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Every evolving romance encounters critical choices along the way. Here are some to be aware of…
In Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” the heroine comes to a fork in the road one day and sees a Cheshire cat in a nearby tree. “Which road do I take?” she asks. “Where do you want to go?” the cat responds. Alice answers, “I don’t know.” “Then it doesn’t matter,” the cat tells her.
Can’t argue with wisdom like that! Unlike Alice, men and women in dating relationships will come to several crucial forks in the road and it does matter which one they choose. Romantic partnerships encounter choices that determine whether or not they should continue on together. It’s helpful, then, for the individuals involved to be aware of decisions that will arise and make them clearly and deliberately. These will likely include:
Decision 1: Is There Enough Potential to Proceed? The early phase of a dating relationship is all about getting acquainted, sizing each other up, and assessing unique qualities. The whole point is to determine if you want to keep going out together and see what happens. Sometimes the answer comes immediately; other times it takes several dates. Sometimes the answer is negative: “I can’t see any reason to go out again.” Other times the answer is resoundingly positive: “Yes, let’s see where this relationship goes.”
Decision 2: Are We Serious Enough to be Exclusive? Eventually, partners will need to determine if they are going to move from “going out informally” to “dating exclusively.” It’s a solid step forward when the man and woman say, “I don’t want to date anyone else—only you.”
Decision 3: How Far Is Too Far Physically? Standards about sexuality range from very conservative to very liberal. The important thing is for you as an individual, and both of you as a couple, to determine your own limits for physical expression and intimacy. For many couples, too much too soon only complicates matters.
Decision 4: Are We Compatible Where It Counts? Do you and your partner have differing core values that would be difficult or impossible to reconcile? Do you have much different views on core issues such as spirituality, finances, gender roles, child raising, family obligations, and so on? Differences often create early attraction, but similarities almost always sustain enduring relationships.
Decision 5: Are We Willing and Able to Overcome Big Challenges? Nearly every relationship that moves from casual to committed encounters potential roadblocks, which could jeopardize the partnership. These might include: living a long distance apart, differing career paths, disapproving family members, the presence of children from a previous relationship, and so on. When such challenges become apparent, couples must decide whether they want to work through them or simply give up and move on.
Decision 6: Do We Have What It Takes to Get Married and Stay Married? This, of course, is the biggest decision of all. Even though you’ve successfully made all of the preceding decisions, don’t assume this one is a foregone conclusion. The keys to this decision are identifying the qualities you must have in a partner, and then having the courage to honestly evaluate if those qualities all exist. If they do exist, you’re blessed indeed to be able to make a positive, life-changing decision.
When you come to important choices on the road to lifelong love, face them straight on, with sharp focus and clear thinking. | <urn:uuid:45178c9d-7af6-41d1-9d62-e74290bc7cca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eharmony.com/dating-advice/dating/six-crucial-decisions-daters-face/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94703 | 767 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Rick Strandlof may have lied about being a decorated Iraq War veteran, but those lies are protected by the First Amendment, according to his attorney and a civil liberties organization.
Strandlof, 32, is charged in U.S. District Court in Denver with five misdemeanors related to violating the Stolen Valor Act — specifically, making false claims about receiving military decorations.
He is accused of posing as "Rick Duncan," a wounded Marine captain who received a Purple Heart and a Silver Star. Strandlof used that persona to found the Colorado Veterans Alliance and solicit funds for the organization.
In May, real veterans serving on the board of the Colorado Veterans Alliance became suspicious of Strandlof's claims, and the FBI opened an investigation.
On Tuesday, the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties group based in Virginia, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Strandlof's case attacking the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act.
John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, said the law is poorly written and should not be used to prosecute people for simply telling lies.
"You have to redraft the law to prove a particularized damage," he said. "If you run around Denver and yell out, 'I got the Medal of Honor,' you are guilty of the statute the way it is written."
In a recent motion to dismiss the case, Strandlof's attorney, Robert Pepin, wrote that "protecting the reputation of military decorations is insufficient to survive this exacting scrutiny."
Judge Robert Blackburn has not yet set a hearing on Pepin's motion to dismiss.
Pepin also wrote that his client suffers from bipolar personality disorder and has other mental health issues.
Rutherford Institute attorney Douglas McKusick argues that Strandlof's lies did not "inflict harm" upon the medals he lied about or debase the meaning of the medals for the veterans who actually earned them.
"Such expression remains within the presumptive protection afforded pure speech by the First Amendment," McKusick wrote. "As such, the Stolen Valor Act is an unconstitutional restraint on the freedom of speech."
The Stolen Valor Act prohibits people from falsely claiming they have been awarded military decorations and medals.
The act, signed into law in 2006, carries a punishment ranging from fines to six months in prison.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Sibert wrote that the false statements made by Strandlof are not protected speech.
"Even if this court finds that the Stolen Valor Act affects protected speech and subjects it to the strict scrutiny standard of the First Amendment, the Act withstands the scrutiny because it serves the compelling interest of protecting the reputation and meaning of decorations and medals," Sibert wrote. "Since the Act's prohibition is narrowly tailored, its criminal penalty does not violate the First Amendment."
Sibert also argued that punishing people for lying about military decorations does not chill the flow of political free speech or freedom of the press.
"However, his lying about receiving military medals, false statements of fact in an effort to increase his status and credibility, fall into the class of unprotected 'utterances' " that are not constitutionally protected, Sibert wrote.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:40a00c01-d0d6-40f8-ab39-750d9562fcec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_14226551?source=pkg | 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 | 0.956792 | 692 | 1.640625 | 2 |
My law firm is acting for a number of business clients who have taken the brave step of suing their bankers. Although there has been much made of the bank’s so called mis-selling of personal protection insurance, which is better termed as simple deceit, there has been little publicity given to the plight of what are usually small businesses who have found to their surprise that they have bought all kinds of weird and incomprehensible financial products from their bankers, usually as a condition of a loan arrangement, only to discover to their cost that what they have bought was entirely inappropriate for them of their businesses.
For too many years small businesses have looked upon their bankers as part of the advice team with which they need to surround themselves. Bankers have made many useful recommendations and their customers expect them to deal fairly with them, balancing the needs of the bank with the needs of the business.
In the fast six or seven years there has been a change in the relationship. The banks instead of sharing the same table as their customers have turned themselves into predatory parasites. They have, I have found from cases that I am acting in, treated their customers quite shamefully.
It seems to me to have resulted from the banks’ greed in trying to turn a profit wherever they can get it and no matter what the cost is to the business upon which they prey.
Under pressure from the various agencies supposedly regulating the banks, the banks are supposed to be rectifying the wrongs that they have inflicted on small businesses by selling them swaps, derivatives, and similar instruments. The common factors in all these financial products include
- The customer does not understand them but thinks that it is sensible to buy them because of his bank’s recommendation
- The customer fears that if he does not buy the product, then the request for loans will be dismissed and most small businesses do not have sufficient capital to work without some kind of bank loan
- The bank managers who sell the products invariably do not understand them. It would be amusing, were it not so serious, to hear any of these sales people who sold the products (often described as bank managers) to explain them in court under cross examination
- The products seem to be designed as a speculation on the basis of “heads I win, tails you lose”
- The auditors of the banks do not understand the value of these products that the banks have sold to small businesses, because they are usually sold with misrepresentation and the contracts for them can be rescinded if the small business takes the matter to court.
I would encourage small businesses to do this. It is expensive, of course, to bring a court action but usually the savings of a successful action make the risk worthwhile. However, the businesses must hurry and on the whole not wait for the regulator to rule. There are strict limitation periods in which to bring an action – usually not more than six years starting from when the arrangement was made and some remedies have a shorter three year deadline.
It is sad to see so many good small businesses being so badly treated by their banks. It can be a tragedy for the business concerned and it is certainly a tragedy for the economy of the United Kingdom because so many jobs depend on small businesses and so much economic activity is conducted by small businesses. I find it unacceptable when I see a small business fail because a bank wants to line the pockets of some employees with commissions and make profits from business that they should not conduct. It is a disgrace and although you may feel that the banks are strong and you are financially weak, if you have a good case it must be worth pursuing it.
We as a nation have suffered greatly from the misbehaviour of bankers, which has gone unpunished. It is time to change that. | <urn:uuid:02c272b5-3b22-4ba4-9591-44c932f19c61> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/bank-mis-selling-to-small-businesses-time-to-fight-back/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98557 | 761 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Elizabeth (Litwiller) and Jacob E. Schwartzentruber Family
Left to right: Moses, Jacob E., Clarence (on his father’s knee) Rachel (Litwiller), Catherine Litwiller, Elizabeth (at the front steps of house built for Peter and Elizabeth (Lichti) Litwiller – also see page 17)
Leah Litwiller and Aaron Wagler
Leah Litwiller married Aaron Wagler in 1897. He was the son of Christian and Magdalena (Zehr) Wagler. Aaron Leah remained on the Wagler homestead, on the North side of Snyder’s Road between Baden and Steinmann Mennonite Church. They were dairy farmers and delivered dairy products in Baden. One time Aaron told one of his friends that he was an M.P. When the friend seemed surprised, Aaron explained the M.P. stood for milk peddler.” Leah was a gardener.
Aaron and Leah passed the farm on to their son Eldon who sold it to his son Ralph C. Wagler and his wife Caroline. Board of Education purchased part of the northwest corner of this farm for Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School of the 1950’s.
Leah and Aaron’s son Milton worked on the Baden milk delivery and in the Baden Bakery as a boy. This was following many years employment at the Livingston linseed Company in Baden and in the Hahn Brass Company in New Hamburg. Milton was a councilor for the Township of Wilmot for several years. He was musically inclined and was the president of the Baden Musical Society about 1920. He played as an alto player with both the Baden Village Band and the New Hamburg Village Band. He was a volunteer fireman for many years. Milton’s wife Alice (Miller) was an active member of the Ladies Aid of St. James Lutheran Church in Baden. She enjoyed tatting and crocheting.
Elmina, Leah and Aaron’s daughter, was one of the first persons from this region to attend the school for the deaf in Belleville. She was there from 1920-1922.
(Excerpt from the 1981 Litwiller Genealogy and Murray and Mary Wagler) | <urn:uuid:74bfd823-97ea-475c-ba3f-b82a75d584e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mennoniteheritageportrait.ca/Report.php?ListType=Photos&ID=6500 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973184 | 473 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Father, Abba! How so much has changed! I am afraid that I am not new enough to follow any longer, not strong enough to fall forward. I am still only a Hebrew of the Hebrews, though like a Gentile of the Greeklands I speak this alien tongue, so that we all can know who You are and why he has come. Y’shua, Jesus!
I thank You, Father, for this Sabbath rest. I give thanks to Your mercy, that I have this bed on which to lie and take selah under Your wings in this long pre-dawn darkness of Shabbat. I am grateful to You and to the kind woman who opened her door to me, to us strangers, as we flee the wrath of antichrist and his unholy city. I have labored there long, Father, who knows my every act, word and thought. I thank You, Father, for counting me worthy to suffer for Your Name. This northern autumn’s days are so dark and becoming darker and the nights longer. Are these signs of the times, Lord? Now the beast’s tenth year is upon us, and my heart flees to You, and to a place of refuge, like a bird flies back to its mountain.
Yet I am troubled as I lie here before You on my bed, meditating on Your mercies and Your mighty works, for nothing and no one comes to us without Your will, without Your knowing. Who was he, that beautiful youth, one of the House of Israel, dark hair of head and beard lush and glistening, bright of eye, and amiable of speech, who greeted me on the road, seeing me, an old man no longer Hebrew-kempt, shorn of sidelocks, white mop of hair cropped as an elder of the Greeks? Who was he who with a smile called out, ‘Pou ypageis, kyrie? Where are you going, sir?’ stopping to greet me, as our opposite paths met on the same road? What could I tell him? I was doubly ashamed, as a Jew a Greek, as a Greek a Jew.
He was obviously a Jew, a lover and keeper of Torah, young and full of bright devotion, overflowing with love for fellow man, even for me. You can always tell when a man’s love asks nothing in return, like the sun he shines, like the rain he falls watering every field. He was a Jew, yes, but why would a Jew like that greet me? Like so many others, why did his tefillin not hide me from his eyes? His sidelocks not shield his ears from me? Why did he not take me for a Gentile, and save his greeting for his brothers? But no, he stopped and took selah with me, the two of us standing in the road, with my companions around us, wondering as was I, who is this man? At that moment, he heading into Rome, and we heading out of it.
‘Pou ypageis, kyrie?’ O Lord my God! What was I to say to him? Should I have told him the truth, that I was running away? That would be new to him, but not to myself. When have I not been running away from You, and much closer, from my Lord, Jesus of Nazareth? When have I not been stopped in my tracks by Your words meeting my fearful ears, yet coming at me just the same? When my brother came jubilantly bringing the good news, ‘We have found the Messiah!’ what did I do? Yes, I ran, but at first the other way. It was Jesus who had to call me to him and rename me ‘Rock’, giving me a heavy weight to carry to keep me from fleeing hastily. Yet rocks make strong foundations too, he said, even knowing me.
What was I to answer? You are always watching, listening. Even I cannot evade that knowledge. I could not lie, but could I counter with a question of my own? Unnerved by but still attracted to his friendly face, I answered, ‘Leaving the city…’ and then, ‘Say, where are you going this fine Sabbath eve? Should you be stopping somewhere soon? It is nearly sundown.’ I wanted him to know, though I do not look like a Hebrew, I am not entirely severed from Your people. Instantly my heart sank, ashamed of my cowardice. Here I was, a follower of Jesus, a witness to his resurrection, again denying him, today as always, when to speak but a word might heal my soul, and share salvation with this young brother.
‘Yes, it will be night soon, when no one can work,’ he responded. I was startled to the depth of my being to hear those words, for who but my Lord once spoke them, etching them forever in my memory? ‘But do not be anxious. Where am I headed? I am going to prepare a place for you.’ I looked at him more closely, my eyes poised in a squint as though peering at the sun. Who was this boy? As I paused to approach the answer that I was afraid might be true, he touched my shoulder quickly and, after giving it a firm squeeze and aiming a serious smile at me sidelong, he released me and continued on his way. The old man in me half-paralyzed stood up, ‘But where should I go?’ He called back, ‘Return to the throne!’
Now I am confused, Lord. O Lord my God, Holy One of Israel, have mercy on me, and reveal to me what I am to do, for dawn is breaking, and the sun of the Sabbath day is about to rise. Enlighten my eyes, or I shall sleep in death, and my enemies will say, ‘we have overcome him!’ Why must I always not understand? Why must I always be too late to grasp the Truth? Yes, I ran to the tomb and was bold to enter therein, weighing my faith against my doubt. Now that I thought it was all over, I was not afraid anymore. But what was ‘all over’? What part of me was ready to die with Jesus on the cross, to say with him, ‘It is finished’? Why not the whole man? No, the old man must run to his death, not from it.
Who was that youth, whom I met on the road yester eve? Who was that beautiful, handsome boy who wore his Torah-faithfulness so confidently and lovingly? He was suddenly there to meet me on the road. You placed him in my path. No, you placed me in his! Blessed be Your Name, Lord God, our God, Holy One of Israel, Most-High! …
… Lord of life and destroyer of death, Master, anointed One, why did you not tarry with me, as you did once with the brothers on the road to Emmaus, even just long enough to break bread with me? I know who You are now, my Lord and my God, I know who you are, but too late to fall at Your feet and worship You. Yes, Lord, yes, I love You, I love You, I love You and will care for Your sheep.
Get up now, my body, arise from your bed of remembrance, take up your cross and follow Him. Wake up the others. Your path is to follow Him on the road, on the royal road of the cross, no matter what it costs, for He has already paid the price, the ransom has been paid, your accounts are clear, you have been bought and paid for. Now, let us arise and go forth to purchase others by the Blood, the Blood of the Lamb without spot, sacrificed before the world ever was, before all ages, for the Life of the world. Get up now, brothers! No, we are not on the road to Ostia. We are not heading out to safety. There is no safety in this world of mere men, only in the city, the City of God, where we go, to return to the Throne.
All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:e873127e-130e-40a3-bff4-e7cf1c7208e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cost-of-discipleship.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982035 | 1,738 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Brown’s Adviser Plans To Ration Holiday Flights And Issue Personal Co2 Ration Cards
By Ian Drury
Lord Turner wants the Government to restrict the number of flights individuals can take each year
Millions of families could be barred from taking holidays abroad under a proposal to ration flights.
Gordon Brown’s ‘environment tsar’ is calling for limits on how many plane journeys travellers can take each year.
Lord Turner suggested that Britons might have to cut back on their overseas breaks.
He said the Government should urgently consider imposing individual restrictions to help reduce pollution caused by planes.
Lord Turner, chairman of Parliament’s climate change committee, said: ‘We will have to constrain demand in an absolute sense, with people not allowed to make as many journeys as they could in an unconstrained manner.’
His remarks will anger business and tourism groups, as well as infuriating those who make regular trips abroad.
The airline industry is also fiercely opposed to limits on flights.
But Lord Turner insists that the Prime Minister must take action to cut aviation pollution.
His committee is drawing up a report into whether the airline industry can meet a target of limiting its emissions to below their 2005 levels by 2050.
Under Lord Turner’s plan, the extra runway - part of a £9billion expansion of the [Heathrow] airport - would work at only half of its capacity in order to curb emissions.
Geoff Hoon, the Transport Secretary, has promised that the runway will be capped at 125,000 annual flights - fewer than the originally planned 220,000 - until 2020.
Families could be barred from taking holidays abroad if Lord Turner’s suggestion is taken up by Gordon Brown
The Government has already doubled air passenger duty to £10 for short-haul flights and £80 for long-haul journeys, a move which costs travellers £1billion a year. The aim was to make flying less attractive.
Last year, the Government floated the idea of ‘personal carbon trading’, a green scheme for compulsory fuel and air ticket rationing.
The idea, recommended by an all-party committee of MPs, was that every adult would be given an annual carbon allowance and a ‘carbon ration card’ to use each time they buy petrol, oil, gas, electricity and flights.
Anyone who exceeded these rations would have to pay to top up a ‘carbon bank’.
Officials estimated the start-up cost at up to £2billion, with a further £1billion to £2billion in annual running costs to pay for the 45million ration cards which would have to be produced and for the vast database to store the information. | <urn:uuid:4ecaa4aa-79cb-4f41-b343-d53d0e603538> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiseupjournal.com/?p=783 | 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 | 0.955652 | 561 | 1.84375 | 2 |
JOLIET, Ill. – The University of St. Francis (USF) is pleased to present the USF Latino Music Immersion Project, with activities to take place throughout February and March. Funded in part by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, this initiative will include three public concerts and five music workshops for students of Joliet high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools-- all showcasing music of Latin-American countries.
Latin guitarist David Burgess will kick off the concert events with a 7:30 p.m. performance and reception on Friday, Feb. 1 in the university’s Sexton Auditorium, 500 Wilcox St., Joliet. A world-renowned guitarist whose performances have taken him to concert halls throughout North and South America, Europe and the Far East, Burgess combines popular and folk music elements with traditional guitar styles, and blends his masterful playing with a fascinating narration about Latin American history and culture.
Over the past 10 years, Burgess has traveled extensively to Brazil and has explored guitar music from the country’s past, as well as many progressive contemporary Brazilian works. His Feb. 1 concert at USF will highlight the music of Brazil and some of the finest Brazilian guitarists of all time including Garoto, Raphael Rabello, Yamandu Costa and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Prior to the show, Burgess will lead a private afternoon guitar workshop for high school and college guitar students, focusing on Spanish, African, Indian and jazz influences on the music of Mexico, Central America and South America.
Burgess has won rave reviews from critics and musicians. The Greenwich Times stated that Burgess’ performance “was hauntingly beautiful, tastefully phrased with exquisite nuance and yet with an aristocratic understatement that held his audience spellbound.”
The remaining two concerts in the series will showcase the Ondas Ensemble (Latin-American music on flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano) performing music of composer Elbio Barilari on March 1, and guitarist Robert Gruca on March 15. Both of those shows will take place at 7:30 p.m. in USF’s Sexton Auditorium.
For more information on USF’s Latino Music Immersion Project activities and other performances, or to purchase tickets, visit www.stfrancis.edu/music-at-moser or call (815) 740-3520. Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for senior citizens (65+), USF alumni and non-USF students.
The University of St. Francis in Joliet serves 3,400 students nationwide, offering undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs in arts and science, business, education, nursing and health care and social work. For information, call (800) 735-7500 or visit www.stfrancis.edu. | <urn:uuid:61567a66-1d10-4df9-a4b4-59e3172ad369> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://romeoville.patch.com/blog_posts/university-of-st-francis-to-host-latino-music-concert-series | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939576 | 599 | 1.515625 | 2 |
JRuby is an open source implementation of the Ruby programming language that targets the Java virtual machine (JVM). It allows the popular Ruby on Rails framework to be used in a Java environment and interoperate with Java code. JRuby offers better performance than the standard C-based Ruby reference implementation in some cases.
Nutter and Enebo were hired by Sun in 2006 to work on JRuby full-time. When Oracle’s acquisition of Sun created uncertainty about the future of JRuby in 2009, they left the company and went to work for Ruby hosting provider Engine Yard. The two remained with Engine Yard until now. Alongside the revelation that Nutter and Enebo are joining Red Hat, Engine Yard announced that it has partnered with the Linux vendor and will continue to support the advancement of JRuby.
Red Hat jumped into the Java middleware market with its 2006 acquisition of JBoss. The company has become a major Java stakeholder and has made considerable investments in Java technology. This makes Red Hat a good fit for employing the leading JRuby contributors. The Linux distributor has a longstanding commitment to open development and will likely be a good steward for the project.
An interesting bit of language stuck out in the announcement. In addition to JRuby, the two developers will also be working on "JVM languages" at Red Hat. I couldn’t help but wonder if there is a connection to Red Hat’s intriguing Ceylon project, an effort by Hibernate creator Gavin King to create a new language that will run the Java virtual machine. Red Hat certainly seems to be interested in expanding the JVM as a platform. | <urn:uuid:f4370a0c-bf8d-43ae-b35a-500c95517519> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/05/red-hat-hires-lead-jruby-developers-alongside-engine-yard-partnership/?comments=1&post=22886659 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941207 | 336 | 1.84375 | 2 |
We’re excited to announce next week’s matching gift campaign with One Day’s Wages (ODW); a grassroots movement of people, stories, and actions to alleviate extreme global poverty. ODW promotes awareness, invites simple giving, and supports sustainable relief through partnerships, especially with smaller organizations in developing regions.
Beginning Monday, May 13th at 9:00AM P.S.T we will be raising funds for The SOLD Project’s Family Camps and Anti-Trafficking Awareness Programs. All donations will be matched up to $2,500.00.
The two-day camp offers parents and their children (primarily teens) the unique
opportunity to discuss points of conflict and collaborate together on solutions in a
supportive environment. Through culturally relevant group activities, families are offered
a structured place to intentionally connect with each other for, as many past participants
noted, the very first time.
Parents and children work together on communicating expectations and responding to
conflict in the Positive Discipline session. Speakers teach on how our behavior affects
others and the negative side effects of physical punishment. In the Breaking and Healing
session, the pattern of family violence and its seemingly endless cycle are explored. Both
parents and children are given the opportunity to discuss their family’s history, explore
what forgiveness may look like in their own homes, and brainstorm how they can each
help “step outside the cycle” of generational violence.
As ironic as it may seem in the sex capital of the world, sexuality is not discussed in a
Thai family structure, leaving children vulnerable in their lack of understanding about
their bodies and how to respond to touches from others that make them uncomfortable.
The consequences of little to no education in this area has disastrous, lifelong
consequences in Thailand when a lack of education and a need for income is coupled
with “opportunity” in the nearest city’s Red Light District. The camp’s anti-trafficking
portion discusses “body safety” with the children. From song-and-dance to role-playing
how to respond to uncomfortable scenarios to drawing body maps, the children are
equipped with an understanding about the individual rights they have.
We’ll be holding two camps (one in October 2013 and another in January 2014), each of which costs $2,500.00. Our hope is that at the end of this campaign we are able to cover the cost for both of these camps.
Between Monday, May 13th and Saturday, May 18th we’re asking you to donate one day’s worth of your wages. That amount will then be doubled, up to $2,500.00. 100% of your donation will be used towards Trafficking Awareness Family Camp.
Just one day’s worth of your wages will fund the awareness of a child at-risk. So please, plan ahead to give. And stay tuned – more information on HOW will go live on Monday morning.
Older generations like to bemoan younger generations for not being aware and not being involved, but we at The SOLD Project would like to show you that this isn’t always the case! We’d like to introduce you to some high schoolers who have taken it upon themselves to not only become informed about social issues, but to also form a club in which they raise funds and take time to educate their peers about the issues as well. The Girl Effect club, as they have dubbed themselves, recently became supporters of The SOLD Project. They are awesome and we are honored to have them in our corner. We hope you’ll enjoy getting to know them as well!
We’ve asked them to share a little about themselves, and here is what they’ve said:
What is the “Girl Effect” club? What are your missions and aims, and what are some things you do?
The Girl Effect Club is relatively new, only a few months old but it started when my friend [Rachel Ketola] and I [Kendall DeVries] noticed that there was a problem with the way that women are viewed around the world. The Girl Effect is an established movement that aims to leverage the potential of teen girls to change their social and economic dynamics by providing them with real, powerful and relevant resources. Rachel and I were very inspired by the movement and founded a club at our own high school to not only support women in developing countries, but to positively impact our peers. There is little acknowledgement of gender issues in our generation and we find many of our friends blatantly accepting degradation.
We also wanted to bring more awareness of prostitution, oppression in foreign countries, and the importance of education for girls around the world. Our mission for the Girl Effect club is to educate our school and community about women’s issues locally, nationally and globally. We have weekly meetings to discuss these issues and start each meeting with a TED Talk (they are awesome!!) oriented around women’s issues. By having both girls and boys in the club, we challenge common ideas about sexuality together and work to advocate empowerment for all. The ultimate mission is to shift people’s consciousness, inspire individual and community action, and ultimately, transform culture so everyone, regardless of gender, can fulfill their potential.
We also educate our community by holding movie nights. The first movie our club showed was called Miss Representation. We had a great turn out and plan to show a documentary called Rape for Profit at the beginning of June to raise more money for the SOLD project!
How did you find out about The SOLD Project? What prompted you to get involved in fundraising for The SOLD Project? How was the money raised (and approximately how much)?
We found out about the SOLD Project the old fashioned way, by searching the Internet! We just wanted a small nonprofit that we knew would use the funds to benefit the cause, and your site and cause appealed to us! It was part of our initial plan to put together a fundraiser to benefit girl’s issues, and when we found you, we came up with our fundraising plan and went with it! We sold different color elastic hair bands. The school absolutely loved them, our slogan was “Educate a girl, Change her world, Buy a hair tie”. We sold for about two weeks, and raised about $160, I know it isn’t much, but we intend to fundraise more!
What are some specific things, if any, you’d like to see the money go towards, and how do you see it aligning with your club’s broader aims?
I asked the club members, and they all agreed that it would be cool if the money went to girl’s education, but really anything that benefits the kids would be just fine to us as well!
Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to help! I am very passionate about this subject and other social issues.
Thanks to the overwhelming contributions of our fabulous supporters, we’ve been able to break ground on a second building at The SOLD Project Resource Center!! This has been a dream of ours for a long time now, and finally, it is becoming reality.
In this new building, we will have:
- two new classrooms (including a computer lab)
- a meeting/counseling room, to conduct meetings with the kids’ families & other visitors
- office space
- small kitchen/cafe area
With this new building, it frees up space in the original building, where the downstairs area will be converted to a library space.
Exciting stuff!! We can’t wait to show you what it looks like when it’s finished!
Thank you again to all our fantastic friends and donors. This would not be possible without each and every one of you and your support!
The SOLD Project has made it onto Girl Effect Headlines! The Nike Foundation’s philanthropic site, The Girl Effect, frequently highlights organizations that are doing groundwork to help empower girls and raise up entire communities. We’ve just been featured!
You can check out the article here:
and then, please, spread the word!!
Happy Thai New Year from all of us at The SOLD Project!
We at The SOLD Project are always inspired when young people take initiative and find ways to use the resources they have to make a difference. Sarah Desatnick is one such impassioned individual. As a Girl Scout, Desatnick is driven to demonstrate her leadership abilities and desires to work in ways to help uplift local communities. She has chosen The SOLD Project as part of her aim in this endeavor. I’ll let her tell you, in her own words, why.
Living in the town of Basking Ridge New Jersey, where everyone has comfortable houses and plenty of food, it made my heart break hearing about these beautiful children in Thailand who have nothing. I did not, however, want to just sit here and feel sympathetic. I wanted to help them receive an education and achieve their goals. I wanted to be able to say I helped make a difference in someone’s life. The fact that one organization, the SOLD Project, can make such a great impact on one community is unbelievable. I want to be able to make that type of difference helping one child at a time. Plus, getting to work with such role models as Rachel Goble is just the cherry on top.
My older brother, who is currently 21 years old, has a very severe disability. This certain disability impacts his ability to walk and talk, and he been in and out of the hospital his whole life. He goes to a special school that is a Hospital and Education facility. He has the support of our family and the help from the nurses and doctors. It does not seem fair that we can provide my brother the help he needs while these healthy children in Thailand do not have the help and support to even get an education themselves. I want to help change that. I want those kids to reach for the stars and follow their dreams.
Each pencil, backpack, or notebook I collect is one more step to giving a child a better education. With all the supplies that are donated, I will package them into the backpacks. Each child’s backpack will include pencils, notebooks, pens, and binders. My goal is to help as many of the children in these villages as I can. The SOLD Project, with help from others, is making a tremendous difference. I want to do all I can to support the SOLD Project and the great work they are doing.
Sarah, your work is invaluable and it is inspiring to see a young person such as you get involved in helping to improve the lives of our fellow human beings. Thank you!
When Zoey, one of our volunteers, mentioned last July how quickly the kids participated in her activities, it first caught my attention. As the year progressed, I began to see more and more how lively and free the kids were becoming, but it wasn’t until the Christmas party–when a quiet 17-year-old sang two songs in English by herself in front of a crowd of 200 people, and a 15-year-old with an obvious medical condition led several dances front and center, and when a young boy whose parents often let him know how little they care made friends with all the Singaporeans–that it struck me how much the kids have grown in confidence in the past two years. Where they were two years ago is like night & day compared to where they are now.
When I first started teaching at SOLD, I had all kinds of academic goals for the kids (based on ideas born of my own experience growing up in the U.S. and the requirements for success we tell our young, middle class, educated kids). Those plans quickly fell apart when I realized some of the basics I had taken for granted in my sheltered life were not so basic for these kids. Like the courage to try. Even an activity as basic as coloring was daunting to many of these kids who were terrified of doing anything, for fear of doing it wrong.
I started to realize that before I could teach them that holy grail of “critical thinking” I had to teach them something more basic: to believe in themselves. To believe they are worthwhile and that they can do things worthwhile. I have a theory, you see. I have a theory that in order to teach them life skills, I need to first teach them that, as human beings, they are worth having skills. Because why do we teach “critical thinking” in the first place, if not so kids can use that skill of analysis to protect themselves later in life? So that when a politician sells them an unbelievable story, they’ll have better instincts. So that when a trafficker comes to call, they’ll know this person is not their friend. We can’t tell them what to say and do in every situation life will confront them with. But we can arm them enough to be careful where they place their trust and to learn to ask questions, instead of following blindly. We teach it to help them protect themselves – but first they must believe they are worth protecting.
Last year went a long way towards building their confidence. This year, I’m continuing with that theme in their education this year, teaching them life skills that might be useful, but that also helps them see their self-worth and value as individuals and human beings, with the hope that if they learn to value themselves, they will be less likely to let themselves get into trouble. We’ll cover things like: how to maintain body health & hygiene, how to cultivate healthy relationships (both with family and significant others), healthy and honest ways to manage conflict in a relationship, and even one for our boys on what it means to be a man.
But before we begin with such heady topics, we started with one on self-esteem. We started with a trust exercise – you know the one where people pair up and you have to let yourself fall backward and trust the other person will catch you? We did that one. The kids were giggling and having a ton of fun, but it was challenging too, and it was obvious who had a harder time trusting. We had them take note of what went through their heads: how it seemed hard or impossible at first, but they had to control their fear, and once they did, they could do it. We said that’s like any challenge in life: your brain might tell you that you can’t, but if you can control your thoughts, you’ll find all kinds of things you can do. But just like how you had to trust the person behind you, you have to create a relationship of trust with yourself, to know that you can do it.
I think they got the picture, and the trust exercise seemed to be a good way to show them viscerally what we were talking about. We made lists of things they liked about themselves (with some kids, this part seemed like I’d given them a tough exam they hadn’t prepared for, for all the hard thinking they were doing), and lists of things that made them happy. We sang songs (Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All), and made a rubber band chain, with each link in the chain representing something that made them happy. We told them to add a link each time something happened to make them happy, and one day it could grow quite long, and if there comes a day when they don’t feel good about themselves, they can look back at their happy chain and remember all the things that made them happy.
Then we finished with a showing of the movie Brave. We popped popcorn for them, and they had a grand ol’ time. At the end, we asked them a few questions about what they noticed in the movie. One answer they gave was that they loved the relationship between the mother and daughter best, and they liked how the mother and daughter were able to solve their problems by taking the time to understand each other.
They’re smart cookies, these kids.
– Jade Keller
Education Program Manager | <urn:uuid:ee098d7b-7f58-4126-9a28-752d572e0e04> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thesoldproject.wordpress.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976021 | 3,367 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Late last summer, my mom saw an interesting spider in our backyard. We named it Charlotte. She lived in our backyard for a couple of months, and kept rebuilding her web whenever it fell apart.
Mom got scared of Charlotte though, because one day she saw her do a big bungee jump! Charlotte jumped down 5 feet to the ground and tried to catch a grasshopper, and then bungeed back up to her web! If you look at the photo, you will see the zigzag in her web, and this is what she used to bungee jump!
Charlotte was not poisonous though, and her variety is known as an Argiope or St. Andrews Cross Spider.
One day, Charlotte was gone, and I miss her. Charlotte was my friend. As you may know, I LOVE bugs and spiders, so I would have liked to play with her! | <urn:uuid:7e25e1b8-e5c0-4d0a-980e-febc457534b3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jbsbigworld.blogspot.com/2008/02/charlotte-spider.html?showComment=1203224040000 | 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 | 0.97682 | 182 | 1.507813 | 2 |
by Ben Howe
President Obama has been touring all over the midwest these past few weeks, giving speeches to crowds of fans, anxious to hear what’s next on his agenda. One could be forgiven for believing that these are less about pushing the president’s current agenda, and more about launching the reelection campaign, however this is a charge that the administration adamantly denies.
But there is a very simple reason that this is viewed as more of a campaign effort. Boasting bulletproof windows, five inch thick doors, and it’s own oxygen supply, the President has made the rounds for these speeches in a multi-million dollar bus, dubbed “The Beast” by it’s critics. There’s been no shortage of opinions from people and pundits on this bus and how having the President tour around the midwest in a caravan of cars and seated on a tour bus sends the message that he is on the campaign trail and using taxpayer dollars to do it.
It appears however, that this might not be the case. According to some sources he hasn’t really been riding these buses much at all. They say, he’s been flying them.
Apparently President Obama only rode the buses for a couple of miles at a time, spending the rest of the time flying from community to community in Air Force One. What’s more, the buses were flown from stop to stop as well. It’s normal practice for the President’s entire motorcade to be loaded up on cargo planes and flown from destination to destination. The buses were just a new part of that motorcade.
But why wouldn’t the presidential limousine have sufficed? Or one of the other armored vehicles that routinely travel with the President? Apparently because the President wanted the imagery of a bus. And buses are what he got.
So good news America! If these reports are true, then not only do you get the pleasure of having a $1.1 million dollar bus carting the President around to “enlist” voters to fight for his reelection, but you get to marvel at the hypocrisy of an administration hell bent on destroying industries with carbon footprints too large for comfort, while they themselves are flying entire caravans of SUVs and buses in giant 747s flanked by fighter jets.
All so the president can travel a couple of miles per stop with the image that he’s on the ground with the people when in reality, he couldn’t be more detached from them, their problems, or this continually declining economy. You couldn’t ask for a better metaphor. | <urn:uuid:2f1660c0-6684-4430-8a43-227d9bfcc3c0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://virtualanarchy.tumblr.com/post/9768049009/president-obama-has-tour-buses-flown-to-stump-speeches | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966007 | 543 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Until recently, I was a bit foggy on the ins and outs of digital rights management.
When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says something such as, “Basically, we are agnostic to DRM on the Kindle, and letting publishers decide,” I thought, what does that mean?
Here’s the answer:
Digital rights management restricts how people use digital media. It can apply to electronic books, or songs, or photos — anything that exists in bits and bytes.
Opponents say that the restrictions limit legal and fair uses of products — which makes customers unfairly subject to lawsuits.
(Think of how certain digital music is sometimes limited to play on specific players. If someone were to “crack” a song, to burn it to his own CD, and listen to it in his own car, he’d be in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Specifically, the circumvention provision says, “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work…”)
Yesterday, I spoke with Smashwords.com founder Mark Coker to learn more about the topic.
Smashwords.com publishes books that are digital rights management-free (DRM-free,) meaning that a purchased book can be downloaded to multiple devices.
The opposite of DRM-free would be a book that is accessible from only one device, or one that has limitations on copying.
The DRM on a book can be enforced using technology, or with a written warning against copying or reselling.
Coker founded his California company after realizing that a publisher can stand between an author and a potential audience. Using Smashwords.com, authors can self-publish digitally, and retain 85 percent of the profit off of each book sold.
“I was a frustrated author like many authors,” Coker said. “The publishing industry tends to move like a bunch of lemmings. It’s very fad driven.”
His wife was a former reporter for a soap opera weekly magazine. And, “five years ago we got the idea to write a book about some of her experiences behind the scenes of the soap opera industry,” he said.
After rounds with professional editors, the couple chose Dystel & Goderich Literary Management in New York as book agents.
“We did everything that you’re supposed to do,” he said. “We started shopping the book around. They weren’t able to sell it . . . Some of the publishers weren’t confident that soap opera fans read books.”
He saw that e-books opened the market for self-publishing.
But former iterations of e-book readers had failed in the 1990s because publishers enacted DRM that was too strict, Coker said.
Publishers feared that e-books would cannibalize paper book sales. Or, that people would copy the books and distribute them, thus killing paper book sales.
(It reminds me of the freewheeling free-music days of Napster, and the panicked response of The Recording Industry Association of America.)
Thus, when people downloaded a digital book, Coker explained, they couldn’t do anything else with it, such as transfer it to another device or a computer.
And when an e-book reader went out of business, the buyer could no longer access the book. (Wikipedia has a list of failed e-book readers here.)
But with DRM-free, which is the default standard for people who self-publish using Amazon.com, books can be replicated. (Amazon ultimately lets publishers choose their own DRM settings.)
Coker says that big publishing houses are slow to eliminate DRM on electronic books. It’s scary because the practice gives more freedom to the customer.
“DRM basically treats customers like they’re criminals,” Coker said. “In the end, you can’t prevent piracy of a digital product. If there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Without DRM, a company has to trust its customers not to pass copies of works onto friends or not resell them on the black market. But people who oppose DRM say that piracy would happen anyway, and DRM simply punishes people who want to copy a product for fair use.
I hope I’ve explained the concept. Let me know if you have questions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also has a page with more explanations and links to articles on the topic.
What do you think? | <urn:uuid:0d172b1e-1e42-4d93-9428-56a7bf190e07> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/2008/page/28/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957261 | 950 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Americans are a hard-working bunch and should keep what they earn. Our ideas for tax reform reduce the burden of taxes while ensuring governments have the resources to focus on core responsibilities.
A commission appointed by Gov. Janet Napolitano is looking at tax reforms and exemptions are fast becoming the most intense point of contention between businesses and their adversaries at the State Capitol.
The Citizens Finance Review Commission is scheduled to present its recommendations to the governor in October and is receiving strong pressure to eliminate various business tax exemptions and credits. Arizona's tax code offers credits and exemptions to dozens of business activities and transactions.
One of Arizona's most prominent conservative Republicans told her colleagues Friday it's time to consider new taxes to end the state budget crisis and avoid a political trouncing by Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Gov.-elect Napolitano wisely is appointing a commission to study the state's budget crisis. Gov.-elect Janet Napolitano is wisely appointing a commission to identify budget waste and make recommendations for budget cuts during this economic crisis.
Such a commission, if bipartisan and knowledgeable about the ways of government, can do much to guide the Legislature through the taxes and spending quagmire of the next legislative session.
It won't be easy. Most estimates put the budget shortfall for the next fiscal year at about $1 billion.
By Charles Goyette
Speaking of the legislature: You can call me suspicious, you can even call me unduly suspicious, but you can't call me asleep at the switch. The Goldwater Institute, that does so much good work here in the state, has put together a forum on tax and spending limitations.
There's plenty of talk in the national media about state and local governments dreaming up long Christmas lists to try and make a grab for their share of federal stimulus spending.
Increasing the federal gas tax to shore up the nation's bridges will not make American drivers safer. But better planning and prioritization of existing transportation funds could. The Transportation Dept. spends about $60 billion per year, and the federal Highway Trust Fund takes in about $40 billion from current gas taxes. There is plenty of money in this $100 billion pot to fund bridge maintenance.
The current national debate proves one thing: Policymakers know how to spend our money, but they have no idea how to invest it.
The good news is you have until midnight Tuesday to file your tax return. The bad news is that you probably spent an inordinate amount of time and money preparing it. But if you believe nothing can be done about this, you may be wrong.
An ideal system of taxation would be simple and transparent. Reasonably conscientious payers could comply with assurance that they had paid the correct amount. The tax itself would inflict minimal economic damage. Tax avoidance would have little impact on business and personal decisions.
Democrats are flexing their muscles. On the fiscal front, they promise to fulfill their mandate for change by prudent fiscal management and looking out for the middle class. They never provided much detail to war-weary voters during the campaign. But now its time to get down to business and make good on their promises.
After years in the red, the Arizona Legislature finds itself with a near-$1 billion revenue surplus. Will the good times continue to roll?
The capital gains tax rate cut, Arizona's robust construction industry and the strong real estate market all contributed to the surplus.
The continuation of good economic times depends in large part on Washington making the capital gains tax rate cuts permanent and our state economy remaining healthy. Arizona policymakers can help do their part by cutting tax rates in 2006.
In a recent article, a Republic business columnist argued that opponents of the Phoenix Civic Plaza expansion and university lab funding lacked the vision of Arizona political giants like Carl Hayden and John Rhodes, writing that "If we'd have listened to the naysayers, California would happily have taken our water." | <urn:uuid:50f24b12-201e-4c8b-bf87-124e4b433f44> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goldwaterinstitute.org/tax-reform-0?page=12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950477 | 794 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Tangled Web: The Corporate Privacy Battle
CNBC Media and Entertainment Reporter
Tech and media giants face a delicate balance between privacy and profits. They rely on consumers' personal information to grow revenue, but if consumers don't feel safe — or if their data is stolen — that's a major problem. Personal information is incredibly valuable for targeting ads, so the stakes are certainly high. The question is how companies can manage and access that data without violating privacy.
A full 88 percent of companies polled by Forrester say that data protection is their top priority. And privacy — a key component of overall security spending — is growing annually. Forrester analyst Khalid Kark estimates that tech companies spend about half of one percent of their revenue on security, and about half of that on privacy-related technologies and practices. Based on these estimates, Google should spend roughly $50 million spend on privacy each year, though the company doesn't break out that spending.
Google says it's doing more than legally required to protect privacy as it faces fire for its controversial "Street View" cameras. The latest criticism comes from Germany, where Google will introduce mapping for 20 cities before the end of the year. Google is working hard to making this work — it introduced an online tool for Germans to remove their homes from "Street View" maps.
Google began targeting ads based on behavior last year, which helped grow Google's Ad Sense platform 23 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. But Google, careful not to use consumers data against their will, at the same time launched new tools for consumers. "Ad Preferences Manager" and "Google Dashboard" allow users to dictate exactly how Google can use search history and the like. "Data Liberation Front" literally "liberates" your data from Google to your computer hard drive.
- First Story in Series: Businesses Mine Consumer Data
- Second Story in Series: Lawmakers Battle Tech Companies
The problem? Critics say Google's choices are confusing, the same criticism lobbed at Facebook, when a new 'Like' button prompted many to share with the whole web, not just a circle of friends. CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to growing outrage by overhauling privacy settings in May. Facebook says it devotes hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and manpower to addressing privacy concerns. Clear privacy settings are more important than ever as Facebook moves to introduce a location-component.
Opt-in seems to be the strategy for companies to manage privacy concerns around location. Twitter has always been an open platform-- just a tiny percent of users ask that their Tweets remain private. But when it added location tagging in March, Twitter asked users to opt in from each of their devices. And even if consumers are asked to think twice before agreeing to disclose their location, people don't always realize the potential danger of all those personal disclosures. Tagging a tweet about leaving home on vacation has even invited robberies.
Companies have their hands full, but at the end of the day a lot of responsibility lies with consumers. The question is whether they have the education and tools to protect themselves.
Look for reports from Julia Boostin, Jon Fortt, and Hampton Pearson, Wednesday August 18 through Friday August 20—part of CNBC's special series "Tangled Web: Profits & Privacy."
Questions? Comments? MediaMoney@cnbc.com | <urn:uuid:fb34692e-ae5c-46b4-b177-d9218442abb9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/38760225 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943624 | 679 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The first organ that develops in the womb is the heart. With all our science we still do not understand exactly what animates its beat. But we do know there is a mysterious force that animates life itself. If you sit quietly in nature you can feel that force. Call it what you will, but it is the life force that animates your heart, which in turn animates your body by flowing oxygenated blood through your veins.
When we are unhappy it seems to me that we are out of rhythm with the flow and beat of life itself. While this force continues to animate us, we put our attention on our thoughts about what has happened and what might happen. Placing our consciousness on these thoughts for too long begins to disconnect us from the life force, and often leads to high levels of stress causing heart attacks, sudden unnatural death, and all manner of illness. We stop dancing to the rhythm of life, which is always there, and our entire system starts to fall apart, as we unplug from our power source. It is a natural warning to get back to the dance of life.
So when you are feeling stressed, remember the life force is always present, bringing you and everything around you to life. It is creating a beautiful diverse array of creation. Do whatever helps you let go of the thinking that is creating your stress, and use your heart to tune yourself with the rhythm and flow of life itself. Let your heart become a tuning fork for the heart beat of life, and like a runner whose breathing and heartbeat synchronizes with the body, you will feel a surge of natural energy.
Follow Paul David Walker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PaulDavidWalker | <urn:uuid:538850b0-5023-401e-b3b7-3689db47de5a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-david-walker/heartbeat-of-life_b_244695.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950005 | 344 | 1.835938 | 2 |
My daughter and I were sitting out on the front porch with the dog at our feet when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed them — silhouettes soaring overhead against the backdrop of fading blue sky, their bent wings trembling in the clear air of eventide.
“Nighthawks!” I whispered, pointing out the darting forms.
“Look at all of them,” my daughter said. “There must be ten or twelve at least.”
“More than that,” I mused. “Maybe twenty.”
We left the comfort of the chairs and descended to the front walk. The sky was full of them, flitting back and forth, their white wing bars flashing in the evening sunlight.
“What are they doing?”
“Feeding, I imagine.”
“I didn’t know insects flew that high.”
We watched their aerial acrobatics for fifteen minutes before they soared off, still pursuing their invisible prey.
“I’ve never seen so many at one time before.”
“I have — in springtime, above the river before it drops into the gorge. They’re probably preparing for the fall migration. Soon the hummingbirds and hawks will follow.”
Early signs of autumn amidst the close fading days of summer. | <urn:uuid:0c26c0c9-36c6-4b95-9865-a61688205635> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://briantmaurer.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/an-aerial-dance-at-eventide/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948228 | 292 | 1.804688 | 2 |
LSA flight into IMC to be prohibited
Proposals under consideration by ASTM committees for light sport aircraft (LSAs) could ban flight in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) for future special light sport aircraft (S-LSAs) until such time as ASTM reaches a consensus on standards for IFR aircraft. The prohibition could come by the end of the year. However, it is important to note that the aircraft could still be used in VMC for IFR flight training.
The ASTM committee for LSA will require consumer notification that the aircraft does not comply with any design standards for operation in IMC. It is the FAA that requires the LSA to comply with such standards. The required notification highlights that no design standards have ever been developed for LSA operations in instrument conditions.
Pilots will still be able to train for an instrument rating in appropriately equipped S-LSAs and file IFR flight plans, as long as they remain in VMC.
ASTM’s IFR subcommittee members have been unable to agree on design standards for LSAs used in actual instrument weather, so the placarding would not be required if the aircraft complied with, and the manufacturer declared agreement to, any FAA or future ASTM design standards for aircraft to be operated in IMC.
Until that day comes, LSAs would carry a placard saying flight into IMC is prohibited. Again, the placard could be removed if the manufacturer of the aircraft declared that the aircraft was in compliance with design standards, once consensus is found, for aircraft approved to operate in IMC. Regardless, no flight under IFR is allowed—before or after the placard—if the manufacturer does not permit it.
“None of this affects night flying,” said Dan Johnson of bydanjohnson.com. Johnson is a pioneer in the promotion of the light sport category.
Any LSA now approved for IFR flight will continue to be capable of entering instrument conditions, as long as the pilot is also instrument rated and the airplane is suitably equipped, including instrumentation and powerplant. Such aircraft can also be used for IFR training.
“This is an effort to ensure that the consumer and operators of these aircraft are aware of what meteorological conditions were considered in the design of the LSA,” Johnson said. “If there is no [IFR] standard, then selling an LSA as IMC capable is foolhardy, because how are you going to defend that later? Until an IFR standard is done, ASTM wants to issue a placard that says ‘no IMC.’”
Additionally, any manufacturer can ban IMC flight regardless of the ASTM standards. If the manufacturer wants to sell an IFR-capable airplane that uses a Rotax engine, then a certified Rotax engine must be used. That will increase the cost of the aircraft by approximately $10,000. At the current time, there is a lack of agreement within both the FAA and ASTM as to whether LSAs should be allowed into IMC weather. Although ASTM sets standards for LSAs, the FAA must still accept them.
September 3, 2010 | <urn:uuid:17ab10fa-9e6d-4e5b-a9d8-90ff1e42a1b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2010/100903lsa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96627 | 659 | 1.703125 | 2 |
TWO people died and seven others were injured at noon yesterday in a chemical plant blast in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
A preliminary investigation showed coal gas leaked at a Hechi Chemical Industrial Group Company purification workshop in Hechi City and triggered the deadly blast, Xinhua news agency reported.
Witnesses reported seeing body parts at the scene. Rescuers said the huge blast smashed the windows of a five-story building, heavily damaged two vehicles parked nearby and lifted 10 iron sheets off the factory's roof.
The injured were taken to a local hospital for treatment and their injuries are not life-threatening, said Li Chunqi, deputy general manager of the company. No one was found to be trapped inside the factory.
An investigation is under way but officials said there is no indication that the environment in the area was contaminated.
The company, a subsidiary of the state-owned China National Chemical Corporation, or ChemChina, mainly produces fertilizer with an annual production value of 800 million yuan (US$127 million), according to information on the company's website.
News we recommend | <urn:uuid:9262c7a8-b164-43fc-b030-932d889a61b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://english.people.com.cn/90882/7964198.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952628 | 225 | 1.664063 | 2 |
We cannot let the government desire to sabotage us allow us to become as intolerant and prejudiced as they are!!! Since the beginning of Occupy, many of us experienced activists have been concerned about the presence of undercover officers and the use of COINTELPRO-style methods to divide and coquer us.
It may be no strange coincidence that just as the Occupy movement is consolidating around the principle of non-violence--something we women are naturally good at--International Women's Day has arrived. LET'S SHOW SOME SOLIDARITY AND ATTEND THESE ACTIONS EN MASSE (Some of them overlap on March 8th, so try to attend some of both!):
WED., FEBRUARY 29TH: 6:30 pm WOMEN OCCUPY/CODEPINK 3/8 COSTUMING 2010 LINDEN, VENICE 90291
For eternity, people who were opposed to their governments or oppressors have united against them. In a democracy, we are theoretically allowed to peacefully throw off an unwanted government by voting them out. However, most of us of any experience or knowledge of our vertical political process in the U.S. know that in our country, the political process is rigged against the people. | <urn:uuid:bcbe1252-f67b-488b-8403-44bd1cdeffdf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://occupylosangeles.org/?q=blog/2210&page=26 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975635 | 254 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Lucinda Riley's latest novel 'The Light Behind the Window' is an entertaining dual time frame novel set in the 1990s and the 1940s. In the late 1990s, in the south of France, we meet Emilie de la Martinieres, an attractive, but naïve young woman from a wealthy, aristocratic family, whose sophisticated and emotionally distant mother has just died. Although not close to her mother, Emilie feels her loss, especially as she is now the sole surviving member of the de la Martinieres family and she is unsure about what to do with the beautiful, but crumbling family chateau and the vineyard she has inherited. Should she sell, or should she start to renovate the chateau with the proceeds of her inheritance? While trying to decide what to do with her life, Emilie, who is at a very low ebb, meets Sebastian Carruthers, a charming and seemingly kind Englishman who is keen to take charge and help Emilie to make decisions. Emilie quickly comes to rely on Sebastian and, after a very brief time together, they marry and Sebastian takes Emilie to England and to his family home in Yorkshire. There Emilie meets Alex, Sebastian's disabled brother who, Sebastian warns her, is the black sheep of the family and not all that he appears on the surface. However, as Emilie gets to know Alex better during Sebastian's long absences from home, and begins to enjoy her brother-in-law's company, she starts to realize that maybe it is Sebastian who is not all he appears to be. And when Emilie starts to delve into her family history, she discovers a lot more than she expected ....
In the 1940s we meet Constance Carruthers (Sebastian and Alex's grandmother) who is drafted into the SOE and, after a period of intense training, is flown into occupied Paris at the height of the Second World War. When her contact from the Resistance does not arrive to collect her, Constance finds her way to the Paris home of Edouard de la Martinieres and straight into the presence of two high ranking Nazi officers. Living on her wits, Connie finds herself in a very difficult situation, especially when one of the Nazi officers decides that he would like to get to know her intimately. And when she is put in the position of having to submit to his warped desires in order to save the lives of other people around her, Connie realizes there is more to war than fighting and more than one way to carry out her duty to her country.
(No 'spoilers' here - there is a lot more for prospective readers to discover during the course of this story).
I haven't read any of Lucinda Riley's previous novels - in fact this one was given to me - so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. If I were wearing my 'literary head' I might just comment that some aspects of this story were a little predictable and that other aspects were not wholly convincing - however, once I had read past the first part of this novel, I found myself drawn into the lives of the characters and before I knew it I was more than halfway through the book. Despite the subject matter of the Nazi occupation of Paris, this novel made a pleasant, undemanding and entertaining read, and although it's most probably not the book to choose if you want to be challenged or if you wish to discover in any real depth the role of the SOE in occupied France, it is an enjoyable book for bedtime or downtime reading. If you are looking for something that is light, without being too lightweight, and you want a story based partly on fact, but blended with fiction, then this could be just what you are looking for. | <urn:uuid:41b4a05d-d377-4e63-ac99-7ca5930427e9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Light-Behind-Window/dp/1447218426 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979396 | 780 | 1.71875 | 2 |
It was the latest sign of the growing rivalry between the technology companies the once were closely aligned but now are vying for supremacy in the fast-growing mobile computing market.
Earlier this year, Apple said it would dump Google’s mapping software from its mobile devices.
“Apple and Google are the mobile operating systems for the future and this is where the battleground is going to lie,” said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
“If it’s going to be a two-horse race, you certainly don’t want to give the other horse any kind of lead,” he said.
Google, the world’s No.1 Web search engine, is also the maker of the most popular smartphone software with its Android operating system. In May, Google closed the $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, setting the stage for Google to more tightly integrate its smartphone software and hardware and mount a more direct challenge to Apple’s iPhone.
Apple said in a statement on Monday that its license to include the YouTube app in the iOS operating system “has ended.” Apple noted that “customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the app store.”
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company’s YouTube license included any financial terms, or on whether Apple planned to replace YouTube with another pre-installed online video app from a different company.
YouTube has been among a handful of apps that come pre-loaded onto the screens of Apple’s mobile devices since the original iPhone was introduced in 2007.
But the app, which was actually built by Apple using YouTube’s standards, did not appear to be as full-featured as YouTube’s own website: the YouTube app does not appear to feature any advertising, and the catalog of available music videos lacks many of the titles found on the website.
Analysts said Google was unlikely to take much of a financial hit from the move, though it could complicate Google’s efforts to expand online services to the growing ranks of mobile users.
“It’s a risk to Google’s overall mobile approach and strategy, in that their services are not going to be as easy to find as they used to be,” said ThinkEquity analyst Ronald Josey. “They need to be everywhere that users are.”
More worrisome, said Josey, is what the move could mean for Google’s deal with Apple to be the default search engine on the iPhone.
“The writing’s on the wall that when search is up for renewal, there’s a significant chance that Google may not be the default,” said Josey.
Analysts believe Google generates a significant portion of mobile advertising revenue from iPhone users.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once sat on Apple’s board of directors, but the relationship between the two companies has frayed. Apple’s co-founder, the late Steve Jobs, was quoted as saying he was willing to go “thermonuclear” on the search leader, after it decided to position Android against the iPhone.
News of YouTube’s disappearance from Apple’s mobile software came as Apple released a new test version on Monday of the iOS 6 software, which for the first time did not include the YouTube app. The final version of iOS 6 is due for release sometime in the Fall.
YouTube is one of the most popular destinations on the Internet, with more than 800 million unique monthly visitors who stream 4 billion videos a day.
Google said in a statement that it was working with Apple to ensure that it has “the best possible YouTube experience for iOS users.” | <urn:uuid:648dc3e5-f303-452d-9285-216199b35860> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.interaksyon.com/infotech/apple-wont-include-youtube-app-in-new-mobile-software | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957934 | 782 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Born: November 30, 1909 in Helena AR
Died: November 5, 1967 in Helena AR
Although many know his name, few really know his music, and bluesman Robert Nighthawk is nearly as big an enigma as Delta blues legend Robert Johnson. Through a lengthy career that spanned four decades, Nighthawk recorded only sporadically and his rambling nature prevented him from becoming a well-known performer in any area. Still, his influence was pervasive, his unique slide-guitar style emulated by artists like Elmore James, Earl Hooker and, most importantly (for the evolution of the blues), Muddy Waters.
Raw Slide-Guitar Sound
Born Robert Lee McCollum (spellings vary) in Helena, Arkansas, not much is known about Nighthawk's early life. He taught himself to play harmonica, but he was in his early 20s before his cousin, bluesman Houston Stackhouse, schooled him in the rudiments of blues guitar. Nighthawk was evidently a good student, as he was soon performing in juke-joints and house parties as McCollum with Stackhouse, throughout Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta.
Nighthawk developed a unique and particularly raw slide-guitar sound firmly based in the Delta country-blues tradition. For reasons known only to the bluesman himself, Nighthawk moved to St. Louis during the mid-1950s and took on his mother's name, performing as Robert Lee McCoy alongside artists like John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson and Big Joe Williams. Nighthawk cut his first recordings, both solo as McCoy and as a sideman, for Bluebird Records in 1937.
A Wandering Soul
During the 1930s and early-40s, Nighthawk performed and recorded under a variety of names, including Robert Lee McCoy, Rambling Bob, and Peetie's Boy. Prone towards wanderlust, Nighthawk performed from the Delta to the Windy City, and all points in between, often playing on street corners for tips and picking up the odd gig at a fish fry or house party. While in Chicago, he was befriended by Tampa Red, whose influence brought an additional dimension to Nighthawk's slide-guitar playing. It is thought that Nighthawk also spent some time playing in Memphis during this time.
Never content to staying in one place too long, though, Nighthawk returned to his hometown of Helena. In 1943, Nighthawk began performing regularly on a radio program broadcast by Helena radio station KFFA. Sponsored by Bright Star Flour, he was competing directly with Sonny Boy Williamson[/link">, who broadcast his show, sponsored by King Biscuit Flour, on the same station. Nighthawk also could be heard performing on other Southern radio stations, including WDIA in Memphis.
Becoming Robert Nighthawk
Nighthawk spent the latter part of the 1940s in obscurity as Robert Lee McCoy literally disappeared for almost half a decade. When he resurfaced, it would be as "Robert Nighthawk," the bluesman taking the name from the title of his first record, "Prowling Nighthawk." His student McKinley Morganfield (a/k/a Muddy Waters) helped Nighthawk land a contract with the Chess Records subsidiary Aristocrat. Nighthawk scored a minor hit in 1949 with the song "Black Angel Blues" but, following a familiar pattern, would leave Chicago and the label in 1950.
In the early-1950s Nighthawk recorded for the United Records label and its subsidiary States Records, but he enjoyed no further commercial success. During the rest of the 1950s and early-60s, Nighthawk wandered until he was "rediscovered" playing on Maxwell Street in Chicago by producer Norman Dayron. Nighthawk would resume his recording career in 1964 for Decca, returning to Helena in 1965 to take the reins of Sonny Boy Williamson's King Biscuit Time radio program on KFFA after the harp master's death. Nighthawk would pass away in 1967, and was inducted into The Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983.
Recommended Albums: Because of Nighthawk's rambling nature and reluctance to record, his musical legacy isn't as well documented as many of his peers. The Document Records compilation Prowling With The Nighthawk offers a comprehensive overview of Nighthawk's early recordings, the album featuring 26 tracks made from 1937 through 1952. Live On Maxwell Street 1964, literally recorded live on the street by producer Dayron, is a rare slice of blues life as it happened, street noise and all included. | <urn:uuid:011ec282-ffc2-4712-ba06-4508c200e794> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blues.about.com/od/artistprofil2/p/RobtNighthawk.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976914 | 966 | 1.8125 | 2 |
TN Editorial: Plan only effective if enforced
Published: Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 6:23 p.m.
The Henderson County Planning Board last week missed a chance to make a needed and important change to county land development policy.
The board took up a proposed rule that would require developers to prove that they can provide water and sewer before they win county approval for a new subdivision in the rural farm district. The rule is needed because of two recent decisions by the Board of Commissioners that raise questions about the board’s willingness to enforce its own land-use plan.
It might seem like basic common sense — not to mention due diligence when it comes to multi-million dollar investments in land and site development — that developers would drill test wells and make sure that soil perks for septic tanks. The latter has proven to be less of problem in terms of big surprises but the former has handed county commissioners at least two big public headaches.
The developers of Grand Highlands on top of Bearwallow Mountain appealed to the Board of Commissioners for help when, to their surprise, there was no water on top of the mountain. Commissioners relented, and agreed to authorize an extension from the Justice Academy to the top of the mountain, with the construction at the developer’s expense.
The vote exposed the fact that commissioners were ready at any time to ignore their newly adopted comprehensive land-use plan. The board’s action also came with a de facto amendment to the original subdivision approval. Hit with the unexpected water line cost, the developer had to recalculate the profit and loss statement, and then seek county approval for higher density. He got it.
Cobblestone Village south of Flat Rock was next in line for a water extension. That developer too came up dry in his hunt for water. Commissioners said OK to that one too. So far no word on whether Cobblestone will seek a density bonus to underwrite the cost of the water pipe.
In both the Bearwallow and Cobblestone cases, commissioners stepped in to fix something that the developer should have known about, setting a bad precedent, then ratifying it.
In the language of today’s economic recovery politics, the county gave bailouts and asked nothing in return. (In both cases, Commissioner Chuck McGrady has been the lone opponent.)
The county Planning Board last week booted a chance to make a good policy decision.
The planning staff recommended a land development code amendment requiring major developments in the Rural Agricultural Area to either provide a public community well system or show proof that there is sufficient water supply to support 60 percent of the proposed lots in the subdivision.
“These requirements are going to be far too strict and cost too much,” said Planning Board member Mike Cooper, a building contractor. “It’s going to bring development to a halt.”
Cost who too much? The land buyer, developer and home buyer? Yes.
But not making the change means that we are forcing the county taxpayer and the water ratepayer to subsidize the development.
“The Planning Board is trying to protect buyers,” board member Renee Kumor said. “We should be looking to protect citizens.”
She’s nailed the issue.
If the Planning Board won’t recommend the change, commissioners should take it up and adopt it anyway. Keep in mind the rule requiring developers to ensure that sufficient water exists would apply to major subdivisions, and would apply only in zones that are designated Rural Agricultural — in other words, land out in the country where the land-use plan tries to discourage development. This ought to be an easy call. If the Board of Commissioners want to ensure the integrity of the land-use plan, it’s an important one.
Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.
Comments are currently unavailable on this article | <urn:uuid:fba2649e-3ded-49b5-b7b2-636ab1bd0c63> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20090118/OPINION/901170253?Title=TN-Editorial-Plan-only-effective-if-enforced | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949696 | 841 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Let's get the story straight about income annuities, the good and bad.
The bad gets plenty of ink, much undeserved. A survey commissioned by the MetLife Mature Market Institute found numerous errors and omissions in newspaper, magazine and wire service stories about these annuities, which are insurance products that offer an income guarantee.
At the same time, some overzealous annuity sellers -- I've come across some at sales presentations billed as "educational seminars" -- are prone to overlook potential drawbacks.
To the extent it's possible in this short space, I'll try to present a more balanced picture.
The basic concept of income annuities is fairly simple: In return for a one-time lump-sum payment, an insurance company guarantees it will send you a check for the rest of your life.
The primary appeal of income annuities -- the reason many advisers recommend retirees consider them for a portion of their savings -- is that you cannot outlive your income.
The primary disadvantage -- the reason these same advisers warn retirees shouldn't put all their money in them -- is that when you die, the payments can stop and your heirs get nothing.
But I overgeneralize, one of the errors cited in the media survey. Income annuities typically let you choose from a number of payout options, including payments to both you and a spouse or another beneficiary, or payments guaranteed to your heirs for a "term certain" if you and your beneficiary die before. Some offer limited access to principal.
The more features you want in your annuity, the lower the payments you will receive. And the basic premise holds true: In exchange for receiving an income for life, you no longer have an "account balance" you can access or spend as you wish.
Before deciding whether that's an appropriate tradeoff, you need to know the assumptions behind the numbers the insurance company quotes you.
Those assumptions involve estimating how long you or you and a beneficiary will live, and what interest rate the insurance company can earn on your money.
For example, for a lump sum payment of $250,000, a man and wife both 65 can buy an income annuity today that will pay about $1,237 a month until they both die.
One key question aside from how much if anything they want to leave to heirs or charity is whether this couple can generate the same or higher income by keeping the $250,000 and investing it.
Assuming at least one of them will live to age 89 -- a fair assumption, based on life expectancy tables -- they will need a steady return of 3.14 percent a year to receive $1,237 a month for 24 years before running out of money. (For these types of computations, you'll need a financial calculator).
With an annuity, this couple would avoid the risk of not achieving that return and, more important, of living "too long." The insurance company, because it sells many annuities, can more safely rely on average life expectancies. For each individual, the odds of living much longer than average are greater.
More annuity advantages: Because payments are considered part return of principal, taxes are lower than if you use your nest egg to generate taxable income. Studies have shown income annuities tend to generate more spendable income than gradually depleting savings.
Now for disadvantages: With traditional fixed income annuities, the payments you get remain the same. If you buy such an annuity today, you'll be "locking in" near record-low interest rates for life. Some fixed income annuities offer inflation-adjusted payments but the initial payments are lower.
Another option to avoid getting stuck with relatively low fixed payments for life is a "variable" income annuity -- the size of the payments varies each year based on the performance of underlying investments. But that means your income will go down if the investments don't do well. There are also "hybrid" income annuities, part fixed and part variable.
A lot to think about? I suggest you don't rush into any decision once you buy an income annuity, the choice is typically irrevocable. If you need advice, get it from a qualified professional who does not stand to gain or lose by whatever you decide.
Also, comparison-shop, including checking any options offered by your employer's benefits department. Payout rates can vary substantially from company to company. You can request quotes at Web sites such as www.annuityzone.com and www.annuity.com. But first, consider the financial strength of the insurance company. An income guaranteed for life is worth nothing if the insurance company can't back up that guarantee.
Humberto Cruz can be reached at AskHumberto@aol.com or c/o Tribune Media Services, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1500, Chicago IL 60611. Personal replies are not possible. Look for other columns by Humberto Cruz in Sunday's Health and Family and Monday's Your Business sections. | <urn:uuid:32238195-c359-4399-914f-e1af720c0186> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2003-07-16/business/0307150535_1_income-annuities-annuity-today-payments | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947151 | 1,034 | 1.5625 | 2 |
COLORADO SPRINGS — Denver's seven-member school board and superintendent spent nine hours Thursday with a psychologist, learning how to better communicate and work together.
The word "Kumbaya" was, indeed, uttered, and board members participated in various relationship-building exercises as they were coached on how to build trust and cohesion using constructive language, listening skills and empathy.
"This is skill-building," said Susan Heitler, the Denver psychologist and marital therapist hired for $2,400 to lead the session. "It's basically the same (as marriage counseling). The main difference is it's eight people rather than two."
The meeting, scheduled weeks ago, took on greater importance after Monday's fiery board meeting, when several contentious reforms were approved and one new board member made a controversial move to insert herself into the vote.
Board member Andrea Merida had herself sworn in hours before the meeting, allowing her to vote on the reforms, but the move ousted longtime board member Michelle Moss and led to tears and outrage.
The board, with three new members, including Merida, appeared to be at odds, split over the reforms and other issues.
Thursday's meeting focused on how to move past hurt feelings, how to defuse negative language and how to build trust.
"These were people who were furious at each other," Heitler said. "We converted it from a disaster to a blessing."
The meeting was held in a small room at the swanky Broadmoor hotel, in advance of the Colorado Association of School Boards' annual convention. Representatives from 152 Colorado school districts are expected to attend the weekend sessions at the hotel, which has been the venue for the convention for decades.
Denver Public Schools board members said they felt they made progress in the counseling session.
"I think we can now move on, treat each other with respect and listen," said board member Jeannie Kaplan. "We still have a lot of work to do."
Coached by the facilitator, board members pressed Superintendent Tom Boasberg on some major issues, using their newfound skills. Some issues, such as lack of communication between the administration and board, were smoothed out with the new techniques.
Merida said she entered the meeting understanding there were some lingering raw feelings after Monday's events.
"You couldn't have walked away from Monday night without feeling that tension," she said. "But this gave me the opportunity to explain where I was coming from. I feel like now we can move forward."
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:8e514ba3-0542-4ad4-ab22-6794f544e264> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13922615 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980134 | 536 | 1.625 | 2 |
Welcome to another Old School Thursday! I was part of the first-ever public school lacrosse team in Weston, MA but there is a private school in Weston that has had lacrosse for decades now, and my father used to play there, The Rivers School. Small world. I got my first helmet ever (an outdated three bar Bacharach) from one of my dad’s former teammates (Jim Navoni, who is a current lacrosse coach at Rivers!), and when I attended the Rivers Day Camp I got my first exposure to no pads lacrosse.
But this week’s Old School focuses on the Rivers School team from WAY BACK in the day!
You will notice that Rivers is scheduled to play “Newton High” (actually Newton North HS) and Winchester High, and these were two of the first public school lacrosse teams in Massachusetts. My father remembers that they weren’t necessarily great lacrosse players, but they certainly had an abundance of athleticism, and early rosters were often filled up with football players looking for someone to hit in the offseason.
Given that they were playing with wooden sticks back then, I can only imagine the bumps and bruises they used to go home with!
See below for more excellent Rivers Old School (courtesy of my dad’s yearbook) and if you’ve got something worth sharing, PLEASE send it in! We’d love to show it off and maintain the connection to the past, for the players of today.
There is a ton more info below…
If my father’s memory serves him right, the team went 8-4 during the year. One thing my dad will never forget is his coach, Lem Thomsen, who was an HM All-American at Princeton in 1956. Lem had taken over from his brother three years earlier. His brother, Tommy Thomsen had left to take the job at Denison. My dad had this to say about the Thomsen Brothers:
As a college player, he (Tommy) had been the University of Pennsylvania’s star goalie, and had done so on legs severely stunted & bowed from some childhood disease. Watching him haul butt out of the crease and clear the ball was some sight. Quite a guy, and both brothers were excellent coaches and good people. Tommy died this past January, and his obit is worth reading.
Rivers didn’t have much a bench, and as my dad remembers, “if you showed up, you played!”
Fermo Bianchi was the captain of the team, and one heck of a player. Jim Navoni was also a great player and all-around athlete, and he actually gave me my first lacrosse helmet and was a huge influence on me over the Summers at the Rivers Camp. The most amazing thing about Jimmy playing lacrosse was that his father was the baseball coach at Rivers! That shows you just how good the Navoni family really was! Mark DeGuzman is also on the team, and he is Mike DeGuzman’s (a childhood friend of mine who played at Dartmouth) uncle.
Here’s a quick recollection from my father about the Newton North game I mentioned earlier:
We played Newton North H.S. their first year of having a lax team; they showed up in two school buses, 50+ players, all huge Newton North football players. Their coach was North’s football coach who started lax there so his players wouldn’t get sloppy over the off-season. One of our 110 pound attackers got cranky and throttled one of their gorilla-esque defensemen, Newton’s bench cleared and ran onto the field, and the only Rivers player to join the fray was Mark! We beat them 7 – 4, guaranteed the last time Rivers would ever beat Newton North. And we knew it even then. I think they were the first Boston area public school team.
I just love learning more about the history of lacrosse in Massachusetts. I’m lucky to have such a great resource! And it’s amazing to see just how many connections I have to this group of high school lacrosse players from 44 years ago, and a great example of how tightly knit the lacrosse family really is. | <urn:uuid:fe95a7b3-513e-4b43-ac09-46962bc29a58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://laxallstars.com/show-las-your-old-school-rivers-lacrosse-1968/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984833 | 884 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Help Make Pet Meds More Affordable!
Guest blog by ASPCA Regulatory Affairs Manager Deborah Press
Our pets are family, and when they get sick we want to make sure they get the best care possible. We rely on the wonderful vets in our communities to keep our pets healthy and ease their suffering. But for many pet parents struggling to keep their animals healthy in this tough economy, the costs can often be overwhelming—even impossible to afford.
In 2011, Americans spent nearly $7 billion for prescription and over-the-counter pet medications. Though purchasing meds from the vet is convenient, in some cases pet parents can save money by filling pets’ prescriptions at their local retail pharmacies. For many pet lovers struggling to keep their animals healthy in a tough economy, being able to fill prescriptions at the lowest cost could mean the difference between being able to afford the medicine—or even being able to afford keeping the pet—or not.
Most vets are happy to write prescriptions for their clients to fill anywhere they choose, but others may not be. We think pet parents deserve the freedom to comparison-shop for pet meds, but to do that, they need a copy of their animals’ prescriptions.
Here’s where you come in.
The Federal Trade Commission wants to hear from you! The FTC wants to understand how to make prescription pet medications more affordable to consumers. They want to know how much you’re spending on pet meds, where you’re buying them, and whether a law requiring vets to give you a prescription to fill wherever you choose would help make pet care more affordable and accessible to you and your animals.
Tell FTC that for the sake of cost and convenience, you would like to have the option of receiving a written prescription from your vet that you could fill wherever you choose.
In addition, please tell them:
- How much you spend on prescription pet meds
- Where you buy your pet meds—at the vet or at a pharmacy?
- What you like/dislike about filling your pet’s prescriptions with the vet as opposed to a pharmacy where you’d fill your own prescriptions
Please note: FTC is accepting comments beyond the September 14th deadline and wants to hear from you!
Submit your comments TODAY—scroll to the bottom of the page and type your comments in the box. | <urn:uuid:bfcf8044-1711-4ed4-b2b6-d31803624647> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.aspca.org/content/help-make-pet-meds-more-affordable | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952444 | 483 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Yes, I know there should be a bug. But I do not know where and why. The strange thing was sometimes it worked but at this time there will be a segmentation fault. If it did not work, some process must sit there waiting for the message. There are many iterations in my program(using a loop). It would after a few iterations the "bug" would appear, which means the previous a few iterations the communication worked. I am quite comfused now.
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 11:00:33 -0700
Subject: Re: [OMPI users] Is there an "flush()"-like function in MPI?
Thanks for reply. One more thing I would like to know is that since the message has already left the sender, how to make sure that the receiver side receives this message? From the output of my program, it seems that the receiver side is waiting for the message(MPI_Recv).
You mean how the sender can be sure to push the message all the way over to the receiver? In practical terms, if the sender completes its send, the receiver should be able to poll and (in short order) see the message. Sounds like you have a bug. | <urn:uuid:8e304863-8c0b-4a31-9f4f-bcfde0e4cea2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.open-mpi.org/community/lists/users/2009/09/10783.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930932 | 254 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The Ticker Quick Views on Politics, Economics and Finance
Can Millions of Coffee Drinkers Fix the Economy?: The Ticker
Howard Schultz is giving new meaning to "start me up." The increasingly activist Starbucks Corp. chief executive officer is taking donations online and through Starbucks cafes to create a small business lending fund. The company will donate $5 million in seed money to give the project, umm, a jolt.
That money can be leveraged seven times into $35 million worth of loans. And ultimately, Schultz said today in a meeting with Bloomberg View editors, he hopes to raise millions more for the project, "Create Jobs for USA."
Beginning Nov. 1, donors who give at least $5 will get a red, white and blue bracelet bearing the message "Indivisible." Mark Pinsky, the president and CEO of Opportunity Finance Network, a Philadelphia group that runs a network of 180 community-based lenders, will oversee the actual lending.
Donations will be distributed to Pinsky's network of so-called Community Development Financial Institutions, which can be banks, nonprofits or faith-based organizations. CDFIs are certified by the Treasury Dept. to provide credit to businesses unable to get conventional loans, such as those located in low-income and underserved areas. Those often are the places with the highest rates of unemployment, too.
In August, Schultz asked other business leaders to join him in boycotting donations to political campaigns until lawmakers agreed on a deficit-reduction plan. Last month, he sent a letter to President Barack Obama and Congress, urging them to put partisanship aside to address joblessness. He said Obama is the only elected official who has responded. Today, he expressed not a small amount of outrage over the parlous state of the U.S. economy and the political paralysis in Washington, saying both parties are equally to blame.
Schultz is calling on Congress to reform the tax system, including by letting companies bring home overseas profits at a lower corporate tax rate in return for creating jobs. He also wants Congress to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write down bad loans "that we all know people aren't going to pay back." Maybe he could refuse to sell coffee to lawmakers until they agree on a housing and job-creation plan?
(Paula Dwyer is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board.)
Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions. | <urn:uuid:b7ac7993-f8e8-4459-ab1c-4f918944075c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-03/can-millions-of-coffee-drinkers-fix-the-economy-the-ticker.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945803 | 529 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Welcome to the forum!
About wiping Windows XP, Do Not Do It! For this reason and this reason alone: if you also use your laptop for business, you're just going to need some Windows exclusive apps. (Microsoft Office, maybe Photoshop, etc.) So you will want a dual partition (% of Linux, % of Windows). This is incredibly easy to do, when you boot into Linux and begin to install, it will ask you how much of your disk (HDD or SSD) you want dedicated to Linux, it will also let you know how much Windows still needs to be a functioning OS. (Though I would never give your Windows partition anything less than 20% of your disk space, unless your disk has about one Terabyte of space.)
A distro is a unique Linux OS. It is a fully functioning OS just like Windows or Mac OSX. You would just download the distro from the distro holder's website.
Which distro to use depends on your needs, really. If you live in the US, Japan, or other country that requires you to BUY your codecs, then the distro that includes non-free codecs is not an option for you. (Such as some flavors of the Linux Mint distro.) You would then have to BUY your codecs from third party vendors, such as Fluendo (I have done this and they work fine.) Or some other codec purchasing company.
I'll give you links to the two most popular Linux distros, and you can judge for yourself.
About: The most popular Linux OS on the planet, you can only use the Unity interface if you use Ubuntu (you can get Xubuntu or Lubuntu, or even, Kubuntu, more on that in my second post here), very comfortable to use. Uses .deb packages.
About: The runner up for popularity in the Linux world. You can pick from four interfaces: GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce. Uses .RPM packages. The DVD version has a MIND BLOWING amount of apps included, dwarfing Ubuntu's STARTING base of apps. (You can always download tons of apps for Ubuntu from the Ubuntu Software Center). I find Fedora isn't nearly as user friendly as Ubuntu, but it's not bad at all for those who know what they're doing.
Hope this helps, and again, welcome to the forum, | <urn:uuid:19d1b1ee-2445-49e2-96aa-33b305f12bee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linux.com/community/forums/person/46997/limit/6/offset/6/post/15654 | 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 | 0.930429 | 493 | 1.726563 | 2 |
US 4614246 A
The wheel chair of this invention has its seat member supported for raising and lowering on a chassis having a castering rear wheel and two relatively small front wheels rotatable on a common axis, each driven independently of the other by a reversible electric motor. A brake member is pivoted to the chassis to swing up from and down to an extended position in which the rear wheel is above the surface and the brake member cooperates with the front wheels to support and immobilize the wheel chair. Swinging legs so support the chair element on the chassis that as the chair element is lowered it moves forward over the footrest so that the footrest does not hamper the occupant in transferring to and from the wheel chair.
1. A wheel chair comprising a chair element having a seat member with front and rear edges and an upwardly projecting back rest, a chassis on which the chair element is supported, wheels on said chassis, and power drive means on the chassis whereby certain of the wheels are driven, said wheel chair being characterized by:
2. The wheel chair of claim 1 wherein the chassis comprises a footrest which projects forward beyond the front wheels, further characterized by:
3. The wheel chair of claim 2, further characterized by:
(1) said distance between said lower pivotal connection of the front and rear legs being less than the distance between their upper pivotal connections, and
(2) the front leg being longer than the rear leg, so that raising and lowering of the chair element is accompanied by tilting thereof whereby said front edge swings down relative to said rear edge as the chair element is lowered.
4. A wheel chair comprising a chair element having a seat member with front and rear edges and an upwardly projecting back rest, a chassis on which the chair element is supported, wheels on said chassis, and power drive means on the chassis whereby certain of the wheels are driven, said wheel chair being characterized by:
5. The wheel chair of claim 4 further characterized by: a plurality of swingable legs, each having at an upper end thereof a pivotal connection with the chair element and at a lower end thereof a pivotal connection with the chassis about which the upper end of the leg is swingable, said legs and their pivotal connections being arranged to provide for raising and lowering of the chair element relative to the chassis and for movement of the chair element forward with lowering and rearward with raising, and to dispose the chair element, when fully lowered, in a position in which it is substantially over the footrest.
6. The wheel chair of claim 5, further characterized by:
(1) each of said front wheels having a diameter to be wholly below the level of the chair element and substantially wholly behind said footrest; and
(2) said rear wheel having a diameter no larger than that of said front wheels.
7. The wheel chair of claim 4 in which said motors are electric motors, further characterized by:
a pair of batteries for energizing said motors, said batteries being supported on the chassis at opposite sides of said spar and behind said front portion of the chassis.
8. A wheel chair comprising a chair element having a seat member with front and rear edges, opposite sides and an upwardly projecting back rest, a chassis on which the chair element is supported and which comprises a forwardly projecting footrest, wheels on said chassis, and power drive means on the chassis whereby certain of the wheels are driven, said wheel chair being characterized by:
9. The wheel chair of claim 8 wherein said upper connections of the front and rear legs are spaced apart by a greater fore-and-aft distance than the lower connections of those legs so that the chair element rocks as it is raised and lowered to dispose said front edge of the seat member below the rear edge thereof when the chair element is fully lowered and above said rear edge when the chair element is fully raised.
10. The wheel chair of claim 8, further characterized by:
11. The wheel chair of claim 10 wherein the diameter of the front wheels is such that each of them is wholly below said chair element and substantially wholly behind said footrest, and the diameter of the rear wheel is no greater than that of the front wheels.
12. The wheel chair of claim 10 further characterized by:
a brake member connected to said chassis behind said rear wheel for movement between a retracted position in which the brake member is wholly above a plane tangent to the bottoms of all of said wheels and an extended position in which the brake member projects below said plane to cooperate with the front wheels in supporting and immobilizing the wheel chair.
This invention relates to powered wheel chairs and is more particularly concerned with a powered wheel chair having features that facilitate an occupant's transfer between it and another seat and which is very compact and maneuverable so as to be satisfactory for operation in confined spaces.
Numerous patents have issued on powered wheel chairs, each disclosing one or more features intended to solve a problem or problems commonly encountered by a wheel chair occupant. By way of example, and without attempting to be exhaustive, reference may be made to the following:
French Pat. No. 2,399,822 discloses a motorized wheel chair having powered main wheels at its opposite sides rotating on a common axis under the seat, at least one castered wheel located forward of the seat, and a pair of castered wheels some distance behind the seat. The front castered wheel is upwardly retractable to enable the wheel chair to move up onto a curb under its own power, and the seat can be raised and lowered to suit the occupant's convenience. However, the location of the front wheel and of the footrest are such that one or both of them are in the way of the occupant's feet during transfer between the wheel chair and another seat. The wheel chair structure as a whole is undesirably long from front to rear and an inherently large turning radius further makes it unsuitable for confined spaces such as toilet stalls and elevators.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,849,051 discloses a powered wheel chair wherein the seat member of the chair element can be raised, lowered, and tilted to some extent, the back rest can be tilted independently of the seat member to be brought to a reclining position, and the footrest is adjustable as to height and position but nevertheless cannot be brought to a position in which it is out of the way of the occupant's feet during transfer between the wheel chair and another seat.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,119,163 discloses a self-propelled wheel chair capable of climbing a curb and having a chair element that can be raised and lowered; but, as in the case of the above mentioned French patent, a front wheel and the footrest are in the occupant's way during transfer between the wheel chair and another seat.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,807,795 discloses a motorized wheel chair that has the seat member and back rest of its chair element so connected and so actuatable that the occupant can be brought to a standing position. The device is intended for those who are infirm rather than for those who cannot control their legs, and, again, it does not facilitate transfers between the wheel chair and another seat.
The problem of transfer that is repeatedly mentioned above is addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,822, wherein the chair element is mounted to swivel on a chassis that has power driven wheels at its opposite sides and has a steerable front wheel asymmetrically located near one side of the chassis and a footrest alongside that steerable wheel, adjacent to the other side of the chassis. As the chair element is rotated about its swivel axis, the occupant's feet are carried away from the footrest and the steerable front wheel. However, the advantage of the device with respect to facilitating transfer is offset by marked disadvantages, one of which is apparent from the patent itself. Because of the asymmetrical location of the front wheel, the device lacks stability, and therefore auxiliary support wheels are mounted on the chassis, at its side opposite the steerable wheel, one behind the main wheel, the other in front of it. These support wheels are normally spaced above the surface on which the device rides, and they engage that surface only when the device tilts to a certain extent. They may prevent the chair from tipping over, but they do permit a certain amount of sideward tilting that can give the occupant feelings of insecurity. The disclosed structure provides for forward and rearward adjustment of the seat relative to its swiveling axis but does not provide for heightwise adjustment, although adjustability of the seat in height is of particular importance in facilitating transfer.
One need only think about the occasional need for a wheel chair occupant to transfer between a wheel chair and a toilet seat to understand the great importance that attaches to transferring safely, easily and without assistance between a wheel chair and another seat. For any such transfer three factors are essential to the wheel chair occupant: the wheel chair must be securely confined against any horizontal movement; there should be nothing in the way of the occupant's feet and legs to hamper or impede the transfer; and the seat member of the wheel chair must be adjustable as to height because the seat to which the occupant is transferring must be at the same height as the one from which transfer is being made or a little lower--never higher.
Most conventional wheel chairs have castering front wheels and retractable footrests that project in front of the main wheels. Usually the footrests are retracted by swinging them upward, and in that case they can present more of a problem during a transfer than if they are left in their operative positions. In any event, a wheel chair occupant's disability may. make manual retraction of footrests difficult or impossible.
During transfer, the occupant tends to impose high lateral forces on the wheel chair that must be resisted by secure braking. Normally, castered front wheels cannot be confined against rotation or swiveling, and they therefore allow highly leveraged horizontal forces to be applied to the main wheels that can overcome a braking force on them.
Adjustability of seat height must be sufficient to bring the wheel chair seat member down to the level of the lowest seat to which the occupant might transfer and up to a level at which the occupant has comfortable access to a counter or the like that is intended for use by standing persons.
Almost invariably a toilet is located in a confined space in a bathroom or stall, and therefore another essential of a satisfactory wheel chair is extreme maneuverability, including capability for turning around on the spot. In this respect it will also be obvious that the overall length and width dimensions of the wheel chair should be as small as possible.
What might be considered "roadability" of a motor driven wheel chair is also important. It must be capable of moving forward at a reasonably fast speed; it should provide for easy and accurate one-handed control of speed, forward and rearward direction and turning; and--perhaps most important--it should be extremely stable and resistant to tipping over.
Stability of the wheel chair when it is braked as well as when it is rolling is of the utmost importance when the wheel chair is used as the driver's seat of a specially equipped van or the like that the wheel chair occupant drives, since the wheel chair must then be capable of supporting substantially high forces in every horizontal direction.
Satisfying these requirements poses a number of problems with respect to the structure of the wheel chair itself. The conventional source of power for a motorized wheel chair--and the only one known to be practical for the purpose--comprises one or more rechargeable batteries. Storage batteries are of course notoriously heavy and bulky, and batteries capable of storing enough energy for a day's operations occupy a substantial volume. In addition to the batteries, the wheelchair chassis must support motors or other actuators for driving the wheels, for raising and lowering the chair element, and for such additional movements or operations as may be required. All of this equipment must be so arranged that it is as compact as possible, does not interfere with mechanism for raising and lowering the seat, and ensures a low center of gravity and good riding stability for the device. The occupant of the wheel chair should be able to control all movements and other operations of the chair, preferably by means of control instrumentalities that are grouped to be accessible to one hand and are self-explanatory in relation to the functions that they control.
The general object of the present invention is to provide a self-propelled wheel chair that has good "roadability", has compact length and width dimensions, can turn around in its own length, and has a seat element which can be raised and lowered to facilitate transfers and which moves up and down with components of tilting and translatory motion that further facilitate transfer.
Another object of this invention is to provide a highly maneuverable self-propelled wheel chair which is very readily maneuverable, even in confined spaces, and which has a brake that ensures security and stability of the wheel chair when it is stopped, positively confining it against both horizontal movement and tilting.
A more specific object of the invention is to provide a self-propelled wheel chair which achieves the above stated objects and which is nevertheless structurally simple, sturdy and compact.
In general, these and other objects of the invention which will appear as the description proceeds are achieved in the wheel chair of this invention, which is of the type that comprises a chair element having a seat member with front and rear edges and an upwardly projecting back rest, a chassis on which the chair element is supported, wheels on the chassis, and power drive means on the chassis whereby certain of the wheels are driven. The wheel chair of this invention is characterized in that the wheels comprise two front wheels, one at each side of the chassis, confined to rotation on a common axis that is near a vertical plane containing a front edge of the seat member, and a rear wheel which has a castering connection with the chassis to swivel about a vertical axis that is spaced a substantial distance behind said common axis and is substantially equidistant from the two front wheels. The drive means comprises a pair of reversible motors, one for each of said front wheels, each said motor being connected with its front wheel to drive the same independently of the other front wheel. The wheel chair is further characterized by a brake member having a surface-engaging lower end portion and means mounting the brake member on the chassis for movement relative thereto between an upwardly retracted position in which all portions of the brake member are spaced above a plane tangent to the bottoms of all of said wheels and a downwardly extended position in which said lower end portion is forwardly in line with said vertical axis, is a substantial distance behind said common axis, and is spaced below said plane to elevate the rear wheel and cooperate with the front wheels in providing stable and immobilized support for the chassis.
The chassis has a footrest which projects forward beyond the front wheels. Movable frame means connected between the chassis and the chair element provides for raising and lowering the chair element and for carrying the chair element forward relative to the chassis as it is lowered and rearward as it is raised. The movable frame means comprises front and rear legs, each having an upper pivotal connection with the chair element and a lower pivotal connection with the chassis, each pivotal connection defining an axis which is parallel to said common axis. The front leg has its lower pivotal connection rearwardly adjacent to said common axis and its upper pivotal connection near the front edge of the seat member, while the rear leg has its lower pivotal connection spaced a distance to the rear of the lower pivotal connection of the front leg and has its upper pivotal connection near the rear edge of the seat member. A lift actuating means, preferably comprising a hydraulic cylinder jack, is connected between the movable frame means and the chassis for swinging the front and rear legs about their lower pivotal connections. Preferably the distance between the lower pivotal connections of the front and rear legs is smaller than the distance between their upper pivotal connections, and the front leg is longer than the rear leg so that raising and lowering of the chair element is accompanied by tilting thereof whereby the front edge of the seat member swings down relative to its rear edge as the chair element is lowered.
In the accompanying drawings, which illustrate what is now regarded as a preferred embodiment of the invention:
FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a wheel chair embodying the principles of this invention;
FIG. 2 is a side view of the wheel chair with the chair element in its fully raised position and the brake retracted;
FIG. 3 is a view similar to FIG. 2 but showing the chair element fully lowered and the brake extended;
FIG. 4 is an exploded perspective view of the chassis and the movable frame;
FIG. 5 is a diagram of the hydraulic system; and
FIG. 6 is a diagram of the electrical system.
The wheel chair of this invention comprises a chair element 5 having a seat member 6 and a back rest 7, both of which are preferably padded and upholstered to be comfortable for long periods of occupancy. Arm rests 8 are connected to the back rest 7 to be swingable between normal positions at the sides of the seat member and raised positions in which they project up along opposite sides of the back rest. Projecting forwardly from the front end of one arm rest 8 is a small horizontal control panel 9 on which are mounted switches or the like for controlling the powered functions of the wheel chair.
The chair element 5 is mounted on a chassis 10 that has two driven front wheels 11, one at each side, and a freely rotatable and castering rear wheel 12. A movable frame 14, connected between the chair element 5 and the chassis 10, provides for raising and lowering the chair element as described hereinafter.
The chassis 10 has a front portion 15 with a width about equal to that of the chair element 5. The front wheels 11 are coaxially mounted at opposite sides of this front portion 15, which also comprises a footrest 16 that projects forwardly beyond the front wheels. Projecting rearwardly and at an upward inclination from the front portion 15 of the chassis is a sturdy, rigid spar 17 that extends along the longitudinal centerline of the wheel chair. Fixed to the rear end of this spar 17 is an upright tubular socket 18 that rotatably receives the swivel trunnion 19 of a castering fork 20 in which the rear wheel 12 is rotatably mounted. The upright swiveling axis of the trunnion 19 is approximately downwardly in line with the back rest 7 of the chair element and is, of course, equidistant from the two front wheels 11.
The common axis of the two front wheels 11 is contained in a laterally extending vertical plane that lies near the front edge 21 of the chair element seat member 6. Over the front wheel axis, just behind the footrest 16, the chassis has a raised boxlike portion 22 which extends across its full width and which houses and supports a pair of reversible permanent magnet motors 23, one for each of the front wheels 11, whereby those wheels are driven independently of one another. The motors 23 and other electrical devices described hereinafter are powered from a pair of storage batteries 24 that are mounted on the chassis, rearwardly adjacent to its box-like portion 22 and adjacent to opposite sides of its spar 17. The motors 23 are controlled for their independent operation by switching means of a known type on the control panel 9, preferably comprising a single "joystick" control of the general type disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 3,100,860 to H. Rosenthal and No. 4,415,049 to J. A. Wereb. With each motor 23 thus controlled for operation independently of the other, for rotation in either direction and at any speed within its range, and with the rear wheel 12 freely rotating and castered, the wheel chair is readily maneuverable in confined spaces and can be turned within its own length.
At this point attention is directed to the fact that the front wheels 11 are of relatively small diameter (e.g., 8 or 9 inches) as compared with the large diameter main wheels conventional on wheel chairs, while the rear wheel 12 may have a smaller diameter (e.g., 6 to 8 inches) than the front wheels. Thus the tops of all three wheels 11 and 12 are well below the level of the seat member 6 of the chair element. The relatively small diameter of the wheels 11, 12 disposes their axles at a low level and makes for a very low center of gravity and corresponding stability against tilting. Because of their small radii, the wheels also extend only small distances in the forward and rearward directions, thus enabling the wheel chair of this invention to have a relatively small overall length even though the axes of the front and rear wheels are spaced apart by a substantial distance that further contributes to stability against tilting. In particular it should be noted that the front wheels 11 are wholly to the rear of the footrest 16 while the rear wheel 12, even in its most rearward position of castering, projects only a small distance rearwardly beyond the back rest 7. Since a motorized wheel chair is almost invariably operated on a relatively smooth paved surface or floor, no significant loss of smooth riding qualities results from the small diameter wheels.
To provide for braking the wheel chair of this invention and positively confining it against any horizontal motion, it has an elongated brake member 26, an upper end of which has a pivot connection 27 with the spar 17 of the chassis. The axis of the pivot connection 27, which is spaced behind the front end of the spar 17, extends horizontally, parallel to the common axis of the front wheels; and the brake member 26 is swingable about it between a raised inoperative position, closely underlying the spar 17 (FIG. 2) and a lowered braking position (FIG. 3). In its raised position the brake member 26 is wholly spaced above the plane P that is tangent to the bottoms of the three wheels, which is to say that it is clear of the floor or other surface upon which the wheel chair rests. In a position of the brake member in which it is less than fully lowered, its lower end is in the plane just mentioned, to drag on the floor or pavement for rapid deceleration of the wheel chair. In its fully lowered position its lower end projects below said plane, engaging the floor or other surface to raise the rear wheel 12 out of contact therewith. Since the brake member extends generally rearward from its pivotal connection 27 with the chassis spar 17, it engages the floor at a substantial distance behind the front wheels 11 and, when fully lowered, it cooperates with the front wheels in providing stable support for the wheel chair and resisting its movement in all horizontal directions. To prevent damage to carpeting or the like that the brake member engages, a shoe 29 at its lower end provides a flat under-surface of some area and has a pivotal connection 30 to the brake member, near the lower end thereof, that allows the shoe to adjust itself to the orientation in which it rests flat on the engaged surface.
For raising and lowering the brake member 26, a double-acting hydraulic cylinder jack 31 is connected between it and the chassis spar 17. Specifically, the cylinder of the jack 31 has a pivotal connection 32 with a rigid strut 33 that projects down from the spar 17, while its piston rod has a pivotal connection 34 with the brake member, spaced below the pivotal connection 27 between the brake member and the spar. The brake member 26 preferably has a small curve or obtuse-angle bend intermediate its ends, in the zone of its connection 34 to the jack 31. In the raised position of the brake member, to which it is actuated by retraction of the hydraulic jack 31, the jack closely underlies the spar 17, while the lower portion of the brake member, below the bend therein, closely underlies the jack. The apparatus for energizing and controlling the jack 31 is described hereinafter.
The above mentioned strut 33 on the chassis spar 17 has secured to its bottom a transverse spar 35 that projects laterally to both sides of the wheel chair and supports the rear edges of rectangular battery carrying plates 124, one at each side of the longitudinal chassis spar 17. The front edges of these plates 124 are secured to the wider front portion 15 of the chassis, at the rear thereof.
The movable frame means 14 by which the chair element 5 is connected with the chassis 10 for raising and lowering comprises a seat supporting member 36 which the seat member 6 of the chair element overlies, a front swinging leg 37 that has a lower pivotal connection 38 with the chassis and an upper pivotal connection 39 with the seat supporting member 36, and a rear swinging leg 40 that has a lower pivotal connection 41 with the chassis spar 17 and an upper pivotal connection 42 with the seat supporting member 36. The axes of the several pivotal connections 38, 39, 41 and 42 are all parallel to the common axis of the front wheels 11.
The seat supporting member 36 is more or less fork-shaped in planform, having a U-shaped front portion with a pair of arms 44 that project forward from a transverse beam 45 and having a spar 46 that projects rearward from the beam 45 and is coplanar with the arms 44.
The front swinging leg 37 of the movable frame comprises a pair of lower leg elements 48 which are rigidly connected at their upper ends by a laterally extending strut 49 and which are spaced apart by a distance substantially equal to the width of the chassis, and a pair of upper leg elements 50 which project up from the strut 49 and which are spaced apart laterally by a substantially smaller distance than the lower leg elements 48 to have their upper ends laterally outwardly contiguous to the front ends of the arms 44 of the seat supporting member 36 and respectively pivoted to them by the upper front pivotal connections 39. The lower leg elements 48 of the front swinging leg 37 have their pivotal connections 38 to the chassis located just behind the front wheels, and each has a bend or curve 51 along its length so that in a lowered position of the chair element the portion of each that is below the bend 51 extends nearly vertically up from the pivotal connection 38 while the remainder of each extends forwardly over the front wheel 11.
The rear swinging leg 40 of the movable frame is preferably duplicated, comprising a pair of identical rear leg elements, one at each side of the respective spars 17 and 46 of the chassis and of the seat supporting member. Lifting and controlled lowering of the chair element 5 is effected by means of a double-acting hydraulic cylinder jack 53 that is connected between the chassis and the movable frame means. As here shown, the cylinder of the jack 53 has a pivotal connection 54 to an upright gusset 55 that reinforces the connection between the chassis spar 17 and the box-like portion 22 of the chassis, and the piston of that jack has a pivotal connection 56 with the rear swinging leg 40, between its parallel leg elements and intermediate its upper and lower pivotal connections 41, 42. Extension of the lift jack 53 raises the chair element 5.
As can be seen from a comparison of FIGS. 2 and 3, as the chair element 5 is raised it also moves rearward through a substantial distance and, in addition, tilts in the direction to raise the front edge 21 of the seat member 6 relative to its rear edge; whereas during lowering the chair element moves forward and tilts in the direction to bring the front edge of its seat member to a lower level than its rear edge. When the chair element is in its fully raised position, the seat member 6 of the chair element is at a somewhat higher level than the seat member of a conventional stationary chair, so that the wheel chair occupant's feet can rest comfortably on the footrest 16 and he or she can have convenient access to a counter or similar surface that is a little higher than a table top. The forward motion of the chair element 5 as it is lowered carries the front edge of the seat member to a position nearly over the front edge of the footrest 16, thus placing the seat occupant in a position such that, with knees comfortably bent, the feet are on the floor in front of the footrest and the footrest is effectively out of the way during transfer between the wheel chair and another seat. The forward and downward tilting of the seat member as it moves down and forward also facilitates transfer to and from the wheel chair.
To provide for the compound vertical, horizontal and tilting movements of the chair element, the front swinging leg 37 of the movable frame means is substantially longer than the rear swinging leg 40, and those legs have their respective upper pivot connections 39, 42 near the front edge and the rear edge, respectively, of the seat member 6 and thus spaced apart by a distance substantially greater than the distance between their respective lower pivot connections 38, 42 to the chassis.
The source of hydraulic pressure fluid for both the brake jack 31 and the lifting jack 53 is a reversible electrically driven hydraulic pump 58 mounted on top of the box-like portion 22 of the chassis. The spar 46 of the seat supporting member 36 is "spliced" as shown in FIG. 4 to clear the pump, which is preferably of a commercially available type wherein a small fluid reservoir as well as the pump mechanism and the reversible motor that drives it are contained in a single housing. The pump 58 is connected with the jacks 31 and 53 in a hydraulic circuit (FIG. 5) that also comprises a pair of solenoid valves 59, 60, one for each jack. The jacks 31, 53 are connected with the pump 58 in parallel with one another, and each solenoid valve 59, 60 is connected in series with its jack 31, 53, at the side thereof for controlling flow of pump fluid to and from the blind end of the jack cylinder. Each solenoid valve is normally closed and is open when electrically energized. When closed, each solenoid valve locks fluid into the cylinder of its jack, preventing both extension and retraction of that jack. When open, the solenoid valve permits flow of fluid to and from its jack so that the jack either extends or retracts, depending upon the direction in which the pump 58 is being driven.
The electrical circuit (FIG. 6) in which the solenoid valves 59 and 60 are connected is so arranged that only one of them can be energized at a time. It comprises a center-off single-pole double-throw brake control switch 62 and a similar raise/lower switch 63, three relays 64, 65, 66 and a rectifier network 67, 68, 69, 70.
The relay 66 is an on/off relay that has its armature 73 connected with the armatures 71, 72 of the other two relays. When the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is unenergized, its armature 73 contacts a dead terminal 78, but when that winding 76 is energized the armature 73 engages a terminal 79 that is connected with the ungrounded terminal of the battery 24.
Each of the other two relays 64, 65 is a single-pole double-throw relay. The relay 64 is a lift/brake relay that has one armature terminal 80 connected with the solenoid 60a of the lift jack solenoid valve 60 and has its other armature terminal 81 connected with the solenoid 59a of the brake jack solenoid valve 59. In the unenergized condition of the lift/brake relay 64, its armature 71 engages the lift jack solenoid terminal 80, but that solenoid 60a is energized only if and when the on/off relay 66 is energized. When the winding 74 of the lift/brake relay 64 is energized, the solenoid 59a of the brake jack solenoid valve 60 is energized through the on/off relay 66, the winding 76 of which is energized at the same time, as explained hereinafter. It will be seen that the lift/brake relay 64 prevents simultaneous operation of the two hydraulic jacks 31, 53, even though both control switches 62, 63 are simultaneously actuated to "on" conditions.
The up/down relay 65 controls operation of the pump motor M. In its normal (unenergized) condition relay 65 connects the pump motor M for running in a forward direction in which the brake jack is actuated to drive the brake member 26 down or the lift 53 jack is actuated for lifting, depending upon the condition of the lift/brake relay 64; but the pump motor is energized only when the on/off relay 66 is energized. When the winding 75 of the up/down relay 65 is energized, the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is also energized, as explained below, and the pump motor M runs in the opposite direction, for brake release and chair member lowering.
The manually actuatable contactor of each of the center-off control switches 62, 63 is connected with the ungrounded side of the battery 24.
If either of those control switches 62, 63 is actuated to an "on" condition, the on/off relay 66 is energized, causing the pump motor M to run in the appropriate direction and the appropriate solenoid valve 59a, 60a to be energized. A limit switch 85, 86, 87, 88 is connected in series with each terminal 101-104 of each of the control switches 62, 63. Each limit switch is actuated by one of the jacks 31, 53 in a mechanical arrangement that will be obvious, so that when a jack reaches a limit of extension or retraction defined by the appropriate limit switch, the pump motor M will be shut off and the solenoid valve 59a, 60a will be closed, even though the control switch continues to be held in an "on" position.
The rectifier network 67-70, which is connected in series with three of the limit switches 85, 86, 87 and with the windings 74, 75, 76 of the three relays, provides for automatic selection of relays to be energized in accordance with the positioning of the control switches 62, 63. The rectifier network comprises four rectifiers connected in a bridge circuit to provide one input terminal 95, one output terminal 96 and two input-output terminals 97, 98. The winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is connected with the output terminal 96, and the windings 74, 75 of the lift/brake relay 64 and of the up/down relay 65 are respectively connected with the input/output terminals 97 and 98. Through the respective limit switches 85-88, the "up" terminal 101 of the brake switch 62 is connected with the input/output terminal 97, the "down" terminal 102 of that control switch is connected with the input terminal 95, and the "lift" terminal 103 of the lift/lower switch 63 is connected with the input/output terminal 98. The "lower" terminal 104 of the lift/lower switch 63 is not connected with the rectifier network, but only with the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66.
It will be seen that when the brake switch 62 is actuated to its "up" position, the winding 74 of the lift/brake relay 64 is directly energized from it and the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is energized through the rectifier 69, while energization of the winding 75 of the up/down relay 65 is prevented by the rectifiers 70 and 67. In the "down" position of the brake switch 62 the lift/brake relay winding 75 is energized through the rectifier 68, the up/down relay winding 74 is energized through the rectifier 67, and the on/off relay winding is energized through all four rectifiers. In the "lower" position of the lift/lower switch 63 the winding 75 of the up/down relay 65 is directly energized through that switch, the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is energized through the rectifier 70, and the rectifiers 68 and 69 prevent energization of the winding 74 of the lift/brake relay. In the "raise" position of the lift/lower switch 63 only the winding 76 of the on/off relay 66 is energized and the rectifiers 69 and 70 prevent energization of the windings of the other two relays.
From the foregoing description taken with the accompanying drawings it will be apparent that this invention provides a powered wheel chair which is compact and very maneuverable, being capable of turning in its own length, but is nevertheless very stable, and which greatly facilitates transferring because of the security with which it can be braked, the ease with which its seat member can be raised and lowered under power, and the forward component of motion of its seat member as it is being lowered, whereby the seat member is brought to a position in which the footrest is out of the occupant's way.
Citas de patentes | <urn:uuid:512822c4-4a21-454d-8644-0cd6682afabb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.google.es/patents/US4614246?dq=flatulence | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960731 | 7,647 | 1.53125 | 2 |
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Israel will transfer $100 million to Palestine to help improve its economy.
After a tough December, Israel is finally giving Palestine its tax revenue. Israel is transferring $100 million to the Palestinian Authority, officials announced today. The Prime Minister's office says that the money transfer is “due to the financial hardship facing the PA," the Times of Israel reported.
Israel normally collects about $100 million in tax revenues and customs each month on behalf of the Palestinians, but withheld the money in December to protest Palestine's upgraded status in the UN.
More from GlobalPost: Where does a 'moderate' victory in Israel leave the peace process?
The monthly tax transfers amount to two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority’s domestic revenue, the Washington Post reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's original decision to withhold the December funds left the Palestinian Authority struggling to pay its 150,000 employees.
This doesn't mean that Palestine can count on seeing future tax revenue. Israeli officials say that the money transfer is a one-time deal, Reuters reported, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has still not formally ended sanctions against Palestine. | <urn:uuid:4b416d3f-03c3-467f-8cd4-3ecc719fff6f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/130130/israel-give-palestine-100-million-held?quicktabs_gp5_homepage_timeline=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934151 | 232 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Recently, I have seen the term "evidence-based marketing" used in a seemingly derogatory manner as in:
"The use of direct marketing for treatment of depression may boost familiarity with potential treatments of the disorder," said Thomas R. Insel, M.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health. "However, we must ensure that treatment is based on evidence-based science rather than evidence-based marketing." (See "Blame the Doc, Not DTC!")
Dr. Insel may have been trying to emphasize the difference between medical practice and marketing and warning docs to obey the former and not be swayed by the latter. However, evidence-based marketing may be just what the doctor ordered.
I wasn't sure what evidence-based marketing meant until I attended an industry conference recently. The concept came up in a panel discussion entitled "The Post-Vioxx Era: Shedding New Light on Drug Safety, Risk Communications, and Advertising." I was pleasantly surprised by the out-of-the-box thinking among the panel members.
One of the panelists -- an Rx product global marketing VP -- shared his "vision of the future," at least as it applies to pharmaceutical marketing.
He suggested that pharmaceutical marketing strategy needs to begin early in the drug development process to identify the true opportunities. This involves understanding the appropriate population for the drug based upon the evidence gleaned from trials. Not only appropriate in terms of benefits, but also risks. The appropriate market may be a smaller market, but it will be comprised of a population less likely to experience known side effects.
Let's take one of my favorite examples -- the ED (erectile dysfunction) market. I have complained before that pharmaceutical marketers have overestimated the size of this market (see "ED Drug Sales Limp" and "Pushing the Envelope is Bad for DTC"). Specifically, the marketers of ED drugs overestimate the size of the market in comparison with government (NIH) estimates. Since these drugs have serious risks associated with them, the marketing, which is decidedly NOT evidence-based, serves to expose a larger than necessary population to these risks.
Some experts argue that targeting a more appropriate market through evidence-based marketing leads to less income, but the income is of higher "quality."
Quality revenue is a well-understood concept in the insurance industry, which will typically carve out risky populations and deny them coverage.
The insurance industry analogy illustrates an important drawback of using evidence-based marketing techniques and settling for quality revenue in the pharmaceutical industry; namely, no one wants to be denied medical treatment even if the evidence suggests that the risks outweigh the benefits. The pharma industry should not make this decision, only the doctor and his or her own patient.
Between You and Your Doctor
In almost every DTC ad you hear or see the phrase "See your doctor" or "Only your doctor can determine if X is right for you" or "That's between you and your doctor." On the face of it, this sounds like the pharma advertiser is taking a neutral stand and defers to the doctor as the "learned intermediary."
The pharma industry, however, is very pro-actively involved in the patient-physician relationship.
On the one hand, direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising pushes patients into doctors' offices and encourages them to ask for drugs by name. On the other hand, physician marketing pushes and entices doctors to prescribe these drugs. As a result, when patients ask their docs for a drug by name, much more often than not the doctor prescribes it even if it is inappropriate to do so (see "Blame the Doc, Not DTC!").
It will be very difficult for the pharma industry to adopt evidence-base marketing and be satisfied with lower revenue even if that revenue is of "high quality." The main reason being that Wall Street investors demand increasing profits and the pharma industry is more and more beholding to their shareholders than to their customers.
Lifetime Quality Revenue
However, it IS possible to increase the "lifetime value" of a drug even when marketing is based on evidence.
Currently, pharma brands spend 80% of the sales and marketing budget on acquisition of new patients and only 20% on retention of current patients. Much more effort should go into retaining patients and ensuring that they adhere to the treatment regime prescribed by the doctor. Evidence suggests that outcomes would be vastly improved with greater patient compliance.
This is a great opportunity for evidence-based marketers to make a difference.
Investors, however, are interested in the short term -- i.e., how quickly can a drug reach blockbuster status after it is launched. By focusing on this short-term perspective, most emphasis is put on revenue from new prescriptions and the pressure is there to dig ever deeper into a pool of patients for whom the product is inappropriate thereby increasing the risk in the long term that the product will become the next Vioxx.
What's your opinion on the issues raised here? Participate in the this month's Pharma Marketing News Evidence-based Marketing & Quality Revenue Survey. | <urn:uuid:73d03ad0-d4ea-4b35-a8cf-595a23dfd766> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/2005/04/evidence-based-marketing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955125 | 1,051 | 1.703125 | 2 |
Rwanda condemns Syria violence
Rwanda has strongly condemned the ongoing violence meted out by the Syrian government against its own people, and expressed support for the aspirations of the Syrian people, who have staged peaceful protests as part of what is now known as the Arab Spring.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Louise Mushikiwabo, was among 40 foreign ministers who attended the Second Conference of the Group of Friends of the Syrian People in Istanbul, Turkey on Sunday.
"While it is true that the independence and sovereignty of States are fundamental to international relations […] the fight and the right to live – the responsibility to protect – are even more critical for the survival of the community of nations,” Mushikiwabo told the meeting according to a communiqué from the Ministry of Foreign affairs.
Mushikiwabo said Rwanda “would not stand by as people face inhumane treatment and threats of extermination”, stressing that all countries are obliged to honour the legitimate and rightful aspirations of their citizens, according to the statement.
Rwanda is a key player in international peacekeeping missions, including in Darfur, Sudan, where it maintains more than 3200 troops.
Reports indicate that at least 34 people, including 16 civilians, were killed on Monday as Syrian forces pressed their crackdown on dissent, pounding rebel bastions and clashing with insurgents near the Turkish border.
Meanwhile, Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, has said that President Bashar al-Assad accepted an April 10 deadline to start implementing a peace plan, which involves withdrawing troops and heavy weaponry from protest cities.
More than 9000 people have died in the year-long violence, according to UN estimates.
Last year, a wave of Arab Spring protests overthrew long-serving regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, whose then leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed in the process.
Contact email: james.munyaneza[at]newtimes.co.rw sunny.ntayombya[at]newtimes.co.rw | <urn:uuid:fd140fe0-4277-4b48-b70b-21702f494441> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=14951&a=52076 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957712 | 422 | 1.8125 | 2 |
RALEIGH, N.C. — The thousands of low-income North Carolinians denied health insurance in a Republican-drafted measure that passed the House on Wednesday are left with few options for coverage.
Its a reality that Chiyanna Henry knows all too well. The Selma mother of three, the youngest of which is 22 months old, is among the 1.5 million uninsured in the state. Her husband receives health coverage through his IT job at a community college, but cant afford to cover the whole family at $900 a month. Im just praying, said Henry, 41.
The federal health care law anticipated covering people like Henry through Medicaid by expanding eligibility to anyone making less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $38,000 for a family of five. But Gov. Pat McCrory and Republican lawmakers are concerned about the potential cost to the state and are moving quickly to block the expansion.
Adam Searing, a health policy expert at the N.C. Justice Center, which advocates for the poor and opposes the legislation, said the hardest hit are low-income citizens who dont qualify for Medicaid.
They will continue to get expensive care in emergency rooms or limited care in overextended community health clinics, he said. They will get half the care a person with insurance receives and get sicker and die earlier than those insured.
The second component of the law, an online marketplace to purchase health insurance, will begin enrollment in October, but coverage wont begin until Jan. 1, 2014.
It cant come soon enough for Stephen Wissink, a 55-year-old cancer survivor. He cant find a reasonably priced policy, even with a subsidy from his employer, given his medical history. And now he needs more tests.
Until we get a health care exchange, Im kind of at wits end about what to do, said Wissink, who lives in Raleigh and works in advertising. I want to be able to afford health insurance to get relief from the pain of neurological damage, and if this stuff does come back, I want to catch it early.
The Medicaid expansion would have covered about 500,000 North Carolina residents. An additional 700,000 are expected to seek coverage through insurance exchanges.
The Affordable Care Act includes caps on how much insurance premiums in the exchange can cost. For those with incomes at 138 percent of poverty level, it is 2 percent of income. The sliding scale caps premiums at 9.5 percent of income for those at 400 percent of the federal poverty level, income equivalent to about $92,000 for a family of four.
But it doesnt include any assistance for those making below the poverty level, or about $11,000 for an individual, because the law presumed those people would be covered by the Medicaid expansion.
State loses control
The federal government will operate North Carolinas exchange in 2014 because the state missed a 2012 deadline to establish its own. And it would remain a federal entity under the law that has now passed the Senate and a preliminary House vote.
The state will pay the federal government $181 million annually to run the exchange.
By relinquishing control, the state will not have the authority to review insurance plans in the exchange marketplace for compliance with regulations nor the ability to mediate disputes between doctors, insurers and patients. The N.C. Department of Insurance gets 1,200 calls a month to a hotline from consumers seeking insurance help.
So basically the consumer, when they could have easily, quickly do what they do now, which is contact us will be calling 1-800-WASHINGTONDC (to talk to) someone that doesnt know North Carolina, doesnt know our people, doesnt have accountability to respond quickly, said Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, a Democrat who favors a state-run exchange.
Republican lawmakers said they would consider ways to address Goodwins concerns. But they challenged the notion of a state-run exchange, contending that the federal law leaves little room for flexibility. Washington will dictate the exchange, said Rep. Justin Burr, an Albemarle Republican and co-chairman of the House health care committee. The partnership (model) and state-based exchange are really an illusion.
The legislation received preliminary House approval Wednesday by a 75 to 39 vote. In the floor debate, Republicans emphasized the cost and the troubles in the current Medicaid system as reasons not to move forward with the Medicaid expansion. As for the insurance exchange, Republicans have rejected it, saying they dont want to be part of implementing what they refer to as Obamacare. | <urn:uuid:d2110ab7-0c98-493c-96dc-72597f1c9719> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kentucky.com/2013/02/14/2516414/nc-bill-leavs-thousands-with-few.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963154 | 929 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Crime Magazine is about true crime: organized crime, celebrity crime, serial killers, corruption, sex crimes, capital punishment, prisons, assassinations, justice issues, crime books, crime films and crime studies.
The City Market Kansas City, Missouri
A first-hand investigative report of the Kansas City Mafia's attempt to take over a major Kansas City entertainment area in the mid-1970s -- an effort that included bombings, extortion, and a large number of murders.
by J.J. Maloney
Every city dreams of greatness. To achieve an identity it constructs symbols (the Eiffel Tower, the St. Louis Arch), or, like New Orleans, has an area, such as the French Quarter, that assumes an identity of its own.
Traditionally Kansas City has been known as a cowtown. It was famous for its stockyards, and the biggest annual event still is the American Royal, during which journalists shake cow patties from their shoes. Kansas Citians are sensitive about that image, feeling it gives them a "hick" reputation.
They point with pride to the Country Club Plaza or Westport, but neither has ever achieved a national reputation. They promote Kansas City as the birthplace of jazz, a claim other cities dispute. They go so far as to call Kansas City the home of great barbecue; local politicians devote great amounts of space to that subject. Such is the desperation for an identity. | <urn:uuid:d0e04a14-960b-42e2-8b48-68475c9bde77> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crimemagazine.com/river-quay-how-courageous-newspaper-and-ex-convict-reporter-took-kansas-city-mafia-and-won?page=22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957007 | 291 | 1.835938 | 2 |
An excellent elaboration of Rule 11, among other things.
The critique of the panellists completely fails to connect this one simple fact: That arguing “you wouldn’t tell racist or homophobic jokes, so why tell fat jokes?” misses the point that people do tell racist and homophobic jokes. Bram Williams alludes to this near the end of the segment, but the dots are not connected. These jokes are everywhere. The jokes in the this advertisement all have resonance because we’ve all heard them all before.
So how is the ad supposed to work? “We’ve conquered racism, now let’s work on fatphobia?” “We’ve conquered homophobia, now let’s work on fatphobia”? “Fatphobia is the last acceptable prejudice”? We haven’t, and it’s not. And it’s downright offensive for a bunch of white sexist blokes working on their personal growth to try to create traction by stomping all over other oppressed groups.
-So much wrong with that headline, but it’s a pretty good article on Yoga for Fatties. (My only real gripe is the line about the use of props in a plus-size class, which implies that said props are unique to those classes — fatties can’t hack it! — as opposed to being a staple of beginning Iyengar yoga that about a zillion different schools have adopted.)
Anyway. I’ve heard this “we shouldn’t be shunting fat folks into separate classes” argument before, and while I do think it’s true that ALL yoga teachers should be trained in modifications for fat bodies, the reality is that even if they are, they won’t necessarily have the time to devote to helping fat students in a big class. And a lot of them aren’t trained, and have never thought about how fat might interfere with the typical expression of some poses. And a lot of them are teaching at gyms where body shame is the norm. And probably most importantly, plus-size yoga classes provide a safer space for fat people who want to try yoga but are intimidated by the thought of walking into a room full of thin people in spandex. So I’m a big fan of the concept, but I would absolutely like to see more awareness of fat people’s needs among general yoga teachers. (Thanks to a Damsel writer for the tip.)
-If you missed it, Obama thinks workplace “wellness” programs are a swell idea and has a team studying the “best” ones and “explor[ing] the feasibility of developing such a plan for federal employees and their workplaces.” FANFUCKINGTASTIC. That totally won’t fan the flames of employment discrimination against fat people or bring yet more fat-shaming into yet more offices. It’ll just make us all HEALTHEEEEEE!
As Zuzu, the first person who sent this to me, said in an e-mail:
If we had single-payer, these things wouldn’t be tied to keeping your job, and if doctors didn’t have to deal with bill collecting instead of providing care in the first place, maybe there would be enough resources for prevention of the kinds of diseases that doctors are always associating with being fat and overlooking in thinner people. Which would mean lower costs, since things would be caught early, what with people not having to do things like walk out of the ER with head injuries or refuse necessary treatment because it’s too expensive. Or wait until a condition becomes life-threatening and expensive to treat before seeking help.
I can’t really top that.
-This has been up on the sidebar via Twitter for a couple of days, but Marjorie Ingall wrote a terrific essay on dealing with kids’ curiosity about fat people — how do you teach them not to scream, “Hey, look at the fat lady!” without reinforcing the message that fat is bad? We discussed this topic a bit on the thread about Joy Nash’s “Staircase Wit” video, but I’m still not sure I know what the answer is.
All right, that’s all I’ve got right now. Reminder to Chicago Shapelings: I’ll be selling/signing books and hanging out at Vive la Femme, 2048 N. Damen, tomorrow evening (5/15) from 6-8 p.m. There will be awesome fat people, awesome plus-size clothes for sale, and refreshments! And if you’re interested in hanging out afterwards, let us know over at the Ning site. | <urn:uuid:31efdeda-f7c1-429e-8be2-a4664643ed33> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kateharding.net/2009/05/14/read-em-3/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=f35e2c39af | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947605 | 1,008 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Learn your lines: How parishes are preparing for the new Mass
It’s dress rehearsal time as parishes prepare for the new Mass.
It was last Advent season when Andy Hentz first heard his pastor talk about the new Latin-to-English translations coming to the Mass. But it wasn’t until Hentz, a mail carrier who reads Catholic magazines and listens to Catholic radio, read excerpts of the new texts on the Internet earlier this year that he realized how dramatic the changes will be.
The 33-year-old married father of three says his parish, St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, has not yet done much to prepare parishioners for what is coming. When the new texts are implemented across the nation this fall, Hentz thinks some Catholics could be caught off guard.
“I haven’t heard much about this, considering it’s going to change the central thing that we do as Catholics,” says Hentz of Granite City, Illinois, a St. Louis suburb. “That’s kind of surprising.”
Diocesan and parish officials across the country say they have worked hard to make sure that won’t be the case when the new translations are introduced at Mass on November 27, the first Sunday of Advent. Last year the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops presented the new texts at 22 regional workshops for diocesan and parish leaders. More than 4,200 people participated from all but six dioceses, says Father Richard Hilgartner, associate director of the USCCB’s Secretariat for Divine Worship. Many dioceses that weren’t home sites sent teams of priests, who would return home and lead training sessions in their parishes.
The church has more than ignorance to overcome. Critics charge that the new texts clash too awkwardly with English, and they resent the “top-down” way in which they are coming to American parishes from Rome.
“Many people will at first be concerned about making changes to prayers and responses we know by heart, but the hope is that the new texts will be helpful in leading to a deeper understanding of what we celebrate in the liturgy,” Hilgartner says. “Parishes are being encouraged to plan for catechesis about not only the changes in the texts but the bigger picture—the nature and meaning of the Mass—as well.”
Ready or not
Father Paul Turner, pastor of St. Munchin Parish in Cameron, Missouri, has been giving presentations to a few dozen dioceses in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. He will go to England and Scotland later this year.
“I’ve been trying to respond to requests from dioceses intermittently over the past couple of years, and there is more intense interest now,” Turner says. “I think it’s going well, but I’m finding what you would expect. Some priests are very hesitant about the changes coming, and some are very excited about it.”
Turner says some dioceses have done “quite a lot” to prepare; others have done “quite little by comparison.”
The Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa hopes a gradual approach will have its faithful ready by late November. Starting in February it began publishing one-paragraph installments in the Sunday bulletin, describing the reason for the changes and including short excerpts, says Peggy Lovrien, director of Dubuque’s Office of Worship.
The first 15-part series covered the introduction to the Mass and the liturgy of the word. This fall a second 15-part series will focus on the liturgy of the Eucharist and the dismissal.
In February the archdiocese also gathered more than 200 musicians to practice singing the new translations and some new music proposed by Catholic publishers. Early this fall Dubuque plans to reconvene the group.
Lovrien says she has enjoyed working with the musicians. “Through all of this I’m real impressed with the deep love of the church that people have,” she says.
She is not worried that many Catholics will be caught off guard come Advent. “Nothing is perfect in terms of communications,” she notes. “The church, from Rome to the Sunday liturgy in parishes, has been communicating over and over that these changes are coming. If there are those who are surprised by it, I think the numbers will be small.”
Turner says it’s hard to say whether he’s comfortable with the level of preparation thus far. “It’s like asking me as a pastor if I’m comfortable with the level of preparation an engaged couple has received so far before marrying,” he says. “You can never have too much.”
Turner has no doubt that the new texts will be implemented on schedule, but some critics say the change will be so unpopular, it should not be forced on Catholics all at once. Father Michael G. Ryan, pastor at St. James Cathedral in Seattle, last year proposed a pilot project “What If We Just Said Wait?” in which the new texts would be introduced in some carefully selected parishes throughout the English-speaking world to be evaluated after a year. Ryan has since discontinued the campaign.
“There is no chance that will happen,” Turner says. “It’s impractical. What would you do [at such a pilot parish] for weddings and funerals when you have a large number of people who have not had the catechesis? And what would you do at the end of that year, go back to the original texts?”
While he disagrees with the critics, Turner likes their passion for the issue. “It’s a sign of how deeply people care about the Eucharist. Behind that is a desire that the people’s voice be heard in some way. It’s a good desire. These changes are going to affect every Catholic in the pews.”
Alexandra Besore, a 25-year-old singer and actress in Los Angeles who attends Mass daily, is among those who are excited about the changes. She says she has grown increasingly frustrated with how area churches have become too “modernized and Protestantized,” citing more tolerance for homosexuality and contraception.
Besore doesn’t necessarily want to revert to an all-Latin Mass but says she is “thrilled” that the “fabulous” new translations will bring a more literal translation of the Mass from the original Latin and a step toward the traditional.
“The closer you get to the original, the closer you get to when Christ was on the Earth, so any move in that direction is a positive thing,” Besore says.
Father Anthony Ruff, a Benedictine priest and nationally known liturgist, says he typically shares Besore’s conservative approach, but he could not disagree more with her support for the new translations. Ruff teaches liturgy and Gregorian chant at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He calls the new texts a “train wreck.”
“They are going to alienate people and be divisive,” Ruff says. “Priests weren’t asking for this, they weren’t consulted, and their viewpoints have been ignored. The vast majority of liturgical and musical directors are against this change and are dreading it. They are doing it against their will, but they’re trying to make the best of it.”
Ruff says he has sympathy for the goal of creating texts that are more faithful to the Latin. But he says the new translation guidelines issued in the 2001 document Liturgiam authenticam, will never produce “good English.”
Hentz, the mail carrier, agrees. Hentz’ favorite part of the Mass always has been at the end of the eucharistic prayer when the priest says, “through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit . . .” In the new translation, that part will be changed to, “through him, and with him, and in him . . .” It might sound like a minute change, but Hentz says it’s the one he’ll have the most difficulty with.
“The Trinity to me is very present there,” he says. “Christ is in the Eucharist, brought there through the Holy Spirit, offered in sacrifice to the Father. [The ‘ands’] kind of break up that connection in my head.”
Another change that struck him as odd is saying “and with your spirit” instead of “and also with you,” in response to the priest’s, “The Lord be with you.”
“My wife was saying, [‘and also with you’] is just kind of a part of our culture. ‘And with your spirit’ seems strange. It’s not the way we talk in our everyday language. But I also see that there’s a different meaning there, and I guess they’re trying to illuminate that.”
The new texts are “overreacting to our current texts, which are too loose and unfaithful,” Ruff says, “but [they] twist the Engish language to fit Latin grammar and word order, and that will not give you good, poetic English, which we need in the liturgy.”
Ruff is urging opponents of the new translations to “make our voices be heard from now until Advent.”
“It’s a long shot . . . but it still will send the right kind of signal for the future, and it will make it clear to the Roman authorities that we need better guidelines and a better process.”
Ruff has felt ramifications from speaking out against the texts, he says. In November he was terminated from the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), for which he had chaired a committee that set all of the music for the new texts in the new Roman Missal.
“I know Rome has read my blog. That’s why I was terminated. ICEL told me Rome did not want anyone critical of Rome involved in the work,” Ruff says. “It’s sad that this is the way our church operates. I don’t feel that bad for myself. I’m glad I was a part of this important work. I’m not hurting at all. I’ve moved beyond that to [see] how can I help the church reform itself.”
Change will do you good
Ken Canedo, composer in residence at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Beaverton, Oregon, and a widely published liturgical music composer, has traveled the country giving presentations on the new texts.
“People have been very receptive. There always are some pockets of resistance. People don’t like change, of course. It’s human nature, especially with something as intimate as the Mass.”
There is a lot of misunderstanding about the new translation, Canedo says, especially if people are getting their information only from news sound bites, rumors, and blogs.
“Catholics need to receive information about their sacred liturgy from authoritative church sources,” Canedo says. “We also need to appreciate that the Mass has a resonance that goes beyond only what we remember of it from our own lifetime.”
Canedo says he has been able to diffuse some of the controversy by putting the changes in historical context. “What I try to do in my workshops is to quote church sources: Liturgiam authenticam and the United States Catholic bishops,” Canedo says. “I also give people a brief history of the Mass from the Council of Trent in 1545, onward through the Second Vatican Council, and up to our day. There were a lot of changes in the liturgy during that long period of time, and knowledge of that helps people to view the upcoming changes in a better light.”
Even those opposed to the changes have told him how an understanding of the history of the Mass has helped them to be more open.
Views from the pews
One person who has enjoyed learning from Canedo is Betty Drilling, a Holy Trinity parishioner. Drilling sings in the choir that Canedo leads.
Drilling says she first read about the changes in the parish bulletin and was struck by how familiar they were. “When I read them, I said to my husband, ‘I don’t know what the big deal is. I remember this,’ ” Drilling recalls.
Drilling, 71, still clearly remembers when the Mass was said in Latin, before the Second Vatican Council, which was implemented in 1970.
In January her parish discussed the new texts at a conference attended by about 200 people, including representatives of the parish’s eucharistic, homebound, greeters, and choir ministries.
“Ken spoke for an hour and 15 minutes, he explained things, and we had question-and-answer time,” she says. The participants then broke into discussion groups and shared their thoughts and feelings about the new texts.
Drilling says she was concerned that the more traditional language would be accompanied by a return to the pre-Vatican II emphasis on kneeling in the pew, something her knees can’t handle. She also wanted to know whether people will still shake hands while sharing the sign of peace and hold hands while praying the Our Father. “Those are things that bring fellowship, even among those people who are new to our parish. My concerns were allayed because none of these things will change.”
“It’s the priest who has to learn so many different things. I don’t understand why people are so upset. It’s going back to what our Bible says and going back to our history. It’s not an awful lot of change.”
Larry Merkel couldn’t disagree more. “I don’t see the point in doing it,” says Merkel, a 43-year-old married father of three, whose family attends Mass each Sunday at St. John Neumann Church in Austin, Texas. “The new translations seem kind of stilted. The ones we have been using have a nice flow to them. They kind of go along in a melodious way, but these don’t seem to do that.”
Merkel, a patent agent, compares the new texts to patent applications that have been translated word-for-word from Japanese or Chinese to English. They are difficult to understand, he says. It is much easier to read applications that have been translated by consultants who account for the nuances of both languages.
“When they’ve been reflowed a bit, they don’t change the meaning; they’ve just been massaged a little bit, and they read much more smoothly.”
Merkel says he probably will quietly say the current responses even after the new texts are implemented but will encourage his children—ages 13, 11, and 8—to make their own decision. He has yet to hear his pastor say anything to prepare people for the changes.
Hentz finds himself somewhere in between the enthusiastic and the oppositional. “It will take some getting used to, but I guess they’re doing it to stay true to the original Latin to make the meaning a little deeper, maybe. I guess that’s a good thing.”
This article appeared in the May 2011 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 76, No. 5, pages 12-17).
Image: Tom Wright | <urn:uuid:5a99beb9-f7f8-438f-82c0-464150557b7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2011/04/learn-your-lines-how-parishes-are-preparing-new-mass?page=4%2C0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970877 | 3,377 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Save the Children: Julianne Moore on U.S. Poverty, Being 50, and Losing Her Mom
Actress/author Julianne Moore puts her heart into family, career, and improving children's lives this Valentine's Day.
Moore on Education Equality continued...
So when her teachers taught the lesson that America is a land of equal opportunity, young Julianne was skeptical. "I'm looking around, going, 'That's not true.' I saw the disparity right in front of me," she says. "We're all supposed to have an equal education, but it really depends on the tax bracket for the county you live in."
After earning her bachelor of fine arts degree in acting from Boston University's School of Theatre, Moore went on to get her big break in television with a dual role as Frannie Hughes and her "evil twin" Sabrina on the now-defunct soap opera As the World Turns. She then landed a series of supporting roles in feature films like Benny & Joon, The Fugitive, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. The late 1990s and early 2000s were Moore's breakout season, as she went from one Academy Award-nominated role to another: Cathy Whitaker in Far From Heaven, Amber Waves in Boogie Nights, Sarah Miles in The End of the Affair, and Laura Brown in The Hours. Along the way, she met Freundlich when he directed her in 1997's The Myth of Fingerprints. She appears next as Sarah Palin in HBO's Game Change, based on the book by the same name, in March.
But she never forgot what she'd learned as an "Army brat." Years later, as charities came calling for a bit of her time, Moore elected to work with Save the Children on programs aimed at alleviating poverty among U.S. children.
"I have a friend who knew someone working with Save the Children, and he told me about all the places I could go and help in Asia and Africa. But I said my area of interest is the United States," she says. "Part of the deal with being American is that we're supposed to go out and help everybody in the rest of the world, but to do that we have to help the children here."
That's a lesson she's always taught her own kids. When Liv was younger, her elementary school did their own card campaign, donating the proceeds to buy toys for a nursery school wiped out in a tornado. "My daughter is a great bake sale person," she says. "She'll make cookies and sit on the stoop with a sign saying 'Bake sale for Japan!'"
How the Economy Affects Children
As America's economic recession lurches into its fourth year, the tentacles of poverty are squeezing more U.S. kids. "The common notion of poverty is the child in the ghetto, and it's true that about 29% of kids in major cities live in poverty," says Beth Mattingly, PhD, director of research on vulnerable families at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. "But 1 in 4 kids in rural America is growing up in poverty, too." Mattingly adds that between 2009 and 2010, an additional 1 million American children became poor. How can you help? Mattingly offers some tips: | <urn:uuid:2eff8b43-2a0f-4bcb-9e61-05e1cc9ec167> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://women.webmd.com/features/save-the-children-julianne-moore-us-poverty-being-50-losing-mom?page=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975984 | 678 | 1.640625 | 2 |
BEARD, DEAN (1935–1989). Dean Beard, rockabilly pioneer, was born in Santa Anna, Texas, on August 31, 1935, the son of Raymond and Opal (Baker) Beard. He was sometimes called the "West Texas Wild Man" because of his frantic stage presence and piano-playing style.
Beard, a lifelong resident of Coleman County, moved to Coleman in 1953 and graduated from Coleman High School. While in high school he started doing session work in Abilene for Key City media mogul and record producer Slim Willetqv. He briefly attended Tarleton State College but soon opted to pursue a music career. He made his first recordings in 1955 in Abilene with the Fox Four Sevens. The same year he shared the stage with Elvis Presley whose star was rising. The two became friends, and they spent a day together in Coleman where Presley's Cadillac created quite a stir.
Intent on duplicating Presley's success, Beard cut two demo sessions in Memphis for Sun Records in 1956, but Sam Phillips decided not to sign him. One of the demos was "Rakin' and Scrapin'," which Beard recorded again the next year in Abilene for Willet's Edmoral label. His popular West Texas band, Dean Beard and the Crew Cats, included area teenagers Jimmy Seals and Dash Crofts, who later became a successful pop duo. A tenor sax- and piano-driven pounder, "Rakin' and Scrapin'," was leased to Atlantic Records for national distribution but failed to break out. A high energy follow-up on Atlantic, "Party Party," suffered a similar fate.
In 1958 Beard, along with Seals and Crofts, joined the Champs (of "Tequila" fame) and journeyed to the West Coast. After recording several sessions with the group for Challenge Records, he was fired and returned to Texas in 1959. Beard continued to record for Willet and then for a variety of other small labels throughout the 1960s. He remained a popular live act into the 1970s, despite having to battle crippling arthritis, the results of an auto accident that broke his back. He died in Coleman on April 4, 1989. He was honored by induction into the West Texas Music Hall of Fame .
Abilene Reporter-News, April 11, 1989. Coleman Chronicle and Democrat-Voice, April 6, 1989. Clay Glover, "The Legend of Dean Beard," Rockin' Fifties, June 1994. Wayne Russell, "Dean Beard," New Kommotion 23 (1980).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Joe W. Specht, "BEARD, DEAN," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbebr), accessed May 18, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. | <urn:uuid:fe24c2e9-e82e-4571-be11-fd3837029c0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbebr | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966524 | 608 | 1.773438 | 2 |
``The ring is closing around the Yugoslav forces,'' NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said.
State-run Serbian television, meanwhile, claimed that Yugoslav forces had cleaned out key strongholds of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. And two trains jammed with more than 10,000 refugees arrived yesterday at the Macedonian border, where U.N. refugee officials described scenes of pandemonium.
``People were . . . crammed onto the train like sardines,'' said Judith Kumin, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. ``Two old people died in the crush, and three women gave birth.''
Clinton, speaking after a meeting in Norfolk, Va., with families of some U.S. service men and women involved in the air campaign, condemned an announcement on Yugoslav television that the three soldiers captured Wednesday near Yugoslavia's border with Macedonia would be tried today in a military court, and pledged to work for their release.
``There was absolutely no basis for them to be taken,'' Clinton said. ``There is no basis for them to be held. There is certainly no basis for them to be tried.''
U.S. and NATO officials said the capture of the soldiers - identified as Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez, 24, of Los Angeles; Staff Sgt. Christopher J. Stone, 25, of Smiths Creek, Mich.; and Spec. Steven M. Gonzales, 21, of Huntsville, Texas - would not deter the air campaign. They argued that the bombardment was working against Milosevic's forces, and U.S. officials committed 13 more F-117A stealth fighters to the effort.
With no direct diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia, the United States worked through Swedish diplomats in Belgrade to check on the Americans and to work for their release. U.S. Secret Service agents and State Department officials had closed the Yugoslav Embassy in Washington and expelled its remaining diplomats, a week after the Yugoslav government severed formal relations with the United States.
Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who also was in Norfolk, sidestepped questions about any possible attempt to rescue the soldiers. ``We have some initiatives that are ongoing at this particular time,'' he said, ``and that's as much as we want to say about that.''
``We've all seen their pictures. We don't like it. We don't like the way they're treated. And we have a long memory about these kinds of things,'' said a stern Gen. Wesley Clark, the U.S. Army officer serving as the supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe.
International law requires that prisoners be provided food, clothes, housing and medical care, and that they are protected against violence, coercion or threats. They should be required to provide only their name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said the Geneva Convention also prohibits putting prisoners on trial, as the Serbs threatened to do with the Americans.
``The fact is it was illegal for them to be abducted, and they were performing a mission in a neutral country,'' Rubin said. ``There is no basis for their detention. And under the Geneva Convention, to subject them to some phony trial . . . is just ridiculous.''
While U.S. officials worried about the captured Americans, they also were concerned that too much concern for their welfare could endanger the thin popular support for the air campaign, which began March 24.
``It's awful they've been taken. But they are of absolutely no strategic value. They don't know anything, like a pilot might about targets,'' said one Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``All that can happen now is that their capture makes the country mad.''
Clinton urged Americans not to focus only on the plight of the three soldiers. He urged them to also remember the fate of the ethnic Albanians being killed or driven from their homes in Kosovo by the Serbs.
``I ask you also to resolve that we will continue to carry out our mission with determination and resolve,'' he said.
U.S. and NATO leaders tried yesterday to paint the NATO campaign as effective and successful despite continuing reports of Serbian aggression against ethnic Albanians and the mass exodus of Albanians into neighboring countries.
``We are making progress,'' said U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen. ``And we intend to stay the course.''
In a dramatic demonstration that the air war has expanded beyond the original limited range of military targets, allied strikes destroyed a bridge over the Danube River used mainly by civilian traffic in the city of Novi Sad. Residents told reporters two missiles hit the bridge's main support columns dead-on and the wreckage collapsed into the muddy river, disrupting navigation on the river, a major transportation artery for central Europe.
The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, said yesterday's bombing runs included the first attacks on the smaller units of troops believed to be carrying out the expulsion of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.
Bacon said warplanes attacked a number of armored personnel carriers in central Kosovo. Also struck yesterday, he reported, were lines of communications and a major fuel facility, a strike aimed at limiting the mobility of Yugoslav troops.
NATO Secretary-General Solana, speaking at the daily briefing in Brussels, Belgium, said the 19-member alliance remains unified in support of the air war.
``We will be successful,'' he said, ``but we will need stamina and we will need determination.''
Clark, NATO's supreme commander, said the alliance was ``having results against forces on the ground, including some of the forces engaged in operations in and around the Pagorusa Valley,'' where Serbs were battling the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. He said NATO forces had done ``substantial damage'' to the Serbian military.
And he challenged widespread reports that the Serbs were ``cleansing'' Kosovo of Albanians through murder or exile so fast that NATO cannot possibly stop them in time.
``There's a little bit of mythology going on about how fast the Serb forces are working on the ground,'' Clark said. ``I would advise you not to be taken into it. We're going to continue our effort, and they're going to pay the price.''
Indeed, some of the early reports of Serbian aggression or atrocities passed on by U.S. and NATO officials appear to be wrong or exaggerated.
In one example, the State Department said there was no truth to a report that thousands of ethnic Albanians were herded into a soccer stadium and were being held in a sort of open-air concentration camp.
But the fact remained that NATO forces were still struggling to knock out Yugoslav air defenses and to stop Serbian military forces who continue to attack ethnic Albanians.
After being briefed by Clinton administration officials yesterday, Sen. John W. Warner (R., Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said the attacks are starting to hurt Serbian forces, depriving them of fuel, food and ammunition.
But he predicted that Milosevic would complete his ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in a week to 10 days anyway, and that even a decision to invade with ground troops would come too late to stop the Serbian aggression.
Meanwhile, refugees continued to flee Kosovo, driven from their homes by Serbian police and Yugoslav soldiers.
Another 14,500 crossed into Albania yesterday, bringing to 100,000 the total who have arrived there since the air strikes started March 24, according to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. More than half have been moved south, away from the border and closer to facilities where they can get food and shelter.
About 14,500 also fled into Macedonia yesterday, bringing to 29,000 the total who have entered. And about 7,000 went to Montenegro, raising to 27,000 the total who have fled there.
The total who have left the province - whose prewar population was about two million - is at least 156,000, officials said. But the number of new arrivals is so overwhelming that ``nobody knows how to count them any more,'' said Kumin, the U.N. refugee spokesman.
This article contains information from Inquirer wire services. | <urn:uuid:10968a96-4487-4d16-a116-2611ebc61b4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.philly.com/1999-04-02/news/25518614_1_yugoslav-military-units-steven-m-gonzales-yugoslav-forces | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973113 | 1,674 | 1.5 | 2 |
The new book of articles and opinion from Jonathan Franzen, author of 'Freedom' and 'The Corrections'. Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' was the runaway ... Show synopsis The new book of articles and opinion from Jonathan Franzen, author of 'Freedom' and 'The Corrections'. Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' was the runaway most-discussed novel of 2010, an ambitious and searching engagement with life in America in the 21st century. Now, a new collection of Franzen's non-fiction brings fresh demonstrations of his vivid, moral intelligence, confirming his status not only as a great American novelist but also as a master noticer, social critic, and self-investigator. In 'Farther Away', which gathers together essays and speeches written mostly in the past five years, the writer returns with renewed vigor to the themes, both human and literary, that have long preoccupied him. Whether recounting his violent encounter with bird poachers in Cyprus, examining his mixed feelings about the suicide of his friend and rival David Foster Wallace, or offering a moving and witty take on the ways that technology has changed how people express their love, these pieces deliver on Franzen's implicit promise to conceal nothing from the reader. Taken together, these essays trace the progress of unique and mature mind wrestling with itself, with literature, and with some of the most important issues of our day. 'Farther Away' is remarkable, provocative, and necessary. | <urn:uuid:21765ede-d5a9-4bed-8fac-a9b127748b45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=19954925&binding=S&qsort=p&cm_sp=works*listing*softcovers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952775 | 294 | 1.5 | 2 |
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Press Release of Senator Cantwell
Cantwell, McCain Seek to Restore Glass-Steagall Safeguards by Separating Commercial and Investment Banking
Amendment would limit bank size and systemic threats to the whole economy
Thursday, May 06,2010
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bipartisan amendment to separate commercial and investment banking. The proposed change in the banking and financial reform legislation being debated in the Senate is also cosponsored by Senators Ted Kaufman (D-DE), Tom Harkin (D-IA), and Russell Feingold (D-WI). The amendment restores safeguards modeled after the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that protect bank deposits from being used in Wall Street’s risky speculation. The amendment is based on the Cantwell-McCain Banking Integrity Act introduced in December 2009.
“Behemoth banks are putting their money into risky, get-rich-quick Wall Street schemes instead of investing in Main Street,” Senator Maria Cantwell said. “So much U.S. taxpayer-backed money is going into speculation in dark markets that it has diverted lending capital from our community banks and small businesses that depend on loans to expand and create jobs. This is stifling America and it is why there is bipartisan support for restoring the important safeguards that protected Americans for decades after the Great Depression. It’s time to go back to separating commercial banking from Wall Street investment banking.”
“I want to ensure that we never stick the American taxpayer with another $700 billion – or even larger – tab to bail out the financial industry,” said Senator John McCain. “If big Wall Street institutions want to take part in risky transactions – fine. But we should not allow them to do so with federally insured deposits. It is time to put a stop to the taxpayer financed excesses of Wall Street. No single financial institution should be so big that its failure would bring ruin to our economy and destroy millions of American jobs. This country would be better served if we limit the activities of these financial institutions.”
“It’s no coincidence that our financial sector got completely out of line once the Glass-Steagall prohibitions were overturned in 1999. By consolidating commercial banking, investment banking and insurance into single financial companies, institutions grew so large and became so interconnected that they were ‘too big to fail,’” said Senator Tom Harkin. “It is clear to me that going back to the Glass-Steagall era regulations will help end the problem of ‘too big to fail’ and will restore order to our financial sector.”
The amendment filed today would prohibit commercial banks from affiliating in any manner with investment banks and vice versa; prevent officers, directors, and employees of a commercial bank from serving as an officer, director, or employee of an investment bank and vice versa; prohibit commercial banks from engaging in all insurance activities; and establish one year from date of enactment as the deadline for financial houses to transition and separate their commercial and investment banking operations.
Beginning in 1933, Glass-Steagall established a wall between commercial and investment banking to protect depositor money from being put at risk by Wall Street speculation. For nearly 60 years, this firewall maintained the integrity of the banking system; prevented self-dealing and other financial abuses; and limited stock market speculation. But since its repeal, banks have blended banking and brokerage, using loopholes in the Act and other statutes to market financial products like stocks, mutual funds and underwriting stocks to their consumers at the same time. When these megabanks default under the current system, taxpayers pay for the losses twice over.
The biggest banks keep getting bigger in the bailouts and the acquisitions. While there are 7,000 commercial banks in the United States, just five of them hold over 50 percent of our nation’s bank-owned assets. Those same five entities hold over 95 percent of banks’ risk in the derivatives markets.
Under the amendment, major financial firms currently operating both commercial banks and investment houses will have to make a decision on whether to focus on commercial banking or investment banking. In most of these institutions, the investment banks and the commercial banks will both be very valuable independently and profitable for their stockholders. By separating the commercial banks from the investment banks, the amendment ends speculation with depositor money and returns investments to Main Street.
View a press release from December 16, 2009 when the Cantwell-McCain Banking Integrity Act of 2009 was first introduced.
For more on Senator Cantwell’sefforts to strengthen financial regulations, prevent market manipulation and forestall a recurrence of the financial collapse, click here. | <urn:uuid:a3929b77-2c2a-4548-97f2-88eb0c0539bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=324753 | 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 | 0.948629 | 978 | 1.835938 | 2 |
LA MARCHE DE
The title March of the Penguins really refers to the march of a large tribe of Emperor penguins focused on here that march to a nesting spot, attempt to breed, and then march back and forth finding food to feed the only babies that were able to survive the harsh cold. For those religious whom attempted to pin their ideologies upon this hit documentary, they never really take in to consideration much of what happens here. Regardless though, "March of the Penguins", the second highest grossing documentary of all time, basically has one objective to show the true nature of the penguin's journey to pro-create. We see penguins marching, penguins surviving, penguins mating, and penguins attempting to have babies. Obviously that's not just one objective, but it really does boil down to the purpose of the documentary.
It's much in the vein of "Le Peuple Migrateur" (except not as staged) and the old nature documentaries that aired on ABC (except not as delightfully ignorant). Yes, "March" features the basic cycle of the wilderness, life and death, live or die, the basic laws of nature. And there are some cute baby penguins in the climax. Narrating yet again is the great Morgan Freeman who seems to be very engrossed in the material he's exploring because penguins are an oddly compelling animal. They huddle together during snow storms and form little groups to keep each other warm, they nestle their babies underneath their stomachs to keep them warm, they protect one another from birds and each other, they perform an odd little dance to court each other, and they all look so damn similar after months away from each other they need to rely on sound to identify their mates and babies.
But Jacquet's exploration in to these birds is also often an adorable and funny chronicle that's basically a short tale in its brief run time, but really does paint the life and death struggle of the emperor penguins as unique and complex enough for the target audience to explore with wide-eyed wonder. For the older audience, they'll be more inclined to discover the utterly excellent direction and amazing cinematography courtesy of Luc Jacquet, Laurent Chalet, and Jérôme Maison. And kids will love the way these birds act like humans, especially in terms of relationships and children, caring for them, sacrificing to take care of them, and the companionship among the tribe of emperor penguins to keep each other safe in the face of the harsh winter. Jacquet's exploration of these animals is simple, and direct, but also very fascinating and entertaining that will appeal to adults and children's curiosities.
For the kids, this will be a new and invigorating experience, but for the adults, well, you'll notice instantly that there's really nothing here that you can't find on PBS or the National Geographic Channel. As a kid, living on network television for years, on the weekends, my dad would take control of the television and the afternoons were spent on PBS watching repair shows, and then four hours of wildlife programming with lions and antelopes, and the occasional aquatic animal, and of all the documentaries I've seen, "March of the Penguins" seemed like a superficial film when compared. "March" is really just meant for children, it never studies anatomy, breeding habits, and biology, it's just these groups of penguins mating, and you'll be able to find this just about anywhere else you look, which is what kept me from truly becoming engrossed in the film.
I figured a film so highly praised would have offered something unique
and fresh to the fold, but in the end it's just fluff, and fluff that
really won't appeal to science and wildlife buffs save for occasional
nuggets that audiences will find interesting. And such proof of fluff is
how the film is narrated. Freeman is excellent, but the descriptions are
often sugar-coated. The mating rituals are featured for just ten seconds
in a non-suggestive subtle method, and worst of all, the film shies away
from really showing the harsh realities of this life; instead of saying
"die" or "dead", they replace it with "fade away" or "disappear". I get
that they don't want to sadden the audience too exhaustively, but if
this is a film about examination of life, wouldn't the examination of
death be also a natural part of the documenting? Life and death are
natural polar opposites that deserve exploration, and death should be
just as featured
Did I love it? No. Did I like it? Sure. It's overrated, excruciatingly overblown, and has nothing you can't find on an average program on PBS or the National Geographic channel, but--though--only at almost ninety minutes, it sure is a lot of fun. Watch penguins walk, watch penguins lay eggs, watch penguins make whoopie, watch penguins die. This is more of an exploration of a family of another species, a passable children's film that kids will utterly love. As for adults? Well--best bring a magazine. Just in case. | <urn:uuid:05d34bc0-2d06-469e-b1e4-fef88e24647e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cinema-crazed.com/h-q/marchof-thepenguins.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961807 | 1,073 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Vouchers: Another Income Redistribution Scheme
A version of this review of Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice by Clint Bolick (Washington D.C.: Cato Institute, 2003) appeared in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 18.2 (subscribe)
Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice is the story of the twelve-year legal battle for school choice that culminated in the 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-HarrisSupreme Court decision upholding the Cleveland school choice program (educational vouchers).
But because the book is also the author's firsthand account of his litigation experiences on behalf of school choice programs, it is also the story of a libertarian's twelve-year crusade on behalf of a government program.
Bolick is the author of several previous books on civil rights, and is the vice president and national director of state chapters at the Institute for Justice. He also has the dubious distinction of having worked for the government at the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.
Although the book was not written in defense of vouchers per se, it has that effect because the author writes from the perspective that vouchers are a good thing that all libertarians should support. Bolick is clearly a pragmatic libertarian who envisions vouchers as both improving public schools by holding them more accountable and helping private schools without bringing increased government regulations. And although he does acknowledge that libertarians are divided on the issue, Bolick gives short shrift to the concerns of libertarian critics of vouchers.
Bolick correctly describes the dismal condition of the public school system, but fails to offer the correct solution: the complete separation of school from state. The Gordian Knot stays uncut. He insists that "it is nothing less than criminal to fail to consider private options in a rescue mission" for children in failing public schools. But is it any less criminal to compel a citizen to pay for the education of someone else's children?
Bolick should have read Ludwig von Mises: "There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private association and institutions."
Besides this crucial point, there are also a number of other fallacies that underlie Bolick's support of vouchers.
The bad guys in the fight against vouchers are always the teachers' unions, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the NAACP, People for the American Way, the ACLU, and "special interest groups." To be opposed to vouchers is to be identified with these groups. Both "absolutist" libertarians and teachers' unions are accused of being responsible for keeping children in government schools. At one point Bolick even implied that God would be on the side of the voucher supporters if the weather were good for a pro-voucher rally.
Bolick holds up the Milwaukee voucher program as "a model for the nation." But this program has been severely criticized by even voucher supporters such as John Merrifield, in his book School Choices.
As a lawyer, Bolick can be forgiven for his claim that "litigation could in fact change the world," but as a libertarian he should know better.
Bolick "idolizes" Milton Friedman, and considers Friedman and his wife "the godparents" of the school choice movement. Friedman or his educational foundation is mentioned about twenty-five times in the book. The longest blurb on the back cover is written by Friedman. But as Murray Rothbard showed: "In many ways, we have Milton Friedman to thank for the present monster Leviathan State in America."
Bolick attaches too much importance to court decisions in favor of vouchers. He equates favorable rulings with the Berlin Wall coming down and "a new era of freedom in our nation's educational system." Not only does Bolick claim that the Zelman case "is the most important education case since Brown v. Board of Education," he frequently invokes the 1954 Brown case as a parallel to the fight for vouchers. Naturally, the NAACP disagrees, denouncing the analogy as "insulting to the thousands of courageous African-American parents and students."
To those parents who would use vouchers to send their children to a private school, vouchers do seem like they empower parents and provide educational freedom. But vouchers are not about educational freedom, they are an income transfer program from the "rich" to the poor. Bolick even admits that vouchers are "a form of income redistribution."
But considering the state of public education in America, aren't vouchers a step in the right direction? Aren't they better than doing nothing? To the contrary—vouchers will make the present system worse. Rather than increasing educational opportunity, vouchers will increase the government's grip on education, increase the costs of education, increase people's dependency on the state, and increase the overall power of the state.
Since the state always controls what it subsidizes, private schools that accept voucher payments will be subject to increased regulation. Given the state's track record, it is inconceivable that it could be otherwise. Private schools will be responsible to the state instead of to parents.
Vouchers are an income transfer program in two respects. Not only will people be forced to pay for the education of other people's children, voucher dollars will be an additional tax burden. Voucher proposals never advocate any reduction in funding for public schools to pay for them.
The state may eventually embrace vouchers if it can use them to its own advantage to foster increased dependency on the state. With a voucher system, both parents and children will look to the state for educational services more so than they do now.
Although Bolick uses the language of the free market and argues that "for those of us who consider ourselves libertarians, the school choice movement is a textbook example of effectively reducing the scope and power of government," many libertarians disagree. Hans Sennholz , the former president of the Foundation for Economic Education, argues that "the very premise of the voucher system is identical to that of the present system of state education. It builds on the coercive powers of the state that raise and dispense the funds according to certain qualifications and conditions. It is neither a stepping stone to educational freedom nor offers a viable alternative."
He is one of many who take this view. If you are looking for a comprehensive legal history of the school voucher movement, then by all means this is your book. However, if you are looking for a philosophical defense of school vouchers or interaction with conservative and libertarian opponents of vouchers then this book will leave you sorely disappointed.
Vouchers, like Social Security privatization and the Iraq war, amount to another attempt to impose market ends by socialist means--a reversal of the social democratic habit of old in which socialism was attempted through market means. But like any mixed economy scheme, whether the statism applies to the means or the ends, the result is bad for public finance, bad for economic productivity, and bad for the practice of liberty.
Laurence M. Vance is a freelance writer and an adjunct instructor in accounting and economics at Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL. Vancepub@juno.com. See his archive. See also other Mises.org articles on school vouchers . Comment on the Blog. | <urn:uuid:a47a1c8f-466b-4a85-95f7-d930299a625f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mises.org/daily/1726/Vouchers-Another-Income-Redistribution-Scheme | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954311 | 1,525 | 1.828125 | 2 |
For better appreciation of this thread, check also On IPR Abolition 11: Trademark and Brands, September 05, 2011.
With this precedent, I don’t think there will be another burger company that will be named Jollybees or Joylibee or Jojolibee and have logo similar to Jollibee’s. The latter will most likely hail them to court. The latter will say, "You lazy and opportunist businessmen, Be creative, find a business name really unique and not borrowing rhymes from our name". Which should validate that IPR abolition is for the lazy and non-innovative guys.
There are additional points raised by the anti-IPR camp:
1. The people in generic companies don't even know a paradigm exists apart from IP, like those articulated by Stephan Kinsella, et al… IP is anti-physical property.
2. Period of patent is arbitrary.
3. Loss of earnings is not a property violation.
#1 looks too presumptuous. The owners, lawyers, PR guys of those generic companies are ignorant of the anti-IPR philosophy and campaign? First time I've heard that. I have talked to some officials of the PCPI, the federation of local pharma companies here, I asked them if they ever entertained or wished the possibility of drug patent abolition, of no-IPR world, they said NO. They know the huge costs of inventing new drug molecules. They don't want to enter that high risk, high cost business. They are happy waiting for the patent of the innovators to expire, then they manufacture their own brands and make money. Both innovators and generics companies are happy with this arrangement, they only squabble from time to time on the extension or the granting of another patent to what they think was a non-inventive process. The debate is more on legality, not on philosophy of IPR.
A molecule is a physical, tangible property. It is intangible with the naked eye, but tangible under a microscope. The “non-physical property” label on a molecule is a misnomer in the first place.
A logo and trademark may be a product of the mind but it also attains physical presence. Even a no-read no-write person can distinguish a McDo or Jollibee logo from the logo of other companies.
On #2, I agree that the 20 years patent on a drug molecule, the 50 years copyright on a song composition, may have been arbitrary. Any number of years can be labeled as arbitrary, but that is no reason to call for the abolition of the patent or copyright system.
On #3, I agree too. A company which hired an idiot CEO who wasted the money for his perks, will soon be losing money if not go bankrupt. And IPR has nothing to do with it.
During the online debate, I asked the anti-IPR guys several questions:
a. Any big and successful company which has no trademark? Say a big "motor company", a big "IT company"?
b. An IPR is a mini-monopoly. Starbucks, Figaro, UCC, McCafe, Seattles Best, etc have their individual trademark and hence, individual monopoly. Who now has monopoly for the entire coffee shop industry?
c. If Jollibee will sue a hypothetical Joyllibee burger company, if Figaro will sue a hypothetical Figaru coffee company, if Itallianis will sue a hypothetical Ittaliano’s restaurant, etc., will the anti-IPR camp also be against those companies who sued?
d. Who is the bigger enemy, the BIG state or the many famous and successful private companies who just want all their competitors to have their own unique trademark and company names, and not copy-catting from their corporate name, trademark and logo?
The anti-IPR camp followed up with another round of arguments.
4. These trademark and patent holders are beneficiaries of the patent system. They are not going to move for its abolition.
5. It's like saying Meralco is a mini-monopoly because it only monopolizes electricity distribution.
6. Those private companies using the state to enforce their supposed IP, these companies are cronyistic to the degree that they use the state.
7. Generic companies not knowing the anti-IP paradigm, this is sure. It's not simply a matter of you asking if they're against abolishing IP altogether and their saying "No." It's about their being aware of the arguments for abolition.
On #5. Meralco monopoly is bad because it is an industry monopoly, it is not just a mini-monooly under the electricity distribution sector. Are there other electricity distributors in Metro Manila and surrounding provinces? No. Meralco has monopolized the entire power distribution business in said franchise area. In the case of the coffee shop or burger business, there ARE many other suppliers and players. Each is a mini-monopoly in a deregulated and non-monopolized industry.
On #6, it’s the first time again I’ve heard that those famous coffee shop brands, those successful burger and fastfood restaurants, those successful innovator and generic pharma companies, all those big and trademarked names in the IT industry like Apple, Sony, Toshiba, HP, etc., now are ALL cronies. This is weird.
On #7, it is weird to say that leaders of the local generic industry are not aware of the anti-IP paradigm as lionized by urban legend propagator Stephan Kinsella, et al. I have heard of the IP lawyer of Unilab, an expert on TRIPS and other IPR issues. I heard him argue against patent ever-greening, the Bolar principle, etc. but I haven’t heard him saying that IPR like patent should be abolished. Or did I miss it big time?
The IP Code (IPC) of the Philippines and other countries recognize something that is an "inventive step" over the previous process or molecule as patentable.
Now here is one mistake or myth that many anti-IP folks sometimes or often mention: that mathematical formulas, chemical and physical formulas, dance steps, etc. are patentable. WRONG. These are NON-patentable. I've heard a number of anti-IP guys arguing against IPR because they thought that such things are patentable. Equations in algebra, trigonometry, Integral and differential calculus, the famous E=MC2, hydrogen, oxygen, H20, CH4, breakdance, new tango steps, etc. are NON-patentable.
The inventive step whether it is 1% or 0.001% over the originally-patented process or molecule is a matter of details. But that’s treading on many grey areas that are easily questionable. So IP lawyers come in, and a referee called the IP Office (IPO) decides which patent applications are valid and which ones are frivolous and invalid. The point is that changes over the original is encouraged, recognized, respected and protected. I think that's how the IPhone evolves, marginal improvement over the previous ones. IPone1 patented, IPhone2 another patent, IPhone3 another patent, and so on.
If one is a serious and really innovative entrepreneur, he should avoid those inventions which have grey areas. Do not go for a drug molecule which is just 1% or 0.1% different over the currently patented drug molecule. Go for 50% to 100% different drug molecule. If a new and famous patented drug against breast cancer is using raw materials 100% from mangos, then go for a drug against breast cancer where the raw materials are at most 50% mangos, 10% avocado, 25% orange, etc. to produce another drug to kill a similar disease that the currently patented famous drug aims to do. Or get raw materials and active ingredients from rabbit intestines or cow liver, etc. The raw materials for active ingredients can be endless for the really innovative inventors. For copy-catters and somehow lazy inventors, they want to hop on what is currently popular and effective and introduce minute different and claim they made big inventive step.
There is a facebuko.com, trying to make fun of facebook itself. I say that it’s cute, its funny. So I don’t think that facebook will ever be worried of their existence and hail the creator of that site to court. The site does not attract subscribers, it's a non competitor. It's just a spoof, and normally, big companies which are getting spoofed usually get entertained rather than get irritated.
Another round of counter-points by the anti-IPR camp:
8. It is careless to say that IP abolition is for lazy businessmen. That's an ad hominem.
9. By bringing in trademarks, you make someone legally liable for something in which they will fail anyway due to competition.
10. My own Meralco mini-monopoly comment was intended to express the absurdity of euphemizing a monoply by calling it 'mini.'”
11. Private companies are cronyistic TO THE DEGREE that they use the state to monopolize certain aspects of their business.
12. What IP does is because you patented the IDEA of a molecule, you own not just that one molecule in your possession, but even those molecules on the other side of the planet.
13. Tthe patent system is supported by businesses out of ignorance and because they are beneficiaries.
On #8. It is my perception that IP abolition attracts the lazy and non-innovative businessmen. Like the guys perhaps who will put up a Jollybee burger or Starbacks coffee or Unolab pharma or Philtranko bus line. There are thousands of possible names for their company but they lazily choose one that rhymes very closely and trademarked very closely, with the popular brands. That's why I call it plain laziness, lack of productive creativity, only the creativity to copy-cat.
On # 9. Trademark violation applies to the non-innovative businessmen. There is an Aling Pilang Cafe. Would new coffee shops aspire to name their company as Aling Pelang or Manang Pilang Cafe? Not a bit. The former is a never-heard, unglamorous to hear company name. On the other hand, lazy and deceitful businessmen are likely to try their new company names Starbacks, Storebucks, Straybucks coffee, etc. Why? Envy, desire to attract many customers at once despite having zero track record as a good coffee company. Laziness to become really unique and creative.
On #10, Wrong. If we do not differentiate what is a mini-monopoly in trademark only vs an industry monopoly, then one can also say that ‘UCC monopolizes the coffee shop industry’, or Figaro monopolizes the coffee shop industry, which is clearly wrong. But if one will say ‘Meralco monopolizes the electricity distribution industry in Metro Manila and neighboring provinces’, that is clearly correct.
On #11. Then ALL companies are government cronies because to some degree, whether 1% or 100% degree, they use the state to monopolize certain aspects of their business, say their location, their parking lot, their oh-cute company name, their oh-pretty actress model, their oh-macho athlete model, their unique and eye-catching logo, etc. Could it be true that all companies are government cronies? Tough luck.
On #12, This is really weird, that if one owns and patented one drug molecule, then he also owns ALL other molecules around the planet. Where could this urban legend come from? I wrote earlier about different molecules SIMULTANEOUSLY invented, all patented, all not in drugstores yet. Molecules just to kill prostate cancer with weird names like abiraterone acetate, azazitidine, befetinib, cixutumumab, docetaxel liposomal, enzastaurin, intetumumab, ixabepilone, lenalidomide, nimotuzumab,... There are also acronym-numbers like MLN 8237, ISIS EIF4ERx, GDC 0449,... So I invent only one molecule, the other guys invent their own molecules, everyone happy. Now whether the molecule that we invented will become blockbuster and profitable or not, is another story.
On #13, Again wrong. ALL generic manufacturers are non-ignorant, and non-beneficiaries of the patented drugs. And yet they all support the patent system for drugs. Why? Because they spent not a single centavo in the very costly R&D, multiple clinical trials (with some animals first, then with a few sick people, then with many sick people, the non-sick, etc.), taking up from 8 to 13 years out of the 20 years total patent life, just to develop one drug. But once the patent expires, all the generic manufacturers can jump in and develop their own brand of drugs from the same molecule that the innovator companies have developed.
I repeat my observation that the libertarian anti-IPR cause is really infantile. They would rather point their guns and angst on private individuals, private companies, which only want protection of their new invention, their carefully-protected business name and brand, than point their guns on the BIG and monster state that taxes big, intervenes big, regulates and restricts big.
More private ownership, more capitalism.
More social ownership, more socialism. | <urn:uuid:e886771b-42ce-4fd5-9616-a578ef9c886b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://funwithgovernment.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-intellectual-property-abolition-part_20.html | 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 | 0.948806 | 2,853 | 1.546875 | 2 |
By Mary Curtis
In 1979, Doug founded Curtis Electromusic Specialties and introduced the company's first three of what would eventually be twenty-three signal processing and generation integrated circuits that were quickly adopted by analog electronic music synthesizers and audio equipment worldwide.
Curtis Electromusic leveraged Silicon Valley technology to enable large polyphonic systems in lighter weight, more compact and more reliable products. Musicians enjoyed having more features; manufacturers' instruments achieved greater differentiation in part from the chip technology. Although Curtis Electromusic broadened its focus beyond synthesizers in 1988, forming OnChip Systems, the original Curtis Electromusic products are still hotly sought after by synthesizer enthusiasts and actively traded online. | <urn:uuid:9ddcc631-cdc6-4eee-a964-dc77a93ebee9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sanjoserocks.org/i_doug_curtis.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943206 | 146 | 1.84375 | 2 |
By Tim McCarthy
It might not pass state inspection, but a car from the distant past is otherwise ready to hit the road.
Students of the Greater Lawrence Technical High School have restored an antique car owned by the vice president of Adamson Industries, a Haverhill business. Their work brought a piece of 1920s culture into the present.
The school's auto body and automotive shops, known as the Reggies' Restoration Shop, restored the 1924 electric Custer Car, a single-seat electric car meant for low-speed travel.
"They did a very nice job," said Steve Contarino, Adamson vice president. "I've had jobs done by some of the best restorers in the country and this one came out very good. This is something the kids and staff at Greater Lawrence Tech should be very proud of. It's back to its former glory."
Contarino collects classic and off-beat cars. Besides the Custer, he owns a sedan used on the set of the "Mission: Impossible" TV show.
Students worked through December removing rust fro the Cluster, repainting the body to fire-engine red and renovating the car's interior. Students from the school's carpentry shop created a new driver's seat.
"They redid it all," Contarino said.
He said that when he bought the car, it was in a dilapidated state. He spent three years collecting parts to rebuild it.
Thomas Hatem, an automotive shop teacher at the school, said students needed to make entire parts of the chassis because original parts don't exist. Despite the challenge, Hatem said six students persevered to recreate the past.
"They thought it was a rust bucket," Hatem said. "But they started looking at it with different eyes. It was a real fun project for the kids to do."
The students have also worked on restoring an antique vending machine at Mann Orchards in Methuen and an engine from a Lawrence mill.
Julio Morales, a junior in the automotive program, said he enjoyed working on a car unlike anything he has ever seen.
"You can see a little bit of history in your shop," he said.
Thanks to the students' ingenuity, the car needs only a battery before it is drivable once more.
Contarino estimated the cost of their restoration work would come to $8,000 if done in a professional shop.
"I couldn't believe the quality of work they did," he said. "They're a really talented group of people there."
Hatem added the shop will restore a particular object only once to make sure students get a variety of projects to work on.
"If we've done it once, we're not going to do it again," he said. "I don't want them to be afraid of trying different things."
The Custer Specialty Car Company operated in Dayton, Ohio, and created smaller cars meant for women, children and amusement park rides. In the 1920s, no federal laws existed to create standards for "road ready" cars, Contarino said. In Massachusetts, the only requirements for cars were a single tail light and two headlights.
"It's the original Prius," Hatem said. | <urn:uuid:c898cbb8-fea2-496f-ba9b-942671e27acd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hgazette.com/education/x158345809/Students-restore-city-mans-1920s-car/print | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975928 | 672 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Hunters gaining ground in SE Michigan
With hunters and snowmobilers fighting to maintain their right to use the Huron-Manistee National Forest, and hunting property being nibbled away here and there around the state, it is quite nice to see what's happening in southeast Michigan's Washington Township right now.
In February, the township board, on the advice of a committee formed a year ago, voted unanimously to repeal a 30-year ordinance that made it illegal to hunt west of M-53 between 26 and 28 Mile roads. The committee recommended that the township follow a long-existing state rule that prohibits hunting within 450 feet of an occupied dwelling without permission of the owner.
The township lies in the northwest part of Macomb County, a place with plenty of room for hunters in some spots. It's just east of Stony Creek Metro Park, which has an abundant deer population that has been held in check in recent years though hunting.
Next step is for the Department of Natural Resources to hold a public hearing on the proposed rule change, and that's set for March 30. The public will have a month after the hearing to submit written comments.
Imagine! Hunters getting more ground, instead of less, and a redundant law possibly being pulled from the books. The township said the move will preserve the rights of hunters and people who just want to shoot on their properties.
Indeed, it will. The rule was never necessary in the first place, since the longstanding "450 feet rule" protected property owners already. It's great to see the township recognizes that fact and is moving to make things right. | <urn:uuid:3654f0c7-ae6b-435a-960a-745cbbae44e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.outdoornews.com/March-2011/Hunters-gaining-ground-in-SE-Michigan/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964404 | 328 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Wrath and Reason
God, as C.S. Lewis said of Aslan, “is not a tame lion.” We tend to want Him to be warm, fuzzy and forgiving and we get uncomfortable with the unpredictable, wrathful part of His character. But God’s ways are not our ways. Romans 1:18-27 is one of those passages that is disturbing because it reminds us just how little we know of God as He really is. How do we understand this wrath, coming from the God whose essence is love? God cannot abide wrong, he literally can’t live with it, because His nature is utter goodness. Therefore, if the ultimate aim of human life is to share in divine life (theosis) then we must be conformed to His nature, because everything that is incompatible will be burned away, “for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).
Is this reasonable? Even what we think is reasonable or unreasonable must be reshaped by the divine fire of the Holy Spirit. This passage (especially Rom 1:21) speaks about being led astray by our own thoughts. Thought is a gift, but it is marked by the fallen world too. One of the prayers before communion asks God to “enter and enlighten my darkened reasoning.” A prayer after communion asks for “humility in my thoughts and a release from the slavery of my own reasonings.”
Jesus often attacked the narrow legal reasoning and piety of the scribes and Pharisees, but he was equally insistent that we are all called to a total rethinking of how we live and speak with each other, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20).
It’s good to be back in Canada with Bishop Irénée and the clergy of the Archdiocese (and praying for Queen Elizabeth, especially during her 60th jubilee). I’ll be here until Thursday to be with them for services and meals, speak with the brethren informally and listen to talks and discussions (liturgical uniformity, confession, administrative issues, updates on parish life and clergy concerns). We’re staying at the dorms of Canadian Mennonite University and having our services and sessions across the street at St Demetrius Greek Orthodox Church.
I came in from the airport as the discussion on liturgical uniformity was going on. Bishop Irénée would like to see parishes move toward this, especially in how hierarchical liturgies are served as he visits from parish to parish across Canada. But he left most of the conversation to the clergy, among whom there was a good open debate on how this is to be done, the role of liturgy, what it means for mission and pastoral responsiveness. As one priest said, “The goal is a transformed people, not a liturgical menu that no one comes to.” Another countered that liturgy is not just an evangelistic tool. “You as a priest are standing and interceding before the throne of God, it’s what you do uniquely in the Body of Christ.” Others admitted that liturgy isn’t enough. “My parish has been there for 57 years but no one in the neighborhood knows who we are.” In short, the discussions in Canada among clergy mirror the sorts of discussions I hear across North America, as clergy and laity ask real questions about the direction of church life and mission. | <urn:uuid:03f9fcac-d492-4470-a9fe-a7d55ccdc7e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-jillions/wrath-and-reason | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962673 | 743 | 1.828125 | 2 |
- Fitness Equipment
The rowing technique is the most important factor when using the rowing machine. If you get your technique right you’ll be efficient and produce better results. With good rowing technique you will burn more calories, get more vital energy with less effort.
Injuries sustained while engaged in fitness activities are more common then you might think, but many of the injuries can be avoided if the individual is knowledgeable and is willing to take the time to implement specific precautions. Listed below are the sources of many common fitness related injuries and suggestions on how to avoid them.
Looking for the Best Treadmill Value? The treadmill market is growing more and more crowded each year. This article will give you 4 key attributes of high value treadmills so you can make an informed decision and find the best treadmill value for you.
In the modern society, people are often too caught up in the day to day grind to really pay attention to less urgent matters in life such as losing weight, much less which local gym to join Then there is the issue of having to get your gear ready and get down to the gym at the right time to avoid overcrowding or before it closes
Tackling the need of a finest treadmill that suits your desires of staying healthy and caters to your requirements is a hard toil, demanding extensive research and market survey To get a treadmill of your choice is quite difficult as the market is bursting with different categories of such units, offering various specifications, leaving you confused in your selection while you survey in the market | <urn:uuid:b6063fd5-3f0e-4762-bf6c-67413f1cd3fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fitnessarticlehub.com/categories/Fitness-Equipment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950375 | 313 | 1.796875 | 2 |
My friend Enrique Krauze has a very incisive article about the Mexican elections at the Washington Post. The article was published Sunday, when the results were not known officially, but as predicted, the PRI took back the presidency after 12 years out of power. As Krauze notes, those twelve years were important, and Mexico has made great gains, but more needs to be done. Just as the PRI of today is not the PRI of even twelve years ago, or the PRI of 1968 that murdered dozens of demonstrators just weeks before the opening of the Olympic Games, we can hope that the modern PRI will be less hostile to the Church than its earlier incarnation.
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In This Issue
- Illinois parish's ESL program welcomes all
- A different Mary assumes the stage
- A question few seem to consider when the US wages war afar
- [Print Edition Only] Special Section: Summer Listings
Not all of our content is online. Subscribe to receive all the news and features you won't find anywhere else. | <urn:uuid:2525f8a5-c603-4a08-8607-012c95c4e663> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/krauze-mexican-elections | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964239 | 252 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Is my anti-depressant causing my constipation?
Treatment for constipation includes changing some behaviors, eating foods high in fiber, and using laxatives or enemas if needed. You can try these treatments at home, before seeing a healthcare provider. However, if you do not have a bowel movement within a few days, you should call your healthcare provider for further assistance.
A variety of laxatives are available for treating constipation. The choice between them is based upon how they work, how safe the treatment is, and your healthcare provider's preferences. Bulk forming laxatives include natural fiber and commercial fiber preparations such as Psyllium or Metamucil. You should increase the dose of fiber supplements slowly to prevent gas and cramping, and you should always take the supplement with plenty of fluid ...more | <urn:uuid:47d856a7-e040-4bae-a297-a3e7e669c0da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://qna.rediff.com/questions-and-answers/what-are-the-benefits-of-triphala/20365727/answers/19725144 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94414 | 167 | 1.632813 | 2 |
By Christopher Maag
Melissa was about to try and live the American Dream. Eager to buy a house
, she applied for a pre-approved bank loan only to discover that an old unpaid bill that she resolved two years ago is still lingering on her credit report
. That's dragging down her score
And she's getting desperate.
"I can't buy a house without ... these things corrected," she wrote in response to a recent story on Credit.com
. "Please, please help!"
Most Americans understand the financial and emotional importance of buying a home
. Even though the rate of homeownership has declined from a height of 69.2 percent in 2004 to 65.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau
, it remains the case that a solid majority of Americans prefer owning a home
"Traditionally, owning has won out over renting for many reasons," says Gerri Detweiler, Credit.com's consumer credit expert. "Owning a home is still one of the main ways that Americans build wealth over time."
But some credit experts are wondering: What's the rush? At Credit.com, we receive emails, blog comments and forum posts from people with damaged credit scores
asking how they can buy a home. And in most cases, the question is asked with a sense of urgency.
Many readers with low credit scores don't just want to buy a home. They want to buy a home now. Steve Campbell, who wrote in August that he and his wife recently filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, asked
: "Can we buy a home anytime soon?"
But Barry Paperno, a credit expert and Credit.com's community director, wonders whether that's really the right question to be asking. Perhaps a more relevant question, Paperno says, is: "Are you sure that your financial situation will be stable enough to make those monthly payments
for the next 30 years?"
Homeownership has many rewards, but consider the risks, Paperno points out. Unlike during the mortgage bubble, buying a home these days usually requires a significant down payment
, and owning it may require substantial investments in renovation, maintenance, insurance and property taxes
. If a homeowner loses a job or her income goes down, and she finds herself incapable of making those monthly payments, all of the money she's invested could be lost, Paperno says.
In addition, if a renter finds he can no longer pay the rent, he can simply move out, possibly losing his security deposit. But leaving an apartment is rarely an event that's recorded on a consumer's credit report, whereas losing a home to foreclosure
causes serious damage to a credit score.
"It can knock more than a hundred points off your score, and you will not be able to get another mortgage for another few years," Paperno says. "If you're buying a house for security, what happens if you lose your job? How secure is it, really?"
Buying a home still makes lots of sense for the average consumer, Paperno and Detweiler agree. But in some cases, consumers with low credit scores might find it makes more sense to put off purchasing, especially if they are getting turned down for loans, or if the interest rate offers they're receiving now seem exorbitantly high.
"If you're willing to wait just a little bit longer, even 18 to 24 months, you can boost your credit, you may be able to get a better rate," Detweiler says.
There is a counterpoint to this argument, however. In today's weak housing market, an interest rate of seven percent might be abnormally high, especially when people with the best credit scores can get interest rates as low as 3.49 percent, according to Freddie Mac's latest report
. But Detweiler had great credit when she bought her home in the late 1990s, and her interest rate then was seven percent.
Which is to say that just because you don't qualify for today's record-low interest rates does not necessarily mean that you're getting a bad deal.
"You may have a tradeoff where you're paying more in interest, but you're still taking advantage of lower overall home prices," Detweiler says. "So it still may be a good idea to buy as long as you get into a decent loan for the long term."
Whatever you eventually decide, it may be best to slow the process down and make sure that buying is the right idea for you in the short term, the credit experts say. The American Dream has a strong pull, as do home prices
that have lost much of their housing bubble value. But don't let the dream of homeownership make you feel rushed to make a decision that could hurt you for years to come.
"Don't be discouraged," Detweiler says. "If now's not the right time for you to buy, that doesn't mean that you will never own your own home. A couple of years can make a big difference."
See more on Credit.com:
How Much Will One Late Payment Hurt Your Credit Score?
When is Debt Consolidation Legitimate?
The Ultimate Credit Report Cheat Sheet
More on AOL Real Estate:
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.
Find homes for rent in your area.
Follow us on Twitter at @AOLRealEstate or connect with AOL Real Estate on Facebook. | <urn:uuid:c6a11fa5-28a5-4613-989d-8919eb3fb4ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/09/25/how-bad-credit-can-stop-you-from-buying-a-home/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974364 | 1,138 | 1.554688 | 2 |
This page is called "The Brickmason's Sons" because several members of the Carney family who came to America after 1855 were brick and stone masons. Their hands built some of the first brick buildings in Bay City, Michigan, my home town, and several of those buildings still stand and are being used today. Those Carney family members eventually left Bay City and scattered to Detroit, Cleveland, New York, and beyond. Perhaps you may be related to one of them?
The CARNEY (and KEARNEY, and variants) mailing list is a publically accessible mailing list that you can post your queries to. You can subscribe to the list by sending a message to CARNEY-Lfirstname.lastname@example.org that contains the word subscribe and nothing else.
CARNEY family genealogy
BACKELIN / BACKELEN family of Hudiksvall, Sweden, to Bay County, Michigan.
BAUM family of Ackworth, Yorkshire and surrounding areas.
BEEGAN family This is my mother's mother's family.
BROWN family This is my dad's mother's family. I still have a lot of work to do here.
CAMPSALL family From Fishlake, Yorkshire, England.
COLE family of Macomb County.
CORNISH family The last name Cornish, not the ancient people of Cornwall.
CUNNINGHAM family A former mayor and prominent physicians are part of this family.
EVERETT family Of Macomb County, around 1880.
FISHER family, of Stillingfleet, Yorkshire, England
GAMBLE family Early farmers in Macomb County, Michigan, who originally came from Fishlake, Yorkshire, England.
GREENBERG family While not a "blood" relative, Matt Greenberg was the fatherly influence in my dad's life (as well as being my great-grandmother's third husband). Matt instilled values in my father that he gave to me and I will give to my children.
HANSON family My Swede side shows through.
Mc HUGH family The McHugh family was close to the Carney family, as a Carney gal married a McHugh, and a McHugh and a Carney were lawyers and judges together.
POOLE family The Pooles are relative newcomers to this country.
RAYER family The Rayers were primarily from Washtenaw county.
SMITH family The Smiths were early settlers in Macomb County.
SPAULDING family The Spauldings were early settlers in Macomb County, and were prominent citizens active in local government.
Genealogy Links, Historical Links, and Tools
Links to other Family Members sites (not necessarily genealogy related)
My Other Interests & Links
About the Webmaster and this web site | <urn:uuid:1ad36b02-5f8a-48e8-9dbf-ac122cf8ee58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.billcarney.com/brickmasons/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964279 | 571 | 1.75 | 2 |
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal's justice minister says former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre will go on trial next month for alleged crimes against humanity.
The trial got the go-ahead after a vote in Senegal's parliament last month. It is to take place in a special tribunal authorized under the African Union and would mark a major step toward Africa dealing with its own alleged war criminals.
Justice Minister Aminata Toure said Tuesday that the trial is expected early next month. Belgium has offered to help finance the cost of special African tribunals within Senegal's court system.
Habre faces accusations of torture, crimes against humanity and war crimes during his rule from 1982 to 1990. He has enjoyed 22 years of impunity after fleeing to Senegal — leaving behind a country strewn with mass graves. | <urn:uuid:b5923351-f216-4e36-a89f-053e744616db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.whas11.com/news/world/187104181.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968312 | 165 | 1.515625 | 2 |
By Marion Davis
PROVIDENCE – The city of Providence has won a $3.3 million federal stimulus grant to fund a campaign with the R.I. Department of Health to fight youth smoking, with at least 15 jobs expected to be added – and more at community-based organizations – to implement the new program.
The Providence Tobacco-Free Campaign will be led by Mayor David N. Cicilline’s Substance Abuse Prevention Council and state officials. The new funds, the mayor said, “will immediately put people to work protecting our young people from making the dangerous choice to smoke cigarettes.”
Dr. David Gifford, the state health director, said the size of the grant will allow state and city officials to work collaboratively “towards truly broad-based systems and behavior change.”
The grant, awarded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will direct funds to community-based and youth organizations to reach culturally diverse populations that are disproportionately affected by tobacco use.
The goal is to reduce youth smoking by 25 percent, and youth exposure to secondhand smoke by 30 percent. In the long run, that is expected to reduce tobacco-related deaths by one-third.
The initiative will include the development of new city ordinances restricting the marketing of tobacco, including a restriction on tobacco ads within 1,000 feet of schools; the creation of a new tobacco vendor registration system; free smoking cessation support services for the uninsured through the Providence Community Health Centers; pilot smoke-free policies in Providence Housing Authority sites; and smoke-free campuses in public schools.
A video of the mayor’s announcement of the program is posted on YouTube. | <urn:uuid:4f1c0677-86f8-48b8-9872-76d62976d717> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pbn.com/33M-grant-to-combat-teen-smoking,48742 | 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 | 0.943391 | 343 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Date of Award
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Sarah L. Cook - Chair
Rod Watts - Co-Chair
Disclosure of sexual assault is a complicated process which depends upon a host of factors, such as assault characteristics, the victim’s interpretation, and the level of distress she experiences. Comprehensive theories of adult sexual assault disclosure have not been proposed. Most studies concentrate on a particular aspect of disclosure, such as outcomes of disclosure and reasons for disclosing versus not disclosing. A number of gaps exist in the current literature on adult sexual assault disclosure. These include the conceptualization of disclosure as a discrete or continuous variable; how it may evolve during stages of recovery; the progression of disclosure (e.g., observable patterns to disclosing); the potential variety of motivations for disclosing beyond help-seeking; and the role of culture (e.g., how one’s cultural and familial upbringing influences comfort and acceptance of disclosure as a viable option). The present study aimed to clarify and expand our previous knowledge about disclosure of sexual assault by investigating the overall process. A qualitative study, using a grounded theory approach, was conducted with a diverse sample of women who were sexually victimized after age 12. Findings from the study reveal the complex nature of disclosure and expand on previous conceptions of its process and behavioral manifestations, such as evidence supporting a disclosure continuum, a variety of motivations for disclosing and not disclosing, the roles of culture and parenting practices that may influence disclosure, and the interactive nature of disclosure and recovery. The results suggest that the disclosure process consists of the factors that contribute to whether a disclosure is made, the disclosure itself, and the aftereffects of the disclosure, a process which could be conceived as occurring in circular manner. Thus, decisions of disclosure appear to be very complex, and all of these factors potentially interact with one another and collectively influence whether a woman discloses and how much. A number of research and practical implications are discussed including examining the relationship between motivations and current recovery stages, modifying our conceptualization of disclosure (as continuous rather than dichotomous), and recognizing the needs and concerns of diverse cultural groups in their decisions to disclose.
Smith, Sharon G., "The Process and Meaning of Sexual Assault Disclosure" (2005). Psychology Dissertations. Paper 7. | <urn:uuid:0fadc7cd-8060-4dfb-916e-061f17b724d0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/psych_diss/7/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936079 | 459 | 1.554688 | 2 |
California's beleaguered timber industry is making a comeback. Timber harvests have increased by 20% or more—and revenue has grown by a substantially higher margin—since a post-housing-bust slump sent harvests to a record low in 2009.
At this lumber mill in Chinese Camp, Calif., near Yosemite National Park, California's largest timber firm, Sierra Pacific Industries, has added 50 workers and turned away dozens of applicants.
A loader stacks logs at the mill in Chinese Camp. About 14 miles away in Standard, Calif., Sierra Pacific closed another mill in 2009. In 2011, that mill was reopened, bringing about 140 jobs back to the area.
A crane at the Chinese Camp mill feeds logs into a debarker.
'Compared to two years ago, things are a little better,' says Ken Cooper, manager of the mill.
Keith Woods swaps out saw blades on a machine at the Sierra Pacific mill in Chinese Camp. Though workers are busy, Mr. Cooper, the mill manager, says the industry remains a shadow of what it was 30 years ago, with the 2011 harvest less than one-third of the state's 1988 peak.
Clyde Bolton sorts finished boards. Larry Cope, president of the Economic Development Authority in Tuolumne County, which includes Chinese Camp, says slowness in other areas—including layoffs at schools, a hospital and municipal government—has tempered the impact of the new jobs.
Bryce Brumley straightens out lumber on a conveyor belt.
Jesus Perez sweeps up sawdust.
In nearby Sonora, shown here, the unemployment rate in April was 11.8%, down from 13.9% two years earlier. Local spending is up, and new businesses are moving into vacant storefronts. | <urn:uuid:20a523d2-061a-4f37-bbfd-545005c38f31> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443687504577567240562384780.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93671 | 365 | 1.757813 | 2 |
CARNES: Humility and Humor from Generations Past
Published: Thursday, February 7, 2013
Updated: Thursday, February 7, 2013 23:02
Last weekend, I spent some time in the Jesuit cemetery here on campus. As part of a tour for seniors and their parents, I walked among the graves and told the stories of several of the Jesuits buried there.
I found myself inspired once again by the work of great men who have arisen in each generation. Fr. Patrick Healy, S.J., positioned the university to serve the national mission of reconciliation after the Civil War. Fr. Gerry Campbell, S.J., followed the call of the Second Vatican Council and made leadership and interreligious dialogue central to Georgetown’s identity. Fr. Timothy Healy, S.J., gave the university national and global aspirations and an expanded research profile.
I was also struck by the generations that are less well-known. These include the Jesuit priests and brothers who taught, offered Mass and gave spiritual counsel daily, maintained buildings and worked in labs and quietly tended to the spirit, heart and mind. In an equally important way, they contributed to making this Hilltop a sacred place that has formed so many generations of students.
The tour raised a deep question for me — one that resonated in the wake of Jesuit Heritage Week: How does this generation — my generation and yours — carry forward this tradition? How are we to bear the lofty vision of Fr. John Carroll, S.J., and Patrick Healy while also giving witness to the gentle, quiet prayerfulness of the Jesuits who daily supported and gave life to that vision? Amid those graves, I noticed a tension in myself between the aspiration to greatness and the equally important call to depth and groundedness.
I recalled the words of Jose Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher and historian who suggested that there is nothing more humbling than recognizing that one belongs to a generation. Until you gain this perspective, you can think that all history depends on you, and that all that you do is a new discovery and a unique accomplishment. But once you see the generations before you, and see your own generation for what it is: historically contingent, living out its one brief moment on the planet. You cannot help but take a more humble — and interestingly, more grateful — stance.
In a remarkable way, telling our story, especially about the diverse generations that came before, helps us become the “generations to come.” Remembering that this university is built not just on its shining moments of triumph but also on its long hours of unseen work and study and conversation and service — and even failures, from time to time — helps us take up our place in history. And more and more, I think it provides an important corrective for us, reining in our sometimes insatiable appetite for success and greatness and reminding us of the virtue of humble groundedness.
Of course that word, “humble,” is not featured on resumes or job descriptions very often. But it might be the most important thing we can learn here. The word comes from the Latin humus, which means “of the earth.” Gardeners will tell you that in English, humus is the most nutrient-rich soil. It produces. And it does so precisely because it has been enriched by the life that came before; it is filled with the organic matter of previous generations.
Humus is also the root of another word: humor — something that can be sorely needed in our constant rush to win awards and achieve perfect grades. With a generational perspective of who contributed to greatness even as they lived with their own fads, follies and foibles, we can laugh in a healthy way about ourselves. Humor cuts the sting out of our failures and gently pushes us to learn from mistakes and misfortunes, and to move forward in hope.
As I finished the tour of the cemetery, amid my brothers who are now literally “of the earth,” I found myself saying a little prayer that our generation — students, faculty, staff and Jesuits — might embrace this moment, in all humility, and bear fruit not just in the greatness that wins accolades, but in the depth and groundedness that are most truly human.
Fr. Matthew Carnes, S.J., is an assistant professor in the government department. He is one of the alternating writers for AS THIS JESUIT SEES IT ..., which appears every other Friday. | <urn:uuid:7a03d75d-86e0-4002-b828-15739673ec1f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thehoya.com/opinion/carnes-humility-and-humor-from-generations-past-1.2986034 | 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 | 0.960927 | 927 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The mission of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northwest Georgia
is to enable all young people, especially those who need us most,
to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
A Boys & Girls Club Provides:
- A safe place to learn and grow
- Ongoing relationships with caring, adult professionals
- Life-enhancing programs and character development experiences
- Hope and opportunity
- A Safe Place for Kids
Every day more than 250 boys and girls in the Northwest Georgia area flash their membership cards to come into a safe haven where they are accepted for who they are, encouraged to do their best, and leave knowing they are valued and understood. Four key characteristics define the essence of a Boys & Girls Club. All are critical in exerting positive impact on the life of a child.
Dedicated Youth FacilityThe Boys & Girls Club is a place—an actual neighborhood-based building—designed solely for youth programs and activities.
Open DailyThe Club is open five days a week, after school and during school breaks, when kids have free time and need positive, productive outlets.
Professional StaffEvery Club has full-time, trained youth development professionals, providing positive role models and mentors. Volunteers provide key supplementary support.
Available/Affordable to All YouthClubs reach out to kids who cannot afford, or may lack access to, other community programs.
Facts About Membership
- 72.88% are from minority families
- 10.48% are less than 7 years old
- 43.36% are 7–9 years old
- 34.68% are 10–12 years old
- 9.44% are 13–15 years old
- 2.13% are 16–18 years old
- 0.19% are more than 18 years old
- 50.87% are male
- 49.13% are female | <urn:uuid:a6c0b9d1-2962-4feb-9333-7308879410e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bgcnwga.org/who-we-are/our-mission/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94054 | 386 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Louisville’s Metro government has finally jumped the shark in the matter of regulating fireworks in Derby City. If there ever was any doubt that our town is virtually devoid of adult leadership, the continuing fireworks farrago should remove it once and for all.
For readers who haven’t been watching, a little history might be helpful. First of all, folks here in Louisville have always loved their fireworks. From the annual Thunder over Louisville at Derby time, to the many professional displays on Independence Day and other celebrations, pyrotechnic deployments always attract huge crowds.
State law traditionally outlawed most flying or noisy fireworks: no cherry-bombs, Roman candles, or bottle rockets could be legally sold or used in Kentucky. Kids had to be satisfied with sparklers and spurting fountains.
As with most silly laws, a large number of people chose to ignore the Commonwealth’s prohibition against personal use of fireworks, and trips down to the Tennessee border for incendiary logistics was a yearly Summer tradition for Louisville teenagers. Later, folks could just drive across the bridge to Indiana for their Fourth of July ordinance. They made you sign a bizarre form, in which you promised to use the fireworks only at licensed locations in Indiana, and not to export them to any neighboring state. Right.
Since the state's anti-fireworks law was mostly honored in its breach—and seldom enforced—the Kentucky General Assembly, in its infinite wisdom, passed a law earlier this year allowing personal use of all manner of small explosives. Bottle rockets, aerial stars, lady-fingers, and the ever-popular M-80s, were now legally available for patriots of all ages.
But, in a last-minute compromise, the legislature included a provision in the new law that would allow local municipalities the authority to pass more restrictive limits on firework use. And, sure enough, our Metro Council nannies—led by Chief Nanny, Councilwoman Madonna Flood (Dem., 24th Dist.)—passed an ordinance on November 17th that barred the sale and use of powerful fireworks. The draconian measure passed by a vote of 11-10.
When the public revolted against this legislative attempt to limit the sacred freedom of Louisvillians to fire off Roman candles, Metro Councilman Jerry Miller, (Rep., 19th Dist.) co-sponsored an ordinance repealing the November 17th ban. On December 8, by a vote of 14-8, the council legalized aerial and exploding fireworks again.
But not so fast. Today, with fanfare (but no fireworks) our new mayor, Gregg Fischer, announced that he was vetoing the December 8 ordinance. "I realize that these more dangerous fireworks are available in nearby counties, but that does not make it the right thing for us to do," Fischer said. "These powerful explosives are not appropriate for our more dense urban environment. As both mayor, and as a father, the last thing I want to see happen is a child to have a finger blown off or have some other injury due to these more dangerous fireworks."
We could put this imaginary stack of “blown off fingers” next to the pile of “eyes put out with B-B guns,” and have a carnage almost equal to the mysterious and un-named legions of folks killed by second-hand smoke.
Fischer’s diminutive general counsel, lawyer Pat Mulvihill, said the veto leaves in force the November 17 ordinance that prohibits the sale or use of most fireworks that explode or are shot into the air.
Councilman Jerry Miller was obviously disappointed in this latest turn of events, and accused Mayor Fischer of “..ignor(ing) the will of the elected Metro Council.” Suggesting that the mayor “…mayor should have made his feelings known during the debate instead of waiting to veto the measure” (a good point, there), he said it is too early to say whether the council will take up the fireworks issue again any time soon.
Councilman Miller also expressed doubts as to whether the citizens of Louisville will respect the fireworks ban (another good point).
When nanny-state liberals conspire to deprive folks of their liberties, they shouldn’t be surprised at the negative reaction generated. Next New Year’s Eve and next 4th of July, you can expect to see and hear just as many fireworks as in the past. And, come next election day, some of our Nanny Councilmen may find unexpected fireworks.
The Arena section features opinions from active participants in the city's politics. Their viewpoints are not those of Louisville.com (a website is an inanimate object and, as such, has no opinions). This article was prepared using only recycled electrons. | <urn:uuid:61d497d8-1c7c-4009-9872-9534634e1723> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://m.louisville.com/content/louisville-mayor-vetoes-fireworks-ordinance-opinion-arena?device=mobile | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958282 | 974 | 1.578125 | 2 |
New York, Apr.7 (ANI): Two new polls suggest that the conservative ‘Tea Party’ movement might be going mainstream.
A Rasmussen poll released Monday found more Americans identify with the Tea Party groups than with President Obama, Fox News reports.
According to the survey, 48 percent of voters said the average Tea Party activist is more aligned with their views on major issues than the president.
Forty-four percent said Obama’s views are closer to theirs.
That came on top of a USA Today/Gallup poll that found more than a quarter of Americans affiliate themselves with the Tea Party movement.
The poll of 1,033 adults, conducted March 26-28, found 28 percent of people call themselves Tea Party supporters, while 26 percent call themselves opponents.
The survey also found that any one demographic group does not disproportionately dominate Tea Party supporters.
The characteristics of Tea Party supporters-in age, education, income and race-roughly follow the characteristics of the nation as a whole.
The Gallup poll had a margin of error of four percentage points, while the Rasmussen poll of 1,000 voters had a margin of error of three percentage points. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:6eb00371-67d2-4d00-b11e-76f57f796365> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://silverscorpio.com/tag/party-groups/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94896 | 243 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Have you ever played Starcraft? It’s a popular real-time strategy game that was first released in 1998. It’s also one of my favorite games. I still like it today although many newer, more sophisticated games have come out.
Some time ago I learned that there are people who make a living from Starcraft. In South Korea especially, Starcraft games are broadcasted live on TV and professional gamers (progamers) earn big sums of money.
Of course, being a Starcraft fan, I then browsed the materials on how to play Starcraft like a pro. There are tons of resources available. They give you not just specific game strategy and tactics but also tips to improve as a player.
I’m glad to find that many of the tips are also applicable to other fields. No matter what field you are in, you can apply them to improve yourself. They can help you become better at what you do.
I’d like to share what I’ve learned with you. For each point, I’ll give you relevant quotes from Starcraft resources (I list the resources at the end of the post).
Here are 15 self-improvement tips from Starcraft progaming:
1. Pay the price
Pros train 8 to 10 hours a day
There is no shortcut to success. If you want to be successful, you have to pay the price, be it with your time, money, or energy.
2. Study the best to internalize patterns
Studying the progames is a shortcut to figuring out the optimal actions in all situations.
Studying the best people in your field is essential. Why? Because it teaches you the right way to do things. But there’s more:
…merely watching very large quantities of pro games will help in establishing subconscious patterns.
Consistently studying the best people in your field helps you internalize patterns. Later on, when you face a certain situation, these ingrained patterns will enable you to make the right decision.
3. Do an active study
When deeply analyzing games it is crucial that you be actively pausing and thinking, asking questions such as: “What would I do here? Why does he make this move or idea instead?”… Actively compare your thought processes and decisions with what the pro actually makes.
Rather than just studying the best passively, be active and get involved in the thinking process. At every decision point, compare what you would do with what they do. It helps you understand how the best people think.
4. Experiment is your friend
This basic play is the result of countless hours of progamers playing each other and finding the most robust and powerful builds and styles.
How do you find the best strategies? By doing a lot of experiment. Experiment helps you refine your ideas and find the ideas that work.
5. Review your past performances
One important way to develop game sense is studying your own replays exhaustively… The primary benefit of doing so is to merge the details of your in-game perceptions where you are hindered by limited information with the accurate assessment of the replay. If you continuously compare your predictions with the real data, your predictions will definitely become better and better.
This is a good way to improve your decision-making ability. By doing this kind of review, you will be able to see gaps in your past thinking process. You can then adjust your assumptions to make better decisions next time.
6. Know what to do in every situation
Being fast is not about being able to move your hands. It is about knowing what to do in every given situation…
Some people think that being fast means moving faster than other people. But a much more important factor is knowing the right thing to do in every situation. Nothing wastes your time more than making the wrong decisions and doing the wrong tasks.
7. Find more efficient ways to do regular tasks
Given that you know what to do (see previous point), it does help to do your tasks faster. It’s especially helpful to find more efficient ways to do regular tasks since you will do them again and again.
In Starcraft, you need to use different buildings for different purposes throughout the game. Beginner players use their mouse to control the buildings. But good players use keyboard shortcuts that enable them to do things in a much faster way.
8. Take advantage of the situation
Do the map starting locations favor certain builds? Some have more open chokes, forcing them to do different openings. Thus you have better openings to take advantage of it.
Look at the situation you’re in. Does it have certain characteristics that make it suitable for certain actions? Is there an opportunity you can take advantage of?
9. Move out of your comfort zone
Another bit of advice. Never be afraid to lose. Try and go out of your comfort zone whenever you can. Losing if utilized correctly is a lesson to be learned.
…in order to keep improving your multitasking, you must keep playing players that are better than you, that push you, who make you struggle to even stay alive.
I like the way they put it. The point is, you must expand your personal capacity. If you keep doing things you’re already comfortable with, you’re not improving yourself.
10. Have a clear goal
To what purpose are you trying to improve at Starcraft? The only reasonable approach is to figure out your goal first, then make your means fit that goal…
Don’t waste your time by doing things aimlessly. Having a clear goal helps you make the right decisions. It helps you avoid spending time on unnecessary things .
11. Learn from those before you
If you want to be good at Starcraft you must study from those who have come before you. There’s no sense in trying to learn an accelerated 11 years worth of strategy on your own.
If you can learn from those before you, why should you learn things the hard way? Whatever you do, find as much information as possible from those who have done it. It will save you a lot of time.
12. Know why you do something
Thus there will come a point when you have a gap in your knowledge: you understand what is right, but not why it is right, and thus do not have the know how without a direct example of how to defeat inferior ideas…
Knowing what to do isn’t enough; you must also know why. Knowing why helps you adapt to unexpected situations because you understand the thinking process.
13. Dig forgotten wisdom of the past
Yet the best place to find unnoticed ideas and strategy is by studying older champions. There’s a lot of unknown territory out there to explore and realistically, almost nobody is going to look back in time to find ideas since they naturally assume everything has been learned and improved upon.
Many people look for good ideas in the present, but perhaps the best way to find good ideas is by digging the wisdom of the past.
14. Recognize good ideas when they show up
Did I have the ability to create that strategy? Absolutely not. But I recognized the value of the opening while others somehow did not.
Often you don’t need to find good ideas. You just need to spot them when they show up. Be observant and expect ideas in unlikely places.
15. Truly “get” something
Lastly, there is a significant difference between understanding an idea and truly getting it to the point where they can use that knowledge to react instantaneously to a new situation.
If something is important to you, don’t be satisfied with just knowing or understanding it. Immerse yourself in it until you truly “get” it, until you can use it to quickly react to new situations.
Photo by SobControllers | <urn:uuid:11b781b9-ca2e-4a6a-8013-5558c5de3f96> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2010/10/12/self-improvement-tips/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955074 | 1,618 | 1.617188 | 2 |
The Hindu Crossword 9729 appeared in the paper today with the by-line of Gridman, out of turn as M.Manna's sequence of 7 grids is not yet over.
The Hindu doesn't generally shuffle its setter sequence, so this was curious. More so because the grid did not look like Gridman's at all. It isn't one of his standard grids, and it isn't a particularly pretty grid either. Black patches at the top-right/bottom-left? Two consecutive unches at the start of words? What's happened to Gridman, was my first reaction.
With the puzzle solved, all of it made sense. It's a special puzzle, with a message encoded in the grid. Did you see it while solving? If not, do you see it now?
The filled-in grid is below. A few hours later, I'll replace it with another that highlights the message. Look for the message meanwhile, and leave a comment about it. Update: Grid replaced!
Hidden Message Deciphered
The perimeter spells out, starting from the bottom-right in clockwise direction:
WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR
Congrats to Ganesh, sriks7, Bhavan, Col Gopinath, Musical Scientist, raghunath – you got it right!
To accommodate the message around the entire perimeter, perhaps, Gridman chose a grid with unusually high blacks/unches. A better option might have been to hide in a longer message to avoid blacks in the perimeter. Or to put the message in other parts of the grid, such as the circle spanning the 2nd row-column. The special grid would have also retained its fairness/aesthetic value that way.
Of course, the clues are uniformly sound so the grid does not cause difficulty in solving.
A secret message of this kind is called a Nina, which I wrote about a couple of months ago over here: What is a Nina?
This was a treat, a promising cruciverbal beginning to the New Year 2010. Thank you, The Hindu and Gridman, for giving us solvers an unexpected New Year gift. | <urn:uuid:ca8311ca-286d-4fec-b65d-94b2173b2390> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/01/hindu-crossword-9729-gridman-nina.html | 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 | 0.954456 | 444 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Buffalo, N.Y. - The man who will advice Buffalo on how best to lure companies here with that billion dollar commitment from Governor Cuomo is getting a first hand look at the area.
Bruce Katz and the governor worked together in the federal department of housing and urban development.
Katz works now for the Brookings Institution, a major Washington think tank where his specialty is improving the competitiveness and prosperity of cities and areas.
Hmmm, I wonder what area could use that kind of expertise?
Scott Brown: "People here will say the three top priorities are jobs, jobs and jobs, what can you tell them about creating new jobs?"
Bruce Katz, Brookings Institution: "I think they're absolutely right. I would say the priority for the country and the Buffalo metropolis is more jobs. You want jobs that pay better wages with better benefits.
"You need jobs that are accessible by skill, so we need to train people for jobs that actually exist and are accessible by geography, people actually have to be able to get to work in a reasonable period of time in a world of four dollar a gallon gas."
Under the governor's plan, the billion dollars is to be used as a way to leverage private investment and lure companies here.
Scott Brown: "You may know there's a good deal of skepticism and cynicism here when it comes to big government projects."
Bruce Katz: "First of all I appreciate the skepticism and cynicism because there's a long history of efforts, the silver bullet, the magic bullet. I think government has an enormous role frankly in job creation and economic growth, it sort of sets the platform for private sector investment and attraction."
Katz spoke on Wednesday to community leaders at Channel 17.
Thursday, he'll meet with members of the area's Regional Economic Development Council.
Scott Brown: "Do you envision ten projects of $100 million each or have you not gotten that far?"
Bruce Katz: "Whether that's ten interventions or more or less really depends on the evidence base. Any successful city and metropolis needs to have a quality, livable place, which you have, in order to attract and retain talent."
Scott Brown: "There's been some question as to whether this money would be spent in the city or the suburbs, how do you see it?"
Bruce Katz: "I don't see the distinctions between cities and suburbs, to me they're completely integrated. We're in a world where Chinese metropolitan areas are 20 million people. A lot of the traditional fights between city and suburb are not as meaningful in that kind of world.
"What makes you special, I think that is the central question to every city and metropolis in the United States."
Scott Brown: "What is it that makes this area special, that we can build on?"
Bruce Katz: "Well I think legacy, location there are only a few border cities in the United States with our largest trading partner. Also, I only think of maybe three places that in the United States- Buffalo, Detroit, New Orleans - where I see individuals who grew up there, people who live there now with an unbelievable commitment to a place. That may be the strongest thing to build on more than anything else because it shows that people care about this place. There is a positive future here, but strategic bets need to be placed."
Katz and the Brookings Institution are donating their services to the Regional Economic Development Council, so there will be no charge to taxpayers. | <urn:uuid:b016afb4-4e73-426a-a54e-9eff25e6fdd0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgrz.com/rss/article/160691/37/Buffalos-Billion-Dollar-Advisor | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964289 | 711 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Hot peppers are good for respiratory problems, clears sinuses, and helps you breathe more clearly.
They contain a lot of vitamin C.
Hot peppers contains capsaicin, a natural painkiller.
I’ve always thought there was a weight loss benefit, but can’t find anything to document that. Jon Benson has mentioned that in one of his books or articles too.
In hotter climates, they eat hot peppers to stay cool. Seems ironic, doesn't it? The hot peppers make you sweat, which actually cools you down. Sweating also helps remove toxins from your body.
And for some odd reason, they're just fun to eat. | <urn:uuid:f9dda4d6-feb6-418c-951f-048f5d7ab6ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sanesuperwomanclub.com/members/index.php/food/healthy-foods-a-z-mainmenu/211-hot-peppers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970027 | 138 | 1.617188 | 2 |
World Trade WT/MIN(96)/ST/123
12 December 1996
Singapore, 9-13 December 1996
Slovenia appreciates the hospitality of Singapore and the sacrifice of its Government to enable this historic Conference to take place. My appreciation goes to the Director-General and the WTO Secretariat for the energy invested into substantial and complex preparations for this gathering of Ministers.
The set of Agreements and Decisions adopted at Marrakesh two years ago, to Slovenia and many other smaller economies, represent much more than a complement of codes of conduct to be followed and to be monitored by Members. They contain values to be sought and achieved in trade and international economic relations. These values have a particular significance for countries which are striving to become members of the WTO. Slovenia wants to play an active role in promoting these values.
The process of translation of these values into national laws and regulations of all the WTO Members is a long and complicated one and requires adjustments of both the society and the economy. The greatest impact of the Uruguay Round Agreements can be seen in the reforms taking place in the countries in transition and countries acceding to the WTO. They are being driven by the need to comply with the multilateral rules and principles and have historic proportions. The tasks of the WTO and its Members in implementation of the accepted commitments are enormous and complex. They are also a burden for small delegations and domestic administrations and their resources. Slovenia would like to see a greater blend of rules and pragmatism and economy in the various tasks and procedures in order to ensure smoother progress in all areas. The WTO also needs to develop a wider public perception of the tasks and the role of the WTO.
Institutionally, great strides have been made in the WTO and some very important work has been achieved which should be taken further, meeting new challenges, in a WTO as an open forum for all issues and concerns to be discussed, relating to the multilateral trading system, and as an opportunity to deal with these issues and concerns. Methods of work in the WTO, in some areas, are time-consuming and not always fully justified. In certain cases they need to be re-examined to allow for better progress.
Increasing membership in the WTO and the extensive list of incoming countries is testimony to its success. This underscores the importance of the Organization. The rapid pace of globalization is increasing pressure upon the WTO to produce additional results to avoid recourse to unilateral measures and pressure from Members. The WTO, in the course of development of its tasks and future role, will have to go beyond the immediate trade concerns and take charge of other matters and issues which effect trade. In Slovenia's view the particular areas of challenge to the multilateral trading system are investment and trade-related aspects of competition policies of Members. Therefore, dealing with "new" issues would provide the WTO with new vigour in the following period.
Questions concerning regional trade arrangements are vitally important for Slovenia as a small economy which depends on trade and foreign economic relations. Regional integration and expansion of trade on the basis of such integration is an economic prerogative for Slovenia. Furthermore, Slovenia believes that regional integrations can better achieve the goals of sustainable development. Monitoring of regional trade arrangements is necessary for reasons of transparency and non-discrimination.
The Government of Slovenia is strongly committed to effective implementation of the WTO Agreements as a first priority. Only this can be the basis for confidence-building in the WTO. Closely linked with further growth and expansion of trade is the simplification of time-consuming and unpredictable trade procedures. Trade and investment are also closely linked. Progressive and open discussions in these and other areas, such as trade and environment, labour issues, may benefit all.
In conclusion, Slovenia is committed to a strong and decisive role of the WTO, which this Conference will, no doubt, endorse. | <urn:uuid:014083e6-9631-478c-8ffb-e8348f521793> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min96_e/st123.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953086 | 782 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Nearly a third of the worldwide web browser market appears to be using Mozilla's Firefox.
That's what Mozilla figured out after crunching numbers from a variety of firms — StatCounter, Quantcast, Net Applications and Gemius — and mixing in its own data. The open source browser's largest market share is in Europe, with nearly 40 percent penetration (152.7 million users). The company rather cheerily pointed out that wasn't even the browser's largest market penetration. In Antarctica, StatCounter gives Mozilla 80 percent of the market.
Interestingly, the nation with the biggest growth in Firefox downloads was Russia, though at least part of that occurred when Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker traveled there. But that was only one spike over the entire first quarter, over which time downloads grew 20 percent in Russia.
In Indonesia, Firefox accounts for more than 60 percent of the market share. In North America, marketshare is 26 percent - 100 million users.
What I found more interesting than these stats, however, was a part of Mozilla's first-ever user survey that showed when people were using their browsers. It's an interesting insight into people's usage patterns. And, to me anyhow, it seemed to reflect a flattening out of time across the United States.
What do I mean by that? Simply put, East Coasters used to get up, get to work and expect the rest of the nation (and world, frankly) to catch up. And when it hit 5 p.m. from Maine to Florida, people in the business world turned off their computers and headed home.
But the day is starting later in the east - specifically in New York, according to Mozilla's survey. From 5 to 9 a.m., a larger percentage of people are booting up their computers in California than in New York. New York catches up by 10 a.m. - which is 7 a.m. California time. It seems as if the round-the-clock nature of the Internet has pushed the East Coast workday a bit later and perhaps moved the West Coast workday a couple hours earlier. That's how I've found my days moving lately, anyhow.
Mozilla also looked at Wyoming (two hours behind New York) and Hawaii (five hours behind New York in the winter months) and found a much larger percentage of users in those states are booting up their Firefox during those same hours. Again, starting with 10 a.m., New York pulls out front again.
Especially with such a large percentage of the tech industry on the West Coast, there are certain folks who can't really get their days going until a little later if they're on the East Coast. It'll be interesting to see if this was just a blip or if Mozilla's onto something when it comes out with its second-quarter data.
After nearly 20 years as a professional journalist for large and small daily newspapers in Florida, Arizona and New York, Amy was part of the Great Newspaper Culling of 2008. That was a good thing. Now, Amy writes for a variety of websites, including NetworkWorld, Discovery's Parentables and Soshable and consults with a variety of sites on their social media strategy.
She also has created the first - and only - bacon news aggregator on the Internet, Bacon Queen and has altogether too many Tumblogs. Amy is the top female user of all time on Digg.com and spends altogether too much time on the computer. You can follow her on Twitter and find more out about her on her website. | <urn:uuid:c6ea5077-d5a6-4a44-8325-06de12091172> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/59664 | 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 | 0.969121 | 725 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Gonzalez, a U.S. Army Dentist currently working at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, served in Operation Iraqi Freedom for 15 months.
"I'm glad and I'm proud I went over there," said Gonzalez. "The hardest part was missing my kids constantly. I will do it again in a heartbeat and I'd still miss them again like crazy."
Gonzalez showed students a picture of her two children before she left for Iraq and when she returned. She also described an emotional homecoming -- one in which many soldiers deployed overseas can understand.
She extolled the value of Skype and her ability to keep in touch with her kids almost daily while serving thousands of miles away from home.
"It's something I'm really thankful for because in the past they couldn't communicate with their families every day," said Gonzalez. They couldn't send messages that they'd get every day. They didn't have this potential for communication. We are very lucky to come this far."
Gonzalez was one of 19 veterans who spoke to 20 classes of ninth grade students Friday to share their experiences while serving in the U.S. military. U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Michael O'Connor and former Marine Drill instructor Ronald Hoover stopped in to see Gonzalez's presentation. Hoover thanked Gonzalez for the work of
"I think we need to instill a sense of patriotism in our kids," said Gonzalez. "I also want them to understand that it's not about politics, it's about the human beings that are down range. The opportunity to interact with kids gives me a chance to put the seed in there that there are different things in the military. It's not just about getting shot at or shooting somebody."
Ninth-grade academy social studies teacher Ricky Lobo -- the husband of Gonzalez and also a U.S. Army veteran from Operation Desert Storm -- helped arrange the special visits for students.
Lobo arranged visits last year for the first time when he was a student-teacher at CASHS under teacher Greg Remson. Lobo set up veterans to speak in all of Remson's classes.
"We did it for only his class," said Lobo. "What I did was I got a World War II, Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraqi veteran in that order. Because I think it's important the children know and appreciate what our veterans have done for us all the way since World War II. These guys are dying every day. It was something different. It was phenomenal. The children loved it."
This year, Lobo, working as a long-term substitute for the district, asked Principal Buddy Chapel if he could continue the tradition. Chapel supported the idea so much, he asked Lobo if he could arrange speakers for the entire ninth-grade.
Chapel retired as a First Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps. in 1995.
Lobo touched base with Amvets, Vietnam Veterans and the VFW posts in Chambersburg, Shippensburg and Dillsburg.
In all 20 veterans spoke to four teachers' classes, two of the 20 were women.
Over the years, Lobo has also picked up contact information by meeting veterans in the public.
For example, Lobo met Hoover in a Carlisle barber shop and met U.S. Marine Sergeant Michael O'Connor as a recruiter.
Lobo arranged for speakers from the Navy, Marines, Army and Air Force. He was unable to locate a veteran for the U.S. Coast Guard.
"A lot of students don't really understand what veterans have done for our nation," said Lobo. "That's why I think it's important. If we can set aside one day a school year to talk about it, I think it's a great experience."
Brian Hall can be reached at 262-4811 and email@example.com, or follow him on Twitter @bkhallpo. | <urn:uuid:a6c59327-9af5-4770-8603-e1e11db6fe2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.publicopiniononline.com/latestnews/ci_21968090/veterans-give-students-look-at-soldiers-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977974 | 819 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The Dallas Holocaust Museum has asked Dallas Holocaust survivors to stay home for the day on Friday, July 9. But the museum will open its doors free beginning at 1 p.m.
The Fred Phelps clan of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., is scheduled to picket the museum at 2:15 p.m. WBC’s picket schedule also includes a number of other stops around Dallas this weekend targeting the Jewish community.
Laura Martin, the Dallas Police Department’s liaison to the LGBT community, asked people not to engage the Phelps clan. They make their money suing anyone and everyone — including the police, she said.
Holocaust Museum President Alice Murray agreed.
“We do not want to legitimatize the hatred of a small number of people who comprise this group by inadvertently providing fodder for media coverage,” she said.
The museum will be open with docents promoting its mission of tolerance and be selling its “upstander” T-shirts.
Rafael McDonnell of Resource Center Dallas said donations have been pouring in for “Hell Freezes Over,” the counterprotest fundraiser to replace the Center’s ice maker. He expects the new Westboro Baptist Church Memorial Ice Maker to be fully funded by Friday evening.
The Phelps gang is expected to gather near the Center at 6:15 p.m. The parking lots will be blocked off so McDonnell recommends street parking.
McDonnell said someone will have a stop watch and a horn. After one minute, he said, the horn will blow and people will throw money into a Pride flag. Each minute Phelps protests, more money will be raised.
“Bring lots of singles,” he said.
Bottled water and Fig Newtons will be served. “Figs” refers to a biblical quote Phelps used to denounce Dallas’ Jewish community.
The target of the evening Phelps protest is Congregation Beth El Binah, a Reform synagogue that meets at the Resource Center. (Full disclosure: I am a member of Congregation Beth El Binah and received the original fax from the Phelps gang about their impending visit).
Beth El Binah’s services will be held on a normal schedule. Everyone is welcome. Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor conducts services that last about an hour beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Powered by Facebook Comments | <urn:uuid:2b539194-e394-4fa5-81f3-f5ffe2b22dcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dallasvoice.com/a-day-of-tolerance-begins-at-the-holocaust-museum-and-ends-at-the-resource-center-1032244.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936757 | 494 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Posted 18 April 2012 - 09:44 PM
I have found Scholers in 3 sizes:
Large: Each side of the hexagon is 4 1/2 inches, 3 reads per note, so that each key plays in 3 octaves. Instrument tuned to C/G but tuned flat enough to be annoying when played with instruments tuned to modern concert pitch.
Medium: Each side of the hexagon is 4 inches, 2 reads per note, so that each key plays in 2 octaves. Instrument tuned to G/D but tuned flat enough to be annoying when played with instruments tuned to modern concert pitch.
Small: Each side of the hexagon is 3 1/2 inches, 1 read per note. Instrument tuned sharp of D/A so that it is almost midway between D/A and Eb/Bb. In Adam-T's photo, the small on on the left must be one of these.
I have some with the pearloid "Mother-of-Toilet-seat" finish, some red and some grey, and some with the wood finish with the fake wood grain painted on. I originally bought the first one in order to cannibalize to fix different 20-button branded "Frontalini". The Frontalini has the pallet style button mechanisms, except they are metal, like aluminium or steel, and its reeds are perfectly in tune. When I found myself with a large Scholer that was the wrong size to cannibalize, I thought the 3 octave tuning was so cool, that I would get another one the same size, and use the parts from this other large Scholer to fix the first large Scholer. But in the construction of the second large Scholer, glue was used too liberally, so that it is rather difficult to take it apart and keep its parts intact.
My advice about Scholers is to avoid them, no matter how cheap you find them. The wood they are made of seems to be better suited for making matchsticks, the tuning is always off, the reed are not mounted separately, but instead groups of 10 (5 in 5 out) are mounted together each on a common trapezoidal red block.
If you want a simple wooden-ended 20-button, so you can look like a more authentic 19th-century sailor, then get a Hohner D40. If you want that parallel octave thing going on, then Stagi makes a 20-button that does that.
I'll take some photos and post them when I have some more time. | <urn:uuid:2d7fb3f0-715e-4e51-8db3-c40be97e516b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.concertina.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14093&st=0&p=135161 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963865 | 522 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The reality of our world is a shifting, evolving, dynamic energy field. As part of this ecosystem, humanity is greowing and developing. As the needs of the whole shift, changes need to be made in the parts that make up that whole. So it is with the auras. A new color --Indigo--has emerged, with skills, talents, and physical characteristics significantly different from those of the other colors. At this time, most Indigos are still children or young adults. I see Indigo children while as a new color invested with new talents and abilities that will be necesary for our evolution. These chldren have unique characterists for which we can only guess the purpose. Parents of Indigo children have a special challenge--how to nurture and cultivate their unique children while at the same time helping them exist in the mainstream of contemporary society. The parents of some of these Indigo children will love and support their differences. Other Indigos will not be so lucky. The significant thing about Indigos is that they have leadership capabilities unlike those we have heretofore experienced. They understand what it means to be a fully actualized human being without having been taught that concept. The most difficult thing for an Indigo to develop is patience and forbearance. Because they seem to have already grasped what it means to be authentic, they have little tolerance for those who struggle with this issue. Indigos are not without compassion. However, their form of compassion is to give other human beings time and space enough to find their own answers, to come to their own resolutions. | <urn:uuid:69a1ad1f-b5b3-4880-99d5-b8d04bbfca6c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.angelfire.com/art/jezabelle/indigo.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964215 | 319 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Nature, fantasy, cultural appropriation, female sexuality and transformation are all a part of my subject. In 19th century Indian miniatures it was common to depict zenana, the stories of the palace’s forbidden womens’ quarters. Using a hybrid form of painting, drawing and collage, my work explores the theme of modern women interacting with nature. My visual stories depict intimate scenes of women harmonizing with the natural world, even as the engine of modern industrialism continues to leave our detritus behind in the environment. With this theme I hope to address the decadence and materialism of modern experience, and celebrate the beauty of nature that we must protect.
Lauren Matsumoto is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Her work explores the dynamic relationship between humans and the natural world. Born in New York of Finnish heritage, married into a Japanese-Mexican family, she has lived in France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Florida, New York and traveled to many other countries. During these travels she gathers insight into other cultures, collecting visual information she appropriates in her work. She has participated in international group exhibitions on three different continents and enjoys speaking about art and design at universities such as Yale and Cooper Union. Her work has been published in Print magazine, GD USA, Graphis and several other noteworthy annuals. She earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BA in Art from Yale. | <urn:uuid:b668cb0b-859e-4ce8-9bb9-64dec7e136c4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://momaps1.org/studio-visit/artist/lauren-matsumoto | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956901 | 294 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Friday night is the first night of Passover, which is a super-duper major Jewish holiday. I'm making matzah kugel and chopped liver to bring to a good friend's Seder, which is Passover's ritual dinner. Go ahead. Make all the disparaging chopped liver comments you want—more for me.
On Sunday, however, we'll be baking an Easter cake to bring to some other good friends' Easter dinner. For years, we've hidden eggs in their garden, which is the British word for backyard, and after 15 years of hanging around with these Brits, I can even understand the one from Manchester. It's a proper Easter dinner, as they like to say, and my husband, the former Altar Boy, always appreciates their baked ham.
Passover and Easter always are vaguely near each other, since they both follow a lunar calendar. Pay attention now. Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full Moon after the vernal equinox. Now hang in there. Passover is on the full moon of the month of Nissan, which occurs every spring, somewhere around March or April, depending on the Hebrew calendar, which has either 12 or 13 months. When it has 13 months, which is 7 times every 19 years, the 13th month is called Adar II, which is when all movie sequels premiere in Israel.
But I drift from my point which is that Jews and Christians are very good at astronomy.
Actually, my point is to explain why I'm having a multi-religion weekend. My husband and I are in a "mixed marriage" (Catholic and Jewish), although the other parents in the Cupertino Chinese Language Immersion Program just thought we were the white couple.
The South Bay is the perfect place for a so-called mixed marriage. Here, such couples are commonplace. Here, people seem to revel in diversity. I'm reminded of a weekend a while ago when I went to a Persian New Year celebration (once again involving that crazy vernal equinox) sponsored by a local Baha’i community group. The evening’s post-dinner entertainment was a Salsa lesson, taught by an African-American man. The next day, I stopped at the Indian market around the corner to pick up fruits and vegetables and a few samosas. After dinner, which was Thai carry-out, my daughter finished her Chinese homework.
Ah, I love living here, especially when astronomical events mean two fabulous dinners in one weekend. | <urn:uuid:6910a084-7267-42f6-a263-dc87ca6b58ce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cupertino.patch.com/groups/jacqueline-levys-blog/p/bp--happy-vernal-equinox-lets-eat | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971661 | 523 | 1.507813 | 2 |
LiveAuctionTalk.com Celebrates the 1927 New York Yankees Rosemary McKittrick's weekly collecting column always has a different slant and viewpoint that captures the reader's imagination. Photo courtesy of Hunt Auctions.
May 2, 2006--Something about the year and the season demands to be immortalized. The victories, the close calls, the heroes, the home runs, it’s all part of the magic of the 1927 New York Yankees.
In the late innings when other players were easing up, the Yankees were heating up. Powered by red meat, whiskey and cigarettes, they won 110 games and swept the World Series from The Pittsburgh Pirates.
It was an American league record that stood for 27 seasons. Murderers’ Row is what they were nicknamed with a team batting average of .307.
Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. Lou Gehrig hit 47.
If confidence and steadiness were hallmarks of great players, Ruth and Gehrig had both with a fury unlike anything baseball had ever seen. When they played, there was a sense that history was being made on the grassy fields.
“Those fellows not only beat you, but they tear your hearts out,” said Washington First Baseman Joe Judge after the Yankees swept a double-header on July 4, 1927.
When professional baseball celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1969, the 1927 New York Yankees was the team they picked as the all-time best. No team has ever been better, baseball historians said. If one player stood out in this team, it had to be Babe Ruth.
It’s no surprise then when an autographed baseball signed by 21 members of the 1927 New York Yankee team goes on the block and commands $66,000. It sold on Feb. 24 in the Important Sports Memorabilia and Cards sale at Hunt Auctions in Exton, Pa.
The baseball included signatures of Ruth, Gehrig, Combs, Lazzeri, Koenig and Meusel. Ruth occupies the sweet spot and remains the boldest signature.
LiveAuctionTalk.com author Rosemary McKittrick has been writing weekly about the art, antiques and collectibles field for 16 years. McKittrick is co-author of “The Official Price Guide to Fine Art,” a 1000-page book published by Random House and co-author of four volumes of “McKittrick’s Art Price Guide.” | <urn:uuid:85a6cb82-69c2-4a89-bbde-25d7175ca897> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news-antique.com/?id=781408&keys=Auctions-Baseball-Collecting | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964918 | 505 | 1.609375 | 2 |
|Lowest Recommended Age:||4th - 6th Grades|
|Profanity:||A few mild words|
|Movie Release Date:||2003|
Walter (Haley Joel Osment) is dumped on the unwelcoming front porch of his two great-uncles, Hub (Robert Duvall) and Garth (Michael Caine) by his flighty mother (Kyra Sedgewick) so she can go to school and learn how to be a court reporter. She tells him that they disappeared 40 years earlier and just mysteriously returned. The rumor is that they have money hidden away somewhere, and she tells Walter to see if he can find it.
Hub and Garth are not used to taking care of anyone. They tell Walter that if he needs anything he should find it himself or, better yet, do without it. Walter is not used to being taken care of. His mother has had a series of worthless or abusive boyfriends. When he calls the school to try to talk to her, he runs through a whole list of aliases before finding out that she has lied to him again and never even enrolled.
Duvall and Caine have such easy charm that they make this movie work, though it sags when anyone else is on screen, including the flashbacks of their adventures in Africa and Osment’s struggles to find his character and manage his adolescent voice.
Parents should know that the movie has “action violence,” cartoon-style and not graphic. There are some tense family issues and sad deaths.
Families who see this movie should talk about their own best advice for children about growing up and about the importance of having role models. They should also talk about Hub’s view that sometimes it is important to believe in things whether they are true or not.
Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Holes and Shirley Temple’s Captain January. | <urn:uuid:d0a0c9dc-41d5-4d42-b495-47485adf329e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.beliefnet.com/moviemom/2003/09/secondhand-lions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975562 | 398 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Where is the theater in China?China has a long history of performance, but most of it is traditional. There are fine productions in television and movies, but there is little live theater. I recently received an email from my brothers theater group in Vancouver Washington asking for some help in finding a way to get a tour going in China. A tall order but I want to try and help. I want to reach out to any teachers here in China who may have contacts with English departments who may be agreeable to work with this idea. When I taught at Beida, Beijing University, Peking University, I saw a professional production of Arther Millers "The Crucible". It was a good production and drew some good crowds from the University and the public.
English is such a priority for students, so if you have some contacts, please contact me so I can pass them on to the planners. The picture above shows the name of the repertoire theater group which is headed by my brother Llewellyn Rhoe. You can click on the picture to view some photos from the website. It is The Main Street Theatre.
I would guess that fewer than one or two percent of the students have seen a theater production. Any help in this project would be greatly appreciated and may also help you too, as you may see your stock rise. If you have any contacts who may be interested in helping with this idea please let me know, as it is a large undertaking. Be assured these artists are talented and would love to bring some culture to your school.
worldtour aka Larry Rhoe | <urn:uuid:005e2718-fd68-429a-ba16-a583742aed7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldtourinchina.blogspot.com/2007/05/where-is-theater-in-china.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969398 | 321 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Washington Square Park signed 'Johann Berthelsen' (lower right) oil on canvas 12 x 16in
US$ 3,000 - 5,000
£2,000 - 3,300
2,300 - 3,900
PROVENANCE: The artist Acquired by Mr. Milton Schepps, New York Thence by descent to the present owner
Mr. Milton Schepps, a close personal friend of Johann Berthelsen, owned a jewelry store at 554 Madison Avenue from the 1930s until it was relocated in 1969. Mr. Schepps displayed many of Berthelsen's paintings on the walls of his store, several of which he sold bearing the label "Traders in Treasures." Mr. Schepps kept a few of the paintings for himself including the first six lots of this sale which have remained in the family's collection.
Known as New York's 'Jeweler to the Stars', Mr. Schepps introduced Berthelsen to Frank Sinatra, who bought nearly 30 works from the artist. Mr. Schepps also likely introduced Berthelsen to Louis Armstrong, who commissioned a painting from the artist in 1954 depicting Times Square and the Paramount Theatre. Not only a gifted painter, Berthelsen was also an exceptional opera singer and must have had much to share with the talented jazz musician. | <urn:uuid:9637be46-37a1-4b0b-a3af-59b2f190d8b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/19991/lot/5/?page_lots=3 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972476 | 271 | 1.53125 | 2 |
CMW mourns the death of Ted Sizer, who, back in 1995, advised Sebastian (then a sophomore at Brown) that he should not be afraid to pursue such an outlandish idea as a neighborhood string quartet residency that combines music and music education with community building and social justice.
Dr. Sizer served as a member of CMW's advisory council, and was the featured speaker (along with Deborah Meier) at Education, Art, and Freedom: An Exploration of Philosophy and Pedagogy, the two-day symposium that CMW presented in May 2004.
"You need an adult community. You need friends, probably teachers who know the same kids, and you have to have a lot of time for “kid talk” because your impression through teaching the subject that you teach may be different than your colleague’s perception in the subject she teaches or the way the kid acts.
Good schools have multiple communities: there’s you, the teacher and your kids, and then there’s you, the teacher and the other teachers who teach the same class of kids. But there also has to be an adult culture. An adult culture should be full of critique. Not only of the adults’ work but also judgments about what’s going on with kids. Very few schools give time for that. That’s supposed to happen by osmosis. [laughter]"
Here is a link to a pdf containing his complete remarks from the 2004 symposium's Public Forum.
-Heath Marlow, CMW staff
I'm glad we got two opportunities to play the Beethoven quartet; it's too beautiful of a piece to only play once! Both performances were a success in my mind: We really did come together as a team to make some great music come alive. A lot of audience members commented on how impressed they were that we sounded as cohesive as we did...they were surprised that we'd only been rehearsing for about a month!
Photo by Kirby
I left the stage with a bubbling excitement about what we had accomplished. This kind of excitement is a common occurrence in my life, but it all the better when I have awesome colleagues to share it with!
-Carole Bestvater (Fellow)
Aaron was kind enough to write up a transcript of the interviews with CMW students that Carole conducted on the bus ride back to Providence following the Boston Philharmonic concert trip. Here are a few excerpts (outtakes):CB: What did you think of the concert?
On Sunday, October 11, Community MusicWorks families boarded a bus and headed up to Boston's beautiful Sanders Theatre to see a performance of the Boston Philharmonic featuring violinist Feng Ning.
A busy street festival slowed our travel to Boston and we thought we were going to miss the first half of the concert, but the ushers graciously let us enter quietly in between movements. We arrived to hear Feng Ning play the Brahms Violin Concerto.
The audience clapped enthusiastically and he played two encores for us. For most students, this was the highlight of the concert:"I liked the short songs after the concerto because they were funny!"
"It was interesting how he played and plucked at the same time. He must have some seriously strong fingers."
It was a great start to a season of exciting concert trips. Looking forward to seeing you on the next one!
-Aaron McFarlane, Fellow
A special invitation to PSQ and CMW fans from Christina at The Providence Athenaeum:
Friday 10/16, 5-7 pm
Salon Series: So, What’s the Story? Part Three: Bass-Baritone Frank Ward on researching and singing the African-American songbook and other works along life’s way. In addition to the standard classical and operatic repertoire, Ward has sung the works of African-American composers of art songs and spirituals, and researched and brought to life vaudeville, minstrel, and musical theater songs, circa 1900. Songs define their times and pass on stories from one era and one culture to another, letting us travel through time and space. Join us for a conversation about Ward’s musical itineraries. For Athenaeum members and their guests. For more info: call Christina at 421-6970 or visit providenceathenaeum.org.
Free to guests of CMW. No need to sign in or make a reservation. Just come and enjoy the evening and (we hope) participate in the conversation.I first heard Frank sing at the PSQ house concert at Phoebe and Peter's loft two or so years ago, and thought some of your fans might be his as well. Please join us!
Reprinted from CMW's 09-10 season program bookWelcome to our 13th season! Community MusicWorks continues to grow in our commitment to the intersections of performing, teaching, and community, and we are blessed to have you as a listener, participant, and supporter. | <urn:uuid:d5e40a88-e05a-4721-b543-77ac46a26aea> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://communitymusicworks.typepad.com/online_journal/2009/10/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971947 | 1,039 | 1.570313 | 2 |
AKRON, Ohio (AP) -- It has been a record-breaking year at the Akron Zoo.
The zoo says it broke its attendance record this year with about 330,000 people passing through the gates so far.
The Akron Beacon Journal (http://bit.ly/UpOdqq ) says the debut of endangered snow leopard cubs and an octopus named Cora have helped drive up attendance.
The zoo's previous high was set in 2008.
A zoo spokesman says they've been able to reach out to community groups in showcasing what the zoo has to offer.
Information from: Akron Beacon Journal, http://www.ohio.com | <urn:uuid:8b9c9a03-9ae4-4fc6-9ab9-b8aa62e83199> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://crescent-news.com/ap%20travel/2012/12/08/akron-zoo-breaks-attendance-record-this-year | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950442 | 136 | 1.726563 | 2 |
LOUISVILLE, KY (WDRB) -- The old historic buildings that make up Whiskey Row in the 100 block of West Main Street in downtown Louisville are no longer in danger of falling down.
That means the reopening of a street at the north end of the row of buildings.
On Wednesday, fences that have blocked traffic will be removed, and Washington Street will be reopened to traffic and pedestrians after being closed for almost two years.
All seven of the facades along this block of Main Street have been preserved. "The success here is that the Whiskey Row facade is intact," says Ron Carmicle of the McCall Group overseeing the stabilization of the buildings.
They were constructed in the late 1800's. Some had been abandoned for decades, so there was severe water damage causing some of the interior of the buildings to collapse.
But seven months of intense labor saved as much of the buildings as possible. "The end result," says Carmicle, "is three buildings that are fully intact, ready for future development, and two others where the interior has been removed but the structural walls have been saved."
So the buildings are no longer in danger of falling down. That means Washington Street is once again safe for cars and pedestrians.
Businesses on Washington Street say the re-opening has been a long time coming. "We are really looking forward to it," says Ben Barker, manager of the Troll Pub, "the amount of traffic that is going to come through here is going to be fantastic for us, it gives us good exposure."
Work continues on two facades on the corner of First and Main, so the covered walkway along Main Street will remain in place until at least spring.
Plans to develop the site into a major attraction continue. "It will be more of a food and live entertainment attraction," says Valle Jones, one of the developers of the project, "I will say it will draw not only locals but tourists; we are trying to make something very significant happen in that block." Jones says detailed plans will be revealed in a few months.
Meantime the reopening of Washington Street should bring some life back to the area right away.
"The Yum! Center generates a lot of interest and a lot of traffic through here," says Carmicle, "so I think on some warm afternoons it will be a nice spot for fans to hang out here on the sidewalk."
Copyright 2013 WDRB News. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:4cd6664b-e86e-4161-b9ef-560726a0478f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wdrb.com/story/20778826/whiskey-row-no-longer-in-danger-of-falling-down | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975378 | 510 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Can you believe $20,000 per acre?
A new record was set for Iowa farmland when a 74-acre tract near Hull in Sioux County sold at auction Dec. 7 for $20,000 per acre. The buyer was a neighboring farmer, Leland Kaster. The seller, Clinton Shinkle, lives in the state of Washington.
“Farmland is very valuable in northwest Iowa,” says auctioneer Pete Pollema of Hull, who called the sale. “We have good commodity prices now and a strong livestock industry in this area.” He started the bidding at $15,500, after talking with people beforehand to find cropland is in demand. Before bidding, one offer of $15,500 an acre was made for the 74 acres.
The total sale figures out to $1.48 million. At $20,000 an acre, if they could have sold another acre, it would have been an even $1.5 million.
• These are truly historic times for farmland prices, as they keep increasing.
• Rise in farm income, strong commodity prices are driving up Iowa land values.
• Unless crop prices collapse, land values should continue to maintain strength.
The previous Iowa land price record was set earlier in October, when a 120-acre farm near Sioux Center, also in northwest Iowa, sold for $16,750 per acre. In late September, an 80-acre tract at Sully in central Iowa went for $16,200 an acre. In setting the new record, four farmers were bidding on the land that eventually sold for $20,000 per acre. Two dropped out, and the second high bidder ran it up to $20,000 before dropping out.
Loren Flaugh of Primghar in O’Brien County, which adjoins Sioux County, attended a land auction the next day (Dec. 8) at Primghar. “Listening to the farmers at the auction at Primghar, the big buzz was the land sale the day before in Sioux County for $20,000 per acre,” says Flaugh. “Everyone in northwest Iowa had heard about it, and most of them probably still didn’t believe it.”
About 50 people attended the Primghar auction where a 60-acre piece sold. The auctioneer started the bidding at $12,000 per acre but quickly dropped to $7,000. The bidding got back up and the 60 acres finally sold at $11,300 an acre.
Fundamentals are strong
Iowa State University’s annual land value survey released in December shows a 32.5% increase in the statewide average for 2011 versus a year earlier. Solid fundamentals will likely keep farmland prices strong for the foreseeable future, says Mike Duffy, ISU Extension economist, who has coordinated the survey since 1986. “With a land market like this,” he says, “inertia is going to keep it strong. I don’t think we’re going to keep seeing 30% increases, but I don’t see a collapse coming either.”
What’s his reaction to the $20,000-per-acre sale? “We’ve seen some spikes, but the highest prices aren’t the average for an area. Sometimes there are unusual circumstances locally,” notes Duffy. “You get situations where land for sale is next to yours, and you want to add onto and expand your farming operation. Or maybe you need the land as a place to apply manure from your livestock enterprise. Or two or three people nearby for years have desired owning a particular piece of land and are determined to outbid each other to get it.”
Farm income is higher now compared to recent years; that’s driving land prices higher. With strong grain and livestock prices, expected earnings from land are higher over the long term now than we’ve seen in the recent past. Another factor is the low interest rate. Where can farmers invest their money to get a better return? Certainly not in certificates of deposit.
Also, the debt load of farmers isn’t as big today, thanks to high farm income. Many land sales are cash-based, financed with a low amount of debt. Down payments are high; lenders are requiring 50% down. In some cases the entire purchase price of land is paid with cash. “There’s little or no land debt being incurred in many cases,” says Duffy. Although people have predicted a coming crash in land prices similar to the decline in the 1980s, Duffy is less sure of an impending collapse.
This article published in the January, 2012 edition of WALLACES FARMER.
All rights reserved. Copyright Farm Progress Cos. 2012. | <urn:uuid:e423e02d-6f32-4d2e-910b-90295b363c74> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://farmprogress.com/american-agriculturist/library.aspx/believe-20000-per-acre-60/67/1417 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956549 | 997 | 1.773438 | 2 |
In South Korea, Microsoft has been found guilty of abuse of trade — as it has previously in Europe and America — and, as in Europe, been told to unbundle Windows Media Player. Nothing new there. What is new is that the US Justice Department, in a radical departure from international protocol , has issued a press release condemning the Korean regulator for its decision.
Let's see some excerpts.
"The Antitrust Division believes that Korea's remedy goes beyond what is necessary or appropriate to protect consumers, as it requires the removal of products that consumers may prefer."
The removal of Windows Media Player does not make it inaccessible to consumers, just equalises access to it and the competition.
"The Division continues to believe that imposing 'code removal' remedies that strip out functionality can ultimately harm innovation and the consumers that benefit from it."
There was plenty of innovation in media players before Windows Media Player became dominant. There is less now. Equal opportunities enhance competition and innovation. Moreover, with Windows Media Player comes Microsoft's DRM: something which, were it to achieve critical mass, would set back innovation for decades.
"Sound antitrust policy should protect competition, not competitors, and must avoid chilling innovation and competition even by 'dominant' companies."
It is hard to work out why 'dominant' is in quotes. Are we mistaken in assuming that possession of ninety-plus percent of the world's desktops is a measure of dominance? Is dominance only truly defined by 'full spectrum dominance', the official stated policy of the American Department of Defense? That, in case you missed the press release, is complete control of land, air, sea and space — presumably, Microsoft has a similar goal for desktops, servers, homes and pockets, but isn't there yet. They must not be 'chilled'.
"Furthermore, we believe that regulators should avoid substituting their judgment for the market's by determining what products are made available to consumers."
Call us old-fashioned, but we thought that this exactly their job. This Justice Department pronouncement will be good news to the producers and consumers of illicit narcotics in the US who can now ask the Food and Drug Administration to desist in "substituting their judgment for the market's", and bring joy to all those crooks, thieves and swindlers who have had their activities curtailed by the FCC, the SEC or any of the other hundreds of regulators from the American Academy of Family Physicians to the Wyoming Division of Banking. Imagine the reaction of any of these bodies was criticised by the South Korean government.
As Harold Pinter said in his Nobel Prize speech last night, America "no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant." For those readers outside America, the Justice Department's press release will confirm these fears. For those readers within the US: yes, this is how America looks from the outside — even to your friends. | <urn:uuid:4fb9204f-7c44-4fa8-bb43-b23456229c4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zdnet.com/justice-the-american-way-3039240831/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959634 | 632 | 1.515625 | 2 |
|Set like a jewel, between the Dublin mountains and the Irish sea, Dublin is known as one of Europe's most beautiful cities. In a 2003 European-wide survey conducted by the BBC, Dublin was voted the city most people would like to live in. It is the capital of the Irish Republic with a population of approximately one and a quarter million, of which about half are under 25. Culture and music are everywhere. It is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city with many restaurants, theatres, music venues, art galleries and of course pubs. Every part of Ireland is easily accessible from Dublin.|
Within walking distance of Dorset College Dublin, is Croke Park the traditional home of Irish Sport which features Gaelic (=Irish) Football and Hurling. Croke Park is the home of Ireland's international soccer team. Interestingly, it is also often used as the venue for major stadium concerts featuring artists like Bruce Springsteen, Celine Dion and Neil Diamond.
Mountjoy Square itself, where the Dorset College School of English is situated, has been receiving plenty of attention, as a movie location, over the last few years, after being featured in several films including the thriller TRIAGE starring Colin Farrell and the oscar-winning ONCE, which also won the special audience award at Robert Redford's prestigious Sundance Film Festival in Aspen, Colorado. | <urn:uuid:706648a2-18ae-4741-b640-51d2e38cf243> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.coursesinenglish.ie/eng/Experience_Ireland/Experience_Dublin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972073 | 276 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Cross-party talks are expected later Thursday to discuss a way forward.
In his report, Leveson said that he had no desire to jeopardize the freedom of the press, which he acknowledged plays a "vital" role in safeguarding the public interest, but that changes are needed to tackle abuses.
The British press has ignored its own code of conduct on "far too many occasions over the last decade," causing "real hardship" and sometimes wreaking "havoc with the lives of innocent people," Leveson said.
"This is not just the famous but ordinary members of the public, caught up in events (many of them, truly tragic) far larger than they could cope with but made much, much worse by press behavior that, at times, can only be described as outrageous," he said.
At the same time, no one proposed that the government or Parliament should be involved in regulating the press, Leveson said.
The judge recommends that the new body have new powers to impose tough sanctions against newspapers that break the rules, including the imposition of fines of up to 1% of turnover, to a maximum of 1 million pounds ($1.6 million).
The judge said the relationship between the press and politicians is mostly "robust," but sometimes the links can be "too close."
He highlighted as a concern "relationships between policy makers and those in the media who stand to gain or lose from the policy being considered."
This risks undermining public confidence in the press and politicians, he said.
Cameron said he accepted that more transparency was needed over such links. | <urn:uuid:815968aa-d29e-4775-b4bf-d205286ef53c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wlky.com/news/money/Leveson-urges-new-independent-press-regulator/-/9365814/17585226/-/item/1/-/5o9mnt/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978248 | 329 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Forums explore campus racial issues
Administrative and student leaders met in McCoy Commons Sept. 27-28 for two forums about recent campus incidents involving racial slurs.
Speaking to about 35 students, faculty and staff in attendance at each forum, Elon University President Leo M. Lambert outlined several steps the university is considering in the weeks and months ahead as it promotes one of the central goals of the Elon Commitment strategic plan: preparing students for the 21st century with an institutional pledge toward diversity and global engagement.
Lambert was joined in leading the dialogue by Smith Jackson, dean of students and vice president of Student Life; Leon Williams, director of the Multicultural Center; and senior Sam Warren, executive president of the Student Government Association.
The university leaders said they wanted to clarify existing procedures and share ideas for additional policies for responding to acts of harassment or discrimination, and ways to further a campus climate of respect.
Lambert said several ideas have surfaced since two early September incidents in which African-American students were the victims of racial slurs from people in passing vehicles.
“This is by no means a complete list, but it’s some of the things we’re thinking about getting started on,” he said.
Ideas include the following:
- Discussions by the Academic Council for helping faculty address issues of race, diversity and bias in the classroom, especially “hot moment” comments by class members that include elements of stereotyping or insensitivity.
- Focus on staff development for training university employees to be more effective at their jobs when dealing with various populations. Programs would likely start with employees who have the most interaction with the public, Lambert said.
- Creating a Student Diversity Council, as was recently suggested by a student.
- Develop a bias incident reporting system for students to formally channel their experiences and concerns to the university. The university will also explore the creation of a staff position to serve as an advocate for victims.
- Identifying and designating new spaces for student groups is another priority, Lambert said. He noted that Elon Hillel will soon have a gathering space of its own, and similar plans could be made for African American students.
Lambert said Elon is by no means a perfect, but it is a university that is constantly trying to get better. "This has been a moment of awakening for us, these moments have challenged us to do this really well," Lambert said.
Students had an opportunity to share their reflections, concerns and suggestions with the room. David Brown, the junior class president, expressed concern that despite the prominent attention Elon leaders have paid to the racial slurs – reactions that included a special College Coffee – he was dismayed at the relatively small number of people who attended the forum.
“Where is everybody?” he said. “Where is the sense of community that we all need to come together to address this? What are we going to do to get students from all walks of life involved?”
Williams was the first to respond to the concern. He noted that diversity is not a priority for many students, and that despite what may be preferred, that was the “reality.”
Associate professor Brooke Barnett, a Faculty Administrative Fellow and assistant to the president, also responded to Brown’s concerns, saying, “our challenge will be to have lots of ways … for people to show their commitment to this cause. It won’t be the same way for everybody.”
Other discussion points that students brought up included a need for the university to invest more in programs and resources already in place, and to consider how the Multicultural Center can do more to dispel the notion that it exists only for African Americans but rather for people of all backgrounds, religious faiths and sexual orientations. Some students also called on Elon to designate a point person who would serve as a resource specifically for African American students. | <urn:uuid:00d3272d-4510-4ddf-8028-c628022b89fd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elon.edu/e-net/Article/57035 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971554 | 801 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Why aren’t conservatives complaining about this South Carolina insurance law?
By Eliot Spitzer|
Posted Friday, Sept. 30, 2011
The “individual mandate” in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act has provoked incredible enthusiasm among the act’s supporters and towering rage in its opponents. The obligation either to purchase insurance or to pay a fine whose proceeds would be used to offset the cost of care to the uninsured is viewed either as an essential part of the architecture of health care reform or as an affront to liberty. In few places has the attack on the individual mandate been more vociferous than in South Carolina, where both new Governor Nikki Haley and Senator Jim DeMint are leading members of the Tea Party movement. They view the individual mandate as inimical to our Constitution and the worst manifestation of government excess.
So it may surprise you to know that South Carolina has its own individual mandate—structured exactly like the federal health care mandate, but for auto insurance. Unlike virtually all other states, which require every driver to carry liability insurance, South Carolina has a more complex system. Under South Carolina state law, in effect for more than a decade, a car owner in the state must either have liability insurance or obtain an “uninsured motorist registration.” The fee for the uninsured registration is $550 and is deposited into the “uninsured drivers fund.” The website of the South Carolina Department of Insurance explains that the $550 fee is used to “offset the costs of uninsured motorist coverage.” (Some portion is also used for consumer education programs.) The “uninsured motorist coverage” is a cost borne by drivers who have their own liability insurance but also need additional insurance to provide for coverage in the event they have an accident caused by a driver who does not have liability insurance—the “uninsured driver.” By statute—SC Code section 38-77-155—funds from the uninsured drivers fund are distributed to insurers who offer this uninsured motorist coverage. Bottom line: South Carolina forcibly transfers money from drivers who refuse to buy insurance to drivers who do buy insurance to cover the costs of risk created by the drivers who don’t buy insurance.
The $550 fee is a rough approximation of the cash needed to insure that those who have not purchased insurance pay their fair share to the system. Eliminating free riders—those who create risk but don’t pay for it—is the worthy objective of South Carolina’s uninsured motorist registration.
South Carolina even has an enforcement mechanism to make sure people abide by this structure: Any driver stopped by a police officer who can’t produce an insurance certificate or a certificate of “uninsured registration” is charged the $550. In other words, if they stop you and catch you, they make sure you buy into the system.
Make no mistake, this structure is precisely what the health care act requires: Either be insured or pay a fine—a fine calibrated to subsidize the costs and risks you create by participating without insurance. And also understand: This makes perfect sense. Eliminating “free riders” is the only way to make an insurance system work. Everybody from the Heritage Foundation to Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney to President Obama has come to this same conclusion.
Opponents of the individual mandate in the health care reform bill have tried to deal with the auto insurance analogy before. Senator DeMint and others have attempted, valiantly, to distinguish auto insurance by arguing that driving is a voluntary act and, therefore, that those who chose not to drive are not forced to buy insurance. But this is, as lawyers say, a distinction without a difference. The core logic in each case is identical: If you create risk and costs to other individuals and society at large by your activity, and yet you refuse to pay for those costs and risks, so that others are being forced to cover your free-riding, then it is fair to require you to share part of the burden. The fact that one can theoretically opt out of driving has no impact on this argument. Opponents refuse to acknowledge the logic of the individual health-insurance mandate despite their embrace of it in the case of auto insurance. (Their other argument about the constitutional authority of Congress to impose the health mandate, which I view as being equally lacking in merit, will nonetheless have to be resolved by the Supreme Court, most probably this term.)
The only escape hatch for Senator DeMint and others would be if they were truly willing to let people “opt out” of the health care system. Then only those who “opted in” could be forced to participate—as with auto insurance. But what would that mean? That if somebody came to an emergency room with a heart attack and that person could not pay cash on the barrel, didn’t have insurance to cover, or hadn’t paid the equivalent of the “uninsured registration fee”—we would really throw them out on the street and say, Sorry, no care for you? Having listened to the audience reaction at the recent Republican presidential debate, where death seemed to be a popular means to resolve social ills, there clearly may be a few fringe voices who have that view. But I don’t believe there is a significant number of people who truly want us to deny critical or emergency care to the sick based on the absence of payment. Indeed, federal law requires that care be provided.
Since opting out is neither morally nor legally possible, we must create a system that then requires everybody to participate in covering some portion of the costs. That is what South Carolina has done for auto insurance and what the nation must do for health care.
Filed under: Affordable Care Act Tagged: | ACA, auto insurance, Barack Obama, health insurance, healthcare reform, Heritage Foundation, individual mandate, Jim DeMint, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Nikki Haley, opt out, South Carolina, Tea Party, uninsured driver, uninsured motorist | <urn:uuid:bb20cda5-7c67-4461-8057-fd545da02237> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://schealthcarevoices.org/2011/10/03/south-carolina-home-of-individual-mandate-hypocrisy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963162 | 1,240 | 1.75 | 2 |
CONTEST - A Coin Bridge to History. A Contest leading your students up to the period of the Constantinian coins they are studying, by using Coin and other images to bring out various famous (and less famous)events in the Ancient Past.
All photographs on this website either are the
property of ACE or of others who have contributed them, and may not be
reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the owner of
same. All rights are reserved. | <urn:uuid:76d7a74c-8798-4c0b-a13c-b57bd0e9ca8c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ancientcoinsforeducation.org/gallery2/v/Coin+Bridge+to+History/CoinBridge_History.jpg.html?g2_fromNavId=x6e128646 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950206 | 97 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Airport security dogs honoured
It's a dog's life
Bobby and Skeeter, who retired as agriculture detection dogs with the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) were feted by the Little Russia Association of Canada for their service to the country.
Retirement agrees with someone
Photo by Bryon Johnson
Jonathan Delgado-Levin-Turner, a Canadian Border Services Agency officer and ex K-9 officer Skeeter, who retired as an agriculture detector dog three years ago. Skeeter was given a community award by Little Russia Association of Canadad recently for his service.
Sniffing out trouble
Photo by Bryon Johnson
Jonathan Delgado-Levin-Turner, a Canadian Border Services Agency officer and an ex. K-9 officer seen here with Skeeter and Bobby who are ex agriculture detector dogs for the CBSA. The canines and their handlers were feted by Little Russia Association of Canada recently.
Wait, is that a contraband?
Photo by Bryon Johnson
Jonathan Delgado-Levin-Turner, a Canadian Border Services Agency officer and ex K-9 officer seen here with Skeeter, his retired dachshund sniffer dog. Skeeter was feted by the Little Russia Association of Canada recently for his services to the country.
At Jonathan Delgado-Levin-Turner’s Brampton home, every bag of grocery undergoes a thorough scrutiny, by two alert ex-Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) workers— Skeeter and Bobby.
Delgado-Levin-Turner, 44, a CBSA employee and former K-9 officer, says he has to constantly remind Skeeter and Bobby they are retired and no longer required to sniff out contraband products that may pose a risk to Canadians.
But, Skeeter, a 10-year-old beagle and dachshund mix and his buddy Bobby, an eight-year-old beagle, still take their jobs as agriculture detector dogs pretty seriously.
Skeeter, who worked with the CBSA for five years and Bobby, who served for three, were recently feted by non-profit group Little Russia Association of Canada for their service to the country.
“The organization felt the dogs played a significant role in protecting Canada,” said Delgado-Levin-Turner, the chairman of the community safety committee of Little Russian Association of Canada. “Skeeter and Bobby are the first Canadian dogs who received this award. It was a gesture of appreciation by the diaspora community.”
Before pairing Delgado-Levin-Turner with Skeeter, CBSA officials looked at the Brampton resident’s resume and personality and compared it to Skeeter’s temperament.
“When I first looked at Skeeter, I thought they gave me only half-a-dog,” said Delgado-Levin-Turner with reference to Skeeter’s dachshund genes. “He and I hit it off from the start. He loved to work, had lots of energy and was a quick learner.”
As an agriculture detector dog, Skeeter’s day begun when his handler showed-up at the kennel where he lived with six others. After some brisk exercise, Skeeter would head to the airport with Delgado-Levin-Turner. Once there, handlers would study flight rosters to see if there were any reports of disease at the country from where the flight originated. They would also read up on potential contraband items to look out for.
Just as the luggage carousel hummed into activity and passengers retrieved their luggage, Skeeter would get to work. If he caught a whiff of something suspicious, he would sit down and place a paw on the item thus allowing Delgado-Levin-Turner to question the traveller. Skeeter’s sleuthing abilities would always be rewarded with a treat and praise from the handler.
Skeeter and Bobby were part of CBSA’s Detector Dog Service’s (DDS) fleet, which not only includes agriculture detector dogs, but other canines trained to helped CBSA officers intercept narcotics, firearms and even currency (hidden for the purpose of money laundering).
Once Skeeter was able to smell and identify a lone chestnut lodged in the corner of a passenger’s bag from one end of the room. That was truly impressive, said Delgado-Levin-Turner.
“Skeeter had an amazing track record,” He said. “His motivation and ability blew me away. He’s a small guy, but so motivated. His scent-detection ability is like a missile. Once he gets a scent, he can hone right on it.”
Skeeter and Bobby’s role at the airport was an important one since all visitors to Canada are expected to declare any food, plants, animals and related products especially since food can cause an outbreak of diseases such as E. coli, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease.
“It was the best job in the world because no two days were alike,” Delgado-Levin-Turner said. “Sometimes when we had to bring in difficult people, Skeeter would cheer them.”
The dogs now live with Delgado-Levin-Turner. | <urn:uuid:c16faa50-eb76-4d75-8204-ba0a3996e1de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bramptonguardian.com/news-story/3074306-airport-security-dogs-honoured/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967065 | 1,124 | 1.523438 | 2 |
There are no translations available.
Homeopathic Materia Medica by Nash
(eupr)The action of this remedy seems to CENTER in the eyes. If you read the symptoms as laid down in "Hering's Guiding Symptoms," you would think that it would cure
almost all possible affections of the eyes, acute or chronic conjunctivitis, iritis, kerato-iritis, spots, vesicles, pannus, etc., and so it will if indicated by the symptoms.
In colds with cough and severe fluent coryza it will sometimes cure, but here the choice must be made between it and ARSENICUM, CEPA and MERCURIUS. (See CEPA for comparison.)
In measles with watery eyes and fluent coryza it is sometimes the best remedy. I remember Dr. C. W. Boyce, of Auburn, N. Y., reporting great success with it in an epidemic in that city. He cured all his cases with it. So I went for the next epidemic in my vicinity with EUPHRASIA, and my failure was as marked as his success. It was NOT the remedy for MY epidemic. But I know enough not to "go it blind" that way very long, and hunted up my simillimum. Then I succeeded, too. Look out, young man, for the remedy that is recommended for ALL CASES of any disease, or you'll "come down hard" some time.
One very prominent characteristic in eye troubles for this remedy is a TENDENCY TO AN ACCUMULATION OF STICKY MUCUS on the cornea, which is removed by winking. All cases of any kind attended with photophobia and lachrymation, with or without coryza, should suggest this remedy, or at least call it to mind. In the eye affections of EUPHRASIA the lids are often involved. Of course this is so with other remedies, such as ARSENICUM, APIS, RHUS TOXIC, etc. STUDY UP. One more symptom: Cough, sometimes dry, but generally loose, WORSE DURING THE DAY, not troublesome at night. This is important, as more coughs are < at night. | <urn:uuid:caf4e13e-89d6-4d38-a339-c067ad47b334> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vithoulkas.com/el/component/content/article/3416.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967881 | 478 | 1.710938 | 2 |
It took Russia's upper house of parliament less than a day to approve a controversial new bill that increases fines on protesters 150-fold. The legislature was approved with a 132-1 vote after it passed through the Duma, Russia's lower house, on Tuesday afternoon. The bill now must be approved by President Vladimir Putin.
The proposed law increases fines on unsanctioned rallies and gatherings from 5,000 rubles ($160) to 300,000 rubles ($9,000), making civil disobedience more severely punishable than prostitution, storing nuclear materials or performing an abortion without medical qualification, according to the Associated Press.
Those organizing a protest without government permission face maximum fines of 1 million rubles, roughly $30,000, or up to three years in prison.
Activists and opposition parties say the bill violates Russia's constitution, which gives "citizens of the Russian Federation the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets."
Around 20 protesters were arrested on Tuesday after the lower house passed the bill, including Sergei Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party. Under the new law, Mitrokhin will be prohibited from organizing any more protests because of his criminal record.
Surprisingly, Putin, whose former party United Russia sponsored the bill, said on Wednesday that he will not put his signature on the bill if it is not up to European democratic standards, adding that "the law will need to be carefully studied in its final form."
"Putin will be against in principle in one case -- if the law is contrary to the generally accepted laws typically used in other states protecting the rights of citizens and members of society, about which the law describes. We're talking about European countries where analogous laws exist," Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti.
"Conceptually, Putin thinks this law, as in other European states, and other states in the world, should not inhibit democracy or the rights of citizens, but at the same time it must take into consideration and guarantee the rights and interests of all sections of society," he said.
The chairman of Russia's Presidential Human Rights Council, Mikhail Fedotov, has already condemned the bill as a "mistake ... fraught with serious human rights violations and a deeper social conflict."
Additionally, a number of opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote, and some tried, unsuccessfully, to delay the vote by flooding the upper house with 400 new amendments to the bill, which were shot down in quick succession.
To contact the editor, e-mail: | <urn:uuid:cb5bbec0-b9aa-4b1d-b7a2-7faf2ee1dc4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/349294/20120607/russia-protest-law-putin.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951841 | 532 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Henry David Thoreau's Beautiful GPS
When it comes to inspirational quotes and verbal kicks in the seat of the pants, Henry David Thoreau is one of the best. I thought he’d be perfect for today’s quote of the day.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. - Henry David Thoreau
A little tip about inspirational and motivational quotes. When you find one that strikes a chord with you.. right where the chord needs to be struck… write it down and put it in plain sight. It’s a funny thing about quotes – sometimes one that sets a fire beneath us does zip for then next person. Someone once told me a quote that had changed their life. I can’t even remember what it was, per se, but it was a Chinese proverb – that much I remember. I also remember them looking at my face, waiting for my light bulb reaction.
Not so much as a flicker.
I just thought, “Seriously? That set you on fire?”
I have several quotes written on index cards hanging on the cork board above my computer in my home office. One, by Lady Maya Angelou always spurs me on: “Nothing will work unless you do.” I’m not sure why, but these words always flip a switch for me.
Browse through the motivational quotes on Self Help Daily and find the ones that flip your switch – then print them onto index cards and place them accordingly. After all, like light switches in a room, our emotional switches need to be flipped on daily… otherwise we’ll be sitting in the dark looking like perfect fools. | <urn:uuid:c5764be3-7395-450c-b095-b964b317d52f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.selfhelpdaily.com/follow-your-dreams-quote/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947496 | 353 | 1.59375 | 2 |
In line with this hands-on approach, WV GreenWorks, partnering with Think Green Midwest and Advanced Energy's Quality-Assured Professional for HVAC program, offers a Jan. 30 pre-conference training to certify more HVAC contractors to assist with the latest Energy Star V3 qualification for single and multi-family homes.
Such certification is a practical consideration in West Virginia, since Habitat for Humanity and affordable housing folks who handle federal funds require HVAC professionals with this certification.
And an Energy Star-certified home will hold appeal to anyone wary of rising utility costs, Halstead said.
"Everybody thinks of the Energy Star logo on an appliance. You know there's some kind of energy efficiency standard it has passed. It's the same for a house. An Energy Star home is pretty much certified to save between 15 and 30 percent ... on utilities."
There are also DIY (do it yourself) Genius Sessions, featuring people who've built modern, yet low-cost or no-cost energy efficient, off-the-grid homes, said Halstead.
"They're coming out to tell how they've done it. You're going to get the most honest scoop about straw bale, geo-thermal, solar, wind. These are people who have been there and done that."
Halstead acknowledges the conference has taken on a lot. But that's because the places where people live and work are essential to productivity, happiness and the overall health and attractiveness of a community.
"It looks like we're covering so much. That's because everything is connected. It's time that we looked holistically at how our environment performs and how we are interacting with our environment.
She acknowledges that some in the building trades "do not want to be associated with talking about green standards.
"But the health, comfort and productivity of your occupant is of primary importance. I would not like to find out they've lowered the bill using materials that off-gas and made my work force sick.
"We think this is an unprecedented time to move past the rhetoric, past all the kind of talk that keeps people from coming together. We think this conference offers a chance for real, civil dialogue."
Reach Douglas Imbrogno at doug...@cnpapers.com or 304-348-3017.
Here's a sampling of some sessions pulled from the schedule of The Building Conference, set for Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at The Waterfront Hotel in Morgantown. The conference is $199 for general registration, $99 for AmeriCorps and VISTA volunteers. For details, visit http://www.thebuildingconference.com:
"Home Performance & Certification: What, How, Why, How Much?"; "Retrofitting Historic Buildings"; "How to Tame Your Energy Hog"; "What Master Builders Know"; "A Million Pennies Saved is $10,000 Earned"; "Eco Schools: Growing a Green Generation By Design"; "Sustainable from the Inside Out, Top to Bottom"; "Innovative Ideas for Our Aging Infrastructure" | <urn:uuid:4843e846-79e3-40fc-a9cc-b36b286e7420> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wvgazette.com/Business/201301160166?page=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944231 | 638 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Father’s Day: A Time to Celebrate Fathers and Heal our Trauma
African Americans suffer from intergenerational trauma over fathers
By Pastor Cliff Chappell
June 12, 2012Father’s Day is upon us and as this day approaches, many thoughts flood my mind as I begin to focus on the “fatherhood” situation in our communities, neighborhoods, cities and our nation; especially the African-American community across this nation. I can’t help but recognize the changes that have taken place between my generation, my son’s generation and my son’s son’s generation. Fathers of my generation were generally either an at-home father or an absentee father. The fathers of my son’s generation were more of the around the home fathers with a custody battle ongoing between their child’s mother. The fathers of my son’s son’s generation are generally single parents with the child being shared between mother and father in separate homes. Now this gets even more convoluted for the children, as too many fathers are absent due to incarceration, and far too many young fathers experiencing untimely deaths due to violence and disease. All of this takes a heavy toll on the children who seek and need the father’s love and affirmation.
My father was an at home father and at the time of his passing 3 ½ years ago, had been married to my mother for 63 years. He worked several jobs to make a living for our family, but there were some “inter-generational” things about the way he chose to father me that I could not understand as a child. There were ways about him that I did not like and attempted to change in the raising of my children as I became a father. My sons both have been good fathers to their children, but again, I still see generational challenges affecting them. I lost one of my two sons three years ago to an accident and now I find myself filling in the role and helping to raise his two children as both a grandparent and as a father.
As I have contemplated it, prayed about it, and studied it, I am coming into a much better understanding of the inter-generational effects that fatherhood has passed on to sons and daughters. At one time in my life, I had no understanding of inter-generational trauma, nor did I care to know about it. You could not have convinced me that it was a real thing, but now that I am older, I see clearly what it has done to our communities and families; I know it is a real thing and something that cannot be ignored.
Inter-generational trauma is real and it is having devastating effects on our community. Education, prayer, and activism by the help of God, and well-meaning men are what it takes to fix this problem and reverse this trend. This work must take place in public forums, private meetings, men’s gatherings, family gatherings, seminars, across pulpits, in houses of faith, the media and other means of information dissimulation, and social exchange. In other words, this is something that none of us can afford to ignore, but everyone must engage.
Father’s Day is coming up this weekend. St. Johns All Nations Church of God in Christ is having a special Father’s Day Program that is open to, and welcomes the community at large. In this special program, in addition to celebrating Fathers and Fatherhood, there will also be special emphasis placed on those who are Fatherless. We have found through our work as activists in Domestic Violence Intervention, and through “Man-Up” that many men; both young and old have been traumatized to some degree due to their father or fatherless experience. This special program will shed light on the problem of Fatherlessness in our country and start the healing process for those without fathers or father-figures in their lives.
Pastor Cliff Chappell, M.Div.
St. Johns All Nations Church of God in Christ, 9486 N. Buchanan Ave., Portland, Oregon 97203 Contact the church at 360-281-5205
ManUp Huddles: Men-Only Huddle is scheduled for 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. June 14 at St. Johns All Nations Church Of God In Christ | <urn:uuid:1df9b4d4-3d94-450f-bb5c-9082ca809baa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theskanner.com/article/Fathers-Day-A-Time-to-Celebrate-and-Heal-our-Trauma-2012-06-12 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979241 | 893 | 1.726563 | 2 |
I’d like to begin this week’s post marking the recent passing of two men who made important contributions to the Catholic Church: Fra’ Andrew Bertie of the Order of Malta and Eduardo Bonnin, founder of the Cursillo movement. Both passed away last week.
We met Fra Andrew Bertie, Prince Grand Master of the Order of Malta, last year during our trip to Lourdes with the Knights. He was already experiencing health problems at the time but tried to remain very active. He was a great promoter of the works of mercy and evangelization that the Order of Malta is so dedicated to.
Fra Bertie was a consecrated religious, which is required for heads of the order, and he was a descendant of the House of Stuart, a very historic Catholic family in the United Kingdom. Many of the important Catholic monarchs around the time of the Reformation were Stuarts, including Mary Queen of Scots.
Here in the archdiocese we have a very active community of the Order, and I am sure that everyone will be offering prayers for him and for the election of his replacement. We are arranging with the Knights the celebration of a memorial Mass in Boston, but the date is not set yet.
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Eduardo Bonnin, from Mallorca, Spain, was an outstanding layman whose life was certainly dedicated to the wonderful Cursillo movement, which has formed so many Catholic leaders in the Church.
In many of our parishes, the catechists, parish council members and other active pillars are cursillistas. Many of our permanent deacons first began their journey toward ministry as cursillistas. Cursillistas are also doing wonderful work in the prisons and in many other different ministries.
Cursillo is a wonderful opportunity to experience the life of grace and to receive all at once a whole vision of the Catholic faith. Many people never have that opportunity; rather they get information about the faith piecemeal over the years. To be exposed to the Church’s teaching on the sacraments, the life of grace and to experience that sense of community that the cursillistas have is a great gift and has transformed many people’s lives. There are regular Cursillos for men and women at St. Basil Seminary in Methuen and at Stonehill College in Easton. We certainly encourage people to make the Cursillo.
The word “Cursillo” means, “little course.” The Cursillo is a “little course in Christianity,” it is an encounter with Christ in a small community of the Church so that his love and grace can be brought to every aspect of life. Cursillo began in Spain in 1949 when Bishop Juan Hervas invited Eduardo Bonnin and other leaders of Catholic Action to assist in the work of spiritual renewal, in time the movement has spread throughout the world. In a fuller sense, Cursillo is an experience of people gathered into a small community by Christ to promote their growth in grace and to intensify their ability to be His witnesses in the world.
In the Archdiocese of Boston, Cursillo is offered in Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese and English. The Office of Worship and Spiritual Life oversees the English Cursillo Movement. The English Cursillo weekends take place at the Marist Retreat House in Framingham, MA. For more information about the program, you can contact the Office of Worship and Spiritual Life at 617-779-3640 or via email at firstname.lastname@example.org, or go to the Archdiocese of Boston Cursillo Website at www.bostoncursillo.org.
We will also be having a Mass for the repose of Eduardo’s soul with the cursillistas of Boston in the near future.
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Last weekend we had two vocational retreats, one at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton and the other at Blessed John XXIII National Seminary in Weston. Each year at this time we have retreats like these for men who are considering the possibility of entering the seminary. They give them the opportunity to experience a little bit of seminary life.
The Blessed John retreat was held first, and a couple of men attended. They were able to live with the seminarians and go to some of the classes.
At St. John’s, over 40 college men attended. The event had much more of a retreat format, but also gave the men the opportunity to experience seminary life and to reflect on what God is calling them to do in their lives.
Two young members of our Korean community participated in the retreat
I was very pleased with both retreats and am very grateful to our vocation team as well as all the pastors and those in campus ministry who helped us bring the retreat about.
- – -
That weekend I was visited by a young couple, Francis Suarez and his wife Gloria, who are from Miami.
I had baptized him, married his parents and married the two of them just last summer. He is going to be running for office in Miami. His father was the mayor there. We are very happy when committed Catholics choose that path of public service, especially when they are guided by their ideals and the Catholic social teachings.
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In the afternoon on Sunday, we had two sessions of the RCIA program’s Rite of Election. The cathedral was filled with people from the parishes, accompanying those who are preparing for baptism or for full communion at Easter time. The rite is always a very joyful and wonderful experience and a very important part of the RCIA program.
The candidates and catechumens come to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross for the ceremony, and it is an opportunity for them to see their bishop as a symbol of their unity with the local church. Being in the cathedral is a very stark reminder that these new Catholics are not just joining their parishes; they are joining the larger Church — both the diocese and universal Church. In the early Church, the bishop baptized everyone, but now the bishop performs the confirmation, which is in a sense the completion of baptism.
Two of the parishes in Lawrence always have the largest groups, and this year St. Mary of the Assumption with pastor Father Jorge A. Reyes had about 60 people, and Father Paul O’Brien from St. Patrick Parish also had a very large group.
Catechumens inscribed their names
We certainly want to encourage all of those working in the RCIA program. It is an opportunity for the whole parish to be reminded of our missionary nature as the Church and the need that we have to be a welcoming and inviting community.
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Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, came to St. John’s on Monday to preach at the vespers and holy hour. He and the rector of his college seminary, Our Lady of Providence, also stayed for dinner. Several of our seminarians are studying at Our Lady of Providence and we look forward to sending more.
Bishop Thomas Tobin
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On Wednesday, I met with the permanent deacons’ community board, which meets six times annually.
Deacon Leo Donohue heads up that office, and recently we have brought in others to help him — Deacon Patrick Guerrini and Mary Reardon, SND, so he can focus on the formation of the new candidates to the permanent diaconate. Deacon Guerrini is now responsible for the life and ministry of the ordained deacons, including their continuing education and sister Mary is working with the wives of the deacons and their families.
I’m sure they will be of great assistance to him because we are expanding the diaconate program so that there will be a new class each year rather than every other year. We will also have two sites for the classes, one will be the new pastoral center in Braintree and the other will be at Austin Preparatory School in Reading to accommodate candidates who live north of the city.
During the meeting, Deacon Leo shared with us the text of the Holy Father’s remarks on the permanent diaconate made during a question and answer session with the clergy of Rome at the start of Lent.
I’d like to share that text with you, as well.
Question by Deacon Giuseppe Corona:
Holy Father, I would like first of all to express my gratitude and that of my brother deacons for the ministry that the Church so providentially has taken up again with the [Second Vatican] Council, a ministry that allows us to fully express our vocation. We are committed in a great variety of works that we carry out in vastly different environments: family, work, parish, society, also the missions of Africa and Latin America — areas that you indicated for us in the audience you granted us on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the diaconate of the Diocese of Rome.
Now our numbers have grown — there are 108 of us. And we would like for you to indicate a pastoral initiative that could become a sign of a more incisive presence of the permanent diaconate in the city of Rome, as it happened in the first centuries of the Roman Church. In fact, sharing a significant, common objective, on one hand increases the cohesion of diaconal fraternity and on the other, would give greater visibility to our service in this city. We present you, Holy Father, the desire that you indicate to us an initiative that we can share in the way and the manner that you wish to specify. In the name of all the deacons, I greet you, Holy Father, with filial affection.
Benedict XVI’s answer:
Thank you for this testimony as one of the more than 100 deacons of Rome. I would like to also express my joy and my gratitude for the Council, because it revived this important ministry in the universal Church. I should say that when I was archbishop of Munich, I didn’t find perhaps more than three or four deacons, and I very much favored this ministry because it seemed to me to belong to the richness of the sacramental ministry in the Church. At the same time, it can equally be the link between the lay world, the professional world, and the world of the priestly ministry — given that many deacons continue carrying out their professions and maintain their positions — important or those of a simple life — while on Saturday and Sunday they work in the Church. In this way, you give witness in the world of today, as well as in the working world, of the presence of faith, of the sacramental ministry and the diaconal dimension of the sacrament of Orders. This seems very important to me: the visibility of the diaconal dimension.
Naturally as well, every priest continues being a deacon, and should always think of this dimension, because the Lord himself made himself our minister, our deacon. We can think of the gesture of the washing of the feet, with which he explicitly shows that the master, the Lord, acts as a deacon and wants those who follow him to be deacons, that they fulfill this role for humanity, to the point that they also help to wash the dirtied feet of the men entrusted to us. This dimension seems very important to me.
On this occasion, I bring to mind — though it is perhaps not immediately inherent to the theme — a simple experience that Paul VI noted. Each day of the Council, the Gospel was enthroned. And the Pontiff told those in charge of the ceremony that he would like one time to be the one who enthrones the Gospel. They told him no, this is the job of the deacons, not of the Pope. He wrote in his diary: But I am also a deacon, I continue being a deacon, and I would like to also exercise this ministry of the diaconate placing the word of God on its throne. Thus, this concerns all of us. Priests continue being deacons, and the deacons make explicit in the Church and in the world this diaconal dimension of our ministry. This liturgical enthroning of the word of God each day during the Council was always for us a gesture of great importance: It told us who was the true Lord of that assembly; it told us that the word of God was on the throne and that we exercise our ministry to listen and to interpret, to offer to the others this word. It is broadly significant for all that we do: enthroning in the world the word of God, the living word, Christ. May it really be him who governs our personal life and our life in the parishes.
Now, you have asked me a question that, I must say, goes a bit beyond my strengths: What would be the tasks proper to the deacons of Rome. I know that the cardinal vicar knows much better than I the real situations of the city and the diocesan community of Rome. I think that one characteristic of the ministry of the deacons is precisely the multiplicity of the diaconate’s applications. In the International Theological Commission, a few years ago, we studied at length the diaconate in the history and also the present of the Church. And we discovered just that: There is not just one profile. What they should do varies, depending on the preparation of the persons and the situations in which they find themselves. There can be applications and activities that are very different, always in communion with the bishop and with the parish, naturally. In the various situations, various possibilities arise, also depending on the professional preparation that these deacons could have. They could be committed in the cultural sector, which is so important today, or they could have a voice and an important post in the educational realm. We are thinking this year precisely of the problem of education as central to our future, and the future of humanity.
Certainly the sector of charity was in Rome the original sector, because those called presbyters and deacons were centers of Christian charity. This was from the beginning in the city of Rome a fundamental area. In my encyclical “Deus Caritas Est,” I showed that not just preaching and the liturgy are essential for the Church and for the ministry of the Church, but rather equally important is the service of caritas — in its multiple dimensions — for the poor, the needy. Thus, I hope that all the time, in the whole diocese, even if in distinct situations, this continues being a fundamental dimension, and also a priority for the commitment of the deacons, even if not the only one, as is also shown in the early Church, where the seven deacons were chosen precisely to permit the apostles to dedicate themselves to prayer, liturgy and preaching. Also afterward, Stephen found himself in the situation of having to preach to the Greeks, to the Jews who spoke Greek, and thus the field of preaching was amplified. He is conditioned, we could say, by the cultural situation, where he has a voice to make present in that sector the word of God. In that way, he makes more possible the universality of the Christian testimony, opening the doors to St. Paul who witnessed his stoning, and later, in a certain sense, was his successor in the universalization of the word of God. I don’t know if the cardinal vicar would like to add something; I’m not as close to the concrete situations.
Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome:
Holy Father, I can just confirm, as you said, that also concretely in Rome, the deacons work in many sectors, for the most part, in parishes, where they concern themselves with the ministry of charity; but, for example, many are also involved in ministry to the family. Since almost all of the deacons are married, they offer marriage preparation, give follow-up to young couples, and things like that. They also offer a significant contribution to the ministry of health care; they help also in the vicariate — where some of them work — and as you heard, in missions. There is a certain missionary presence of deacons. I think that, naturally, in the numerical plane, the greatest commitment is in the parishes, but there also exist other sectors that are also opening, and precisely because of this, we now have more than a hundred permanent deacons.
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On Thursday, I was visited by Vincent Cerasuolo, liaison for the Archdiocese to the Charismatic communities. He has been working with over 50 English speaking communities as well as the Spanish, Brazilian, Haitian and African charismatic communities in the Archdiocese. He spoke to me about their new Statutes.
Father Art Coyle oversees the different activities, so he accompanied Vincent.
I am very grateful for all that Vincent is doing to promote the charismatic prayer groups, particularly helping them to make sure that they are all united and that they have good communication among them, despite the different languages and ethnic groups.
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Also on Thursday, I was visited by Bishop Anthony Vu Huy Chuong of the Diocese of Hung Hoa, in Vietnam. He’s been bishop there since 2004.
He explained to me that his diocese had been without a bishop for 11 years. When he arrived, he had 25 priests. He now has 50. He has two of his seminarians studying with us at St. John’s.
Father Arthur Kennedy and Bishop Anthony Vu Huy Chuong
The situation is still difficult for the Church in Vietnam, although he sees many signs of hope and improvement. I told him that the Vietnamese Catholic community has been such a blessing for our country In the last few years one tenth of the ordinations in the United States have been Asian priests, most of them Vietnamese, even though they represent a very small percentage of the total number Catholics in the country. Vietnamese families are sending many men to the seminary, for which I am very grateful.
Bishop Anthony has a cousin who lives in the area so we told him we hope that he comes back some day to visit again.
I also told him that cardinal Van Thuan, the very famous and holy Vietnamese cardinal, spent quite a bit of time in Boston; he was even operated at St. Elizabeth’s hospital.
Bishop Anthony spoke English rather well, quite an accomplishment, because he learned it while in high school.
He gave me a lovely calendar from his diocese with the image of the Sacred Heart of Mary. I don’t really understand what is written on it, because it’s all in Vietnamese, but at the bottom is printed the name of his diocese, Diocese of Hung Hoa. That is my photo of the week.
Until next week,
Yours in Christ | <urn:uuid:5cdcfb8b-9fca-4996-ae7b-ece9f6e0c034> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cardinalseansblog.org/2008/02/page/3/ | 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 | 0.977142 | 3,939 | 1.835938 | 2 |
My Dear Mrs. Sprigg:
Your very welcome letter was received two weeks since, and my sadness & ill health have alone prevented my replying to it. We have met with so overwhelming an affliction in the death of our beloved Willie a being too precious for earth, that I am so completely unnerved, that I can scarcely command myself to write.
What would I give to see you, & talk to you in our crushing bereavement, if any one’s presence could afford comfort—it would be yours. You were always a good friend & dearly have I loved you. All that human skill could do was done for our sainted boy, I fully believe the severe illness, he passed through, now, almost two years since, was but a warning to us that one so pure, was not to remain long here and at the same time, he was lent us a little longer—to try us & wean us from a world, whose chains were fastening around us & when the blow came, it found us so unprepared to meet it. Our home is very beautiful, the grounds around us are enchanting, the world still smiles & pays homage, yet the charm is dispelled—everything appears a mockery, the idolized one is not with us, he has fulfilled his mission and we are left desolate. When I think over his short but happy childhood, how much comfort he always was to me, and how fearfully I always found my hopes concentrating on so good a boy as he was—when I can bring myself to realize that he has indeed passed away my question to myself is “can life be endured?”
This blog complements the Library of Congress exhibition, “The Civil War in America.” This series of posts chronicles the sacrifices and accomplishments of those—from both the North and South—whose lives were lost or affected by the events of 1861–1865. To learn more about the object featured in this blog entry, visit the online exhibition. | <urn:uuid:957b46e1-65ae-4d5f-9aba-7cec7aab66f7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.loc.gov/civil-war-voices/in-our-crushing-bereavement/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983571 | 409 | 1.609375 | 2 |
News of Riverton, Lander and Fremont County, Wyoming, from the Ranger's award winning journalists.
Inhaling the 'dog days' of spring
Apr 20, 2012 - By Carolyn B. Tyler
Despite their pleasure at hanging their heads out the open window of a moving car, most dogs don't enjoy other breezes blowing in their faces. My dogs cower if you puff their way.
And they hate to be hit with water. In fact, my means of discipline/training is a spray bottle of water. After a couple of quick sprays, all I have to do anymore is pick up the bottle and their behavior becomes exemplary, even the nine-month-old pup, BonnieBlue.
Therefore, Bonnie's newest fascination is unexplainable -- she has fallen in love with the humidifier.
I keep a cool water humidifier running in the bedroom during the winter months to deal with our naturally extra-dry Wyoming air. Just as it is about time to disengage the humidifier for the season, BonnieBlue had taken to basking in it.
She stands right at the end of the steam spout and lets the cool, wet air cloud across her face. If I were spraying her with the same substance, she'd rightfully consider it punishment.
Because I don't think Bonnie is a masochist (at least I haven't seen her reading "Seven Shades of Grey"), I've tried to figure out her attraction to the active humidifier.
Is she trying a beauty treatment? She does often dig her snout into the mud. Should I be on the lookout for cucumbers on her eyes?
Or is she perhaps relieving herself of the pollen in the air that is currently affecting so many of us?
Are her nasal passages and lungs squeaky clean from the daily dose of cool steam while the rest of us try to sneeze our way clear?
Rita and Samson want no part of it.
Perhaps BonnieBlue is on to something. | <urn:uuid:1582bf94-8345-4596-983d-6c2d77d3f989> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailyranger.com/story.php?story_id=1263&headline=Inhaling-the-'dog-days'-of-spring | 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 | 0.973001 | 410 | 1.789063 | 2 |
At this event Cardinal-Designate Wuerl gave a very fine talk on the erosion of religious liberty in our country and the necessary solutions. I have heard him speak on this topic before in various priest-gatherings and am glad to hear this talk, and that it is available on the Internet as a podcast or mp3 download. You can get the full talk here: DFF Forum Podcasts along with the other talks as well.
I would like to present a brief summary here along with a few short sound clips that will give you the flavor of what I think is a very fine talk and a most necessary topic for our consideration.
Cardinal-Designate Wuerl divides his twenty-four minute talk into three parts:
- The Nature of the Problem
- The Necessity of Witnessing to our Faith
- The Need to More Effectively Communicate our own Message
1. The Nature of the Problem is that we are experiencing a sea-change wherein it is increasingly asserted that the only place for religious expression in our culture is inside church buildings. Religious involvement of any sort in the public forum is often intentionally proscribed. Sometimes this is done overtly, sometimes more subtly. He recalls how religious liberty was suddenly ended in Maryland in the 17th Century and the doors of Catholic Churches we ordered locked. He then challenges our thought that such a thing could not happen today, and gives two examples of something quite similar happening recently. In addition, another threat to religious liberty is that common Catholic teachings are increasingly be labeled as “hate-speech.” He addresses all this in this three minute excerpt from the talk:
2. The Necessity of Witnessing to our Faith – In such a climate it will become increasingly necessary for us to know our faith and witness to it. This will require courage and conviction that the truth will win out. But for the truth to win out it must first be heard! And that depends on us. Here is a 2.5 minute clip on this point:
3. The Need to More Effectively Communicate our own Message- Most Catholics hear of their faith in a very filtered way through the media. When the secular media describes a Church teaching, or an event within the life of the Church, it is often reduced and reported in a secular way. Important theological nuances and distinctions are often left out of the discussion. For example, in the discussion on stem-cell research, it is often reported that the Church merely opposes stem-cell research. This is not true. We oppose only embryonic stem cell research. Further, one is more likely to hear through the filter of the secular media, bad news about the Church or matters which cause controversy. Under-reported are the millions helped through Catholic Charities, the millions who find healing and peace in the Church, and so forth. Here is a 3.5 minute clip wherein the Cardinal-Designate describes the nature of this problem
At the direction of the Archbishop, the Archdiocese of Washington is currently working on many new ways to get our message out directly to Catholics and all people. This blog is one of those ways. The ADW website is currently under re-design. Podcasting, Youtube videos, enhanced e-mail communications, Catholic Radio AM 1160, and many other approaches are either underway or planned for the near future. We are serious about the need to communicate in an increasingly effective and direct way.
The complete talk of Cardinal-Designate Wuerl is here: Complete Talk
In the end, Cardinal-Designate Wuerl is not content merely to describe or lament the problem. He is challenging the Archdiocesan Staff and every Catholic to be part of the solution. We must come to better know our faith, communicate it, and personally witness to it. The steady erosion of Religious Liberty in this country cannot be allowed to continue. But to battle it will will require courage and a polite, non-violent, but firm resistance to the increasing demand that we remain silent and aloof. In a word, Evangelize! You should be a witness. | <urn:uuid:ebcfe829-81a4-4521-88d1-e39ef95e27e8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.adw.org/2010/10/in-defense-of-religious-freedom-cardinal-designate-wuerl-speaks/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960835 | 834 | 1.726563 | 2 |
The Oregon House voted today to end the electoral college system in favor of the popular vote in electing a U.S. president.
House Bill 2588, which passed 39-19, now moves to the Senate.
Four states have endorsed legislation to ban the current system, which awards all the electoral college votes in a state to one candidate. The states pushing for direct election are Hawaii (4 votes), Illinois (21), Maryland (10) and New Jersey (15). Oregon has 7 votes.
Supporters say they need this because right now, presidential candidates spend too much time in toss-up, vote-rich states.
"For Oregon to join this interstate compact would move the nation one step closer to making sure every vote counts in presidential elections," said Rep. Ben Cannon, D-Portland, who carried the bill.
But opponents argue this is an end-run attempt around the U.S. Constitution and the wishes of the Founding Fathers -- and probably won't make Oregon any more relevant on the national level.
"It strikes me that this bill is a bill out in search of a problem," said Rep. Bob Jenson, R-Pendleton.
The National Popular Vote would take effect when and if enough states equaling 270 electoral votes -- a majority --approve the legislation to join the multi-state compact. | <urn:uuid:d02ee806-dab8-491b-afc8-cc2c9b267967> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/03/oregon_house_votes_to_end_the.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933063 | 273 | 1.671875 | 2 |
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