy could receive with crude being below $50. So having to pay a small amount to the synthetic fuels manufacturers to keep them whole and to keep those fuels being produced for the next time oil runs up, it looks like a good insurance policy and, when oil does run up then the money would get repaid. So, there are other supports that are out there including the $0.50 a gallon, right now it looks like that’s going to get extended via the Farm Bill. Don’t get me wrong I like getting $0.50 a gallon as well, it’s a good support but I think the things that really can make a difference are those things, those long term supports that take the commodity risk out of the very large plants and would encourage people to then invest that scale of $4 to $4.5 billion.
So, the investment summary really is that we have a proven technology. The fuels that we make are environmentally sound, a clear path to commercialization, an experienced management team. To support the political environment I have to take that out for a few months, we had support a political environment to start with, the environmentalist did a very good job at making out that CTL was twice as bad on a CO2 footprint as I mentioned. I think as we have solved that problem with sequestration and blending in the biomass which we spent a lot of time back in Washington and explaining to people that the way we plan to implement this technology utilizing initially waste streams with those other two ways that we can do this in an environmentally friendly way and therefore the political environment is coming around again. Then of course, the cash flow coming from the fertilizer plant helps support the business at this time. With that, I’ll open up to questions.
Can you describe in your licensing talk, I don’t know anything about licensing but typically is there an upfront payment if you’re successful? Or, do you have to wait for the project build to get some sort of sizeable [Inaudible – no microphone].
I. Merrick Kerr
The question was in our licensing discussions basically how are we going to get paid from our licensing. Really, it will depend on the type of license that we have. There are two ways that we can do this, we can look for project specific type licenses and the way it would work there is effectively we would sell engineering services to the company while they go through the engineering process of the plant. Then, at the point where they decided, “Yes, this makes sense we’re going to move forward with the plant.” We would do a license with them at that time which could at that point we would present them the alternatives which could be cash up front, some amount of cash up front and then a royalty per barrel, or simply a royalty per barrel. We are happy with any of those. The other way that we can do it and we would be selective about who we would do this with but would be to sell a master license agreement where there would be an upfront fee right at the beginning where you would give somebody the right to use the technology for a large number of plants and then you would simply work on each individual project at it came along. So, two options that we’re in discussions about right now.
[Inaudible – no microphone]
I. Merrick Kerr
The question is what’s our principle business risk and what keeps me awake? Really, the challenge for us as you can imagine we’re $150 million market cap company. The challenge for us with anybody with this is scale up. Right, you demonstrate the technology, you prove how well it works at the 10 barrel per day size and then even for us to do that 1,600 barrel per day plant where we are prepared to take fairly modest returns in order to demonstrated it, it’s still $450 million or a little more. So, the challenge for us is finding the backers to enable that to get done and then on the larger scale plants it’s basically find the very large multinationals who’ll stand behind us to get those plants done. There was a time where I wasn’t sure that crude was going to stay about the $60 to $70 number we need, I’m less concerned about that now. The challenge now is scaling up.
Can I ask you for your refinement economic scale? In other words you mentioned this prior to crude but you’re really talking in terms of [inaudible] as spread yes? So the spread between peat coal and your inputs, am I right?
I. Merrick Kerr
In this instance.
[Inaudible – no microphone] relating to the supply and demand and price of peat coal. Then you have refined products at the other end. Can you discuss those dynamics?
I. Merrick Kerr
I can. The question is the dynamic between really what I am doing is conversion technology so not to dissimilar to what they would call the heat rate of a power plant where you convert natural gas into electricity. That’s effectively what we do. Really, you get from one peat coal you get two barrels of fuel. You get a little less probably about 1.7 for coal depending on the BTU content of the coal. When you get down into the biomass realm, good quality biomass is maybe just over one barrel per ton. You get into the municipal waste and you’re probably less than a barrel per ton just because of the BTU content. So, if you look at that $60 a ton peat coal effectively means your $30 per barrel of feedstock so 50% of your costs is coming from that feedstock. The good news is particularly with peat coal there is some correlation between the value of your input and the value of our output unlike some of the other industries where you’ve got your non corrulated inputs and outputs. Peat coal tends to go up in volume when other BTU values go up as well like crude.
[Inaudible – no microphone]
I. Merrick Kerr
But, my end product becomes worth more as well. If you think of the problem that the ethanol people have right now as the corn is pushed up but the value of the ethanol has gone down so they get squeezed in the middle. What is likely to happen to be is as peat coal goes up fuel goes up as well because they are both correlated back to crude. So I have more – the products moved again. Also, when we build one of these large scale plants unless the partner we have has its own feedstock and is able to supply it, we would hedge out the feedstock in the same way people buy – when people construction natural gas to power plants they’ll hedge out their natural gas and they’ll sell the power. So, we’ll actually look for at least five to 10 years depending on what the debt requirements are we’ll actually lock in the margin. Did that answer it? You look like you’re not 100% convinced yet?
[Inaudible – no microphone]
I. Merrick Kerr
Well, we put out RFP and I can’t disclose too much but we have the ability to get peat coal related to something that is hedgeable. So we get a price that is not based on peat coal but based on something else which you can then hedge. Any other questions? Thank you. | <urn:uuid:61e2af70-6489-4910-b8fb-970b0950bdf6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://seekingalpha.com/article/70267-rentech-inc-wall-street-analyst-forum-presentation-transcript?find=biomass&source=word_cloud | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964548 | 7,661 | 1.53125 | 2 |
We know its not possible, we know its not dreamable.....
But, what if it is?
Here are a few people i interviewed(Actually they're my friends....^_^) About the possibilities of a cure, this is their responses:
(NOTE:They asked me to put only a nickname or some sort instead of their real names)
"You cannot cure zombies! They are already DEAD! *laughs* "
"Um, i guess, with the right ingredients."
"NO, the undead stay fricking dead."
So tell me....
IS there a cure for the walking dead?
Let me know......
This is a little off topic but, the disasters of today and tomorrow as same with Viral resistance and immunization might not be as natural as you would think them to be. we all know how the Us for Example put and endless insane amount into black book /blue book projects. However you want to call them.
Lets Take "Natural disasters" they can be explained by looking into HARP and chemtrail technology.
and disease immunization might be man made to do population control, but make it all seem natural to thin the herd. Lets take the H1N1 "swine flu" for example, we all know how quickly governments reacted and fear mongered the entire populous to a useless and pointless mandatory immunization shot. Guess how much money that made them, and to add do you really know whats in that shot, we all know immunization shots are both good but mostly bad for our bodies to to all the crap it contains. There`s tons of side effects, a cell to cause slowly flu immunization to antibiotics could be in it for what we know.
In short people rely to much on second hand information in today s society, and it makes us easy to manipulate, best way to keep things secret is to feed half truths with tons of lies in it to throw whomever looking into it into so many back alleys they grow weary of their endeavor and quits/puts it aside cause life and its A4 existence force them to do so.
(to avoid misunderstandings this is just a general thumb rule)
we can argue on this forever on and on, if you don't share this viewpoint of how easily we are manipulated i feel sorry for that person and would call whomever such as a sheep ready to be sheered and stripped of all its wool. Imo such people should do us all a favor and remove themselves from the genepool, cause they are not worthy of the brain power they possess and air and space they breath and use. Harsh words i know but ignorance annoys me, especially when it comes to life and a understanding of our possible futures as mankind. Without knowledge and understanding one can never become a visionary.
I'm all for thinning the herd. A genepool minus some pondscum wouldn't be too bad.
I haven't had a vaccine since I was in the military. Got out in '87.
I guess we all buy in to conspiracy theories a bit but you lost me at chem trails.
When swine flu was first identified in the 1970s the vaccine killed more people then the flu itself. I don't recall the H1N1 vaccine being mandatory not even for 1st responders. I refused the vaccine. I told my chief that I declined to be vaccinated. Others took the vaccine. I didn't get sick. A couple of them got the flu but didn't die from it.
I've seen enough crap to know there isn't a spook around every corner or under every rock. There aren't enough spooks to run all the conspiracies. I've also seen enough to be wary of the government and to verify before acting. You've got to choose your battles wisely. Tipping at windmills will get you a tight fitting white jacket, nasty tasting liquid meds and a padded room.
There is no argument if someone allows rumors and half truths to run their life. Live your life but be wary.
Anyways i don't buy into them, i personally just think with a science fiction type mindset, that the possibilities are there, no matter how the official stories go and selectively believe in the possibilities of such said theories. Which in my mind makes me a very open minded person.
I don't view them as conspiracies, but rather a theory, like life itself and its creation, like every religion is, its all but a mash of theories which one can choose to have valid points in each our own view on the world. As far as for spooks, you don't need a spook under every stone, just a few to incite/ ignite a spark of interest, very much as my first post in this thread. The mention of a soul and how i portrayed it made you all discuss it very elaborately. Our imagination is our strongest trait, but also the one that make our minds frail if we do not understand how to maintain a cool head.
About the vaccination, in my country it was mandatory for selective groups of people. but ofc you have the right to refuse. It got very.. um media hyped.
My country bought a ton of these vaccinations, half of that got thrown away..lol
Sidenote- There is a theory that H1N1 was engineered, obviously not well enough to be the new black death/ Spanish flu,but according to this theory it was supposedly to have fucked us over so bad, like Black death did Europe.
"The cure is a shotgun,
The cure is whatever blunt instrument
One can salvage"
-The Devil Wears Prada
There is one cure:
A bullet through the head.
Simple as that mate. | <urn:uuid:89ded233-e35a-4bcb-bf39-2309118bad8d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lostzombies.com/forum/topics/a-cure?commentId=2035037%3AComment%3A919755 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971158 | 1,183 | 1.703125 | 2 |
TRENTON -- A measure sponsored by Senator Fred H. Madden which requires assisted living facilities to have both a defibrillator and a staff member trained in its use on site has been signed into law.
"Through the signing of this legislation, we are providing increased protection for nursing home residents around the State," said Senator Madden, D-Camden and Gloucester. "More often than not, assisted living facilities are home to older residents and those with serious health issues. This measure codifies existing Department of Health and Senior Service regulations and brings these facilities in closer in line with nursing homes and other health-related institutions, by ensuring that employees have the training necessary to use a defibrillator to help save a life in an emergency situation."
Senator Madden's measure, S-2146, gives assisted living facilities one year from the bill's enactment to acquire at least one defibrillator and to have employees trained to use the machine.
The measure requires the defibrillator to be maintained in a central location within the facility. Assisted living facilities will be responsible for arranging and covering the cost of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training and defibrillator use for facility employees.
Defibrillation is a process in which an electronic device is used to provide an electric shock to the heart, in hopes of reestablishing a normal heart beat and activity after an arrhythmia or a heart attack.
This measure was approved by the full Senate on Feb. 23. | <urn:uuid:42048e52-7e87-4d0b-90da-227545cece63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.com/south/index.ssf/2009/04/madden_bill_requiries_assisted.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96007 | 309 | 1.5 | 2 |
The man who directed hit teams for drug kingpin Pablo Escobar fingered a disgraced politician on Friday as being behind the 1989 assassination of leading presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan.
Alberto Santofimio Botero, a former senator and justice minister, was arrested Thursday for the killing of Galan -- a case that rocked Colombia and deprived the nation of a crusader against drug traffickers and corruption.
John Jairo Velasquez, who led Escobar's army of assassins, said in a telephone interview from prison with RCN TV that he was present at a meeting with Escobar and Santofimio when the politician recommended Galan be killed.
"Alberto Santofimio Botero had the idea of killing Luis Carlos Galan," Velasquez said. "Alberto Santofimio recommended that he be killed because the man, with the weapons of the state, would go after Pablo Escobar."
In 1989, Santofimio was running for the Liberal Party nomination for the 1990 presidential elections. Galan was a rival candidate, charismatic and likened to John F. Kennedy. Velasquez said Santofimio showed no hesitation when he told Escobar that Galan be killed.
"He was 100 percent calm ... he was removing a political enemy from his path," Velasquez said.
For Escobar, the assassination of Galan meant he would be eliminating a candidate who would likely extradite drug traffickers to the US for trial. The Medellin cocaine cartel, which Escobar headed, fought a bloody war during the 1980s to pressure the government to bar extraditions. Cartel assassins killed judges, an attorney general, Cabinet ministers, journalists and police. Hundreds more Colombians died in cartel bomb attacks in Bogota in Medellin.
Galan, who was shot dead while campaigning south of Bogota, was so far ahead in the polls for the 1990 presidential elections he was virtually assured of victory. His campaign manager, Cesar Gaviria, ran in his place after the attack, and was elected president. Immediately after Galan's assassination, then President Virgilio Barco retaliated by reinstating extraditions.
Santofimio, a former justice minister, was flown to Bogota on Friday aboard a police plane from a town in western Colombia where he was arrested. Authorities first tried to bring him to the capital on a commercial flight, but passengers rebelled, saying they did not want to travel with the disgraced politician.
Santofimio, 61, faces 40 years in prison if found guilty in Galan's murder. Santofimio was long known as the "political godfather" of Escobar, who was shot dead by police in 1993. In 1995, Santofimio was arrested for taking money from drug traffickers.
While several members of the hit team that killed Galan were arrested within days of the assassination, for more than 15 years Colombians have wondered who was behind the killing. Rumors swirled that politicians and security forces were involved. | <urn:uuid:5d9e028c-1bcd-4ca1-80e7-85103c8cc9d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/05/15/2003254775 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977796 | 624 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud.
Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not.
When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.
The Arab League’s Ministerial Committee had approved the report, with four votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against; guess who, Qatar – which is now presiding the Arab League because the emirate bought their (rotating) turn from the Palestinian Authority.
So the report was either ignored (by Western corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed – by Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even discussed – because it was prevented by the GCC from being translated from Arabic into English and published in the Arab League’s website.
Until it was leaked. Here it is, in full.
The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.
Once again, the official NATOGCC version of Syria is of a popular uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead, BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes of the developing world see it as the Syrian government fighting heavily armed foreign mercenaries. The report largely confirms these suspicions.
The Syrian National Council is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated with both the House of Saud and Qatar – with an uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of the Assad regime, but most of all is infested with these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, especially Salafist gangs.
Still NATOGCC, blocked from applying in Syria its one-size-fits-all model of promoting “democracy” by bombing a country and getting rid of the proverbial evil dictator, won’t be deterred. GCC leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed their own report and went straight to the meat of the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the UN Security Council.
So the current “Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown” in Syria at the UN is no less than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects Washington, London and Paris have been forced to fall over themselves to assure the real international community this is not another mandate for NATO bombing – a la Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as “a path for a political transition that would preserve Syria’s unity and institutions”.
But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is. Another BRICS member – India – alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled draft UN resolution.
There won’t be another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be blocked – again – by Russia and China. Even NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players – Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo – has a different long-term geopolitical agenda. Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbor and trading partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any regime change scheme.
So here’s a suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since you’re so seduced by the prospect of “democracy” in Syria, why don’t you use all your American weaponry and invade in the dead of night – like you did to Bahrain – and execute regime change by yourselves?
• First published at Asia Times. | <urn:uuid:f43ca1e3-66ab-40b1-8b45-34ad1a18f9d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/02/exposed-the-arab-agenda-in-syria/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954596 | 981 | 1.554688 | 2 |
WASHINGTON -- By Thanksgiving, President Obama will have pardoned eight turkeys during his term in office -- just more than a third the number of humans he has pardoned, 22.
With the president scheduled to conduct the annual Thanksgiving pardoning of two turkeys Wednesday afternoon, news organizations are drawing comparisons to other kinds of pardons.
NPR News cited one study comparing recent presidents on number of pardons granted in relation to those rejected:
Ronald Reagan: 1 in 8
George H.W. Bush: 1 in 19
Bill Clinton: 1 in 16
George W. Bush: 1 in 55
Barack Obama: 1 in 290
Said White House spokesman Matt Lehrich: "President Obama takes his constitutional power to grant clemency very seriously, and each recommendation received from the Department of Justice is carefully reviewed and evaluated on the merits." | <urn:uuid:7655734c-1445-406d-b922-ce252c6305d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.11alive.com/news/article/264927/40/President-Obama-pardons-8-turkeys-22-humans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95287 | 173 | 1.804688 | 2 |
When the credit crisis hit and the real estate market all but collapsed, news of disgraced developers became commonplace, their tales more often than not layered with intrigue.
Take Kent Swig, who, after being divorced by his wife, filed an affidavit in May responding to a lawsuit filed by his ex-father-in-law, industry luminary Harry Macklowe, arguing that Mr. Macklowe embarked on a “vendetta” aimed at “starving” him of every last penny.
But as the downfalls of real estate tycoons like Mr. Macklowe, Shaya Boymelgreen, Bruce Eichner and Larry Gluck stack up like so many new developments across Manhattan’s skyline, analysts and the city’s landlords themselves have begun to wonder aloud if there’s a limit to how much real estate can be accumulated.
“A developer’s function is to develop property, and sometimes they develop and develop until they can’t develop anymore,” said appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel Inc., a real estate appraisal and consulting firm based in New York City. “Where people fell short was that the market was more powerful than them … the market is brutal, and it has no compassion.”
With President Obama elected to four more years in the White House, a juggernaut exists in the looming Bush tax-cut deadline. Nobody knows for sure whether the cuts will expire, but as it stands, if Congress does nothing, capital gains taxes will increase from 15 percent to as much as 28.8 percent, including surcharges, tax experts said.
Depending on which side of the aisle you’re on—Republican or Democrat—the expiration is expected to either hurt or stimulate the economy. Some believe that in order to erase the massive national debt ($16,260,682,814,332.77 at press time), the country has no other option but to increase taxes. Opponents of the hikes believe that if the wealthiest taxpayers have less money, they’ll spend less on consumer goods, restaurants and, perhaps, real estate.
Either way, brokers are scrambling to push deals before the end of the year, to some degree playing off fears of the tax deadline—and some people are making decisions as though the expiration is a certainty.
“Since the summer, we’ve seen unusually heavy volume of high-end property owners who are transferring properties” as the tax deadline approaches, Mr. Miller said, adding that this leads to an “artificial compression of the market.”
One broker wrote in an email that was sent out to a group of clients and later obtained by The Commercial Observer that “Since the low capital gains taxes are expiring soon, I would say that it’s in your clients’ best interest to reach an agreement before 2012 … I would think it’s in your best interest also to close in 2012.”
The good news is that the shrewdest of investors—and perhaps the luckiest—will rise to the occasion, navigating the real estate terrain with intelligence and vision, which most likely means running business as usual and paying little attention to the tax deadline.
“The traditional developers and real estate families hang on for generations—no one-term presidency or Congress is going to affect them,” said the real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey. But, he added, there are those who treat investments “like ATM machines and who are not making the most intelligent investments … that is a different world.” | <urn:uuid:fc79a110-6bc8-4ded-9c7b-093ccb666c7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://commercialobserver.com/2012/11/reaching-for-the-sun-is-it-possible-to-own-too-much-real-estate/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965509 | 741 | 1.59375 | 2 |
The latest news on weapons
Dempsey says U.S. cannot prevent weapons sales to Syria.
He can do something or do nothing – and doing nothing really isn't an option.
Both the Obama Administration and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel say Assad has crossed a "red line."
U.S. waits for stalled investigation into alleged March chemical attack.
Despite protests, Feds can buy products on GSA web site, local law enforcement reports no impact.
U.S. law may classify many weapons—including 'potato guns'—as WMDs.
U.S. drones and North Korea's satellite launch show the need for increased public discourse as the tools of modern warfare expand.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says it is increasingly concerned that the beleaguered regime in Syria might be considering use of chemical weapons against its own people and warned that doing so would "cross a red line."
Any further international intervention in Libya must address their dangerous weapons arsenal before the tools of destruction end up in the hands of terrorist organizations.
Candidates with two histories on gun rights battle it out in Colorado's 7th District. | <urn:uuid:444dc92c-309b-45be-95b2-9148c5560862> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://money.usnews.com/topics/subjects/weapons | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942413 | 237 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Unsealed Documents Reveal Lax Attention To Safety Before Mine Blast
We've reported and heard plenty in the last year about how the Upper Big Branch mine explosion was preceded by failures to strictly apply mine safety regulations and practices. Both mine owner Massey Energy and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration share blame, according to a recent report from the West Virginia Governor's Independent Investigation of the disaster.
Now, there's evidence the board of directors of Massey Energy also failed to provide safety oversight, despite a court order.
The evidence comes in more than 5,300 pages of documents that a West Virginia judge ordered unsealed in response to a joint motion filed by NPR and the Charleston Gazette.
Gazette reporter Ken Ward has focused on this as he combs through the documents, and reports "Massey's board did not appear to take seriously a court settlement that required it to take a larger role in the coal giant's safety practices."
The 2008 court order resulted from a so-called "derivative" lawsuit filed by several large institutional shareholders against Massey executives and board members.
The lawsuit claimed that poor safety practices at Massey coal mines diminished the value of the company at the expense of shareholders.
The court order required the Massey board to assume specific safety oversight responsibilities. But, as the documents show and Ward reports, the board failed to follow through in the years and months before the Upper Big Branch explosion, which killed 29 Massey mine workers.
Among the failures cited in the documents and Ward's story:
-- A newly-hired Vice President for Safety was required to report to CEO Don Blankenship and not a board safety committee, as the court order required.
-- The board's safety committee waited until after the Upper Big Branch explosion to begin gathering information from Massey's safety compliance reporting system.
-- After the disaster, the board discovered that CEO Blankenship had setup a safety reporting system that defied the terms of the court order.
-- The board failed to take action about well-known safety problems at several Massey mines, including an injury rate at one mine more than double the national average, hundreds of safety violations and millions of dollars in fines at another mine, and a Kentucky mine considered so dangerous by federal regulators they sought the first-ever federal court injunction that could have placed safety compliance at the mine under a judge's supervision.
The documents unsealed Wednesday do not actually include those authorized for release by Judge Charles King in Kanawha County Circuit Court. NPR and the Charleston Gazette are returning to court in West Virginia to seek a court order requiring the release of the relevant documents.
We'll have more on those documents here and Ward will continue to post stories gleaned from them on his Coal Tattoo blog. | <urn:uuid:8655e21e-c04e-4bb9-865b-9c51efb0f6fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbur.org/npr/136900784/unsealed-documents-reveal-lax-attention-to-safety-before-mine-blast | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956013 | 564 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Summer Meal Plan 2200-2500 Calories/day
The incredible variety available in the supermarket has led to an troubling phenomenon for athletes and active individuals. Instead of changing the fruits, vegetables, and even meats we consume as the seasons change, our CTS Nutrition Team has noticed a disturbing trend toward eating the exact same dozen-or-so foods all year long. To help athletes rediscover the tastes and nutritional benefits of seasonal foods, we’ve created meal plans for Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
Variety is a crucial part of a healthy and high-performance nutrition program because it helps ensure that you’re getting a more well-rounded combination of vitamins and minerals. And beyond these micronutrients, there are innumerable components that can improve your health and performance – even if science hasn’t quite figured out how – including phytonutrients and flavonoids. Generally, the more you change up your food choices, especially when it comes to fruits and vegetables, the more balanced your overall micronutrient intake will be.
The 4-week Seasonal Meal Plans are designed to meet your daily calorie demands so you have the energy and focus to be more productive at home, at work, and during your workouts. At the same time, the plans ensure you’re getting the right vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, as well as the balance of carbohydrate, protein and fat, necessary for optimal health and performance.
Like our successful Endurance Meal Plans, the Seasonal Meal Plans follow our proven method for achieving weight loss and sustaining your energy levels throughout the day by spreading food intake across six meals: breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner, and evening snack. Each Plan includes a wide variety of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products to keep your taste buds guessing and insure you take in all the nutrients your body needs on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Meals include a range of recipes including mouth-watering salads, rich smoothies, tasty desserts, and even burritos.
Note: These plans contain meat, poultry, fish, dairy products and eggs. They are not vegetarian or vegan meal plans.
For a peek at a sample day, click here | <urn:uuid:3335258c-7cf9-4f8d-9386-bb9d5014894a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sites.fastspring.com/trainright/product/summermealplan22002500?action=adds | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935309 | 461 | 1.695313 | 2 |
New Delhi: Traders' body CAIT on Thursday alleged that "corporate greed" has played a role in government allowing foreign investment in the retail sector.
"The organised corporate forces try to control and capture all possible sources of economy. The current decision to allow FDI in retail too is a result of corporate greed," said Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), the apex body of trade associations.
Releasing a book titled 'FDI in Retail Trade of India--Assumptions vs Facts', it said, "Those favouring FDI (foreign direct investment) in retail have in a clandestine manner convinced the government about the benefits and needs of FDI..."
But no opportunity was given to traders to put forward their views and grievances, CAIT alleged.
"Such kind of differential treatment smacks of some kind of conspiracy to hijack retail trade of India," it said.
Traders also called for measures to strengthen the retail trade which employs over 22 crore people.
"Our government instead of making reforms in unorganised retail sector is trying to create a rift in harmonious society (producer-transporter-trader-consumer)."
The book contains arguments of various political parties, ministers, industry chambers, trade organisations and journalists on the issue of FDI affecting farmers, small retailers and consumers.
In November last year, the government allowed 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail and 100 percent FDI in single-brand retail.
Following widespread opposition, including from its own allies, the Government suspended its decision to allow 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retail.
First Published: Thursday, April 19, 2012, 21:49 | <urn:uuid:62e89486-eda5-4afc-a529-07d2e2c487f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zeenews.india.com/business/news/economy/corporate-greed-behind-decision-on-fdi-in-retail-cait_46205.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949644 | 342 | 1.796875 | 2 |
What is your denomination's position regarding Israel? Do you agree with the PC(USA) that requires divesting funds from Israel?
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church uses the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. In Chapter 19, paragraph 3 we confess that the people of Israel, God's people in the Old Testament, are
a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances; partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly of divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated under the new testament.
In other words, we believe that Old Testament Israel was the Church before Christ came. Paragraph 4 adds, "To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people (my emphasis), not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require."
In other words, the nation of Israel, as it existed as the people of God in the Old Testament is no more. Galatians 6:16 informs us that the Church is now the Israel of God. In the Old Testament the church, called the nation of Israel, consisted of the blood descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But in the New Testament the Church now consists of all those who believe God's promise like and along with Abraham (See Romans 4:1-12 and Galatians 3:13-14). We who trust in Christ are now the nation of Israel!
Therefore the Orthodox Presbyterian Church holds that the political/geographical entity known as Israel is not significant in and of itself. We pray for the blood descendants of Abraham, the Jews, that they might also believe in Jesus (see Romans 9-10). But our position would be that the present day nation of Israel is no more significant than any other nation, and yet ought to hold a significant place in the work of the Church in making disciples of every nation.
As to your second question, we have not taken a position as a denomination on the investing or divesting of funds for Israel, nor do I think we ever will. Our task is not political but spiritual: "Go and make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you"—Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church, in Matthew 28:19-20a.
"Questions and Answers" is a weekly feature of the OPC website. At least one new question is posted each week, so there should always be something new here for you to read. (For those who would like to look at previous questions and answers, they will continue to be available as well.)
The questions come from individuals like yourself. If you have questions about biblical and theological matters, you are invited to send them by e-mail by using the "Pose a Question" link on the OPC home page or by clicking here.
The purpose of the OPC website's "Questions and Answers" is to respond to biblical and theological questions. Matters of church discipline, disputes, or debates go beyond the scope of our work. We recommend that you present your concerns in these areas to the appropriate judicatory. In most cases this will be to a local pastor, elder, or session. We do not want the website to replace personal involvement in, or commitment to, the local, visible church.
While we will respond to every serious questioner, we are not bound to give a substantive answer to every question, should we deem the question to be beyond the scope of our purpose or our own ability to answer.
You will receive an answer by email. Please be patient as many of our respondents are busy pastors. The response to your question may take up to two weeks. Some of the questions submitted will be chosen to be posted here, along with the corresponding answers.
The answers come from individual ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church expressing their own convictions and do not necessarily represent an "official" position of the Church, especially in areas where the Standards of the Church (the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms) are silent.
Note that the "Questions and Answers" posted on the site have been editedall personal references are removed, Scripture references may be added, and sometimes portions are expandedto make the questions and answers more useful to a larger audience. | <urn:uuid:402bb5d8-9c8a-4e60-9532-6a014519971d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=466&pfriendly=Y&ret=L3FhLmh0bWw%2FcXVlc3Rpb25faWQ9NDY2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950367 | 913 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Resolutions getting a little rusty? Feeling a little uninspired to cook something healthy or get some exercise in your day? Here are 10 sayings that I found to inspire you (and me!). I’ve included attribution where I can, but I found most of these on Pinterest.
- Today just get up and go because yesterday, you said tomorrow.
- You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. — Zig Ziglar
- Any exercise is better than no exercise.
- What fits your busy schedule better — exercising one hour a day or being dead 24 hours a day?
- It’s a shame for a woman to grow old without seeing the strength and beauty her body is capable of.
- Every choice you make about what you will put in your body and how you will move your body will either put you one step closer to good health or one step further away.
- What you eat in private, you wear in public.
- It’s hard to be optimistic when your fat pants are tight.
- The difference between who you are and who you want to be is what you do.
- A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything. — Irish proverb
Do you have a favorite saying that keeps you motivated with regard to health and fitness (or life in general)? Feel free to share it in a comment below. | <urn:uuid:73bff6aa-1e87-4b26-aeab-34d3c4d19cb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.fitcityindy.org/10-bits-inspiration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946365 | 297 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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Eurozone Slips Back Into Recession
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:47:00 -0500
The economic news in Europe just keeps getting worse: The eurozone, the 17 countries that use the euro currency, has slipped back into recession.
Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency, said Thursday that the bloc contracted 0.1 percent in the third quarter; it shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter.
A recession is often defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Here's more from the agency:
"Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, seasonally adjusted GDP fell by 0.6% in the euro area and by 0.4% in the EU27 in the third quarter of 2012, after -0.4% and -0.3% respectively in the previous quarter."
EU27 refers to the 27 states that make up the European Union. Ten of those states still use their own currencies.
The eurozone was last in recession in 2009. The bloc's economy shrank for five consecutive quarters in that period.
"This was totally expected because of austerity policies combined with world growth slowing down and a dramatic fall in activity in Germany and the Netherlands," said Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank. "The last couple of days have created a new momentum for a major change in policy input, because up until this week, social tension was not part of equation. It seems like the tone has shifted dramatically."
His comments were reported by the BBC.
Still, European markets closed broadly lower on the news.
Larry Elliott, economics editor for The Guardian, warns that more economic contraction is likely.
"Greece has just signed up to another batch of spending cuts, the Spanish economy is in freefall and Germany will continue to struggle all the while world trade remains weak. European banks remain in a parlous state and would go under without life support from the European Central Bank and national governments. The first half of 2013 will be grim."
Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
IN FOCUS TODAY
Friday, May 17, 2013 - 4:41am
More than 17,000 Baltimore students miss 20 or more days of school a year. Many of these...
Friday, May 17, 2013 - 4:37am
WYPR's Fraser Smith and Karen Hosler talk about changes to the horse racing industry in Maryland...
Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 7:00am
Attorney General Doug Gansler may run for governor in 2014, but he's moving toward a decision... | <urn:uuid:4db74a3f-9fd4-4255-af01-e14c88195f83> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wypr.org/news/eurozone-slips-back-recession-0?quicktabs_1=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94253 | 641 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Ad agencies $65 million winners in election campaign
One thing is certain about the recent off-year national election - it was a windfall for the advertising industry, especially the electronic media.Skip to next paragraph
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Political analysts are putting the tab for the election and the primaries that led up to it at more than half a billion dollars - for gubernatorial races and runs for seats in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. That may be expensive for the candidates and their supporters. But it was highly profitable for advertising agencies, bringing in revenues estimated at more than
The advertising earned further millions through commissions or fees for placing political ads in local or state contests.
As always, as good chunk of political promotion dollars was spent on radio and TV in a flurry of last-minute advertising blitzes designed to push candidates over the top to victory. The question is, was this an effective use of media advertising?
Experts disagree on the answer. Many believe that while it may be difficult to prove just how effective a big burst of advertising is at the very end of the campaign, without it the candidate might just as well concede defeat.
David Garth, president of the Garth Group in New York, is a firm believer in the kind of results to be expected from applying modern marketing techniques such as research and advertising in the political arena. Mr. Garth has guided many a candidate to victory over the past 23 years. For example, he was Edward I. Koch's media man in his two successful bids for mayor of New York.
This year he watched in dismay as one of his candidates, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, lost by the slimmest of margins (0.06 percentage points) in his bid for the California governership. Conceivably, more money and more advertising would have pushed this candidate over the top.
''Money alone is certainly no guarantee of winning an election,'' Garth said. ''But it can be an enormous help. Look at Lautenberg's victory over Fenwick in New Jersey.'' (Democrat Frank Lautenberg, a wealthy but little-known New Jersey businessman, poured in millions of his own money to defeat his far better known Republican rival, Millicent Fenwick, in a race for the US Senate seat.)
''I doubt very much that voters hold it against a candidate when he has money and spends it to get elected,'' Garth reckons. ''The voting turnout was up, and in certain big city areas by substantial amounts. So political advertising can't be the turnoff some observers thought it was.''
In addition to a number of races around the country which featured campaign chests crammed to overflowing with millions of media dollars, many reporters noted a prevalence of ''negative'' spots this time. Garth indicated it would be misleading to generalize about the results of the election. But he concedes, ''In certain areas, there were a lot more of these hard-hitting and fiercely competitive TV commercials than we've seen before.'' | <urn:uuid:fd1723cd-7473-4d4c-a427-9ccab129e145> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.csmonitor.com/1982/1119/111935.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969935 | 608 | 1.523438 | 2 |
This Forum is dedicated to the Druidic search for the underlying meaning of life, the unifying nature of our common humanity, and our interconnectedness in the search for truth.
This forum is dedicated to the quest of our common humanity, especially in the exploration of the underlying commonalities of the human condition, the similarities between faith systems and philosophies, and the Druidic search for all that unifies rather than divides. This is a public forum, viewable by guests as well as members, and is cataloged by most search engines.
The term "Common Quest" does not mean that ultimately there is one faith system, or one lowest common denominator. It means that we are all trying to do the same thing: find the meaning of our existence in this common humanity that we share.
One rule for discussions here: Honor One Another.
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[Papa Doc said,]"... The Bill of Rights has no exemption for 'really bad people' or terrorists or even non-citizens. It is a key check on government power against any person. This is not a weakness in our legal system; it is the very strength of our legal system."
That was exactly the objection raised by The New York Times in its own excellent editorial challenging the constitutionality of the NDAA. It should not be difficult for those same editorial writers to treat Ron Paul as a profound and principled contributor to a much-needed national debate on the limits of federal power instead of attempting to marginalize his views beyond recognition.
The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion. ...
The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation's history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people's allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state.
Aside from the Christian dominionist distortion of history on the Founders view of separating church and state, it's also curious that a "constitutionalist" who idolizes the Constitution would say that it and the Declaration are "both replete with references to God." Declaration of Independence (which has no legal force): # of references to "God": 1; Original Constitution: # of references to "God": 0; # of references to "Lord": 1, in "the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven." Bill of Rights: God references, 0; Amendments 11-27: God references, 0.
It looks like Iowa voters caucus-goers might be in the process of turning Ron Paul into a Newt. ...
And much hand-wringing will ensue on the left, as they try to decide whether or not they like a racist anti-war isolationist who favors a society of bare-foot, pregnant women smoking dope in the kitchen.
Charlie Pierce, There Is No Republican "A Team"Esquire Politics Blog 12/28/2011: "The current frontrunning crazoid is a guy who played footsie for his entire career with a bunch of cowflop brownshirts plotting revolution down at Goober's Gas 'n Sip."
It also means you, Ron Paul. If you're going to play footsie with the gunz-and-ammo crowd for your entire career, including those elements of the gunz-and-ammo not entirely disposed to sharing the country with people darker and/or more Jewish than they are, then you had to know that, sooner or later, our longtime supporters were going to collide with your newer, younger supporters who like what you say about Iran and the Bill of Rights, and that this collision wasn't going to make you look like a bold coalition-builder. It was going to make you look like somebody trying to raise a militia at Bonnaroo. So defenses like, "I dunno what went out there under my name" aren't going to cut it.
You know who also thought that "appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990's"? The same people who thought it was a good political strategy in the 1960's, '70's, and '80's. The same people who hired Lee Atwater. The same people who looked at the white-supremacist backlash against the triumphs of the civil-rights movement and saw, not a outbreak of lawless racism, but a golden political opportunity, and who built a political movement out of the remnants of American apartheid, and who allowed that movement to take over an entire political party until all that's left is what you see now, parading through the streets of Iowa, or working in the state houses to deprive minority voters of the rights for which they paid so dear a price.
It was more than Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul, boys. It was the entire Republican party, and the conservative "movement" that energized it. It's why Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about "states rights" in Mississippi, not half-a-mile from the spot where murdered civil rights workers were buried in a dam. It was welfare mothers driving Cadillacs and young bucks buying steaks. It was the slandering of Lani Guinier as a "quota queen." It's all those ID laws in all those states, and the phony ACORN scandal, and virtually everything said by every GOP presidential candidate on the subject of immigration and, in case you haven't noticed, it's an awful lot of the problems your people have with Barack Obama. It's what the pathetic Willard Romney is talking about when he talks about "the entitlement society." It's too late to get out from under it now. Without "appearing to be racist" as a good political strategy, there would be no modern Republican party. Modern conservatism would have ceased to exist after the debacle of 1964. Don't be fobbing it all off on poor Ron Paul. | <urn:uuid:a981a45f-5556-43f4-8ba8-ce2e774308a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thebluevoice.blogspot.com/2011/12/friday-papa-doc.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968414 | 1,157 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Column: 1st casualty of match fixing is innocence
PARIS—It's a sad reflection on our times that an amazing scoreline in soccer this week sparked doubt when it should just have inspired awe. Conspiracy theorists with unsubstantiated mutterings of a possible fix prevented Lyon from simply basking in its 7-1 rout of Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League, devaluing the remarkable achievement. With good reason, the French club was angry and hurt.
Yet skeptics also can point to good reasons why it is hard and even unwise these days not to be suspicious about what happens on the field, or to accept all results at face value. Those reasons are clearly identified. They even have names.
Like Ante Sapina and Marijo Cvrtak. Those match fixers are serving 5 1/2-year prison sentences in Germany for manipulating more than 20 games, including a 2010 World Cup qualifier between Liechtenstein and Finland, a Champions League qualifier between Debrecen of Hungary and Fiorentina of Italy, Europa League matches and games in leagues in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Turkey, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Canada.
Phone taps caught Sapina and accomplices honing plans to corrupt the referee of a 2009 Europa League match, with one saying: "Listen! If you can somehow ensure that the home team wins by two goals in the second half. Only the second half ... Do you understand? And you can bet on that."
The Ukrainian referee later acknowledged to UEFA investigators that fixers "told him that he would be a millionaire in two to three years from now by manipulating certain games," according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport panel that upheld his life ban from soccer this January.
Another name is Wilson Raj Perumal, from Singapore. He is serving a 2-year prison sentence in Finland for bribing players and fixing league matches there. FIFA also linked Perumal to a conspiracy to fix games in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Central and South America.
Those are just two of many possible examples, just two of the good reasons to not be naive. It seems that each week brings new reports from somewhere around the globe -- most recently, Turkey, where 93 people have been charged -- of the threat posed to sports by fixers and gambling syndicates getting rich by manipulating results. Because this corruption is underground and under-the-table, it's impossible to know exactly how far and deep the rot has spread.
Suffice to say that for UEFA President Michel Platini "match fixing has become the favorite pastime of organized criminal networks" and "an evil as profound as it is intangible."
And the first casualty of fixers is our innocence.
Skeptics like the Twitter user (at)PrimlyStable -- who wondered online whether the Zagreb-Lyon match was fixed -- perhaps shouldn't have jumped to conclusions so quickly and without solid proof.
Yet one cannot fault them for doing so. That is not a swipe at Lyon or Dinamo Zagreb, it's just a sign of the times.
Even if the vast majority of the 29,000 games that Platini's organization monitors per season for indications of betting fraud and fixing are clean, it's not surprising that minds have been dirtied by games that were not. Aside from fixing itself, it is the perception of corruption that presents such a mortal danger to sports. Because if many minds start to suspect that results are fixed even when they are not that could turn them off and away. Saddest of all, it could stop fans believing in that magic ingredient which makes sports such addictive entertainment: the unexpected.
Like Lyon beating Dinamo 7-1.
As Judge Jeremy Cooke said to the three Pakistan cricketers he sentenced last month in one of the biggest fixing scandals to tarnish that sport: "Now, whenever people look back on a surprising event in a game or a surprising result or whenever in the future there are surprising events or results, followers of the game who have paid good money to watch it live or to watch it on TV ... will be led to wonder whether there has been a fix and whether what they have been watching is a genuine contest between bat and ball."
But that cynicism must be kept in check, too. Although suspicion without proof may be understandable, it also is unfair and will ruin our enjoyment if we let it take hold.
Yes, it was amazing that everything happened just as it needed to for Lyon on Wednesday night. To advance to the last 16 of the Champions League, Lyon needed both a deluge of goals against Dinamo and for Ajax to lose the other Group D game against Real Madrid.
Yes, it was surprising the unlikely scenario actually unfolded.
But aren't surprising and amazing why we watch sports?
By themselves, they do not have to mean that a 7-1 scoreline must be too good to be true.
Nor did the wink that Dinamo defender Domagoj Vida appeared to direct at Bafetimbi Gomis as he helped the Lyon forward pluck the ball out of the net after the French team's fifth goal constitute proof of anything. It should, in fairness to all those who sweat and work so hard in sports, take far more than that to get fans tweeting.
Still, admittedly, between doping and fixing, it is getting harder to cling on to the ability to believe in the unbelievable that one needs to enjoy the unlikely feats sports can offer.
Lyon can blame the likes of Sapina, Cvrtak and Perumal for that.
Because of such thieves of innocence, we say "Bravo!" and "Really?" at the same time.
Sad for us all. | <urn:uuid:199cb045-2168-404a-b06d-baa85cd30f72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boston.com/sports/soccer/articles/2011/12/09/column_1st_casualty_of_match_fixing_is_innocence/?camp=pm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961395 | 1,179 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Open Source Hardware Logo in Kicad
Today, the open source hardware logo was chosen via poll.
Wayne and Layne uses and loves Kicad, an open source ECAD program for laying out our PCBs. A while ago, we wrote an open source web and standalone app called img2mod that can convert images to Kicad modules, suitable for putting on silkscreen layers (or copper or anything else).
This afternoon, I took a few minutes and put a few different sizes of this logo into a library that anyone can include in their Kicad project and brand their PCB as open source hardware.
So, if you’d like to make your PCBs with an open source PCB layout tool, we heartily recommend Kicad (although we hear geda is pretty good too).
The logo library is up on our github, in a new Open-Source-Hardware-Logos-for-Kicad repository.
Note: we haven’t tried these yet (it’s only been official since this morning!), but we’ll continue to refine them as we try them on real boards. | <urn:uuid:b6d19d23-9191-4e0d-a135-0aa95970fcd5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wayneandlayne.com/blog/2011/04/07/open-source-hardware-logo-in-kicad/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933602 | 238 | 1.609375 | 2 |
EUGENE, Ore. - Move over, Watson: The crossword-solving computer program "Dr. Fill" will take on human competitors at the world's premier crossword puzzle tournament next month.
Matt Ginsberg of Eugene plans to take his creation to the 35th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament to play against humans. It’s the world’s oldest and largest tournament, set for March 16-18 in Brooklyn, NY.
"I decided, well, if they're going to make such a big fuss about Jeopardy!," he said, "then I'm going to do crosswords which are actually harder and have real artificial intelligence inside and see how far I can go."
But crosswords and computers have been a long-term interest for Ginsberg.
"It's a hobby," he said. "I'm a terrible solver, and this is my vengence on the crossword community. Dr. Fill is way better than I am."
So how does Dr. Fill work?
For starters, the doctor is not a male.
"It's an it," Ginsberg said. "It solves puzzles totally unlike how humans solve puzzles, and it's not a him.
"At first it looks at all the clues, and it tries to get some understanding of what the clues are about," he explained. "Unlike a person who actually understands the clues, Dr. Fill does some statistical analysis and says, oh this might mean whatever but it's really not terribly well-informed.
So to speak.
"I have a database of pretty much every crossword clue that's been used since around 1990. It's got the body of wikipedia so it looks in there just to see if something comes up, but not a whole lot, it's got a very careful list of words that are probably good crossword words," Ginsberg said. "It just tries to say well I've seen something like this before."
As a result, it can solve crossword puzzles in minutes.
But so can the top human solves.
Hence the trip to Brooklyn next month.
"Everybody's curious," he said of the crossword community. "I know if you go to the tournament this year and you beat Doctor Fill, you get a button saying I beat doctor fill." | <urn:uuid:4e57356c-e87b-4807-bb95-6709ea31327c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kval.com/news/local/Move-over-Watson-Dr-Fill-139246798.html?tab=video&c=y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96836 | 479 | 1.71875 | 2 |
A few years ago, it seemed inevitable that wireless technology would rapidly become a necessary, integral part of corporate computing. IT managers and CTOs alike were scrambling to wireless-enable their applications and build the infrastructure to support the predicted coming wave of mobile workers. But, a slowing economy, a battle over wireless standards, and a lack of killer wireless applications had many hitting the brakes on wireless adoption.
Just because the hype surrounding wireless computing had to 'get real,' it does not mean that mobile application development and serious advances in wireless technology infrastructures stopped. In fact, it's quite the opposite. And, experts say that a wireless strategy continues to be critical for business today. | <urn:uuid:e57de10c-c60c-4718-8fb7-d5cd42a7f7bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/7583-0-0-0-121.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965476 | 139 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Yeah that's right Negro's of the Untied States, yall asses only be free for 44 years as a Race of people...you been lied to, led astray, hoodwinked and taught in school that you and your people was free in 1865, we was free from bondage but that was it. AINT THAT A BITCH!!!!!
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 1619-1865 = 246 YEARS OF BONDAGE
then after slavery we was held down even more and did not have rights of FREE MAN and Citizens of the United States
1865-1877 - Blacks still didnt have full rights of a citzen
JIM CROW LAWS - 1877-1968 = JIM CROW LAWS
1968 was the last law of Jim Crow that was put down and the so-called negro of the united states have the full rights of a citizen of the united states and was Free.
Now sit back and think about that shit
7 • • | <urn:uuid:0c150a03-8751-45ca-af82-f62024d66857> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://community.allhiphop.com/discussion/488976/the-so-called-negro-of-the-united-states-of-america-only-been-truly-free-for-only-44-years | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981265 | 205 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Lori Verderame fears Americans are selling off their fortunes one garage sale at a time.
Verderame, an antiques expert known as Dr. Lori, is waging a campaign to educate people about the unrecognized treasures gathering dust in attics and populating yard and garage sales. She shares her expertise on the Discovery Channel series Auction Kings and in her nationally syndicated column, and she’ll bring her crusade to the Akron Home and Flower Show for 11 stage appearances starting Friday.
Verderame often sees objects go for a fraction of their value, simply because the sellers don’t recognize their worth. Often the culprit is simple ignorance, she said, but sometimes the root is more sinister.
She recalled meeting one woman of about 75 who had been duped into selling a document to an appraiser who’d valued it at $50. The document, it turned out, was worth $50,000.
That incident prompted Verderame to start doing shows to educate people about the potential value of their possessions. She presents the information with a generous dose of humor to help people retain what they’ve learned, she said in a recent phone interview from her office in eastern Pennsylvania’s Bucks County.
The fast-talking Verderame came to antiques appraising from museum work, where she would be called on to determine the value not only of artwork, but also of other donated items. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from Pennsylvania State University and has worked at institutions including the Yale University Art Gallery, Penn State’s Palmer Museum of Art and the Allentown Art Museum.
She’d planned to be a university professor and concentrate on research, she said, but then someone from KYW-TV in Philadelphia saw one of her presentations back when she was doing them at community colleges, night schools and the like. That led to her hosting a local show called Trash or Treasure? and eventually to her current position with Auction Kings, where she evaluates items for the Atlanta auction house Gallery 63.
She frequently travels across the country, presenting what she calls her antiques appraisal comedy show. In between her busy appearance schedule, she evaluates items for clients who contact her through her website, www.drloriv.com. She also has a Facebook page, www.facebook.com/doctorlori.
Verderame said just about everyone has stuff in their homes that has value. Look around your family room, for instance. It might contain 100 objects, 40 of which might be considered an antique or collectible, she said.
Trouble is, the average person often can’t distinguish the gems from the junk. That’s why she emphasizes the importance of appraisals.
Unlike less scrupulous practitioners, Verderame said she bases her valuations strictly on past sales, not on wishful thinking or on price guides that might be written by dealers looking to profit from their own artificially inflated prices. She isn’t a dealer, so there’s no possibility of a conflict of interest, she said.
That’s one of the rules Verderame shares: Never have an appraisal done by someone who wants to buy the item from you. That person might set the value low in the hope of cashing in on a bargain from an unwitting seller.
Verderame estimated she appraises about 20,000 objects a year and said she constantly watches the antiques markets to keep up on values. That way, she has a broad base of knowledge to bring to her presentations. A good memory helps, too, she said.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t make a mistake. I’m a human being,” she said. But she works hard at amassing a storehouse of information so she can talk authoritatively about just about anything her audience brings in.
And she’s not afraid to tell someone an item is worthless.
“People want the truth. … It’s hard to be the person that says it’s not worth much,” but honesty is critical to her integrity, she said.
Of course, she’d rather give people good news.
She’s identified some real bonanzas — a Picasso drawing bought for $2 that was worth $50,000; a Degas purchased for $12 at a garage sale, which she valued at $100,000; a copper weather vane that a man salvaged from his grandmother’s house, and that turned out to be worth enough to save the home from foreclosure.
One older couple, she said, had a dealer offer them $8,000 for their painting before one of her shows, but only if they would agree not to have her evaluate it. They wisely turned down the offer. It was an American Impressionist landscape worth at least $100,000, she said.
Besides telling people what their items are worth, Verderame also uses her shows to help them improve their negotiation skills and sell their possessions for top dollar.
That can be a challenge for many people, especially women, she said. But “this isn’t friendship,” she said. “This is business.”
A potentially lucrative one, at that.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or email@example.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/mbbreck, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckenridge and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth. | <urn:uuid:9c6d0429-84b0-4090-bc40-c086dc7294ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ohio.com/lifestyle/antiques-expert-to-offer-advice-evaluations-at-akron-home-show-1.373567 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967161 | 1,179 | 1.507813 | 2 |
crowning glory-must see
The other day, I bumped into a close female friend of mine who has long suffered from alopecia, which means hair loss. Over the years, I have worked with myriad clients and friends, all victims of permanent hair loss, along with many who have endured temporary hair loss as a result of chemotherapy. One client of mine even went completely bald as a result of stress—she lost all her hair following an extensive and consuming remodel of her home. Many women with hair loss issues come to Los Angeles in the hopes that the L.A. professionals will be able to help them. After all, if you can’t get great-looking hair in Hollywood, where can you go?
A surprisingly large percentage of females have either very thin hair or are completely bald. Of the total number of Americans who suffer from hair loss, up to forty percent are women. Research indicates that, in the United States alone, approximately 25-30 million women are affected by some form of hair loss. And men think they have it bad! At the very least, male baldness is widely accepted in most cultures, and very often is even regarded as sexy.
What are the causes of female hair thinning and hair loss? Common causes include autoimmune conditions, such as lupus, in combination with stress. Nutritional deficits, such as low-carb diets or imbalances of certain nutrients, such as Vitamin A, zinc, manganese, B6, essential fatty acids, and iron, can also cause women to lose their hair. Drug side effects and certain hormonal conditions can also cause female hair loss, as can birth control pills. Anything that has the potential to negatively affect our minds, our emotions, or our physical selves has the potential to induce hair loss.
Most women deal with their thinning hair in silence, and the secret is incredibly painful to keep. Hair loss is more in the closet than homosexuality these days, as women rarely discuss this issue even with their closest friends. Since hair loss is not life-threatening, the medical community deflates the significance of hair loss for women, offering little in the way of support or treatment. But female hair loss is certainly a big deal, no matter what the doctors say. The psychological pressure to conform to absurd standards of beauty and lifestyle are difficult enough—as it stands, women must attempt to stay in shape, wear the proper clothing, earn their own money, maintain perfect relationships, and raise decent children. Worries about hair loss only exacerbate the disparity between the modern woman and her idealized self-image, chipping away at her already fragile self-esteem.
Hair loss can occur as early as a woman’s teenaged years, played out under the microscope of intense peer pressure. In order to maintain any sense of positive self image, these young girls must lie to friends and potential dates about something so beyond their control. A newly divorced woman face similar obstacles—re-entering the world of dating and mating, this woman feels pressured to lie to her suitors about the status of her hair, or her lack thereof. When we imagine a woman at her most sensual, slowly stripping to climb into bed with her partner, her hair does not usually land next to her pile of sexy lingerie.
Amy Gibson was starring on a daytime soap opera when she started losing her hair from alopecia areata, an auto-immune condition that eventually left her permanently bald. At the onset, she was only 13 years old. She managed to keep her condition a secret through decades of soap stardom. Eventually, in an effort to help other women in similar situations go “from feeling like a victim to being victorious” (amyspresence.com), Gibson decided to break her silence. A brave and compassionate woman, she now publicly sports different wigs in a variety of colors and styles—and she looks stunning in all of them!
I met an older woman recently who permanently lost her hair after being given ether during the delivery of her two children; she has been wearing wigs for over 50 years. I don’t know what options she had when she first started wearing wigs, but these days, so many wonderful possibilities exist. From gorgeous full wigs made of high-grade Russian human hair to less expensive wigs made of coarser Indonesian or Chinese hair, or wigs crafted from a variety of impressive new synthetics, the options have considerably improved. It takes a full-fledged commitment to figure out what will work best for each person. For some, hair extensions are the answer; for others, a small piece to add fullness to the top of the head does the trick. For some women, a full wig is necessary. The level of comfort is also a viable consideration, as is the versatility of the piece—can a woman swim in her wig? Will the piece require a good amount of time and preparation in order for a woman to feel ready for public outings?
None of these considerations are trivial. They say a woman’s crowning glory is her hair. Without it, the world sees her as ill or disfigured, inevitably affecting the way she sees herself. Hair so powerfully symbolizes sexuality that it will take some time for us to be as neutral toward the idea of a balding woman as we are toward balding men.
My heart goes out to all the women who expend the enormous amounts of time, energy, and money it takes to manage their hair loss, and to those who suffer the psychological grief of losing their “crowning glory.” I extend a special thanks to those who, like Gibson, have become comfortable enough with their hair loss to break the silence of shame.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. | <urn:uuid:fb07623e-0d4d-4d81-bb1a-7da0f38c64f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.groundreport.com/Lifestyle/crowning-glory-must-see/2872025 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971865 | 1,191 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Away With The Manger?
Iowa town removes nativity scene from annual Christmas decorations.
There is controversy brewing in Oskaloosa, all because of Christmas decorations on the town square.
The city decorated their tree and put out a nativity scene last week, causing quite a buzz around town.
"I was looking around the park to see if there was any other religious or non-religious displays representing any Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Agnostics, and there wasn't anything," says Oskaloosa resident Aiyanna Looney.
Looney wrote a letter to the city asking them to take down the nativity scene or find a way to represent all religions, not just the Christian faith.
"This is about fairness, representing minority religions, and respecting everyone who lives in this town, even if there is one Muslim family and one Hindu family, they're here and they deserve respect," says Looney.
City council member Aaron Ver Steeg says the city took down the nativity scene and the city council will hold a special meeting to discuss the complaint. Ver Steeg says he wants the nativity scene to stay.
"I'm one of the believers that our religious freedoms are being taken away by a select few people, I think this person who complained is in the minority and I think I have to speak for the majority," says Councilman Ver Steeg.
Ver Steeg will point to a Supreme Court ruling that states a nativity scene can be present in a city park as long as a non-secular item such as a Christmas tree is also displayed. | <urn:uuid:3ae3c450-c40a-4735-8491-3b309387fa33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kveo.com/news/away-manger | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97424 | 331 | 1.5 | 2 |
Olympic Champions Speak at Manhattan
Jones, who won three medals at the 2012 London Games, began the lecture series by discussing the struggles he's overcome as an African-American swimmer and how he hopes to inspire other minorities to get involved in the sport. Liukin, the all-around gymnastics champion in 2008, talked about growing up as the daughter of two Olympic champions, her success in Beijing and the opportunities it presented, and her motivation for coming back in an attempt to make a second Olympic team this summer.
Pompey, a 1999 Manhattan graduate, has represented Guyana at four Olympics, including the London Games. She and Ryan, the Jaspers' longtime assistant coach who has continued to work with Pompey, spoke together about their shared journey. Remigino won two gold medals at the 1952 Helsinki Games, including the 100 meters, while still a student at Manhattan. He showed a video of his Olympic race, then relayed stories of his time on the track team at Manhattan leading up to the Olympics.
The lecture series concluded with Beard, a seven-time Olympic medalist. Beard won three medals at the 1996 Atlanta Games when she was just 14 years old, and she shared her experience of leaving the sport shortly thereafter before deciding to come back and eventually make three more Olympic teams.Each hour-long lecture started with the athlete's story, followed by a question-and-answer session. Those in attendance were also given the opportunity to meet and take a photo with the Olympians. | <urn:uuid:4a667718-14fa-472f-8639-fff943e9cce8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gojaspers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=12500&ATCLID=205696369 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976327 | 308 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Vitamin B and AMD
A seven year study of 5,200 women showed that daily B vitamin supplements could lower the odds of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in women. 4l% of the participants taking the B vitamins were less likely to develop the disease.
If you found this article interesting, you can get updates in your email inbox any time similar articles are posted. The subscription options you will be presented with are based on your interest in this article. Just click here to sign up for a free membership and get started! | <urn:uuid:979b20c7-95d3-463e-a4c1-3b34458c7dc3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://macula.org/vitamin-b-and-amd | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937204 | 111 | 1.648438 | 2 |
The English film maker Derek Jarman, dying of AIDS in the 90s, did not go gentle into that good night. He raved – raved against a society he saw as uncaring, raved against the Church of England, which he felt had abandoned the gay men dying in droves because they were “sinners.” That rage occasionally spilled into his diaries, and his poems, in the form of some very salty language. F-bombs were dropped in one especially incendiary passage, which became an issue for me when I fell in love with the musical setting of his poems by the English singer and composer Donna McKevitt.
“Translucence” is McKevitt’s song cycle based on poems from Jarman’s book Modern Nature. The songs are bleak but beautiful. The most heartbreaking of all is the concluding song, “I Walk In This Garden” – a desolate farewell to a generation that was allowed, and perhaps even expected, to “die so silently.” At one point, though, Jarman writes the line “Matthew f**ked Mark f**ked Luke f**ked John/who lay on the bed that I lie in…”
It is sung in such a lovely, lyrical way that it could easily go right by a listener, but of course I couldn’t take that chance in airing it. Not only is the F-word still verboten on the radio, but here it was linking the Four Evangelists to Jarman’s decimated gay community, adding a frisson of sacrilege to an already provocative word. So I edited out the offending words and then edited them back in, backwards, so as not to disrupt the flow of the line.
That worked fine, until the time came to present the piece in its first, and to date only, US performance. It was part of my annual “New Sounds Live” concert series, and we chose the splendid acoustics of St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University. For the later broadcast, I could repeat my earlier edit, but for the live performance, it simply had to be the way Jarman and McKevitt (who was also one of the singers) intended it. In the pre-concert talk, we discussed the language and why Jarman would’ve used it. If people were going to be offended, we asked, what was the offensive part? The word itself? The religious context? Or the poem’s larger image of a plague whose victims were being cast as having brought it upon themselves?
After the performance, which left many in tears, a woman walked up to me and introduced herself as the chaplain of St. Paul’s. I guess I knew that a chapel would have a chaplain, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he or she would be at this event. I braced myself for… what? Anger? Disappointed disapproval? Sober, reasoned argument?
“Thank you for bringing this music here,” she said. “We need to get more people thinking and questioning like this in church.”
Of course, I spend a lot more time being a dad than I do being a concert producer. (Or at least, that’s what I try to tell my wife.) And that little four-letter word is such a big issue for parents. The same word I worked hard to present in a sacred space still sounds harsh in my own secular home. But what to do about it? I prefer Kanye West’s “real” version of “Monster,” but I’m not sure what to do when my 15-year old walks through house chanting “I’m a-need to see your f**king hands at the concert.” I can’t very well tell her to shut the f**k up. Can I?
Does the F-word have a place in our culture, and the arts? Leave a comment. | <urn:uuid:d150d1f0-88c8-4232-9627-3af65de4eb6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/blogs/soundcheck-blog/2011/mar/22/wtf-do-we-do-about-f-word/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981433 | 843 | 1.53125 | 2 |
- Social Media
- Active Citizenship
- Good Giving
- Corporate Responsibility
- Be Fearless
As the world's attention increasingly focuses on the difficult situation in Pakistan in the wake of devastating floods that have affected more than 17 million people in the country, you may be looking for ways to help. We wanted to share a few online and mobile resources, and invite you to share your own suggestions in the comments.
As it has done for previous disasters, Global Giving has created a centralized page listing projects directly involved in flood relief, and Network for Good has also developed a list of organizations who are providing funding and other critical aid to Pakistan, with links to donate directly to those organizations' efforts. The Jolkona Foundation has also dedicated a special project page that allows you to donate directly to families affected by the floods. This New York Times article is also a great resource that points to various organizations involved in flood relief. And for grantmakers, the Council on Foundations has set up a disaster grantmaking resource page with background and links on various corporate, NGO and philanthropic efforts to help.
If you prefer to help via mobile, you can contribute to the State Department's Pakistan Relief Fund by texting "FLOOD" to 27722, or via text to one of the numerous organizations that mobile giving platform MGive has partnered with - the full list of organizations and text codes are available in this press release.
If you're looking to keep up-to-date via Twitter, follow #helppakistan for updates on relief efforts and other tips on how you can help. | <urn:uuid:1af23bf7-7ab9-40c1-9222-a80ee9d40615> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://casefoundation.org/blog/pakistan-flood-relief-ways-you-can-help | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950016 | 320 | 1.710938 | 2 |
The Tragedy of Abdul Haq
Commentary / Robert McFarlane / Wall Street Journal 2nov01
Mr. McFarlane served from 1983 to 1985 as President Reagan's national security adviser.
More than a year ago it became clear to any casual reader of news from Afghanistan that there was growing opposition to the Taliban. The resistance came not just from the Northern Alliance, but from villagers and fighters throughout the country, especially in southern Pashtun areas. This ought to have been a clear signal that the Taliban were vulnerable, and that the opposition could play a critical role in bringing them down. It should have led the CIA to engage with grass-roots opposition, to support and nurture people like Abdul Haq, a commander who last week was caught and executed by the Taliban.
Unfortunately no such effort was made. And therein lies a scandalous, tragic story of bureaucratic incompetence with profound implications for our national security in the years ahead. Let me go back to the beginning.
At about this time last year, I was approached by Joseph Ritchie, a successful Chicago businessman and friend who had spent much of his childhood in Afghanistan. He shared my sense of the potential for Afghans to take back their country from the Taliban, and asked my advice as to how they ought to go about it. I felt that the organizing and support of any effort to bring down the Taliban was beyond the means of, and inappropriate for, private sponsors. It was a role for governments, and I offered to help him bring the concept to the attention of appropriate officials in Washington.
Together we first reconnected with one of the most successful commanders from the struggle to force the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s, Abdul Haq. I had first met Haq while serving as President Reagan's national security adviser in 1984. When he came to the White House, Haq had already established a reputation as a courageous combat leader and brilliant tactician. President Reagan and later Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were equally impressed.
Through our talks over the next several months, culminating in February of this year, I became convinced that with fairly modest support Haq and 50 to 60 of his fellow commanders had the forces, and the necessary skill and determination, to take on the Taliban. I believed, however, that parallel to his military campaign, there needed to be a political framework -- a process to form a post-Taliban government -- that would bring civil order back to the country and manage its reconstruction. Abdul Haq and Joe Ritchie agreed and devoted several months to enlisting the former king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, to serve as the catalyst and moral foundation of this process.
We received attentive hearings and encouragement at the departments of State and Defense, as well as the White House. In each case, however, we were told that the CIA had responsibility for this mission. Unfortunately, the CIA made it clear that it was reluctant to take on the assignment.
In a series of meetings, we urged that CIA officials begin planning with proven commanders with well-documented track records. They responded with flimsy criticism of the commanders, all of it based on hearsay. Disclaiming any personal stake in our preferred nominees, we then asked only that they go into the field and do their own due diligence, and especially talk to the dozens of commanders who were disposed to help. To this we received only dismissive comments and indifference. In one astonishing exchange we were told, to paraphrase, "We don't yet have our marching orders concerning U.S. policy; it may be that we will end up dealing with the Taliban." Such an attitude obviously turns the mission of intelligence gathering -- to inform policy makers -- on its head.
Faced with this persistent recalcitrance, Haq -- who had been reluctant to seek U.S. help and never expected to get it -- decided in mid-August to go ahead and launch operations in Afghanistan. He returned to Peshawar, Pakistan, to make final preparations. After six weeks' work coordinating with other commanders, and a short trip to Rome to coordinate with the king, on Oct. 21 he re-entered Afghanistan and headed for Jalalabad. He knew that he had been under surveillance by Taliban operatives in Peshawar and was very vulnerable, but believed he could evade them and join up with his colleagues.
Unfortunately, due to his popularity, he was recognized -- and compromised -- as he transited villages along his way. After four days, while proceeding with his party up a narrow road in the mountains near Jalalabad, he was ambushed. While under attack his nephew, a member of the group, called Joe Ritchie's brother, James, in Peshawar and asked, "Can you do something?" James called me, and I, in turn, called the CIA operations center. An unmanned surveillance aircraft was vectored to the battle area. It successfully attacked a convoy at some distance from the ambush, but by then, almost five hours later, Haq had already been captured. The next day the Taliban executed him.
The tragedy here is not just the loss of a man of courage and excellence to whom the U.S. owed a great deal, but the dysfunction within the CIA that his loss underscores. It was implausible that this 11th-hour request for help would have succeeded. The calamity is the CIA's failure to engage with him -- or with any of the dozens of other capable Afghan commanders -- a year earlier and to put in place the coordination that could have avoided his loss. Such planning would also have put us in a position today to work with Haq's fellow Pashtun commanders.
Abdul Haq is gone. Fortunately, his brothers-in-arms remain committed to toppling the Taliban. They constitute a capable alternative to a large deployment of U.S. forces if we will devote the appropriate attention and planning in the days ahead. These Pashtun field commanders are driven to take back their country not for us -- since we abandoned them after the Soviets withdrew, they have little confidence or respect for us -- but for themselves and their countrymen. It is undeniably in our interest that these fighters be given a chance -- and any support they might request -- to do this job.
Their effort would benefit enormously from local intelligence and material support. Moreover, the undoing of the Taliban by Afghans would remove any claim of martyrdom from Osama bin Laden, as well as reduce the risk of losing our Muslim coalition partners. The alternative is for much larger U.S. forces to do the job. They would surely succeed, but at a much larger cost in lives.
The best bet is cooperation. The U.S. military is superbly prepared to engage in this kind of war. For 20 years we have been perfecting a solid capability for rapid reaction, small unit raids in remote areas, and special operations behind enemy lines. The Joint Special Operations Command is a magnificent fighting organization comprised of the best-trained, combat-ready troops available from the Army, Navy and Air Force. They will surely dominate every battlefield on which they are deployed.
As in all combat operations, however, success begins with intelligence; you need to know as much as you can about the enemy. Even the best force in the world will fail without solid intelligence. The CIA cannot provide it; it has utterly failed to do its job. But the military can. By working together, the Pashtun commanders and our special operations forces can win in Afghanistan.
For 25 years national-security professionals have lamented the decline of the CIA, especially its clandestine service. The Church and Pike committees destroyed it in the mid-1970s and no meaningful rebuilding has occurred. Sadly, we must accept that in this war, the CIA will be on the sidelines. But surely the attack of Sept. 11 removes any illusion that we can continue to ignore our void in human intelligence. The overhaul of the CIA requires focused presidential direction. But while that long-term process gets underway, we should focus on helping the Afghans to win the war in their country -- and this time helping them rebuild when the fighting is over.
Remembering Abdul Haq
Afghan freedom fighter's son says he 'died for the people'
Charlie Goodyear / SF Chronicle 5nov01
Abdul Majeed Arsala, 16, son
of Abdul Haq, prayed with others during a memorial service for his father
in Hayward. Chronicle photo by Michael Macor
Dozens of mourners gathered at a Hayward mosque yesterday to honor Abdul Haq, a famous Afghanistan war hero -- and resistance leader -- whose dangerous life ended on what many believe was a mission of peace.
No one ever expected the charismatic Haq, 43, to stop taking risks. But the legendary fighter -- who lost a foot during the Soviet occupation of his country -- apparently had become more recently known for his humanitarian work.
Haq was widely seen as the best chance to lead a democratic government that could replace the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.
So when he slipped into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan last month in an attempt to persuade some tribal leaders to switch sides, friends and family worried that Haq might be captured but did not think he would be executed as he was on Oct. 26.
"We were shocked to learn that the Taliban -- who are Afghans after all -- hanged him and riddled his body with machine gun fire," said Omar Akbar, who helped organize yesterday's memorial.
Haq, one of several prominent Afghan exiles working to turn the nation against the Taliban, was renowned for his role as a commander of the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989.
Haq's eldest son, 16-year-old Abdul Majeed Arsala, and the slain leader's nephew, Khushal Arsala, also paid tribute to his memory, calling Haq a "hero of peace.
"All the best qualities in the world were in him," said Khushal Arsala. "He was respected by all Afghans."
Majeed last spoke with his father on Oct. 20 and talked about the dangers that Haq faced in resisting the Taliban regime.
"He said, 'In life you have to take risks,' " Majeed recalled in a soft voice as he stood on the floor of the mosque. "I'm proud that he died for the people."
Although several mourners said they were disappointed the U.S. military was unable to respond to a call for help from Haq shortly before his capture, Haq's family rejected the theory that the "Lion of Afghanistan" had been working in concert with the CIA.
"He was always independent in his decisions," said Khushal Arsala. "He took these risks on his own. He died for his country, his people and the free world. "
About 100 men entered the doors of the mosque, which bore pictures of the bearded, bald-headed Haq. They removed their shoes and sat along the edge of the building's main room. There were no tears, not even from his son, only the keening sounds of prayer. Women and young children waited outside.
Said Safi, who was related to Haq by marriage, said the fabled commander had "a very big heart" but had grown weary of politics. Haq, he said, wanted to bring peace to his people but not necessarily become their president.
"He was thinking like Gandhi in India," Safi said.
Many mourners noted Haq's popularity across a range of often-fractious tribes in Afghanistan. "He was just about to prove to the world that the Taliban don't even have the support of a majority of Pashtun tribes," said Eshan Ayar, a member of a Tajik tribe and not a Pashtun like Haq.
Ayar called Haq's death a "major loss," but added, "Time is on our side, and we will win the war against the terrorists."
If you have come to this page from an outside location click here to get back to mindfully.org | <urn:uuid:99170366-9f72-43d5-ae35-090c7024b0c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Abdul-Haq-Tragedy.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984132 | 2,467 | 1.585938 | 2 |
What fractions can you find between the square roots of 56 and 58?
Find the polynomial p(x) with integer coefficients such that one solution of the equation p(x)=0 is $1+\sqrt 2+\sqrt 3$.
The squares of any 8 consecutive numbers can be arranged into two sets of four numbers with the same sum. True of false?
To help explain it is worth considering the journey from the | <urn:uuid:771c230b-0596-4a40-b492-e78fa2e7a193> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nrich.maths.org/2364/clue | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931237 | 91 | 1.765625 | 2 |
We've all heard it before: "You're lucky to have any job." But just because you have one doesn't mean you have to just suck it up if it sucks, or it's not the career you want. The problem may be that you're looking at your position as "just a job" and you have no idea what kind of career you want. It doesn't have to be this way.
I know a lot of people who hate their jobs, but when asked what they'd rather do, they're already very close to doing what they're passionate about—they just needed to stop and figure out how to get there. Here's how you can take a good, hard look at yourself, figure out what you really want to do, and work this into a personal career plan that will help you get where you want to go, personally and professionally.
Take Stock: Evaluate Yourself
Write Down What You Do: The first thing to do if you're going to pull yourself out of a career-related funk is to take stock of where you are professionally. Your job title and resume only say so much about what you do, so spend a few days taking good notes of what you actually do. Start with the core responsibilities of your position (things you would put on your resume), then write down everything else you spend time doing at work, even if it's tangential to your actual "job." Photo by Bill Sodeman.
A good way to get in the habit of doing this is to keep a work diary of your successes, failures, and activities. It's also a good opportunity to get in the habit of doing a GTD-style weekly review, where you take time each week to take stock of what you've accomplished and prepare for the next week. When you're done, sort the list into things you absolutely hate doing, things you don't mind doing and things that you love and wish you could do more of.
Write Down What You Want To Do: Once the list is sorted, it's time to focus on the things you'd like to do more of. Build on those items and write down what you wish you could do every day. Don't be afraid to get far-fetched; if you wish you could get paid to read blogs all day, jot that down. Some people call it "wasting time on Reddit," but the right employer may call it research. Photo by sunshinecity.
Now, start thinking long-term. Ask yourself, "Will I want to keep doing these things in a year? What about two, or five?" Don't be discouraged if you're not sure. It's impossible to know what the future you will want, but try to write down some general thoughts. Ask yourself these questions:
- What am I best at doing, both personally and professionally? What am I terrible at?
- Do I want to stay in this job? Or this field?
- If I want to change jobs, do I want to be promoted into a similar, more senior role?
- If I want to change jobs, would I rather manage people, or would I prefer to continue doing it all myself?
- If I want to change industries, which field am I interested in?
- What is it about that industry that excites me? Has it always interested me?
- What am I doing already that will serve me well in that field?
- What type of company would I like to work for? What about that company is most important to me?
- Would I prefer to work for myself, or become a freelancer, knowing that working for yourself isn't always rainbows and unicorns?
- Looking at the list of things I love doing, what kind of job uses those skills? Who does those things every day?
Review Your Answers: The point of these questions is to help you evaluate your goals. They help you determine what types of jobs involve the tasks you said you enjoy doing. Pretend you land the perfect job. Now think about where you'd like to go from there. Would you like to keep doing it on a more advanced level? Perhaps you'd like to manage people who do what you do now? When you start thinking about those next steps—without the stress of the whole "where do you see yourself in one/five/ten years" kind of questions (which are largely useless anyway)—you'll find yourself thinking in terms of the career you want, not just your "dream job."
Once you've finished writing all of this down, you should have a pretty good self-evaluation. This is valuable in itself, and can help you ground yourself in your current job or negotiate with your boss on those tasks that you really hate and how you can do more of what you enjoy (and are strongly suited to.) Now you're ready for the next step: actually building your plan.
Take Notes: Build Your Career Plan
Research the Jobs You'd Like To Do: Now that you know what you'd like to do, it's time to find jobs that let you do it. Here's how:
- Visit Your Local Library or Career Center: Sometimes the best way to find a job that matches up with your skills and desires is to ask a more experienced person. A chat with a reference librarian or specialist at a career center will put you on the right track towards career guides and resources that can help you translate your dreams into a job title you can aim for. Photo by CUS Visual Media.
- Chat with Your HR Rep: If your company has an HR rep, they're the person you should go to if you want to learn more about what careers are available in your company. Obviously your company's HR rep has a vested interest in making sure you're successful in your current job (we hope!) and that you stay at your current company, so if you like your company and just dislike your job, they may be able to help.
- Scour Job Search Sites: Most people are used to searching job sites for job titles. Try searching for a function or task that you enjoy instead. If you like spending all day on Twitter or Facebook, search for "Twitter" or "Facebook," or better yet, search for "social networks" or "social media." Most job search engines will match your keywords with job responsibilities as well as required skills in job listings.
- Take a Career Assessment Test: The CareerPath test (from the folks behind CareerBuilder) is a good one that blends elements of a personality test with a career assessment test. The results will help you understand what kinds of jobs and careers make heavy use of the passions and skills you have. You can find more tests at About.com.
- Talk To People About Their Careers: Sometimes word of mouth is the best way to find out how to translate your passions into a job you'll love, as we've previously discussed. Ask your friends and family, even your colleagues about their previous jobs. Highlight the things that you enjoy and ask them if they've ever heard of a job that does those things. You'll be surprised: often the side-responsibilities you like at your current job are primary responsibilities at another job. Photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
For example, one of my best friends is saddled with sending dull, dry sales emails for the company she works for. It's a long and difficult process, and she says she would like it more if she had better tools to do it. However, she really loves seeing the number of people who open those emails, who gets which flavor of message based on their purchase history, and what they click on when they open them. To her, it's just the crap her boss doesn't feel like doing, so she gets to do it. At my old company it's called Campaign Analysis, and there are tools that would make her life easier (not to mention a paycheck she'd probably like as well.) When I explained this to her, she was surprised. Because she had a clear picture of the things she liked and disliked about her job, it was easy to point out that there are jobs out there that could give her an opportunity to do what she enjoys every day.
Research Where Those Jobs Lead: Once you have an idea what types of jobs you'd like to have (even if it means you've rediscovered how much you enjoy your current job), start thinking in terms of a long-term career. Do some research on where those jobs usually lead. A good place to start is the Occupational Outlook Handbook from the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the My Skills, My Future career search site.
If you're interested in systems administration, think about what your life would be like after you get the job. After a few years, would you like to manage other administrators, or would you be happier taking on increasingly technical and challenging projects? In most technical roles, it's one or the other. Which would you prefer if you do land that job, and what happens to other people who get it? Photo by East Capital.
You'll also want to find out whether the career you want requires education, degrees, or certifications to advance. Some organizations will only promote if you show you're advancing your skills as well as performing well on the job, and others will only consider you for promotions if you go out and get a relevant degree, or take classes relevant to your job. Continuing education isn't a bad thing, but you don't want to reach for a career you want only to find that you're stuck after taking the first step.
For example, when I was a Project Manager, eventually I learned that a promotion wouldn't be forthcoming until I earned my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. When I started looking at other companies, I learned that having one makes you more marketable. So I went out and got it to move my career to the next level—I had the time to study and the money to put into the test. Not everyone has that, but I certainly wish I had known it would be necessary before I started out as a PM.
By the time you finish this research, you should have an idea of where the careers you're interested in will take you, and whether you like those possible paths or not. Of course, you can't predict everything: you may discover a love of management when you think you're going to be an engineer forever, or invent a new application while doing software development that leads you to start a new company. The important thing is to think past the job offer you'll hopefully get, be flexible, and start visualizing the career you'd like to have.
Take Action: Make Your Move
By now, you should have your self-evaluation finished, and a few ideal career paths all mapped out. Congratulations: you have a personalized career plan, based on your interests and your skills. Now all that's left is the hard part: deciding which direction you'd like to take. Your career plan shouldn't be a dead document. Keep researching jobs that match up with your goals, and keep talking to people about what opportunities they have in their organizations for people who do what you'd rather do all day. Photo by Quinn Dombrowski.
Once you decide on a direction, you'll have to determine whether or not the first step is something that requires education, a completely new job, or something you can start with your current gig. You may be getting valuable experience now that can lead you to the career you love, given time. Alternatively, it may be time to jump ship and work to the career you want to have, even if it feels like you have no relevant experience.
Regardless of what you choose to do, even if it's nothing for now, there's tremendous value in taking stock of your strengths and weaknesses and where you are professionally. You can use that information to make your current job more bearable just as easily as you can use it to find a new direction. Spending a little time making a map of how you want your career to evolve can save you weeks or even years of toiling away in a job or career that brings you no joy.
Are you happy with your career path or are you ready for a change? How are you planning for that change, or if you've made the leap, how did you do it? Share your experiences in the comments.
You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at firstname.lastname@example.org, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+. | <urn:uuid:32a8d647-5529-4752-b10a-7ee87f6d5ebd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lifehacker.com/5852033/how-to-build-a-personal-career-plan-and-plot-a-course-out-of-your-dead+end-job?tag=Employment | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976459 | 2,576 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Son Of Fury Directed by John Cromwell. Costume Romance. The heir to a great English estate vows to take his rightful place presently occupied by a selfish Uncle. 94 mintues Black and White 1942.
* * * * *
In those days, the male stars were more beautiful than the female stars, but the female stars were better actors. Joel Macrea, John Wayne, John Payne, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable were gorgeous guys, and the most gorgeous of all was Tyrone Power. His looks were black Irish with Garbo-long eyelashes – along the lines of George Clooney, except Power, of course, was better looking. Clooney has one advantage over Power in that Clooney is now alive and Power is not, which means that Power is no longer seen as sexually attractive by those who grew up with him in the 30s, people whose sexual development is simultaneous with his own. It’s what makes a star and keeps a star a star. In Power’s case, he also had talent, but, because of his scripts, it was banked – right into Zanuck’s account, for Power was the biggest star at Fox. Zanuck assigned him role after role the same. You can see the responsibility a superstar of that era had to meet by the dumbing down of their range, while George Sanders and Dudley Digges especially savor the scenery. Diggs really has a good time; playing a mercenary lawyer, he gobbles up the camera like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In the scene Power has the want; Digges want is to deflect the want, but just imagine what Digges comes on with in this scene. Sits behind a desk the whole time, and plays, not a particular action or want, but rather a way of life, all-powerful and impressed by nothing. What a perfect choice to make to play the key moment in the scene. And later on, to make his entrance into court and dress himself in court. Also check out George Sanders’ opening moment when he has to oblige a ruthless close-up to tell us that his long-lost nephew has been discovered. His response is conventional; what lies behind it is the genius to have created the energy of a man who enjoys his own greed. And that, not his technique and not his want or intention, is the force that drives the truth of the moment into life. And so we have the great character actors of the movies doing the same thing forever and also in this film, Henry Davenport as the loving gramps, John Carradine (who was a bad actor but an understandable one), and Elsa Lanchester (who is also a bad actor, because self-conscious of her effects, but believable here). And Tyrone Power was just such a type-cast actor. He played the Tyrone Power type, and film after film duplicated the format, including an early childhood, here played by little Roddy MacDowell, completely devoid of sentimentality, firm in his energy, and fascinating to watch in his withheld ruthlessness. Power was a master at mediating the unbelievable lines he was given in these costume shows. He never overplays his hand, and so the lines sound believable. It is not that he believes in them, so much that the decency he summons plays off a certain challenge to carry him through them. He was a romantic actor par excellence, which means that his sexual instrument is not lustful but lyrical. In wooing a lady he is not rapacious but fun and kind and heart struck. Bolder with Frances Farmer as milady and more bowled over by Gene Tierney doing a South Seas hula-hula, but always respectful of the lady. If you can look beyond his mesmerizing beauty, into his eyes you can see how he comes alive and in what ways. The direction by John Cromwell is discrete, the filming by Arthur C. Miller is narratively helpful, unintrusive, and, in the London rather than the South Seas scenes, spectacularly convincing, as are the fight scenes between Sanders and Power, for they are cunningly performed by bewigged stunt extras. The score by Alfred (too-many-violins) Newman is intrusive, the exact opposite of Power’s presence, and the perfect model of what not to do while performing balderdash. | <urn:uuid:4046a09c-819a-4c05-978c-26a2e90a59dd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moviemoody.com/category/stars-male/dudley-digges/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98474 | 897 | 1.53125 | 2 |
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LONDON (AP) — Firefighters battled a massive blaze at an east London recycling center Sunday as the city prepared for the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Officials said the blaze was the biggest they'd seen in the city for years, but that the games would in no way be affected.
The fire — about 7 miles (11 kilometers) east of the Olympic Park — was brought under control by late Sunday. A London Fire Brigade statement said the whole of the 50 meter by 100 meter (165 feet by 330 feet), single-story recycling center had burned and that, at one point, a plume of smoke could be seen across the capital.
"We've not seen a fire of this size in London for several years," London Fire Commissioner Ron Dobson said. "It's certainly a dramatic end to the Olympics for the London Fire Brigade."
The statement said more than 200 firefighters drawn from across the city had been sent to fight the fire in Dagenham, an industrial, riverside area at the very edge of the capital.
"I would like to reassure people that we are still able to attend incidents across the capital and the fire cover we're providing at the Olympic venues has not been affected," Dobson said.
In a message later posted to Twitter, the fire service said the Dagenham fire had been contained. "We'll be there during the night damping down," the tweet said. "An Olympic effort by our crews. Enjoy the Closing Ceremony."
The cause of the fire wasn't yet known. No injuries have been reported.
A spokesman said the fire brigade didn't keep detailed logs on the size of one blaze or another, but mainly thought in terms of the personnel and equipment needed to tackle each fire. He said the last comparable fires he could remember included the inferno that broke out at London's Camden Market in 2008 and a blaze that gutted the New Look store on Oxford Street in 2007.
In line with office policy, he spoke on condition of anonymity. | <urn:uuid:acc5e0e7-00a9-4202-a6df-0632468a6970> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-08-12/london-firefighters-huge-blaze-in-capitals-east | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975576 | 425 | 1.539063 | 2 |
The president clearly is betting on it. An Obama campaign ad running here declares that Romney wanted the auto industry to “fail,” and an auto worker says, “Mitt Romney would have just let us go under, just let them go bankrupt.”
Three years ago, Obama was singing a different tune when it came to bankruptcy. “I know that when people even hear the word ‘bankruptcy,’ it can be a bit unsettling, so let me explain what I mean,” Obama told worried auto workers in 2009, when he announced that hemight take GM and Chrysler bankrupt — as indeed happened weeks later. Bankruptcy, the president said, is simply a “tool that we can use” to “make it easier for General Motors and Chrysler to quickly clear away old debts that are weighing them down so they can get back on their feet and onto a path to success.” It is not, Obama insisted, “a process where a company is simply broken up, sold off, and no longer exists.”
Now Obama using the “B” word to suggest that is exactly what Romney wanted to do.
So how does Obama attack Romney for wanting to take GM and Chrysler bankrupt when he actually took them bankrupt? Romney, Obama claims, would not have provided “government assistance to the U.S. auto companies, even if they went through bankruptcy,” adding that “we would have lost a million jobs.” This is false. Romney wanted the federal government to guarantee private-sector loans, while Obama wanted the federal government to provide the loans directly. No matter, Obama continues to peddle the falsehood that Romney would have let GM and Chrysler die, declaring at a Cleveland rally last week, “If Mitt Romney had been president when the auto industry was on the verge of collapse, we might not have an American auto industry today.”
While the facts are on Romney’s side, the messaging is not. The Romney campaign allowed Obama to dominate the airwaves for months and to hammer Romney with bankruptcy attacks without responding — allowing the impression to harden that Romney opposed federal help for the auto industry.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has been a lonely voice in countering the Obama bankruptcy assault. He wrote an op-ed, published Friday in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper, in which he declared, “The question was never whether to let Detroit go under, but how best to save it.” And at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, last week, while Romney didn’t mention the bankruptcy issue, Portman took the argument head-on: “Mitt Romney did propose government help. . . . And folks, all the independent fact-checkers who have looked at this agree: President Obama . . . [is] not telling the truth.”
Portman knows how to win in Ohio. He beat a sitting lieutenant governor by 18 points just two years ago and is widely credited with helping Romney to achieve his narrow Ohio primary victory in March. And it seems Team Romney is belatedly starting to follow his lead. Over the weekend, the Romney campaign finally released a new ad that goes on the offensive on the auto bankruptcy issue. “Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China,” the narrator says as the screen shows two American cars getting crushed at a scrap yard. “Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He is supported by Lee Iacocca and The Detroit News.”
The campaign is also beginning to highlight the fact that Obama’s plan was, in Portman’s words, a “political bankruptcy” that put the government in charge of “picking winners and losers.” GM plants in Mansfield, Columbus and Parma were shut down, and more than 100 local dealerships in Ohio were among the losers in Obama’s plan. This weekend, Paul Ryan held a round-table with retirees from auto-parts maker Delphi who were cut out of the government deal and saw their hard-earned pensions shrink by up to 70 percent.
A Cincinnati Enquirer/Ohio Newspapers poll last weekend shows the race now tied at 49 percent apiece— which means Ohio, and ultimately the presidency, could hinge on who wins the fight over the auto bailout. Will the late-breaking Romney counterassault be enough to turn the tide, or is it too little too late? We’ll know the answer in eight days.
Marc A. Thiessen, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, writes a weekly online column for The Post. | <urn:uuid:80fc600f-0218-49bf-aa64-f167c888d6c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-a-thiessen-will-obamas-bankruptcy-line-work-in-ohio/2012/10/29/b94a6da4-21d5-11e2-8448-81b1ce7d6978_story.html?wprss=rss_rightleaning | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971308 | 977 | 1.632813 | 2 |
by Richard Masoner
On May 7, 2008. the New Hampshire General Court (what they call the legislature in The Granite State) passed House Bill 1203, “An Act Relative to Bicycles” which generally improves conditions for cyclists in the state of New Hampshire. The new law will take effect on January 1, 2009. Among the provisions of this new state law:
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation will be required to design rumble strips, drain grates, and other road surfaces with bicyclists in mind, although the law has a ridiculous “get out of jail free” card for the DoT by stating that the design standards will be “discretionary” and the DoT “shall not be held liable” for failure to design to these standards.
Three foot passing laws are all the rage right now, but New Hampshire’s three foot law has an interesting twist: an additional foot of clearance is required for every 10 mph over 30 mph that the passing vehicle is traveling.
New Hampshire added the standard exceptions to the “as far as practicable” rule — you can move away from the curb to avoid hazards, when overtaking another vehicle, when preparing to make a left turn, and to get out of a right turn lane when going straight.
Finally, we have what looks like the safety compromise for those Bike Ninjas in our midst: a cyclist must wear at least one item of reflective outwear such as a reflective vest, jacket, or helmet strip while riding at night. No standard is stipulated for what consitutes “reflective.” Technically, my black t-shirts reflect light and meet the definition of “reflective outerwear,” but I don’t think that’s what the lawmakers have in mind.
Seen on various bike mailing lists today, but thanks to Keefer Madness for the handy dandy direct link to the text of the bill. | <urn:uuid:63cf40b0-d311-4b51-9755-36b7c49c60d1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.commutebybike.com/2008/05/20/new-new-hampshire-bicycle-laws/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933757 | 405 | 1.742188 | 2 |
SEATTLE - For a summer day at the beach, people pack a lot of stuff. But should packing a gun be allowed?
Michaela Kohmetscher says "no." She was strolling along Alki Beach Park with her daughter this afternoon.
"There’s children in the park, and there's just no place for guns,” she said.
Chantae Gilman of Seattle agreed.
"My opinion is that guns should not be allowed in parks," Gilman said. "It’s not safe."
But Bob, a tourist from Wisconsin who didn’t want his last name used, said people should have the right to carry a gun if they’re doing so legally.
"If you're out there in the public and you're carrying it for protection, if you have a legal permit to do that, then I don't see any problem with it," he said.
A shooting at the heavily attended Seattle Folk Life festival in 2008 prompted then-Mayor Greg Nickels to issue an executive order on his way out of office banning guns from places where families and children gather.
But the ban was short lived.
"We have absolutely no doubt that this ban in unconstitutional," said Alan Gottleib of the Second Amendment Foundation when the ban was instated.
Months after signs prohibiting firearms went up around Seattle parks, they came down. A King County judge ruled that the ban violates state law.
But the city is appealing.
"Our position is this is not a law or an ordinance," said Bob Scales, Supervisor of the Government Affairs Section of the Seattle City Attorney’s Office. "It's a rule, a condition of entry to the park - just like no smoking, no drinking and no camping."
There are a lot of rules about what you can and can't do in a city park.
But gun rights advocates say today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court should kill off Seattle's attempts to revive a handgun ban. In a five-to-four decision, justices struck down Chicago's ban on handguns, considered the most restrictive in the country.
The high court ruled the second amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms in state and local jurisdictions.
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn says he hasn't yet read the Supreme Court ruling but he will continue to look for ways to make public places safer.
"We're not the only city across the state that looks for flexibility to ban guns from parks, pools or community centers where appropriate. A lot of cities want that flexibility," McGinn said. | <urn:uuid:027bf6a5-b287-4350-8d09-8d173e12e4f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Seattle-still-fighting-for-gun-ban-in-city-parks-97353789.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966971 | 536 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Wednesday April 28, 2010
Ladies, you're not the only one tracking your menstrual cycle.
A new iPhone app, Code Red, is allowing men, or anyone who uses the app, to track your menstrual cycle.
HOW IT WORKS: Your partner types in the first day of your menstrual cycle. Then each month the iPhone sends a notification to remind your beau it's that time of the month.The app doesn't just track when you are bleeding. During PMS time, a female symbol with devil horns appear. During ovulation, an alert is sent out to let him know the best time to get down.
The iPhone app isn't the only program that allows men to track their women's cycle. "PMSBuddy" and "PMSMeter" track menstrual cycles as well. "IAmAMan" allows men to track the menstrual cycles of several women at once, for those players out there.
Thursday February 25, 2010
According to a recent poll done by Sky Real Lives, a British television network, found that 25% of British women over 35 never have sex.
Women in Scotland are the most deprived, with 38% of those polled admitting to never having intercourse. In stark contrast, ladies from the Midlands sound as though they are happier than most, as 32% of those polled admit to having sex on a weekly basis.
Women with children in the household, surprisingly have the added pleasure of having more orgasms than women without children; 19% of women aged 35 and over with no children in the household, who have sex, stated they rarely or never orgasm when they have sex, compared to 12% of women with one child and 14% with two children enjoying orgasms most of the time when they have sex.
Unsurprisingly the daily grind of the office has an impact on most women's sex lives too with 67% of part time working women who have sex having orgasms most or all of the time, compared to 55% of those who work full time.
Premenstrual syndrome has perhaps more of an impact on women's lives than expected. Of those polled, one in three women (35%) aged 35 to 44 admitted to feeling violent towards themselves or someone else during this time.
Thursday July 9, 2009
You've just finished making love, and you're in that pleasant dream-like state when you go to the bathroom and discover that you are bleeding. Nothing can bring you back to reality faster than vaginal bleeding after sex. Post-coital bleeding can occur for a number of reasons, and is nothing to take lightly. Take a look at the top 10 causes of vaginal bleeding after sex
Thursday July 9, 2009
Although most urinary tract infections or UTIs are not serious, they are painful. Approximately fifty percent of all women will have at least one UTI in her lifetime with many women having several infections throughout their lifetime. Fortunately, these infections are easily treated with antibiotics that cause the symptoms to quickly disappear. Some women seem are more prone to repeated infections than others and for them it can be a frustrating battle. Learn about the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of UTI | <urn:uuid:8c3cead4-5350-48b4-a35f-a4b3d85f1a38> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pms.about.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9731 | 644 | 1.726563 | 2 |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The torch is lit as a reminder never to forget, and Veterans Day is just about that. It's a day to honor military members currently serving and to remember those who have passed. "This is probably the most special day of the year," says veteran Brian Kennedy.
Kennedy and fellow veteran Joe Tulli stand side-by-side. They never met each other until today, but share a bond of brotherhood. "I got two purple hearts in Vietnam. Combat medics are on the front lines I was 18 and I almost got killed in Vietnam I was just lucky," says Tulli.
Veterans from all over Jacksonville made a stop at the Veterans Memorial Wall to pay their respects to those who didn't make it back alive. "How lucky I am to be here and all those people who didn't come back their names are on the wall there," says Tulli.
Mayor Alvin Brown and Governor Rick Scott took time to watch Jacksonville's annual Veterans Day Parade. Mayor Alvin Brown says, "Today's a big day. Honoring our veterans those who've served our country and those who made the ultimate sacrifice." "Thank goodness for veterans they defend our freedom. They give us the opportunity to do parades have safety and security so I'm very appreciative," says Governor Rick Scott.
From World War 1, to the current war in Afghanistan, November 11th is a day to stop and thank all veterans for their service. "It's a great day to remember what people have done before us to make this country what it is," says Kennedy.
Todays Veterans Day parade concludes the city's weeklong tribute to the military in their 'Week of Valor'. | <urn:uuid:c8576339-6880-4ad8-9deb-45269b1350bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actionnewsjax.com/mostpopular/story/Veterans-day-events-in-Jacksonville/SHtrGIL9G0im36IQMJCy4g.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979599 | 354 | 1.53125 | 2 |
The kids, who range in age from 8 to 11, put on their Sunday best and put their best-foot-forward for the first after-school PS 65 Snowball Dance. Tickets were sold for $5 per student, with the money to be donated to the Stephen Siller Foundation for hurricane relief. At last count, students raised more than $875.
The idea came from fourth-grade teacher Jessica Sanfilippo. "I kept thinking about how I could help the people who lost so much. I love to hear music and dance, so then it struck me – we could plan a ballroom dance," Ms. Sanfilippo said.
"The rest of my faculty, staff, parents and community just ran with it," reported PS 65 Principal Sophie Scamardella.
Adults decorated the lunchroom, transforming it into a "ballroom" with a ceiling covered in large, white, dangling "snowballs."
Staffer Joey Gigante – aka DJ Joey – was happy to provide free music. "It was a lot of fun, and for a great cause. I was happy to pitch in and help the victims of Hurricane Sandy," Gigante said.
The Parent-Teacher Association donated pizza, while guidance counselor Liz Rodriguez took care of refreshments.
"This is what we're all about, demonstrating 'acts of kindness' to people in need," Ms. Rodriguez said.
While students said the dance was fun, they also grasped the seriousness of their mission.
"The dance was so much fun," said fifth-grader Sarah D'Onigbinde. "I thank Ms. Sanfilippo for making it happen and I feel good about helping the victims of the hurricane."
Her classmates Aryanne Hackshaw and Daniella Salazar agreed. "It was really fun. We loved raising money for a good cause," Miss Salazar said.
The dance wasn't the first effort students have made this year to help others.
At Thanksgiving, students collected food and made several baskets that were distributed to hurricane victims, as well as to families in need. They are also involved in a holiday toy drive.
Teachers and students at the small school on St. Paul's Avenue, at the corner of Grant Street, also known as the Academy of Innovative Learning, often refer to themselves as "dolphins" after their school mascot.
Ms. Rodriguez, faculty moderator of the Student Council, said the fourth- and fifth-grade students on the council "have been charged with the responsibility of helping others in the community, learning citizenship skills, teamwork, and brainstorming ideas to figure out how to be true little dolphins."
As an incentive, students at PS 65 who model "dolphin spirit" are rewarded with "I Got Caught Being Good" tokens they can redeem in the "I Got Caught Being Good Store."
"Just the other day, one of our Student Council members, Aaliyah Honoree-Mehmedi, a fourth-grader, used her tokens to purchase a gift from our 'I Got Caught Being Good Store' to donate to the holiday toy drive," Ms. Rodriguez related.
"Two of her friends and classmates, Taylor Bueno and Sarina Vo, gave Aaliyah their tokens too, so that they could get a nice gift to donate to another child. That's exactly the kind of 'positive behavior' we try to promote," she said. | <urn:uuid:8ef6b87c-41ea-4937-8f42-690f7866d6c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.silive.com/northshore/index.ssf/2012/12/staten_island_students_at_ps_6.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979457 | 709 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Originally Posted by russianrocket
In case you missed it, the government forced banks to give out those risky loans. So, as I've said before, it always leads back to the governments incompetence forcing business to do something they don't want to
I agree. This is something the OWS protestors can sympathize with as well, I'm sure. Bad government policy that forces risky lending causes market bubbles, which end up hurting the middle class most when they burst.
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot
In case you didn't realize:
(1) many banks did not receive any bailout at all and have already died (Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns being two prominent examples, but certainly not the only examples)
That's good, they should fail for making such poor decisions. Unfortunately, many failing banks were bought out by the big banks that received bailout money, and now we have a very small number of still irresponsible banks that the government claims are "too big to fail".
(2) Basel 3 has already been rolled out, and will take effect by 1st January 2013, so how to act irresponsibly?
Basel III is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. It is a marginal increase in the amount of capital banks are required to hold, but that isn't going to prevent poor lending decisions. | <urn:uuid:d79c9c4f-6151-4c38-b885-e69affb6aecc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/996388-post67.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982459 | 277 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Mentor System for Family Medicine Residents
One of our many strengths as a residency program is that we care about each other as people. We respect and value the effort it takes all of us to succeed every day. Excellence in medicine, like anything worth striving for, isn't achieved without effort and hard work. We can, and do, promise to honor your sincerity and commitment, and we'll support you when the going gets tough.
We believe that mentoring is so important to your success that we include it in our vision statement!
- Our residency is an educational community which prepares learners to be competent family physicians ready for excellence in patient care, leadership and lifelong learning. As a community, we work and learn through providing medical care to individuals and families in collaboration with other health care team members while making appropriate use of innovative technologies and models of care delivery. We seek to bring froth the strengths of each resident through a rich and varied set of experiences and ongoing faculty mentoring.
All incoming residents are assigned a faculty mentor to meet with at least quarterly to assess how our residents are balancing the demands of their job and education with a variety of life stressors, including making a career choice and meeting the needs of family and friends. Mentors also review evaluations and help residents set educational and life goals.
The mentor and resident should meet at least four times a year. These meetings will be assigned and occur during the months of February, May, August, and November. | <urn:uuid:5c712b22-6a05-4980-a1b1-acf883bf3c07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uihealthcare.org/GME/GMEMainInsidePages.aspx?id=231183&taxid=226268 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968706 | 298 | 1.640625 | 2 |
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pressed his fight for a health care overhaul, using a nationally televised news conference to seek support from the American public on an issue that has become pivotal for his young presidency.
With his popularity dipping and Republicans on the attack, Obama called an evening news conference Wednesday to argue that changes were needed to guarantee health care for the tens of millions of Americans without insurance and for the financial stability of the United States.
Obama stepped to the microphone looking greyer than the man who ran for president and took office in January. In the past six months, he has confronted critical issues including soaring unemployment, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a deadline to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
It is the health care debate, however, that now towers above all others and overwhelmingly dominated the news conference. The United States is the only major industrialized nation that lacks a comprehensive health care plan.
Obama cited examples of Americans whose insurance would not cover cancer treatment or who went into debt after emergency surgery.
"This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they cannot afford to wait for reform any longer," he said.
On Thursday in the Midwestern state of Ohio, Obama has planned more events focused on health care. He will visit the Cleveland Clinic, which he has praised as a model for reform because it pays doctors a fixed salary that does not depend on how many procedures or tests they perform.
"They've set up a system where patient care is the No. 1 concern, not bureaucracy, what forms have to be filled out, 'what do we get reimbursed for,'" Obama said.
The stakes are huge for Obama, who is putting much of his credibility on the line to gain passage of legislation. At least one Republican said it could prove to be the president's Waterloo if the drive collapses.
Obama has argued that making health coverage affordable and sustainable is so vital that anything less will erode the economic stability of families, businesses and even the government.
He noted that Americans "spend much more on health care than any other nation but aren't any healthier for it."
He wants Congress to vote on comprehensive health care bills before lawmakers break for summer recess in August. That timetable is growing tenuous, though.
Republicans contend Obama's push and emerging congressional bills are rushed and risky, and some conservative members of the president's own Democratic Party are balking as well. A nervous public is being hit by TV ads and claims from all sides.
The top Republican in the House of Representatives, John Boehner, said of the health care legislation: "Mr. President, it's time to scrap this bill. Let's start over in a bipartisan way."
Instead, Obama has been stepping up the fight. He has been seemingly everywhere talking health care: giving statements from the White House, visiting health clinics, talking to bloggers, granting interviews.
The health care debate may have dented Obama's popularity. His approval rating stands at 55 per cent, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll, down from 64 per cent in late May and early June. Some 50 per cent approve his handling of health care, but 43 per cent disapprove, and that number has risen sharply since April.
It did not help the White House when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week that the bills moving through Congress would add to long-term U.S. costs, not reduce them.
Obama said the biggest forces behind the deficit are the rapidly growing costs of government health programs for the poor and elderly, known as Medicaid and Medicare.
Unless they are tamed, he said, "we will not be able to control our deficit."
Obama has said the country is moving in the right direction, and he points to legislation from his first half-year in office including a massive economic stimulus bill that is ultimately designed to work over two years.
"As a result of the action we took in those first weeks, we have been able to pull our economy back from the brink," he said.
Still, unemployment is at 9.5 per cent and rising. Talk that Obama inherited an economic mess from George W. Bush is fading, and the American public is now grading the new president. His approval rating on handling the economy has been slipping as impatience grows.
Surgical Products is conducting a brief, one-question survey about healthcare insurance coverage. Click here to answer the question. Thank you! | <urn:uuid:40456988-45f9-48ab-9d7e-6ecc337348e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.surgicalproductsmag.com/news/2009/07/obama-presses-health-care-overhaul?qt-recent_blogs_articles=0&qt-recent_content=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972794 | 902 | 1.679688 | 2 |
OSU in Tulsa Office of Research
Research is an integral part of the mission for OSU-Tulsa and OSU Center for Health Sciences and adds significantly to the academic environment. It keeps faculty in the mainstream of current knowledge and offers faculty and students a different learning experience in addition to classroom work. Major research areas include biomedical sciences, forensic sciences, clinical medicine, engineering and human sciences. OSU in Tulsa is home to world-class research facilities, such as the Helmerich Research Center at OSU-Tulsa and the OSU Center for Health Sciences Forensic Sciences and Biomedical Research Center.
OSU is involved in the Tulsa Research Partners group, an independent research consortium created to impact multidisciplinary collaborations and award research grants to support technology development projects in software, IT cyber-security, advanced materials, telecom, bio-life and alternative energy sciences. The Research Partners are part of the Oklahoma Innovation Institute, which is a non-profit corporation committed to building an innovative economy in the Tulsa region. The Institute fosters collaborative research and development, entrepreneurship, company creation and retention, life-long learning and creative, future-oriented thinking. The objectives are driven by private sector, government and philanthropic partnerships.
OSU in Tulsa is also active in the founding, development and implementation of the Tulsa Area Bioscience Education and Research Consortium (TABERC). TABERC was founded to develop bioscience research in Tulsa through multidisciplinary and collaborative approaches to undergraduate and graduate education and technical training. TABERC is currently comprised of nine Tulsa area institutes of higher education. This collaborative partnership will position Tulsa and the surrounding area to be a leader in bioscience education, training, research and innovation by utilizing assets of all area institutions of higher education. | <urn:uuid:392eb32f-a790-480f-8e61-a3fec50c110b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osu-tulsa.okstate.edu/research/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934783 | 358 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Popular QuestionsSee all »
- In the conclusion of July's People, where does Maureen run to and why?
- In July's People, who is Nyiko and what is her relationship to the family?
- Who are July's people in Nadine Gordimer's novel "July's People"?
- What is one point of comparison between July's People and The Great Gatsby?
- What is the cultural conflict in Nadine Gordimer's "July's People"? | <urn:uuid:feec6aa6-e95e-4577-b0b7-301975b61897> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.enotes.com/julys-people-nadine-gordimer/pictures | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963589 | 101 | 1.828125 | 2 |
New Minn. campaign launched against distracted drivingby Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio
St. Paul, Minn. — Traffic deaths nationwide and in Minnesota are at their lowest level in decades. But the percentage of fatalities caused by distracted driving is rising.
With that in mind, Minnesota safety advocates Tuesday announced a campaign to tell the people most at risk, young drivers -- and their parents -- to keep their eyes on the road.
Among those urging drivers to pay better attention is Dan Phillips of Shorewood, who said his daughter is dead because the driver of a car she was riding in was distracted.
Phillips will never forget the day three years ago when his daughter Kelly, 17, and two friends headed to a high school event in the southwestern Twin Cities suburbs. Kylie Grayden, a family friend and Kelly's classmate at Minnetonka High School, was driving.
"Kylie was distracted, either texting or adjusting her iPod, and the wheels went off the road," Phillips said. On Tuesday, he carried a photo of the section of road, which is mostly wide and straight with a slight curve.
"She overcorrected to the left, headed for the left ditch, pulled it back to the right. And if you look at this you can actually see the tire tracks leading into the ditch," he said.
The car carrying the three teens went into the ditch and rolled. The only survivor was the driver's cousin Mitch Grengs, who was wearing a seatbelt in the front seat.
Phillips said his daughter Kelly was a faithful seatbelt user, but was a rear seat passenger in a vehicle where the belt didn't work.
The driver, Kylie Grayden, was dead at the scene. Kelly Phillips was critically injured, taken to Hennepin County Medical Center, and died the next day.
Safety advocates say such tragedies illustrate a major problem.
"The proportion of fatalities that are associated with driver distraction increased by more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2008," said Carol Bufton, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Safety Council.
A survey by the AAA motor club in Minnesota and Iowa earlier this year showed a very high rate of distracted driving among people 20 years old and younger.
"Eighty-six percent of teens admit to driving distracted on occasion," said Gail Weinholzer, a spokeswoman for the group. "Teenagers engage in distracted driving for three reasons: To save time; because they don't see it as dangerous; and to avoid boredom."
Minnesota law prohibits drivers 18 and under from texting and talking on cell phones. State law also prohibits people of any age from texting while driving.
However, Minnesota, along with 40 other states, still allows adult drivers to talk on their cell phones.
Repeated efforts in Minnesota over the years to prohibit handheld cell phone use while driving have failed.
The safety advocates have created a new website, PayAttentionandDrive.org, to combat distracted driving.
They want people to visit and comment, anonymously, when they engage in or witness distracted driving that causes -- or almost causes -- a crash. They want the comments to serve as warnings and reminders to others about the dangers of distracted driving.
- All Things Considered, 09/21/2010, 3:24 p.m. | <urn:uuid:f94338e0-1721-4c6e-9433-7fc0e67a555f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/21/distracted-driving-minn?refid=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980799 | 677 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The American Cancer Society's Relay for Life is a unique fundraising event that runs mostly on enthusiasm. Its advocates say, with each step the walkers take, the closer we all get to eliminating cancer.
"When I was first a volunteer we said, one out of four cancer patients could be saved," said volunteer, Betty Lou Jones of Meridian. "Now three out of four can be saved. Not only the treatment is easier. The quality of life is so much better."
The funding for research is what makes the hope for a cure possible.
The volume of awards bestowed at the Mississippi Relay Rally in Jackson was too many to mention individually.
But Lauderdale County led the way. Four teams from Lauderdale County raised over $10,000 each including Anderson Nursing Administrators, Mississippi Power Company, Northcrest Baptist Church Team #3, and Camie's Crusaders, named for cancer survivor, Camie Heard.
"I was so impressed and so inspired by her attitude when she was diagnosed," said longtime friend Carrie Latham, team captain for Camie's Crusaders.
"It is an awesome, awesome honor," said Heard. "Of course the ultimate goal is to find a cure for this."
Lauderdale County placed at the top in the Mid-South division of six states in per-capita giving. WTOK was recognized for best overall coverage of the relay for Life in the Mid-South division.
wtok.com: Extended Web Coverage
Relay for Life
Source: http://www.myrelayforlife.com/ (The American Cancer Society Relay for Life Web site) | <urn:uuid:f32cfd33-d3f0-49e0-b35a-45396f495d07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wtok.com/home/headlines/146622.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949194 | 334 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A record $19.5 billion in exports last year pushed Alabama further into the top half of U.S. states for such activity.
The state now ranks 22nd in the nation for total dollar value of exports, up from 25th in 2011.
Greg Canfield, secretary of the Alabama Department of Commerce, said last year's growth builds on the success of previous years.
Since 2009, the state's export value has grown 59 percent.
That year, Alabama's exports plunged to $12.4 billion amid the recession and a global sales slump for the auto industry. But as the state's auto industry has rebounded since then, so have exports.
Transportation equipment is the state's top export, by far, but growth was seen in a number of export categories last year, said Hilda Lockhart, director of the Commerce Department's International Trade Division.
Some areas struggled, too.
"The world's second-largest economy, China, slowed during 2012 and affected exports in those industry sectors of mining, heavy machinery and scrap metal that were prospering previously as China saw tremendous growth," she said.
But even with that slowdown, Alabama's primary metals exports to China, including steel, grew 836 percent from 2011 to 2012, Lockhart added.
In other highlights, plastics and electrical equipment rebounded in 2012, showing gains from 2011. Both sectors had declined from 2010 to 2011.
With the recent passage of the free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea, Lockhart expects greater numbers of shipments to that country in the next couple of years. | <urn:uuid:14617e73-2af0-4a24-8bd7-82b0e33d5a6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.al.com/wire/2013/02/exporting_alabama_see_the_top.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953954 | 326 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Posted by A, a resident of the Monta Loma neighborhood, on Dec 17, 2012 at 2:54 pm
I thought that the neighbors really wanted the minipark but the field orientation was obviously more important. Prediction: The water district will give up on Mt. View entirely and 50-year-old McKelvey will stay the way it is. The trees will stay, the fields won't be shrunk, the current parking will stay, and there won't be any playgrounds for another 50 years at least.
Posted by Neighbor, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Dec 17, 2012 at 5:02 pm
I don't know why Jac Siegel says people are not building detention basins anymore or that they are 1960s technology. A simple Google search shows they they are a best practice recommended by FEMA Web Link , the EPA Web Link , and state and local Web Link flood and environmental protection agencies. I've not heard anyone propose any feasible alternative for the 100 yr flood volume that is expected in the Permanente and Hale creeks that would overflow right there at McKelvey park. | <urn:uuid:cac267de-4646-44cc-a81f-1411e5e26732> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mv-voice.com/square/index.php?i=3&d=&t=5023 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960438 | 230 | 1.625 | 2 |
A federal judge has allowed Arizona to enforce the most controversial part of its politically charged immigration law, the so-called "show me your papers" provision.
In an order on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton upheld the section allowing authorities, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of people who may be in the United States illegally.
The Supreme Court in June tossed out most other aspects of the tough new law, but said the part known by critics as the "show me your papers" provision could go into effect, at least for now.
The hot-button immigration issue is a major attack line in this year's presidential campaign with Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, accusing President Barack Obama of failing to devise a comprehensive strategy to deal with illegal immigration.
Arizona is the nation's most heavily traveled corridor for illegal immigration and smuggling. The Justice Department said Arizona's population of two million Latinos includes an estimated 400,000 there illegally, and 60% to 70% of deportations or "removals" involve Mexican nationals.
The Pew Hispanic Center recently issued a report that found that Mexican immigration to the United States has come to a standstill. However, the debate continues as more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants -- from Mexico and other countries -- continue to live in the United States.
Bolton's decision was in response to a suit that followed the Supreme Court ruling by a number of individuals and civil rights groups who said enforcement would lead to racial profiling.
It would be up to Arizona to decide when to enforce the measure and there was no sign that would occur immediately.
It was not clear if the coalition of civil rights groups and individuals would appeal Tuesday's ruling or wait to see how the law is enforced.
"There is a basic uncertainty about what the law means and how it will be enforced," said Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in late June, making clear that Arizona authorities must comply with federal law in conducting the immigration status checks or face further constitutional challenges.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who led the fight to pass the overall law, applauded the latest court order, saying it gives law enforcement "one more tool" to use "in collaborating with federal authorities to reduce the crime and other impacts associated with illegal immigration."
She said the law "must be enforced efficiently, effectively and in harmony with the Constitution and civil rights."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had asked Bolton to block the provision, said it was prepared to continue challenging the law by documenting instances of racial profiling throughout the state, Alessandra Soler, executive director of the legal group in Arizona, said in a statement.
The Supreme Court struck down other challenged parts of the Arizona law, upholding the broad authority of the federal government to set immigration policy and laws.
Among provisions tossed by the high court was a measure that authorized police to arrest illegal immigrants without a warrant where "probable cause" existed that they committed a public offense making them removable from the country.
The Arizona law generated immediate controversy after it was signed by Brewer in April 2010, prompting an Obama administration challenge.
Supporters of the Arizona measure contend the federal government has failed to enforce existing immigration laws, leaving it to states to take their own steps to deal with mounting economic and social problems caused by illegal immigrants.
Administration officials have said the Department of Homeland Security expects increased requests from Arizona police to check the immigration status of suspects. However, they said the department will get involved only in high-priority cases.
Several other states followed Arizona's lead by passing laws meant to deter illegal immigrants. Similar laws are under challenge in lower courts in Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Indiana and South Carolina. Arizona's appeal is the first to reach the Supreme Court.
At issue was whether states have any authority to step in to regulate immigration matters or whether that is the exclusive role of the federal government. In dry legal terms, this constitutional issue is known as pre-emption.
The district court case is U.S. v. Arizona (10-cv-1413). | <urn:uuid:67ea36dc-eaaf-4635-be2b-505b08127ae9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kesq.com/news/Arizona-can-start-enforcing-immigration-law/-/233092/16652378/-/klsn6gz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965348 | 824 | 1.515625 | 2 |
EAST EUROPEAN CRIMINALS are willing to pay thousands for a clapped out Nokia with a software problem, according to a fraud investigator in the Netherlands.
Frank Engelsman said that cyber-gangs are paying 25,000 Euro for a Nokia 1100 phone which was once Nokia's all-time best-selling models in 2003.
Engelsman said the only ones that were worth anything were made in a factory in Bochum, Germany and contain software from 2002 that is vulnerable to tampering.
Apparently, the handsets can be used to intercept one-time passwords needed to complete an online banking transaction.
All the crims need to do is reprogramme the phone to use someone else's phone number, intercept the TAN code and enable an illegal money transfer into their own account. µ
It's becoming more prevalent in car research and development
Software has the ability to automatically edit videos over the cloud via iOS
Sign up for INQbot – a weekly roundup of the best from the INQ | <urn:uuid:73ae6410-7206-4460-8511-ea11734c8bbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1051854/criminals-looking-discontinued-nokia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94974 | 209 | 1.5 | 2 |
Nearly a quarter of Poles are keen to go abroad in search of employment, a study published Wednesday reveals.
The 'Social Diagnosis 2005' study revealed 22.5 per cent of Poles already working are nevertheless interested in working abroad.
Some 24 per cent of jobless individuals were also keen to pack-up to find work outside Poland where the jobless rate hovers around 18 per cent - the highest in the 25-member European Union.
The majority, 41 per cent, would prefer to work in neighbouring Germany, followed by 26 per cent in Britain and some seven per cent in Ireland.
The study also shows three-quarters of Poles now feel healthy and happy compared to the 57 per cent that declared such sentiments during the tumultuous early 1990s after the 1989 collapse of communism.
"Poles are also healthier," author of the study Professor Janusz Czaplinski said, quoted by the Polish PAP news agency.
"There has been a decline in the number of smokers and the number of smoked cigarettes," he noted but warned of a dramatic rise in narcotics and alcohol consumption by teenage girls. | <urn:uuid:f6c36319-1ca3-4987-ba41-c38bf1e849e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.local-life.com/warsaw/news/869-Transition_Poles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960193 | 226 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Use The Source!
When I first let the world in on our "little" project to create an open tablet there were some who wondered openly about the licensing of the software. It's an important question that deserves a clarifying answer:
We are not using the OS (Android, in this case) provided by the hardware manufacturer. We are also well aware that some of the people in the hardware supply chain are violating the terms of the GPL. This was amazingly frustrating for us and caused significant delays as we went in search of GPL friendly vendors. We found that in the market of affordable device makers in China, they just don't exist. There's a cultural as well as legal hurdles that have led to this unfortunate situation, and I personally think Google has a lot to answer for when they allow such companies open access to their app store while they must be aware of the license violations that are going on. So it's an unfortunate situation, but we're problem solvers, we're bad-ass Free software developers who see a problem and bang on it until it falls over, right?
We decided to go with Mer, the community continuation of MeeGo, as our base OSS. With the amazing help of the Mer community, we have been able to bring up a non-Android, built-from-source kernel on the device and even boot into Plasma Active. There is still work left, and we still do have some binary drivers, but this progress is already one massive crowbar that's prying open the doors that have been shut on the world of ARM based devices.
We're not the only ones working towards such a brighter future: there is Luc Verhaegen's work sponsored by CodeThink on the Mali 400/200 GPU driver being announced as FOSDEM; there is the Rhombus-Tech project that is working on a GPL kernel with Allwinner for their products such as the A10 (a chipset we'd already been looking at for (near) future devices). These are all awesome projects, and I'm happy to be a small part of this growing wave of effort. Simply put: we need open devices, and this is how we're most likely to get them. Hopefully in the future it will become "the way it is done" by all vendors out there, but it takes some early movers to take the first steps and force change.
Since we're using Mer for the user space and Plasma Active for the user experience, all the code above the kernel and most of the kernel itself is already open and available for download right now.
Full disclosure: right now we're still stuck with a few binary drivers
which is not a perfect situation. With
time I'm confident we'll get the binary drivers out of the picture, one by one, even if it takes time, effort and some pain. We've already managed to get source for some drivers that were not previously available so the trajectory is right. If we wait for perfection, however, we'll never get anywhere because we need to release and push the status quo level of openness further inch my inch by making releases. It'll be incremental, but we're already further than others have gotten. It's been hard but rewarding work, and I hope we can all work together to make it go faster, bigger and further!
Open Beyond Licensing
I do think it is unfortunate that when I wrote about an open and unlocked device, so many people jumped straight to the topic of source code licensing. Free software is not about licensing. Let me pause while the shock of that idea sinks in for a moment. ;)
Free software is about freedoms. Licensing is an important part of the toolbox to ensure those freedoms are available, but they are only tools not the actual product being aimed for.
This is important to keep in mind because openness and freedom goes a lot deeper in Spark than just using GPL and BSD licensed code. For instance, the boot loader isn't locked so you can boot your own OS if you wish. You can install your own apps, you can even provide your own app delivery system. You can use the Open Build Service to deliver software on top of the Mer core. That is not a property of the open licensing, but of our desire to deliver devices that you not only purchase but wish you own.
The content store is also going to be interesting. On release, the client will be Free software and the APIs openly documented so others can write front-ends. Most interestingly, however, is the server side. It has been designed in such a way that other people with other devices or concepts can use that same back end to make their own stores. It supports the idea of a single, large set of content which can then be curated into any number of different stores with different focuses and delivery targets.
Think about the possibilities: a school district or educational board could decide to set up a "store" with learning materials and content with access granted to their students. They could offer both "free" and "pay for each download" content, even if only for bookkeeping purposes. Much like the wildly successful video game markets for gaming consoles, the Make Play Live content store uses a points system for transactions, so in such a scenario points could be handed out to students, schools and/or entire districts.
On release, we will be providing a guarantee that if the project dies or we all fall over, the back-end code for the store will be made immediately available for download under a Free software license. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, of course. Once we are happy with the implementation and scalability of it, we will be making the back-end open as well. We have chosen to delay that release as we don't want others setting up their own hosted stores before we are confident in the internal design ourselves.
Even Activities themselves, the core interaction concept in Plasma Active, embody the philosophies of freedom and openness. This is your device and it should become your personal thing reflecting you. You are not treated as a mere consumer for an app store, but given a tool to help you live your life in some small way.
I really urge people to think about openness and freedom, two amazingly important concepts, beyond the boundaries of simple software licensing. Licensing is important, and we take it pretty damn seriously .. but we ought to look at bigger picture and really think about how to make our digital tools open and free in all sorts of ways.
Tomorrow I Answer Questions
There were tons of really good questions asked on my blog, on tech news sites that carried it as well as by private messages. Tomorrow I will do my best to go through answer as many of them as I can with short, to-the-point answers. I will be covering information ranging from release time lines to pre-orders to more hardware details to .. well .. visit tomorrow to find out! | <urn:uuid:ff2c0fc7-348d-4fa3-89d2-c51802565848> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2012/01/open-beyond-licensing.html?showComment=1328024098054 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968649 | 1,406 | 1.53125 | 2 |
By LINDA A. JOHNSON AP Business Writer
Anti-stroke drug being developed with Bristol gets set back a year
Trenton, N.J. - Shares of Pfizer Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. fell Monday after federal regulators unexpectedly delayed for a second time a decision on whether to approve the companies' highly touted experimental anticlotting drug Eliquis.
Some analysts see Eliquis as better than two new clot-preventing pills that beat it to market, but the latest delay means a U.S. launch of Eliquis likely won't happen until next year.
The Food and Drug Administration said it wants more information on "data management and verification" from a huge international study called ARISTOTLE that examined how well Eliquis prevented strokes in patients with an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, the drugmakers said Monday.
The companies said the FDA did not ask for new studies, and they plan to work quickly to address outstanding questions. Even so, a spokeswoman for New York-based Bristol-Myers said the agency could take up to six months to review their response.
"We are already working with the agency, and we are hopeful that the review of our submission can be completed within a shorter timeframe," said spokeswoman Laura Hortas.
Analyst Erik Gordon, a professor at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said the FDA requiring more information on data management and verification indicates "someone either flubbed the application by not making the data management process clear or flubbed the actual data process."
"It's a giant botch-up to, at best, lose a year on one of your much-needed blockbusters," Gordon added.
Bristol-Myers shares were down $1.23, or 3.48 percent, at $34.13, and Pfizer shares were down 26 cents, or 1.12 percent, at $22.47.
The news has a bigger impact on Bristol-Myers, because it is much smaller than Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker. Also, the FDA in January delayed a decision on another crucial experimental drug from Bristol, diabetes treatment Forxiga, known chemically as dapagliflozin. The agency said it needed more data, including data from an ongoing study and possibly new studies, to assess Forxiga's benefits and risks.
Eliquis, known chemically as apixaban, is one of a handful of new drugs meant to prevent heart attacks and strokes better than warfarin - long the standard treatment despite how tricky it is to use. Eliquis, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH's Pradaxa and Xarelto from Johnson & Johnson and Bayer HealthCare all are expected to grow into much-needed blockbusters for their makers, with annual sales topping $1 billion.
"All of this is surprising given the widespread perception that Eliquis is a best-in-class product relative to already-approved" Pradaxa and Xarelto, BernsteinResearch analyst Dr. Tim Anderson wrote of the new delay.
It could benefit Xarelto and Pradaxa, and possibly a fourth stroke-preventing pill in late-stage testing by Daiichi Sankyo, called edoxaban, Barclays analyst C. Anthony Butler wrote to investors.
"The longer time window is significant in a market that appears to be less open to switches (from warfarin) than previously assumed," Butler wrote.
He added that if Bristol-Myers and Pfizer give the FDA the new information by September, the agency could make a decision next March. That would be a year after the FDA's original target date for a decision on Eliquis. At the end of March, the FDA pushed back its original deadline until June 28, saying it needed more time to review additional information the companies submitted after applying for approval late last year.
Both men noted analysts may revise their sales forecasts for Eliquis, which Anderson had pegged at $2.3 billion in 2015 and $3.5 billion in 2020.
Doctors and millions of patients have long wanted a better alternative to warfarin, an inexpensive generic drug also sold under brand names such as Coumadin. Getting the dose of warfarin correct is so tricky that patients must have frequent blood tests to ensure they're getting enough to prevent clots but not enough to cause internal bleeding. Some foods interact with warfarin, compounding the difficulty.
Bristol-Myers discovered Eliquis and since 2007 has been testing it in partnership with New York-based Pfizer. The European Union approved it in May for preventing blood clots in patients getting hip or knee replacement surgery, and the companies are considering whether to seek approval for that use in the U.S., Hortas said. The drug also is in late-stage testing for treating patients with clots in major blood vessels.
Pradaxa, also known as dabigatran, was first to market, getting approved in October 2010 for patients with atrial fibrillation. Xarelto has since been approved for patients with atrial fibrillation and for preventing blood clots after hip or knee replacement surgery. But J&J said last week the FDA denied its request to expand approval of Xarelto to prevent life-threatening blood clots in patients with acute coronary artery disease, and it expects to work with them to address the questions as quickly as possible. | <urn:uuid:c4ba1897-29d9-4cc3-94d0-5babd84ed9e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theday.com/article/20120626/BIZ03/306269939/1070/ENT09 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953378 | 1,136 | 1.632813 | 2 |
In an email to developers of the Linux distribution Ubuntu, Canonical's Scott James Remnant explained how they hope to achieve a 10 second boot time with Ubuntu 10.04, the version to be released in 2010, after 9.10 is released this fall.
The projected speed improvements come with changes to the kernel, such as making the X.org server, which controls the display elements in Linux, load up quicker. The boot process will divided into sections with time budgets: two seconds for Kernal and initramfs, Plumbing (drive loader), and X.org server; and four seconds for the desktop session and other services.
"This benchmark time is to a fully logged in desktop (auto-login) with an idle CPU and Disk. Deferring services is not an option unless done properly," Remnant wrote.
The reference platform that Canonical plans to use for this target is a Dell Mini 9 netbook, equipped with the typical Atom processor and an SSD hard drive. Remnant feels this is a good benchmark because it represents what he calls a "middle of the road" system and that some will be faster and slower, but the low price of the machine allows other developers around the world to purchase one to perform their own testing while helping to contribute to the goal.
"10s is a good number, especially for a generic, hardware agnostic, non-stripped down Linux distribution," Remnant wrote, "from that starting point, development teams will be able to customise and tailor Ubuntu for specific hardware - and the OEM team will be able to produce custom remixes of Ubuntu that boot even faster."
Remnant also said that a side-effect of the fast boot speed is that there will be no splash screen. He also said that the team is working to reduce the boot time in 9.10 (codenamed Karmic) but users should not expect the near instant boot they hope to hit with the next release.
Ubuntu already is known for having a quick boot time, as one user proved by back in April. He was able to install Ubuntu 9.04 RC on a system equipped with a speedy Intel SSD drive inside an IBM ThinkPad. When formatted in the ext4 file system, he was able to boot the system in 7.83 seconds. These additional speed improvement that Canonical is targeting for the upcoming Ubunutu release is a feature that Linux enthusiasts should be proud of.
Download: Fast Boot Presentation
Neowin member Executor89 contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:5ce786f2-bfd0-4804-9eed-125d35ceedcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/06/11/ubuntu-targets-10-second-boot-time-for-2010-release | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941846 | 517 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Despite Prestage Farms' reputation, NCSU pleased to take its $10 million
The Humane Society report centers on Prestage Farms' use of gestation crates, such as pictured here. The cages are not illegal, but since sows can't move, they can develop abscesses and lameness.
Photo courtesy of Farm Sanctuary/ Creative Commons
Tags: Wake County, Stories
Uploaded: Dec 5, 2012
Post / Read Comments (5) | <urn:uuid:3a92cb80-96cd-4864-9da0-4369274ccb97> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/ImageArchives?page=7&oid=3208596 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930621 | 94 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Colorado House Spikes Legislation Charging Undocumented Students In-State Tuition
|Undocumented students walk through a minefield of laws in pursuit of higher education.|
Some bills die on the floor of the statehouse. Others die on the governor's desk. Sometimes, they die in the courts.
And then there are those that die in a legislative committee, along party lines, like Colorado's Senate Bill 11-126, legislation passed last week by the Colorado Senate to allow undocumented students to take classes at public colleges paying in-state tuition. That bill was killed by Colorado's House Education Committee on a straight Democrat/Republican split last night, 7-6.
The rejection comes at a time when undocumented Arizona students are rallying against Maricopa Community Colleges' targeted anti-immigrant tuition hike, and spotlights the minefield facing undocumented kids across the country who want to pursue higher education.
Washington, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, Illinois, New York, and Texas allow their undocumented students to take classes at in-state tuition rates. Arizona does not.
Oregon, Maryland, and Colorado are all states considering legislation giving undocumented kids the opportunity to pay in-state tuition, although the Colorado bill's future is now bleak. Undocumented students in those states currently pay out-of-state tuition.
The United States House of Representatives passed a bill last fall, the DREAM Act, allowing undocumented students who graduate from college the opportunity to become U.S. citizens, but that bill died during a Senate filibuster.
Undocumented students in Arizona who can't afford to enroll at four-year universities have begun taking smaller courseloads at local community colleges to continue their education.
Although undocumented students taking classes at Maricopa Community Colleges pay out-of-state tuition, out-of-staters taking six or fewer hours are charged about $100 per class -- still a pricey total, but manageable.
But the governing board of Maricopa Community Colleges decided last month to raise tuition on part-time students to $1000 per class, which is well beyond the reach of most of these students. | <urn:uuid:2c485eed-5cc3-495d-af2c-8c61a403e82d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/04/colorado_house_spikes_legislat.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937969 | 437 | 1.664063 | 2 |
By Rebecca Onion
Marlon Brando dropped this battered address book on the stage of New York's Barrymore Theatre while appearing in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in 1949.
The loss of the book must have been significant to the young actor. Brando scrawled on the flyleaf: "On bended knee I beg you to return this. I lost eight others already and if I lose this I'll just drop dead!" Underneath this plea, he wrote an address - "47 W. 47th N.Y.C." - which he then crossed out and updated with "37 W. 52."
Sadly for latter-day snoops, Brando mostly stuck to first names in recording his contacts ("Janice," "Sandra," "Kay"). Notables listed by both first and last name include Ellen Adler (famed acting teacher Stella's daughter and Brando's sometime girlfriend) and "Jimmy Baldwin" (the writer James Baldwin, who was Brando's longtime friend).
The play's production manager, Robert Downing, picked the book up off the stage and - for reasons lost to history - kept it, despite Brando's desperate note. The book ended up at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center with the rest of Downing's papers.
Thanks to Helen Baer and Jennifer Tisdale of the Harry Ransom Center. | <urn:uuid:030175f6-ab91-445d-88a8-2926df3cd2e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cullmantimes.com/community-news-network/x2056619531/When-Marlon-Brando-lost-his-little-black-book/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951598 | 281 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Japan for Sustainability does the following activities:
- Provides a variety of information on the environment and sustainability, from Japan to the world, via our web site and e-mail magazines.
- Covers not only current developments but also traditional wisdom, craftsmanship and practices of day-to-day life, as well as local activities.
- Works to develop special partnerships with people in Asia, in order to cooperate to find paths toward sustainability in this region.
- Welcomes feedback and comments from overseas and shares them in Japan and with partners in Asia, so that we can improve efforts and activities in this region by learning from each other.
- Creates a vision for a sustainable Japan through discussion among various stakeholders.
If you find our activities unique and valuable, we appreciate your support! | <urn:uuid:69b1327f-d04c-4ec3-92d3-5c887b0d3fdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.japanfs.org/en_/jfs/activities.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943865 | 163 | 1.71875 | 2 |
- Kali phos (6X) is derived from potassium phosphate. This biochemic tissue salt is a natural component of all fluids in the body. It acts as a nerve nutrient and is naturally present in all brain cells and nerve tissue. This remedy is a natural calmative, helping to soothe nerves and lessen the feeling of “being on edge”. It supports a healthy brain and nervous system and can help relieve occasional nervous tension and irritability in the body.
- Nat phos (6X) is derived from sodium phosphate. This tissue salt naturally supports the acid-alkaline balance in human cells. It also helps to maintain pH balance in the body, break up lactic acid, regulate bile production, and help with the process of assimilating fatty acids, which are important building blocks for cellular health in the brain. It is beneficial to alleviate occasional heartburn brought on by nerves and general gastric problems related to unsettled emotions.
- Nat sulph (6X) is derived from sodium sulphate. The principal function of Nat sulph is to be a cell cleanser and regulator. Optimal levels of Nat sulph in the body will help to ward off common feelings of discouragement and dismay. These are the feelings that can make even the thought of getting out of bed seem overwhelming! A short temper, sudden fury and a dismal mood all respond well to Nat sulph.
I feel much more positive and have a spring in my step. Before I started with your products, I was like a bear with a sore tooth! So this product is such a relief to my family too!- Tessa, GA, USA
What is Triple Complex Mood Tonic?
Triple Complex Mood Tonic is a safe, non-addictive, natural remedy containing 100% homeopathic ingredients that were selected to relieve irritability and sadness, and help restore a balanced mood without the potentially dangerous side effects associated with many psychiatric drugs.
Formulated by a clinical psychologist and our team of experts in natural medicine, Triple Complex Mood Tonic is a FDA-registered OTC homeopathic medicine containing a combination of three biochemic, cellular-supporting tissue salts especially selected for their effect on brain structures, brain chemistry and nervous system health. This combination of tissue salts can be used regularly in a general capacity to promote systemic balance in the brain and nervous system, as well as in conjunction with other remedies to maintain therapeutic effectiveness.
Tissue salts, also called cell salts or biochemic salts, are composed of minerals which occur naturally at a cellular level in our bodies and all organic matter on earth, such as plants, rocks and soil. Just like the bricks and mortar of a wall, tissue salts are the building blocks for cells.
Making sure that all the cells of your brain and nervous system are functioning effectively will also mean that you will enhance the bio-availability of all supplements, remedies and even nutrients in your diet, thereby maximizing all your brain health efforts!
Triple Complex Mood Tonic may be taken at the first signs of irritation and moodiness for effective help. It’s available in two forms, small tablets or liquid, and either form may be taken depending on your preference. Both forms are easy to ingest and hassle-free with no artificial colors or preservatives.
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All Native Remedies homeopathic products and biochemic tissue salts are manufactured in a FDA- and GMP-registered pharmaceutical facility under the supervision of qualified homeopaths and responsible pharmacists. Individual ingredients are listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States (HPUS).
The moody blues
Moods are influenced by several parts of the brain, and more and more evidence is being discovered that suggests that there are specific areas in the brain that are at the center of mood experiences. The limbic system is the part of the brain that appears to be most directly involved in human emotion-regulation, particularly the area known as the limbic cortex. A well-nourished brain will regulate moods accordingly and maintain balance.
A healthy brain does this by regulating normal levels of serotonin, the body’s own feel-good chemical. Serotonin directly influences your mood. When normal serotonin levels dip or fluctuate, a person can feel gloomy, a bit sullen, irritable and slightly temperamental, while at other times they may wear themselves and others out with an overabundance of enthusiasm and good cheer!
To ensure systemic health and balance in the brain, and as a result keep moods harmonious, it is important to exercise, get adequate sleep, have hobbies, play, eat healthy food, spend time with loved ones and maintain cellular nourishment.
The natural way
Due to the negative effect that stress has on emotional health, following good stress-management techniques can make a big difference in the way we feel. Many herbs are well-known for their support of the brain and nervous system.
Regular exercise helps to release natural feel-good chemicals in the brain and will contribute to a balanced mood, self-esteem and positive feelings. Eating regular, healthy meals can go a long way toward providing the nutritional needs of your brain and limbic system, in order to allow it to function at its best and regulate your emotions properly. Vitamins, minerals and other nutritional substances are all important building blocks of brain health and balanced mood.
Unfortunately, due to modern farming methods, the food that is available to us is often deficient in the minerals and vitamins that are essential for health - even if we follow a healthy diet. Many people rely on fast food or pre-packed processed meals due to time constraints and a stressful lifestyle. Over time, this can lead to a deficiency in vital nutrients that are essential in maintaining healthy body systems. When body systems are compromised, it can result in poor health or even disease.
While many of us supplement with daily vitamins, there are other nutritional building blocks that are overlooked which are essential for cellular health. Amongst these are minerals or tissue salts – vital components for cellular health.
What are the Ingredients?
Triple Complex Mood Tonic is 100% homeopathic and contains the following ingredients: Kali phos (6X), Nat phos (6X), Nat sulph (6X)
This homeopathic remedy is an OTC medicine registered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Native Remedies is the leading brand of natural remedies known for safe, effective and quality products. Our remedies are formulated by natural health experts and produced under the highest pharmaceutical standards in FDA-registered, GMP certified facilities. We utilize the finest quality ingredients that are officially monographed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States (HPUS).
Native Remedies homeopathic products and biochemic tissue salts never contain any animal products, gluten, artificial colors, flavors or preservatives, and are not tested on animals. Our products are always backed by our One Year Unconditional Money Back Guarantee.
How do I use Triple Complex Mood Tonic?
Children and adults: Dissolve 2-4 tablets in a clean mouth 3 times daily. Dosage may be increased to up to 6 times daily if needed.
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Mix drops in 1/4 cup of water and sip slowly or put drops directly into the mouth.
For all ages: Acute: Take 0.25 mL to 0.50 mL every hour for up to 10 doses or until symptoms subside. Chronic: Take 0.25 mL to 0.50 mL 3 times daily.
Both the tablet and liquid forms of Triple Complex Mood Tonic are homeopathic and are safe for all ages, as well as during pregnancy and breastfeeding. This remedy may also be taken along with prescription medicine.
Note: It is recommended that Triple Complex Mood Tonic be used concurrently with fast-acting PureCalm™ for maximum effectiveness against anxiety and panic attacks brought on by poor mood or feelings of sadness.
Caution: If symptoms persist or worsen, a healthcare professional should be consulted. If pregnant or breastfeeding, ask a health professional before use. Keep this and all medicines out of reach of children.
How long until I see results?
People can differ widely in their response times for tissue salts depending on individual makeup, lifestyle, diet, etc. Some may experience symptomatic relief within days, while others can take up to 6 weeks before an effect is felt.
Benefits are achieved when Triple Complex Mood Tonic is used consistently along with a healthy lifestyle.
How long will a bottle last?
One bottle of Triple Complex Mood Tonic tablets will last approximately 30 days depending upon the amount taken and the frequency of use
One bottle of Triple Complex Mood Tonic liquid will last approximately 39-40 days depending upon the amount taken and the frequency of use.
How has Mood Tonic helped others?
Triple Complex Mood Tonic has been used to relieve irritability, anxiety and feelings of sadness for many people. Here is what some of them have to say:
“I have never managed to stay constantly bright and chirpy and seem to occasionally get blue. Your Triple Complex Mood Tonic has been great. I feel like I am on a more even path with fewer bumps in the road, its amazing! ”
“I have used your Triple Complex Mood Tonic together with your MindSoothe Capsules for the past six weeks and I am so grateful to report that I am feeling much better. I am not as grumpy as I used to be and I feel much more positive and have a spring in my step. Before I started with your products, I was like a bear with a sore tooth! So this product is such a relief to my family too! ”
—Tessa, GA, USA | <urn:uuid:6df6b6e2-8b86-491a-a401-24754bf5599a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nativeremedies.com/products/mood-tonic-normal-serotonin-levels.html?mobile=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94514 | 2,095 | 1.8125 | 2 |
- Historic Sites
May/June 1996 | Volume 47, Issue 3
The alert reader (and for that matter the near-comatose one) will notice that this month’s cover story on American taxation arrives at a conclusion that will not be anathema to the chairman of the company that pays my salary. And given the current vigor of the flat-tax debate that he did so much to initiate, I thought it might be worthwhile saying something about how this particular article came to be.
One of the frustrations of planning future stories for a magazine that appears eight times a year and cannot match the scorching pace and big staffs of the weeklies lies in the difficulty of calculating what subjects will have a hold on the public imagination some months down the road. Often enough a story commissioned in the heat of the current concerns has all the urgency of OUR IMPERILED INTERURBAN SYSTEM when it comes time to print it.
American Heritage editors are lucky: we are freed from some of the constraints that bind other magazine editors, because so much of our subject matter is timeless. But that very timelessness puts us under the pressure—a wholesome pressure, withal—to connect the past with the present, to show that timeless doesn’t mean irrelevant. Our Associate Publisher, Ed Hughes, whose work is very much in the present, pointed this out with offhand economy one day not long ago when I passed his office on my way to lunch. “Hey, Richard!” he called out. “You on your way to Green-Wood Cemetery to cover a late-breaking story for us?”
But last spring it did not require supernatural editorial prescience to predict, in broad terms at least, what would be happening this spring. No matter who was in the presidential race, there would be plenty of discussion about taxes.
This was an easy call for me. I asked John Steele Gordon to write an overview of taxation in America to appear around tax time in 1996. I never considered going to anyone other than our business columnist. Not only is John great at spotting and telling a small but resonant story (his piece on the casual corporate murder of an American classic, Liederkranz cheese, drew about as much mail as anything we’ve ever published); he is also adept at sorting out the jackstraw facts of a huge story and setting them down in a lucid and lively narrative.
He had already on our behalf won victories over such obdurate subjects as the national debt and the health care crisis, and now he’s done it again. John’s survey of American taxation arrived in these offices before our Chairman had entered the nation’s biggest, scariest arena.
Once he had, I needled John about it some. “Hell,” he replied happily, “I was for a flat tax back when Harold Stassen was still running for President.” | <urn:uuid:c85cc81f-6e7e-490c-9646-306d85edafc4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americanheritage.com/content/tax-timing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96132 | 609 | 1.617188 | 2 |
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|NYTimes.com > Washington|
245 U.S. 474
GOLDMAN et al.
Argued Dec. 13, 14, 1917.
Decided Jan. 14, 1918.
Mr. Harry Weinberger, of New York City, for plaintiffs in error.
Mr. Solicitor General Davis, of Washington, D. C., for the United States. [245 U.S. 474, 475]
Mr. Chief Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
Because of the constitutional questions involved the plaintiffs in error prosecute this direct writ of error to reverse a criminal conviction and resulting sentence imposed upon them. The indictment upon which the conviction was had charged them with having, in violation of sections 37 and 332 of the Criminal Code (Comp. St. 1916, 10201, 10506), unlawfully conspired together and with others unknown to induce persons who by the Selective Draft Law of May 18, 1917, (Public No. 12, 65th Congress, c. 15, 40 Stat. 76) were under the duty to register, to disobey the law by failing to register. Five specified overt acts were in the indictment charged to have been committed in furtherance of the alleged illegal conspiracy.
Seven grounds of error were assigned at the time of the allowance of the writ: (1) The refusal of the court at the request of the defendants to dismiss the indictment on the ground that the formation of a conspiracy to induce persons not to register as they were required under the law to do and the performance of overt acts to carry out the conspiracy constituted no offense. (2) The action of the court in refusing to grant a motion in arrest of judgment on the same ground. (3) The refusal to set aside the verdict because the facts proved did not constitute an offense against the United States. (4) The denial of a motion to dismiss the prosecution at the request of the defendants on the ground that the Selective Draft Law upon which the alleged duty to register depended was repugnant to the Consitution and void, there being numerous specifications on this subject involving a challenge of all power in Congress to have enacted the law and moreover upon the assumption of some power an assertion of the repugnancy of the statute to the Constitution resulting from various provisions which the act contained. (5) The de- [245 U.S. 474, 476] nial by the court of a motion made at the close of the case to dismiss the indictment on the ground that it stated no offense as previously insisted and upon the further ground that in any event there was no proof of the alleged conspiracy or the averred overt acts or of any act adequate to show guilt. (6 and 7) The refusal of a motion to set aside the verdict and in arrest of judgment because the verdict was contrary to law and unsupported by evidence upon grounds which had been previously urged and overruled.
Putting aside the multiplication which results from urging the same ground several times because when once made it was adhered to and reiterated at different stages of the trial, it is clear that the assignments embrace only three propositions: (1) The failure to dismiss th prosecution because of the repugnancy of the Selective Draft Law to the Constitution for the reasons relied upon. (2) The refusal to dismiss because the indictment stated no offense. (3) The refusal to dismiss because there was no proof of conspiracy or of any overt acts adequate to have justified the submission of the case to the jury. Indeed in the elaborate argument at bar all the assignments of error are treated as embraced under the propositions thus stated and we therefore come to dispose of the case from such point of view.
1. The grounds here made the basis of the charge that the Selective Draft Law is repugnant to the Constitution are so far as they concern the question of registration provided for by that law, identical with those which were urged in Arver v. United States, 245 U.S. 366 , 38 Sup. Ct. 159, 62 L. Ed. --, and were there adversely disposed of. The ruling in that case therefore also adversely disposes of all the relevant constitutional questions in this. The duty nevertheless remains to consider the other questions. Brolan v. United States, 236 U.S. 216 -218, 35 Sup. Ct. 285.
2. The contention that the indictment stated no of- [245 U.S. 474, 477] fense proceeds upon the assumption reiterated in various forms of statement that no crime results from an unlawful conspiracy to bring about an illegal act joined with the doing of overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy unless the conspiracy has accomplished its unlawful purpose by causing the illegal act to be committed. This, however, but disregards the settled doctrine that an unlawful conspiracy under section 37 of the Criminal Code to bring about an illegal act and the doing of overt acts in furtherance of such conspiracy is in and of itself inherently and substantively a crime punishable as such irrespective of whether the result of the conspiracy has been to accomplish its illegal end. United States v. Rabinowich, 238 U.S. 78, 85 , 86 S., 35 Sup. Ct. 682, and authorities there cited.
3. Sifting out of the arguments advanced to support the proposition that there was no evidence whatever tending to show guilt, contentions based upon the misconception as to the law of conspiracy which we have just adversely disposed of, and, moreover, contentions concerning an asserted misuse of discretion by the court below in ruling on an application to postpone the trial, which as we have seen, were not even remotely referred to in the assignments of error, we think all the arguments rest upon the assumption that the power to review embraces the right to invade the province of the jury by determining questions of credibility and weight of evidence and from the residuum of evidence resulting from indulging in and applying the results of such erroneous assumption drawing the conclusion as to no evidence relied upon. While this statement suffices to dispose of the case without going further, we nevertheless say without recapitulating evidence that after a review of the whole record we think the proposition that there was no evidence whatever of guilt to go to the jury is absolutely devoid of merit.
It follows that the judgment below must be and it is | <urn:uuid:1a709f58-2bd7-4cd8-82ed-be8f523ab6a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&court=us&vol=245&invol=474 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960029 | 1,303 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Ibrahim Gambari is head of Unamid, the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur. He’s a diplomat. And one of the things about being a diplomat is that you go to things when you are invited. That’s the diplomatic thing to do. And so it was that he turned up at a wedding do in Khartoum. Of course it wasn’t any old wedding. It was the marriage of Chad’s president Idriss Deby to a daughter of the infamous Janjaweed leader Musa Hilal. And guess who was there? Omar al Bashir, president of Sudan who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on several counts of crimes against humanity.
Unpleasant and distasteful the company may have been. But then few diplomats in the region would get very far if they avoided unpleasant and distasteful company. But look what happened next:
New York-based Human Rights Watch protested in a letter last week to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over the meeting, in which a Reuters photograph showed Ibrahim Gambari talking to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir at the wedding in Khartoum.
“Mr. Gambari’s attention has been drawn to the letter and to the need to avoid such encounters in future, however unintentional this particular encounter may have been,” U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters.
In an ideal world, of course Mr Gambari should not be consorting with suspects such as Mr Bashir or his Janjaweed lieutenant. But then again, we don’t live in an ideal world. As Simon Allison points out, that is rather why we have diplomats:
This is a conflict in which there aren’t any good guys, only men of varying levels of disrepute. Bashir is among the worst, but he is also the most important. Knowing this, and given the parlous state of Darfuri politics does it not make some kind of sense that Gambari should seize whatever opportunities he can to speak with Bashir and his lieutenants?
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I turn up at an office in my tie with tape recorder in hand then everyone’s guard goes up. Instead I get some of my best work done, contacts made and titbits collected at social occasions. And the same goes for diplomacy.
The human rights analysis has proved an effective tool for raising awareness of so much suffering around the world. But sometimes we have to remember it isn’t the only game in town.
In the end, Mr Gambari has a better chance of making a difference in Darfur than a bloke with a megaphone laying down the law from New York. | <urn:uuid:2efbfdf7-255b-44ea-b0e5-4ee41d5b6bc0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://robcrilly.wordpress.com/tag/omar-al-bashir/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953764 | 581 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Length: 28 minutes
Format: MP3, 128 kbps
Filesize: 28 Megabytes
Israel’s deadly raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla killed 9 passengers and left many more wounded in the early hours of May 31st. Over 700 activists aboard the flotilla were held captive for three days following the attack. Israel released a trickle of video footage and photos during that time. Some recordings were later revealed to be misleadingly edited, to prove an allegedly violent ship attacked the Israeli army.
Most of the footage aboard the ship was confiscated by the Israeli Defense Forces. However, one filmmaker managed to smuggle out three tiny SD cards that carried one hour of footage from the Mavi Marmara boat.
Iara Lee, New York based Korean-Brazilian filmmaker, was aboard the ship with her film crew. Since being released and deported from Israel, she has testified in front of the United Nations. Her footage was shared on the internet, and received one million hits over the weekend following the attack. It has helped establish the facts of what happened during the attack, including over 30 shots fired by the Israeli army, some at almost point blank range.
On June 22, CKDU 88.1FM had the chance to catch up with Iara Lee over skype, to discuss her experience of the attack, the purpose of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and what the next steps are for the international, Palestinian-led movement to end the Gaza Blockade.
To see more of Iara Lee’s work, visit Cultures of Resistance. This interview was originally aired on CKDU 88.1FM in Halifax, Nova Scotia. | <urn:uuid:5da24693-563d-4ecd-8fc8-f0be78a2a3fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ckdu.ca/news/tag/israel/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975253 | 342 | 1.804688 | 2 |
PRAYER-DUEL WITH A MUSLIM:
A Christian Confronts the Islamic Practice of Mubahala
By David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi
PART ONE: The Challenge
During the summer of 2005, my friend Nabeel, who was a Muslim at the time, brought another Muslim to a small gathering of friends to discuss Christianity vs. Islam. (Nabeels Muslim friend has asked to remain anonymous in this article, so I will refer to him by the pseudonym "Ahmed.") Overall, I was impressed with Ahmed. I learned that he had been raised in the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam, but that he had converted to orthodox Islam. When he converted, he sent letters to numerous Ahmadi Muslims, urging them to reject the teachings of his former sect. Beyond this, Ahmed seemed to be quite reasonable on certain issues. For instance, he admitted that the Gospel of Barnabas is an obvious forgery. Since many Muslims cling to the Gospel of Barnabas despite the overwhelming proof against its authenticity, the fact that Ahmed was willing to acknowledge its falsity showed that he was open to evidence.
At the same time, despite his openness in certain areas, I noticed that Ahmed had a strong tendency to reinterpret evidence to conform to his Muslim beliefs. We examined a number of statements by Jesus, as well as some Old Testament prophecies, yet whenever the facts called Ahmeds position into question, he simply replied, "That all depends on your interpretation."
Ahmed and I also had an email exchange. He responded to some of my criticisms of Islam, and I replied back. Eventually, Ahmed wrote a lengthy article and posted it on his website. At the end of the article, he challenged me to a Mubahalaa Muslim prayer-duel. Having received the challenge, it never occurred to me that I should reject it, though I was concerned about the format. Traditionally, in a Mubahala, each side is supposed to call down the curse of God on the "liars" (i.e. the opposing party). This aspect helps illustrate an important difference between Islam and Christianity. Whereas Muslims are permitted to curse their enemies, Christians are commanded to bless those who hate us and to pray for them:
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:27-28)
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. (Romans 12:14)
Fortunately, Ahmed took the Christian mode of thinking into consideration while putting together the format of the Mubahala, and we ended up with a Christian-friendly version of an ancient Muslim practice.
We met together on January 1st, 2006, to take our oaths and sign our contracts. Ahmed brought a Muslim witness, and I brought a Christian witness (the newly Christian Nabeel) along with another person, who taped the exchange. Ahmed stated his core beliefs about Islam and Christianity, and then called down the curse of God upon himself if his beliefs were false. After that, I stated my beliefs about Christianity and Islam, and asked God to curse me if my beliefs were false. To add a Christian twist to the duel, I asked God to abundantly bless the person speaking the truth. We also signed contracts that reinforced our agreement.
I was satisfied with the arrangement. I wasnt required to curse anyone. I simply invited God to curse me if the core teachings of Christianity are false. But since the core teachings of Christianity are absolutely true, I had nothing to worry about. Ahmed, on the other hand, had staked his safety on the teachings of Muhammad, and Muhammad was a false prophet. To me, of course, this seemed like a very dangerous move on the part of Ahmed.
We agreed that any clear sign of a curse that took place within a year would count as a verdict from God. However, just three weeks after signing our contracts, I received an email from Ahmed. He apologized to me for what he had done and said that he could "no longer be a party to this Mubahala challenge." A number of bad things had happened to him, yet instead of concluding that God had cursed him, he decided that God was simply punishing him for wrongfully entering into a Mubahala. Hence, the flaw that I had noticed when I first met Ahmed (i.e. his willful reinterpretation of everything that conflicts with Islam) had returned to help him reinterpret the outcome of our prayer-duel.
Ahmed is quite embarrassed by the ordeal. I asked him if he would contribute his side of the story to this article, but he would rather remain anonymous. Personally, I dont think he has much to be ashamed of. He loved his religion enough to lay his own safety on the line, and this took a great deal of courage. However, it takes even more courage to follow God wherever He leads. Ahmed exhibited his willingness to obey God when he left the Ahmadiyya sect. We can only pray that his strength of heart will once again be revealed in leaving Islam entirely, with his eyes fixed on Jesus.
Although Ahmed didnt want to contribute to this essay, I think its important to have additional testimony here. Thus, Part Two will be the same story from Nabeels perspective.
PART TWO: Further Testimony
Last year, while investigating Christianity, I decided to invite my friend Ahmed along with me to a friends apologetics group meeting. I considered Ahmed to be a seeker of the truth, as was I; I also believed that all good arguments were worth hearing. There Ahmed met David Wood, and they started dialoging about Islam and Christianity.
Over the next several months, David and Ahmed exchanged some emails discussing certain arguments for and against their respective faiths. The culmination of this exchange was an invitation to a prayer duel, or "mubahala," based on the one proposed by the Prophet of Islam in the Quran:
But whoever disputes with you in this matter after what has come to you of knowledge, then say: Come let us call our sons and your sons and our women and your women and our near people and your near people, then let us be earnest in prayer, and pray for the curse of Allah on the liars. (3:61)
Ahmed decided that since intellect was not enough to prove the truth of Islam over Christianity (or vice versa) God should be invoked as arbiter.
I am personally connected to this mubahala because, as a friend of both Ahmed and David, I was invited to be the moderator. As I was an Ahmadi, he considered me to be a neutral third party member. However, unbeknownst to Ahmed, my own search for the truth had already led me to Christianity and I could no longer be considered "neutral" if I were to moderate. I thus refused to be moderator, but told Ahmed I would be present at the signing of the mubahala papers. I came as Davids Christian witness. (To read about my conversion from Islam to Christianity, click here.)
David and I went together to the agreed signing location. On our way there, he asked me what I thought would happen in the course of the prayer duel. Having become convinced of Christianitys truth, I knew that Ahmed would essentially be calling curses down upon himself. However, most people are very obstinate in their beliefs, and very little can cause people to see that they are wrong, even the losing verdict in a mubahala. I told David that Ahmed would probably have some unusual difficulties in his lifenothing life threatening, yet some things that were obviously out of the ordinary, such that any neutral observer would know that Gods verdict was against him. I also predicted that, instead of recognizing his loss and Gods response, Ahmed would explain away the extraordinary occurrences, subconsciously writing off the verdict.
I came to this conclusion because, having been a Muslim, I knew from personal experience that Muslims will take supernatural signs from God to mean anything and everything other than admonitions to leave Islam. I even explained this to Ahmed that very day, after the papers were signed. Then I prayed to God in front of both Ahmed and David, asking Him not to punish the cursed party too severely, for I was worried about Ahmeds safety.
A few weeks later, Ahmed called off the mubahala. He has asked me not to share the details of the events which caused him to reconsider his involvement in the prayer duel, except that there were events that were out of the ordinary. Ahmed did exactly as I had predicted, explaining away these events to mean that God did not want him to partake in the mubahala, and not that he had actually lost.
Thus ended the first and only mubahala I have seen with my own eyes. A Muslim challenged a Christian, the Christian accepted, and I predicted the outcome. May God open the eyes of those who ask for signs yet cannot see them, and may He send His blessings upon us all. Amen.
PART THREE: Islam and the Art of Reinterpretation
As Nabeel pointed out, our biases sometimes hinder our search for truth. Gods answer to a Mubahala is a kind of evidence, but evidence can always be reinterpreted by those who are most concerned with believing what they want to believe. Im not saying this simply of Ahmed. This applies to everyone, whether Christian or Muslim, atheist or Jew. It is quite natural for a person, when confronted with evidence against his beliefs, to view the facts through colored lenses.
While believers of every kind may do this from time to time, it is a much greater problem when it comes to Islam. As anyone who has tried presenting historical evidence to Muslims will know, reinterpretation of the evidence is at the very heart of Muhammads religion. Indeed, based on my own experience, Ive found that discussions (of the evidential sort) with Muslims often go something like this:
Christian: The evidence for Jesus death on the cross is overwhelming. We have not only Christian sources that report His death, but also Jewish and Roman sources. All the ancient sources agree that Jesus died.
Muslim: Well, I believe that God made everyone think that Jesus died. However, in reality, God took Jesus to heaven, and Judas was crucified in his place.
Christian: So God is in the business of tricking everyone into believing falsehoods? That seems a bit odd to me. Well, what about all the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?
Muslim: I believe that God may have let Jesus appear to the disciples after he was taken to heaven. The disciples simply misinterpreted Jesus appearances. They thought that he had risen from the dead, but in reality he had just returned for a visit.
Christian: If that had been the case, I think Jesus would have informed them that He never really died, to prevent misunderstanding. Based on what youre saying, it looks like Jesus started the largest religion in the worldChristianityby accident. But what about all the 1st century evidence that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God?
Muslim: Your sources have been corrupted.
Christian: What if I show you that all of our more than 5000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament agree that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, died, and rose from the dead? Would that make a difference?
Muslim: No. I will still believe that the evidence has all been changed. No evidence, no matter how strong, will ever convince me of Christianity.
Christian: And yet youll believe anything that Muhammad sayswithout question! Personally, I cant accept Muhammad as a prophet. He married more than a dozen women, had sex with a nine-year-old girl, allowed his troops to rape their female captives, robbed people, traded slaves, tortured people for money, and brutally murdered those who questioned him. Are you really willing to believe everything he says?
Muslim: Of course. All those things were completely acceptable. How dare you question Gods greatest messenger!
Christian: I must say, your faith is quite invincible.
Many Muslims would say that this imaginary dialogue doesnt represent their position. But based on personal correspondence and conversations with numerous Muslims, I think it is really quite accurate. This isnt to say that all Muslims think in this manner. Some Muslims will examine the evidence objectively. However, if a Muslim begins examining evidence objectively, he probably wont be a Muslim for long.
PART FOUR: Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on Mubahala
Since Mubahala is not a Christian practice, it is difficult to say what Christians should do when challenged to one. Nevertheless, a few things are clear.
First, the outcome of a Mubahala will probably have very little effect on Muslims. Of course, if a Christian who takes part in a prayer-duel suddenly gets hit by a car, Muslims will be sure to claim victory. But if something happens to a Muslim in the duel, reinterpretation is always easy. The Muslim who receives the curse could say, "Now that I have examined my scriptures more carefully, I conclude that only Muhammad could justly call for a Mubahala. Hence, I was wrong to call for one, and I must back out of our agreement." (This was the approach taken by Ahmed.) As for those Muslims who, seeing such an outcome, decide to continue believing in prayer-duels, they could simply say, "That Mubahala wasnt done properly," or "That particular Muslim wasnt a good representative of Islam, so the outcome doesnt matter." Either way, the outcome probably wont have much of an effect on people who are used to reinterpreting evidence.
Second, even though the outcome of a Mubahala will be unlikely to persuade Muslims that Christianity is true, Christians have nothing to fear from taking part in a modified Mubahala (i.e. one in which we dont have to call down curses on others). The God who raised Jesus from the dead is not going to curse Christians just because people who reject His offer of salvation pray for a curse. Thus, so long as the Christian isnt violating Scripture, I see no reason why Christians shouldnt accept a challenge to call God as a witness.
Third, while Muslims may challenge Christians to prayer-duels, Christians certainly shouldnt make similar challenges. Muslims call for Mubahalas because they have no real evidence to support their position. When confronted with the awful facts about Muhammads life, there is perhaps no other recourse than to say, "Lets curse one another and see who dies!" Christians, on the other hand, are not in the same predicament. We have the resurrection of Jesus to prove that Christianity is true. It was a sign from God, and all who reject it are guilty of rejecting Gods greatest miracle. Christians, then, should focus on challenging people to examine the evidence for Christianity, not on cursing people.
Since Muslims have no miraculous sign that vindicates Islam, they will continue, occasionally, to call for Mubahalas. If a Christian has thoughtfully and prayerfully considered the options, and decides to take part in a prayer-duel, I suggest that both parties agree that the following rules be applied to the interpretation of the outcome:
This last rule may seem odd, but careful reflection shows that it is quite reasonable. The Prophet of Islam himself laid down the practice of Mubahala. If he was right, then God will give a clear answer when two parties enter into a prayer-duel. Thus, if a Mubahala takes place, and nothing happens, it seems that Muhammad must have been wrong. This would be a reason (albeit a slight one) for doubting Muhammads authority.
PART FIVE: An Invitation to Pious Muslims
I entered into a prayer-duel several months ago, and I believe that God delivered His verdict. However, I suspect that many Muslims will say, "You survived the Mubahala with Ahmed; now enter one with me!" Since I think its a waste of time to spend the rest of my life asking God to curse me over and over again, I propose the following alternative. Allow me to first explain the situation.
Shortly after Ahmed backed out of our Mubahala, a Muslim named Naser made a similar challenge. I talked to him over the phone, and he asked me what I would be willing to put on the line for Christianity. I told him that I would gladly lay my life on the line. Several weeks later, he sent me a contract he had written. After making some modifications, I signed it and marked it with the blood of my right hand. The contract stated my beliefs about God, Jesus, Christianity, and Muhammad. It also stated that I invite God to curse me if my beliefs are false. This wasnt strictly a Mubahala, however, since I was the only one entering into it (Naser simply signed as a witness). Nevertheless, it seems that it is in line with the spirit of the Quran. Muhammad believed that God will curse a non-Muslim who, along with Muslims, invites God to curse the liar. I have signed a contract stating that I agree to these terms. Moreover, though Ahmed has called off the first prayer-duel, I havent withdrawn from my original oath. This means that I am currently under two separate Mubahala contracts.
Instead of numerous separate Mubahalas, I invite all of the worlds 1.2 billion Muslims to join together in prayer for Gods curse upon me. For the record, Ive had heart problems since I was ten years old, so it would be quite easy for Muhammads God, if he is the true God, to curse me. If Islam is true, then may the world know it through Gods curse upon me. But if God doesnt curse meindeed, if He blesses me insteadthen let us forever end this nonsensical notion that God will curse a Christian in a Muslim prayer-duel. Next year, Ill give a full account of everything that has taken place. Until then, I will continue to proclaim: "Jesus is LORD, and Muhammad was a false prophet."
1. Many Muslims would object to the phrase "Ahmadi Muslims," for Ahmadis believe in another prophet after Muhammad. Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Ahmadiyya sect. On the one hand, I know several Ahmadi Muslims, and they are extremely dedicated to the teachings of Islam. They wholeheartedly believe that Muhammad was a prophet and that the Quran is the word of God. They pray five times a day and fast, and they have a warm and friendly community.
On the other hand, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (the founder of the Ahmadiyya sect) made some of the most absurd claims Ive ever heard, such as his claim to be the second coming of Jesus as well as the Muslim Mahdi. Moreover, the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad make Islam even harder to defend than the orthodox view. Orthodox Islam is already fraught with difficulties (such as Muhammads violent acts and admitted susceptibility to demonic influence), but the Ahmadiyya sect compounds these difficulties by adding the outrageous claims of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad.
My final assessment of the Ahmadiyya sect is this: I agree with orthodox Muslims that the teachings of Islam preclude the rise of a prophet after Muhammad. Nevertheless, Ahmadis are extremely dedicated to Islam, and their doctrinal differences dont seem significant enough (to me) to call them non-Muslims.
2. Muslims are divided over the issue of Mubahala. Many Muslims hold that only Muhammad was qualified to call for a prayer-duel. Others believe that only groups of people may enter into one, and that everything must be in strict accordance with the practice as it is laid out in the Quran and Sunnah. Still others maintain that any Muslim may challenge someone to a Mubahala, even if it will be between two individuals.
3. There are, however, some instances in the New Testament where curses are invoked. In Galatians, for instance, Paul says that the false teachers who were perverting the Gospel were "to be accursed" (1:9). Why then, are Christians unwilling to curse others? I think the answer lies in the biblical Gods attitude toward people, and the effect this attitude has on believers. According to the Bible, God loves everyone, so it is difficult to ask God to curse people when we know that He loves them (see Ephesians 2:4-5; John 3:16; 1 John 4:10; Romans 5:8). In contrast, the Quran lists a number of groups who are outside of Gods love:
"Allah does not love those who exceed the limits" (2:190);
"Allah does not love any ungrateful sinner" (2:276);
"Allah does not love the unbelievers" (3:32);
"Allah does not love the unjust" (3:57);
"Allah does not love him who is proud, boastful" (4:36);
"[Allah] does not love the extravagant" (7:31);
"Allah does not love the treacherous" (8:58);
"Allah does not love the mischief-makers" (28:77);
"Allah does not love any arrogant boaster" (57:23).
We must remember here that many Muslims dont take these verses literally, and that there are verses in the Bible which, if taken literally, would mean that God hates certain people. Nevertheless, no one who has carefully studied the Bible would deny the fact that the overall emphasis is on Gods love for everyone. The Quran lacks this emphasis. Hence, whereas the Bible stresses Gods universal love, the Quran highlights Gods love only for those who do good. I suspect that this difference between Christianity and Islam produces a difference between certain Christians and Muslims. For many Muslims, there is nothing wrong with cursing enemies, since God doesnt love these enemies anyway. (Notice that verse 3:57, which says that God doesnt love the unjust, comes only a few lines before 3:61, where Muhammad explains the practice of Mubahala.) The concept of God in Islam may perhaps even account for the prevalence of terrorism against those who refuse to submit to Islam (whom God doesnt really love).
4. This rule would only apply to Muslims who believe that they may still take part in Mubahalas.
5. This may appear at though I am challenging Muslims to a Mubahala. However, as I stated above, I dont think that Christians should make such challenges. I am simply inviting Muslims to join together in prayer for the result of two Mubahalas that have already begun. I do this to allow all Muslims to play a part in this duel, so that no further challenges will be necessary.
Articles by David Wood
Answering Islam Home Page | <urn:uuid:bf511e9f-7ca1-4e1f-92df-1a2d7b44e462> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://answeringislam.org/Authors/Wood/mubahala.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974845 | 4,746 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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Cable lock for electrical outlet box Patent #: 4350839
ApplicationNo. 370264 filed on 06/22/1989
US Classes:174/135, Accessories174/153G, Grommets248/56Extending through plate
ExaminersPrimary: Askin, Laramie E.
Attorney, Agent or Firm
Foreign Patent References
International ClassesH02G 003/22
Foreign Application Priority Data1988-06-23 GB
DescriptionBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a cable entry device for an electric appliance.
Where an electric cable enters an appliance, be it a fixed appliance, for example, a domestic or workshop appliance, or an appliance which is moved from place to place by an operator, for example, an electric hand tool or an electrically driven lawn mower, it is important that the cable via the cable sheath should be firmly anchored to the appliance so that any force applied to the cable will be primarily resisted by the cable sheath, rather than being applied to conductor wires. Where the force is applied to the conductor wires within the cable, there is a tendency for the conductor wires to be pulled away from their terminal connections, with undesirable and possibly dangerous consequences.
In the past it has been customary to clamp the sheath of a cable within an appliance by means of a clamping bridge tightened by screws and bearing on the outer sheath of the cable. An alternative arrangement has been to locate the cable between a pair of cable grips which press against the cable and are inclined at an acute angle to the cable in such a way as to present a strong resistance to the cable being withdrawn.
Cable anchorages of these kinds are complex and involve a number of small components and do not lend themselves at all readily to automated production and assembly techniques. It is an object of the present invention to provide a cable entry device for an appliance in which the cable is anchored and which is simple, reliable and very readily assembled.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to the present invention a cable entry device for an electric appliance comprises a body and a protective sleeve through which the cable passes, the body including at least one cable grip to grip the cable so as to resist its withdrawal from the body and at least one retaining catch to resist withdrawal of the body after insertion into the appliance. Preferably, the body is in the form of a one-piece molding made from a resilient material and comprising first and second body portions incorporating the cable grip (s), a flexible web interconnecting the body portions, the web bearing the retaining catch (es) and being so disposed relative to the catches as to act as a spring for them when the body is folded at the web to bring the portions together.
The invention provides a cable entry device with a body through which the cable passes and within which the outer sheath of the cable is gripped. This body is then pushed into the appliance where it is locked in position. Such a body, as will be explained below, may be made as a one-piece plastic molding.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
The invention will, be not described by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a cable entry device and cable passing therethrough, according to the present invention;
FIG. 1A is a perspective view of a cable disposed within a protective sleeve of the cable entry device before the location in the body of the cable entry device; and
FIG. 2 is a perspective view of the body of the cable entry device in its opened-out condition and before assembly around the cable.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
Referring first to FIGS. 1 and 1A, a cable 1 is shown passing through a body 2 and is protected at its point of entry by a flexible protective sleeve 3 of conventional form and molded from rubber or other insulating material.
The body 2 is a one-piece plastic molding having two portions X and Y interconnected by a web Z and shown in its opened-out condition in FIG. 2. At the entry to the body recess 4 receives a flange 3A by which the protective sleeve 3 is secured in the body. A pair of cable grips 5 and 6 are formed integrally with the body 2 for gripping the protective sleeve 3 surrounding the cable by engaging the sleeve surface at an acute angle in known manner. A strong resistance to the cable being pulled out of the cable entry device is thus achieved.
The web Z has two legs 7, with an elongated aperture 8 therebetween and through which the cable 1 passes when the entry device and cable are fully assembled. Catches 10, 11 are molded as shown on the outside of the legs 7 and a further catch is molded on portion Y in the region junction of the web Z and portion Y.
To assemble the cable entry device, the protective sleeve 3 is placed on the cable 1 and the cable is inserted through the aperture 8 with flange 3A at the end of the protective sleeve 3 disposed within the recess 4 and the cable passing between the cable grips 5 and 6. The two portions X and Y of the cable entry device are then folded together, the web Z being sufficiently thin and flexible to allow folding, and are secured in position by locking tabs 13 and 14. The locking tabs 13 have lugs 13A which engage slots 13B whereas the locking tabs 14 have lugs 14A which engage slots 14B.
The cable and entry device are then inserted into an appliance, where the catches, 10, 11 and 12 engage the appliance body to prevent withdrawal of the cable and the entry device. The resilient flexible web Z acts as a spring to urge the catches outwards into the locking position.
A cable entry device according to the invention thus provides a cheap, secure and readily assembled form of cable entry device which will prevent the cable being withdrawn and avoid stress on the cable being transferred to the terminals of the cable wires.
Field of SearchAccessories
Extending through plate
Including provision to attach to stress bearing portion of conductor
Enlargement engaging means
Distinct cable attached enlargement means
Conductor gripped by or entirely within connector housing
Longitudinally divided connector housing grips conductor
Hinged connector housing parts | <urn:uuid:27bc1e11-2686-4dbc-b528-348ff716e8ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5012046/description.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933685 | 1,298 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Q: My husband and I are now married
in the Catholic Church. Our previous
marriages were not Catholic marriages.
Between the two of us, we have three
After his divorce, my husband returned
to the Catholic Church. He says that one of
his mistakes was not introducing religion
to his daughters, who are now 19 and 24.
They live with us but do not understand or
want to know about the “Catholic Dad”
they suddenly have.
Because of their questions and disagreements
with the Catholic Church’s
teachings, my 12-year-old daughter is now
questioning the upbringing that I have
been teaching and living as I promised
to do when she was baptized in the Catholic
This is perhaps our biggest challenge as
a blended family. Any advice or suggestions
would be appreciated.
A: I think it is important to begin
by saying that the “one-size-fits-all” approach does not fully respect
how a person grows in faith. True, the
object of our faith (God) does not
change, but our ability to understand
and appreciate God develops. Faith has
content (truths about God and revelation)
but faith is also a relationship,
which must either grow or decline.
Different issues become urgent at
various points in a person’s life. What
someone learns about God at age five
is true as far as it goes, but by itself it
cannot fully support that person’s faith
at age 12, 19, 24 or 67.
The best approach may be for your
husband to explain to his daughters
why faith in general and being a Catholic
in particular have become so
important to him in recent years—what
was lacking before and how his life
This may be difficult for him to do
without seeming to run down their
mother. He probably needs to speak
about his own blindness regarding faith
when the daughters were growing up.
You may be able to help him prepare
for this talk.
If their birthmother is in their lives,
he should probably encourage them
to ask her to explain how she came to
whatever faith she now has.
Your 12-year-old daughter has her
own challenges to faith. She is certainly
influenced by her stepsisters, but the
situation is not likely to improve until
she more fully “owns” her faith issues
and begins facing them seriously. Her
stepsisters’ questions and disagreements
are exactly that—their questions and
If you talk to other Catholic mothers
who now have or recently have had
12-year-old daughters but are not in
blended families, you will probably
hear some of the same doubts and
objections that your 12-year-old daughter
is voicing. Her situation has been
influenced by her stepsisters but was
not completely created by them.
You can help your daughter in her
faith growth, but you cannot do that
work for her. You might want to begin
by acknowledging that some faith
matters that seemed very clear to you
at age eight, for example, became much
less clear at age 12—and how you dealt
Your goal is not to give her the total
faith that sustains you today but to
help her believe that her current faith
issues are not insurmountable. In some
ways, doubt can be an invitation to
deeper faith. Perhaps that is what the
father of a boy from whom Jesus
expelled a demon understood when
the father said to Jesus, “I do believe,
help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Your daughter is regularly observing
how deeply faith is influencing your
life. You are probably giving her more
good example than you suspect. Being
ready to speak about your own faith
journey in a way appropriate for her age
is probably the greatest help that you
can offer her now.
Why Isn't There a Saint for Each Day?
Q: Although several Catholic Web sites
have a “Saint of the Day” feature,
the Roman liturgical calendar does not
have a saint for each day. Why hasn’t the Church designated at least one saint for
each day of the year?
A: The 2001 edition of the Martyrologium
Romanum lists over 6,500
saints, only a fraction of the “great cloud
of witnesses” mentioned in the Letter to
the Hebrews (12:1). All saints point us to
God’s saving love. Perhaps because the
saints are mentioned collectively in each
approved Eucharistic Prayer, the Church
has not assigned one saint for each day
of the year. Some days already have other
celebrations assigned anyway (December
25, for example).
Although the Roman liturgical calendar
does not assign a saint for each
day, bishops’ conferences and individual
dioceses can have supplemental
liturgical calendars, honoring selected
saints and blesseds. The general calendar
for the United States currently
includes Saints Elizabeth Ann Seton
(January 4), John Neumann (January
5), Katharine Drexel (March 3), Peter
Claver (September 3), Isaac Jogues
and Companions (October 19), Frances
Cabrini (November 13) and Rose
Philippine Duchesne (November 18).
Mother Theodore Guérin, recently
canonized, will be added to this list.
There are also days assigned for
four blesseds with a U.S. connection:
Damien Joseph de Veuster of Moloka’i
(May 10), Junipero Serra (July 1), Kateri
Tekakwitha (July 14) and Francis Xavier Seelos, C.Ss.R. (October 5).
When the worldwide liturgical calendar
was revised in 1969, celebrations
for several saints were moved to dates
outside the Lenten season.
Not all saints in the Martyrologium
Romanum are martyrs. Only six of the
18 entries for November 3, for example,
are martyrs. Some of those saints are in
the 12-volume Butler’s Lives of the Saints (Liturgical Press, 1995-2000).
Q: My husband and I are in our 80s,
both cradle Catholics and practicing
despite our limitations. We are now spending
a lot of time “cramming for our finals,”
so to speak.
One thing that bothers us is how God
can judge individually the large number
of people who may die in a single instant,
say during a plane crash or a flood. Does
each person appear before God at that
A: God is not limited by time the
way that you and I are. God is
limited only by whatever would contradict
what being God means. Thus,
for example, God cannot be a racist
because that would contradict what
being God means.
Over six billion people on this planet
are now alive because God wants each
of them to be alive. If that is true and
if God knows the hearts of each of
those people at every moment, then
God can certainly judge hundreds
or thousands of people who die in
The logistics of God’s judgment
have been a subject of speculation or
worry for centuries. That concern is a
significant part of First Thessalonians,
the first New Testament writing to be
Some Christians in Thessalonika
(northern Greece) worried that those
who were alive at the time of the
world’s final judgment would have an
advantage over the people who had
already died. St. Paul wrote: “For the
Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with
the trumpet of God, will come down
from heaven, and the dead in Christ
will rise first. Then we who are alive,
who are left, will be caught up together
with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be
with the Lord. Therefore, console one
another with these words” (4:16-18).
Salvation is through God’s grace with
which we need to cooperate. Your good
decisions and your husband’s are the
best preparation for your “finals.”
Q: Can saints in heaven hear our prayers? According to a former
Catholic, people are wasting their time praying to the saints. Is there
any help from Scripture on this issue?
Saints in heaven hear us but cannot answer prayers independently
of God. We do not pray to saints because they are
an alternative to God, for example, the way a child may
seek to obtain from one parent something that the other
parent has turned down.
We pray to saints because they are outstanding examples of how to
cooperate generously with God’s grace. Their example helps us do the
same. That is the spirit in which Chapter 11 of the Letter to the Hebrews
praises holy men and women in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In praying for saintly intercession, we are asking that the saints join
their prayers to ours. They encourage us to join them at the river of life-giving
water that flows from the throne of God (see Revelation 22:1).
If you have a question for Father Pat, please submit it here.
Include your street address for personal replies enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, please. Some answer material must be
mailed since it is not available in digital form. You can still send questions to: Ask a Franciscan, 28 W. Liberty Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202. | <urn:uuid:09ccbe14-d9ab-40c9-a572-619d88853c3e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Nov2006/Wiseman.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954911 | 2,088 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Indian Navy Breached by Chinese Hackers
Data from naval computer systems was uploaded to Chinese IP addresses.
The Indian Express' Manu Pubby reports that Chinese hackers recently accessed sensitive computer systems belonging to the Indian Eastern Naval Command.
"The Eastern Naval Command plans operations and deployments in the South China Sea -- the theatre of recent muscle-flexing by Beijing -- and beyond," Pubby writes. "India’s first nuclear missile submarine, INS Arihant, is currently undergoing trials at the Command.The extent of the loss is still being ascertained, and officials said it was 'premature at this stage' to comment on the sensitivity of the compromised data."
"A 'person familiar with the investigation' revealed to [The Indian Express] that thumb drives were found at the site," writes The Register's Phil Muncaster. "These were apparently infected with malware which, once placed in the standalone computers, covertly collected information according to certain keywords. These documents remained hidden on a secret folder on the USB until it was connected to an internet-enabled PC again, when they were sent to certain IP addresses traced to China."
"The virus is similar to one that attacked the US military's classified networks in 2008," notes Ars Technica's Sean Gallager. "Those led to a Department of Defense ban on the use of USB drives and any other writable removable media. The DOD partially lifted the ban in 2009, restricting the use of USB drives to 'carefully controlled circumstances.'" | <urn:uuid:89fa1134-5c39-4900-9132-fda756cd9437> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.esecurityplanet.com/hackers/indian-navy-breached-by-chinese-hackers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965077 | 304 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Human rights activist Marina Schuster speaks for Bhutto-Ispahani lecture series.
It’s not easy to ask for donations, but they’re the lifeblood of the University of La Verne, which can offer top-notch faculty and facilities because of them.
You get an e-mail from someone at the University Advancement office at your alma mater. Or perhaps a letter. Or a phone call. Or maybe all three. You know what’s coming: They’re going to ask you for money.
OK, fine. You had a good experience in college. You pull out your checkbook (or its electronic equivalent), make a donation, and that’s that.
Except it’s not. You know they’re going to ask you again next year, or maybe even in a few months. Sure, it feels good to help out the old school. But don’t they ever get enough? Why do they keep asking for money year after year? And don’t you wonder where that money really goes, and how it actually benefits the university?
“People think that donations just roll in automatically to institutions — especially the big ones, like USC, for instance,” said Michael Welch, Associate Vice President for Annual Giving, Alumni Relations and Advancement Operations at the University of La Verne. “Well, they don’t. People have to be asked. If people gave by their own volition, you wouldn’t need fundraisers. It takes a lot of time and effort.”
Housed in a small, modest building in Old Town La Verne that once served as the university’s health center, La Verne’s University Advancement office is where many of those calls, letters and e-mails have their origin, at least in a general sense. And, unlike the days when students strolled through the doors with a sprained ankle or in need of an allergy shot, the focus of those in the building today is on the health of the entire institution. Without them, the university literally would not be what it is today.
“Without planned gifts, we wouldn’t have the new Campus Center,” said Robert Earhart, associate vice president for University Advancement, referring to the recently completed Sara & Michael Abraham Campus Center that opened its doors in the fall of 2009, and describing one of the forms of donor giving the university employs. The lion’s share of the funds for the building came from members of the university’s Board of Trustees. But beyond that, donations had to be generated through old-fashioned fundraising. “Planned gifts played a central part in meeting our goals. And it provides undergirding for the future well-being of the university.”
Going beyond the checkbook response to a phone call or an email, planned giving can provide donors with an opportunity to give over a longer term — and it can give their gift a life beyond a one-time response.
Endowed scholarships represent another form of planned giving that can provide donors with a lasting legacy at the University of La Verne. La Verne biology professor and Natural Sciences Division Chair Robert T. Neher and his wife, Mary, have established an endowed scholarship to help students in the natural sciences. The principal is maintained, while the interest generated is used to help students with their tuition.
Still, don’t most of the University of La Verne’s funds come from tuition? Why worry so much about fundraising?
“We are a tuition-driven institution,” Earhart said. “Most of our revenue comes from tuition. But about 2-3 percent has to come from other sources. That’s where fundraising comes in. It may not sound like much, 2 to 3 percent. But if you think of your own finances, where let’s say you had expenses for mortgage, car payment, insurance and so forth totaling $50,000, but you made only $48,000, what would you not pay for? That $2.5 million is extremely critical.”
Ultimately, as those who work in the old health building will tell you, it’s not really about the money. It’s about providing the best learning environment for students.
“That’s what we’re about in the very best case, managing money to help change students’ lives while giving donors joy in making that possible,” said Jean Bjerke, Vice President for University Advancement. “I believe giving is a wonderful thing. We have a wonderful tradition of philanthropy and support for non-profits. I give to La Verne and other institutions, so I’m not embarrassed to ask. If I ask for a donation, it’s always to something I’ve made a gift to first.
“You have to believe in what you’re doing, and that has to come through. I love what I’m doing. I don’t mind asking people to donate because I believe in this institution and what it’s all about. I’m very motivated to invite people to give, but I also want to find ways to make it meaningful for them. When we were raising money to refurbish the Ann and Steve Morgan Auditorium (formerly Founders Auditorium), a trustee asked me if he could donate to the remodeling project. Later, he thanked me for giving him an chance to give, for the opportunity to do something meaningful for the university.”
As Welch points out, it is about involving those who were once connected to the university, or who continue to have something invested in it, to feel connected and involved in the ongoing work of the institution. “We say, ‘Here’s an opportunity to feel good and contribute.’ ”
It might help to know, when that call or e-mail comes in, that the size of the gift is not as important as the simple fact that you give. A foundation considering a contribution to an institution often bases its decision on the percentage of alumni who continue to support their alma mater — not on how big those donations are.
“To a large extent, our job is to communicate that much of what we have here at the university is made possible by the alumni who came before,” Welch said. “We try to get that message out in every possible way we can.”
For Earhart, it goes beyond finding creative ways to generate funds.
“What’s special about La Verne is that it’s found a way to make a liberal arts education available to many people who would not have had that opportunity,” he said. “Thousands of students have come here who probably wouldn’t have been able to go to college otherwise. The University of La Verne embraces them and gives them opportunities to develop personally and provide them with motivation that transforms their lives. People four or five years out of college come back and say, ‘La Verne changed me.’ Hundreds of people who come to school here are the first in their families to go to college.
“I feel I’m part of something special here. In a small way, I’m part of the success of those students. It’s like preaching — you don’t see the results right away. People sometimes ask me why I left the ministry. I don’t feel I did. This is another form of ministry, helping people to be something more than they would have been if not for your involvement.
“I enjoy my job. I’m not just raising money for someone’s salary. The gifts I help people make are helping perpetuate and sustain La Verne. People who make these gifts can really feel good because their gifts are helping sustain the University of La Verne and its concern for students.” | <urn:uuid:93f415b1-3820-4152-aaa2-3b51bf0381bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://laverne.edu/voice/2010/12/paying-forward-paying-back/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961276 | 1,669 | 1.53125 | 2 |
This is an important week in Iraq. U.S. forces will redeploy to bases outside of Iraqi cities on Tuesday. That means Iraqi forces will be in charge of security. But recent attacks have some questioning if this is the right time for such a move.
At least 80 people were killed in a recent truck bombing in a Baghdad market. The attack was just the latest in a strong of terror operations that has seen close to 200 Iraqis killed in June alone. They have called to mind a much bloodier era in Iraqi history--before the 2007 U.S. troop surge. Back then, al Qaeda and Shiite militias wreaked havoc across the country.
Things are different now. Violence is at an all-time low and life has returned to normal in many Iraqi neighborhoods.
Still, as the U.S. military prepares to hand security over to Iraqi forces, the question lingers: are they ready?
U.S. officials say yes.
"Despite the fact that you've seen sporadic high-profile attacks still taking place in Iraq, the overall security climate is a good one and -- and we remain at all-time low," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.
U.S. military officials say an upswing in attacks was anticipated in the run-up to Tuesday's handoff. They're confident Iraqis won't let al-Qaeda and other terror groups reestablish a foothold.
"When you talk to the average Iraqi, they're tired of al Qaeda at this point," said U.S. Army Lt. Col Samuel Hayes. "And they're ready to move forward."
The U.S. can move forces back into cities for security reasons if called upon by the Iiraqi government. But the plan right now is to continue to train Iraqi forces prior to a complete U.S. withdrawal in 2011. | <urn:uuid:9d300a58-10e0-4fcc-9782-f8d02444896e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2009/June/Iraqi-Forces-Ready-to-Take-Control-/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977737 | 376 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Enacted at the depth of a banking crisis, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 effectively turned the deposit insurance system into a privately funded, albeit still mandatory and government-managed, system. In the 10 years since the FDICIA’s enactment, the new system has worked reasonably well to preserve the safety and soundness of the banking system and to protect taxpayers from funding losses to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fund, for which banks are now responsible. Nevertheless, the FDIC has recently encouraged a reexamination of the current structure of the deposit insurance system to improve its performance.
Some of the changes proposed by the FDIC may actually return the system to one in which the taxpayer is again at greater risk for funding bank losses. Chief among those changes is a measure, included in a number of bills now pending in Congress, that would allow the FDIC greater flexibility in the way it charges insurance premiums on banks. In particular, it would alleviate the requirement to increase premiums as harshly and rapidly when losses drive the fund below the designated 1.25 percent reserve-to-insured-deposits ratio to replenish the fund within one year. But that would increase the likelihood of the fund going and staying negative and increase the probability of putting the taxpayer back on the hook.
A second proposed change would increase the maximum coverage of $100,000 per account. That is likely to encourage some depositors to become less concerned about the financial health of their banks and banks to take on more risks, which would increase the chances of bank losses and failures.
Last, the FDIC would like to see insurance premiums reflect the riskiness of insured banks. Although it sounds good in theory, this is one task that bank regulators are ill-equipped to perform, because the appropriate risk also depends on the risks imposed by the regulators themselves when they fail to act in a consistent and efficient manner in resolving troubled banks.
An implicit government guarantee of banks will remain as long as the deposit insurance system is government operated. For that reason, to reduce that guarantee, insured banks should at least be given a greater voice in the management of the FDIC.
Many of the proposed changes would diminish market discipline and encourage regulatory forbearance. Their adoption could inadvertently lead to a reversion to the pre-1991 system of almost unlimited taxpayer liability. | <urn:uuid:eff28066-cda8-4f2a-9daa-8d5886d4fba1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/fdic-reform-dont-put-taxpayers-back-risk | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960224 | 470 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Born in the Dominican Republic, Raquel Paiewonsky is a mixed media artist interested in the ways that our “primal” selves respond to and develop within constantly evolving urban environments. The abject is a large theme in Paiewonsky’s installations, which often display mutilated or ‘mutated’ familiar objects such as dolls, fake nails and articles of clothing. Reified body parts are symbolic of failure to adhere to social standards of ‘normalcy’ as well as the difficulties of identity building, due in part to residual attitudes of cultural inferiority in post-colonial regions as well as the oppressive nature of stereotypes.
As a result of this frustration, violence is also a prevalent theme. Severed limbs, such as the many beeswax feet hanging from pantyhose in Levitando a Solo un Pie (2003), dangle from the ceiling. Gravity plays an integral part in many of Paiwonsky’s works; it acts as punisher, rendering its objects immobile, unable to move forward (or backward for that matter).
Another installation, Muro (2009), features a wall covered in hundreds of breast-like sacks of different types of material. The sacks stretch toward the ground, reminding us of the effect of gravity on the body as we age. There is a component of horror to all of Paiewonsky’s works; removed from the context of the body, the sheer volume of ‘breasts’ heaped atop each other produces the same mix of attraction and revulsion that one gets when looking at, say, a photograph of the thousands of skulls stacked atop each other in the Paris catacombs.
Paiewonsky infuses ambivalence into all of her projects; the viewer is constantly caught between fascination and repulsion, wanting to identify the ‘parts’ that make up the assembled bodies yet perhaps unwilling to get too close. The mutilated bodies are rendered vulnerable, and they use this very mutilation to hide the secrets of their experiences from the prying gaze of the spectator. To visit the artist’s website, click here | <urn:uuid:ffe7536d-ff45-4815-bb43-32d644e742a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artandsciencejournal.com/tagged/nylon | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938889 | 441 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers (VaHomeschoolers) has heard from many Virginians who support the goal of creating opportunities for homeschooled students to participate in public school sports and activities. Below, you can read a sampling of what Virginia families have told us. Please email us if you’d like to share your story.
- Family of Teachers Supports Homeschool Access —Micah Fitz and Terri Erwin-Fitz, Bristow
- Stronger Communities, More Choices—Laura Baldwin, Washington County
- Boys Want to Play Ball!—Julia Thompson, Southampton County
- Daughter Needs Homeschool Academics, Dreams of School Sports—Annett Gilchrist, Chester, VA
- My Kids Would Just Like the Opportunity to Try Out—Julie Fowler, Fairfax County
- Staying Active as Part of the Local Community—Julie Canavan, Culpeper
- A Champion Who Can’t Compete—Joshua Pratt, Campbell County
- Not a Homeschooler, But in Favor of Homeschool Sports Access—Rich Osedacz, Sterling
- Teen Homeschooler Who Wants to Be Heard—Lily Garay, Albemarle
Family of Teachers Supports Homeschool Access
Our family attended one of the hearings in Richmond last year on the Tebow Bill and we were completely disappointed by the reaction of those speaking on behalf of the VHSL. Their hostility toward children who want to simply play sports was overwhelming. Ironic, considering the fact that they are an organization that is supposed to ensure fairness in sports for all student athletes.
We are from a family of public school teachers. The homeschooling parent in our family is a former teacher, her sister is a teacher–her husband is a teacher and football coach, and our grandfather was a teacher. All of whom support our decision to homeschool and participate in sports activities.
Most parents of children in public schools and coaches that we know are surprised to hear that homeschoolers are not allowed to play sports at public high schools. We support our local teams attending football games and other sports activities, seeing many friends from the community who many assume that since we are there, we are allowed to participate if we choose.
As we see it, the VHSL is a private, independent corporation that dictates to its “members” the rules of participation and who can or cannot access public fields and public services. How is that possible or legal? How can “public” schools and, therefore, “public” teams belong to a league that discriminates? How can they have a monopoly on all public schools in Virginia?
The VHSL continually points to “fairness” as a reason homeschoolers should not be included in sports activities. We want our children to work hard, to excel academically, and to be productive members of our communities. Our family has been a member of our Prince William County Community for 20 years. For 11 of those years we have coached, refereed, and played with and against many athletes in our community that, now, at the high school level we are no longer “allowed” to participated with; fairness is all we ask.
—Micah Fitz (age 14) and Terri Erwin-Fitz, Bristow
Stronger Communities, More Choices
All parents are raising children who will one day lead our communities to meet the needs of all of our citizens. To do this they must be able to know all members of their community and work together in teams of people with diverse beliefs, backgrounds and priorities based on knowledge and not stereotypes. We give up an opportunity to teach this to all our children when we have policies that institutionally divide groups of children into “us” and “them.” It seems inconsistent, unnatural, and unhealthy for a our public school system to teach the value of tolerating and embracing diversity on one hand, while on the other hand saying that some students can’t play on our team because their families have made an educational choice (what is best for them) that happens to be different from public school.
My child interacts with children of all ages who go to public school, private school and homeschool. All are from families who want what is best for their children. We respect their choices and applaud this priority. With so many families today struggling to do what is best for their children under difficult circumstances, effective policies need to facilitate options and innovation, not impede them. These bills represent an opportunity for children to learn to work together toward a common goal by capitalizing on what they have in common while respecting their differences.I implore you to not let this opportunity pass us by.
While the term “homeschoolers” may be efficient for policy discussions, please remember that we are first members of our community who just happen to homeschool. Many homeschooling parents are volunteers, coaches, and scout leaders who invest in the community’s children regardless of how the children are educated. We just ask for the same consideration.
— Laura Baldwin, Washington County
Boys Want to Play Ball!
My sons are 8 and 9 years old. They both have played baseball since they were 4 years old. Homeschooling was not our first choice, but now we all love it so much it is our only choice. But when it comes to sports, we have to take a pause on one dream to address another. They play Travel Baseball, Little League and in the past Pony “Rec” ball. They love ball, but after a certain age, their options are very limited unless they are in formal school, that offers baseball. I know very few kids make it to the pros, but why should they give up that dream for an education that is tailored to their needs? My youngest son is not even 9 yet and easily handling the 4th grade academic requirements, but emotionally he is still every bit of an 8 year old. But he loves to play ball!! Both of my sons know, at this time, in this state, if they wish to be “seen” playing ball they will have to attend “school” away from home. Not a happy prospect, but at this time they can’t pursue both dreams..
— Julia Thompson, Southampton County
Daughter Needs Homeschool Academics, Dreams of School Sports
I chose homeschooling this year for my 6th-grade daughter, Emma, for academic reasons. I felt that in school, Emma was losing her desire to learn, she was falling behind in math, and she was losing confidence in herself. As a public high school teacher, I understand that if students leave elementary school with these characteristics, many times they continue to fall behind.
Because Emma is homeschooled, we have to pay almost $100 or more for her to play any sport. I think if she is athletically inclined in a sport she should be able to try out for a spot on the team at our local school. I understand the objections to allowing homeschoolers to participate. My athletic director at my former high school informed of all of them. But homeschooled students should not be kept from playing a sport for their community school due to those who wish to abuse the system. Legislation such as this year’s bills (HB 1442 and SB 812) should be put in place so those parents and education officials who seek to game the system will not be able to. My daughter is very disappointed that she will not get to play for her school this year or in high school. This is something she had been looking forward to since she watched her older brother play basketball for his school team.
— Annett Gilchrist, Chester, VA
My Kids Would Just Like the Opportunity to Try Out
I have six children, all homeschooled, ages 8-18. Not all are athletes, but the three that are, are quite good! Eve, my 15 year old, would like to try out for volleyball, gymnastics and diving. Anne, 10, is a diver and gymnast. Max is 8 and plays baseball and dives.
We are asking for the chance for our children to try out for teams. We aren’t asking for special consideration. We realize that in certain sports like basketball and baseball, chances would be slim. In others, like swimming, track, cross country, diving, and gymnastics, where skills, times, and scores speak for themselves, our homeschooled athletes could be a great asset to the high school team.
— Julie Fowler, Fairfax County
Staying Active as Part of the Local Community
Our family supports homeschool access for two main reasons: one, keeping students active and two, mutualistic symbiosis. First, too often during these HS years the priority for exercise dwindles because of other responsibilities; however, keeping the children involved in sports and extracurriculars all through high school helps solidify the habit of being well balanced physically, emotionally, and academically. Who wouldn’t want their child well balanced and better prepared for the rigors of college or trade vocations after high school? Everyone agrees providing opportunities in sports and extracurricular activities to public school students is vital to their success; is that any less important for other students in the community? It shouldn’t be. Don’t be the one who discriminates between students. Make sports and activities available to ALL students in the community.
We hail from a small town, Culpeper. The high school years are challenging ones to find sports and extracurriculars for the homeschooled students in the immediate community to be involved in because there are such limited resources in terms of volunteers, field space, and league competition. Pooling what little resources we have together as a whole community with no discrimination as to school choice would be a mutualistic, symbiotic relationship. All community members would be able to come together as a team and encourage and support all students in their sports and activities. Both sets of children, homeschooled and public schooled, and their families, benefit when there is equal sports access, especially in small towns.
In closing, you will always find reasons NOT to move towards mutualism. We have heard about the administrative differences, the student work load differences, the fairness differences; but those can easily be worked out with a well balanced approach and teamwork. In fact, there is evidence of things working out just fine in many other states. Why not Virginia? Let us become a united commonwealth in helping students get active and stay active on public school property without discrimination as to school choice for our mutual benefit.
NOW is the time to show the students that we as leaders in the community are problem solvers; that we want our community to live, play and work together for our mutual benefit.
— Julie Canavan, Culpeper
A Champion Who Can’t Compete
My son Micah Pratt runs Cross Country. He is a member of the Peaks View Pacers Cross Country Team. This past season Micah became the fastest 8th grader from Virginia at the Foot Locker South Regional Championships. Micah and the Pacers run a full season against many schools, both private and public. However, they are not allowed under current law to run in the state championships because the state championships are sponsored by VHSL. Therefore my son Micah and his teammates are limited from experiencing the full potential of statewide competition and are not allowed to compete against champion teams from public schools, even though their parents contribute to the funding of public schools.
We live in Campbell County Virginia. We own a home in Campbell County. We pay taxes to Campbell County. Yet, we don’t receive any compensation from Campbell County or the Commonwealth of Virginia for home educating our children. Other families do. For example, my neighbors who choose to send their children to public schools receive the benefit of my tax dollars. So, on a simple economic level my family is receiving taxation without representation. But for me that is not the greater point.
The greater point for me is that there is a group of young, hardworking, disciplined, American citizens, who are discriminated against because they choose to home educate. This is wrong and should be changed.
— Joshua Pratt, Campbell County
Not a Homeschooler, But in Favor of Homeschool Sports Access
My children are not homeschooled, but I strongly support allowing homeschooled children to play sports in public schools. First, homeschoolers do not get a break on their taxes for not sending their children to public schools so they have a right to access some services provided by public schools—why not sports? Second, many sports programs within Virginia are pay-to-play. Allowing homeschooled children to play sports and pay the fee like the other students would increase the revenue generated. In addition, many schools cannot get enough players to adequately field teams. Allowing homeschooled children will help local teams fill the field. Overall there are many reasons for allowing home schooled children access to sports in public schools. The reasons for not allowing them to play don’t make any sense at all.
— Rich Osedacz, Sterling
Teen Homeschooler Who Wants to Be Heard
My name is Lily Garay. I am 16 years old, a high school Junior, and have been home-schooled since the 2nd grade. It was my choice and still is today. Not because my parents forced me or told me horrible stories about public school, but because I decided that I needed a different learning structure. I currently attend Albemarle High School part time. I attended full time for the 2nd semester of my sophomore year, but decided that I needed to learn differently.
On the days I don’t go to Albemarle I study driver’s education, write (I am currently working on a book), work on my music, work on my online/offline businesses, and do some intern work for two magazines. I also help out at my church and other local ministries. I am fully bilingual in both English and Spanish. Because of my music I have traveled nationwide and to Puerto Rico. Not only do I sing, but I do public-speaking as well. I speak at conferences or to children/youth wherever I am asked. Oh I also go to the gym with my dad! He says that he’s my “phys ed teacher”. I let him think that.
I would like to play basketball with some girls my age, but Upward (a Christian basketball team) doesn’t have a high-school program. If I wanted to I could enroll in SOCA or the YMCA, but being on a team that is more competitive would be nice. Even though I go to AHS part time I still cannot even try out for a sport! My parents pay the same tax as other students. The only difference between a public school student and me is that I have chosen to educate myself in a different way. I have learned a lot of things over my lifetime, but what I cannot seem to grasp is why I am not allowed to try out for a sport at my public school. Public. Even if the coach doesn’t pick me because I’m not the best, at least let me try out. Homeschoolers in Albemarle County are allowed to take music courses and other classes, but not allowed to try out for sports. How does this make any sense? I know that I am only one voice, but I am one voice that will be heard. Please pass the Tebow Bill.
— Lily Garay, Albemarle | <urn:uuid:98a722a9-a001-43a8-a350-7cd885b87d14> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://vahomeschoolers.org/protecting-homeschooling/issues/sports-access/stories-from-homeschooling-families/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9752 | 3,237 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Here at Knewton, we’re lucky enough to work with some of the brightest educators, developers, designers, and marketing gurus around. With so much brainpower floating around, it might seem like it should be easy to learn from one another. But what we realized recently is that while we want to share knowledge and bounce ideas off one another, often it feels like we’re all speaking different languages. We’re such n00bs when it comes to the other guy’s area of expertise that we don’t even know how to ask about what we don’t know. You know?
Introducing WTF Brown Bags. These informal lunchtime presentations aim to give team members a basic level of knowledge about… something. We’re talking simple stuff, stuff that (if you’re not in that particular field) you’ve probably been pretending to understand for too long. WTF is the Internet? WTF is a programming language? WTF is marketing?
We love our WTF talks. And then we realized: we can’t be the only people out there with some gaps in our knowledge base. So we decided to share them with the world outside Knewton, too. Welcome!
First up: WTF is the Internet? You think you know… but do you really? Knewton CTO Pete Miron takes us through it. Enjoy, and leave any questions in the comments!
WTF Brown Bags are curated by Sean Miller and Ian Parker. Video editing was done by Ian Parker and Justin Bonilla. | <urn:uuid:8267c3c0-315b-4f37-93a6-2c0cd94eaecf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.knewton.com/blog/knewton/inside-knewton/2011/08/08/introducing-the-wtf-series-wtf-is-the-internet/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932507 | 331 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Friday, June 08, 2012
How they've grown!
First morning in their new coop!
I have been busy this week putting together a new chicken coop for my little chickens. The once tiny chicks are now feathered and ready to be outside, if still only half-grown. I was more than ready to get them out of the cabin. By the time they are this size they are already masters at kicking bedding out of their pen and creating a mess.
The Rhode Island Red girls look pretty much the same, though one has been the "bossy hen" since she was 2 days old. The black sex-links are different enough to tell apart. They are a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a barred rock hen. You can see that one has a reddish "bib." Another has a reddish "cape," and the third has almost no red.at all. The Rhode Island reds are a lot bigger than the black ones, and I'm sure that's not because the reds are a week older than the black chicks. The black chickens are going to be medium-sized hens and the reds will be large.
So far, the young ones haven't figured out how to go up their ramp to reach the nice chicken house that is complete with nesting boxes and a roosting perch. They seem to love their extra space, and one has already found a worm this morning. Worms are like treasures to chickens. Whenever one finds a worm, the others all try to steal the precious worm from her. This results in chicken mayhem, with five chicks racing after the chicken with the worm while that one is desperately trying to keep the worm for herself. This morning the winner put herself into a corner to keep the others away while she gobbled the worm. | <urn:uuid:b9ea2e50-d535-4d6d-815a-8a0f23fa7077> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://roundtoprumings.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-theyve-grown.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979765 | 371 | 1.515625 | 2 |
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Reading support:This statistic shows the percentage of adults in the United States who used a computer at least occasionally from 2000 to 2010. In 2009, 78 percent of U.S. adults were said to use a computer at least occasionally.
More on Hardware | <urn:uuid:12cefe6d-435a-4c48-a9ec-7430d2cd7e29> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.statista.com/statistics/184400/percentage-of-adult-computer-users-in-the-us-since-2000/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937736 | 82 | 1.726563 | 2 |
A Reference Resource
Hershel Gober (2000–2001): Secretary of Veterans' Affairs
Hershel Wayne Gober was born in 1936 in Monticello, Arkansas. He earned a B.A. from Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific University), where he graduated with high honors.
Gober served in both the Army and the Marines, fulfilled two tours of duty in Vietnam, and earned the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldier's Medal before retiring in 1978 as a major. He was subsequently inducted into the Infantry Officers' Candidate Hall of Fame.
After leaving the military, Gober served as the supervising director of the Northwest Pipeline Corporation from 1978 to 1983 before becoming an instructor at the Junior Reserve Officers Corps in Arkansas. In 1988, Governor Bill Clinton appointed him director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans' Affairs, a post he held until he became President Bill Clinton's deputy secretary of veterans affairs in 1993.
In 1997, Clinton nominated Gober to become secretary of veterans affairs, but Gober withdrew his nomination amidst allegations of sexual harassment and remained deputy secretary. In 2000, when the job became available once again, Clinton again tapped him to become secretary, and Gober served in that capacity for the last months of the Clinton presidency. | <urn:uuid:ae831ad4-05ac-48d8-9e32-7138a470b3c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://millercenter.org/president/clinton/essays/cabinet/715 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969558 | 257 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Slam dunks and behind-the-back passes may make the highlights, but consistent, correct execution of essential skills will win more basketball games for you and your team. The NABC’s Basketball Fundamentals Video Series is a complete instructional clinic on passing, dribbling, moving without the ball, shooting, rebounding, and defending for players and coaches.
One of the most memorable NCAA tournament game-winning shots was made by Valparaiso University’s Bryce Drew in 1998 as the Crusaders nipped the University of Mississippi at the buzzer. In NABC’s Shooting Fundamentals Video, Bryce’s father and highly respected Valpo head coach Homer Drew teaches the shooting techniques that make such unlikely attempts possible. Drew’s teams are known for shooting good shots and making such a high percentage of shots that the teams are perennial conference champions and postseason tourney participants.
Homer Drew has been head basketball coach a successful collegiate head coach since 1976. He has been at Valparaiso University since 1988. In that time he has led the Crusaders to six straight Mid-Continent Conference tournament championships and five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances as well as five Mid-Continent regular season titles. In 1998 the Crusaders advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.
Under Drew's guidance, the Crusaders won 20 or more games for six straight seasons in the 1990s. With numerous successful seasons under his belt, Drew is Valparaiso University's winningest coach and has received the Mid-Continent Conference Coach of the Year award three times (1993-94, 1994-95, and 1995-96). The Crusaders led the nation in three-point field goal percentage for the 1992-93 season.
Before taking over at Valparaiso University, Drew rebuilt programs at Bethel College (Ind.) and Indiana University-South Bend. He was named the NCCAA District Coach of the Year in 1978, 1980, 1982, and 1983 while at Bethel.
Drew and his wife, Janet, reside in Valparaiso, Indiana. They have three grown children, Scott, Dana, and Bryce. Bryce is a guard with the Houston Rockets.
“These informative videos, endorsed by the NABC, teach the essential skills to excel as a basketball player. Both players and coaches will learn from this series. Lon Kruger, Barry Collier, and Homer Drew are exceptional teachers of the game of basketball.”
Gene Keady, head men's basketball coach Purdue University
“Basketball players never outgrow the need for solid fundamentals. Even the most seasoned coaches and players will gain new insights from these great technicians. The NABC's Basketball Fundamentals Video Series can help your team to the next level.”
Kelvin Sampson, head men's basketball coach University of Oklahoma | <urn:uuid:38936448-b14c-425f-b952-b4ee677aa60e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.humankinetics.com/products/all-products/nabcs-shooting-fundamentals-video-ntsc?ActionType=2_SetCurrency&CurrencyCode=6 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957752 | 596 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Ping Fu is the founder of 3D software pioneer Geomagic and a true believer in the transformative power of 3D technology. 3D Systems announced plans to acquire Geomagic earlier this month, and now Fu serves as the conglomerate’s chief strategy officer as well. Also this month, Fu published Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, a powerful, deeply personal memoir that chronicles her life in China as a victim of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a U.S. immigrant, and later, a successful entrepreneur, visionary, and technology advisor to President Obama. It’s an inspiring, moving book about personal resilience, the value of vulnerability, and the power of making. It deserves a wide audience.
Choose virtually any chapter of Fu’s life and it reads like an epic. Taken from her family by Mao’s Red Guards when she was just 8 years old, she was forced to live in squalor in a reeducation camp, where she had to care for her 4-year-old sister far from her comfortable life in Shanghai. For 10 years she endured hunger, physical abuse, public humiliation, loneliness, and a brutal sexual assault at the age of 10. But as the tyranny of Mao’s Cultural Revolution eased, she began to work in factories, where she learned electronics at a young age. Later, she was allowed to apply to university and was just one of a fraction of applicants accepted in a country that had banned academics for a decade. She went on to become the editor of a literary magazine, but was branded a counter-revolutionary because of an article published in the journal deemed critical of the Communist Party. Already blacklisted, two years later she wrote her senior thesis on China’s “one family, one child” rule and the female infanticide that resulted. Her thesis fell into the hands of the press and the story of infant deaths became an international outrage that exposed China’s human rights violations.
For that, she was whisked away to a stinking cell with bound wrists and a black bag over her head. She was released, but later told by officials that she had to leave China. She was exiled.
Leaving her family, she flew to the United States and arrived in Albuquerque, N.M. with just $80 and three words of English: “hello,” “thank you,” and “help.” From that point, she put herself through school as a maid and waitress, entered the then-new field of computer programming, and climbed to the top of the industry. Among other things, she worked on the team that created NCSA Mosaic, later known as Netscape. Ultimately, she founded her own company and rescued it from the brink of bankruptcy.
Whew. That’s quite a life, and as Bend, Not Break makes clear, Fu is quite a woman. Written with unflinching candor about her personal life, China, and corporate America, Fu’s strength seems to come from the words of Taoist wisdom her father imparted to her in the happy days in Shanghai before Mao. The advice is where the book gets its title: Bend, not break. It’s also clear that she’s a keenly intelligent, adaptable, and humble woman. The book reads as a series of episodes in which Fu tackles one challenge after the other. In spite of what are always long odds, she prevails again and again, even taking setbacks like her husband’s abandonment, low employee moral, lawsuits, and other body blows as opportunities to learn and grow. This perspective adds up to passages like this:
Life has been messy for me, as it has for most people. I have come to the realization that challenging experiences break us all at some point — our bodies and minds, our hearts and egos. When we put ourselves back together, we find that we are no longer perfectly straight, but rather bent and cracked. Yet it is through these cracks that our authenticity shines. It is by revealing these cracks that we can learn to see and be seen deeply.
In China, she told me, making and craftsmanship are highly revered, and under Mao, factory jobs were prized. Her experience working in Mao’s factories planted a seed in her mind that sprouted when she sought to create her own company. Rather than launch another internet-based business as was the rage at the time, she wanted to connect software to the physical world. That was her vision for Geomagic and 3D technology.
“I was a maker all along,” she says.
She believes that 3D printers are a revolutionary technology that’s even greater than the personal computer because at its essence, it is about making things.
“We all grew up making things. That to me is more natural [than using a PC].”
3D Systems’ moves to acquire Geomagic were too recent to make it into the book. But in characteristic candor, she says she was reluctant to sell the company, but investors wanted a payout and she felt the timing was right to merge Geomagic’s software with 3D Systems’ reach to finally realize her goal of “democratizing” manufacturing through on-demand, mass customization, and locally based production that can “unleash” individual makers and small and medium-sized manufacturers while large-scale manufacturing fades away. She writes:
It is possible to interrupt the cycle of painful and often shortsighted outsourcing that many people still accept as the the inevitable outcome of globalization. Instead, we will move increasingly toward a modern version of localization, with local production marked by a global interconnectedness and accessibility.
“I finally feel that is becoming real,” she says. | <urn:uuid:ef2c42e9-4c3b-49b1-ac3e-10ba80dd0d3c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.makezine.com/2013/01/29/book-review-bend-not-break-by-ping-fu/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979035 | 1,205 | 1.5625 | 2 |
What does the Mass mean to you? That's probably a tough question for many modern Catholics in this country. Is it an obligation to be fulfilled each week at a convenient time slipped in between sporting events and family obligations? Is it our one hour of spiritual nourishment and prayer for the week? Or is it a life-giving experience that helps transform our lives and make us ready to take up our Gospel challenge.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap, of Denver recently gave an inspiring and thought-provoking lecture on liturgy and the ways our culture and even our Church have, in a sense, watered down the "cosmic" element of the Mass, taking it farther and farther away from the celebration that the early Christians loved so much they were willing to die for it.
At a lecture at the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Illinois yesterday, Archbishop Chaput questioned whether modern men and women are capable of "real worship."
"We live in a society where the organizing principle is technological progress, conceived in narrow, scientific and materialistic terms. Our culture is dominated by the assumptions of this scientific and materialistic worldview. We judge what is 'true' and what is 'real' by what we can see, touch and verify through research and experimentation.
"In this kind of culture, what meaning can there be for the traditional Catholic notion that the human person is created in the image of an invisible God; that the person is a creature of body and soul, infused with 'the Spirit of sonship' through the liturgy and the sacraments?
"In practice, almost nothing of what we believe as Catholics is affirmed by our culture. Even the meaning of the words 'human' and 'person' are subject to debate. And other tenets of the Catholic worldview are aggressively repudiated or ignored.
"The question becomes: What implications does all this have for our worship -- in which we profess to be in contact body and soul with spiritual realities, singing with the angels and saints in heaven, receiving the true Body and Blood of our once dead and now risen Lord on the altar?"
The archbishop went on to outline four points necessary for a renewal of liturgy:
-- the need to "recover the intrinsic and inseparable connection between liturgy and evangelization"
-- that liturgy be seen as a "participation in the liturgy of heaven" in conjunction with the worldwide Church and communion of saints
-- the need to "strive to recover and live with the same vibrant liturgical and evangelical spirituality as the early Christians"
-- that liturgy is a "school of sacrificial love...We are to become the sacrifice we celebrate."
In what is perhaps the most powerful portion of his lecture, Archbishop Chaput talks about the significance of Mass in the lives of early Christians and in our lives today:
"I won’t take the time here to rebut these claims. The problem with all such nostalgic-primitivist reconstructions can be summed up in one thought: Nobody risks torture and death for a meal with their friends. And torture and death were the frequent penalty for being caught celebrating the Eucharist in the world of the early Church.
"There are countless stories we could point to. One that especially moves me comes from the year 304, during Diocletian’s great persecution. A congregation in Abitina, a village near Carthage, was rounded up. The account of their torture, written by a witness just a few years after the fact, is brutally raw and graphic. What shines out is the people’s Eucharistic faith.
"Interrogated about why he disobeyed the Emperor’s decree, a young lector named Felix said this: 'As if one could be a Christian without the Mass or the Mass could be celebrated without a Christian! … The Christian exists through the Mass and the Mass in Christians! Neither can exist without the other. … We celebrated the glorious assembly. We gathered to read the Scriptures of the Lord at the Mass.' "We notice in this confession the same themes we’ve been talking about. The Mass for these disciples is no mere meal. It’s a 'glorious assembly,' a heavenly liturgy. This liturgy defines their identity as Christians. And it also defines the identity of the Church; so much so that one of Felix’s fellow martyrs would confess: 'We cannot live without the Mass.'
"This is the kind of faith that should inspire our worship. And this is the kind of faith that our worship should inspire. Can we really say today that we’re ready to die rather than not celebrate the Mass?"
Food for thought this Friday morning. Read Archbishop Chaput's full lecture HERE. | <urn:uuid:b756c2e8-df3a-4f6c-8a98-76772fd596f5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.osvdailytake.com/2010/06/nobody-risks-torture-and-death-for-meal.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952925 | 993 | 1.820313 | 2 |
One of the good things of the peer review process is that if you publish, you’re eventually going to have to review papers for conferences or journal in your (perceived) area of expertise. Sometimes you get pearls such as “the resulting results of algorithm X are resulted” (true story), or “the dynamics of the attorney of yes no plasmodium” (also true), but sometimes bad science comes from the bad presentation of results.
This is also a (essentially true) story. So I’m reviewing a paper that proposes some kind of method for predicting the value of (some) parameter that minimizes some error function. The method is fast, but not analytic. The graph in the paper looks something like:
So it seems that the error is greatly minimized for values around 170. But the paper conveniently dismisses the real scale of the error in favor of some relative error. So the same graph with the (incomplete, but) now absolute scale now looks like this:
The geometry is the same, but now we know the actual scale of the “minimization.” We now know it’s not that impressive, but visually, we still get the impression that the minimization of the function using values around 170 is awesome. Already changing the scale somewhat makes it less impressive:
and finally, if we consider the actual scale of the change:
we see that… well… that was not a very interesting result after all. In all graphics, it’s the same series (I did not take the one of the paper, of course, but some random walk with similar properties), but the last graphics shows conspicuously the complete ineptitude of the proposed result.
Guess who got an F
So this week’s entry isn’t much of an entry, more a rant against people that can’t science very well, certainly a rant against bad graphs. I think one of the challenges (even once you do have good science/results, which was not the case of the authors) is to present your information correctly, that is, in a way that’s both informative, easy to understand, and, more importantly, not misleading.
Huff’s wonderful How to lie with statistics (at amazon) comes to mind, and I do recommend it, but I would rather suggest you first read Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, a really nice (introductory) book on data visualization. I must say that I have been more careful in the design of figures and graphs since I have read Tufte’s books. Some of the tips given are somewhat self-evident, but some are actually subtle; and one has to be exceedingly careful with subtleties. Reviewers aren’t always very subtle. If you mislead, or are not understood, you fail.
Often details that first seem inconsequential make a big difference. Let us look at this graph:
This graph in neutral colors is meant to convey that the method (whatever it may be) reduces the selection of classes 1 and 2, and favor the “better” classes 3, 4, and 5, compared to some unshown previous method. First, this graph renders very badly the fact that the sum of all bars is zero. Why? If you have a finite amount of items, you super-class some, and de-class some, then the net variation in the number of items is zero. Here, that the lower classes are negative and the higher are positive is to be interpreted as an amelioration. Out of context, it’s not much help. It’s a bad graph.
It’s even worst because the graph is entire susceptible to color-based interpretation. In red, it seems now so much worse, for no real reason:
…but in green:
it now seems so much better! Why? Because we are so deeply conditioned to interpret red as bad, danger, etc, and green as good, fresh, healthy, that the mere change of color of the graph changes its interpretation! Consider:
This one has neutral color, and we cannot really guess if bigger is better or worse. Coloring so:
makes it clear that higher/bigger is worse. Reversing the color scheme:
we get the exact opposite!
So to make a long story short, I do take care of having the right scale and the right colors to transmit the correct information and the correct intend, and so should you. | <urn:uuid:d7a5ba85-f153-4942-b5a3-8f566c720eec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://hbfs.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/bad-graphs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943828 | 948 | 1.507813 | 2 |
OXNARD, Calif., March 26 (UPI) -- United Farm Workers in California are marking the anniversary of the birth of founder Cesar Chavez amid worries about the future.
Thirty-five years after Chavez brought the plight of the migrant workers to the attention of Americans, many hardships remain, The Los Angeles Daily Herald reported.
Besides worrying about immigration reform, January's record-breaking cold snap destroyed many farm workers' jobs.
"Workers are moving to Colorado, to Kansas, because California is too expensive," Teresa Nava who has worked in the strawberry fields since she arrived from Mexico 18 years ago, told the Daily News.
"What Cesar Chavez did for us was all good," said a supervisor who identified himself to the newspaper as Javier. "But I don't know what's happened since. We hold meetings. We march and still the people are afraid."
|Additional Business News Stories|
NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) --Shale oil plays in the United States may be more attractive to investors than oil sands in Canada's Alberta province, a financial analyst said.
LEIDEN, Netherlands, May 24 (UPI) --With South Korea edging closer to deciding on a contractor for its $7.3 billion KF-X fighter program a European competitor is dangling a new carrot to its bid. | <urn:uuid:5d33c9c7-46f1-479b-ad9e-bdc3bf995248> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2007/03/26/Farm-workers-worried-about-future/UPI-28031174929049/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964694 | 275 | 1.59375 | 2 |
from the IL RNHA
Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. And Illinois has tried every bureaucratic avenue available to it, spent far and away more money on our students in our public schools than ever before; yet, our performance rates are suffering, our teen recidivism rates are rising, and our citizens are left wondering, "Don't our kids deserve better?"
Our kids do deserve better. And Illinois Senators have been working to deliver. First with SB 2494, which was killed last year in the Illinois House of Representatives, and now with SB 1932, Illinois students and parents that are sick and tired of failing schools and burdensome bureaucracy, will finally have a chance to exercise their choice in pursuing the most important component of our social compact - education.
SB 1932 offers real options for students in to escape failing schools through school vouchers. The bill, introduced by Republican State Senator Matt Murphy, is co-sponsored by many others including Democrat State Senator James Meeks, who believes that students in failing schools should have every opportunity to achieve a quality education.
The RNHA of IL supports passage of this legislation by the State Senate, and swift passage by the House. We also call upon the Latino Caucus to publicly endorse this legislation or enter into a public debate with our organization on its merits for Latinos in IL. Now is not the time to play politics with the hope we have for our children and our children's children. Now is the time to make a difference that gives Illinois families the chance to change the course of their children's lives for the better, forever. Now is the time to act. Now is the time to vote for SB1932. | <urn:uuid:229b6c2b-f282-4233-8d16-12db2281dd1a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2011/05/il-rnha-releases-statement-supporting-passage-of-the-school-choice-act.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967186 | 336 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Before purchasing a new property, buyers should have the property thoroughly inspected. One inspection that is standard is a pest inspection. It's recommended that buyers are present when the inspection is being done so that they can ask questions. Some buyers prefer to spend several hundred dollars on other inspections including structural inspections, roof inspections and electrical inspections to make sure that the property they're buying doesn't have problems lurking in the future. People who don't have these inspections done sometimes end up in long, costly lawsuits against the seller for the costs of repairs. The law states, however, that a seller isn't liable for problems that weren't known to them at the time of the sale. Since most homeowners don't normally have their property inspected on a regular basis, sellers often won't know about potential problems such as faulty foundations, which can cost as much as Fifty Thousand Dollars to repair. For this reason, buyers are encouraged to have properties inspected thoroughly before the sale is finalized. | <urn:uuid:cb071c73-b904-427e-8767-f39cf41999f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cw15.com/guides/legal/realestate/story/Property-inspections/XJiPL01FDkCdrWqkui6gFg.cspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985422 | 192 | 1.507813 | 2 |
ROWLETT — KMOV sister station WFAA has obtained a cell phone video shot by Tristan McKissick in his seventh grade history class at Schrade Middle School.
His instructor was teaching them about roping steer.
"He told me to stand here and take off running, and he was going to rope me," Tristan said. "So he threw it and roped me."
The video shows the Garland ISD teacher actually roping his students.
"He didn't pull or anything; he let go when he saw it go around his neck so it wouldn't hurt him," Tristan said.
Tristan and his parents said they're sharing the video because they want to show the teacher was just being creative and meant no harm.
"He shouldn't have done that, but he was just trying to teach them... to do something different, and I admire that," said Randy McKissick, Tristan's dad.
But the parents of a 13-year-old boy said their son was hurt in the exercise, and ended up with rope burns around his neck.
Most of the students thought the whole exercise was all in fun. But even Tristan McKissick agrees this was not a good idea.
"He probably shouldn't have done it, but he didn't mean to hurt anyone."
Garland ISD has placed the teacher on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation. | <urn:uuid:4db7117f-cd22-44cc-a076-5367ac6a60d6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kmov.com/video/featured-videos/Video-shows-Texas-teacher-lassoing-students-191152661.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.993533 | 295 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Kelly Elsten thinks there’s something odd with the city utility bills she and other Lawrence residents pay. And she thinks she’s found out about it the hard way.
By at least one measurement, she’s correct. After asked by the Journal-World, the city’s utility billing division determined that about 30 percent of all Lawrence utility bills have a late fee attached to them. That is more than two to three times higher than several other utilities.
Ed Mullins, who oversees the utility billing operations as the city’s director of finance, said the Lawrence numbers were eye-opening.
“It did seem high to me,” Mullins said. “I was surprised by that.”
Finding an industrywide average has been difficult, but the Journal-World confirmed the city of Manhattan has late fees on only about 10 percent of its bills. The Board of Public Utilities, which provides electric and water service to parts of Kansas City, Kan., averages 17 percent. Douglas County-based Rural Water District No. 4 has an average of 7 percent.
Elsten has a theory about Lawrence’s high numbers: Many Lawrence residents don’t know they’re paying a late fee.
‘A late fee is a late fee’
Elsten wasn’t quite sure what she thought the word “adjustment” meant on her city utility bill.
After all, the bill is for water, sewer and trash service. That trifecta probably isn’t an exact science. The water part involves reading a meter that spins around like an antique clock, and the sewer and trash, well, nobody wants to spend time thinking about sewer and trash.
But in October, Elsten’s city utility bill was messed up like bills sometimes get. It was showing an amount that looked too high, so she called the city. When she called, she wasn’t particularly concerned about the adjustment. It only amounted to a dollar or some change most months.
Then, she learned what it was. In the world of Lawrence city utility bills, the word “adjustment” means a late fee.
“I was livid,” Elsten said. “It is very unethical and misleading to have a customer pay a late fee under the name of an adjustment. A late fee is a late fee and an adjustment is an adjustment.”
Mullins said the city’s use of the term adjustment to describe a late fee isn’t ideal, but he doesn’t believe it is misleading to most people.
“I think it is pretty clear to most people that it is a late fee,” Mullins said.
But the city is hoping to change the wording in the future. Cindy Naff, the city’s customer service supervisor, said the department’s current billing system doesn’t allow for the word ‘adjustment’ to be changed to late fee without reprogramming the system. The city doesn’t own the system, but rather operates it under a license agreement and thus can’t reprogram it. But the department is hopeful of getting new billing software, perhaps by the end of the year, that would allow for the change.
Mullins, though, said he’s still unsure why somebody would pay an “adjustment” on a bill without knowing what it is.
“I think it is pretty common that if you see an ‘adjustment’ on your bill, and you don’t know what it is, you’re going to ask about it,” Mullins said
Three years of late fees
If Elsten — who has lived in Lawrence for 18 years — is any indication, not everybody does. By the time Elsten figured out what an adjustment was, she had paid three straight years worth of them.
Every month since 2007, Elsten had unknowingly been paying a 2 percent late fee. A simple solution, of course, is to pay your bill on time.
And that brings Elsten to the second part of her theory about the city’s late fees: People are getting charged a late fee when they shouldn’t.
Elsten insists that she’s been paying her city utility bill on time — and she points to documentation from an online bill paying system that she uses with US Bank.
Elsten says — and bank officials agree — that she initiated her city utility bill payment in a timely manner. Elsten admits that she designed her bill-paying strategy to have the money taken out of her account on the actual due date, but she contends she always gave the bank at least four business days prior to the due date to complete the transaction. The bank agrees with that assertion.
Because of a technical glitch that has since been corrected, US Bank was creating an actual paper check to send to the city each month. The check would be dated to be cashed on the bill’s due date, but the bank insists it was sent four business days in advance. The U.S. Postal Service estimates the average delivery time for first-class mail to be one to three business days.
The city, though, says it simply wasn’t getting the check by the due date.
“There’s no way for us to verify when that check was sent,” Mullins said. “We just know when we got it, and it wasn’t by the due date.”
US Bank uses an out-of-state contractor to process and mail the checks. The company mails in such volume that it uses a special category of first-class mail called “presorted first class.” The envelopes the checks are mailed in do not have a standard stamp, and also do not have a standard postmark showing when they were entered into the system. A spokeswoman at the Lawrence post office, said it would be difficult to determine when the check was actually mailed.
Terri Kaase, a manager for US Bank who oversees the online bill-paying system, said she’s confident the contractor was mailing the checks in a timely manner. She was seeking written verification of that at press time, but she said the company does thousands upon thousands of checks and that a problem with late mailings would have been spotted quickly.
“For the most part, the number of complaints we get of this nature are few and far between,” Kaase said.
$187,000 in late fees
Even if Elsten’s check is the one rare check that happens to get lost in the system, that doesn’t explain why the percentage of Lawrence bills with a late fee appears to be significantly higher than several other utilities.
Elsten has her theory about that too. She thinks the city’s utility billing staff gets swamped with checks near the due date and just does not get them entered into the system in a timely manner.
Mullins flatly disagrees with that. He said his staff processes checks the day it receives them. He said checks sent from these bill-paying systems often are more difficult to process because they don’t come with a return bill stub, and often the account number on the check is not entirely accurate. That means the staff has to look the account up by name, but Mullins said the city wouldn’t use that as a reason to levy a late fee.
“If for some reason we wouldn’t get to it until the next day, we would trick the computer to make it think we were entering it on its due date,” Mullins said.
Elsten even has wondered whether the city has a financial incentive to keep the late fee totals high. Mullins said that’s not the case either. In 2010, the city collected $187,947 in late fees through its utility operations.
“I realize that $187,000 is still a good amount of money, but it is nothing to run a utility on,” Mullins said.
The city collects about $30 million in fees through its utility each year. He said the city from a cash flow management standpoint has a much greater incentive to get the money that is due in a timely manner than it does to collect a relatively small amount in late fees.
“We would be much happier if everybody paid their bill on time than having 30 percent not paying it on time,” Mullins said.
In fact, Mullins said the high numbers have him wondering whether the city is providing enough of a disincentive for people to pay their bill late. The city currently charges a 2 percent late fee. That means on a $40 bill, the late fee will be 80 cents. That penalty is lower than in some cities. Manhattan, which deals with a similar college population and has only 10 percent of its bills with late fees, charges a flat $25 penalty for being late.
“Maybe our 2 percent is not enough to get people to pay on time,” Mullins said.
That won’t be the answer Elsten wants to hear. She’s been made financially whole from all this — the bank credited her account about $43 to cover the three years worth of late fees — but she still thinks the city has problems with its billing system.
“I just think it is misleading,” Elsten said. “They’re not telling you that it is late. They are telling you that it is an adjustment, and that could be anything. But the big thing is, I think there are a lot of them that aren’t late.” | <urn:uuid:dc4a6e89-0eb4-4ffa-b196-ca54abedad75> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/jan/30/city-adjustment-charge-draws-ire-resident/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975271 | 2,029 | 1.796875 | 2 |
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