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A cursory search turned up no content on TFL about Zak the Baker, a Miami baker whose process is attractively documented in What is Artisan Bread? Here's a short article with a little background.
Anyone here ever try his product?
This is not meant to criticize Zak's baking prowess. The video itself speaks volumes of his skills. I enjoyed watching it immensely.
But, if I'm ever in Miami, I won't be buying his bread. I wasn't attracted.
He begins his demonstration, dutifully donning his hat--presumably, in compliance with a Florida or Miami-Dade County health regulation; then in his cool (take that any way you wish) tank-top and suspenders, he blithely waves his hairy armpits over ingredients, mixings, dough, ovens and finished loaves continuously throughout his process.
In fact, I think a comment in the news article link mentions that, too.
I'm reminded of a picture in one of the famous bread books--maybe by Leader?--in which a shirtless French baker with a lame clenched in his teeth casts a handful of flour over shaped loaves.
I didn't watch the video but your description strongly reminded me of a "behind the scenes" tour I got at a restaurant a number of years ago where a large guy with a hairnet in place and clean white apron was mixing a large tub of coleslaw with his bare hands and the hairiest arms I have ever seem. He was elbow deep in it. This was before using gloves was the standard but not before common sense was invented. I never ate there after that.
it really doesn't bother me all that much. After seeing the bakers in SF in the late 60's and early 70's and what they did to their bread and how they did it and then baking with my much hairier apprentice all these years- Zak is pretty tame. But I can see where others would be put off.
It's the bacteria, yeast and who know what else that I cultivate in SD that scares me to death :-)
Zak's outfit strikes me as half professional garb, half superhero costume. It kind of adds to his overall charm - kind of like a crazy uncle who is fanatical about handmade artisan bread.
On another note, I wonder if somebody has invented armpit hairnets.
I have seen many old photos of bakers working in nothing more than a pair of underpants because of the heat from the oven. If my memory serves me well some of these pictures were from the the Poilane bakery.
Bread is baked to an internal temperature of ~210F which sterilises the end product very well. I think the problem is merely aesthetic.
He looks like a great baker to me; isn't that what really matters?
Am I to presume the immaculate white coat and white hat you wear is for show only?
Completely agree with Andy. Zak bakes beautiful bread with natural ingredients.
Wasn't there a post here a while back from someone looking for a place to intern? Zak takes on interns....
I heard this guy inoculated his sourdough mother by scrapping the oils off the forehead of a Bedouin buck in heat! Supposedly you can taste subtle hints of goat musk in his bread from August to November! The white tank top and suspenders are clearly just for show, because rumor has it he normally bakes completely naked. ; ) | <urn:uuid:f0a262bc-4a9e-419a-aaef-9d28227021d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31248/zak-baker-video-and-article | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980992 | 720 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Everyone you know who loves using social media didn’t understand it in the beginning either.
Especially in business, most people still don’t quite grasp how to use it to grow a company and serve people better. And those who do were once as confused and curious as everyone else.
Turning On The Lightbulb
The first time I saw Twitter in 2007 it seemed very silly to me. At the time, people compared it to the status updates on Facebook, which to me were the most annoying feature of the new network. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to read a stream of status updates.
Until 2008 when my friend David explained it to me. We were on a trade show floor and he said “look around this room at all of these people having conversations with each other. Now imagine if you could listen in on any of those conversations and interject when you like.” It blew my mind!
Now Twitter blows my mind as the most efficient way of keeping me in touch with the news and media that the people I know share.
Mentorship Is The Only Way To Learn Social
Last night I asked a few friends online if they had a eureka moment when the lightbulb went on and they really understood social media for the first time. Most of them did. But ALL of them said they learned as they went with advice from friends. It’s just not something that comes naturally to most of us.
@davidalston on learning social:
“Twitter was october 2007 at the PRSA show in Philly. Marcel set up my BB and I took in the show while having to work the booth. I also made new connections at the show and watched how Kami Huyse performed PR for the show on the fly.”
And why should it? When we were children our families mentored us on how to socialize: “smile when you say hello”, “It’s not polite to stare”, “look at people when they are speaking to you”, “don’t fidget”, “open the door for the person coming in behind you”. How would we have known these things if someone who cared about us didn’t tell us?
It makes sense that people wouldn’t understand social media at first and how it applies to business. We have nothing we can compare it to. So learning how to use it is a challenge.
@davergallant on learning social:
“It was a progression for me. I always knew it was a massive shift in the way we communicate. One lightbulb moment was when I recognized how much easier it was to reach our degrees of separation than before. Another was when I started investing as much in my online relationships as my offline.”
Everything else the internet has brought us resembles something we already understood. Email made sense because it was the same as postal mail that we’ve exchanged for hundreds of years, except electronic. In Web 1.0 websites were just a new way of sharing brochures and the type of static content we find in print materials.
Blogs were the first personal, social tool that I remember having a hard time adjusting to. This new form of self-publishing seemed kind of narcissistic to me and I couldn’t see myself doing it. I wondered who really cared about my opinion? Now the opinions of others make up most of my daily reading. We all adjust.
But Web 2.0 and the online social revolution has brought us a connectivity that the world has never known: Mass two-way communication!
That has never happened. Ever. And it takes some getting used to.
I’m curious to know about other’s experiences getting online in a personal way. In the comments below, please tell me if you remember a moment when the lightbulb went on and you “got” social media? | <urn:uuid:c3d248e1-5f4c-41eb-a628-cf6791ab571b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sociallogical.com/blog/nobody-gets-social-media-in-the-beginning/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975079 | 828 | 1.585938 | 2 |
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., Apr. 23, 2009 – “My daddy is a hero,” says eight-year-old Jessy Hill as she gives her father a hug after celebrating a dream-come-true Disney moment.
Jessy and her 11-year-old brother, Austin, got the opportunity of a lifetime – to be grand marshals in the “Celebrate a Dream Come True” parade at Magic Kingdom. Grand marshals are randomly selected daily for the parade, but for the Hill family of Canton, NC, the magic of the day held extra special meaning.
Sgt. James Hill, a U.S. Army Reserve Soldier, recently returned from his second deployment to Iraq. The Hill family was in Orlando on April 18 to attend an Army Reserve Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Workshop when they were randomly recognized in honor of the Month of the Military Child.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate what they endured during my deployment,” Sgt. Hill said about his children. “Like other military families, our deployments are not just about the soldier. It also affects our children in more ways than one may see.”
Since 1986, the U.S. Army has designated April as the Month of the Military Child to recognize the important role that military children play in the armed forces community. It is a time to applaud America’s youngest heroes and thank them for the sacrifices they make in courageous support of their military parents.
“They’ve earned it,” Keri Hill said about her children who have gone through two recent deployments. “They’ve gone a whole year with just me and without their father. They need to have a lot of fun, and that’s what we are doing here today.” She said military children experience deployments differently than adults.
“They are without a parent and don’t exactly understand what the deployment is about,” Hill said. “They rely on us, as parents, to explain why their mom or dad is leaving for an extended period of time. I think it impacts them harder than it does us.”
After waving non-stop and with a big smile etched on his face, Austin Hill said the parade was an amazing experience he will never forget. He was amazed by the outpouring of support they encountered and couldn’t wait to return home to tell his family and friends about his magical experience.
“I enjoyed seeing the crowd’s faces,” he said. “There are people out there that really do care about soldiers like my dad. It really makes me feel good about what he does as he serves our country with other soldiers in Iraq.” | <urn:uuid:35cd5250-e46d-480f-9033-4491b8ce263d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.stitchkingdom.com/page/578/?social_controller=auth&social_action=authorize&target=https%3A%2F%2Fsopresto.mailchimp.com%2Ftwitter%2Fauthorize&post_id=136 | 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 | 0.980485 | 575 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Andrew Melo (MLK, ’03) has the same built-in curiosity as you and I. He’s just a little more trained to follow it into areas unknown, like, say, particle physics.
“It's human nature to be curious about the world around us and fundamental research is one of the purest expressions of that curiosity,” Andrew told me about his work with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment that made so many headlines last week. “It's awe-inspiring that humanity has reached the point where we can produce and detect particles that only exist for a thousandth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. It's really an exciting time, and I wonder what we'll figure out next.”
Andrew is a PhD Candidate at Vanderbilt University, working with a team at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago on experiments happening on the other side of the globe at CERN. In case you hadn’t heard, CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory and the epicenter for experiments on the very foundations of our universe.
But first he was a Metro Schools student, from start to finish: Una Elementary, Meigs Magnet, and on to Martin Luther King Magnet, where he discovered his affinity for the world of physics.
“I wasn't even planning on studying physics when I went to undergrad,” he said. “I took two years of AP Physics at MLK, and as a freshman at Sewanee I used my AP credits to start out in the sophomore-level electronics lab. After that, I was hooked, and I decided to double major in physics and computer science.
“[Taking AP classes] was hard at times, but being able to test out of several intro courses helped put me ahead in college and allowed me to take classes I would normally not have time for.”
As a young student Andrew had passions across disciplines, picked up from a host of wonderful teachers. “I was fortunate enough to have numerous teachers that not only prepared me academically, but also passed on a thirst for knowledge. I probably wouldn't be where I am if it wasn't for the prodding of Mrs. Adcox, Mrs. Berry, Ms. Hunter, or Mrs. MacDonald to go beyond and to learn for learning's sake.
“I took German from Mrs. MacDonald, hosted foreign exchange students, and traveled with our class to Germany one summer. Because of her love for the German language and German culture, I ended up sticking with it and took German classes at Sewanee until I was able to read Kafka and Brecht. [Mrs. MacDonald] and others like her really nudged me to take that extra step to really keep with things because I enjoyed them, not because I had to.”
What he enjoyed was the total school experience – books, sports, and even serving as MLK’s first official mascot. He’s carried that passion through to his work today on the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Though he didn't directly work on the Higgs boson discovery that grabbed the world's attention, he has worked with a variety of subjects and tasks for CMS at LHC that would make most of our heads spin.
“I've spent the last few years measuring one of our backgrounds, quantifying some particle identification algorithms, maintaining the supercomputer at Vanderbilt, and developing the experiment's offline computing framework -- responsible for processing tens of millions of gigabytes of data on our globally distributed computing resources.”
Read more about Vanderbilt's work with CERN.
That devotion for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields is evident in the way he talks about science and what it can give to our society. While experiments like the ones happening at CERN may not directly cure any diseases or produce the next iPhone, the research and development that go into them have tangential benefits that can be felt for centuries.
“If you look back at the 20th century, a lot of inventions, prestige and wealth were generated by the strength of America's science output,” he told me. “American research labs and universities provided not only enormous contributions to humanity as a whole, but also made us a center for knowledge and industry, along with the accompanying collateral effects.”
The future of these contributions, he believes, lies in our commitment to STEM education and how far our students are willing to pursue it.
“I think that providing the right education, support and resources to students interested in STEM will help to continue to excel in the future.”
So how can today’s students become tomorrow’s STEM superstars?
“In general, but especially if you want to be in an STEM field, one of the most important things you can do is to get as much experience as possible, as early as possible. There are tons of programs set up to support students. If you look around, everything from summer internships to doctoral fellowships are offered by companies, schools and the government. I spent a summer making diamonds at The University of Alabama at Birmingham and had a great time. There are a lot of people doing what they can to help the next generation of students. Take them up on their offers.” | <urn:uuid:725e98fe-5257-4264-98ab-6e190646d2ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mnps.org/page92000.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971262 | 1,113 | 1.828125 | 2 |
We have already lost over 150 people in Bradley County due to automobile deaths in this new century. Most cases have been due to speed and driving under the influence. Some deaths involved both speed and impaired driving due to alcohol or drugs.
We have tried to get the message out through the Banner and the broadcast media that the Sheriff’s Office has implemented a policy of zero tolerance toward the chronic speeder.
Thousands of warning tickets and verbal warnings have been given over the years by our deputies. This goodwill effort has failed to slow traffic. Some of our residents have been given more than one warning.
The BCSO continues to have complaints from people in local neighborhoods about cars going too fast. It is a problem on every road in the county, every single day.
Sometimes we have complaints of speeding in neighborhoods and then find out that the complainant or a relative are part of the problem, because they get caught speeding, too. There seems to be an attitude that — “I should be exempted for speeding, but my neighbor should be punished.”
I have mentioned before that working traffic aggressively, not only saves lives, but, brings benefits in solving crimes, as well. A strong law enforcement presence is probably the greatest tool in crime prevention.
When petty drug dealers, burglars, thieves, robbers and shoplifters know the law is in the area they will not ply their trade there.
When these thugs visit from other cities our deputies will be looking for any traffic infractions they commit. They will be cited or, possibly jailed. They will find out that we are very intolerant of law-breakers.
We must enforce all the laws of the land fairly and without discrimination. Although, when someone has the look and actions of a drug dealer or user, for example, we must be very careful not to “profile” anyone illegally. We must enforce the traffic laws and make traffic stops that are consistently legal.
This crackdown will prevent both traffic deaths and street crimes, as we tighten our grip on the traffic enforcement laws. We will be arresting more law-breakers and Bradley County will be a safer place to live. I believe all types of criminal activity will begin to decrease.
The price all of our honest everyday citizens will have to pay will be they must tow the mark when it comes to driving on our roads.
This will certainly be a learning process.
For this campaign to saves lives to be effective, our deputies will have to write tickets to all violators.
We will not discriminate.
I am asking for the patience and cooperation of all of our citizens in this lifesaver, crime-solving and crime-prevention effort.
As I write this I know that some of my extended family and friends will receive a traffic ticket. Please stand with me and set a good example. Please stand with me as we work to save lives and prevent many other more serious crimes. Only with your help will this program work for everyone’s benefit.
That is why I echo the saying, “Support Your Local Sheriff.”
As always, thanks for hearing me out! | <urn:uuid:9398511c-5a8c-4ae2-aeb2-3c877f5a949e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clevelandbanner.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Support+your+local+sheriff%20&id=16561330 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960754 | 638 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Next week, the Tate will open the Tanks, the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film works. When I first visited the space, in 1993, the only means of access was down a very steep ladder. Back then, although the tanks – a series of storage chambers left over from the building’s original incarnation as a power station – had already been emptied, the smell of oil was still incredibly strong and there was a feeling of danger and hostility. But I saw real potential.
While Tate had invited artists to make large installations in the Duveen Galleries at the original gallery in Pimlico – Richard Serra, Luciano Fabro and Mona Hatoum had all done projects there – we didn’t have experience of presenting live works. This really happened only when we started using the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern as a basis for different kinds of performance and action, which has formed a foundation for the Tanks.
All of us now recognise that some of the most exciting art over the past 40-50 years has been in the field of performance and installation, and much of it has been rather short-lived – in the sense that it has not been possible for people to experience it other than in the moment it happened.
The great thing is that we can now begin to engage more closely with such activity, as the gallery did with the American conceptual artist Robert Morris two years ago, when we re-created a series of constructions he had made at Tate in 1971. We have skills that allow us to recover the past, but also the spaces to present what is happening now.
Fundamentally, any experience of a work of art is a learning activity. If I go into a studio and see work that was made yesterday, I have only my own resources and experience to rely on in trying to interpret, understand and create a relationship with it. People always cite a primary experience when I ask them how they became involved in art. Whether it’s a curator, a collector or a visitor, the most important thing is that they were standing in front of something, rather than reading a book or looking at an image.
Certain shows I saw early on were transformative for me. There was a remarkable one at Tate in 1964 called 54/64 that I went to when I was at school. It was a survey of 10 years of contemporary art, and although it was mainly focused on north-west Europe and America, it was eye-opening, and unusual for Britain at that moment. After all, it had been only five years earlier, in 1959, that the first big exhibition of American Abstract Expressionism had taken place at Tate.
Another formative experience was going to Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and encountering its founder, a man called Jim Ede, who had converted four derelict cottages to house his collection. A former curator at Tate, he had known Alfred Wallis, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth in the Thirties, and he’d collected their work.
I matured at a moment when art stopped being about painting and sculpture alone, so I had the advantage over people who were 10 years older than me, most of whom found it very difficult to deal with the notion of the conceptual and the performative. I was surrounded by the work of Keith Arnatt, Gilbert & George, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long, installation artists such as Anthony McCall, and performers such as Joan Jonas, who we showed at the Whitechapel.
Embracing contemporary and historic work that crosses over disciplines and intersects with the displays and exhibitions is key for Tate Modern. The Tanks enable us to show how the history of the past century connects with the full range of work that is being made by artists today.
Tate Tanks, London SE1, will be launched with a 15-week festival from July 18 to October 28. Info: tate.org.uk/thetanks | <urn:uuid:8691212d-f72a-4ce5-b693-1157238c200d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/9403439/Tate-Tanks-Nicholas-Serota-the-Tate-Tanks-connect-the-past-and-present.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984654 | 821 | 1.609375 | 2 |
|International Vegetarian Union (IVU)|
11th IVU World Vegetarian Congress 1947
THE 11th INTERNATIONAL VEGETARIAN CONGRESS AT STONEHOUSE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
THE first postwar Congress of the International Vegetarian Union was held from the 29th July to the 5th August at Wycliffe College, Stonehouse, Gloucestershire.
Mr. W. A. SIBLY extended a most cordial welcome to Wycliffe College to all who had come from overseas and from various parts of Great Britain. He welcomed them as vegetarians - as representatives of a movement which knew no frontiers of race, or blood, or religion or speech. In pleading for a "wise tolerance" he said that whether they were vegetarians for health reasons, whether they believed that the best vegetarian diet was one which confined itself entirely to the direct products of the vegetable kingdom, or one which conformed with the definition of membership laid down by the founders of The Vegetarian Society one hundred years ago, and permitted the inclusion of milk, cheese, and eggs, or whether they sought to emphasize the economic arguments, their attitude towards others should be one of large-hearted and sympathetic comprehension. Mr. Sibly said that they should be well assured that their contribution to the community as vegetarians would be a valuable and an important one. They came with a message of goodwill and brotherhood, of simplicity and peace both between man and man, and between man and the animal creation. Here, he said, was a way of life which would harmonize and help, and heal; which would give fitness of body and serenity of mind; which would promote true temperance; and which would do more for human well-being than all the drugs and medicines and inoculations and sera at present foisted upon mankind. It was encumbent upon all of them, whatever their nationality, to proclaim the advantages and pleasantness of vegetarianism, and by their personal example of healthy living to demonstrate the truth of the faith they possessed.
Mr. Sibly gave them a special welcome to Wycliffe College, which was founded by his father sixty-five years ago, and to Gloucestershire - "a district once on the borders of Celtic Wales, and Roman and afterwards Saxon England, a county through which ran the boundary between the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, a county which, with the Cotswold Hills and the Severn Plain and the Forest of Dean and the River Wye, with its ancient camps and cathedrals and abbeys and pleasant stone-built villages, has much of beauty and interest to show you." He hoped that they would make allowance for the present difficulties of life and service in Britain, and that they would all carry away with them the happiest memories of their visit to the West of England.
Mr.OLUF EGEROD (Denmark), the Honorary Treasurer of the Union, in a characteristic reply, thanked Mr. Sibly for the warm welcome he had given them, and also referred to the Centenary Year of The Vegetarian Society.
Brief speeches were made by the overseas delegates - Mr. G. van Nederveen, as President of the Dutch Vegetarian Society, invited the Union to hold its next Congress in 1950 in Holland. He was followed by Mr. N. Nielsen (Denmark), Mr. M. Karlson (Norway), Mr. G. Hedfors (Sweden), Mr. J. Pedersen (Sweden), Mr. A. J. Perroud (France), Mr. E. A. Webbe (U.S.A.), and Mr. J. H. Bolt (Holland). Mr. S. A. Hurren (London) and Mr. Roy Walker (Secretary of the London Vegetarian Society), also spoke as well as Mr. Peter Freeman, M.P., who had made a special journey to Stonehouse from the House of Commons, and had to return the following morning.
During the course of the evening Mr. James Hough (Congress Secretary) intimated that Mr. Webbe had brought with him, by plane, direct from the States, an attractive basket of fruit as a token of goodwill from the vegetarians in America.
Mementos of the Centenary of The Vegetarian Society were presented from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Holland, and as space will not permit of details of these in the present issue, reproductions will be given in a subsequent number. Mr. Sibly, as President of The Vegetarian Society, expressed the grateful thanks of the Society for the inscribed tokens of appreciation of a century's work in the vegetarian cause.
Although it was intended that as much time as possible should be free for friendly intercourse in this first postwar Congress, a good share of the time available was devoted to business matters. The business included reports from representatives of Societies affiliated to the I.V.U., and were given by Mr. Carl Schelin (Sweden), Mr. Dugald Semple (Scotland), Dr. H. J. Rogler (Norway), Mr. Howell Ritson (Ireland), Dr. T. Kaayk (Holland), Mr. J. Hough and Mr. Roy Walker (England), Mr. Niels Nielsen (Denmark). In addition, Mr. Emil Just and Mr. Emanuel Vonka spoke as representatives of Czecho-slovakja, and Mr. E. A. Webbe as a delegate from the United States. It was regrettable that no delegates from Germany had been able to get over in time for the Congress although Mr. Siebeneicher (Berlin), who was in England at the time, attended the Congress before its close.
Introduced by Mr. J. H. BOLT (Holland), consideration was given to the publication of an international vegetarian magazine, and it was finally agreed that it be a recommendation to the I.V.U. Committee that they take steps forthwith to have I.V.U. news circulated along the following lines :-
(a) The news to be sent in English to a central editor who will edit, duplicate and remit this news sheet to National Societies who will be asked to translate it into their own language and to publish it in full in this language in their magazine.
(b) Each national representative to the I.V.U. to be responsible for the news supplied to the editor.
The constitution of the I.V.U. was revised and copies were distributed to the Societies affiliated to the Union.
An important report was read by Mr. J. H. BOLT (Holland), Hon. Secretary of the I.V.U., on his enquiries through affiliated Societies regarding the position of Vegetarianism in wartime. The report contained some exceedingly interesting information which we intend to publish as space permits.
The Hon. Treasurer, Mr. OLUF EGEROD (Denmark), submitted an audited financial statement which was approved.
Mr. W. A. SIBLY (England) was re-elected President, Mr. JAS. HOUGH (England) to act in the capacity of Vice-President in the event of Mr. Sibly not being available for any meetings of the Committee. Mr. O. EGEROD (Denmark) was re~appointed Hon. Treasurer, and as Mr. J. H. BOLT (Holland) was unable to continue as Hon. Secretary, Mr. KAJ DESSAU (Denmark) was unanimously elected.
The good wishes of the meeting were sent to Mr. G. Bernard Shaw on the occasion of his 91st birthday, and also to Mahatma Gandhi.
The congratulations of the I.V.U. were also cabled to the American Naturopathic Congress, celebrating its Jubilee in New York, and holding a special day devoted exclusively to the exposition of vegetarianism, and the good wishes of the Union were sent to Dr. Nolfi (Denmark), who had just been struck off the medical register in that country for insisting on the practice of natural methods of healing.
A telegram was received, from the Secretary of the CALGARY VEGETARIAN SOCIETY with the message :- "Vegetarians owe a debt of gratitude to the founders of The Vegetarian Society and to those who have upheld its principles since its inception."
Messages of good wishes to the Congress were also received from the Bombay Humanitarian League, the Irish Vegetarian Society, The Malayan Vegetarian Society, and the Liga für Lebens-Reform (Hamburg).
Final Assembly in London.
Dr. P. D. KAPUR (Hon. Secretary of the India Society for the Protection of Animals) and Mr. HENRY POLAK (at one time associated with Mahatma Gandhi, in South Africa) also addressed the gathering.
If you can help with any further information about the 1947 Congress, please contact John Davis firstname.lastname@example.org | <urn:uuid:2a4ec864-56b3-4b95-9210-addef70851b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ivu.org/congress/wvc47/report.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968053 | 1,881 | 1.570313 | 2 |
War is a persistent metaphor associated with football. It's obvious from the terminology (bullet passes, bomb throws) to the game's strategy of penetrating and defending territory. Games are routinely described as battles, players are warriors, and quarterbacks are often described as "field generals."
But with few exceptions, football players in the college or professional ranks rarely ever see or experience real war, where winning or losing is a matter of life or death, and the bombs and bullets are real.
Daniel Rodriguez is one of those rare exceptions.
The 24-year-old Virginia native and U.S. Army war veteran today will trade a battlefield for a football field as he seeks to realize his dream -- playing college football.
The bonafide war hero, who served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star Medal for Valor along with a Purple Heart, takes the field today as a walk-on wide receiver recruit as Clemson starts fall practice.
Rodriguez has not played football since he was in high school at Brooke Point High in Stafford, Va. He lettered three years (2003-05) in high school as a slot receiver, running back, cornerback, holder, quarterback and kick returner. He will work with the receivers this year at Clemson and have three years of eligibility.
It has been Rodriguez's dream to return to the football field at the college level. Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney offered him a spot on the team as a walk-on after seeing an amazing video about Rodriguez on the Internet (see attached video above). The professionally produced video highlights his rigorous training regimen and his quest to play football.
"I am very happy for Daniel," Swinney said. "He is getting the opportunity to follow his dream. We are excited to have him join our program. I have no doubt that he will become a great leader for us. His background and story is an inspiration to us all."
Rodriguez, who will attend Clemson on the G.I. Bill, was featured on the front page of USA Today a few weeks ago and has been profiled on CNN and Dan Rather Reports (see attached video clip above).
Rodriguez, who watched a close buddy die and who took part in some of the fiercest and bloodiest battles in Afghanistan, came home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. As he prepares to strap on pads, he is anxious to put that part of his life behind him and start a new chapter, according to this report by the Anderson Independent-Mail's Orange & White Web site.
“When I get in that weight room, put on those cleats, it’s one of those things that clears my mind, puts me at ease,” Rodriguez said. “It’s something I have back. My peace of mind, my good nature, my well-being I abandoned is back.”
And while he is realistic about his chances for stardom at Clemson, he said he does see himself as a role model for other vets, especially those suffering from PTSD, and expects to use his experiences overseas to become a positive presence and locker-room leader.
“It’s not for me to shut out what I’ve been through. It’s what catapults me beyond what I’m doing to succeed,” he said. “I’m using the hardships, the horrors, the killing, friends I’ve lost as my fuel to where I want to be. You can turn and manipulate anything negative in your life and use it, you’re on top.”
To read more, click here and here. | <urn:uuid:01849f11-5b94-437b-bbc5-57e9309530a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://easley.patch.com/articles/from-war-hero-to-football-hero | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977141 | 761 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Miles Espy, with accounting firm Draffin & Tucker, said he would seldom recommend proprietorship as a business entity because of the lack of liability protection it affords the owner. Espy gave an overview of various types of legal business entities at a seminar on Tuesday.
ALBANY -- A hour-long seminar was given Tuesday at Albany Technical College for the purpose of advising future business owners in choosing the most appropriate legal entity for their companies. The title of of the seminar was "I'm a What?" and was presented by the accounting firm of Draffin & Tucker LLC as a part of Albany's Small Business Appreciation Week that continues through Friday.
According to Miles Espy, a partner with Draffin & Tucker and chairman of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce board, while the seminar was not intended as a substitute for consultation with a CPA or a corporate attorney, it provided basic information that might reduce the time spent with a professional, possibly lowering consultation fees.
"A lot of times people are so eager to do what they want to do in their business, they don't give proper consideration to the tax or liability issues," Espy said.
Espy said there are five primary business entities from which to choose, and making a proper choice would depend on a number of variables regarding the particular business, including the number of owners, amount and type of capitalization, amount of debt and whether investors would need to withdraw substantial funds within a short period of time.
According to Espy the automatic and most common entity is the sole proprietorship, available to individuals and married couples. Income from the business is considered personal income and taxes are filed in that way. Espy said he would seldom -- if ever -- recommend the entity because of a total lack of liability protection. If the business is sued or becomes liable for any type of loss, there is no distinction between business assets and those of the owner.
Partnerships, by definition, must have more than one owner, Espy said, and partnerships may be either general or limited in their structure. A general partnership is similar to a proprietorship in the sense the law does not distinguish the partners from their business. In a limited partnership, some or most of the partners may enjoy a limit of liability equal to their investments.
Espy also explained some of the complexities of corporations and "S corporations," including the "double taxation" of corporations and the legal separation of both entities from their respective owners. That separation, Espy said, is important to the owner for the protection afforded should the company incur a major loss due to liability.
A type of entity which is becoming more popular, Espy said, is the limited liability company, or LLC, the form under which Espy's accounting firm operates. The LLC provides liability protection to its owners with income allocation and operational matters determined by agreement of the owners. There is flexibility in how taxes are paid as well.
The business entity seminar was filmed and recorded in its entirety, and will be available for viewing through Albany Tech and the chamber, said Bill Sadler, chairman of the Chamber's Small Business Resource Committee. | <urn:uuid:c0f0c6c8-a124-4a94-b16a-e8ab020749f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2012/may/22/program-answers-what-am-i-of-business/?sports | 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 | 0.974502 | 640 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Jestico + Whiles completes new academy in Kent
The main objective of the client's brief was to provide a radically transformed education experience for the young people of South Maidstone through the provision of entirely new facilities as a catalyst for a new style of teaching and learning. The new Academy was to be a means of enabling an innovative and highly personalised curriculum within a radically redesigned learning environment, which the school had been prototyping in an old assembly hall for some years previously.
The principal component of the design brief was to create Learning Plazas. Unlike traditional classrooms these spaces provide learning environments for up to 120 students at a time, which when paired together would create ‘home bases' for a whole year group (7 classes). The curriculum is design so that pupils spend some 70% of their time in these Learning Plazas for non-practical teaching or learning, and the brief therefore required the Learning Plazas to be large flexible spaces that could support innovative approaches to teaching and learning within a single open plan space.
The brief also required that the aesthetic and feel of the Academy should not look or feel institutional, nor like a traditional school, but instead reflect the specialisms of Business and Enterprise and Vocational Studies. Specialist spaces were to be visible from either inside or out and the use of cutting edge technology was to be used throughout the entire Academy. | <urn:uuid:e7ebe6aa-4000-4568-bda0-603a6ecf2727> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=16050 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957001 | 277 | 1.570313 | 2 |
According to the Code of Canon Law, Article 1, No. 903: “A priest is to be permitted to celebrate the Eucharist, even if he is not known to the rector (parish priest) of the church, provided either that he presents commendatory letters (faculty or celebret), not more than a year old, from his own Ordinary or Superior (bishop)…
Fr. Raul del Prado, a diocesan priest from the Philippines, has so far failed to present any kind of document from any Philippine bishop that he is indeed recommended to perform his priestly functions in Australia.
In spite of the absence of a celebret, his sister Mrs. Emma de Vera confirms that the priest continues to say mass.
(Read Related Articles: “Priest continues to say mass” & “Blind Faith”) | <urn:uuid:617ef6ea-f510-4ee7-9de3-f9b75894a69d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.philippinesentinel.org/2011/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957451 | 181 | 1.523438 | 2 |
We are well trained on FHA foundation requirements and have qualified foundation inspectors ready to go to work for you on your Foundation Inspection in San Diego. Have your foundation report in 3-5 days.
What is a foundation certification / foundation report?
A foundation certification is a process initiated primarily by mortgage companies for people who desire a FHA / HUD, VA, or another type of government loan for a manufactured or mobile home. The loan underwriter requires that the manufactured home foundation be in compliance with FHA / HUD or VA guidelines before they can obtain a loan. A licensed engineer produces a foundation report, or engineering report certifying that the manufactured homes' foundation system complies with the HUD Permanent Foundation Guide for Manufactured Homes (PFGMH - HUD 7584). The first step in obtaining a foundation certification or foundation report is to get a foundation inspection.
The Foundation Inspection Process:
We arrive at the house and begin by taking measurements and photos
of the exterior of the home. Afterwards, we inspect the crawl space - the area beneath your home - to collect photos of the foundation system, which consists of the foundation wall and the piers, or supports located throughout the middle section of the home. There are many different ways to build a foundation for a manufactured home. Our job during the foundation inspection is to collect the relevant data and provide this information to an engineer allowing them to make an informed decision as to whether the foundation is in compliance with HUD / FHA or VA guidelines. If you are trying to get an FHA /HUD or VA loan on a manufactured or mobile home, you need us for your foundation inspection!
What We Do:
- Provide next day service. Call today, get your foundation inspection done tomorrow
- Provide a standard 3-5 day turn around for a certified letter from an engineer
- Provide 24-36 hour expedited service if required
- Provide foundation inspection services throughout San Diego County
- Provide referrals to retrofit the foundation if the foundation report finds the foundation to be non-compliant
Engineering and certification reports are provided by Harrison Engineering, LLC.
We perform foundation inspections in the areas listed above as well as many other parts of San Diego County. If you do not see your city, please contact us. We will be proud to offer a foundation inspection in your city.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 July 2011 20:56 | <urn:uuid:9f215e12-3043-472b-8eff-4f9c13ad3ec5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sandiegohomeinspect.com/fha-hud-foundation-inspection | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933356 | 485 | 1.53125 | 2 |
On Being Blog
So we’ve been trying to finally find someone to interview about the human animal bond, a show topic that’s been in the works for quite a while now. I was shocked to learn in my research just how much the relationship between humans and animals had changed over time. About 100 years ago, dogs in this country were primarily used for work on the farm, and rarely allowed inside the home. Today, 60-80% of dogs sleep with their owners at night in the bedroom, either in or on the bed.
Why have we gotten so much closer to these creatures? Is it our growing sense of displacement from nature that makes us want to form a bond with something non-human? Is it the same longing many people for natural places that a recent guest talked about in our show Pagans Ancient and Modern?
Of course, our desire to get close to animals is not new, as this amazing article from the New Yorker points out: the earliest artworks human beings are known to have created were cave paintings of animals. Maybe we bring animals into our home today for the same reason those first artists chose not to depict themselves but rather the living creatures around them. We want to get ahold of that wildness somehow. But I have to wonder what those cave painters would think if they could see us today, feeding the fish, changing the kitty litter, or doling out doggy anti-depressants.
After a group conversation about which Star Wars movie was the best one (discounting the new trilogy, obviously, my favorite The Empire Strikes Back has a strong following), I went out for lunch. In the food court nearest to our building, I saw at a distance a man sitting at a table, pencil in hand, his palm squeezing his forehead. He was looking down at some paper, and looked like he had to figure out a way to balance his finances or die. As I got closer, I saw what he was working on: a crossword puzzle. He was completely taken.
As I walked back to the office, I thought, “Gee, I should take up a new hobby.” I thought of just a few weeks ago when I was playing with my cousin’s son, following the instructions of a Lego jet, sifting through the pieces to find a red block with two studs, and feeling this kind of meditative calm come over me. I remembered being lost, as I would be in childhood, sifting through the blocks the same way. Maybe I should become a Legomaniac as an adult. (Unfortunately, sitting on the floor isn’t much fun anymore.) I guess I’m noticing all this because we just recorded some promotional language for our upcoming rebroadcast of Play, Spirit and Character.
(photo: “crosswords“ by m_m_mnemonic/Flickr)
Fatemeh Keshavarz, our guest in “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi,” periodically distributes a personal newsletter sharing her thoughts and opinions on Iranian news, culture, and US-Iranian relations and politics. What I enjoy most about these newsletters are the visual elements she includes that highlight photography, art, and multimedia features that you wouldn’t find in U.S. media.
Recently she included a link to a slideshow of Iranian women potters describing their art. One potter, Maryam Kouhestani, talks about her striking piece of figures worshiping behind 40 angels:
“…My angels are children who were born old. They all look rough. They have not experienced the tenderness of childhood, but deep down they are still children. One of my angels is trying to tell her fortune. I got this idea from the children there. Their lives are so much at the mercy of fate and random events that they are always trying to find out what will happen to them next.”
Photo by David Silver / Flickr, cc by-nc-nd 2.0
It's been fascinating to watch the reactions to our recent rebroadcast of the Barbara Kingsolver. Last year we had a wildly positive response. This year, more than a few listeners experienced Kingsolver's account of her experiment in a year of eating what she could grow herself — and my interview of her — to be elitist at worst or impractical at best.
Full confession here: I was more surprised by last year's response, because I also felt that the odyssey Kingsolver undertook necessitated all kinds of basics that elude me and most of the human beings I know — a stay at home job where you set your own hours, a wildly cooperative teenage daughter, a farm you just happened to inherit — and that's not to mention the southern climate. Still, I was compelled by her insistence that we can't leave these problems to the next generation, and by her descriptions of the delights of homegrown food.
I did plant a garden last summer of the first time in my life, and loved it. I've made more of an effort ever since to buy food that has not travelled thousands of miles to get to me. But this year I haven't managed the garden. I've become more acutely aware of how hard — if not impossible — it would be to live on what I could grow year round in Minnesota or even buy at coops or farmers' markets. And I've learned about some of the ironies of this issue of food globally. For example, that New Zealand is producing such ecologically friendly food that, on balance, the kiwi fruit they produce might be an ethical choice for me to purchase. And on and on.
So here's my question to you, to all of us: Is sustainability sustainable? Part of the challenge, it seems to me, is to be focused and mindful and accept the limits of what each of us can humanly do in the circumstances in which we live right now, and accept that in ourselves and others. Are we suffering from too little practical guidance on how the routines of our imperfect, already complicated daily lives can truly affect the environment? Or are we facing a debilitatingly guilt-inducing overload of information?
I'd like to hear others' ruminations on this. What happened to the listening public's excitement about eating locally between last year and this? Many of you asked if Barbara Kingsolver herself is still living this way. If she's not, does that negate the whole effort? How can we stop sustainability fatigue from setting in?
What inspires a person to learn the language of his ancestors, even though he didn't grow up speaking that language himself?
And what inspires him to join a school where he can teach that language to children?
What do those children think about the language? And what affect can the effort have on an entire community?
These were a few of the questions I had for Keller Paap, a teacher in an Ojibwe immersion school program called Waadookodaading (We Help Each Other) on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation in north-central Wisconsin. I got in touch with Paap while I was working on our recent program "Sustaining Language, Sustaining Meaning." You can hear his story in the embedded audio above. He begins by introducing himself in Ojibwe.
What I gleaned from talking to Paap was that this language revitalization effort is doing more than merely preserving the language. It's literally keeping the language alive so that it can continue to grow and change, with new words and new ways of saying things. I love the way he describes his students' relationship to the language. It's literally keeping the language alive so that it can continue to grow and change, with new words and new ways of saying things. I love the way he describes his students' relationship to the language. They aren't dwelling on the long-standing U.S. policy of forcibly educating Native Americans in English. They aren't learing Ojibwe as a political act or even as a cultural act. They're just living in it, and making it their own.
This audio piece was produced with help from Trent Gilliss and Mitch Hanley. Music by Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band. Keller Paap took the photo of the Ojibwe road sign, which translates as "The Dam."
(photo: “Antony Gormley: Olympic Podium” by threefishsleeping/Flickr)
Our company’s marketing folks have asked us to put together a compilation CD featuring material from the past 12 months. This CD will be used to give to public-radio programming directors who are not familiar with the program, as well as to potential funders, and for other marketing uses.
Rather than some edited compilation, we’re thinking of putting together the first half of three separate programs on the CD (each half being about 25 minutes). That way, we can showcase the depth, intimacy and storytelling we aim for. The other criteria? The shows must have been produced in the past year.
Choices, choices… It would be wonderful to highlight our Peabody Award-winning Rumi show. I’m also fond, myself, of the Mathematics show, the Architecture show, and the Jean Vanier show (yes, Jean Vanier is his own subject). Oh, and Heschel. | <urn:uuid:3b0779af-890a-4cb3-b8c7-59b2ff3692c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.onbeing.org/blog/%25E2%2580%259Cplaying%25E2%2580%259D-audience/4011?page=189 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974047 | 1,928 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Rue Longue has two medieval portes, one at each end. Here we see Porte Saint-Julien at the eastern end of the street - ie nearest to Italy. The original name was Porta Julia. With both entrances closed, the town was protected from invaders.
Later, in 1687, a chain barred the entrance and a tax had to be paid to the Count of Ventimiglia by merchants who wanted to sell their wares in Menton. This import duty was known as the 'droit de chaîne.'
30 April 2009
29 April 2009
Two signs, and three decidedly different periods in the history of this house in Rue Longue.
The red and white sign, and the most recent, is of a now defunct Halal grocery shop. Alongside, an inscription on the wall. This is the most interesting inscription in all of Rue Longue - even considering Gaspard de Bottini's house at no. 129.
There are three parts to this inscription: the first being the monogram of Christ which is in the centre. The second, the initials of the proprietor (B.T.) in 1542 and the third, the initials of another proprietor (M.M.) in 1855.
As you can see this building is in desperate need of some T.L.C.
For those of you interested in the history of Menton, do take a look at Eddy's blog, D'Hier a Aujourd'hui. Eddy is the husband of Catherine, who many know from her lovely Just the Five of Us blog. Eddy and Catherine have an apartment in Menton that they visit during most school holidays. Their absolute love of Menton shows in all their postings about the town. Eddy's blog features old postcards alongside a photograph of that same place today and commentary giving us the history. Fascinating it is. Do take a look.
28 April 2009
27 April 2009
Another pergola at the beautiful Clos du Peyronnet. This glorious garden is in Garavan and just 200 metres from the Italian frontier.
A cup of tea with William, sitting at this table is heaven - looking (to the left of this photo) over beautiful pools (plus ducks) and beyond to the Mediterranean - it is absolutely my favourite Menton garden.
This wisteria - click to enlarge the smaller photo - is called 'Black Dragon.'
This is the last photo of the Clos for the moment but we will return for a series on this beautiful garden later in the year. Tomorrow, the last in the 'wisteria' series, and this time at Place des Herbes in the Old Town.
26 April 2009
Here we see the enormous size of these wisteria plants, the trunks almost as wide as the columns. There is more than one variety planted along this pergola. Some years back one of the pillars was broken in two by the strength of the wisteria - but again, it was its very strength that prevented the pillar actually falling. Recently William had it replaced - an exceedingly delicate operation.
In the past, William has given 'wisteria parties' in April - a wonderful way to admire these ancient plants in bloom.
25 April 2009
Indulge me! I know we are supposed to be continuing our visit to Rue Longue - and we will, we will, but I just wanted to show you some of Menton's wisteria before it disappears.
The Clos du Peyronnet is one of Menton's famous gardens, in this case, one of the very few private gardens in Menton that is open for garden tours and to the general public on certain days in June. It's owned by William Waterfield and I plan a series on the Clos - we have a treat ahead - but over the next few days, we'll just look at various wisterias. Then back to Rue Longue.
I took this yesterday afternoon. This particular wisteria is almost over - William said it was at its best two weeks ago. These few fronds tho, high up, still show their long, narrow form and beautiful delicacy.
24 April 2009
They were sitting on a bench in front of the sea, their restaurant, Coté Sud, behind them. Four guys, one girl. The girl didn't want to be photographed. Here are four smiling Italians. Need I say more. Che bello!
23 April 2009
Don't kids wear the greatest gear? Pink for a little girl.
These two were playing, one on blades, one not, near to the old port of Menton.
Do take a look at Catherine's blog today to see a wonderfully ORANGE view of Menton.
22 April 2009
This is Noel, a ferronnier (craftsman in wrought iron) who has his workshop on Place du Petit Port in Menton. I was taking a photo of an empty wine bottle hanging on a wrought iron hook outside his door. Seemed to me strange - why a bottle and not a sign? Then he appeared and one hour later I left!
Noel is 83 years old and still works in fer forgé. He showed me inside his workshop. He proudly showed me a programme of a 1950 exhibition where his work was displayed alongside that of Pablo Picasso. And then he pulled out a fat bunch of photographs of all his work and that's why one hour later I left...
It's amazing the characters one meets just wandering around and all with a story to tell.
21 April 2009
20 April 2009
There I was, about to take a shot of the 'rampes,' the steps that lead up to Rue Longue, when I noticed this handsome young man. I loved the contrast of the colours of the building and he in black and white.
I thought if I was clever I'd sneak a shot of him, but he was too quick for me. He smiled. I smiled. I said, 'I'll take 'your' photograph then,' dragging my camera away from the rampes (so difficult!) and then he waved. I asked him if I could take another and later he gave me his email address to send him the photos, which I've done.
(P.S. I found it hard to choose which photo I preferred. I might yet change them around. What do you think?)
Italian men! Seems to me they are all gorgeous. Thanks, Giorgio!
19 April 2009
We've left our visit to Rue Longue - just for a few days (we'll be back, I promise).
I went to Rue Longue on Easter Monday to take more photographs of that ancient street but on the way there and back, I got to meet some interesting people - and wanted you to meet them too.
This is Virginie. She is often to be seen on the streets of Menton playing and singing - and she has a really beautiful voice. She lives in a van with her two dogs. The one you see is Tequila, her Yorkie who has recently been sterilized, because her other dog, a Jack Russell 'got at her' and she had five puppies. I suggested she castrate the Jack Russell but she didn't want to do that as he guards her and her van. Sleeping alone at night in her van, I understand.
Don't you love her footwear! Bells on her toes. A great sound with the guitar.
Notice the wisteria in the background of the photo below. It's a particular beautiful variety - pale, with much longer flower fronds than normal. I love it's delicacy. More pics of Virginie and Tequila and the wisteria on Riviera Dogs today.
18 April 2009
This narrow vaulted passage allows us to walk from Rue Longue down to the sea. It was originally built for the Princes giving direct access to a landing stage.
Legend has it that the ladies of the Prince's Palace often lost their jewelry in this obscure traverse so the Mentonnais would quickly run to the passageway as soon as one of the grand ladies had passed by. Much more likely, is that the moon on the sea resembled the shine of a diamond.
There is much, much more to show you in Rue Longue - the Palais Princier, the Hôtel Pretti and so on - but tomorrow, for a day or two, I want to introduce you to a few people I met over the Easter break in Menton. But we'll be back to Rue Longue, I promise.
17 April 2009
The little girl is being filmed but it is she who is telling the photographer how to use the camera.
Before I zoomed in on this beautiful child, I was attempting to take a photograph of Rue Longue in relation to the old port and the beach. About half way down Rue Longue there is this gap in the houses. You see the steps that go down to the lower level and the sea. These steps - or 'rampes' - continue on the other side of Rue Longue - to our right - climbing ever higher and enabling us to reach the Parvis St. Michel and Basilica.
At the base of the steps that you see in this photo, you will find THIS.
16 April 2009
15 April 2009
There are several fascinating stone lintels on Rue Longue. This is perhaps the most interesting in that the door and door fittings appear to be original too. It's just along from the Prince's Palace, which we'll see another day.
The smaller photo shows the lintel more clearly - click to enlarge. On the left you see the date: 1543. In the centre is Christ's monogram - you find this on several houses along the street. Either side of Christ's monogram are the letters B and G. These stand for the original owner Gaspard de Bottini. I don't know what the two symbols on the right signify.
As I was photographing this house, a lady opened the door. Naturally I apologised - then we chatted and she confirmed the door and door fittings are original - other than the door has been reinforced along its base with newer wood. She kindly left the door unlocked for me to go inside and photograph the hallway - there would seem to be two apartments. Tomorrow, we'll look in more detail at this beautiful ancient doorway.
Marta - this is for you! Marta left a comment the other day hoping I'd feature number 129.
14 April 2009
Yesterday I wrote that no cars go down Rue Longue. I was wrong! Here you see 'Le Petit Train' which takes visitors around the town.
So yes, cars - and Le Petit Train - can go down Rue Longue but it's obvious they can't park for long as they'd block the street.
Thanks to Karen, USA who left a comment that Le Petit Train used to come down this street even before the renovation. See her comment below. Thanks Karen!
13 April 2009
If you live on Rue Longue, you'll be used to steep stairs. These are actually quite smart compared to many that have no tiles. The smaller photograph shows the entry with old tiles so typical of this area.
There are five apartments in this building as you can see by the number of mailboxes.
Water, wine, milk, all your food, your household cleaners - everything - has to be carried up several flights of stairs and that's after you've already carried your shopping from the market to here. You'll find no cars in the tiny streets of the Old Town. (see next day's post - I was wrong!)
I've a snug little kingdom up four pairs of stairs."
- William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 1863)
12 April 2009
An old door on Rue Longue. The anti-war poster is used as a message pad:
'Jean-Philippe, Me donner en urgence la clé de la cave. Merci. Ou je change la serrure,' - which roughly translates as -'Jean-Philippe, Give me the key to the cellar urgently. Thanks. Or I'll change the lock.'
I love this snippet of life. Maybe it's simply that things seem more interesting in a language other than your own.
If you enlarge the smaller photo, you'll see the poster says 'Tout pour l'armée, rien pour ta gueule.'
Thank you so much to Marie and Catherine and my neighbour, Agnès, for the correct translation, which isn't literal - the word gueule being slang in French. 'All for the army, nothing for yourself.' Read the first two comments for this explanation and information on Cabu, the famous cartoonist and caricaturist, who created this poster. Thanks, ladies!
11 April 2009
10 April 2009
09 April 2009
08 April 2009
Some of you may remember the series on Rue Longue at the end of 2007, when it was under renovation. At the time it was almost impossible to walk down the street - take a look HERE to see how the road was excavated to a depth of several feet and residents had to squeeze past on narrow planks of wood.
Rue Longue, after two years of work, is almost finished. In the main photo we see the new surface on the road. The smaller photograph - left - shows how it used to be. Yes, perhaps the tiny pavements had to be removed, but I so wish they'd used paving that was more in keeping with the feel of these medieval houses. Of course, it's safe, it's non-slip and that's what councils think of these days. And yes, there is a sense of design in the light and darker tiles giving that long winding effect in the middle, but it's awfully modern. In 1908, Rue Longue was repaired with stone from La Spezia in Italy and it's this paving that has now been replaced. Progress?
Rue Longue was the original Roman Road - the only road leading into Italy. Called Via Aurelia, it became the Via Julia Augusta in the first century and it was around this road that Menton was built in 1250 AD.
The photo below shows this street how it was not long before the new paving was laid.
Tomorrow - we'll start to explore this beautiful old street and see what's new and what's old. Do come back.
07 April 2009
Do you remember being buried in sand when you were a child? I've a photograph somewhere - just my head shows and I recall to this day how clammy and uncomfortable it was. We dug a deep hole, in went the victim, and on went the sand...and it was so heavy you couldn't get out without help. Scary.
- Montaigne (Essays)
This photograph was taken at the end of February on one of Menton's public beaches.
Posted by Jilly at 09:01
06 April 2009
Yesterday, we had steps to walk up. Today we have steps to walk down - although we could take the narrow traverse to the right and then we might be on the road less travelled...
The Old Town is a myriad of little streets, up, down, through tunnels, turn left, turn right. It's easy to get lost. Of course, that's the best thing to do: get lost. Wander - enjoy - and see where the road takes you.
05 April 2009
- Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973)
04 April 2009
- Jane Brody
In some ways I prefer the composition of the smaller photograph but the bigger one tells the whole story. Which do you prefer? | <urn:uuid:9b168b87-5177-4869-914f-b032354a0c4c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mentondailyphoto.com/2009_04_01_archive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966352 | 3,277 | 1.742188 | 2 |
1. Wedding Gifts
Now such need was naught but a memory. Hobbit-children might still die of disease but no longer by a ruffians' sword.
War had fled the Mark and Ithilien too. Dernhelm was no more: Éowyn would marry Faramir. Peace was sweet.
Buckland had many rams. One of their horns would make a fitting gift for this new age.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author. | <urn:uuid:002c7085-f70f-445e-8259-71a8d44264e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.henneth-annun.net/stories/chapter_view.cfm?stid=5176&spordinal=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959598 | 227 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Less than $300 from Spotify. More than $45,000 from iTunes.
Talking about how he makes money, the independent musician Jonathan Coulton has compared his business to a "special engineered cow who eats music and poops money." Coulton doesn't have any idea what happens inside the cow's gut, but that's okay. Money comes out the business end.
And that's how it is for most online musicians, or artists generally, in today's digital economy. If they're lucky enough to make money, they may not heavily analyze the particulars. They feed the cow music, and out comes the money.
So it's rare that we, as consumers or fans or fellow artists, get the ability to see exactly how successful makers support themselves: to look at the source of their earnings, and to glance up into the cow's -- well, I'll cut this metaphor now.
The avant garde cellist Zoe Keating has allowed us see her revenue model. Earlier this summer, she posted the details of her Spotify earnings, revealing that every time someone listened to one of her songs, she made about three tenths of a cent. She also posted her iTunes earnings at the time.
But yesterday, she augmented that data with new material: what she makes from Pandora, radio plays, and her participation in the royalty-collecting American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (which everyone calls ASCAP).
During those six months, Zoe Keating made (before taxes) $84,385.86. This is where that money came from:
Just taking a first look at these data, it becomes clear that buying music from artists directly -- through iTunes, Amazon or Bandcamp -- is the best thing you can do to support their music-making. Keating made 97% of her revenue through people just buying her music, whether through physical sales or digital download. Spotify subscribers pay their ten bucks a month for the service, and that even feels like a healthy little monthly gift to music-making. But it's not nearly as helpful to the artists as buying an album or a song from iTunes, Bandcamp or Amazon.
And this is a point Keating makes herself: that digital distribution -- even through iTunes -- most helps artists because it removes the middle man. In notes attached to her Google Doc, she writes:
The income of a non-mainstream artist like me is a patchwork quilt and streaming is currently one tiny square in that quilt. Streaming is not yet a replacement for digital sales, and to conflate the two is a mistake. I do not see streaming as a threat to my income, just like I've never regarded file-sharing as a threat but as a convenient way to hear music. If people really like my music, I still believe they'll support it somewhere, somehow. Casual listeners won't, but they never did anyway. I don't buy ALL the music I listen to either, I never did, so why should I expect every single listener to make a purchase? I think that a subset of my listeners pay for my music, and that is a-ok because...and this is the key.....there are few middlemen between us.
And there's one more point here, about streaming services and their similarity to radio (which, for Keating, means income from NPR in both its satellite and terrestrial broadcasts).
When Keating first revealed her streaming revenue, many compared her earnings from Spotify to radio royalties. That is, they're not worth much by themselves, but in the aggregate, they bring in some cash. The two have little in common as services -- when listening to the radio, you're not your own DJ -- but today's numbers both do and don't support that economic thesis.
During the fourth quarter of 2011, Keating made $77 from NPR and $149 from Spotify. But zoom out a bit, and it seems that a great month in radio reaps profits that streaming services can't touch. Last year, from April to December, Keating made $271 from Pandora -- and $640 from NPR. Radio helped Keating far more than streaming did. And advertising data might support that: according to this Mary Meeker slideshow, while Americans spend 11% of their time listening to radio, advertising companies (who drive the worth of the medium) spend 15% of their budgets there.
Ultimately, though, data from Keating alone don't provide enough evidence to know how the music business works right now. "I admit I have grander designs" than revealing the innards of her music-making cow, writes Keating in the Google Doc:
[I]f we are going to discuss the ideal structure of the new music industry, we need to know how recording artists make a living today or we're just spouting hyperbole. So, in the interest of evolving the discussion, I am making myself into a data point. I encourage other artists, if they are able, to do the same.
Let's hope so. | <urn:uuid:476f0dbc-27d5-49c2-bb8d-32fd478d88c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/how-you-turn-music-into-money-in-2012-spoiler-mostly-itunes/260678/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971884 | 1,024 | 1.679688 | 2 |
A big thanks to the local dentists who donate thousands of dollars in dental care each year, providing several hundred adults with dental care they would otherwise have gone without.
A press release from Whatcom Alliance for Healthcare Access notes the work of two programs: Donated Adult Dental Program coordinated by Interfaith Community Health Center since 2006 and the Alliance's Whatcom Project Access Dental, which started last summer.
In the adult program, dentists volunteer their time at the clinic two or three days a month. In 2011, 28 dentists donated care through this program, providing services valued at $54,440 to 170 patients.
Whatcom Project Access Dental was launched last July with funding from the Washington Dental Service Foundation. In this program, dentists treat patients within their own practice during their regular business hours, and decide the number of patients they will see each month. In the program's first year, 21 dentists saw 116 patients, donating services valued at $72,000.
"It has been a very successful first year," said Lara Welker, program manager at the Whatcom alliance. "Dentists have been incredibly generous, and we hope to bring even more dentists on board."
Dental care is a significant unmet need for low-income adults in our community, according to the press release. In a recent survey of low-income residents in Whatcom County, affordable dental care was ranked "as extremely important" and "very hard to get."
For more information about the Donated Adult Dental program, contact Meagan Swanlund at email@example.com or 360-676-6177, extension 1102. For more information about Whatcom Project Access Dental, contact Lara at firstname.lastname@example.org, 360-788-6588.
REFINERY DONATES TO RED CROSS
Phillips 66 Ferndale Refinery has donated $15,000 to the to Mount Baker Chapter of the American Red Cross to help buy a four-wheel drive vehicle to tow a supply trailer, according to a press release. The vehicle will take first-aid supplies, drinking water, food and other materials to flood victims. It will also be useful in hilly areas or swamped flatlands, taking food, equipment and volunteers to help people who must abandon their homes.
RE SOURCES APPOINTS NEW DIRECTOR
Crina Hoyer has been appointed executive director of RE Sources for Sustainable Communities, according to a press release. She had been serving as the interim executive director since February.
"We all agree that Crina is the best person to move this organization into the future," said Ken Bronstein, president of RE Sources board of directors. "Her history with the organization, first-hand knowledge of local environmental issues and her strong leadership skills make her the perfect person for this job."
LIBRARY PATRON WINS E-BOOK DRAWING
Lynden Public Library patron Mark Warren won a Kindle Fire in a drawing from the Whatcom County Library System. Participants in the library's usability study were eligible for the prize donated by the Whatcom County Library Foundation,
"I come to the library often and was happy to help with the study," he said. "I can't wait to start downloading eBooks from the library!"
A press release said the purpose of study was to improve the library's current website.
Out and About runs Mondays in The Bellingham Herald.
Reach JULIE SHIRLEY at email@example.com or call 715-2261. | <urn:uuid:84ac8a64-12a2-4b09-9a84-db245e76c4b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2012/08/20/2652932/whatcom-dentists-provide-free.html | 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 | 0.952269 | 748 | 1.65625 | 2 |
When Bishop Austin Vaughan was arrested at a Manhattan abortion clinic in 1988, the archbishop of New York suggested he might one day join the bishop in a jail cell. But his people didn’t need a photo of Cardinal John J. O’Connor in handcuffs to understand his love for the unborn, his fearlessness in defending them, and his pastor’s understanding of their mother’s struggles.
In a major address he gave shortly after becoming archbishop, he told “anyone who is within the sound of my voice and is pregnant and considering abortion, come to me and we will provide you with what you need.” That kind of practical care and the willingness to make it happen marked his life as our bishop.
When a mentally imbalanced man shot several people in an abortion clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1994, the Cardinal responded publicly, “If anyone is thinking about shooting an abortionist, let him shoot me first.” And when asked if he was going to put a moratorium on abortion clinic protests as a result of the shooting, as had been done in Massachusetts, he declared, “I too would be willing to call for a moratorium on clinic protests, as soon as the clinics impose a moratorium on abortions.”
My class was the first to go through all our years at the diocesan seminary with him as archbishop, and he was a model for us as a priest, and not only in his pro-life work. He came often to St. Joseph’s seminary and made a deliberate effort to know every one of his seminarians. He told us that “before I lay hands on you, I want to know who I’m giving this awesome responsibility to.” Once a month he brought the seminarians to St. Patrick’s Cathedral in cassock and surplice, and he would say “this is so you can see the people and they can see you.” Afterward he would take us to his residence for coffee and cookies. It was one of the ways he got to know us.
Raised in a Catholic family, the cardinal was naturally pro-life. “It was just a normal part of our lives growing up,” recalled Mary Ward, the cardinal’s younger sister in a conversation with me, but he became radically pro-life after a visit to Auschwitz. When he put his hand in an oven where the bodies of Jews and other Nazi victims were burned, “he found it quite unreal that anyone could think about doing that to another human being. He considered abortion to be just that unthinkable.”
His work for the unborn was not just pastoral but institutional. As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-life Activities, he helped invigorate the Catholic Church’s public witness to the sanctity of life. When he began his tenure, evangelical Protestants and Catholics were fighting abortion from separate places. Understanding that the movement should grow in unity rather than division, he brought these pro-life leaders together for meetings in his residence. The unified pro-life movement we have today is partly his creation.
In 1991, Cardinal O’Connor founded the Sisters of Life, a joyful community of sisters who, in addition to their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, take a fourth vow to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life. After Father Lee Kaylor’s widowed mother became one the first Sisters of Life, he envisioned a ministry that would equip priests to be stalwart advocates for the unborn. He went to the cardinal for guidance and with this blessing began Priests for Life on the West Coast.
Two years later, Father Kaylor asked me to take over Priests for Life. I went to the cardinal seeking his guidance, and his permission - in the midst of the much-heralded priest shortage. Always eager not to do all he could to help not only the unborn but their mothers, he encouraged including post-abortion healing in the ministry.
Not long after, I received a call from the priest personnel director: the cardinal had given me his blessing, and a three-year window to build the ministry. He urged me to headquarter Priests for Life anywhere in the archdiocese. We set up our first office in Holy Rosary Church in Port Chester. He let me develop the work on my own, but his support opened many doors.
The cardinal fought for life until the day he died. At his funeral in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, attended by 3,500 mourners, the crowd stood for a thunderous ovation when the homilist, Cardinal Bernard Law, declared, "What a great legacy he has left us in his consistent reminder that the church must always be unambiguously pro-life." Even pro-choice President Bill Clinton and his wife, now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were pulled to their feet.
This summer, as we launch pro-life Freedom Rides in the South to call attention to abortion as the greatest civil rights tragedy since slavery, we will save a seat on the bus for Cardinal John J. O’Connor. We know he will be riding with us.
Father Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life. | <urn:uuid:5ebf22f2-8005-4066-95a7-5e0768cf5a79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.priestsforlife.org/library/3843-fearless-defender-of-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982864 | 1,097 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Wish it also mentioned some other programs like Dragon.
Keep in mind that ARIA is meant as (hopefully) a stop-gap measure. HTML elements are getting (have) their own native roles which would naturally be exposed to the browser anyway. Some elements have more than one role, and there are rules (still developing) determining when roles conflict, who wins.
Example: the new <nav> tag has a native role of "navigation". The ARIA role="navigation" is meant to be placed where the author wants to expose a meaning of "this is the primary navigation area" to the browser. Ideally, instead of ARIA roles, we would be able to use the HTML tag <nav> and this role would be there anyway. Though I like the idea of being able to manually place the ARIA role where it's needed rather than adding what in my view is an "extra" tag around my navigation lists.
The article ends with only a taste of the possibilities regarding interactive elements like buttons, and the potential issues with doing something like
I just finished reading this article "Making an Accessible Dialog Box" and it fits in nicely with the ARIA theme of this thread, so I wanted to share it.
I don't know how well dialog role is supported in screen readers. Aria-labelledby/describedby are pretty well (among those who support ARIA), though be careful if you end up actually having a form somewhere: the ARIA role will override any label you have for an input (none of Nicholas' examples had a form that I saw, but just be aware). But this is exactly the place where ARIA steps up and does what HTML simply does not have the built-in semantics to do, making hand-made widgets workable for more people. Yay. | <urn:uuid:8e87988a-543d-4aeb-87e0-09516ee9c933> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?947038-How-Browsers-Interact-With-Screen-Readers-and-Where-ARIA-Fits-in-the-Mix&p=5321479&viewfull=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963503 | 375 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The 2013 U.S. Open at Merion quietly demonstrated that professional golfers and the everyday or weekend golfer play entirely different games in different circumstances with different rules.
1. Out of Bounds: the pros finally had to deal with out of bounds and how many strokes did it cost? Average golfers face this all the time.
2. Rough: the pros finally had to deal with rough over their shoes. Average golfers deal with this all the time due to our cheap courses only mowing once a week or less.
3. Conditions: no matter what, courses prepared for a tournament are in top shape with markings for ground under repair, etc. Pros get every advantage in regards to course conditions.
4. Caddies: a professional caddie is not a normal caddie. Besides most amateurs rarely having a caddie. Pro caddies are similar to on course coaches/psychologists.
5. Venue Change: the course layout/yardages were changed mid tournament to help the pros score a little better. When does that ever happen for the weekenders playing an informal tournament on a golf weekend?
6. Equipment: the pros have EVERY advantage in terms of equipment. Tiger has a reference set at Nike’s manufacturing facility to ensure that each club made for him is exactly the same!
7. Balls: some pros play with a higher compression ball that only a very few golfers could ever compress. Is this an advantage to those few?
8. Ball Spotters: the pros get the advantage of ball spotters/finders with their little flags. Average golfers take strokes all the time trying to find a ball hit in rough so high the foursome can’t find it. We know it’s somewhere… we just can’t find it.
9. Officials: the pros get in trouble and they call for help. Sometimes knowing the rules can help! (Burrowing animal anyone?)
10. Conditions Again: I have to restate conditions, this weekend proved that the pros regularly play on different courses in different conditions than most of us. When faced with similar conditions that the average golfer faces, the pros scores started to seem a lot more familiar.
The USGA and PGA should create two separate rules or start playing courses like the rest of us with equipment that we buy off the shelf!
Guest Blog Post: Matthew B. | <urn:uuid:e5184bbf-a1dd-4048-8108-5b5231e79e03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.polaragolf.com/events | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954803 | 498 | 1.53125 | 2 |
I'm writing a analytical essay (for school) about a novel. I need to cite some quotes (for support), that comes from that novel.
I know that the MLA style citation goes as follows:
"Quote goes here" (Author Pg#)
However, do I still have to write the author's name in the citation if my essay is obviously analyzing only one work of text? I just want to quote and cite something that the narrator said from the book that I'm analyzing.
So how would it go? It feels kind of weird to write the author names after each quote... when I'm obviously taking quotes out of the same book.
What is proper? What should i do? | <urn:uuid:1bc2ae47-ff40-4585-b418-1b2f804a983b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/2800/citing-multiple-quotes-from-a-single-novel/2802 | 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 | 0.968704 | 145 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Valentine's Day is filled with hearts of all sizes and colors and flavors. Cards, flowers, chocolates and sentiments singing the praises for our hearts! Yet how often do we think about our actual heart? The one that started beating before we were born continuing 24/7 until we take our last breath. The one that beats about 100,000 times per day, 35,000,000 times per year and a mind-blowing 2.5 BILLION times in a lifetime!!!
This magnificent living pump that moves your blood about 12,000 miles in the course of a day, slower when we rest and faster when we move without one conscious thought on our part!
The choices we make in life with what we put into our mouths, the activity levels we perform and the management of stress all effect the health, performance and longevity of this incredible piece of machinary.
Regardless of whether you are healthy, or already have problems with your heart, there are things you can do today to begin to strengthen this vital muscle! Don't let another day go by, learn what you can do to enhance your heart, and its function. Make the changes today to effect the health youll be in over the next few years.
Simple low to no cost changes you can do today to begin your journey to a healthy, strong and beautiful heart! Join me February 20th at 6PM to learn how! If this pressing for you call me today and we can begin today instead of waiting until the 20th to begin your transformation! 248-960-3599 and ask for Sarah.
The class takes place Feb. 20 at 6 p.m. Read more about it on Patch. | <urn:uuid:091a8695-e2b9-4179-a134-f38ba8eb16a3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://westbloomfield.patch.com/blog_posts/healthy-heart-month | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931178 | 344 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Beyond Measure: Conversations across art and science is a new exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge that explores how geometry is used by artists and astronomers, engineers, surgeons, architects, physicists and mathematicians — among many others — as a means to explain, understand and order the world around us.
Built around a series of workshops, talks and discussions, Beyond Measure will offer many different ways of engaging with geometry, and many different views of the world we live in. The exhibition draws parallels between the artist’s studio, the laboratory and the study as equivalent places for thinking, imagining and creating.Read more...
Labels: Latest news
posted by westius @ 1:18 PM | <urn:uuid:d8cfded1-fa4e-4386-aa19-f066f89e2ccb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://plus.maths.org/content/Blog/text/g/content/919778.polldaddy.com/sites/all/modules/simpleswf/mediaplayer-html5/www.britishscienceassociation.org/forms/festival/events/showevent2.asp?page=76&EventID=134 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956576 | 143 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I recycle, I turn lights off when I leave a room, I unplug things we aren't using, but I wouldn't say I was saving the planet. I like to take long showers, and I'll do so while the washing machine and dishwasher are going. Sometimes I hang out clothes, or I might be using the dryer during the least energy efficient time of day. If living green meant the amount of veggies I eat per week or the amount of green accessories I have, then yes, I live a green life.
But seriously, I don’t like to waste things. I am usually the one who finishes the leftovers, the ketchup, scrapes the jelly and mayonnaise jars clean. I’ll use the broken slimy little piece of soap and rescue it from going down the drain if it escapes my washcloth. I'll use my solid deodorant down to the plastic or until the small solid chunk falls to the floor and breaks to pieces. I mix water in with the bottle of liquid laundry detergent to rinse the residue out for one more load of laundry.
The word residue is one that I can remember asking my mom, “What does residue mean?” She was cooking and I was helping. I remember that it was cream of mushroom soup. As as exclaimed that I was finished, she said, “That’s good, but you have to get the residue out like this” as she proceeded to clean the can with the spoon. I repeat, you have to get the residue out, in my head, in her voice, every time I am scraping a can clean.
When I was in high school, I earned a generous allowance with chores that included doing the dishes and ironing my brother's clothes for school. With my allowance, I learned to budget and save. My allowance combined with a $2.50 an hour paycheck from my job was to pay for my clothes and entertainment. I never had to ask my parents for money.
At the time I was wearing a hairstyle where I shampooed my hair everyday (uncommon for black girls). I would use the conditioner twice; once to soften my hair and then again to rinse it out slightly (a leave in conditioner effect). This gave my hair a naturally curly appearance as it dried. I guess excessive use of the products I shared with my mom was getting out of hand. She came in my room with a bottle of conditioner and asked, “Did you put this in the trash?” I replied, “Yeah it was empty.”
I don’t remember how she demonstrated that the bottle was not empty but she said, “If you are going to waste shampoo, you can start buying your own shampoo and conditioner with your allowance.” I said, “Fine”, like it was no big deal and I started buying nicer shampoo. Remember the Jhirmack hair products? This was during the time of Dallas, and Victoria Principal was in the Jhirmack commercials.
I started buying all my toiletries. It was at my expense so I could pick what I wanted and no one could tell me how to use them. Here’s where the learned lesson came in. When I got to the bottom of the shampoo, conditioner and lotions I had purchased, I turned them upside down until I couldn’t get anymore out. I never wasted a drop of a good product. I won’t discuss all the hair products I have wasted money on over years. That would be contradicting myself.
Christopher has been at the bottom of his toothpaste for about a week now. Groaning on Monday morning about going to school, he was tired of hearing how there was still more toothpaste in the tube. He couldn’t get it out. I squeezed the last of it out, demonstrating how as I worked it from the bottom to the top. He was not impressed.
When he came home that afternoon, from the direction of his room, I heard a happy, “THANKS MOM!” as if I had left him a surprise. I said, “What?” He said, “For the toothpaste!” I had been to the grocery store.
Here’s the thing… I bet my mom didn’t know she was teaching me a a life lesson. I wonder if I am teaching Christopher one now? | <urn:uuid:82124632-4ec0-43d9-b458-85ed2e9890a9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kenyagjohnson.com/blog/2012/5/23/good-to-the-last-drop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982017 | 925 | 1.6875 | 2 |
We don’t generally think of a painter as being self-effacing, but that is exactly what makes Ann Mikolowski’s paintings so special. The conundrum is that there are no signature brushstrokes, no palette she favors, and no overt signs of her personality in her realist paintings. She used photographs to get her subject matter, but she was neither a photorealist nor someone who perfected a machinelike approach. When we consider that her two recurring subjects are landscape and portraiture, both of which we think of as being inseparable from the artist’s style—and here I am thinking of Alex Katz, Alice Neel, and Lucian Freud—the fact that she eschewed every kind of overt mannerism becomes all the more remarkable. It would be a mistake, however, to think that these are signs of her modesty, because, if anything, they are a confirmation of her deep and unshakeable confidence in both herself and her project.
I think the reason Mikolowski never developed a style was because she wanted to honor the world in its details. Instead of concentrating on the advantages to be gained by authoring a style, she found a way to quietly but convincingly step aside, so that the unembellished world she so loved and cared for could commemorate itself in all its particulars. Whether she was working on large-scale land- or waterscapes or diminutive portraits, everything about the moment had to be discovered in the specific painting she had undertaken. Her project was to enable the everyday world of nature and friends to memorialize their own existence. Time is fleeting, and moments are swallowed up as everything is pulled forward toward chaos, but this realization never became a cause for sorrow, self-pity, or protest. One of the salient features of Mikolowski’s work is her acceptance—I would go so far as to say her serene embrace—of time passing.
Scale plays a crucial role in Mikolowski’s landscapes and portraits. The land- and waterscapes can be as large as six by seven and a half feet, while the portraits are seldom taller or wider than three inches, and fit easily in the palm of one’s hand. They are literal mementoes that one can carry anywhere.
It is likely that Mikolowski chose these radically different sizes because the largest ones were the biggest canvases she could move by herself in the studio, while the smallest ones marked how far she could go in the opposite direction without making a miniature. Given that many of the waterscapes share something with minimalist monochromes and that her tiny portraits are replete with details and the texture of things, such as coats and shirts, it is also evident that she worked on such radically different scales because each demanded that she be absolutely meticulous as well as completely innocent and sympathetic in her looking. It was all about seeing what was right there. For in very different and highly challenging ways, the subject matter and the scale are at odds with each other, and merging them challenged her to find a way to envision in paint the plainspoken world around her.
In the portraits, the viewer immediately senses how at ease Mikolowski’s subjects must have felt in her presence. It certainly was the case when she and I hung out for a day in the early 1980s and she took snapshots of me, one of which became the source for a painting in which I am hugging a chow dog that is sitting on my lap, both of us looking relaxed and silly. Engaging and warm, Ann found it easy to disarm her subjects, to get them to be casually themselves. She looked at the world with tender bemusement.
In Robert Creeley (1988), the poet is resting his forearms on the table, a cigarette in his right hand. He seems to be reflecting on what he is going to say next. Before him are a partially filled glass and a nearly empty bottle, the label turned away because the artist doesn’t want it interfering with the subject. Something of the poet’s intensity, sincerity, and solitude comes across. Mikolowski has been subtly attentive to the texture and folds of his denim shirt as well as the feel of his skin. The subtle shifts she makes in the paint are painstakingly scrupulous, and yet are never emphasized. For her, the real delight was in getting it all down.
The casualness of the pose the artist has picked shouldn’t lead us into stopping at the painting’s surface, satisfied with marveling at the exquisite sense of the particulars she articulates. The burning cigarette and nearly empty glass remind us that time moves on, that the now of this painting has long since been obliterated. In Mikolowski’s hands, the camera became an efficient means by which she could record the most casual and fleeting moments without calling attention to either herself or them. The snapshots she took of her subjects served as reference points, a quick way of sketching in the necessary information. If we stop and think about that for a moment, we begin to realize the extent of her accomplishment as well as the degree of both her scrupulousness and her inventiveness. A snapshot turns everything into an image; it tends to generalize. The brightness of the flash is apt to wash away details, which is why Andy Warhol liked to use snapshots as a source for his commissioned portraits.
Warhol wanted the face to become flat, a reproducible image. He was interested in flattery and having the subject pose, but just the opposite occurs in Mikolowski’s portraits. Rather than flattering her subject, she was interested in getting the scratchy feel of a woolen scarf or the smooth side of a Fiberglass motorboat just right. In her exacting attention to textures and light, she reminds us that the world is something we touch and see. The relationship is intimate. At the same time, the tiny scale of the portraits contradicts everything we associate with the genre. Because they are so small, one is surprised to discover that the image doesn’t supersede the artist’s evocations of tactility, and that there is a bigness to these works, which has to do with how much space she can depict on an incredibly small surface. For one thing, the subject is always shown in a very particular environment—a room, porch, or backyard. The figure isn’t posing; he or she is in the middle of doing something that is ordinary. In Anne Waldman & Allen Ginsberg (1988), the poets have on their coats and sweaters. Behind them is an open door. Either they are about to say good-bye, or they have just arrived in someone’s apartment. Informed throughout by Mikolowski’s intense commitment to veracity, the painting registers a passing moment, an event that we might not consider particularly memorable or even dramatic. Mikolowski has slowed time down to a glacial pace, so that we can scrutinize a brief moment and realize that all of them are important. Her disparate predecessors include Hans Holbein and Thomas Eakins.
The formal challenge presented by the portrait’s diminutive scale is daunting. Mikolowski had to figure out how to cut and mount the canvas as well as frame it. Her desire for a calm perfectionism required her to work with brushes that she had carefully pared down to one or two hairs. Everything about these works required a high level of focused concentration, which, to her credit, she never makes obvious. There is no sign of angst or struggle; she refuses to call attention to herself in those ways. At the same time, these portraits go far beyond their technical brilliance and formal strength. In her seamless merging of scale and subject matter, Mikolowski evokes vulnerability, tenderness, a desire to protect and hold, and the dearness of friendship itself, without ever becoming sentimental. And yet, rather than like a precious object, they feel sturdy, able to withstand the pressures of life itself. This is because the artist’s plainspoken thoroughness, which is most obvious in her loving attention to details, bestows the paintings with a feeling of perseverance, which becomes all the more pointedly eloquent when we remember that many of her subjects are poets. As Mikolowski knew deep in her being, to be a poet in this world one has to be dogged and have stamina. That she and her poet husband, Ken, connected with other poets and artists in the magical and endearing ways that they did—and here I am thinking of those remarkable envelopes crammed with postcards, broadsides, collages, and even paintings, which they solicited, printed, and published under the rubric The Alternative Press—is just one of her many accomplishments. She and Ken enlarged the definition of the domestic to include anyone who wanted to be part of it.
On the opposite end of the scale are the large landscapes, which she must have been just able to move around in her studio. In Spring (1988), which is done in a square, abstract format, Mikolowski depicts an angled view, at once familiar and private. For some reason, and it may not be a reason so much as a reflex, we have stopped and looked up at the sky, the swirl of clouds overhead. On either side of us is a diminishing row of bare trees that are just beginning to show signs that the weather is turning warmer. There is nothing extraordinary about the view, but the angle and the moment the artist has chosen are charged with feelings ranging from anticipation to melancholy, and lots of stuff in between, all quietly but firmly kept in check. We aren’t looking just at trees and clouds; we are looking at two different manifestations of time, the cyclical and the constantly dissolving. This is one of Mikolowski’s particular and emotional strengths. She gets us to look at the ordinary, everyday world with a heightened awareness of our own fragile place in it. Without elaborating or straying from the facts, she infuses a commonplace moment in nature with all kinds of sentiment.
In Gold (1994), seen through bare branches and trees, the yellow-orange sunlight reflected multiple times on the snow and icy water animates the painting with a sense of deep solitude, at once gratifying and haunting. One is alone in the woods, walking somewhere. The sun is sinking, and the light is partially blocked by the trees and therefore unreachable. That the feelings and thoughts we have become a complex accumulation of possibilities, rather than resolving into one state or another, is why we keep returning to her paintings. Her views of nature don’t turn the world into a story. The work is open and generous. We feel as if we have all experienced a similar landscape, and yet Mikolowski’s plain view suggests that we might not have seen or remembered it with such a forceful awareness of our mortality.
Nothing is generalized or abstracted in the artist’s views of the world, even when, as in Morning (1990), she uses a limited palette of related tonalities to depict a scene as pared down as that of water and sky. What one senses in these land- and waterscapes is that time is passing and pressing and, as Rilke put it, our awareness of beauty and terror go hand in hand. The difference, however, between Rilke and Mikolowski is a profound and telling one. In the Duino Elegies, the poet opens the First Elegy with the question that resounds throughout the rest of the nine poems: “Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ / hierarchies?” Mikolowski never asked this question; it wasn’t in her nature to demand answers from the world. It had given her more than enough, and she was responding in kind. She had the strength and confidence to step aside, and to become the gently painstaking medium by which the world and her friends could celebrate their own passage through this difficult world. | <urn:uuid:fc7c2bf9-3beb-4b76-905d-89f3cbd642fe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/239332 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976491 | 2,491 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Elisabeth is Action Against Hunger's communications officer, reporting on our impact and current events around the world.
Crisis Mounts in DRC: 200,000 Displaced in Past 10 Days
Imagine fleeing violence in your home city and settling in a camp for displaced citizens. If that fate isn’t difficult enough, imagine the area around the camp then being seized by members of a rebel group, forcing you back, homeless, to your city of origin where there is no power and virtually no access to water. This scenario isn’t a bad dream. It’s the reality being faced by residents who originally hail from Goma, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In the past week, a rebel group known as M23 seized Goma, and a handful of nearby towns and has threatened to escalate its activites. M23’s pursuits have long plagued eastern DRC, with rebel-related violence displacing some 650,000 people earlier this year between April and October. But recent events have been catastrophic in scale, with another 200,000 people displaced in the past ten days alone.
When violence erupts, Action Against Hunger‘s first priority is to ensure the safety and welfare of our field staff, in addition to continuing our lifesaving programs where possible. While the current crisis is very much in flux, security concerns and travel restrictions place limits on many of our operations, but we are also hard at work assessing new needs and developing plans to respond as soon as the security climate allows it.
In recent months we have been providing emergency relief to more than 190,000 people displaced between DRC’s North Kivu (of which Goma is provincial capital) and South Kivu provinces. There is a critical need to expand our emergency programs from our bases in Shabunda, Minova, and Bunyakiri in response to the influx of newly displaced populations – from emergency water, sanitation and hygiene activities to ensuring adequate supplies of ready-to-use therapeutic food products like Plumpy’nut so we can manage malnutrition among the most vulnerable.
We need and profoundly appreciate your assistance in helping so many in DRC escape a tragic fate. According to a UN Situation Report, only 57% of the funds requested by the humanitarian community for relief efforts in DRC in 2012 have been raised – and that was before this current crisis came to be. Please help, and do stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks, outlining the specific nature of our response.
In the meantime, take a few minutes to inform yourself about the deep nature of the DRC crisis. The New York Times is providing outstanding coverage from expert Africa correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman, and his photographer colleague Jehad Nga has been taking moving photos (see a sample below). CNN has also published provocative commentary on the need for increased attention on this crisis, written by a DRC national.
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Facts about Hunger
925 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition around the world.
Malnutrition affects 32.5% of children in developing countries.
1 out of every 6 infants are born with low birth weight due to undernutrition among pregnant women in developing countries.
1 out of every 3 people in developing countries are affected by vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Hunger is number one on the list of the world's top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. | <urn:uuid:a1798a6a-b013-49a6-8766-3425bb09d29e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/blog/crisis-mounts-drc-200000-displaced-past-10-days | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945781 | 797 | 1.734375 | 2 |
New research shows that social media interaction between a customer and a brand drives immediate and long-term sales increases. The 2012 LoyaltyOne Social Media Transaction Impact Study was released this week by LoyaltyOne, in cooperation with Northwestern University and the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business,
The research findings are based on a two-year analysis of brand-customer social media engagement and actual transaction data with Canada's more than 10-million member AIR MILES Reward Program. Consumers who participate in LoyaltyOne's AIR MILES loyalty program earn reward miles by making purchases from its affiliated business partners (sponsors) and services across the country. Collectors of the program redeem reward miles for a wide range of travel, entertainment and merchandise rewards.
The results show that AIR MILES collectors who participated in social media events and promotions increased their purchases from AIR MILES program partners by 15-30 percent over non-participants.
The engagement involved monitoring participation in online events and contests from February 2009 to May of 2011. Researchers were then able to use AIR MILES program collector data to obtain concrete evidence of the impact of social media engagement on purchasing behavior.
"The good news is this research delivers the evidence that investment in social media has the potential to return benefits in the form of transactions, profits and ROI if done well," said Neil Everett, LoyaltyOne executive vice president and CMO. "The even better news is this study demonstrates that the data obtained through loyalty programs generates a reliable method of measuring this connection."
Other highlights from the study include the following:
- The mere act of writing a short public statement on a social media site spurs significant lifts in transaction activity;
- However, more elaborate posts dealing with redemption experiences (travel, entertainment) created a higher lift than shorter, product-based posts;
- The higher the level of participation in a social media event, the greater the impact on a consumer's purchasing activity;
- Brands can use social media as a tool to raise the value of lower-volume, high-potential consumers who have more room to increase their spend; and
- Events that encourage participants to recreate the core benefits of a brand have higher lift effects than more generic posts.
Read more about social media initiatives. | <urn:uuid:584c500f-f532-4f15-92e6-a2e27b50c74f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/article/202755/Study-Social-media-interaction-leads-to-long-term-sales-increases | 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 | 0.941986 | 462 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Tablet computers are not new, but the Apple iPad has changed everything. Because of their versatility, portability, ease of use, and image quality, tablets have already started to change some of the ways that photographers do business.
How a Tablet Differs from a Notebook
Let's be honest: Before last year, tablet computers have not worked well. They have been large and heavy, tried to do too much, and have usually required the use of a stylus. The developers did not seem to understand that a tablet was a different beast than a notebook.
The iPad from Apple changed all this. It is small, but has a screen size big enough for serious work. It is fairly light and has an excellent battery life. It runs an operating system specifically designed for touch. It does not need a stylus to use, though some are available. It is instant on and off. Installing applications is so easy. And, users feel a little safer because Apple plays the role of gatekeeper in approving apps. Plus, the image quality is great.
Until recently, Apple has had the tablet-computer scene to itself. And really we are still waiting for the competition to actually hit stores, though that is starting to happen. Competition is good because it will not only bring choices but also ensure that things will usually change for the better.
HP has their Windows 7 based Slate out and looks likely to have a Web OS based version out in 2011. Other companies either have or will bring out other tablets based on various platforms. This is great as it will give us choice.
Uses for Tablets in a Photography Business
The key to determining how a tablet fits into your photography business is to understand both what it is and what it is not. A tablet is not a high-powered laptop, so you won't be Photoshopping images on one. It is a highly portable viewing system, communication system, and document-creation tool.
I recently released an iPad app version of my book "Photography Wisdom" (you can find it on the App Store under photography titles or by searching for Photography Wisdom). It has only been available for 10 days, but is selling well.
Some people who already had the print version of the book have told me that the images look so much better on the iPad. These comments mirror my own feelings, but it is nice to have the confirmation. You know yourself how good images can look on your LCD computer screen, and tablets offer the same type of view.
We all know the frustration of trying to get what we see on screen to appear on paper. It is tough for the fundamental reason that a screen emits light while paper reflects it. HP and other companies do a great job with printers these days, but there is still that fundamental difference. Tablets let you present your images to clients (art directors, advertising execs, company management, brides, mums and dads) in a way that matches the way you work on your images in Photoshop. Furthermore it lets you take a huge number of images with you wherever you go, so those chance meetings with potential clients can be exploited immediately. And we all know immediacy is one of the keys to sales.
Great prints are still immensely important, but why not have more ways of doing things? A digital portfolio that you can carry with you can be more useful than a great print portfolio on a shelf in the studio.
So a tablet can be a portable portfolio. It can easily hold different portfolios for all the different areas of photography your business may cover. The touch interface of tablets is natural for flipping through images. People get the hang of it quickly and it is a much more intimate feeling than clicking a mouse or touch pad button.
The onscreen keyboards of tablets are probably not going to be your first choice for typing lots of text. But the keyboards are perfect for things such as filling in forms or writing to-do lists.
As a documentation and organisation tool, a tablet is wonderful. I use a range of software like Things on my iPad to keep track of shot lists, reminders of things to shoot if I come across them, and location details. Depending on local laws, keeping model and property releases on a tablet can be far more convenient than on paper.
Many tablets will offer constant connectivity to the Internet and many will have GPS built in. This is a great combination for location scouting and documenting and can be better on a large screen than a smartphone.
When shooting on location, using the larger screen of a tablet can be a better way to judge image quality than using the screen of your camera. In fact there are ways to use a tablet to control your cameras.
One key advantage of tablets over laptops is that you can easily use them standing up. This matters to photographers, because when we’re on location or even in the studio, standing is often our standard mode of working. Being able to make notes, show a portfolio, or document where you were when you took that shot is a great productivity benefit.
Another key difference is that a tablet is more like an appliance than a computer. It is on and off in a flash and lets you do the task you need with little interference and no fuss. With the model I currently use, I have experienced very few crashes and have had no issues with viruses.
Eventually all computers will offer multi-touch interfaces and gesture recognition (as seen in the movie "The Minority Report"). But for now, tablets are as close as we can get. You really do need to use one to appreciate the power they offer for photographers.
If you have started using an iPad or other tablet computer in your own photography business, I would be interested in hearing your comments on how you are using it and what you like best about it.
Unless there are other topics you would like me to address, this will be the final post in my Photography Business series. The other posts are as follows: | <urn:uuid:a8457e3b-df09-4e7e-95ed-230be6c1ea88> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Professional-Photography/The-Photography-Business-Part-12-How-Tablet-Computers-Are/ba-p/83323 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966146 | 1,212 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Practical Training for Intermediates (Notes 1997-2002)
Artwork by Luca Buvoli. Text by Stuart Horodner.
Published by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art
Though mankind has made many advances in the past few centuries, we have not quite mastered the art of flying, certainly not to the extent that birds have. Thus Luca Buvoli's notes and research and diagrams on the art of flying are greatly appreciated, especially this uniquely assembled artist's book, in which he offers tips for the intermediate flyer.
STATUS: Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory. | <urn:uuid:712b304c-6b06-4d74-bf0e-9b9b5a99c153> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artbook.com/catalog--art--monographs--buvoli--luca.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943044 | 123 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Duncan Riley, of TechCrunch fame, has started putting up some short videos at dunchanriley.tv. One of those videos in particular got my attention. It's embedded below...
The video and specifically the assertion that "Open Source is communism" got me to thinking. Thinking about the nature of Open Source, where it belongs, and why some projects work while others fail.
(For those who don't watch the video, Mr. Riley doesn't say Open Source is communism he just responds to someone else saying it)
Looking at What Works
I liked the choice of examples he used so I'm going to use them as well. Here were his examples:
Those That Work: Firefox, MySQL, Linux
Those That Don't Work: Open Office
So the question is, why is software like Firefox exploding while OpenOffice flounders?
Its the Platform Stupid
When James Carville famously devised the statement "Its the Economy Stupid!" he added the "Stupid" because he was surprised no one in the Presidential Race was addressing what everyone outside the race already knew. That people were worried about the economy.
Similarly, those in the open source world like to paint flowery pictures of selfless people working with no purpose other than charity. But despite those flowery pictures most outside realize that open source projects succeed when people are motivated by self interest. Firefox, Apache, Linux and their other LAMP brethren created platforms on which millions of applications run. In turn, those application developers are dependent on the open source products being around.
This motivates those developers to help out which keeps the products alive.
OpenOffice on the other hand is a largely a stand alone product. You can build small Add-Ons but that functionality isn't enough to build an ecosystem of companies around it. Which is why it flounders despite its potential and big company backing.
It isn't Communism it's Good Business
Getting back to the "Open Source is Communism" claim I think the above proves this isn't the case. In fact, Capitalism is better served when companies embrace Open Source.
To give one example, its an enormous waste of money for Microsoft and Apple to both develop lower level functionality to interface with identical hardware. No one buys an OS based on how elegantly it communicates with its serial bus. If these companies agreed to share technology that was identical in both systems they could spend their money competing on the things that consumers actually care about.
(I realize this will almost certainly never happen but its a good example none the less)
The Software Industry is polluted with examples of companies doing more work than they need to by spending money on building things that already exist. The tragedy, as in the above example, is that consumers don't care. In fact, most consumers don't want companies to innovate in these areas. Can you imagine a company that required its own web browser?
This isn't new
I think the most important thing here is to put Open Source into its proper context. Part of the problem is that people who love technology tend to see themselves as revolutionaries. So you get Open Source advocates running around thinking they're changing the world when actually they're just catching up to it.
Yes I said catching up to it.
You know what else is Open Source? A Tire. All cars use the same basic "Tire Technology" Some have expanded on it (TripleTred, ComforTred, etc...) but in the end its the same tire underneath it all.
You see, Open Source is actually a pretty old concept.
Technology and specifically the software industry trails behind other industries when it comes to making parts that are open and interchangeable. Open Source isn't revolution its the same evolution that millions of other product types have gone through.
Not only is Open Source not Communism it is really at the heart of Capitalism. Capitalism is finding ways to make money as efficiently as possible. Using common, open components is an easy way to do that. Ask Steve Jobs how much money he saved by not having to start from scratch on OS X.
(OS X is derived from an Open Source Unix variation for those who didn't know)
This type of development is inevitable in a capitalist system. Every car company in existence uses the same type of tire because they have to. If one company tried to resist they'd almost certainly go out of business because they'd have to spend exponentially more on R&D. As time goes on I think Open Source will play a bigger and bigger role in the software industry for just that reason.
Don't get me wrong, there will always be parts of software that rely on closed source just as there is still proprietary technology in cars. But I think you'll eventually see those closed source implementations resting on an Open Source Foundation and the consumer will be better off for it.
One Final Note
The above post is a generalization and like all generalizations it has exceptions.
There will always be people coming up with new business models and that's part of what makes a capitalist system great. So Matt Mullenweg may very well make money by running a hosted version of his Open Source software and that's great. If Wordpress can be successful through only one company (as opposed to building a platform) more power to them. But exceptions to a rule don't invalidate the rule itself. | <urn:uuid:31588ef2-1b99-49f4-874e-ef56cdf88658> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tomstechblog.com/?tag=/communism | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967179 | 1,094 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The drug that is considered the most abused in Alabama is marijuana. It accounts for most of the drug-related arrests in the state. In fact, it is becoming common for police to get between 50 to 100 pounds in a single seizure. Most of the marijuana in Alabama is imported from other states, not grown in-state. That is, of course, not to say that it is the only drug in use in the state. In fact, according to the National Substance Abuse Index, marijuana is only the drug that is the reason behind the most arrests, cocaine is the biggest threat to the state, both crack and powder. Methamphetamine (or meth) is abused mostly in rural settings and its usage surpasses that of cocaine. Prescription drugs, mostly drugs like Vicodin, are increasingly becoming an issue in the state.
The importation of drugs and local production (and growing) of drugs have only increased over the years. In fact, the use of drugs and alcohol by teenagers in Alabama, according to a 2009 survey, is at 20.3%. This is higher than the national average. If you have an issue with one of the drugs on the list, or any other drug, or you are a part of the growing number of drug abusers in the state, you have come to the right place. Our website offers a large list of drug rehab facilities that you can contact.
Addiction Treatment Centers in Alabama | <urn:uuid:07e42b23-50d5-4c0a-8dde-c292ebf787fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alltreatment.com/al/alabama-treatment-centers | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96757 | 288 | 1.703125 | 2 |
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What are, and what will be, the hot topics in your interest areas? What criteria do editors and reviewers use to select papers? How could you increase your chances of publication? Find out by hearing what our editors have to say. | <urn:uuid:dbf4c01e-fac2-40e9-8408-0afdb4df134e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.emeraldinsight.com/authors/index.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935102 | 225 | 1.78125 | 2 |
These steps are based on my years of experience of doing it wrong; so I have it on excellent authority… my own happiness… that if you follow these steps … you may not be ecstatic..but you will be in a a better place.
1. Sit quietly for 5 minutes a day
2. Stop whining (you live in the wealthiest country in the world)
3. Stop gossiping (including judging other in our own minds or out loud)
4. Be grateful (write down 5 things you’re grateful for 2x a day, no repeats for 30 days)
5. Learn new stuff – especially stuff that is hard
6. Find someone to help (outside your family)
7. Shut up and listen (for a change)
8. Exercise your body and willpower daily
9. Walk tall, smile, be gracious
10. Be grateful — this is really the key to everything.
At the most difficult time of my life, I kept a gratitude diary. Once a day I wrote down 5 things I was grateful for…and I couldn’t repeat anything. After 3 months I had incorporated gratitude into my daily thinking. That was nearly 20 years ago and I still reflect on all my gifts everyday.
Those tremendously sad years gave me the one thing I needed most – a way to enjoy every day – no matter what is happening around me. The idea and accompanying serenity are yours for the taking.
Photo credit: Partners in Community Development | <urn:uuid:76ca4821-8911-44b9-ab2a-46fe42ec6bbe> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hellinthehallway.net/2012/08/07/10-steps-to-a-happy-life/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938877 | 305 | 1.664063 | 2 |
This article is part of the Business IT Series in association with Intel
The mobile device market has always been a vibrant place, but up to now has been the playground of a number of very successful specialists. Successively, the market has been dominated by the likes of Nokia, Motorola, RIM and Palm. These hardware specialists had their day and sank back, some disappearing altogether from the market.
With the advent of smartphones and touchscreen tablet devices, the mobile arena is now dominated by Samsung and Apple. These are two vendors with a wider scope than just mobile devices, but they are still niche players, especially in the corporate computing sector.
At the same time, user interfaces and operating systems have shifted from proprietary systems to standard offerings from the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google.
The next wave in the development of mobile devices and software, from a corporate perspective at least, is going to involve the big enterprise players in the wider computing pantheon.
As organisations react to the proliferation of consumer devices in work use and seek to extend the reach of their computing systems out to the most remote workers in the field, enterprise software vendors will be driven to adapt their systems so that they can be accessed from small-format computing devices on the move, outside the corporate infrastructure.
In an effort to regain some homogeneity in the hardware estate and provide staff with versatile, portable access devices, hardware manufacturers are looking at designing suites of user hardware, from tower, to laptop, to tablet to smartphone which interoperate and sync with no effort on the part of the user.
The proliferation of devices is as wide as it ever was. Apple has just released the latest version of its iPhone handset, following a high-profile patent battle with rival Samsung. The court found in favour of Apple, causing some ripples in the latter’s strategy for releasing future products. More is at stake though with some of the fundamental operations of the phone, which customers have come to see as standard ways of operating smartphones, at the heart of the dispute.
It’s a clear indication of how fierce competition has got in the mobile handset market, with vendors so keen to protect whatever aspects of their products make them stand out in a very busy market.
It could also be a sign that the bigger players with the budgets for big legal teams will do anything they can to keep the upper hand.
The release of the iPhone 5 is marked by an elongated screen and the capability for faster mobile broadband connectivity. This is a reaction to consumer demands, but these enhancements are also useful for business users, who need a good strong connection to connect to big corporate databases and bigger screens to adequately view those Business Intelligence dashboards.
Is this really necessary? If SAP’s roadmap is anything to go by, definitely so. The enterprise software giant has seen the writing on the wall and has made mobile access to its customers’ ERP systems one of the four pillars of its business strategy for the near future.
The proliferation of mobile devices in the workplace has been driven from the top down, with company directors insisting their iPads be integrated with corporate systems so that they can access company data. The logical extension of this is connectivity to core corporate systems so that they can pull down management information in real-time and use it to make snap business decisions.
SAP is reacting to this need and other big corporate computing software vendors will doubtless follow suit.
The changes to the newest iPhone illustrate how the optimum mobile device has not yet been developed, as mobile phones evolve into smart computing devices, and clamshell laptops morph into touch-sensitive tablets.
The fanfare for the iPhone5 is short-lived, as the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone is due for release by February next year and so the procession of new smartphones on the market goes on.
We currently have a spectrum of devices to choose from. The range covers lightweight laptops with keyboards, to 7-inch and 10-inch screen tablets, to notebook-size e-reader-type devices and phones and down to 3.5-inch screen smartphones. The largest are too bulky for carrying about your person and the smallest are unsuitable for some corporate applications.
Hardware makers are reacting to this melting-pot in a number of ways. Some devices can dock into desktop ports to become more suitable for labour intensive uses, such as computer aided design and content creation.
The proliferation of devices has also lead vendors with big market shares in existing desktop and infrastructure hardware markets to explore new revenue streams in the mobile arena.
Intel has long been a dominant force in corporate computer processing, but has recently ventured further into the mobile space. It has provided the computing power for a new generation of Ultrabooks. These are super-powerful laptops, initially targeted at consumers, but will eventually be seen in the workplace, where employees can make use of fast application processing and boot-up times.
Intel has also established beach-heads in the mobile handset arena, with a partnership in the UK with Everything Everywhere (a joint venture between Orange and T-Mobile) to produce a mobile handset for the carrier’s customers.
More recently, the chip-maker showcased a device at its developers’ conference that can be used as a desktop PC but doubles as a 27-inch tablet device. Called the Adaptive All-in-One, the device has a 1080p HD display and a high-performance graphics processor.
Intel’s approach demonstrates how end users are no longer willing to make distinctions between the capabilities of the computing they use on the move or at a desk, nor are they prepared to put up with any loss of access to the data and communications they need just because they are mobile.
Niche players in the market will continue to delight them with innovative designs for devices and applications, but established providers that power the systems that support these devices and applications are steadily moving into the frame as well. | <urn:uuid:3b682fe7-cc6c-41a8-a86a-746246243cdc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.techworld.com/business-it-hub/tech-briefing/3401335/iphone-5-shows-optimum-enterprise-smartphone-not-yet-been-developed/ | 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 | 0.956506 | 1,200 | 1.671875 | 2 |
David Simon, creator of the HBO television series "The Wire," is among 23 recipients of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius grants" - news that left him with what he described as "a vague sense of guilt."
The $500,000 grants were announced Tuesday by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The money, paid quarterly over five years, comes with no strings, allowing winners unfettered freedom to pursue their creativity.
Simon's guilt stemmed from already being amply funded in an industry that's "a little bit recession-proof," he said. Still, the award's prestige will go far with network executives. While critically acclaimed, Simon's dissection of urban problems in "The Wire" and more recently "Treme" hasn't yet scored Emmys or high Nielsen ratings.
"It makes it easier to go into the room with the network and argue against doing the usual thing in television," Simon said. His next pitch? The history of the CIA since World War II and a housing desegregation fight in Yonkers are two subjects inspiring him now. "Not all these things have the best possible commercial outlook," he said.
MacArthur winners don't need to tell anyone how they'll spend the grant money. There are no reporting requirements.
"We could spend it all on cake," joked theater director David Cromer, one of this year's recipients. Cromer, known for staging American classics like "Our Town," said he wasn't ready to discuss what he may attempt with the grant's support. But he has some non-cake ideas.
"It purchases you freedom," Cromer said. "I can do things now that aren't necessarily going to generate an income."
That's exactly what the foundation has in mind. Bob Gallucci, the foundation's president, called the grants "an investment in people who have already done extraordinary things." There have been 828 MacArthur Fellows, including this year's winners.
"We're hoping not only that they'll do extraordinary things in the future, but that this fellowship will make that somewhat more likely," Gallucci said.
Jason Moran, a jazz pianist and composer, said he was elated and that the grant would fuel many of the projects that have lain dormant in his mind.
"I have already begun making minor plans on band expeditions to Senegal to study Senegalese drumming, or bringing our music down to perform in rural parts of America, or to simply create new collaborations with artists in other fields, or begin a series of recordings made on the old format of Edison wax cylinders," he said. "It's all in play now."
None of the winners is from New Orleans, but the Big Easy exerts a strong pull on the 2010 grantees. Simon's newest HBO series "Treme" is about residents of post-Katrina New Orleans. Cromer recently revived Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," set in New Orleans, to great praise.
And Shannon Lee Dawdy, an anthropologist and archaeologist from the University of Chicago, has studied New Orleans since 1994. After Hurricane Katrina, she worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of Louisiana to make sure recovery efforts respected the city's archaeological heritage. | <urn:uuid:179c196f-eebc-481d-bd20-5c6f67933a54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2010/sep/27/macarthur-foundation-reveals-2010-genius-grants/ | 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 | 0.974958 | 671 | 1.578125 | 2 |
I try to raise awareness, everywhere I can, and when we have a pregnant patient (or immediately post-partum), I try to take that patient for the type of testing that I do, and remind the doctors (if they forget...we have a large perinatal service and a number of cardiologists, so they're pretty good).
Some of what I see in the literature seems to suggest that all the blood vessel changes reverse completely. But we know that "remodeling" does go on, and some of those changes are permanent. And anecdotally, it does make a difference. I see too many women here reporting problems with hypertension and other issues not to think that it makes a difference.
FWIW, I never had hypertension problems before pregnancy, and didn't really have it during pregnancy, either, other than what I called "flash" hypertension, where it would elevate briefly. It never went really high, either. But I had claudication (arterial spasms) severe lymphedema, and hyperreflexia, and to this day I have claudication in the same spots.
And the question arises: do I have this looked into? I'm 52, on very low-dose estrogen following hysterectomy, and I'm concerned about my cardiac risk factors. So anything I can find out that supports early screening in our population, if nothing else but to convince the insurers to pay for it, can help all those of you with young children and questions about your future.
Now about the teen-age years...can't help you there [}:)]! | <urn:uuid:cc038a91-83d6-4535-8ed8-626e8f4aa825> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.preeclampsia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26446&start=10 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975489 | 331 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Harvey Pekar was an American underground comix legend. A lot of people know him for American Splendor, a series of autobiographical comic books. He was a giant, in his own way. He died in 2010, survived by his wife Joyce Brabner.
JT Waldman is the creator of Megillat Esther, which I reviewed here several years ago. It's my favorite edition of the book of Esther, bar none. It contains -- as the saying goes -- the whole megillah; all of Esther, plus all sorts of commentary interwoven throughout the gorgeous artwork.
When Harvey Pekar died, he and JT Waldman were collaborating on a nonfiction graphic novel -- an illustrated memoir with historical divagations -- called Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. The book follows the two authors through Cleveland as they discuss Pekar's relationship with Israel, from the Zionism he imbibed in childhood through a process of beginning to question Israel's role in the world.
In Megillat Esther, JT Waldman skillfully braids classical commentary on Esther together with the text of the megillah and with his striking and beautiful visual art. He does something similar here, only in this book he's interweaving the story Harvey tells, the experience of hearing that story from Harvey, and Middle East history. | <urn:uuid:bd160af2-5155-4d20-a435-e64b8bc0c816> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/comics/ | 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 | 0.969926 | 278 | 1.820313 | 2 |
State irons out registrations of exotic animals
Owners' deadline was a few weeks ago, but filings had problems
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US & World
State officials continue to work with owners of exotic animals to help them fully register their creatures with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, even though the state deadline submitting information was several weeks ago.
About 30 registrations covering roughly 200 animals were filed with the state before the Nov. 5 deadline, but they contained errors or omissions, according to the department.
One of the biggest problems with the incomplete forms was that some owners had yet to implant their wild animals with a microchip containing information to help identify them if they got lost or escaped, said Erica Pitchford Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the agriculture department.
Now, the department and the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association are working to help the owners abide by the microchip requirement by connecting them to veterinarians who can perform the task.
“The ones who are making an effort to come into compliance, we’re trying to let them do that as much as possible,” Pitchford Hawkins said, adding that owners must keep a record of their correspondence with veterinarians.
Under a new state law, owners who don’t register could face a first-degree misdemeanor charge for a first offense and a fifth-degree felony for a subsequent offense.
But the state isn’t yet referring owners for prosecution if they have failed to register their animals. That’s part of an agreement officials have with four owners who are suing the state’s agriculture department and its director over the new law. The owners contend that the new regulations threaten their First Amendment and property rights. A federal court hearing on the lawsuit is planned for mid-December.
A list of registrations obtained by the Associated Press through a public-records request shows that at least 114 private owners have successfully registered animals with the state. That figure doesn’t include zoos or research facilities that also submitted registrations.
Ohio’s restrictions on exotic animals had been among the nation’s weakest.
State lawmakers worked with a renewed sense of urgency to strengthen the law after an owner last fall released 50 creatures, including black bears and Bengal tigers, from a farm in Zanesville, Ohio, before he committed suicide. Authorities killed most of the animals, fearing for the public’s safety.
Under the new law, current owners who want to keep their animals must obtain the new state-issued permit by Jan. 1, 2014. They must pass background checks, pay fees, obtain liability insurance or surety bonds, and show inspectors that they can properly contain the animal and care for it.
One of the factors of obtaining a state permit includes timely registration.
If owners are denied permits or can’t meet the new requirements, the state can seize the animals. | <urn:uuid:c837f2aa-5aed-412e-96c1-1a8ca672766e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/24/state-irons-out-registrations-of-exotic-animals.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962024 | 694 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The muzzle of the barrel is specially machined to protect the rifling, therefore preserving and protecting accuracy. This is a critical feature on any barrel. If riflings are damaged in any way, especially at the muzzle, accuracy suffers and it is often difficult to determine the cause.
Browning X-Bolt and A-Bolt rifles have a short 60° bolt lift. Many competitors' rifles incorporate a 90° bolt lift that is not only slower and cumbersome but places the bolt near or on the rifle's scope, making the bolt more difficult to operate.
Rockwell Arms stocks some of its firearms in its Sandpoint, Idaho store, but some firearms shown on the site will not be in stock in the store. If you would like to buy a particular firearm from the store, please call ahead to confirm it is in stock in the store. | <urn:uuid:5080b335-9ac6-41e7-994f-fe3a8778a7df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rockwellarms.com/Store/ProductDetails/Browning-035008332-A-Bolt-Stainless-Stalker-375-HH-Caliber-24-Rifle | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95201 | 174 | 1.578125 | 2 |
I just copied and pasted this article from BB.com, Big Cat or whoever. I don't like the sound of this.
It has come to my attention that some people have been adding taurine to their diets to decrease cramping from clenbuterol or other beta-adrenergic agonists. Whether or not there is any merit to this, I really don't know. I haven't seen any data one way or the other. I assume there must be some truth to the rumour or people wouldn't be doing it. Then again...
Regardless however, supplementing extra taurine during a diet is not advisable. It is indeed true that beta-adrenergic agonists like clenbuterol and ephedrine will reduce taurine levels, no question about it. But did anyone ever stop to think that maybe this has a reason? Your protein intake should stay the same, roughly, which means that these compounds are actively reducing taurine levels.
If anyone had bothered to look these things up for a few seconds they would have known it is with good reason. Taurine may inhibit fat loss in different ways. First of all it will increase insulin sensitivity. I didn't even need to state that, it has been used in supplements with varying success for that exact same reason. If we know that many effective fat loss aids work primarily by lowering insulin resistance (Growth hormone, noradrenaline, etc), we already know this is not a bright idea.
This lowers the threshold at which glycogen is stored again. This will increase chance of gaining fat during cheat days due to enhanced sensitivity of fat cells to insulin, and limit fat lost on dieting days since the extra stored glycogen will have to be burned again before you start burning fat again.
This is however the least of your concerns. Taurine is also known to reduce Thyroid levels. Studies have demonstrated that a high platelet level of taurine will reduce T3:T4 ratio in men. This would slow down your metabolic rate, meaning you use less calories than you would otherwise. Obviously this will result in less fat lost for the same amount of calories eaten.
Taurine may also reduce cAMP production in certain animals. The extrapolation in this case is a far fetch, but something I would like to see tested in humans. Since the cAMP acts as a second messenger in the process of lipolysis, the process of releasing fatty acids from their glycerol backbone, making them available for burning, this will reduce the amount of fat released and consequently the amount of fat burned.
This all fits nicely into the picture that free form amino acids should not be frequently used on a diet. As with carbohydrates, quickly absorbed sources create higher peak levels that also decline faster. This almost always leads to a favourable situation for a lower metabolism.
When dieting you will opt for carbohydrate sources that absorb slower, so they have less of an effect on factors influencing food intake. The same holds true for protein. You should opt for protein sources with a more anti-catabolic character, that release slower, such as casein.
Thread: Don't take Taurine when dieting? | <urn:uuid:f8123a2d-24b0-4e92-bd0d-641e46c358eb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=415717&pagenumber= | 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 | 0.966229 | 657 | 1.5 | 2 |
(Media Availability with Polish Minister of National Defense Jerzy Szmajdzinski. Note: The minister's remarks are provided through interpreter.)
Rumsfeld: Good afternoon. I am delighted to have just welcomed the minister of defense of Poland to the Department of Defense. We have met previously at NATO meetings, and needless to say, Poland is a valued and helpful member of NATO, as well as a partner in Operation Enduring Freedom.
I had the opportunity to particularly thank the minister and his country for the role they're playing with respect to mine clearing in and around the Bagram airport in Afghanistan and the assistance they're providing with Special Forces in connection with maritime interdiction.
The -- we had a good discussion. We talked about NATO. We talked about NATO enlargement. We talked about the NATO-Russia relationship, the NATO-Ukraine relationship, and the U.S.-Poland relationship. And it's -- I want you all to know that I arranged this lovely sunny afternoon for his visit.
Rumsfeld: Mr. Minister, welcome.
Szmajdzinski: I have to say that these talks were really very good. We talked about the military relations. We talked about political relations. We talked also about the war on terrorism.
We talked about the recently the Poland unit in the operation of -- in the Operation Enduring Freedom. We talked about the enlargement of NATO, about what relations between NATO and Russia would be -- should be like in the future. We talked about what is important for Poland and United States, about the relations between NATO and Ukraine, which are important for both our countries. We talked about the military cooperation and about the necessity to shape new capabilities of the alliance. And we are convinced that both of us -- both our countries can play an important role in the discussion about the new capabilities of North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This decision will be made during the summit meeting of NATO in Prague, but we also decided that the informal ministerial meeting, of the ministers of defense, which is going to be hold in Warsaw in September, may be also a good opportunity to talk about new capabilities.
Q: Mr. Secretary, you both mentioned the war on terrorism. U.S. Marine F-18s recently arrived in Kyrgyzstan last week, I believe, and now based near Bishkek to launch raids into Afghanistan. Does this --
Rumsfeld: To do what?
Q: To launch raids into Afghanistan. Does this signal increasing cooperation by Central Asian states for the war on terrorism? And do you, perhaps, plan to go back there anytime soon for a visit, as you did in December?
Rumsfeld: There's no question but that any number of Central Asian countries have been very cooperative and helpful in the global war on terrorism. We have valued that support and that cooperation.
The short answer is yes, I do intend to go back and visit Afghanistan and some of the neighboring countries in the period ahead. And I suppose we'll be announcing something at some point on that. But I look forward to it.
Q: Could you tell us, sir, when you might be planning to do it?
Rumsfeld: I guess it's not quite set yet. We'll -- when we get close when it's to occur, why, we'll make an announcement. It may very well be that I have to do something before I go, and therefore, when I go is kind of open at the moment.
Q: Mr. Secretary, given what we've --
Rumsfeld: Should we alternate, maybe, and have the Polish press --
Jamie, you're not from Poland, are you?
Q: No. No, no.
Q: I'm from Poland. (Laughter.)
Rumsfeld: Go ahead.
Q: My name is Marigo Koski (ph). I'm from Polish Public Radio. Let me ask in Polish, because you have to hear our minister.
(Through Sec. Rumsfeld's off-mike interpreter.) How do you see the necessary (inaudible) relationship between the United States and Ukraine, that (inaudible) defense minister mentioned, and what would (inaudible) in the relationship?
(Same question, through Min. Szmajdzinski's interpreter.) What do you think about the relations of Unite States and Ukraine, which was mentioned here by the Polish defense minister? And that is the role for Poland in shaping these relations?
Rumsfeld: Well, first let me say that, needless to say, Poland and Ukraine have a close relationship, and Ukraine is part of the Partnerships for Peace in the NATO -- under the NATO umbrella. It is a country that has had a special relationship to NATO. And we have -- just in the time I've been back here as secretary of Defense, I've met -- goodness, it must be three or four or five times with the NATO ministers, with the Ukraine minister, I think, at NATO meetings and other meetings. I think it's important that the relationship between NATO and Ukraine continue to evolve and develop, as has been the case with other countries, and we look forward to that.
Q: I think he wanted an answer from the Polish -- didn't you want an answer from your minister? You're okay. Well, can I ask my question, then?
Q: (Off mike.)
Q: Mr. Secretary, given what we've heard from other U.S. officials, not you, but other U.S. government officials about what Abu Zubaydah has claimed in terms of al Qaeda's capability to develop a so-called "dirty" bomb, how concerned should Americans be about the threat of the remaining remnants of al Qaeda being able to smuggle such a device into the United States? Where would you put that on the concern meter for the average American? Hearing these stories, how worried should they be about that?
Rumsfeld: Well, I don't know that I'm the best person to comment on that. It seems to me that the intelligence community and the law enforcement community are addressing a full range of potential threats that come across the radar screen every day. For myself, I'll simply say that we as a -- as people in the world have to recognize that we're living in a time when exceedingly powerful weapons exist, and the -- (interrupted by loud noise of airplanes flying overhead) -- (pause) -- you want to give a little respect for the airplanes flying over? (Laughter.) (Pause.)
We live in a time -- free people all over the world live at a time when weapons of mass destruction exist. Their power and their range grow from year to year. And we know that there are a number of terrorist states that are on the state terrorist list, and have been for many years, that have those weapons. We also know that those states have relationships with global terrorist networks. And what that means is that the impetus, the urgency of the global war on terrorism is underlined and punctuated with each of those various threats that occur from day to day.
We have a task, we have an important responsibility. Our margin for error as people has been shrinking. With two big oceans and friends to the north and the south, over the centuries the United States could be fairly relaxed. Today, with the power and reach of those weapons, one cannot be relaxed. We need to be attentive, we need to -- as the president has said, exist in a state of heightened awareness. And we need to take the steps that are appropriate to see that we do everything humanly possible to put pressure on terrorists all across the globe, and that we find ways to root out the individuals and the networks and the countries that harbor them.
Q: Do you believe Abu Zubaydah, that al Qaeda could build such a weapon if they had the materials, sir?
Rumsfeld: I don't want to get into specifics. What I will say is that we have seen that terrorists are willing to wrap explosives around themselves and blow up shopping malls. We've seen that they're willing to put explosives in their shoes and try to blow up airplanes. We've seen that they're willing to fly airplanes into buildings, tall buildings, and kill thousands of people. It doesn't take much of a leap of imagination to recognize that there are people on this earth who are perfectly willing to go about the world trying to kill thousands, and more than thousands, of innocent men, women and children.
I think what we'll do is take a couple of more questions. And the minister is getting a nice suntan and he's ready for another question.
Rumsfeld: Yes, sir?
Q: Polish Radio, RMF FM. My name is -- (inaudible). I would like to ask both of you, Mr. Secretary, if you could tell us more about the plans for the informal meeting of ministry of secretaries of defense of NATO countries in Warsaw, and if it is a new way of discussing the problems inside NATO when NATO is closer cooperating with Russia. So as far as I understand, the Russian minister will not participate in the meeting in Warsaw.
Rumsfeld: That's my understanding as well.
I'll let the minister respond.
Szmajdzinski: The meeting in September will be the meeting of the North Atlantic Council. We do not exclude the possibility of having the minister of defense of Russia during this meeting.
But the discussion about the increased military capabilities of the alliance will be conducted within the ministers of the alliance and not with Russia.
Q: Mr. Secretary, I have a two-part question. The Canadian defense minister said --
Rumsfeld: And then two follow-ups with that. Yeah.
Q: -- yeah -- (chuckles) -- says that Brigadier General Marc Dumais is going to be the co-chairman of the inquiry into last week's friendly fire incident. And I want to know if that's your understanding, if that is going to be his role, as well as will the American investigator -- or American investigators be able to question the Canadian troops?
Rumsfeld: I -- this is a matter that is going to be handled through the administrative chain in the Department of Defense. There are well-established procedures for how these things are done. When more than one country is involved, obviously, those procedures are adapted. And the last I heard was -- and I'm not involved in it, needless to say, and I should not be considered the authority on the subject -- but the last piece of paper I saw this morning, earlier, was that that is correct, that there is to be a U.S. and a Canadian co-chair of the investigation. And who will be able to ask what of whom, I think, is a matter for the respective countries. But I know, from our standpoint, we expect that there will be full transparency for the Canadian participants.
Q: Do you know if there's any desire upon the part of the American pilot to offer any condolences to the families of the victims?
Rumsfeld: You would have to ask down through the administrative chain. I'm sure that the Public Affairs Office can -- could answer that question. I can't.
Q: Okay. Thank you.
Rumsfeld: Okay. Thank you very much, folks.
Szmajdzinski: (In English.) Thank you very much. | <urn:uuid:66b14628-14f5-48cd-a123-03dc4658efe1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=3411 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969312 | 2,368 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The time has come for politicians to, well, stop being politicians and find a way to compromise before looming tax increases and spending cuts topple this nation’s economic scales.
If Republicans and Democrats in Washington — and the president, himself — have any real concern for the American people they serve, they’ll find a way to agree, ending this nonsense that, were it not so serious, would be down-right comical.
But to do that, politics must be set aside. This can’t be about a particular party or even a particular platform, and it certainly can’t be about whether the compromise will help get congressional leaders elected again — it must be about what is in the best interest of the nation and its people.
Somehow the thing that should be at the very heart of any decision has, once again, been cast aside as politicians dig their heels in, refusing to budge on issues that must be resolved.
According to The Associated Press, congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over a long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been set. The Senate is due in session today, although the immediate agenda includes legislation setting the rules for government surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists abroad, including Americans, as well as a measure providing $60 billion for victims of Superstorm Sandy.
And, the House has no plans to convene, following last week’s rebellion in which conservatives torpedoed Speaker John Boehner’s legislation to prevent scheduled tax increases on most, while letting them take effect on million-dollar wage earners.
So where does that leave the American people? Unfortunately we all are at the mercy of selfish lawmakers that we have elected to represent us.
Americans need to wake up and realize that what is being done in Washington right now on both sides of the aisle is not representing us or the nation’s best interest. What is happening now is politicians doing what they do best — working for their own best interest.
Our leaders will tell us, via national news shows, that the time has come to stop “kicking the can down the road,” yet the road gets longer and the can seems to be winding its way down it with no stopping in sight.
And why? Because nobody is willing to blink.
As Americans, we have an obligation to stand up and cry foul, telling our lawmakers that enough is enough, demanding that they find a way to resolve this situation and resolve it now. We tend to forget that we, not they, are the bosses here, the ones who’ve put them in the very powerful and lucrative positions they hold, and they we can remove them from those seats on high just as easily as we have put them there.
It’s time we called for compromise, and it’s time lawmakers heard our demand and did something about it.
So use your voice. Call your legislators and let your voices be heard, loudly and clearly. Perhaps our collective forces will spark action that doesn’t seem to be destined to be fueled any other way.
It’s time politicians return to being lawmakers and representatives of the people before they run us off the fiscal cliff. | <urn:uuid:205d3626-8099-4a67-bea7-e272464ab4de> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.clintonnc.com/pages/full_story_myown/push?article-It%E2%80%99s+time+to+compromise%20&id=21243634 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964298 | 659 | 1.578125 | 2 |
(S.D.)-Rapid City Woman Reunited With Class Ring 40 Years Later
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) - A Rapid City woman who lost her class ring in the flood of 1972 has been reunited with it.
Vesper Wright says she had long written off the ring that she'd gotten in 1968. She says that "it was completely gone from my mind."
But Neil Ramlow had discovered the ring in 1972 while working for a mobile home salvage company after the flood. He held onto it for 40 years, hoping at some point to figure out how to find its owner.
Last year, he finally connected with a Rapid City librarian, who matched up the ring's initials with Wright's maiden name.
Getting the ring back was especially meaningful for Wright, who had worked to pay for it herself as her first major purchase.
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Send Story to a friend. | <urn:uuid:e96a3c89-e64c-4e5f-a866-74d41b3a0a45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.chadrad.com/newsstory.cfm?story=27804 | 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 | 0.975277 | 196 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Title: Software usability
Context: If pictures are worth a thousand words then infographics have to be worth a couple gazillion at least.
Synopsis: You can talk about the benefits of software usability until you are blue in the face, but so what? Words are cheap. Well, no longer will you be forced to engage in non-infographic backed discourse on the necessity and efficacy of software usability. Finally an infographic that is the indisputable defense of your argument you have been waiting for! Everyone believes a good infographic. How can you not? What with its bright colors, bite-sized factoids, and artfully arranged numbers that may or may not be true. You know that software usability has truly arrived when it warrants its own infographic. And today, we have arrived my friends???
Best Bit: “Users are almost ten-times more likely to encounter a usability problem in a business application than a website.”
Title: Infographic: Watch A Company???s Management Team Mutate Over 4 Years
Context: We’ve all most likely been re-orged at least once in our life. Did I say once? Sorry, I meant eleventy billion times???
Synopsis: Large, hulking, ossified corporate structures are impossibly inflexible. Stagnant. Inert. Lifeless. Except that they are not. At all. Almost counterintuitively, these corporate behemoths tend to behave like living organisms in reality, constantly changing, growing and repairing itself as new challenges are faced, as it grows and indeed, as it dies. It is hard to understand the symbiosis that allows such complex organisms to function on a day to day basis and while institutional prejudice projects a plodding and structured pyramid, it can actually be incredibly dynamic and organic, if not more than a little chaotic. So the next time you hear the dreaded news that you are about to be re-orged ??? again ??? don’t weep over the systemic uncertainty, instead embrace the anatomical metamorphosis as part of the healing necessary to keep any living entity robust.
Best Bit: The animation itself. Watch at full screen as the creator recommends. | <urn:uuid:c634ad16-fc7c-4fc1-980f-f1d6b2431e4e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://areuxperienced.me/tag/infographics/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940316 | 447 | 1.585938 | 2 |
In 1995 I moved into Plimsoll Road in north London. A few doors down was a pub called The Plimsoll, with a trainer stuck in the middle of its pub sign. Around the edges of the sticker was a scrap of grey sea.When the pub changed name a few years later, a strange impulse prompted me to buy the sign—an ugly object that revealed, with the trainer stripped off, the Plimsoll mark, and the name and dates of Samuel Plimsoll, 1824-1898.
I knew then that the Plimsoll line was the level of maximum submergence marked on a ship, but other than that nothing about the man it was named after. I began to find out about him, and discovered a story of such resonance and irresistible drama, and a character so compelling, that my idle curiosity became something of an obsession.
Plimsoll had fought a timeless fight, I discovered, against the greed of those who made profits, on behalf of those who took risks to provide the profit. Encountering resistance to his proposed life-saving safety measures from shipowners, including some in the House of Commons where he was an MP, Plimsoll turned for support to a nation that responded with tumultuous enthusiasm. I discovered, to my delight, novels, plays, music hall songs and poems his decade-long campaign inspired.
The story was vivid and involving even to someone who had not previously paid attention to the merchant marine. When I learnt of Plimsoll losing his temper in a famous outburst in the House of Commons, I could see and hear him, shouting and trembling with rage, while his wife scattered copies of protest from the ladies' gallery onto the press gallery beneath her. The parades and cheering crowds that applauded Plimsoll's cause; the doomed sailors saying farewell to their sweethearts; the desperate mariners clinging onto the masts of sinking ships; the uncooperative captain who painted a Plimsoll mark on the funnel of his ship ... such images as these emerged from the contemporary accounts I read, and caught me up.
I was moved to tears by Plimsoll's rhetoric and entertained by his stroppy defiance, and wrought upon by the sufferings of those who drowned or were bereaved. The greed, negligence, callousness, racism and deviousness of the evil-doers in this tale were shocking. And the story of the machinations in the corridors of power, and the crisis that nearly ousted Disraeli from office, seemed to be a slice of political history we should not forget.
Nor, I thought, should we forget the tenacity of one man and his wife in pursuing an altruistic end at any cost to themselves. Sincere and intensely empathetic, unstuffy and plain-speaking, and ahead of his time in much of his thinking, Plimsoll was someone I was very glad to get to know.
The pub sign is now in my back garden. The house is full of Plimsoll memorabilia. And I can't leave the subject alone even now the book is published.
This essay originally appeared on Booktrust. | <urn:uuid:f16e2119-99d3-4bca-babe-82135878720d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nicolettejones.com/main/why | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979548 | 652 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Sunday Nation (Kenya)
In Kenya’s Sunday Nation there’s an excellent opinion piece by Ken Kamoche about the crisis in Zimbabwe. He starts by talking about the Chinese arms shipment to Robert Mugabe’s regime, saying it shows up a disturbing insensitivity and lack of understanding on the part of the Chinese – “it beggars belief how anyone in China could have expected the incident to pass unnoticed,” he says. The author is thankful that South African workers have refused to let it through.
Kamoche then moves on to give a damning account of Robert Mugabe and his desperate efforts to cling to power, dismantling some of his own arguments in quite a witty way, applying business school logic to the situation: the very fact that Mugabe thinks there’s no-one even in his own party who could successfully take over from him is an indictment of his own inability to nurture talent – which is in itself a leadership failing.
Kamoche also says Zimbabwe has gone from being the breadbasket of Africa to its basket case, before saying more seriously that any African who turns a blind eye to the situation in Zimbabwe “stands accused of complicity in the dehumanization of fellow Africans” – implicitly pointing the finger in particular at South African President Thabo Mbeki, who’s refusal to speak out against his neighbour, Mugabe, is drawing increasing criticism at home and abroad.
Aujourd’hui en France (France)
What do Martinicans dream of?
The French paper Aujourd’hui en France (known as Le Parisien in the Paris region) visits the island of Martinique to see how the Caribbean Overseas Department is doing as it mourns the death of its most famous son, Aimé Césaire, whose funeral took place last week.
The newspaper features an interview with the poet’s successor as mayor of the capital Fort-de-France, Serge Letchimy. His party favours autonomy for the island, but not independence; a view that seems to be shared by most. Martinique of course has a much weaker economy than the rest of France. Figures provided by Aujourd’hui en France highlight the gap: the island has an unemployment rate of 22 percent; its economy, particularly banana cultivations, was hit badly by hurricane Dean last year.
For the young students interviewed by the paper, Martinique still needs France. They say they’re proud to be Martinican but also proud to be French, and if they went to finish their studies in mainland France or abroad, they’d definitely return to Martinique to try and contribute to the island’s development.
Sunday Times (UK)
Every year the Sunday Tmes publishes it’s rich list, detailing the fortunes of the richest people in Britain. Today, Lakshmi Mittal is ahead by a country mile. The steel magnate is the sixth wealthiest man in the world, and with 27.7 billion pounds, his fortune is more than double that of the next person on the British list: Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich. The list for Britain is chocked full of foreign names, which I suppose reflects at once British multiculturalism… and British tax policy.
Independent on Sunday (UK)
The Independent on Sunday, however, thinks all this celebration of wealth is in rather bad taste. Let’s talk about happiness, not money, says the paper, and it’s compiled a list of the hundred people in Britain who’ve done most to contribute to the happiness of others.
It’s rather a hard thing to calculate I think, but you’ve got for example Henry Allingham, a WW1 veteran and Britain’s oldest man at 111… alongside a 16-year-old cancer sufferer who’s written a heartening book about how to deal with cancer when you’re a kid. The list ranges from anonymous charity workers to apparently generous-hearted famous people, such as the painter David Hockney, and JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, who enjoys the honour of appearing on both lists. | <urn:uuid:3e5e7a39-e478-4738-99ee-8adc057bad7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.france24.com/en/20080427-papers- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952463 | 866 | 1.5 | 2 |
Talnot was a Bajoran who wrote several prophecies, including The Prophecy of the Final Days, which is one of the ancient texts.
In 2375, Winn Adami, when told by the disguised Skrain Dukat of the Rogath blight that had struck Relliketh, believed it had been foretold in a passage from Talnot's prophecy, "the land shall be poisoned by a great evil." (DS9 episode: "'Til Death Do Us Part")
In 2376, Lenaris Holem tried to think if the destruction of Sidau had been foretold in Talnot's prophecies. (DS9 novel: Bajor: Fragments and Omens) | <urn:uuid:8d0f429f-f858-4354-b93a-e5b72dcd1e05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Talnot | 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 | 0.960082 | 144 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The governor ordered the California Air Resources Board to allow refiners and gas stations to roll out the winter blend before its previously- scheduled Oct. 31 sales date, an action the governor said will increase gas supplies up to 8-10 percent, "with only negligible air quality impacts."
In a letter released at noon, as California gas prices fluctuated widely for the seventh straight day, the governor said the market variations were imposing "unacceptable
An analyst said California's wholesale gasoline market has gone "into a panic about the adequacy of California fuel supplies" Jeffrey Spring of the Automobile Club of Southern California said the market disruption followed a power failure at the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery and closure of a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California last Monday.
Other pressure on the state's gas market includes local refineries dropping production levels, energy companies exporting fuel to Mexico and other countries, and allowing inventory to dwindle in anticipation of
The average price of a gallon of self-serve regular gasoline in Los Angeles County rose to a record $4.661 Saturday, increasing 12.2 cents from Friday. In Orange County, it settled at one penny lower than LA.
"I am directing the Air Resources Board immediately to take whatever steps are necessary to allow for an early transition to winter-blend gasoline" to be sold in California, the governor said in a letter to Mary Nichols, his appointed head of the CARB.
Some clean air advocates had worried that such a move would hurt air quality in October, which is one of the hottest months in coastal California due to Santa Ana windstorms and other seasonal weather fluctuations.
The governor said today that winter gas evaporates more quickly than summer blend, which takes longer to evaporate and is better during the smoggiest months of the year in the summer.
Brown said he expected gas prices to settle down, now that the
ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance has resumed operations following an electricity
outage last week. A Tesoro refinery in the South Bay is expected to resume
production next week, after its maintenance shutdown. | <urn:uuid:d96d9ca8-83fa-409e-ab48-59972a015e4d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailynews.com/lifestyle/ci_21719903/gov-jerry-brown-orders-switch-winter-gas-dampen | 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 | 0.952121 | 426 | 1.554688 | 2 |
The major provides students with basic competency in the functional areas of finance and provides students with the education foundation that is needed to prepare them for professional exams such as the Series 7, CFP and CFA. This major, as well as the personal financial planning major, combines the applications of analytical skills to the problems facing financial managers, financial institutions and individual investors while developing an understanding of today’s financial markets. This program leads to careers in business financial management, banking, securities and commodity brokerage, consulting, insurance, financial planning and small business entrepreneurship.
For department information or additional degree requirements, click here
For course description, click on the course. | <urn:uuid:eb910641-aa33-4197-babf-1c31984dd401> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nmu.edu/bulletin0708/node/81?processtype=self&action=degtype&phase=phase5&elementid=7&subaction=313 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952015 | 133 | 1.585938 | 2 |
We welcomed it with open arms and windows.
And with a St. Patrick's day trip to Washington DC.
We visited our long-time, Californian-turned-east-coaster friends Jordan and Kristy and spent the afternoon in DC, walking along the path where pink and white blossoms lined the streets and water for miles.
Kristy & Jordan and Rene & I on our walk to the monuments...
The Jefferson Memorial... I've been before once. But this day we took the time to read the quotes inscribed on the stone walls of the interior. The words were so beautiful and rang so true.
If you've never seen them, you can read the full inscriptions here.
My favorite was this....
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free..."
There's something about hearing those words spoken by men at a time that seems so long ago. About standing on the same steps as those who read those inscriptions for the first time.
It makes me see myself as much smaller and my potential as far greater.
We can look back at history and see so much change. We see how men and women saw the injustices before them and did something to make things different. And we still see injustice now. So then what? What is stopping us from speaking out, from creating and being change? What is stopping us from paving the way for those after us just as it's been paved by those before us? Someone will.
Let it be you and me.
I'm thankful for men like Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. Thankful that we can be reminded by these memorials of their lives that injustice ought not be tolerated and that individual people can make a difference.
And I'm thankful for Cherry Blossoms and sunshine.
Happy St. Patrick's Day | <urn:uuid:901bb07c-06cc-44de-a2b5-e03e377a88d3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thevelardes.blogspot.com/2012/03/cherry-blossoms.html?showComment=1332130263615 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968713 | 446 | 1.5 | 2 |
I grew up on Internet RFCs, so technical standards issued under licenses that forbid free redistribution offend me. Every such document, whether intentionally or not, is a device for hindering open-source software projects and privileging closed-source developers with big budgets and lawyers to hand.
They offend me even more when (as, for example, when the GPS reporting standard NMEA 0183) the proprietary “standard” is so badly designed that a mob of crack-addled rhesus monkeys could have done a better job – and for this they want me to pay? They offend me the absolute most when the “standard” is distribution-restricted, expensive, badly written, and its topic is a safety-critical technology – so that people could actually die because some jerk wants to collect a trivial amount of secrecy rent on a standard that was crappy to begin with.
Fortunately, there is a way to monkeywrench the organizations that perpetrate this sort of thing – and I’ve spent a substantial part of the last couple of weeks doing exactly that. I’m writing about it here to encourage others to do likewise.
In connection with my ongoing work on GPSD I’ve recently been studying AIS, the marine Automatic Identification System. Since about 2004, maritime authorities worldwide have required every passenger vessel and every cargo ship of more than 300 tons displacement to carry a transmitter that periodically squawks navigational information about the vessel. AIS receivers in the vicinity can pick up this information and make it available for useful things like collision-avoidance systems.
A few AIS receivers have integral map displays meant to be read by a human, but these are largely toys for casual boaters. Most behave a lot like shipboard GPS sensors; they ship AIS sentences out a serial or USB port to be read by navigational systems that will do something useful with them…like, say, automated collision avoidance.
Well…you can do something useful with these sentences if you can read them. And why is that a problem? Because distribution of the core standard for the AIS reporting format (ITU-R 1371) is, you guessed it, restricted under terms that are proprietary and evil. Just like NMEA 0183. But what’s even worse, in this case, is that the International Telecommunications Union is charging secrecy rent on a standard that appears to have been designed mostly by the U.S. Coast Guard. So, a organization that is (a) private, and (b) foreign is charging Americans secrecy rent on a design built with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
When I learned this, I decided I was going to (a) do the open-source world a service, and (b) break their secrecy any way I could. Yeah, I know, some of you are going to tell me this sort of thing is pretty normal in every area of technical standardization other than the Internet; I even knew that, having run into it occasionally before. But this time I reached the “mad as hell and not gonna take-it any more” stage. I’m pushing back.
Here’s what I’ve done. Without looking at the two proprietary standards that bear on AIS (NMEA 4.0 and ITU-R 1371), I’ve collected all the public information on AIS messages and reporting formats into a document which essentially blows the lid off their secrecy. The “without looking” is important; at this point, I don’t want to see them so that I can”t be gigged for copyright infringement over my document. Here it is: AIVDM/AIVDO protocol decoding.
And how do I know this describes reality? Because it describes the masses of AIS sentences helpful people have been sending me. I have a working decoder in the GPSD suite now; it’s not integrated into gpsd itself yet, but you can use it to filter logs full of armored/encoded AIS sentences into readable text. Full support, and test clients that do cool stuff, will follow soon.
Actually, this thing wouldn’t have been trivial to put together even without the legal barriers. The public sources, and conversations with people who have seen NMEA 4.00 and ITU1371, reveal that these documents have been through multiple revisions with substantial changes in them – and the latter one is so densely and badly written that I was able to gather much of what I needed from technical corrigenda published by the U.S. Coast Guard. Also, I document common practice that the official standard doesn’t.
OK, so you should now go and do likewise with some other evil, locked-up-behind-a-paywall standard. We need to teach the ITU and other organizations like it that they will get p0wned and scorned every time they try to collect secrecy rent on these things, so they’ll stop trying.
And don’t worry that you’ll stop good standards from issuing; these groups are generally funded by vendor consortia and governments heavily enough that I can’t see the document fees they collect making any actual difference to them. And that, really, is the final turn of the screw – not only are they locking out open-source projects, they’re doing so for an amount of rent that’s tiny in comparison to the rest of their funding base.
How do I know this? Simple – because it has to be; after all, the Internet Engineering Task Force successfully organizes the same sort of standards work without charging one thin dime for viewing RFCs. So screw you, ITU and NMEA both; your paywalls aren’t just greedy, they’re stupid greedy.
(Oh, and anyone who’s got test sets pairing armored AIVDM sentences with text decodings of same should send them to me so I can add them to my regression test. Don’t bother if it’s just messages types 1-5, though, I’ve got plenty of test sets for those.) | <urn:uuid:2cdc5a44-18a8-4c38-a165-4befc4c85ee6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=888 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939171 | 1,281 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Thu February 21, 2013
Man's Ashes Take Trip Across The Country
Originally published on Fri February 22, 2013 9:26 am
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And now, a story from Washington State, a story about one family's unexpected odyssey. Seventy-three-year-old Kevin O'Grady had recently died in Seattle, where one of his two daughters lives. She mailed her father's ashes across the state to her sister, Katy, in Spokane. That's where their father, an Air Force veteran, was to be buried with military honors.
But after several days, Katy had yet to receive the ashes.
KATY O'GRADY: So I was calling post office after post office, just devastated, trying to find where my dad is. Where is my dad? Finally, probably the fifth or sixth or seventh person that I spoke to - there is your dad, there he is. Oh, we found him. He's over in Pennsylvania.
BLOCK: Katy O'Grady says the post office did not know what went wrong or when his remains would make it home. With his military honors ceremony quickly approaching, Katy called her sister in Seattle to tell her their father was 3,000 miles away.
O'GRADY: I remember her saying, are you kidding me, are you serious. I said but just think about it, where is Pennsylvania? And she paused for a minute and she goes, back east. I said where has dad always wanted to go. She goes...
(SOUNDBITE OF A GASP)
O'GRADY: ...back east.
BLOCK: Their dad was an Illinois native and a history buff who never got to journey back east, until now. His posthumous trip across the U.S. included a stop in Philadelphia.
O'GRADY: He landed where the Liberty Bell is. And he could have told you everything you could have ever needed to know about the Liberty Bell. His next stop was New Jersey. And then, on his way back, he crossed through pretty much every state he could have ever possibly want it to go through.
BLOCK: Meanwhile, Kevin O'Grady's honors ceremony was held without him. Nearly a week later, the Post Office delivered his ashes, which Katy took to the veteran's cemetery in Spokane for a quiet burial. What happened there took her by surprise.
O'GRADY: Another service was going on at that time but you couldn't see it. And right as I kissed my dad goodbye, and the gentleman places him in the ground, guns go off and then "Taps" starts playing. And because it's just open field up there, it surrounds you - like it was specifically made just for him. I believe my dad was there.
He was, like, It's OK, kid - I got this.
BLOCK: Katy O'Grady is still awaiting a full explanation from the U.S. Postal Service. But she thinks her dad would be happy with the mishap for finally getting his trip back east.
O'GRADY: He got it on the U.S. Postal Service's dime. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | <urn:uuid:28a5eecc-1bdd-4a6c-b529-7e377e82830e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/mans-ashes-take-trip-across-country | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.987661 | 678 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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321 N. Pine | <urn:uuid:057e67f6-10b9-479e-9e9f-e13685bd7e0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.eduguide.org/privacy-policy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935125 | 2,183 | 1.671875 | 2 |
April 5 - Wisconsin Psychological Association annual meeting, Madison, Wisconsin April 5 - Rainbow Book Cooperative, Madison, Wisconsin April 13 - San Antonio Book Festival, San Antonio, Texas April 15 - Book People, Austin Texas April 29 - Book presentation, Lozano Long Latin American Studies Institute, Austin, Texas May 18 - The Twig bookstore, San Antonio, Texas May 24 - The Brazos Bookstore, Houston, Texas June 1 - Barnes & Noble (N. Preston), Dallas, Texas
The city of Juárez is ground zero for the drug war that is raging across Mexico and has claimed close to 60,000 lives since 2007. Almost a quarter of the federal forces that former President Felipe Calderón deployed in the war were sent to Juárez, and nearly 20 percent of the country’s drug-related executions have taken place in the city, a city that can be as unforgiving as the hardest places on earth. It is here that the Mexican government came to turn the tide. Whatever happens in Juárez will have lasting repercussions for both Mexico and the United States. Ricardo Ainslie went to Juárez to try to understand what was taking place behind the headlines of cartel executions and other acts of horrific brutality. In The Fight to Save Juárez, he takes us into the heart of Mexico’s bloodiest city through the lives of four people who experienced the drug war from very different perspectives—Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, a mid-level cartel player’s mistress, a human rights activist, and a photojournalist. Ainslie also interviewed top Mexican government strategists, including members of Calderón’s security cabinet, as well as individuals within U.S. law enforcement. The dual perspective of life on the ground in the drug war and the “big picture” views of officials who are responsible for the war’s strategy, creates a powerful, intimate portrait of an embattled city, its people, and the efforts to rescue Juárez from the abyss.
War Stories is a film about the experience of war and how war transforms the lives of those who have lived it. Regardless of time and place, regardless of whether or not a war is seen as justified, for the soldier there is something deeply universal about the experience, as if he or she were enacting something timeless, something known but not fully thought or articulated that only those who have lived it can comprehend. This film attempts to bring the viewer closer to that inarticulable experience through the stories of those who have seen war up close.
Mexico, America’s third most important trading partner and a country with whom the US shares a 2,000-mile border, is hanging by a thread. "The Fight to Save Juaréz," explores Mexico’s war against the drug cartels and the implications of this campaign for Mexico and the United States. The focus of the book is Ciudad Juarez, epicenter of Mexico’s war against organized crime, where thousands have died and where at one point 25% of the Mexican government’s forces fighting this war are deployed. The book reveals an intimate portrait of a city caught in the crossfire, where no one can escape the extraordinary violence that is taking place.
This film describes the wave of kidnappings and other crimes that have swept over Mexico in the last decade. Today Mexico has one of the highest incidences of kidnapping in the world, for example, and while the phenomenon was initially a problem for the wealthy elite, it has become increasingly ‘democratized’ (as the rich found ways of protecting themselves). Today, people in all walks of life are ready targets.
Institutional Rate: $225.00
This exhibit (part of the permanent collection at Humanities Texas) explores the impact of the racially motivated murder of James Byrd on that community. Ricardo Ainslie created, wrote, and produced Jasper, Texas: The healing of a community in crisis, a traveling photographic exhibit (New York City, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Galveston) for which he enlisted the collaboration of photographer Sarah Wilson. Each exhibit opening (the exhibit book won the 2003 Digital News Award for Best Project -photography, text, design) was conceived as an event in which audiences learned the lessons of Jasper as conveyed by some of the Jasper residents who were widely credited with keeping the peace in the tense aftermath of the murder.
Through interviews with some of the world’s leading researchers studying the ways of the brain, this film explores such topics as the relationship between the brain and the visual arts, music, and poetry, conscious and unconscious functioning, and the relationship between the consciousness of humans in comparison to other animals.
Looking North: Mexican Images of Immigration (2007, 30-minutes) explores Mexican views of the phenomenon of mass migration that has resulted in the exodus of so many Mexicans from their country origin. Through man-in-the-street interviews with people from all walks of life we get a glimpse at America’s immigration controversy from a decidedly different point of reference. Viewers will be surprised at the range of reactions and feelings represented in this film.
Crossover (1999, 55-minutes) illustrates the bittersweet legacy of school desegregation in the town of Hempstead, Texas, where the historically African American K-12 school was razed and all of its contents, including years of awards and trophies, disappeared. The Sam Schwarz School was not even noted in the official history of the Hempstead Independent School District, even though most of Hempstead’s African Americans who were over the age of 40 had attended it and remembered it fondly and with a certain nostalgia, notwithstanding the Jim Crow era with which the school was associated. Crossover has been screened to a broad range of audiences across the country (from the National Science Foundation’s Chautauqua Course in 2003, the American Psychological Association’s National Multicultural conference in 2005, to conferences at historically African American universities and community Black History Month events –over 22 screenings in all). Crossover also became the cornerstone for “Crossover Lives,” a Humanities Texas – National Endowment for the Humanities oral history project (in collaboration with the Texas Association of Developing Colleges and the Texas African American Heritage Association) exploring personal narratives of the experience of school desegregation.
Drawing from in-depth interviews with identical and fraternal (same-sex and opposite-sex) twins ranging in age from 15 to 65, The Psychology of Twinship (Second Edition: Northvale: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1997) explores the emotional development of twins, their relationships with each other, and how others experience them. The book is unique in its interest in the psychology of twins’ experience rather than twins and the influence of genetic makeup.
In 1998, three white men dragged James Byrd to death behind a pick up truck in Jasper, Texas. Byrd was black, and at least two of his killers were members of a white supremacist prison gang known as the Confederate Knights of America. The racially motivated dragging death was a modern-day lynching. Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper (University of Texas Press, 2004) explores the life and psychology of Bill King, the man who took the lead role in the murder. Ricardo Ainslie spent two-and-a-half years researching the book in Jasper and on Texas’ Death Row, where King is presently housed. Long Dark Road was runner up for Best Non-Fiction for the 2005 Hamilton Book Awards.
No Dancin' In Anson: An American Story of Race and Social Change (Jason Aronson, 1995/The Other Press, 2002), explores life in a small West Texas town following a life-imitates-art controversy in which the City Fathers outlawed dancing within the city limits and the controversy that ensued. Anson’s dancing controversy was symptomatic of Anson’s social transformation following the Civil Rights Act. People of Mexican ancestry who during Jim Crow had not been permitted to live within the city limits or eat at its restaurants now comprised a third of the town’s population. No Dancin’ explores the implications of Anson’s profound social change as both individual and a collective experiences and the ways in which this small Texas town may mirror what is taking place in America more generally. | <urn:uuid:b6df30bd-a261-43ca-a460-76d4e0ce811d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ricardoainslie.com/all-projects/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955312 | 1,724 | 1.710938 | 2 |
I just potted a large piece from a gi-normous Peruvian apple cactus that my brother has growing in his yard in Long Beach. He cut the piece and gave it to me for Christmas and it has been drying out in in my garage since then. I thought I had left it too long, but the top sections seem fleshy and fine, with only the bottom cut part being nice a dried out. So, I potted it this morning, mixing in some of the soil I bought from you. My question is, should I water it now, or should I wait for several more weeks? Should I fertilize it soon? I have some of the kelp product.
My sister took a smaller piece last year and has it growing inside in her apartment in NYC! It’s doing fine (though no fruit yet…ever?). When she started, she waited 4-6 weeks for the cut to dry out, then potted it. She waited another month before watering it — based on internet research.
The fruit is really good!
ps, I love receiving the newsletter and seeing all the names and photos of the plants.
It looks like the Cereus is doing well. If you potted it in our soil you don’t need to fertilize for a year. In general after planting a cactus cutting you want to wait at least a week before watering. Since you have Aeoniums planted in there with it you will need to water sometime in the next 2 weeks, and that’s OK.
Your sister’s plant in NY should grow fine if its in a sunny window, but it is unlikely to bloom. The flowers are pollinated by bats, so even if it does flower she would need to hand pollinate to get fruit (assuming she doesn’t have any bats in her apartment. I know it’s New York, but still…)
We don’t get fruit on ours here in the flats of Berkeley since we also don’t have bats, however up in the hills they do have bats and they do get fruit. Delicious fruit. | <urn:uuid:3d3f21ef-fb0f-4e01-b0cb-50d0802cb5c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cactusjungle.com/blog/ | 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 | 0.976712 | 438 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Posted 1 year ago
Time Telling through the Ages by Harry C. Brearley, copyright 1919, is a comprehensive work covering the clock and watch industry, sponsered by Robert H Ingersoll & Bro., the Ingersoll Watch Company, which was in business from 1881 - 1922.
Since I collect various watches and clocks, this book was added to my book collection.
Harry Brearley writes in the preface, "In the midst of the world war, when ordinary forms of celebration seemed unsuitable, this book was conceived by Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro., as a fitting memento of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of their entrance into the watch industry, and is offered as a contribution to horological art and science. Its publication was deferred until after the signing of the peace covenant."
Was happy to receive this gift for my collection | <urn:uuid:1b80aa2b-1f95-4e69-a105-8b50ab099bbf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/56270-time-telling-through-the-ages-by-harry?in=collection-725 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957109 | 181 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Most of what is discussed here involves lowing energy costs for residential customers, hence the name HOME energy pros. The commercial customer has a monthly energy bill that often exceeds the amount…Continue
Started this discussion. Last reply by Bruce Navin Jul 12, 2012.
A quick poll to see how widespread smart meter technology has become.What type of power meter do you have, and how does your utility use the technology?a: Analog dial meterb: Digital, but not a…Continue
Started this discussion. Last reply by Rod Fox Aug 9, 2012.
How much does the blower off delay at the end of a cooling cycle add to the humidity? It's been discussed that leaving the fan on all the time while in cooling mode increases humidity dramatically,…Continue
Started this discussion. Last reply by Bob Blanchette Jul 2, 2012.
We're on a project installing "smartstats" for customers. I'd like to get some feedback to what other Building Science guys thought about the program/thermostat. The costs of energy vary based on…Continue
Started this discussion. Last reply by Tom Delconte Apr 8, 2012.
Recently my 13 yr old Carrier A/C devolved a leak and I chose to replace the system rather than track down the leak and repair the coil. I had been reading about doing manual J calculations and how contractors are scared to death to undersize. I had been talking to co-workers about this and it's an uphill battle getting them to think different than 1 ton per 500sq ft. So I decided to take confidence in correct sizing and "put my money where my mouth is" and install a 2 ton sized…Continue
Posted on September 2, 2012 at 4:39pm — 1 Comment
How SmartHours Plus works: It costs more for electricity during peak periods of high customer demand.
Other factors, like weather conditions and the time of year, also drive electrical prices higher. SmartHours Plus,
sometimes known as Variable Peak Pricing (VPP), allows you to save when costs are lower, or off peak. Peak hours
are 2 to 7 p.m. weekdays, and prices during those hours vary based on demand (see chart). You’ll get advance
notice of tomorrow’s peak price the…
Posted on January 17, 2012 at 1:30pm | <urn:uuid:e8eb05fc-bc8f-4ff0-98a6-69f0832cf803> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://homeenergypros.lbl.gov/profile/BobBlanchette?xg_source=profiles_memberList | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945501 | 486 | 1.617188 | 2 |
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 20, 2012
I have never accepted V. S. Naipaul’s description of our society as being half-made or our people as mimic men and women. Some years ago, I wrote a trenchant criticism of Naipaul’s work in which I responded to those designations in an effective manner. For the past three weeks, I have been traveling in Germany and England. As I view our political landscape from afar, I cannot help but get the impression that our Prime Minister is playing dolly house with our people’s future; fiddling around which their good nature; and treating them with a contempt they do not deserve.
Take her latest installment of child’s play. She goes off to India for two weeks; takes a large entourage with her; arrives back home hours behind schedule as an adoring press and her ministers (that is, those who were left behind while she visited her motherland) gathered at Piarco to welcome her back. When asked how many persons accompanied her on her trip and the cost of the mission she responds with infantile flippancy that has become her standard behavior: “I do not know exactly how many people were part of the mission because I did not see everyone.”
Can she be for real? You do not know how many persons accompanied you on your mission because you did not see everyone?
Her reply about the cost of the mission was equally as juvenile: “Every time we travel, we have reported and indicated what we will do.” When translated, this answer can be interpreted to mean that she does not know how much of the taxpayers’ money she spent [or intended to spend] when she undertook her mission; did not consider it an important consideration; nor did she care particularly how much was lavished on those who went on the mission.
Now don’t get me wrong. I do not begrudge the honorable Prime Minister going to India in search of roots or in seeking to construct bridges with India. In 1964, quickly after our Independence, Dr. Williams and a twelve-person entourage visited about nine countries in Africa “to form” what he called “a political [bridge] between the West Indies and Africa, mindful of how dangerous the bridge can be [if] it is not soundly constructed and properly maintained.”
Many Trinbagonians were skeptical about his Dr. Williams’ trip. Like Kamla, he took off without announcing its purposes and objectives to anyone. The Mighty Sparrow dubbed it an “African Safari” and Lord Blakie, in a scathingly skeptical calypso called, “De Doctor Eh Dey,” complained: “Before you see about your territory,/ You chartering plane and flying from country to country.” Blakie saw Williams’ trip as an attempt to get away from the growing unease that was gnawing at the government.
Kamla has found herself in a similar predicament. After her ill-fated State of Emergency and false alarm about an assassination threat, she needed to change the political conversation so she flew to India. She claims that she had 200 meetings in 8 days since four days were spent traveling; signed 50 memoranda of understanding; and conducted 50 joint trade meetings while she was there.
Normally, much preparation is done before these heads of state meetings which leaves this observer to ask: how many preparatory meetings were held prior to Kamala’s trip to India; over how many months these meetings were held; and where were they conducted? Could the prime minister give us this information when she addresses parliament about her trip to India?
Not content with her initial flippancy and conspicuous illogic, she jumped into the silk controversy since she is one of the recipients of this auspicious gift. She opined: “The judges took a decision [about the silk] and we respect that decision. But as far as I am advised – and I wasn’t here – there are only two persons calling for the removal of the silk…But is it most interesting that many of the persons who are making the most noise gave themselves silk in the first place and there was no noise…Should you take that route, then it means that every person who received silk under that criteria for the past 50 years should give them back? I think the answer is no.”
Now the question here is very simple. Should there be criteria upon which these honors are given out and if so, what should they be? Lawrence Maharaj claims that he offered such criteria when he was in office. The present Attorney General claims that it is a holdover from the colonial days so we should get rid of them. Yet he and his colleagues were seen celebrating his receipt of this colonial honor.
But if the AG is so intent on disparaging this honor, why is it that his argument for being deserving of this honor is that he appeared in front of that supremely colonial body, the Privy Council, over forty times leading Jack Warner to argue that he was denied such an honor previously because he brought all of his cases against the bad ole PNM?
But if the silk is emblematic of colonialism and if we have come into a new understanding of ourselves, why is it that we still prostrate ourselves before the supremely colonial Privy Council? And if the Prime Minister and her Attorney General are prepared to rail against colonial institutions why dosen’t the UNC vote to install the Caribbean Court of Justice as the highest appellant court in our region? We can say that although we pay fealty to Mother India and Mother Africa we place even more trust in a fledging Caribbean civilization that we are trying to nurture and develop.
When this happens, we would be able to say: “Dr. Williams take Lord Blakie advice / If you want Trinidad to be really nice/To stifle my conscience that I can’t do/Trinidad and Tobago depend on you / Ah don’t want when I watch the daily paper / You talking and smiling with Nkrumah / He seeing ’bout he country, you see ’bout yours.”
Kamla, are you listening? | <urn:uuid:0e5212dc-f970-4157-a7eb-13375b936c6e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog/?p=6060 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97945 | 1,302 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Why All the Robo-signing?
Shedding Light on the Shadow Banking System
January 24, 2012
The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19th that the Obama Administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the “robo-signing” scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation reveals that it did not just happen occasionally but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail – fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion.
To the President’s credit, however, he seems to have shifted his position on the settlement in response to protests before his State of the Union address. In his speech on January 24th, President Obama did not mention the settlement but announced instead that he would be creating a mortgage crisis unit to investigate wrongdoing related to real estate lending. “This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans,” he said.
The Deeper Question Is Why
Whether massive robo-signing occurred is no longer in issue. The question that needs to be investigated is why it was being done. The alleged justification—that the bankers were so busy that they cut corners—hardly seems credible given the extent of the practice.
The robo-signing largely involved assignments of mortgage notes to mortgage servicers or trusts representing the investors who put up the loan money. Assignment was necessary to give the trusts legal title to the loans. But assignment was delayed until it was necessary to foreclose on the homes, when it had to be done through the forgery and fraud of robo-signing. Why had it been delayed? Why did the banks not assign the mortgages to the trusts when and as required by law?
Here is a working hypothesis, suggested by Martin Andelman: securitized mortgages are the “pawns” used in the pawn shop known as the “repo market.” “Repos” are overnight sales and repurchases of collateral. Yale economist Gary Gorton explains that repos are the “deposit insurance” for the shadow banking system, which is now larger than the conventional banking system and is necessary for the conventional system to operate. The problem is that repos require “sales,” which means the mortgage notes have to remain free to be bought and sold. The mortgages are left unendorsed so they can be used in this repo market.
The Evolution of the Shadow Banking System
Gorton observes that there is a massive and growing demand for banking by large institutional investors – pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds – which have millions of dollars to park somewhere between investments. But FDIC insurance covers only up to $250,000. FDIC insurance was resisted in the 1930s by bankers and government officials and was pushed through as a populist movement: the people demanded it. What they got was enough insurance to cover the deposits of individuals and no more. Today, the large institutional investors want similar coverage. They want an investment that is secure, that provides them with a little interest, and that is liquid like a traditional deposit account, allowing quick withdrawal.
The shadow banking system evolved in response to this need, operating largely through the repo market. “Repos” are sales and repurchases of highly liquid collateral, typically Treasury debt or mortgage-backed securities—the securitized units into which American real estate has been ground up and packaged, sausage-fashion. The collateral is bought by a “special purpose vehicle” (SPV), which acts as the shadow bank. The investors put their money in the SPV and keep the securities, which substitute for FDIC insurance in a traditional bank. (If the SPV fails to pay up, the investors can foreclose on the securities.) To satisfy the demand for liquidity, the repos are one-day or short-term deals, continually rolled over until the money is withdrawn. This money is used by the banks for other lending, investing or speculating. Gorton writes:
This banking system (the “shadow” or “parallel” banking system)—repo based on securitization—is a genuine banking system, as large as the traditional, regulated banking system. It is of critical importance to the economy because it is the funding basis for the traditional banking system. Without it, traditional banks will not lend and credit, which is essential for job creation, will not be created.
All Behind the Curtain of MERS
The housing shell game was made possible because it was all concealed behind an electronic smokescreen called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.). MERS allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws. Title would be recorded in the name of MERS as a place holder for the investors, and MERS would foreclose on behalf of the investors. Payments would be received by the mortgage servicer, which was typically the bank that signed the mortgage with the homeowner. The homeowner usually thinks the servicer is the lender, but in fact it is an amorphous group of investors.
This all worked until courts started questioning whether MERS, which admitted that it was a mere conduit without title, had standing to foreclose. Courts have increasingly held that it does not.
Making matters worse for the servicing banks, Fannie Mae sent out a memo telling servicers that in order to be reimbursed under HAMP—a government loan modification program designed to help at-risk homeowners meet their mortgage payments—the servicers would have to produce the paperwork showing the loan had been assigned to the trust.
The hasty solution was a rash of assignments signed by an army of “robosigners,” to be filed in the public records. But the documents are patent forgeries, making a shambles of county title records.
Complicating all this are tax issues. Since 1986, mortgage-backed securities have been issued to investors through SPVs called REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits). REMICs are designed as tax shelters; but to qualify for that status, they must be “static.” Mortgages can’t be transferred in and out once the closing date has occurred. The REMIC Pooling and Servicing Agreement typically states that any transfer significantly after the closing date is invalid. Yet the newly robo-signed documents, which are required to begin foreclosure proceedings, are almost always executed long after the trust’s closing date. The whole business is quite complicated, but the bottom line is that title has been clouded not only by MERS but because the trusts purporting to foreclose do not own the properties by the terms of their own documents.
John O’Brien, Register of Deeds for the Southern Essex District of Massachusetts, calls it a “criminal enterprise.” On January 18th, he called for a full scale criminal investigation, including a grand jury to look into the evidence. He sent to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz over 30,000 documents recorded in the Salem Registry that he says are fraudulent.
From Lending Machines to Borrowing Machines
The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent, but because they have been required to in order to come up with the collateral (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: the banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates.
“Instead of lending into the economy,” says British money reformer Ann Pettifor, “bankers are borrowing from the real economy.” She wrote in the Huffington Post in October 2010:
[T]he crazy facts are these: bankers now borrow from their customers and from taxpayers. They are effectively draining funds from household bank accounts, small businesses, corporations, government Treasuries and from e.g. the Federal Reserve. They do so by charging high rates of interest and fees; by demanding early repayment of loans; by illegally foreclosing on homeowners, and by appropriating, and then speculating with trillions of dollars of taxpayer-backed resources.
Not only has the system destroyed county title records, but it is highly vulnerable to bank runs and systemic collapse. In the shadow banking system, as in the old fractional reserve banking system, the collateral is being double-counted: it is owed to the borrowers and the depositors at the same time. This allows for expansion of the money supply, but bank runs can occur when the borrowers and the depositors demand their money at the same time. And unlike the conventional banking system, the shadow banking system is largely unregulated. It doesn’t have the backup of FDIC insurance to prevent bank runs.
That is what happened in September 2008 following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank. Gary Gorton explains that it was a run on the shadow banking system that caused the credit collapse that followed. Investors rushed to pull their money out overnight. LIBOR—the London interbank lending rate for short-term loans—shot up to around 5%. Since the cost of borrowing the money to cover loans was too high for banks to turn a profit, lending abruptly came to a halt.
Fixing the System
The question is how to eliminate this systemic risk. As noted by The Business Insider:
Regulate shadow banking more tightly, and you probably have to also provide government backstops. Shudder. Try to shut the thing down or restrict it and you suck credit out of the system, credit which much of the non-financial “’real” economy uses and needs.
Interestingly, countries with strong public sector banking systems largely escaped the 2008 credit crisis. These include the BRIC countries—Brazil Russia, India, and China—which contain 40% of the global population and are today’s fastest growing economies. They escaped because their public sector banks do not need to rely on repos and securitizations to back their loans. The banks are owned and operated by the ultimate guarantor—the government itself. The public sector banking model deserves further study.
Whatever the solution, a system that requires the slicing and dicing of mortgages behind an electronic smokescreen so they can be bought and sold as collateral for the pawn shop of the repo market is obviously fraught with perils and is unsustainable. Please contact your state attorney general and urge him or her not to go through with the robo-signing settlement, which will be granting immunity for crimes that are not yet fully known. Phone numbers are here. The surface of this great shadowy second banking system has barely been scratched. It needs a very thorough investigation.
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com. | <urn:uuid:ba70f799-9611-499f-a0d4-42011a6b8089> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/2012/01/30/why-all-the-robo-signing-shedding-light-on-the-shadow-banking-system/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971732 | 2,468 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Past Award Finalists and Recipients
Australian of the Year
National Finalist Australian of the Year 2013
Adventure teacher Andrew Hughes has combined his two great passions: inspiring students from diverse backgrounds, and building awareness of the importance of our natural world. Seven years ago, Andrew developed the innovative teaching program Expedition Class, where primary students follow him into the wilderness by satellite link and interact live as he tackles challenging landscapes and situations Andrew has also developed the high school expedition program Skullbone in which students are re-engaged, linking curriculum to their own real adventures on expeditions. Andrew began in 2006 by kayaking 5,000 km through rough seas and crocodile-infested waters from Hobart to Cape York. Since then he has undertaken more extraordinary adventures, including surviving on a desert island, and exploring coastal and internal Papua New Guinea. Having started the programs at significant personal and financial expense, he has built support through the Bookend Trust and several patrons, including author Bryce Courtenay. Andrew is the 2012 Power of One Awardee, and is a key part of the award-winning Bookend team recognised by the Tasmanian Government, the United Nations Association of Australia, the Banksia Environmental Foundation, and named Australian Geographic's Conservationist of the Year. | <urn:uuid:89663f0e-3768-4870-95ed-4a113b41ab1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/honour-roll/?view=fullView&recipientID=1032 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946571 | 254 | 1.617188 | 2 |
At least you should try to hit the door several times and having to knock it down to enter, instead of receiving with the door open. While it is a defense mechanism and survival, when fear takes over, preventing us from clarity of thought, the picture is viewed from another perspective where the lens is prevailing negativism. Do not allow yourself to find something negative in everything, always seeks its bright side, you’ll see any, you find them and stay with that thought. If everything has been for a cure and a healing, also is there to fear. The best way to combat any kind of fear is action. We must dare to try, let no more be a possibility for another time perhaps, is to take action and advance our projects. We must become restless adventurer and experience the unprecedented and unknown.
Decided to undertake our projects and carrying them out will be the only way to know “question.” Investigate new things, seek, find new challenges and bring forward, that keeps your spirit strong and alive. That’s when you learn someone truly said: “Try something you have not tried it before and do at least three times: once to fear, another to find out how and the third to see if you like it or not. For other opinions and approaches, find out what christie’s art auction has to say. “There are inner qualities that are due to fear, such as courage and faith in God. And some people may bring them to the fore in times of terrible crisis. But if fear does emerge will do its work safely. Deepak Chopra fears: those ghosts that surround and harass the man from the bottom of the story.
Georg Fischer “Things have not been done before tasks are worth today. Do you belong to flock to obey, or do you lead the way? Are you a coward who fears for the crew teasing suspicious, or leave, at the risk of failure to seek a goal that is new? E. Gust. It uses the forces inside you, they’re there, find them, and face your fears. If you have a project in mind or a dream I want to turn into reality, time and the time is now. Good luck Eduardo white. | <urn:uuid:75f7c9ab-0098-4d45-8d83-d685d38ea63f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.utabusinessalumni.com/category/news | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964691 | 461 | 1.570313 | 2 |
LED lighting has been moving gradually from niche markets such as traffic lights and camping headlights to fixtures at homes and businesses. It could gain a brighter profile among investors as well with the planned Nasdaq debut of Lighting Science Group, which wants to raise up to $150 million.
The company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday reflects optimism for the LED market’s growth this year and beyond. Lighting Science’s shares have been traded on the OTC Bulletin Board, and now it wants to enter the big league of Nasdaq under the same symbol “LSCG.” The Florida company hasn’t priced the shares it plans to offer.
Lighting Science designs and makes LED lamps and other light fixtures for the residential, commercial and industrial market. The company has been selling LED lighting for nearly a decade and owns factories in Satellite Beach, Florida and Monterrey, Mexico. The Mexico plant started production only last November. It also hires Citizen Electronics to make its products in Asia.
The company increased the number of people on its payroll, including contractors, to about 600 at the end of last year from 210 at the end of 2009, according to its SEC filing.
LED lights are energy efficient and long-lasting, but also more expensive than compact florescent or halogen lights. Investors have been willing to put money on LED lighting to help drive down its cost because it’s targeting an existing and vast market, unlike other greentech such as solar and fuel cells. Bridgelux, which makes LED chips and arrays, recently raised $20.7 million. The company opened a factory in California only last year and launched a “plug-and-play” LED fixture for industrial and commercial building owners about a year ago.
Lighting Science cited a bullish projection by Strategies Unlimited that says the LED lighting market will grow from about $874 million in 2010 to over $4.3 billion by 2014.
The company isn’t profitable, however. Lighting Science posted a loss of $155.38 million on $30.33 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2010. During the same period in 2009, the company posted a loss of $35.25 million on $21.97 million in revenue.
Lighting Science’s two main customers are Osram Sylvania and the Home Depot, which accounted for 21 percent and 6 percent of the sales respectively during the first nine months of 2010, the SEC filing said. Its main competitors include General Electric, Philips, Panasonic and Cooper Industries.
To read more on greener telecom and data centers and smart grids check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
- How to Cut Carbon from Mobile Networks
- Smart Energy Emerges As Layer in Telco’s Energy Home
- Smart Algorithms, the Future of the Energy Industry
Photo courtesy of Lighting Science Group | <urn:uuid:c328421a-0bc3-47c9-a6b8-4f88ef17a4f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gigaom.com/2011/02/11/lighting-science-aims-to-raise-150m-and-join-nasdaq/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939693 | 599 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Last year, the Boca Raton Museum of Art opened in its new location with "Picasso: Passion and Creation -- The Last Thirty Years." Now, almost a year later, the museum presents two retrospectives focusing on another 20th-century giant: "Chagall: From Russia to Paris -- Drawings and Watercolors 1906-1967," displayed in the rear gallery on the first floor, and a second-floor show, "Chagall in Print."
Chagall's Amanti, from the 1920s: swirling perfection
On display through April 7. Call 561-392-2500.
Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Mizner Park, Boca Raton
Like the Picasso exhibition (see "The Late, Great Picasso," March 22, 2001), the Chagall shows make sense seen primarily in the context of a more comprehensive career spanning close to a century. Marc Chagall was born in 1887 in Russia and died in 1985; also like the long-lived, Spanish-born Picasso, he spent a great deal of his life in France. But these two new shows don't remind us of the vigor and seemingly endless inventiveness of their subject the way the Picasso retrospective did.
Unless you're already familiar with Chagall, the works here might well leave you wondering just what he did to achieve his international reputation and popularity. For that, you would have to turn to the artist's paintings, which repeatedly emphasized, as Boca Museum executive director George S. Bolge observes in the exhibitions' catalog, "Chagall's trademark fiddlers, floating lovers, and village landscapes... [and] his Jewish roots...."
Chagall can be thought of as an expressionist precursor of surrealism, as he demonstrated in some well-known works: I and the Village (1911) with its topsy-turvy buildings and people, and Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers(c. 1913-14), which features the Eiffel Tower hovering in the background, to name two. Aside from these and other early works, however, I've always thought Chagall was a bit overrated, although I wouldn't go as far as Time magazine critic Robert Hughes, who once declared, "Chagall painted nothing but cloying ethnic kitsch for the last thirty years of his life."
Except for a few watercolors, the two Boca shows focus on drawings and graphics. "From Russia to Paris" includes 70 pieces, most of them in pencil, pen, or India ink on paper. "Chagall in Print" has more than 165 etchings, including all 105 of the ones the artist did to illustrate the Bible, a set he worked on all through the 1930s and during the first half of the 1950s. The latter show also includes a series done for The Story of the Exodus, illustrations for André Malraux's On the Earth, and some 1967 sketches for costumes for a ballet company.
One way of looking at drawings and sketches is as preparatory work -- a fleshing out of ideas that will later be further developed in other media. Another is as works that can stand on their own. Either way, it seems to me that the works in this show fall short.
A few of the early drawings hint at what's to come later in the paintings -- a 1910 pencil portrait of a violinist, for instance, and an ink drawing of a pair of lovers from the 1920s -- but many of the other drawings come across as uninspired doodling. Some of the portraits, especially those of harlequins and clowns, are simply reminders of how much better other artists handled such subject matter (again, Picasso comes to mind). One ink piece -- The Artist and the Crucifixion (1939-40) -- is an unsettling image of an artist working from what appears to be a real crucified man right there in the studio.
Among the best pieces in the first-floor show are three charcoals, all titled Portrait of P. Barchan and done in Berlin in 1923. Seen side by side, they show how deftly Chagall captured three subtly different moods of the same character. Another especially strong drawing is a pencil portrait called The Chimney-Sweeper (c. 1925), which conveys greater facial expressiveness and detail work than is evident in many of the other portraits.
The main impression I took away from the "From Russia to Paris" show is that, for an artist who painted people with such precision and care, Chagall could be surprisingly clumsy with a pencil or pen. That impression was strengthened by the "Chagall in Print" show upstairs.
An introduction posted at the beginning of the second exhibition insists that Chagall "is perhaps best known and most widely popular for his lithographs than for his work in any other media." But Art 20: The Thames and Hudson Multimedia Dictionary of Modern Art characterizes Chagall as "essentially a colorist," which points us away from the lithographs and back toward the paintings (and to Chagall's designs for stained-glass windows such as the ones he did for the Metz Cathedral in France).
A strangely awkward handling of the human figure predominates in the Biblical series, with many of the people frozen in stiff, formal poses. (That's why The Grave of Rachel, with its simple landscape including a tree, some hills, a building, and a camel, is such a standout in this series.) This is especially jarring for an artist whose paintings often feature highly fluid, graceful figures, such as the dreamy, elongated couple portrayed in the 1915 painting Birthday.
Compared with some of the outstanding shows hosted by the Boca Museum in the past year or so -- the Picasso, for example, and Arman: The Passage of Objects (see "Objects of Dissection," December 27, 2001) -- the Chagall shows aren't exactly bad; they just feel faintly halfhearted. The catalog suggests that this might indeed be the case. The reproductions are fine, but there's that lack of attention to detail that can be so irritating. Bolge, the museum's executive director, ends up with a G as his middle initial on both the title page and at the end of his "Acknowledgments" section, while both Chagall's first and last names are misspelled as "March" and "Cahgall" within the first few pages. The gushy introductory essay by Vincenzo Sanfo reads like a careless translation, and India ink is referred to as "Indian ink" throughout the catalog. | <urn:uuid:8fb7d261-69bf-41ff-8141-2c06cd6ebff8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2002-02-28/culture/different-strokes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969677 | 1,361 | 1.75 | 2 |
All the current answers are very good, but I want to propose a different point of view.
Even though I would say the vast majority of games don't get their stars right is out of straight laziness and/or ignorance. The same goes for firearm sounds, physics (ever played a racing game? any racing game?), history (for historical games) and many other fields.
However, if I were directing a game, I may not aim for realism in certain elements such as the star field, and I would do so intentionally, on aspects that are not crucial to gameplay.
The reason behind this is that the more you aim for realism, the larger the player expectations will be on that realism. And while player expectations have no limit, budget and time do.
So suppose I got a star chart for my game, and I use that as my skybox. Players who notice that, will then criticize that the stars are 3 degrees off, or that based on the vegetation you see in the game, you can estimate the latitude where the game is taking place, and that the star field doesn't correspond to such a latitude.
So even if I fix that, more players would then criticize that you can't see the ISS, or that some star has an apparent magnitude of 4.5, but in the game it looks like 4.8.
Rinse and repeat.
The point here is that, the more you aim for realism, the bigger your players' expectations will be. If your game requires realism in some aspect, then by all means dedicate your time and money to maximizing this realism. For all the rest, I would probably intentionally make it unrealistic, so I can keep my focus and that of my players in the parts of the game that actually matter. | <urn:uuid:2cda8ff6-7ba0-4b7f-a6b7-c1a4e67a59da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/47611/why-no-night-sky-with-realistic-star-constellations?answertab=oldest | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973686 | 361 | 1.5 | 2 |
by Michele Kumi Baer
“What do you think about women with disabilities?” asked Sarah, a Nigerian woman living with a visual disability.
I was confused, and she sensed it. So she asked another question: “You aren’t embarrassed or annoyed by having to meet with us?”
It was my second day at Mobility International USA’s Gender, Disability and Development Institute (GDDI) so wasn’t it obvious? I respect and admire these women. I want to learn from them. As someone working at a women’s rights organization, isn’t it clear that I am committed to supporting women with disabilities?
Unfortunately, these things are not obvious to Sarah and other women who came from all over the world to participate in the 6th International Women’s Institute on Leadership and Disability (WILD). I learned there that oftentimes aid organizations give off the impression that they could care less about women with disabilities, hence Sarah’s question to me.
Watch reflections from MIUSA 2010
Sarah shared with me a story about a young woman in her community with a mental disability who was imprisoned as a sex slave by seven young men. When Sarah approached the authorities about the rapes, they were dismissive of the violence committed against this young woman and told Sarah that she was crazy to think that anyone would find such a woman desirable. Hearing this made my blood boil.
While the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) entered into force in 2008, there is still a long way to go to until we live in a world that is free and just for people with disabilities.
I look at my own community and know that those of us in the global women’s movement need to do a better job of including women with disabilities. For starters, we should employ more women with disabilities in senior leadership positions in our organizations and foundations and include the voices and images of women with disabilities in our publications. These are just a couple of my ideas. I know the WILD women and other sisters working on disability rights have many, many more.
If you answered “yes” to my three questions on inclusivity (see the "How Inclusive are You?" section to the left), you are on the right track to including people with disabilities in your work. But simply reading this blog and answering my questions is not enough. To understand the issues facing any group of marginalized people, you have to actually engage with them, learn from them, and allow them to lead.
One of my fellow GDDI participants predicted that the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities – and women especially – would be the “next frontier” in international development. Let’s make her prediction come true.
Michele Kumi Baer is the social media coordinator for Global Fund for Women and attended GDDI this August. Michele's work at the Global Fund is rooted in her strong belief in the power of online technologies to build communities and incite activism. | <urn:uuid:b2014d7b-611d-41da-a45e-a05507355736> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/impact/news/176-2012/2011-her-wild-adventure | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97181 | 623 | 1.84375 | 2 |
House Takes Up Sandy Relief Bill After It Was Dropped By Previous Congress
The House made good on a promise from Speaker John Boehner to pass stalled federal aid for those hit by Hurricane Sandy. Tamara Keith talks to Robert Siegel to explain the politics surrounding the $51 billion package.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
And I'm Robert Siegel. It's been two and a half months since Hurricane Sandy crashed into the East Coast and since then, federal disaster relief funds have gotten wrapped up in politics. At the end of the last Congress, House leaders faced strong criticism from within their own party for letting a relief bill die. Well, after a series of votes today, they approved as much as $50 billion for New York and New Jersey.
For more on this story, we're joined now by NPR congressional correspondent Tamara Keith. Hi, Tamara.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hi, Robert.
SIEGEL: This measure is coming in multiple parts. I want you to explain what's going on here.
KEITH: I will do my best. In short, House Republicans want lots of opportunities to vote on various aspects of the Sandy funding measure so that they can take a stand and then not necessarily take a stand on the next part or basically vote for it before they're against it, kind of a thing. So there's a base bill. It's $17 billion in funding and then there's an amendment that would and another $33 billion getting us up to that 50 billion mark.
And in there about a dozen other amendments, some of which would remove funding from very specific things, like the National Weather Service Ground Readiness Program. And right now, as we speak, there are votes happening on another amendment that would basically require offsets, spending cuts, to match the $17 billion in disaster funding.
SIEGEL: Tamara, this is disaster aid, which is not usually so controversial. Why such a complicated dance on this particular measure?
KEITH: The Republican mantra for the past several months or probably more than that has been we have a spending problem and this is spending. Yes, it's spending that's traditionally been untouchable, but it's still spending. And one theory of why House leaders let the Sandy funding bill die at the end of the last Congress was because they had just voted on this fiscal cliff deal, which was something that most Republicans hated.
It didn't deal with spending and it allowed taxes to rise. And then, you know, the very next bill to come up was going to ask them to approve tens of billions of dollars in new spending. You know, it's been two weeks now, but there's still many - House Republicans are very uncomfortable with this. But then there are others, like New Jersey's Frank LoBiondo, who say we need to do this.
REPRESENTATIVE FRANK LOBIONDO: I've asked my colleagues, because we seem to be very mixed and divided on some of this, think of the human face. My constituents, the constituents of the Northeast, they're not just whining. They're not just uncomfortable. They are devastated.
SIEGEL: Now, Tamara, the Northeast is not the Republican heartland, so what are you watching for in today's votes and what do you think House Speaker John Boehner might be looking for?
KEITH: The real question is how many House Republicans will vote against this measure. Most congressional watchers, most people believe that this will pass somehow, some way, with strong support from Democrats. But you could see 60, 70, maybe more House Republicans peel off. And the question is whether John Boehner will get the majority of the majority, whether a majority of House Republicans will support this measure.
In the past, he said he wouldn't bring a bill up unless it had that level of support, but then with the fiscal cliff deal, very few Republicans supported it and it passed because of Democrats. And the question now is whether he is going to have to keep breaking his rule.
SIEGEL: And we'll see what happens this evening. NPR's Tamara Keith speaking with us from the Capitol. Thank you.
KEITH: Thank you, Robert. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | <urn:uuid:a1395373-402a-430c-933b-b0030c703cda> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbur.org/npr/169452224/house-takes-up-sandy-relief-bill-after-it-was-dropped-by-previous-congress | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9687 | 915 | 1.523438 | 2 |
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Tue January 15, 2013
Governor Martinez Seeks To End Immigrant Driver's Licenses
Republican lawmakers gave Gov. Susana Martinez a standing ovation as she renewed her push to stop New Mexico from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.
Martinez used her state of the state address on Tuesday to ask lawmakers to repeal a 2003 law allowing driver's licenses for illegal immigrants and others without a Social Security number.
GOP lawmakers cheered when the governor outlined the proposal.
Democrats have blocked the measure during the past two years.
The GOP governor contends it's a public safety risk to issue licenses to illegal immigrants.
Supporters of the licensing law say it deals with the reality that some people working and raising families in New Mexico are illegally in the country, and need to drive to their jobs as well as take children to school.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. | <urn:uuid:1b8c45a8-7393-4bdb-913e-678c413decb2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://krwg.org/post/governor-martinez-seeks-end-immigrant-drivers-licenses | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953855 | 193 | 1.75 | 2 |
Dee Dee Bridgewater Appears at United Nations World Food Day
Singer will appeal for international solidarity to finance fight against world hunger
In observation of the 31st United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Food Day, and coinciding with the 66th anniversary of the founding of the FAO, a special ceremony is being held in New York City today that will bring together the prominent people and opinion leaders from UN system, humanitarian and development organizations and the private sector. Singer Dee Dee Bridgewater will speak at the event as part of her long-standing efforts to assist the FAO in their global outreach to end hunger.
The event will be an opportunity to raise funds in support to agriculture and livelihood recovery projects in the Horn of Africa and to assist households to meet their food needs over the next six months and beyond.
Bridgewater is currently in the midst of a world-wide tour in support of Midnight Sun, a collection of love songs released on her own DDB Records/Emarcy (Universal) label. | <urn:uuid:84f67a4c-26c8-4338-ac13-f7ad86f90ccb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jazztimes.com/articles/28764-dee-dee-bridgewater-appears-at-united-nations-world-food-day | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931721 | 207 | 1.554688 | 2 |
I purchased a compressor recently. It is a Speedaire, 80 gallon compressor with 7.5 HP motor and 80 gallon tank.
Based upon first impressions, the motor and pump run fine. However, when bringing the tank up to pressure, I heard a hissing noise at about 140 PSI, and realized that there is a hairline crack in the tank, near a 2" long weld attaching the engine/pump mounting platform to the tank.
The crack does NOT track the heat affected zone of the original weld, in fact it is perpendicular to it.
Here the "=" signs denote the HAZ, and "\" signs denote the crack.
In any case, when I saw this happen, I almost dirtied my pants and immediately relieved the compressor of pressure.
I am not yet sure what was the cause of this crack in the first place. I will try to find what I can.
My question, obviously, concerns my repair options. I do weld and have some experience with both TIG, as well as with 7018.
But, I can hardly think of any welding where more is at stake than here, due to pressure. So, I see the following options:
1) Take off motor and pump, cut holes in the tank and throw it away, look for another tank.
2) Repair the tank by welding and hydrotest.
Considering option 2, the first question concerns welding. How would you weld? How do you identify where the crack ends? Would you drill relief holes at ends of the crack?
The second question is about hydrotesting. I was thinking about something simple, such as replace tha gauge with a 400 PSI gauge, close off all openings besides one, fill tank with water, connect to a hydraulic pump or grease gun, and bring pressure to 400 PSI (the tank supports 200 PSI) and look for leaks.
This is very time consuming and I would like to know how likely would it be that I would make some very bad mistake.
Results 1 to 10 of 33
01-24-2009, 07:23 PM #1Junior Member
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
Welding, hydrotesting a compressor tank
01-24-2009, 08:05 PM #2Senior Member
- Join Date
- Jun 2004
This comes up quite often, and my answer is always the same: Unless the tank is something really special (and this isn't), scrap it. It isn't worth the risk fixing it. New tanks are cheap. The crack you are describing is due to fatigue from vibration and the stress concentration at the mount point (quite common, by the way). Likely to show up elsewhere as well in the near future, and my show with undesirable manifestations. The tank is worn out. There is no practical (ie: less expensive than a new tank) way to detect and repair these flaws before they open up for most people.
I would suggest a replacement tank. Make up a frame to support the compressor rather than mounting to the new tank. Much better life that way, if you keep the tank drained of moisture. DO NOT weld mounts for the compressor to the new tank. If you must mount the pump directly on the tank, find a tank manufactured for the purpose, with the loading considered in the design.
As a side note, in most places in the US and Canada, it is not legal to repair the tank yourself. It must be done by an authorized shop (Natn'l board "R" stamp holder, or equivalent). Non-commercial users can get away with it, but if there is a failure, your insurance probably won't cover any damage or injury.
01-24-2009, 08:12 PM #3
I'd choose option #1
I don't weld for a living so I'm by no means an expert, but I know several people who do weld for a living (my Dad mainly - Ok so he retired a few years ago at 71yrs young) and I can't think of one who would try to repair it. I do know some farmers and so called weldors who have tried repairing tanks, one of which spent 3 days in the hospital after a portable tank litterally got wrapped around his head (you could see where his nose, chin, and forehead are in the tank). The tank busted loose at about 90psi. I would have to beleive that if it is cracked in one spot, there's another one coming. I'm sure it could be fixed by someone that is willing to take a chance, but I hope like heck that no one is by it when it decides to let loose. I've seen the outcome of that, and trust me it aint pretty. Good 'ole flathead (his nickname even before the 'accident') kept that old tank as a stark reminder to the power of compressed air. Me, being the good friend and in general a smart A$$, bought him a new air tank after getting home from the hospital. That was probably 7 years ago - he still won't fill it.
For what it's worth - If you decide to scrap it, That is a good idea to cut holes in it so someone doesnt see it at the scrap yard, curb, or whatever and decide to try using it....
01-24-2009, 08:57 PM #4
As others have said "dont fix it"
Dont cut holes in it!!!
Cut in in half long ways.
Make a grill or smoker.
A parts washer, Large turkey fryer.
But dont scrape it use it for a project.
Lay the 2 halves a their side and a la penutbutter sandwich, a beer tub.
The idears are coming fast. LOLBe safe
Give more than you get and
you will get more than ya need.
This is true for the good and bad
that life puts out.
01-24-2009, 09:46 PM #5Junior Member
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Cornwall, Ontario
I agree with everyone. I had that happen to a little compressor I kept in the welding truck. I think I'm gonna cut it in half and make two flower pots.
01-24-2009, 11:03 PM #6
If it were mine, I would break it down, (motor and Compressor), cut the motor base off the tank (I'd use a cut-off wheel) leaving about 1/4" on the tank to weld it back on. Inspect the tank for more cracks, buff off the paint from the crack area, degrease it (using a non flammable degreaser) V out the crack slightly, preheat the base metal (90-150 degrees) Propane torch is fine, Tig or Mig the crack, clean-up the welded area, Fill it with a water hose (hydro test) most water systems are around 60-80psi. If all is good, weld the base back on the tank and put it back in service. You wouldn't believe the cracks I've fixed in the area Refineries and the pressure and temperature they operate at.
01-25-2009, 06:10 AM #7
Wouldn't the proper hydro be more than the pressure it would run at? I also work in a refinery and the hydro's are always more than the service the vessel would see on a normal operating run. Plus they always have someone to sign off on everything. I would think if he fixes the tank and something happens down the road a few years he would be liable or injured. Just my .02...BobBob Wright, Grandson of Tee Nee Boat Trailer Founder
Metal Master Fab Salem, Oh 44460
Birthplace of the Silver & Deming Drill
1999 MM185 w/185 Spoolgun,1986 Thunderbolt AC/DC
01-25-2009, 06:20 AM #8Senior Member
- Join Date
- Aug 2004
- Milan Michigan
I have fixed a few compressor tanks in my life time and I have never seen a failure where the tank exploded like a granaede.
Every time I have seen a failure it was nothing more than a split and the air bled out.
I also have a few friends in the portable welding industry and none of them have seen a tank blow into peices like a bomb that many of you suggest.
Keep in mind I'm talking about compressor tanks, usually 2'-3' in dia. max.
I could see a large dia. tank having a big split that if you were standing near the split when it occurres that you could get hit by the splitting metal as it flares out.
Also keep in mind that I am talking about a air compressor tank that typically holds not more than 175 Psi.
Not a 3,000 psi tank.
I would like to hear some feed back as to what the failures were on the air compressor tank failures that you vetrans have seen.
Did the tank slightly split open and the air leak out as I have always seen or did the tank break into peices throwing schrapnal.
01-25-2009, 07:21 AM #9
Weld 4 fins on one end, paint it OD, then dig a hole deep enough for about 1/3. Tell people it's an unexploded bomb.Nick
Miller 252 Mig
Miller Cricket XL
Millermatic 150 Mig
Miller Syncrowave 200 Tig
Jet Lathe and Mill
Jet 7x12 horz/vert band saw
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Century 50 Amp Plasma Cutter
20 ton electric/hydraulic vertical press
60" X 60" router/plasma table
Vist my site: www.nixstuff.com
and check out some of my ironwork and other stuff
01-25-2009, 07:49 AM #10Senior Member
- Join Date
- Jun 2004
Not common, but they do let go: http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=176187
Most common failures I have seen would probably be pinholes from rust, followed by fatigue cracks near mounts. Neither is worth repair, as both indicate that the tank is near the end of its life and problems will recur, unless the tank is something really special (odd size, part of a machine and it can't be replaced, etc) | <urn:uuid:84edb17d-7c94-43e0-bbb7-9cae4a09ac9b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.millerwelds.com/resources/communities/mboard/showthread.php?15707-Welding-hydrotesting-a-compressor-tank&p=174154 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958691 | 2,159 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is renewing his probe into the effect of drug company outsourcing on drug safety by asking Merck to explain the safety implications of its outsourcing practices. Brown, who earlier cast his skeptical gaze of Pfizer, in July released a letter he'd sent to the company asking for more information on its reliance on global outsourcing for manufacturing pharmaceutical ingredients and finished products.
He cited a statement by Merck senior vice president Richard Spoor that the company is “moving in the direction of externally sourcing approximately 35% of the overall manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients… and packaging by 2010.”
“Drug company profits cannot come at the expense of consumer safety,” Brown said. “Pharmaceutical companies must be able to guarantee the safety of their products and trace the origin of their ingredients.” In the letter, Brown asked Merck to provide: the specific mechanisms used to track the chain of custody for each ingredient in the drugs and biologics the company sells; the procedures used to ensure that every facility in the chain operates in a manner consistent with Merck's quality and safety standards; the percentage of external sourcing that has been contracted to US-based companies; the top 10 countries to which Merck outsources, based on the percentage of business outsourced; a rough percentage break-out of the types of outsourcing for which Merck has contracted in each country; and the estimated wages paid at companies producing active pharmaceutical ingredients for Merck in each country, compared to the wages that would be paid had Merck manufactured those items internally.
Brown said he would also like the company's analysis of the top reasons that typically prompt a decision to outsource to China, India or other developing nations, an assessment of the impact of outsourcing activities on the price of the medicines sold in the US, and the strategies Merck uses to ensure the products manufactured by contractors meet the same quality and safety profile as those applicable to Merck-manufactured products. | <urn:uuid:1c89beeb-9bc0-413f-bc91-996ba0c786c7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mmm-online.com/sen-brown-renews-outsourcing-probe/printarticle/116164/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967871 | 404 | 1.695313 | 2 |
the net of people deeply affected by political violence
Forgiveness of dead IDF soldier’s mother leaves Palestinian killer cold
Sunday 8 November 2009
"At 4 A.M., I got out of bed and went to read the letter," says Robi Damelin. "Palestinian friends knew that the Palestinian news agency Maan published a letter of response from the sniper to the letter I wrote to him, but it was hard for them to tell me about it. One night, at 11 o’clock, I turned on the computer and saw an e-mail that a friend had sent from America, in which she told me that there was a letter. Think about it: I’m living alone, it was already late and I couldn’t start calling anyone. I was shocked and afraid to read the letter. I couldn’t fall asleep, as much as I tried."
Just before Yom Kippur, Robi Damelin, 65, an activist in the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families for Peace (also known as the Parents Circle - Families Forum, or PCFF), revealed in these pages (I forgave him, -Lo perdoné- Haaretz Magazine, September 25) an unusual letter of reconciliation that she’d written to the Palestinian sniper who killed her son David, an officer in the reserves. In March 2002, Ta’er Hamad positioned himself with an old carbine rifle on a hill opposite a checkpoint in Wadi Haramiya, killed eight Israeli soldiers and two Israeli civilians - and escaped unscathed. Two and a half years later, in October 2004, he was arrested by an Israel Defense Forces unit operating in his village of Silwad. After learning of his incarceration, Damelin decided to contact him and his family, seeking reconciliation.
"This is one of the hardest letters I’ll ever have to write," she wrote them, some months later. "David was 28, studying for a master’s degree in the philosophy of education at Tel Aviv University. He was part of the peace movement and did not want to serve in the occupied territories. He had compassion for all human beings and he understood the Palestinians’ suffering. He treated those around him with respect. David belonged to the officers’ movement that refused to serve in the occupied territories, and yet, for many reasons, he served when he was called up for reserve duty. I cannot describe to you the pain I have felt since his death. After your son was apprehended, I spent many sleepless nights thinking about what to do: should I ignore the whole thing or try to find a way for closure? I came to the decision that I wish to choose the path of reconciliation."
Robi Damelin waited several years for Hamad’s response, which swiftly dashed any hopes she harbored of reconciliation. "I recently learned of the contents of a letter by Robi Damelin, mother of the soldier David, who was one of the 10 soldiers of occupation who were killed in the operation for which I was sentenced to 11 life terms," Hamad wrote. "I cannot address the soldier’s mother directly. Not because it is difficult for me to convey my response from prison, but because my hand refuses to write in a style that epitomizes the policy of the occupation, that refuses to recognize and to accept the rights of our people. I cannot hold a dialogue with someone who insists on equating the criminal and the victim, and on equating the occupation with its victims. This is my response to the letter of Mrs. Robi, and I hereby criticize her sarcastic style when she thinks that with emotional words it is possible to resolve this decades-old conflict."
Hamad bluntly rejected the bereaved mother’s outstretched hand. "Mrs. Robi did not explain what led the soldier David to enlist," he continues. "She doesn’t know the iron fact that her son not only took part in the torture of my people, but stood at the head of the perpetrators of the killing and murder. From her letter, it appears that she is living on another planet. She forgets that the late Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat) called for peace 35 years ago. I wish to remind the mother of the soldier David that history proves that a people that does not fight an occupation with all means, including arms, cannot obtain its rights. This is the lesson that must be taken from looking at your ally the Americans who were humiliated in Vietnam and this is the lesson of your army’s withdrawal from Lebanon. You must remove your hands from our land and from our people, and if not, it is our duty to kill the murderers.
"Mrs. Robi says that she joined the Palestinian and Israeli parents’ organization for peace, after the death of her son," Hamad added. "This is an organization of parents who lost their children in the arena of the conflict, while she, Robi, is determined to equate our martyrs with their casualties, likening those who are fighting for their rights with the occupiers. Just as I refused to directly address the soldier’s mother, I cannot wish to meet her. I cannot meet with the occupier of our land on the same land. I carried out the operation as part of the struggle for freedom, justice and the establishment of an independent state, not out of a lust or love for killing. Acts of violence are a necessity imposed upon us by the occupation and I shall not abandon this path for as long as the occupation continues."
"For more than two and a half years I waited for a letter and suddenly, after the article on Yom Kippur, I received a response," says Damelin at her home in Tel Aviv. "I have no doubt that the article was a catalyst for him. I admit that I didn’t expect his letter to be so cruel and political. I searched for something personal, because maybe I wanted it to be a personal process. But there is nothing personal in his letter of response. It’s a kind of declaration. This is also a statement, but in the end, his letter is full of political cliches. It contains no deep thinking beyond the political justification of freedom fighters who seek to achieve their own state."
A few days later, Damelin decided to write back to Hamad. "Ta’er," she wrote, "you wrote that David went to the army in order to kill, but this young man, who spent most of his time attempting to effect a change through education, said: ’If I go to reserve duty I will treat everyone with respect and so will my soldiers.’ I think that these are not the words of a violent person. I think that these are the words of a person who is certain that we should not be in the occupied territories. A Palestinian I met after you killed David told me that he spoke with my son the day before and that he was sorry to hear that David had been killed. This is the human side of the conflict. You say that you killed 10 soldiers and civilians with the goal of ending the conflict. Is it possible that there was an element of personal revenge, as you had seen your uncle violently killed by Israeli soldiers as a child and had lost another uncle in the second intifada? Do you think you changed anything? I think that the killing of human beings, on both sides, only contributes to the cycle of violence."
Only through writing, Damelin says, is she able to think and to put things in proportion. "I sat down by myself and after 20 minutes I was done. Then I understood once more that I am really no longer this man’s victim. If I were a victim, my writing would be much angrier and more bitter. But it wasn’t. My reaction was sadness about the whole situation, about the lack of hope, about a person who, after receiving such a letter from me, writes me back the way he did. I found it sad that he, or his friends in prison who perhaps helped him write, didn’t look at all at the human side: his and mine."
That’s obvious. But what’s the point of another letter? You’ve seen now what he has to say.
"Almost everyone tells me that. But when you’re fighting with someone, the first encounter is the most dramatic. In the second encounter, you’re less angry. I want this man, who killed my son, to understand what I’m doing."
Still, you can’t ignore that he views your son as a criminal and an occupier.
"He basically said my son is a murderer. That’s why it was important for me to write to him again. I know that if this sniper would have had a chance to know David, he wouldn’t have been able to kill him. In this sense, my response is almost to protect my son. And yes, there is something insulting in his saying that I’m not being honest, when I know to what extent I examine every day just who I am, [and ask myself] do I really mean what I say."
Is there something in particular that motivated you to write the second letter?
"Ever since I received his letter, I couldn’t sleep at night. One morning, very, very early, I started getting food ready for my cats and I was listening to the radio. That morning I heard a BBC interview with Jo Berry, daughter of a British MP, and with Patrick McGee, an activist in the Irish underground who was responsible for the bombing of the parliament in London in which her father was killed. They talked about their first encounter and about the reconciliation process they’re going through. It was like it was custom-made for me: When I heard them I thought that maybe I’m not really crazy like everybody thinks, and I went into the room to write.
"It’s hard for me to imagine that Ta’er and I will do something like that. It’s hard for me to imagine the continuation of what I’m doing. I don’t expect to receive any letter next week and I don’t expect us to meet one day. This is a process that could last 20 more years."
What does you older son say?
"When I told Eran that I received a letter from the sniper, I expected him to say, ’For god’s sake, Mom, let this thing go.’ But he said something very beautiful. He said, ’Mom, this is also the beginning of a dialogue.’"
To the original article: Haaretz.com
It is also published in: The Parents Circle Website | <urn:uuid:366f1af1-01e5-4da2-a8d7-31a5345edb58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.internationalnetworkforpeace.org/spip.php?article566 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984961 | 2,238 | 1.578125 | 2 |
The Answer To The Yearly Christmas Shopping Dilemma: What to Buy For That Millionaire Next Door --The Porsche Design/Harrods Advent Calendar
Those who have grown up with Christian traditions have seen Advent Calendars -- coming out prior to Thanksgiving, usually in stores and shops that want to get Christmas decor underway, sometimes even before Hallowe'en. Many of these calendars take the form of large rectangular cards with 24 "windows", one of which is opened every day during Advent. Each window opens to reveal an image, a poem, or part of a story such as the Nativity story itself. More elaborate Advent Calendars have a small gift concealed in each window, such as a toy or a chocolate item.
Advent (from the Latin word adventus meaning "coming") is a season observed in many Christian churches, a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. It is the beginning of the Western liturgical year and commences on Advent Sunday. Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before December 25th. This year, Advent begins on November 28th. And this year, the humble Advent Calendar idea has certainly received a new, high end interpretation ( see above) from the Porsche Design Group and Harrods of London. It costs $1,000,000 USD.
Now, this Calendar was written about in Luxist before, in September. Evidently, Harrods is providing much more exposure, as the Calendar, one of only five available worldwide, is being showcased in the Knightsbridge store's Menswear department of Harrods in London, until Friday 3rd December 2010. Standing at more than 1.75 metres tall ( a little under six feet tall), it undoubtedly proves to be the ultimate Christmas gift for millionaires who are historically impossible to shop for. This is something they really do not have.
Behind each of the calendar's 24 windows, illuminated by light bars, reveals unique surprises from Porsche Design in anticipation of Christmas. Three particularly special, concealed highlights include a Porsche Design P'6910 Indicator Chronograph timepiece in rose gold, an individually customizable Porsche Design Kitchen, and a 8.5 metre long (approximately 27-28 feet long) RFF28 Speedboat, designed by the Porsche Design Studio in Austria. In addition to this trio, there are many other products by Porsche Design --including sunglasses made of 18 carat yellow gold, fine writing tools, cufflinks and the premium running shoe Bounce:S². Some of the other products and compositions are represented symbolically on aluminum plates.
Michael Ward, Managing Director of Harrods, said: "Harrods has long been associated with unveiling innovative and highly exclusive products and we are delighted to be welcoming Porsche Design's unique Advent Calendar." | <urn:uuid:41419f1d-d47e-432c-a746-858317817e2f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.luxist.com/2010/11/22/the-answer-to-the-yearly-christmas-shopping-dilemma-what-to-buy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936096 | 566 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Updated Jan 15, 2013 - 4:45 pm
SAT scores show Arizona's top 50 high schools
Arizona's top 50 high schools have been ranked by SAT score by the Arizona Department of Education.
According to Phoenix Business Journal, the state's SAT participation rate increased from 21 percent of seniors taking the SAT to 24 percent of seniors taking the SAT.
"This year's numbers are promising and positive, relative to prior years," he said. "The trend is in the right direction. I wish it were even more, but it's in the right direction," [Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John] Huppenthal said.
Arizona's SAT scores are slightly above the national average. | <urn:uuid:ce007c49-5e5e-4c14-89f3-d66954762744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ktar.com/22/1602178/SAT-scores-show-Arizonas-top-50-high-schools?nid=64 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961738 | 140 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Morgan Spurlock — the guy who lived for a month on McDonalds in the movie “Super-Size Me” — has a new television project. In the first episode of his show, which will air on FX, Spurlock and his fiancƒ©e live on minimum wage for 30 days. In today’s Washington Times columnist John McCaslin has this to say about the episode:
The Department of Labor has set the federal minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, although many states have minimum wage laws that are higher. (If employees are subject to both the state and federal minimum wage, they are entitled to the higher of the two minimum wages.) Ohio, where Mr. Spurlock sought employment, is one of only two states with minimum wage rates lower than the federal rate, the other being Kansas, which might explain why he chose the state for filming. Had he chosen to stay home and look for work in California, he would have found the state’s minimum wage is higher than the federal rate.
McCaslin wants to give his readers the impression that Spurlock’s experience was uncommon because Ohio’s minimum wage is so low. That’s not true. Twenty-nine states have a minimum wage that is at or below the federal limit. Six states don’t have any minimum wage at all. In other words, 35 states have the exact same minimum wage as Ohio. | <urn:uuid:7385717d-9e08-49c8-bc67-5cf75841f250> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://thinkprogress.org/media/2005/06/10/1065/minimum-facts-from-washington-times/?mobile=nc | 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 | 0.971561 | 296 | 1.585938 | 2 |
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sharonica Transitioning 19mo to 'big bed' 23/04/2012, 02:04 PM
*mylittleprince* Have you moved him to a toddler bed or proper sing... 23/04/2012, 02:09 PM
Jo-Anna Have you considered a basinet for the new baby to ... 23/04/2012, 02:13 PM
Xander2 We did the same thing at pretty much the same age ... 23/04/2012, 02:13 PM
Tesseract We have DD 14 months in a 'big bed'. It... 23/04/2012, 02:22 PM
kiwimum2b Hi. I have just put my nearly 18 month old into a ... 23/04/2012, 02:28 PM
nakedrhubarb I would put my son to bed with the same routine - ... 23/04/2012, 02:37 PM
Studybug HI there DS is 2yrs, 3mths and we're about to... 23/04/2012, 02:52 PM
♥~patricksmum~♥ we are transitioning Pat now. At the moment his co... 23/04/2012, 03:01 PM
me_n_my_kidz Hi, we have always put them in the big bed with mi... 23/04/2012, 03:01 PM
Jenflea He might feel safer in the cot which could be why ... 23/04/2012, 07:48 PM
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While most women wouldn?t associate being a new parent with feeling more attractive, it seems men see it differently: they think they?re better looking than before they were dads.
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|Time is now: 22/05/2013| | <urn:uuid:0688e585-a9f8-4589-b164-110f6a95f7ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.essentialbaby.com.au/forums/index.php?showtopic=974122&mode=threaded | 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 | 0.930226 | 769 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Part II: Short-term management implications
The bottom line to the changing corn environment is that feedlot costs of gain (COG) will increase substantially the rest of this decade and probably beyond. That changes the profit prospects of various post-weaning production/marketing alternatives for ranchers.
Each month, I prepare a set of planning-price projections for 12-18 months ahead, and then examine their management implications. Eight different short-run production/marketing programs for marketing 2007 calves are summarized below; these were generated in mid-April with corn that was priced at 30¢ off that month's futures price. Projected COG and breakeven prices are also included:
Selling 2007 calves at October 2007 weaning: (COG is $112/cwt. of calf produced. Breakeven selling price is $112/cwt.).
Backgrounding 2007 calves to 800 lbs. marketed in late January 2008: (Corn @ $3.26/bu. with COG at $66/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $106).
Finishing 2007 backgrounded calves in a custom feedlot marketed in June 2008: (Corn @ $4.74/bu. with COG at $87/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $92).
Marketing 2007 calves as calf-feds at 1,175 lbs. in May 2008: (Corn @ $4.32/bu. with COG at $77/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $100).
Marketing 2007 calves as grass cattle off grass in September 2008: (COG is $54/cwt. Breakeven price is $101/cwt).
Placing 550-lb. calf-feds mid-April 2008 to be harvested October 2008: (Corn @ $5.85/bu. with COG at $93/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $106/cwt).
Placing 800-lb. feeders on feed mid-April 2008 to be harvested June 2008: (Corn @ $5.03/bu. with COG at $91/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $96/cwt).
Harvesting finished steers mid-April 2008: (Corn @ $3.26/bu. with COG at $74/cwt. Breakeven selling price is $102/cwt).
Figure 1 summarizes and compares my profit projections for these eight production/marketing alternatives. In general, I find it very difficult to add value to 2007-born calves beyond weaning. The only two positive post-weaning production/marketing alternatives listed above were finishing 2007 backgrounded calves with a projected profit of $4/head, and running 2007 calves as grass cattle during summer 2008 with a projected $15/head profit (after paying for grass).
Meanwhile, my projection for 2008 calves is for an $11/cow profit when selling at weaning (compared to $69/cow in 2007). Lower gross income per cow in 2008 generates the projected drop in net income per cow.
High corn prices keep me from finding a way to add value to 2008 weaned calves with a profit. I project a $53/head loss for backgrounding 2008 calves. Finishing these backgrounded 2008 calves projects a loss of $37/head, and marketing the 2008-born calves as calf-feds projects a loss of $61/head. (A $5.19 market premium is needed to project a breakeven calf-fed production/marketing alternative.)
Comparing my projected marketings of 2008 calves vs. 2007 calves offers some optimism for cattle feeders. It appears feeder-calf and feeder-cattle prices are ever so slowly adjusting to return a profit back to the post-weaning profit centers, including the cattle-feeding sector.
High corn prices are putting post-weaning profits under severe economic pressures. The reality is feeder-calf and feeder-cattle prices haven't yet adjusted to the new price equilibrium of $4, $5 and possibly $6 corn. These corn-price levels suggest feedlot COGs in the $70s, $80s and $90s, respectively. The cattle industry has never seen these feedlot COG levels.
First-quarter 2008 cattle feeding losses were substantial — $138/head in January, $128 in February, $132 in March and $148 in April. Such losses could lead to feedlot closings and sales of feedlots at 50¢ on the dollar, both of which lead to further feedlot consolidation.
Record-high post-weaning COG brought about by record-high corn prices must eventually be reflected in feeder-cattle and feeder-calf prices. This, however, hasn't yet happened to the extent needed to return profits back to cattle feeding.
Feedlots continue to overbid cattle due to an oversupply of bunk space. Once a feedlot shuts down, a feedlot owner's balance-sheet equity takes a huge hit. This equity loss probably won't be felt as long as the feedlot is operating — even if operating at a loss. Eventually, these kinds of feedlot loses will take their toll on the feedlot sector.
High feeder-calf and feeder-cattle prices relative to projected COG result in my projecting little or no post-weaning profits with 2007 or 2008 calves. My current short-run projections suggest that profits to be made with 2007 and 2008 calves will be made by weaning time.
Ranchers, take note! Your unit cost of producing (UCOP) a cwt. of calf has become all-critical! Yet, most of you aren't even measuring UCOP. Without this measure, you can't be sure you're actually operating your lowest-cost production/marketing alternative.
Ranchers may be already locked into their production/marketing programs for 2007 calves, but there's still time to push the pencil on the production/marketing of 2008 calves. Now is the time to re-evaluate your complete ranch production/marketing program; today's demand-driven corn prices won't be coming down as they have in previous supply-driven run-ups. The biofuels era is different!
Harlan Hughes is a North Dakota State University professor emeritus. He lives in Laramie, WY. Reach him at 701-238-9607 or email@example.com. | <urn:uuid:1c8bf62b-0861-44ca-815d-42b7980a6561> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://beefmagazine.com/print/business/harlan-hughes/0601-changing-corn-environment | 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 | 0.938416 | 1,357 | 1.6875 | 2 |
An open letter to the NBC Nightly News, with Brian Williams.
re: NBC Nightly News: Back Story
October 6, 2008, "Back Pain Epidemic Outpaces Treatment Options."
and October 7, 2008, "Cutting Down on Back Pain without Surgery."
The videos from NBC's broadcast are at the end of this post.
In October, the NBC Nightly News published two videos and two broadcasts about back pain. In response to this story, I’d like to bring to your attention as well as the attention of Brian Williams and Robert Bazell, two articles recently published in the British Medical Journal that answer the questions raised on the Nightly News.
1) “Back Pain Epidemic Outpaces Treatment Options”
Brian Williams aired this story on back pain and treatment options. The numbers quoted were beyond belief: we spend $90 billion a year in the US on back pain treatments; $60,000 per surgery.
2) The following night, Mr. Williams showed the video, “Cutting Down on Back Pain Without Surgery.” He began by saying that they double-checked the numbers from Monday's broadcast because they were so unbelievable; it turns out that they’re real. Robert Bazell, NBC News Chief science correspondent, ends the video saying, "...but experts say most people should try a non-surgical treatment first."
3) A recent study shows 85% reduction in back pain without surgery and with zero serious adverse effects, through 24 lessons in the Alexander Technique. The study results were published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on August 19, 2008; it is known as the ATEAM Trial. See: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug19_2/a884
4) On December 11, 2008, the BMJ published another article as well as an online video: "ATEAM Trial; the Economic Evaluation,” about the cost-effectiveness of the Alexander Technique as shown by the study. See:
The American Society for the Alexander Technique (AmSAT) provides the following results from the study:
579 patients were involved in this multi-center clinical trial, which is one of the few major studies to show significant long-term benefits for patients with chronic non-specific low-back pain. BMJ, 2008;337:a884
One year after the trial started and following 24 Alexander Technique lessons the number of days in pain fell by 85% compared with the control group. The average number of activities limited by back pain had fallen by 42%.
In real numbers:
Control Group = 21 days of pain per month
After 6 lessons plus exercise = 11 days of pain per month
After 24 lessons = 3 days in pain per month
I am reaching out on behalf of the millions of people who have or will suffer with back pain. Surely this method offers sufficient potential to be investigated and reported on by the NBC Nightly News. If the results are as published in the British Medical Journal, then this is indeed an idea whose time has come. The Alexander Technique: a non-invasive, gentle, educational method for self-empowered care. The Technique is recognized in Israel, England, Australia, and many other countries from Switzerland to Brazil. It has been in continuous practice for over 100 years and is offered at over 50 Universities and Conservatories across the United States.
It is time to save money and save backs.
Please let me know how I may be helpful in providing information or pointing you to sources to investigate this further.
Certified Alexander Technique Teacher, M.AmSAT
Contact me at: dbenyehuda(at)comcast(dot)net
CONTINUE TO SEE THE VIDEOS FROM NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
Continue reading "
A way out of Back Pain without Surgery | <urn:uuid:529c9972-498a-44b4-95df-c0aea24da47e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.appliedalexandertechnique.com/2008/12/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936412 | 797 | 1.5625 | 2 |
MetroPCS Communications, the nation’s fifth largest mobile phone company, has introduced the first smartphone capable of receiving mobile digital television broadcasts. However, the launch may be too little, too late.
MetroPCS is offering the Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G, priced at $459, which is capable of receiving Dyle mobile digital television broadcasts. Dyle is a service of the Mobile Content Venture — a joint venture of 12 major broadcast groups, including Fox, NBC and Telemundo.
Today there are only 120 Mobile DTV stations in the country. In New York City, there are four; in Chicago there are five. NBC, which is broadcasting the Olympics, is a supporter of Mobile DTV, and local NBC stations are available in several cities. Early customers of the phone would be able to see some Olympics coverage.
Broadcasters have been trying to get Mobile DTV off the ground for several years, and MetroPCS is the first mobile company to agree to offer the service. Major carriers such as AT&T and Verizon tried mobile television earlier (e.g., MediaFLO) but shut down their systems due to lack of customer interest. They have not signed onto the Dyle venture.
While the Dyle (mobile DTV) service is free to users, the Samsung phone costs about $200 more than an equivalent phone without TV reception. It remains to be seen whether users will pay that extra money for only three or four channels in most markets. Also, the phone itself requires the use of an antenna and early reviewers said signals stuttered when the phones were moved around.
Also, competing with Mobile DTV on wireless devices is Aereo, a new service that has launched in New York City and is gearing up to launch around the nation. It picks up all local TV signals and delivered them via the Internet to the phone. There is no extra cost for the phone, nor does the phone have to rely on an antenna for reception.
Broadcasters have tried to stop Aereo, a company backed by media mogul Barry Diller, but Aereo has won preliminary hearings in court. The broadcasters claim it is illegal to redistribute their signals. A federal judge has discounted the argument of the broadcasters and said Aereo likely will be allowed to operate.
Aereo, which operates in a free mode or for $8 a month for DVR service, could become major competition for not only Dyle, but the entire Mobile DTV system.
Dyle representatives have said that there are external dongles and others devices for reception on other smartphones and Apple iPads coming in the near future. However, Aereo already works without them. | <urn:uuid:c31a0ee6-8802-4f51-a637-12f7cd486135> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://broadcastengineering.com/print/mobile-tv/metropcs-offers-mobile-dtv-enabled-smartphone | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969301 | 543 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Nice early find that Kim. :mrgreen:
The Libochovice glassworks in Czechoslovakia was created by Feigl and Morawetz in 1911, which became part of the state-controlled Sklo Union group after the Communist government took control of the country post WW2.
The catalogue you found this set in dates from the mid/late 1920s, so your set (pattern 1760) would have been made by Feigl and Morawetz at the Libochovice glassworks. The glassworks continued to make trinket sets even after becoming a part of the SU group but this set doesn't appear in the 1950s catalogue.
Libochovice are documented on the Glass Trinket Sets
website but I don't yet have any examples of this set so may I add your photos of it please?
Source: Info about the Libochovice glassworks is taken from Sklo Union Art Before Industry: 20th Century Czech Pressed Glass
, by Marcus Newhall (published Nov 2008), which includes the later 1950s catalogue on the accompanying CD. Marcus was also instrumental in obtaining the catalogue which is shown on Pamela's Glas-Musterbuch | <urn:uuid:6e1a6cb3-f249-446d-89dd-2305ba692a16> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,28539.msg160352.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968992 | 245 | 1.601563 | 2 |
The Commerce Department today issued its figures on GDP. They suggest that the recession is winding down and that the economy soon will start growing.
The economy contracted at a 1 percent annual pace in the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department. That’s a big improvement over the first quarter, in which the dip was 6.4 percent. Most analysts expect positive growth over the remainder of the year, albeit at a modest rate, and more substantial growth in the first half of 2010.
This is an excellent scenario but it also represents a sobering prospect for Republicans, especially those who are becoming giddy over the fact that President Obama’s job approval rating has declined to a little above 50 percent. An economic recovery was almost inevitable, but Obama will get credit for it nonetheless, particularly because he took action that he’ll be able to link, however speciously, with the recovery.
On the other hand, it may be some time before Obama and the Democrats can garner the credit. That’s because even as the economy recovers, unemployment will likely rise. And even if growth becomes rapid, analysts expect the increase in jobs to be much slower.
There’s a good chance, then, that next year at this time, when it matters for electoral purposes, the economic picture will be (or appear) mixed. If so, the public’s view of Obama and the Democrats will probably be mixed too.
JOHN adds: Paul and I have been going back and forth on these issues for a while. We don’t drastically disagree, but my take has been a little more optimistic. Thus, while no one can argue with the proposition that a healthy economy–healthier, anyway–will make both President Obama and the Democratic Congress more popular, I don’t think the end of the recession will do anything like restore the voters’ honeymoon with Obama.
There are several reasons for this. One, I think most people have figured out that recessions come and go. Good times put everyone in a better mood, but some voters, at least, will be selective about where credit goes. Two, a great many voters are alarmed at the Democrats’ agenda, especially government medicine and cap and trade. Most voters believe, correctly, that these measures would hurt, not help, the economy. And the “stimulus” bill is rightly regarded with suspicion by just about everyone. These reservations won’t go away when the economy turns around. Three, and perhaps most fundamentally, governing has forced President Obama’s hand. As a candidate–especially, as a candidate almost wholly unscrutinized by the press–he could try to be all things to all people, with some success. But a mere six months in office have revealed the real Barack Obama: a hard-left liberal. Hence this survey from today’s Rasmussen Reports. Seventy-six percent of likely voters now classify Obama as a liberal, with a remarkable 48 percent terming him “very liberal.”
I don’t believe anyone who was generally regarded as “very liberal” has ever been elected President; not since Franklin Roosevelt, anyway. So I don’t think it is unreasonable for us conservatives to hope for the best of both worlds: a modest recovery in our 401Ks, and a new President in 2013.
PAUL adds: I don’t disagree with anything John says here. But some of what he says reinforces my concern. The public, as John says, now understands that Obama is a liberal, not a post-parisan, and half of it apparently considers President Obama vey liberal. Yet, in a terrible economy, his approval rating is at 50 percent or better. Thus, I think Obama has quite a good chance of being re-elected as an out-and-out liberal if, as seems likely, the economy is doing reasonably well by 2012.
John is probably correct that no one generally regarded as “very liberal” has been elected president since FDR, President Johnson was very liberal when elected in 1964, but wasn’t generally regarded as such. But it’s also true that no one generally regarded as “very liberal” has run for president as an incumbent presiding over an economy that was in good shape.
Remember too that all recent presidents who ran for re-election after an economic recovery were re-elected. In 1984, President Reagan won in a landslide that few would have thought possible for a candidate that conservative. In 1996, President Clinton won handily. If 2004 counts as this sort of an election, then President Bush made it three for three despite his growing unpopularity due to mounting problems in Iraq.
President Obama has made the audacious decision to try to become the man who transforms our politics by serving eight years as an openly left-liberal president. It’s not unreasonable to hope that voters will deny him that opportunity, but the way things are shaping up, neither is it unreasonable to think that they will grant it to him.
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“Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.” Winston Churchill
“Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” Inscription on the Liberty Bell | <urn:uuid:0fb14fbe-14e8-4573-b211-ae1a75341650> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/024169.php?tsize=small | 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 | 0.971402 | 1,150 | 1.75 | 2 |
They're starting revolutions, opening schools, and fostering a brave new generation. From Detroit to Kabul, these women are making their voices heard.
By now, you surely know, if you didn’t already, that Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential pick, wants to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher system. You might have read that, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his economic plan “calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.”
Less attention has been paid, though, to Ryan’s hard-right positions on social issues. Indeed, on abortion and women’s health care, there isn’t much daylight between Ryan and, say, Michele Bachmann. Any Republican vice-presidential candidate is going to be broadly anti-abortion, but Ryan goes much further. He believes ending a pregnancy should be illegal even when it results from rape or incest, or endangers a woman’s health. He was a cosponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a federal bill defining fertilized eggs as human beings, which, if passed, would criminalize some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization. The National Right to Life Committee has scored his voting record 100 percent every year since he entered the House in 1999. “I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” he told The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack in 2010. “You’re not going to have a truce.”
Indeed, Ryan exemplifies a strange sort of ideological hybrid that now dominates the GOP. On economic issues, he’s a hardcore libertarian who once said, “[T]he reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker…it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” Yet when it comes to women’s control of their bodies, he quickly turns into a statist. “In the state of nature—the ‘law of the jungle’—the determination of who ‘qualifies’ as a human being is left to private individuals or chosen groups,” he wrote in a 2010 essay titled “The Cause of Life Can’t Be Severed From the Cause of Freedom.” “In a justly organized community, however, government exists to secure the right to life and the other human rights that follow from that primary right.”
For anyone who wants to know how Ryan thinks, that essay is worth reading. It’s about 1,500 words long, but the word “woman” doesn’t appear in it once. Nor does the word “mother.” To him, a woman’s claim to bodily autonomy or self-determination doesn’t merit even cursory consideration. Here’s his analogy: “The car which I exercised my freedom of choice to purchase…does not ‘qualify’ for protection of human rights. I can drive it, lend it, kick it, sell it, or junk it, at will. On the other hand, the widow who lives next door does ‘qualify’ as a person, and the government must secure her human rights, which cannot be abandoned to anyone’s arbitrary will.”
Ryan said he has never specifically advocated jailing women who have abortions, but according to a newspaper article, he said, “If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”
This disregard for the exigencies of women’s lives—the dismissal of their choices as amoral exercises of “arbitrary will”—was thrown into high relief during his 1998 run for congress against Democrat Lydia Spottswood. Both candidates backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but Spottswood believed there should be exceptions in cases where a woman’s life or health is endangered. “Ryan said he opposes abortion, period,” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said any exceptions to a ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban would make that ban meaningless.”
During that campaign, Ryan also expressed his willingness to let states criminally prosecute women who have abortions. According to another Journal Sentinel article, he “would let states decide what criminal penalties would be attached to abortions. Ryan said he has never specifically advocated jailing women who have abortions or doctors who perform them, but added, ‘If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.’”
Naturally, when Ryan’s selection was announced on Saturday morning, the anti-abortion movement was jubilant. While he made his reputation in the fiscal arena, David French wrote on the religion blog Patheos, “[T]hose of us in the conservative movement have also known Paul Ryan as a man completely committed to the cause of life… a recitation of his legislative record doesn’t do justice to his pro-life commitment.” Now, people outside the conservative movement need to understand that commitment as well.
Inspiring women from around the globe will convene in April for the 2013 Women in the World Summit. See who’s coming!
From invisible Iranians to dealing with an overweight body, see works from female photographers to watch.
Newsweek and The Daily Beast are excited to announce the 2013 Women in the World Summit on April 4 and 5. Get your tickets today.
DINKs, DILDOs, and other readers respond to Joel Kotkin and Harry Siegel’s Newsweek story about America's declining birthrate and share their reasons for remaining child-free.
Gail Sheehy looks at the new, strategic feminism, as PBS prepares to air the documentary ‘Makers: Women Who Make America’ tonight.
The mother of a domestic abuse victim speaks out
As Melanne Verveer departs, who could be Obama’s new champion for women and girls? By Katie Baker.
Diane von Furstenberg joins GMA's Robin Roberts to talk about the annual DVF Awards and reveals the courageous anchor will be honored at this year's event on April 5th.
“Fatshion” is a popular community on Tumblr, where plus-size bloggers post pictures of themselves as a way of celebrating their size. Judy McGuire reports.
The film, which will be released March 7, advocates for the education of girls around the world. Eliza Shapiro reports.
Three feminists from different generations revisit Friedan’s classic. By Jessica Bennett, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Alisa Solomon.
A new CDC study is just the latest news to buoy the pro-breastfeeding camp, reports Eliza Shapiro.
Ping Fu talks to Katie Baker about the online backlash to her new memoir, ‘Bend, Not Break.’
She changed the game irrevocably, and now she’s about to transform it again—by walking away. Plus, read the full transcript of her farewell speech.
Tina Brown and Angelina Jolie announce gathering strength for an education fund in her honor.
How two women’s online plea is pushing the lingerie giant to the ‘survivor bra’ market. By Nina Strochlic.
See locations of the country’s 724 clinics and distance to the closest clinic in different areas. By Michael Keller and Allison Yarrow.
When companies support women, write Melanne Verveer and Kim Azzarelli, their businesses and communities win.
Veteran Anthony Woods recalls a brave lieutenant who lost her life in Afghanistan.
After gifting his DNA via Craigslist, a Kansas man may be on the hook for $6,000 in child support. Fair? | <urn:uuid:06532f68-e27f-467d-bc20-a12093ffd6bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-s-extreme-abortion-views.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 | 0.950783 | 1,675 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Another Trade Secret-- to do with Levels
You walk into a tool store and pick up a level. Is it? Is it really Level? How do you know it is accurate?
Here's a hint. 70% of all levels on the shelf at our local stores are not accurate.
Check a nearby shelf for level. Then rotate the level... check again. Flip it and check again. The bubble should be precisely in the same place. If not... it is not accurate. DON'T BUY IT!
Check for vertical level-- Plumb. Same procedure. Rotate the level, flip.
Try to imagine building something perfect when each time you check something with your level you get a different reading.
Don't assume that just because a level is expensive, that it is accurate. I've gone into a store with the intention of buying a good level--and after checking them I left with an $8.00 level because it was the only accurate one on the shelf. | <urn:uuid:74413ae3-28d8-44b2-bf3a-0c9d8038e208> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://carpentry-contractor.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-trade-secret-to-do-with-levels.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940301 | 210 | 1.78125 | 2 |
FIRE BLOGS: Los Angeles
October 25, 2007 6:35 PM
Growing up in Oak Park, a small town outside Malibu, changed my views on the fires. I remember when my family and I were evacuated and instead of packing our most precious belongings and pictures, my mother and I grabbed lounge chairs and sat in the middle of street watching the fires burn down the mountains.
Most LA residents hear the term fire so much that when their house is being evacuated they don’t leave. Residents are posting in and outside their houses thinking that the fires will be put out before their homes are torched.
All over southern California there are over 13 fires destroying lives, houses, mountains, and more. Luckily today the Santa Ana winds, which were fueling the fire, calmed down and firemen were able to control one near Griffith Park.
The associated Press reported that the Los Angeles Zoo put most of its 1,200 animals inside holding quarters. But, what is happening to all the wildlife?
My dad called me a few days ago said, “When I was leaving for work the other day I saw a pack of coyotes running into the suburbs form the mountains. And the rats have been flooding the city with no where to go.”
Many high schools throughout the southern California are opening their doors and transforming into rescue centers for the families that have lost their homes. Neighbors and other people of the communities have opened up their homes as well.
One major problem that has risen is the threat on the Southern California power grid line, which cut power for 335,000 customers on Sunday and over 37,000 customers on Monday. The power company and state officials stated that the power line reached all the way to Arizona but the region was still able to serve 99% of their customers.
Investigators are questioning if the fires were started because of arson. The man who is the suspect was cited for smoking in a non-smoking area and was later recovering from burn injuries.
» FIRE BLOGS: Santa Barbara - Angela Baca's take on what going on in her neck of the woods
» FIRE BLOGS: San Diego - Khari Johnson runs through the news on the San Diego region
» Devastation - Southen California ravaged by wildfires that have destroyed 1600 homes and businesses and cost more than $1 billion in damages.
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Copyright © 2008 [X]press | Journalism Department - San Francisco State University | <urn:uuid:44d99ef4-40a9-4513-a66c-bd452bd49a0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/009413.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970423 | 511 | 1.59375 | 2 |
Even the most loving family members can start to drive each other crazy after a few hours of being trapped in a vehicle. The ultimate challenge for road trippers is to find the right gear and activities to keep everyone satisfied and occupied. Here are a few suggestions for keeping younger travelers safe and content.
Most states require parents to keep their babies and children in car seats or booster seats until they reach specific ages and weights. To view the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggestions for selecting and installing car seats click this link: http://www.nhtsa.gov/Safety/CPS. The Bubble Bum is a booster seat that's fairly new to the market but is quickly becoming popular with parents and children. It's lightweight, compact, and inflatable. The Bubble Bum is filled with air so it's much softer than conventional booster seats that are more rigid. A softer seat makes long rides more comfortable. Visit the Bubble Bum website to find out more about it and to see a list of awards that it has received - http://www.bubblebum.co/us/.
Traffic jams, road repair work, and accidents can slow down a car trip. Having the sun beaming into the car window at any time, but especially during one of those slow downs, can be a nightmare. If traffic slows down the person sitting next to the window can feel like they're being cooked. Sun shades help to block out excess light and reduce heat during the sunniest part of the day. Sun shades for the car are inexpensive but can make a road trip much more pleasant. Safety 1st sells a 2-pack of peel and stick sunshades for less than $5 - http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3749220. There are numerous varieties of sun shades that can be purchased from specialty and discount stores.
Find It is one of the best games a family can pack for a road trip. It's quiet and no batteries or electricity are needed. People of all ages enjoy hunting for hidden objects buried inside of the portable Find It container. Everyone in the car can take turns shaking and turning the game until all of the hidden objects are found. There are several versions of Find It available. Find It Original, Find It On The Farm, Find It At The Beach, Find It At The Zoo, and Find It Glitz & Glamour are just a few of the game themes. Visit the Find It website to find out more about the game that will entertain people ages 8 to 98 - http://www.finditgames.com/.
Books on CD can make travel time in a car go by faster. Bringing along books that allow younger readers to follow along can be an excellent opportunity for them to work on their reading skills or simply be entertained. While the children enjoy their books parents are free to concentrate on driving. The Barnes & Noble website has hundreds of audio books to choose from for kids in every age group - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?aref=3146&cat=833709&fmt=audio&srt=sa&store=BOOK. Amazon.com also offers a variety of children's books on CD - http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AChildren%27s%20audiobooks&page=1.
Two classic ways to pass the time while riding are word search puzzles and crossword puzzles. Inexpensive and widely available, they require concentration and not much else. They're perfect for creating quiet time on the road. To make them more fun parents can challenge young passengers to complete them in a specific amount of time. Parents can purchase or create identical versions of the same puzzles and offer a prize for the first child to complete the puzzle. Discovery Education has made creating original word puzzles easy. Click this link to use the free PUZZLEMAKER - http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=2629947&CFTOKEN=97772767.
If children are occupied on a road trip they're not as restless and the trip is not as tedious. Plan ahead to keep them busy. Bring drinks and snacks so that they don't get hungry. Be sure to have them use the restroom before hitting the road. Advise them in advance of a rest stop schedule to avoid unnecessary stops. But be prepared to stop for emergencies. | <urn:uuid:22282e96-ef68-4fa4-b098-d3e45b3dc4d2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.examiner.com/article/suggestions-for-keeping-children-comfortable-and-busy-on-family-road-trips | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94953 | 929 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Flotsam's Wonder World
September 18th - October 30th
Blending influences of lost carnivals, Nordic mythology and hazy nostalgia, Mike Shine's eerie yet often light-hearted art has been included in exhibitions with SFMOMA, Laguna Art Museum and The Museum of Craft and Folk Art. His mixed media pieces are typically composed of house paint on found objects like driftwood, buoys, carnival bottles and ephemera. The artist's sinister characters are made ironically inviting to the viewer with mechanized interactive components that recall classic carnival attractions. The art "opera" is based on the carnival ringleader, Flotsam, who Shine considers to be his personal version of Mephistopheles. The artist cites dark, enigmatic figures such as Stanley Kubrick, Friedrich Nietzsche and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as his inspiration for the exhibition. | <urn:uuid:161ed2bc-dc53-4d39-85f3-d7f4e376e0d4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.941geary.com/shows/flotsams-wonder-world/fb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949007 | 177 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Stimulus Home-Buying Break Flunks Fairness Test
Congress has stirred up a hornet's nest with a minor provision tucked away in the massive economic stimulus package that's on track to be passed this month. The provision seems simple enough: Take a law passed last year that provides a tax credit of up to $7,500 to first-time home buyers and strip out the part that says the credit must be paid back to the federal government over 15 years. Without the easing, the "credit" is essentially a no-interest federal loan. Thus the juicier credit would theoretically spur even more first-time home purchases.
Problem is, the home buyer credit applies to purchases after April 8, 2008, and before July 1, 2009, while the easing was written to cover only folks who bought a home during the first six months of this year. So under the proposal in the stimulus package, if you purchased your home before Jan. 1, you still have to pay back the credit. Score one for the procrastinators.
Needless to say, folks who acted last year to take advantge of the home buyer credit are pretty upset about the double standard. They're raising a hue and cry that Congress changed the rules in the middle of the game. Why would lawmakers make such an obvious political blunder? It isn't hard to figure out what happened. The point of an economic stimulus package is to spur future economic activity. If what you're trying to do is get more people to buy homes, it doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint to extend the incentive to folks who already made a purchase.
But fairness has to enter the equation, too. Easing the credit just months after creating it is tantamount to saying that it didn't have enough oomph in the first place and should never have included the repayment requirement. If Congress believes the credit needs to be heftier, then shouldn't everyone who qualifies for the credit get it on the same terms? If folks who bought last year put up a big enough stink, it's possible lawmakers will take a second look, but so far they haven't given any indication they're listening to the complaints. Instead they're talking about juicing up the credit in ways that might make recent buyers even madder: Removing the $7,500 maximum and opening up the credit to folks who aren't first-time buyers. | <urn:uuid:40723fb6-43cd-4c6f-a07d-2786f4c3801c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://kiplinger.com/article/business/T043-C012-S001-stimulus-home-buying-break-flunks-fairness-test.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968877 | 488 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Estonia's justice ministry has asked parliament to adopt amendments to enable courts to use Facebook and Twitter accounts to contact crime suspects, a ministry spokesman said Monday.
"One of the main reasons why court cases proceed slowly in Estonia is often the very slow delivery of relevant documents to those involved," justice ministry spokesman Priit Talv told AFP Monday, referring to the laborious process of serving suspects with subpoenas.
"Around a third of all civil cases are constantly in phase of documents delivery. With the new legal steps planned to take force in January 2013, we want to expand the electronic means of courts to deliver these documents" including subpoenas, he added.
According to the draft bill, a person contacted by court via their email, Facebook or Twitter account will receive a note with a link to the court documents.
But the subpoena will be legally delivered only after he or she has clicked the link and visited the official site that can be accessed with an electronic identification ID-card issued to all adult Estonians.
"In addition to those criminal suspects who deliberately try to hide their mail or residence address there are many people whose address is either not registered or they travel a lot. Reaching people via electronic means is both cheaper and quicker," Talv said.
Known as E-stonia, the tiny ex-Soviet Baltic republic of 1.3 million which joined the European Union in 2004 and the eurozone in 2011 is among the world's most wired and IT savvy nations.
Lawyers said Monday the step will also bring Estonia closer to making information gathered from social networking sites valid as court evidence.
"It would be helpful for example in cases when one of the parents refuses to pay child support and claims to be too poor to pay a penny, but the very same person can be found in Facebook posing in front of his or her expensive house or car or resting at a resort," lawyers Maret Hallikma and Anton Sigal wrote Monday in Paevaleht, a leading Estonian daily.
According to a recent study, 65 percent of all Internet users in Estonia -- a figure rising to 80 percent for those under 40 -- visit their Facebook account at least once a week.
Twitter is less popular, with just five percent of Estonian Internet users logging on at least once a week. | <urn:uuid:e41eaa8b-a77a-42c2-9d67-621b4fe3a9f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sg.news.yahoo.com/estonian-courts-facebook-twitter-tap-suspects-181921037.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96128 | 467 | 1.664063 | 2 |
9-11 survivor to speak on campus Tuesday
BOWLING GREEN, O.—Earl Johnson was on the 51st floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when it was struck by one of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001. On Tuesday (Sept. 11), the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Johnson will relate “Stairwell to Heaven: A 9-11 World Trade Center Survivor's Story of Escape” at Bowling Green State University.
He is scheduled to speak at 9:25 p.m. in the Lenhart Grand Ballroom of the Bowen-Thompson Student Union.
Johnson's appearance is part of a 9-11 Never Forget Ceremony and Candlelight Vigil on campus. Hosted by the BGSU College Republicans and the Young America's Foundation, the memorial service is free and open to the public.
Johnson's career in the financial services industry took him from Bainbridge Island, Wash., to New York City in 2001. After 9-11, he and his family returned to Bainbridge Island, just across Puget Sound from Seattle, and, inspired by the sacrifice he had witnessed that September morning, Johnson ran for and was elected a commissioner of the island's fire department. He turned his attention to public speaking following the publication of his book, “Stairwell to Heaven.”
At BGSU, 9-11 memorial events will begin with a campus-wide moment of silence at 9:11 a.m. Tuesday. From noon to 2 p.m., nearly 3,000 American flags—one for each of the attacks' victims—will be placed around the Union Oval, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., donations may be made to the 9-11 Victims' Fund at tables in the Union.
“United 93,” the film about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to overtake the hijackers, will be shown at 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the ballroom.
The evening program will start at 9:11 p.m. with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing of the National Anthem. At 9:15 p.m., the Rev. Michael Dandurand, pastor at St. Thomas More University Parish, will discuss “9-11 and How It Shapes Our Faith.”
After Johnson's talk will be a time for recognition of members of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies, firefighters, and their families. A slide presentation is set for 10 p.m., followed by silent adjournment to the Union Oval at 10:15 p.m. for the candlelight vigil. There, the ceremony will conclude with a memorial prayer, music by the BGSU Men's Chorus, presentation of arms, a moment of silence and the playing of taps.
# # #
(Posted September 07, 2007 ) | <urn:uuid:794b7575-d697-4e8c-9b40-6f50acfc9314> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/mc/news/2007/news36625.html | 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 | 0.95733 | 594 | 1.53125 | 2 |
White Fungus growing on blades of Organic Wheatgrass
Has anyone ever encountered a whte fungus that grows ontop of the wheatgrass blades? It almost looks like a powder that if you run your hand over to brush it off it creates a white dust. It is making the wheatgrass turn a greenish-yellow and the blades are not as juicy as they once were. This fungus shows up the last 3 days of the grow cycle. I have been successfully growing organic wheatgrass for the last year and have not had this problem until now. I have tried watering less, increasing the airflow, watering with hydrogyn peroxide, and watering with baking soda.
A picture might help but if using a small fan on the grass doesn't solve it then I can only suggest changing the growing medium and growing in a different area - eg the bathroom rather than the kitchen or if you grow out doors then a different area of the garden.
I wonder if this could be a issue with the seeds. Do you have any mold underneath on the roots. Are you using a fan and watering it heavy in morning and light at night?
Originally Posted by ktrimble2010
trying to upload pic.... having a hard time uploading pics, it keeps comming up as to big of a file but its under the jpeg limit? here is a link to the pic -----> http://www.ppws.vt.edu/stromberg/sma.../wpmildew2.gif <---------
anyways... i believe i have found the name for the fungus that i have it is "Erysiphe graminis" most people see this on their lawn, not their wheatgrass! i am trying a different seed supplier but it takes weeks to see results. so, in the mean time can anyone reccommend an anti-fungus spray to try? ---- or something !? thanks!
Last edited by ktrimble2010; 07-22-2012 at 10:37 PM.
Just a few suggestions, based upon personal experience (I'm sure I'll think of more, after I've posted, but this is all that springs to mind at the time of writing):
*Make sure you use good clean seed (moulds and toxins can grow on poorly-stored seeds). This is one reason why it is worth buying seeds from several different suppliers to begin with, to find out who provides the best quality seed. Believe me, there really are differences between suppliers. Remember that you want to be buying your seed from a supplier with a good turnover of seed - if you buy it from a healthfood store that doesn't sell much seed, then their seeds may have been on the shelf for quite a while, with the potential for microscopic mould levels to have increased during that time. This will, of course, vary from one shop to another.
*Make sure you use good quality soil
* Do not oversoak your seeds - this is a major one! 8-10 hours MAXIMUM (so basically, this is just overnight while you are sleeping). Under some circumstances, it can be beneficial to allow the seeds to slightly sprout before placing them on the growing soil, but this is something each person needs to experiment with and find there best option.
*Do not be tempted to apply too much seed to the soil. I've seen people using rediculous amounts of seed in an effort to obtain maximum yield for a given amount of soil / size of tray. This is a fool's approach. When seeds germinate, they create heat. Heat promotes growth of moulds. Therefore, it is critical to allow each seed to not get too hot. This means don't pile seeds on top of one another, just spread an even layer of seeds on the soil, no more than one seed deep.
Planting density of your seeds is also relevant from the point of view that you need there to be sufficient space between each stem/blade of grass for air to circulate and thus avoid build up of mould-promoting humidity.
*Ensure abundant ventilation. This is a major reason why growing outdoors can be a good option, provided one lives in a temperate climate. If your climate or living situation forces you to grow indoors, then do be sure to ensure good air circulation using a fan of some kind (although be careful not to allow a fan to 'dry' germinating seeds - the fan is mostly of use once roots have formed below the soil and blades of grass are growing
*Try to avoid direct sunlight
*Ensure good drainage of your soil. Whilst it is tempting to deliberately stop trays from draining, so as to minimise the need to water the soil, this is a fool's approach. You need good drainage, even though this means watering the trays slightly more frequently.
*Don't re-use soil for the next batch (if you've properly composted your old growing soil and root mats, then that's different).
*I can tell you from personal experience that wheatgrass DOES grow differently depending on how much soil you use. If you use only an inch of soil, the roots cannot develop very well and the grass experiences much greater stress than if you use a good 2-3 inches of soil. I assure you that it is absolutely worth paying a little more in order to use at least 2 inches of soil.
*It's not really a good idea to try to get a second harvest from a trayful of wheatgrass seeds/roots. It'll be less nutritious than the first batch and the risk of mould running rampant is increased, since it may already have begun during the first growth cycle.
*It is possible to soak seeds in hydrogen peroxide or grapefruit seed extract ('GSE') in an effort to reduce the likelihood of moulds forming on your wheatgrass seeds and blades, but it is naive to believe that this is a complete solution in itself - there is no substitute for good ventilation and following the other recommendations above. Do yourself a favour and get the fundamental basics of healthy wheatgrass growing (described in the points above) correct, rather than ignoring them and hoping for a magic bullet solution to kill mould problems. If you grow your grass properly, respecting it's needs for ventilation, 'breathing space', and sufficent soil depth, you should find, as I do, that there is no need for hydrogen peroxide or GSE, unless you live in unusually challenging environmental conditions (e.g. very hot/humid). Grass likes to grow in cool conditions. It grows more slowly in cool conditions, but don't look at this as a bad thing, just have a little patience and you'll see that cool growing is generally far superior.
*a SMALL amount (i.e. very diluted) of liquid kelp and/or OceanGrown Solution sprayed onto your wheatgrass (once it has begun to grow some green blades) will help support it's healthy growth.
*it is a rookie's mistake to apply too much liquid kelp/ OceanGrown Solution. More is not better!! Use it very diluted and you'll stand the best chance of getting satisfactory results.
*It is a rookie mistake to grow a flat of wheatgrass thinking that you can use just a little each day - for maybe 2 days this approach can work, but any longer than that and problems occur, such as mould or the wheatgrass imply becoming too mature and the soil not being able to sufficiently support it's health anymore - in this case, the roots may experience black mould and/or some slime, and the grass blades may become very bitter and the chlorophyll may degenerate to a paler colour.
Lastly, do be aware that the taste of your wheatgrass will vary, depending on many factors:
*Don't let it grow too old and bitter
*Try different cereal grains. For example, some people like the sweetness of wheatgrass but I find it rather sickly (though I am able to handle the taste if there's no alternative). I prefer oatgrass juice as it is not sickly sweet, but the downside is that it can leave a bit of a burning sensation in the back of the throat. Barleygrass juice is rarther bitter but fairly clean-tasting. Kamut tastes much like wheatgrass in my experience. Don't be fooled by people claiming that 'wheat is the best' - that's old dogma. All the major cereal grasses produce extremely nutritious and potent juice, with great similarities in nutrient profiles, so find one that you find most palatable because a potent juice which you can't bear to consume won't do you anywhere near as much good as one that you are happy to regularly consume/implant.
Hope that helps you a little.
Last edited by Arky; 07-23-2012 at 10:41 AM.
Arky...you covered everything I was going to say :)
The only thing I will say is that you actually can grow a flat of wheatgrass and just juice a little each day, although it's not ideal. You just have to start juicing before the grass is fully mature so that you finish the tray before it matures too much.
I too prefer barleygrass and oatgrass to wheatgrass, I've never been a lover of very sweet things. I juice them all anyway because they each have slightly different nutrients.
I highly recommend an out-of-print, and very unassuming, book on the topic of cereal grass nutrition-
'Cereal Grass What's in it for you!' - Ron Seibold (ed.)
You can pick up a secondhand copy on Amazon for just a couple of bucks and it's a very informative read.
Sometimes, it can be found (legitimately) in digital form on the internet, so you may get lucky if you hunt around, but I was happy to spend a couple of bucks and get a hard copy.
Originally Posted by Living Food
Hmmm... well, I agree with you 25% ;-)
If you have somewhere very cool to store the wheatgrass, then it is more viable to use it over a few days, but I still feel that the wheatgrass harvest period is optimal during an apprimately 48-60hr window of time. I'm only saying that on the basis of personal experience. If you can store it really cool (i.e. in a cellar or fridge) then there is some scope for extending this timeframe to some extent. I know some people suggest harvesting the entire flat and then storing the blades in stay-fresh bags, in the refrigerator. If I was going that far, I think I'd prefer to juice the entire harvest on the day of cutting, and then freeze the juice in icecube bags, even though I fully understand the compromises involved in freezing a living juice.
Each to their own... :)
Oh, I agree with you. There is an optimal time for harvest, and it's a fairly small window. I juice and drink the whole tray all in one sitting, when it's at the peak of its nutritional value. That's absolutely the best thing you can do, but most people don't drink that much juice.
Juicing a little at a time isn't ideal...I was just saying it could be done.
LOL - I remember drinking over a quart of wheatgrass juice once (ironically, it was one of my attempts at hydroponic growing, which didn't turn out well, but that's another story) - anyway, the point is that this particular large dose of wheatgrass juice had a profoundly cleansing effect upon me, even expelling some parasite material. Grass juice is incredibly powerful stuff; it's definitely not hyperbole! :-)
I'm actually gutted that I can't tolerate grass juice at present, so it's well over a year since I had any. Hopefully my body will become able to tolerate it in a couple of years (or less) from now. Only time will tell.
I hope you get worthwhile results from consuming the stuff.
Absolutely amazing benefits. I drink 2 glasses a day in conjunction with a glass of sunflower greens, a glass of chia greens, a glass of some other microgreen or green sprout, and a few glasses of weed (wild greens) juice.
I hope you get worthwhile results from consuming the stuff.
Could you tolerate sunflower green juice, chia green juice, or pea shoot juice? They're all amazing potent and nearly as nutritious as grass juice.
thanks, thats a lot of good info! i had one more questioin, what are your thoughts on the plastic domes that cover the trays during germination? right now i use news paper on top of the seed, after i mist the seed i mist the paer to get it wet. again - its been going well _untill now_
Originally Posted by Arky
Last edited by ktrimble2010; 07-25-2012 at 03:32 PM.
I wouldn't recommend using newspaper as that could leach on the grass. Here is the steps that I do and it works great.
1. I take a pint glass container and put 1.5 cups of organic wheatgrass seeds in it. I fill it with water just above the wheatgrass seeds. I let that soak for 10 hours or so. Overnight
2. Dump that water that was soaking for 10 hours out and now rinse with fresh semi warm water like 3 or 4 times. Then flip the pint over and let all the water drip out. Do this for
1.5 days or so and twice per day. By this time you will see the seeds sprouting.
3. Now plant in your tray with organic dirt. Then take another tray and put it on top so it covers the seeds. Let the seeds stay in dark a few days or until its lifting on the cover. Continue to water twice per day.
4. Once the grass is growing and touching the flipped tray, then remove the tray and add to window for light. Water twice per day and add a desktop fan if possible. | <urn:uuid:4cf9738c-f2a9-403c-92b5-7e4cea3ee6bb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rawfoodtalk.com/showthread.php?68773-White-Fungus-growing-on-blades-of-Organic-Wheatgrass&p=699188 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959852 | 2,906 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Global Trends in Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: A Response to Green, Cohen, and Wood
By Andrew Mack
We thank Amelia Hoover Green, Dara Kay Cohen and Elizabeth Jean Wood (henceforth GCW) for their thoughtful critique of the Human Security Report’s analysis of the impact of war on the incidence of sexual violence.
As we made clear in the Report, we believe that Dara Cohen’s dataset, which relies on State Department reports on human rights violations, makes an important contribution to our understanding of wartime sexual violence. Indeed we agree with GCW more than we disagree. But there are some real differences.
GCW say that what they call the “global decline claim” — i.e. that conflict-related sexual violence is likely declining worldwide — is not supported by data.
In fact, as the graph below makes clear, the Cohen dataset itself clearly show that the percentage of conflicts that experienced the two highest categories of rape decreased by about one-third during the 2000s.
This is significant for two reasons.
First, the new millennium is the decade in which we believe that the State Department data on reported conflict-related sexual violence are most likely to accurately represent the trends in actual levels of conflict-related sexual violence. This is because there has been a dramatic increase in reporting on such violence at the UN, other international agencies, the donor community, NGOs and the media during the 2000s.
Second, the 2000s is also the decade in which senior officials in the UN and other international agencies were claiming, without any supporting data, that wartime sexual violence in warfare was increasing.
In the Report we argue that the State Department data from the 1980s almost certainly suffer from chronic under-reporting and thus grossly underestimate the actual level of sexual violence. It defies credibility that the overwhelming majority of conflicts should experience no sexual violence at all in this violent decade.
Under-reporting is a problem that also appears to affect the 1990s. There is a considerably greater percentage of countries with no reported sexual violence at all than in the 2000s. However, we believe that the increase from the mid-1990s up to the year 2001 is influenced by a substantial rise in awareness of the issue of wartime sexual violence. Following the mass rapes in Bosnia and in the genocide in Rwanda, wartime sexual violence received growing attention in the international community and the level of reporting increased.
The trends in reported sexual violence — first up and then down — are very clear in the graph in GCW’s post, reproduced below.
Will the substantial decline in reported conflict-related sexual violence in the 2000s become a continuing trend? No one knows. But it is certainly a major shift from the three-fold increase in reporting that took place in the previous two decades.
Since 1980: More Sexual Violence or More Reporting of Sexual Violence?
As noted by GCW — and as we discuss in the Report — the Cohen dataset shows a very large increase in the incidence of reported conflict-related sexual violence from 1980 to 2000. So it may legitimately be asked why we chose to focus on the 2000-2009 period in which we noted that only 9 percent of the years of active conflict were characterized by the highest level of sexual violence.1
The reason is simple.
As explained above, the extraordinarily low levels of reported sexual violence in the 1980s were almost certainly a function of a lack of reporting, and not any absence of conflict-related sexual violence.
This was still part of an era in which, as countless feminist and other scholars have pointed out, conflict-related sexual violence was generally ignored in the international community, often being accepted as a “normal” consequence of war — one about which little could be done.
It is true, as GCW point out, that there are some references in State Department reports to wartime rape in this period. But with no reported sexual violence at all in 85 percent of the conflict years in this decade it is clear that these reports were very few and far between.
Indeed just how little reported conflict-related sexual violence there is in the State Department data for the 1980s is apparent in the fact that no countries in the 1980s experience Category 3 conflict-related sexual violence — the highest level — despite the fact that conflicts in this decade were more than twice as deadly on average as those of the 1990s, and more than three times as deadly as those of the new millennium.2 Just 5 percent of conflict years are reported as experiencing the serious sexual violence of Category 2, and 11 percent experience Category 1 — low levels of reported sexual violence.
Are the State Department data for the 1980s really credible when they indicate that only 15 percent of conflicts experienced any sexual violence in that period, when in the far less violent 2000s it finds that some 87 percent of conflicts experienced conflict-related sexual violence?
Was there really the huge increase in sexual violence in conflict-related sexual violence in the 1980s and 1990s that the State Department reports suggest, or is what we are seeing simply a huge increase in the reporting of sexual violence?
Since there are no independent sources of cross-national data other than the State Department reports, it is impossible to answer this question definitively. GCW do not argue for or against the case that there has been a real increase in wartime sexual violence.
We argued in the Report that there are good reasons for believing that the State Department’s accounts on sexual violence for the 1980s suffered from severe under-reporting.
In the 1990s, the shocking atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda surely meant more reporting of sexual violence than the 1980s. But other wars got much less attention. In the DRC, the “rape capital of the world,” for example, the first major report on wartime sexual violence did not appear until 2002.
We focused on the data for the 2000s because by that time reporting on wartime sexual violence had grown substantially relative to the previous two decades as the issue became more politically visible in the international community.
State Department reports for the 2000s are not only more likely to reflect the reality of conflict-related sexual violence than the data from the 1980s, and likely the 1990s, but they should also be sufficiently comprehensive to reveal core facts, about the variance of levels of sexual violence between countries and between armed groups. Both we and GCW agree that these and other findings are critically important.
The Association Between Battle Deaths and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Our Report argued that there was likely an association between the deadliness of armed conflicts and the level of conflict-related sexual violence and that since the end of the Cold War the latter had likely declined along with the former. We never claimed the relationship was linear of course — we could hardly have done so, since we accept the findings of Dara Cohen, Ragnild Nordås and Elisabeth Wood on the large degree of cross-national and intranational variation in the propensity of combatants to perpetrate sexual violence.
GCW point to cases where there is clearly no association between deaths from organized violence and levels of conflict-related sexual violence; it is also possible to point to other cases — like Rwanda — where there clearly is a strong association. But small numbers of individual case studies can’t reveal average effects. Regression analysis of cross-national data can, however, and since the Report was published, Dara Cohen has passed on the results of the regressions she ran on her data for the 2000s. These indicate that there is a positive, though weak association between the incidence of sexual violence and the number of battle deaths. The relationship is not statistically significant however.
Since the regressions were for the period in which we believe the State Department reports are most likely to be accurate we certainly accept this finding. The regression results don’t include sexual violence data for post-conflict years, however, so they do not challenge the core of our argument, namely that conflict-related sexual violence is likely to be reduced substantially after wars end.
Is Ending Wars the Key?
The Report claims that, “since the end of the Cold War, the number and deadliness of armed conflicts has decreased substantially, and with it — we assume — the incidence of conflict-related sexual violence.”
But how do we reconcile this claim with the Cohen data for the 1990s that clearly show an increase in the combined percentage of countries affected by the two highest categories of conflict-related sexual violence during periods of warfare?
Under-reporting may be part of the answer, but the more important reason is that the Cohen dataset, as is, cannot test the proposition that ending wars reduces the incidence of conflict-related sexual violence since it does not collect data on sexual violence in the post-conflict period.
We argued in the Report that it was logical to assume that when conflicts end, conflict-related sexual violence would also end—or at least decline substantially.
When wars end, combatants are rarely demobilized immediately and may continue to perpetrate sexual violence for some time after the fighting has stopped.
With rebel groups, militias and (some) government forces demobilized, large percentages of individuals reintegrated into the their home communities, and with rape camps closed, it would be surprising if, on average, the incidence of conflict-related rape did not decline substantially within a few years.
Indeed it is difficult to think of any arguments to the contrary — i.e., to make the case that three years after a conflict had ended there would have been, on average, an increase in conflict-related sexual violence.
If it is correct that levels of conflict-related sexual violence tend decline after wars end this would explain why any such a decline could not be revealed by the Cohen dataset.
GCW don’t believe that the declinist thesis is the most important one for researchers and policy makers to focus on. We don’t disagree, and our discussion of the possibility that conflict-related sexual violence will decline when conflicts stop, takes up only a very small part of the Report.
We also agree that global trends are of no interest to those directly affected by rising sexual violence in a particular country. But this doesn’t mean that global trends have no policy relevance. If conflict-related sexual violence is increasing or decreasing worldwide, it is important to understand why.
And if it is indeed the case that stopping conflicts has the indirect consequence of stopping or reducing conflict-related sexual violence, then what the UN calls peacemaking (stopping ongoing wars) and post-conflict peacebuilding (preventing stopped wars from restarting) may be important strategies for preventing conflict-related sexual violence.
There is considerable evidence that peacemaking and peacebuilding, while inefficient, are also effective. There are no cross-national data to the best of our knowledge that indicate that any of the current international strategies for reducing war-related sexual violence are effective.
In the 2000s, the data from the Cohen dataset show that the share of conflicts with the two highest categories of conflict-related sexual violence decreased appreciably during periods of warfare. This indicates that something must be reducing sexual violence. Finding out what and why, would seem to be important knowledge for policymakers to have.
1 We note that—contrary to what GCW suggest—we also report the shares of country years for all other intensity levels (see pp. 25-26 of the Report).
2 We thank Dara Cohen for providing these data. | <urn:uuid:e2f10f30-8afe-4956-992a-e056ebb19222> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2012/11/14/global-trends-in-conflict-related-sexual-violence-a-response-to-green-cohen-and-wood/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962373 | 2,354 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Decade of Fiscal Stimulus Yields Nothing but Debt: Caroline Baum
When George W. Bush took up residence in the White House in January 2001, total U.S. debt stood at $5.95 trillion. Last week it was $14.3 trillion, with $2.4 trillion freshly authorized by Congress Tuesday.
Ten years and $8.35 trillion later, what do we have to show for this decade of deficit spending? A glut of unoccupied homes, unemployment exceeding 9 percent, a stalled economy and a huge mountain of debt. Real gross domestic product growth averaged 1.6 percent from the first quarter of 2001 through the second quarter of 2011.
It doesn’t sound like a very good trade-off. And now Keynesians are whining about discretionary spending cuts of $21 billion next year? That’s one-half of one percent. And it qualifies as a “cut” only in the fanciful world of government accounting.
The Budget Control Act of 2011 will save $917 billion over 10 years relative to the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline. It leaves the tough work to a bipartisan congressional committee of 12, to be appointed by the leadership in each house. If this supercommittee fails to agree on a minimum of $1.2 trillion of additional savings over 10 years, automatic spending cuts -- evenly divided between defense and nondefense -- will kick in.
Is there any reason to think the same folks who couldn’t agree on a grand bargain this past month will join hands and find commonality in the next three, with one month off for vacation?
Even if the committee agrees on the prescribed savings by Nov. 23 and Congress enacts them by Dec. 23, as required, laws passed today aren’t binding on future congresses.
Throw in the fact that revenue and budget forecasts tend to be overly optimistic, and there’s even less reason to think Congress has put the U.S. on a sound fiscal path.
In a July 2011 working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel identified a pattern of over-optimism in official forecasts, a bias that gets bigger in outer years. (Who can forget the CBO’s 2001 estimate of a 10-year, $5.7 trillion budget surplus?) A fixed budget rule, such as the euro area’s Stability and Growth Pact with its mandated deficit-to-GDP ratios, only exacerbates the tendency.
“Political leaders meet their target by adjusting their forecasts rather than by adjusting their policies,” Frankel writes.
The deal hashed out in Washington at the eleventh hour this week does nothing to curb the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending -- on programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Medicare outlays have risen 9 percent a year for the last 30 years in a period of stable demographics, according to Steven Wieting, U.S. economist at Citigroup Inc. The automatic spending cuts outlined in the budget act would limit reductions in Medicare expenditures to no more than 2 percent a year.
By the end of 2012 or start of 2013, the federal government will be back at the trough with a request for additional borrowing authority. The debt will keep rising, and the ratio of publicly held debt to GDP will increase from 62 percent last year to as much as 90 percent in 2021, according to some private estimates, depending on what Congress does about the expiring tax cuts, the Medicare “doc fix” and the alternative minimum tax.
The CBO’s estimate of $2.1 trillion in savings over 10 years is well short of the $4 trillion Standard & Poor’s says is necessary to stabilize the debt and avoid a rating downgrade.
No matter. Some prominent Keynesians are advocating more spending now for an economy that is sputtering. Alas, there is little appetite in this country, and less in Congress, for more spending in light of the questionable results. A lost decade doesn’t seem like a good return on an $8.35 trillion investment. (For purists, only $6 trillion of the increase was in marketable debt, the kind of good old deficit spending Keynesians love.)
Maybe it’s time to try something new and different. In 2002 I wrote a column titled, “How About Some Tax Reform Along With Tax Relief?”
How about it? Get rid of the loopholes. Better yet, scrap the entire tax code, which would decimate the lobbying industry. Implement a flat tax or a national sales tax. The time has come for what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill calls “architectural change.”
Can the Code
The current tax code is burdensome, inefficient and costly to administer. O’Neill says it costs the Treasury an estimated $800 billion annually, divided equally between administrative costs and uncollected revenue.
Eliminate the corporate and individual income tax, he says, and replace them with a value-added or consumption tax, with tax refundability for lower-income households.
“We should focus the tax system on raising revenue for the things we as a society need,” O’Neill says.
Of course, what society needs is a matter of opinion. Without strong economic growth, the options are more limited, the choices more difficult. Fiscal stimulus can have only a short-term impact. The government taxes or borrows from Peter to pay Paul, reflecting a temporary transfer of resources, nothing more.
What does the nation have to show for chronic short-term thinking and policies like these? Long-term problems and a mountain of debt.
(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff email@example.com.
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:155c5180-587b-4029-abc2-1467a8037f62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-05/decade-of-fiscal-stimulus-yields-nothing-but-debt-caroline-baum.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934149 | 1,270 | 1.789063 | 2 |
PLEASE DONATE NOW TO JESUS CARITAS EST - WE NEED YOUR HELP
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
EUROPE : ITALY : BENETTON WITHDRAWS FAKE IMAGE OF POPE
CATHOLIC HERALD REPORT: By JOHN THAVIS on Thursday, 17 November 2011
The Benetton store in central London: their advertising campaign features world leaders kissing one another
CATHOLIC HERALD REPORT: The Italian fashion house Benetton has withdrawn an advert depicting Pope Benedict XVI kissing a Muslim leader hours after it was condemned by the Vatican.
The campaign is entitled “Unhate” and features doctored images of supposedly antagonistic world leaders in kissing scenes. The Vatican said the image of Pope Benedict embracing Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, president of al-Azhar University in Cairo, who announced the suspension of dialogue with the Vatican earlier this year, was offensive.
The ads were unveiled yesterday and a few hours later the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, registered a strong protest. He condemned what he called “a completely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father, manipulated and exploited in the context of a publicity campaign for commercial ends”.
Shortly afterward, the image was gone from the website of theUnhate Foundation. The Italian news agency ANSA reported that a company spokesman said it had withdrawn the image.
Fr Lombardi said the image represented “a serious lack of respect for the Pope, an offence to the sentiments of the faithful and a clear demonstration of how fundamental rules of respect for people can be violated by advertising, in order to attract attention through provocation”.
Fr Lombardi said the Vatican’s Secretary of State was considering what steps to take in order to guarantee “respect for the figure of the Holy Father”.
In the past, Benetton has employed shocking images in its advertising campaigns. One ad in 1991 depicted a priest kissing a nun.
Other images in the current campaign portray President Barack Obama kissing Chinese leader Hu Jintao and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embracing Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. | <urn:uuid:86ac9be1-3f15-4cdd-9588-b6441fc59581> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jceworld.blogspot.com/2011/11/europe-italy-benetton-withdraws-fake.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945136 | 444 | 1.539063 | 2 |
|Iran's Quds Force|
The massacre in Srebrenica was the last best piece of propaganda of the 20th century. Syria’s Houla massacre, if swallowed whole, will produce the same deceit.
In 1995, after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed in Ohio, purportedly 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) were massacred during a summer in Srebrenica. It was referred to as the worst mass murder since World War II and the blame was quickly laid at the feet of the usual suspects – Serbian forces. The result was NATO’s aerial bombardment and the invasion of 60,000 troops under United Nations command.
The Bosnian invasion was predicated on the idea that Srebrenica was a result of “ethnic cleansing” the endgame of course to stymie if not eradicate the Bosniak bloodline. The only problem was women and children were evidently put on buses and allowed to flee. When the graves were exhumed and the bodies examined mostly men of fighting age were found. It took over a decade for the Hague to exonerate Serbia in the action and place it squarely on a Croat, but by 2007 the damage was irreparable in more ways than one. So goes the fog of war and propaganda.
Syria over the Memorial Day weekend suffered a microcosm of that massacre when 108 civilians (32 children under 10-years-old) in Hula, outside Homs, were summarily dispatched without mercy. Initial reports suspected the Syrian army, if not, the Alawite Shabiha militia, loyal to the Assad regime. A Syrian investigation, however, found the culprits to be an 800-man death squad.
Thus far the trial of the Houla Massacre has taken place in the court of public opinion, which has been severely biased in favor of the opposition since the beginning of the Arab Spring, imbued with democratic legitimacy. In reality the Free Syrian Army (FSA) based from behind NATO lines in Turkey and under the direction of the Syrian National Council (SNC) is supplemented by a dubious international coalition of Islamic fundamentalists from all over the Middle East.
Rather than merely appealing for democratic reforms this sordid sum has created an environment of rampant sectarian violence not scene since Iraq in 2007. Unfortunately like in Afghanistan and Iraq the grand irony is that the West’s “crusade” as it is often referred to has actually displaced hundreds of thousands of Christians. According to French Bishop Philip Tournyol Clos:
“…the picture for us is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.”
“the enemies of Syria have enlisted some of the Muslim Brotherhood in order to destroy the brotherly relations that traditionally existed between Muslims and Christians: Yet, to date,they are not able to: they have provoked a contrary reaction and the two communities are more united than before. The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks”
This heartfelt testimony reflects what we have known for the better part of a year, that the “protestors” and “activists” in Syria are very much part of a larger proxy war which pulls support from a vast cross section of the NATO-Sunni alliance. Funding of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood has been in the pipeline since at least 2007 when it was reported in the New Yorker that Israel and the US were funneling support through Saudi Arabia so as not to compromise the “credibility” of the ostensibly “Islamic” movement. A similar tactic was utilized through Pakistan in creation of Al’ Qaeda in 1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (we all know how that worked out). As members of the Muslim Brotherhood are now honored guests at the White House, one must wonder if “credibility” is any longer an issue.
To continue with the Srebrenica analogy, while there has been no peace accord as there was in Bosnia former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has been attempting to monitor a ceasefire (part of his six point plan) as he did in Rwanda and Bosnia, which has by all accounts demonstrably failed as it did twice before. To be sure, as the Washington Post’s distorted, but still revealing op-ed detailed, wherever Kofi goes killings follow.
The common narrative parroted throughout the MSM (here and here) is that these UN monitors are naively providing “cover” for the Assad regime’s reprisals and add credibility to the Syrian government under the idea that diplomatic solutions are being ardently pursued. Given what we know about the composition of the insurgency, however, it is much more likely the opposite is true. UN monitors legitimize the conflict itself as a wholly indigenous uprising that requires diplomacy and time rather than expose it for what it is – a foreign invasion aimed at dismantling a key ally of Iran and Russia.
Srebrenica “claimed 8,000 lives”, however, it later turned out those numbers were grossly exaggerated (more like 700) and the motive – ethnic cleansing – proved tenuous at best. In reality it was another horror of war propagandized as the international version of a hate crime – a crime against humanity – ostensibly far worse and deserving of invasion. In Houla, while the scene has changed the goal is very much the same: demonize a vulnerable target government, intervene with force and with overwhelming humanitarian legitimacy post-haste.
The massacre, however, retains all the hallmarks of a shake and bake propaganda piece: the group was nearly 1/3 children, the fatalities purportedly as a result of “tank shells” and while many victims were in fact “mutilated and killed by knives.” Indeed, the footage was “released by the rebels” for Western consumption, that much is undeniable. Thing is, the Syrian army doesn’t enjoy a monopoly on that type of ordinance since the FSA has been reported to have captured Syrian army tanks as well as receiving even more tanks from defectors.
What was true in Srebrenica (see the Srebrenica fact sheet) is most likely true in Houla, both parties are were responsible for the death and destruction rather than one fail swoop of merciless destruction at the hands of an all-powerful Assad hell bent on crushing the moral of his people and their wishes for democracy.
Tempered with the aforementioned facts, the understandable and demonstrable desire of the media to sensationalize the events, geopolitical interests and the thin evidence (lies of satellite photos showing pro Assad forces “at the time of the attack” were in fact a day old, testimony of defected “air force officer” with “super human” hearing and sight, and testimony from a child in shock and impressionable) an objective analysis may come forth. Until that time beware the sirens call.
What is Qud’s Force Doing in Syria, Re-balancing or Massacring?
It has been reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ismail Qa’ani, second-in-command of Iranian Special Forces – Quds Force – has been training Assad’s soldiers since before the Syrian uprising. This from the International Business Times:
“The Quds, named for the Farsi word for Jerusalem, are Iran’s special forces unit — in American equivalents, a mix between black-ops and the CIA. As the Revolutionary Guard’s external force, the Quds support and facilitate Islamic movements in other nations on Teheran’s behalf, movements that allegedly include terrorist organizations.”
OMG, so like terrorist organizations like NATO backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) or Nevada trained MEK both listed on the US State Department’s “Don’t Feed the Terrorists” list, those types of terrorists? Looks like two can play at this game.
The state department attempted to connect the dots for us in the wake of the Houla massacre neglecting to brief us on the opposition’s questionable allegiances and design. Its spokesperson, according to IBT:
"Victoria Nuland said that the Shabiha militia, accused of carrying out the Houla massacre, has been modeled after Iran’s paramilitary Basij force, suggesting that the Iranian military could have trained the Syrian civilian soldiers."
This could be true, but it doesn’t explain the inconsistencies and gaps in the favored fiction of Houla, rather it supplies a red hearing.
In reality the official narrative is fraying. The IEDs, reports of wahabbists, displaced Christians and clandestine support are piling upon a delicate ruse. The idea that the opposition’s “demonstrators” and “activists” are a homogenous, indigenous and innocuous bunch of freedom loving non-state actors has been so undermined that Sec. of State Hillary Clinton revealed the true mastermind behind the Houla massacre claiming in Copenhagen that Quds “are coaching the Syrian military … helping them set up these sectarian militias.” She effectively, in one line, used up her lifetime supply of irony.
It is evident, according to defectors, the Quds Force was needed because Syria’s Army wasn’t up to task in crucial engagements with the foreign backed FSA and its fundamentalist friends. Hm, odd. In the end, the Syrian government (backed by Iran, Russia and China) faces a foreign backed insurgency (under the aegis of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Turkey, NATO). We are in effect seeing World War III in a fishbowl, perhaps a peak into the future and its only going to get uglier from here. | <urn:uuid:e9bfc049-683d-4b66-a3cc-902681355b1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.purpleserf.com/2012/06/syrias-srebrenica-blamed-on-iranian.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965961 | 2,128 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Walking up back to where Pottergate meets Bedford Street, turn left at the Birdcage and just after the Belgian Monk pub you will meet St John Maddermarket with its archway to the left.
Turn left at the foot of St John Maddermarket towards Charing Cross. Go straight over the road and continue north along Duke Street. Turn left along the ancient route of Colegate. St Michael Coslany, now the Inspire Discovery Centre, is in front of you.
Walking out to Oak Street, turn right past the tower and continue to St Mary’s Plain. Turn right here and you will come across my favourite Norwich church, St Mary Coslany.
Turn left on rejoining Duke Street and then follow the roundabout to the left. Take the pedestrian entrance to the end of St Martin’s Lane to walk up to St Martin at Oak, which lost it’s tower during the last century (see some of George Plunkett’s photographs).
Retrace your steps to the roundabout, cross over St Crispin’s Road and follow Pitt Street north. St Augustine is outside the inner ring road but part of its parish was within. The ancient walls did not follow exactly the same route as the modern road. The church is on your left.
Again retrace your steps and walk south, crossing back to Duke Street (there is an underpass). Take the first left, Muspole Street and discover St George Colegate. | <urn:uuid:62444527-9d85-4712-adfb-7d4dd0b7d5a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yourlocalhistory.co.uk/blog/2011/11/20/a-foggy-blog-three-hours-two-legs-and-nearly-40-churches-par-2.html | 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 | 0.937381 | 307 | 1.710938 | 2 |
|THE FACE OF THE WORKING CLASS TODAY|
Okay, so it is Labor Day, sort of America's goofy take off of May Day, except it really is not about workers, the working class or much of anything else of note. There are some unions who march around, often with flags, and never talking beyond wage slavery. Mostly, people just take the day off, barbecue, go to the lake, hang out, catch a ball game, again nothing much of note.
I figured I would try to do something that somehow relates to workers and even to "organized labor." No, I don't go around glorifying unions in this country, since virtually 100% of them are merely helping to prop up capital, certainly not challenging its existence anyway.
Still, and some of my more pure friends will belittle me for saying so, we'd be better off with a strong union movement as opposed to a mostly dead one.
So with all that in mind, and with that fact that I have to go enjoy "labor day" with the rest of America, I will leave you with this interview taken from AlterNet. Perhaps, the significance of this discussion has to do with the fact that it is about a very much rising part of today's working class, of the Precariat, and of the Multitude.
It ain't all that much about steel mills and big factories anymore.
But that is another story... | <urn:uuid:9b0a3787-1b09-4622-a42d-4f1742fa3352> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2012/09/domestic-workers-and-face-of-working.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974893 | 292 | 1.757813 | 2 |
As part of the Dean of Students Office, the Office of Community Standards, Rights and Responsibilities promotes personal responsibility through educational outreach to the University community and the enforcement of the Student Conduct Code in a kind, caring and compassionate manner.
The Office of Community Standards, Rights and Responsibilities is a department operating within the Division of Student Affairs at the University of Maine. The Office of Community Standards assists in maintaining the general welfare of the University community by promoting individual responsibility and personal development. The conduct process is designed to supplement the educational mission of the University by encouraging learning outcomes and responsible decision-making through its process, practices and educational interventions.
The University Of Maine System Board Of Trustees has developed a Student Conduct Code. The Office of Community Standards is authorized to establish and administer the Student Conduct Code for the flagship campus at Orono. The purpose of the Student Conduct Code is to maintain the general welfare of the University community.
The University strives to make the campus community a place of study, work, and residence where people are treated, and treat one another, with respect and courtesy. The University views the student conduct process as a learning experience with goals of personal and academic growth, personal responsibility, and understanding and appreciation of the students enrolled in the University community and the greater community.
All students must follow these standards. Students who violate these standards will be subject to the actions described herein. These procedures are designed to provide fairness to all who are involved in the conduct process. | <urn:uuid:e2ffdc47-2599-43e1-943a-ffe31bc273fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://umaine.edu/judicialaffairs/about/?tpl=textonly | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94761 | 297 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Painting is never an easy endeavour, but when it comes to tackling a hallway, many potential do-it-yourselfers are stumped, says a spokesperson for CIL Paints.
"The No. 1 question we receive from people across the country is how to paint a hallway," says Alison Goldman, marketing and communications manager for CIL Paints, in a news release. It is important to consider the size of the space and its visual relationship to the surrounding rooms, she says.
"As with any other room in the house, the amount of lighting in the area is also an important consideration, especially because hallways tend to be tunnel-like."
She suggests using paint colour to create colour illusions like depth or width, to coordinate colour choices with adjacent rooms and to use vibrant colours to add some zip. | <urn:uuid:8f150897-db37-4006-ab9f-39fcdb4279c6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.househunting.ca/chilliwacktimes/Vacation-Homes/Painting+space+race/6325402/story.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952224 | 168 | 1.820313 | 2 |
New York is bigger than all its skyscrapers because its essence is not brick and mortar but flesh and blood.
The Boston Marathon attack is a slap in the face to a sleepy-headed America.
New York and Boston are now forever linked as sisters in sorrow, but our example can provide something to remember as Boston slowly heals its wounds.
A disturbing account of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts since 9/11.
An honest attempt towards a serious project to present an objective analysis of U.S. foreign policy for India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
There is no making sense of this because there is no making sense of it.
So this Thanksgiving is the start of something: a holiday season unlike any other here in New York since 9/11.
9/11 is a day that is so significant, so life altering even for those who were not even born at the time, and it is necessary and compelling to recognize the day in meaningful ways.
The Smithsonian Channel's 9/11 documentary, narrated by Martin Sheen, accompanied by the shorter 9/11: Stories in Fragments.
Well, it certainly lives up to its name! | <urn:uuid:e36659c5-13bd-42eb-9a0e-eb213639f2b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogcritics.org/tag/9-11/page-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961945 | 237 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Review of Viable Values (2004)
Publishing on the Secular Web is not necessarily an endorsement of the mission of the Internet Infidels. Please note that Stephen Parrish has no interest in promoting metaphysical naturalism or the products advertised on this site.
Review: Tara Smith. 2000. Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 205 pp.
In Viable Values Tara Smith attempts to give Objectivist ethics a rigorous statement and defense. Objectivism is the name given to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the novelist who wrote such books as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. (Thus this review is not about moral objectivism as opposed to moral subjectivism.) Rand and her associates defend a form of ethical egoism, wherein moral values and ethical behavior for every individual are to be grounded in that individual's own interests. Ethical egoists believe that what "furthers" one's own interests is the basis of ethical behavior. Rand and her followers believe that they are providing a rational, secular approach to ethics which shows that ethics is objective--i.e., that there is one moral system obligatory for anyone who chooses to live an ethical life.
Rand never wrote a definitive treatise on Objectivist ethics. Her heir, Leonard Peikoff, has published a book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, where he articulates and defends Objectivist ethics. Other Objectivists have also written on this subject. But as far as I know, Viable Values is the only book-length attempt to argue for the Objectivist position and critique other views at length. The book is mainly a work in meta-ethics, the foundation and justification of ethics, rather than a work on various moral problems.
Smith's book is composed of six chapters. The first chapter contains an introduction to the problem of meta-ethics with an overview of the argument of the rest of the book. Here Smith makes the case that there is widespread immorality in our society, and that one reason for it is that people have not been given good reasons to be moral. It is this lack that she sets out to rectify.
Chapter 2 is entitled "Why be Moral?" and is an extended exposition and critique of three popular theories of meta-ethics: intuitionism, contractarianism, and rationalism. All of these, she argues at length, fail to provide an adequate ground for ethics. Intuitionism is the view that "all people have direct knowledge of right and wrong." Contractarianism holds "that obligation is a product of human agreement." Finally, rationalism holds that "[w]e should be moral because rationality requires it."
In the third chapter Smith attacks what she calls "Intrinsic Value." This is the concept that there are ethical values which are inherent in actions themselves, apart from any person's valuing. On this view, some "things are good in themselves." Because this theory is widespread Smith spends an entire chapter critiquing it.
Chapter 4 brings us to Smith's positive case. She argues that morality's real roots are in life. She claims that it is life--the fact that human beings want to live--that provides the basis for values and thus morality: "Values ... depend on the fact that organisms face the alternative of life or death.... The requirements of human life furnish the standard of value for human beings and, derivatively, the basis for all moral prescriptions." Only living things have an alternative of life or death, and because of this the choice to live will provide human beings with an automatic code of values, and hence provide morality.
The next chapter continues Smith's argument that the proper outcome of the choice to live is flourishing. That is, she argues that mere physical survival or longevity should not be the goal of human activity, but rather living a flourishing life should be.
Finally, in chapter 6 Smith defends what she calls "Principled Egoism." She articulates a form of egoism--that all ethical values should, for every person, have the goal of a flourishing life for oneself. She ends by defending her position against possible criticisms, such as the charge that on this view living for oneself may cause one to make another suffer. She holds that "the promotion of one person's interest cannot make another person suffer; when one individual's interest suffers, it is never because of another individual's gain." With this she brings her book to a close.
Viable Values has virtues. First, Smith is a clear writer, which is always a plus in philosophy. Second, she gives what I believe to be the clearest and most plausible exposition and defense of Objectivist ethics in print. Finally, she gives what I think are cogent critiques of some of the alternative ethical positions to Objectivism, such as contractarianism and intuitionism.
Having said that, there is also much to criticize in Smith's book. One major lapse is in her choice of what alternative theories to critique. In the beginning of Viable Values Smith mentions (but then quickly dismisses in two sentences) religious ethics (such as divine command and natural law theory), utilitarianism, and Kantianism. Given the historical importance of these theories, plus the fact that they are still quite influential (especially religious ethics), virtually ignoring them leaves her critique incomplete.
More to the point, however, is that Smith's main line of argumentation fails. The first concept to note is that according to Smith, the choice to live, and hence accept morality, is itself a nonmoral choice. If one does not choose life, then one places oneself outside the whole realm of morality. Thus, the choice to be moral is itself amoral.
This has some disturbing immediate consequences. For example, the terrorists who hijacked planes and then flew them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, on Objectivist theory, not acting immorally because they had chosen to die, in spite of the fact that they killed many innocent people.
However, if one chooses to live, then one automatically must adopt a code of ethics. The fundamental reason is prudence. As an illustration, think of a man who wants, more than any other option at the time, to wake up at 6 AM the next morning to do something important. He knows that the only way that he will do that is to set his alarm clock. In these circumstances, the only prudent and rational thing to do would be to set the alarm clock.
Similarly, if one chooses to live, and makes it one's ultimate good, then it would be irrational not to do those things which would enable one to live. It is from this that Objectivism derives its theory of obligation. But it can be seen to be a very tenuous theory of obligation, for it depends upon every individual's choice. At any time, a person could decide not to live, and thus be free of any moral obligation.
However, there is a larger problem. Like Rand and other Objectivists, Smith argues that the choice to live or die must be the fundamental choice that everyone faces: "No alternative end could replace life as the source of value because no alternative end could be achieved by means that do not respect life's requirements." In short, life must be the ultimate end for a person because if he was not alive, he couldn't do anything else. If what you really want to do is to go bowling, then you must try to stay alive, for the simple reason that if you're dead, you can't go bowling. Or at least you wouldn't enjoy it.
There are at least two problems with this line of argumentation. First, although the vast majority of goals that people aim for involve them being alive, not all of them do. For example, a man may take out a life insurance policy to provide for his family when he dies. Wills are usually made for the same purpose. So one can have values that do not entail that one must be alive. One may deeply desire that one's own family have continued prosperity long after one is dead.
The second and more important reason is that although it is necessary to be alive to enjoy other values, this does not mean that life itself must be the supreme value. All that it means is that life is a necessary precondition for the enjoyment of any values. One may only choose to live because it allows one to enjoy other values.
For example, suppose that your favorite activity in life is bowling. The thought that you may never bowl again would drive you to suicidal despair. Most of your waking hours are spent either bowling or thinking about bowling. Nothing else matters to you very much. If this were the case, it would seem that you would want to live so that you can go bowling. Deprived of the pleasures of rolling a ball at a bunch of pins, you see no reason to live. On the other hand, because you can actually bowl a lot, you are filled with a zest for life.
If this were the case, then would you really need to choose life as your ultimate value? It seems not. For you, life would merely be an instrument to what you want to do. Bowling would be your ultimate value, and since this is so, to be rational you would have to consider the ways in which you could do the maximum amount of it. Life would be, like a bowling alley, merely a means to an end.
In essence what Smith is doing is arguing thus: if you want to do any A, you must have B, so therefore B has to be your ultimate value. This seems obviously fallacious and shows the real nature of the argument. Smith makes an illicit move from the fact that life is a necessary precondition for doing most of what we want to do to the conclusion that it is thus what we must choose as our ultimate value. But there is no reason why life should be given the status of an ultimate value for anyone. What Smith's argument really shows is that if we value X more than anything else, we should arrange our lives so that we may realize X.
But in this case the theory of values becomes very relativistic. Whatever is one's ultimate value is what one aims for and rationally attempts to realize. Objectivism turns into pure moral subjectivism, for what one values then becomes what one ultimately holds. And since the choice of ultimate values is arbitrary in the absence of what Smith calls intrinsic values, any choice is as good as any other. Of course Smith does not want to adopt moral subjectivism, but that is where her theory inevitably leads given the failure of her argument that life and physical longevity must be chosen as ultimate unless one wants to die.
Smith doesn't really believe that herself. For in the next chapter arguing that life must be one's ultimate value, she subtly changes life as physical longevity to life as "flourishing." A flourishing life is a happy, productive life. This, she writes, is the reward of morality.
In a sense I think that Smith is right. Few people really want to live no matter what the circumstances are. Imagine a situation where you are told that you will have a lifespan of 120 years, but that you will be in extreme pain the entire time. Would this make you happy? Not unless you are very strange. By bringing in flourishing, Smith is admitting that life in itself, mere physical longevity, is of little value in the absence of anything that makes life worth living.
The problem for Smith then becomes that life as survival and life as flourishing are two different things. She writes that "[l]ife, as the source of and aim of ethics, is flourishing." The trouble with this statement is that it is obviously not true. One can survive and not flourish. One can live for 100 years and be miserable the entire time. Of course this is not usually the case, but the scenario is logically possible.
If the arguments that Smith makes for the necessity of choosing life as one's ultimate value were sound, then they would only show that one must choose to survive because otherwise one cannot enjoy any values. One does not have to flourish to have values. The two concepts are logically distinct, and Smith is really using a classic "bait and switch" tactic. First put out the necessity of choosing life as survival, and then switch to life as flourishing.
There is one other major criticism to be made here. That is to be at least plausible, Objectivist ethics must show that there are no genuine conflicts of interest. Otherwise on egoism people would be entitled to behave in ways that seem blatantly immoral. For example, if it is in your best interest to obtain ten million dollars, and a practically risk-free opportunity to embezzle that much money arises, then on egoistic principles, where every ethical action is governed by what is best for the individual, it would seem that the ethical thing to do would be to embezzle. And this seems obviously wrong.
To avoid this Rand and Smith have the notion that there are no genuine moral conflicts. For example, suppose that Al and Bob both want the same good job: high paying, prestigious and in pleasant surroundings. They have to take a test to compete for the job. Suppose that the only available alternate job is working in a smelly, dangerous chemical factory at minimum wage. There is a greater risk of having a shorter lifespan at the factory than at the other job. Both men are qualified, but the company's tests show that Al would be only 99% as good at the job as Bob would. On Objectivist principles, the company would be wise to hire Bob. Now it can be easily seen that the company would be better off if it had hired Bob, and Bob would be better off, and in some sense even the entire community would be better off, but Al would not. Let us also suppose that Al has the opportunity to switch the tests, so that his name is on Bob's and vice versa. He can do this with minimal amount of danger of being detected. If he switches the tests he will be hired and poor Bob will be relegated to the noxious factory job.
The question is, if Al is an ethical egoist, why should he not do this? Is it because it involves him lying and cheating? But if this leads to Al having a longer, more flourishing life, isn't this all that matters on ethical egoism? To restate Smith's theory, ethics is a matter of choice, the choice to live. All ethics flows from this original choice. Therefore, the only justification that Smith has for acting ethically is to fulfill the original choice to live. Things are only "bad" for an individual because they would lead to a shorter or less flourishing life. Therefore any behavior that is normally considered immoral--lying, cheating, stealing, betraying, and murdering--is only immoral for an individual if is "lessens" his or her life.
To avoid these counterintuitive results, Smith argues that there are no real conflicts of interest among rational people. In the above example, she would have to say that if Bob gets the job, it is not only in the best interest of both the company and Bob, but it is also in the best interest of Al. The problem with this is that it just seems plain wrong. Al is not better off being relegated to the local chemical factory.
Let us grant that acting in an ethical manner is usually in one's best interest. The problem for Smith is that she has to demonstrate that is always in one's best interest to act in that manner that is commonly thought to be ethical. In essence, she has to show that it is a necessary truth that if one act in this manner, this will "further" one's life. Otherwise, she will be forced to say that while it is usually the case that one is better off if one does not lie, cheat or steal, still there are times when one is better off to do so. Not to do so in such exceptional cases would be unethical on egoism.
"So what?," one might say. Every ethical system has extreme cases where it is difficult to say what the right thing to do is, or where principles seem to conflict with each other. For example, there is the old problem about too many people on a life raft. The problem with Smith's theory--and with Objectivism in general--is that it is not just extreme cases that one has to worry about. If one can "greatly further" one's longevity by embezzling money, and the odds that one will be caught are minimal, wouldn't it be the moral thing to do to go ahead and embezzle? To avoid this, Smith needs to show that it is always in one's best interest to not to do so, not merely that there is always a cost to doing so. I believe that this is an impossible task. Indeed, while Smith and the Objectivists deny that there are any real conflicts of interests among rational people, to most of the rest of us they seem to be a common occurrence. The burden of proof here is on Smith; she must show that it is never the prudent thing to do to act in a manner most would call immoral. This, I believe, cannot be done.
In essence, Smith reduces ethics to prudence. While prudence is an important virtue, it cannot carry the whole load itself. For one thing, as I argued above, prudence may tell you how to best achieve your goals; but it cannot tell you what goals you ought to have. In theory, then, being a cannibal or a hit man are just as worthy goals as Smith's goal of "flourishing longevity."
I will make one final criticism. There are many critiques of Objectivism in print. For example, Charles King and John Robbins both make extended critiques of Objectivist meta-ethics. Yet Smith ignores them. It is not good scholarly practice to simply ignore criticisms of one's position. Smith's book would have been better if she had interacted with the critics of Objectivism.
In conclusion, Viable Values is a good introduction to Objectivist meta-ethics, probably the best in print. It also makes concise and valuable critiques against several popular meta-ethical theories. However, I think that Smith completely fails to make the case for Objectivism. The Objectivists still have not made their case.
Copyright ©2004 Stephen Parrish and Internet Infidels, Inc.
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The Mullahs’ Eyes on Iraq
Posted By Frank Crimi On April 25, 2011 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 8 Comments
Amid heightened concerns that Iraq’s democracy is becoming increasingly vulnerable to an array of internal political and economic threats, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki strongly repeated his stance that the remaining 50,000 US troops will be gone from his country by the December, 2011 deadline. Not surprisingly, the main beneficiary of this action appears to be, once again, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Despite objections from both Iraq’s army chief of staff and the US commander in Iraq, Maliki said Iraqi security forces were more than capable of filling the American void, arguing they are “able to take responsibility, to maintain security and to work efficiently.”
Maliki’s comments came after a recent meeting in Baghdad with Speaker of the House John Boehner, one in which Boehner afterwards released a statement that read in part, “Just four years ago, a terrorist insurgency was killing innocent civilians and wreaking havoc across the country. Today Iraq is a different country.”
However, Boehner’s statement proved to be a little premature. Hours after its release, two suicide car bombings blistered Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding 26. It was just the latest in a string of amplified insurgent attacks across Iraq over the past several months, assaults that have led the State Department to issue a warning that “no region should be considered safe from dangerous conditions.”
Added into this fearful and dangerous atmosphere has been a string of increasingly violent nationwide demonstrations centered on political reform, ones which call for an end to widespread government corruption, better government services and better paying jobs. The protests — which began in February — have killed at least 14 people and wounded hundreds.
So, while popular opinion in Iraq may seem to be on the side of Maliki, not all Iraqis — most notably Sunnis and Kurds — are desirous to see a final exodus of American troops during this chaotic time.
That sentiment was best expressed by an advisor to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who said in March, “In practical terms, Iraq is already divided. If the U.S. withdraws its troops as scheduled at the end of this year, it will trigger the splitting up of Iraq. There will be civil war, maybe even a regional war.”
Unfortunately, the specter of an Iraqi civil war reared its head following the recent ominous comments made by Muqtada al-Sadr, the notorious anti-American cleric who led the brutal Shiite Mahdi Army that killed untold thousands of Iraqis during the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq from 2004-2007. In a statement to supporters, al-Sadr promised to revive his militia if the American “occupation” is extended.
In an effort to extinguish this fuse, Maliki said through his media adviser, “The security agreement cannot be extended without the acceptance of all the Iraqi political forces.” Of course, it’s no surprise Maliki took this course of action, as he owes his second term as prime minister to al-Sadr’s endorsement, one which required Maliki to offer several positions in his cabinet to al-Sadr loyalists.
Still, it may have come as a surprise to Maliki when al-Sadr subsequently added new criteria to his bottom line demand of an end to an American military presence in Iraq. In a rhetorical challenge to his supporters, al-Sadr asked, “What if their companies and embassy headquarters will continue to exist with the American flags hoisted on them? Will you be silent? Will you overlook this?”
Al-Sadr’s exhortation is all the more relevant, as the American embassy in Baghdad – already the largest US diplomatic mission in the world — is scheduled to double to 16,000 employees by January 2012. Absent a US military presence, their protection will be the responsibility of a combination of private contractors and inexperienced Iraqi security forces.
However, if Maliki is concerned about the ongoing turmoil and the potential negative effects it may have on his nation’s future, he certainly doesn’t seem too affected. As he has boastfully said, “Our country is now the most stable and secure in the region,” noting that “there are downsides, but everything is put on the right track.”
Although this may be a matter for debate, what isn’t in question is who will most benefit if things do go south in Iraq. Just as it has taken advantage of regional uprisings throughout 2011 to destabilize its Sunni Arab rivals, Iran is already well on its way to take advantage of any Iraqi security and political instability.
Despite the conflagration of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and Iranian efforts to incite horrific sectarian violence in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, Iran’s ties to Iraq have actually grown increasingly closer as the US presence diminishes. To wit, through a series of economic agreements, Iran is now Iraq’s largest trading partner. Iran has also created politically influential ties with Baghdad’s government through Shiite proxies such as al-Sadr and the Iraqi Shiite coalition.
For Iran, a weakened and compliant Baghdad government would allow it to use Iraq as a platform for widespread Iranian regional influence. In fact Iran’s efforts on this front have produced some early successes. For example, through Iranian encouragement, Iraq has forcefully made attempts to evict and send into exile the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group based in northwestern Iraq and one the Islamists most fear. Moreover, Iraq has energetically taken up the Iranian policy stance against the Sunni Arab crackdown on Shiite uprisings in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.
Some are very concerned with Iran’s role in this drama. As Iraqi political advisor Wrya Saeed Rwandzi warned, “Iran is openly fighting the secular democratic forces in the entire region. They are more dangerous than al-Qaida.” In fact, he went on to say, “Obama is doing nothing. The U.S. has no clear policy, and is sending contradictory messages.”
That viewpoint, of course, rings distressingly true, as Obama has seemed — at best — indifferent to America’s strategic role in Iraq and — at worst — dangerously injurious. Yet, having campaigned on a pledge in 2008 to end the entire American presence there and now facing re-election in 2012, Obama looks increasingly likely to cut ties altogether.
But this is not a fait accompli, as was perhaps indicated by comments made by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates shortly after he returned from a visit to Baghdad. Gates said the offer for the United States to remain in Iraq was still on the table: “My basic message to them is [for us to] just be present in some areas where they still need help…But they have to ask, and time is running out in Washington.”
Unfortunately, as events are continuing to prove, time may be also running out on the future hopes for Iraq’s nascent democracy as well.
Frank Crimi is a writer living in San Diego, California. You can read more of Frank’s work at his blog, www.politicallyunbalanced.com.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/frank-crimi/the-mullahs-eyes-on-iraq/
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